Ignition Point (7 page)

It mattered. If there really were secrets and plots, it meant Grandfather might not be wrong. It meant that voice in his head might not be his own. He’d asked for proof, after all.

Meredith wove them through the trees as they headed downhill now, gathering speed until they splashed into the shallow edge of the river. She snatched up a branch and began pushing it into the water, feeling along the bottom.

“Here,” she finally said. “There’s a sandbar. The river’s deep, but it isn’t fast. We can cross on the sandbar.”

“Cross to where? Merry—” Lucas looked around, trying to get his bearings in the dappled light filtering through the trees. He hadn’t been back long enough to know the city well, much less the surrounding countryside. All he knew was that the moss-coated humps of the ruins of old buildings made his heart thump and his mouth go dry. The remnants of the world that had been before were now draped with vines and hidden by ferns. The hidden ruins were a reminder of the evil of the world that had come before. They were a reminder of his place in the world that was now.

He wanted the ordered, clean lines of the city around him. “Where are we going?”

Before she could answer, he realized where she was taking him. It wasn’t anything directional. No more than a feeling, like an echo of his grandfather’s words. Those conspiring against him consorted with Sparks. His mind flashed to the scene in the alley.

And isn’t she already guilty of the same?
His mind hissed the thought.
She loves
you
, after all.

“Merry, are you taking me to the Kennels?”

Her happy expression flashed into irritation. “Don’t call it that. It’s a village. A community, just like the one we live in.”

“Okay,” he said. A feeling of wrongness worked through his belly like spreading fingers. What business did she—did either of them—have in the Spark village? “But are we?”

Meredith smiled and glanced over her shoulder at the far shore, still focused on luring him onward.

Was she a lure? What had Edgar said? Once they had Lucas, they had his grandfather?

How had Edgar known he was a Spark? Lucas had told only one person….

“Why?”

She let an impatient huff of breath escape and tilted her head. “I wanted to surprise you. Dad said to wait, he was afraid…. But the Councilor knows now. You talked to him, and we’re getting married!” She let a giddy laugh escape and threw her arms to the side, gesturing her happy disbelief with the long stick. “He knows about us, and of course, he knows about you. The Councilor’s own grandson is a Spark. Dad couldn’t even hardly believe it when I told him.”

Lucas felt a sick sort of spinning in his midsection, as if something—his breath, his understanding—was being sucked down into a death spiral.

He’d told her she had to keep that between them. It was his deepest secret. It was his shame. He’d shared it with her because her love somehow eased it….

What had she done?

She’d given his weakness to her father as a weapon.

A rush of heat suffused his face. His pulse throbbed in his temple. He could hear the pounding in his ears, the force of his blood echoing the anger that flashed through him.

“Yes, we’re going to the village.” Her voice was breathless, excited. “We’re going to see my niece. She’s strong, so strong. Stronger than any of the men. Do you know the Council policy on girls like that?”

He nodded automatically. Lucas had heard Grandfather discussing policy with aides. But what difference did the stupid policy make? Why was she even talking about this? She’d
betrayed
him. And she was babbling on like it didn’t matter.

“They take them away,” he said. “Because the Council believes they’re a danger to the delicate balance of freedom and production.” It was easy to parrot what he’d heard. The Council wanted Sparks just strong enough to power the cities but not so strong that they could do more. Not so strong that they could want more. With a matrilineal power, that was dangerous. The rare strong girls, a one-in-a-thousand evolutionary slip, would grow into women who’d pass on their strength. They’d create a generation of monsters just like them.

He didn’t tell Meredith that, though. Something in him was pulling back, watching. Wary. Doing exactly what the voice in his head had told him.

Meredith nodded. “You do understand. But now we don’t have to hide Emma anymore. Your grandfather will stand for us in the Council. He’ll protect Emma. And we owe it all to you.”

Lucas struggled to follow her leaps. He’d never said that. He’d never promised any of that. All he’d wanted was someone to share his secret.

“No,” he said softly. Then, again, louder, “No. I didn’t say that—any of that. You want my grandfather to stand up to the rest of the Councilors against
his
policy? No, Merr. Grandfather didn’t even give me permission to marry you. That wasn’t what we talked about. He told me to—asked me to—”

Her smile died. “He asked you to what?”

Lucas shook his head. He couldn’t tell her. “I want to marry you, Meredith, but he wants to send me away.” A partial truth was better than nothing. His next words tumbled out, a rush of air to push the sin of disobedience from him. “I want us to go away, instead, start new somewhere else where we don’t have to pretend anymore. Somewhere neither of us has to be a secret.”

“You’re a Spark,” she whispered. “It doesn’t matter where we go. It’ll always have to be secret.”

“No. Not every Zone is like this.” This was where he could convince her. She hadn’t been outside Zone Four before. Lucas had. Whether it was biblically right or not, he knew there were places where Sparks were as free as any other citizen. His grandfather was determined to change that. But it hadn’t happened yet. “My foster family took me to other—”

“Lucas. No.” Her voice was firm. “We stay. My place is here. Fighting with my family.”

“Fighting my family?” He snapped the question.

Meredith’s chin lifted. “If necessary. Your grandfather is right about one thing. We do have to stand on faith. Some things are righteous, Lucas. Sometimes God requires us to do things we’d never consider, because they are right.”

Including betraying the man who loves you?
The anger beat strong in his temples again.

Her words echoed his grandfather’s, yet her meaning was a world apart. Both of them couldn’t be right. One of them must be a pretender. One of them was using faith to further an agenda. He loved them both. How was he to know who was wrong?

“No. It isn’t right. No matter how hard it is on any of us, Grandfather is the one true path.”

“No. No! Lucas, Sparks aren’t aberrations. They’re not subhuman. They’re not dogs, either. And they sure as Dust aren’t a sign of the end times. Your grandfather is twisting something good and true to suit his own purposes, and it’s wrong!” She lifted her arms again, but the stick shook this time. “We are alive, right now. And we are people, both of us. It’s just that one of us can make the Dust do what he wants. Are you less of a person, Lucas?”

No. But I’m chosen. I’m different than the other Sparks. You should know that!
If she loved him, truly loved him as Grandfather did, shouldn’t she see that he was special? Was this what the voice had wanted him to realize?

The truth hit him like a fist. She didn’t. She couldn’t. She was working against his grandfather. Lucas was just a means to an end.

She wouldn’t leave with him because she didn’t love him. She would never marry him.

“All I wanted was you.” He hated that his voice sounded so broken.

She shook her head, her eyes going soft again. She stepped closer, dropping the stick into the water to dip below the surface, then bob back and spin slowly away. Meredith reached out to him. “I want you, too.”

He wanted to believe her. He just didn’t. Not anymore. Her fingers left a cold trail down his cheek to his chin then dropped to his chest. Her eyes followed them.

She can’t even meet my eyes. How could I have been such a fool?
The thought of how desperately he’d wanted to run away with her made his stomach clench.

“I’m right,” she said. She raised her gaze to his briefly then moved it over his face. “You know I’m right. Come with me so you can see. Let us convince you. Being a Spark isn’t a curse. It’s a gift.”

It was the exact word his grandfather had used. Except his grandfather hadn’t used it to manipulate Lucas. He’d used it to shame Jacob, to show him the divine in Lucas—the divine Meredith could not see.

That was why he’d given Lucas this assignment. It wasn’t merely so Lucas could prove himself to Grandfather. Jacob sneered at Lucas at every opportunity. He expected Lucas to screw up. Jacob expected Lucas’s defect to stain everything he did.

With sudden icy clarity, Lucas realized it might already have done so.

He’d sworn to keep his Spark a secret. Not a single member of the Brayer family had been born a Spark in the two hundred years since Sparks were engineered, until Lucas. If it had been up to his mother, he’d have been left at the edge of the contained Spark community as a foundling. Or drowned.

Grandfather had saved him. He wanted Lucas. He needed him. And Lucas had repaid Grandfather’s devotion by sharing his secret with the family intent on destroying grandfather’s legacy.

“You know I’m right.” Her hand rested on his stomach, her fingers curling into his shirt. “Baby, you’re not a curse.”

His nerves fluttered under her touch, his body trying to respond, even as his stomach curled with nausea. Lucas swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry. She had been using his weakness for her this whole time.

He looked away from her, turning his head back to the shoreline behind him. His gaze swept along the tangled forest, looking for an answer, a path.

He found it.

Two men crouched in the underbrush up the shore from them. One of them was Jacob. How had he and Meredith not heard them?

You were too focused on your plans to betray the only man who has ever believed in you. And she was focused on plans of her own, wasn’t she?

Lucas was certain Jacob watched not only to ensure Lucas acted, but to complete the task himself if Lucas failed. The men were following her. They must know she was being used as a lure to corrupt Lucas. He had his answer. All he’d had to do was listen.

And believe
.

Meredith really was the key to Lucas’s future. He was chosen.

Tears of gratitude welled in his eyes. Was this what righteousness felt like? The making of impossible decisions? “No,” he said. “It’s not a curse. It’s a weapon.”

He felt a wave of serenity settle over him, easing into him through his skin like a misty cloak of virtue that cooled away the anger. Lucas knew what he was now, even as he turned back to look down at the only person he’d thought had loved him in spite of what he was—

No,
he corrected himself sternly.
That’s wrong. Grandfather loves me. Even when Mother rejected me, he always came for me.

“Maybe you’re right, Meredith.” He soothed away the confusion in her eyes after his last words. He lifted her hand from his stomach and gave each knuckle a soft kiss then settled it back by her side. “But you’re a gift, too. You were meant for me.”

It was true. Just not in the way that either of them had thought.

“You were always meant to show me the right way….” He’d just had to see her through faith instead of desire. He bent and touched his lips to hers.

Meredith rose on her toes to meet him, lifting her arms to his shoulders.

It made sweeping her under easier. He wrapped his hands tight around her neck and pushed her beneath the water.

Her hands clutched at his shoulders at first, as if she thought it might be a game. After a moment, she fought him. Her fingers curled into claws that strafed his neck and chin. His height kept his eyes from her nails. His long legs set wide gave him stability, even as her own legs kicked.

The water boiled around her from her desperate flailing. Her hands suddenly gripped the front of his shirt and then slid loose. Her arms fell to the water and bobbed under and back up again, just as the branch had moments before.

Her long black hair swirled around his wrists, an inky cloud that helped him focus. He held her under, waiting. He had to be thorough. Grandfather would expect no less.

Two crimson drops dripped from the gouges she’d opened on his chin. They settled on the surface of the water then slowly distorted with the lazy swirling of the water around his wrists. The blood caught in the floating strands of her hair and separated, spreading in the water until they couldn’t be seen. They were still there, he knew. Still Lucas. But hidden.

He took a deep, cleansing breath and lifted Meredith from the water. Her green eyes stared up. Water drained from her nostrils and mouth, poured off her hair. Somehow heavier now, her body resisted him. He pulled her to him, crushing her softness to his chest a last time.

Lucas turned, dragging her with him. He trudged the few steps back to the shore to settle his accomplishment in the detritus of the river’s narrow beach. A slender thread of grief fluttered in some wind within him. Soon, it would be gone, as ephemeral as the life of the traitor he’d loved.