Phoenix (19 page)

I unbutton his shirt so I can wipe the congealing blood off his neck and chest. Elijah
softly purrs, enjoying my touch as I dab the rag over his toned muscles. I try to
ignore him, knowing he’s under the influence right now and can’t help himself. Still,
it feels illicit, wiping his bare chest when my fiancé is nearby.

“Thanks for helping Ash,” I say quietly when I’m done patching him up.

“Anything for you, pretty girl.” Elijah raises a hand and strokes my cheek. “I love
you.”

I flinch away from him, struck by his words.
It’s the Haze,
I remind myself.
It makes people think they’re in love with you when they’re not.
Elijah falls asleep, a smile on his sensuous lips, and I know he’ll have good dreams.
I doubt I’ll sleep a wink.

There’s movement behind me, and I turn. Ash silently walks out of the shadows, his
eyes glittering. Grief is written all over his face. He doesn’t look at me, just sits
down on the ground and leans back against the wall, shutting his eyes.

“Will he be all right?” Ash says after a moment.

“He’ll have a killer headache when he wakes up, but he’ll be fine.”

Ash gives a faint nod, then turns his face from me, but not before I see the tear
slide down his cheek.

ASH

THE LIGHT
of the digital screen dims slightly as the battery starts to run out of juice. I’ve
been watching the news all night, trying to keep my mind busy, but it hasn’t worked.
All I can think about is how Elijah declared his love to Natalie, confirming my fears
that she’s cheating on me with him. I turn off the digital screen to conserve the
last of its energy.

Natalie’s head is on my lap. I gently brush her blond hair away from her face, grief
aching through me. Despite my pain, anger and humiliation, I still love her. I can’t
blame Elijah for being so infatuated with her—she’s incredible.
Does she feel the same about him?
Natalie seemed startled when he said he loved her, so maybe she doesn’t feel as strongly
for him as he does for her. That gives me hope that maybe I haven’t lost her yet.

Elijah stirs, waking up. He sits up and groans, cradling his head. Haze Headaches
are a common side effect when you’ve been injected with Darkling venom. The puncture
wounds on his arm and neck are still raw, making my thirst return with a vengeance.
I try not to think about how good he tasted. Bastet blood isn’t like anything I’ve
ever had before. It’s such a rush.
I want more.

“Don’t get any ideas, Darkling,” he says, reading my mind.

“I can say the same thing about you.” I must look pretty appetizing to a hungry Bastet
right about now.

He rolls his eyes. “Don’t flatter yourself. You’re not my taste at all.”

“No, blondes are more your thing, aren’t they?” I reply.

He looks at Natalie, then back up at me, a furrow between his brows.

“I’m not interested in Natalie,” he says.

“Don’t lie to me. I saw you with her in the laboratory. She made you promise not to
tell me something that would hurt me. So if you’re not trying to sleep with her, what
is it?” I demand.

Elijah glances at Natalie again, clearly torn about something.

“Well?” I say, my anger rising.
Why won’t he just admit it?
“Last night, you said you loved her.”

He seems genuinely surprised by this. “I did? That was just the Haze talking.”

“Bullcrap.” A horrible thought strikes me. “How long has it been going on between
you two?”

Natalie released Elijah from the laboratory months ago. Have they been secretly keeping
in touch ever since, while I’ve been busy working with Roach and Sigur? The thought,
the betrayal, is too much to comprehend.

Natalie’s roused by my raised voice, and her eyes sleepily blink open.

“Everything okay?” she says.

I stand up, my body shaking with rage. “Everything’s fine. We need to go.”

I’m halfway down the tunnel by the time they catch up with me. Natalie tries to take
my hand, but I just can’t hold it, not yet. The pain is too raw. We walk down the
railway tunnel in complete silence. Anger and humiliation surge through me, poisoning
my mind. It’s one thing to think Natalie and Elijah hooked up over the past few days
because they shared an intense physical attraction—that I can just about handle. But
it’s altogether a different matter if they’ve been sleeping together for months. That
would mean they have genuine feelings for each other, that they’re in a
relationship.
That, I could never forgive.

What I don’t understand is why she agreed to marry me if her heart doesn’t belong
to me anymore. Was it out of a sense of duty? Fragg, does she feel
sorry
for me? I picture the burns on my arms and shoulders, the night terrors that plague
my dreams, and realize she must pity me. Elijah does seem like an attractive prospect
by comparison.

The tunnel exit can’t come soon enough, and I’m relieved when we reach it within the
hour. We pull back one of the wooden planks boarding up the exit, allowing us to slip
outside. Despite the blistering heat prickling my skin, the daylight is a blessing.
Anything
is better than being trapped underground with Natalie, Elijah and my thoughts.

I spoke too soon.

We surface on the rim of a bustling rail and truck depot. There must be fifteen train
tracks feeding in from all directions, plus scores of cargo trucks hauling long metal
containers. On the roofs of the depot buildings, digital screens show the latest news
from SBN. Sentry guards busily unload the cargo from the trains onto the trucks, ready
to be transported to their final destination. A lot of the cargo seems to be weapons,
medical supplies and food.

Hovering above the depot is a familiar-looking Destroyer Ship. My stomach plummets.
We’ve walked straight into the lions’ den.

We slink back into the tunnel, out of sight. When Natalie said the Sentry guards used
the tunnel as a rail link to the camp, I hadn’t realized that the depot on the other
end of it would still be in use. But of course it would be—it was stupid of me not
to figure this out earlier. Still, we weren’t faced with many options at the time.

“Should we head back to the camp?” Natalie whispers. “If the Destroyer Ship’s here,
they’re probably waiting for us to show up.”

I shake my head. “If they were waiting for us, there would be a hundred guards patrolling
the tunnel at this end. They don’t know we’re here—they must think we escaped back
into the desert.”

“So why are they here?” Elijah asks.

“Refueling?” I suggest.

“We should go back to the camp,” Elijah says.

“And go where after that?” I reply. “We still have no means of transport, we’re miles
from anywhere, and I can’t survive in this heat for long. No, we stay here. We just
have to find a way to get on one of those trucks undetected.”

“How do you propose we do that?” Elijah says.

“Throw you out as bait?” I suggest.

Elijah scowls and Natalie gives me a stern look.

I scan the depot from our vantage point within the railway tunnel, although my view
is partially blocked by crates and upturned carts abandoned in front of the exit.
I watch as groups of Sentry guards load crates onto rows of trucks, parked side by
side, with just a few feet between them. The wooden boxes all have different locations
printed on them: Centrum, Athena, Gallium, Leopolis, Thrace—
yes! Some luck at last.

“There,” I say, pointing to the green truck where the crates marked for Thrace are
heading. “We’ll escape on that.”

“We don’t have any disguises,” Natalie says. “They’ll recognize us.”

“Then we just have to do this the old-fashioned way and stay out of sight,” I say.

We cover ourselves in sandy dirt from the cave floor, darkening our skin and clothes,
in hopes that this will serve as some sort of camouflage. I flinch slightly at the
sight of the black cloth around Natalie’s forearm, remembering what I did. She rolls
down her shirt sleeve, covering it.

“We ready?” I say.

“No,” Elijah mutters.

Natalie nods.

I cautiously approach the tunnel exit. About twenty feet away, three Sentry guards
are loading cargo onto a red truck destined for Gallium. That’s our best shot at cover.
The trucks are parked close together, so we can easily run from one to another, hiding
under them until the coast is clear. I’ll need to distract the guards, though. Scanning
the area, I spot a pile of smaller crates to the right of the truck, each with a green
cross and the word
FRAGILE
printed on it. Medical supplies.
Perfect.
I grab a stone from the ground, weighing it in my hand. I’ve got only one shot at
this. Taking a deep breath, I lob the rock at the pile of crates. It smashes into
the middle box, and the medical supplies crash to the earth.

The guards all run to assess to the damage, shouting at each other. We’ve got mere
seconds to get across the dusty path.

“Go,” I say.

We sprint out of the tunnel, bursting into the blazing sunlight. Adrenaline pumps
through my veins, and my mind is thinking just one thing:
RUN!
We keep our heads low, darting between the crates and upturned mine carts for cover.
The Sentry guards are still fighting over who stacked the medical supplies, blaming
each other.

Just as one of the guards finds the stone, we reach the truck.

The guard inspects the stone in his hand, his brow creased.

I usher Natalie under the vehicle. Elijah’s next.

The guard starts to turn.

Fragg!

I dive, rolling under the truck just as the guard looks in our direction. My heart
crashes against my chest as the guard walks over to the vehicle.
Did he see me?
A pair of brown leather boots stops directly in front of us. I hold my breath. There’s
a long pause. Eventually: “Come on, you lot, we haven’t got all day,” he calls over
to his two colleagues.

I exhale.

There are loud clangs above our heads as they continue to load the heavy crates into
the truck.

“I can’t believe we’ve been lumbered with shipping this fragging crap to Gallium,
given all the trouble there,” Brown Boots moans to one of his colleagues.

“What’s going on in Gallium?” his colleague asks.

Elijah impatiently taps my shoulder and motions for us to leave, but I shake my head.
I want to hear what the guard says.

“Fragg, Spinner, don’t you ever watch the news? The Darklings broke out of the ghetto.
It was a bloodbath,” he says. “Why do you think they need all these weapons and medical
supplies?”

When did this happen?

“I didn’t really think about it,” Spinner says.

“You don’t think, period,” Brown Boots says.

“I heard rumors that Phoenix was there,” the third guard chimes in. “Apparently he
single-handedly killed fifty guards.”

“I heard it was a hundred,” Brown Boots says. “Ripped their throats out and drained
all their blood.”

“No kidding?” Spinner says nervously.

My mind reels with this news. The Darklings have staged a rebellion in Gallium, the
capital of the Copper State? This is
huge.
The Copper State is where all the munitions factories are located. With the rebels
causing havoc in the state and Emissary Vincent executed, the place will be in chaos.
This is . . . this is brilliant!

I wonder who spread the rumor that I was involved in the uprising. Probably Roach.
It’s a good plan. Not only does it keep the Sentry off my tail as I search for the
Ora, but it’s made the guards scared of me. Sometimes the myth of a person is more
powerful than the real thing. Little do they know that the real Phoenix is hiding
under their truck, covered in dirt and frightened as hell.

“Did you hear what Pearson’s got in his cargo hold?” Spinner says.

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Brown Boots replies. “He’s always making up crap.
One time he said he shot a Lupine, and it turned out to just be some guy’s dog.”

The third guard laughs. “Yeah, and what about that time he claimed he took on a whole
nest of Wraths?”

“No, this is real this time. He said he caught it two days ago in Fire Rapids,” Spinner
says a little defensively.

Fire Rapids?
Why does that name ring a bell?

“If it’s true, why hasn’t he shown it to anyone?” Brown Boots challenges.

“He was worried someone would try and steal it.”

“He’s lying,” the third guard says.

“If he’s lying, why would he have called Sebastian Eden down here?” Spinner says.

“Because Pearson’s as stupid as you are,” Brown Boots replies.

Brown Boots and the third guard chuckle heartily while Spinner mutters curses under
his breath. Natalie gives me a questioning look. That explains why the Destroyer Ship
is overhead. It’s a relief knowing for certain they’re not here waiting for us, but
whatever is in that cargo hold must be pretty important if Sebastian’s paused his
search for us to check it out.

As they continue to load the cargo, the guards’ leather boots kick up plumes of red
dust, which tickles our noses. Natalie covers her nose just as a sneeze escapes. She
gives me a panicked look.

“Did you hear something?” Brown Boots says. I wave at Natalie and Elijah to move.
We crawl across the sand to the truck parked a couple of feet away, just in time to
avoid being spotted as Brown Boots peers under the red vehicle, where we were hiding.

“Huh,” he mutters, shaking his head.

We scamper under the next vehicle, keeping out of sight, and after a few heart-stopping
minutes, we make it to the green truck heading to Thrace. It’s parked next to an armored
cargo train, but the cargo isn’t medical supplies: it’s prisoners. People scream and
groan inside the carriages, their hands stretching out of the barred windows, begging
passing guards to free them or give them water.

“We have to help them,” Natalie says.

“We’ll be spotted,” Elijah replies.

A Sentry guard opens the truck door and climbs in. We don’t have much time.

“Ash, look!” Natalie whispers, pointing to three figures walking alongside the cargo
train, heading right toward us. It’s Sebastian and Garrick, plus a third man—a Sentry
guard, who I’m assuming is Pearson.