The Wandering (The Lux Guardians, #2) (44 page)

A dark blur comes
hurtling into the Official, knocking me out of his grip. I hit the
ground on my side, my hip slamming into the bricks. I scream. Pain
builds upon pain upon pain until I’m crying and screaming with
it.

“Tia!” Honour
yells.

I try to claw my way
out of the pain but I’d really like to sleep.

“You know I’ll keep
you safe. Anything else can happen and I won’t care, but I won’t
let a single thing happen to you.”

“That sounds
dangerously close to a promise.”

“It is a promise, but
don’t get used to me making them. That’s the one and only thing
I’ll promise anyone, ever.”

I drag myself onto my
hands and knees.

Anything else can
happen and I won’t care.

I struggle to my feet,
grabbing my knife in the process. Marrin wouldn’t want me to stop
fighting just to be with him. I’m not honouring him by dying. I’m
insulting him, insulting this life he gave me by sacrificing
myself.

Alright, Marrin,
I think,
you win. I’ll fight to live. But I won’t forget
you and I won’t move on. Not in a hundred years.

With the Official
paying no attention to me, I’m able to jam the bony edge of my knee
into his crotch. And thrust my blade into his stomach. He lets out
a roar that is nowhere near human. I scramble out of his reach, my
heart tripping over itself.

The
Official charges—not at me, but at Honour.
No! No, no, no, no, no.
I tighten my
grasp on the knife, stabbing any area of the hulking man I can
reach, but I might as well be stabbing him with a toothpick. He
doesn’t wince once, not even when I thrust the blade under his
ribs. There’s something protecting him, some technology, something
States. I cry and curse at the same time.

He howled, I remember.
When I kicked him. So whatever protects him is only on his chest!
As the man closes his fists around my brother’s throat—this brute’s
signature move—I hold my knife in both hands and sink the metal
into his leg. I throw all my weight onto it, feeling it hit
bone.

He drops Honour, who
stumbles back, wheezing for air, clutching his neck.

Panicking as the
Official faces me, I release the knife, leaving it sunk into his
leg. My hands are shaking now. I’m not sure if my whole body isn’t
shaking.

We’re going to
die.

Anything else can
happen and I won’t care.

No knife, no defensive
skills against a man this big, I back away with my hands up.

The Official wrenches
the dagger from his leg with a grunt. At the sight of the blood, he
goes mad. His eyes bulge. He abandons all joy of killing us. His
hand reaches for the gun that will burn us to blackened nothing,
the disc of twinkling glass on the end of the barrel a pretty
threat.

I run for Honour,
dragging him away by the collar of his coat. We need to get to the
buildings. If we can just get to the buildings, we’ll be able to
hide. The leather is slippery, though, and Honour evades me. He
runs right for the Official, no doubt thinking something about
being selfless and saving me.

My
eyes burn with tears. I hate him in that moment. Doesn’t he know
the only reason I’ve been able to stay alive, the only reason
I’ve
wanted
to,
is him? What do I have without Honour?

The Official raises
his gun. Honour skids to a stop.

There’s no use
begging. Not with this Official.

There’s only one thing
I can do: I have to use the power dormant in my veins. The power
waiting for me to call it to life. But I know the price of using
that, what it will do to me. But what choice do I have?

Morality or my
brother’s life—it’s an easy choice.

For the first time
since we left Underground London Zone I find myself grateful for
what they did, how they twisted me.

I close my hand around
the Official’s bicep and allow my senses to awaken. I open myself
up to it and draw everything into me. The street becomes brighter,
sharper around the edges. There is energy thrumming in every tiny
thing.

Anything else can
happen and I won’t care.

I hope you don’t care
about me becoming a monster, Marrin. Because that’s what I am
now.

I find the Official’s
energy, locate everything that makes him who he is—atoms and blood
and DNA, training and brutality and slaughter, fears and desires
and hungers and thoughts—and I willingly do what those men forced
me to do for so many days, months, years.

I tear his being
apart.

Gunfire explodes
through the street and though I’m aware enough to distinguish it
from the whirr of Official weapons, though I hear bodies dropping
at an alarmingly fast rate, I’m singularly focussed on the man in
front of me. The Official’s energy scatters. A rush like a drug
high courses through me. I shudder. The Official collapses into
dust.

I shield my eyes as
the ash that once was a person is blown away on the sea wind, and I
know this is a turning point. This will change me. This will change
everything.

Honour will know,
everyone
will know, what I’ve been hiding:

I know what happened
to us in Underground London Zone.

They made us powerful
beyond all belief.

They made us
killers.

~*~

Thank you for
reading!

I hope you enjoyed The Wandering. Book three in the Lux
Guardians series will be released in 2015. Keep up to date with
Saruuh Kelsey’s new releases by joining her mailing list at
http://bit.ly/1sDAugj

Please take a
moment to recommend this book on Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes &
Noble, Twitter, or your blog.

Find these
other books by Saruuh Kelsey:

The Lux
Guardians series

A Compilation
of Side Stories

Under
(Novella)

The
Forgotten

The
Wandering

The Legend
Mirror series

The Beast of
Callaire

Fissure
Chronicles short stories

Love In The
Gilded Age (October 28th)

saruuhkelsey.co.uk

thelegendmirror.tumblr.com

theluxguardians.tumblr.com

***

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Plentiful
gratitude to:

The Matriarch,
for the proof reading, the support, and the supply of coffee.

Lisa, for
finding all the little problems with The Wandering and helping make
it much better.

Stasia, for
the ingenious suggestions, stellar friendship, and the dick
comments.

Deanna, Jessi,
Maddie, Nadia, Henna, Laura, Polina, Stasia, and Chiara, for having
faith enough in this series to fund it.

Randi and
Crocus for making life generally brighter.

Readers of The
Lux Guardians, for giving me that final push to get each book
finished.

And most
importantly: the internet, for existing.