Master and Apprentice

by Bateman, Sonya

  The last one vanished.

  I went still, determined to hear him first. It was hard to listen over the blood pounding in my ears, the sick adrenaline rush of the kills. I made myself concentrate and finally heard footsteps on wet grass.

  They were moving away from me. Toward the monastery.

  I vaulted over the wall. When I touched down, the sounds ahead stopped. He was probably looking for me. I crouched low in case he decided to try for a random shot, and stared in the direction I thought he’d gone. A thread of pungent odor invaded my nostrils—sharp and sour, distinctly human. I could smell his fear.

  And I could follow it. Right to the flattened patches of grass beneath his unseen feet.

  I hammered out four shots in rapid succession. He flickered into view with the second, dropped on the third. I froze again and waited for activity from the building, expecting reinforcements to rush out and throw spells at me until I exploded.

  Nothing happened.

  The silence unnerved me. There had to be more of them. The scream I’d heard was pure pain, definitely not self-inflicted. So why weren’t they responding to the gunfire?

  I stayed low and took a few hesitant steps toward the place. Still nothing. Keeping the gun ready, I moved closer and tried to scope things out. A slight movement to the left of the back-door alcove drew my attention. I stopped again, waited.

  A dark shape exploded from the shadows, straight up to the roof. A cloaked and hooded figure in white, possibly the one I’d glimpsed behind Calvin in the mirror. Or maybe Calvin himself. The figure hovered for an instant, facing me, then turned and flew like a dart into the night.

  I approached the spot he’d left. A shallow moan drifted up from the ground, and I searched my pockets until I found the spare flashlight. Whatever they’d done, I had to see it to help. And I’d have to hope there weren’t any more of them waiting in the wings. I switched the light on, and the beam found a crumpled heap lying on the ground along the wall of the monastery.

  But it wasn’t Ian. It was Calvin.

  He’d put on the black robe again. Bruises and cuts marked his ashen features, and his left arm flopped at a disturbing angle. The front of his muddied robe was torn open, revealing a bloody gash crusted with dirt.

  I had to wonder why his mystery pal had gone after him like this, though his condition failed to generate sympathy. I wanted to plug him a few times myself. I couldn’t destroy him, and I wasn’t ready to get into the torture racket—but maybe I could scare some information from him, and then leave him crippled enough for me to escape.

  I knelt and pressed the muzzle against his throat. “You won’t die, but it’ll be really fucking painful,” I said. “And if I hear one word that isn’t English, I pull the trigger.”

  He stirred, but made no effort to get up or look at me. “I won’t help you.” A cracked whisper, barely audible. “You had no right … to kill them.”

  “And you had the right to kill Akila?”

  Calvin flinched. After a long moment, he turned his head and looked at me. “Donatti.”

  “Yeah. Surprise.”

  “So it’s true. They destroyed the princess.” He closed his eyes again. “I thought you were one of the … other scions. They killed my brothers too. Shot them like dogs.”

  “You can drop the bullshit monk routine.” I pushed harder with the gun. “Where’s Ian? Did he come here?”

  Calvin shook his head. “Please. My brothers. If you just look, you’ll see them …”

  “I said drop it!” Christ, he sounded convincing. I could almost believe there were piles of dead monks inside somewhere. The ones we’d seen before were probably descendants, too. Window dressing for whatever it was he did up here. “I know you’re working with them. I saw you, when you sent those assholes to kill me.”

  “I sent no one.”

  I came real close to firing. Only stopped because he wouldn’t be able to talk anymore. “Do you think I’m stupid? Changing your clothes doesn’t change your face. I’m a criminal, remember? I’ve seen through better disguises.”

  He shivered. “I can explain …”

  “I don’t wanna hear it.” I set the flashlight down and freed one of my blades from an ankle holster. “What I want to hear is what the fuck’s going on. I swear to God, I’ll—”

  Pain ripped through my shoulder without warning and knocked me to the ground. It almost felt like I’d been shot. I scrambled to right myself, tried to aim a shot at Calvin. He hadn’t moved or spoken. How the hell was he doing this? Another blast of agony exploded in my thigh. I made myself invisible, hoping he wouldn’t be able to target me, and touched fingers to my shoulder. No blood. No injury of any kind.

  “Son of a bitch,” I said. “I know you can’t kill me like this.” I lifted the Sig—and a phantom bullet hit between my shoulder blades, knocking me to my hands and knees. I tasted blood that wasn’t there. “I’m gonna blow your fucking skull apart,” I said through my teeth.

  “Wait. Please listen. I’m not …”

  The rest of his statement escaped me when new pain filled every cell of my body. Everything around me dissolved, like a chalk drawing in the rain, and I was facedown on packed dirt, surrounded by shifting shadows. A bloody, battered shell. One of the shadows kicked me. I felt it connect, tried to move out of the way. But my muscles wouldn’t respond.

  Then I pushed up without any effort or thought. I wasn’t controlling the movements. Slowly, I realized I was wearing a vest. And glowing.

  This body wasn’t mine. Somehow, I was inside Ian.

  Skin crawled and shivered while fur forced itself through pores. Jaw stretched, teeth lengthened. A mindless, crazed fury replaced thought and awareness. Murderous intentions. A lunge into the shadows. Blinding light swallowed the world.

  I opened my eyes, and Calvin was kneeling over me. “Ian,” I gasped. “How …”

  Searing pain filled my head. It lasted for long seconds, and then at once I returned to normal. My hands were empty. The bastard must’ve disarmed me during whatever the hell that was. I glared at him. “You might as well get it over with,” I said. “If you try to draw things out, I’ll get away.”

  “I’m not going to kill you.” Calvin leaned back on his haunches and sighed. “It wasn’t me you saw before. It was Vaelyn.”

  “Who?”

  He bowed his head. “Vaelyn,” he said in a whisper. “My twin sister.”

  Chapter 18

  I almost wanted to believe him. If it was true, I’d probably live longer.

  On the surface, it kind of made sense. Lynus had definitely referred to a Val among them. And something had seemed off when I saw Calvin in white. The face was a little rounder, a little softer. The eyes were intensely murderous. But damn, if that hadn’t been him in the mirror, his sister wasn’t a twin. She was a clone. And she made one ugly female.

  My gun lay on the ground just beyond my hand. Maybe I’d just dropped it—but I wasn’t taking any more chances. I grabbed the gun and rolled away from Calvin to stand out of his reach. “Convince me,” I said. “Or I’m putting you out of commission.”

  He stayed put. Didn’t even try to look at me. “You know I can’t.”

  “Try.”

  He sighed. “Among the djinn, twins are always one male and one female, and always identical. Each possesses a slight leaning toward the opposite gender. I am … shall we say, less rugged than most males of my clan, with more hair. Vaelyn is stocky and rough voiced for a female. She is my sister.” Calvin made a weak gesture and sank farther down. “And she was … my mistake. I should never have released her.”

  “From what? Her tether?”

  “Yes.” He stared up at me. “I’ve regretted it for fifty years.”

  “So she’s the reason you don’t use magic anymore.”

  He nodded. “Vaelyn is insane. I’d hoped two thousand years of quiet reflection had served to restore her to sense, but it only made her worse. As you can see, she has no reservations about
violence.”

  “Wait.” I glanced back across the yard to the dark heaps that were dead scions. “The guy—er, whatever, in the cloak who flew away when I shot those assholes. That was Vaelyn?”

  “It was.”

  So he was the business she had to take care of here. “Why’d your sister kick your ass?”

  “I told you. She’s insane.” Calvin stood slowly, grimaced, and cradled his lopsided arm. “She can’t destroy me, so she had her disgusting half-breeds slaughter my brothers instead.”

  I decided to ignore the disgusting half-breed comment for now. “Let me guess. That’s a twin thing, right? If you die, she dies.”

  “Yes, but not because we’re twins.” He flashed an expression that suggested he hadn’t meant to say that. “You see, Vaelyn developed a method to transfer tethers. She bound herself to mine in order to prevent me from destroying her.”

  “Jesus Christ. There’s no love lost between you two, is there?”

  He gave me a pained look. “Please don’t take the Lord’s name in vain.”

  “Holy … uh, crud. Sorry.” Memories of ruler-wielding nuns zipped through my head, and I thrust my free hand reflexively behind my back. But the Sig stayed pointed at him. “It does seem kinda funny that a guy who says he’s a monk, and is opposed to murder, would want to kill his own sister.”

  “She’s dangerous,” he said flatly. “Still, I have no wish to destroy her. And even if I wanted to, I couldn’t. Djinn can’t destroy their own tethers.”

  “Really.” Another little fact Ian must’ve forgotten to mention. “Well, I—”

  Whatever I’d planned to say got swept away under a tide of sudden pain. There was no distinct sensation of gunshots or punctures this time. Only pure, unrelenting agony that drove me to my knees.

  Destroy me. Damn you, thief. What are you waiting for?

  The pain vanished when Ian’s voice in my head stopped. “What the fuck is going on?” I blurted out. As if Calvin had a clue. I clenched my jaw and stood, expecting to be knocked down again any second. I almost wanted to fulfill Ian’s request and kill him right then for whatever the hell he’d done to me. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Not yet.

  Calvin’s brow furrowed. “Are you all right? Have you been injured?”

  “No.” I scowled at nothing in particular. “I’m hearing Ian’s voice. And feeling his pain. I think.”

  “That’s … unusual.”

  “Can’t argue there.” I rubbed my pounding head and tried to block all the thoughts that demanded attention. My brain didn’t have enough circuits to deal with everything at once. “It’s probably because of what he did to me on the way out.”

  “And that would be … ?”

  “I don’t know. It was a spell. Something about binding my small soul to him.”

  “The rohii’et.” Calvin lost a few dozen shades of color, took a stumbling step back—and genuflected.

  Seeing a Morai make the sign of the cross froze my blood. “I take it that’s a bad thing.”

  “It’s evil. He’s stolen part of your soul.”

  “Er. When you say ‘stolen,’ does that mean I’m not getting it back?”

  “Yes. It does.” He leaned against the wall of the monastery like his legs couldn’t hold him up anymore. “The rohii’et lets him tap into your power. He can use you like a battery. And since you’re bound to him, his intense feelings are reflected in you—particularly if he’s thinking of you at the time.” Calvin closed his eyes. “Why would he do such a reprehensible thing?”

  The disgust lacing his tone pissed me off. “Maybe because your crazy-ass sister murdered his wife,” I said. “This isn’t supposed to be permanent. He went out to their compound to kill as many of the bastards as he could, and now he expects me to destroy him so they can’t torture him for the next few centuries.”

  “Compound?”

  “Yeah. The bitch has herself an army, in case you couldn’t tell from the reinforcements.”

  “The scions.” Calvin straightened a bit, winced. “I take it you killed the three she brought here.”

  My conscience made a spirited attempt to induce vomiting. “Thanks for reminding me,” I said. “Got any idea where they came from? They can’t be hers—and they’d better not be yours.”

  “I had nothing to do with them.” His voice cracked, and I suspected he was lying. At least in part. I doubted he’d fathered the bastards, but he knew more than he was letting on. “How many are there?” he said.

  “I’m not sure, but I know that wasn’t all of them. I think they have women too.”

  “The djinn were never meant to breed with humans.” Calvin’s eyes narrowed, and I felt his passive condemnation of me in that stare. “You should honor Gahiji-an’s wishes. Destroy him, and walk away. You can’t defeat Vaelyn.”

  “No, I can’t.” I glared back at him. “But you can.”

  He didn’t say anything for a long time. Finally, he turned away and limped toward the monastery. He froze after a few steps and spoke without looking back.

  “Perhaps I could, if she were alone,” he said. “But I won’t.”

  I didn’t follow him right away. I couldn’t. Ian’s consciousness dragged me off again, and I found myself locked in his pain-riddled body, chained upright, bleeding from everywhere. Unable to see beyond vague, smudged shapes that may or may not have been moving. What I felt from him was more than physical. The anguish of his soul exceeded the torture a thousand times over.

  Destroy me. Please. For the love of the gods … release me.

  A raw sob lodged in my throat. I couldn’t tell if it came from him, or me. Blurred patchwork vision shifted up a few inches—Ian lifting his head. A cloaked and hooded silhouette stood before him. Fire consumed his blood.

  His scream drove nails into my heart.

  Silence. Another figure stepped from behind the first. The hooded one raised an arm, and the new arrival mimicked the movement with a long, curved blade clutched in a hand.

  No! Taregan …

  For an instant I caught a clear glimpse of the face behind the knife. Tory, bloodied and bruised, stricken with horror as his arm betrayed him and plunged the blade into Ian.

  I crashed back to my own awareness, sprawled on the grass beside the monastery. He must’ve stopped thinking about me. Probably wasn’t thinking anything right now. Echoes of pain lingered in my gut where he’d been stabbed. Hot tears bathed my face.

  I couldn’t let him suffer anymore. I had to honor his wishes.

  If I did it fast, maybe I wouldn’t have time to talk myself out of it. I pushed up to my knees and extracted Ian’s tether. My hands shook when I drew the blade, and I almost dropped it. Oh God. I can’t do this. My body moved without input from my brain, slicing the keen edge of the dagger across my palm. Blood pulsed and drizzled on metal.

  Crimson-tinged light blazed along the surface of the blade where my blood coated it, forming familiar symbols. Djinn writing.

  That wasn’t supposed to happen.

  Only Ian’s blood should’ve had this reaction. I’d seen it when the Morai leader tested Ian—we’d made decoys to try and keep him alive, but things hadn’t exactly gone according to plan. This was a blood tell. The glowing symbols insisted this was my tether. Which was impossible.

  I spoke the spell anyway. The dagger failed to burst into flames.

  There was no way I could summon the nerve to try again. I wiped the blade clean on the grass, replaced it, and headed in search of Calvin. The back door stood open. I walked in and immediately discovered proof that he’d at least told the truth about his brothers.

  Two bodies in brown robes lay faceup on the floor in the hallway. Each of them had been shot once in the head, at point-blank range. Their contorted, frozen stares were almost a mercy to look at compared to the exit wounds that were thankfully not visible. These descendants really were monsters. There had to be a special fiery lake in hell reserved for people who slaughtered monks.

&nb
sp; I edged around the carnage and made my way to Calvin’s study. He was there, searching his shelves of scrolls for something. “I told you I’m not going to help you,” he said without looking at me. “Just leave. Or shoot me and then leave, if it makes you feel better.”

  “I can’t destroy Ian,” I said.

  Calvin shook his head. “I know he’s your … friend.” He lifted his good arm, moved a few scrolls aside, and frowned into the space. “Honestly, though, he’ll be better off if you do. You can’t save him, and they will torture him for a very long time. He’s Gahiji-an the Slayer. He’s killed their kin without remorse.”

  “You don’t get it.” I moved farther into the room. “I literally can’t. I tried.”

  His gaze swung in my direction. “What?”

  “You said djinn can’t destroy their own tethers, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, the damned thing’s acting like it’s mine. I started the spell, got my blood all over it, and it lit up with djinn writing like it does with Ian’s blood.”

  “Of course,” he breathed. An expression of wonder spread on his face. “You’re his scion.”

  “Uh … yeah. So?”

  “The rohii’et. It must work both ways with you.” He went back to shuffling scrolls, faster this time. “Not a theft, but a true bond. A sharing of souls. Have you noticed anything different—abilities you didn’t have before the spell?”

  “I guess,” I said slowly. “I can hear better, smell better, see in the dark. Like a wolf. I never could pull that off before, but Ian can.”

  “Yes. Don’t you see? As he can draw from you, so you can from him. Ah, here it is.” He pulled a tightly wound parchment from a shelf. “I have theories about scions, but of course I’ve never been able to test them.”

  “Wait a minute. I thought you hated the idea of half-breeds.”

  “I wasn’t always opposed.” His good humor faded visibly. “One tends to change one’s views after two thousand years of observation.”

  “Oh. Right.” I glanced around the room, suddenly uneasy. Something felt wrong in here. “So, does that mean I have a tether now?”