Defiance (37 page)

“Better than being dead,” Drake says, and starts his task.

“You two fill the rest of these jars with the liquid in your barrels. It’s glycerin. Don’t let it come in contact with the acid, whatever you do. It would kill us all.”

“What can I do?” Rachel stands beside me. “Give me something to do.”

“Press the button, sweetheart. Keep pressing it.”

She climbs over the wagon seat and grabs the device again.

Three minutes.

Plumes of black smoke rise from the west now as the fires in North Hub eat through the city at a frightening speed. From the outside, it must look like the entire city is already up in flames.

I check the progress of the men in the back. Each team has about nine jars filled and capped now. Drake’s hands are blistered raw, but he refuses to let his teammate dip for him.

Nine is good, but I don’t know if it will be enough.

“Everyone who will listen to me is out of the danger zone.” Nola appears beside the wagon. “Blow it up, Logan.”

“Keep filling.” I say to the men, and snatch the dagger from my boot so I can cut the horse free of the reins. He takes off running as soon as he’s free, and I look at Rachel. “Come out of the wagon.”

She scrambles down and stands beside me, still holding the device.

“We’re going to flip the wagon over and use it as a shield.”

Two minutes.

I call out a warning to the men, and they lift the filled jars and metal drums clear of the wagon bed. Then we flip the wagon to its side and crouch behind it. A quick count shows I have nearly twenty jars of each liquid now. Eighteen of acid. Nineteen of glycerin.

It will have to be enough.

Grabbing a jar of acid, I lob it at the gate. It explodes against the stone in a hail of glass and sizzling liquid. I bend down and pick up two more. Two of the men grab jars of acid too, and we throw all six of them against the gate. When they reach for more, I stop them.

“Save those. We’ll need them.”

One minute.

I scoop up two jars of glycerin. The men do the same. “Stay down,” I say to Rachel and Nola, and then we throw the jars.

The glass missiles arc through the air, slam into the damp concrete, and shatter. The gate explodes in a brutal hail of concrete slabs, steel splinters, and suffocating dust. People scream as tons of debris come raining down around us. Some are crushed, others are knocked off their feet, still more are sliced open by the lethal barrage.

It’s a sea of wreckage, blood, and chaos, but there’s a hole in the gate big enough to fit three wagons side by side. Beyond the ruins, the Wasteland gleams like a jewel-green beacon of safety. Behind us, the roar of the beast is closing in.

“Get as many of them out as you can,” I say to Nola, Drake, and the others. They hurry to comply, and I pick up another jar of each liquid as the Cursed One incinerates the last block of buildings between it and the gate and comes for us.

I
lean down beside Logan and pick up two jars as the beast comes closer. Grim determination anchors me to the ground as the flames eat through Lower Market and the cobblestones shake beneath the weight of the Cursed One’s approach.

We did this. We brought it here. We have to do everything in our power to destroy it. It’s the only chance the people outside the gate have of surviving.

“You should leave too,” Logan says.

“Don’t be an idiot. Whether we live or die, we’ll do it together.”

He doesn’t argue.

We wait as the beast slithers its way over the cobblestone street toward us, its movements jerky, as if something beyond itself is driving it forward. We wait while it fills the grassy clearing between the gatehouse and the gate with fire. And we wait until we can see the milky yellow of its unseeing eyes.

I grip the jars with bloodless fingers, and ready myself.

“Now!” Logan yells.

We throw the jars and they explode against the impenetrable scales of the beast. The force knocks the creature to its back. It bellows, flips over, and comes for us.

“Again!”

The second round of explosions blows a section of its tail to pieces. Wild triumph surges through me.

We can beat it.

“It can be killed. Did you see that? It can be killed!” I reach down for two more jars, and the Cursed One jerks to a stop, shuddering as if held back by something. I lob the jars, and the beast bellows as they hit it in the side, sending a shower of ebony scales clattering to the ground and revealing a small patch of gray skin beneath.

“It’s vulnerable!” I scream over the sound of flames and the roar of the beast.

Determination slides quickly into vicious purpose as I stare at the beast’s exposed skin. I can’t avenge Oliver. I can’t stop the Commander. But I can destroy the creature that took Dad from me.

Logan would argue. Calculate angles and odds. Take a moment to plan. But if I do that, I could miss my chance. The fury inside me begs for vengeance. Promises that if I just obliterate the cause of my pain, I can find peace. I hold on to the bright, jagged edges of that idea and let it fill me up until I can’t see anything else.

Then, as Logan bends down for more jars, I snatch my knife out of its sheath and charge straight for the Cursed One.

“Rachel!” Logan screams my name, but I keep running.

The beast bellows, a tortured sound full of pain and rage.

I skid on debris.

It whips its head in my direction.

I grip my knife with steady fingers.

It jerks its nose, sniffing the air.

Nine more yards. I raise my blade.

Its claws dig into the ground.

Eight yards.

“Rachel, no!” Logan screams again.

Seven.

The beast’s tail slams into the ground.

Six.

It shudders and pins me with its sightless eyes.

Five.

I brace to launch myself forward. It lowers its snout and roars, blasting me with an unending stream of fire.

“N
o!” I stumble, hit my knees against the pavement, and scream, “Rachel!”

One second she was there, running straight for the Cursed One, her knife raised above her head. The next second, there was nothing but flames.

I can’t breathe. Can’t think beyond the swelling tidal wave of unbearable grief rising up to suffocate me.

She’s gone.

Gone.

Ripped from me, just like Oliver and Jared. Just like my mother.

“Rachel!” My breath sobs in and out of my lungs as I choke on her name. I dig my fingernails into the cobblestones beneath me as everything I’d built my world on turns to ash.

I have nothing left. Nothing but the merciless creature in front of me, still spewing the wall of flame that killed her. Nothing but the terrible need to take it with me as I die.

She’d promised we’d be together. Live or die. We’d do it together.

I’m going to make her keep her word.

And I’m going to take the Cursed One with me.

Pushing myself to my feet, I face the beast and raise the jars above my head. I’ll ram them down the creature’s throat and hope I find my family waiting for me after death swallows me.

Despair is nothing but cold, brittle determination driving me forward. One last plan. One last calculation. One last effort and my life will count for something as I join her.

Vaulting over a pile of broken steel, I brace myself to leap straight into the beast’s mouth, but then I see the impossible.

Rachel
.

She’s sliding on her stomach beneath the wall of fire, her knife aiming straight for the monster’s unprotected side. She’s covered in soot, her clothing singed and torn.

She’s the most beautiful sight I’ve ever seen.

The stream of fire exploding out of the beast’s mouth sizzles into a puff of acrid smoke. It twists its head toward Rachel and sniffs the air.

I’m not about to let it kill her.

“Hey!” I yell and run forward. “Here! Look here!”

It ignores me.

Rachel’s forward momentum slows as she hits the scales blown off the beast’s side. She can’t stab its side before it realizes she’s there. She can’t, unless I provide a distraction.

I calculate trajectories, pray I haven’t misjudged the velocity needed, and hurl the jars I carry. They explode a few yards in front of the Cursed One and send me flying backward onto a pile of rubble.

The creature snaps its head toward the sound of the explosion and roars a stream of fire at the offending noise. Rachel belly-crawls over debris, pushes her left hand into the ground for balance, and raises her knife. The blade flashes crimson and gold in the light of the fire, and she buries it in the monster’s side.

The Cursed One screams and spits fire as it coils in on itself. Rachel is trying to pull her knife free, but its tail knocks into her, sending her sprawling. I push off the wreckage and race to her. Grabbing her beneath her arms, I haul her backward as the beast screams again.

“Get a sword. Another knife. Let’s finish it,” she says.

But it’s too late. The creature jerks its head up, trembling as if being held still against its will, then dives into the ground, scales and debris sliding in after it as it burrows toward its lair.

I pull Rachel to her feet and crush her to me. She wraps herself around me and holds on as if I’m all that is keeping her from drowning. My hands are shaking, and my throat feels raw from screaming, but in the midst of the flaming wreckage around us, all I can feel is gratitude that Rachel is still alive. I want to hold her until the shaking passes, until the terrible panic I felt when I thought she was engulfed in flames dies completely, but I can’t. We’re surrounded on three sides by fire.

“We have to get out of here,” I say, and start leading her toward the shattered gate.

“I don’t understand what just happened.”

“I don’t either. It left without trying to finish us off. It never leaves when it knows its prey is still alive.”

Rachel stumbles over a slab of concrete and grabs for me. “It didn’t look like it had a choice. It was behaving the same way it did when you controlled it out in the Wasteland.”

“But if it wasn’t obeying our device, then who was controlling it? Maybe Rowansmark has tech even stronger than the device the Commander tried to steal?”

She shakes her head. “I don’t know.” Looking at the carnage around us—the flames, the rubble, the bodies trapped in what would become their funeral pyre—she shudders. “It doesn’t matter who was controlling it. We started this, Logan. We brought it here.”

It does matter, because if the total annihilation of Baalboden was the goal, whoever was controlling the Cursed One can send it back to finish off the survivors. And it matters because I have no doubt the Commander and anyone else hungry for power will stop at nothing to get their hands on tech like that. We can’t let that happen. Today is vivid proof.

But she’s right. We called the Cursed One. We started this. And we’ll need to live with that. I don’t know how we’ll do it. I’m weary, inside and out. I want to take her hand. Walk away from the destruction. Disappear into the Wasteland. We could travel for weeks. Months. Find a quiet place where there are no power-hungry leaders, no cities, no memories to reach out and slice into us when we least expect it.

We could, but then who would hunt down and destroy the tech that caused today’s devastation? Who would honor the memory of Jared’s sacrifice and exact justice for the Commander’s actions? The weight of what must be done settles on my shoulders as I take Rachel’s hand.

We climb over the debris, walk through the hole in the gate, and turn to face the city. She leans into me as I wrap my arms around her, and we watch Baalboden burn.

T
he city burns for three days. Most of its citizens never make it out. The ones who do are divided between worshipping the ground Logan and I walk on for rescuing them, and blaming us for bringing disaster upon everyone by rebelling against the Commander’s protection.

We can’t find the Commander. I don’t see how he could’ve made it back into the city when we had to blow the gate to pieces to get out, but I suppose it’s possible he’s one of the charred bodies lying inside what used to be Baalboden.

I think it’s much more likely that when he realized his city was doomed, he ran into the Wasteland with his guards like the coward he is. The thought sparks a weak flame of fury within me, but I’m too exhausted to keep it alive.

Sylph made it out, along with her new husband. I recognize a few other faces of girls I knew in Life Skills. Melkin’s wife made it out too. I’m grateful, even though the sight of her fills me with suffocating dread.

When those who hate us leave to seek asylum in another city-state, I don’t try to stop them. Neither does Logan.

The rest of them elect Logan as their new leader. Some of them simply because he rescued them by blowing up the gate. But most of them want him as their leader because he publicly stood up to the Commander at the Claiming ceremony, an unprecedented act of courage he then trumped by escaping from the dungeon.

There’s talk of rebuilding elsewhere. Quinn and Willow join our group, and Willow quickly finds a kindred spirit in Nola. As Drake, Logan, Willow, and Nola organize teams of survivors to search the ruins for salvageable goods, I slip away and enter what’s left of Baalboden.

The city is a carcass of bones and ash. Hollowed out. Every vestige of life burned into silence.

We understand each other.

The magnitude of what I’ve caused is a crushing weight I refuse to lift. Let it consume me. Let it drive me to my knees. It’s less than I deserve.

I leave the rubble of the gate behind and walk the charred, twisted streets until I reach the ruins of the home I shared with Dad. The home where Logan first joined us as an apprentice. Where Oliver visited regularly with sticky buns and fairy tales.

The ash clings to me as I sink down to sit where our kitchen table used to be. If I close my eyes, it can all go back to the way it used to be. If I close my eyes, I can see Dad, his gray eyes shining with pride as I find my first target with a bow and arrow. Oliver opening his arms wide for me as he walks up to the front door.