Iron Inheritance (28 page)

“Where is she?” Josh asked. He’d been so quiet that I’d almost forgotten he was standing next to me.

“Chapel conference with da other regions’ leadas.” Wright clasped her hands together nervously. “Her and Denisov still wantin’ to talk to ya.” She looked at me pointedly.

I nodded as a wave of tiredness washed over me, the thought of my mom the only thing keeping my eyes open.

Miranda yawned and patted Nate on the head like a puppy. Then she patted the actual puppy. Deep circles under her eyes and the drunken nature of her walk were all too apparent as she turned toward the exit. Freddy followed, his arm a buoy around her shoulder.

“Wait, where are you going?” I called to them. They were the stars tonight as far as I was concerned. If it weren’t for them, we’d probably have gotten caught or Nate would have died in his own Jeep.

“We’re Graced, not the undead.” Miranda waved and yawned again.

I rushed forward and hugged them for all I was worth. With Freddy it was like wrapping my arms around a warm, slightly sweaty, stuffed bear. Miranda was a sack of sleepy bones. “Thank you, Freddy. Miranda. I’ll try to find some way to repay you.”

Freddy laughed and patted my back. “I don’t keep track of that kind of stuff.”

“Well, I do.” I let go and smiled.

He rolled his eyes and prodded Miranda forward.

When I turned back, Nate was rubbing his thumb back and forth on Ria’s hand, whispering something to her. I sighed more relief and glimpsed a bubble of green essence surround them out of the corner of my eye.

“Oh.” My eyes widened, and I crept out a door to the quad.

A white hot sun swept over my skin. The Magnolia trees were green with giant white flowers dying at the ends of their branches. The heat of summer was too much for them.

My eyelids drooped heavily, and I sat on an empty bench to think about my next move, what I’d say to Morales. Like it or not, she was still in charge, and she probably had resources I’d need to find my mom.

Faceless people milled around me but never came close enough to say something. I closed my scratchy eyes and saw my mom—perfectly posed in the photo I’d committed to memory.

“You should get some sleep.” Josh sat next to me.

I glanced sideways. Deep purple circles cradled his eyes. “You’re one to talk.”

“Yeah?” He ran his fingers through his thick hair as he exhaled. “I don’t seem to be able to self-assess so well these days.”

I closed my eyes again, not really hearing him. I just wanted to see my mom’s face again.

“I’m sorry I put you in that position.” His voice strained, something caught in his throat. “I had no idea she would—”

I inhaled and forced my eyes open. “It’s done.” I shook my head. “How could you know your old girlfriend would try to entrap me in a life-altering deal?” I raised an eyebrow to see how he’d react to the word ‘girlfriend.’

He didn’t respond, his back hunched with his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands so I couldn’t see his face. “I’m not the man you think I am.”

My gaze scoured his profile, his dark hair and rigid, muscular shoulders under a black shirt. “You know, until tonight I didn’t realize how much of an idiot you are.”

He chuckled breathily, his head still in his hands. “Finally, someone who gets me.”

“Seriously.” I adjusted my body so I could face him. “You ran at full speed through those hallways knowing you’d die if you hit another one of those force fields, and all of it to save us from a place I never should have taken us.” I leaned closer, wanting to stroke his back, to take his hand. He wasn’t the one who should be taking this so hard. It was on me. I should carry the blame.

“And I was the one who suggested the tracker.” He shoved himself upright, his back punished with an unyieldingly rigid spine until he stood. “Nate was right. We should have come back here for help, should have followed protocol. Denisov would say the same thing.”

“And not find out about my mom?” I stood and looked into his blue eyes. “I’d go through a thousand more nights like tonight to know she’s alive, to find her and finally see her in something more than a picture frame.”

He didn’t look at me but spoke to a point just over my head. “I’m not getting involved like that again. I’m going to be a soldier—that’s what I came here for. I follow orders. I don’t give them.”

I looked up at him, bewildered. How could he think of himself like that? A solider? A life on the front lines for The Defense might be what he wanted, what he saw for himself, but that wasn’t him. He was brave and smart and warm, and other than right now, he didn’t try to hold me back from anything like everyone else did. He wanted people to push themselves to their limits, the consequences and stereotypes be damned.

But his guilty, withdrawn eyes held me back from saying any of that, and before I could get out any other meaningless words, he disappeared in a whispered gust that pressed my necklace into my chest.

Numb legs carried me into the shade of the colonnade surrounding the quad as parts of my brain began to shut down even as Kovac and my mom and Josh each shouted my name.

I looked up and found my reflection staring back at me in a classroom window. Dirt and dried blood still stuck to my arms, but my face…I had her face—my mom’s. Her chocolate hair, her lips, her brown eyes. I looked so much like her. It used to hurt to admit that—a small pain in my chest. But now, it gave me strength. Soon there’d be a moment when I wasn’t just looking in the mirror. I’d get to hug her, feel her.

I rubbed my thumb over my necklace. Why hadn’t Grandpa tried to save her? Had he even known she was alive this whole time?

The thought made the air around me heavy, sticky. Logic tried to intrude, to run like ice water through my veins, speaking half-truths I didn’t want to believe. Maybe Kovac was lying. Maybe Grandpa thought she was dead. Maybe he’d tried and failed.

Maybe there are enough ‘maybes’ in this life already.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I knew Grandpa was dead. He’d taken the blast Kovac had made for me. He’d died to save me.

A lump caught in my throat, but I swallowed it. I also knew that Kovac survived the sacrifice. He was alive enough to still send demons after me, to keep my mom alive after all these years, to keep drawing breath in that movie studio of his.

I slapped the tiredness out of my cheeks and wrenched open the nearest door. If I found Denisov first, she might have information on my mom or a plan of attack already in place, at least more than Morales would.

Ornate picture frames flicked past me on the way to her office. It was locked. I went through the cafeteria into the arena. Only a handful of people were training—Denisov was nowhere in sight. Half a dozen other locations flashed by as I searched one after the other, not willing to stop in case my heavy eyelids won their battle.

The golden flame of gas lamps flickered on the stone walls as I came into a cavernous courtyard at least a hundred feet below the actual school. It was built like the library with large columns reaching up to an arched ceiling of ornate stone. The difference was that there weren’t any shelves to take up the massive space. Instead, it was completely open with only a few benches, a fountain, and an entirely separate building erected in the center. Stained-glass windows were set into the sides, and a double door entrance sat under the empty cross on top of the steeple. The light from the gas lamps on the outside walls barely reached the building. It felt as if it were covered in a perpetual night with stars peppering the distance just beyond my field of vision.

If I couldn’t find Denisov, I’d at least meet Morales head-on. Her voice echoed off the walls of the subterranean courtyard from the chapel in the center, punctuated by other booming voices I didn’t recognize. She must still be talking with the other Patron leaders, trying to decide my mom’s fate.

I crept to the double doors and peeked through the crack in the center, their words much clearer now.

“We understand your apprehension, Laura,” a voice boomed from a speaker at the center of the stage.

The chapel stretched out with enough pews to easily fit three hundred people. Near the front, three steps led to a large stage with a podium at the center. Behind it, two large projector screens hung on either side of another cross and held five giant faces of old, wrinkled men and women I’d never seen before.

“No, you do not.” Morales stood at the bottom of the stage and looked up at them. “This is a subterfuge meant to lure us to break the truce. If we do this, we’ll have the war on our hands that we did twenty years ago.” She shook her head. “You all remember our losses, the devastation it caused.”

“And you remember when Kovac broke your truce by murdering the leader who got us through those times.” Denisov’s sharp voice cut through the air as she stepped into my narrow view.

“And now we circle back to sacrifice.” Morales threw her hands in the air. “It is not possible for him to survive if Solomon sacrificed himself, which seems very likely according to his granddaughter’s and his Guardian’s accounts.”

“The last time we trusted the word of a Guardian, I lost a quarter of my people,” said a tan, weathered face from the screen, his green eyes staring at Morales menacingly.

“What are we going to do about Solomon’s daughter?” A high-pitched woman’s voice cut in.

Morales’ shoulders drooped. “She can’t be alive—not after all this time. There’s no logic to it.”

“There doesn’t have to be logic involved when you’re dealing with Babylonians. They’ve never kept your peace, and Eve’s mother is proof of that,” said Denisov. “It doesn’t matter that they’ve kept her alive this long; the only thing we need to focus on right now is how to get her out.”

Morales looked like she was about to say something again when someone tapped my shoulder.

I spun around with my fists raised and my heart hammering my eardrums.

Duke smiled, a step out of my reach for precaution. “Need some help with the door?”

I dropped my fists and turned back. “They’re about to decide something.”

“It’s about time. They’ve been at it for hours. I had to step out for a while to get some fresh air. They keep talking in circles.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Why would you be in…?”

Duke shrugged. “Curse of being the president’s son. That’s his voice now.”

A deep voice murmured indistinctly for another moment before stopping abruptly. I turned and pressed my ear against the crack when the door creaked outward so quickly that it pushed me into Duke. He caught me gently.

“Brooks. Harding.” Denisov stopped advancing. “Perfect timing.”

Morales bumped into her shoulder, mumbled an indistinct apology, and stepped back.

“The regional leaders and the president have agreed that the Tercets will hunt down Kovac and find your mother as I prepare us for the inevitable.” She tightened her jaw. “We’re going to get her back.”

I nodded, her sharp, intense eyes convincing me to believe her more than Morales ever could. “I want to help you find him, find my mom.”

Her hawk eyes narrowed. “You’re what Kovac wants, and as long as we keep you close, they’ll come to us.”

My mouth hung open as I processed what she meant.

Bait? She wants to dangle me out there like a worm on a hook?

Perfect.

“We’ll be ready.” Denisov put her hand on my shoulder and then started forward again, Morales not looking at me as she followed.

“This is going to be interesting,” said Duke as he watched the pair disappear.

“What is?”

“Looks like my father finally put Denisov in charge of L.A.”

It took a week. That was it. That was all the time necessary to completely change the way the college operated.

Classes were cancelled.

Every Patron was put into a military unit under The Defense, and almost every one of them was assigned a part of the city to patrol.

Except us.

My fingers curled around the metal handles attached to the thick iron cords that stretched into the floor. The arena’s bright lights glinted off the shiny metal before being absorbed by the black mat under my feet. Nate stood near the outer wall, his hands behind his back in a military “at-ease” position that looked very uncomfortable. Ria sat next to him, her brown and white beagle sniffing her feet as she scratched his ears. Freddy and Miranda were each pretending to sword fight with Duke and Cheryl—our overseers.

Denisov had a funny way of staying true to her word. I was locked within the bounds of headquarters in order to make Kovac come to us. Meanwhile, every other person—including the Tercets, the top trio The Defense had—was out trying to hunt him down. Not exactly an open invitation for Kovac to take the bait.

I pumped my arms up and raised my hands over my shoulders, the thick iron cables straining. Sweat beaded down my forehead and onto my nose, dropping past my lower lip as I exhaled.

I lowered my arms back down, and a series of weights clunked together under the floor. Aside from sparring circles in the Warrior section of the arena, we had weight machines specifically designed to test our strength. Press a button up top, and the weight adjusted below so that when you pulled on the handles you could lift different amounts.

Today, without thinking about my mom or Kovac or anything else that would make my pulse pound, I could lift the equivalent of a VW Beetle. As long as I steadied my breathing, my talent seemed to be working finally. I still couldn’t see the essence that had bottled up inside me for years, which meant I was nowhere near conjuring a spiritual weapon, but the strength was enough for now, especially knowing that if I just tapped some uncontrollable part inside of me the sight would come and I’d be able to lift a downtown bus.

“Fetch!” Ria called just before a tennis ball smacked my shoulder. Her dog continued to sniff around her and Nate.

I stooped down and picked up the ball, then threw it her way as she got up to meet me on the orange track. “The dog obviously does not like that game.”

She grinned. “Who said I was trying to get him to play?”