Shattered (Alchemy Series Book #3)

by Augustine, Donna

  "We were attacked on our way there."

  There was blood on her lips. This was bad, real bad.

  "By who?" I asked.

  "I don't know," she said. Her eyes drifted closed but I didn't think she was unconscious. Every word seemed like an effort to her.

  "She is not going to make it very long if we don't get her help." I looked specifically toward Dodd now. "We all want to get Sabrina back and our only lead will die out here if we don't do something quick."

  "Agreed," he said. "You take her back. I'm going to keep moving forward with Dark."

  "Dodd, think for a second. I couldn't carry her back even if I agreed to that plan, and if we start splitting up, then we'll all be dead for sure." You're dead, is what I wanted to say, but I was trying to not enflame his ego along with his need to save his woman. "If she dies, we might not ever find Sabrina. And if we don't get her help soon, she's dead." I whispered she's dead, hoping Colleen wouldn't hear me. I hoped Dodd was picking up on the general theme of what I was saying and I wouldn't have to scream we're all going to die over and over again.

  "Okay," he said. "We turn around."

  Dark made a growling noise and motioned his nose toward the helpless Colleen.

  "Yes, I think that's a good idea," I replied and watched the eight foot tall werewolf scoop her up. He'd be able to carry her easier than anyone else in his wolf form.

  Burrom dug his pipe out of his jeans pocket. "This isn't going how the cards said it would."

  "What did the cards say?" I asked.

  "You probably don't want to know," he replied as we walked in full darkness, Dodd flashing a light ahead of us.

  "Tell me anyway," I said.

  "Forget it. I spoke to soon."

  I looked to where Burrom was staring up ahead. Dodd's flashlight caught a shimmer of their scaly skin as they made their way toward us. I couldn't tell how many there were, but the rippers had found us.

  "You take the back," I said to Burrom as I quickly moved to the front.

  "Now this is more of what I expected," I heard Burrom say as I ran to the front.

  "Get behind me," I said to Dodd.

  "Absolutely not," he replied. "No one dies for me."

  "I. Won't. Die." I stressed each word. "You will."

  He took precious seconds that we didn't have but finally relented. "Valid point," he replied and then allowed me to step in front of him.

  With everyone behind me, I could concentrate solely on what was coming at us. As the rippers got closer, I saw there were fifteen of them.

  They made strange clicking and hissing noises as they edged closer. I didn't remember that noise from last time and I'm sure I would have. It filled the air with a foreboding and I had a really bad hunch it meant they were preparing to feed.

  They stopped three feet away from me, which was way too close for comfort. They started to fan out and circle around us.

  "Burrom," I called, not wanting to turn my back on the rippers.

  "They're closing in," he yelled from behind me, voice raised but calm.

  It was a lot easier to be calm when you knew you weren't going to be dinner and you didn't care if the people around you were possibly dessert.

  I waited…no, hoped the silver smoke would appear and save my ass once again. Was it somehow now a part of me? And if it was, why couldn't I use it? The stuff that seeped out of me hadn't been useful at all.

  The rippers' eyes were darting back and forth between where Dodd stood and the other Keepers. They weren't paying attention to me at all, tonight. They were hungry and only had eyes for their next meal.

  They were also nearly opaque now. My hunch was that a diet of human meat was what brought them fully into this new existence, and they'd had plenty of it. God only knew how many lives had been sacrificed to them.

  They edged in closer and closer, their attention remaining on the Keepers of the group.

  "Dark," I said.

  He growled in reply, but I knew the anger in it was directed solely for the rippers.

  "Form a triangle with me and Burrom."

  We readjusted with the Keepers in the center but it wasn't going to be enough. They maintained a larger distance from me than Burrom or Dark. The horrible clicking noises they were making intensified, as they seemed to be becoming more excited at the prospective kill to come.

  Donald and Dodd released a spray of bullets into the group of rippers but they simply bounced off their tough skin.

  Finally, after several tense moments, one of them made a lunge for Dodd. He parried and slit a gash into its arm. It recoiled back with a screech, but another one simply took its place.

  Fear and anger boiled up inside of me as I saw them lunge again for Dodd. "Get away from him!" I screamed. Silver mist leaked out of my mouth as I yelled. The ripper looked like it was being physically pushed away from Dodd.

  "Keep going," Burrom said.

  "Get back," I said, and again, the silver mist flowed from me. The rippers moved back a little further. Their attention was fully on me now and their clicking and hissing stopped. "Come on, let's start moving forward."

  "Are you sure?" Alisa asked, terror tingeing her words.

  "I don't know how I'm doing this or how long it's going to work for." I couldn't stop and argue with them. I needed to get them moving and now. "I'm moving forward. You either move with me or you can stay here to die." It was a bluff that I hoped they'd fall for.

  I took a step forward and everyone moved with me. It had taken us nine hours to get here. The walk back was going to be pure torture if the rippers stayed with us the entire time.

  "Dark, how's Colleen?" I asked, trying to calculate how long we had and if we'd make it back in time to save her with the much slower pace.

  He replied with a high-pitched howl that I interpreted to mean not so good.

  I didn't want the young girl to die but knowing she was the only lead to someone I cared for made it that much worse.

  "Dark, could you travel faster without us?"

  "He nodded," Burrom said.

  "A lot faster?"

  "Yes," Burrom spoke again for Dark.

  "I don't think they like your wolf form. Give Colleen to Dodd for a minute and step away from the group." I tried to think back to the wolves that had been killed. Was it just Dark or was it the wolf form? I knew I was asking a lot of him, but we'd never get Colleen back alive at this pace.

  Dark moved to the front next to me and then ahead. The rippers didn't bother with him at all. He circled and loped back to my side.

  "Dark, take Colleen and try to get her back as quick as you can. We'll follow behind you."

  Dark let out another growl. I didn't need this one interpreted for me. "I'll get them back. I got this. You need to get her back because if she's still bleeding out, she'll be dead soon."

  I chanced looking back for a moment and letting the rippers out of my sight, in favor of checking on Colleen. Her head lay limp over Dodd's arm, her small form lifeless. Blood was dripping down Dodd's shirt and staining it.

  Dark gently lifted Colleen from Dodd's arms with his large clawed hands and returned back to me.

  "You've got to get her back as quick as you can."

  He leaned his muzzle down to her, sniffing along her neck. He looked back to me and nodded.

  A second later, he broke out of the group in a fast gait. I held my breath as he shot straight into the rippers but they paid him almost no mind as he zigzagged between them, heading back toward the casino.

  Once he was gone, Burrom fell into place holding up the rear again. The rippers kept pace with us as we went. Whenever the rippers started to edge in, I spoke and they stepped back.

  We'd barely started back and I was already exhausted. However this magic worked, it wasn't easy. It was draining me more by the second, each word costing me more than the last. This was going to be one long walk back.

  Chapter Eleven

  "Did Dark make it back with Colleen?" I asked Buzz the minu
te we walked into the Lacard lobby at three in the morning. The place was quiet as we stepped inside. The rippers had followed us all the way back and increased in number as we moved, most of them more interested in staring at me than anyone else. I'd repeatedly told them to leave but was too exhausted by the end. For the last quarter of the trip, we'd kept everyone sandwiched between Burrom and me. Only a handful still lingered in the distance as we went inside the casino.

  Buzz's blue eyes widened and his eyebrows rose. "Cormac's pissed."

  "I'll deal with him later. Did Dark make it back with the girl?"

  "Yes."

  "Is she…"

  "Alive."

  "Who's taking care of her?" After Dark left, I had nothing but time to think of all the worst case scenarios. Sabrina was gone and I wasn't sure there was another doctor in the casino that could help her.

  "One of Burrom's people."

  I nodded, leaving him immediately for the seventh floor. I didn't realize Burrom and Dodd were behind me until I got into the elevator, not having the energy for the stairs. I stepped in and hoped the gas supply was running strong. Dodd looked visibly agitated and Burrom was just too scary to be stuck in the close confines of an elevator with for more than a minute or so.

  "Unit #711," Burrom's guy told us as soon as we stepped off the elevator, knowing instinctively what we wanted to know.

  Cormac was standing by the girl's bedside when we entered the room, talking to a young woman who seemed to be checking on Colleen. Our eyes met and their intensity made me shiver. Again, the thought that something more was going on with Cormac than I knew sprang to mind but I was prioritizing issues right now. Hunches were low man on the totem pole.

  I stepped up alongside the bed next to him.

  His face told me he had questions even before he spoke. "Don't disappear."

  I nodded. "How's she doing?"

  "There is a lot of bruising and internal damage," the young woman said. I knew she was Fae so I guessed she was older than the twenty or so years she appeared.

  "You're a doctor?"

  "Yes, but not normally to humans." It wasn't said with rancor but insecurity. "There were a couple of puncture wounds," she pointed to several places on Colleen's torso, "but I believe I have her stabilized."

  "Did you have to operate on her?"

  "Cut her open? I don't do that sort of thing." The doctor put her hands up as if to ward off such a ghastly suggestion.

  "Then what are you doing?" The image of her chanting over Colleen's bedside didn't instill much confidence in me.

  "I've treated her like I would any magical creature." The nurse pulled Colleen's shirt up slightly and showed me a gaping wound coated with a black tar like substance.

  "Will that work on a human?" I asked.

  "I don't know about normal humans, but I don't believe that's what she is any longer."

  "She's not human?" Cormac asked.

  "She's one of the changed now, they are no longer human the way you would think of them."

  I looked down at the young teen and didn't see what she meant. "Other than her eyes, she looks human to me."

  "Have either of you touched her?" the doctor asked and we both shook our heads. "Feel her," the doctor encouraged.

  I reached down and took the girl's hand. She was a bit cool, probably due to her currently bad circulation, but she felt normal. I shrugged and looked at the Fae doctor.

  "No, don't just touch her; feel her like you would a wormhole or whatever it is you people do."

  I knew that for creatures who were used to dealing with magic their whole lives, these extra senses were like seeing and smelling but I still consciously had to think of it.

  The second I did, I felt a jolt of energy pass through her skin and I dropped her hand instinctively.

  "You'll get used to it," the Fae doctor said.

  I nodded, it hadn't been painful, just unexpected.

  "I've done everything I can, or know how to do," the doctor said. "Now we just wait."

  "I'll stay with her," I said to the doctor. "I'm sure you're exhausted." And you're a little creepy.

  Cormac put a hand on my back. "We've got other issues to handle. I'll send some people to help her."

  "I'll have my people do it," Burrom said from the door, eyeing Colleen in a way that set off a couple of alarms in me. I'd forgotten he and Dodd were in the room.

  "We'll alternate shifts," Cormac replied.

  I suspected neither Burrom nor Cormac were doing this for completely altruistic reasons. Cormac, Dodd and I wanted the information only she had. I didn't know what Burrom's motives were, other than he liked knowledge and here was the perfect opportunity to acquire a guinea pig. After all, knowledge is power.

  And as for power, what was happening to her? To all of us, for that matter. "Where's Dark?" I asked Cormac, thinking of how he'd lost control of his form for the first time ever since I'd known him.

  "At Dodd's, trying to change back. He scared the hell out of the humans when he got in."

  It had probably been quite a sight, a hairy eight feet tall monster carrying a young girl dripping blood.

  "Somebody needs to check on him," I said.

  "I'll do it," Dodd replied and left the room.

  "Keep me posted," Cormac told the Fae doctor and then steered me out in front of him.

  He followed me as I headed to the stairwell.

  "The scouting group found a large stash of gas today. It's safe to use the elevator."

  I kept walking in the same direction. "Nope. I'd rather use the stairs."

  "Have you always been this crazy? I used to think it was just you needing to transition, but I'm starting to have my doubts."

  "What's crazy about not using the elevator?"

  "You were afraid to go outside but then you stalked Tracker, who was an obvious threat, who you knew could kill you. You stay out all night with the rippers but then you won't use the elevator. You don't see something off about those things?" His voice echoed up and down the stairwell but we were the only ones in there.

  "When I didn't outside for a while because I was afraid of flying away, it didn't cause harm to anyone, while Tracker did. The rippers could've killed Dodd and the other Keepers, while taking the stairs all the time just gives me exercise. How do you not see the logic of my choices?"

  I pushed open the door to the penthouse. If someone asked when it had become home, I couldn't have told them, but I knew with perfect clarity that it was indeed home. The night of New York, when the shit hit the fan and the world was torn apart, it was where I wanted to be most. When everything was falling to pieces around me, I'd known with absolute clarity where I wanted to be.

  "Okay, let's have it," I said, knowing he was going to haunt me until he had his say. I stepped into the beige oasis, also known as the living room. Nothing about me was beige. I wondered if he'd let me redecorate the place now that everyone knew he wasn't beige either.

  "You were supposed to be back by dark. You don't know for certain that the rippers won't eat you."

  "I do now." I collapsed onto the couch and kicked my feet up. He was stalking around the room. Cormac was a machine these days, never resting. How was he doing it? I was operating on little to no sleep and it was obvious in my every move. But he never looked tired.

  "Why? What happened?" he asked.

  I told him about how the mist seeped out and the rippers had been forced back just by my voice alone.

  "But you still haven't seen it?"

  "Like I used to? No. Not since New York." I didn't add that I wondered if somehow on that night I had absorbed it into myself. That the silver strands were now part of me, maybe always had been.

  I looked at Cormac, wondering if he was thinking the same thing but his face was unreadable again. Then he left the room and I relaxed deeper into the couch cushions. That had been pretty easy. I'd been expecting a much larger fight than that.

  I just lay there and stared through the windows, too tired to s
tand anymore. An occasional ripper passed by, glancing in out of curiosity, but I was becoming adjusted to them and just changed my view to the other side of the window and tried to remember what the glittering view used to look like, even at the wee hours of the morning like now.

  Cormac walked back in and I rolled my eyes. I'd relaxed too soon.

  "Hold out your hand," he said as he stopped next to me.

  I did as he asked but immediately dropped the black-shrunken piece of flesh to the ground.

  "Ugh, what is that!" I looked at it there, lying on the floor.

  "That was the contract between us." He stood a few feet away from me, just staring.

  I looked back, trying to gauge his mood. Nothing. "It's completely destroyed? That easily?" I didn't think he would do it. He actually did it. Now that it was gone, I didn't know how I felt.

  "It wasn't that easy, but I created it. It wasn't triggered, so I could destroy it."

  "So that's it. It's just handled. We're unengaged or whatever?" The thing looked like it had been charred but there were no ashes in my hand. It was over. I was free, so why wasn't I as relieved as I thought I'd be?

  "Yes," he said. "Are you happy now?"

  Did he want me to be happy or was I supposed to be nonchalant? I watched him standing there, not moving an inch. I hated when he shut me out like this and I had no idea what he was thinking. If I'd done something someone asked me to do, I'd be thankful. I'd been asking him to get rid of it, so maybe I was supposed to be happy.

  "Yes, thank you. It will just make everything much easier now, I think." The black flesh lying there kept drawing my gaze.

  He didn't say a word in reply and I started to ramble on.

  "I didn't think you'd do it, but it's for the best. I'm way too young to be married after all, and this way we can just take our time and see if it's the right thing." I didn't know if I was convincing him or myself anymore. "Really, this was the right thing." I tore my eyes off the dead contract and looked up at Cormac and a knot formed in my stomach.

  His face wasn't emotionless anymore, but cold.

  "You once told me you were broken. I didn't believe you, at first. Actually, that's not true, I knew you were broken but I thought I could fix you." He took a couple steps away from me and I couldn’t take my eyes off of him as my insides clenched and I realized belatedly that he hadn't wanted me to be happy.