Darkening Chaos: Book Three of The Destroyer Trilogy (28 page)

Drake
is stronger than I would have given his slight frame credit for. With the
interference still raging, I struggle to get his arm off of me. His other hand
flashes in toward my neck. The glint of something sharp and shiny sticking out
from the edge of his watch speeds toward my throat. My thrashing doubles as I
try to get away from the poisoned dart. Hammond appears in front of me,
suddenly, his hand reaching down to grab Drake’s.

“No,
Hammond! Don’t!” I scream, but my words don’t register in time. His hand closes
around Drake’s wrist.

Hammond
jerks his hand back, and I can see the tiny ruby-colored drop on his palm.
Drake’s own surprise that his poison didn’t reach either me or him slackens his
grip. I slip my elbow free and ram it into his temple. He lolls to the side as
Hammond’s knees buckle and Kayla screams. Dean and Lance reach me and help
secure the stunned Drake. I warn them about the dart before stumbling over to
Hammond.

“Hammond?”
Kayla cries. “What happened? Hammond, look at me!”

My
hands grip his wrist and I thrust my Naturalism into him. I wait for the flood
of sensory information I usually get when I try to heal a wound, but all I get
is a trickle of pain and toxin. “Damn it, the interference! Kayla, we have to
get him out of the room. Help me!”

She’s
sobbing and a total wreck, but she grabs his arm and helps me tug him toward
the door. He’s a big guy, and neither of us can access our Strength completely.
Dragging him across the floor seems to take an eternity even when Hope rushes
in to help. I can feel his pulse growing fainter. It is almost completely gone
by the time we get him into the hall. We collapse next to him as soon as we’re
clear of the interference and both of us latch onto him and pour our talents
into his body.

Kayla
gasps as she feels her lover’s life slipping away. I grit my teeth and focus
everything on his body. I can’t hold in my own sob as the information bounces
back at me. The toxin has already sped its way through his veins. They’re
disintegrating as I hold him, blood losing its track and spilling into the rest
of his tissues. I race to stop it, slow the pace, repair the damage, but it’s
already too late. The toxin flows into his heart and starts ripping it apart.
Nothing I can do is enough to stop it. His life slips away quietly in the midst
of Kayla’s agony.

Grief
wells inside of me at the sight of Hammond’s motionless body, but another
emotion more intense pulls me up from the floor and turns me back toward Drake.
I storm into the room, barely even noticing that the interference has stopped,
and yank him out of Dean’s grip. My fingers lock around his throat and slam him
down on the desk he was poised so calmly behind just a few minutes ago. His
head rebounds against the wood and smacks back down a second time. His eyes
lose their focus for a second, realigning only to meet mine a bare inch away.
For the first time, emotion creeps into his controlled visage. Fear widens his
pupils until his baby blues are almost completely engulfed.

“I’d
kill you right now for what you just did if I didn’t believe what I told
Braden,” I say with sheer fury. “Death is too good for you. I’ll get the
information I want from you, and I’ll make you pay dearly for it. And after I
get what I want, I’ll use every one of my talents to make sure you understand
just how despicable and evil you are. How’s it going to feel when I dredge up
your memories of the people you’ve tortured and killed and make you relive them
a dozen times? And if that doesn’t work, I’ll find memories of the people you
loved and make you watch them die over and over again, because there’s no way
you don’t have at least one loved one you’ve lost.”

Drake
goes completely pale, and I know I’ve hit the right nerve. Awful, furious
desire to hurt him rages in me.

“Who
was it, Drake? A parent, like me? A sibling? Or maybe a woman?” I ask slowly.

His
frozen exterior cracks. The slightest hint of moisture in his eyes betrays him.
I have no compassion for him at all. He lost his lover, well, that’s what he
tried to do to me. He tried to make me kill the man I loved. I don’t think he
ever expected Braden to succeed. I think he knew I would be too strong, that I
would be forced to kill him. Sending Braden was a new way to torture me, break
me down by making me murder him.

I
slam his shoulders against the desk again and hiss, “I guess we’ll see how many
times you can watch her die before you wish you’d never heard my name, Drake.
And then, when you’re so broken you’ll never be able to put yourself back
together, if you’re really lucky, that’s when I’ll kill you.”

He
doesn’t even try to move when I let go of him. Hope is there, though, to take
over guarding Drake. She nods at me approvingly. When I turn around, I don’t
get the same from Dean and Lance, or a bleeding Braden. They all stare at me in
shock. My chin starts to tremble, but I don’t let any tears fall.

“Hammond’s
dead,” I say stiffly.

Dean
bows his head and shakes it slowly. Lance’s hands tighten into fists. Maybe now
he understands my threats against Drake. We had all become good friends with
Hammond. He was dedicated and talented, creative to the point of brilliance,
and funnier than anyone I know. Dean and Lance turn away wordlessly and move to
help Hope with Drake. Braden is still standing in the same place, staring at
nothing. The hand that was pressed against his bleeding head a moment ago has
fallen slack at his side, dripping blood on the carpet.

“Milo
was right,” he says quietly, “I never should have come. I’m a liability, Libby.
It’s my fault Hammond is dead. I caused this. I didn’t have any talents to stop
him from manipulating me. I didn’t even know he was doing it. I killed
Hammond.”

I
grab his chin and force him to look at me. “Stop it, Braden. This isn’t your
fault. It isn’t even Drake’s, not directly anyway. He was trying to get either
me or him. I don’t think he cared which. Hammond just tried to help me and
touched the barb. It was an accident.”

“An
accident that never would have happened if I hadn’t been standing there with a
gun to Drake’s head. If I’d been able to block him, I would have captured him
and none of this would have happened,” Braden argues.

“None
of us had any substantial talents, Braden. He could have done it to anyone. You
were just the first to get to him, which is incredible anyway. We’d probably
all be dead if it weren’t for you. When that blast of interference hit us, we
were all on the floor. It took me forever to get up. You held the Seekers off
until we could all get back on our feet. Without you, we would have been
plucked up one by one and had our throats slit,” I say. “Please don’t blame
yourself for Hammond. It wasn’t your fault. He knew the risks of coming on this
mission. We all did.”

The
sound of Kayla’s sobbing drifts through the door and Braden flinches. I take
his hand and pull him after me. Dean and Hope are dragging a very tightly bound
Drake down the hallway, and I’m surprised to find Milo and Daniel coming toward
us. They must have heard the struggling and crying. They take in Hammond’s body
and slow. Daniel’s weathered face falls and his hands start shaking. He’s known
Hammond longer than any of us. Milo looks taken aback as well, but his reaction
is nothing like Daniel’s. His eyes snap to Braden without anyone having to tell
him what happened.

“I
told you it was a mistake to bring him!” His whole body tightens in fury. “Look
at what’s happened because of him. You never should have let him come!”

I
can’t stop myself. I thrust an accusing finger at him and say, “If you’d let
Celia come, she might have been able to save his life! She’s the best healer we
have and you refused to let her help. Don’t start blaming other people when
you’re just as much at fault.”

He
steps forward, the threat clear in his expression. Dean and Daniel cut him off
immediately, but Daniel’s gentle voice is what really holds him back.

“Milo,
Libby, we need to get out of here. The guards we left alive are going to wake
up and start causing problems.”

Everyone
looks down at Hammond. The sight of his body, blood dribbling down the side of
his mouth, stifles some of Milo’s anger. He makes a sudden move forward to help
carry him. Kayla is too upset to do anything, right now. Someone may have to
carry her, as well. I stoop to help pick up Hammond’s body, but Braden stops
me.

“Let
me, please,” he asks.

I
nod sadly, ignoring Milo’s accusing stare, and move to help Kayla up instead.
Braden’s arms slip under Hammond’s body and heft his large frame with more
struggling than it would have taken me. Milo watches without speaking. I will
not let him use this against Braden. This wasn’t Braden’s fault, and I’ll
defend him to the end. Maybe Milo realizes that. Finally, he looks away and
starts leading everyone out of this death house. More than a few tears join the
footfalls as we reach the first floor.

“Whoa,
is that guy dead?”

I
nearly drop Kayla in shock. “Jen? What are you doing here?”

“We
found her sneaking around the perimeter,” one of the men guarding her says. He
holds up a camera and cell phone. “Caught her with these.”

Of
course they did. “How did you even know where we were?”

She
tries to shrug off the two guys holding her. Their hands clamp down on her arms
even tighter, making her wince. “How do you think I found you, Libby? I
followed you. I knew you were planning something. Who is that guy?” she asks,
pointing to Drake.

“Nobody
say a word to her, and keep your thoughts guarded,” I command. Not that anyone
looked like they were going to give anything away, but just in case. The
problem is, even guarding your thoughts can’t block her completely. I’m sure my
mom has been teaching her all kinds of ways to get information. My resigned
sigh is more for how tired I already feel than for Jen. I hand Kayla off to the
nearest person and approach my former best friend. Her eyes widen in fear and
anticipation. Well, here’s what she gets for her efforts.

My
elbow cracks against her skull and her eyes roll back in her head. I look up at
her guards and say, “Tie her up, blindfold her, and keep yourselves shielded.
She’s a Concealer. If you have to, knock her out again. Just don’t let her get
any more information than she already has. I’ll deal with her later.”

They
nod and haul her outside. With the disaster I was waiting for already met, and
another near one temporarily averted, the escape goes through without a
problem. None of the guards wake back up, and none of the Seekers made it
through the battle upstairs alive. We all make it back to the cars and carry
our friend, and our enemy, back to the training house in silence.

There
are only a few more members of our group waiting for us there, but our arrival
sets off a flurry of activity, mostly due to Hammond’s body being brought in. I
dismiss most of the strike team to help Kayla with arrangements for Hammond. An
unconscious Jen is taken away to a spare bedroom to sleep off the massive
headache I’ve given her. Only Braden, Lance, Milo, and Hope follow me and my
prisoner down to the basement already prepared for him.

Milo
and Hope are more than happy to get him strapped into the chair that has been secured
to the floor in the center of the room. Lance and Braden aren’t so quick to
leave me alone, not after what they heard me threaten to do. Braden is the
first to speak.

“Libby,
you’re not really going to do the things you said you would, are you?”

“Why?
Don’t you think he deserves it?” I ask.

Braden
scoffs, his expression dark. “He deserves to burn in Hell for eternity.”

“Then
why are you concerned about him?”

“We’re
not concerned about him,” Lance says. “We’re concerned about you, about what
torturing him will do to you.”

“You’re
angry now, but later on, once you’ve had time to calm down, you may feel
differently. You’re not a vindictive person. Don’t make it pleasant for him, by
any means, but think about it before you do anything worse.”

I
look at them both with a calm expression and say, “I won’t let these monsters
take any more of my friends. I’ll do whatever I have to do to get the information
I need.”

Chapter
23

Wreckage

When they resist, it’s
always harder. Drake has no Concealment or Perception of his own to battle
mine, but he doesn’t need them to fight me. All he needs is steel
determination, directing his thoughts to pointless topics, burying what I want
to know. Both of the talents I’m using plunge into his memories with razor
sharpness and purge everything I can find. Childhood memories that mean nothing
to me, banal remembrances of meals or conversations, he keeps throwing them at
me in an attempt to hide what I really want. Keeping my temper reigned in while
I sift through everything isn’t easy. I’m about two seconds away from slapping
the teeth right out of his jaw.

I
slice into another memory and shred its contents. Nothing. Another dozen
memories are exactly the same. My fingernails are digging into his skin as I
try to control my desire to hurt him more than I already am. The pain of my
nails is nothing compared to the agony I’m putting him through by trampling around
in his mind. Every memory invaded sends a spike of fire through his body, each one
I burst and toss away, a spasm, as if I’ve torn away a piece of his flesh. I
know how much it hurts to have your talents stolen, from both sides of the
ritual, and I’d do it if I thought it would help me and not sap me of my
remaining strength.