Sacrifices (30 page)

“One question,” Loch asked tensely. “Did Muirin know where you’re taking us?”

“How can you think she’d have told!” Spirit demanded furiously. “She died defending us!”

“I don’t think she would have if she had a choice,” Loch said grimly, and Spirit hiccupped on a sob.
She saved our lives, over and over again, and I was never sure I could trust her, not until the end.
Her eyes stung with tears as she remembered how
happy
Muirin had looked last night when she found out she was the first one Spirit had told about QUERCUS.

“No,” she said dully. “She didn’t know.”

They were still a mile from where they could make the turn into Radial when there was a flare of headlights in the rearview mirror.

“They’re after us,” Burke said unnecessarily. A moment later someone shone a high-powered spotlight into the Xterra. Addie automatically braked, dazzled by the glare.

“Speed up!” Burke shouted.

“I can’t
see
!” Addie snarled, but she accelerated again. The front wheels slipped off the edge of the road and bumped along the shoulder. Addie yanked the wheel back the other way, and the car slewed across the road. She was driving blind. But she didn’t slow down.

“Let me drive,” Loch said suddenly.

“Are you crazy?” Addie demanded. “I’m doing ninety on ice and the Legions of Hell are following us! This isn’t the time to switch drivers!”

“Maybe not,” Loch answered. “But you’re the only one here who can take somebody out at a distance, so I think you’re going to have to give me the wheel!”

Addie’s only response was a wordless wail. Loch began climbing between the two front seats. Addie saw the turnoff into Radial just as she was passing it. She jerked the wheel sharply around. The car fishtailed wildly. Loch was thrown into the front passenger foot well.

“Yeah, that works,” he muttered. Addie giggled jaggedly.

Why aren’t they shooting at us? Or— Or— Or—something?
Spirit huddled down in the corner of the back seat. She should have been terrified, or mourning, but she just felt numb and—weirdly—as if she wanted to yawn. What she wanted most was to close her eyes and just not be here anymore.
Shock,
she told herself distantly.
This is what shock feels like.

“They want us alive,” Burke said grimly. “And they probably think they have a good shot. We’re heading right toward The Fortress.”

Spirit wrapped her arms tightly around herself. In the front seat, Burke, Addie, and Loch were doing a complicated handoff as Loch slithered into the driver’s seat and Burke deadlifted Addie out of the way. The car bumped over the new railroad tracks. They’d reached Radial.

“Where are the lights?” Addie suddenly demanded, her voice high and panicky. “There should be streetlights!”

We have to be in Radial by now,
Spirit thought. It might be small, but it had streetlights—and The Fortress was always lit up so brightly every night the glare was visible from Oakhurst. But there was nothing but blackness outside the windows.

“I’ve got it—I’ve got it!” Loch said. The car slewed wildly as Burke took his foot off the accelerator, and bumped up over something—curb?—and back down again. The car began to slow. Then Loch floored it, and the car leaped forward. Addie was sitting in Burke’s lap now. He wrapped his arms tightly around her waist, holding her steady.

“I was kidnap-proofed when I was fifteen and one of the components of that was an offensive driving course,” Loch said. He went on explaining what he’d been taught, his words coming fast and sharp with nerves.

“It’s too dark,” Addie said, and she sounded terrified.

She’s right.
Spirit took a deep breath as the realization hit her. Her chest ached as if she’d been holding her breath for far too long. She craned around and looked out the rearview window again.

No lights. No
headlights
. Their pursuers might have shut off their lights—but
their own
headlights weren’t showing anything either. Not buildings. Not road. Nothing but darkness—not even fog, because fog should be white, and this wasn’t. It was as if the darkness itself was closing in around them. Their headlights were dim and yellowish, as if the car’s battery were dying—though it couldn’t be with the motor running—and when they faded out entirely the darkness would have them.

“Oh god I can’t see the road,” Loch whispered suddenly, breaking off his nervous monologue. He took his foot off the gas.

This isn’t fair,
Spirit thought. They were going to die—either run into something, or be caught—and Muirin would have died for nothing. She reached over the back of the seat with both hands. Addie clutched her left hand tightly. Burke gently took her right.

“Spirit!” Addie yelped. “Your ring! It’s glowing! The stone is
white
!”

For a moment Spirit’s only thought—as she tried to tug her hand free of Addie’s—was to get the ring
off.
She’d worn it to the dance because they’d all had to wear their class rings to the dance. She could see the light between Addie’s fingers, faint but clear, and it seemed to her as if it was the only light in the entire world.

Happy New Year.
It was as if someone else was speaking inside her mind, but it was her own voice. Her own thought. The New Year’s Dance, and all the lights had gone out, and everyone there had stood frozen and terrified in the darkness, as pure Fear lashed out at them as if it were a living thing. Her ring had glowed then. So had Burke’s—Addie’s—Loch’s.

Muirin’s.

And the Fear had come again and again, as if it was hunting for something—for some
one
—but they’d learned to fight back. Staying together. Taking care of each other.

Holding hands.

“Addie! Remember New Year’s! Remember what we did! Grab Loch!” Spirit cried. “And Burke too!”

For a moment Spirit thought Addie was too terrified to move. Then she let go of Spirit’s hand and gripped Loch’s shoulder. Spirit took the hand Addie had released and put it on Loch’s other shoulder. Now she could see her ring clearly. The stone glowed as brightly as if it was one of those tiny LED bulbs, and it ought to frighten her—why her? why now? why was it
white
?—but somehow it didn’t.

Because they were together. And they wouldn’t give up.

Ever.

The fear—the despair—lifted away as if she was waking up from a nightmare. And as if something—something powerful, something
good
—had just been waiting for her to notice it, she felt an uprush of
power
.

Like it was in February, when we faced down the Shadow Knights, all of us together. Like it was at the library—we fought back then, too.

Once again Spirit had a sense of being a conduit for something coming from outside, something using her as a gateway. It should have terrified her, this feeling she was something’s tool, but it didn’t. It felt
right.
And it was as if this wasn’t just power, but illumination, as if something was shining through her, shining through all of them—something
bright
.

The headlights burned white again. The dark fog was gone.

They were in Radial. Its lights weren’t out. It looked
normal
. The car was rolling slowly along the road; they were almost at The Fortress, and they were drifting through the gates.

Spirit took a deep breath. “You know, I wasted two days working on that stupid history paper and I didn’t even have to,” she said loudly.

She felt Loch startle, as if he’d just realized where he was. He hissed something under his breath and jerked the wheel away from the road to The Fortress. The gravel under the tires sprayed as he gunned the engine again.

“There are traps in the road,” Loch said, his voice filled with awe. “I can see them. I can drive around them!” He began to slew the car left and right, avoiding traps only he could see.

Spirit looked behind them. The Shadow Knights were at the other end of Main Street—three SUVs. They’d been hanging back—they had to have been, waiting for Loch to just drive right up to The Fortress—but the moment he turned the car away, they accelerated.

Addie saw them too.

“Water,”
she growled, her voice deep and rough with fury. And suddenly, between them and their pursuers, everything containing liquid water in Radial burst open. Jets of water from buried water pipes ripped through earth and blacktop, showering the road around them with debris as the water geysered high into the air. The glass of storefronts sprayed outward, shattered by jets of water striking them with the force of a hail of bullets. The water reared up like a wave, like a living thing, lashing out at the Shadow Knights and turning to ice as it hurtled forward.

“How dare they?” Addie said furiously. “How dare they?”

“On the right,” Burke said quietly.

Spirit saw one of the Breakthrough RVs—one of the ones built on a bus chassis—rolling through the gates of The Fortress. It was entering the roadway ahead of the ice-wave that had taken out their other pursuers, and it was gaining on the Xterra, even though the little SUV’s engine howled as Loch redlined it. Spirit could see headlights from within The Fortress shining off the side of the bus as it made the turn into the road. There were other chase vehicles following it, but they didn’t matter. The bus would reach them first.

“I need more time,” Addie said, her voice thin and breathless with strain.

“Oh no hurry. Take all the time you need,” Loch said tightly. “Just— This thing won’t go any faster.”

The bus made the turn onto the road behind them and slowly started closing the distance between them. Spirit could hear the deep roar of its engine over the frantic howl of theirs.

Closer.

The driver of the RV beeped and flashed his headlights at them mockingly. The air horn made Spirit’s teeth vibrate; she wanted to cover her ears, but to do that would mean letting go of Loch and Burke.

Closer.

It was less than six feet off their back bumper now, so close the only thing Spirit could see was the dragon-and-tower logo on the front of the bus. In another minute it would hit them. The Xterra was shaking as if it was about to come completely apart.

“Okay—
yeah
!” Addie shrieked.

The ground behind them dissolved. A column of water spurted upward. It couldn’t be coming from a water pipe, Spirit thought. There was too much of it—a pillar of water as wide as the front of the bus, white with force as it sprayed out of the ground. It struck the bus just behind the front wheels, lifting it. Flipping it. The bus slid off the column of water, balanced for an instant on its back end, and fell.

The ground shook.

And if that had been all that happened, the four of them would still have been caught, because the nimble pursuit vehicles—two, three,
six
Jeeps and Humvees and one ordinary sedan—swerved around the RV and kept coming, into the spreading lake the jet of water had left behind. They drove right into it, breaking to the left and the right to avoid the crater in the middle.

Drove into the water …

… and sank.

Spirit saw the headlights slowly dim as the cars drifted into the depths of the sudden Addie-created lake—it
was
a lake, and not just a big puddle with a pothole in the middle. The entire road had to have given way, and the water was still spreading.

One or two of the chase cars hadn’t gone in—but they couldn’t follow, either. Spirit watched until she saw the Shadow Knights who’d been in the submerged cars reach the surface, then turned away.
I hope you all catch pneumonia,
she thought viciously.

Addie laughed softly. “I apologize to everyone in McBride County for draining the water table dry and causing countywide drought for the foreseeable future.”

“Considering the alternative, they shouldn’t mind,” Burke said seriously.

I just hope this
is
the alternative,
Spirit thought dazedly.

“That’s what took so long,” Addie continued contritely. “I had to get the water here.”

“Okay, where now?” Loch said. He didn’t slow down, even though nobody was following them now—that they could see, anyway.

“Just keep going,” Spirit said. “We stay on this road for a while.” She looked down at her hand. The stone had gone dark again, and the sense of being a pipeline had ebbed, but it was another ten minutes—hurtling through the night with nothing chasing them—before the four of them were willing to let go of each other.

About five minutes after that, Loch let the car slow to the actual speed limit.

“The last thing we need is to get grabbed for speeding,” he said ruefully. “Because I don’t actually have a license. And, uh, I’m not sure what we’re going to do when we run out of gas. The tank’s full right now, but—”

“Don’t worry,” Spirit said, with a calm confidence that surprised her a little, “we have enough to get us where we need to go.”

They drove in silence for a few more minutes.

“Uh, where
is
that, exactly?” Burke said slowly, his voice puzzled but not suspicious. “You said you had a place for us to go, and—you know I trust you. I always will, no matter what. But you said you’d explain it to me.”

“To us,” Addie said softly. Her voice was filled with quiet sorrow. “I just wish—” She stopped.
I just wish Muirin were here to hear it too.
Addie didn’t need to say the words for Spirit to hear them.

“So do I,” Spirit said, and she heard the others murmur agreement. “Okay. I have a story to tell all of you. It’s long. And it’s incredible. But it’s all true.”

She told them the same story she’d told Muirin less than twenty-four hours ago, and maybe someday losing Muirin—losing her
friend
—that way wouldn’t hurt so sharply, but for now it did.
I’m so glad I told you,
Spirit thought.
I’m so glad you knew I trusted you. That I believed in you. That’s all you ever really wanted. From everyone.

The other three listened to her story in silence. It wasn’t a silence of disbelief, or of doubt. It was just that the night had been so full, and the tale she told was so incredible, that nobody really knew what to say.