Chapter 12
brADLEY
Elaine let loose a stream of pure power, one of her less finessed spells, one that was more like shooting a flare into an oncoming crowd. Unfortunately for all of us, it had the exact same effect as a flare.
It went off brilliantly, illuminating the men who were perched on various beams like birds. A few still crept in through the massive windows near the ceiling that I assumed were for exhaust. I gasped sharply. By my sight, there were at least twenty men.
Twenty against five. I wasn’t sure why I’d assumed that any of this would be fair, why I’d thought… well.
When Elaine’s magic faded, the afterglow in my eyes blinded me, the regular light of the room—forge, electric lights—dim in comparison.
“What are they—” I had planned to finish the sentence doing up there?
But before I could, they were on us. As my eyes adjusted, all I could do was feel.
Something slammed into me, and at first I resisted, trying to scrabble with it, but then I recognized the scent, my eyes finally clearing. “Griffin.”
Around us, the men attacked in sweeping motions, their weapons ranging from swords to machine guns.
“Stay here,” he said, putting me behind one of the horrendous metal sculptures.
Then he was back into the melee. I shouldn't have been surprised that he thought I was like a child who needed to be tucked away. After all, my single experience with combat was trying not to hurt anyone too badly at the oracles’ camp.
The men had circled Julian, their automatic weapons looking even more lethal when compared to his sheathed sword. Julian nodded his head at his first opponent.
“Drop the weapon,” the other man said.
“You took the words right out of my mouth,” Julian replied. “Drop ’em, walk away, and we don’t need to have any more conflict, you and I.”
Williams’s man didn’t take the suggestion. Raising his gun to his shoulder, he snarled, “Drop the sword.”
There was a brilliant flash, almost as bright as Elaine’s flare, and then the man was left holding half a gun, the rest on the floor. Julian had sliced it in half, right up to the man’s grip. For a second, his eyes went wide, but then he looked around. “Fire!”
Standing in a circle, the other men hesitated, glancing between one another, some of them no doubt measuring the realization that shooting into the circle meant shooting toward each other.
That was the only hesitation Julian needed.
With another brilliant flash of light, a slash of his sword, each of the men was left gawking at the half of the weapons they still held, then down at the presumably expensive parts left in fragments on the floor.
For a moment, I was sure that was the end of it. We won. Julian would simply destroy everyone’s weapons and then…
And then Elaine released fire, the spell that hit hard and didn’t take prisoners, and I knew that we weren’t even nearly at the end of this. Elaine was a controlled magic user, a delicate touch with magic, someone who only used just enough force, an artist.
“No!” she screamed, and I didn’t care what I was running into, I pushed myself away from my hiding place and threw myself into the battle.
Dodging around Julian and his sword, now facing off against the guards who were wielding their destroyed weapons as clubs, I caught a glimpse of Griffin, his fists swinging, his motions poetry as he danced through a crowd of men all better armed and better protected than him.
Three men stood clumped together, swearing, heads jerking back and forth. “Where is she?”
“There!” One raised his weapon, but then his face slammed to the side, an invisible punch throwing him off balance.
He went down, taking his partner with him, and I didn’t see what happened to the third. Brigette could do what she wanted with him as far as I cared.
Elaine stood just beyond the men currently caught at the mercy of a librarian who didn’t like them talking in the stacks.
Her hands clenched at her sides, swirls of magic trailing over her arms and up to her elbows, and she screamed again, so loud that I raised my hands to my ears before I caught sight of her eyes.
Red. Red and covered in lenses, and I whispered, “No.”
But she grimaced as she turned one of her hands in on herself, pressing it against her own abdomen. She screamed again, her chin raised, her shriek so loud it echoed in the building, shaking it. When she stopped, blood soaked her blouse, and her eyes were perfectly normal, brown again.
I couldn’t look away, even as I could feel a familiar buzz in my skull. Wincing, I crushed my hands to my head, huffing in pain and reaching out with my mind. Where were the helmets? I knew there had to be some. There had to be something—
“My babies!” Kane wailed, and my head snapped around.
He was staring at three men in the doorway, blocking our exit. All of them wore helmets, and I had a sudden realization. If they could turn any of us, Julian, Griffin, Elaine, even Brigette? The rest of us would be dead.
Well, not if they got me, but why would they want me? An academic with no magic to speak of and the upper body strength of one whose only workout was lifting piles of ancient manuscripts?
I couldn’t let them get my sister. With a last look, I saw Elaine raise her hand, a more nuanced restraint spell spiraling off her palm, catching five men at once and pinning them to the ground.
Then I was running for the front door, picking up a weighted pole on my way, the end designed with a thick bulb at the top.
It was either confusing art or an inefficient fire poker, and I didn’t care either way because I was not letting them take Elaine. I was not—
None of the men looked at me as I approached, too consumed by the chaos of the fight. Or they knew the truth, that I was useless here, that I had no power to speak of and they could overlook me.
Well, fine. Overlook me. Go ahead. I wasn’t going to let them take anyone.
Raising the pole, I slammed it across the head of the nearest man. He yelped, the impact denting the helmet hard enough that it jammed into his skull. Blood leaked down his neck, and he fell, his body going lax with what I hoped was unconsciousness.
I didn’t wait. I swung again, but the next man grabbed hold of the horribly inefficient, artistic fire poker. Wrenching it out of my hands, he swung it back at me, and I had just enough time to dodge forward and put my hand on his head.
“Let go,” I commanded, feeling a buzz in the back of my skull that rose in volume like a jackhammer.
He stared at me, his teeth bared. “What are you talking about?”
But he didn’t swing the pole. His friend turned to him and said, “What’s going on?”
But the question was too late because I had some idea of what was going on. “Let go.”
He dropped the pole.
“Give me the helmet,” I said, feeling my voice echo as though it was carried on a thousand wings, as though the air moved specifically to lift it and move it.
He blinked but lifted his hands and took it off, handing it to me.
“What are you doing?” his friend shouted. “What are you—”
I put the helmet on.
Immediately, the rest of the world disappeared and, at the same time, I could see everything. I could hear everything, the whispers of sound but also a current of murmurs that I realized were thoughts.
That’s it, Corazon, you and me, Julian thought, his words a murmur of affection as he used the flat of the blade to push someone back. Then he flipped the sword so he could draw a slice through the strap of one of the guns, letting it fall awkwardly, and the man yelped—
Brigette’s mind was a soft whisper of codes and waiting, a hum of affection as Kane’s office safe gave in to her, letting her in, and oh, look, there was some money to go along with those important-looking documents—
Where is he? I left him right here? Where is he?
Did they get him? Did Williams take him?
Was that his goal all along? I almost paused at Griffin’s thoughts, so wholly focused on me, as though I was the most important piece in the puzzle rather than the only one here who could be left behind to no one’s detriment.
Consume. Take. Breed. Consume Take Br—NO No no nono. Elaine’s voice was a pure scream, a horrible wrenching sound as something bigger than her tried to press down, tried to take away the free will she clung to.
Next to me, the other helmeted man was a buzz of sound, a thousand voices at once, and I realized I’d been mistaken. He wasn’t forcing his will on everyone else. He was merely the vessel, the radio antenna accepting something far, far more powerful and spitting it back out into the world.
I reached out, grabbing his head in the physical world, and I felt his surprise, his shock at how fast I moved, at how strong I was as I yanked the helmet off his head.
Then it was just me, and I fell to my knees, the voices that had been divided between two now forced on me, but I didn’t care, I had to—I had to—
“Stop.” But my words were ineffective, too many things at the same time, the press of the city beginning to encase me, the whispers becoming shouts in my ears. I needed less. I needed them to stop.
“Stop them,” I commanded. “Stop them.”
And I could feel Williams’s men turn on each other, screaming in a horrible, wrenching way as they became pure instinct, desperate in a fight for dominance as they fell on each other, weapons and hands and mouths tearing into flesh.
I felt bile rise up my throat. What had I done?
But then there was something else with me.
Good. Yes. More.
I turned, although my eyes were unseeing, although all I could do was feel the presence.
More. More. Yes. Moremoremoremoremoreyesmoremoreyes.
And I was seeing something new, a billion small lights, all mine for the taking. I could turn them, turn them to me, I could consume them. I could—I could—
Someone pulled the helmet off my head. Griffin knelt in front of me, his face bruised, his hands bloody, and he said, “That’s enough, Bradley. We’re safe.”
The men were still pounding into each other, their bodies continuing the fight, their faces warping as though their human skeletons were shifting and becoming something else. Something terrible. Their red eyes didn’t even blink, a million small lenses seeing everything.
I could see it. They were becoming the Hive.
“I can’t stop them,” I said helplessly. Elaine screamed, using her magic to shove the men apart, their arms still grabbing for each other, even as they were tearing apart dead flesh, tearing skin from hollow bones.
Julian threw himself in front of Elaine, using his blade to keep the men coming toward her at bay. She grunted, blood dripping from her nose as she reached for more magic, more binding.
“You have to stop them!” Griffin was right in front of me, his hands framing my face. “You can do this.”
“I can’t,” I whispered. I hadn’t done it in the first place.
Liar. You know who you are.
I reached up to slap my hands over my ears, but Griffin was already there, his hands tight, grounding me here. Even without the helmet, I could feel the buzz of it, the way they shivered in the back of my head.
Their voices had been extinguished, not by death but by the overwhelming voice that still spoke in the back of my own head, still promised something I couldn’t name but wanted so badly it nearly tore me apart.
Moremoremoremore.
“Enough,” I whispered.
Griffin frowned at me, his face worried, and he said, “Sweetheart, I don’t think you understand.”
I shook my head, and when he started to loosen his grip, I raised my hands and pressed them harder against my own face. Closing my eyes, I dug into that voice, the relentless hunger.
“Enough. You have enough. You cannot have more. You are full, you are sated. You have enough.”
I didn’t open my eyes, the buzzing so intense I could feel it throughout my body. I tightened my grip on Griffin’s hands, and he met me, pressing his forehead against mine. One by one, I felt the men in the room drop, going slack in Elaine’s restraints.
As they did, the voice in my head got louder, now a shout so intense I could see colors behind my eyes, see the brilliant red of… something else.
“You did it,” Griffin said, his voice wondering. “You stopped them.”
Footsteps approached, and Elaine asked, “What happened? What was that?”
“My babies!” Kane wailed.
My eyes snapped open, and I shouted, just a moment too late, “No!”
Kane put one of the discarded helmets on his head. His whole body shook, his hand trembling when he reached out, grabbing at thin air. Brigette appeared in his grasp, struggling to breathe, squirming as he lifted her off the floor.
“What did you find, little thief?” His voice was distorted, the helmet echoing it. Strange mandibles formed around his mouth, click-clacking out of a gap between the helmet and his chin as he warbled. “Shall I take it from your mind?”
“Stop!” When I yelled the word, the air around us seemed to warp.
Griffin was up, running toward Kane, his hand drawing back, and I recognized those knuckles, recognized the damage they would do. They were going to crush Kane’s helmet. I let myself relax.
Kane caught Griffin’s hand, the impact of the punch dissipating into nothingness. Griffin howled in pain, and I lurched toward him, but Elaine was faster, using a spell to bind Kane down.
With one hand, he waved the magic away, dissolving her dark blue magic into smoke. He grinned at Julian.
“Would you see what I will do with that sword you hold so precious? Be ready, sword whisperer. You will lose your blade the moment you raise it against me.” Then the mandibles extended, his mouth so wide I was sure he could consume us all.
I took three steps, grabbing the helmet as tight as Griffin had held my skull together only a few minutes ago, when the Hive had threatened to turn my brain into atoms. I could feel the threat in the voice, the consuming need.
Wrenching the helmet off Kane’s head, I stared into his horrible, insectoid face.
“Enough,” I said. “You have enough.”
The look faded from him, and he dropped Brigette. His eyes were wide and horribly human when he looked around at the carnage and said, “What happened here?”
Griffin took my arm and tugged me away. I grabbed hold of Elaine’s hand, and Brigette and Julian followed. When we were all packed in the car again, Brigette swore loud and colorfully.
“Are you fucking kidding me? The Hive are real?” Brigette swore again, slamming her hand on the dashboard.
“Just get us out of here,” Griffin said. “We need to be gone before MEA or Williams show up.”
Julian drove.