End Game (The Foundling Series) Read online

  Flailing against the Drosera, I scrabbled for soft tissue until he roared. A lucky shot on my part relieved him of his other eye. He was fighting blind. He spun aside, and I lurched free, thankful to have escaped however I managed it. Thankful until I heard a faint squeak of indignation when the Drosera snapped its jaws closed over thin air.

  Phoebe.

  That stupid, stupid, brave kid had come to my rescue.

  The pain in my side vanished, gone, forgotten. I leapt onto the Drosera’s back, sinking in my claws to anchor me, and I wound my tail around his throat as many times as it fit before I began to squeeze.

  It struggled against me, unwilling to go down without a fight. Phoebe kept buzzing him, distracting him, and she caused my blood to ice in my veins, a feat I couldn’t blame on Conquest this time.

  This kid was nursing a serious hero complex, and heroes didn’t always win in the real world.

  Tighter and tighter, I cinched my tail. Oxygen deprivation finally gave me a hand, and the creature slowed. Once he quit thrashing, I started chewing on his nape, gnawing through the hard plating an inch or so lower than my tail. Rich blood filled my mouth when I hit tendon and then bone, and I kept chewing for all I was worth, desperate to put him down so I could strangle Phoebe.

  The Drosera finally stopped twitching, and I plucked Phoebe out of the air with my tail, interrupting her victory dance, and dropped her into my front claws. Her eyes shone up at me with admiration that both warmed my heart and exasperated me. She chittered away while I clutched her against my chest, and I wished again that whatever barrier prevented me from grasping Convallarian could be erased without giving Conquest a firmer toehold. I understood the tone and intent from Cole much better than from her, but he had warned me most of her jabbering was just that — childish noises of enthusiasm.

  Tucking her close, I used one front claw and both back ones to climb the tree to Thom and deposit Phoebe in his arms.

  “I won’t let her escape again,” he promised. “I didn’t expect her to go after you.”

  I rumbled a sound that couldn’t decide if it wanted to be a growl or a sigh.

  “She is her father’s daughter.” Thom rubbed his cheek against the top of her head. “She’s got a lot of you in her too, more by the day. She idolizes you.”

  This time there was no debating. It was a sigh. A kid idolizing me was dangerous on every level, especially if my reckless behavior encouraged her to emulate me.

  A roar from farther afield drew my attention, and I scrabbled down the tree to rejoin the crush. I passed Adder’s remains and chalked him up to one of Cole’s kills based on the bite radius of his injuries.

  Miller, whose coils resembled a sock full of bubblegum balls, shot in front of me, plucking a harried female Bushta out of my path and swallowing her whole. I grunted thanks and kept running straight up to where Cole was lashing anyone who advanced too close to Portia, and therefore Maggie.

  Love for him spilled through me, and if I hadn’t already given him every inch of my heart, I would have at that moment. Portia wasn’t a weak link. She was experienced, savvy, and strong. But Mags was in there too, and she wasn’t prepared for the realities of the battlefield. Not that I had any room to talk. This was all horrifying and new to me too.

  Together we struck down the remaining Drosera and Bushta. Santiago sprinted toward the catapults and began disabling them while Portia checked the bunker for survivors. Downfield, Wu and Kapoor stood together, weapons clutched in their hands, and began the trek to join us. Above, the Malakhim lite picked off any stragglers. Once that was done to Able’s satisfaction, he landed on the back of a dead Drosera in its natural form, seeming fascinated with it.

  “Any sign of Sariah?” I panted. “She left before the fun started.”

  “Two of my best are following her. They’ll capture her and return her to you.”

  Personal experience with Sariah taught me it was doubtful she would be captured but hope never hurt anyone. Malakhim were experts at rooting out charun. Maybe they would succeed where I had failed. Or, dare to dream, she might resist arrest and get killed in the process. One less problem for us to solve.

  Ugh.

  What a very Conquest thing to think of, let alone hope for. When had wishing someone dead become okay? Granted, she had killed her fair share of innocents. More than. She was the engineer of Uncle Harold’s bargain with Famine that resulted in his death. I had plenty of reasons to hate her before she captured Cole and me then threw us into an underground bunker, but mostly I was just tired of her scheming. I had enough on my plate without adding more, and her specialty was noticing when I almost had it clear before dumping extra helpings on top.

  “We appreciate the assist.” I stuck out my arm, and we shook hands. “You and your men are impressive in battle.”

  “We’ve trained hard for the moment when it might make a difference.” He swept the field with a critical eye. “I believe this is a start.”

  Wu came to thank Able as well, going as far as to clap him on the back, and the young man beamed. I let them wrap up before summoning Wu to ask him a few questions.

  “What’s with the glow bug routine?” I had witnessed flares here and there, but his performance for Sariah was next level impressive. “You could always do that?”

  “It serves no purpose.” He rolled a shoulder, the fabric of his shirt red from the blood of his kills. “On our home terrene, the nights are long. The flares are meant to blind our nocturnal enemies to give us the upper hand. Here? It’s a parlor trick. One Father relishes.”

  “I was impressed.” Not gonna lie. “You had me fooled for the first minute or two.”

  “The bangles dampen our bond.” He flicked a glance at them. “I regret the necessity. I didn’t have a choice, and we had no way to get a warning to you.”

  “It’s okay.” I laughed. “More than okay. You sprung us. We’re not picky about how.”

  “Kapoor needs to rest.” Wu watched Kapoor check the fallen and ensure they didn’t rise. “He’s growing more restless the longer the hunt takes. He’s stopped eating or drinking. He’s too focused on his end goal.”

  “I didn’t expect Sariah to rally her forces so soon, or to use them to detain me. She’s hung up on the idea of Ezra. She wants in his good graces. Makes me wonder if it’s a manifestation of her mommy syndrome. She committed heinous acts to impress War and Thanases. Without them, who is she performing for? She’s achieved the peak. In her mind, she is the new War. What’s left but to reach higher?”

  “Father will kill her eventually.” Wu didn’t sound worried about her, but I had made that mistake one too many times. I wouldn’t again. “She can’t have but a handful of Drosera left unless she was breeding them on the sly too. There’s no telling how many clans she’s allied with, but we put a dent in her numbers today.”

  “Let’s hope she doesn’t buff it out and come at us harder next time.”

  “Three more clans were camped out about five miles from here. They rushed in when they heard the calls go up but turned and ran when they spotted you slaying Bushta to reach Phoebe.”

  “Did you see that kid? She almost gave me a heart attack.” I unerringly found Cole and prayed he had been too busy staying alive to notice me almost getting Phoebe killed. “Talk about little but fierce.”

  Wu attempted a smile, but it was too heavy, and it sagged on his face.

  “How long do you propose we let Kapoor rest?” I rotated my shoulder, unhappy to find it tender again. “Are we talking overnight or … ?”

  “He’ll require a solid twelve hours at least. Twenty-four would be ideal. Either way, Thom will have to sedate him. He’s too wired to sleep on his own.”

  “That works.” As much as I hated to cede ground, I knew the drill. “Miller and Cole will be crashing soon.” Miller, in particular, required sleep in order to digest. He didn’t get a choice. He filled his belly, and his brain flipped the switch for him. The same was true of Cole to a lesser extent.
“We might as well make it forty-eight. I would rather lose time than people.” I exhaled. “I’ll touch base with Santiago, see where he suggests we hole up to recover.”

  Once we came up against the real Ezra, there would be no handy rest breaks after each scuffle. We might as well make use of this one. Plus, I could get in some healing time with Thom. He could make sure Adder put everything back where it belonged, maybe take the edge off the new aches and pains I earned today.

  I left Wu to keep watch over Kapoor while I checked in with the coterie. Portia and Santiago were drenched in blood, grinning from ear to ear. She was trying to get him to high-five her when I arrived, but he palmed her forehead to keep her at arm’s length, smirking at her struggle to swat him.

  “I assume you’ve mapped out our next pit stop,” I said, interrupting their jostling.

  “Fifty miles to the east is a city big enough for us to get lost in for a few days. I’ve booked us rooms on various floors in various sizes under various names.”

  “How various clever of you,” Portia sniped. “Get it? Various?”

  “I got it.” He leveled a flat stare on her. “I didn’t laugh because it wasn’t funny.”

  Her harrumph made him glow with satisfaction. Yeah. Never going to understand those two.

  “I’m going to check in with the others. We need to move fast. Miller was hitting it hard out there. He’s not going to last long.”

  As luck would have it, Miller was the next person I stumbled across, and I rushed to wedge my shoulder under his arm. His eyes drooped, and a yawn cracked his jaw. He leaned on me, wilting on the spot.

  “You ate too much.” I poked his flat stomach with my finger, and he groaned. “Where does it all go?”

  “It —”

  Clamping a hand over his mouth, I shook my head. “I don’t actually want to know.”

  Nightmares about hands climbing up the back of my throat to freedom were bad enough. I didn’t want to learn the truth about where all the charun bits I ate ended up before they were digested. Then again, I never saw them protrude out of my stomach, so who’s to say they ever passed?

  And just like that, I gave myself fresh nightmare fodder.

  What if the bodies never passed? What if they floated around in there — wherever there was — forever?

  I helped Miller to a level spot clear of debris and bodily fluids and eased him down. Maggie was there before his butt touched dirt, searching him for wounds and generally fussing over him, which made him smile through his exhaustion.

  When it became obvious she had things under control, I went in search of Cole. I found him crouching beside a Bushta, examining the boarlike tusks protruding from its mouth.

  “I haven’t seen one of these in a long time.” He rose to join me. “They taste as good as I remembered.”

  Working hard to conceal my unease when I had no room to talk, I asked, “Like bacon?”

  “More like … ” He humored me with a quick grin. “You don’t want to know, do you?”

  “Not really.” I stared down at the corpse. “It’s just too people-y for me to enjoy a debate about the subtle hints of flavor.”

  A copper aftertaste kept me wishing for a toothbrush and toothpaste, but that would have to wait until we reached our hotel.

  “Able arranged transportation.” He indicated a plume of dust kicking up behind what appeared to be two Humvees. “Everyone ready to go?”

  “We have to collect Thom and She-Ra, but yeah.”

  “She-Ra?”

  “Princess of Power?”

  A thoughtful expression settled over his features. “It has a nice ring to it.”

  “Your child is a menace.” I punctured his bubble of paternal pride. “However, she probably saved my life.”

  “I’ll have a talk with her,” he promised, setting out for the tree.

  “Wipe that proud papa smile off your face before you do, or she’s not going to take anything you say seriously.”

  “This was her first battle.” Nostalgia tinted his voice. “She put her life in jeopardy to protect someone she loves, and she came out victorious.”

  “She could have been killed.” I hated to be a Debbie Downer, but it needed saying. “She’s still a kid.”

  “She’s Convallarian.” He slung his arm around my waist, tugging me against his side. “This is natural for her. She’s a predator, and she’s learning protective instincts from watching you with the coterie, who she views as extended family.”

  “I would never have forgiven myself if she got hurt. I figured you would think the same.”

  “I would be destroyed if she were lost to me again, forever this time. Do I want to put her in a bubble? Yes. Will I? No. I can’t clip her wings.”

  Clip her wings.

  That was the worst possible outcome for any flight-capable charun, even worse than death, and it hammered home how seriously Cole took her ability to make decisions for herself and act on them. I was all for her growing up to be a strong, independent woman. But the human in me, who recalled my upbringing, felt we ought to keep a steadying hand on her. In case she stumbled, we could catch her.

  “I can’t help but imagine her as the child I saw … ” The little girl in the vision Conquest shared with me. “I picture her as this chubby-cheeked toddler racing around corners and jumping out to scare people. It’s not fair to her, and I understand that. I’ll try to readjust my viewpoint, but Cole — she’s still a kid. I can’t make any promises.”

  “Her first molt is coming up fast.” The lines fanning from the corners of his eyes deepened. “That will give you perspective.”

  Molt.

  All too easily, I pictured a snake shedding its skin. I didn’t need the Discovery Channel for the image. I found them in the yard as a kid. One of the hazards of living in the country. She would most likely lose her skin in patches rather than in a single piece, but still. I couldn’t wrap my head around what that meant for the child within her.

  Dad might have had his hands full with me, but I matured at a natural pace. He had time to grow into his role along with me. For me, motherhood was a crash course with notes scribbled front and back on an index card. Her childhood was zipping by on fast forward, and I couldn’t get the pause button to work. That, at least, was a universal sentiment shared by parents the world over. Maybe I wasn’t so hopeless at this after all.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Our accommodations in the city were exactly what I expected from Santiago down to the single rooms he assigned Cole and me while he took a suite. Under normal circumstances, I would have fought him over it. That’s clearly what he expected me to do and had primed himself to pitch an epic fit over my audacity, but I had other plans.

  I had given Death enough time to mourn. However hard it might be, it was time she rejoined us.

  Sariah was on the loose, and now we had to worry about her targeting us in addition to the Malakhim. I couldn’t force Death to cooperate. She could kill me with a touch, so dragging her off to battle wasn’t going to happen. She might choose to stand down, declare her losses too great to continue. As much as I wanted to begrudge her that, considering her coterie had been dead from the start, I would have been lost without mine. I couldn’t very well slap her in the face with a double standard if I wanted to stay in her good graces.

  “Where are you going?”

  I turned from the window in the room with a single queen bed to find Cole watching me, his head denting the pillow, eyes already closed. “Who says I’m going anywhere?”

  “You’re not in bed with me,” he pointed out, “and Wu is outside the door. I can smell him.”

  “Okay, fine. I’m going to pester Death.” I joined him on the mattress. “We need her. I was going to wait until we had an idea of where to find Ezra, but our mini vacation drove home that the unexpected happens. We could be attacked and recaptured, and where would that leave us if the entire coterie got caught next time?” I couldn’t bear to think of it, so I pushed it as
ide as I did all the things I didn’t want to dwell on. “Death could have gripped those bars and turned them to dust or at least corroded them enough for us to snap them. That’s assuming they weren’t smart enough to stay out of touching distance.”

  “How long will you be gone?” He traced the designs embedded in my skin up to my shoulder.

  “Two days tops. That will give you, Miller, and Kapoor the maximum amount of time to recover.” I could use a nap too, but I hadn’t earned my rest yet. I had farther to go before I slept. “We might not get another chance to recharge before we find Ezra. We’d be stupid not to take this opportunity.”

  “Thom is watching Phoebe?”

  “He’s sharing a room with Mags so they can take turns babysitting. Miller and Rixton are in the room next door in case they need backup.”

  “Kapoor?”

  “He’s locked in a closet in Santiago’s suite.” I shrugged. “Wu mentioned something about the dark helping him to relax. This way Santiago can keep an eye on him, so I’m not complaining.”

  “Be careful.” He drew me down for a chaste kiss. “Come back to me.”

  “I will.” I stroked his cheek, tracing his jawline, until he fell asleep. “I love you.”

  Backing out of the room, I slung a bag with clothes and supplies over my shoulder and made sure to lock Cole in tight.

  “Ready?” Wu straightened from where he had been leaning against the wall.

  “One day I’m going to get the hang of invisibility.” I led him to the elevator, and we rode it to the topmost floor. “Then I won’t have to keep bumming rides. I’ll be able to zip off wherever I want whenever I want.”

  “Have you considered asking Phoebe for pointers?”

  “You’re a funny guy, Wu.”

  Until I got the hang of cloaking myself, I would be forced to keep depending on others for transportation when it mattered. With us taking refuge in the heart of a city, I had no hope of slipping away unnoticed. I had to rely on Wu to get me to Death’s hideaway.