Tremble (24 page)

31

He laughed as I pulled myself upright. “Not exactly what I had in mind, but this works, too.”

“Don’t suppose I could talk you out of whatever you’re thinking, huh?”

He folded his arms and widened his grin. “You can try. I get a kick out of women begging me for things.”

Begging? What a frigging scumbag. “Sorry. I don’t beg.”

Without another word, he lunged for me as the elevator jerked upward. I managed to dodge him, but it wouldn’t last. There wasn’t a hell of a lot of room in here. He made another swipe, and I made another dodge. It probably would have gone on like that—back and forth until one of us finally got tired—but the elevator jolted to a stop, sending us both toppling to the floor.

“Oh,” I groaned, feeling a tiny bit queasy. “That can’t be good.” This was it. I finally understood Kale’s loathing for these things. I was never getting into another elevator for as long as I lived.

There was a horrible noise—a cross between a metallic crunch and an odd snapping sound. It was followed by the elevator whooshing into motion again—only this time it was in the wrong direction. Down.

And at about five times the normal speed.

I loved roller coasters. The thrill of soaring high above, inside and out, upside down, and sideways. It was the kind of crap I lived for. I’d done the free-fall ride at Great Adventure one year with Brandt. He’d hated it, keeling over promptly as our feet touched solid ground—but I’d been in heaven. As the elevator plummeted, I tried to remember what the appeal of it all was.

I managed to climb to my feet again just as the car came to a bone-jarring halt. Of course, the motion of the sudden stop brought me to the floor again. I made another attempt to stand, but the agent, pale-faced and determined, stumbled upright first and shoved me back, reaching toward the ceiling to knock out the emergency door. It clattered open and he wasted no time jumping and hefting himself up. I tried to grab his legs, but he kicked out, getting lucky—or so I told myself—and caught me in the side of the head.

Everything swam and I went down again as the elevator jerked into motion once more. Down. Stop. Down. Stop. I didn’t know how many floors the building had or exactly how high up we were—and I had no desire to find out.

Positioning myself beneath the hole, I stretched and kicked off the ground to reach the opening. It took me three tries, but I finally grabbed the edge and hauled myself to the top of the car. The agent was there, balanced precariously on the edge, trying to reach a metal bar that jutted several feet above his head. He was too short.

I peered over the side, hoping we’d stopped near a set of floor doors, but there was nothing for at least several feet. I could try dropping down to a ledge below, but there was a chance I wouldn’t have enough time to pry open the doors and slip through before the car started falling again. I didn’t relish the idea of getting crushed. Plus, there was a chance I could miss and plummet to my death.

The agent let out a growl, still trying and failing to get to the bar. I was about to tell him we should work together, but my stomach lurched as the car began to fall again.

The guy screamed, losing his balance and lurching to the side—and over the edge. He caught the rim of the car, but by the time I crept toward him, his fingers had started to slide. “Here.” I extended my arm. “Let me help you!”

He didn’t argue, making a move to take my hand. But a terrible squeal filled the air, and the car jerked a few feet. The sudden shift dislodged his grip from the elevator.

I peered over the side and watched the darkness below swallow him. He didn’t scream, which made the whole thing more eerie. Despite the fact that he was an agent and had technically tried to kill me, I said a silent prayer for him. No one deserved to die like that.

Standing, I took a deep breath and was careful to move slowly as I inched across the top of the car to the wall. I had no intention of falling to the same fate as the agent.

The elevator had slipped a few feet and I saw a bar with a floor door beside it. There was a good chance I could reach it. If successful, I could swing to the small ledge and hopefully pry the doors open.

On tiptoes, I reached for the bar and prayed Kale and Aubrey were having better luck than I was. My fingers brushed the surface, but I was too far away to wrap them around for a good grip. The car shimmied, and I was sure it would continue its plunge, but it remained still. Deep breath. I could do this.

I tried leaning forward and stretching, but it was no use. I was a hair too short. My only chance was to jump and hope I caught it on the first try. Any sudden movements would send the car crashing down.

“Okay, Dez,” I said to myself. There was a slight echo and the hint of smoke. “This is just another stunt. Something they said you couldn’t do.”

I thought about Kale and how my life had changed since he’d stumbled into it. I wasn’t a believer in fate. We all made our own way—despite what Ginger would have me believe. And my way was to live a long, crazy life with Kale by my side. It didn’t end at the bottom of an elevator shaft in a Denazen building.

Bending my knees slightly, I arched my back, arms up, and jumped.

For a drawn-out moment, there was nothing but air beneath my feet. A bubble of panic formed in my chest, but it faded as my fingers closed around the cool metal, right hand locking like a vice.

A moment of victory, followed by one of terror as my left hand slipped off. The car beneath quaked as I used the tip of my sneaker to give myself the nudge I needed to grip the bar again—this time with both hands.

With an echoing scream and a rush of stale air, the car dropped from under me, disappearing into the abyss. There was a deafening noise and a reverberating rattle as it hit the ground. Judging from the distance, I’d gotten off just in time.

“Holy shit,” I gasped, and swung toward the small ledge. My feet touched solid ground again, and I pressed myself tight against the elevator doors with a silent prayer of thanks.

The doors weren’t as hard to pry open as I expected. I slipped through and fell to the floor to catch my breath as alarms wailed all around. I let myself rest for a moment. A short span from the count of one to ten—that was all I could afford. Kale was still here somewhere. And so was Aubrey. He’d helped us, and I wouldn’t leave him behind any more than I would have one of the others. Whether he liked it or not, he was one of us now.

I wondered what this would do to his relationship with Able…

By the time I got to ten, I was on my feet and running. The building had erupted into chaos. People were running down the hall—some with fire extinguishers and others with boxes and stacks of papers. They were all too busy to pay any attention to me.

Room after room was the same. People trying to put out little fires everywhere.

I stopped short as I passed the holding room where they’d kept me earlier. There was someone inside. Flash of flannel and a mop of unruly dark hair. “Vince?”

He looked up from the charred remains of the desk, startled. “Dez!” Stepping to me, he threw his arms around me and squeezed. “You’re all right!”

I returned the hug, slightly awkward, and pulled away. Vince was a nice guy and all, but we’d never been hug-friendly. “What are you doing in here? What’s going on? Are the others here, too?”

“Whoa. Slow down.” He took a deep breath. “We got a tip that the vial was in here. I’m searching while Sue and Dax and the others take the guided tour with your friend Aubrey.”

“Kale! Where’s Kale? Have you seen him?”

“He’s looking for you. I think Denazen figured out he was playing for the other team.”

“We should find the others. Regroup. This place is a madhouse, but that doesn’t mean someone won’t get bagged and tagged. Plus, whatever’s on fire is spreading. The whole place is liable to go up like a roman candle any minute now.”

Vince chuckled. “There’s no fire, Dez. This is the work of a Resident. Carley, I think her name is.”

Carley. The name sounded so familiar. It took me a moment, but I remembered where I’d heard it before. “That’s the freak-show who made me think they’d kidnapped Mom back in September.”

Vince nodded. “Apparently she’s done with Denazen.” He turned back to the desk. “Go find Kale. I have a couple places left to look, then I’m right behind. I want to be sure we don’t miss it.”

I didn’t think for a minute they’d stashed the vial in here, but I didn’t correct him. He was finally taking part in the action, and I knew from experience it felt good to do something productive and helpful. One last nod and I was out the door and racing down the hall.

The entire building had erupted in chaos, and I needed to find Kale. Bursting through the door at the end of the hallway, I twisted to go left but froze when I saw an agent flying full speed in my direction.

I pivoted to the right and found Kale. He was on the other end of the hall, crouched low to the ground. His hand pressed flat against the linoleum as a swirl of black gathered, going from wall to wall.

When he looked up and saw me coming, it was too late.

32

“Dez, no!” he screamed, jumping to his feet. His expression contorted—pure panic. Something rare on Kale’s face. He pointed to the ceiling. “Up!”

With the inky black mass barreling toward the agent—
toward me
—I froze and looked up. Above my head was a thin pipe that ran the length of the room. Kicking off the ground with all my strength, I grabbed the pipe and drew my legs up just as the churning mass zoomed past. I counted to ten—to be safe—then dropped to the floor and turned to watch the darkness continue on its path. Either the agent didn’t understand, or he was so oblivious that he didn’t see, but he hadn’t made any attempt to move. He was still coming fast.

And then he wasn’t.

Kale’s darkness hit him. The agent never even slowed. One minute he was only a few feet away, zooming toward us and solid, the next he was a million tiny particles of dust scattered in my face. I cringed, waving a hand back and forth to not breathe him in.

“Are you okay?” Kale said, coming up behind me. “I almost—”

“I’m fine. Promise. Cavalry has arrived. I just came from Vince, and he said Mom and Dax are in the building searching for captives.”

“They’re in the building?” Kale’s eyes went wide. “How did they get inside?”

“According to Vince, some of the Residents Denazen thought were wrapped around its fat little finger aren’t so compliant anymore. Seems Brandt and Devin organized one hell of a coup.”

He smiled. “Trojan horse. Like what Kiernan did at the hotel.”

My mouth fell open, and for a second all I could do was stand there and stare. Just for a second, though. The next, I threw my arms around him, squeezing as tight as I possibly could.

He returned the embrace then pulled away. “It’s confusing. I can only see fragments. And sometimes the things I see don’t make any sense. What I just said, I don’t understand. I can’t see the memory clearly. But I have a good idea what’s real and what’s fake now.”

“This means it’s fading, Kale. We’re going to be okay.”

He kissed me quickly on the forehead and took my hand. “Hurry. This is our last chance to find the vial.”

“We have the case of Domination. Forget the vial—I’ll take my chances. There’s no way we’re going to find it now. This place is huge and we have no idea where it’s being kept.” At this point, we were only pushing our luck. I was free, I’d found Kale, and we had the serum. Brandt used to tell me I didn’t know when to walk away. I’d done some growing up since then, though, and that wasn’t the case anymore.

“There’s one last place to look,” Kale insisted. He tugged me forward and I let him. “Come on.”

We sprinted to the other side of the building—floor sub-level seven—and climbed staircase after staircase. The higher we got the more activity we saw. The smoke grew thicker. I kept telling myself that it wasn’t real, like Vince said, but it smelled real. It felt real, too. The temperature in the building seemed to have jumped a good thirty degrees.

Kale pulled me into an unmarked room at the end of the hall and closed the door behind us. We entered a wide landing that overlooked a room full of scientific equipment. Microscopes, rows of beakers and tubes, and a huge glass tank full of water. It was the one thing that looked ridiculously out of place. It reminded me of something you’d see at an aquarium. A shark tank—or maybe a mermaid.

Crap.

If there were mermaid Sixes out there, I was turning in my membership card.

Kale took my hand and pulled me down to the second landing, pointing to a row of metal cabinets. “Marshal brought in a scientific team. This is where they did the research on the blood with the formula that was stolen from Wentz. They might be keeping it here.”

“They might be,” someone said from the doorway above us. “But wouldn’t that just be too easy?”

We looked up to find Kiernan standing in the open doorway.

“Isn’t this a nipple twist.” She looked from me to Kale, eyes settling on our joined hands. There was red-hot fury in her eyes, as well as a spark of hurt. “Mind explaining, lover boy?”

“I told you,” Kale said slowly. His fingers tightened around mine. “Nothing could make me forget the girl I love.”

She blinked, staring like she’d heard him wrong. “So it was all nothing? Everything we shared? You didn’t love me at all?”

While I’d never been driven to the same level of desperation Kiernan had, I understood the way she felt. Sort of, anyway. Dad had ignored me most of my life. I did anything and everything possible to get his attention. To feel some kind of connection. I’d wanted the same thing she did. A family. The difference was, I found friends. There were people out there who genuinely cared about me, and with them in my life, Dad’s lack of interest didn’t matter quite so much. My sister hadn’t had that. I’d seen the way Dad—
Cross
—treated her. She had to have seen it, too. She might not be willing to admit it just yet, but I was betting Kiernan had finally realized the love she craved wasn’t going to come from Marshal Cross, so she’d foolishly pinned her hopes on Kale.

Kale’s lips twisted into an angry scowl as she started down the first set of stairs. “It was all a lie. Something you forced on me. I love Dez. I’ve always loved
Dez
, and only her. The things that happened between us weren’t real, and they weren’t about love.”

“Maybe not at first, but it turned into something more,” she insisted. There was the slightest crack in her voice. Desperation and betrayal. Despite what she’d done, my heart hurt for her. It didn’t excuse her actions—there was always a choice—but she was hurting.

He shook his head. “No. It didn’t.”

Kiernan stepped onto our landing. “I’m sorry I lied to you, Kale. It was the only way to make you see the truth. Daddy only wants what’s best for us—
for you
.” She pointed to me, lip curling into a cruel smile. “She doesn’t love you. She’s only using you to take us out.”

Kale once told me that he loved how I never made a big deal out of his social awkwardness. How I accepted him the way he was, even though he didn’t get the jokes others did or sometimes took things too literally. He didn’t understand because he’d been a prisoner at Denazen since his birth, every detail of his life at the mercy of cruel men with their own twisted agendas. But I didn’t
accept
these things. I
loved
them. Kale was Kale, and there was no one else on earth like him. He wasn’t your average chocolate chip cookie. No. Kale was a mocha cookie with coffee-flavored chips and a gooey caffeinated center. He was one of a kind—and I wouldn’t have changed that for anything on earth.

“What’s best for me is Dez, not you. You’re—” He tilted his head, lost in thought for a moment. “You’re crackers on crazy,” he declared, proud of the analogy. When he responded in true Kale fashion, the part of me that had shriveled away when he left came bounding back to life, bigger and brighter than before.

It was crazy on a cracker, but God, I loved this guy.

“Fine. Go ahead,” she said with an ugly sneer aimed at me. “Smile. Laugh. Think you won because you turned him against me. How long will your stupid happiness last without this?”

She reached into her pocket and pulled out something small. Balanced between her thumb and pointer was a glass tube filled halfway with thick red liquid. Penny’s blood. The vial.

She was the one who had it.

Kale tensed, ready to pounce, but I stopped him.

Kiernan didn’t miss it. She laughed and wiggled the vial, blowing him a kiss. “I know what you’re thinking, Dez.” The blood coated the inside of the glass, turning it an opaque red. “You’re thinking no big, right? There’s still a chance with that batch of Domination you stole. A fifty percent chance of survival is better than zero, right?”

I opened my mouth, then closed it. How did she know they’d taken the drug? Had Devin been caught?

As if reading my mind, she nodded and I tried not to panic as she tossed the vial into the air, then caught it. “Dad had a feeling you’d go for it so he left an extra-special batch in the lab. I’m sure you guys have snagged it by now.”

“Special?” Kale asked. He inched forward as Kiernan backed away. She was on the second step now, leaning against the railing, and I was terrified that any sudden movement would cause her to drop the vial.

“
Very
special. Your batch shares some of the same ingredients as ours—only it’s missing a few
key
elements.”

“It’s lethal,” Kale said, fingers curling around the banister.

“Wickedly so,” she confirmed. “Takes a while, too. Guys in the lab said someone could last up to five days after taking it—and wish for death the entire time.”

I pushed aside the sick feeling in my stomach and stepped up to meet Kale, who’d paused at the base of the stairs. “Why even tell me?”

Kiernan backed up another step. With a smile I’d never forget, she wiggled the vial again over the edge of the railing and said, “Because I wanted the satisfaction of seeing your face when I did this—”

Time slowed. A scream spilled from my lips, the agonized sound bouncing off the walls and echoing through the corridor. I threw myself forward to catch the vial as it dropped over the side of the banister, but it was too far. The tips of my fingers brushed the edge but instead of drawing it closer, I flicked it farther away. Horrified, I watched as it fell, crashing not into the large tank of water but to the concrete floor below and shattering, the small amount of liquid splattering everywhere.

I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. My future was there on that floor. On the stairs above me, Kiernan laughed, and when I climbed to my feet and turned, Kale was backing her up against the wall. The tips of his finger swirled black.

I grabbed his arm and pulled back. “Stop—this is between us. Me and her.”

If Kale disagreed, he didn’t show it. With a simple nod, he stepped back to our landing as I took his place in front of the girl who had tried so hard to shred my life to bits. There was no fear in her eyes. Only resentment.

I knew the feeling. Any love or sympathy I had for my
sister
was officially gone.

“You had everything,” she whispered.

“So you decided to take it?” I countered. “I have a newsflash for you, Kiernan. You didn’t get to grow up with your father—lucky, by the way—but neither did I. Marshal Cross
isn’t
my dad.”

She looked like a five-year-old who had just been informed the Tooth Fairy was a fraud. “Liar!”

“Why the hell would I lie about that? He told me himself. He’s not my flesh and blood—he’s yours. And trust me, you can have him.”

She started to speak but I pushed forward, knocking her flush against the wall.

“You had to see who he was—what he was doing. And you still helped him. You helped him burn down the hotel.
You
killed Rosie. You took Kale from us. From
me
. And why—so you could get the approval of a man who doesn’t give a crap about you?”

“My father loves me!” she screamed. But there was no conviction in her words. She didn’t believe it any more than I did.

“No, Kiernan. He doesn’t. Marshal Cross doesn’t love anyone. He’s not capable of love. You’re so desperate to win his approval that you don’t see what’s really going on.”

I took a deep breath. “I thought we were blood,” I said, grabbing her hand. “I could have forgiven almost anything. You were confused.
He played you
. I understand that. Sleeping with Kale, helping Able—I might have been able to get over all that.
Eventually
. Because you did it to me. But what you did to Rosie—and
Kale
? Dropping that vial didn’t just kill me, Kiernan. It killed other people. Innocent people. People I care about.” I leaned closer. “Those are lines you shouldn’t have crossed.”

Kiernan let out a nervous laugh. “So, what? You’re going to kill me?”

I hadn’t crossed that line yet—and I hoped I’d never have to. As much as a large part of me wanted to, I wasn’t going to start with her. Backing away, I let go of her hand and said, “I don’t have to. If you stick with Cross and Denazen, you’re killing yourself.”

“Maybe—but at least you went first.” She wasn’t looking at me. Her head was tilted up.

The next few things were kind of a blur. Kiernan winked and stepped aside. At the same time, two echoing pops split the air. I didn’t know what they were at first and there was no time to react. For a normal person, at least.

In a flash, Kale shot forward and elbowed Kiernan in front of me, while at the same time yanking me hard down the first two steps. She screamed and lunged forward, but Kale pulled me from her path and she fell to the landing. I blinked. Just once. One minute Kale was beside me, the next he was propelling himself up the stairs toward the agents who had burst into the lab.

I watched for a minute as they danced on the landing above us—trading blows and swinging back and forth in what looked like a choreographed Hollywood fight scene. One swung and Kale ducked, sending him over the banister. His screams faded, ending with an echoing
thump
as his body crashed to the ground below, to the left of where the vial had fallen.

Kale loved the thrill of the fight but had obviously had enough. At the tips of his fingers, the black mass began to swirl, and the remaining agent—the one who’d fired the gun—took a step back.

I was so wrapped up in watching Kale, I’d forgotten all about Kiernan. Unfortunately, she hadn’t forgotten about me. She was climbing to her feet, blocking me from the stairs—and Kale. The front of her light gray T-shirt was splattered with macabre red and I thought she might have spilled some of the vial on her.

She saw me watching her and laughed. No. It was more like a cackle. She tugged at the shirt and I could hear the wet sound it made, sick and wrong. With a nod toward my shoulder, she said, “I know, I know. It’s worse than yours. Probably fatal.”

Mine?

I followed her gaze and nearly crumbled. The air left my lungs in a single, chilling breath. Down the front of my shirt was my own trail of macabre blood, spilling from a sick-looking hole in my shoulder. One I hadn’t even noticed.