The Blood Guard (The Blood Guard series) (12 page)

C
H
A
PT
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16
:

NEVER SAY DIE

“W
hat’d you go and hit me for?” He glared at us while hugging his arms around his middle. “And with a
chair
? What sort of brute uses a
chair
?”

“Dawkins?” Greta squeaked, her voice catching in her throat. “Dawkins!” She dropped the hatchet and dove forward to hug him. “You’re alive!”

“Mind the ribs,” he said, wincing. “Still a bit tender.”

“But you were dead,” I insisted. We’d seen his arm sticking out from beneath a couple tons of semi. People don’t just get up and walk away from things like that.

“And yet here I am.” Dawkins dragged his hands down the front of his dirty T-shirt. There were new stains on i
t
—
w
hat looked like blood and oil, and one that was obviously the mark from an enormous tire trea
d
—
b
ut he looked much the same. He got to his feet, stretched his neck to work out a kink, then bent and picked up the flashlight. “Dead, Ronan? Dead is just a state of mind.”

“I’m pretty sure that dead is more than a state of mind,” Greta said. “You were
smooshed
.” She hugged him again. It was like by dying and coming back to life, he’d become her favorite person in the world.

“It was a wee tiny truc
k
—
”

“It was a
huge
truck. It was horrible.” Greta’s face crumpled up. “Your hand was sticking out from under the truck’s tires, all like, ‘Aaagh!
’
”

“How do you even know that was me?”

“You were wearing that.” I pointed to the dirty brown leather jacket. “The one you still have on. The one with blood all over it. And tread marks.”

“Fine, you’re right, I’m a proper mess.” He looked down and sighed. “I wish we had time for me to wash up and explain, but that will have to wait, I’m afraid. Right now we are in a bit of a hurry.”

From inside the room, Ms. Hand let loose with another spell, and this time the metal in the door wavered as if it were starting to melt. Dawkins aimed the beam of the flashlight at it, then at the dangling keypad. “Whoever is in there seems pretty keen to get out.”

“It’s the woman who’s been chasing us,” I said. “The one from the truck stop. Ms. Hand. We locked her and one of her helpers inside.”

“You two did this?” Dawkins said, beaming. “Now that is
strong work
! I’m impressed. My chest would swell with pride if only it didn’t hurt so much.”

“Sorry about the chair,” I said.

“Oh, it was more that business with the truck,” he replied. “Takes a while for me to get back to 100 percent.” He shrugged. “But enough jibber-jabber! Let’s get a move on.”

I picked up my chair.

“Are you kidding?” Greta said to me. “Leave it.”

“No way. I feel defenseless without it.”

“It’s a
chair
.”

“It hurt Dawkins, didn’t it?”

Dawkins said, “He’s got a point there.” He turned back down the hall toward the entrance, and we fell in behind him.

“How did you get here?” Greta asked.

“I don’t rightly know,” he said. “Once I came to, I discovered myself snugged up tight in a giant plastic bag. That was a first.”

“Yeah,” I said. “They’d gone and picked u
p
—
w
ell, your body. If you’d been dead, I mean. But if you were alive, then I guess it wa
s
—
”

“Still my body. I just happened to be not quite done using it.”

“Right. They grabbed your body and the other guy’s,” I said, beginning to put it together. Someone must have moved the body bags from the back of the SUV into the safe house. “But why did they take your bodies in the first place?”

“They were likely planning to interrogate me if I came back to myself, so to speak,” Dawkins said. “They know that Overseers are, um, especially durable.”

“But you were
smooshed
,” Greta said again.

“So you keep telling me,” he said. We’d reached the door to the lobby. “At any rate, body bags are not like sleeping bag
s
—
t
hey don’t put zippers on the inside. Who knew?” Dawkins pressed his ear against the door. “Peaceful as a tomb,” he said, easing it open.

Lying facedown on the carpet of the lobby were Izzy and Henry. Both had their hands tied behind their backs, their feet bound together, and socks balled up in their mouths. Izzy glared at us, a bruise blooming over her left eye.

“Do you know these two gray-haired hooligans?” Dawkins asked, gesturing.

“Unfortunately,” Greta said. “Who tied them up?”

Dawkins gave a bow. “My handiwork. They weren’t being very friendly, and so. Where was I? Right: Zipped tight into this body bag, and I didn’t know where I wa
s
—
I
figured a morgue of some sort. I couldn’t get out, and I didn’t have any kind of blade on me, so I did what anyone would do: I started hopping around and shouting, ‘Hello! Hello!
’
”

“You were still in the body bag?” I asked.

“What do you not understand about my being unable to free myself from that thing?” He nodded toward Izzy. “That tubby old viper there came and unzipped me. I could tell from the Tesla gun she held that she was no friend of mine, so I did what comes naturally.” He tapped his temple. “I head-butted her.”

Izzy growled something, and Dawkins snapped, “I apologized already. Now, which of you has the keys to that motor home out there?” Her eyes flicked to Henry, and Dawkins said, “Old Man Winter, eh?” He patted Henry’s pockets and found the keys, then said, “Okay, kids, I think we should take this reunion on the road.”

“What about Sammy?” Greta said.

“Who?” Dawkins said.

“This kid who was traveling with these two,” I explained, glancing around. There was another door out of the lobby, one I hadn’t noticed when we’d first arrived. “He saved us when we were in the motor home.”

“If he saved you,” Dawkins asked, “what are you doing
here
?”

“Okay, he
tried
to save us, but we got caught, anyway,” Greta said. “Maybe he’s locked up here, too. We’ve got to help him.”

Dawkins rolled his shoulders until something popped, then stood up straighter. “What’s one more kid? I swear, I’ve become a glorified babysitter. Let’s go find this Sammy character.”

Dawkins opened the door off the lobby, and we followed him into a small room with a wall of gray metal lockers and two wooden benches. Facing us was a gun rack loaded with rifle
s
—
o
rdinary ones without the Tesla modifications. Next to the rifles was a fat duffel bag.

“We’d best find something with which to defend ourselves,” Dawkins said. He opened the duffel and peered inside. “These will do.” He took out two sheathed swords that curved slightly at the tips, then drew them from their scabbards. “Briquet sabers, Napoleonic era. A bit unwieldy, and fancier than I generally go for, but we don’t really have a choice.”

“Why don’t we just use the guns?” I asked.

Dawkins crossed and uncrossed the sabers a few times, and a whisper of metal filled the room. “Guns are dishonorable.”

“Hard to be honorable when the other guy brings a gun to a knife fight,” Greta said.

“Not when the person wielding the knife is one of the Blood Guard. We ca
n
—
w
ell, slow down time itself. A Guard’s reactions are fast enough to mark a bullet’s trajectory and deflect it. So guns are, for the most part, ineffective against us.” In my mind’s eye I saw my mom charging the fake cops in Stanhope, knocking aside their bullets with her cutlass. And I remembered the paddle I’d used on the river. But that wasn’t the same thing, was it?

A sword in each fist, Dawkins sidled up to a swinging door on the opposite wall of the locker room. “Now let’s see what’s on the other side of this.”

“What about us?” Greta said. “Shouldn’t we have something to defend ourselves?”

“You mean a
weapon
?” he said, his voice dripping disbelief. “You two are practically
children
; you could get hurt.” He tipped his chin at me. “Besides, Ronan has his chair. If we run into any trouble, he can sit on our foes.”

“Can we just find Sammy and get out of here?” I asked. “That locked door isn’t going to hold Ms. Hand much longer.”

“Right, then,” Dawkins said. He backed into the door, turning as he did. We followed.

Beyond was another hall like the one we’d come fro
m
—
a
similar row of cell doors, the same fluorescent lights, the same tan tiles on the floor. But coming around the corner at the far end were the two men who’d brought Greta to Ms. Han
d
—
M
r. Two and Mr. Five. They skidded to a stop as the door swished back and forth behind us with a soft
fwap–fwap-fwap
.

“Hello, there!” Dawkins called, walking down the hall to meet them.

Mr. Two and Mr. Five both held Tesla rifles. Clearly the ones we’d disposed of weren’t the only Tesla weapons these people had.

“I really wouldn’t shoot those newfangled gadgets in here, if I were you. Who knows what’s in these pipes overhead?” Dawkins gestured with one of his sabers. “Could be extraordinarily messy.”

They leveled the rifles.

“Duck!” Dawkins shouted as they opened fire.

He took three enormous leaping strides, then dropped to his knees and slid. As he did, he spun the swords in swift, short arcs, catching the violet Tesla bolts with the flats of his blades. The beams ricocheted off the swords into the walls and ceiling, shattering the lights and the bulb housings and showering glass and metal down on everything.

And then the bolts seemed to fuse, and I realized that Dawkins wasn’t just blocking the beams. He was aiming them, reflecting them away from himself and back at the two men.

Startled, Mr. Two and Mr. Five released the triggers.

Dawkins rolled a neat somersault and planted his feet on the ground, then exploded into the air, sailing high, right between the two men.

Mr. Two dodged out of reach, but Mr. Five wasn’t as fast, and Dawkins swung the hilt of one sword hard against the man’s temple. Mr. Five crumpled to the floor.

Dawkins bounced off the far wall to the ground.

It took him only a moment to get back on his feet, but that was long enough for Mr. Two to take aim at Greta and fire off a shot from his Tesla rifle.

Greta was as good as dead. Except…

Nothing is as fast as the speed of light, but somehow that split second lasted a short eternity. There was Mr. Two, grimacing as he squeezed the trigger. Behind him, Dawkins was already springing into the air again, bringing up his swords. Greta, one hand on the wall of the corridor, was slowl
y
—
w
ay too slowl
y
—
d
ropping to the floor, trying to get out of the way.

And somehow, interrupting it all, my stupid metal chair.

When had I thrown it? I don’t know.

It looked almost weightless, tumbling gently end over end, spinning up right in front of Greta before the Tesla bolt struck her.

The chair didn’t explod
e
—
n
ot quit
e
—
b
ut the discharge from the Tesla gun caught it full-on, and it burst into bright light. I squeezed my eyes shut, but I could still see the outline in the dark, as though its shape had been traced by laser beams.

A smoldering shower of steel pattered to the floor around us. A few bits landed in Greta’s hair but I swatted them out. A thin electrical stink filled the air.

From down the hall someone grunted, “Unh!” and then the searing light from the Tesla gun was gone and Dawkins was standing over the two unconscious Bend Sinister agents.

“Wow,” Greta gasped.

“What did I just do?” I whispered.

“Saved my life,” she said. I reached out a hand and pulled her up, and then she hugged me, hard enough that I wheezed. “Thank you,” she whispered.

“I
knew
that chair would come in handy!” Dawkins hollered from the other end of the hall. “I’ll make a Blood Guard of you yet, Ronan Truelove.”

The big room around the corner was the mirror image of the one where Ms. Hand had interviewed m
e
—
s
carred wooden tables, the same cold concrete floor, even the same passcode to open the door. But there was no sign of Sammy. “That’s a relief,” Greta said, rubbing her wrist. “I was afraid we might find hi
m
—
o
r his han
d
—
o
n one of those tables.”

Instead, there was a map and a blueprint, the kind architects use. Dawkins scanned both, said, “Don’t mind if I do,” then folded them up. I remembered that I had his notebook and wordlessly handed it to him. He nodded and tucked everything into his jacket.