Kady Cross: The Girl with the Windup Heart

Being shot hurt. It hurt a lot.

Finley cried out as Lady Ash’s bullet tore through her upper chest and exploded out her back. She staggered under the impact. The second bullet—from one of the automatons—drove her to her knees in breathless silence.

“Finley!” It was Griffin. She could hear the terror in his voice. He must really care about her to be so afraid for her. Stupid that would be what she thought about at a time like this.

Not going to die. She clung to that thought as she struggled to breathe. Punctured lung? Blood soaked her shirt, ran down her front and back in hot little rivers. Both bullets went through. Good. At least Emily wouldn’t have to go hunting for them inside her. At least her body wouldn’t try to heal around them.

She just had to heal before the wounds killed her. As she fell forward onto her hands, she prayed for the abundance of Organites in her system to get to work. It seemed the reconstructing process of her body had intensified as of late. Now was not a time to regress.

Lifting her head, she sought out each of her friends who were involved in the fight. The scene before her played out like one of those moving pictures—one frame at a time. Emily was back and using her ability to communicate with machines to make one of the large automatons fighting them dismantle itself. Sam took another down with his incredible strength. Jasper used his amazing speed to grab Lady Ash and bind her limbs. He’d shot her in the arm.

She tasted copper as her gaze turned to Griffin. Finley opened her mouth, but only blood came out. Griffin wasn’t watching her. He was watching Lady Ash and he...he was glowing.

Griffin’s power was the ability to harness the Aether—the energy expelled by all living creatures, and the realm of the dead. It was a terrible power, one that he fought to control every time he used it. A power that had brought so much pain upon himself—and his friends—as of late. It was power he rarely directed at a person, and now he directed it at Lady Ash.

She’d made short work of Jasper’s restraints, burning through them like they were spider silk. Even with soot and blood on her she was beautiful. She looked like a china doll, not the destructive witch she’d proved herself to be. Finley watched as flame ignited in Lady Ash’s palm and slowly licked its way up her arm, until her entire body was engulfed. The flame didn’t harm her, dancing just above her skin. She watched in horror as the flame took on the form of a long whip in her hand.

The automaton that had shot her stomped toward Finley, pulling a large sword seemingly out of his very back as he walked. The floor between them trembled with every step. She’d be worried if those holes in her body were already starting to close themselves. Finley took two tiny capsules from her pocket, broke them open and jammed one into each entry wound, wincing as her ripped flesh protested. Organites in their pure form immediately set her insides tingling as they worked their magic. They were little beasties from the very cradle of life itself, responsible for the evolution of life. Putting them into her body might take her abilities up another notch and she didn’t bloody care.

She forced herself to her feet. She wasn’t bleeding quite so heavily now, couldn’t feel the gurgling in her chest. She was going to live.

Too bad she couldn’t say the same about the automaton. She punched her fist—with the brass knuckles Emily had fashioned for her—through the creature’s chest, smashing its logic engine and dropping it in its tracks.

Lady Ash screamed—a ragged, eardrum-piercing sound that brought them all to a standstill. All but Griffin, that was. He was the one responsible for the woman’s anguish.

Finley had no idea how he’d done it, nor how it was even possible, but somehow Griffin was using his own abilities to turn Lady Ash’s power against her, so that her fire actually began to scorch her flesh and clothing. The awful smell of burning hair began to fill the air as Griffin seemed to glow from within—as though a light had been switched on inside him. Tendrils of power radiated from him, swirling around him like opalescent ribbons. That was new. The rest of the ribbons wrapped around Lady Ash.

It was also terrifying.

“Griffin!” She cried. He was going to kill the woman if he didn’t release her. Lady Ash might deserve to suffer for all she’d done—she’d killed people—but Griffin wasn’t the law and he wasn’t God. He’d already been haunted by one death this year; his conscience didn’t need another. “Griffin!”

He still didn’t acknowledge her. He began to lift off the ground, pulled up by his own power. Bloody hell, this was not good. She had to stop him.

But before Finley could help Griffin, she needed to take care of the automaton advancing on him. Her wounds were healing quickly, but she’d lost blood, and was still sore. She was nowhere near her peak fighting condition, but it was going to have to do. She had to stop that machine before she could stop Griffin from making a horrible mistake.

She oughtn’t have worried. The metal hadn’t even touched Griffin when an arc of sizzling blue light danced along its fingers, all the way up to its shoulder. The polished body began to convulse and gears ground and screeched. Sparks flew, and Finley raised her hands to protect herself from them. The automaton clattered to the ground, just as Finley saw what it was that had felled it.

Griffin had built a sort of energy field around himself and Lady Ash.

She wasn’t going to make the same mistake of touching it.

“Griffin!” She cried, “You have to stop!”

And he did. Suddenly, the flames around the woman flickered out, and Griffin’s feet touched the ground once again. She ran to him, but he held up a hand stopping her from coming any closer. “Don’t,” he said. When he turned to face her, both of his eyes glowed an eerie blue—no pupil and no iris, just blue. “Finley, don’t come any closer.”

She was dumb at times, but she wasn’t stupid. If he told her not to come any closer it was because he was afraid of hurting her, and she would stand her ground. A few feet away from her Lady Ash crackled and smoked, her body slowly turning into her namesake. Griffin had killed her.

Finley stared at the charred corpse in horror, not because the woman was dead, but because Griffin wouldn’t be able to live with himself for the death.

“Take a deep breath,” she told him. “Just calm down.”

“Get out of the way, Fin.” His voice was quiet and hard. “Now.”

“No.” She shook her head, putting herself between him and the body. “You won’t hurt me, Griffin. I know you won’t.”

“But I will,” came a dark whisper from behind her. The threat slithered down her spine, but she refused to shudder. Instead, her gaze locked with Griff’s. It was terrifying, that blue fire in his eyes, but not as terrifying as the realization that a ghost had just spoken to her.

“Garibaldi?”

Griffin nodded.

“You’re more clever than you look,” the voice whispered. Now that she knew who it was, Finley could hear his faint Italian accent.

“Thanks,” she replied dryly, not making any sudden moves. Every instinct demanded she whirl around and put her fist through the villain’s head, but that was the problem—her fist would go right through his head, and that was only if he was visible.

“Finley?” Emily asked, glancing from her to Griffin. “What’s going on?”

Finley barely glanced at her. It looked as though the others had defeated their opponents, as well, but thankfully there was only one corpse. Every bit of machinery was still. Garibaldi obviously hadn’t lost his touch when it came to controlling metal. “We’ve company.”