Ascendant (The Shift Chronicles Book 4)

by Eva Truesdale

  “Sounds good.” I tucked my chin closer to my chest as I felt bile rising in the back of my throat.

  “You’re okay,” Kael repeated. “I’m right here.”

  “I have a feeling I’m going to need to hear that a lot today. And probably over and over these next few weeks.”

  “Then I’ll be sure to repeat it ad nauseam.”

  “Ugh, why would you mention nausea right now?”

  “Sorry,” he laughed.

  I looked up again just in time to catch sight of Vanessa leading the others down the aisle. They were a welcome distraction. Another three reasons for me to try and put on a brave face. They took their seats across the aisle from us. I was glad to see Vanessa taking the outside spot closest to Kael; I’d been half afraid she would try and force Kael to sit next to his father in an attempt to orchestrate that warm and fuzzy heart-to-heart she was hoping for. She completely ignored Kael as she sat down, though, leaning around him and locking eyes with me instead.

  “Are you alright, Alex? You seem kind of pale.”

  “I was born kind of pale,” I said, attempting to laugh it off. “This is just the way my face always looks.”

  Her lips formed a slight pout. Kael shook his head at both us, laughing quietly again, and then unhooked his seatbelt and got to his feet.

  “I’ll be right back,” he said.

  Five minutes later, he returned with a bag full of what turned out to be saltine crackers, along with an entire six pack of ginger ales. “It’s a long flight,” he explained at the bemused expression I gave him.

  “Isn’t there some sort of limit to how many snacks they give people on this plane?”

  “Yes.” He settled into his seat and threw a glance back down the aisle. “I had to flirt mercilessly with that pretty flight attendant over there to get her to cooperate.”

  I lifted an eyebrow. “You know, I want to be jealous, but mostly I’m just impressed. Do you think you could flirt your way into getting us a first class upgrade or something?”

  “Doubtful,” he coughed, just as the pretty attendant in question walked past our seats. She paused long enough to give me a smile the was an unsettling mix of I’m-a-cheery-airline-employee and I-might-stab-you-in-your-sleep-if-you-doze-off-mid-flight.

  “I told her that stuff was for my father,” Kael explained as she disappeared behind the curtain separating first class. “Somehow I didn’t think the flirting would be as effective if I told her it was for my girlfriend.”

  I nodded, popping the tab on one of the cans of ginger ale. “Wait. Girlfriend? That’s the first time we’ve used that word. So does this mean we’re, like, officially dating?”

  He gave me a sideways glance.

  “It’s just, there was no note or anything,” I said.

  “Note?”

  “Yeah—you could have drawn little boxes, one for yes and one for no, and been like will you be my girlfriend? Check yes or no. I always thought it was cute when guys did that in elementary school. I always wanted to get one of those.”

  “We aren’t in elementary school,” he said.

  “So you could have commemorated the occasion by buying her flowers or something instead,” Vanessa chimed in, refusing to be excluded from any conversation that had to do with romance.

  “Flowers die,” Will pointed out without looking up from the Skyline magazine he was leafing through. “And most of them stink.”

  “God, you’re both hopeless,” Vanessa said, sighing.

  I actually kind of agreed with Will, but I was smart enough to keep that to myself; Vanessa already looked utterly dejected at the thought of this cruel, unromantic world.

  “No notes,” Kael said, turning back to me. “No flowers. But here—I’ll open your crackers for you.”

  “A regular Romeo,” Vanessa said under her breath.

  “Romeo also died,” Will said. “And probably stunk, too, given the time period.”

  Vanessa folded her arms across her chest and sank down into her seat, giving him a dirty look. “You are just… you are the worst kind of person,” she said. “Do you know that?” But she looked like she might have been fighting a grin. Will gave her a playful nudge, and the two of them were still having a passionate debate about romance and tragedy when the plane finally started to move toward the runway. I closed my eyes and turned away.

  Takeoff was always the worst part.

  My stomach dropped as the engines roared completely to life and we started to pick up speed.

  I didn’t get sick, though. Maybe because Kael was holding my hand the whole time, or maybe because my mind was now completely distracted with other fears, with other worries besides flying. And with the realization— as the wheels pulled into the plane with a ka-thump ka-thump— that we’d officially reached the point of no return.

  We were really on our way to face whatever end was waiting for us, thousands of miles away from what was left of my home.

  Kael fell asleep when, according to the little monitor hanging from the ceiling, we were flying close to Iceland. He was still holding my hand. He was holding my gaze, too. Because though I’d memorized every curve, every edge and every line of his face already, multiple times, somehow I was still afraid of forgetting them. Of losing them. Losing him.

  His fingers tightened around mine, suddenly.

  His eyes stayed closed, but they pinched together, and his lips parted slightly as his breathing became quicker. More uneven.

  I knew what he would do next, because I’d seen it too many times already during this past week. I tried to keep it from happening, but I could only wrestle his hand into being still for so long before I’d be creating a scene, drawing more attention than we needed. So I let go. I let his fingers pry their way from mine. I watched him clutch at the curse mark over his heart, and I just made sure his hand stayed human this time; a few nights ago, he’d grown claws in his sleep and had attempted to dig out whatever evil that curse had buried in him. I’d barely woken him up in time to stop him from doing some serious damage to himself.

  Waking him up didn’t stop the pain, though.

  And it would probably only upset him to know that I’d seen him hurting like this. When he was awake, he could ignore the pain a little better—they all could— and though I knew it was happening, we all found it easier to pretend that nothing was wrong. But I wasn’t feeling up to pretending at the moment. So I let him sleep.

  The pretty attendant from earlier passed our seats again, but instead of giving me another death glare, her eyes were concerned— and a little panicky— when I met her gaze.

  “Is he okay?” she asked.

  “He’s fine.” My voice was a little more clipped than necessary, maybe. But I didn’t like the way she was glancing between me and Kael. The way her eyes hesitated on my scarred face for too long, and the way the judgment and assumption were so obvious on her face. Clearly, she thought we had issues. And yeah, okay, that was true, but they weren’t issues that could be fixed by her bringing us an extra pillow or a pack of peanuts or whatever, so I just wanted her to keep moving.

  “He’s having a nightmare is all.” I didn’t look at her as I said it.

  “So wake him up?”

  My head snapped toward her, and I must have looked as terrible and angry as I felt, because she finally took the hint and kept walking. Sprinting, basically.

  (How many times does this make in the past week, then?) It was Joseph’s voice in my head. He wasn’t looking at me, though; he was staring at the monitor above their row, his eyes aglow with the green light of the little blinking airplane on it. (I know you’ve been keeping track of everyone’s...attacks.)

  (…This is seven for him.)

  Seven for Kael, six for Will, six for Joseph himself, and ten for Vanessa. That I’d seen, anyway. I didn’t know why Vanessa’s attacks seemed to be more frequent than anyone else’s. I thought about asking Joseph, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I was too afraid of the answer.

 
He’d already closed his eyes, anyway, and he left me alone after that.

  Minutes later, Kael’s face had finally relaxed again. And his hand had fallen, first to his own knee and then to mine, where it stayed and occasionally squeezed, as if he wanted to make sure I was still there and still real and still solid. Not once did he open his eyes. I wondered if he was only pretending to be asleep, now. I quickly decided I didn’t care. I wanted to pretend to sleep too. At some point, though, my pretending turned to really sleeping, and I dreamed of fire that I’d summoned, flames that surrounded all of us on a hill in the pouring rain.

  But I couldn’t tell if it was burning us or saving us.

  Two

  followed

  The city of Dublin was alive with the sound of bike bells ringing, with taxi and bus drivers blaring their horns as those bikes cut in front of them, with people laughing and telling their friends animated stories as they walked along the cement and cobblestone sidewalks. And with music. There was music coming, it seemed, from every direction: bits of live band performances escaping into the early night as pub doors opened; the twangs of guitars and heartbeats of drums from street performers; the occasional car radio booming—usually either something folksy, or an electronic version of some top 40 pop hit.

  It had been raining when we arrived, though it had stopped soon after we checked into our hotel. There were still puddles here and there, and railings and signs and awnings were still slicked with water that reflected a dazzling amount of the city’s lights.

  It was loud, and it was bright—but it wasn’t overwhelming, even with my heightened senses. The only other truly big city that I had to compare it with was New York, which I’d been to for the first time four years ago. It wasn’t much of a comparison, though; to me, the two felt completely different.

  This city seemed more sure of itself, somehow. I guess because it was older, and some of these buildings around me had been standing for centuries, and I could easily see them standing for centuries more; all of the wrought iron and stone seemed less breakable than the glass and flash buildings of the more “modern” big cities I’d been to. And people moved quickly here, same as those other big cities, but they seemed to know more about where they were going and why, and I didn’t feel anxious shuffling my way along with them. It might have had to do with the ties my bloodline had to this country, but I already felt like I fit among the crowds here—and not just because I looked like I could be a native. Even though, no— despite what that baggage-check lady had assumed, there actually weren’t that many redheads here. There’s that stereotype that all of Ireland is redheaded, but really it’s only something like ten percent of the population (so, we were basically unicorns, even here).

  I walked alone, making my way toward the pub where Kael and Will said they were planning to go first. There was a long list of places they were planning to hit tonight. Meanwhile, Vanessa and Joseph and I were supposed to be resting, so that we could take the next shift of information gathering. We were looking for any and all clues, really. Anything that might help us pinpoint the feral’s hiding place, or stronghold or whatever, with more accuracy.

  Joseph’s hypothesis was that the source of their power—of their entrance into our world, possibly—was that hiding place they’d fled to, somewhere in this country. And if we could find it and destroy it, then it would destroy the feral as well.

  So that was our mission. We would find it, while back home, Eli and a few others were conducting their own research, mostly into the luna fascinus curse. Plus, we had others on our side, too, who had flown here before us, and still more who would be coming behind us.

  Divide and conquer.

  There was a whole army on my side to do just that, all of us working toward the same things.

  But I still couldn’t sleep easy.

  So I’d left a jet-lagged Vanessa and Joseph a note, and I’d set out on my own.

  I had stopped walking without realizing it, falling in line with a group of other girls about my age who had paused to watch a street performer playing what I think was a mandolin. He had a nice voice; the kind that made simple lyrics resonate with complex emotion, and I wished I was just a tourist for a moment so I could hang out and listen.

  After less than a minute of standing there, though, I felt it.

  Someone was staring.

  I’d more or less gotten used to that already; the way people looked at my blind eye and scarred face reminded me a little of the way people had looked at me after my dad died. Like they desperately wanted to ask questions and know details, but they knew that, unfortunately, common courtesy demanded they look away and mind their own damn business instead.

  The one staring at me now was no different. I found him immediately when I glanced into the crowd across the circle from me: A man in his mid-twenties, maybe, judging by what little I saw of his face before he quickly looked away. I noted his coat, just because it was a bright shade of burgundy and sort of vintage-looking, but other than that one detail that stood out and stuck in my mind, I quickly forgot about him.

  Or tried to, anyway.

  I kept walking. I was hyper-aware, now, of any staring that followed my movements. I didn’t feel like I was blending in at all. Not anymore. So I didn’t bother with trying to, and I just walked faster and faster, until I was practically running.

  I rounded a corner, onto the block where Kael and Will were supposed to be. I forced myself to slow down and catch my breath so I could walk calmly into the pub ahead, and so I could focus on directing my thoughts toward Kael and telling him I was approaching the building. That building turned out to be another one of the city’s many solid, ancient ones, made of weathered stone crawling with ivy. It had a bright blue door and a sign made of metal with letters that were too worn to read with just the quick glance I gave it. I knew this was the right place, though. The scent of Kael and Will hovered around the front steps.

  I wrapped my hand around the cold metal handle and heaved open the heavy door, and just as I slipped through it, I caught a glimpse of burgundy out of the corner of my eye.

  Inside, the air was suffocating with the scent of fried food and beer. There was an undercurrent of smoke, too; it was illegal to smoke in pubs and other restaurants here, same as it was back home, but the old bricks of this place had already soaked up more smoke than they would ever be able to completely lose, I guessed. It made me think of my mom. Of how quickly and completely that scent had clung to her once Lora had disappeared and she’d picked up her pack-a-day habit. My stomach twisted as I pictured her face.

  Kael met me a moment later, and we were able to press through a relatively thin crowd and grab a table near the back. He pulled out a chair for me, but I didn’t sit right away. My gaze kept flickering back to the door. Watching for another flash of red, even though I didn’t want to admit it.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” I lied quickly. “Where’s Will?”

  He nodded toward the bar, where Will was deep in conversation with a man who was holding a cane that he kept twirling around in his lap. Nervously twirling it, I thought. I kind of saw Will as a goofy big brother, and I still forgot, sometimes, that he could be incredibly intimidating to other people.

  “He’s going to join us in a minute,” Kael said. “Since you can’t sit at the bar, my dear underage friend.”

  “I like that I can be trusted to save the world, but not to have a beer. Not that I actually want one.” I finally gave in and sank into the chair he was holding for me. “I think alcohol kind of stinks, actually. But still. It doesn’t seem fair.”

  He shrugged and took the seat across from me. “The world is cruel and unjust,” he said.

  I fumbled for something else to say, while my gaze absently, automatically turned toward the door again.

  What if I’d missed him coming in?

  “Something is making you anxious.” It wasn’t a question this time. Kael knew he was right, and there was a bit of impatienc
e edging into his voice now, pressuring me to tell him the truth.

  “I’m just overtired,” I said instead. “It’s making me paranoid, I think.”

  He looked unconvinced, and like I had every reason to be paranoid, besides. “You shouldn’t have walked here by yourself,” he said.

  “It was only a few blocks, and I was surrounded by a ton of people the whole time.”

  His frown didn’t budge, but amazingly, he let it go at that.

  Or maybe he was just more interested in what Will had to say than in arguing with me; his eyes slid to the bar, where Will was nodding goodbye to the man he’d been interrogating. Will didn’t look especially optimistic as he turned and started toward us, but I was still eager to hear anything and everything he might have learned.

  As soon as he reached us and took the seat next to me, though, I was distracted.

  That man in the burgundy coat was suddenly sitting at the very end of the bar, swirling a glass full of amber liquid and staring straight at me. He didn’t look away from me this time, either. He stared, unapologetically, for one minute, two minutes…

  “Okay, that’s it.” I stood up so quickly that my chair would have hit the floor if Will hadn’t caught it.

  “What’s it?” he called after me.

  I was already halfway to the man at the bar, who rose partway out of his own chair as I approached; he looked surprised for maybe a fraction of a second, and then his features fell into an impassive wall that regarded me steadily, even as I demanded, “Why are you following me?”

  He didn’t answer.

  Will and Kael appeared on either side of me a moment later, and it was Will who finally broke the silence. “Following you?” he said, before turning and fixing the man with a hard stare. “What is she talking about?”

  He took a long sip of his drink instead of answering.

  One of the bartenders had noticed the bit of commotion we’d made, and she was now standing just a few feet away from the man in the red coat, washing the same few glasses over and over with her eyes narrowed in our direction. She looked like she was waiting for a reason to toss us out of her pub. So I tried to keep my voice calm and quiet when I said, “He was staring at me outside, a few blocks away—we were both watching the same street performer. And then he followed me here.”