chapter Twenty-three
Edges
She was wearing the same clothes I’d left her in, her white Henley smeared with dirt and blood, and she’d slammed into the conference hall much in the way she’d slammed into that warehouse on our first meeting. Morgan froze, visibly stunned, and there I sat, once again caught, bound, and powerless to sway her.
My gaze shot to Logan in a silent attempt for assistance, to beg him to remove her, but he just lifted his shoulders in a helpless shrug. Brendan looked furious, the rest of the room simply confused.
Recognition dawned on Morgan’s face, and he smiled, abruptly returning to his show. “Ah, and here’s the infamous sister. Such a pleasure you could join us.”
The implication in his tone tore through me and I was suddenly sitting upright, struggling vainly against my bonds. He would use her now. He would have Brianna.
Damn it, why had she come? It had been the one thing that kept me sound. The chosen was protected. Emily was safe.
Morgan turned and stepped closer to the edge of the platform, and the first drops of blood seeped through my fisted palms as they writhed beneath the restraints.
“No,” I hissed at Morgan’s back. “Leave them be.”
He didn’t turn but I could see the side of his jaw flex as his grin increased.
“Take the trade,” Emily said levelly from across the room. “If he dies here today, you will never get Brianna.”
Gods, what was she doing? She meant to threaten him?
“Well, well,” Morgan hummed. “What a puerile group of admirers you have here, brother.” He glanced over his shoulder at me, both of us knowing they were at his mercy. Neither of us doubting every single one would soon die. “Kind of pathetic, isn’t it?”
“Let them go, Morgan,” I said. “Let them go and I will follow you. I will submit.”
He smirked at the desperation in my voice, my clenched teeth. His gaze fell briefly to the blood trickling down my palms to pool on the floor, but he wasn’t concerned that I might escape.
“So,” Morgan said for the crowd, “you come here to make demands of me, little commonblood.”
Emily stepped forward, separating herself from the crowd at the entrance, centering her position between the Council men lining the walls. “I am giving you your last chance,” Emily said. She stared, unshaken, at the man who had killed her mother. The man who had held her mother captive, forced her into the only choice that could save her daughters’ lives.
Morgan shook his head, disbelief clear in his tone. “You people stand here as if you have some kind of say in the matter.” He gestured toward the door, the men lining the walls. “Do you think I’ve not covered these rooms with the highest security? Do you think I’ve not filled those halls with guns, with trained men who plan to stop each of you from leaving the property?” His voice dropped to a deadly tone. “Do you think that I cannot move you all at my will?”
Emily took a deep breath, and then gripped the handle of a blade that was strapped beneath the front hem of her shirt. Four knives, I thought, for gods’ sake, she has four knives.
Her left hand dropped in a strange motion, and I suddenly stilled. My eyes found Logan, who had eased slightly away from the other Division men. My stomach dropped, and instinctively, my mouth opened to stop them. But I couldn’t. There was nothing I could do. Any signal I gave would only alert Morgan. Her right hand came up, her grip loose and ready.
Morgan laughed. “Oh, look, Aern. Your prom queen brought a knife.” His words were light, plainly unconcerned she could strike him from that distance, and several of the younger men along the walls chuckled. But I could see the concentration in his features, the way his thumb pressed against the inside of the platinum ring at the base of his third finger. It wasn’t working. He was doing everything in his power to sway this girl, and it wasn’t working.
My chest swelled. He couldn’t take her. He could never steal her mind. I prayed he wouldn’t kill her, that he would wait, try and use her to bait Brianna, that there was some chance…
And then the corner of Emily’s mouth rose in a smirk, as if she, too, were laughing at his prom queen jab. When her knife landed solidly into the left side of his chest, it was as if all the air was sucked from the room.
“I was homeschooled,” she said evenly, a new knife suddenly in her hand, and I knew the words were to remind him of her mother.
Morgan let out a shocked huff of air, hand coming up to grip the hilt protruding from his chest, and the room broke into chaos.
“Here,” Logan shouted to the men behind him, pointing the location of a concealed keypad. Several soldiers moved on the group, whose position now seemed less like cattle being led to slaughter and more like a raging stampede. Brendan reached behind his back to retrieve a hidden revolver, apparently not so trusting as he had seemed, but shots were fired from the opposite side of the room and there was abruptly a frenzy of suits and soldiers searching for cover, aiming for kills, and locked in unarmed brawls.
Two men leapt onto the stage to grab Morgan, who had removed the blade and was screaming furious threats at anyone within earshot. I had broken loose of one restraint, but dislocated a thumb in the process and couldn’t free my other hand.
I yelled, “No!” toward Emily as she rushed the stage, but it couldn’t be heard over the din of battle.
Her eyes met Morgan’s as he was dragged behind the hidden door, each of them delivering an unspoken promise before the panel slid closed and broke their connection.
“Look out!” I screamed, and she rolled to the floor just as one of Morgan’s men took a shot at her from the lower level. He spun as a bullet tore through his chest, and she crawled over to cut my straps free.
“What are you doing?” I hissed as she cut the last tie and I could finally grab and shake her.
She stared helplessly for a moment, as if she had no good answer, and then I fell to the ground as my legs collapsed.
A cry escaped Emily and she crumpled over me. Panting, I looked down where her hand pressed tight against my hip, and realized I’d been shot. Again.
“Help!” Emily yelled. “Logan! Brendan!” and then, as though she could think of no other name, “Eric!”
I took a deep breath, and then pressed my own hand over hers and leaned forward.
“Aern,” Logan said, suddenly crouched in front of us.
I nodded and Emily slid her hand from under mine, and then she and Logan each took a shoulder.
“The east wall,” Logan said, and we moved clumsily across the platform toward the steps. Two of Logan’s men met us there, covering fire and helping to block our escape from view. As we came to the east entrance, I glanced at Logan, who seemed to know more than anyone else about the new ins and outs of Council.
“I’d already done the recon,” he said, gesturing at Emily as he released my shoulder. She was on my good side, and slipped easily beneath my arm to prop me up while he pressed a code into the keypad. Emily glanced at the other entrance, the one currently blocked by thirty of Council’s men, at the shouting and fighting and gunfire, and then, with a sick expression, impatiently back at Logan.
The door slid open and we were shuffling down the hall in an attempt at running, the two other men splitting up to scout ahead and cover our backs. Three downed guards littered the floor of the corridor.
“We broke in earlier,” Logan explained. “Took out the ones Morgan had planned to surprise us with, disabled some of their security systems. I would have done more, but we didn’t have long before we had to meet up and enter with Brendan. Couldn’t leave them alone.” We turned a corner. Two more men lay prostrate along the walls. “Most of them were tranquilizer darts,” he said, glancing sidelong at me as we moved. “The men weren’t quite ready to kill their brothers.”
“Down!” the scout yelled from the corner to the hallway in front of us. We crouched, Logan releasing my arm to ready his pistol, and gunfire erupted ahead of us.
Emily flinched as a bullet ripped through the arm of our frontman’s jacket. Several more rounds were fired, and then he turned to signal our backup before waving us forward.
“How much farther?” Emily asked, and I realized I was weighing a little too heavily on her slender frame.
Logan pressed a finger against his ear, and said, “Not much, they’ve got clearance at the northeast corner.”
Gunfire and shouting echoed behind us, and Logan picked up the pace to nearly drag me with them. Three Division men appeared in the corridor in front of us, guns at the ready, and ushered us the last ten feet to a door. Sunlight burst into the foyer, and I squinted, snow-blind as they rushed me across the lawn. More gunfire, the chopping sound of helicopter blades, the barking of orders, torturous groans from the wounded, and then I was face down on leather and Emily was curled into the floorboard beneath me.
I reached for her, my hand clutching hers tightly, and promptly passed out from loss of blood.