Flame (31 page)

He took in one deep breath … two … and suddenly he was sobbing into his hands, hysterically gulping air and shaking, his legs and arms and fingers alive with the electricity of his infinite relief.

“Kieran?” It was Mather calling him. “I’ve just spoken with our doctors. Can you … expel the explosives?”

He nodded. “I’ll try.”

He engaged the automatic navigation system, strapped himself into his seat, fitted a grav bag around his mouth, and stuck his finger down his throat. He heaved and heaved, bringing up his breakfast, and then fluids, until finally the balloons started coming up, one by one. He ignored the growing pain in his stomach, ignored the horrible burn in his throat, until every last balloon had come up, all twelve of them.

The detonator was still there; he could feel it wedged inside him, tearing at his insides. It was too jagged and large to pass back through his esophagus. When he had no strength to keep trying, he pulled himself back to the cabin where he took up the headset. “Hello?”

“Go ahead, Kieran,” Mather said.

“I threw up all the explosives,” he said. His heart felt weak, and his head swam from the effort. “Not the detonator. It’s too big.”

“That’s progress, Kieran.”

“Should I come back?”

“Not until we find the Pauleys. They can’t blow you up, but if they activate that detonator, it might rupture your organs. One of our doctors is here with me, and she says to drink plenty of water. It might help move that detonator through.”

“Okay.” His voice sounded little to his ears.

“We’ll find them, Kieran,” Mather said reassuringly before signing off.

He turned off his headset before replying, “Go to hell.”

A red light on the control panel by the copilot’s seat caught his eye, the com screen flashing,
Closed signal.

He pressed the option for more information and couldn’t believe his eyes. Someone was hailing him from the Empyrean on an encrypted channel. He pulled himself to the copilot chair and enabled the signal.

“Hello?” he asked.

“Kieran?”

He knew that voice.

“
Arthur?
” he whispered. The lights on the control panel took on an otherworldly quality, and he dropped his head to his hand. “I thought you were…”

“Can you get to the Empyrean?”

“The Empyrean is dead,” he said stupidly.

“Sarek and I are
on
it, Kieran. It’s not dead.”

Kieran couldn’t move or speak. They were both alive? His dearest, truest friends were alive!

“Hello? Kieran? Can you find your way to us?”

Kieran shook his head to clear it, enabled the long-range sensors, and found the shadowy form of the Empyrean moving in a parallel course to the New Horizon. “I think I can.”

“Get to the port shuttle bay. I’m signing out so they don’t hear us.”

“Okay,” Kieran said, dumbfounded.

Kieran sat in the copilot’s seat, staring in disbelief at the blue and red lights in front of him. Twenty minutes ago he’d been sure of his impending death, but he was alive, sitting on a shuttle, about to go home to see his dearest friends.

Arthur and Sarek were alive!

Kieran disabled the com system so he wouldn’t be bothered by Anne Mather again, took hold of the joystick, and turned the shuttle toward home.

THE END

“Seth!” Waverly hissed into the darkness. She had, only moments ago, turned off all the lights with Jared’s com unit. She could hear Jacob swearing as he pawed over the ground, looking for the detonator.

“Seth?” she called back through the darkness. Her hand grazed a foot, and she groped in the dark until she could feel his lips.

She waited … waited … holding her breath …
please please please …

A tiny puff of exhaled air warmed her fingers.

“You little bitch!” she heard from behind. Jacob was still back where Seth had thrown the device. Waverly pulled at Seth’s arm, trying to lift him, but he was too heavy.

“I’ll get you,” Jacob snarled. She could hear him stumbling through the cornstalks, wheezing and gurgling. His gut had exploded into ribbons of blood when she’d shot him. She’d expected him to crumple right then, but he hadn’t, and she had no idea where the gun was.

“Run,” she heard whispered from below.

“Seth!”

“He thinks I’m his buddy,” Seth whispered. She kissed his cheek, his eye, his ear. “He won’t hurt me.”

“I can’t leave you!”

“He won’t hurt me,” Seth insisted. “Go!”

“No!”

“Get help,” he wheezed.

She felt Jacob’s hand close around her ankle. “I’ll kill you,” the man said.

She kicked his hand away, got to her feet, and ran back through the corn, blindly, no idea of where she was going or what she should do.

Save Seth. Help Seth.

By some miracle, she still held the com unit in her hand and decided to risk using the screen as a light source. Its meager glow revealed only her immediate vicinity, but it was enough to keep her from falling. She pointed it at the ground as she followed a row of corn.

After long, terrifying moments, she found the wall, then she turned to her left and followed it until she reached the doorway she and Serafina had entered. She nearly tripped over the body of the dead guard, and she crouched over him to pick up the walkie-talkie that hung on his belt.

“Hello?” she said into it. “Is anyone there?”

“Who is this?” asked a harsh voice.

“This is Waverly Marshall. I need help. Seth … he’s sick and hurt and Jacob Pauley has him. Please.”

She sounded like a little girl, and for the first time in a long time that’s what she felt like: a child who needed a grown-up.

“Where are you?”

“I’m at a doorway on the port side of the granary. The guard is dead. I think Jacob killed him. Please. Seth needs help.”

“There’s a security force on the way,” the voice said.

“Okay.” Waverly buried her face in her hands.

She couldn’t do this anymore. No more scheming. No more revenge. She wanted safety. She’d had it once. She hadn’t even noticed it then.
It wasn’t real anyway,
she told herself.
I only thought I was safe, but all those years, that’s when Anne Mather and the doctor were making their plans, laying their traps.

Cones of light spilled into the darkness in front of her and she heard the heavy steps of men. She raised her hands to show she had no weapons. “Please! We need to help Seth.”

“Where is he?” one of the men asked, stepping forward. She couldn’t see him, but he had a deep voice that was somehow gentle, and she took a step toward him.

“Jacob Pauley has him in the cornfield.” One of the men took hold of her roughly by the elbow.

“Can you take us to them?”

“I think so,” she said.

One of the men took Jared’s com unit out of her hands. He looked at it with suspicion. “What is this?”

“It’s some kind of computer. It belongs to Jared Carver.”

The man’s eyes dropped to the dead man on the floor and he cried, “Who killed Robert?”

“Jacob, I think,” Waverly said, blinking against his flashlight. She was surrounded by men now, at least five of them. “Please. Seth is so sick.”

“Show us where,” said the stocky one with the deep voice. He took her arm and walked with her, his grip firm but gentle. There was something about him that appeared kinder than the rest, and she pinned her hopes on him.

“In the cornfield,” she whispered. “Toward the starboard side.”

“I told the Pastor to raze this field,” she heard someone behind her say. “But she wanted things to stay normal.”

“All the guns were accounted for,” said another man. “We thought it would be okay.”

“They’re not
using
guns,” Waverly hissed, losing patience. “The Pauleys made Kieran swallow explosives.”

“How do you know that?” one of them asked, alarmed.

“I’ll tell you later. Right now Jacob is looking for the detonator in the cornfield, and we have to stop him before he finds it!”

That got them moving. One of the men stayed behind to issue evacuation orders to the audience. Waverly could hear the voices of the crowd, hushed, waiting for the lights to come back on. Two of the men went ahead, their flashlights illuminating the corn fronds, stopping every few feet to look back at Waverly. She pointed them toward Seth, following the broken stalks she’d left behind in her flight from Jacob.

When they were getting near, she whispered, “Better turn off your lights.” She crouched down, and the four men did the same.

“He might have a gun,” Waverly whispered to the man on her right.

They moved more cautiously now, but their footsteps through the cornstalks were too loud. She hoped the sounds of the audience being moved out of the granary bay might cover the noise they were making.

If Jacob had found that gun …

One of the men walking to her left cried out, “Someone’s here!”

“Where?” the man holding her arm asked.

“I stepped on him.” The man’s flashlight flicked on and he pointed the beam at the ground, but Waverly couldn’t see what he was looking at. “He’s dead.”

Waverly sank to her knees. “
No!
”

“I’m here,” someone whispered a couple feet from her right knee. She crawled toward him and felt Seth’s clammy forehead, heard his struggling breath. She leaned her forehead on his and cried.

“Jacob Pauley,” one of the guards said and kicked at the dead man’s arm. Jacob’s staring eyes never moved in their sockets as his head wobbled on the ground. Waverly cringed. He was a brute. He was stupid. He was cruel. And she was glad he was dead, but she couldn’t stand to look at him like that.

“Central Command … we need a med team down in the port-side granary, stat,” said one of the men into a walkie-talkie. He knelt by Seth and felt his forehead. “Bad fever,” he said, shaking his head.

“Don,” Seth whispered.

The other men paused, all of them looking at the stocky man. “How does he know you?” one of them asked sharply.

“I brought him a few meals down in the brig.” He was lying. Waverly could see by the way his eyes never moved a single iota as he stared into the other guard’s face.

“We’ve located Kieran Alden,” Waverly heard through a walkie-talkie. “He’s in a shuttle right now.”

“Copy,” one of the men responded.

Waverly was glad Kieran was safe, but she was terrified watching Seth’s face as he struggled to breathe. His lips were peeled back from his teeth in a painful grimace and she could hear fluid in his throat. She took hold of his hand, squeezed, and was relieved that he had enough strength to squeeze back, if weakly. He rubbed her fingers with his thumb, back and forth.

She rested her forehead on his and whispered, “I love you.”

She held her breath until he whispered, “I wanted to say it first.”

She smiled. In the middle of all this, he’d made her smile.

Soon two people came pounding through the corn, carrying a stretcher between them. She watched as they slid the stretcher under Seth and strapped him in. She started to follow them back the way they’d come when she felt a hand clamp around her elbow. She turned to see Don blinking apologetically. “We need to ask you a few questions.”

Just then, the lights came back on. Squinting, Waverly looked around to get her bearings. She could just barely see over the tops of the corn. Mather was standing on the stage next to a group of guards, their heads ducked away from the bright lights as the last of the audience left the granary.

Waverly gasped. A dark shape mounted the stage right behind Mather. The shape uncoiled like a snake; a hand extended like a fang.

“Look out!” Waverly screamed.

Ginny Pauley opened fire before anyone could react. She shot Anne Mather in the back once, twice, three times.

Mather sat down on the stage, almost as though she meant to.

The guards around her started running, fumbling for their guns, screaming. Ginny turned her gun on the men who had been standing with Mather and shot them, one by one, a single bullet for each of them.

Waverly ran after the guards, racing toward the stage, her vision jarred with every step. She acted without thought, without feeling, not sure why she followed them. They broke through the edge of the cornfield and were now in full view of that crazy, murderous, damaged woman.

Ginny dropped down to one knee, her gun pointed at Waverly. Waverly felt arms wrap around her waist and she hit the ground. A heavy body landed on top of her, and she heard a man’s deep voice in her ear. “Stay down.”

Waverly nodded, and he crawled off toward the stage. She watched from between chairs as four men opened fire on Ginny, who sank to her knees, hiding her head under spindly forearms, her body twisting in a grotesque spasm. The air exploded with so many rounds of gunfire that Waverly couldn’t count the bullets.

And then …

… quiet.

In the calm that followed, Waverly heard agonized moaning. Four men were standing around Ginny, looking down at her as a fifth man stripped her body of the weapons she’d carried: knives, a machete, a nightstick, and a handgun.

It was Jared’s handgun, the one Waverly had brought here.

Don came back to Waverly, stricken, beads of sweat over his brow and the bridge of his nose. He wiped his forehead with the back of his arm. “You okay?” he asked.

Waverly nodded. “What about Mather?” she asked.

“Not good.” He took hold of Waverly’s arm to help her up. She was unsteady on her feet as he pulled her toward the stage, her legs moving automatically. When she swallowed, her mouth was dry and somehow full of dirt.

The moaning got louder—it hadn’t been Ginny moaning after all—and when Waverly looked up at the stage, she saw a pair of legs twisting in agony. She slowed down, but the guard kept her walking. “I don’t want to see,” she whispered.

“She wants to talk to you.”

“No,” Waverly said quietly, but she let him pull her along.

So many times she’d pictured killing Anne Mather. She’d dreamed it, over and over, bloodthirsty dreams that woke her feeling disturbed and satisfied, horrified and eager.