The Sight

by Chloe Neill

  “You’re ruining this. You’re ruining our chance at something different. They ruined our lives. They ruined the Zone.”

  Unlike her flashier friend, this woman looked genuinely angry, genuinely sad, and one hundred percent more willing to die for what she believed in.

  “The war ruined the Zone,” I said. “But the war’s over. We’re trying to make it better, and Reveillon is trying to destroy it altogether. Right now you can drop the gun, and I won’t have to shoot you. Or you can stand there, and I’ll have to. Because you chose your side, and I chose mine.”

  Without a word of argument, she crumpled to the ground.

  I blinked.

  I didn’t think I’d been that compelling.

  And then I looked behind her at the Para with the brick in her hand. She blew out a heavy and shuddering breath.

  “Well,” I said, looking at the Reveillon women on the ground, “that was very well done.”

  —

  I helped the Para back into the shelter, then moved outside again to rejoin Liam, but he was gone. The building was quiet, the sounds of fighting echoing from somewhere to the east.

  Liam wouldn’t have left his post without a reason. Either someone was hurt or someone was here . . .

  I walked to the intersection and scanned the streets, caught sight of him turning a corner. I ran forward, skimming the building and peering around the edge of the building.

  Ezekiel and Liam stood in the middle of the long, narrow park in the middle of Devil’s Isle, ten feet between them, and a cluster of Reveillon members around them.

  Ezekiel wore clothes that were clean and pressed and free of blood or dirt. He stayed clean, even as he demanded others kill in his name.

  There was a streak of blood on Liam’s face. With dark scruff along his jawline, his shirt torn and battered, and his eyes gleaming with battle, he looked like a warrior of myth, an Irish prince whose kingdom was on the line.

  I crept closer, looking for a spot where I could aim, get a clear shot. And that’s when I saw it—that look in Ezekiel’s eyes. The hatred, sure. The anger. But also the hunger.

  It was the same hunger I’d seen in the eyes of the young wraith we’d taken back to the clinic. The hunger for power . . . and the hunger for magic.

  Malachi’s words echoed in my head, as clearly as if he’d been standing beside me. “You have to be prepared for the unexpected.”

  Ezekiel was a Sensitive, and he was well on his way to becoming a wraith.

  I suddenly understood the killing of the angel in Congo Square, why Eleanor had seen the stain of magic. Ezekiel had been wraith enough to kill the Para, to destroy his body in the futile attempt to get at his magic.

  She’d seen Ezekiel’s dark power, the spilling of the angel’s blood.

  All this time—all this hatred—and Ezekiel had the same power and magic he’d railed against. Did he hate magic because he had it, or in spite of it? Did he hate us because of his own self-loathing, or was he in denial that he’d become his own enemy?

  There was nothing more dangerous than a man who couldn’t recognize his own hypocrisy . . . unless it was the followers who’d realized he was a hypocrite. I was close enough to shoot Ezekiel, but, like the adviser had suggested, that might just create a martyr.

  I needed to destroy the illusion he’d created first. That might make his followers turn against him, and that might just end the war.

  Gun at my side, I walked through the circle of Reveillon members and onto the grass. Their gazes flicked toward me—Liam’s with concern, Ezekiel’s with excitement.

  “Well, well, well. Claire Connolly. You two enjoy rescuing each other, don’t you?”

  I gave him a confused stare. “I don’t see that either of us needs rescuing.”

  Ezekiel smiled wildly. “You’re traitors who we’ve surrounded. This is over, although I’ll allow you to confess your sins before you go, if you’d like.”

  “Would you? How thoughtful. What sins would those be?”

  Liam watched me carefully, obviously trying to figure out what I was planning.

  I moved a step closer to Ezekiel, just close enough to let him get another whiff of the magic he’d sensed in Camp Couturie—but hadn’t recognized. And just as I suspected, hunger flashed in his eyes again.

  “Son of a bitch,” Liam muttered. He’d figured it out, too.

  I kept my gaze on the killer. “A very wise man told me that the center cannot hold.”

  “Meaning what?” His voice was hoarse with wanting, and he swallowed thickly.

  “Meaning, if you confess your sins, what happens to those who follow you?” I took a step closer, gazed into his ravenous eyes. “If you tell them you’re a Sensitive?”

  His expression went cold. “Traitor. Harlot.”

  “Maybe. But that doesn’t change the fact”—I took two steps back—“that you have magic.”

  The Reveillon members looked back and forth between us, debating who to believe.

  “I don’t have magic!” Ezekiel screamed it, then ripped open his shirt, revealing a network of scars across his abdomen and ribs, some of them fresh. “Those demons were excised.”

  Rage bubbled in me, rage that the refusal to deal with Sensitives had led to this, that he’d actually cut himself in some delusional attempt to rid himself of magic. And by doing that, by deciding he’d been cured of it, he’d eliminated whatever chance he’d had to learn to cast it off, to find the balance that would have saved him.

  “The demon is excised!” he repeated, his eyes belying the words.

  “Let’s test that theory,” I said, and reached into the magic still spindling inside me.

  “Claire, no!”

  Liam knew what I intended, and his voice was tinged with concern. Containment would come to know exactly what I was, and I’d have to face the consequences of it.

  He was right. It was a risk. But I was tired of hiding. I was tired of pretending to be something else. This was necessary to show what Ezekiel really was, and I’d be damned if cowardice steered me away from it.

  I shook my head but didn’t take my gaze off Ezekiel. “It’s time, Liam. It has to be. That’s how this ends.”

  As if he sensed the magic I gathered, Ezekiel’s eyes went almost slack with desire. I wrapped fury—tinged with pity—around those threads of magic, and used them to whip a machete from a Reveillon member’s hands, sent it spinning at Ezekiel. He ducked, and it hit the oak behind him, shattering splinters into the wind.

  Before Reveillon could object, could curse my name and my magic, Ezekiel screamed, the sound as horrible as any wraith’s. And as he sang that unholy note, fire burst from his mouth, singeing a line across the grass.

  The man could scream fire.

  For a moment, there was only shock—the Reveillon members horrified by the man they’d believed would lead the charge against magic, and Containment agents baffled by the irony. They’d figure out eventually that Ezekiel was fighting his demon the best way he knew how—by excising it not just from his body, but from everything.

  I avoided the line of fire, gathered up magic for another shot. Anger gave me control, helped me lift a nearby bench into the air, spin it toward Ezekiel. He hit the ground to dodge it, sang his fire again.

  This time, the stream was nearly bullet-fast. I sidestepped, but not fast enough to avoid the knife-sharp pain of fire along my leg. I’d burned myself before, but this was no ordinary fire. It was angry and barbed, as if each lick of flame was infinitely forked to scrape and sear.

  Maybe it was time for a different plan.

  Ezekiel and I faced each other, the battle still proceeding around us. I stared at him, looking purposefully hopeless, even as I gathered more magic for another shot. Or more precisely, for another volley.

  When he opened his mouth to scream, I wrenched my magi
c against his, wrapped those braided links of power around the stream of fire. Sparks shot up from the conjunction of his magic and mine, as alien power battled alien power.

  He pushed, and I pushed back, sweat running down my back, my shaking arms, as I struggled to keep the magic from surging back toward me. Ezekiel was powerful, but I doubted he understood his own strength, knew how to control it. Not after denying it for so long. Still, he warred ferociously, changing the pitch of his magic to change its temperature, its vibration, so I had to counter with moves of my own. It was like controlling a feather in the middle of a hurricane.

  I was getting dizzy, adrenaline, magic, and exhaustion taking their toll. One final push, I told myself. One final push, and he’d be down, and the center would be gone. He would be done, and with him, the rest of it.

  I gathered every ounce of magic, every frazzled thread of anger and frustration, bound them together with will and resolve. And when that braid was strong enough, tight enough, I thrust it toward him.

  Ezekiel went pale . . . and he faltered. Telekinesis overpowered fire, pushing his magic back toward him, into him. It slammed into him like a bus, throwing him back against the live oak behind him, where he slumped to the ground.

  I fell to my knees, chest heaving.

  Ezekiel shuddered as Containment agents swarmed to him, to the rest of the Reveillon members. But he raised his bloody eyes and smiled at me, the stain of death at the corners of his mouth. “You’re too late,” he yelled, and pointed at something behind me, his eyes closing as the agents surrounded him.

  As the battle exploded again around me, Reveillon members fighting with the agents who tried to subdue them, I looked back.

  Liam lay alone on the ground twenty feet away, body shuddering from the force of Ezekiel’s magic. A shot meant for me must have ricocheted, or Liam had stepped in to shield me from it.

  “Liam!” I screamed, and ran to him, fell down in the grass beside him, fear piercing me as sharply as a Paranormal’s blade.

  His left shoulder was charred, his shirt singed, but he was still breathing, pulse tapping visibly in his neck, chest rising and falling with each breath. Tears of relief streamed down my face as I gingerly pulled his shirt away from the wound. It would need a thorough cleaning and bandaging, but Lizzie would take care of it. He’d be fine.

  He’d be fine. He had to be fine.

  My fingers grazed his skin again . . . and that’s when I felt it—under and behind and running through those shudders was something foreign, and yet utterly familiar. Liam’s lashes fluttered, and he opened his eyes, blinked to adjust, to focus. And when his eyes finally trained on me, they shone brilliantly gold.

  He was alive, and he was . . . magic.

  I couldn’t stop my voice from shaking when I said his name. “Liam.”

  Eyes still fixed on mine, fear transforming to realization, he grabbed my hand, and magic—power—jumped like a visible spark between us. He clasped my hand hard, squeezed until my bones ached, while frissons of magic shimmered in the air.

  “Claire,” he said, his voice ragged with magic, with power, and with what looked like the cruel ecstasy of whatever passed through him.

  He was like me now. “You were hit by my magic”—I told him, watching waves of it pass through his body—“and I think you have magic now. Like Eleanor.”

  I returned my gaze to his face but failed to recognize the emotion in his eyes.

  “Magic?”

  I nodded. “You’ll be all right, Liam. You’re alive,” I said, and pressed my mouth to his. “You’ll be all right.” I looked around for help, but Containment agents would be useless here. “I’m going to find Lizzie. She’ll take care of you. Stay here, and don’t move. I’ll be right back.”

  He grabbed my hand, gripped it hard enough to bruise. “No, Claire . . . I can’t . . . leave . . .”

  I’d thought he didn’t want me to leave. “I’ll be right back,” I assured him. “I promise. I have to get Lizzie.”

  I searched for five minutes but couldn’t find her in the crowd. Afraid for Liam, I gave up and ran back to him. I’d wait with him until someone came—someone would come eventually. He’d be okay until then.

  But when I reached the spot where he’d lay, the grass was empty. He was gone, and the Containment agents dealing with the Reveillon members they’d captured there now stared at me suspiciously.

  They’d seen my magic.

  They knew what I was.

  I shook my head, willing myself to stop, to think. That was for later. Liam was now. Where had he gone? Had Lizzie gotten to him first? Taken him to the clinic?

  Instinctively, I looked in that direction, found Malachi in the middle of the street. Liam stood at his side, holding his wounded arm. They both looked at me, Liam’s gaze steely and somehow alien, Malachi’s unreadable.

  There in the middle of the street, Malachi stretched his wings and draped Liam’s good arm around his neck, as if preparing to lift them both into the air.

  But why would he take Liam? Why not just wait for Lizzie to check him out, to take him to the clinic?

  I stared at Liam, watched his golden gaze—so much like Malachi’s—turn angry, and then turn away.

  Realization hit me. Malachi wasn’t taking Liam for help, I realized, knees nearly buckling.

  He was helping Liam run.

  Liam had become magic, the thing he loathed and feared, the reason Gracie was dead. The reason Eleanor was injured. He’d become the enemy he’d been hunting since the war began. Not a Paranormal and not a Sensitive, but certainly not a human.

  Liam had become one of the demons he chased, and he was running.

  And he was running without me.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Ezekiel had been a Sensitive, and he’d become a wraith, or close enough that Containment wouldn’t care much about the difference. He’d made war against humans, Paranormals, Containment. That I’d helped battle him back would be dwarfed by that simple fact—whatever else I was, I was still a monster. I was a demon not yet unleashed, and Gunnar couldn’t protect me forever.

  Liam had chosen to run. I no longer had a choice.

  Gunnar had been right about Ezekiel. Without his leadership, and with a new understanding of who he was and how he’d lied, the assault lost momentum and the sounds of battle receded again. No longer afraid of losing ground to Reveillon, Containment agents began to gather up their enemies.

  Since I’d proven I was one of them, I had to go.

  I ran back to Royal Mercantile, past the revelers who’d already gathered in Jackson Square to celebrate with booze and candles and music. Some were subdued and quiet; others sang a raucous version of “When the Saints Come Marching In.”

  I ran past them, past the Pontalba Apartments to Royal, past the former shops and empty lots, pushing through the stream of humans heading toward the Square to join the celebration.

  As much as I wanted to be like them, I wasn’t. And I’d made that known to the world.

  I was a full block away from the store when I realized how little there was to come back to.

  I stopped in front of what remained of Royal Mercantile, stared.

  They’d knocked the glass out of the front door, but left the leather strap with the bell. The front windows were gone; glass fanned across the sidewalk like snow. The store had been trashed, emptied. Goods either taken or broken, which was just pointless and wasteful.

  I walked inside, right through the door, glass crunching beneath my feet, and stared at the devastation.

  I’d known this might happen, was likely to happen. But there was a big difference between knowing it and actually seeing it.

  Tadji was sweeping glass and grit in the middle of the store. “Claire!” She dropped her broom, ran forward, embraced me in a hug. “Thank God. You’re all right.”

  I
nodded, too numb to react. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m good. I’m good.” She looked around the store. “I mean, you can see what happened here.”

  “Reveillon?”

  She nodded. “The ones too afraid to actually fight, I think. They broke the windows, took a lot. There were so many of them. I wouldn’t let the customers fight. I didn’t want anyone else getting hurt, Claire. Not over things.”

  “Good,” I said. “Good. You did just the right thing, because you’re right—it’s just stuff. It doesn’t matter.”

  Did anything matter now?

  “What about Burke? Gunnar? Gavin? Liam? Are they all right?”

  Guilt settled heavily in my bones. “I don’t know,” I admitted. I hadn’t seen them, knew only that we’d won the battle, that Liam had gone, and that I had to. Everything else blurred at the edges.

  I went to the stairs, took them two at a time to the storage room.

  “Claire!” Tadji called after me as I grabbed the go bag from my armoire. She reached the doorway as I stood up again, and she looked down at the bag with wide eyes.

  “Claire, stop,” she said firmly, holding up a hand. “Stop and tell me what’s happened.”

  “We beat them back. We won. I don’t know what will happen with Devil’s Isle, with the Paras who helped. But we beat back Reveillon. Ezekiel is dead.”

  “Then why are you running?”

  “I used magic in front of Containment.”

  She looked confused. “But after all this, after everything, they’ll understand now. They’ll get it.”

  I shook my head. “Ezekiel was a Sensitive.”

  It took a moment for her to understand what that meant, and why it mattered. “Jesus. He was a wraith?”

  I nodded. He was close enough to it. “Containment knows he had magic, what he did with it. The destruction and death he brought. To beat him back, I had to show him. But they won’t change their mind about Sensitives. Not now.”

  Reveillon was mostly vanquished. Paranormals had shown they could be helpful.

  We would be the new enemy.

  Tadji shook her head. “Things will change, Claire. They will. Gunnar will see to it. Gunnar will help them understand.”