The Daughter Of Lava (#3 Reclaimed Souls Series) (8 page)

I shove her away from me and she nearly slips and falls, but she still laughs as if she has nothing left to lose.

“You’re using my own speech against me. That’s how
you
know about the apple orchard.”

“You don’t remember me, do you? You caught us kissing once, Pareu and me, behind my father’s house. I think you were twelve. Why do you think he kept coming to my father’s orchard? He didn’t even like apples. But you did.”

I loved those apples. I loved escaping with Pareu.

A distant memory resurfaces of finding Pareu kissing—more than kissing, actually—a girl with white blonde hair. Then, later on, the same girl up in the trees waiting for us. Waiting for Pareu. Pareu telling her… secrets.
 

What secrets? I wrack my brain.

And yet here she is in front of me, delaying me, probably hoping to confuse me.

“So you knew my brother. Big deal. I’d say it’s an odd coincidence, but nothing that would convince me to spare your life.” I pull out my dagger.

White Rose smiles at me like a lunatic. “I can assure you that that’s not necessary.” She moves closer to the hand rope and then swings one leg over, then the other. “I don’t have much time left. I can feel the poison entering my brain.”

“What are you doing?” I scream at her, sheathing my dagger.

At that moment, I hear someone yelling to my left, though the rushing water conceals the actual words. But my soul knows the voice.

Roland.

White Rose starts another round of demented laughing and I swing my head back in her direction. I rush up to her, grabbing at the buttons of her shirt to keep her still.

“What do you know? Quick, before Roland gets here.”

One half of her face smirks at me, but I can tell she’s ready to end it all and jump into the waters below.

“The summer you turned twelve, Pareu learned why your family was in hiding. To protect you. From what, I don’t know, but he had other ideas. He was always full of grand, utopian ideas, wasn’t he?” She looks away, her eyes displaying a far-off memory. “My goddess, how we loved him.” She shakes her head. “Whatever your brother knew, it got back to the savage king. I know who put the bullet in Pareu’s head.” She looks hard at Roland as he walks toward us and then back at me. “The same man that killed my sister, Lisbeth. Don’t trust your heart, Rahda. It’s always wrong.”

She swipes my hand away from her shirt and leaps backward from the bridge. Like a graceful, yet damaged, scarred swan. I watch until she disappears, until Roland, with untroubled eyes, steps calmly to my side, until he whispers it’s time to go.

Sixteen

E
VEN
NUMBNESS
HAS
A
feeling, like a quiet anger that can’t be gotten over quickly enough, or a memory that won’t come to the surface.

But, also like numbness, you can push it away until the pain finally registers. In my mind, I watch, repeatedly, White Rose fling herself off the bridge. Her shirt flapped against her skin and her face, Dear Goddess, her face was one of peace. She would have rather died than face the consequences of her pain, her memories, her actions.

I’m not like her. I’ve never given up. Pain, to a varying degree, has made me stronger. Though, consequently, I’ve never known peace. Turmoil always seems to brew just under my skin, like my body, mind, soul, and heart have never been in agreement.
 

And I don’t know what any of it means.

So when Roland looks my way with concern in his eyes, I can push the questions, the discomfort, the uneasiness away and pretend nothing is wrong.

Roland doesn’t buy it, but he says nothing as we climb out of the tunnel, through another door, and enter directly into the Palace Skyscraper.

It’s the same room with all the couches.

The room barely houses us and now, as I observe them, innocent citizens are huddled in groups of ten to twenty each. Mr. Underwood moves between them. Demonstrating how to use the weapons. Plotting. Explaining. Planning.

For their death
, I think depressingly.

“Mr. Underwood has a plan?” I ask Roland.
 

“The less-abled ones will fight from above on the fourth floor. Bows and arrows. Rocks. There’s a balcony there. The rest go outside. We’ve strategically downed large trees from the Old City, the mountain paths, and flooded the western plains. Plus, we have the monk warriors. If you’ve never seen them in action, you’re in for a treat. Most of tonight’s
citizens
were either from Mr. Underwood’s northern mountain clan or those that refused to leave the continent during the plague break-out. I know what you’re thinking.” He holds up his hands. “They weren’t supposed to be here, but there’s nothing we can do about it now except protect them and allow them to fight with honor.”

“And the Grandfather has everyone else, including whatever beasts he’s summoned from Hades Rocks,” I hiss through my teeth. Five hundred against the world. “We might as well surrender. Maybe they’ll kill us quickly.” I see movement up on the regal staircase. Cat Evinas. I wondered where she was.

She comes down the steps like a queen in her own right, stops before us, and pulls me into an embrace. Roland looks at Cat oddly, like maybe she’s never hugged anyone before.
 

Cat’s stiff armor-like attire crushes my front as her communicator tablet pokes me in the shoulder blade. When she pulls back—in reality, she actually pushes me away while keeping her hands on my outer biceps to stare at me like a disapproving mother—I notice two long, sheathed swords, one on each of her slim hips.

“Ready for battle, I see,” I say, impressed. “Or are you just taking a break from kicking ass?”

“Don’t go into the main hallway unless you want to trip on bodies,” she says smoothly. “The servicebots are finding it difficult to clean it up.”
 

I can’t tell if she’s joking or not.

“How is it out there?” Roland asks after clearing his throat.

“The mountain is on fire, as is Widow’s Lane. Patroxi have joined in, but not on our side of the fight, or, at least I can’t
tell
which side they are on. Maybe they are on their own side and see this as a chance to gain some power.”

“Will they see you as a traitor?” I ask.

“They won’t see anything but a blur from my swords,” she answers, one of her thinly arched eyebrows cocks, as if I would challenge her statement.

The weapons master interrupts. “I be takin da folks upstairs now, mizzy.”

I step away and find the group that will be going upstairs. Wren and her granddaughter, Gilly, and a couple dozen others are in the group. I shake their hands and murmur, “With Honor and the Goddess,” to each. Wren grips my hand harder than any other.

“You may not be a mutie, but you certainly have guts, Rahda,” Wren says. “Go with Honor, Queen, and we will follow in Honor.”

Mr. Underwood escorts them upstairs as Roland, Cat, and I lead everyone else into the courtyard.

The mountain range glows bright orange and smoke billows angrily into the sky.

Roland turns to me. “I don’t know how today is going to end, Rahda. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I need to… I have to…” he pauses, running his fingers through his hair with intensity. “You mean everything to me. If I could give you my very soul, I would. I’d give it to you right now so that I could spend eternity with you. I’ve already waited more than a decade to see myself in your eyes. I’d wait forever. A million lifetimes. Eons. So…” He hesitates again and I feel like hours go by before he continues. “I need you to know that I love you, that I cherish you, and that I Honor you to the Goddess. I will follow you in Honor, my Queen.”

He pulls my hand up and kisses it longingly. Afterward, he cups my face in his palm and his eyes seem indecisive, unsure, though intense, before he pulls me in and kisses me on the lips. Hungry. Demanding. Unrelenting.

He pushes himself away, his breath ragged, and runs away from me, out of the courtyard and out to find a battle.

Cat stares at me a moment, as do the others, and then I shout, “Let’s go!”
 

Cat hands me one of her swords, and it feels wonderful in my hands. I push the numbness away, welcome the pain that normally settles around my heart, and rush out of the courtyard.

Seventeen

H
EAT
RADIATES
AROUND
ME
, in me, and through me as I finally see the burning mountain range. It’s spectacularly ablaze, as if the Goddess herself touched it with an angry hand. An orange glow bounces off everything.

My
shadow
isn’t so much of a shadow anymore, but a short figure in brown robes, twirling two razor-thin swords at a pair of ghoulish, bald, troll-like beasts. In a matter of seconds, both beasts are cut down to the size of a mound of cut flesh.

Clinks of metal on metal ping my ears as the sizzle of the burning mountains echo down. Everyone talks, yells, grunts. I see the threat before I can react to it. A tall soldier with a swinging, spiked mace zooms at me just as Cat pulls me back.

“You’re a standing target, Rahda,” Cat hisses. She twirls around me, one of her arms pushes me back, and instantly, she slices through the soldier’s midsection and pulls out just as quickly. The soldier crumples sideways and lands unceremoniously on the cobblestone sidewalk.
 

But another quickly takes his place, a female solider, ready to battle Cat.

I don’t have the luxury of becoming a dumb spectator. A thick, gender-less Patroxi warrior charges me. I duck the flying metal chain it swings at me and it accidentally hits someone else, thus stalling its attack on me. I stay ducked down, run in, pull out my dagger, and embed it in the Patroxi’s neck, upward, between its acrylic scales.

The body falls backward. I pull out the dagger, pushing the Patroxi away from me and stepping up on it. I peer into its hazy, cloudy-colored eyes—they move ever so slightly, watching me as it dies—before I decide on what to do next. Inspecting its head, I remove the half-alien’s diamond-impregnated battle helmet, sort of like removing the shell from a turtle. I scoop out the leftover skull-matter and brain-guts, careful to avoid dislodging the Patroxi audio-system embedded inside, and shove it down hard on my own head.

It’s large, and some of the Patroxi’s brain-guts sluices down my skin, giving me a momentary chill, but it will work. Maybe I’ll be able to hear commands. Maybe not. At the moment, it’s all static, but so not loud that I can’t hear the sounds around me. Cat, whose sword moves like an exotic dancer hell-bent on destroying one enemy combatant at a time, turns briefly to stare at me. Then she shakes her head and resumes her task at hand.

I notice the smaller, squat-like men and women fighting with massive crossbows as large as their bodies are tall. Alben Underwood’s people. And they aren’t taking a beating from anyone, not even the tallest, largest soldiers or the meanest, grizzliest beasts.

Their dry, cut-up accents weave around me as they communicate with each other in a northern mountain dialect that I can barely understand at the best of times.
 

I move forward and widely around Cat, who’s now going toe-to-toe with a much larger opponent. Thin, bloody gashes now decorate her upper arms as she expertly wields her sword. It slices into the soldier just as something hits him from the backside.

When the soldier falls over, I see Alben Underwood lowering his crossbow, reloading it, and firing it into the gut of another enemy body.
 

“Git’a move on, mizzy,” he grunts at me, “or I’ll shoot ye myself fer bein’ a waste of space. Dat helmet looks stupid on ye.”

I plan to say a cutting remark, but there’s no time. I raise the dagger up and let it fly at Alben. His eyes widen suddenly and I know that if he could, in that moment, he’d shoot me with his crossbow.
 

However, the dagger sails over his head and impales into the right eye socket of the soldier behind Alben. It’s the same young girl I met yesterday, guarding the path to the monastery, and for the first time, I feel a sense of remorse. Her name is Deni. One of the Grandfather’s security guards. She drops instantaneously. Her Fisk 837 machine gun clatters away from her body, but not before a few rounds fire off.
 

Cat rears back suddenly—she’s already moved on and fighting another Patroxi—and I know right then that she’s been hit. Alben fires his crossbow into the Patroxi’s chest as I rush to Cat.

“I’m fine,” she yells at me as Alben retrieves his arrow. Cat checks herself. “I am not a child, Rahda. I can barely feel it.” I’m amazed at her strength and warrior-like stance. If I wasn’t already in love with Roland, I would fall hard for her.

A blood stain starts to saturate her left side—her fighting arm side—and I see that the bullet went clean through the triceps of her left arm.

She says something else, but I barely hear it. The sound in the Patroxi’s helmet starts to make sense.

“They’re sending another wave of Patroxi,” I say out loud, translating the Patroxi clicks and grunts as they come over the helmet’s audio-system.

“How do you know that?” Cat asks.

I point to the helmet. “There’s a communication link inside.”

“Where are da Patroxi comin’ from?” Alben asks doubtfully, looking around, and I can understand why.

The mountains are completely ablaze, water is starting to flood the streets—which will help contain some of the burning buildings—and the rest of the paths into Skyscraper City are flooded.

Unless they plan to fly in—

Just then, an enormous, tank-sized gray being lands ten feet away from us. It’s ten times the size of a regular half-alien.

“What the hell—” I choke on my own question.

Instinctively and together, we all take several steps backward, and I almost trip on Deni’s body. Crouching low and never taking my eyes of the thing that just landed before us, I snag the dagger out of Deni’s face. And I pick up her machine gun.

Then, Cat gasps loudly. Whatever it is, if Cat’s alarmed, it can’t be good.

I look up to the fire-lit, smoky sky and see other objects zooming down. Giant Patroxi. They land all around the city, on tops of buildings, and several strategically touch down on the Palace Skyscraper’s balconies, their weight crushing steel, concrete, and wood.