Beneath the Guarding Stars Read online

  We walked another few minutes in silence before we came to a door that appeared to be another elevator. I wondered if this one would contain more moss, more biological hazards, and I backed away from it, mentally preparing my already tired muscles. Ruth placed her hand on a panel at the side. I bumped into Jonah before I’d backed up a couple of steps. I was so close to him that the bundle of plaits in his long hair tickled my arm.

  He frowned down at me and I slipped to the side, seeking Michael, who was only a few steps behind us. Before I reached him, Ruth called my name and gestured me toward the open elevator doors.

  Close by, Michael gave me a reassuring smile, but for a second I thought about refusing. There was something guarded behind his eyes that made me want to draw closer to him. The way his mom held herself apart from him, shoulders slumped as though she needed to protect her heart, made me want to stay. Not out of anger this time. She seemed to be floating, alone and separate, desperately wanting to connect but not knowing how.

  I suppressed a sigh. I had to let her and Michael figure it out and my presence would only get in the way.

  To my relief, this elevator wasn’t covered in green but more violet lights, and it was bigger than the ones we’d come up in, although it would probably only hold up to four people. I squeezed in, surprised when Ruth inclined her head at Jonah. “You too.”

  He scowled, took a look at Michael and his mother, and followed us in.

  “You can get the next one,” Ruth said to them as the doors closed.

  She punched a button, and as soon as we were alone she turned to Jonah, her face full of purpose. “Talk to me about the moss.”

  “What? Here?”

  She raised her eyebrows at him.

  The scowl on his face had become so permanent that I hardly noticed it anymore. He said, “I think it’s been tampered with.”

  “It can’t have been. The biology can’t evolve. It’s the failsafe, you know that.”

  “Yes, but what if another plant has polluted it and is using the moss to support its own evolution?” He stared at me, his expression rough as he spoke, his jaw clenched.

  Ruth snatched a breath. Her calmness faltered and she lowered her voice. “Do you mean…?”

  “We should be watching that—” He paused, exasperated. “That other. We should have been watching it all this time.”

  “You know we can’t, Jonah. We can’t get close enough to it. The cameras are broken and any new ones would meet the same fate.” Ruth shook her head, her plait sliding away from its comfortable position on her shoulder. “Even if we could get close to it, what would we do about it? We can’t destroy it.”

  “It’s an abomination, Ruth. The faith community’s concerned—”

  “Don’t tell me what my community is worried about.” She sucked in a breath, the sharpness disappearing from her voice. “We will always be concerned about it. It’s wrong. It should never have been and the perpetrator should have been punished. But he wasn’t, and it is what it is. All we can do is pray that it has a purpose.”

  “Then we should at least reestablish the moss. Start with a new culture. One that doesn’t recognize the genetic material of mortals.”

  “What? Treat their DNA as foreign material and target them instead?”

  “It would solve all of our problems.”

  “At what cost? No, Jonah. It’s not like you to think that.”

  I leaned against the side of the elevator, grateful that these walls were cold and unyielding and there was no sign of green anywhere. They spoke of targeting me as though they’d forgotten I was there. What would happen if they reset the moss? Would I never be able to leave? Would I die if I tried?

  Jonah sighed and scrubbed at his face, wiping away the scowl and replacing it with something much more human, much more vulnerable. “I’m worried, Ruth. Both Seversand and Evereach have respected our independence for a thousand years.”

  Ruth nodded, her expression suddenly far away. “I remember how afraid Evereach was that Starsgard might join with Seversand.” Her head tipped back as the elevator descended. “The power in these mountains…” She came back to the present, a new fire in her expression. “They should be afraid.”

  “Yes, but in just two days, not only has Evereach attempted to attack us for the first time in known history, but this mortal child has overcome our most powerful defense system.”

  “Evereach will deny the attack on our borders. William will claim it wasn’t sanctioned.”

  William who? Then my confusion cleared. President William Scott. It seemed that Ruth was on a first name basis with him.

  Jonah snorted. “We know he places no limits on his covert operatives. As long as they don’t tell him what they’re doing.”

  Ruth laid her hand on his arm, seeking his eyes. “We’re all tested, Jonah, but we will rise to this challenge with courage and compassion.”

  He shook his head. “Finding the right balance between protecting our people and seeking justice is more difficult now than it ever was.”

  “Then, I guess we’ve been given our greatest trial.” Ruth gave him a small smile and something passed between them as the elevator slowed. Her touch on his arm was light and he covered her small hand, silent together until the elevator slowed.

  Ruth turned to the door and she spoke to me for the first time since we’d entered the elevator. “Here we are. Don’t be alarmed, but we requested a few people gather to meet you.”

  She hadn’t finished speaking when the doors opened and we faced a small room brimming with about twenty people, roughly forming three groups. I immediately calculated the distance to the exterior doors, plotting a path across the few hundred feet it would take me to get there. I assessed the gap between a group of about seven people dressed in beige coats and another group wearing dark blue vests and black pants.

  There was a third group—the smallest—of about five people with hair of varying lengths, not one of them dressed like the other but each one standing or leaning against the wall in a way that reminded me of coiled wire, ready to spring.

  One of them—a boy maybe a few years older than me, maybe twenty, probably older—stood as soon as the doors opened, and flicked his blond hair out of his eyes. His face was still and set, his expression unmistakable across the twenty feet between us. The mask of his features pressed me backward like a physical shove, daring me to step into the room, to step into territory that was not my own.

  He gave the group a silent signal and they prowled toward me, the first to move as Ruth ushered me outside the elevator and onto the marbled floor.

  For a second, I thought about jumping back in and returning to Michael. We should have arrived together. I shouldn’t have let Ruth separate us, no matter how much time Michael and his mom needed together.

  As the group led by the blond boy sauntered toward me, I recognized what they were, even before Ruth spoke into the sudden hush around me. The way they walked, the way they held themselves, their arms bare despite the chill. They were each chiseled and lean, stalking across the floor as though they could float across it or leap the distance if they wanted to.

  “Ava, this is Seth.” Ruth nodded toward the blond boy, who stopped in front of me, the other four gathered behind him.

  “Seth is the head of our dance troupe, and your new family.”

  Chapter Three

  I BRISTLED, the sensation as sharp as the expression on Seth’s face. My family was either dead or gone, but their absence didn’t mean they could be replaced. Shoving my bitter reaction down, I pulled myself up and met Seth’s eyes, forcing a smile. The last thing I wanted was to make enemies before I’d been there a day, so I offered my hand.

  Before I could speak, he pulled me toward him and seized me in a dance hold, one hand gripping mine, the other suddenly at my waist.

  His voice was a low growl. “They say you can dance.”

  From the corner of my eye, Ruth balanced on her front foot as though she wasn’t sure wh
at Seth was about to do—or whether she liked it. To my surprise, Jonah also appeared uncertain, one hand raised as though he thought he might have to step in, but not the hand with the purple leaf in it. I wondered if Jonah would use it if he thought I was threatened, but then I realized that he’d removed it, so I guessed I was the only lucky recipient of that particular threat today.

  One corner of Seth’s mouth lifted, and the same expression Michael gave me that made me want to kiss him had the opposite effect on me coming from Seth. He raised an eyebrow. “I guess you’d better show me. We don’t welcome new members into our family—” Did he smirk at that word? “—without asking them to prove themselves.”

  He directed me backward, his arms tightly controlling me, forcing me to move the way he wanted. The other dancers gave us room and one of them began clapping a rhythm.

  I knew the beat like I knew how to breathe.

  For a second, the boy stopped being Seth of Starsgard and was simply my dance partner. My body settled into the rhythm of the salsa as smoothly as if I were at dance practice and not far away in another country. Ballroom dancing wasn’t my forte—I’d started with ballet when I was five and moved on to contemporary—but I’d practiced it enough to know I could hold my own.

  I felt him pulling me closer and closer with each swing, directing me, and it seemed that our bodies drew nearer each time, even if the dance didn’t require it.

  Without realizing it, the beat slowed, and he pressed me up against him, his hand planted on the small of my back. I tried to switch my mind off. I’d danced with a partner a hundred times before and I had to think of it like that. Just one more move, one more moment of technical precision, an attempt at perfection, nothing personal.

  Except that his eyes and the set of his jawline and his hands told me that this wasn’t about dance—it was about whether or not I was accepted into a group that didn’t accept just anybody. He snapped me close in a final move that saw me leaning backward, one leg extended. My old dance teacher’s voice rang in my mind. “Perfect lines,” she’d sing with a clap of her hands—the closest she’d get to a compliment.

  Except that this boy didn’t want me here, and his arms didn’t tingle with the energy of the only boy I trusted, and the last time I danced I was spiraling through a room full of covert operatives holding mortality weapons. I froze, and my hesitation was all Seth needed to lean in close, pressing me up against him, his mouth at my ear.

  “I guess you do know how to dance.” He touched my cheek—the one the vine had lashed. Instead of being repulsed or afraid, he seemed intrigued. “You really don’t heal at all. Well, that should make things very interesting. See you at practice. Tower Fifteen, level forty-five, tomorrow afternoon.”

  I drew a breath, still in his arms, as the elevator doors opened again and Michael called my name. He covered the distance between us in a few purposeful strides, but he halted an arm’s-width away as he realized what I was about to do.

  Seth was still standing close to me, one arm around my waist, my legs entangled in his. He seemed oblivious to the fact that if I moved the right way I could pull my foot back and trip him. In the last two weeks, dance had become a form of self-defense for me: a twirl and kick was an offensive move, a slide was a defensive move. I’d transformed the thing I’d been doing my whole life into something that saved my life.

  Michael folded his arms as his eyes met mine, waiting for me to make my choice: down this boy, whose every look told me he didn’t want me here, or disentangle myself without embarrassing either one of us?

  I shot Michael a small smile, imagining Seth sprawled on the floor, but Seth was the head of the dance troupe, and I’d promised Ruth that I would use dance to contribute to the Starsgard community. Leveraging my arm with a gentle pull, I compensated my balance enough to disengage my leg.

  At the last moment, Seth’s eyes narrowed, as though he realized how close he’d come to ending up sprawled on the floor. He started to speak but I interrupted.

  “Sure. I’ll see you there.”

  I took a deep, steadying breath as Seth glanced at Michael and strode away, the other dancers close behind. Michael’s hand took mine, but for a moment I couldn’t speak.

  Before I could move, two little girls raced up to us, tugging on my jeans. They each held a puffy jacket, offering one to me and one to Michael, wide eyes sparkling with curiosity.

  “Hi,” I said, shaking off Seth’s final challenging look as I pulled on the jacket.

  The girls gave me identical bright smiles, faltering a little as they looked up at Michael, and I realized from their point of view he must look like a giant. He was broader than Jonah, who was equally tall, but as I glanced around the room I noticed that all of the men here were lean—not wiry like the dancers but built for something other than the constant combat sports Michael had grown up with. Their weapons were not their bodies. I checked to see if they all carried the purple leaf that Jonah had threatened me with, but it didn’t appear so.

  Ruth smiled as she moved to my side, the tension disappearing from her shoulders. “These are our precious girls, Lilith and Moira.” In turn, she bent to kiss their cheeks, brushing Lilith’s wispy blond hair out of the way and smiling into Moira’s brown eyes.

  I glanced around, judging the ages of the people around me by the length of their hair—most much older than me but many in their first century. Most couples in Evereach were only able to have one or two children, and by the look in Ruth’s eyes as she gazed upon the two girls, I guessed it was the same here too.

  As warmth from the jacket crept back into my arms and chest, Michael’s mom approached, hesitantly, and spoke to Ruth for the first time since they’d descended.

  “Where’s Jason? He should be here.”

  Ruth surveyed the group. “He was on the roster to work at the fuel marsh this morning, but I sent someone for him.”

  As though she’d conjured him from the crowd, a boy’s voice reached us, clear above the general chatter. “Michael!”

  Ruth stepped back as a boy plunged through the throng, hurtling at full speed. He skidded to a stop, his face a grin from one ear to the other, not quite as tall as Michael but with the same dark hair cut to his jaw. He didn’t wait for an invitation to bear-hug Michael, who laughed and slapped him on the back.

  Their mother smiled, and for the first time it lit up her face. The sharp, lonely angles disappeared and she looked younger, lighter. She clasped her hands together, beaming and watching, her prickly guard down as though she’d forgotten there was anyone else there.

  Jason brought with him a scent like green earth, a stark contrast to the cold, odorless stone and glass around us. I wasn’t sure how to place it. Deep within the earthy green came the smell of oil, heavy and pungent, a strange and off-putting scent, reminiscent of … something I’d smelled before.

  With a shudder, I identified it. It was the same smell as Officer Cheyne’s skin when he and Michael’s dad had kept me prisoner in the Terminal. Cheyne was a slow healer too. I shook it off. It couldn’t be the same scent. He was far away, and there was no reason Michael’s brother could have had anything to do with him.

  Michael dropped an arm around Jason’s shoulders and propelled him toward me. He said, “Jason, this is Ava.”

  No bear-hug for me. Jason wavered in front of me, almost smiling but not quite. “Hi.” He reached out to shake my hand, his arm suspended, not touching me, until I took his hand and shook it. He scratched the back of his head. “So, you’re the girl who heals slower than me. I wasn’t sure if I’d break you.”

  Break me? I glanced around. Of all the expressions around me, curiosity was the greatest. The alien graze on my cheek that remained unhealed wouldn’t be helping.

  Still, they’d seen Seth manhandle me, but Jason hadn’t. I tried to soften the edge in my voice but didn’t quite succeed as I muttered, “Thanks for the reminder.”

  The smile fled his face as he backpedalled fast. “Sorry, I didn’t mean it
the way it sounded. It’s just that nobody here knows what it’s like having to get stitches to heal or having to wait all day for breaks to get better and … uh…”

  “I’d like to be able to heal a broken bone in a day. That would be kind of fast actually.”

  The only way I’d done that was when Officer Cheyne injected me with nectar—the black liquid they’d formulated to keep Josh alive. The same liquid that had turned me into an uncontrollable threat. With the first dose I’d burned up from the inside, set a man on fire, torn a metal chair apart, and cracked a twelve-inch-thick concrete wall trying to escape. I shook my head, trying to dispel the images; I didn’t want to remember the green room where they’d held me, the weird hallucinations of red roses and golden scorpions, the pumping of nectar around my body, and the out-of-control strength it had given me.

  I met the concern behind Jason’s eyes. He was probably the closest I would ever come to another mortal now that my brother was dead. Jason was a slow healer—an insult by anyone’s standards, but in his case the truth.

  “Hey, don’t worry about it. You’re right—we have a lot in common.”

  The worry eased and he grinned at me, mouth turned up in an impish expression. “I bet there are lots of things they won’t make you do. Like tend to the fuel marsh.” He sniffed his hands. “Do I reek or what?”

  I couldn’t help but smile, guessing that the fuel marsh—whatever it was—was the origin of the scent around him. It was nothing to do with Cheyne after all.

  “Ava…” Ruth was at my side again. “I want you to meet my community.” Another man was with her and behind him had gathered all the people dressed in beige. He clasped my hand briefly. “Welcome, sister. The faith community is looking forward to all you can teach us.”