The Liberator (A Dante Walker Novel) (Entangled Teen) (21 page)

“Tell me you can teach me something valuable, and fast, or I’ll leave tonight.”

Kraven snaps his teeth together. “I can teach you things, but you have to commit to the timeline. Three days for each sector, five sectors remaining. I need two weeks.
You
need two weeks. And that’s without adding on Amplification, which you’d probably want to—”

“That’s too much time,” I growl. “Try again.”

“I need two weeks, or I can’t—”

I hold up my hand and, amazingly, he stops talking. Our eyes meet. “We’re done here.”

Every nerve in my body pulses as I stride toward the exit.

“Wait,” Kraven says.

I keep moving.

“Wait!” he yells.

I’m almost gone when he breaks.

“I’ll show you,” he whispers. “I’ll show you how to summon your wings.”

With my face still turned away from him, I smile.
That
is exactly what I was waiting for.

DESCENT

“Demons exist whether you believe in them or not.”

—Emily Rose

29

Outside

I spin around and face Kraven. “How fast can you teach me?”

He turns his hands palm up. “That’s the beauty of it, Dante. That all depends on you.”

The way his voice rises, I can tell he likes this. That the ball’s in my court. I roll my head from side to side like Evander Holyfield, like I’m to go twelve rounds. “Bring it, Cyborg.”

Kraven eyes me. “Think you’re a big man? Think you got what it takes?”

“Damn straight.”

He steps toward me. “Let me tell you something. There are eight liberators, all who have trained to summon their wings. What’s more, those cuffs have seen a lot of ankles. Yesterday’s liberators aren’t always today’s. You know how many of them have learned what I have?”

I curl my hand into a zero and hold it up, because I know where this speech is headed.

He surprises me and holds up a single finger. “One other liberator besides me.”

Laughter bursts from my throat. “Oh, ho! Someone else is as awesome as you? Bet that twisted your panties right up.”

Kraven’s lips form a tight line. “You’re not ready to learn.”

“I am,” I say, swallowing my laughter. “I’m totally ready to wing out.”

He circles around me like a wolf, analyzing my build. “You could be strong enough.”

“I am strong enough.” My voice drops an octave. “I’ve already almost done it a couple of times.”

Kraven stops in front of me. “Let’s avoid fictitious tales while we’re training, yes?”

“You don’t believe me?”

He sighs so long I wonder if he’s got three lungs instead of two.

“I’m not lying, Cyborg,” I tell him. “It hurt like hell. Felt like something was trying to tear its way out of me. And it burned.”

Kraven cocks his head to the side. “I don’t believe you, Mr. Walker. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is you try to summon them now.”

I close my eyes and try to focus on growing Hercules wings. I’m doing a pretty good job imagining how wicked cool they’ll look when Kraven interrupts my thoughts.

“I didn’t mean right this second,” he says. “First you have to clear your head.”

I keep my eyes closed. “Head clear. Check. What’s next, sensei?”

Kraven’s bare feet shuffle against the training mats. “Clearing your head doesn’t happen that quickly. You need to be sure you know who you are.”

“Name’s D-Dub. Pleasure.”

“You need to be sure you know, without a doubt, that you are a liberator. That you are ready to leave behind your old lifestyle. Are you harboring any old demons, demon?”

My eyes open. His face softens, and the lines around his mouth relax. He grips the back of my neck. “Everyone has a past, Dante. Have you let yours go? Are you changed?”

Heat creeps across my skin. He asked me a question, so why can’t I answer it?

Because I know what lies in my heart. And I’m not ready to let it go.

Kraven walks to the glass wall. His back is to me. “Do you call yourself a liberator?”

My muscles relax. This is an easier question, one I can answer. “That’s what I am.”

“Is it?”

“What are you, my therapist?” I roll my shoulders to try and loosen up. This sudden change in topic is messing with my head. It’s like he’s already gotten in there, like he can read my mind or some crap.

“I wasn’t always a good man,” Kraven says.

“Are you now?”

Kraven turns around. His dark eyes look past me. “I did terrible things, unimaginable to me now. But I repented. I embraced a new life. And because God is merciful, I was forgiven.” Kraven touches a hand to his chest. “Look at me now, a liberator.”

I don’t believe Kraven ever did terrible things. He’s so Rule Book. But maybe that’s what made him do those things. Maybe he didn’t like it when others wouldn’t abide by his rules. Could that be why he rarely shouts, rarely even raises his voice? Perhaps his demon was his temper.

“I never did terrible things.” My stomach rolls saying this aloud. I’m not lying exactly, but the words are heavy leaving my mouth, like I don’t believe them myself.

“So you were a saint?” Kraven asks, his lips quirking upward. “That’s how you came to be a collector?”

My hands tighten into fists. “It doesn’t matter. It’s in the past.”

“Wrong. In order to summon your wings, you have to dig deep inside of yourself. And if there’s something there that isn’t resolved, it’ll never work.”

I bite the inside of my lip. “Then how did Rector use his wings?”

Kraven averts his eyes. “His wings are not the same as ours. He uses all that darkness in him—all that blackness—in order to call them. You don’t want to do that. You don’t want to awaken that side of yourself.”

Don’t I?

“I don’t have anything to let go of,” I snarl. “So what’s next?”

“Again, if you don’t follow the steps, this will never work.”

I grit my teeth so hard my jaw aches. “Listen to me, Kraven. I’m tired of your sectors, and of your steps. Show me how to summon my wings or I’m out of here.” My heartbeat throbs in my ears. “No. You know what? I don’t need this. What I really need is time. And every second I’m here, I’m risking the sirens breaking in.”

“Do you know why you were chosen to be a collector?” he asks suddenly.

My heart leaps, because it’s a question I’ve never truly known the answer to.

“Lucifer believed you were strong, intelligent, manipulative. He believed you’d faithfully follow orders that satiated your own selfish desires. And more importantly, Lucifer knew that out of all the fallen souls in hell, that you in particular would never consider yourself redeemable. Six cuffs built for six people who fit that exact description. You were one of those six, Dante.”

“How do you know this?” I say in a near whisper.

Kraven turns on his heel and moves away from me.

“And where exactly are you going?” I ask.

“Follow me.”

The SOB must be confident I’ll do as he asks, because he gets farther and farther away without checking to see if I’m behind him. I drop my head back and stare up at the ceiling. Then I groan and jog to catch up, thinking about what he said, wondering if it’s true.

It’s true.

We trek through the house without a word. When he reaches an orange door, he unlocks it and spins around.

“Ready?” His grin sweeps from ear to ear.

“For what?”

“To play.”

Kraven shoulders the door open, and sunlight slams into us. I shield my eyes from the sudden brightness. When my vision adjusts, I gaze across the horizon. We’re in the back of the mansion, patches of snow dotting the ground. A chill creeps in beneath my long-sleeved shirt and jeans, and the smell of salt fills my nose. There’s an empty expanse of dead grass and beyond it nothing except the ocean. But how far down is the water? Twenty feet? Thirty?

A hundred?

Kraven glides toward the cliff without hesitation. He doesn’t even have shoes on, the freak. I follow after him not because I think it’s the best idea, but because my racing pulse demands it. I want to be here. I want to find the sirens.

I want to pick a fight today.

I’ve been cooped up in that house for four days. Today is day five. The sun feels good on my neck, even if the cold bites at my nose and ears. I fill my lungs. Once. Twice.

Walking after Kraven, my blood surges. Yes, I want this. This is what I was reborn to do. Screw strategy, screw process. Just show me the fiend that wants to hurt Charlie and I’ll tear out his beating heart. Then I’ll eat it.

Kraven gets right up to the edge of the cliff, so close I think he might leap off. I’m so hopped up on adrenaline that part of me wants him to. Would I jump after him? See if I can fly without wings?

He spreads his arms out wide, and the wind rolling off the ocean tangles in his blond hair.

“Come and get us!” he thunders into the open air.

And I think, “Yeah.
Hell
, yeah.”

After Kraven’s words are eaten by the tide, he waits. He waits so long I start to imagine there are bugs beneath my skin. That if I don’t move—if I don’t
do
something—they’ll devour me alive from the inside out.

A small sound rings through the morning, the noise a stone makes when falling from a ledge to the jutting rocks below.

It sounds again. And again.

Something is coming.

Kraven shuffles back, and I match his steps. We breathe hard, waiting for them to show themselves.

A hand whips over the side of the ledge.

And a man, tall with lanky arms and legs, pulls himself up. He’s wearing a steel-gray shirt, gray pants. If it wasn’t for his dark skin, it’d be hard to tell him apart from the stone cliff he crawled up from. One of his pinkies is missing. I wonder how he lost it. Maybe it was from antagonizing a German shepherd as a kid, or from an Indian cooking class.

I lick my lips, nearly tasting the tension.

My legs move toward him before I even think about what I’m doing. I don’t want to think. I just want to feel the crack of my knuckles against this guy’s face. But something behind him stops me.

It’s another arm, pulling another body over the edge. A woman. She stands upright, cracks her neck.

And then another arm. And another. And another and another and another.

Sirens appear, slithering onto their bellies and then rising up like cobras. They’re mere humans who agreed to work for collectors. They don’t have special powers or the ability to survive where we don’t. I should take comfort in this. But there are too many of them. More than I want to count. I lean my head toward Kraven. “What are we going to do?”

“We?” he says, eyeing the sirens. “This is your fight.” Before I can think, Kraven grabs the back of my shirt and hurls me toward them.

I land hard against the cold ground, frozen solid from winter’s fury. I’m out here alone. They’re surrounding me. I should be afraid. I should run back to Kraven and demand he fight alongside me. But this is what I want.

Release.

I jump to my feet and roar like the beasts they work for. “You want her? You’ve got to get through me first!”

They lunge at me.

30

Inside

I feel the crash of fists in my back, the splinter of a kick in my side. Teeth tear at my skin, and hands claw at my throat. It doesn’t matter. I don’t care. I’m tired of hiding from these people. Tired of running.

I remember Charlie the way I left her this morning, the way she looked at me with fear. I detest that. I detest seeing her afraid and being unable to ease it. Now I can. I grab the next fist I see and spin until I hear joints pop. Then I turn on the next siren, a girl my age. I grab her hair and throw her to the ground.

A siren twice my size wraps his burly arms around my chest. I use what Kraven taught me, throwing my heel back into his kneecap. The man collapses with a guttural groan. I leap over him and throw my elbow into a siren’s nose. Blood sprays across his cheeks, and a smile lights up my face.

I’m doing well. Surviving. Taking them down one at a time. But the problem is that they keep getting back up. Their goal was to get past me to Charlie, and maybe to Aspen, but now they’re focused on me alone. They’re angry. And an easy way to alleviate that fury is to take me down.

They move like a flock of birds. One guy, the one who first stepped over the ledge, races toward me. The others follow his lead and fly forward. Together, they hit me like a wall. I land on my back, and rocks dig into my muscles.

I kick and flail—all arms and legs like an overturned beetle—but they easily overtake me. The first punch feels special, like I’ll remember it a thousand years from now. But the rest blend together until the pain becomes all that I am. Even places they haven’t touched scream out.

Then they stop. One at a time, they stop. Above me, their faces pull away until I see the blue of the sky again.

I try to get to my feet but nothing works. My body is broken.

Kraven moves toward the sirens. His lips curl back, and his eyes blaze, and he may be a liberator, but he looks like a monster.

The sirens seem to understand he’s the bigger threat, considering I’m a bloody heap of tissue and bone. They charge toward him. I pull myself up as much as I can. I have to help. If we fight together, then we may have a chance to overcome them. But I know that’s a lie. There are too many. All we can hope for is to send them back to their caves along the cliff wall.

The sirens close in. They’re only a few feet away. Why isn’t Kraven moving?

Move!

A shadow crosses Kraven’s face and I see it—his rage. The temper he swallows every day. But he’s not going to swallow it now.

The liberator curls in on himself, his arms wrapped around his stomach, head between his knees. A burning smell fills my nostrils.

And then he explodes.

His entire body opens like a thundercloud, and wings burst from his back. A glow wraps around his torso like the sun is pointing a finger straight at him. And he growls. He growls like a tornado and moves like one, too. Sirens scurry backward, but he storms after them, throwing them like they’re made of nothing. They
are
nothing next to him.

I get to my feet, but my legs are shaking. I’m not sure whether it’s from injuries or from watching Kraven. As I stumble back, I think of how I was terrified the collectors would find Charlie. That they would get to her. I think of how the threat of the sirens kept me up at night, of how I pictured them slinking through the cracks to steal her away.

But seeing Kraven blast through sirens, I know there is nothing to fear. Not now. Not with him here.

A daring siren rushes forward, undeterred by Kraven’s wings. But the liberator just uses his wing like a battering ram and throws the siren twenty feet. When too many sirens charge him at once, he folds his wings around himself like a shield. Then he whips them open, and sirens fly up and out as if a bomb detonated at their feet.

The battle goes on for several minutes and all I can do is stand slack-jawed. I remember the way he fought the night the collectors took Charlie. But I didn’t have the time to really focus then; I was too worried about getting my girl out of there. Now, though, all I can do is watch.

One by one, the sirens admit defeat and scamper toward the ledge. I manage to throw a few hits in as they flee to ensure they keep running. When I glance back, a single siren remains. He stands before Kraven, determined. His hands twitch, and I notice he’s missing a finger. He was the first siren to appear, and he’ll be the last to leave. Kraven rushes toward him, and the siren bends at the knees like he’s going to leap over the liberator. When Kraven gets closer, the siren lunges. He doesn’t leap, he spins.

He spins so quickly Kraven loses track of him, and so do I. When I spot him again, he’s on Kraven’s back. The liberator cries out when the nine-fingered man gets ahold of Kraven’s left wing. He’s tearing at it with his hands, his teeth.

The liberator whirls around and around, trying to grab at the siren. I rush forward, ignoring the ache in my body. I’m almost to him when Kraven jumps into the air and slams onto his back. There’s a sickening crunch, and I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe because I’m afraid of what I’ll see when Kraven rolls off him.

Slowly, the liberator slides to his right. The siren scrambles to his feet, and my airway reopens. I don’t know why I was afraid of the guy being dead. I want them to be dead.
Right?

I move forward to help Kraven subdue him. This is good, better than killing the dude. Now we can ask him questions, drill him until we know what the collectors’ plans are. Why didn’t I think of this before? Why didn’t Kraven?

My hand grips the siren’s biceps, but as soon as it’s there, his arm is ripped from my grasp. Kraven has his hands around the guy’s throat. The siren’s eyes bulge. I take two steps in Kraven’s direction, but he’s too quick for me. He rushes toward the ledge.

“You don’t belong here,” Kraven snarls.

He’s too close to the ledge.

Too close.

“Kraven,” I yell. “Stop. We need him.”

Kraven’s wings snap open so violently I almost lose my footing. He squeezes tighter, and the siren fumbles at his hands. But that’s wrong. Kraven taught us that never works. You have to be on the offense even when you’re playing defense. The siren should tear at his nostrils. Gouge his eyes. He doesn’t, though. The siren just keeps pulling on Kraven’s hands, and now his face is turning purple.

“You don’t belong here,” Kraven repeats, quieter. I can hardly hear him over the ocean.

The liberator takes another step toward the ledge, and the siren nearly tumbles over. He tries to turn his head to see how far the fall would be, but Kraven clutches his neck too tightly.

I can’t move. I can’t speak. I’m afraid if I do, Kraven will drop him.

And he can’t do that.

He can’t.

Big Guy would declare war on hell if a collector killed a human. So what would he do to one of his own? Someone that’s supposed to work for him?

“You don’t belong here.” Kraven’s voice is calm. “You belong in hell.”

He throws the siren.

He throws the nine-fingered man who may have lost his finger on a fishing trip with his daughter. He throws him, and the siren’s body seems to float in the air for a single moment, his face twisted with terror.

And then he falls.

The man is gone.
The human
is gone. Dead.

Kraven turns and looks at me, and my blood runs colder than the winter breeze. His eyes are black as night, and his hair is almost white against the sky.

I can’t believe what he just did. What will happen to him? Will his cuff be removed? Will he be tossed into hell himself? But then I remember something Kraven said.
They’re soulless.

Does that make a difference? Does Big Guy only care about those he can still save?

I decide
yes
.

Kraven rushes toward me, and even though instinct tells me to flee, I hold my ground. When he gets within a few feet of me, I don’t step back. Instead, I lift my chin to meet his gaze straight on. Kraven closes the distance between us and grabs my biceps. He drags me behind him as he heads toward the house, his wings still splayed open.

“Let go of me,” I bark. “I’m not a child.”

But he doesn’t. He just keeps pulling me until we’re inside the house, until we’ve woven through hallways and rooms and we’re back in the training area. At that point, I jerk back. I don’t care whether my arm pulls out at the socket, I won’t be manhandled. If it’s a fight he wants, I’m game. Even if I can hardly stand.

I rip my biceps from his grasp. He whirls around, and his wings sink behind his shoulders. A cracking, snapping sound tells me he’s brought them back into himself. I open my mouth to fire out questions, but he cuts me off by grabbing my shoulders.

“What are you holding on to?” His voice crashes over me. “Say it.”

I try to pull away but he won’t let go. “Get away from me.”

“Let it go!” he roars. “Let it go, or you won’t save her.”

“Get off me.” It’s all I can say. All I can think. “Get off me. Get the
hell
off me.”

“Tell me what it is! Say it!” Kraven rears back, and before I comprehend what he’s doing, his fist connects with my jaw. The world spins, and I’m falling. I hit the training mat and roll onto my side.

“Son of a bitch.” I groan and clutch my face in my hands. I’m not sure whether Kraven is planning on hitting me again, and I’m not about to lie around waiting to find out. I get to my feet. My vision blurs before focusing. “You want to wrestle, Miami? That’s fine. But you better be ready to breathe your last, because I won’t stop until your broken cuff is in my hands.”

A guttural sound rips from my throat as I lunge at him. He sidesteps me and circles an arm around my chest.

“Stop fighting me, Dante.” He squeezes until my ears ring. “Let it go.”

I try to throw my head back, but he cocks his own to the side. I end up head-butting his shoulder, which does absolutely nothing. My heel slams down, but he pulls his foot back. I was expecting he’d know this was coming. But I know he won’t expect
this
.

I leap up and curl my knees toward my chest. Kraven is pulled off balance and crashes to the floor. He falls on top of me, and my face smashes into the ground. Doesn’t matter. He’s let go of me, and that’s all I care about. I scramble away from him, then kick his face, hard. His nose crunches beneath my boot.

Once I’m upright, I jerk into a fighting stance. “Come on, Cyborg!”

A faint burning smell hits my senses, and my mind puts the pieces together. Burning smell equals wings. I’m not sure when I figured that out, but I almost wish I didn’t know what was coming next.

I hobble toward the exit, my right leg dragging behind me. When I look over my shoulder, I see Kraven flying—
flying!
—across the room. His white wings spread out like a cloud. If I were looking at his wings alone, I might think he seemed peaceful. Innocent. But one glance at his rigid face, lips wet with blood, tells me I need to brace myself for impact.

Kraven slams into me, and we roll across the training mat in a heap. He lands on top of me and forces my shoulders back. My head hits the padding with a dull thump. It’s the first time I realize how thin the blue mats are.

The liberator thrusts his face close to mine, so close I can see the pink of his gums as his lips peel back. “Let your demons go.”

My heart hammers against my rib cage. All I can think about is getting him off me. Over and over I think about escape, because if I don’t think about escape, then I’ll think about what Kraven is saying, and I can’t do that.

Kraven’s chest inflates, and his words boom like a semi-sonic blast. “I said,
LET IT GO!
”

I snap. A thousand suppressed memories roll over me. I drown in them. “I can’t!”

I’m not sure I’ve said anything at all until Kraven growls again. “Why not?”

“I can’t let go of my demons because I
am
a demon. Because I’ve
always
been a demon. I’m bad. There isn’t something inside that I can let go of, because it’s all I am.”

Kraven jerks my shoulders up and slams me back down. “Tell me why, demon! How do you know?”