The Breakers Ultimatum (YA Urban Fantasy) (Fixed Points Book 3) (22 page)

It should have been fear that flooded through me. Our cover was blown, the Blood Moon didn’t rise for another day, and every Breaker from here to kingdom come was probably descending on us at this very moment. Taking all that into consideration, the idea of being able to hide long enough to actually take advantage of the Hourglass’s Blood Moon weakened anchors and break out of this place seemed a near impossibility.

But it wasn’t fear that was my motivating factor right now. It was anger. Tennsion lay dead on the ground; a young boy who would never get to experience anything other than duty, restraint, and feeling out of place. He died for me, because of me. But it wasn’t my fault. I had heard enough garbage about being responsible for horrible things. Tennison’s death wasn’t on me. It was on the son of a bitch standing in front of me.

“Any last words, Blood Moon?” the other Breaker asked. “And try to make it something poetic. When I recount this story to the historians, I want to make it stand out.”

“I was nervous before,” I muttered through clenched teeth. “It’s why I couldn’t use my abilities. You see, when I get flustered, it’s hard for me to concentrate.”

“So?” He asked, his finger itching to pull the trigger and go down in history as the savior of the world.

I leaned forward and, with venom in my voice answered. “I’m not nervous anymore.”

The world slipped into shade again and I used it to knock the bastard backward. He hit a tree, but that wasn’t good enough for me. Using the shade, I pulled his body back up. Slamming against another tree and then another, he was my personal pinball and this forest was my machine. I was sick of people getting hurt for me. And what was more, I was sick of getting hurt myself.

“They’re coming for me, aren’t they?” I asked, jerking his body to a stop. Blood poured down into his eyes and mouth, but he managed to weakly answer.

“They’re going to kill you,” he said, spitting up metallic red liquid.

“They’re going to try,” I answered. The idea of ending him, of snapping his neck or slicing his throat with the shade crept into my mind. He certainly deserved at least that much. But who would I be then? Not anyone I wanted to.

Instead, I let his body fall helplessly to the ground and turned away. They’d be here to save him or they wouldn’t. That wasn‘t my concern, and I had people to warn if we were going to stand a chance of getting out of here.

*******

Things were normal when I made it back to the cabin. Echo was standing over a smoking pot, stirring what looked to be thick chicken soup with Dahlia sitting quietly at the table, book in hand, and Casper and Royce talking with Renner at the counter. Good, at least he had made it back okay.

I wished it could stay like this, which was odd. Just ten minutes ago, I wanted nothing more than to be out of this cabin, out of the Hourglass, and on my way to whatever utopian daydream my bio-parents had waiting for me.

But now that the hour was here, now that we had been thrust into it, I was having second thoughts. What if I just gave myself up? Would the Council allow the rest of them to live? Probably not, and even if they did, what sort of life would it be? Traitors weren’t looked upon well within the Hourglass, and Casper wasn’t even one of us. He would no doubt be considered expendable. Like it or not, we were all in this together. And the hour had come.

“They know,” I said loudly, breaking into Royce’s sentence about his favorite flavor of Jell-O being ‘green’.

“What?” Dahlia asked standing, but her face said she already knew what I meant. The atmosphere of the room changed, and things suddenly became very serious very intense.

“They know where we are. I ran into one of them in the woods. He looked like Owen, and then he didn’t. Now he’s dead, and everyone knows where we are.”

“You killed somebody?” Royce asked; his face free from even the slightest trace of its usual levity.

“No!” Casper answered loudly. “No, of course she didn’t. You didn’t,” he said, looking at me. And it wasn’t a question. He knew me too well for that.

“I didn’t,” I answered. “I wanted to, but I didn’t. It doesn’t matter. They know where we are. They’re coming for us. What are we going to do?”

“We’re going to run,” Royce said, moving toward me protectively, as though the threat was already here.

“There’s nowhere to run,” Dahlia said, closing her book more calmly than she had any reason to. “The only thing that kept us safe thus far has been the seer’s anchors. If those have been nullified, there isn’t a place within these walls where we won’t be found.”

“But we were gonna run,” Casper said, running a hand through his hair. In the distance, I heard the familiar sound of Echo’s fingers drumming loudly against the stop top.

“We were going to run when the Blood Moon was in the sky, when the anchors were to be weakened. It was to be a straight shot, and we were to be coming from an unknown area. Our only shot ever was to make a beeline for the boundary and hope we had enough time and manpower to punch a hole through the anchors before we were found out.” Dahlia answered, still sitting. “They know where we are now. They know where we’re coming from. And even if they didn’t, there’s no way in fate’s fanny bag that we can stay under the radar for an entire day.” She leveled a withering gaze on me. “I’m afraid it’s over.”

The bottom seemed to fall out of the room. It absolutely fell out of my chest. It couldn’t end like this, not so unceremoniously, not without even so much as a fight for good measure.

“So what are we supposed to do, just sit here and wait for them to break the door down?” I asked, trying hard to keep my voice steady and my stance strong.

“No,” Renner said from his chair. “We don’t have to.” He wheeled closer to me, meeting my gaze with his own and adjusting the way he sat.

The drumming of Echo’s fingers stopped abruptly and he asked, “What does that mean?” Something about the way he moved toward Renner, about the steadiness of his eyes, which made me think he already knew the answer to that question.

“You can get out of here. You just have to harness the power of the Blood Moon to weaken the anchors.”

“The Blood Moon doesn’t rise for another day. By then, we’ll be found, tried for treason, and sentenced to death,” Dahlia answered, cutting her eyes from Renner to her husband and back again.

“So we do it ourselves,” Renner grinned. “We make the Blood Moon rise.”

My eyes narrowed. That wasn’t possible. Astronomical phenomena were astronomical phenomena. The Blood Moon rose when the Blood Moon rose. No one could change that. Right?

“Don’t be daft,” Dahlia said, rolling her eyes. “I know you’ve been gone for a while Renner, and perhaps your new habitat isn’t very conducive to garnering and retaining knowledge. So let me give you a refresher course. Shade cannot change what is on that level, only what is perceived. And even if it could, our numbers aren’t large enough for something like that. We can’t even reconstitute the anchors that hid us here. It’s a fool’s errand.”

“I’m not talking about that, Dahl,” he said, rolling closer. “I know shade can’t do that. But the Essence can.”

“Absolutely not!” Echo’s voice- well, it echoed through the cabin. He was on Renner like a flash, a bearded burly flash. “We’ve already had this conversation, and I won’t hear of it!”

“Hey!” Royce said, throwing himself between Echo and the man he called his uncle. “Let’s take it down a notch.”

“This doesn’t concern you, son” Echo said, trying to keep his voice as level as possible.

“The hell it doesn’t!” For his part, Royce didn’t seem to mind letting his tone hit the rafters. “That man you’re screaming at right now; that man who’s in a wheelchair, I’ll remind ya, is the closest thing to a father I’ve ever had. So I’ll be damned if I’m gonna let you treat him like a redheaded stepchild.” His eyes flickered back to Renner. “Even if I don’t necessarily agree with what he’s talking about.” Turning to Renner, Royce said,” The Essence is dangerous, Uncle Renner. Everybody knows that. Last time, Cresta barely pulled herself back out. If we make her go through that again, there ain’t no guarantee she’ll be able to find herself again.”

“I understand that,” Renner said. “And certainly, if Cresta doesn’t feel like it’s something she can do, then I wouldn’t blame her. But I don’t see what other choice we have.”

“That isn’t a choice!” Echo yelled. “It’s a suicide mission. The Essence is much too powerful, much too dangerous. Cresta will not be your test subject!” Echo’s stance suddenly shifted. His eyes got wide as he looked Renner up and down. “You-you’re lying to me.”

“What in fate’s name are you talking about,” Renner asked, looking around for some sort of support.

“You’re lying to me about something. You have a hand in this, don’t you?”

“Don’t be preposterous!” Renner said, wheeling himself backward.

“I’m not being anything of the sort. You’re lying to me. I can feel it!” Echo moved as close to Renner as Royce would allow. “You came in right before her. Where were you? What did you tell her? Did you send her out to be caught intentionally? Did you want this to come to fruition?”

“Back up!” Royce said, pushing Echo backward. “Get the hell away from him!”

“Enough!” I screamed. “I won’t hear any more of this!”

“He’s lying to me, Cresta,” Echo said, pointing at the chair bound man.

“I don’t care!” I yelled from beside Casper. “I don’t care how or why we got to where we are. The only thing that matters now is how we get out of it.” I swallowed hard. “I have to do what Renner says. I have to make the Blood Moon rise.”

“No,” Echo sad sharply. “You don’t know what you’re doing. You don’t know where it could go.”

“It could make me crazy,” I answered, trying to sound unaffected. “It could melt my brain or whatever. I know. You already told me.”

“But I didn’t tell you everything,” Echo said, his eyes dropping to the floor.

“Echo, don’t!” Dahlia said, standing and finally looking invested in what was going on around her.

“I have to, Dahlia. If this is what she’s considering, then she deserves to know the truth; all of it.”

“What-What are you talking about?” I stammered, already exasperated.

“I haven’t been honest with you, Cresta; at least, not completely. There’s a reason I’ve been so apprehensive about you exploring the Essence. I’ve seen what it does to people,” Echo said, finally calm enough that Royce let him pass; though he shot a protective look to me as he did so.

“Yeah, you told me. Three people could tap into the Essence before me,” I said.

“Yes Cresta, but the reason I was so afraid about this, for you in particular, is because one of those people, one of the poor unfortunate souls who found themselves destroyed by the Essence, was your biological father.”

The breath caught hard in my throat, threatening to choke me. My biological father? I had always assumed that, after they sent me away, they had settled down to live some idyllic life somewhere, free to be with each other. Maybe they even had a couple more kids. Maybe he helped my biological mom grow vegetables when she wasn’t pretending to be a small town psychiatrist.

But this, losing his mind after delving into some cursed power set; it wasn’t what I had expected. And it sure as hell wasn’t what I wanted for him. It made more sense now, why Echo was so hard-nosed about me staying away from the Essence. It was like wanting the kid of an alcoholic to steer clear of the bottle. The excess was in my blood. The destruction was a family trait.

“I can’t- It doesn’t matter Echo. It can’t matter right now,” I said, trying to stay strong, and finding Casper’s hand wrapped around mine. “If I don’t do this, we all die.”

“And if you do, we still might die, and you might lose your mind in the process,” he said.

“I can’t just sit here and-”

“And if you do lose your mind, do you have any idea of the sort of destruction you’re capable of?” He asked me.

“Are you afraid for me, or afraid of me?” I asked, looking at him and, for the first time in a long time, unsure of what I was seeing.

“Don’t make me answer that question, Cresta,” he said quietly and, with that, he already had.

“I’m doing this,” I said, my face (and resolve) steeling over. “You can thank me later.”

Marching outside with Casper’s hand still in mine, I looked up at the sky. The night still seemed peaceful, like any ordinary evening.

“You’re really going to do this?” Casper asked, squeezing my palm.

“I don’t have a choice,” I said. “Do you think it’ll happen? Do you think I’ll lose myself?”

“Wait just a sec,” he said, let go of my hand, and rushed back inside. In an instant, he was out again, a white rag in his hand.

“Ever since Royce gave you that stupid shirt, I’ve wanted to do this.” He unfolded the white rag and I saw that it was a shirt of his own. A white t-shirt, a paper magazine clipping of a woman’s high-heeled feet sticking out of a car window had been crudely duct-taped onto it. Above the picture, Casper had written our mantra ‘Cars Drive on Roads’ in magic marker.

“After I got my memory back, I was really pissed at you,” he said. “I mean, royally mad. But I got over it. And after that, I just wanted to see you; only I couldn’t. I didn’t know where you were, and I didn’t know how to find you. And the worst part was, I didn’t even have a picture of you. They had all just vanished.”