by Deanna Chase
“He said people are gathering to move against you?”
“Yep, that sounds about right.”
“When does this deal end? I don’t remember reading about war activities in the small print on that contract I signed.” And when can I get the hell away from this mess. I thought my life was messed up before? This put things in perspective.
“Not sure,” he replied with a shrug of his shoulders.
“Yes, well, that doesn’t really work for me.”
“I’m not trying to play with you. There are a lot of factors at work.”
“Which leads to my next question, what are we exactly? This seems a bit beyond making some pocket change and good skin.”
“I’ll tell you whatever you want to know, but you do understand there’s no going back?” He turned toward me to make sure I understood him. “You have a couple of drinks one night and slip, no one is going to let you off the hook.”
“Didn’t we already establish the whole secrecy thing? I get it. Now look at the road if you don’t mind, and start spilling.”
“I’ll do better than tell you.”
I felt a jolt in the road and realized it was one of the Lacard driveway speed bumps. We fell quiet as he pulled over to the curb. The moment we came to a full stop the valet took his car.
“Take that to my suite,” he said to the valet, and I turned to see my duffle bag disappear. Oh shit, that didn’t bode well for my evening. He could have had the valet check it for me to pick up later, but he didn’t.
We walked to his elevator in silence, and I noticed more than a few pairs of eyes watch us cross the casino floor, including Vicky’s. I knew what it looked like, but I’d stopped caring about what people thought of me years ago. If they wanted to imagine me sleeping with the boss, let them. That was a lot easier pill to swallow than what I’d grown up with. They meant nothing to me.
When we stepped into his elevator, I thought we would head up but we dropped instead, and I had to remind myself that I had his word on my safety. Did I believe him? Yes. If he still wanted to kill me, like he said, I’d probably already be dead. Hell, any one of them could’ve killed me in my trailer. No one would have noticed me for days.
When the elevator opened, we stepped into a small square hallway. As the doors closed behind us, a panel opened revealing a keyboard. He dialed in a code, then a beam of light scanned his iris and the second set of doors opened. I followed him into a long hallway that had to be at least a mile long.
“I didn’t realize the casino was so big.”
“This area underground is larger, but it’s close.”
“When do we get to the whole top secret area?” I tried to sound glib, but I wasn’t sure I’d pulled it off.
He stopped suddenly in front of one of many doors. “Now.” He opened a door and waited for me to enter.
I heard him shut it, as I looked around. The room was the size of my high school gymnasium, but its walls, ceilings, and floors, were the polished dull grey of a pencil tip. A line of computers and equipment lined the back wall and there were two enormous monoliths of polished ebony at the opposite side of the room.
Drawn to them, I walked over to the closest one and ran my fingers along the veins that ran through the stone. When I touched them, I imagined I could feel a pulse running through them. It felt so real I drew my hand back quickly.
“What are they?” I asked in awe.
“These help us to open a portal. This is where we transport.”
I pulled my eyes from their beauty to see him standing a few feet behind me, admiring them as well. He walked forward and stopped next to me. I watched him graze the ebony surface with his fingers, like I had done, tracing the pattern across its sleek surface. An image of him grazing his fingers across my skin popped into my head. He turned his face to me and I swear he could read my thoughts. His eyes were intense as they stared at my face and lingered a second too long on my lips.
He turned his back to the monolith and leaned against it with a knowing smirk.
“Don’t look at me like that. There isn’t a chance in hell.” I took a couple of steps to gain some distance. “Now, explain this to me?” I turned my back to him and looked around the room.
“Come here.” He pushed off and walked toward a desk where a small dark stone lay. It looked like the same material as the larger monoliths but a fraction of the size. He picked it up and tossed it to me.
I held it warily, not wanting to close my hand around it. I held it far from my body with my palm open.
“Close your hand around it.”
“Why?” I asked, stalling.
“The way you are acting, I think you already know.”
“I have no idea what you are talking about.”
“Then do it.”
“No, it’s stupid,” I said and tried to blow him off. I had the feeling that Cormac wasn’t put off his track that easily.
He walked toward me and went to touch my fingers, but I pulled away before he could.
“Fine.” I closed my hand, and felt the cold stone warm in my hand, then tingle. I prayed for nothing to happen. Sometimes it wouldn’t, but a bad feeling made me think this wasn’t one of those times.
“Open your hand.”
I hesitated, feeling the pressure and afraid to release it, afraid to confirm what he already knew, what I’d spent years of my life hiding. I knew that he expected what was going to happen. He was the same thing, whatever an alchemist actually was, but old habits do really die hard. After hiding something for so long, I couldn’t seem to get my fingers to relax their grip.
“It’s okay,” he said, as he stepped forward and pried my fingers open.
The stone shot through the air like a bullet and buried itself into the lead ceiling above.
“Well, that’s interesting,” Cormac said, as he stared at the ceiling in interest.
“What do you mean? I thought you knew what was going to happen.”
“It’s much stronger than I would have imagined. I should have guessed it would be after how quickly your body shot out those bullets, but Buzz isn’t the best shot. I thought he might have grazed you with some of them.”
The mental calculation he was making showed openly on his face. What I’d done truly surprised him.
“Care to clue me in?”
“You’re a half breed. I don’t understand how it’s this strong. Only full bloods usually have this much strength.” He was still staring at the ceiling. His emotionless mask back in place, so I could no longer read his thoughts. “This is interesting,” he added, but I guessed he was talking more to himself than me.
“Half breed?”
“Alchemists, or that’s how we started out thousands of years ago, before we evolved into what we are now. Now we are mostly called Keepers.” He watched me now and waited for this to sink in.
“You turn metal into gold and something about the fountain of youth?” That was the beginning and end of what I knew about alchemy and all I remembered from surfing Google.
“That was one of the original goals, but we surpassed that a long, long, time ago. What you just did was change that stone into exotic matter.”
My brain scrambled as I remembered that term from a science class. “Doesn’t that have something to do with wormholes?”
“It has everything to do with wormholes. A wormhole is a shortcut to a different place in the galaxy, sometimes a different universe. Wormholes normally aren’t traversable for two reasons, they collapse under the gravity generated by the space-time fabric, and they emit huge amounts of radiation. If you didn’t get crushed, you die from the nastiest sunburn you’ve ever seen.” He motioned toward the stone still stuck in the ceiling. “Exotic matter counteracts the gravity.”
“And the radiation?”
“It isn’t poisonous to Keepers. We can draw the radiation omitted to us like a vacuum, and we are immune to it. We simply absorb it like a sponge would sop up water. Then our bodies use the energy, similar
to someone else digesting a steak dinner.”
“And that’s what I’ve been doing, turning things into exotic matter. How do I hurt people?”
“Yeah, that’s a cute trick you do. I haven’t seen anyone use our ability in that way for a long time. That’s why I didn’t recognize it when you used it on Tracker in the casino. How did you start doing that?”
“I don’t know,” I said vaguely, not wanting to give him the desperate details of the first time it had happened.
He waited for a moment, but then let it go and continued. “You’re exciting their cells.”
“I don’t understand what you mean?”
“You are stimulating them into a frenzy, which applies pressure to the surrounding areas as well. I’d imagine it would be extremely painful. You could burst bones if you did it strongly enough.”
“But I thought alchemists did things with chemicals? They didn’t change things with their bodies and minds. How can that be done by touch alone?”
“Once our ancestors learned how to distort different object’s physical natures, and how to create exotic matter, we were able to create a stable wormhole. Some of the portals that opened led to nothing but barren lands, or just space. But some of the portals led to a planet with humanoid races. Once we learned how to communicate with them, we discovered they had their own unique skill set. Where humans have a conscious brain and a subconscious, their brains are a single united process. Certain functions remain on autopilot, but they can override anything in their systems. They can consciously alter their brain patterns. In exchange for passage through the wormhole, they helped meld our skills into our subconscious.”
“I don’t get it.”
“We consciously control our energy and the energy around us. Matter on a very small scale is vibrations. Different vibrations change what the matter is. We simply change the vibrations.”
“And that is how I healed?”
“No, you healed because of your subconscious skills, although we aren’t as adept as they are at it. Their brains are a single consciousness. Our subconscious has some reasoning abilities, but it can’t communicate freely with our conscious. Your brain knew you were about to be shot, so your cells simply were prepared. They concentrated in the outer parts of your head to limit entrance and then forced the bullets out.”
“But once I was shot, how would my brain keep doing that if I’m passed out?”
“Your brain doesn’t stop working, your conscious brain just isn’t aware of it. When your alarm clock goes off, your subconscious wakes you. It’s always aware of what’s around.”
“You know that sounds insane, right?”
He pointed upward toward the stone still lodged in the ceiling above us. “But that’s normal? With the bullets, it was simply a matter of changing your body’s density temporarily.”
I wasn’t completely shocked. How could I be? I’d lived my whole life knowing things weren’t the way people believed. I’d gotten shot in the head and walked away. That didn’t mean I was at ease with this reality, either. I now had confirmed proof, and thinking something and knowing something can be worlds apart. I leaned a hip on the table he had taken the stone from, as I tried to act as if I was taking this in stride, even though my insides felt like a churning mass of mush.
“I saw that man, Tracker, change. What was he?”
“For lack of a more sophisticated term, you would know him as a werewolf.”
“And this alien werewolf person, he is one of the races that helped merge your abilities?”
“No, Tracker isn’t that skilled. He and his kind are on the lower rungs of their civilization. Vitor’s race, also known as Fae here on earth, are the kind that helped us. In essence, Tracker’s race just came along for the ride.”
“And who are these people gathering against you that Vitor warned of?”
“Vitor himself.”
“Why would he warn me about him?”
“He’s playing you.”
“And how do I know anything you say is true?”
“You don’t.”
“Why did you shoot me that night? Because of this?” I waved my hand to encompass everything in the room.
“We thought you were a human. There is a binding agreement between our races that all human witnesses are eliminated. When you saw Tracker change that night, you were in a private area of the casino, a safe zone. Your life was forfeit. If we didn’t kill you, he’d have tracked you down and done it himself. A quick death at our hand was a kindness.”
A shiver passed through me. “Spare me your kindness in the future. I’d rather take my chances.”
He ignored my sarcasm and continued. “Once your body forced the bullets out, we knew you were one of us. Now that we know what you are, it’s different. You’re a Keeper, and as such, you fall under my domain. They would have to get clearance from me to touch you.”
“And who keeps me safe from you?” I nailed him with the frostiest stare I had. He talked to me and explained things as if we were on good terms, but I wouldn’t be lulled by his relaxed demeanor. “You didn’t think bygones would be bygones after you had me shot in the head five times, did you? We’d start singing Kumbaya?”
He shrugged his shoulders and walked across the room and I found myself admiring his grace as he moved. I was annoyed at myself. If my subconscious supposedly had some reasoning ability of its own, it was a real masochist. I thought hard, trying to send it the message that it was a complete idiot. He was the enemy. You don’t find the enemy attractive, it didn’t matter how hot he was, you moron.
“I get that you’re pissed, but I had to do it. Now I don’t.”
“And when that changes?”
“It won’t.”
“Great. That’s very reassuring. Cause things never change in life, right?”
“Why did you try to run?”
“Why wouldn’t I? I’ve no desire to get messed up in whatever you have going on.”
“It’s a little late for that. This day’s been coming since the day you were born. For a half-breed, you have way too much power flowing through your veins. Strolling around, untrained as you are, it was only a matter of time before you started to cause a problem for us. I can’t fathom how you managed to avoid detection for this long.”
“I’ve managed. When freaky stuff starts happening around you all the time, you’d be amazed at how easy it is to remain alone.” I didn’t add how lonely I’d been, but I’d gotten by. People had much worse lives then I had. I wasn’t going to cry in my sleep over being alone.
He was watching me with all too knowing eyes, and I didn’t like the pity I thought I read in them.
“Stop,” I snapped.
“I’m sorry.”
“You don’t need to pity me, you’re the murderer,” I accused him, trying anything to shut down the entire exchange that was hitting me way too hard. I looked at him, hoping to see anger. Even violence was preferable to this. I could handle anger and violence. I was used to those things. “Are you letting me leave or not?” My voice was starting to rise. I never raised my voice. It declared how upset you were, a satisfaction I didn’t like to give to anyone.
He reached down on the table near me, toying with a few papers and I jumped up and moved across the room.
“I was hoping to give you a little time to acclimate, bring you into the fold slowly, but it’s not working out like that.”
“So what does that mean?”
“It means that I need you to be on the grounds here at the casino full time. You can still go wherever you choose, but you’ll need to take an escort.”
“No, absolutely not.”
“I don’t have a choice. Vitor, and whoever else is involved, is determined to destroy the portal. It’s bad now. If they were to get their hands on you, it could be much worse. I’m trying to make this as easy for you as I can.”
“So what if they took me? What if they took you or one of your guys?”
“Not all my men
are Keepers. The ones who are, they wouldn’t be able to take alive.”
“So we can die?”
“Yes.”
“What if I were trained?”
“You’d have to swear loyalty to me. Are you ready to do that?”
“Sure!” I said with the most enthusiasm I could muster. All this, without ever taking a single acting class. I thought I sounded pretty believable.
He laughed and walked closer to me. “It would have to be sincere.”
“How about you train me, and we’ll see how the loyalty thing works out?”
“I can’t turn you into a weapon that could be used against me.”
“So then, what? I live in your casino indefinitely?”
I watched him closely, and saw his façade cracking just slightly to reveal what looked like uncertainty. “I don’t know,” he said finally. We’d hit a stalemate.
As we left the room, we fell into silence as I followed him back upstairs. My mind ran wild thinking of the implications. Alternate universes were straight out of my sci-fi shows, and knowing that perhaps I could control the opening to such a thing made me heady with possibilities. Having that power was almost enough to make me want to swear loyalty. But not quite.
As we stood in the elevator together, I knew we were heading to his penthouse, and I remembered I had a shift tonight.
“I need to go get a few things from my place. I need my uniform for tonight. Lucky for me, my job is in the casino. Maybe my goons can just blend in with the regular ol’ casino goons.” I said this with fake optimism.
“You do realize that an alchemist can change base metals into gold. If you swore allegiance, you’d never have to work another day in your life.” He looked at me with eyebrows raised.
I stared at the walls and crossed my arms over my chest. I hated being alone in close quarters with him. He smelled too good, he looked too good and it was just completely unfair. Villains were supposed to be ugly. Just another way I was getting screwed in this deal. My villain didn’t even look like he was supposed to. “I’m sure I’d just get bored.”
“There are also other ways to be entertained.” The look on Cormac’s face left little doubt as to what he was referring.
