TAYLOR COOK
ABU DHABI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES • HOFN, ICELAND
“TAYLOR,” EINAR SAID, HIS VOICE SOFT BUT commanding. “Get up.”
Taylor opened her eyes slowly. Her muscles felt tired, her fingertips and palms still tingling from the protracted use of her healing Legacy. Her mouth was dry, as were her nasal passages. She coughed scratchily, sitting up on the divan where she had passed out.
Einar handed her a glass of water. “You’ve been sleeping for almost six hours,” he said. “I think that’s long enough.”
Taylor worked some moisture into her mouth. “You didn’t do any healing. How would you know?”
Einar didn’t reply. He simply grabbed her by the arm and helped her stand. They were in one of the palace’s hundred guest bedrooms. This one was decorated with pictures of the sheikh—grim as he looked when Taylor first saw him—standing next to a variety of expensive cars. Taylor rubbed her eyes.
“What happens now?”
“We go home,” Einar said.
Taylor gave him a look.
“Back to my home,” Einar clarified.
“And then what? Wait around until this Foundation of yours picks another rich prick to have me heal?”
Einar raised an eyebrow. “Did you not enjoy it? Using your Legacy to save a life? To do the impossible?”
Taylor hesitated. She and the other healers—they had cured the prince’s leukemia. Cleaned it right out of his body.
The cancer was deep in the prince’s cells. She could feel it there. Alone, Taylor wouldn’t have been able to produce enough healing energy to cure the sickness—but with the group, it was possible. Vincent had been of similar strength to Taylor; Jiao’s healing energy was the most focused and precise; the crippled boy a font of raw power. After getting over her initial reservations, Taylor had thrown herself into the work, her energy commingling with the others, beating back the corruption that infested the prince’s body.
The process had taken four hours. After, all of them were spent and ready to pass out. Oddly and despite the fact that they were strangers to her, now that she’d broken away from the other healers, she missed the warm feeling of their energy.
Taylor didn’t tell any of this to Einar. “You know, the Academy had me healing people too,” she said instead. “They didn’t pick special cases. They let me heal whoever was in need.”
“The prince is a valuable ally. His family helps keep this region of the world stable.”
“Who told you that? The Foundation?”
Einar said nothing, which Taylor took as a yes. He walked out of the guest room, forcing Taylor to follow him.
“These people you’re working for, they get to decide who gets healed? They get to control the healing? Is that it?” Taylor pressed him.
“I’m sure we could arrange for you to do some kind of charity, if that makes you feel better,” Einar said.
“It would make me feel better to not have some shadowy organization controlling my life.”
Einar stopped, looking around. The hallways of the palace were clearer now than when they’d arrived; there didn’t seem to be a squadron of guards assigned to them. There also weren’t cameras mounted over every doorway.
“I liked what you said to the prince. ‘Are you a good person?’” Einar chuckled quietly. “It does these people well to be reminded, once in a while, who really holds the power.”
Taylor started to say something, but realized that Einar was being genuine. Opening up, even. She closed her mouth and let him keep talking.
“The Foundation, Earth Garde, the Academy. They are all just ways to control us,” Einar said. “We are young now and not strong enough to make our own way. One day, though, we will be. In the meantime, we’re forced to choose who we allow to exploit us. The Foundation . . .” Einar met her gaze. “They provide a good life. To fight against them, at this point, would be futile.”
Einar resumed his walk down the hallway. Taylor followed after him, mulling over his words. So, he wasn’t blindly loyal to the Foundation. But they’d corrupted him to the point where he’d do their bidding. She didn’t agree with what Einar said about the Academy—that felt like home to her, which surprised her. Taylor hadn’t wanted to go there in the first place, but now badly wanted to go back. She needed to find a way out. A way to free herself, and Freyja, from the grasp of these Foundation creeps.
As they entered the courtyard with the Loralite stone, Taylor had begun to remove her headscarves; they’d become annoyingly tangled while she was passed out. She and Einar stopped short. A dozen of the white thobe–wearing guards stood in the courtyard, blocking their path to the Loralite stone. All of them were armed and, while their weapons weren’t raised, they all seemed ready for action.
Taylor swallowed hard. Maybe the sheikh hadn’t appreciated her insolence.
“What is this?” Einar asked, apparently as surprised as Taylor to find their way barred.
Jiao emerged from the crowd of guards. She looked fresh and awake—a sharp contrast to how Taylor felt after their marathon healing session. The smartly dressed Chinese girl smiled at Taylor like they were old pals, then fixed Einar with an icy look.
“You can’t leave, Einar,” she said simply.
“Excuse me?” he replied. “What are you still doing here, Jiao?”
“The Foundation asked me to stay in case you got out of hand. But you’ll be a good boy, won’t you?” She wiggled her fingers in Taylor’s direction. “Come on, darling. You’re coming home with me.”
“Um, what?” Taylor replied.
“Einar will remain as a guest of the sheikh,” Jiao said.
Einar took a step forward and put a hand across Taylor, preventing her from going to Jiao. Not that she made a move in that direction anyway.
“I don’t understand,” Einar said flatly.
Jiao snorted. “Really, man? You lost Rabiya. Probably got her killed.”
“I made healing the prince possible,” Einar retorted.
“Yeah, and I assume that’s why the sheikh hasn’t already beheaded you,” Jiao replied. “Doesn’t mean he’s happy that you threw his niece to the wolves.”
“She belonged to the Foundation,” Einar said sharply. “That was the deal. We heal his beloved son and we gain the services of his niece.”
Jiao shrugged blithely. “Guess you should tell the sheikh that.”
Slowly, Taylor put the pieces together. The girl with the headscarves from the road was related to the sheikh. Einar had lost her in the process of kidnapping Taylor. Now, he was in trouble. She remembered the conversation she’d eavesdropped on between Einar and the British woman.
Taylor ignored Jiao’s outstretched hand, not making any effort to push by Einar. This was an opportunity to make a move, but whose side should she take? She was frozen.
“After everything I’ve done for the Foundation,” Einar said bitterly. “One screwup and—”
“Oh, stop,” Jiao said. “You know how it works.”
Jiao made a gesture and two of the guards stepped forward. One of them carried a pair of manacles, the other held out two microchips like Taylor had seen attached to the crippled healer.
The two guards made it within five feet of Einar before they both began hysterically crying. They fell to their knees, clutching their faces, sobbing uncontrollably.
He was playing with their emotions.
“Einar—,” Jiao started to say.
And then the shooting started.
It came from the two guards farthest at the back. Their weapons went off, shots firing into the dirt. Taylor noticed that they looked surprised. They hadn’t pulled the triggers.
It was Einar.
The other guards spun around, startled, weapons coming up—and then Einar was telekinetically pulling all the triggers at once, a cross fire beginning, the sheikh’s guards gunning each other down.
Jiao screamed. A bullet had struck her in the knee. She fell to the ground. Taylor remained rooted in place.
“I find this very disrespectful of my talents,” Einar said. He lifted Jiao with his telekinesis and flung her through one of the second-story windows.
Then, he grabbed Taylor by the hair.
“Sorry,” he said. “But you need to come with me.”
Taylor was too stunned, staring at the bloody bodies of the murdered guards, to immediately react. Or maybe that was Einar, making her docile.
He dragged her to the Loralite stone and touched the cobalt surface.
The spinning sensation. Blinking blue lights. The sudden chill of Iceland.
Finally reacting, Taylor shoved away from Einar as soon as they were inside the wooden enclosure. He didn’t seem to notice. Einar was too focused on the crumpled body propped up against the wall. She’d been so badly beaten, it took Taylor a moment to recognize Rabiya.
Einar laughed, looking down at the unconscious girl. “This is tremendously ironic.”
“You asshole, what does this mean for—?” Taylor gasped. Outside the enclosure, Ran lay on her back, taking cover behind a pile of rocks. She was stunned to see her roommate there—and in rough shape. Ran had a gash along her cheek and a bullet wound in her thigh.
“Get down!” Ran shouted at her as Taylor made to run across the grass. “Sniper!”
Taylor ignored her friend’s instructions, hopping over the unconscious body of one of those Blackstone mercenaries as she rushed to Ran’s side. No bullets came from the upstairs window.
“You’re hurt,” Taylor said as she slid in next to Ran. “How did you . . . ?”
But then, it made sense. Rabiya. They’d gotten her to teleport them here.
“We came to rescue you,” Ran said. She looked over Taylor’s shoulder, tensing up when she saw Einar.
Einar edged out from the enclosure with more caution than Taylor, peering up at his cabin.
Quickly, Ran grabbed a stone, charged it with her explosive energy and sent it flying towards Einar.
He looked up just in time, swatting the rock away with his telekinesis. His lips curled in annoyance and he thrust a hand in Ran’s direction.
Taylor recoiled as Ran’s entire body began to vibrate. Veins in her neck bulged, all her muscles tight. Blood from her cheek flattened out against the side of her face. It looked like Ran was trying to sit up, but she couldn’t. Her eyes were wide and bloodshot.
Einar was using his telekinesis to grind her into the ground.
“It’s funny how the instinct is to use our telekinesis to throw things at our enemies,” Einar said conversationally. “Even the Loric behave that way. You can see it in videos of them fighting during the invasion. They rip away guns, hurl around cars. But the body’s an object, just like anything else. My theory is, the Loric had an instinct bred into them, not to use their telekinesis on each other directly.” Einar shrugged. “I’ve been trained a different way.”
“Let her go!” Taylor shouted.
“How does that feel, Ran Takeda?” Einar asked. “Is it like Tokyo again? The feeling of being crushed?”
If Taylor thought there was some glimmer of humanity in Einar, she’d been woefully mistaken. He was insane. With her telekinesis, she grabbed a sledgehammer that lay near the Loralite stone and flung it at him.
The head of the hammer struck Einar right between the shoulder blades. He yelped and fell onto his hands, his grip on Ran broken. She grabbed her ribs, gasping for air.
Taylor plucked the sledgehammer out of the air. She stood over Einar and cocked her arms back.
“It’s more satisfying to hit people with things,” she said. “You’ll see.”
She almost brought the hammer down. But then a feeling of deep sympathy came over her. Who knows what the Foundation had done to this poor kid. He wasn’t bad. He didn’t want to hurt her. It was all just a misunderstanding.
No. That was Einar. Manipulating her.
By the time Taylor realized that, it was too late. Einar stood and ripped the sledgehammer out of her hands. He cracked Taylor across the face with the wooden handle, knocking her down.
“Hmm,” Einar said. “You’re right.”
He raised the hammer and brought it down on Taylor’s ankle. She screamed as the bones shattered, and nearly fainted.
“That should keep you busy,” Einar said. He tossed the sledgehammer across the yard, stepped by Ran and walked into the house.
Tears stung Taylor’s eyes. Warm blood trickled down the side of her face from a gash on her eyebrow. Her ankle felt as if there were broken glass under her skin.
“Tay . . . Taylor . . .”
That was Ran. She struggled to sit up, clutching at a nearby rock. Patches of mud and bits of ice clung to her shoulders where she’d been driven into the ground. She arched her back strangely and craned her head back, gulping air.
Or trying to, at least.
“I . . . can’t . . . breathe . . . ,” Ran said.
Einar must have broken one of her ribs or crushed a lung. Taylor looked at Ran dazedly, trying to focus through the immense pain and her spinning head.
“Hold on,” Taylor said, her voice cracking.
As fast as she could manage, Taylor dragged herself across the yard towards Ran. Her lips were turning blue. Taylor needed to get there. Needed to heal her. Fight through it.
Meanwhile, from inside the house, Taylor became vaguely aware of Kopano shouting.
They’d come here to save her. All her friends.
And Einar was killing them.