Invaded (Alienated, #2)(87)

“He’ll kill you anyway,” Aelyx said. Dead men told no tales. “Or you’ll die along with the whole planet when The Way ends the alliance, because your water supply is infected. You need our technology to decontaminate it.”

Grimes paid no heed to the warning. He shoved the clip into his pistol, staring at David hard enough to set him aflame. “Jaxen’s gonna need all the muscle he can get to stay in control after the coup. That’s when governments are most vulnerable.”

A coup? Aelyx refused to believe it. Jaxen was certifiable if he thought he could stage a takeover. The population of L’eihr, including the capital guard, would never support any faction other than The Way. Besides, Jaxen was already in a position of great power. What would he have to gain by throwing the planet into chaos? But despite the absurdity of it, Aelyx saw how he could use this information to his advantage.

“You could be a hero,” he said to David. “If we go to Alona and tell her everything, she’ll reward your honesty and execute Jaxen for treason.” It would solve all of David’s problems. “It’s not too late,” he promised, hoping some molecule of their friendship had been genuine. “If you do the right thing, Syrine will forgive you, and so will I.”

Grimes cocked his pistol and pointed it at Aelyx. “Forget it. I’ll kill him myself.”

“No.” David adjusted his aim toward Grimes in a clear message to hold his fire. The other man gaped at the betrayal before his gaze turned to stone and he aimed at David in return. “Think for a minute,” David said. “It could work.”

“You can’t trust him!” Grimes shouted, nodding at Aelyx. “You think he’s gonna let this go—just forget we’ve been trying to kill him for months? If Jaxen fries, we fry right along with him.”

Aelyx faced David, the only man he had a chance of convincing. “I give you my word. Who do you think you can trust more—Jaxen or me?”

David didn’t speak, but the set of his jaw and a nearly imperceptible nod of his head told Aelyx he’d won. The dynamic in the room shifted, and after that, everything happened in a flash. In an attempt to outmaneuver the other, David and Grimes simultaneously raised their weapons and fired.

A deafening shot tore at Aelyx’s eardrums, and in the time it took him to cringe from the shock, both men lay crumpled on the splattered plastic tarp—Grimes with a disturbingly tidy hole in his forehead and David with his chest torn open like a package of raw meat.

Instinctively, Aelyx’s hands flew to his coat pockets for his cell phone, but he’d left it in his bedroom along with his com-sphere. He crawled to David’s side and gently patted him down for his cell, but the boy pushed away his hands, shaking his head to communicate what Aelyx knew deep inside: no medical intervention on Earth could save him.

Stammering in denial, Aelyx watched the shreds of camouflage jacket turn from green to red as blood pumped out of David’s chest in time with his heart, each beat noticeably slower than the last. Aelyx had to do something. His hands moved to David’s blond head and down over his shoulders in useless desperation while the boy drew a strained, wet breath.

“Please,” David whispered, blood rising to his mouth and coating his teeth. “Don’t tell…” Bubbles of air rose from inside his chest, stealing his last breath and, with it, his final words.

But Aelyx understood.

“I’ll tell Syrine you died protecting me. And that’s the truth.”

David nodded his gratitude while tears welled in his eyes. For the next minute, Aelyx held his friend’s hand as the life flowed out of him, the terror in his brown gaze fading by slow degrees until his light extinguished completely.

Aelyx gritted his teeth against the pain. His fists clenched in rage. If he had to die himself to make it happen, Jaxen would account for his crimes.

Suddenly, the heavy door flew open and Troy Sweeney stormed inside, weapon drawn, scanning the carnage. “Are there more?” he asked Aelyx while darting glances up and down the hall.

“No. This is it.”

Cara ran in behind her brother and stopped short, gaping at all the blood. “Oh my God.”

While Troy yelled at his sister for not staying in the stairwell like he’d ordered, Syrine drifted into view. Her eyes bulged when she found David, and she swayed on her feet. After clutching the wall for support, her face took on an eerie calm, even as she paled several shades. She didn’t cry out in anguish or ask what had happened. Instead, she sank to her knees at David’s side and took the boy’s free hand in both of hers.

For a long minute, nobody spoke. When Syrine’s strangled whisper finally broke the silence, her tormented voice tore a gash in Aelyx’s heart.

“I didn’t tell him,” she said. “He told me so many times, and I never said it back. Now he’ll never know.”

While Syrine wept over her l’ihan’s body, Cara dropped to the floor beside Aelyx and gently took his battered face between her hands. Her blue eyes flooded with tears as she locked their gazes.

I’m sorry, she told him. I’m sorry about David, and for everything I said before. I love you, and I want to go home—to the colony. She must have sensed his disbelief, because she opened her mind to him and shared her conversation with Syrine. That was why they had come here, because Cara couldn’t wait to tell him the news. That might have been you, Cara said with a nod at David. You might have died thinking we don’t belong together. I couldn’t live with myself if—