And yours, I thought, looking over to Abram. Of course, I didn’t say it out loud.
“And if I could help you, I would,” Ramsey said, spreading his hands. “This isn’t some dickheaded power play. There’s honestly nothing I could do. To cast the sort of spell needed to find a Conduit who has cloaked themselves with this much power, I’d need a potent Supplicant and a Conduit who knew how to channel that power. I’d probably need at least two scotches as well. And while I have a stocked liquor cabinet and your girlfriend here is, in fact, a Supplicant, I’m going to have to disagree with Meatloaf on this occasion and say that two out of three just isn’t going to cut it.”
“How’s about three out of three?” Abram asked, leaning forward.
“A-Abram?” I stammered, suddenly uneasy about laying my secret at Ramsey’s feet.
“You’re the one who wanted to go down this road,” he whispered harshly. “Besides, Mr. Duldridge and I have an understanding about secrets, don’t we?”
“Consider me a vault,” he said, a slight tremble to his voice.
“I’m a Conduit,” I said quickly, blurting it out before I lost my nerve.
“You have the wordage wrong, dear. It’s called a Supplicant,” Ramsey said. “And not a very good one if you don’t even have that straight by now.”
“She’s both,” Abram said, shooting daggers at Ramsey with his eyes. “And she’s one of the best.”
I bit back a laugh. How can one be the best Supplicant? Was I an awesome bleeder? Even with the clock ticking down the minutes to my death—not even a full two days left until my demise—it was hard not to find Abram’s sentiment amusing.
Ramsey looked back and forth between us, as though he was expecting Ashton Kutcher to jump out from behind the bookshelf and tell him it was all a joke.
“You’re not serious,” he finally said.
“Do I seem like the ‘not serious’ type?” Abram asked.
“My God,” Ramsey said, staring at me.
He walked over, his hand stretched out in front of him. He reached for my face, as if to inspect it for some sort of barcode or instruction manual.
Abram grabbed his palm and flung him backward. “Hands off!”
“I knew there was something about you. I could feel it. I could sense it somehow,” Ramsey said. “Do you have any idea what this means?” He was actually flush now, hot and jittery. “You’re practically solar-powered! You’re an unending loop of power and potential—the infinity symbol brought to glorious life.” He blinked hard. “We can find the Conduit. With you, we can do damn near anything.”
“No, we can’t,” I said, my tone heavy with reality. “I don’t know anything about my powers. I don’t even know what they mean, let alone how to use them.”
A maddened look twirled in his gaze, complementing the smile that now danced across his lips, really completing the whole ‘mad scientist’ vibe he had going on at the moment. “But you can learn, you beautiful creature.” He nodded at me. “And before you leave this house today, you will.” He clapped his hands together loudly. “Now let’s go save an island.”
And at that moment, I felt hope. A horrible, terribly, awful false hope.
Chapter 20
Ramsey moved toward me. The obvious excitement on his face calmed me. If he thought this—the fact that I was a weird Conduit/Supplicant hybrid—was exciting and worthy of hope, then maybe we had a chance. Maybe the itch to cling onto Abram and say goodbye was nothing more than a knee-jerk reaction to something I wouldn’t have to consider much longer.
No. I couldn’t let myself think that way. Hope like that had a tendency to make people lazy. And I couldn’t afford to be anything but focused right now. I would do well to not let the possibility of what I wanted so badly screw with my mind.
Abram took another intimidating step forward, and Ramsey held his hands up as though to imply his innocent intentions.
“With her, we have a chance,” he said. “We actually have a chance!” He slid his eager gaze toward me and indicated me with his hand. “Well, come on. Show us what we’re starting with.”
“I can’t,” I muttered. “I’ve been trying, and it’s like—”
“Trying to grab soup with two hands?” Ramsey grinned at me. “It can be difficult at first, especially without having someone there to guide you. But if you’re open to it, I think I can help.”
Hesitation flooded me. This was what I wanted. It was my idea, for God’s sake. So why was I so wary about it now that it was in front of me?
“I don’t know,” I murmured.
As I backed away, Abram turned to face me, eyeing me worriedly.
“Have you—” I cleared my throat. “Have you ever done this before? Helped someone like me, I mean.”
“There is no one like you, Charisse,” Ramsey said. “But I’ve guided many Conduits through their transitions. It’s part of the training we receive as mages.” His gaze flickered to the floor. “And, as I told you, I guided your former friend Dalton as well.” He looked back at me. “Not that he was anything like you.”
“Right. Dalton,” I said, my heart in my throat. Not exactly my former friend. More like more former stalker/serial-killer.
Ramsey had been involved with Dalton, the absolute worst person I had ever known. How could I consider having anything to do with him after learning that?
And then that woman’s face—the single mother from the news—flashed through my mind. She was gone now. Gone forever. Her children would never have her in their lives again. And very soon, Abram wouldn’t have me.
I needed to make this happen for her and for me and all the victims to come. For those children and for Abram. Hell, maybe even a tiny bit for Ramsey and Briar, too. And we didn’t exactly have time to find a different mage. We had one and a half days. That was it. Ramsey was all we had.
“What do I do?” I asked, inching forward. From the corner of my eye, I saw Abram’s shoulder’s ease, though he remained close enough that he could intervene if necessary. We both knew we needed to do this, but we still didn’t know what this was. “I’ve already tried clearing my mind, getting my meditation on. It didn’t work.”
“And it won’t,” Ramsey said, taking a seat in a high-backed chair in an adjacent room. “Come, sit,” he said. Abram and I followed and sat on the loveseat across from him as he continued. “You’re doing the opposite of what you need to.” He splayed his hands out in front of him. “Being a Conduit is a beautiful thing. It affords you control over what is and what could be. The entire universe and all it is capable of is stretched out in front of you. But only if you accept it.”
As he leaned forward in his seat and reached for my face, I flinched. There was nothing threatening about the action, but come on. Personal space, please.
Instead of touching me, though, he just waved his hand in front of my eyes. “Clearing your mind, pushing all that you feel away from you, is effectively killing your connection to the magic.” He dropped his hand away and leaned back in his chair again, bending up his leg to rest one ankle on the opposite knee. “What you feel, what you think, who you are—it’s all vital to the process,” he said with a wave of his hand. “You weren’t made a Conduit by accident, Charisse. The magic chose you, and it did so for a reason.”
My head was spinning now. He talked about magic as though it were an entity. Some being with cognizant thought, some greater plan. He talked about magic as if magic was…God.
I’d gone from terrified to just plain uncomfortable in Ramsey’s presence. How did I tell him to get on with it, without sounding rude? I didn’t have a whole lot of time.
“Okay, then,” I said carefully. “So what do I do?”
“You need to connect with what you’re feeling. All of it. You need to let it wash over you. You need to allow yourself to revel in it. That’s what will spark the magic. Can you do that, Charisse?”
I looked over at Abram, and a million different feelings lit up inside of me. Could I do that?
This mage had no idea just how well I could do that.
I gave a slow nod, and he nodded back. Abram and Ramsey both looked at me in silence. Right, so they wanted me to try this now. No pressure or anything…
I closed my eyes and let it all flood back to me. At first, it filtered in like a trickle. The way I felt about Abram, the complicated feelings I still had for my father, the rift that had formed between Lulu and I as a result of dating the man she believed killed her brother, the fear I had in regards to everything I had been through. Losing my mother…
Something shifted. I felt as if I was being swept up in a wave, moved and thrown about by the intensity of these feelings. These were emotions I would usually escape, but this time, I let myself be pliant to them. Let them rock me. Throw me. Collide into me.
The fact I was still mourning my mother, the fear and sorrow that came with knowing I would very likely be dead in a matter of days, the bitterness I felt toward fate.
“Channel it,” Ramsey whispered from somewhere in front of me. “Whatever you’re feeling, whatever is pushing you forward, channel it into doing what you feel like you have to.”
And what was that exactly? What did I have to do? Save myself? That seemed a bit one-note given the immense power everyone kept telling me I had. No. This was bigger than me. Satina had said there was a plan for me, that I was important somehow, that there were trials I needed to face before my destiny would show itself.
I hadn’t really thought about it then. Before the last little bit, my destiny had always taken the detour toward wherever the best sales were. Now it seemed I was being called to do more. To be more.
I was going to have to become this thing. I would have to be the Conduit they all needed me to be.
Something like a hundred baby bee stings pricked at my skin. The stingers turned into finger nails, scraping me from the inside, hands pulling at me from under my flesh.
“What is this?” I whimpered, unable to keep the fear from my voice. I felt like the sensation might carry me away.
“It’s called the awakening,” Ramsey said. His voice sounded both close and distant, like an underwater scream. “All Conduits go through it. Albeit, usually at a much younger age.”
“Ouch,” I murmured. I wasn’t old or anything, but I had just found my first gray hair the other day, so thinking about how far behind I was with all of this didn’t sit too well with me.
Still, I had emotions to let loose. I had things to feel. I had powers to tap into. I had—
“Charisse…” Abram’s voice fell like tin against my eardrums.
I opened my eyes to see him beneath me. But not just him. Ramsey was under me too, and they were both standing on the ground…the far off ground.
But what was I standing on?
“Sweet Jesus,” I stammered once I realized what was going on. “I-I’m flying.”
“Levitating,” Ramsey corrected, which was sort of like telling me my poncho was actually a sleeveless raincoat. A distinction without a difference. “And you need to focus.”
Warmth, thick and flowing, ran down my cheek.
“That’s enough!” Abram shouted, grabbing Ramsey by the collar. “She’s bleeding. Stop this now!”
My hand went to my nose and came away bloodied.
“She’s so close,” Ramsey whispered. “It’s only the change. It can be trying, but she has to push through it.”
“The hell she does,” Abram said, throwing Ramsey back. Ramsey stumbled back, hit hard against the wall, and slid to the floor.
Abram leapt onto the wall, muscles flexing as he made his way toward me. But it was too late. I could feel myself tipping over some internal ledge. A surge of energy rose up in me. Light, bright and blinding, poured out of me, knocking Abram back and taking away the rest of the world.
When it subsided, I was on the floor again. Abram lay at my feet, chest heaving with shallow breathes.
“Are you okay?” he asked breathlessly, even though I should have been the one asking him that.
But the thing was, I was okay. I was better than okay. I felt as though a piece of myself had come to life, as though a veil had been lifted from my eyes and I could see the world for what it really was. And best of all, I had come away with one very important piece of information.
I leveled my gaze at him. “I know, Abram. I know where we can find the Conduit.”
Chapter 21
This was not the way I wanted to end up at the beach. Ideally, Abram and I would have been sprawled across a towel, soaking up the sun (along with a bit of each other). But things didn’t go that way. Our vacation was now a mysterious manhunt with a ‘do it or die’ clock running in the background.
The last twenty minutes of the afternoon were a blur that had somehow led me here. I didn’t know where I was going, and yet I did. It was surreal. Right at the end of my “awakening” a feeling had unfurled around me—a sense of something. Maybe the same something Satina had felt but not been able to find. It was a dark energy, and it wasn’t pulling me toward it so much as repelling me. I knew if I followed my discomfort, I would find the talisman, and when I did, I would be that much closer to finding the Conduit.
Ramsey said what I felt might be a shield the Conduit had put up for protection. Or, he said, it just as easily could be a ritual tool, or simply an item the Conduit valued. Regardless, I was following that energy, and that energy had led me here.
And the most unnerving part was I knew this place all too well. This was the end. This was the foot of the cliff where all the Supplicants before me had died.
“Are you sure you can do this right now?” Abram asked, looking me over with that concerned look he had worn ever since my nose turned into a blood geyser.
“I’m fine,” I said, shaking off his concern. “You heard Ramsey. He said it was draining at first, that it was just something I have to tough out.”
“Right.” Abram plowed across the warm sand as we walked the beach—looking for what, exactly, we weren’t sure. “It shouldn’t surprise you to learn I still don’t trust Ramsey. And I’m not very excited at the prospect of my girlfriend toughing anything out, regardless of whose life is at stake.”
Even if that life is my own, I thought, biting my lip.
The truth was, I was more than a little physically spent. Tapping into my Conduit side for the first time had shaken me to my core. While it felt as if I had opened a new side to myself, it also felt as if I had been hit by an eighteen wheeler. So, in a perfect world, I would’ve ran to some four star hotel, taken a hot bubble bath, and spent the night cuddling with my monster man. But the world was not perfect, and this damn island barely had a seaside inn, let alone a Hyatt. And, thanks to my nighttime rendezvous with Briar, I didn’t have an extra day to spare.
“Look. I’m fine,” I said, taking his hand and looking him right in the eyes. “I promise.”
I hated lying to him almost more than anything. But I did it out of love and concern. That made it okay, right?
He huffed, either believing me too noble for my own good or hating the situation even more than I did. “You better be,” he said, squeezing my hand. “I’m not above ripping a mage in half.”
“Good to know.” I gave him a quick peck on the cheek. The kiss lit me up, but also tinged my mind with hurt. Our kisses were finite now…and our days together were almost up.
I shook my head and turned away from him. I would not let despair steal this from me. If I was to die, then I would go out fighting, kissing, and doing other things that I’d come to enjoy with Abram lately. And besides, I wasn’t dead yet. I still had a day and a half, a suit of powers I didn’t have yesterday, and the most powerful man I had ever known standing beside me. This wasn’t over yet.
Since awakening my Conduit side, I had come to find a strange connection with things. The world seemed intent on whispering in my ear. It was strange, low, and indecipherable. But something told me that would come with time.
Abram placed his hand on my
shoulder. “Are you all right, Charisse?”
“I just need to focus,” I said.
Ramsey had told me that. He’d said that, while letting my emotions run free, I needed to narrow my mind so that all my thoughts were on what or who I was looking for.
That, of course, was easier said than done.
I started off again, and Abram strode beside me. Like every time he was in my presence, my thoughts started to wander to him. It took all I could not to settle on his smell, the way his arms felt around me, the sound of his voice in my ear.
Instead, I focused on much less pleasant things. There was a Conduit out here—one who wanted me dead. There had been bodies right where were we now walked—Supplicant victims who deserved justice. I only hoped I was enough to give it to them.
“Anything?” Abram asked. He seemed on edge, as though he thought the Conduit might pop up from behind a rock at any moment.
I paused, trying to feel something. Now that we were closer to the location, the sense of being repelled was strong everywhere. I didn’t think it could get any stronger than it was, which made it impossible to tell if I we were closer or farther from where we needed to be.
“It’s harder than it looks,” I said finally, my shoulders slumping along with my hope.
“Really?” he muttered. “Because it looks damn near impossible.”
“I can feel it.” I closed my eyes in frustration. “I can feel the magic swirling around out here. But it’s muddled, like I’m searching for it underwater or something, amidst an undercurrent.”
“I hate magic.” Abram growled beside me. His body was tense and hard, his stance rigid.
I knew him well enough to know what was going on. It was the energy on this island. Even now, in the bright sunlight of midafternoon, it was zapping all of his energy to stop the beast from taking over.
No wonder he hated magic.
Sleeping with the Beast: an Adult Paranormal Shifter Romance (The Conduit Series Book 2) Page 14
