I Am Number Four: The Lost Files: Last Defense(33)

Comforting as it was to see Eight again, it was still saying good-bye. I can’t imagine what Marina’s going through. She loved him and now he’s gone. Again.

Marina stops and glances back at the temple, almost like she might go back inside. Next to me, Adam clears his throat.

“Is she going to be okay?” he asks me, his voice low.

Marina shut down on me once before, back in Florida, after Five betrayed us. After he killed Eight. This isn’t the same—she isn’t radiating a constant field of cold, and she doesn’t look like she’s on the verge of strangling whoever comes close. When she turns back to us, her expression is almost serene. She’s remembering, storing that moment with Eight away and steeling herself for what’s to come. I’m not worried about her.

I smile as Marina blinks her eyes and wipes a hand across her face.

“I can hear you,” she replies to Adam. “I’m fine.”

“Good,” Adam says, awkwardly looking away. “I just wanted to say, about what happened in there, uh, that I . . .”

Adam trails off, both Marina and I looking at him expectantly. Being a Mog, I think he still finds it a little uncomfortable to get too personal with us. I know he was amazed by the Loric light show inside the Sanctuary, but I could also tell he felt like he didn’t belong, like he wasn’t worthy enough to be in the presence of the Entity.

When Adam’s pause stretches on, I pat him on the back. “Let’s save the heart-to-heart for the ride, okay?”

Adam seems relieved as we walk back towards our Skimmer, the ship parked alongside a dozen other Mog crafts on the nearby landing strip. The Mog encampment in front of the temple is exactly the way we left it—trashed. The Mogs that were trying to break into the Sanctuary had cleared jungle in a precise ring around the temple, getting as close to the temple as the Sanctuary’s powerful force field would allow.

It isn’t until we cross from the vine-strewn overgrowth of the land directly in front of the temple to the scorched brown soil of the Mog camp that I realize the force field is gone. The deadly barrier that protected the Sanctuary for years is no more.

“The force field must have shut down while we were inside,” I say.

“Maybe it doesn’t need protection anymore,” Adam suggests.

“Or maybe the Entity diverted its power elsewhere,” Marina replies. She pauses for a moment, thinking. “When I kissed Eight . . . I felt it. For a split second, I was part of the Entity’s energy flow. It was spreading out everywhere, all through the Earth. Wherever the Loric energy went, now it’s spread thin. Maybe it can’t power its defenses here.”

Adam gives me a look, like I should be able to explain what Marina just said.

“What do you mean it spread through the Earth?” I ask.

“I don’t know how to explain it better than that,” Marina says, gazing back at the temple, now cast half in shadow by the setting sun. “It was a feeling like I was one with Lorien. And we were everywhere.”

“Interesting,” Adam says, eyeing the temple and then the ground beneath his feet with a mixture of caution and awe. “Where do you think it went? Are your Legacies . . . ?”

“I don’t feel any different,” I tell him.

“Me neither,” Marina says. “But something has changed. Lorien is out there now. On Earth.”

It’s definitely not the tangible result I was hoping for, but Marina seems so upbeat about it. I don’t want to rain on her parade. “I guess we’ll see if anything’s changed back in civilization. Maybe the Entity’s out there kicking ass.”

Marina glances back at the temple. “Should we leave it this way? Without protection?”

“What’s left to protect?” Adam asks.

“There’s still at least some of the, uh, the Entity left in there,” Marina replies. “Even now, I think the Sanctuary is still a way to . . . I don’t know, exactly. Get in touch with Lorien?”

“We don’t have a choice,” I reply. “The others will need us.”

“Wait a second,” Adam says, looking around. “Where’s Dust?”

With everything that happened inside the Sanctuary, I completely forgot about the Chim?ra we left outside the temple to stand guard. There’s no sign of the wolf anywhere.

“Could he have gone into the jungle looking for that Mog woman?” Marina asks.

“Phiri Dun-Ra,” Adam replies, naming the trueborn that survived our initial assault. “He wouldn’t just go off on his own like that.”

“Maybe the Sanctuary’s light show scared him off,” I suggest.

Adam frowns, then cups both his hands around his mouth. “Dust! Come on, Dust!”

He and Marina fan out, searching for any sign of the Chim?ra. I climb onto our Skimmer to get a better look at the surrounding area. From up here, something catches my eye. A gray shape squirming out from beneath a rotten log at the edge of the jungle.

“What’s that?” I yell, pointing the writhing form out to Adam. He races over, Marina right behind him. A moment later, Adam carries the small shape over to me, his face twisted with concern.

“It’s Dust,” Adam says. “I mean, I think it is.”

Adam holds a gray bird in his hands. It’s alive but its body is stiff and twisted, like it suffered from an electric shock and never recovered from the spasms. His wings jut out at odd angles and his beak is frozen half-open. Even though this is nothing like the powerful wolf we left behind just a short time ago, there’s a quality that I immediately recognize. It’s Dust, for sure. Bad as he looks, his black bird eyes dart around frantically. He’s alive, and his mind is working, but his body isn’t responding.