Ignition Point (11 page)

The other Scavengers laughed, their eyes bright with malice. One sprawled on the other side of the fire, watching. Another stood back, watching the desert and the torture with equal excitement. The last of them held a boy by his arm, twisting it cruelly back behind him to force him to watch. Damar had bitten through his lip to keep from crying out at whatever the Scavs had done to Ghost before Lena had woken. He cried freely now, tears running down his cheeks to mix with the blood on his chin.

Heal this?
They had noticed the absence of the terrible wound one of them must have given Ghost in the raid. They thought he had healed himself.

Heal this.
It was the first thing she had to do, if she was to have a hope of focusing enough to free them. She had to heal herself.

Because she was a Spark, she healed faster than most. Even so, she knew fixing the agony in her shoulder wouldn’t be fast or easy. She recognized the pressure on her shoulder as packing they had shoved into the wound to stop the bleeding. They wanted her alive.

Lena swallowed. It took several panic-filled seconds for her to push away the implications of that, the image of herself being sold. When she managed, she focused everything she had on the Dust within her.

It doesn’t have to be pretty, just fast. Heal me fast.
She showed the Dust what she needed, and she could feel as it began knitting together her flesh. It rejected the fibers packed into the wound, pushing them out as she healed. Her arm and shoulder were no longer cold. They warmed as the Dust’s energy spread through her cells from those being directly healed to those in proximity.

The warmth changed to heat, which transformed into an itching burn. She gasped and squeezed her eyes shut. When she opened them again, it was done. The heat from her shoulder was intense enough that she could feel it on her cheek, but the pain and the wound from the bullet were both gone.

“She’s awake,” the man who’d been lounging on the other side of the fire announced. He’d sat up. He looked at her intently. Lena recognized it as the peculiar unfocusing of eyes needed to see the energy bloom of another Spark. Only Sparks could see the auras that grew brighter with every use of the ability until a Spark dispelled the pent-up extra by grounding. She realized it must have been her bloom glowing in the desert night that had helped him spot her. And shoot her. “She just did something.”

“She did something?” The man grinding the iron rod into Ghost stopped to glance back at the Spark and then over at Lena. He laughed. “What could she do, Marreau? Not a whole lot of anything out here needing charging.”

The Spark called Marreau cocked his head at her. He rose to his feet and crossed around the fire to kneel in front of her. “I don’t know. But her bloom just flared, and she was already bright. I’m telling you, she did something.”

The other man narrowed his eyes as he looked past Marreau to where Lena lay on the ground, as if he would magically gain the ability to see the bloom Marreau was talking about. He wouldn’t.

Lena held his eyes for a moment, glowering and silent, before turning them back to the Spark in front of her. He was the dangerous one—not because she thought he could do what she did, but because he could tell she was doing
something
.

He needed to be the first she took out. But as soon as he fell, the others would attack. She couldn’t deal with all of them at the same time. By the time she’d completed a thought to one man’s Dust, the other men would be on her. But maybe…

Lena could feel his Dust, waiting. She told them what she wanted. She asked them to wait, and then she moved on to another of the men.

Marreau stopped gnawing his lower lip. He reached out to pull at the bandages at her shoulder. Stymied by how well they were wrapped and packed, he cursed and pulled a long knife from his belt.

Behind her, Lena heard a gasp and rustle, as if the woman moved in protest. Had it been she who tended Lena’s wounds?

Marreau tossed her a contemptuous look of warning. “Back off, bitch.”

The other man spat into the dirt at his feet, narrowly missing Ghost’s face. When he raised his gaze, it came to rest on the woman behind Lena. There was more than a warning in his eyes, there was a flatness that promised violence later. Whatever the woman had done during or after the attack, even if it was just to wrap Lena well, she had earned his enmity. Was she a slave, Lena wondered, or his woman? Perhaps she was both. Lena could feel her sinking back down, but the intensity of her energy didn’t fade.

Marreau sawed through the bandages and pulled them away. Once the wrappings had been tossed aside, he pulled away the packing, still heavy and red with wet blood. Beneath the packing, however, there was no gape of bullet-torn flesh. There was no wound at all. Marreau rubbed at her skin in disbelief. He tossed a wild-eyed look over his shoulder.

“Do you see this?!”

The Scav leader yanked the bar from Ghost’s knee, leaving Ghost to strain at his bound hands, writhing in pain again. The man stalked over, carrying the bar with him.

If he struck her in the head with it, if he did anything that tore at her ability to focus, they were finished. Lena watched him come closer as she desperately gave orders to Dust then moved on again.

When the leader reached her, he jammed the iron rod into the ground beside her and then crouched to lean in. He stared at the pristine skin covering her shoulder, skin that had no doubt been a bloody, gaping mess the last time he’d seen it. When he raised his gaze to hers, his eyes were filled with an avaricious gleam that made Lena’s heart stutter.

“Did you do this? The rumors’re true then?”

Lena didn’t answer. She pressed back into the ground. The urge to scrabble back in the sand to get away from the malevolent man before her was nearly overpowering.

He kept his dead stare on Lena as he spoke to Marreau beside him. “Get the brand, Marreau. This one stays with us. Keep her breeding, sell the brats to Council.” He turned to grin at Marreau. “You think you could get a powerful Spark on her? A girl?”

Marreau raised his brows. “Sparks breed true. She makes any girls, they’ll all be like her. And with my seed? The boys’ll be powers, too.” He turned and gave his leader a cool look. “But I’m keeping the boys. I’ll train them myself.”

His temerity earned him a laugh and a clap on the shoulder. “Why not? You had the best training the Council had to offer, didn’t you? We’ll work up a contract, no worries. This’ll be good business. We’ll be able to afford to replace every man we lost tonight off this one girl.” The Scav leader grinned down at Lena. He reached out and gripped her chin, turning her face to look at each side. “Get the brand,” he repeated to Marreau.

Marreau rose to step toward the far end of the fire. He grabbed a rag from a pile beside one of the nearby tents to wrap it around the handle of a long metal pole standing in the hot coals along the edge of the fire. Lena didn’t wait for him to bring the brand back.

As soon as he turned and she realized exactly what they meant to do, she told the Dust to strike. It wasn’t perfect timing. She hadn’t finished with the man standing watch across the fire. But she couldn’t wait any longer.

Both Marreau and the man holding Ghost’s brother stiffened. Because Marreau had been mid-step, his momentum carried his body forward. He toppled. The brand fell into the rags. They smoldered for seconds then ignited.

The Scav with a cruel grip on Lena’s face whirled to see what had happened, then whipped his head back. His face contorted.

“What do you think you’re doing, little Spark trash?” His fingers tightened more, nails biting into her skin. The soft flesh of her cheeks was forced into the sharp ridges of her teeth.

But her focus pulled back in from the two men frozen and stiff behind him. The Scav raised his free hand to strike at her just as she reached out to his own Dust.

He gurgled. His hand left her face to clutch at his throat. She knew it felt like he had hands tightening there, squeezing away his life. It’s what she’d frantically told the Dust to do. She pulled herself up to a sitting position and scooted back.

The movement was enough to attract the attention of the guard, who’d jumped to help Marreau put out the fire. He hadn’t noticed that Marreau was still on the ground, not stomping or scooping sand on the rags. But he noticed Lena sit up.

Lena scuttled back like a sand spider, reaching out for his Dust as he leaped toward her. The fire flared up again behind him as she struck. She’d run out of ideas.

He froze as he leaned out for her, eyes widening. He made a soft sound, like a pup who’d been kicked, before collapsing to his knees and then falling face down onto the desert floor. His heart was charred inside him, she knew. The Dust had released a massive burst of heat and electricity in his chest.

Lena stared at his still body in horror for a long moment before movement yanked her focus away.

The woman set the child on the ground, curled in a ball, with her hands over her ears where the woman’s had been before. Then the woman stood, swaying before the Scav leader.

The man was on his knees before his slave. He was still choking, his face purpling and desperate. His gaze rose. From her position behind the woman, Lena couldn’t see her face or eyes, but the vicious man paled, his scrabbling fingers freezing on his throat. His eyes locked on her face as she leaned down and calmly slid the long knife from his belt. She was still for a moment.

The knife slashed out, taking the leader across the throat, just above his clutching hands. Blood fountained. The slave woman stepped away. She moved past him to Marreau.

The fire from the rags was spreading. The orange flames licked up the side of the tent closest. Its light cast her in shadow. Her silhouetted form seemed darker than the night around them as she made her way to Marreau.

There was no hurry to her movements. She took her time as she bent over to reach down, lifted his head by the hair, and slid the blade with infinite care across his neck. His blood spurted at her feet. It pulsed over her slow hand and the blade of the knife she held.

She didn’t step away immediately. She stared down, watching in satisfaction as the paralyzed man’s life pumped out at her feet. When his staring eyes had glazed, she released his head. It thunked down into the bloody desert mud.

She stood again, looking across the fire at the younger Scavenger. He’d been holding Damar. When he’d frozen with the others, when the women had started their assault, Damar had realized he could slip free. The boy had scooted across the sand to Ghost.

Damar curled around his wounded brother now. He had a knife in his hands and he was sawing at the ropes that bound Ghost.

The Scavenger stared at the slave woman. She stood over Marreau, her fingers working on the hilt of the bloodied blade. The younger Scav was frozen across from them, his muscles locked and keeping him from fleeing.

What must he be thinking of the terrible sight of this woman and what she’d done to the strongest of the men he’d lived and worked with? The men had led him to prey upon others and were predators no more.

A dark stain spread from his crotch, down his legs.

The vengeful woman shook her head. “I have no use for your blood, Mireles. You never touched me. So go.” Her voice was hard, flat. When he didn’t move, it rose in anger. “Did you hear me? I’m not going to kill you. Run away.”

Lena pulled herself to her feet. “He can’t.”

The woman turned to her, startled, as if she’d forgotten Lena was there.

“He can’t because
I
have use for his blood,” Lena said. “He touched my friend. He laughed at his torture. He held his brother and made him watch. He has the blood of their family on his hands as much as the others. He is no innocent in this.” Lena took a few cautious steps forward.

The woman considered Lena’s words. After a moment, she nodded and lifted her hand, flipping the gory blade to palm it as she offered Lena the knife.

But Lena had already shifted her attention back to the Scavenger. What would be a just reward for his actions? She thought about Ghost’s suffering, about the uncertainty of rebuilding and survival now that his family group was gone. There would be no quick death for this Scavenger.

Lena glanced down at the leader, dead before her. Her only regret was that he hadn’t suffered more.

When she raised her head, she sent her will out to the Dust in the young Scav’s body, and then turned away. She’d give him no more of her time or attention. Ghost needed her now.

She bent over her companion, ignoring the choking and gagging sounds coming from her right. Damar had managed to cut the ropes and drag his brother’s arms back down to his body. Ghost’s breath came in short, fast gasps. He was going into shock.

Lena glanced up again, to place the dangerous woman before she turned her focus to healing Ghost’s wounds. She was nearly depleted. After so much activity, if she didn’t ground again soon, she’d be joining the dead men in a desert grave.

But the woman wasn’t a threat. She’d slid the blade of the knife into the ground and stepped away from it to return to lift her child into her arms.

As soon as she saw the little one, Lena felt a pang of regret for the choice she’d made a moment ago. The wet gagging from the man frozen in place was bad enough. She didn’t want the child to look over and see the dark blood that Lena knew must be flowing freely from his mouth and nose as it erupted up from his hemorrhaging lungs, drowning him. Perhaps she should end his suffering now? Give him a clean death so the child wouldn’t be traumatized?