The Blood Guard (The Blood Guard series) (19 page)

The crisscrossed grid of beams was so bright that it took our eyes a moment to adjust. “It’s beautiful,” one man exclaimed, and everyone in the group seemed to agree.

We edged closer again as the man in the surgical mask positioned the hoop. “As you can see, the table is on rails, allowing us to easily pass our subjects through the Needle’s Eye. The soul is combed out and trapped here, in the Conceptacle.” He tapped his finger against a silvered glass bottle and screwed it into place on the side of the hoop. “This is a double-walled silvered flask, which has undergone a complicated enchantment that effectively traps the soul for as long as we wish to keep it.”

“And what happens to the…subject?” the woman asked.

The man in the mask paused and thought for a moment. “I suppose the subject
could
be kept alive in a vegetative state, hooked up to breathing machines and the like, though I can’t imagine why anyone would bother.” And then he laughed like he’d said something funny.

I was so tense with anger that I felt like I could throw up. After the past eighteen hours, I’d gotten used to the fear. But anger? That fed something new: a determination to stop these people. I’d felt the first inklings of it on the side of the highway while looking at Ms. Hand; but now it was overwhelming. Somebody had to stop the Bend Sinister, and wasn’t that what my mom had secretly raised me to do?

Greta’s breathing quickened. “He said
subject
,” she whispered. “Ogabe said something about that. Are they going to use my dad as a test subject?”

“Before we comb the soul from our first Pure,” the man continued, “we have to make a few test run
s
—
t
o calibrate the Eye, so we can be sure the Conceptacle is properly hosting the subject’s essence.” The man gestured and the net of light in the hoop disappeared. “Donald?” he said. “Bring out the boy.”

A moment later, a familiar voice said, “Dr. Warne
r
—
I
mean, Dad? What’s going on?” And then a frizzy head of dark hair entered the room, escorted by a brawny guy in a suit. “Am I forgiven?”

“Absolutely, Samuel,” Dr. Warner said. “We know you were an innocent pawn in the hands of those people.”

Even from up above, through the glass bricks of the floor, I could see Sammy’s shoulders relax. “That’s what I told everyone, but no one listened.”

“It’s okay, son,” Dr. Warner said. “We brought you here to ask for your help. We’re testing a new scanner and need someone to examine.”

“A scanner,” Sammy said, and I could see him tense up as he looked around. Then he nodded. “Sure. Okay. What do you need me to do?”

“Just lie down on this gurney. We’ll guide it through this metal hoop here. You might feel a slight pull, a tugging inside you. But ignore it. It won’t last long.”

“Do as your father tells you,” said a petite lady with short blonde hair who was wearing a lab coat.

“Okay, Mom.” Sammy climbed up onto the gurney. “No problem.”

I pressed my hands to the glass, wanting to shout to Sammy, to warn him, but I couldn’t seem to draw a breath or get a word out.
They can’t do this.
But it was too late: Sammy was already on the table, the straps looped around his wrists, chest, and ankles.

Greta opened and closed her mouth, unable to say anything, and turned to Dawkins, but he was already up and running, the screwdriver clenched in his fist.

C
H
A
PT
E
R
25
:

MAN ON FIRE

“M
ake noise!” Dawkins yelled. “Get their attention! Slow them down!”

Greta pounded her fists on the glass so that everyone looked up. “Sammy!” she cried. “Get out of there!”

“Greta?” Sammy said, smiling and squinting past the lights. “What are you doing up there?”

“Donald,” Dr. Warner said calmly, “send someone to take care of this disturbance.” He gently pressed Sammy back against the gurney. “Never mind them, son.”

“Don’t trust him!” I yelled. “He’s lying to you!”

“Ronan!” Dawkins shouted, “I need your assistance.”

He fell to his knees beside one of the enormous generators and wedged the blade of the screwdriver under the steel planking on the floor. Beneath the steel was a channel filled by a fat braided cable covered in black plastic.

“What’s that?” I said as I reached him.

“Conduit,” he said breathlessly. “All the power from those generators there goes through these cables here to the station below us.”

“They’re going to kill you, Sammy!” Greta shouted, banging on the glass.

“Here’s what’s going to happen,” Dawkins told me. “I am going to stab this screwdriver into that cable. That will create a short in the system and cause all the power to shut down.”

“But you’ll…get electrocuted,” I said. “You’ll die.”

“That’s usually what electrocuted means, yes,” he said. “But die? Me? Never!” He slipped out of his leather jacket. “Nonetheless, once the power is off, I
am
going to need you to pound on my chest with your fist to bring me back.”

“Pound your chest, got it.”

“You will have to hit me very
hard
. You’re basically kick-starting my heart. Otherwise, it will just take its sweet time, the lazy thing, and I need to be up faster than that.”

Greta shouted, “Sammy’s got one of his arms free!”

“Good to hear,” Dawkins called. “Greta, go join Ogabe by the door.”

He whispered a few words, and the blade of the screwdriver grew incandescent. “Remember: Don’t touch me until the power has cut off. If you touch me before then, I may still be conducting electricity.” Dawkins said. “Oh, and I almost forgot: please put me out if I catch fire.” He handed his leather jacket to me. “Use this to beat out the flames.”

Then he clutched the screwdriver with both hands, raised it over his head, and slammed it into the cable.

There was a blinding burst of dazzling light, followed by a sudden silence as everything shut down. The room went completely dark. After a moment, I saw something in front of me flickering orange.

I blinked and turned on my flashlight.

The flicker was Dawkins. The electrical short had blasted him backward, away from the cable. In the flashlight’s beam, I could see tendrils of smoke rising gently from his body. His jaw was slack, his eyes open and empty.

And his T-shirt was on fire.

I froze for a second, thrown back to that nightmare moment in Brooklyn when I’d woken up to flames crackling around the edges of my bedroom door.

And then I snapped out of it. This was
my friend
on fir
e
—
a
friend who was depending on
me
to save
him
for a change.

I smacked his leather jacket on him, using it to douse the flames.

And then I did as I’d been told: I pounded my fist against his sternum. Once, twice, three times.

Nothing happened.

“Come
on
,” I grunted. I sat astride him on the floor, clasped my fists together, and brought them down as hard as I could.

He inhaled loudly, then coughed, arching his back.

I couldn’t help myself: I laughed. He was alive! He couldn’t be killed, but still I’d worrie
d
—
t
hat I’d let him down, that I’d let him die.

He said something unintelligible, flexed his fingers and hands, then said, “Why…are you…
sitting
…on me?”

Laughing again, I pulled him up, threw his arm over my shoulder, and half dragged him to where Greta and Ogabe stood beside the doors, their backs against the wall, holding hands. There was the sound of a chain rattling from the other side of the doors.

“I think someone’s coming,” Greta said.

“The door will hide us,” Dawkins whispered, “but we will have to move quietly.”

Across the room, I saw the flashlight I’d forgotten on the floor. I started for it, but Dawkins held me back. “It will lead them that way.”

Greta let go of Ogabe’s hand and hugged Dawkins. “You saved Sammy!”

“Yes, yes,” Dawkins whispered. “Now shut up.”

The doors were pushed open, and four men wielding powerful flashlights ran into the room. Each was perfectly groomed and dressed in the dark business suits that seemed to be the Bend Sinister uniform. In the light of their flashlight beams I could see that three of them held swords, while the fourth carried a Tesla rifle. Without speaking, they went straight toward the beam from my flashlight.

Dawkins caught the edge of the door before it closed, and the four of us quietly slipped through, Greta leading Ogabe by the hand. On the floor in front of the door was an open padlock and chain that Dawkins ran through the door handles. He snapped the lock shut. “That might hold them for a few minutes.”

Just then, a series of little red bulbs in wire cages near the ceiling flickered on. They were bright enough that we could see where we were going, but not so bright that anything was crystal clear. “Backup generators,” Dawkins said. “I was hoping they wouldn’t have any of those.”

Ahead of us was the top of a stairwell. Dawkins gestured for us to follow. “Nice and easy,” he whispered as we made our way down in the darkness.

The stairwell opened onto a corridor. Far to our left was a pair of double doors like you might see in a hospital, with big square windows set into the top half. Through the glass we could see flickers of illuminatio
n
—
f
lashlights, maybe, or light from the backup generator.

“Are they going to finish what they were doing to Sammy?” Greta asked.

“I don’t think the backups can generate enough power for that device to work,” Dawkins said. “The whole reason they need their own power substation is that the Eye of the Needle takes a lot of juice. So Sammy
should
be safe. For now.”

Doors lined the corridor. “Ronan, about where was it that you saw Ogabe’s head?”

I closed my eyes and tried to remember the distance from the operating-room window that Greta had crouched over. “This one,” I said, running to the second door in the series. “I think it’s this one.”

Dawkins tried the knob, then stepped back and kicked it open. “Inside, everyone. And no flashlights! Remember, there are windows in the ceiling.” Once we were all inside, he eased the door shut.

Dawkins raised a finger to his lips. From the other side of the door, we heard the sound of feet pounding past. Someone was barking orders.

After they’d gone, Dawkins took the Zippo from his pocket and cupped his hand around it. In the bit of light he let escape between his fingers, we could see that the room might once have been a small office. Now it was a cell. The desk had been shoved against the wall, and in front of it was a cot.

Lying on top of the cot was the shaved head of a young black man. Its face grinned, and Ogabe’s body pushed its way between the three of us, went to the cot, and gently picked it up.

“Who’s got the tape?” Dawkins asked in a whisper.

“Tape?” I said. “You never said anything about tape!”

“I’m sure I put a roll of duct tape on Gaspar’s work
bench when I grabbed the lock-pick set and the screwdriver,”
Dawkins said.

“You only brought the screwdriver,” Greta said. “There isn’t any tape.”

In Ogabe’s hands, his head rolled its eyes. The hands shifted the head around until it was tucked into the crook of his left arm like a football, and then he turned his right hand in a gesture that clearly meant “Proceed.”

Dawkins sighed. “Sorry, friend. I got distracted.”

The headless shoulders shrugged, but the face under its arm winked at Dawkins.

“I wonder where that goes to,” Dawkins said, pointing to a door on the left wall. “Greta?”

She unrolled her pick set and a few seconds later, we stepped through and into the office next door.

“Who’s there?” asked a woman’s voice as we came through.

Lying facedown on the cot, hands cuffed behind her back, her feet tied, was a woman in old paint-spattered jeans and a men’s blue button-down shirt. There were bruises on her face, including a nasty-looking cut over her right eye.

My mom. My crazy intense, way-too-bossy, badass, and brilliant mother, fearless protector of Greta Sustermann and my favorite person in the world. Her clothes were stained dark with something ne
w
—
b
lood, maybe. And then I didn’t see anything else because my vision got all wavery.

Okay, so I was on the verge of crying. So what? Somewhere deep down I’d believed my mom was going to turn up dead. Without her, I’d be all alone in the world. I’d have my dad, but now I realized something I hadn’t understood before: my dad just didn’t count as much.

She flopped around until she could see us, squinting in the weak light from the Zippo. “Ronan?!” she said, disbelief and anger in her voice. “You should
not
be here!”

I tried to say “Mom,” but all that came out was a strangled noise, so I just dove down and hugged her. “You’re okay,” I finally managed to say.

“I will be once I get out of these cuffs,” she said. “Why are you
here
, Ronan?”

“Hold on, Bree, while Greta unlocks you,” Dawkins said.

“Greta is here, too?” my mom said. “Greta
Sustermann
? I’m going to kill you, Jack!” She struggled for a moment, then relaxed so that Greta could pick the locks on the cuffs.

“Your threats scare me not at all,” Dawkins said. “I’ve been killed twice already since yesterday. I’ll explain about the kids later, but trust m
e
—
t
hey gave me no choice.”

My mom said nothing, but gave Dawkins a look that I knew wel
l
—
i
t said that death was the least of his worries. After a few moments, the second cuff rasped open, and my mother sat up on the cot and hastily untied her legs. She stood and folded me into a crushing hug, then held me away and stared into my face. “You’re okay?”

“I’m fine,” I said. “Honest.”

A flicker of light from above silenced us. “They’re searching!” Dawkins hissed, dousing the Zippo. “Everyone against the walls.”

We hugged the walls as the beam of a flashlight played through the glass panel in the ceiling. After a moment, it moved on.

“Did you find Dad?” I asked my mom once it was dark again. “Is he okay?”

Mom stared at me in the dark, then turned on Dawkins again. “Why did you bring the children?” she asked, despair in her voice. “This is the
worst
place. Do you know what they’re doing here?”

“Sadly, yes,” he replied. “We saw a demonstration a few minutes ago, just before the lights went out.”

She sniffed. “Why do you smell like something’s burning?” Then she looked at Ogabe. “And what happened to his head?”

In the next connected office, a woman’s shawl was draped on the cot, and a table held a glass of water with a lipstick smudge on the rim. Dawkins felt the cot and said, “It’s warm. Whoever was here, we just missed her.”

There were footsteps in the corridor outside, and someone tried the handle to the office. We all froze. Apparently satisfied, the footsteps moved on. “When they try Ogabe’s cell, they’ll find our entry point,” Dawkins said. “We need to hustle.”

In the room beyond the office with the shawl, trussed up in much the same way we’d found my mother, a man lay on the cot.

“Dad!” Greta cried.

Gaspar Sustermann wasn’t a big man, but he was broad shouldered and muscular, and his receding red hair only made him look tougher, like a military man in civilian clothes. Greta hugged him where he lay on the cot. She pressed her face against his shoulder and said, “I missed you so much! It’s been a horrible day, Dad, first the train and the swords and then a truck ran over our friend and Ronan and I had t
o
—
”

“Sweetie,” Gaspar Sustermann said, “it is great to see you and all, but can you do your old man a favor and open these cuffs?”

“Oh geez!” Greta exclaimed, sitting up and dragging the back of her hand across her eyes. “Of course! Sorry!”

In the final empty cell, Dawkins had Greta work the lock to the hallway while he quickly briefed Mom, Gaspar, and Ogabe’s head on what we’d seen. “This Eye of the Needle device is functional, and they were planning on trying it out on a few test soul
s
—
s
tarting with this poor kid named Sammy. Then, I suppose, you two.”