The Rise (8 page)

Alexa

“STOP!”

The word tore through my lips, which seemed to be trembling for no apparent reason. We were smashing down a dirt road through the forest that allowed access to the city of Two Rivers. I thrust my hands out in front of me, my palms hitting the smooth dashboard hard enough to send a flash of pain up my arms. The sound of sharply seized breaths and tires churning and spitting rocks and gravel due to harshly compressed brakes filled the small space inside the car. My neck snapped forward, whiplash sending more pain down my spine. I could hear my heartbeat pounding and pumping hot blood through my tense body. The Mercedes came to a stop, slamming me back against the leather seat. For a moment, I was afraid to look up.

“You okay?” Kayden asked, and I could see his wide chest falling and rising, his golden eyes glued to the scene in front of us. His voice was tight. I pulled my gaze away from him and looked out through the windshield.

There were people standing in the middle of the road. Without thought, I threw my car door open and had to catch it before it slammed me in the head on its way back. I raced around to the front of the car, my Gladius clutched hard in my right hand. The silver blade shot out from the end of it, and the Mercedes’ blazing headlights threw shards of silver light every which way, making the weapon seem to glow in my grasp. I felt my breath catch and hold as I took in the people. Their mouths hung agape and their eyes were bugged like one of those children’s toys that you squeeze the bottom of to make the top half bulge. A few of them were in what looked to be nightclothes. Two wore all black. Another was a pale colored wolf, huge and panting.

And I recognized them.

My eyes scanned them from left to right, and their names ticked off in my head, swimming in a soup of utter confusion and surprise.
Patterson, Soraya, Catherine, Tom—

I stopped. Tommy was holding someone in his arms, someone who seemed to be unconscious, or dead. Someone with long light brown hair, a slight build and pink sneakers on small feet.

Nelly!

I moved forward so fast that the whole of them flinched backward. A growl ripped up from the throat of the wolf with them, low and deep and threatening. Tommy’s arms tightened around my sister, and I paused only when I saw the hard look in his eyes, and could feel the mirrored challenge in the dagger gazes of his companions. My head spun for a moment. They were acting as though Nelly was some wounded calf that needed the hoard’s ultimate protection, and I was some lioness sneaking through the tall grass to snag a meal. Anger, hot and ugly, spiraled in my stomach.

My left eye twitched. My voice came out in a snarled, ripping growl that made even the wolf among them lower her tail and flatten her ears. I recognized it as the voice of my monster, rising forward to meet these surprising challengers with eager anticipation.
“Give. Me. My. Sister,”
I growled, meeting Tommy’s cool blue gaze with the fire in my own.

None of them moved. Then, slowly, holding my stare tightly, Tommy held Nelly out. My Gladius fell to the dirt at my feet with a thump. I came forward and took the body of my sister in my arms, which were trembling with I don’t know what. Her weight seemed like nothing. I looked down at her, and when I spoke next, my voice was my own, if not small and slightly broken.

“What
happened
?” I asked. And for a moment, the world went blacker than the night sky above us as my heart seemed to shrivel like a rotten fruit and fall to the pit of my stomach. I couldn’t breathe, and if the world hadn’t come back in to focus just then, allowing me to see the rise and the fall of my sister’s chest, I may have collapsed to the ground like something shattered and irreversible.

When someone placed a hand on my arm, another snarl ripped up my throat, and I jumped backward with my sister clutched maybe a little too tightly in my arms. Another wave of confusion swept me when I saw whose hand it was that had touched me.

“I’m sorry,” Queen Camillia’s eyes regarded me carefully, drifting down to Nelly every other second or so, as if she didn’t want to trust me with my own sister. “I will explain everything later, but we must go now.” Her gaze fell to Nelly once more, and the look that passed behind her eyes made my brow furrow and my arms tighten more fiercely around my Nelly. What in the holy hell was going on here?

“Your sister is fine,” Queen Camillia said, with so much affection that my heart ached a little and an unexplained touch of something like jealousy ran through me. “But we are all in danger if we stay here. We have to go.”

I hadn’t noticed them getting out of the car, but Kayden and my Mother were now standing beside me. Queen Camillia’s eyes grew as large as boulders when she caught sight of my Mother, and a little more anger spiraled in my stomach, remembering that the Queen had been the one who had told me my Mother was dead.

Soraya dashed forward, catching all of us off guard, and leapt into Kayden’s arms. He caught his niece and held her closely. When he spoke, his voice came out steady, but confused. “What are you doing here?” he asked, looking up at Catherine for a response.

“Oh, for Lord’s sake,” Queen Camillia sighed, and came striding forward. She placed her slim hand on Kayden’s arm, and my hackles went up until I realized what she was doing. The Queen was a powerful Searcher. She could explain quicker that way.

When she drew her hand back, Kayden sucked his breath in sharply. He turned to look at me, and the look in his golden eyes was so full of alarm and something else akin to horror that I turned on my heel and began running back to the Mercedes with Nelly still clutched in my arms.

“Wait!” I heard someone cry, and it took me a moment to recognize Tommy’s voice. I spun around to face him. “We
all
have to leave! We can’t go back now. Victoria, got get the van,” he said, and when the wolf tipped its head sideways Tommy ripped his t-shirt over his head and tossed it to at her. She caught it out of the air between her teeth and loped off into the trees.

“The keys should be in the glove compartment! Head southeast!” shouted the Queen, and turned to face me once again.

All eight of them were staring me, or rather, at my sister, who lay in my arms. I could have screamed out loud, I was so damned confused. “Someone tell me what the hell is going on here
right now
. Or I’m taking my sister and getting the hell out of here,” I said, directing the question at the Queen. “And you just see if you can stop me.”

It was Kayden who answered me. “Alexa,” he said, and then his words were drowned out by the engine of the van as it came smashing through the trees. I squeezed my eyes shut at the glaring headlights. Victoria sat behind the wheel. She put it in park and waved her arm out of the window, telling us to hurry up.

I stared at them all for just a moment and bit down hard on my tongue. “Fine,” I said between clenched teeth. “Where are we going?”

“I know the way,” Queen Camillia said.

“Fine,” I repeated.

Kayden tossed her the keys to the Mercedes, and the Queen caught them out of the air. I looked to Tommy to see if he had anything to say about Queen Camillia driving his car, but his eyes were still fixed on Nelly from where he seemed to hover only a few feet away. The thought of following the Queen anywhere made me more than uneasy. But, whatever she’d shown to Kayden made him agree that we had to leave, so that was good enough for me. For now.

I looked down at my unconscious sister, guilt and worry as thick as storm clouds sweeping through me, and decided to head for the van, where Nelly might be able to lay down. Kayden came with me, along with Soraya, Catherine, Tommy, and Patterson. I raised an eyebrow at my Mother when she began heading toward the Mercedes with the Queen and Gavin and some other Warrior I didn’t recognize, who was also cradling a girl. They were the only ones among this group whom I’d never met before.

My Mother came back to where I was standing outside of the van and looked down sadly at Nelly, who hadn’t stirred in the slightest. I had to resist the urge to shrink back out of her reach. I was gripped by an inexplicable, overwhelming protectiveness, and though I knew my Mother meant Nelly no harm, that didn’t mean I wanted to let her near her. Or
anyone
near her, as a matter of fact. I didn’t like the way they were all still gawking at her. I bit down on my bottom lip and I tasted blood in my mouth. My fangs were out.

“I’m going to ride with them,” whispered my Mother. “Make sure this isn’t some kind of trap. Also, I’d like a word or two with ‘her Majesty’.”

 I couldn’t help but notice the malice that dripped from my Mother’s words when she said
her Majesty.
“Tend to your sister,” she said, before turning and walking stiffly for the Mercedes again.

Tommy slid open the van’s side door, revealing a carpeted interior with only two seats, the driver’s and the passenger’s. In the driver’s seat Victoria shot me a smile that made my lips curl, even though it seemed to be genuine. This night just kept getting weirder and weirder. It was a good thing that by now, I was used to weird. How much had changed in the short time I’d been gone? And why did I have the awful feeling that my sister was at the center of it? Did her secret somehow get out?

I crawled into the van and laid Nelly down gently on the floor. Lifting her head, I placed it in my lap and brushed her soft hair out of her face with my unsteady fingers. Kayden crawled in next and tucked something into the back of my pants, I knew by its cold, smooth feel that it was my Gladius. I’d forgotten I’d dropped it.

Tommy sat on the other side of me, his bare shoulder brushing mine as he bent his head over my sister. I felt Kayden’s arm go around my shoulders, and I didn’t see it, but he must have given Tommy a look that made him scoot over, but only a few inches. The others climbed in, slid the door closed, and we started off down the road that led to only God knows where.

We were all silent for what seemed like an eternally long time, and though I had questions piled higher that the Empire State Building, I couldn’t seem to form any of them clear enough to get them through my lips. I only stared down at my unconscious sister, and let the air go in and out of me. The Queen had said that Nelly was fine, but she didn’t look fine to me. Her lips were slightly parted, and dark circles hung like shadowed half-moons below her lids. She was alive. I could feel that in my bones more so than see it in her face, but that didn’t mean she was
fine.

And it was my fault. I’d left her to this.

“What happened?” I asked, feeling like a broken record. Or maybe just broken.

“Oh, you should have seen it, Alexa,” said Victoria from the front seat. My head jerked up. This wasn’t the Victoria I knew; the bitch who hated me and my sister and had tried to kill me. No sarcasm or malevolence rode her words. In fact, she sounded humble and…awed.

I say we cut her throat and throw her out right here, Warrior. We can’t trust this bitch. You know that.

I almost told the voice in my head to shut up, but it had a point.

I
always
have a point.

Now I did tell it to shut up. I cleared my throat. My words came out clipped. “I should have seen
what
, Victoria?” I said.

Victoria made a sound like a swooned sigh, so low that if I didn’t have my enhanced hearing, I wouldn’t have heard it over the sound of the bumpy road going by under the tires. “Your sister, Nelliana,” said Victoria. “You should have seen Nelliana. She was…
wonderful!
”