Taken (Ava Delaney #4) (31 page)

I called, “Take
the smaller children, and move quickly out of here. Then come back
for more. They won’t wake yet.” I made the door and held firm as
everyone hurried through it. Esther was holding a baby, maybe a
year old, who was wide awake and screaming, “Mama, mama, mama,”
over and over again.

“She was new,”
a boy was saying. “She came here today.”

My breath
caught my throat, and I saw the tears in Esther’s eyes, but she
didn’t say a word, even though she knew the Council would keep the
child.

The Guardians
moved quickly, and soon the market was empty. But I had a terrible
feeling that we had missed out on something. It had been far too
easy. There had been far too few guards. It was as if they knew we
were coming and made a run for it, perhaps taking the most powerful
children with them.

Processing the
children and captives took two days. The Guardians divided into two
teams. One took the arrested guards and humans to the cells, where
they were locked up until they could be questioned. The other took
the children and submissive market workers into a large housing
area of the Council’s property. It was above ground, I was happy to
see, and although it was surrounded by eight foot walls, there were
three acres of grass and playground equipment.

But it wasn’t
home.

Some doctors
and nurses were waiting at the building that would house the
children. They studied the kids and made sure they weren’t alone
when they woke up properly. Some of the older children fought so
hard upon waking that they had to be sedated all over again. Others
cried; more still stared at nothing. The home was chilling and
alien, and I wanted to take all of the children there and then. But
the Council could do more for them than I could. At least, for the
moment.

Slowly, the
children adapted, or at least, stopped looking so traumatised. They
didn’t speak much, and the little girl Esther had carried cried her
heart out for hours every day. Nothing would appease her except her
mother, and her mother was probably dead.

I was happy to
work alongside the Guardians to help the children. Val and the
twins had left almost immediately. I had forced them to go before
they were trapped in a “home” of sorts. I hung around to make sure
the children were treated properly.

The news came
while I was helping persuade some of the children to eat.

“Ava, can I
speak to you?” Gabe said in a soft voice. He wasn’t good with the
kids, but he had learned to talk in a certain way around them.

“What’s up?” I
asked as I followed him into the hallway.

“The cells were
raided during the night.”

“What do you
mean,
raided
?” I asked through gritted teeth.

He looked older
all of a sudden. “They’re all gone, Ava. The guards, the carers,
all of the older ones in the cells.”

“Escaped?”

He shook his
head. “Dead. All dead.”

“What the hell
happened? There were teenage girls in those cells, Gabe!”

“I don’t know
what happened. Not exactly. Someone silenced them. That’s all I can
tell you.”

“Fuck you!”

“Ava—”

“No! Fuck off!
They knew we were coming, and they knew how to get rid of the
witnesses. They’re one of you. At least one of you is involved in
the market.”

“Would it help
if I told you I agreed?”

“No, it
wouldn’t.”

I walked away
and didn’t look back. I couldn’t without feeling sick. I was
leaving the children to the monsters who had taken them in the
first place. The only difference was the Council were wearing
prettier masks. I had no way of fighting.

At least not
alone.

***

Emmett seemed
happy to see me home again, but Carl had already left.

“He was going
crazy locked up in here and having to listen to Maria on the
phone,” Peter told me. “And the trouble’s over.”

“It’s not over.
One of the Council has to be involved. They got away with it. The
witnesses are dead. And now they’re keeping the children. Nothing’s
over. Not a whole lot changed. Not for the better, anyway.”

He pulled me
into his arms. “I’m sorry.”

“They will be,
too. Some day.”

“What now?”

“I don’t know,”
I half-sobbed. “I don’t know what to do anymore.”

“Yvonne wants
us to go home. She wants to stay with me to take care of
Emmett.”

“Is she still
working for Daimhín?”

He shrugged.
“But I can’t do this alone, Ava.” I stared at him, and he smiled
suddenly. “Emmett wants to stay.”

“And you?” I
asked.

“I think Emmett
needs to go to school in September. I think he needs a chance at a
normal life.”

My heart sank.
“Oh.”

“But he’s
special, Ava. And I don’t know how to deal with that. I need help
with that.”

“From Yvonne?”
I couldn’t keep the venom out of my voice.

“It’s her
house,” he reminded me. “And it’s full of memories I don’t care
for. I can’t even call it safe.” He hesitated, but his eyes said
more than his words.

“Emmett’s safer
here.”

“With you? Or
with us?” His voice softened so much that it became
unrecognisable.

I had to pull
away and stare at him for a couple of seconds to understand. “You
want to stay? With me?”

“If you don’t
mind. For a while, at least. It’s been… different here with you.
I’ve
been different. Better. And I’m terrified to do this by
myself.”

“You’re an
idiot,” I said, but I smiled at him. At least something had gone
right. Emmett wasn’t leaving, and that made me feel… calm.

Carl came back
to find out what had happened, and we stood side by side as we
watched Peter and Emmett strengthen their bond by playing football
in my backyard. I told him everything, and I felt better for
it.

“It sounds
unreal,” Carl said.

“Felt it, too,”
I admitted.

“Was it… what
was it like? To be there?”

I bit my lip.
By the time I left the slave market, I had felt comfortable in
Hell, too sure of myself. But the darkening in my blood had been
all too real, all too familiar. So I didn’t say a word about it. I
just kept on looking outside at two of the people keeping me in the
light.

“What happened
with Maria?” I asked to change the subject.

He sighed. “The
usual. We’re drowning together. I have to let her go. She could be
so much better without me.”

“Don’t. You can
make it work. You can fix it. She
loves
you.”

He turned to
me, something akin to understanding in his eyes. “That isn’t always
enough, Ava.”

I looked away,
unable to bear the raw pain inside me at his words.

“Be careful,”
he said a couple of minutes later, and I felt his fingers squeeze
my hand.

“Of course I
will. Nobody can hurt us here.”

“I’m talking
about this.” He nodded toward Peter and Emmett. “
This
is
dangerous for you, Ava.”

“He’s your
friend,” I said in surprise.

“And so are
you. But a ready-made kid isn’t a miracle cure.”

I opened and
closed my mouth a couple of times before deciding to go with
avoidance. “I don’t want to hear this.”

“I know,” he
said sadly, releasing my hand. “I know.”

He left soon
afterward, the awkward tension driving him away. I joined the
others outside, trying to shake off the feeling.

We had some
nice, normal days, the three of us acting like a family as Peter
and Emmett used me as a buffer for their growing relationship. But
my smiles were weak, and my heart wasn’t in it because all I could
think about were the children the Council had possession of.
Emmett, Val, and the twins were all safe, but it wasn’t enough. Not
nearly enough. I hadn’t found a way of fixing everything.

And then there
was Eddie. He had made it clear he wanted a new start, one without
the Council, and maybe I hated them enough to turn to him. But I
wasn’t sure who to trust and if I might be releasing a bigger
monster onto the world.

Esther came to
me a couple of days later, her arms wrapped around herself. I
invited her in frostily, but she seemed not to notice. She wandered
into the house as if in a dream, and a glimmer of worry wormed its
way into my chest.

And then I
smelled the blood. “What’s happened?”

She looked at
me, and the hollowness in her eyes scared me. “I couldn’t stop
thinking about that baby. I had carried her through, and she kept
calling for her mama. She wouldn’t stop. They said she’d stop after
a few days, but she never did. Even in her sleep, she cried. I
heard her in my dreams, Ava. Every night, the same cries. And you
heard that boy; the child had just been brought there. She
remembered her own people, and she missed them.”

“Okay. So what
happened?”

“I stole her
from the Council.” She held up her hands at my gasp of surprise. “I
know, but I read the newspaper reports and found her surviving
family. Her mother was
alive
, Ava. She had been on a weekend
away when it happened. Her sister died in her place, and she was
distraught herself. She looked so much like the baby, and both of
them were devastated, so I took the baby home. And the mother was
so unbelievably grateful.” Spittle flew out of her mouth at the
urgency of the word. “The baby stopped crying for the first time.
She smiled and held on to her mother so tight. It was… I’ve never
seen so much
love
before.”

She gulped a
couple of times, her eyes wet with tears. “And then they came. They
must have known what I would do.”

“Who came?”

“The Council
sent Guardians for her. Aiden was with them. My own brother. And he
grabbed me, held me so tight I couldn’t move. Even if he hadn’t, I
might not have moved an inch. I was frozen to the spot. And they…
and they…”

“It’s okay,” I
said as the tears rolled down her cheeks.

She shook her
head. “No,” she moaned. “No, it’s not. Coyle… put a dagger through
the back of the mother’s neck so hard it went straight through. She
was still holding the baby, and the… and the baby was covered in
her mother’s blood. She opened her mouth, but she… she didn’t cry.
She never cried. Not even when they both fell to the floor.”

I felt my own
eyes fill with tears.

Esther was
devastated, and the words came faster. “I reached for the baby, but
I slipped on the… on the blood, and someone else took her. I
couldn’t see straight. There was nothing… it was so
quick
.
They left me there, said I had to clean up the mess I made, and
Aiden… Aiden did nothing to stop them. And the baby saw everything,
and she didn’t cry. She couldn’t cry.”

She ran to the
bathroom and threw up repeatedly. I realised Peter was standing in
the doorway, having heard the whole thing. His eyes held an icy
glare, and I felt the old Peter returning. I waited for Esther to
finish, and then I let her cry on my shoulder. She was so young, so
naive in some ways. She had so many expectations for her life, and
she felt such pride in who she was, but inside, she was a little
girl who couldn’t deal with the reality of her world.

“I should never
have trusted them,” she said at last. “Everything I’ve done, it
doesn’t come close to this. Did they send me on the trainee
missions before? Is that why I’m so shocked by this? Why would they
do it? Why kill her like that? The baby… that poor baby. And now
they have her, and she’s worse than before because she can’t
cry.”

I felt cold as
stone sitting there next to her. We were reaching a turning point,
an important one. The Council were the protectors, those murderers
of innocents.

“Are you
willing to do something about it?” I asked when she composed
herself. “Are you willing to go against your own brother for what’s
right?”

She nodded
vehemently. “I can’t stand by anymore. When they said they were
keeping the children, it was hard enough. But this… this is a step
too far for me. I’m not a murderer, Ava. And if this is what
Guardians have to do, I can’t be one of them any longer. I can’t
call myself a Guardian—or a shifter—and feel pride anymore.”

“If you step
up, they’ll all turn their backs on you—the Guardians, the Council,
and even your pack. Are you truly willing to lose your brother?
Your family? Your pack?”

She closed her
eyes and thought for a few minutes. When she opened them, her
expression was clear, calmer than before. “It was my fault. That
woman died because I tried to do the right thing by a baby we were
supposed to save. It’s all dead to me now. All of it. I’m not
giving up on that little girl. Not now, not ever. I have to get her
home, or I’ll never be able to live with myself.”

“I think we
should go back to Folsom’s place,” I said. “I think we need to talk
in a safe place.”

“I’m so sorry.
I endangered you all by coming here.”

“No, you
didn’t. We’re friends, and we can protect ourselves.” I took her
hand. “Just because you won’t have your pack doesn’t mean you’ll be
alone, Esther. Family’s more than blood.”

She blinked
back some tears. “They’ll come for me. I didn’t… clean up the mess.
I went to pieces and came straight here. I didn’t know where else
to go.”

I gave Peter a
heads up and decided to take Esther to Folsom’s place. She didn’t
know what it was called, and I wasn’t about to tell her. I needed
to leave that to others. But she deserved a chance at redemption,
at least, at redeeming herself in her own mind. What had happened
was awful, truly disgustingly terrible, and the Council were going
to pay for their actions. I was more determined than ever.

No matter what
it took.