Between the Heaves of Storm

by V. J. Chambers

  “But you did seduce me on purpose, and you did it because Cameron told you to.”

  She nodded. “That’s what I said.”

  I knew she’d said that, damn it. But it didn’t make any sense. “Why?”

  She looked out through the windshield of the car. “He’s coming. I don’t have time to explain.” She turned and gazed deep into my eyes. “Whatever you hear me say to him, know that I am on your side. I promise. And, please, Kieran, watch out for him. He’s going to try to—”

  But Cameron had reached our car and was opening the door for Eve. “Hey babe,” he said.

  And then she was kissing him.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  ~kieran~

  My hands clenched in fists. I was completely confused. I had no idea what Eve was talking about. I only knew that I really didn’t like watching her kiss another guy.

  I threw open the passenger side door of the car and got out, uncapping the power inside me as I moved. I focused on Cameron. I willed the entire force of my magic onto him. I wanted to destroy him.

  Cameron saw me moving. He broke the kiss. To Eve, “Oh good. You brought Kieran.” He held up one hand, palm first and began muttering quick words underneath his breath.

  Suddenly, I felt an icy punch to the stomach. It sucked all my power up inside me. It made me cough. I doubled over, clutching myself and hacking.

  “What did you do to him?” Eve asked.

  I fumbled for my power, mentally searching for the figurative container I kept it in. But when I found it, the power was tightly capped. I couldn’t release it. I struggled and struggled, panicking inside. But nothing worked. And within seconds, Cameron was at my side. He pounded me on the back while I still coughed.

  “Doing all right there, buddy?” he asked.

  I glared at him.

  “I know it’s tough to find out Eve was playing you. She’s quite sweet girl, isn’t she? And very easy on the eyes as well,” Cameron said.

  “Cameron, whatever you’re doing to him, don’t do it,” said Eve. She caught my gaze with her own. Her expression made it look like she still cared, anyway. But I didn’t know if I could believe it. After all, she’d told me that she’d been dating Cameron. That whatever had been between Eve and me had been part of one of Cameron’s plans. Eve didn’t seem particularly trustworthy at the moment.

  Cameron pulled a length of rope out of his pocket. “Just keeping him from being dangerous, that’s all, sweetheart.” He started to tie my hands behind my back. “From the way you’re acting, I might almost think you’d taken our plan a little too seriously.”

  Great. Tied up and with no powers. I was helpless. I was glad Chance wasn’t here, but I was worried for the little guy. Could I trust anyone in the coven? Azazel sure hadn’t been able to.

  “Actually, Cameron,” said Eve. “I’ve been thinking. Maybe we shouldn’t—”

  Cameron let go of me and put one finger over Eve’s lips, silencing her. “Don’t finish that thought, sweetheart. Let’s get you juiced up, and then we’ll see how you feel, okay?”

  Eve shook her head.

  Cameron took her by the arm and led her away from me. They were walking up over a field towards a makeshift stage. That was when I noticed that there were dead bodies everywhere. I looked from one mangled and silent form to the next. There had to be over a hundred dead people. And Cameron was stepping over the bodies as if it meant nothing. What had happened here? I hadn’t seen anything so destructive since—

  I gulped. Since I’d incited the riot in D.C. on Lily’s orders. There had been more dead bodies then. And they’d all been my responsibility. But just because I was capable of violence worse than this didn’t mean that it was excusable. What had happened here? Why?

  I felt a gun poke into the small of my back. From behind me, a voice said, “Move.”

  I moved.

  I walked over the field after Cameron and Eve. When we reached the stage, we stopped. That was when I saw her. Azazel. Tied up on stage, surrounded by armed men, and looking more terrified than I’d ever seen her. Of course, Jason was there too. He looked the same as ever, except scruffier. Guy could use a shave and trim if you asked me. I was sure Azazel would think he looked rugged and sexy. One thing was for sure. I’d never looked rugged to Azazel. Never once. And I knew, because I knew everything she knew.

  Except right now. Right now, I didn’t know why she was on this stage with Jason. I didn’t know what Cameron wanted with us. And I had no idea what she was thinking.

  I expected to feel more at the sight of her. I expected that there would be a rush of emotion. I knew I wanted to see her, but I’d wondered if I’d fall in love with her again if I did. I wondered if maybe I’d look into her eyes, remember how it felt to be her boyfriend, and then want her back badly. I’d also wondered if I would be so angry with her when I found her that I would try to kill her. Weirdly enough, I felt neither. I didn’t feel any real surge of feeling at all. I stared up at her, remembering everything we’d been through together, and I thought, I’m over you.

  It wasn’t because of Eve, either. Because all evidence currently pointed to the idea that Eve was a two-faced traitor, and that she’d used me for some kind of scheme that Cameron had planned out. Even if she’d had a change of heart in the car when she’d tried to warn me, it kind of didn’t matter. Cameron was powerful enough to force my magic back inside me and keep me from getting at it. He was going to be able to do whatever he wanted.

  I hadn’t noticed, because I’d been distracted by the fact that Eve was kissing Cameron and that there were bodies all over the ground, but the rest of the coven had parked their cars and made their way up to the makeshift stage behind us. I eyed them warily. Had they been in on this whole thing from the beginning? Was that why Eve had said that thing about an aphrodisiac in the ritual where they’d healed my gunshot wound? Oh God. The gunshot wound hadn’t been a set up, had it? I was so confused.

  Cameron was up on the stage, beckoning to the coven members with one hand. The other hand was biting into Eve’s arm, holding her in place.

  Jason was staring at Eve like he recognized her, but couldn’t place her.

  “She’s Eve Newcomb,” I told him. “From Bramford.”

  “Kieran,” said Jason, his face twisting in disgust.

  I started to protest, but Cameron noticed me again and pointed. “You,” he said. “Up on the stage.”

  The person with the gun in my back prodded me forward. It’s really hard to climb up on a stage when your arms are tied behind your back. Trust me on this. But I managed it eventually. Cameron steered me in the direction of Azazel. She looked up at me with wide, confused eyes. I felt sorry for her. And it was weird that she didn’t even recognize me.

  Cameron addressed the coven, still holding Eve close. “First things first, everyone. We need to restore Azazel’s memories. But not her powers. Just her memories. I want her to know what’s going on when everything goes down.” He seemed excited.

  The coven members formed a circle around the stage. They began to chant in the same weird language they’d chanted in during the ritual at Eve’s house.

  Jason stood up. “Oh, come on. If you’re trying to give her back her powers, you’re not killing her.” He lunged at Cameron, knocking him face down on the stage.

  Cameron made an umphing noise.

  Jason rained down blows on Cameron, his fists cracking against Cameron’s neck and back.

  Cameron screamed, “Lord of Chaos, I invoke thee!”

  And Jason’s body flew through the air and collided with several metal chairs on the stage. Jason fought to get back to his feet.

  Cameron glared at him.

  Jason was pushed onto the floor and pinned there by some unseen force.

  “Don’t mess with me when the entire coven is here, okay?” Cameron said, smiling.

  Jason swore.

  At that moment, I felt a strange tugging inside my skull, as if something was being pulled out of
my brain. It didn’t hurt exactly, but it felt odd. I jerked involuntarily, the sensation was so foreign.

  Cameron saw it. He strode over to me and pushed me against Azazel so that my arm was touching her shoulder. “You have to be touching for the transfer to work.”

  The tugging intensified. I felt as if there were electric currents between Azazel and me, and that energy was flowing out of me into her.

  The chanting of the coven got louder, as if their voices had been artificially amplified.

  The sensation in my body grew even more intense. My entire body started to vibrate. My teeth chattered against each other. Searing energy flowed through me into Azazel, and I realized that all of her memories were fading, so that I was left only with my memories of her memories, if that made any sense.

  Abruptly, the chanting stopped, and my body went limp. I fell to the floor of the stage in a heap.

  Azazel made a gasping noise. Her eyes searched the area as if she had no idea where she was. Then they settled on me. She half-sobbed. “Oh, God. Kieran.”

  * * *

  ~azazel~

  It was too much to integrate all at once. I felt like I was two people colliding in one body. Everything I’d been in the past month crashed up against everything I’d been before I lost my memory. I felt like I was losing myself, like the identity I’d had without my memories was alien to my previous identity. Like all the things I’d felt and thought in the past were part of some different person. They were familiar, as if some soul-twin had done or thought those things, but they weren’t me .

  There was so much to process. But the first person I saw was Kieran. I felt relief at seeing him at first. I wanted to run to him and throw myself into his arms. He’d always been so comforting to me. But then, I had to integrate everything I’d done while having lost my memory, including insisting on staying with Jason. Then, it crashed down on me that I’d been effectively cheating on Kieran. It wasn’t like I’d known what I was doing exactly, but I had been. It was funny, because Jason had always accused me of cheating, but I never had, until now. And when I did cheat, I didn’t cheat on Jason but with Jason, and—

  I thought I would cry. The fact that my actions could hurt Kieran, would hurt him once he knew, made me feel sick with guilt. I never wanted to hurt Kieran. Kieran, of all people on earth, was simply good through and through. He was simple and sweet, and I wanted—

  But I’d almost forgotten about what it had been like right before losing my memories. Hadn’t I been hurting Kieran then? Hadn’t I been deeply stuck inside the cocoon of my powers, where everything was destruction and blood? I’d barely been human, and that’s what he’d said to me before he’d used the grimoire to take my powers. My powers...

  “The grimoire took my memory too,” I said to Kieran.

  “Um, Zaza, I’m not sure that this is the time to piece things together, exactly,” said Kieran.

  Right. Cameron. I turned to my foster brother, who was gazing at me with a smirk on his face. He looked awfully proud of himself. He didn’t look much different than he had when I’d left Bramford. A little bigger, maybe, but he was the same old Cameron.

  “Cameron,” I said, feeling even closer to tears, “I’m so sorry about what happened to Mom and Dad.”

  He shook his head. “No, you don’t get to play that card. It was your fault. You don’t get to pretend like it wasn’t.”

  “If it’s any consolation, you wouldn’t have wanted to live with Grandma Hoyt like I had to. That woman was nuts and manipulative and kind of horrible.” Of course, I guessed my parents had been all those things too.

  “She left you a lot of money.” Cameron glowered at me.

  “Which is totally useless now that society has collapsed,” I pointed out.

  Cameron glared at me. “You know what, Azazel? Shut up. Even if you apologized and begged for forgiveness it wouldn’t matter. I hate you, and I want you and Jason to see the new world I’m going to create.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut, still reeling from the confusion of my memories trying to integrate with each other. New world? When had he said anything about that before? Cameron was on a revenge scheme, pure and simple, right? I fought to keep everything straight. He’d come to Jason and me and told us that he wanted to destroy our lives, the way we’d destroyed his. But he hadn’t said anything about creating a new world. What was he planning? Why did he take over the OF? I hadn’t given much thought to this before. Apparently, my Joan self was much more concerned with whether or not Jason was into me or not.

  I shot a glance at Jason, who was still pinned down against the stage by Cameron’s power. Conflicted feelings shot through me.

  I snapped my head away. I couldn’t afford to think about that right now. Not when Cameron was trying to kill me. Not when he was making noise about creating a new world. “You want to tell us a little about this new world?” I said to Cameron. I was hoping to stall him. I was hoping to get more information. I was hoping if I could figure out what was going on, I could stop him.

  Cameron sneered. “You and Jason got it all wrong, you realize that? Your powers are supposed to work together, not against each other. But you two used your powers to screw up the entire world. How many people have you killed between the two of you? How many battles did you force people to fight? You don’t deserve those powers.”

  Okay, this wasn’t helping. He was just talking about how much he didn’t like us. Big deal. No one ever liked us, anyway. I was used to it. As for the powers…well, I wasn’t sure I’d ever wanted them in the first place. “Okay, we’re bad people, Cameron. You want to kill us. And then there will be a great, new world because we’ll be gone.”

  “Not just because you’ll be gone,” he said. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a book. The grimoire.

  I flashed on my last memories as Azazel. Kieran was in my face holding the grimoire, telling me he was going to strip my powers. And…I didn’t have my powers right now? Did I? Kieran had them. So that was how it had worked. The grimoire hadn’t purged my powers. It had transferred them, along with my memories, to Kieran. And if Cameron had the grimoire…. “You’re going to steal my powers?”

  “Technically,” said Cameron, “they’re Kieran’s powers now. I had to get this—” He gestured with the grimoire “—from the OF. It took me forever to figure out how Kieran did it. That Lily bitch didn’t want to talk. I had to torture her to death. See, right when it happened, we felt it in the coven. A disruption in the power of chaos. It was intense. And I had to know what happened. Eventually, after Kieran showed up in Cumberland and killed a bunch of my men, I figured it out. And then I needed to get to the OF to find out how he’d gotten the power.” Cameron grinned at Kieran. “But conveniently, they came and got me.”

  Kieran was shaking his head, looking horrified. “You were never captured. Not really. You only wanted to use the OF’s power.”

  Cameron jiggled the grimoire again, looking proud of himself.

  Kieran looked at Eve Newcomb, who was being clutched by Cameron for some reason I couldn’t quite understand, and looked just as skanky as she had in high school. Seriously. Could she wear a lower cut top? “You knew about this?” Kieran asked Eve.

  Eve didn’t answer him. She looked away.

  “I needed you and Eve to have a connection,” said Cameron, “so that I could use her to reflect back your memories during the transfer. Because I’m not really into the idea of having Kieran bouncing around inside my head.”

  Kieran grimaced. “You used me,” he whispered.

  Wait. Connection? Kieran and Eve? Oh, no, no, no. “Kieran, please tell me that you have not been cheating on me with the skank who made my life in high school completely miserable.”

  “Don’t call her a skank,” said Kieran.

  My jaw dropped.

  Cameron broke into peals of laughter.

  “Besides, you can’t tell me that you and Jason have been living here like monks,” Kieran said.

 
“I had amnesia,” I said.

  “Yeah,” said Kieran, “and I had all of your memories, so I knew exactly how you felt about me.”

  What was that supposed to mean? “I loved you,” I said.

  “I loved you too,” said Kieran. “But notice how we’re both using the past tense?”

  “Because you’re both going to be dead in a few minutes,” said Cameron. “So shut up.” He pulled Eve close and kissed her neck. “Ladies first, darling.” He nudged her toward Jason.

  Eve’s gaze darted from Kieran to Cameron. “Listen, Cameron, I’m not sure—”

  “Of course you are,” said Cameron. He dragged her over to where Jason was pinned down and shoved her to her knees in front of Jason.

  Jason’s face was red, and he was sweating from the effort he was using to fight against the power that kept him from moving. Apparently, he couldn’t speak either, because I could see him straining his jaw to open it, but his teeth were clamped shut.

  Cameron beckoned to me. “I need you over here too.”

  I didn’t move for a second.

  Cameron muttered a few inaudible words under his breath.

  I felt myself pulled forward by an unseen force. I couldn’t resist. Within a few seconds, I was kneeling on the stage next to Eve. I faced Jason. I didn’t even really know what Cameron was doing, but I felt powerless. It was strange, because Jason and I had never been powerless before. We’d always triumphed. There had always been a kiss, something that had fixed everything. But that, I knew, had been our powers. Powers I didn’t have now. And Jason’s powers were blocked. We were helpless.

  Cameron put my hand in Jason’s. He put my other hand in Eve’s.

  “Now, sis,” he said. “I need you to focus your thoughts on Jason. Reflect his memories back at him. Okay?”

  His memories? Wait. What was Cameron…?

  Cameron opened the grimoire.

  Oh no. He was stealing Jason’s powers too. But why was Eve—

  Cameron handed Eve the grimoire. “Read.”