She just couldn’t.
Instead, she rushed to Brooke’s side just as a series of loud clanks sounded behind her. She dared not look.
“Brooke!” Sam shook her until her terrified gaze snapped to attention. “You two, leave! Now!” She pushed her toward Nadine and issued the command once more. As they ran out of the kitchen, Sam turned, her heart guarding itself against what she might find.
The pot rack had come lose from the ceiling and had fallen on top of Greg. He was on one knee with an arm over his head, holding the rack at bay. Skillets lay strewn all around him. He stood, flung his arm to the side and sent the rack flying across the stove.
In front of him, Veridan was still under Bruce. Both were immobile, not a hint of struggle between them. Greg stood watching them as still as they were. Sam took a step closer, her eyes unblinking and fixed on the two men.
Then Veridan kicked his magic-charged arms and legs and Bruce sailed straight upward. He hit the drop ceiling, then plummeted down and landed on the floor with bone-crushing force.
Sam watched in horror as Jacob, who had come to and was sitting in a daze with his back pressed against the cabinets, reached a hand toward his father.
“Daddy?” he said in a tremulous voice. He crawled, arms and legs shaking and pressed a small hand to his father’s face. “Daddy?” he repeated, this time louder.
Bruce was still, his open, fixed eyes staring into nothingness. Sam stifled a cry for the boy’s sake, but in her mind she heard her own voice, raw and frantic, roaring at the injustice. Jacob couldn’t lose his father—not now that he had him back.
“You fucking monster.” Greg’s clenched fists were stiff at his sides, trembling with pent up energy.
He jumped forward, arms outstretched to catch Veridan, but the Sorcerer was faster. He hopped out of the way in a blur of movement, a hand tight around his talisman. Like a dashing shadow, he stepped back, then sideways until he was behind Jacob again.
The boy’s face was buried in his father’s neck as he wailed like a newborn.
“Get away from him!” Sam yelled, looking around for something to use as a weapon. A magnetic strip attached to the wall caught her eye. It held in place several knives in different shapes and sizes. She snatched the biggest one. As useless as it seemed, it was better than nothing. When she turned back, the Sorcerer had Jacob back in his clutches.
“Back where we started?” Veridan said. “Although, in truth, worse off.” He cast a disdainful glace down at Bruce’s inert body. “Do you still doubt I will kill the boy?” Veridan’s gaze darted to the back door. He edged his way in that direction.
Jacob struggled, his small hands reaching toward Bruce, his legs stiff and trailing behind him as Veridan pulled him along.
I can’t let him take Jacob. Do something!
But what? What could she do? She was useless, her power and even Greg’s were nothing against this threat. They couldn’t act and risk Jacob’s loss. Still, their hesitation had already cost Bruce his life.
No, not their hesitation, hers. Veridan wanted her. No one else.
Sam shook her head. That was also a lie. If she did as Veridan wanted and went with him, she would be putting more than her own life at risk. The Sorcerer might kill her on the spot, but she doubted that was his plan. More likely, he would bring her to Danata. Then Greg would become a victim, too. Or more precisely: a casualty. Judging by past experience, they would not turn out like Bruce or Elizabeth.
What then? What?!
“I’ll go with you!” Sam shouted, feeling her head near the point of explosion. She took a few steps forward.
“No, stay back,” Greg ordered her. “You can’t trust him.”
“Come and I will let the boy go. I promise.” Veridan had moved further back and was now pushing the door open with his back.
Sam gave a Greg a desperate look. “We have to do something,” her eyes said. He nodded, understanding her better than anyone ever could. Sam barely had time to register his assent when, in his act-first-ask-questions-later fashion, he threw his hands in Veridan’s direction and discharged a blue bolt of energy that zapped across the air at the speed of a bullet. The bolt exploded across the Sorcerer’s chest, clearing Jacob’s head by mere inches.
Veridan flew past the door and slammed, back first, against the wall in the narrow hall outside the kitchen. He slid down and crumpled to the floor, legs sprawled and holding the door open.
Free from the evil Sorcerer’s clutches, Jacob, face wet with tears, ran to Sam, crashing against her and burying his face in her t-shirt.
She wrapped the boy in a tight embrace. “Jacob.” He felt solid and safe in her arms, but her heart kept racing, her brain screaming that something was amiss. What little relief she’d felt slipped away before it became whole.
Something’s wrong.
Her head shot up. Greg was making his way to the back door where Veridan had collapsed.
“Greg, don’t!” Sam said, but he didn’t stop right away. Instead, he took another step forward, put a hand up to acknowledge her.
Then Sam felt a cold tug against her very soul and anything else she might have said died in her throat.
She knew what was coming an instant before Danata stepped from behind the wall and into the threshold right in front of her now-smiling Sorcerer.
The Regent’s hands were fisted and held high up above her head. Sam didn’t have to use her skills to know what was between Danata’s fingers. She had felt the tug on her vinculum as the vile Ripper had taken hold of it.
In the instantaneous rush of her thoughts, Sam realized that all of this—holding Jacob hostage, killing Bruce—had been a mere distraction. Greg had sensed the danger, but he’d thought it originated from Veridan, when all along Danata had been hiding past that door, ready to offer the killing blow.
“I have you now,” Danata said with relish, then yanked her hands apart in one violent motion, giving Sam’s untried instincts no more than a split second to protect them, to safeguard what little she could.
Standing in a victorious pose, the Regent held her hands up in the air, well apart from each other. She cackled with her head thrown back.
Sam blinked at the sight, then, as if in a macabre, synchronized dance, she and Greg fell to their knees. They wobbled for a moment, heads slumping forward. Finally, they fell face first to the floor and lost all knowledge of themselves.
Chapter 55 - Veridan
Veridan stood and dusted himself off. Who knew he had such a talent for acting?
He smirked.
The arrogant Keeper lay at Danata’s feet, unconscious, or hopefully dead. The fool thought his magic had knocked Veridan out, but he’d erected a shield around himself the moment Greg burst into the room. The plan had worked beautifully.
Danata turned and faced Veridan, an exuberant, crazed look in her violet eyes. She threw her head back and laughed, her throat working with each horrendous cackle. Veridan’s eye twitched. He looked away to hide his disdain.
“Sam, Sam! Wake up!”
The boy, Jacob, was shaking Samantha. Her head lolled from side to side as he did so.
Veridan pushed past Danata and walked back into the kitchen. Jacob scuttled away from the girl, retreating on all fours like a bug. His face was red and lined with dry and fresh tears. The fear in his eyes was as primal as anything Veridan had ever seen. It also made his eye twitch.
“Go!” Veridan impatiently flicked a hand toward the boy.
Jacob’s gaze turned to Sam, then his father. “Y-you’ll pay . . . you’ll pay for this,” he said, moving backwards toward the double doors. The look in his eyes, as he finally slipped out, had little fear left in it and was, instead, a thing of hatred and lust for revenge.
Maybe I’ll come to regret letting you live. But it would be a long time before the boy would morph and turn into any kind of creditable enemy.
Veridan pushed the poor devil out of his thoughts and faced Danata. Her state of rapture had nearly
passed and she was now regarding her victims with detached pleasure.
She moved away from Greg and took a few steps toward the girl. Danata’s knee-high leather boots tapped against the cheap flooring. She was dressed like she was at a fun afternoon of Polo, practical and comfortable for the job at hand.
“Is she dead?” Danata nudged Samantha’s arm with the tip of her boot. There was reluctant regret in her tone, a paradoxical combination.
Veridan took a knee next the girl and pressed two fingers to her throat. He frowned. “No, she’s alive.”
“Excellent! What about the Keeper?”
Veridan approached Greg warily.
“Oh, he’s not dangerous anymore, even if he’s alive,” Danata laughed. “Severed from the girl he’s a Keeper no more.” She snickered like a naughty girl who had gotten her way.
“Still alive, too.” Veridan pulled away from Greg. His heartbeat was as accelerated as the girl’s had been. Normally after the Ripping, the victims’ heart rate was barely discernible. Odd.
“Just as well, I suppose. We can use him as leverage, if she refuses to do as I say.” Danata brought her hands together in delight. “This was a marvelous plan, my dear. You’ve outdone yourself.”
“We should leave, transport them out of here before they wake up.” Veridan pulled two small vials of potion out of his breast pocket and, prying Samantha and Greg’s mouths open, poured their contents in.
When that was done, he slipped his hands under the girl’s arms and started dragging her toward Greg. He was halfway there when a commotion sounded outside the double doors. He looked up and exchanged a glance with Danata.
“Through there, please hurry,” someone urged.
Astute as always, Danata rushed to Veridan’s side and clutched his arm, just as Portos, Bernard and Roanna herself burst into the kitchen.
The sisters’ gazes locked. They hadn’t seen each other in years, and the weight of the time and ill blood between them was like a discharge of electricity in the air.
Veridan snatched his pendant and uttered his transport incantation in one quick breath. Portos had time to do nothing except watch Veridan’s satisfied smile as they disappeared, leaving only the unconscious Greg behind.
It was a shame they couldn’t take him, too—Veridan had a score to settle with the brat—but he couldn’t complain. One couldn’t demand perfection every single time.
Chapter 56 - Greg
Greg came to with a jolt, his chest pumping so hard it hurt. He wrapped his arms around his side and howled in pain.
“Sam! Sam! Sam!”
His throat felt raw as if he’d been screaming for days.
“Lay back, son.”
Someone pressed a cool hand to his forehead and he felt a prick on his arm. He looked down at a large syringe stuck into his shoulder. His eyelids grew heavy immediately. He fought the dizziness, but his eyes blinked closed for a second or several hours, he didn’t know how long. Then he was awake again, screaming, heart and chest pumping. This time his arms were stiff, tied down, perhaps. It didn’t matter. He didn’t need arms.
He needed a lifeline.
“How much of this is it safe to give him? This would be the fifth time.”
“I wish magic would work, but it’s having no effect on him, for some reason.”
“Sam! Sam! Sam!” Greg screamed but barely heard his own voice. He was swimming in open space, lost with nothing, no one, to anchor him to Earth. He had to find her, had to wrap his arms around her and bury his face into her neck. Once there, he would hold on tight, so tight he would never feel adrift again.
“So do I give him another shot?”
“No. Maybe later. He’s had too much already.”
“He’s going mad.”
“Greg, Greg, listen, you have to calm down. Lay back and rest.”
“Sam! Sam! Sam!”
There was no other word, no other end but to find her, cling to her, never let her go.
More time passed. He screamed and screamed until he wore himself out. Even then, he mumbled her name like a prayer so vehement that not one second went by between one utterance of her name and the next.
“Please, Greg. You have to stop.”
There’s nothing. Nothing. Nothing. She’s not here. Not anywhere.
It was impossible. She had always been there, like the sun, like the moon. Grand and unavoidable. He had to keep looking, wading through this nothingness until he found his way.
Because he would find his way to her. It was what he did. He always knew where she was. He’d just taken the wrong turn, but he was on the right path now.
“Sam, Sam, I’m coming.”
“Greg, don’t do this. Please!”
She was near. Maybe around the next corner. Yes! She would be around the next corner, waiting, smiling.
“Snap out of it for God’s sake. She’s not here!”
Lies. Lies. Lies.
“I’m coming, Sam. Sam! Sam!”
“Shit! Don’t make me . . .”
“Sam! Sam—”
“SHE’S NOT HERE! You were ripped apart. Ripped, ripped, ripped, and if you don’t freakin’ snap out of it, you’ll never see her again.”
No. No. No.
Greg curled on one side, stopped calling Sam’s name and cried until his inside shriveled.
* * *
Compliance came by degrees, but acceptance didn’t follow.
The truth of what had happened took shape before Greg’s eyes like a deformed sculpture hammered into shape by cruel hands. Once he could stand to look at it for more than a few seconds at a time, he saw reason in Brooke’s pleas to “snap out of it.” And he did, to everyone’s surprise.
It took days. Seven to be exact, but he rejoined the living.
“Greg’s either very strong or . . .” Portos, like everyone else, searched for an explanation. “Or something went differently during the ripping.”
Greg was sitting in an armchair, Jacob curled up and asleep at his side, head resting on his thigh. Since Greg had first woken up, the boy hadn’t left his side. He followed him like a stray duckling and didn’t go with anyone else no matter how much they cajoled or begged.
I’ll keep him safe for you, Sam. He caressed Jacob’s hair and felt a measure of peace.
Others were in the room: Bernard, Ashby, Perry, Brooke, as well as people he had never met, most notably Sam’s mother. Roanna looked so much like her daughter that it almost hurt to be in her presence. Greg couldn’t bear to make eye contact, even if it was rude.
They had brought him here—transported, really—while he was still unconscious. The house belonged to a Luana Mirante, Joao and Calisto’s mother, and it was one of MORF’s safe houses. He knew it was in England, but he had idea of the town or general area. It didn’t matter.
For four days, they’d kept him sedated, until it wasn’t safe to medicate him any longer. After that, they sent Brooke to smack some sense into him. She was the only one who knew exactly what to say.
“If you don’t freakin’ snap out of it, you’ll never see her again.”
He would see her again. That was a promise. Greg brushed Jacob’s hair again. The boy sighed.
Sam’s father stood by the hearth. “Do you think that whatever went differently with Greg also went differently with Sam?”
They were trying to figure out why he wasn’t crazy, why his mind was still intact.
Or so they thought. Just because he could talk and function normally didn’t mean he was whole. He was anything but. He was torn to pieces inside, and if it wasn’t for the hope of seeing Sam again, he would have nothing else to carry him on.
Portos rubbed his chin. “I don’t know.”
“I think Sam did something,” Greg said, thinking back on the horrible moment when that witch tore them apart. Struck by the recollection, Greg bit his lip, took a deep breath, and tried, again, to recall, doing his best to ignore the pain that flared at the memories.
“She . . . I felt
her reaching for me. It felt like . . . I don’t know, like she was trying to save us.”
The old sorcerer paced, a long robe billowing behind him. “I wish we knew more about Weavers. It is quite possible that skill is part of her arsenal.”
Roanna’s eye lit up. “In that case, she might be in control of her full mental abilities, just like Greg.”
Even the clear timbre of Roanna’s voice reminded him of Sam. He stood, laid Jacob’s head gently on a cushion and left the room.
He walked through a long hall lined with all kinds of ancient-looking paintings, clocks and useless pieces of ornamental furniture. At the end of the hall, there was door that took him outside into a moonlit night. The chilled air hit his face and cleared his mind. He reclined against a squat stone wall and looked at the faraway trees.
His tolerance was thin and wore away quickly. This was the third time he’d walked away from everyone, sure his head would explode if he didn’t just leave. He hoped it would get better. It had to get better. Bernard and Roanna were just as interested as he was in getting Sam back. He had to be of help.
Brooke joined him fifteen minutes later. She sat on the stone wall and said nothing for a long time. He was grateful for that. Every once in a while, she sighed and shifted positions.
“She started going on about it being our fault again,” Brooke sighed.
Mirante hadn’t wasted any opportunities to blame her kids, Ashby, Perry and Brooke for what had happened. They had set out to find Sam against her express instructions to leave her be and, as a consequence, had led Veridan straight to New York.
“If it’s anyone’s fault it’s mine,” Brooke said, getting choked up.
“You have to stop blaming yourself.”
“Everyone keeps saying that. Veridan used a spell, no human could have resisted it, blah, blah, blah. It doesn’t matter. I was the one who took her away from you. It was my fault.”
She played with the amulet she now wore at her wrist. Perry had made it for her. It was supposed to prevent memory alterations. Many Morphids wore them. No memories acquired while wearing it could be modified or erased. So if it was taken away, the wearer would at least remember who took it.
Ripper (The Morphid Chronicles Book 2) Page 29
