“You done?” Nancy asked, her forehead wrinkled.
Aya nodded. “Take me to the gate.”
Nancy took her on a completely different path to the outer walls. Aya could never track her way through the maze of alleys and narrow streets and strategically placed dead ends, but of course, that was the whole idea. When they reached the gate, a guard came out of a little hut whose windows glowed blue-green with computer screens. He unlocked the exit door and Aya peered out into the vast, windy fields beyond.
“Wait.”
Aya pivoted at the sound of the familiar voice. Aaron peeled himself away from the interior shadows and approached her. The guard fell back into his little hut and Nancy, with a respectful nod to Aaron, melted back into the city labyrinth.
Though Aya longed to make a run for the field, she folded her hands and looked up at the approaching Air, who wore a different expression—owned a separate demeanor altogether, actually—than that of the premier.
Aaron was older than his leader, somewhere in his fifties, Aya guessed, and his coloring was much paler than the premier’s tanned, worn appearance. He cocked his head as he regarded her.
“Yes?” she prompted.
“How can you look so human,” he murmured, “when you are so clearly not?”
She did not move and kept her features as still as stone. Evolution was the Children’s greatest secret—even greater than their hidden domain and their means of travel across the planet. No Primary or Secondary knew of the choice presented to each Child. None knew that some humans who now walked Aboveground had been born Within.
“What you did with the earth,” he went on, staring at her with bald curiosity, “seems impossible. For you to have been . . . that. And now you are . . . this. I have never seen a Secondary do anything like that.”
She sensed her hair respond to him, the long white tendrils coiling around her wrists like vines. His eyes dropped to the motion, then widened with wonder. Not with fear or mistrust or doubt.
Perhaps in this man she might find an ally. Perhaps someone more sympathetic and less leery than the premier.
“We are not Secondary,” she replied. It had never been declared a secret, that statement about her people’s history.
Aaron crossed his arms. “What do you mean?”
Aya laced her fingers. “Children are actually Primaries. We are sisters and brothers to humanity, born as one being at the dawn of time, and then separated as life changed with the earth.”
A heavy pause followed. “How come no scientists or archaeologists ever found skeletons or evidence of you, like they did early humans?”
“Because we die Within.” Or, if a Child had already evolved, they died Aboveground and no one was the wiser.
“Fascinating,” Aaron breathed.
She lifted her shoulders in a movement she’d copied from Keko. “So you see, we are not truly Secondary. We’ve always been here. And we will always be—”
A klaxon roared throughout the compound, the small device sitting on top of the guard hut throwing out the terrible, shrieking, repetitive alarm. She doubled forward, hands over her ringing ears. When she straightened, she watched with dread as the guard yanked shut the iron exit doors to the compound, locking her inside the walls.
After screaming something to her she could not hear over the cacophony, Aaron took off running back through the tangle of buildings. That guard had a phone pressed to his ear, his hands flying over various keyboards. She could stand here and wait to see when they’d actually let her go . . . or she could follow Aaron and find out the reason behind the horror in his eyes.
His feet disappeared around the first left corner and she sprinted after him before he could take another turn and be lost to the labyrinth.
They ran and ran, this path far more linear and shorter than the other two she’d been pulled along. Very soon she and Aaron burst into the tiny square in front of the church she’d just left. Air elementals spilled from the bland, narrow buildings, streaming toward the church, their hands to their mouths and eyes turned up to another alarm blaring on top of the steeple.
Aaron sliced through the growing crowd, pushing up the steps and toward the doors. Aya followed, taking advantage of the space his people afforded him.
The church doors gave way under Aaron’s mighty push, and only after Aya tumbled in after him did he realize she’d followed. But if he meant to shout at her or kick her out, there was no time because Nancy was running down the back hall toward them, panic making her face white and her eyes impossibly wide.
It was then Aya heard the screaming.
A woman’s scream, a piercing wail that shot down from somewhere on the second floor. It never ended. Just kept running on a terrified, intensifying loop.
“Is that Hillary?” Aaron demanded of Nancy when she finally reached them.
Out of breath, Nancy replied, “Yes. Are the gates secured?”
Aaron nodded, ashen face turned to the stairs.
Footsteps pounded on the floor above, how many sets Aya couldn’t say. At least three, maybe more. An explosion of shouting and the distinct sounds of a fight, fists and kicks and more things breaking. It was a violent one that made the scene she’d witnessed earlier through the premier’s office door feel like a child’s temper tantrum. Men shouted and grunted, cried out in pain or in threat. She could make sense of none of it.
A million emotions sailed through the building, bombarding her, wreaking havoc with her human senses. None of them were good.
“The premier!” Aaron had his hand on the railing, one foot poised on the bottom step.
Nancy grabbed his arm, pulled him back. “Already dead. Hillary found him in his bathroom. Throat slit.”
Aya felt like the earth was taking her under while locked in this human body.
The fight upstairs rolled closer, the walls practically bowing out from the force of multiple bodies repeatedly striking them. The sounds were almost as deafening as the klaxon that still blared outside.
Then all of a sudden it stopped, the air charged with dread. There was a different struggle above, this one more focused, less intense. The muffled sounds of men’s terse voices drifted down.
Two males appeared at the top of the stairs, each clamping hard to one of Jason’s arms. Jason. Who was covered in blood.
FIFTEEN
By the time they got back to the B and B, the rain had started up again. A teasing spatter this time, thrown about in the wind. They walked side by side along the quiet road—the first time one of them had not led or been chased. They did not speak. Keko fought the urge to reach for his hand.
Griffin opened the door to their room, and this time the slow inward swing of the door didn’t scare her. Didn’t confuse her. Because she’d made her decision and got what she needed from him.
And now she just had him. For tonight, at least.
Still standing on the porch, she peered inside. “It’s nice. A bed and everything.” Her laugh was quiet and nervous, and she didn’t recognize the sound of it. Hated it, even. “Haven’t slept on one of those in a while.”
Slowly, so slowly, he pulled the key out of the lock and turned around to face her. She loved the way he moved, had loved it from the first moment she’d seen him in that parking garage. Loved it even more as she remembered how he’d selflessly vaulted himself off that rock to attack the treeman.
She’d gotten spooked when she’d stood in this exact spot earlier, weighted down by choices and feeling buried in her revived feelings for him. So she’d headed down to that bar, ordered two burgers to go, and sat down to have a good think. A small part of her had hoped he wouldn’t come looking for her.