by Lucy Auburn
"I have an illusion going to keep them from seeing us," Mason explains, while I prepare to make a shield big enough to protect all of us, including Eve, from Brutus. "I wasn't able to use my powers on him during the first attack, but this time... I feel so much stronger. Like I could do anything."
He's not the only one. We're better together, and I hope that means this fight is nearly over. For the sake of all of us, Eve, and my mother's memory.
"Come," Brutus says in a low voice, crooking his fingers with an unpleasant smirk on his face. "This way, child. I can feel your spirit and strength. It will be mine—but don't worry. The sacrifice won't be in vain."
Tugged forward as if by an invisible string, a student I barely recognize stumbles out of the woods. His eyes are wide with fear, his blond hair damp with sweat, every footstep he takes agonized as if against his will. But the immortal Marcus Junius Brutus is more powerful than him. Even though using so much of his stolen Affinities at once makes Levi's poison surge to the surface of his skin, grey and green running through his veins, Brutus still takes control. The sick pallor to his face only makes something about the way the student falls to his knees in front of him even more horrifying. Even with his body in poor condition, he's still capable of great evil—and has immense power.
The replacement body he's found doesn't stand a chance against him.
All at once I realize who it is: the lightning-bearer I saw practicing his skills on campus during my first days here. Horror curls in my stomach at the thought of his Physical Affinity becoming a part of Brutus's arsenal, if it works that way. I only have to hope that Eve taking Cleopatra's place will make it impossible for him to take over the body, since he needs her spells to make the body ready. That's assuming he can't do it all on his own...
We can't let it get to that point.
Now is the time to go on the offense instead of hiding.
"Time to make our move," I tell the others in a low voice, meeting each of their eyes. "Grayson, can you send a telepathic message to Eve?"
He grimaces. "It may be difficult, given the strength of her Mental Class training, but I'll try to get through her wards and speak to her."
"Good. I'm going to use my force field to block him from attacking her—or us. Levi, do you think you can weaken him further?"
"It would be my pleasure."
"Mason, keep us invisible to his eyes for as long as possible."
"Got it."
Wyatt arches a brow. "And me?"
"Wyatt..."
"I'm going to get Carter," he says firmly, naming the lightning-bearing student with an ease that makes me embarrassed I haven't paid better attention to the other students here. "I'll bring him to safety."
"But it's dangerous—"
"I get to make my own choices," he says gently, while panic rises inside me at the thought of him taking Carter's place. "Ellen, I'm strong. I have to use that strength for something. Including saving others."
This is the part where I could beg him to stay back. Or even worse—pretend like I'm okay with his plan, then use my force field to keep him from diving into battle. But the truth is, I can't control Wyatt, and I shouldn't try to. I know more than anyone how terrible it feels when someone you care about seeks to restrain your every movement because of their own fear and insecurity.
I just have to hope his strength is enough for both of us.
"I'll shield you as best I can," I tell him, trying not to let my panic take control of me. The hard thing about caring so deeply about someone is that sometimes, you have to let them go. "Don't let him take you."
"I won't."
"Ready?"
Grayson says, "Sending the message in three... two..."
I can tell the instant Eve gets it, because her eyebrow twitches. She manages to hide it, though—Brutus is too busy grabbing onto Carter's arms and pulling him to his feet, presenting him like some kind of cat that caught an oversized canary.
Wyatt nods his head once in my direction. Levi pulls poison into his hand and stares directly at Brutus, ready to take him down.
I take a deep breath, remind myself of how far I've gone and how strong I've become, and drop the guys' hands. Mason furrows his brow and clenches his jaw as he fights to keep the illusion going; Levi and I take a step forward and share a look of determination. I push every ounce of my force field into my palms until they crackle with energy. It's so much that I have to stretch my fingers out, feeling the impossible pull of powerful physics come from my palms. The moment we took to recharge our connection is paying off.
Time for battle.
Chapter 15
Every beat of my heart seems to surge against my skin, my pulse like a living thing that's desperate to escape the confines of my very human body. It all moves at once, everything changing in moments, faster than I can keep track of.
Wyatt moves.
He's so strong. So fast.
He heads directly into danger, and I watch him do it, even though all I want in the world is to keep him out of it.
Throwing out my hands, I push a force field out and in between Eve and Brutus. I also try to cover the others—but Brutus has Carter by the shoulders and tugs him back, grabbing him by the neck and watching as my force field comes within striking distance of him. Eve manages to pull away, even as dawning recognition crosses Brutus's face.
With a roar of strength, Wyatt dives for Carter and wrestles him from Brutus's grip. Levi helps him, pushing poison at Brutus ten, even a hundred times stronger than normal, so deadly that the man's entire body—a body he stole from my birth father—turns a ghastly pale color, his veins writhing like snakes beneath his skin.
It's impossible to believe that he's still standing.
Grayson mutters something behind us, leaning forward, his weight on his cane. "Get up, get up..."
The Black Serpent stands. He's wavering on his feet, seemingly held up by force of will—his will or Grayson's—and nothing else. I'd believe he was a walking corpse if I didn't know better.
I let down my force field enough to help Wyatt get to safety, watching him with my heart in my throat.
Wyatt drags Carter away.
He's almost here, almost far enough from the danger that I can protect him.
But then Brutus's mouth curls up in a smile.
It's eerie, to see my father's face used by someone else's force of will. I may not have ever known Vincent Arizona, but I can't help seeing my own resemblance to him, even now. His body should be interred in the same mausoleum as my mother, who loved him more than life itself—not being used by a psychopathic mass murderer to extend his lifespan another decade or so.
Frantically, I try to wrap Wyatt in my force field, but it doesn't shift and bend fast enough, despite all the power going through me. Brutus reaches out a hand, his nails black half-moons, poison pulsing through his forearms, and drags at Wyatt's back with his power.
Those invisible string pull him, despite his strength. He bellows and lets Carter go; the lightning-bearer falls to his knees, weakened by something. Eve rushes to him, trying to grab him and pull him to safety; he turns and wretches in the grass, and she cringes away.
Brutus grabs hold of Wyatt's neck and pulls a knife out of his belt.
My scream is an echo in my ears, felt more than heard. It's the prick of Penny's claws into my shoulder. The bunching of Killer's muscles as he leaps into the fray, all teeth and hackles despite his fear.
Through it all I hear Grayson's voice. "Attack him, now."
The Black Serpent—Connor, I should think of him now, of all times—takes an impossible step forward. He leaps through the air, a blood-slick sword in his hand, his cry of anger cracked through with pain and agony.
Slicing his sword across Brutus's chest, he sends blood spraying, the end of his sword's arc biting into the man's arm and nearly severing his hand.
Brutus stabs him in the gut for his troubles. Connor doubles over; Brutus pulls the knife out, a false smile on my fathe
r's stolen face, and stabs him again, in the neck. Then the chest. Then the back, as he falls to the ground, this time no longer groaning in pain.
Mason moans, murmuring, "My illusion. I've been trying, but—it's not working anymore. He can see through it. He can see all of us."
As Brutus turns to us, I realize that my force field is no longer protecting us completely. Killer snaps at his heels, and gets a good bite in, only for Brutus to kick him so hard he yelps and limps away. Eve, pushing Carter behind her, stands up and throws a knife at the man; it sinks into his poison-filled chest, and blackened blood seeps out of the wound, but he stalks towards us anyway.
Wyatt stands to face him.
Groaning, Levi's fingers tremble as he puts everything he has into poisoning him.
Mason moans, gasping out, "He's attacking my mind somehow, he's—my illusions—I can't see through them anymore!"
"I'm trying to get into his mind," Grayson says, sweat beading on his temple. "He's too strong. Ellen, we should consider falling back."
"I won't leave Wyatt behind."
And Wyatt won't stand down, even if it means losing his life or his very body, because that's how much he cares about protecting us. As Brutus stalks towards him, I can see it in every determined line of his body: he's willing to do whatever it takes to face this battle, no matter what it costs him.
He'll sacrifice himself.
But I can't bear to lose him.
I feel a spark in my chest, and it's not just because Penny leaps off my shoulders and stalks through the grass, or because I somehow can still see even without her draped around my neck. There's a prickling feeling inside me, a warmth the shape of a symbol both arcane and incredibly common: five points, representing four anchors and the one they're tethered to.
I don't have to look down at my shirt to know that the pentagram is glowing against my chest, so bright it must be visible from far away.
Because I can feel the power surging inside me, as fear is replaced by adrenaline, weakness by strength. I can see everything, and not just in the literal way I saw before, because now I can also see the green-and-black cloud of Levi's poison, the bright white aura of Grayson's mind control, every blue-tinted surface that Mason's illusions create, and the deep red-orange bellow that is the heart of Wyatt's strength. Feeling how they all lead to me, knowing how their powers compliment mine, I'm sure that they're ley lines beneath the earth leading to the wellspring of my undeniable magic.
I won't let him have Wyatt.
Taking a step forward, I feel the air stir around me. Birds rustle in the distant tree canopy, lifting their wings and diving through the fog. Snakes and brightly colored frogs stir in the dampness. Killer shakes off his injury and inhales deeply; Penny swishes her tail, and the leaves of the trees rattle around us as beetles, termites, and cicadas stir. Even the topsoil of the earth teems with life as worms burrow up, up, towards the thing that calls them: me.
Further beneath the earth, the spirits awaken.
Past the veil between this dimension and others, vengeful ghosts raise their heads and rattle their chains. They break free of their confines. They head this way.
My force field surges out of my hands, not as a solid mass, but as a buzzing in the air and the beating heart of the wind. It blankets the earth around us and stretches towards the sky. Shimmering in the air, it waits my command.
I take another step. Another. Until I'm standing beside Wyatt and his strength. So that it's me the monster looks at, wearing my father's face.
A breath, held for a moment, like a taut string.
I unleash everything within me on the man who killed my mother.
Every bit of anger and strength. All my hidden weaknesses, and the power they've given to me. In my heart I feel it all: the times Jack hit me and I didn't hit back, the way it felt to be arrested, how I left some part of myself behind the moment I first stabbed him. There was going home to my mother, then losing her. Finding strength as I ran away. Losing it again the moment I went blind—or so I thought.
The truth is that the greatest strength comes from pushing past the biggest weaknesses.
I'm stronger than anyone could've ever imagined. Around Brutus, my force field reforms into a wall of knives pointed directly at him. It advances like a wall trying to crush its enemies. Birds dive at his head; snakes wrap around his ankles. Spirits rise up from below and rake their long fingers through his body.
Then. In the air, beneath the sun. I see it. A brief, bright shining moment of the future.
I see him die.
Brutus, that is. It comes on me like nothing I've ever seen before, crystal clear down to every single detail: how his skin will turn grey, then black, then harden. His eyes will roll up in his head. A breeze will blow him—my father's body, and the man himself—away into ashes, never to be seen again.
I blink, and the future is gone, but I've never been sure of it. Out of all my visions, both confusing and useless, this one couldn't be clearer. It leaves as soon as it comes, but even after it's gone, I somehow can sense—not the future, but the next moment, at least.
So the moment before Brutus reaches for a knife, I direct the angry black rat snake at his feet to surge up into the air and wrap around his wrist so tight he can't move.
When he narrows his eyes and reaches out a hand to try to grab Wyatt, I push him back with my force field, forming a shielded barrier around each of my guys to protect them.
As he murmurs spells beneath his breath, trying to tap into other, stolen powers, I make the ghosts of all who have died unfairly, here and other places, fly into his mouth until the very breath is stolen from him and no words leave his lips.
Stepping close enough to stare into his eyes, I tell him, "You're done for."
"Not yet." His voice is the rasp of the near-dead, but somehow he hasn't lost the confident expression on his stolen face. "There's someone you forgot to protect."
He crooks a free finger, and something flies into my back, forcing me to my knees. It was—is—Carter's unconscious body; Brutus was right, I forgot to wrap my force field around him, as preoccupied as I was with protecting the people I love and care about.
Grabbing Carter's neck, Brutus casually says, "It's not what I could've hoped for, but this will do for a while."
He digs his fingers into the student's skin, and Carter seizes from head to toe. I try in vain to counter Brutus, throwing my force field at him, but it pauses just a brief hair before touching him or even Carter. It's as if there's an invisible force field around both their bodies, connecting them where they touch.
As Carter flops and seizes, then goes still, Brutus sucks in a deep breath. His fingernails, eyes, and lips begin to glow. He presses a cold, near-dead mouth against the seemingly dead body he's holding against his chest.
What I foresaw comes to pass.
Brutus's face goes grey, then black. He crumbles to ash. The wind picks him up, and what's left of him is gathered at the edges of my force field, a macabre kind of cremation.
But the glowing part of him, the soul that the spirits cringe away from in agony, goes into Carter's still-warm body. As the lightning-bearer's bright blue eyes open and he takes in a gasp of breath, I know who really resides beneath his skin.
Shaking out his new outfit, the near-immortal killer looks at me one last time, even as I try to take him down, as my animals struggle to attack him through whatever spell he used and my force field surges against him again and again.
"See you soon enough, Ellen Arizona."
He disappears into fog.
And is whisked away on the wind, leaving nothing behind.
A moment later, I let my powers go, feeling the strength ebb from me. I blink, once, and the world around me goes dark, then grey, then completely black.
I'm blind again.
I can feel the despair all around me, though. I don't need to see the look on my Conduits' faces, or Eve's face, to know how they're feeling. I feel it deep within my chest, a keen
ing sense of the unfairness of all this.
"We had him," Levi says numbly, "but he just... didn't die. Even after all that."
"I had him, and I didn't finish the job," I correct him. "My mom... I wanted to avenge her death. And look where it got me."
"We'll get him next time," Eve says, sounding more confident than I feel. I look at her through Killer's eyes as he paces to my side. The illusion has fallen away from her face, leaving the truth behind—and nothing less. "At least he won't be coming back for another body."
Faintly, so faint that I almost miss it, a voice says, "He will. Need one... soon."
A cough. The sound of blood rattling in lungs.
I pace through the grass with Killer beside me and stare down in shock through his eyes at Connor-Lionel-The-Black-Serpent himself. Of course, despite being stabbed repeatedly, and crumpling to the ground, and barely moving, he's alive. At least for now.
"What do you mean?"
I have to crouch down and lean close to hear his answer, which is like the murmur of the wind through autumn leaves, or a stream gently lapping against its shore.
"He didn't do... the ceremony. Without her." It takes great effort for him to breathe in again, and I marvel at the fact that he's even alive and speaking right now. "Unlike with... your father. Vincent."
I swallow. "So will he need another body?"
"Soon enough."
He takes in another difficult breath. I'm starting to feel like I'm at the tragic climax of a film, one where the beloved mentor dies violently and tragically, only this time it's a madman who kidnapped me speaking vital and important information as he dies. Stranger things have happened in my life, I suppose, and I can feel a bit of pity even for a man like the one dying at my feet.
"Don't worry... about him." His voice is clear and unhindered by insanity for the first time in a long time. Reaching up towards my face, he says, "You have your father's eyes." Oh-kay. "I hope that you... finish... his mission."
Whatever that means.
A moment his breathing stops—I can hear it, even if I can't see him with my own eyes. The strange and mysterious energy that kept him alive leaves his body all at once, until he's still. Killer whimpers as he senses with a canine's keenness that his soul has left his body, and my Spiritual Affinity tells me that his soul has moved through me and beyond, somewhere even I can't follow.
