Divided: The Alliance Series Book Four (27 page)

Maybe it would be the humans who killed me, once they found out what I’d done.

What felt like an eternity of walking later, but was probably less than an hour, we reached a stone building with the odd appearance of a medieval castle. Two towers reached to the sky and a third had crumbled into ruins over the parapets.

“Perfect,” said the StoneKing, flashing me another smile. “I believe the castle was once used as a prison… for human trespassers.”

“Lovely,” I shot at him, but my heart sank deeper into the mud.
We can’t win. There’s no way… if he just left me alone…

“Right.” Hauling me by one arm, he led the way into a dark entrance hall. It was icy-cold inside, and pitch-black—for a minute. Then an eerie glow suffused the air, and I drew away from the StoneKing’s grinning face as it loomed out of the darkness. The glow was coming from their
skin.

“You don’t know all my secrets yet, Adamantine, do you?”

I said nothing. It was too dim to make anything out, and I stumbled as he pulled me up a narrow stair. The stairs kept going—he was taking me into one of the towers.

“There are dungeons, too, but I thought it would be nice to give you a view of what happens to your friends.” He shoved open a door, revealing a circular room containing a wooden bed and nothing else. It stank, like the swamp, but worse. The hairs rose on my arms.

People had died in here. I was sure of it.

Oh, God.

“There.” The StoneKing shoved me, sending me sprawling onto the mattress, which instantly emitted a cloud of dust and insects. Scrambling back, I spun around in time to see the door slam, and hear the click of a key turning.

“Convenient of them to leave a key in the lock, isn’t it?”

“Fuck you,” I snarled, and threw myself against the door. Pain shot up my shoulder, but the door didn’t budge.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

“You have two options,” said the StoneKing from outside the door. “There is a window, is there not?”

Yes… a small one. No glass. I might be able to wriggle through, but it was a hundred feet off the ground. And below, the other humans gathered. No Stoneskins were out there at all.

“There’s no one left,” said the StoneKing. “I wonder what will come to kill them first? I’ve heard the area is a common wyvern nesting ground. Lucky we’re all protected inside this stronghold, isn’t it?”

The humans on the ground below looked to be panicking, arguing in groups, even hiding. Several had run, but there was nowhere to escape to. The horizon was unbroken. Just swamp, and mud, and decaying trees. I picked out Gervene and Aric amongst the others. They’d been confined to one area, and someone shouted out, but even magic wouldn’t get them out of there. The monsters could smell it.

The StoneKing’s voice spoke from the other side of the closed door. “Your options are as follows: watch your friends die before I kill you tomorrow at dawn, or climb out the window and die before you hit the ground.”

Sure enough, more Stoneskins gathered on a balcony of sorts, directly underneath the window. If I climbed out and jumped, risking death, they’d catch me before I reached the others.

“Fine,” I said.

He’d forgotten one thing—one
major
thing. I had magic, and he wasn’t holding me anymore.

Quick as a flash, I took out my communicator.
Please let there be a signal.
Nothing.

Why did there have to be a signal on that distant world, but not here?

Wait…

I tapped the message screen—and it lit up, buzzing loudly.

Crash.
The door slammed open again, and the StoneKing stood there, his expression livid.

Someone had sent a reply all right, but I had five seconds before he reached me. Backing to the window, I fired a jolt of magic directly at the floor, where he was about to tread.

A crack spread across the stone, but not deep enough to break it. There wasn’t enough magic. I had to go with Plan B. If I couldn’t use the communicator, someone else could.

“Don’t you
dare!”
snarled the StoneKing.

“Aric!” I yelled out the window. “Catch this!”

I took aim, and threw the communicator out the window, propelling it with the smallest jolt of magic. The StoneKing stared for a moment, as though totally confused as to what I was doing. I didn’t blame him, seeing as I’d thought of the plan on the spur of the moment. But at least I’d aimed right. From the window, I watched Aric jump up and catch the communicator. He might be an idiot, but he was also a trained Academy graduate with insane reflexes. I hoped either he or Gervene came up with a reply before the Stoneskins got to them.

I fired magic directly downwards at the ledge. The Stoneskins on the balcony stumbled as the stone broke under their feet—pity it wasn’t enough to knock them down.

“Get them!” the StoneKing shouted, and this time, I couldn’t run. He grabbed my arm so hard I yelped in pain. “You
dare…”

“Yeah, I fucking dare, you psycho,” I spat. The world swam before my eyes.

Hopefully, death would be quick.

Wingbeats, and a hideous screeching noise. I looked up sharply, dread coursing through me. No way. That couldn’t be…

“Perfect,” said the StoneKing, his smiling face too close to mine. “I think I’ll let you die alongside your friends, Adamantine.”

He dragged me to the window, and threw me out into the empty air.

***

KAY

We couldn’t get another word out of either of the Stoneskins. The first lapsed into speaking nonsense in a language none of us understood while the other remained unconscious until the first Alliance guards started to arrive. Valeria’s Alliance. I didn’t want to stick around, but the Stoneskins had left no clues as to where the others might be—when I questioned the guards, they said the common rumour was the two Stoneskins had fallen out of the sky. Given how most of Valeria’s doorways were at a high level, that was surprisingly unhelpful.

The story I’d told the guards in the Passages had spread by now, as had the notion that I was using some top secret Alliance tech. I had to tell them I’d been told not to let anyone touch the Chameleon. Luckily, the Stoneskin had interrupted by rattling the cage, trying to get out, and I slipped away. Mr Helm followed me from the lab into the corridor. The Stoneskins had left hand-size dents in the walls.

The colour drained from Mr Helm’s face as he saw the damage. “If there’s anything I can do to repay you…”

“I want to buy that car. The one with bloodrock enhancement.”

Mr Helm gaped at me. “You what? It’s not for sale. It’s priceless.”

“I think I have a use for it,” I said. “There are more of those Stoneskins out there, and they kidnapped a friend of mine. I’ve been tracking them, but they’re most likely offworld, in a hostile place. An invisible car would be pretty handy. And so would that doorway port.”

“It’s not authorised,” said Mr Helm. “It requires an Alliance member to activate it. As for the
car,
it’s untested in the field.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “This wasn’t tested in the field, either.” I tapped the Chameleon. “Look, if I have a car, I can follow them through whatever doorway they came in by. There are too many of them for me to fight alone, but the source they have—trust me, you don’t want it unleashed on the Multiverse.”

Not if they really were taking Ada to Enzar. A high level magic world already steeped in conflict. Pieces were starting to slot together in my head, and not in a way I particularly cared for. The Stoneskins had to be linked to Enzar, too. They’d been created on the
Empire’s
orders? But what did they want with Ada? Before she’d joined the Alliance, she’d lived as far under the radar as possible, even from her homeworld. Only when she’d joined the Alliance had the rumours started spreading. Sure, it might have reached that far… but how had two of those bastards ended up here on Valeria?

The guards were talking on their communicators, and I caught the words
lethal source
and
war.
Mr Helm, deathly pale, shook his head. “All right, Kay. I can trust you not to damage it?”

Given my record with Valerian transport, probably not. “Sure,” I said. “But I’m taking it offworld.”

“Let me know how it goes,” he said. “It’s one of my most inspired ideas, but I would be
very
interested to have a talk with the designer of that remarkable device of yours.”

“I’ll let him know,” I said. Speaking of which, I needed to update Ada’s brother. But first, the car. Luckily, it seemed the same as a regular Valerian hover car once Mr Helm freed it from the metal circles holding it in place and switched it on. I climbed into the driver’s seat.

“Thanks,” I said, again, as he got out the way. I hit the accelerator.

I hadn’t mentioned I was no expert in this particular type of steering—not to mention driving through a building wasn’t what the car had been designed for. But compared to getting those Stoneskins into the cages, it was child’s play to navigate my way out, past the bodies of those the Stoneskins had killed and the wreckage they’d made of the front doors. My hands clenched over the dashboard. They were crazed killers, the lot of them. But whether there were ten or a thousand, I’d get Ada back or die trying.

I hit the button marked ‘camouflage’ and vanished along with the car as it soared out of the building, and into the sky.

***

Several frustrating minutes combing the skies later, I gave up and steered through the first open doorway to the Passages I found, coming out into a deserted corridor. The hover car remained in the air even in the Passages, though sparks danced off the surface as the residual magic came into contact with the chameleon-coating.

Frustration buzzed under my skin as I drove down more corridors. At least the car made traversing the Passages a hundred times faster. But I had no clue if it would work offworld or if the hover batteries would give out when faced with another world’s atmosphere. As I reached the corner that led to the main Passage, I paused the engine. I didn’t want to draw attention to the fact that I’d just broken a dozen laws. The car was invisible, so I killed the engine at the corner and hoped no one walked into it.

All things considered, it hadn’t been my best plan.

Jeth’s voice sounded in my ear: “I got a reply from Ada.”

I hit the earpiece with the palm of my hand, convinced I was hearing things. “You what?”

“I got a message from Ada. I’m forwarding it to the Alliance.”

I was already jumping out the car. “I’m on my way.”
Ada. She’s really…

I hadn’t counted on half the Alliance being gathered in the corridor. I shouldered my way through a pack of guards, ignoring the heads that turned in my direction, ignoring the questions.
Ada. Get to Ada.

First—her brother. I found him arguing with Carl.

“It’s not illegal,” he said. “And her message—look, it says quite clearly, they’re a direct threat to the Alliance.” A buzzing sounded and he pressed his communicator to his ear. “Nell, don’t—for God’s sake. She’s coming here.”

“She’s unauthorised,” said Carl.

“I doubt you’d be able to stop her.” Jeth’s eyes fell on me. “What happened?”

“I caught the Stoneskins, they’re imprisoned in a room they can’t break out of. Ada messaged you?”

“Must have picked up a signal. Check your communicator.”

Sure enough, the message screen had lit up. A long message, clearly typed in a hurry, but readable, and accompanied by a picture.

“Is she still on that world?” I was already inputting the description into the Alliance’s file search window. “When did this come through?”

“Just now, but it might have been delayed. There’s no way to tell.”

And she’d pushed those Stoneskins through the Passage doorway—before or after? Again, no way to tell. But if we went to that world, we could find the trail. Maybe even pick up her trace.

The description matched a dozen possible worlds. I showed it to Carl, who was fielding yet more questions from the guards. It looked like someone from Earth’s Alliance had forwarded Ada’s message to the other Alliance branches, too.

One word stood out above all others:
war.
There were a hundred Stoneskins, she said, but they were nigh on invincible. I was one person with a Chameleon adapted with sciras. We sure as hell didn’t have an army. If
they
had one, God only knew what we’d do.

I shifted impatiently, trying to find a way through the crowd.

“Where are you going?” asked Jeth.

“After her.”

“You can’t,” he said. “The whole Alliance is involved now. Damn. I need to make more of those sciras things—no way can one person take out a hundred of those monsters.”

“Yes, but getting Ada away from them ought to be the priority,” I said.

“It ought to,” said Jeth, tapping buttons on-screen, “but—
Dammit.
Nell’s going to the hidden Passage.”