Page 81 of The Inheritance
He took my hand, squeezed it to his chest, and pointed to the exit, toward the gate. “Home.”
I nodded. “My home.”
Jovo put his paw on his chest and said, pronouncing the words very carefully. “Help.” He pointed at me. “Ada. Dan-ge-rous. Help.”
He waved his knives around and struck a dramatic pose.
It took me a minute. My nice new friend from a different world, who helped me kill an assassin from an alien planet, was determined to walk me home. Because it wasn’t safe. Gentleman Jovo.
I sat on the floor and laughed.
The trek from the anchor chamber to the gate was short. So short, I nearly cried. Only a few dozen yards on the other side of the anchor chamber the ground sloped downhill into a wide tunnel that led pretty much straight to the gate. I had wandered through the tunnels for days. I must’ve crossed above this tunnel several times, never finding access to it.
After the first few minutes I started running. Jovo kept up with me and we bounded through the passage, with Bear in the lead. The way was clear. All the monsters were either dead or too scared to get in our way.
We’d crossed the killing site of Malcolm’s team. I stopped long enough to pick up some aetherium charges. I didn’t look at the bodies.
The assault team had marked their path with white arrows painted on the walls. Following their route was easy.
We’d been running for what felt like an hour, when I saw an orange arrow on the wall. I remembered when Hotchkins drew it. We had reached the turn off to the mining site.
Finding London’s cave-in took no time at all. Two aetherium detonations later, we blasted a hole through the rubble. With my new strength, I could’ve dug through it, but I was in a hurry, and when I flexed, my talent conveniently marked the best place for an explosion.
We made it into the mining site. The bodies lay where they fell. Nothing fed on them, nothing touched them. They had been decomposing for a week and some were beginning to bloat. The four gress, however, had shrunk as the shrouds drained the last of their body fluids. I set off the remaining amulets one by one, until the dead gress became ash.
My mother was decomposing too, although much slower than the humans around her. I wrapped her in her robe, carried her into a side tunnel, to one of the dead ends, and placed her on the bottom of a shallow pool while Jovo stood guard. I used the last aetherium charge to collapse the passageway. Cold Chaos had no reason to go this way and with luck, her body would remain undiscovered.
I stood there by her tomb in silence for a long moment.
Thank you for your gift. I promise I won’t squander it.
The secret of the breach was hidden. It was time to go home.
Main blade, backup blade, four aetherium grenades…
Elias turned away from the table filled with his gear. Something was going on outside. He headed to the library’s entrance. Outside the window, the sunrise barely began, the street and the gate awash in the early dawn light.
Elias stopped by the tinted window. The gate was on his left. In front of it, Leo stood with his arms crossed. Kovalenko was on Leo’s right, lean, dark-haired, holding his bow. The cryo ranger was poised on his toes, the bow casually hanging in his hand. Kovalenko summoned energy projectiles, which his mind shaped into arrows. Contrary to the misleading name of his talent, they didn’t encase things in ice. When one of Kovalenko’s arrows struck, his target seized up, frozen in their tracks for a couple of moments, as if tased. The bow wasn’t strictly necessary, but it helped him aim.
To the right, at the mouth of the street, ten people had disembarked from a personnel carrier, grouping themselves around their leader. Tall and broad-shouldered, he towered over his team, and his bulky tactical armor, reinforced with adamant, only made him look larger. Anton Sokolov, a bastion Talent, a good solid tank with just the right amount of aggression. The woman next to him was older and willowy, her dark blond hair pulled back into a French braid. JoAnne Kersey, otherwise known as the Bloodmist. For some reason, a lot of women awakened as pulse carvers, high-burst damage dealers who used bladed weapons and diced their opponents into pieces in a controlled frenzy. JoAnne was one of the best.
Elias recognized a few other faces. All ten had the same charcoal and white patch on their gear: a dark square showing a shield with two stylized wings spreading from its sides. A faceless human bust rose out of the shield with a sharp corona of triangular rays stabbing outward from its head. It was meant to evoke guardian angels and general badassery, but to him it looked like some winged crash dummy thrust its head through the shield and was now stuck wearing it like a yoke.
The ten people on the street wore it proudly. The Guardian Guild had sent their A team to claim the Elmwood gate.
He didn’t hold it against Graham. It wasn’t personal. Graham was like a shark: always hungry and looking for something to sink his teeth into.
Krista walked out of the library’s depths and stopped next to Elias. A faint red glow traced her long dark fingers, a precursor to an inferno.
“Look at them all dressed up. Bless their hearts.”
“Are we ready?” Elias asked.
“We’re good.”
“London?”
“Geared and armed. If he isn’t happy about it, he’s keeping it to himself.”
