Before the Raging Lion Read online

  The girl in the corner of the dirty cell barely registers my presence. Without food and water for the last two weeks, her body’s on the verge of shutdown.

  I glance around the cell, inhaling the musty, underground air. Over the last year, I’ve built Alexander’s trust and now I’m one of a handful of people who know where the cells are located. They’re so well hidden it’s no wonder the government’s never found them. There are cells at three different locations and each location has five underground levels. I’m glad I’ve only seen as far down as the fourth level. I don’t want to think about what happens on level five.

  I return my attention to the girl. Alexander’s special children normally break much sooner than this. All I have to do is offer them one sip of water and they remember what it’s like to be alive. Then the will to be living takes over and they do whatever Alexander wants.

  It never ceases to surprise me how easily they break. They who can’t die, who heal faster than my mortal body ever will—even the slow healers. But there’s one thing that normal people fear more than anything else: being buried alive.

  Bury the weak. The Basher mantra is a constant threat at the back of my mind.

  In the past year, there was only one guy who didn’t break at the water stage—Douglas Reid, my best friend’s brother. Aaron didn’t know Douglas was captured and neither did his family. Even though Aaron was a Basher already, that’s the way Alexander works, making his followers keep secrets from each other. It happened right after Douglas left home for Hazard training so his family thought he was there.

  I did everything I could to help him—not that he knew it was me. He’s a fast healer and Alexander wanted a mole in the Hazard organization. Douglas has a mean streak. Still, he didn’t deserve to be in the cells. Nobody does.

  He didn’t give in until they threw him in the pit and started covering him with dirt. Now he does whatever Alexander asks, feeding him information from Chasm and the Hazard training facility there. Even slipping the other students experimental death drugs. Alexander thinks he’ll find a chemical that can kill people. He doesn’t know how close he is to the thing he wants.

  He doesn’t know about me. Not yet.

  Cheyne hasn’t told Alexander because that would mean revealing himself as a Basher. He doesn’t know that Mr. Bradley already knows. So the game continues…

  The girl in the cell right now doesn’t even register the sound of water sloshing in the cup. She’s in another place in her mind. Somewhere far away from here.

  Without thinking, I take three bold steps toward her and lean down, resting on my knees and dropping the bad-boy act for the first time. I know I’m taking a risk, but…

  I remove my facemask, sensing the warm air on my face. For the first time, she registers emotion: the barest flicker of surprise.

  “Hey,” I say, letting my real voice show through, not the harsh modulated bark I usually hide behind. “Why are you here? What does he want?”

  I only know a little: she designed a computer virus but I don’t know what it does. What I know is that the only word she’s said so far is “no.”

  Her eyes are open in slits: they’re not the color of anything I’ve seen before. Purple, but iridescent, not natural. For the first time I notice that there’s a strip of color in her hair too—a red streak that extends from above her right eye all the way to the end of her hair. It’s almost too dirty and lank to see.

  She mumbles something, but her eyes don’t leave mine.

  “You can resist by breaking,” I say, the words tumbling out of my mouth like thorny weeds.

  I know I’m taking a bad risk. The worst risk I’ve taken so far. But I need an ally. Someone I can trust behind the Basher veil. And so far this girl is the only one who’s proven she’d rather go into a coma than help Alexander. Even Douglas Reid who broke in the pit kept looking at the cup of water like he’d snatch it out of my hands. Not this girl. She looks only at me.

  The words roll off my tongue. “Keep a part of yourself separate and let the rest crumble. Do what he wants for a while. You’ll come back to yourself when you need to. You’ll fight back when it matters. You can’t fight him if you’re in the ground.”

  She continues to appraise me. I know she’s trying to figure out if it’s a trick. I don’t blame her. I wouldn’t trust me either.

  Finally, she speaks. “You won’t break me.”

  “I don’t want to.” I take a sip of water, holding it in my mouth.

  She opens her lips to speak again and without another thought, I lean across the distance between us and press my lips to hers. She doesn’t close her mouth in time and water sloshes from mine to hers.

  She’s so surprised that she swallows the water.

  “But I will keep you alive,” I promise. “Any way that I can.”

  Her chest rises and falls and her hands pull against the shackles keeping her bound. She was determined to refuse the water and now I’ve tricked her into drinking it.

  Her eyes are wild as storms made of violet lightning. “You…”

  But for the first time her cheeks flush, her eyes open wide, and I know it’s a reflex because her body remembers what it’s like to be living.

  “Drink,” I say. “Stay awake. But fold up a piece of yourself with every mouthful. Beat him at his own game.”

  She doesn’t touch the cup. She glances toward the cameras in the high corners of the cell. “Who are you?”

  I don’t tell her my name. Instead, I say, “The cameras aren’t functional. They used to be, but someone kept breaking them.” I wink so she’ll know it was me. “Old Alex ran out of money to keep fixing them. Somehow I think that’s where you come in.”

  “Yes.” That’s all she says. Then she hesitates.

  “There’s more water.” I hand her the cup and she struggles to take it, dragging her shackled hands to her mouth, gulping all the liquid down.

  Her expression turns to steel. “Tell Alexander I’m ready to talk.”

  I reach for her hands, being as gentle as I can when I release them. The chains are always too tight, restricting the blood flow so that her body has to continue regenerating—a way to force her to use more energy, make her fade faster, give in more easily.

  The skin around her wrists stays black, her fingers stiff, for a full minute. Then her skin blushes and I know she’ll be okay.

  I usher her out of the cell and she walks with her back straight, her head held high. I know she’s folding up a piece of herself with every step, ready for the right moment, the moment to rebel.

  For once I made the right choice. I took a good risk.

  Finally I’m not alone.

  As we leave the cell, I don’t want to admit that I’d give anything to kiss her again.

  Chapter Six

  Ava, now

  MY EYES ADJUSTED slowly to the dark as I stumbled down yet another staircase. That made five. Five levels, five staircases, five doors. All of them bolted like a dungeon in a medieval castle.

  After the transporter landed, I’d had about two seconds to take a swift look at our surroundings, but there was nothing to see. We were already inside a closed hanger. Still, it didn’t seem that they were taking any chances. My assessment came to an abrupt halt when soldiers dressed in Basher uniform swarmed us.

  “Don’t fight them,” Mr. Bradley warned—right before one of the men stabbed me in the neck with a needle and my vision swam. Within moments, I was completely blind.

  Mr. Bradley’s voice was increasingly distant. “Just go where they tell you.”

  Someone—probably the soldier who’d injected me—took my arm in a firm grip and pushed me forward. The next thirty minutes was filled with a series of stops and starts, walking and waiting, the clanking of doors, and finally another sharp sting in my neck after which my vision returned.

  Just in time to walk down a series of stairs.

  Guards stood at each door, keeping watch, armed with tranquilizer guns and clothed in the Bashe
r’s traditional garb so there was no way to know their true identities. Mr. Bradley followed close behind, while Sarah and Aaron remained a few steps behind him. Aaron kept his dart gun close—the one with the virus in it—in case I made any sudden moves, but I’d been left unbound. I figured that was for practical reasons: there was no way I could steady myself on the stairs without clinging to the balustrade. I felt much better than before, but my strength was slow to return.

  Down and down we walked, until the walls were made of rock and clay, and the air smelled musty, stale, as if a stagnant water pool lay close by.

  The fifth door opened, the guards watched me pass through, and finally I drew to a stop, my calves burning from walking the steps. I assessed the roof of a large cavern. True to the smell, a water pool was situated on the right hand side, a constant drip down the walls and off a lip of rock echoing around me. Immediately in front of me was a wide, dusty arena, with openings in the left hand side leading off in multiple directions.

  The cavern moaned as if the wind crept through cracks in the clay around us—a low, disconcerting sound.

  Another group of soldiers gathered in the center of the room while Alexander paced restlessly nearby. The lion’s skin hung from the wall but even without it, he was large and overbearing next to everyone around him.

  Mr. Bradley went straight for him, the most agitated I’d seen him since I fell from the cliffs. “Alexander! She could have been killed in the air! You have to keep people away from her.”

  Alexander seemed unperturbed, appraising me as the soldiers lined up as if they’d take turns trying to kill me themselves.

  He said, “She lives only at my whim.”

  Mr. Bradley sucked in a breath as I drew parallel with him, keeping my head high, showing the soldiers I thought nothing of their display of strength.

  Mr. Bradley was definitely biting his tongue at that point.

  I interrupted whatever he was going to say, knowing that arguments about my safety would go nowhere. “Why am I here?”

  Any number of possibilities raced through my mind. Alexander could plan to keep me here in the cells. Maybe he intended to eventually kill me here.

  He smiled. “That’s the most important question you’ve asked so far.” He flicked his hand toward the waiting soldiers. “Bring them out.”

  The camouflaged men and women disappeared into the openings around us and for a long moment, there was silence.

  Then the moaning wind drew closer. And closer still, until human shapes took form in the dark tunnels beyond.

  Some of them walked, some of them dragged their feet, some of them were being dragged, some of them were small and others large, but all of them…

  Children.

  Children with their hands and feet bound, their eyes sunken around bony bodies, shuffling through the dust, their every breath moaning from their mouths.

  No… Bile rose into my throat. Rage, pure and terrible, rocketed through me as Alexander commanded them to stand in rows around the room.

  I counted twenty children, one maybe as young as five and another as old as thirteen. They barely looked up, their breaths short and shallow, some of them standing only by leaning against the walls behind them.

  Anger, hot and lethal, raged through me.

  The Basher cells had always been a myth to me—the stuff of nightmares. The Bashers lived in the shadows. Nobody had known who they were or where their cells were located. Since my mortality became public knowledge, they’d come out of the shadows. They’d revealed themselves as a terrible force. Olander had infiltrated the government and had used fear to cause an uprising that led to the former President’s resignation.

  And now, even though everyone knew who the Bashers were, the cells were overflowing with children.

  I wanted to scream, to fight, to take hold of the children’s chains and rip the metal apart. I wanted the children to see the sky, breathe fresh air, fill their empty stomachs, smile, laugh, and do the things that children were meant to do.

  I barely registered Alexander’s presence beside me until his fingers curled into my hair, and in that moment I felt more hatred than I could possibly contain.

  His hands were rough against my cheek, stroking against the corner of my lip. I forced myself not to lash out at him, my hands closing into fists and my fingernails digging far into my skin.

  He whispered into my ear. “You’re going to kill them for me.”

  Shock replaced my rage. “What did you say?”

  He remained unbearably close. “On the mountains of Starsgard, you exploded like a shooting star, showering the earth with wrath. You will do the same in my name. You will eradicate the slow healers—the blight on the earth—once and for all.”

  So this was what he wanted me for. And why he wanted raw nectar. He’d sent Hannah to steal the branch to get it. Only raw nectar gave me the power to kill. My eyes flickered to the white cocoon resting on the ledge beside the lion skin.

  The fake branch that I’d given Hannah was contained inside it. A real branch could be grafted to another tree and produce more raw nectar. The fake branch had enough nectar on its surface to conceal the fact that it wasn’t real, but not enough to form more than two pearls—maybe three at most.

  It was enough nectar to kill Alexander. But only if I could get close to him without him guessing what I was going to do…

  I couldn’t explode, because that would kill the children too. I had to target Alexander first and then the soldiers—and do it fast. I counted the soldiers swiftly: eleven, plus Aaron behind me with his dart gun ready.

  “I am death,” I whispered, tears burning behind my eyes. “And they are in misery.”

  Mr. Bradley stared at me, as did Sarah, confusion written on both their faces.

  Sarah took a step toward me as though she’d get in my way. “Ava, you can’t possibly do what he wants.”

  I turned to them, my hands raised with helplessness. “Should I leave them here like this? Barely alive. Clearly in pain? Is that what you want me to do?”

  “I…” Sarah rubbed her wrists. She had no bruises—they would have disappeared quickly—but that very morning she too had been shackled in this place. Her words came back to haunt me: he let me out for the day.

  “Do I kill Sarah too?” I asked Alexander.

  For the first time, he looked shocked. “Of course not. Sarah’s one of my special children. She’s useful to me. These children, on the other hand, are just slow healers.”

  I hid my relief, but his response held barbs. I gestured to the children. “Just slow healers?”

  He shrugged and his nonchalance was cold. “Far better than them growing up to have more children, spreading their genes like vermin.”

  I kept his gaze. “Then bring me the cocoon so I can end it.”

  “No! Ava!” Sarah’s cry was cut short as Aaron wrenched her backward, forcing her up against the wall and keeping her there. He was talking to her but I couldn’t hear what he said over her screams. She struggled and shouted at me, until one of the other soldiers strode forward and shot her with a tranquilizer dart.

  She slumped and Aaron caught her, lowering her to the ground more gently than I’d expected. He slid down next to her on the dirty floor, resting her head on his shoulder and propping her up so she wouldn’t fall into the dirt. Tears dripped down her frozen cheeks but he turned her face away from the children so she wouldn’t see what was happening.

  Alexander himself handed me the cocoon.

  Before I opened it, I pictured the flower that was once inside it—the flower that Michael and I had created when we kissed under the tree in a moment when the world had stood still for us. A moment when I’d felt nothing but happiness.

  Alexander had destroyed the flower beneath the heel of his boot. He’d destroyed so many things. But I knew the battle wasn’t against him alone. Olander was also complicit.

  Well, I was about to deal with one of them.

  Inside the cocoon, the nectar
had pulled together to form two large pearls on the surface of the branch. I tried not to think of Michael’s lips on mine as I reached for the source of my strength.

  I handed the cocoon back to Alexander and he placed it back on the shelf. Then I held up one of the black pearls for him to see. The other, I kept concealed in my palm. I’d need it later.

  Without another moment’s hesitation, I slid the pearl into my mouth. As it melted, memories of icy mountains, Michael’s heartbeat, my brothers’ smiles, Pip’s laughter, the bears’ ferocity, all of it crashed down around me, the force of emotion surging through me with heat and flame fast on its heels.

  For the first time in a long time, I couldn’t control it, but then, I wasn’t trying too hard either. I remembered the time Michael had given me nectar to save me after his car exploded and I’d lost my legs. I’d burned so brightly he could hardly see.

  I could use that. A plan built in my mind, a plan to save the children and kill Alexander.

  Bright light burst from me. Alexander and the soldiers cried out, hunching over to protect their eyes. I breathed out as slowly and gently as I could, exhaling orange swirls of fire, molding them with my hands, forming shapes in the air as I walked toward the children.

  The shapes in the flames became a dragon, a horse, an eagle, and a tiger, each of them taking a place above our heads, maintaining a brightness that caused Alexander and the soldiers to squint and splay their hands across their eyes.

  As I passed the stagnant pool of water, the dripping sound became loud in my sensitive ears—not only dripping from the rock lip but also beyond. I followed the direction of the sound, sensing an opening in the bottom of the pool, down through a deep bend in a large pipe beneath it, along the bend, and sharply up again into … water. So much water. There was an enormous body of it all around the cavern. I could hear it now, sloshing.