by Corwin, John
"Justin?" Elyssa's face snapped into view.
I yanked my head back, wobbling on my feet as I played the memory back a few times, trying desperately to remember the man's face. Why did he look so familiar? "Where did she go?" I asked.
"Where did who go?" She looked around, her forehead creased. "Who were you talking with?"
"My mom." The words caught like steel barbs in my throat and it was all I could do to keep back the furious tears threatening to break free. I was so angry I could hardly think straight. I wanted to destroy something. Take the Conroys and break them, one over each knee. I didn't even know what they looked like, for god's sake. My only memory of my grandfather was the horrible recollection of him coming and taking away my baby sister.
Elyssa's eyes lit with excitement. "She came to see you? What did she say?" The joy in her eyes flickered out when she saw the sorrow branded on my face. Her mouth dropped open a fraction and understanding drowned the joy on her face. "Oh, Justin, I'm sorry. I thought—"
"She told me to deliver a message to my dad. She doesn't want either of us in her life anymore and she'll call on the Templars if we try to find her."
Disbelief washed across her face. "Are you kidding me?"
I shook my head and squeezed my eyes shut for a moment. "At first I thought it wasn't her. That it must be a trick. But then she touched my head and somehow I knew it was Mom. No one was controlling her." Had she released the strange memory? Or had her mere presence triggered it? "Right after she left, I had another memory return."
She inhaled a sharp breath. "Tell me."
I explained it, though it seemed hard to express the details in words. "I saw the man's face so clearly the first time, but it's harder now."
Elyssa snapped her fingers in my face, startling me. "Eye color?"
"Gray."
"Hair?"
"Silver. Slicked back."
"Glasses?"
"Yeah, he had on round spectacles." As if those few ingredients were enough, the man's face came back in vivid clarity and I ground my teeth at the sight. I knew where I'd seen his face before. "Remember the gray men I told you about? The golems?"
She nodded.
"They look exactly like him."
Elyssa rocked back on her heels, her eyes thoughtful. "This means something, Justin."
"Mr. Gray is an asshole?"
"Your mother helped you." She grasped my hand. "She helped you! This exact memory returning now is not coincidence."
I ran my other hand through my hair and growled. "She just told me to get the hell out of her life."
"Maybe she didn't mean it. Maybe she can't say what she wants." Elyssa touched my forehead as if she could touch the memory itself. "She gave you a gift to hunt down your enemies. Mr. Gray might know how to save your sister."
I took her other hand in mine and squeezed as the hope dangling by its fingertips from the cliff of doom in my heart reached up another hand and took a firmer hold. "Maybe you're right." I swallowed a lump in my throat. "I hope you're right."
"What are you going to do?"
"Tell Dad and figure it out from there, I guess." I looked back at the milling mass of students. "I just don't understand why she's doing this. The day before she left she told me she'd love me even if I hated her. It's almost like she knew she'd be doing something terrible. Like she'd planned all this a long time ago."
Elyssa pressed my hand to her heart. I looked into her eyes and felt the pain and anger melt away. The tight band of pressure across my chest eased. I drew in a breath and squeezed back. No words were necessary in that perfect moment. I knew she wasn't just standing next to me. Elyssa was with me, a part of me I could count on more than anyone else in the world.
The love I felt for her right then swelled in my chest until I thought I would burst. I hugged her and buried my face in the soft strands of her black hair. I drew in her soft sweet scent, the smell of leather and oil and something else. Maybe it was just the shampoo she'd used that morning, but it made me think of her.
"What do you want to do now?" Elyssa said, pulling back and regarding me with a soft expression. "Your father is free and clear and it doesn't look like the good old boys will be blackmailing you anymore."
That was a really good question. Dad would want to go after Ivy and Mom. But there was a lot on the proverbial plate. What Underborn had said about Thunder Rock and about the instability of the Conclave struck a nerve with me for some reason. I wondered if getting to the bottom of Thunder Rock would clear up relations between Elyssa's father and me, or if it was just wishful thinking. But how could I possibly hope to solve something that happened before I was born?
No matter what Mom said, I had to find her and Ivy no matter the consequences. It was time to plan. Thunder Rock could wait. Mr. Gray awaited somewhere. Probably right in this very city. Dad might know where the mansion in my memory was. He and I would confront the evil bastard and find out why he was sending his puppet minions after me. I gazed at Underborn. He probably knew exactly where I could find this man. But his price was too steep. Maximus deserved a painful death, but I wasn't the one to do it. Let the master assassin handle it. I'd find Mr. Gray without his help.
I let my gaze drift toward the crowd of students. "Mom doesn't want me coming after her, so you know what that means."
Elyssa returned a knowing smile. "Naturally you want to go after her. Maybe the mansion from your memory is a hint. Maybe she really wants you to find her."
I nodded and felt hope gain a firm hold on the cliff of doom. "One hopeless quest down, a million more to go."
"I'm in." She pursed her lips. "But remember what you promised about planning."
"I haven't forgotten."
She tilted her head slightly and stared deep into my eyes. "My god, you've changed."
I quirked an eyebrow. "Miss the bottle-bottom glasses?"
A smile brightened the serious look on her face. "Sometimes. I still remember the shorter chubbier version of you, thick glasses and all." She pressed her hand against my surprisingly firm stomach. "But don't worry, I won't stop liking you even with all these disgusting muscles you've put on."
I laughed. "Give me a few tubs of ice cream. Maybe I can get rid of them."
Her hand felt hot against my skin, even through the shirt. She pressed it flat and ran it up to my chest, her violet eyes searching mine. "How do you feel?"
"Oh, I have a little indigestion, probably from all the gore. Nothing a little Pepto-Bismol won't clear up."
She raised an eyebrow. "I'm being serious, Justin. You killed someone."
"I did what I had to do. He tried to kill your mom. He took a shot at you." My entire body tensed. "Yeah, I feel conflicted about it. But I had no choice."
"You're a lot more confident than you were. But you seem to think you're indestructible sometimes. With Katie and the truck, giving so much blood to save Stacey, and then taking a bullet for me." She touched the bullet hole in my shirt. "A few inches difference and it would have been a head shot. You could have died."
When she put it that way, I sounded like Rambo. Hell, maybe there was a part of me that acted on pure instinct. But I had learned one thing about myself. I would do anything for the people I loved. And Heaven help anyone who got in my way.
"If I have a chance to save someone I care about, I'll take it," I told her. "But especially for you." I caressed her cheek. "I'd do anything for you. If that means killing someone—" The image of Sherriff Skinner's crushed body, the way his eyes, wide and accusing, stared at me after I'd slammed him into that wall lingered at the front of my mind. I felt sick even if the monster deserved it.
"I can take care of myself, Justin." She said it without anger, without scolding me.
I nodded. "I know. But I want to be there for you even if you are my ninja girl." I pressed a hand to the small of her back and pulled her tight. Kissed her hard on the lips. "Are you ready to ride a white horse into the sunset now?"
She grinned and looked
at the noon sun. "It's a little early for sunset."
"Who cares? I just want to find a nice safe place where we can be alone together."
"Oh, Mr. Slade? You planning to seek out my inner goddess?"
"Is that what it's called?"
She raised an eyebrow in a very sultry way and said, "Why don't I let you find out yourself?"
# # #
Overworld Chronicles Book 3
Read an excerpt from Book 3 of the Overworld Chronicles, the sequel to John Corwin's Dark Light of Mine, available in 2012:
Police were swarming my school, and it was all my fault. Well, mostly anyway. Elyssa and I stood at the back of the milling student body of Edenfield High, most of who were gaping at the wailing fire trucks, ambulances, and police cars zipping around the school grounds across the road from the church parking lot where we'd been evacuated.
The face of Mr. Turpin, my English teacher, caught my eye as he met a group of the po-po in the middle of the road and spoke with them. "If only those cops knew who they were talking to," I muttered to Elyssa.
"He is a master of deception," she said, gripping my hand as her gaze found my target. "But he's also full of useful information."
Mr. Turpin, aka, Underborn was the most notorious assassin in the Overworld. But whatever information he had to offer wasn't worth it. "His price is too high." I let go of Elyssa's hand, trading it for her shoulder so I could pull her closer. Without her, I wouldn't have survived the past few days. Underborn had marked my father for death. When I tracked him down and demanded he rescind the hit, he admitted it had mostly been a ploy to lure me to him. To test me, as he put it. As a price for calling off the hit, I'd had to help him with a vampire problem at my high school. Now our institution of lower education looked like a warzone.
"He'll want you to go after Maximus, instead of your mother, won't he?" she said, phrasing it more like a statement than a question. Her violet eyes met mine. "I've got to convince my father to mobilize the Templars. They don't understand the threat."
The threat Maximus posed was pretty clear, at least to me. According to Underborn, he was recruiting high school students all over Atlanta—maybe even the entire country—to form a rogue vampire organization. But Maximus's blood wasn't potent enough to turn people into vampires. When he tried, the turning failed and transformed the person a member of the walking dead, a zombie with vampiric abilities. Those in the Overworld called them vamplings.
Maximus had turned Brad Nichols and the result had been carnage.
"Your dad is too focused on taking down the spawn to care about a rogue vampire." I thought back to my disastrous meeting with her parents. To say Thomas Borathen despised my kind would be a huge understatement.
She brushed a lock of black hair behind an ear as a gust of wind dislodged it. "Underborn told us my father's feelings might change if we figure out who engineered the Thunder Rock massacre."
Thunder Rock. Before I was born, Thomas Borathen had led a group of Templars to take in a rogue spawn responsible for manifesting into his demon form and consuming the souls of those unfortunate enough to cross his path. Instead of finding a lone spawn, they'd encountered hordes of dark creatures from the demon plane. Only two Templars escaped that day: Thomas Borathen and Kevin Sorensen. But Thomas didn't know about Kevin. In fact, my eyes were looking at the supposedly dead Templar right now—Underborn.
"Yet another mystery our beloved assassin wants me to solve," I said with a pshaw. "It's a never-ending cycle with that guy."
Elyssa's eyes narrowed. "We can't just let him dictate terms for everything, Justin. I say we make him talk. He might know where your mother is. He might even have blueprints for the Conroy's house for all we know."
"Or where Mr. Gray lives."
She bared her teeth at the mention of the name I'd given the sorcerer who'd sent his gray-suited golems after me, knocking her out during the attack. "I'd definitely like to pay him a visit."
"How in the world do we make Underborn spill the beans without agreeing to another of his tasks?"
She tapped a finger on her chin. "He's got to have a weak spot we can exploit."
I scratched the back of my neck as I thought about it. "He said there are moles in his organization. People who will kill him if he interferes with their business."
She nodded. "I'll bet we could use that to our advantage."
"Time to threaten him for once." I rubbed my hands together in anticipation.
The pressure of someone or something watching me prickled the hairs on my neck. It took less than a second to find the source. Outside the police roadblock to my left and nearly a hundred yards away, a blaze of red hair in the window of a parked limousine captured my gaze.
Kassallandra.
The breath caught in my throat as the window on the car rolled up and the face vanished from sight. This wasn't good. Not at all. Dad's family, the Slades, had arranged a marriage between him Kassallandra Assad, except Dad had fallen in love with my mother, Alice, and run away with her. I was pretty happy with the outcome—being born and all—but hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, and Kassallandra was a demon spawn like my father. Her temper obviously matched her fiery hair because she'd sent hellhounds to track him down and fetch him to her like a human Frisbee.
But now she was here. Watching me. Why?
It didn't take long for my brain to connect the dots. She probably planned to use me to get to Dad. We had to corner Underborn and question him fast. The last thing I wanted was to add hellhounds to an already exhausting day.
Agnes Wright, Principal Perkin's secretary, appeared through a break in the crowd. Her beady little eyes locked onto me. She jabbed a finger my way and spoke to two officers who appeared behind her.
"Oh, crap," I said to Elyssa.
She saw Agnes leading the policemen our way and grimaced. "Did she see Principal Perkins and Coach Burgundy take you outside the school earlier?"
I nodded. "Ted Barnes was there too. They took me to the football training room just before Brad and his two goons burst in and killed everyone." Just thinking about the black veins racing up Brad's face made me shudder. The vampling virus had turned him into a half-dead lunatic with all the strength of a vampire. Perkins and his good old boys hadn't stood a chance.
"If the cops ask you, tell them that those two were talking to you about scouts at the next football game."
"Scouts?"
"Yeah, college football scouts. Tell them they were tipping you off that there might be scouts and that you could get a college scholarship. Then they let you go back to class and that's the last you saw of them."
"Yeah but what if these cops know about Perkins and the others blackmailing me to play football? For all I know the entire police department was in on it."
"If there's one thing I've learned about corruption, the big players hold the most valuable information close to their chest and only tell their underlings what they need to know. If they were planning to make big bucks by manufacturing supernatural steroids from your blood, there's no way they would've told anyone outside their little group."
I could have run away at supernatural speed and they never would have caught me. But if I did, the cops would assume I was guilty. Ending up on the FBI's most wanted list would be the perfect capper to a crappy day. So I swallowed the nervous lump in my throat and tried to act natural.
"He's right there, officer," Agnes Wright said as she and two local police officers closed in on me.
I almost gulped but somehow managed an innocent look of concern. "Who, me?"
"Yes, you, you rotten kid!" Agnes screeched.
"That'll be enough, Ma'am," said the officer to her right, a dark-skinned officer of medium build who looked like he wanted nothing more than to get the school secretary far, far away from him. He looked at me. "Justin Case?"
I nodded. "Yes, officer?"
"Mind if I ask you a few questions?"
I managed a shrug. "Sure." Elyssa squeezed my hand as a j
ackhammer pulse pounded in my chest.
"I'll take him to my car," the officer said to his companion.
I looked through the milling mass of students in the church parking lot and across the road where the nearest patrol cars sat, blue lights flashing. "What's going on? What happened?"
He gave me a shrewd look as we walked toward the car, a look that made me think he could see straight into my soul and pick out every little lie. Once we arrived, he retrieved a metal clipboard from the front seat and wrote a few things down on the paper clipped to it.
"Where were you at ten this morning?"
"Biology class."
"And after that?"
"Uh, Ms. Wright called my class on the intercom and told me to go to the front office."
"And?"
"I went there and met with Principal Perkins and our football coach." That much was true.
He wrote that down. "What was the nature of the meeting?"
"They took me outside and told me some college scouts might be coming to our football game this Friday and if I played well, I might have a chance at a scholarship." Actually, they hadn't said much of anything until they'd gotten me inside the football training room where Sheriff Skinner, Chief Amerson, a doctor, and two goons with guns were waiting.
"Anything else?"
"They said they were proud of me, sir." The absurdity of that lie almost made me burst into hysterical laughter. Instead, they'd informed me the blood sample I'd submitted for testing as part of the standard procedure for joining the football team had returned very surprising results. They thought I had a miracle steroid in my blood enabling me to be the best football player they'd ever seen and planned to milk me of that steroid and make millions. Until Brad showed up and killed them all.
The officer scribbled my lies on his notepad, stopped, and tapped the pen against his chin. "Where outside were you exactly?"
"On the side of the school, kind of near the cafeteria."
"Did anything else happen?"
"No. I left them right after they told me about the scouts and headed back for class. Well, first I had to go to the bathroom because I was kind of nervous about the scouts thing and it upset my stomach something awful. Whew, let me tell you it took a few minutes to squeeze those demons out."
