The Bloom Series Box Set: Bloom & Fade (29 page)

The feeling was nowhere near as strong
as it had been in Bozeman, but there was no longer any denying who
was causing it. Colton had first noticed its return in the training
room at The Dome, then again when they were all getting into the
cars to drive to the medical facility. He wanted to say something
to Haven about it, but didn’t know how to begin without sounding
ridiculous.

“
Here we go,” said
Marius.

The tires of the black trucks squealed
as the vehicles shot out of the parking lot and veered onto the
dirt road that led to the sand dune where Colton and the others
stood.

“
Back to the car,” said
Corva.

Colton followed her and Marius down
the side of the dune and stood next to the police cruiser—hopefully
the car was out of sight of the approaching trucks.

Dormer had already pulled the sedan
out from behind the dune and sped down the road, away from the
medical facility.

“
Get the last one,” said
Marius as the first of the trucks passed the dune, chasing after
the sedan. “And don’t miss.”

He put his hands on Corva’s shoulders
and squeezed tightly. Orange flame—brighter than before—shot over
her body from head to toe, then pooled at her hands. She held out a
pointer finger and closed one eye to aim.

When the last of the four trucks sped
past the dune, she tracked its movement with her arm. A thin orange
laser shot from the tip of her finger and shattered the truck’s
driver-side window. It burned straight through the cabin and
exploded out the other side, ripping off the passenger-side door
and sending it flying up into the air.

The truck veered off the road and
decelerated quickly before stopping roughly against the base of a
large sand dune.

“
Nice shot!” said
Colton.

Marius hurried to the truck and opened
the driver’s door. The driver was dead—Corva’s energy beam had
burned into his temple and come out the other side. Marius pulled
him out of the truck and sat him against the dune. The passenger
groaned and started to lift his head, but Marius knocked him out
with a heavy right cross to the jaw and pulled him outside. The
third security guard in the back seat of the extended cab hadn’t
been wearing his seat belt and lay unconscious against one of the
back doors, blood trickling down his forehead. Marius pulled him
out and set him on the ground next the others.

“
Would have been nice to
have both doors,” said Marius as he sat in the driver’s seat. He
looked at the empty space where the passenger door had been before
Corva’s energy blast ripped it off the truck.

“
Would it be nice to spend
the rest of your life single?” said Corva.

She sat next to him as Colton climbed
into the back.

“
On second thought,” said
Marius. “Is sort of like convertible now, only different. Marius
changed his mind. He likes it.”

“
I thought so,” said
Corva. She winked at him.

Marius backed the truck away from the
dune and drove onto the dirt road, a fog of dust pluming up from
the tires.

“
What about the other
trucks?” asked Colton.

“
Dormer can handle them,”
said Corva.

“
Are you sure?”

“
Trust me. He’s tougher
than he looks.”

Colton sat back in his seat and
squinted against the air that blasted into the cabin from the
missing door.

Marius gave his automatic rifle to
Corva, who popped out the long ammunition clip, checked the rounds,
and slapped the clip back into the gun.

“
And if he can’t,” said
Marius, “maybe we get to have a little more fun.”

“
You know where the black
building is?” shouted Colton from the back seat.

Corva nodded. “We found it last year.
We knew about the medical facility long before—that’s the reason we
set up camp so close.”

“
Right next to the
hornet’s nest,” said Colton.

“
Best place to be if you
need to act quickly. It makes sense that the two sites are linked.
We were never able to figure out how they were moving around
without being seen.”

The truck rode smoothly down the dirt
road. The oversized, off-road tires had been specifically designed
to absorb the heaviest bumps, and Colton barely felt anything when
one of the wheels dipped down into a large pothole and bounced out
the other side.

Marius skirted the base of a huge,
rocky hill, and on the other side, in the distance, was the gleam
of a black, glass-covered building.

“
That’s it!” said
Colton.

“
Where’s the entrance?”
asked Corva.

Colton looked around the huge, open
space surrounding the building. He tried to remember a specific
landmark that Shelly drove past right before the Jeep rolled down
into the tunnel.

A few hundred yards to the right he
saw the two large boulders that she had driven between right before
she opened the ramp.

“
There!” he shouted,
pointing at the giant stones. “On the other side.”

Marius accelerated and drove toward
the boulders. Just as he cleared the base of a mountain of jagged
rocks, the black sedan careened around the other side and caught up
with the truck.

Dormer sat behind the wheel of the
black car, pointing back over his shoulder. He held up three
fingers, then lowered two of them until only his index finger
remained.

Marius nodded at Dormer and took his
foot off the gas pedal.

One of the black trucks sped around
the side of the mountain, kicking up rocks and dirt in its wake. It
barreled toward Colton and the others.

“
Don’t wait too long,”
said Marius.

Corva leaned out the side of the truck
and grabbed the edge of the roof. She stood up and faced backward.
Marius reached over and grabbed her leather belt to keep her from
falling out. She rested the stock of the rifle in the crook of her
shoulder and aimed down the long barrel.

With a loud
CRACK
of gunfire, the
hood on the pursuing truck exploded up into the air and flipped end
over end until it smacked into the ground.

Two armed security guards leaned out
of their truck and raised their guns.

“
Corva…” said Marius,
looking into the rearview mirror.

She pulled the trigger. The
driver-side front tire on the pursuing truck burst like a popped
balloon and the truck veered to one side. It crashed into a small
boulder—its tail end rose up into the air slammed back down to the
ground. Steam spouted from the exposed engine. Two spiderwebbed
circles cracked the windshield where the guards’ heads hit the
glass.

Marius pulled Corva back
inside.

“
That was fun,” she said,
a faint smile on her lips.

“
Lots more where that came
from,” said Marius.

He sped up and drove next to Dormer in
the sedan, pointing to the two boulders they were rapidly
approaching.

“
Find button,” he
said.

Colton looked up at the ceiling of the
truck but only saw an overhead light. The doors on either side of
the back of the cabin only had window controls and
handles.

“
Here,” said
Corva.

She flipped up a small plastic
covering in the center console between the two front seats and
pushed a round, red button. On the other side of the two boulders,
a plume of sand rose into the air, shot upward by the descending
ramp.

“
Bingo,” said
Marius.

He turned the truck slightly to align
the wheels with the ramp. The vehicle dropped quickly, plunging
from daylight to darkness and bouncing harshly against the bottom
of the tunnel as the wheels hit concrete.

“
Woo!” said
Marius.

Colton turned back as the black sedan
descended the ramp. The car’s headlights flicked on automatically
as soon as it was out of the bright sunlight. The silhouettes of
Dormer and Haven were briefly outlined by the light pouring down
into the tunnel behind them.

“
Where do we go?” said
Marius. The constant whine from the large tread of the tires on
concrete grew louder as he sped through the tunnel.

“
This leads to a big
parking garage,” shouted Colton. “There’s an elevator that will
take us up into the black building.” He turned back again and
looked at the sedan. “Are you sure they’ll be okay?”

“
They’ll be fine,” said
Corva.

The tunnel disappeared around the
truck as they drove out into an enormous underground parking
structure. The foundations of a large building were mixed with
bedrock on the far end and dark tunnel entrances lined the rough
concrete walls on all sides. Powerful halogen lights in the ceiling
high above shined down on the parking lot, illuminating most of it
but casting other parts into deep shadow.

Several more black trucks were parked
by an elevator at the base of the building. There were a few other
cars parked on the lot, the most impressive of which was a sleek
black sports car that looked more like a spy vehicle than a
practical automobile. Its windswept curves melded into the frame so
that there were no sharp edges. The headlights were covered with
black glass and the windows were tinted so dark that they
practically blended in with the paint job, giving the impression
that the entire car was shaped from a single piece of polished
metal.

“
That’s the elevator?”
shouted Marius.

“
That’s it.”

He steered toward the foundation of
the building and came to a squealing halt next to the other parked
trucks. Colton hopped down out of the back seat and dusted off his
jeans—a thick layer of fine powder coated his clothing. The truck
was also more orange than black from all the dirt and stood out
conspicuously from the other vehicles, all of which had been
perfectly washed and waxed.

Marius took a step back and
shrugged.

“
Too late to be sneaky
anyway,” he said.

Corva tossed him the rifle as she
walked to the elevator. Marius caught the gun easily and slipped
the thick strap over one shoulder. He held it in both hands, ready
to fire, while Corva inspected a small black panel in the
wall.

“
How do we get in?” she
asked.

“
There’s a key,” said
Colton. His face turned red from embarrassment when he realized he
had forgotten about the access cards.

“
You’re just telling
us
now
?” said
Corva.

Marius looked around the parking
structure with a scowl, seemingly expecting to be attacked at any
moment.

Colton watched as the black sedan
drove in a large loop around the edge of the parking structure.
Dormer slowed down at the entrance to each tunnel, then sped up to
get to the next one. When he had almost completed a full circle, he
approached a tunnel close to the one they had first come from. The
sedan’s headlights swept over a large red plus sign attached to the
wall—he had found the way to the medical center.

Colton felt a tugging from within as
the car disappeared down the shadowy corridor. The red tail lights
blinked out and he felt alone once more.

“
We’re going to have to
force it open,” said Corva, taking a step back from the
elevator.

A burst of gunfire erupted from
somewhere nearby and bullets hit the rocky wall next to
Colton.

36

“
D
own!” shouted Marius.

He grabbed Colton’s shirt
collar and pushed him to the ground behind a truck as chunks of
rocks fell around them. Bullets sank into the opposite side of the
truck with a sharp metallic
TINK-TINK-TINK
.

Corva crouched near the rear of the
truck. She peeked out and more gunfire thunked into the tailgate
near her head. She quickly reeled back around and looked over at
Marius.

“
Six or seven,” she
said.

Marius growled. He patted the top of
his rifle and spoke to it softly in Russian as if it were a
favorite pet, then kissed the cold steel of the barrel.

“
Okay,” he said, looking
at Corva. “How many bullets can you stop?”

Corva shook her head. “A concentrated
burst, maybe. After that they’ll go right through me.”

Colton remembered Alistair telling him
how the most powerful Conduits could absorb the kinetic energy of a
hailstorm of bullets. The shells would essentially hit an invisible
wall as the impacts were negated and the energy was transferred
into the Con.

He ducked as another round
of bullets hit the wall behind him. Metallic
PINGs
echoed throughout the parking
structure as the rounds ricocheted off parked cars.

Marius nodded at Corva. “Do it fast,
my little sparrow. I will handle the rest.”