Darkening Chaos: Book Three of The Destroyer Trilogy (5 page)

“I
…” he says, thrown off balance by me not arguing with him. “Yeah, it was a
smart move, I guess. They never would have expected you to show up in Canada.”

“I
just wish I could have grabbed someone more useful.”

“It
would have been too dangerous, Libby. You were lucky things went so well. Going
after a more talented Seeker, things could have gotten bad. Whether they can
see us coming, or not, they’re still an elite military strike force. Next time
isn’t going to be so easy,” Milo says. “It’s going to take planning, and a lot
more than just you and an old guy.”

Daniel
did great for an
old guy
. I know Milo’s right, but deep down his words
bother me, a lot. “Milo, we will plan the next grab better, and we’ll have a
whole team with us, but have a little faith in me, okay? I can do things. I do have
some pretty powerful talents. I don’t need everyone constantly trying to
protect me and keep me from getting hurt. I have the right to make decisions
about how my destiny is going to play out. I’m the freaking Destroyer, for
crying out loud!”

“Yeah,”
Milo says quietly, “but you’re still human. You aren’t perfect. You can still
make mistakes.” That last word flicks off his tongue angrily. “You don’t always
know what’s right. I’m not trying to take over—I know you have to make the big
choices—but I’m not going to let you get yourself killed over something
stupid.”

Guilty
energy builds around me, streaks through my veins. I know we aren’t talking
about the Seeker anymore. He means Braden. Mistake. Stupid. Not worth dying
for. A dozen excuses flit to my lips for why I had to lie. I want to spit them
all out at him. I want to tell him right now that I’m going to save Braden no
matter what the cost is. But I can’t say any of it.

As
much as I try to justify everything I did, I am the one who gave into Braden a
few too many times, who found reasons to be around him, who could have said no
and didn’t.  I tried. I tried so hard to hate Braden, to keep him at a distance
at first, but the more I was around him, the harder it was to see why I should,
and I fell. I don’t know if I’ll ever see him again, let alone whether I could
ever love him like I do Milo, but I won’t abandon Braden. And that’s not just
because I’ve fallen in love with him, I wouldn’t abandon any of my friends to
that. If I was the one taken and twisted, Milo would do the same for me,
wouldn’t he?

“Libby?”
Milo asks.

I
don’t respond right away. The pressure of my guilt mixed with my hope that I
will be able to save Braden won’t let me.

“Libby,
I know you’re worried about … everyone, but you can’t make decisions purely on
emotion. You’ll get hurt that way,” he says. “Other people will get hurt, too, and
I don’t think you want anyone else getting hurt over this. I can’t stand the
thought of you getting hurt, either.”

Then
he’s quiet. I don’t know what to say. I feel so horrible about how I’ve hurt
him, but I can’t say what he wants me to say. I love Milo. He was the only one
willing to stick by me after my Inquest even if his motives might not have been
completely unselfish. But I can’t abandon Braden. My head and heart have been
ground into pulp lately. I don’t know how to respond without hurting him even
more. What I do know is that I don’t want Milo to hate me. It crushes me to see
him look at me with anger in his stormy grey eyes. The line is silent for a
long time before I finally speak again.

“I’m
sorry, Milo. You’re right. I don’t want to hurt anyone more than I already have.”

Silence
plays over the line again. When it is broken, Milo changes the subject
slightly.

“Would
you really have wanted me to go with you tonight?”

My
whole body softens in response to his vulnerability. Lance shifting away from
me reminds me that he’s still there. Lance knows more about my Braden-Milo
dilemma than anyone else, but I also know he doesn’t like being stuck in the
middle of it. I turn away from him, giving him permission to leave me alone for
a few minutes. He can still feel my emotions through the Guardian Oath he gave
to protect me, but it’s easier to deal with just that than having to hear it as
well.

“Yes,”
I say to Milo, “I would have liked to have had you here with me.”

“But,
what about …” His voice trails off and he doesn’t finish. He doesn’t need to. I
know he’s thinking about Braden, how I went into a frenzy when I realized he’d
been taken and tried to power my way through my friends to find him, of how I
admitted that I had fallen in love with him. I remember how all three of them
had to tackle me and tie me to a chair-which I still don’t think was
necessary-to keep me from bolting.

“Milo,
I…” My throat and mind seize up on me. I can’t think or speak. I don’t know
what to say. I can’t say anything. I can’t do this right now, not over the
phone, not an entire country away. “Can we talk about this when I get back?”

When
Milo speaks again, the beautiful caress of his voice has stiffened back into
business mode, bringing a poignant sense of loss to my heart. “I went to Mr.
Walters’ house this afternoon. The box he left for you was easy enough to find.
His notes are all in code, but there were some other things that might be more
helpful right away, like his thoughts on what we should do next and pictures of
Helen and her family. His granddaughter looks like she’s about our age. I can
see her diktats in the picture.”

I
don’t know why, but despite knowing the year Mr. Walter’s granddaughter was
born, I kept picturing her as a little child. Maybe thinking of her as
completely helpless makes it easier to think of dying to save her life. I shake
off that thought, telling myself it won’t come to that.

“Did
you ask Casey about decoding Mr. Walters’ notes?” I ask. Casey is so patient
and steady. She’s the perfect one to handle it.

“She’s
already working on it. I’ll let you know if she finds anything.”

“Thank
you, Milo,” I say, “thank you for taking care of everything there. And thanks
for making me come here. I needed the time to think.”

I
can almost feel the burning questions in his silence. He’s dying to know, to
ask about Braden and what I’m planning to do. There’s little chance he thinks
I’ve forgotten about him. I wonder if he realizes I plan to rescue Braden at
the same time I go for the Ciphers. The millions of questions I know must be
dancing around in his head don’t come tumbling out. He stows them away for
later and gets back to the task at hand. Milo has worked so hard for the
Ciphers. A few days ago he told me they were more important than us right now,
but that we would have our chance to be together with no other distractions. I
wonder now if he still hopes that day will come as much as I do.

“Now,
let’s talk about this plan of yours. Lance wouldn’t explain it. He said I needed
to hear it from you, which sounds to me like I’m not going to like it very
much,” Milo says grumpily.

Oh,
he’s going to like it. All it takes is one word to bring the smile back into
his voice.

“Naturalism.”

Chapter
5

Invincible

My grin spreads wide as I
stare back at Captain Blackwood. I allow myself half a second to enjoy him
realizing I’ve just played him for a fool. The yelling, the demands, the false
naiveté of the last few minutes, it was all a big act. I even kind of warned
him when I offered him the possibility that I was fooling Braden about me. I
was, and am, truly terrified of being here, but I never expected him to honor
our deal. So I came prepared.

Panic
flickers in Blackwood’s eyes, but I’ve already tapped my Naturalism. The whole
group flinches when my balled up fists suddenly snap open. The gesture means
nothing. It does distract them enough to keep them from reacting, though. The
marble floor they’re standing on suddenly melts into goo. Screams bounce
through the room as they are sucked down. A couple of them manage to think
clearly enough to try laying themselves out flat to slow their sinking. The
quickest one only gets his knee back out of the mess before I reverse
everything.

Marble
solidifies with a stunning crack.

A
few broken bones may have contributed to the sound. That’s how I broke my ankle
last year, anyway. Anguish and fury call out at me from the circle of trapped
Guardians. Blackwood is by far the loudest, and most trapped. Somehow, he has
ended up with both hands stuck inside the marble as well as being buried up to
his hips. Being built like a linebacker tends to be a drawback when you’re
standing on virtual quicksand.

I
walk across the only portion of the floor whose pattern isn’t completely
distorted by my trap. My heeled boots—which I wore particularly for the nice,
dramatic sound they would make—snap along with me. I stop right in front of
Blackwood. His heaving body is bent in unwilling supplication before me. That
makes me smile even more. He can’t look me in the eye with how he’s pinned, but
he glares as hard as he can at my kneecaps. I can see the veins in his neck and
head pulsating to a frantic beat, flushing his skin scarlet. His whole head
looks like a cherry tomato. Many of the other Guardians who aren’t white with
pain look similarly upset. I don’t bother with anyone but Blackwood.

Squatting
down in front of him, I press my finger under his chin and force his head up
painfully until he is meeting my eyes fully, if not squarely. A seething desire
to see his hands around my neck burns in his eyes. Maybe one day he’ll see his
wish come true, but it won’t be today.

“You
aren’t nearly as smart as you think you are, Blackwood,” I tell him.

His
jaw grinds together so hard I can hear the squeal of his teeth. “You haven’t
won, yet. I’ll never tell you where they are.”

“I
already know where the Ciphers are.”

Blackwood
scoffs at me. Part of me wonders whether
he
even knows where they are. He’s
not a Seeker, but I bet he wishes he was. Something tells me he knows much more
about the secretive group than he should. Someone as driven and devoid of
conscience as him wouldn’t let information like that stay hidden for long. No,
he definitely knows where the Ciphers are, whether he’s supposed to or not. He
is the ranking Guardian of this compound, after all. I suppose he would have to
know where the prison cells are. I doubt he’s ever been down there, though.

“Fourth
subfloor, right? Take a left at the bottom of the stairs?” I say, making his
eyes bug in disbelief. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. You Guardians aren’t as
good at keeping secrets as you think you are. And neither are Seekers.”

I
add that last part just to see his reaction.

The
breath he sucks in and holds make his veins throb even harder. Fear works its
way into his furious expression. He knows. He knows exactly who the Seekers
are, and now he’s trying to figure out how I could have possibly gotten a
secret out of a Seeker. And maybe he’s wondering just how much it hurt. My
smile turns wicked, just to see him shrink back a little more. Sometimes fear
can be a good thing.

But
I’ve had enough of Blackwood.

I
stand and turn my back on him, making it perfectly clear exactly how little I am
worried about him getting to me now, and pull out my cell phone. Milo answers
right away. Our conversation doesn’t last long. He’s too eager to get in here.
I slip the phone back in my pocket and turn back toward the doors. Reaching
them will take some careful stepping. If I cared about not hurting anyone, that
is. I don’t. I stomp through the encased Guardians stepping on more than one
pair of fingers and
accidently
kicking a few more as I walk by. I fling
the doors open for Milo and the others.

Lance
was left behind on this one, too, because of the risk of the Seekers seeing him
approaching. He’s suffering through another boring school day, hating it no
doubt. My phone has been buzzing nonstop for the last few minutes. I don’t have
time to stop and answer his texts right now. I’ll get to him when I know
everyone is safe. Milo powers up the stairs looking grave and excited at the
same time. It’s an odd combination. All of that falters when he gets a look at
the lobby. The others, Dean, Daniel (despite being an
old guy
), Hammond,
the only renegade Cipher not killed during the first rescue, and Kayla, another
impressive Cipher from Canada, all pile into the room. Not a one of them are
any more careful than I was as they tromp forward.

“Dang,
Libby, you said you could do it, but I have to admit I doubted,” Dean says.
“Commanding nature like that takes some serious Naturalism. My Uncle was pretty
awesome with manipulating stuff like that, but he could only warp a small patch
of material even at his best. You did the entire floor. Where’d you learn how
to do that?”

“My
mom. She did this same thing to me, once.” I don’t care to expound any further
to Dean. He doesn’t push me. Kayla and Hammond do look at me questioningly.
There’s no point trying to explain my mother’s many horrible qualities, so I
don’t.

Milo
steps over next to me, his hand coming up to grip my shoulder excitedly. He
leans in, and says, “That is pretty impressive. And for the record, I never
doubted.”