The Shattered Dark (33 page)

The path beneath my feet steepens. I’m in decent shape, but my legs begin to burn,
and the thinning oxygen is making my breaths come in quick, shallow gulps. I concentrate
on keeping a steady pace and distract myself by trying to spot the ground squirrels
that I keep seeing scurrying through the grass or across one of the big white boulders
that we pass. They’re marmots, I think, and even though they look nothing like Sosch,
they remind me of the
kimki
anyway with the way they dart from crag to crag or sit on their haunches, blinking
at us with mildly curious expressions.

I keep climbing, letting my sketchbook hang behind me. It knocks against my butt with
every step I take until we finally hit more level ground. Nakano’s compound is about
half a mile away. The building Naito pointed out from below isn’t the only one here.
Two others, both smaller but with the same green roofs, are nestled side by side farther
back from the mountain’s edge. Naito’s father chose a beautiful location for his compound.
I have to give him that.

When we’re within a few hundred yards of the main building, I grow paranoid about
the fae’s chaos lusters. They’re wearing long sleeves beneath their
jaedric
armor,
but their faces and hands are uncovered, and even with the moonlight, the blue lightning
looks phosphorescent and bright.

And it’s becoming more erratic the closer we get to the compound. Nakano must be running
a ton of tech inside.

We walk along the edge of the tree line for as long as possible then Naito and Aren
kneel in the foliage. The lights are off, and there’s no movement inside the building
as far as I can see.

I crouch by Aren’s side. “Do you think we beat the remnants here?”

“It’s possible,” he says.

“But unlikely,” Naito adds. “They don’t have a city to defend. They could have fissured
out the second Lee and Paige told them about the serum.”

“They would have to find a stone-seller to get here, too, though.”

Naito shrugs. “Their stone-seller might have had an imprinted location even closer
than ours.”

I take in a breath, then slowly let it out. The only way we’re going to know for sure
is to get in there.

“Will there be an alarm?” I ask, wanting to know just how fast this search of ours
is going to have to be.

“I can get us in,” Naito says.

That’s not quite an answer to my question.

Naito straightens, then says to Aren, “You should stay here. My father has made this
place unpleasant for fae.”

“We’ll be okay,” Aren says, standing as well.

“No, you won’t be. You’re already feeling the tech. You step inside that building,
and you won’t be able to think. He has a low-level electric current flowing through
the walls, and the signals he broadcasts—they’re designed to affect fae. The compound
will let you walk in, but it might not let you walk out.”

God, he makes the place sound sentient.

“What if the vigilantes haven’t left?” Aren asks. “What if the remnants show up looking
for the serum?”

“If the remnants come in, they’ll be just as crippled as you would be,” he says, turning
his attention back to the main
building. “And if the vigilantes haven’t left, McKenzie and I will take care of them.”

His voice is as cold as the In-Between, and goose bumps break out across my skin.
I don’t have to guess what he means by “take care of them.” He fully expects me to
kill a vigilante if we come across one.

Aren’s looking at me, watching for a reaction. I don’t give him one. I keep my expression
and my voice carefully neutral, and say, “I have my dagger. We’ll be fine.”

“If you want to help us,” Naito says, “check out the residences.” He nods toward the
compound’s other two buildings.

Aren doesn’t take his eyes off me. I’d feel more comfortable with him at my back,
but I’m trusting Naito on this one. If he thinks going inside that main building is
dangerous for the fae, then I don’t want Aren going in. If something happened to him…

Just the possibility causes my throat to tighten up, making it hard to draw in air.
Losing him would crush me. There’s no doubt about that.

My fear is mirrored in his eyes.

“We’ll make it through today,” I tell him, and I don’t know if my words are meant
to reassure him or to reassure myself.

His jaw tightens, but he focuses on Naito, and says, “You have ten minutes. Then I’m
coming in.”

“Make them long minutes,” Naito says, setting off across the clearing.

Long minutes,
I think as I jog after him. Not a chance. The fae have good internal clocks when
things are calm, but when they’re waiting on the shit to hit the fan, they’re as impatient
as two-year-olds. We’ll be lucky if we have five minutes before he comes in after
us.

Miraculously, Naito and I reach the door of the main lodge without any hiccups. He
reaches into his pocket and pulls out a set of keys. He selects one, then slides it
into the lock.

“You have a key to this place?” I ask quietly.

“No.” He grabs his dagger, then, keeping it safe in its
scabbard, he hits the end of the key with his pommel three times.

It’s so fucking loud, but I don’t see any movement from inside. A quick check to my
right, and the other two buildings look quiet and still as well. So why do I feel
like we’re being watched?

It takes another two knocks for the key to turn. I have no idea how he did that, but
I just tighten my grip on the strap of my sketchbook as Naito pushes the door open.
Once we’re inside, Naito goes straight to an alarm pad. He reaches up to type in the
code, but freezes, his finger hovering above the buttons.

“It’s not on,” he says.

My heart hammers in my chest. “We need to know if the serum is gone.”

He nods. “This way.”

I follow him through the main room of the lodge, though it’s hard to see that this
place was once a resort. Only a wet bar in the back corner, the wide, thick wooden
beams on the vaulted ceiling, and the huge stone fireplace toward the front of the
room indicate its history. The rest of the area is taken up by long, plastic tables.
On top of them are about a dozen flat-screen computers. They look out of place here,
especially with the piles of old books in the back of the room. They’re in tall stacks
on the floor and on a sofa pushed up against the wall. I read one of the titles as
we pass by,
Grennan’s Guide to Faery
, and want to laugh. The fae are nothing like the winged creatures little girls dream
of meeting.

Naito moves into a smaller room in the back of the lodge, but I pause in its doorway,
looking back at the computers. The screens are black, but they’re plugged in and,
if the little green lights are any indication, they’re on.

I walk to the nearest one. Move the mouse.

A box pops up, asking for the password.

I type in “vigilante” because, yes, I’m that uncreative. Plus, I’m stalling. Thinking.
The details of how to make the serum might be on the hard drives. What other research
could be here? Is it worth taking with us?

“Hey, Naito,” I say, entering the next room.

“What?” he asks, but I don’t answer immediately. He’s standing in front of a safe,
twisting the knob to the right, back to the left, and back to the right again. And
again when it doesn’t work. But that’s not what’s caught my attention. This room has
been converted into a laboratory. Beakers are held in metal clamps, petri dishes sit
beneath microscopes, and plastic tubing runs between bags of clear liquid and glass
flasks. In short, this room looks like a fully equipped medical lab minus the sanitation.

“McKenzie?” Naito stops what he’s doing to look at me.

“Do you know the password for the computers?” He acted like he could disarm the alarm
with a code, and he obviously has at least some hope of guessing the combination to
that safe, so maybe his father is overconfident and hasn’t changed any of the vigilantes’
codes.

Turning back to the safe, he says, “I might be able to guess it, but it’ll take too
long to…Finally.”

He opens the safe.

I move forward, trying to see inside. “Is the serum there?”

He’s shuffling through some things. Papers, stacks of money, more papers. He shakes
his head. “No. It’s not here.”

Damn. “Is that the only place it could be?”

Naito closes the door, slips something into his waistband. A gun. I hate guns. It’s
not just that they’re lethal and that one of them killed Kelia, but it feels like
a bad omen to see this one. This break-in has gone well so far, but that could change
in an instant.

“This is where it’s most likely to be, but no,” Naito says. “My father could have
put it somewhere else.”

His gaze sweeps the room. We don’t have time to do a complete search of the compound—Aren’s
probably already losing patience—but we need to be sure we’re not leaving it behind.

“I think Lee’s already been here,” Naito says. His mouth is pinched. It’s his fault.
There’s no denying that. His grief blinded him, and he made a decision that could
cost us the war.

But I can’t find the will to be angry at him. Instead, I say, “We should get out of
here.”

He nods.

“But we can’t leave the research here,” I add. “Find a match or a lighter or something.
We’ll burn the place down.”

God, I sound like an arsonist, but we have to make sure we don’t miss anything that
will allow the vigilantes to easily reproduce the serum.

I leave Naito to search the lab and head back to the main room. The wet bar catches
my attention. There could be a lighter there, and alcohol is flammable. Some of it
is, at least.

Ducking behind it, I start rummaging through the bottles. Most of them are red wines,
mostly Pinot Noir, but there’s some vodka and rum, too. Those might fuel a fire. If
I can find a matchbook.

There’s a shallow basket behind one expensive-looking bottle, but it contains nothing
but old corks, a simple corkscrew, and some pocket change. Nothing to start a fire
with.

“Did you find any…” Naito’s voice fades out, and he tilts his head to the side. That’s
when I hear it, too, a whirling, clicking sound. I look to my left, where a staircase
leads down to a lower level.

“Basement?” I ask quietly.

“Yeah,” Naito whispers.

We should just leave—everyone knows not to go into the basement when unidentified
sounds are coming out of it—but Naito’s already heading that way. I mutter under my
breath and follow him.

The basement isn’t a dark, gloomy hole. It’s brightly lit and is being used as an
office. File cabinets line an entire wall, and a shiny, executive-sized desk is set
up in the room’s center. On the end of that desk, a laser printer spits out page after
page. It’s responsible for the sounds we’re hearing, and as we reach the bottom of
the stairs and turn toward it, a hand reaches up to grab the newly printed documents.

It’s Lee. He’s sitting on the floor, hunched over a tablet computer. He doesn’t read
the pages that just printed; he clenches them in his fist. He hasn’t noticed us yet.
His attention moves back and forth between the tablet and the mess of papers that
are strewn all around him.

I glance at Naito. His jaw clenches. The barrel of his gun dips toward the floor.

His gun. I didn’t see him take it out, but as I watch, he seems to regain his resolve.
He reaims at Lee’s head.

“Naito,” I whisper. Something is obviously wrong with his brother. Lee’s eyes are
puffy, bloodshot, and he’s pale.

Naito lets out a breath and lowers his gun all the way. “Lee.”

The other human ignores him.

“Lee,” Naito says again, more emphatically this time.

Lee finally looks up. “I’ve killed her.”

“What?” Naito takes a step toward his brother.

“I’ve killed her.” Lee’s gaze takes in the papers around him. “Paige. The Sight serum
is fatal.”

I
FEEL THE
blood drain from my face. My skin becomes cold and prickly. “Paige is dead?”

Lee stares at the papers around him, shaking his head. “They’ve all died. Within six
months. They just…we’ll just die. I didn’t know. I swear to God, if I had, I wouldn’t
have injected her.”

“Wait, Lee.” I grab his shoulder as I crouch in front of him, shake it to make him
meet my eyes. “Is Paige alive now?”

Tears pool in his eyes. “She’ll never forgive me for this.”

She’s still alive. I let out a breath, but my chest feels tight and achy. If Lee’s
right about this, she won’t be alive for more than six months. Neither will he, but
he seems more concerned about Paige than about himself.

“Where is she?” I ask.

He runs a hand through his jet-black hair. “With the Court fae. I wouldn’t let her
come here with me.”

“And where are the Court fae?” Naito asks, kneeling beside us. His gun is still in
his hand. His finger runs across the trigger guard as if he’s itching to fire the
weapon.

“I’m supposed to meet them at the turnoff.”