by Smith, HD
I pulled my presence farther into the stratosphere, looking down on a much larger area, but again, only druids. I had a sick feeling in my stomach as I realized the truth.
I was in Paradise.
Chapter 11
As I surveyed the land, I caught sight of a tiny glow of green in the distance. I willed my presence to investigate. Zipping along the lush vibrant countryside, I finally found the enclave of green dots. Fallen descendants—or those who had chosen to change their allegiance to the fourth realm—were quarantined there. The quaint cottages, a small village of them, were surrounded by a military-style blockade. There was only one way in and out: through an armed checkpoint.
I was beginning to understand why my power wasn’t growing stronger. Harry—if he knew about this—wasn’t letting them leave. Mab was probably killing hers. I didn’t know how The Boss was justifying it, but I suspected none of the newly fallen still within their old realms were being allowed to return to Fallen.
I opened my eyes, returning to my body in the warehouse, and stood. I considered searching the office, but knowing who brought me here wasn’t going to solve my other problems. If it was the mob, then I wouldn’t learn anything new. There was most likely a standing order to grab me and the crew got lucky. If it wasn’t them, then I’d just have to deal with it later. The office was fully visible through the large glass windows to the main floor. If I stayed, I’d just get spotted by one of the workers. I had to leave now before any of them knew I was awake. I closed my eyes and thought of the enclave. I snapped a line and materialized within the woods outside the checkpoint.
I’d been aiming for inside the enclave, so I was surprised it hadn’t worked. I tried again, but couldn’t get past the barrier. Blinking my eyes, I looked at the area with my second sight. The magical wards glowed a bright purple, with waves of yellow running through the design as if it were electrified or always changing.
Being careful to remain hidden from the guardsmen at the checkpoint, I approached the shield. Pushing my hand forward, I tried to touch the surface of the barrier. I’d had the ability last summer to destroy Kane’s prison, which trapped him in the meadow, but this bubble was different. I could see the magic of the wards flex as my hand approached. I continued to push until the length of my arm should have been inside the enclosure, but the magic of the shield had stretched around it.
The tattoos wrapping my arm ignited and the hunger for power within me flared. I imagined myself walking forward and having the purple glow encase me completely, and then using my new ability to drain it dry.
My hand warmed and the tulip glowed so bright it hurt, leaving a bad taste in my mouth. The magic literally tasted bitter and I wanted to spit it out. Was this its attempt to resist being consumed? I pulled my arm back and tamped down the hunger, but it was far from quelled. I focused on cycling the energy back in on itself to regain control.
Noise from the guard shack startled me, breaking my concentration. Energy crackled around each wrist and lapped out at the enclosure. Streaks of black rippled through the shield before I could rein it in.
“Over here,” one of the guards yelled.
I closed my eyes and thought of the fourth realm. Staying here and possibly getting caught wouldn’t solve the Fallen refugee issue in Paradise. I needed to know what was going on in my realm. Omar might offer some advice on fixing this mess, or at least suggest a way to save the trapped descendants. I thought of the beach where I’d landed the first time I’d entered the fourth realm, but just as it had when I tried with Ronin, nothing happened. I thought of the house Omar had taken me to when I almost died, but I sensed no line form. I focused on Omar, someone I should have had a strong connection to, but nothing happened. Even with Harry’s blood, I couldn’t get to the fourth realm.
The voices of the guards were getting closer. Trying one last time, I thought of home. It was a long shot, and I assumed I’d end up in my NYC address if not the fourth realm, but the line that snapped into place wasn’t my apartment in New York.
My home, the one in my heart, was currently holed up in Mab’s castle. The cold stone fortress sent a shiver down my spine. Of course, it didn’t help that Thanos’s gaze was staring lovingly into the eyes of another. I gasped, causing him to look up. For a brief moment I saw something—joy or pain, I wasn’t sure—then my heart fell as he laughed.
A young voice lazily spoke from the other side of the room. “What causes this outburst, Brother?”
My head turned to find a girl draped disrespectfully across the arms of Mab’s throne. Her long blond hair was pulled back in a severe ponytail and her lean legs were sheathed in black leather pants so perfectly fitted they looked molded on. A tight, body-hugging white t-shirt, contoured leather jacket, and custom riding boots completed the look.
She raised her head to see what Thanos was up to. I gasped again as our eyes met. It was the biker version of Sydney, only one that might actually be able to kick my ass if she was Mab’s untouchable as Ronin said.
“Faith,” Thanos drawled. “Do tell mother I tire of her games. I have much more tasty morsels to play with now.”
Faith Dragon, Enforcer, Sophia Mazie Grant, and Sydney’s twin curled her lip in a wicked sneer and mouthed, “Game on.” The knowing gleam in her eye as she licked her perfectly glossed lips sent a new shiver down my spine.
I glanced back at Thanos, who was nuzzling the neck of the tasty morsel in his arms. I staggered back as if I’d been slapped. The pain was too much to take. He hadn’t forgotten me—he’d simply moved on.
Hellfire coalesced in my palms and power dripped from my fingers. Part of me didn’t want to control the surge anymore. He didn’t love me. Faith cackled with laughter and my anger began to consume me.
Mab’s voice broke the silence. Drifting in from the foyer, she said, “Thanos, your last trollop is simpering out here. Take out your trash before I am forced to handle it.”
I closed my eyes. Dealing with Mab wasn’t on my list, so I snapped a line to my apartment and blinked away.
Tears ran down my cheeks at Thanos’s betrayal. He didn’t need saving. He didn’t love me and he hadn’t kept his promise. I fell against the office wall, sliding down until my ass hit the floor. Thanos had been with another girl and he’d literally had another in the wings. He’d dismissed me without a second glance.
Hellfire danced around my wrists. The energy roiling at my core wanted more power—and I had no desire to stop it.
Through my tear-stained vision, I caught the trickle of amber light as it wound its way in through the windows and doors. I pulled the magic to me. The stream of power increased as more lines merged to feed my hunger. I let it come, welcoming it in to feed my damaged soul.
A loud crash sounded outside on the street. I blinked to the window, looking out on the city around me. A woman’s scream pierced the quiet, horns honked, sirens blared, and guns fired as one by one streetlights winked out in the twilight and buildings went dark.
The pull continued, drawing more and more of the power from the surrounding area. Cars stopped dead in the streets and everything was eerily quiet.
Darth Vader’s Imperial March started playing from my pocket, breaking my concentration and stopping the flow of power.
Conrad Bosh was calling.
Taking a deep breath and stretching out my neck to ease the tension caused by pulling so much juice, I retrieved my phone.
“What?”
There was a momentary pause, before he spoke. “Claire. Is something wrong?”
I wasn’t sure what pissed me off more: the fact that The Boss interrupted my power grab or that in the entire five years I’d worked for him, he never once asked me if anything was wrong. So why the fuck did he care now?
“No,” I responded, my voice coming out in a dull monotone. “Why do you ask?”
“I’m getting reports of a disturbance near your apartment. Transformers have blown and a portal near your building became visible to humans just before
it blinked out of existence. There was also a similar occurrence downtown earlier. A virtual dead zone now exists. Thoughts?”
“Shit happens,” I said. Then, I hung up.
Switching the phone to silent, I tossed it on my desk. I made my way mindlessly to the dark kitchen. I drank half the carton of milk, ate all of the leftover pizza cold, and had just started on the peanut butter when a knock sounded at the door.
My first thought was that maybe I shouldn’t have hung up on The Boss, but then I sensed the names of the one outside, and it wasn’t The Boss or Quaid, his right-hand man and general lackey, untouchable, whatever. Turning to face the door, I realized the entire apartment was barely visible in the twilight of early evening, just like it had been on the street outside. I was curious how my phone had survived the drain. A second knock focused my attention back on my unexpected visitor, the bitch queen’s untouchable, Faith.
Chapter 12
Snapping my fingers, I manifested candles around the apartment. Coiling the power within as tight as I could, I opened the door. Faith, dressed much as she had been in Mab’s castle in biker leather badass-ness, stood there smiling.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I asked.
With a girlish chortle, she said, “Now, Claire, is that any way to treat your new BFF?”
Faith sounded like a perky sorority sister, which was just wrong. She looked exactly like Sydney, minus the multi-colored hair, but her cold eyes made it very clear she wasn’t the quiet one. I stepped back when she stepped forward. She raised her left eyebrow and I erected a protection spell. I didn’t want to be caught unaware, especially if she knew of the prophecy and had specifically come here to kill me.
Craning her neck, she took in the room. “I just love what you’ve done with the place. Such a minimalist approach to lighting.” Spinning back around to me, she asked, “Did you wipe out the entire block on your own or did you have help?”
She chuckled when I didn’t respond and continued her stroll around the room.
Faith paused in front of the mirror by the door. Studying her reflection in the candlelight, she asked, “So you’ve actually met my sister. Is she as pretty as me?”
It shouldn’t have surprised me that she knew about Sydney. She was Mab’s puppet after all, and I was sure Mab had kept her eye on all the contenders. But how did she know I’d met Sydney? Was she just guessing because I’d recognized her or did she know about Sydney’s capture?
I blinked my eyes to see what magic clung to Faith. Unlike Sydney, she didn’t have the eye of Udjat on her forehead, but there was a thin green glow flowing in tendrils all around her. It touched things as if tasting them before darting back into the collective swirl around her. Was this her ability to see the truth?
“There’s really no comparison,” I said, hoping she’d get my meaning.
Turning to face me, her eyes narrowed. “Mother says I’m the prettiest. That’s why she picked me.” Faith looked me up and down, but her general disposition had already told me she wasn’t very impressed with my looks. “I thought you’d be more…interesting,” she said. “Mother called you dangerous. I don’t see it.”
“Mab isn’t your mother,” I corrected, then immediately realized how wrong I could be. Sydney and Faith were contenders, which meant they had an otherworldly parent, and that parent could be Mab. Not that an ovum donor makes someone a mother.
Faith snorted. “I’d ask what you call the one that raised you, but oh yeah, that’s right, you were an orphan.”
She made an exaggerated frowny face and I considered blinking her out of existence. Honestly, the power ball I had tightly coiled at my core could probably have her gone in the blink of an eye. Instead I smiled, which caught her off guard. I’d lamented my sucky childhood years ago; she had no clue what would really hurt me. Jack’s death, Thanos’s loss and betrayal, those things meant more to me than how badly I’d had it as a kid. “Hum…Mab, the bitch queen, or thirty-six foster families? Are you sure you got the better deal?”
Faith smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. She drummed her index finger on her bottom lip. “I think under different circumstances we might have been friends.”
I barked out a laugh. “No love lost between you and Mab, I see.” She gave me a coy smile, but didn’t say anything. “You being Mab’s untouchable, I’m surprised I haven’t seen you before. Of course, Mab doesn’t strike me as a person who’d actually value a second-in-command. With her arrogance, I’m sure she doesn’t even need one. She gave you that mantle for another reason, probably the same reason she picked you in the first place. But, hey, if you want to believe it was because of your looks, you go right ahead.”
Faith opened her mouth to say something, but I cut her off.
“Why are you here?”
She pressed her lips into a hard line, and then smiled that cheery sorority girl grin—all fake sincerity and too-white teeth. “I need you to fetch something for me.”
I cocked an eyebrow. “Are you serious?”
Faith nodded.
Without giving it much thought, I said, “Sophia Mazie Grant.” The spark of power buzzed as it left my lips. Unfortunately, it rolled right over Faith, not affecting her in the least. “WTF?”
Her grin turned to a smirk as she jumped up and down clapping. “I was hoping the rumors were true. You got Raven’s gift, you got Raven’s gift,” Faith sang.
I narrowed my eyes at her. Why hadn’t that worked? It couldn’t be because she was Mab’s untouchable, could it? I was sure Quaid had been spelled by Raven last summer when I dispelled everyone, but maybe I was wrong, and this was the real reason Faith was Mab’s untouchable. Mab had known Raven still existed and she was confident last summer in the museum that she had another that was like me. She must have meant Faith, but perhaps she wasn’t sure Faith would be protected and decided to risk me first. Yeah, that sounded about right.
“Oh, don’t worry,” Faith cooed. “I won’t tell mother about your new power. If I did, she might not let me have it.” With a smug look on her face, Faith sat primly on the edge of the sofa.
How had she known about Raven’s power? Why was she immune? I’d been immune to Raven because she hadn’t realized which name was tied to my blood, but Sophia should have been Faith’s true name, the one she was born with. I considered trying her other names, but that would just seem desperate. I tried another tactic: the direct approach. “Since we’re sharing,” I said, plopping down in the chair across from her, “what can I expect to get when I kill you?”
Her lip curled up on one side. She probably thought I had no chance in hell of killing her. I noticed her head cock ever so slightly to the side. I blinked my eyes and overlaid the scene before me with magic sight. The tendrils of power around her had thinned to the width of a hair as they tried to reach me. Unfortunately for her, they couldn’t quite make it.
Sighing, she folded her arms over her chest and the tendrils pulled back. “Why not? It isn’t like you’ll ever get it,” she laughed.
I blinked the second sight off and sat back, ready for her to dish.
“I can see into the past of an item. I can know all of its deepest, darkest secrets. With just one touch.” She opened and closed the fingers on her right hand, as if that was the touch she meant. I supposed physical contact would do the same thing, but the tendrils of power radiating around her were probably the way she gained most of her information.
“Is that it?” I asked, trying to throw her off balance. “Because honestly I was expecting something … I don’t know … more interesting.”
At first glance, all the contenders’ “seeing the truth” powers were underwhelming. I got sensing veils, Raven got sensing names, Sydney got sensing death, and Faith appeared to have sensing the past. But like the rest, I was sure there was more to it than that.
Her eyes narrowed. In a pithy tone, she said, “It may not seem as powerful as knowing a name or seeing a true form,” she said, cocking her eyebrow in a knowing w
ay, “but it has its advantages.”
Interesting. She knew which “seeing the truth” power I’d gotten from Jayne. Obviously, she knew Raven’s, but did she know Sydney’s gift?
She continued, answering my unasked question. “At least I didn’t get the power to see when someone will die—that one just sounds like it would suck.”
“So proof Mab didn’t choose you for your looks?” I goaded.
Faith’s face reddened and I wondered if Mab had been the one to tell her, or if Faith somehow used her power to figure out which gifts we’d each received. Maybe she’d used her power on Mab and taken the knowledge from her or another person in Mab’s court. I couldn’t imagine the big three were the only ones that knew the contenders’ secrets. I tightened my shields. I didn’t want her getting any of my real secrets.
Composing herself, she said, “Mother didn’t know of my gift when she selected me. Like most, she sees my power as a parlor trick. But with one touch—”
“Yeah, yeah, deepest, darkest secrets, I heard you. But mine are practically a matter of public record, so what else you got?”
Faith stood abruptly and I followed, readying my power if needed.
She looked at her hand and then turned her cold eyes to me. “I can see hidden fear—everything that someone would rather no one else ever knew about them and how they imagine others using it against them—which is quite unique.”
Okay, that was potentially problematic. But what could she tell, that I wanted Thanos? Mab had already turned him against me, or he never loved me. Then it hit me: she’d see the power within me, Harry’s blood-induced-power, and there were lots of ways she could screw me over with that information, especially if I handed it to her on a silver platter.
