I didn’t need to be the one screaming, anyway. That was coming from the other room. The sound of my mother crying out haunted me. It had taken years for me to push those memories aside, years where I had hated the helpless sensation, and being too young, too small, too weak to do anything. Then again, it was then I had vowed to get out. If my mother was unwilling to protect me, and if my father was the one willing to harm me, I wanted nothing to do with either of them. Maybe I had been wrong about it all along.
The helplessness washed over me, and I reached for the power that came with it, diving into it, pulling it forward, and then I sent it out of me and into the circle I had created. Power bloomed, washing around me in a circle, and solidified. I breathed out, my breath a little shaky, and Barden watched me.
“It doesn’t get any easier, does it?” he asked.
I shook my head. “Times like this, it doesn’t.”
“When you’re practicing…”
“When I’m practicing, I can use a different way of connecting to my power.” I didn’t know why that was, though I suspected it came from me currently being in a position of helplessness and fear, so I was having to dig into an even deeper sense of helplessness and fear. It was likely all connected, but despite that, I never felt as if I could reach for any more.
Thankfully, the power surging around me was enough to ensure my safety. I could feel it, almost an invisible wall, and it cut me off from everything else outside of the barrier. Surprisingly, the presence of the barrier did something else. It revealed Jean-Pierre. I hadn’t been able to see him before, but now I had the barrier around me, I was able to make him out far more easily. He was moving quickly, in swirls of power, but he wasn’t moving so quickly I couldn’t track him.
I glanced over to Barden, wondering if it was the same for him. If it was, why wouldn’t he have said something to me? “Can you see him?”
“Not well.” Barden frowned. “I take it from your question that you are able to do so.”
“With the barrier in place I can. Why can I, but you can’t?”
Barden shrugged. “As you have seen, different spells work differently for people. In this case, it seems as if your barrier has connected you to the type of power that the vampires are able to utilize.”
I wondered why that could be. What was there that would make me attuned to the vampires? Unless it had something to do with the fact that I held onto this coin in my pocket. Holding onto magic as I did, it was flowing through me, which meant it was flowing through everything on me. I didn’t have enough control over it otherwise, so that as it did, as it washed out through me, I realized it was flowing through everything within my pocket—including the vampire coin.
Interesting. If I were ever to have items like those Matt carried, I would need to be more careful. If I used magic, I might explode everything all at once. I frowned to myself. Maybe that was the key. I didn’t want Matt to harm Jean-Pierre, and seeing how the two of them were battling, I didn’t know if he would be able to, but I wasn’t about to give him a chance.
I released the circle, but held onto my sense of magic. When I started forward, Barden watched me.
“Dr. Stone?”
“It’s fine, Barden.”
“I think you need to be holding onto your protection. We don’t know what will happen.”
“I don’t know what will happen, either, but I don’t know that holding onto my protection is the way to do this.”
“Dr. Stone?”
I started forward, moving slowly, carefully, and as I did, I kept the side of Jean-Pierre in my focus. I wanted to be careful with him, not wanting him to be harmed, not until he understood what was taking place. I needed to stop Matt.
“Step back, Dr. Stone,” Matt said.
His voice came out strained, and while I appreciated him implying he didn’t want to harm me, I knew I couldn’t take a step back. “Both of you need to stop.”
“I can’t,” Matt said.
“You helped save him.”
“Dr. Stone, you don’t understand.”
“You’re right. Which is why you need to stop.”
Neither of them spoke, and I wasn’t surprised my plea for peace had failed. It left me with only one other possibility. I shifted my attention, moving away from Jean-Pierre, focusing instead on Matt. As I did, I pushed out with power. It wasn’t a spell, it wasn’t controlled, and it was completely unfocused. Which was what I needed it to be. I didn’t have a lot of magic on my own. I was a hedge mage, destined to be a magical specialist, but I could do this.
When the magic—my magic—struck Matt, it washed over him, the same way that my magic washed over me, rolling through me. It triggered something, and there came a series of flashes along my wrist, cold that worked its way up my arm, one flash after the other, each one bursting with a sense of almost pain.
The entire front of the conference room exploded. Flashes of light burst, mixed with streamers, thunderous explosions, and strange surges of power.
When it faded, I breathed out, looking around.
Matt was gone.
14
I took a step back, afraid Matt might suddenly appear behind me, but there was no one—thankfully. I felt a hand on my shoulder, and I span. Barden was there, grasping my shoulders and keeping me from moving too quickly.
“Dr. Stone?”
I shook my head. “Where did he go?”
“What makes you think he went anywhere?” Barden asked, his gaze looking beyond me.
I turned in the direction of his gaze, and as I did, I understood what he was getting at. The entire front of the conference room, where Matt and Jean-Pierre had been fighting, had been destroyed. Sections of the floor were blown free, leaving wood splintered. It had blown through the wall behind it, which surprisingly, appeared to be cement rather than anything else. The ceiling had damage as well, though not nearly as much as the floor or the walls.
“He couldn’t have died from that,” I whispered. I hadn’t wanted to kill Matt. I’d wanted to stop the fighting, wanting to keep him from battling with Jean-Pierre, but then again, I had triggered his spells. Had I known something like this could happen? Maybe not quite like this. I had known something would happen, even if I hadn’t expected it to be this.
“He was skilled, Dr. Stone, but even as skilled as he was, I have a hard time believing he would be able to survive this.”
I pulled myself free of Barden’s grasp, making my way to the front of the room. The floor creaked beneath me, a tenuous creaking sound that left me concerned I might plunge through it, and if I did, would that mean I’d crash into one of the vampire chambers far below? I still didn’t know what was down there, other than that was where Jean-Pierre had come from.
There was no sign of Matt. Then again, there was no sign of clothing or other indication he might have been caught up in the explosion. If nothing else, that left me with the hope he had survived it.
“What did you do?” Barden asked.
“I released his spells.”
Barden looked at me for a moment and then he broke into laughter. “You did what?”
“I did the only thing I could think of, Barden. I wanted these two to stop fighting, and until they did, I knew I needed to do something.”
“And so this something was you releasing the spells.”
I nodded.
“Remind me to be careful around you.”
I turned, looking for Jean-Pierre, and found him standing near the doorway to the conference room. He watched us, but he was speaking to others on the other side of the door. When he was done, he turned to me. “It seems as if I owe you again, Dr. Stone. I’ll admit I find this unfortunate.”
“What? The fact you still live or the fact you owe me?”
“I doubt that one of those would have been able to remove me.”
“I don’t know. I saw what he was able to do to others.”
“Yes, about that.” He glanced to the doorway before turning his attenti
on back to me. “Whose idea was it to come here?” Jean-Pierre asked.
I didn’t want to betray Barden, but I didn’t need to worry. Barden took a step forward, positioning himself between me and Jean-Pierre. Always the protector, but that wasn’t always necessary, something Barden needed to better understand. “It was my idea,” he said.
“Why?”
“Call it a grudge.”
“You’re angry at the way Roland betrayed the Mage Council?”
“I’m angry he got away with it.”
“And what makes you think he did?” Jean-Pierre held Barden’s gaze for a long moment, neither man looking away.
“He remains the head of his house,” Barden said.
“Indeed.”
I glanced from Barden to Jean-Pierre. I didn’t know what had taken place, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was there had been something of a promise in what Jean-Pierre had said. “You really had already taken care of it, hadn’t you?”
Jean-Pierre nodded to me. “Mages, even those who are as old as Barden, operate on a different time scale to vampires. What is a long time to a mage is not as long to a vampire, especially to those who serve on the Council of Elders.”
“What did you do?”
“It matters not. All that matters is Roland will face his punishment.”
“Will face or has faced?” Barden asked.
“As I said, it matters not.”
“There is something to this,” I said. I backed away from the opening at the front of the room. I didn’t want to be too close to it, worried it might collapse, leading to me plunging far below. At the same time, I felt as if I needed to move in order to think. I needed to piece things together, and standing here as I was, it felt as if I couldn’t wrap my head around everything as well as I wanted to. “Why did Roland say what he did about the Council?”
Jean-Pierre said nothing.
I glanced over to Barden. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?” I asked. The timing was unusual. Jean-Pierre shouldn’t have been able to reach Minneapolis that quickly, not without some magic of his own, though I wouldn’t put it past him to have that ability. With everything the vampires knew, it was possible he still had a mage or more at his disposal who allowed him to travel. Having examined him, I knew he didn’t have any markings on himself, not the way Barden had described other vampires possessing, so he wasn’t stealing power directly. It was possible he carried a wand or something along those lines in order to tap into its power, but even in that, I wasn’t sure.
“What do you suspect?” Barden asked.
“I don’t really know. Something’s not fitting together.”
I didn’t like the fact I wasn’t able to piece it together, but it seemed there, almost at the edge of my ability to grasp, and yet… I still couldn’t get there. It was a puzzle. I’d never been that great at puzzles, but I could brute force them. I would stick with it, trying piece after piece until I found the one that worked. That was what I needed to do now.
It all came back to the strange comment Roland had made about the Council. That, combined with everything else, left me wondering if there was something here that would explain it all. Was there a unifying explanation I could discover?
“The Council is the issue, isn’t it?” I asked Jean-Pierre.
The elder vampire watched me for a moment. “Not here.”
“Not here?”
“I cannot talk here. Do you have a place?”
I glanced at Barden. Knowing that Matt knew how to break into his warehouse, I didn’t think that was a good place for him to go, and knowing that Matt knew how to find me at my condo, that wasn’t the right place to go.
“There might be a place we can use,” Barden said.
“Very good. I will meet you in your car.” With that, Jean-Pierre disappeared. It happened with a fluttering of movement so fast I couldn’t follow it, and I stood watching Barden for a moment.
“What is it you suspect?” Barden asked.
“I’m not really sure. The Council seems to be the key to it, but I don’t understand why.”
“Why do you think the Council is the key?”
“It’s all about Roland.”
“Roland isn’t necessarily the most trustworthy. He might have said anything to convince us of what he wanted us to believe.”
“I’m fully aware of that, but what I’m getting at is that there is something else I can’t grasp.”
“What?”
“It’s tied to the death at the organization. I had started to question whether Matt was responsible, but given his single-minded focus, I can’t help but think he actually wants to figure out what happened. It was possible he really does care about John Adams.”
“That was his name?”
“Sort of. The members of the organization take on aliases.”
“Of course,” Barden said. We stopped in the doorway to the conference room. I expected there to be vampires guarding us, but they had moved the bodies of the fallen, and though there was a single vampire, there weren’t any more than that.
“Are they going to stop us?”
“I doubt it.”
“Why?”
“For one, I am a member of the Mage Council. I have made it clear in my time here, wanting them to be aware of that fact. Anything they do to me would be considered an assault on the Council itself. There are no vampire families that would be so foolish as to attack the Mage Council.”
“You said for one.”
“The other is the token you carry. I suspect they are aware of it, and that gives you a level of access and safety you wouldn’t otherwise have. To answer your question, I don’t think they will try to stop us.”
We headed down the hallway, and as we reached the door, Barden grabbed my arm. “Where did you disappear to?”
“I was thinking I needed to find Roland, not knowing that he would return and attack.”
“Instead you managed to find the elder.”
I shrugged. “Jean-Pierre was… Well, I think he found me.” It was the only explanation that made any sense to me, and I didn’t know how to explain it otherwise. When I had gone down the stairs, it wasn’t as if I had been compelled to do so, having thought I was looking for Roland, but Jean-Pierre had managed to find me.
That wasn’t quite right. He hadn’t been expecting me, had he? Which meant he hadn’t known I was going to be there. Unless he had, and had just been suspicious, which is why he tested me. That had been what he was doing when he was using his vampire ability on me, trying to force me to share with him that I was whom I claimed to be.
“I will be interested in discovering what is taking place,” Barden said.
We stepped outside, and I hesitated. Everything appeared calm, almost quiet, but when we had arrived, there had been a rapid assault. I still didn’t know why, though it had to be tied to everything else. Not only had there been someone following us, but there had been someone who had attacked Brad. That was a piece I hadn’t been able to figure out. It was one more thing for me to brute force my way through, trying to see if I could uncover the secret to it. For some reason, I didn’t think I would be able to do so easily.
Barden hurried us toward his car, and a part of me remained a little unsettled until we got in. Even there, I couldn’t help but feel as if we weren’t completely safe. At this point, all I wanted was to be as far away from here as possible. I wanted to be anywhere but where the vampires might attack, but it was more than that. I wanted to be anywhere but where Matt might come after us. Without knowing exactly what he was after, I couldn’t help but feel as if I needed to hide, prepare, and be ready for… anything.
But at this point, I didn’t feel as if I were ready for a lot of anything at all. I felt as if I were no safer than I had been before. Perhaps less, if only because of what Matt had done. And now we had Jean-Pierre back in Minneapolis. The last time he was here, he had nearly died. Regardless of what he might claim, and regardless of his stated abil
ity to restore himself, I wasn’t certain he would be able to do so.
When we reached the car, I felt the surge of magic tingling along my bracelet. Not for the first time, I was incredibly thankful I had the bracelet, that Kate had provided a way for me to be able to know when magic was used around me, and even more so, to be able to protect myself. In that moment, I missed her more than I usually did.
“You should get in the car,” Barden said. There was an edge to his voice that he didn’t often have, and I glanced up to see him staring along the end of the driveway.
“Is he back?”
“Something is,” Barden whispered.
I hurriedly pulled open the passenger side door and climbed in. Once I was, I waited for Barden to get in. He stood motionless at the door, his hand on the doorframe, staring outward. “Barden?”
“Just a moment, Dr. Stone.”
What was he waiting for? If Matt or others like him were coming, then we needed to get moving. We couldn’t sit around and wait, could we? We already knew just how skilled he was from the things he was capable of doing.
Then Barden got into the front seat. As he did, power surged around the car, and I thought they understood what he was preparing to do. He was going to transport the entire vehicle. If he did, where would we go?
“You have to wait for Jean-Pierre,” I said.
“I’m aware of that,” Barden said.
I watched the house while Barden watched the end of the driveway. Where was Jean-Pierre, anyway? How long was he going to be before he came out? We needed to get going. I wanted safety. I didn’t want to worry, to fear another attack, and I wanted to be away from the vampire house, more than anything else.
“If he’s not here in another few moments, we will need to depart.”
“Barden, we need to know what’s going on.”
Open Fracture Page 15
