I Got You

The first shot cracked through the hangar like a firecracker inside a metal drum.

Then everyone started firing.

Gunfire erupted from Kincaid’s men. Bullets struck steel walls and sparked from the rafters. Hanging lights shattered. People dove behind overturned tables and stacks of crates.

Tomas barely had time to turn before a bullet snapped past his ear.

Another struck the concrete beside his foot.

The third caught him.

A hot, violent punch tore across his shoulder. One of Red’s straps snapped at the same instant.

Tomas spun and fell.

For a second, he didn’t understand what had happened.

Then the pain arrived.

Bright.

Blinding.

Red slipped from his back and skidded beneath one of the overturned tables.

Tomas!

Kay’s voice cut through the gunfire.

“Tomas!”

He pressed one hand against his shoulder. When he pulled it away, his fingers were wet with blood.

Great.

That seemed bad.

Boots slid beside him.

Bryce dropped to one knee, caught Tomas beneath his uninjured arm, and dragged him across the concrete.

“Come on, Calder.”

Tomas tried to get his feet beneath him.

The world tilted.

“You picked a hell of a night to get shot,” Bryce grunted.

“Technically, I think it was an accident.”

“That makes it better.”

Bryce pulled him behind the mangled remains of the dinner table. Broken plates cracked beneath their knees.

He examined Tomas’s shoulder.

“It’s a graze.”

“You sound disappointed.”

“I’m trying to keep you from passing out.”

“Not helping.”

Bryce tore a strip from the bottom of Tomas’s shirt and pressed it against the wound.

Above them, the Collector spread across the rafters in the shape it had chosen.

Wings made from darkness.

Claws curled around steel beams.

A long body formed from smoke and storm.

It wasn’t a dragon.

It only wore the idea of one.

Bullets passed through it without slowing.

The Collector lowered its head.

Hollow white shapes burned inside the darkness.

The shooting faltered.

Then stopped.

Across the hangar, Kincaid stood in the open.

His remaining men crouched behind crates and vehicles, but Kincaid hadn’t moved. He watched the Collector descend with the calm expression of a man accustomed to everything in the world having a price.

The darkness hovered above him.

Kincaid raised his chin.

“What are you?”

The Collector answered by falling on him.

Smoke slammed into Kincaid’s chest and wrapped around his body like a living cloak.

He stiffened.

His mouth opened, but no sound emerged.

Something pale tore free from the center of his chest.

A ribbon of light.

Thin.

Trembling.

Alive.

The Collector pulled it into itself.

Kincaid collapsed.

His body struck the concrete and remained there. His eyes were open, but nothing moved behind them.

The pale shapes within the Collector burned brighter.

It had recognized something in Kincaid.

A familiar hunger.

Kincaid collected fear, obedience, debt, and human lives. He built his power by turning people into possessions.

The Collector had crossed worlds for rarer prizes.

But hunger recognized hunger.

Across the hangar, Soren began crawling toward a side door.

He moved on his hands and knees, no longer concerned with dignity.

The Collector turned.

Soren looked over his shoulder.

“No.”

The darkness crossed the hangar faster than any living thing could move.

It swallowed him.

Soren screamed.

Another pale ribbon tore from his chest.

His life bent toward the Collector, stretched thin, and disappeared into the smoke.

The scream stopped.

Soren collapsed beside the wall.

His chest didn’t seem to move.

The Collector released him and rose.

The white shapes inside it had become brighter still.

Bryce stared from behind the table.

“What did it do to them?”

Tomas fought to remain conscious.

“Collected them.”

“They’re dead?”

“I don’t know.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the only one I’ve got.”

The Collector turned toward them.

Bryce froze.

“Bad news,” he whispered.

Tomas didn’t need to ask.

The hooked mark on Bryce’s chest began to glow beneath his shirt.

Purple light traced the unfinished lines.

Bryce grabbed at it.

“What the hell?”

The mark pulsed.

His body jerked toward the Collector.

Bryce caught the table frame with both hands.

The metal screeched across the floor as the mark pulled him forward.

“My chest!”

Tomas remembered the bonfire.

The mark beneath Bryce’s skin.

The piece Tomas had erased and the hooked fragment that refused to disappear.

The Collector hadn’t forgotten Bryce.

It had left a claim behind.

“You asked why it still bothered you,” Tomas said.

Bryce’s fingers whitened around the table.

“This isn’t the time for an explanation!”

“It marked you.”

“You did something to me!”

“Not me.”

A tendril stretched from the Collector.

It curled around Bryce’s ankle.

Bryce shouted as the darkness dragged him from cover.

Tomas lunged and caught his wrist with his uninjured hand.

Pain ripped through Tomas’s shoulder.

He held on.

The Collector pulled harder.

Bryce’s grip slipped from the table.

“Tomas!”

Tomas reached beneath Bryce’s shirt and planted his bloody palm over the glowing mark.

Energy answered from somewhere across the hangar.

From Red.

From the twelve stones hidden inside him.

The connection stretched painfully between them.

Tomas wiped his hand across Bryce’s chest.

To anyone watching, it looked like a boy smearing blood across another boy’s skin.

Beneath Tomas’s palm, the hooked mark vanished.

“No,” Tomas said.

The tendril snapped away.

The Collector recoiled.

Bryce collapsed beside him, gasping.

He pulled open his shirt.

The mark was gone.

Completely.

Bryce stared at Tomas. “You saved me.”

“You pulled me out of the gunfire.”

“So we’re even?”

“Not remotely.”

A rifle fired somewhere behind them.

The Collector struck.

A thick tendril swept across the hangar and hurled the gunman into a stack of crates. Wood splintered beneath him.

Another man ran.

The darkness lifted him from the floor and flung him through an office door.

Weapons clattered across the concrete.

Kincaid’s remaining men abandoned their positions and fled for the exits.

The Collector ignored most of them.

Its attention shifted toward the military transport truck.

Sagen saw it.

“No!”

Kay turned toward him.

Sagen stared at the truck with terror carved across his face.

“Not the delivery!”

Kay seized the front of his jacket.

“You put the girls in there?”

Sagen opened his mouth.

Kay’s fist answered first.

Her knuckles struck his jaw.

Sagen collapsed like a dropped sack of grain.

Kay ran for the truck.

Tomas knew it was empty.

He tried to shout.

“Mom!”

The word vanished beneath the roar of the Collector.

Darkness flowed over the transport truck, searching every seam and opening.

Finding nothing.

The hollow eyes flared.

Kay reached the side of the vehicle.

“Hey!”

The Collector turned.

A tendril struck her squarely in the chest.

Kay flew backward and slammed onto the concrete.

Tomas shoved himself upright.

Bryce caught his arm.

“You’ve been shot.”

“That’s my mom.”

“Tomas—”

He pulled free.

Every step sent fire through his shoulder.

He ran anyway.

The Collector rose above Kay.

Tomas slid across the concrete and dropped beside her.

She was conscious, but barely.

“Tomas…”

“I’ve got you.”

He gathered her against him with one arm.

The shadow fell across them.

The Collector descended.

Then a voice shouted from the doorway.

“Tomas!”

Courtney stood inside the hangar.

Mud covered her clothes. Blood streaked one side of her face, and she was alone.

The girls were nowhere behind her.

She saw Red beneath the overturned table.

Courtney sprinted through the wreckage, dropped to one knee, and grabbed the bookbag.

The stones inside had dimmed after taking their remembered form. Faint pink cracks remained beneath the purple.

Courtney pressed one hand against Red.

“Find him.”

Red’s remaining strap shot outward and caught the leg of the overturned table. He pulled himself across the concrete.

Courtney gave him one hard shove.

Red slid through shattered plates, shell casings, and drifting ash.

“Tomas!”

The Collector reached for Kay.

Tomas stretched out his hand.

His fingers closed around Red’s surviving strap.

Light erupted.

Not white.

Not purple.

Both.

It swept across the floor in a widening circle, throwing the Collector backward.

A dome rose around Tomas, Kay, and Red.

The light flickered.

Weak.

Unstable.

The Collector gathered itself above them.

Its wings expanded across the ceiling. Smoke thickened around its claws.

It struck.

A column of darkness slammed into the dome.

The hangar shook.

Light rippled across the shield but held.

Tomas tightened his arm around Kay.

She struggled to lift her head.

“What is happening?”

“Red’s helping.”

“The bookbag?”

Try sounding grateful.

Kay’s eyes opened wider.

But there was no time to question what she had heard.

The Collector struck again.

The dome buckled.

Cracks of darkness spread across its surface.

Red’s zipper opened.

Inside him, the twelve stones flickered between purple and pink.

I can’t hold it.

Tomas pressed Red against his chest.

“You beat Merrill.”

That cost almost everything I had.

“Then take what you need from me.”

That could kill you.

“Get in line.”

Outside the dome, Courtney approached.

The Collector swept one wing toward her.

She ducked beneath it and reached the edge of the shield.

Her palms struck the light.

The dome flared.

Courtney closed her eyes.

The ancient connection reopened between Keeper and stones.

Peace.

Recognition.

Memory.

The Collector felt it.

Its attention shifted from Tomas to Courtney and then to Red.

All three were finally together.

The boy.

The Keeper.

The stones.

Exactly what it had wanted.

The darkness stretched around the dome.

A voice filled the hangar without sound.

MINE.

The stones pulled against Tomas.

Not toward Courtney.

Toward the Collector.

Red’s straps tightened desperately around his arm.

Tomas.

He felt the Collector searching through their bond.

It found every fear he had carried.

Bryce’s laughter.

Coach Chad’s contempt.

Teachers who treated him as stupid.

Kay calling him Bookbag Boy.

Soren telling him he had his father’s eyes.

The Collector pressed against every wound and offered Tomas the same thing Soren had offered.

Power.

Enough strength to make everyone afraid of him.

Enough power to ensure no one ever laughed again.

All he had to do was stop resisting.

The dome darkened.

Tomas’s injured shoulder burned.

His grip weakened.

Courtney opened her eyes.

“It isn’t asking what you believe,” she called through the shield. “It’s asking what you choose.”

The Collector pulled harder.

The twelve stones lifted inside Red.

They pressed against the zipper as if they might tear through it.

Tomas looked down at his mother.

Kay had protected him for fifteen years.

Sometimes badly.

Sometimes cruelly.

Sometimes by becoming the very thing she believed the world feared.

But she had stayed.

Bryce stood beyond the dome, one hand pressed against his newly unmarked chest.

Courtney held both palms against the shield.

Red clung to Tomas with one remaining strap.

Tomas understood.

The Collector could offer power.

It could not offer connection.

“Red isn’t yours,” Tomas said.

The dome brightened.

The Collector’s claws sank into the light.

Smoke burned away from their tips.

“Courtney isn’t yours.”

The shield expanded another inch.

The Collector tightened around it.

“Bryce isn’t yours.”

The hooked mark tried to reappear on Bryce’s chest.

Tomas wiped one hand through the air.

The mark vanished before it could form.

“My mother isn’t yours.”

Kay looked at him.

Tears filled her eyes.

“And I’m not yours.”

The stones stopped pulling toward the Collector.

They hovered inside Red.

Waiting.

Tomas held the bookbag against his chest.

“You get to choose.”

The stones answered through Red.

I choose you.

Courtney pressed harder against the shield.

“And I keep that choice.”

The Keeper connection locked into place.

The twelve stones changed.

The last traces of pink disappeared.

Purple spread through them, deep and complete.

They were whole.

The Collector screamed.

No sound came from it, but every window in the hangar shattered.

It tried to release the dome.

It couldn’t.

Its tendrils had sunk too deeply into the bond it intended to possess.

Purple light raced through each strand of darkness.

The Collector tore at itself.

Pieces ripped from its wings and turned to ash.

The dragon shape collapsed.

Smoke poured down the sides of the dome, burning wherever it touched the light.

The Collector pulled harder.

The stones refused.

Another section of darkness broke away.

Then another.

Ash filled the hangar like black snow.

Tomas felt the Collector inside his mind.

Not frightened.

Enraged.

It had waited for the stones to become ripe.

It had savored every piece of chaos that brought them closer.

It had been right.

The conflict had made them whole.

But it had mistaken wholeness for helplessness.

The Collector had waited too long.

The stones could choose now.

And they had not chosen it.

The dome expanded.

Light swept through the hangar.

The Collector’s wings shattered.

Its claws dissolved.

The long dragon body split into ragged pieces of smoke.

The pale life it had taken from Kincaid and Soren flashed inside it, then vanished into the collapse.

Nothing returned to the bodies on the floor.

The final strand of darkness twisted above Tomas.

Two hollow eyes formed inside it.

They stared down at him.

Tomas stared back.

“No.”

The light struck.

The Collector came apart.

Not dispersed.

Not driven away.

Destroyed.

The last black fragments burned into gray ash before touching the floor.

Silence flooded the hangar.

The dome faded.

Tomas sagged over Red.

Kay caught him before he fell.

Outside, the rain stopped.

Not gradually.

One moment it hammered the airport.

The next, it was gone.

Water dripped from the broken roof.

Ash settled across the overturned tables, abandoned weapons, and motionless bodies.

Bryce approached cautiously.

His shirt remained open. The skin over his chest was unmarked.

He looked at Kincaid.

Then Soren.

Neither appeared to be breathing.

José knelt beside Kincaid and pressed two fingers against his throat.

For several seconds, he found nothing.

Then his expression changed.

“Pulse.”

“Good?” Eljen asked.

José shook his head.

“Barely.”

Marleen checked Soren.

“Same.”

They looked dead.

Perhaps whatever remained inside them hadn’t realized it yet.

Courtney crossed the hangar and knelt beside Tomas.

Red’s zipper opened.

The twelve stones rested inside him.

Purple.

Completely and unmistakably purple.

Courtney touched one with the tip of her finger.

A tired smile spread across her face.

“You’re whole.”

Tomas looked down at Red.

“That means you can go home.”

Red’s remaining strap curled around his wrist.

When I’m ready.

Kay stared at the moving strap.

Then at Tomas.

“You saved us,” she whispered.

Red’s zipper twitched.

Please. Don’t thank him.

Kay froze.

I did most of the work.

She slowly turned toward the bookbag.

For fifteen years, Kay had survived by refusing to see anything she couldn’t control.

This time, she let herself see.

“Did your bookbag just talk to me?”

Tomas looked down at Red.

Then back at his mother.

“Weird, right?”

Kay stared at him.

A laugh escaped her.

Small at first.

Then helpless.

Tomas started laughing with her, even though his shoulder hurt and the hangar was destroyed and two men lay close enough to death that no one could tell the difference.

Bryce watched them.

“I don’t get this family at all.”

Far across the hangar, Sagen groaned.

Outside, sirens began to wail.