walker saga 07 - earth (11 page)

There’s no reason for the ability to be defective. Weaker, yes, but we must be on the right path.
Brace’s words were a small comfort, but still I worried.

Lucy appeared to be asleep, her mate keeping her upright by wrapping her tightly in his arms.

Brace noticed where my attention was.
You can sleep, Red. I’ll keep you safe.

He had said those words to me so many times, and they were always true. I knew I could rely on him to protect me, in all situations – except the final ritual. There were some things which were outside even Brace’s control. The Seventine were one of those things. When it came to those creeps, it was up to me to do the protecting, and I would not let him down.

I don’t need to sleep. I’d rather just sit here with you and watch this spectacular scenery.

His amusement flittered through my mind. We had left the city, and these outer lying country areas were sparser but no more attractive, littered with trash, rubble, car shells, and the evidence of humans living on the streets. Just like downtown. Was there nowhere in this entire state that had escaped the destruction of the gangers?

I was totally sick of waiting and holding on to the damn tether. Patience had never been my strongest attribute, and right then, with all of the pressure on me, I was even more antsy than usual. I reached for the cord again. Trying to trace toward it. I felt the familiar jerking pull, like my ability was attempting to kick in, but there just wasn’t enough energy available. The backlash was minimal this time at least. But still, if I couldn’t trace myself, I would never have enough power to bring the other three across.

I dug deeper into my energy well, searching for something in that dark depth. A swirl of the ancient, alien-like power wrapped around me. I was instantly reminded of the days I’d been scared to death of what lay in this well. I had feared that which I did not recognize or understand.

Now, though, we were as one, and I understood exactly what my center held: a chamber that could cycle through masses of power. Others’ power and my own. It was depthless because I had immeasurable capabilities to absorb and transfer energy. Of course, I wasn’t a god; I did have my limits. Like with the cage in Que’s glass mansion, and the one on Nephilius. I often reached a point where the energy had to go somewhere –

Wait.
My filing cabinet.

I had sucked down a crap-ton of energy on Abernath and the drawer was full. I’d forgotten about it, because the moment I slid the metaphorical drawer closed, all of the pressure and energy feeling just disappeared. That compartment was all kinds of wicked.

Tell Colton to hold on to Luce.
I let go of my handhold, excitement rocketing through me.

Of course, right then I was jolted when we hit a bump, and almost fell off the back of the car. Brace caught me in time. Focusing again, hoping like heck that when I opened that drawer I’d have access to all the power. Only one way to find out if Earth rendered that compartment useless.

I gave a sharp tug on the mental lock on the cabinet, and it slid back with ease. Power burst through me, and for the first time since arriving on Earth the cloying pressure on my Walker energy faded away. I sat straighter, rejuvenated again. It was all there, glorious and shimmering. Filed away into its spaces and waiting for me to utilize. I reached for the golden cord again, and this time as I went to trace I siphoned off some of the glorious goodness in the filing cabinet.

The jerking sensation was as strong as it had ever been, and since all four of us were touching, everyone traced across with me.

It worked!
I managed to shriek through our bond.
We wasted so much damn time.

Brace didn’t answer; he was taking a second to orient himself. Since tracing was almost instantaneous, we were already at our destination. I did the same.

The first thing I registered was the smell. It was bad. Like really, freaking bad. I coughed a few times, before lifting my arm and pressing my sleeve against my mouth. I slowed my breathing, taking in the shallowest breaths I could manage.

After a few moments I got the smell thing under control, and managed not to barf on myself or anyone else. My eyes finally stopped watering, so I was able to look around the very dimly lit space. The moment everything became clear, I almost lost the contents of my stomach again.

Oh, holy crap on cracker toast.
My eyes darted as I tried to process the multitude of images assaulting my senses. It was like my eyes and mind understood the scene we were currently standing in, but the horror was so consuming that a part of me refused to believe it. This was a slaughter house. A human female slaughterhouse.

I lurched to the side then and threw up. I didn’t have much in my stomach now, but it took a while for the heaves to slow. I could feel Brace at my side. He held my hair away and rubbed a hand over my back. This was becoming a common occurrence on Earth.

I sobbed as I vomited again. The odor. The blood. The empty eyes. It was haunting. Even when I closed my own eyes I could still see every single victim.

“It’s okay, baby, just breathe. Just breathe, Red.”

The soothing tone of his accent gave me moments of reprieve from the vileness of this room. Finally, stomach and throat aching, I stood up and buried my face into Brace’s chest. A few more shuddering sobs shook me, but I knew I had to pull myself together. I had to find the half-Walker female. She wasn’t in this room, but the tether was much stronger now. We must have just missed her.

“Abby!” Lucy’s horror-filled voice had my head jerking up from where it was cradled. “Where the hell have you traced us? Is she here somewhere?”

“No, I think we just missed her. She’s been moved from this room.” My words shook.

I reached up and wiped at my mouth a few times. I could still taste the sickness there.

Brace handed me a canvas-type bottle of water. He had a few of these skins stashed in his army pants. I quickly rinsed my mouth and spat. I sucked in a ragged breath, but I seemed to already be dealing better now. Compartmentalizing my emotions and trying to focus on our task.

My eyes scanned the space again, skipping over the multitude of mutilated bodies. I was pretending they were not there. We were in some sort of building. Not particularly large, but there were reflective surfaces surrounding us on all sides. Like mirrors, only a little different. The setup was odd. It reminded me of the interrogation rooms that used to be in those old cop shows we’d watched before television bit the dust. But this room was on a much larger scale. Could it be an interrogation warehouse?

Even though I was trying not to focus on the girls I still saw the blood pooling under cut throats, not to mention the multitude of bruises and lacerations. I had to harden my heart, because I couldn’t help these girls any longer. But I silently promised each of them that if I found out who had done this, those humans would suffer.

For now, my half-Walker wasn’t in this room. It was time to follow the tether. Here’s hoping it led me not only to her, but also to the animals responsible for this mess.

I didn’t speak as I started to follow the cord, my boots squishing into grime and fluids as I stepped through the bodies. The floor was heavy with blood, the liquid now congealed and the bodies cold.

The girls had been dead for some time, but my half-Walker had only recently left the room. Had she been stuck in this room with all this death? Or was there some other reason that this was the place my tether had brought me? The golden cord was very strong now, with just a slight transparency. We were heading in the right direction.

Lucy’s wide blue eyes were shimmery and rimmed in red. A sprinkling of tears littered their multi-colored depths, and I could tell she was fighting to control her emotions.

Colton and Brace’s faces were hard to read as they followed behind me. Well, actually, if carved-from-stone and ready-to-kill-anything-that-moved was an expression, then that was the one they wore. I could imagine them tearing through the gangers without a second thought.

I wondered then what hardness was currently in my features. There was no denying that I had lost little pieces of my innocence over the course of the past year. I was almost nineteen, but it felt as if it was a hundred years since I had stepped through Quarn’s shimmery portal on Earth.

The cord led us to a gray and white brick wall. Like those thick, reinforced-style bricks. I reached forward to rest my hands against the solid structure. How were we supposed to get through here?

“Stand back.” Brace’s voice was a bite of steel. Cold and cutting.

Colton shuffled Lucy and me behind him, the three of us moving a few feet from the wall. I watched from beneath Colton’s arm. I expected Brace to throw an energy ball or something at the wall, but instead he simply cocked back his arm and, with the force of a sledgehammer, slammed his fist into the structure. Noise and dust exploded around us. When my vision finally cleared, and I saw what he’d done, my jaw pretty much fell to the floor. With one punch he’d leveled the entire wall, leaving a six-foot high and four-foot wide gap in it.

“Note to self – do not spar with Brace.” Lucy looked impressed as she followed my mate across the gap and into the other side.

Colton snorted. “I could have done that too, little pixie. He just beat me to it.”

Lucy patted his arm – which was as strong and nicely muscled as Brace’s. “I know, wolf, I know.”

Even after punching down a wall, my mate didn’t look any happier. And I totally got that. The images of those females continued pounding through my head, and the fact that we shared a bond and mental connections was not making it any easier to forget. We were bouncing our anger off each other, and this was not allowing any of it to leave our systems.

Bring on the gangers. Finding them would definitely help with releasing more of my pissed-offness.

The tether didn’t seem to care about walls or buildings which lay in its path, simply sending me along the shortest route to my girl. Luckily, though, the next time we hit a wall, there was doorway which led into a long hall.

Our footsteps were silent as we trekked in a single line formation along the narrow corridor. Yellow, fluorescent lights flickered above us. I wasn’t sure if they had electricity here, or if the hum in the air was from a massive generator. Blood droplets trailed the ground, and an eerie silence engulfed everything.

I really hoped Earth wasn’t messing with my tethering ability, because I needed to find my half and get out of this place like yesterday. This scene was straight out of a horror film. Weird flicking lights. Old abandoned building. Blood trails on the ground. Massacre in the previous room.

Something told me that my sense of apprehension was not misplaced.

Although, it didn’t hurt that I had my very own live-action GI Joe pressed close to my back. Brace’s warmth kept me from losing my mind, and it definitely kept some of the fear at bay.

I was distracted by my tethered cord. The gold suddenly flared to life, and the last of the transparency disappeared.
Crap.
She was close.

The hallway was ending, a door at the end signaling that we would have to move to another area. As we closed in on it, I could hear voices. Lots of them.

“Looks like someone is having a party and didn’t invite us.” Lucy’s voice was hard, not her usual trilling song. “You all know I hate to be a party crasher, but hey, you want to kill a dozen women in cold blood, seems you might need a little crashing in your life.”

None of us would be able to move past that scene until there was some form of punishment inflicted. Sure, two wrongs don’t make a right, but sometimes crimes need to be punished. That’s how the great cycle works. And I was a bit of a believer in ‘an eye for an eye’. I was going to be taking some eyes today, for sure.

Brace and Colton hesitated about three feet from the door which blocked the end of the hall. Lucy and I exchanged glances before turning back to our boys. What were they doing? After a few moments of them exchanging glares and furrowing brows, I finally tapped into the bond.

…
last battle I killed eight more than you. It’s my turn to take point.

Gods … I’m your damn princeps.

Great, the morons were wasting time arguing over which one of them got to go first.

Men!

We so did not have time for this. I reached for more of the energy in my filing cabinet. It was fairly depleted now after I had traced all of us here, but there was enough left.

Forming an energy ball – mine were so pretty, all laced in gold – I flung it free and blasted the door out into the darkness beyond. Cold rushes of air slapped at my face, and I was happy to know we were finally venturing out of the warehouse of death. Lucy and I wasted no time. We were out of there in an instant.

Brace and Colton swung their heads around to see our backs as we strode out the door and into the unknown. I heard sighs, but there were also some chuckles. No surprises there. We often irritated and amused them at the same time. Score one for female awesomeness.

They caught up with us immediately. Once we were clear of the warehouse, a briny scent slapped me in the face. Even though I couldn’t see it, I knew we were close to water. My eyes adjusted to the darkness in seconds and, as we continued moving, the concrete below shifted into wooden slatted decking. We were on docks.

I scanned the expanse of timber-clad jetty around us, finally noticing that about a hundred yards in the distance a group of humans huddled. I wasn’t sure if they had noticed us, but they most probably had, since I’d been kind of noisy making my point with the door.

I didn’t hesitate. I stalked closer before breaking into a run. These asshats were going down.

“Red!” Brace’s exasperation followed me.

I heard Colton chuckle. “Now you know how I feel. Being mated to these females is like trying to keep a sacred animal in a cage. They look beautiful and innocent, so you forget they’re wild creatures, and you want to protect them. Right until the moment you get too close and they rip your arm off.”