Eve of Destruction

by C. E. Stalbaum

  Eve of Destruction

  C.E. Stalbaum

  Copyright © 2011 C.E. Stalbaum

  Cover Art by Gilbert Contreras

  Cover Lettering/Design by WAZ Design (http://www.wazdesign.com/)

  Edited by Cindy Kay

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or used fictitiously.

  All rights reserved.

  Also by C.E. Stalbaum

  The Shattered Messiah Trilogy

  The Last Goddess

  The Last Empress

  The Chronicles of Eve Trilogy

  Eve of Destruction

  Eve of Despair (2012)

  Eve of Destiny (2013)

  Also by Jade Fantasy

  Angel of Solace

  by Selene Edwards

  Acknowledgements

  As with any large project like this—especially one that was written and re-written over the course of such a long period of time—there are more people to thank than I have space for. But I’m going to rattle off a few names anyway and hope that everyone else already knows how I feel!In particular, I wish to extend my appreciation to my artists, Gilber and Chris, for doing such an awesome job with the cover art and lettering. I’m sure all writers love anything that helps their world come to life, and their work definitely did that for me. I also want to extend an infinite thanks to my family for their patience and support. Without them, none of this would be possible.

  Most importantly, though, I wish to salute my readers, the most vital component of any story. Enjoy yourselves, and let me know what you think!

  Prologue

  They were waiting for her when she stepped out the front door: three dark-coated men with wide-brimmed hats, their greasy faces veiled in shadow. Two of them already had their guns pointed at her, and the third idly flipped a serrated knife between his hands. They hadn’t said anything. They probably assumed their aura of quiet menace would be enough to intimidate her.

  It was time to prove them wrong.

  “Which one of you did it?” Evelyn DeShane growled. “Which one of you cowards killed her?”

  They didn’t move; they didn’t even twitch. The three Dusties continued their silent stare-down, and Eve balled her hands into fists. A year ago—by the Goddess, a few months ago—and she would have frozen in terror at the mere sight of Industrialist thugs all the way out here on the east coast. They were a plague infecting western Arkadia, and the magi caste had thought them contained.

  But now the disease had spread all the way to her doorstep, and it was up to her to burn it out. They believed she was a helpless little girl, a pampered aristocrat with no capacity to defend herself. They, like all Dusties, sorely underestimated the power of the Fane.

  “Then I guess I’ll just kill all of you,” Eve hissed. “May the Goddess grant you the mercy I shall not.”

  She flicked her wrists, and her palms exploded in orange-white flame. The Dusties wouldn’t expect a second-year academy student to wield raw energy like this; they weren’t prepared for the power she could unleash. The Flensing might destroy her when she was finished, but as long as she could burn the smug looks from their soot-stained faces, it would all be worth it.

  Eve extended her hands toward the Dusties. The flames flickered hungrily, yearning to lash out and devour everything in front of them. The power of the Fane coursed through her, its energies brimming at her fingertips—

  But nothing happened.

  The spell died in a puff of harmless smoke, and the magic retreated back into the Fane. The Dusties, goading stares and all, vanished into the shadows.

  And Eve was once again alone. Her hands trembled as she held them up to her face, the cold rain beading on her pale skin. Her dress was already soaked through, and her shoes had sunk into the muck.

  She sighed and closed her eyes. She saw the Dusties everywhere she went now. Today they were the trio of shrubs in the front lawn; yesterday they’d been the fence posts out in the backyard. And in her dreams, they were everywhere…but always just out of reach.

  A growing part of her wished they really would just stride up to the front door, armed or otherwise. At least she would get a chance to finally see them; at least she would be able to look into the eyes of the men who had taken the last of her family away from her. But she knew that would never happen. They had killed her mother and disappeared, and they wouldn’t be coming back.

  Eve finally opened her eyes when she heard horses drawing a carriage up to the front gate. A familiar male voice thanked the driver, and her heart sank as the rage inside her drained away. She just wanted to be alone. Why did he always insist on following her wherever she went?

  “I looked for you at the cemetery,” Zach Lagrand said as he sloshed his way across the old cobblestone walkway. “How long have you been here?”

  She tossed him a cold glare. “What do you want?”

  “I don’t want anything,” he said, raising his hands defensively. “I just thought I should check on you.”

  “Well, you checked.”

  Zach stood there in merciful silence. She could tell he was debating whether or not he should lean forward and share his umbrella, but he knew full well she could weave a spell to block out the rain if she wanted to.

  Eventually he sighed and rubbed a hand across his mouth. “I saw your train ticket.”

  Her eyes narrowed dangerously. “You were digging through my things?”

  “No, but I do have a house key, you know,” he reminded her. His voice remained soft, which for some reason bothered her more than if he’d been yelling. “I saw it on the table yesterday.”

  “And now you’re here to convince me not to go.”

  Zach grimaced. “It’s crazy, Eve. You can’t just leave school like this, not in the middle of a semester. There’s no way it’s what your mom would have wanted.”

  “It’s exactly what she wanted. You read the note.”

  He rolled his eyes. “That scrap could mean almost anything. We’ve been over this. It’s meaningless gibberish.”

  “It is not gibberish!” Eve snapped. It came out harsher than she intended, and she quickly spun back around to glare at the front door. Anything to get away from his damnable blue eyes.

  As the days had gone by, her anger had become a tough and resilient shield against the pain. First she’d been mad at herself for not being here when it happened, and then later she’d been furious at Zach for the same reason. Eventually she’d just blamed it all on her mother. How could Tara DeShane, a powerful mage, fall before a handful of Dusty thugs?

  The welling of tears surged into a river, and suddenly Zach was reaching out to catch her. It was a repeat of the first moment she’d come home and found the body…and almost every day since. Eve had promised herself that today would be different, but it never was. And it never would be.

  “If you’re going to go,” he whispered into her ear once the worst of the sobbing had subsided, “at least wait a while. Give yourself time to settle and make sure you’re doing this for the right reasons.”

  Eve gripped onto his shoulders and pushed him away. She could barely see his face through the tears despite her best efforts to wipe them away. “Like what?”

  “Like…I don’t know, but you shouldn’t do this out of grief. You need time. Let yourself have it.”

  She shook her head. “They didn’t touch anything, Zach. Do you have any idea how much our collection of Heuvo statuettes is worth? Or the books in her office, or the baubles locked in Dad’s den? They didn’t touch any of it—not one screlling thing. They didn’t even take her purse!”

  “I know, but…” He sighed in frustration. “That could mean almost anything. It could have been a rand
om Dusty hate attack. The papers have been filled with those lately.”

  “Then why did they take the book?” Eve countered. “Why would they have ignored an entire house of valuables and taken that one thing? They killed her for it, Zach. And I’m going to find out who and why.”

  He sighed and lowered his eyes. “We still don’t know if they’re the ones who took it. The police weren’t convinced. If you just give them some time, maybe they’ll—”

  “The police don’t give a damn about us and you know it!” Eve growled. “They don’t care about the magi-caste anymore. I wouldn’t be surprised if half of them were Dusties at this point.”

  “It won’t be any better in Vaschberg,” Zach warned. “Actually, it will be a lot worse. It isn’t safe for magi there—or anywhere else out west, for that matter.”

  “It wasn’t safe for mom here, either,” Eve pointed out. “I don’t need the police. I just need to find the man mom talked about in her letter. She said that he’ll know what to do, and that’s good enough for me.”

  He had an over-protective glint in his eyes, the same one that had driven her crazy time and time again over the years. But she couldn’t really fault him for it. It was what made him Zach…and it was one of the biggest reasons they were friends. Besides, as much as she didn’t want to admit it, he was probably right. Traveling to Vaschberg was going to be dangerous, and Eve was betting a lot on a single scrap of paper.

  But she had to do something. If she didn’t, no one else would.

  “Gregori Danev,” Zach said eventually. “That was the name, right?”

  Eve nodded. “That’s who I’m going to Vaschberg to find.”

  “All by yourself?”

  “That’s right,” she insisted. “I’m not a helpless little girl anymore. I’m a mage.”

  He made a face—the same one he always made when he was about to give in but didn’t like it. She’d seen it a lot over the years, and it always made her feel a little guilty. Especially this time.

  “Being a mage will just make you a target,” he murmured, “especially if you advertise it.”

  “I know that,” she replied tartly. “I can take care of myself.”

  “What about the rest of the semester?”

  “I already contacted the headmaster. I have to do this, Zach. And I have to do it now.”

  He stared at her for a moment longer, but then his eyes finally softened. “I had a feeling you’d say that.”

  Eve raised an eyebrow. “But you came here anyway?”

  “I figured it was worth a try.” He smiled and reached into his pocket. Inside was another train ticket. “But I am going with you.”

  “Zach…”

  “You’re not arguing this,” he said flatly. “I haven’t found work around here yet anyway, and I have at least another few months before the army ships me off again.”

  Eve tried her best to glare at him, to hold firm and insist he not do anything so foolish. But her heart wasn’t in it, and finally she just sighed and leaned forward to hug him. His umbrella dropped to the ground, and he wrapped his arms around her back. It was the same embrace that had calmed her ten years ago when her father had died. It was the same embrace she had grown to depend on since she was a child, and one she had desperately missed in the last two years.

  “Thank you,” she whispered.

  “Come on. Let’s go inside.”

  Chapter One

  “One drake,” the charlatan proclaimed. “Just one drake for an authentic Sunoan necklace. Straight from Vayrise, it is! You want one for your sweetheart, son? Make her neck as pretty as her eyes.”

  “Uh, no, thank you,” Zach said as politely as he could manage while still pushing through the veritable wall of other shills. He clamped his hand over his wallet for good measure, and he noticed that Eve was clutching onto her purse with both hands.

  “They really need to make this illegal,” she muttered once they’d finally made it through. “Half the lines in there are because of these kreel.”

  “It seems to get worse every year.” He glanced back over his shoulder to check if anyone was following them. So far the people seemed more concerned with escaping the swindlers than paying attention to him and Eve. “Let’s just try and get to the exit.”

  In any practical sense, Radbury Station had no right being as busy or as large as it was. Zach’s parents had lived out here some twenty years ago before the tracks had been laid, and at the time Radbury had barely been more than a poor fishing village. But for some reason the station itself had become the major junction of every rail entering or leaving the north-eastern coast, and at this point the collection of ramshackle cabins had been replaced with chintzy coin stores and street-side peddlers.

  He’d traveled through a dozen similar towns overseas in Esharia during his tour there, but Radbury was the worst of them all. He couldn’t put his finger on why, exactly, though part of it was undoubtedly because he had no desire to be here. The smell certainly didn’t help, either.

  “If they’re going to insist on hawking all this useless drek, they could at least offer gas masks,” Zach grumbled as the two of them finally stepped out of the main building. “Goddess, I’d settle for a thick towel to put over my face.”

  “And you say I’m the prissy one,” Eve chided, though her nose was wrinkled. She squinted out to the horizon and the double silos silhouetted against the crimson skyline. Each stack was busy spewing out a black cloud of Goddess-knew-what into the air. “It’ll just get worse if Chaval wins the election. He’ll build those things all over the country.”

  Zach winced at the mention of the Industrialist Party leader. He didn’t particularly care for Chaval’s politics, but the man was wildly popular out west. Publically disparaging him was a bad idea all around.

  “Maybe, but I think we should keep those observations private,” he said softly.

  She rolled her eyes. “We aren’t in Vaschberg yet, you know. And I’m not afraid of his Dusty thugs.”

  “You should be.”

  Eve stopped and looked over to him. “You’re doing it again. You promised.”

  He opened his mouth to reply but stopped himself before anything came out. She’d been scolding him for days about his overprotectiveness. She kept saying he was “acting like a tough guy,” but this had nothing to do with being macho. They were both in danger here, whether she wanted to admit it or not.

  “You’d think with all these other shops there’d be a café or something around here,” Eve said, glancing about the buildings surrounding the station. “I think that might be a diner over there on the left a few blocks up.”

  “It’s a little far,” he pointed out. “If we take too long we might miss the train. I’d rather not be stuck here all night.”

  Eve shrugged. “I bet ours will be late. People complain all the time about these things running behind schedule. Come on, I’m hungry.”

  She walked ahead, he begrudgingly followed. He’d been expecting trouble for days now, ever since he’d first gotten home. The police thought the murder was a random shooting, but Eve had never believed that. At first she’d assumed it was a targeted attack by one of the Dusty gangs. They’d been assaulting magi out west for years now, and things had gotten so bad that even most of the temple priestesses out there had migrated east. Rumor had it that the gangs had been gaining strength out here now, too, and Zach had read in the papers that there’d even been shootings as far north as Selerius, the nation’s capital.

  Once Eve realized that one of her mother’s books was missing, she’d started thinking it was more than just a hate crime. Zach wasn’t sure what he believed yet, but if the murder had been more than a random spat of violence—if the killers had targeted Tara DeShane intentionally—then they might come after Eve, too.

  But nothing had happened while they were in Lushden. He hadn’t seen anyone lurking around the house or following them around town, and other than neighbors stopping by to express their condolences, the
two of them had been left alone. Eventually he’d finally started to let his guard down, but the moment they’d pulled into Radbury Station a mental alarm had been ringing in his head.

  And it was getting louder.

  “Do you know that man over there, by chance?” Zach asked, gesturing with his head. “The balding guy with the brown jacket and newspaper.”

  Eve frowned as she followed his eyes. “You mean the guy under the streetlamp? I’ve never seen him before. Why?”

  “Because he’s looked over at us about five times since we left the station.”

  “Maybe he likes my dress,” she muttered.

  Zach frowned. It was probably nothing. It was almost certainly nothing, in fact. But that didn’t silence his mental alarm or make him feel any better. He eyed the stranger as they moved, trying to be as subtle about it as he could. The man didn’t look over at them again or even so much as flinch when they walked past, and Zach wondered briefly if he really was just being paranoid about the whole thing.

  It was perhaps ten seconds later that he noticed a second man watching them from a bench just down the street near the café. He locked eyes with Zach for just an instant before smiling politely and then glancing away again. It was just the kind of thing a random stranger might do. A stranger…or a professional who didn’t want to blow his cover.

  “Drek,” Zach swore, his stomach tightening. His mind flashed back to his last mission in the Kelpek border region when his unit was being stalked by rebels in the forest…

  “What’s wrong with you?” Eve asked. “You’re supposed to be the calm one—”

  “We need to get out of here,” he cut her off, instinctively patting the reassuring lump of his holster through his long jacket. The station had still been crowded despite the late hour, but at this point they were almost totally alone out here on the street. He assumed the Dusties—if they were Dusties—wouldn’t start shooting in the middle of a crowded station, but if they wanted Eve badly enough, they might settle for opening fire on a mostly empty street.