The Bloom Series Box Set: Bloom & Fade (51 page)

Colton tried to find the right words
to say, and then he realized there were none.

June turned to him, smiling through
teary eyes, and wiped her hands on her shirt. “But we’re going to
make the most of it, aren’t we, Colton? Cake for everyone.” She
picked up the loose crumbles and pushed them back into the cake,
then gently coated them with icing so they would stick.

“
Cake for everyone,” he
agreed.

Micah trotted over from the stove,
carefully keeping his wooden spoon and its contents from spilling.
He stood next to June and offered it up to her timidly. She sipped
from the ladled end and chewed on it for a minute, Micah watching
her the whole time as if his life depended on it.

“
C’est
magnifique
,” she said finally. “Micah,
it’s perfect. You have made the best soup in the entire
world.”

His face lit up as he hurried back to
the stove and turned off the burners. He hoisted the pot aside—with
a little help from Dormer—and fanned the soup with an oven mitt,
still smiling at his accomplishment.

June sighed. “So what’s
next?”

“
What do you mean?” asked
Colton.

“
You know what I mean.
Don’t you go planning
anything
without me, you hear? I’m awake now, and I won’t
sit around while those soldiers and that woman march all over the
people that saved me from that horrible place.”

Colton thought about telling June that
they were never going to plan anything. Maybe then she could stay
out of harm’s way. Yet he knew the look in her eyes—it was the same
look in Haven’s when she was determined to do something, and good
luck to anyone who tried to stop her.

“
You’ll be the first one
to know,” he said. “I promise.”

June nodded and went back to icing the
cake. Colton watched her, admiring her calm beauty. The black,
poisoned veins on her forearms faded away as they passed her
elbows, but Colton knew they would soon reach all the way up to her
shoulders and onto her back.

He had looked at himself in the mirror
that morning, peeling off his shirt and gently touching the skin
over his ribs. It looked as if someone had taken a pen and sketched
out the veins under his skin in dark, bold strokes. They spread
like spiderwebs over his back, and soon the veins would cover his
entire torso.

The sound of marching boots snapped
Colton back to reality. Micah and Noah went to June and she pushed
them behind her as five soldiers stomped to a halt in the hallway.
Kamiko walked through the middle of them, forcing them aside
without a touch. Her eyes were lit up and raged like burning
wildfire. She seemed angrier than Colton had ever seen
her.

She looked right at him.

“
Come with me,” she said.
“
Now
.”

Colton thought about resisting, then
looked around the kitchen. Micah and Noah huddled behind June, who
stood with her head up and glared directly at Kamiko. Dormer stood
by the stove, watching the soldiers, his fists slowly pumping open
and closed. Each soldier had a rifle aimed at someone in the
kitchen. June and the others would be slaughtered easily if Colton
or Dormer put up any kind of a fight.

Colton slowly walked toward Kamiko
with his hands up. “I’ll go,” he said.

She grabbed his hair and yanked him
out into the hallway. The sudden violence startled him. He yelled
and tried to pull her hand away. Lightning crackled from her other
palm as she slapped Colton’s face and pushed him to the
ground.

“
Hey!” shouted Dormer from
the kitchen. The rapid
clak-CHIK
of five rounds feeding into five separate rifle
chambers silenced the room.

Colton stood up, rubbing his stung
cheek. Kamiko brushed past him and barked an order at the soldiers,
who were suddenly on either side of Colton, dragging him out to the
main dome room.

24

T
he truck was moving again, but something was wrong. Haven lay
flat as she could on her back in one of the large plastic
containers. The dark shapes of men with guns blurred past her
outside the truck. Marius and Bastian, each in their own container
to either side of her, remained silent.

The driver downshifted and the truck
slowed. For a terrifying moment, Haven thought he was driving away
from the building. At any second she expected a hail of bullets to
rip through the sides of her plastic container, turning her into
Swiss cheese. The constant bright light outside her container
suddenly dimmed as if a giant curtain had been lowered over the
world.

The truck was going
into
the building. Had
the driver somehow managed to talk the guard into letting them
pass? Even as the truck came to a stop, Haven knew her hope was
foolish. She could hear the guard outside, yelling at the driver.
Several more dark shapes approached the truck.

Then she heard Roku
speaking, loudly, as if he were standing right outside the
containers. He berated the guards for their carelessness and
pretended he was doing an inspection of the security around the
facility. He had found a particular lack of due diligence in this
sector and he held the guards in front of him
personally
responsible.

There was a hushed murmur as the
guards spoke amongst themselves, and then a gun went
off.

Haven saw a bright orange crack of
muzzle-flash through the opaque plastic wall and her vision turned
blue. A guard was stupid enough to spin the cap off her container
at that exact moment and got a face full of flame. He screamed and
dropped his gun, then stumbled backward and fell motionless to the
ground.

Haven let another blast of blue fire
turret through the container opening. It shot out through the hole
like the fire from a rocket booster, and when it dissipated, she
was standing there, fists clenched, wings outstretched behind her
back like a burning angel.

The truck driver opened his door and
ran out of the building without looking back. Haven and the others
were in a small storage room that was sealed off from the rest of
the complex. Crates and empty plastic containers were stacked all
around the room. There were six guards in a semi-circle around the
truck, and three of them dropped their guns when they saw Haven.
Roku lay on the ground next to the truck, holding his bleeding side
and breathing shallowly. Behind Haven, the caps of two more
containers spun off and fell to the ground. Bastian hopped lightly
from the opening and in an instant his entire body was alight with
pale yellow flame.

The three guards who had managed to
keep their guns in hand raised them and fired. Three loud cracks
rang out but were silenced by blue and yellow fire. The searing
flames from Bastian and Haven consumed the bullets in midair and
turned them to ash. A faint smell of gunpowder wafted over Haven as
she stood with her feet in a wide stance and let her fire out into
the world.

It was a terrible thing.

The deep well of emotion inside of her
had finally found an outlet, and the flames gushed forth from her
clenched fists, overtaking and extinguishing Bastian’s yellow fire.
He stood back as her skin erupted again and again with the blue
flame, each small explosion expanding and pushing the enveloping
flame farther and farther from her body.

She couldn’t hear her own screams, and
was aware that the fire also streamed from her eyes and her open
mouth, joining a few feet in front of her to form a solid beam of
plasma. Someone grabbed her ankle, and deep inside her mind, amidst
the chaos that came from the memories of two murdered parents and
the destruction of everything she once thought of as “normal”,
Haven heard a voice calling to her. It was the voice of a woman she
had never heard, but it was comforting in its earnest
plea.

“
It’s okay to be angry,”
said the soft voice, so full of understanding…and something else.
Pain? Regret? “Be still, my child. Be still, and the deep waters of
your torment will calm. Find your peace, and save your fight for
another day…”

The voice trailed off within Haven’s
mind, and with it the blue energy that enveloped her body. The fire
died from her eyes and mouth, her wings receded into her back, and
she collapsed to the ground, fighting for breath. Sweat beaded from
her entire body; her shirt was soaked. The concrete floor smoked
beneath her and part of it had melted to form two depressions where
her feet had been planted.

Roku let go of her ankle and rested
his head on the ground. He pressed his other hand to the gunshot
wound in his side. His face was grey from the loss of
blood.

“
Thank you,” whispered
Haven. In that instant she knew that Roku had pushed one of his
memories into her mind, just as he had done when he and Bastian
were trying to convince her to join them in the hunt for Alistair.
She had a brief glimpse of flames, of a house consumed by fire, and
of a woman kneeling before Roku, trying to comfort him in his
rage.

Bastian stood looking down at Haven,
frowning. He helped her to her feet, then knelt down next to
Roku.

Marius appeared at Haven’s side and
put one hand gently on her shoulder. “Are you alright?” he asked.
He sounded like she had just been in a huge accident and he didn’t
quite know what to say.

“
I’m fine.” She avoided
his eye contact and stared down at her feet.

“
Marius feels terrible,
not being able to help. Maybe without the Fade, you would not have
to do so much on your own. Look at me, Haven.
Look
.”

She turned and looked.

“
Marius has never seen a
stronger girl—er,
woman
, than he sees with you. You are capable of so much more, but
you have to be careful. It is hard. Marius knows it is hard. But
this thing is not just about you. It is about Corva, and Colton,
and Noah and Micah and all the others still stuck in the Dome with
that Kamikaze woman.”

“
Kamiko,” said Haven, and
smiled despite her anger.

“
Yes, that one. What a
name,” said Marius, shaking his head. “The other thing is, if you
burn yourself out too quickly, we don’t stand a chance.”

“
I understand,” she said.
And she did. Haven knew what was at stake and how much everyone in
the Dome was depending on her and the others to come back with a
cure. The anger that had seeped from her during her rampage had
been unknown to her until the moment it flared up and exploded into
the world.

She looked at where the guards had
been standing and for the first time noticed that all six of them
were gone.

“
Where’d they go?” she
asked.

Bastian ignored her. He took a bottle
out of an inner coat pocket and popped the cap, then poured clear
liquid over the bullet hole in Roku’s side. The liquid fizzed when
it hit his blood and Roku winced in pain.

Haven looked at Marius, but he said
nothing. Then she noticed the burn marks on the floor: six pairs of
two oval black marks, each one just long enough to match the soles
of six pairs of boots. But the boots and the soldiers that had been
wearing them were gone.

She put her hands to her mouth, unable
to utter a word. Her fingers fluttered over her lips and she
smelled fire. She shoved her hands into her pockets with disgust
and turned away.

Bastian leaned Roku against a wheel of
the truck and inspected his wound.

“
Can he heal himself?”
asked Marius.

“
No,” said Bastian. “We
need another Conduit, or some good old-fashioned surgeon’s tools.
The bullet is still in there.”

“
Here,” said Marius. He
produced a butterfly knife from a hidden pocket and tossed it to
Bastian. “We don’t have much time.”

Bastian opened the knife with ease and
a second later was sterilizing it with yellow flame on the tip of
his index finger. Roku grit his teeth in anticipation but lifted
his shirt to reveal his wound. Bastian knelt down and, after a nod
from Roku, stuck the red-hot blade into the bullet hole. Roku
choked back a scream and his skin sizzled as the blade worked its
way to the bullet. With a quick flick of the knife, the bullet was
out and on the ground in a small pool of Roku’s blood.

Roku collapsed and closed his eyes,
breathing deeply.

Bastian stood and tossed the knife
back to Marius. “Thanks. He’ll have to work out the rest on his
own.” He looked at Haven and the malice in his gaze was
clear.

“
It’s not
my
fault he got shot,”
she said, far more defensively than she meant. “What’s wrong with
you, Bastian?”

Marius grunted. “He is jealous of your
ability. His fire was nothing once you really got
going.”

“
I’m not jealous,” said
Bastian. He sounded like he was telling the truth. “I’m angry that
it took us so long to cross paths. We could have avoided most of
the pain and misery and death that we’ve endured over the years if
only you had been there to help us. I’ve never seen anything like
it.” He shook his head. “I just don’t understand. What took you
long to join the fight? So many people would have been
saved.”