Chapter Twenty-one
A/N: Contains swearing, violence and the lot. It is also quite long... :S Well, that's my excuse for not having posted in a while. Enjoy!
What had happened must have been a strange dream. That was the only explanation Vara could reach when her feet touched solid ground. They’d just come from the master’s room and what had happened before—the huge cave, the swirling stones—that had just been some odd nightmare that had flashed through her mind while they’d…teleported. God, the word was so freakishly strange that she cringed at using it.
When Vara opened her eyes, however, she couldn’t see Omar’s large, open face. That was because she was wrong: it hadn’t been a dream. Omar was dead. Left behind.
Vara’s skin began to tingle. At first it wasn’t so bad, but then the sensation grew until it started to get uncomfortable. She glanced down at her hands and saw her skin was glowing red. Steam began to rise from them and she nearly pulled a muscle in her neck when she looked up to check the others. They too were as lit up as a Christmas tree on Christmas Eve. Only Leo didn’t look panicked, but then nothing really ever did panic Leo.
“Relax,” he growled. “The stone is just protecting us from the planet’s environment.”
Vara glanced at Emily. The girl was shaking and her eyes had this wide, glassy quality to them. Her face was pale and sweaty again, with strands of her hair sticking to her forehead. Vara wondered if she herself looked that bad with the energy from the stone running through her.
“W-what do you mean?” one of the guards wheezed, looking like he was enjoying the stone’s “protection” as much as a bath in acid.
Kerr smirked, but the smug look on his mug vanished as soon as he squawked, “Not every”—he cleared his throat—“not every planet has the same environment. Either the temperature’s different or the gasses in the air could boil your lungs from the inside. Think of it as going to mars without a spacesuit, which is what we’re doing, I suppose.” He looked at Leo to tell him he was on the right track. Leo rolled his eyes and shoved his gun in his holster.
“’Cept we ain’t on Mars,” grumbled a different guard. “We’re on some other planet.”
Vara took this as her cue to look around, and regret doing it almost immediately. The red world was just a barren lump of rock, with jagged little mounds that looked like over-sized termite hills. The only thing that could be called foliage was this strange, twisting clump of weed that looked more like clumps of purple barbed-wire than a bush. Above their heads, the black and grey sky swirled angrily, with bright flashes pulsing from it every few seconds. Barely ten steps away from where they stood was a huge hole, about the size of a football field. The jagged rocks clumped around its ring looked as though they were going to crumble and drop into the gap at any second. Vara craned her neck, but from where she was standing, the hole looked bottomless. Everyone began to nervously step towards the more robust looking dirt to their right.
“We’ll set up camp for the night,” Leo announced, “and let everyone get their heads right so I don’t have to shoot anyone else.”
Emily winced and Vara thought back to Omar. She ran an eye over Emily, not liking how grey her skin looked. Maybe seeing Omar get hit between the eyes was a little too much for naïve, little Emily. She’d have to talk to her tonight; make sure she wasn’t suffering from PTSD or whatever.
Leo apparently had the same idea. “Vara you’re sharing a tent with Emily. Keep an eye open.” Which translated as pull an all-nighter being Emily’s baby-sitter. “You three,” he pointed at some guards, “scout the area. I want to know if there’s any wildlife we should be careful of, and check we’re not on a game trail. Everyone else set up camp. We’ll plan what to do tomorrow morning.” Someone opened their mouth to ask a question, but Leo cut across them sharply. “Wait until the morning!”
For a moment no one did anything, but then people began to drift off in twos or threes. Vara ditched Emily and hurried to catch up to Leo.
“What are we doing about Kieran?” Vara asked.
“Nothing.”
Vara gritted her teeth. “Excuse me? What do you mean ‘nothing’?”
Leo raised an eyebrow at Vara. “That’s your mission.” He craned his neck and scanned the darkening skies. “What do you propose we do?”
“Go after him.”
“Which we will do.”
“I meant now.”
A muscle in Leo’s jaw twitched, an indicator that he was beginning to get bored of Vara already. He still didn’t look at her, but kept his pale eyes fixed on the clouds churning above their heads.
“We have the orange stones,” Vara continued. “Me and Emily got some before…before we had to go. The master said that Kieran was somewhere in a world where we had to use the orange stone to get to. We could go now rather than camp down here and waste time.”
Leo finally tore his eyes away from the sky and turned to face Vara. There was a faint snarl on the edges of his lips and he leaned so close to her she wondered if he’d forgotten the concept of personal space. “You really do think the master has put you in charge,” he growled softly. “And that finding Kieran is important.” Leo laughed quietly. “Kieran is nothing. He is a piece of thread that has come unravelled from the master’s plan. A thread that is merely bothersome until it is clipped off.”
“But he killed Sven and Rick,” Vara whispered back, so surprised that Leo was dismissing Kieran so casually that she doubted she could’ve found the strength to talk normally. “He needs to know that crossing us like that means he’ll be tracked down and shredded.”
The look in Leo’s eyes was almost pitying as he stared down at Vara. Slowly he leaned forward until his lips brushed against her ear. “You are as ignorant as Emily,” he breathed.
Her heart pounded in her chest. “What do you mean?”
Leo leaned back and sent her another contemptuous look. At that same time, something dropped down from the sky and hit his shoulder, soaking silently into his black hoodie. A raindrop. Immediately, more drops followed.
Vara heard footsteps behind her and turned from Leo to see Emily rushing up to them. “Vara—we need to put the tent up.” Her eyes looked red and she carried the blue canopy of the tent. “I-I can’t do it right. The stupid tent is all tangled up and it won’t go together and I am getting so frustrated and I-”
Vara took the tent from Emily immediately, worried she might burst into tears. Vara didn’t have any tissues with her—things could get very uncomfortable. As she set to work on the tent, she caught the movement of Leo strolling away in the corner of her eye. She frowned to herself, replaying their argument in her mind. You are as ignorant as Emily…
***
The reddish light from the moon fell on Vara’s face as she stared out of the tent’s opening. The sudden downpour of rain had stopped almost as soon as they’d got the tent up. Vara’s index finger gently ran up and down the cool barrel of her gun and she kept the weapon on her lap so if anything was going to happen, she’d be ready.
Emily hugged her knees closer to her chest and began to rock back and forth. She stared randomly into space, lost in her thoughts. Her tangled, blonde hair was still damp from the rain and every now and then water droplets would fall from the ends.
The pall of silence lasted for some time.
A quiet sniff and a quick sweep of her tongue over her dry, cracked lips signalled Emily was the first to break out of the trance. When she spoke her voice was low and gruff, as though she was a chain smoker who partied all night and cried all day.
“Ever since I first met Kieran I’ve wanted to know what was going on, what he was doing.” She paused, bit her lower lip, and continued, “And then he went missing. When I met you and everyone else Kieran worked with, I knew a bit more, but I also realised that there was so much more I didn’t know.” Again, Emily stopped. She looked like she was fighting back tears and, when she next spoke, Vara was sure that even if she was deaf she would’ve heard the wavering in her voice. “After today, I know I’m not the only one who has no clue about what’s going on.”
Vara narrowed her eyes and let the truth of Emily’s words sink in. She hated to admit it, but Emily was right: today had shown they all turned into headless chickens when everything went wrong. Even Leo seemed to be making it up as he went along. Wait until the morning? That was loser talk for ‘maybe I’ll think of something really good that night’. If they survived the night, that was. God knows what the wildlife was like here. Vara wrapped her hand around the handle of her gun, ready for whatever was out there. They really had no clue, huh?
“We’ll find Kieran.” The words were hollow; Vara didn’t really believe them. But she wanted to give Emily something, some small grain of hope to help comfort her in such a dark time. Emily’s reply was so soft Vara wasn’t sure if she’d heard her right.
“What if he doesn’t want to be found?”
Vara frowned. “What?”
Emily was quiet for so long that Vara thought she wasn’t going to answer. Then she said almost defiantly, “I’ve seen him.”
Vara twisted around so she could stare incredulously at Emily. Emily didn’t meet her gaze. She kept her eyes on a patch of wall in front of her, her teeth buried in her bottom lip. “What?”
“I shouldn’t have said that.” Emily reached up and began to tug at a lock of her hair. “I…I shouldn’t have said that.”
“Too late for that,” Vara scoffed. “When was this? Just after he went missing?” Silently she added, I should’ve known you were holding out on me.
“No, last night.”
“Last night!” Vara’s mind began to race. If that was true then it would explain Emily’s change in behaviour, that new determination she’d developed. Also why Leo had grilled Vara for leaving Emily alone that night. He’d expected something like that. He’d known Kieran would try to contact Emily. But…how? “So what, Kieran popped in for a visit at the master’s heavily guarded mansion and then buggered back off after five minutes?”
“He didn’t visit the mansion. I…I had a dream about him, except it wasn’t really a dream. Kieran was there, in some white light, and he was telling me to stay safe, to not look for him, to…” she trailed off and quickly glanced at Vara from the corners of her eyes. “To…be careful of anyone else looking for him.”
Yeah, that bastard didn’t want to face up to the consequences of his actions, but like it or not, they had his precious Emily and she’d be the perfect tool of revenge. Which was probably the reason why he wanted to keep them separated, come to think of it.
Vara sighed. “It was just a dream, Emily. You miss him. You’re bound to be dreaming of him.” Inside, she was bitterly disappointed that Emily hadn’t seen Kieran. Maybe she could’ve given her some clue as to his whereabouts. But no, she’d just had some stupid, little dream about him. Very helpful.
“No, I-” Emily stopped and glanced quickly at Vara again. “Well, maybe. It must have been nothing. You’re right.”
It was pretty obvious that she was lying, but Vara wasn’t up to arguing about something that really didn’t matter. Now, if Emily had said that they’d met up for real in a secret location that Kieran went to regularly, well, it’d be a different matter.
“Why don’t you get some sleep?” Vara said at last, fed up with Emily staring blankly at the tent wall. “It’s been a long day.” Well, actually, it was probably only just the afternoon back at the mansion but, with all that had happened, it felt like they’d been awake for weeks.
Emily nodded and eased down into the foetal position, looking tiny in the huge sleeping bag. Vara turned her head and gazed at the moon rising in the dull, orange sky, fighting against her heavy eyelids. Softly, she began to stroke the barrel of the gun again.
***
Someone was shaking her awake. Vara lifted her head up from her chest and squinted at the unfamiliar face hovering inches from hers. Automatically, her hand wrapped around her gun, but she relaxed her grip, and wondered briefly how long she’d been out for.
“Hey, Vara, right?” said the guard with the beak-like nose leaning over her.
“Uh-huh.” She waved him away, and he stepped back, but soon began to lean forward again. She didn’t like the tight frown pulled down over his eyes and the rigid, anxious set of his mouth. “Can I help you?”
“Leo sent me to watch Emily and let you rest”—Vara felt her face began to turn red as she realised that she really shouldn’t have fallen asleep—“but I can’t see Emily anywhere.”
Vara jumped to her feet and spun around, searching for where Emily had been sleeping not long ago. There was nothing but the crumpled sleeping bad—which was empty. The ground swayed under her feet as she stared at the place Emily should have been. The tent felt smaller, like the walls had rushed in on her. Her heart pounded and her mouth became Sahara-dry.
“I’ve checked outside the tent,” the guard continued, his voice just an irritating insect whine as thoughts of the master skinning Vara alive played over and over in her mind. “She’s not there. Did she say where she was going?”
“No.” Vara bit her lip. “Go and alert Leo,” she ordered at last. “Tell him to assemble a search party.”
Boy, was Leo going to be the happiest bunny in the world. Vara felt like kicking herself for falling asleep when she should’ve kept an eye on Emily. One minute she was thinking how tired her eyes were, the next this guy was waking her up. While she’d been kicking back in Dreamland, Emily could’ve been dragged out of the tent by wild animals.
As the guard went out into the gloom, Vara noticed that the orange moon was gone. The sky looked lighter to the left of the tent’s opening, which meant the sun must be getting ready to rise. It was nearly morning.
She went back to chewing her lip. Leo’s face was going to be a picture. They’d lost the only leverage to make Kieran to do exactly as they asked, and the only tool to break him completely apart when they were finished with him. But it was also more than that: Vara couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that Emily would be terrified out there on her own, with none of them there to protect her. It was like realising your prized cow had wandered into wolf territory and you kept on thinking about how it didn’t have a blanket to keep itself warm with. So freakin’ insane.
Vara couldn’t stand there anymore, waiting for Leo to stalk over and lynch her. Besides, it was just wasting time. Vara would just go and look for Emily herself. Maybe if she found her, Leo wouldn’t be so pissed. Maybe.
She pushed through the tent’s opening and kept both her hands on her gun, pointing it at the darkest shadows. She didn’t know where she was going, or where to look. She supposed Emily had no clue where she’d been going if she’d wandered off. She’d just have to think like Emily and hope she was following where the girl had gone.
She couldn’t have gone far, Vara kept telling herself as she stumbled about in the dark. She’d forgotten to bring her flashlight and only had the dim light of the rising sun to help her. It was only a matter of time before she tripped over a hidden rock and dived to the floor head-first.
The gun slipped from her grip and skittered a couple of inches away. Vara cursed and went after it, pausing as she noticed the dip in the ground the gun had landed in. She squinted, recognising the indent in the dried mud. A footprint.
Her heart leapt and she looked for others. There: one just in front and another in front of that. There was only the solitary trail, which meant they couldn’t belong to the scouting party Leo had sent out earlier. They had to belong to Emily.
Vara grabbed her gun and pushed herself to her feet. She began to follow the trail, stopping every couple of steps to check out where she was going. She wasn’t about to blunder into whatever danger Emily had no doubt encountered.
She’d stopped to check again when a faint sound from just ahead of her set her teeth on edge. Once, back in a time that felt centuries away, Vara had been chasing a guy who owed the Black Dragons. He’d managed to get to his car before she could get a clear shot at him and had torn away into the night.
He hadn’t seen the dog.
It’d been a stray sniffing around some overflowing bins, standing right in front of that guy’s car. It hadn’t died straight away—Vara watched as it yelped and whined, paws scuffing uselessly at the tarmac. Finally, she raised her gun and put it out of its misery.
Standing there in the dark, Vara heard what sounded like the dog’s dying whimpers. The sound sent shivers rolling through her body, and with a nervous swallow she forced herself to step towards the sound. There was something there—something injured behind the ragged clumps of purple bushes.
Vara slowly pushed the brambles to one side and saw Emily sitting on the edge of the hole, her legs dangling over the edge. Emily’s shoulders were hunched like she was leaning over something. Vara frowned and slowly made her way to Emily, her heart knocking against her chest. She couldn’t explain it; there was something about the way Emily rocked back and forth, and the unnerving, little sobs coming from her. It made Vara feel like eerie music should be playing in the background.
When she got close enough to reach out and touch her, Vara whispered, “Emily?”
Emily’s head snapped up and she turned to look at Vara. Tears crawled down her pink cheeks and wisps of her hair were stuck to her face. She stared blankly at Vara for a second or two as if she didn’t recognise her. Then she seemed to slowly come back to herself.
“Vara,” she said through a wobbly smile. “I-I didn’t hear you…”
Vara’s frown deepened. “You shouldn’t be out here like this. It might not have been me who found you.” At Emily’s blank look, Vara sighed and decided to save the lecture about wild animals and Leo for later. “Come on. Let’s go back.”
“O-okay.”
Emily swung her legs back onto solid ground. Then she unclasped one of her fists and Vara caught a glimpse of something that made her freeze.
“Emily!” she hissed. “What the hell are you doing with one of the stones?”
Emily looked down at her fist as if she’d forgotten what she was holding. She lifted the stone and gazed at it like it was the most fascinating thing in the world. Behind her, Vara heard the shouts of the others as they came closer to where Emily was hiding. They, too, must have spotted the footsteps.
“It’s so small,” Emily said, still staring at the stone. “But so many people have died because of it.”
“Don’t do anything stupid,” Vara whispered, not taking her eyes off Emily’s face. That soft whisper Emily was talking in and that trance-like look on her face wasn’t soothing Vara’s anxiety. “Please, Emily. Here: just give it to me, okay? Just give it to me.”
Vara extended her hand to Emily. She glanced away from the stone for a second and frowned at Vara. “Why would you want it? It killed that man at the cave. It killed Kieran’s friends. It’s going to kill Kieran!”
“Then why would you want it!” Vara snapped.
Emily gazed at Vara, surprised by her outburst. Just as her wide, unfocused eyes met Vara’s, movement erupted around them. Leo and the others burst onto the scene, their faces grim and their guns pointed at Vara and Emily. Emily gasped and took a step back—towards the hole.
Acting on instinct, Vara shot a hand out, grabbed her wrist, and kept Emily from stumbling into oblivion. But as Vara did this, the stone Emily was holding was knocked from her hand. Vara and Leo and all the others could only watch helplessly as the stone tumbled into the black.
Leo turned his gun on Emily.
I've got nothing to say; I can't wait for the next one 
!!