“What if we leave a group of soldiers here and take the rest of them with us. We can make up time without the wagons,” I say.
Ben doesn’t have time to answer before Lincoln cuts him off. “It’ll take too long.”
My hands fling out in an over-exaggerated movement. “Well what’s your bright idea then, huh?” Asshole.
Lincoln looks at me and arcs his brow slowly. “Teleport.”
I cock an eyebrow. Well, that’s not a completely stupid idea. “Pensatore doesn’t have that power.”
Lincoln steps directly in front of me, his massive height towering over me. “But you do.”
“I’ve done that once and, honestly, that wasn’t even intentional. It just kind of happened on its own.”
“We don’t have time for this!” Ben yells at us. “We only left a few dozen soldiers at the settlement. The rest are all here. They won’t even be able to defend themselves.”
I sigh. Damnit. “Fine. I’ll go ahead and do what I can.” What difference can a single person make anyway?
Relief floods Ben’s face. Does he really think I will be able to make that big of a difference? I am not an army.
The two brothers are raw elementals just like I am. Neither of them have ever tried to use their ability to move though. They didn’t even know it was possible until they watched the duels. Ben has never been fond of his earth element, instead he chooses to wield his pusher ability. From how Lincoln made it sound during our training, it’s probably been years since he last used it.
“Can we use the angels?” I ask hastily. “Can they carry some of the soldiers there and come back and grab another load?”
“No,” Ben says, clearly having already thought of that. “We’ve used them too much already – they need time to rest.”
I nod and take a step back, letting my lightning surface. Thunder cracks overhead. “I’ll take care of her,” I say to Ben. Those are my last words as the lightning slams into my sternum and pulls me into its sizzling current.
When my feet touch the ground I try to gather my bearings. Where the hell am I? The only thing I can see is thick tree trunks all around me. I thought of Pensatore, of its stone houses and walls, of the iron gates and food carts in the Market. This is definitely not where I meant to end up.
My head pounds as a voice echoes inside of me. You only travel as far as you can see. The Watcher. How would he have known to tell me that? He’s not like Tessa, that much I’ve figured out on my own. I twist around, searching for him, determined to find him watching over my shoulder. Of course, there’s nothing there but more trees.
Only as far as I can see, huh. Great. This is going to take a while. Again and again I get slammed with my own power. By the time the stone wall comes into view, sweat drips down my back, soaking into my leather jacket. Almost there. The next appearance has me a few feet from the gate. It’s not the same one that I remember entering when Lincoln and the Watcher first brought us here. There are no trees directly in front of it. Instead there’s a sheer drop off that falls who knows how far down, that, by the sound of it, ends in a fast moving river. I teleport one more time.
Just inside of the wall, I nearly land on top of a Pensatore soldier. “Tessa?” I ask while trying to catch my breath. Teleporting takes a lot out of a person apparently.
The soldier nods, pointing at the top of the wall. The man directs me to the stairs, escorting me up a 30 foot wall.
“Where are they?” I ask no one in particular. I shield my eyes from the blazing sun, and realize that that was a stupid question to ask.
“Violet,” Tessa says from next to me. “Ben said you were on your way.” I pull her into a giant hug, squeezing her frail body as tightly as I dared. “We heard about Maddox.”
My eyes land on the single man standing outside of our gate. “How long has he been standing there?” I ask her.
“Just a few minutes.”
The sun shines off of the man’s bald head until he looks up at us. His arms bend at a ninety degree angle, his hands stopping next to his ears. “My name is Lucas, I am the leader of Aetheries,” he yells loud enough for all of us on top of the wall to hear him. “I mean you no harm!”
His jaw is lined with dark blonde or light brown hair. Seeing as, even after the journey here, he still has no hair, I imagine it’s not a choice on his part to have that hair style. His clothes are ripped and torn. Not necessarily from damage but from being well-worn. There are no weapons on him; no magic flowing around him.
“Why the hell are you here?” I scream down to him. The Reapers laugh, but I ignore it.
“We need help.” He falls down to his knees, keeping his hands raised up. “Please.”
I’ve had my own questions about this clan since the attack. Those questions are now screaming at me. How are they here? If they are here and we were at the camp … who the hell attacked us?
“Where are the rest of them?” I ask Tessa.
“Just inside the treeline,” she answers. “The soldiers and guards who saw them say that there are women and children with them.”
That can’t be right.
Why would the leader walk out by himself while unarmed? Why would he bring his entire clan with him? Why tell me he needs help? Curiosity gets the best of me. “I’m going out there.”
“You’re what?” Tessa asks.
“I’m going to go and talk to him.” I weave through everyone, heading back towards the stairs. “You three stay up here. If he makes a move then kill him.”
Tessa is quickly left behind, unable to keep up with me.
As a handful of soldiers pry the gate open, I start to second guess myself. I’ve never been one to think things all the way through and this is clearly one of those times. Ben didn’t send me ahead to play Lord – he sent me here to keep his mate and the rest of the clan alive until the reinforcements arrive. And here I am, walking out to meet the very person we had just crossed the realm to kill. Well, him and his people.
27
My magic flows through my veins, heating my body from the inside out. I can summon it with little thought now, but feeling its strength is comforting and, well, old habits die hard. I’d rather have it ready to go and not need it, then need it and not have it summoned. Over the last few months both Lincoln and the Watcher have drilled it into me – always being ready to defend or attack into me. It’s one of the few lessons that actually stuck with me. Even my fingers linger a hair’s width away from the axes dangling from my hips.
The man stands so still he might as well be a statue, letting me cross the distance between us. I know this is a bad idea. It could easily go badly. I don’t care. There are too many questions about this clan that no one seems to care enough about to actually try to find out the answers. With my own life having been at stake too many times to count, always because of these people, I have to know why. I need to know. What is it about me that is so damn important to them that they will send people all the way to the human realm to find me? This isn’t just about me either. It’s about what they are, about what makes them so bloodthirsty and insane. Maybe I can get answers from this man. The small chance that I can makes up for how stupid this is.
Lucas keeps his hands up, showing me his empty palms as I approach him. He can’t be more than a few years older than I am. His clothes are more worn out than I originally thought, his shoes worn down almost to nothing. His head is clean shaven, his brows and facial hair showing his natural hair color as a dark blonde. His dark green eyes shift between me and the lightning crackling overhead. When his hand shifts down and stops in front of him, I take a hesitant step back. “I’m not here to hurt anyone,” he mumbles, now lowering both hands to his sides.
I don’t respond to him. Lincoln always told me that Strega is peaceful. That the clans get along to an extent but that they aren’t exactly on friendly terms with one another. Seraphina showing up in our settlement and asking for help had been a rare exception.
“I just want to talk,” he explains, clea
rly choosing his words carefully. “Maddox. Is he here?”
Telling him that Maddox is dead would just be flat out stupid. Telling him that Maddox is simply isn’t here also doesn’t seem logical. Avoiding the question all together seems to make the most sense. “Whatever you have to say you can say to me.”
He glances back up to the sky. “Are you Rovente?”
Crossing my arms, I sigh heavily. “Why are you here?”
Lucas seems to consider the question and me very carefully before finally answering. “My clan needs help. Coming here was our only option.”
“Help with what exactly?”
Confusion covers his expression. “Against Rovente.”
My eyebrow jumps up. I don’t know what I had expected him to say, but that was far from where my mind had been. Over the last week we all assumed Seraphina and her army had been attacked like we were by him and his people. Why would he want help against them? “Explain yourself.”
“It’s a long story,” he stutters. “It would be better if I could talk directly to Maddox.”
I repeat myself, growling the words at him.
“Fine,” he says. “I suppose I should start from the beginning then.” When I don’t answer immediately, he continues. “What do you know about Aetheries?”
“Start from the beginning. But if this is just a way of wasting my time…” I let the lightning crack high above us, finishing my threat for me.
He clears his throat, which sounds almost painful. “About six years ago I was a member of Rovente. My mate and I were at home, the night just like any other. Within a matter of minutes the entire house filled with this thick black smoke. We couldn’t breathe, could barely see what was right in front of us. I made it to a window and opened it, using my air ability to try and blow the smoke out of the house enough to see what was causing it. No matter how much I tried, more smoke filled the house. My mate was laying down on the floor trying to find air to breathe.”
Neither Seraphina nor Maddox knew what happened to these people. Lucas seems to remember it very well. Did he say six years ago? I rack through my memories, trying to remember what Seraphina said when we first met. It sure as hell hadn’t been six years.
“One minute we were suffocating,” he continues, “the next it was gone. Every trace of it disappearing like it was never there. We ran out of the house and saw all of our neighbors doing the same. Everyone that lived on that block experienced the same thing we did and none of us had an explanation. Mikayla knew, she chalked it down to kids being kids.
“Within a few days all was forgotten. We moved on, went about our lives like nothing ever happened. Within the week my mate started to lash out at me. We were fighting over the most ridiculous things.” His eyes zone out like he’s reliving the memory and judging by his lips thinning out, it’s not a good one. “It was just us yelling at each other at first. Then she started pushing and shoving at me, something I didn’t even know she was capable of. It wasn’t just her though. The neighbors were literally killing each other by this point. Mikayla couldn’t ignore it any longer.”
My mind starts putting two and two together. Mikayla was the Queen before Seraphina, the one that was murdered about two months ago. Seraphina didn’t say anything about this situation to us. The only thing she told us about Aetheries was like sixty years ago with some unknown King. This was a separate incident, one that I doubt any of us in Pensatore even knew about.
“The guards showed up,” he continues. “They dragged us from our houses or from work, wherever we were at the time. Those of us who were still alive were physically forced to the border of our lands, and kicked out. We weren’t given food or water or even an explanation. They just gave us a quick kick in the ass and that was that.
“We had all heard the rumors about what happened decades before, that a group of Rovente members were banished like we were and had formed a new clan known as Aetheries. That was the only place we knew we could go. We did what we could to stay alive. My mate started campfires each night; water elementals made sure we stayed hydrated. As the days turned to weeks, the situation grew dire. We weren’t afraid of being outside in the elements or that we would starve to death. It was each other that we were scared of.”
For the first time since he’s started talking, he meets my gaze. “You have to understand that I’d known these people for years. They were good people. Were good people. But they weren’t my friends anymore. My mate,” his adam’s apple bobs and horror shows on his face. “She was gone. Physically she was there with me, but mentally she was an entirely different person. She killed one of the children with us. Just snapped and set her on fire. We had to protect ourselves. I had to protect them. From her.”
“You killed her?” I ask him.
He nods. “There was no other choice. She had changed. She was dangerous.”
“Then you found Aetheries?”
This time he shakes his head. “They found us the next morning. We were brought back to the settlement, kept in a large quarantined area as they watched us for weeks. The leader before me told me that they were looking for specific behavior from us. That and physical changes in our eyes and skin.
“Fifty of us were banished from our home. Thirty made it to the Aetheries clan alive. Twenty came out of quarantine. We were all hurt that day from that smoke, me included. There are these urges that we all deal with every minute of the day. Some of us were – are – simply able to control it better.”
Silence falls between us as he once again gets lost in his thoughts and memories. I feel for the guy, I do, but I need more information from him, information that isn’t tainted from being passed from one person to another, information that hasn’t been watered down. “What happened to them?”
“The people of Aetheries were honest with us, brutally so. They told us what they knew, what challenges lay ahead for us. I didn’t believe them at first. I thought it was all a big misunderstanding. It wasn’t. It all made horrific sense actually. It’s hard to explain, but we are all sick. We all have this darkness inside of us that wants to reach out and snap someone’s neck. It’s a voice in our minds that constantly tries to pull us toward anger and pain. The more we use our magic, the louder that voice grows. Eventually we have no control over ourselves.”
I know that voice, I realize suddenly. It’s the same one that spoke to me during the lightning storm. It took everything I had to fight against it. Flashbacks of the man I killed in the woods hits me square in the face. He didn’t act like a normal person. He was robotic almost.
“When that happens,” Lucas continues, “you know it. Their eyes change first. Their irises turn black and eventually even the whites of their eyes. Veins start to surface on their skin. Their blood is dark as night. It’s like they are possessed by that voice. The person that they once were is gone and there’s no coming back from it.
“There was nothing we could do for them. Aetheries doesn’t believe in violence of any kind because we fear it will lead even the strongest willed among us to this point. We banish them, dropping them off deep into the woods and pray that they don’t find their way back to us. We call them the Malum, for they are as horrible as anyone person can be. They crave death and pain on a different level than the rest of us. They are mindless, their feelings gone.”
I hold up a hand to silence him, not needing to hear any more of this. I already know exactly what he is talking about. The man in the woods was a Malum, one that had come from Aetheries. The man who killed Lincoln’s mother was as well. “You said you needed help against Rovente. Why?”
“A few months ago a woman showed up at our settlement, one that everyone from Rovente knows. Her name is Seraphina. She was the sister of Mikayla who was Queen when I was banished. She was also the keeper of the talisman that determines the next destined King or Queen. Immediately recognizing her, we invited her in. Well, her and two of her Hunters. She told me about her sister’s murder, about how much she feared Pensatore would come after her
next. She was sad and terrified as she told me the details. When she finished, I told her that I was sorry for her loss, but whatever was going on between Pensatore and Rovente wasn’t our issue. I explained that even if we wanted to help, we couldn’t. Using our magic will result in something far worse than death for us. We don’t have weapons on us or anywhere in our clan. We don’t even raise our voices for fear of what we might become.”
28
That. Little. Bitch. She told them that we were responsible then came to us saying that Aetheries was responsible? What the hell is her problem? Was she trying to get us to take each other out so that Rovente could be the last remaining clan in Strega?
He clears his throat again, the sound growing more and more raw each time he does it. “She said she understood and that was that. The three of them went to leave and she spun around and her entire persona changed. She spoke loud and clear to ensure each Aetheries member would understand her.” He grows quiet, letting his voice trail off, and rubs at his temples. “Have you ever met her?”
Enemy Of My Enemy (Price Of Power Book 1) Page 27
