by MJ Fletcher
“Red button. Red button.” I screamed as we freefell to the ground. Edgar punched the button and the jetpack roared to life and we soared back up.
“We did it,” he shouted over the rushing wind.
I didn’t have the heart to tell him that Darker’s lapdog had just grabbed a jetpack and dove off the ledge after us.
“Give it everything we got,” I whispered in Edgar’s ear as I twisted the knob in my hand letting off energy to slow down our shadow.
“I see the exit,” Edgar yelled and my body jolted as he pushed it full throttle and the jetpack thrust forward.
The crimson blast raced toward us like a missile and I jerked my arm forcing Edgar to turn over just as the energy crackle and slammed into my lower back. I let out a scream and wanted to cry from the pain running through me.
“Hurry,” I urged Edgar through gritted teeth. My left arm felt cold, almost numb and my whole body was starting to tingle.
Our hooded pursuer weaved toward us as the thrust of the jets cut and we landed near the exit. I let go of Edgar’s neck and turned slamming my doorknob into the wall activating a portal. I felt the connection click and turned the knob swinging open the door.
“Go,” I yelled pushing Edgar through the door. The attacker flew up, cutting his jets at the last second. I was backing up through the door, not far to go when he twisted his key and shot a bolt of crimson energy across the short distance, slamming it into me. A moan escaped my lips and I started to fall.
He rushed forward reaching out to stop my escape, but the little energy I had left was fueled with anger and I brought my hands up in time to push him away. My hand hit into his face and I grabbed his hood and twisted it as I fell through the portal. The hood slipped away and my eyes could hardly believe what I was seeing; brown hair and familiar eyes that cut me to the bone. Words caught in my throat as he stared at me with such hatred and anger that I shivered.
I swung my arm out grabbing my doorknob and ripping it off the portal and as I fell and hit the ground I heard the portal slam shut behind me. I laid on the cold floor of the Cape Beanery. Edgar was a few feet away making valiant attempts to stand while I laid there feeling the blood drain from my body and my heart breaking all over again.
“Chloe.” Val rushed toward me skidding to her knees, then she grabbed my head and cradled it.
“It’s going to be okay,” she whispered to me but her worried expression as she glanced over my wounds didn’t have me believing her for a minute. “Someone call for help.”
“Val.” My voice was hoarse, barely a whisper, so she leaned in close to hear me and I barely got out what I needed to tell her before I slipped into total darkness. “It was Nightshade.”
Chapter Thirty
Status: WTF!?!
The yelling was not helping my headache. I turned over and pulled the pillow over my head to try and block it out, but it didn’t do any good. I could still hear raised voices, something was going on. I tried to push myself up and found my left arm wrapped in gauze and something that looked like a massive bracelet attached to it. I blinked trying to get all the sleep out of my eyes and get a better look.
It was an Impossible Engineer device for sure, the gears and buttons being a dead giveaway. I figured it had to have something to do with healing my arm.
Healing, my arm.
That’s right. I’d been injured fighting people at the Tavern at the End of Time. No wait, not just people, Faith and her team and Ms. True also showed up and...
Nightshade.
Holy hell, I had seen Nightshade. How was that possible, he was dead. At least I thought he was dead, could I be wrong? I’d lost a lot of blood maybe I had seen what I wanted to see. That didn’t make sense either, especially recalling the look on his face. The hatred in his eyes for me had been all too real, but why?
I needed to know what the hell was going on and I needed to know right now. I pushed myself up and let out a groan. I wasn’t in very good shape not only was my arm a mess but my back and stomach felt like they’d been plowed by a truck.
I examined the room and realized that I had no idea where I was. I wasn’t about to let that stop me. I stood on wobbly legs and grabbed a flannel robe lying on the chair beside the bed. I slid my arms through biting my lip the entire time. I stepped to the door, opened it, and looked out into a well-lit corridor and recognized it as one of the halls in the Reliquary.
“We need your help, is that too much to ask?” Mr. Miller asked with a hint of fear.
“Why the hell should I help any of you?”
I jolted to a stop when I heard Gavin’s voice in the Reliquary. It seemed so out of place, as if some boundary had been crossed.
“Because we need to know if what the girl said is true.” That was Dad and he was surprisingly calm.
“You accused me of being a traitor and now you want my help?”
That was Gavin’s I-don’t-care-what-you ask-I’m-going-to-say-no voice.
“What’s going on?” I demanded as I stepped into the room. Dad was the first up and across the room. He grabbed me hugging me to him and even though it hurt, I didn’t stop him. I rested my head against his chest and closed my eyes for a moment to soak in that feeling of being safe and loved in my dad’s arms.
“You okay?” Gavin leaned forward in his seat and kept his eyes on me.
“I think so.” Dad freed me of his hug, though I used his arm to steady myself until I slid into a chair. “I’m sorry; I thought you were the one who betrayed me.”
“You’re not the one who accused me.” He looked from Dad to Mr. Miller.
“We explained that,” Mr. Miller said.
“Right, you explained it after you attacked me and found out you were wrong.”
“You attacked Gavin?” I looked to Dad and he shrugged.
“When you went to the Tavern we wanted to make sure you would be safe. After Levi set his diversion off we confronted Gavin.”
“Confronted? Yeah right, they blew my door open and attacked me.”
“Is everyone okay?” I asked.
“Yes,” Dad said glancing from one man to the other. They both nodded in agreement, though with a bit of reluctance. “We were just explaining the situation to Gavin.”
“Good,” I nodded, “because it sounded to me like you were fighting with him.”
“I see you’re feeling yourself,” Gavin joked.
“Yeah, all me, besides—you know—feeling like hell.” I lifted my left arm as high as I could to emphasis the point. “Just what were you explaining to him?”
Dad’s chin dropped and he spoke in a low voice. “We lost the Legend and the book that controls it to the First Kind. Edgar explained to us that Faith was the traitor and she’d been using the Forget Me Not on you.”
Dad walked over to the table and lifted the small globe up and twisted it in the light. I held out my hand and he brought it to me dropping it in my palm. I rolled it around looking at the symbols that marked it as being made by Gavin, the very thing that had led me to believe he was the traitor.
“What else?”
“Faith left messages with numerous Old Kind accusing you, Edgar, and herself of stealing the map from the Mapmakers Union. The Union has brought Edgar into custody and is going to put him on trial for crimes against them.”
“Are you serious?” I half stood but the pain in my back forced me to sit down again.
“I’m afraid so.”
“Can’t his family do anything?”
“It was an artifact. It doesn’t matter what anyone does. Edgar will most likely be expelled from the Union and could very well end up in prison.”
“What about me? I was accused too.”
“Dante has said that he won’t take the word of a traitor and has refused to order your arrest. Though the Mapmakers won’t be so willing to accept that, they’ve already broken off any contact with DS. It’s the first time that’s ever happened.”
“Exactly what the First Kind wants
.” Gavin leaned back in his seat, a scowl on his face. “They want us fighting against one another instead of them. Then they get to ride in and take over. I thought the Union was smarter than that.”
“What are we going to do?” I asked.
“At the moment we were trying to convince Gavin to help us learn more about the First Kind.”
“How?” I looked from Dad to Gavin.
“The Forget Me Not.” Dad pointed at the small globe still in my hand.
“But it’s broken. What can it tell us?”
“When I gave it to you I activated a fail safe,” Gavin said.
“What does that mean?”
“A simple word... remember. The Forget Me Not doesn’t just change memories it can contain them as well. I set it up as a recording device. Everything that has happened around the Forget Me Not is contained inside it.”
“You mean—”
“Anything Faith did or saw while she had it is recorded inside,” Gavin said.
“We can see where she went, what she did, everything?” I gulped thinking about the secrets that the device might hold. Maybe what I’d seen wasn’t a dream, and this might be able to tell us.
“Yes.” Gavin nodded.
“Do it, please.” Our eyes met and Gavin gave a small smile.
“Just remember that what we see might not be pleasant.”
“I know.”
“Okay then, I’ll do it,” Gavin agreed and stood, walked over to me and took hold of the Forget Me Not. He pulled a small multi-tool from his pocket and began to work on the casing of the device.
Dad leaned in close and whispered in my ear, “Are you okay?”
“I’ll be fine; I’m just worried about Edgar.” I was really desperately concerned about Edgar, but I also couldn’t shake the image of Nightshade staring at me with such hate.
“We’ll figure something out to help him, I promise.” He hugged me quickly and I thought of Bodie. I wanted to talk to Dad about our ancestor, but now wasn’t a good time.
“Is everyone ready for this?” Gavin looked around at each of us and we all nodded. “Here we go.”
I heard the click of a button and the room suddenly filled with light, shadows, and images. They shifted and moved all around us and a thousand voices overlapped all speaking at once.
“Give me one second,” Gavin said.
I heard metal twisting and everything began to come into focus. Shadows turned into solid objects and the room we were in disappeared and became an alleyway. Faith was standing in front of me and I was completely still. Everything was in shades of black and white like the ultrasound images they use to see babies in the womb.
“Why does it look like this?” I asked.
“The Forget Me Not uses sonar to record its surroundings. This is the moment it was activated, when she first used it on you. Let me see if I can speed it up.”
Everything sped up and images filled the room dashing about at lightning speed until finally me and my friends were all standing in a cavern and talking about who was going to stay behind. This was the moment just before Nightshade threw me through the portal.
“Keep going,” I said not wanting to relive the painful memory. The images sped along once again and now we were in Cape May and Faith was activating her Doorknob. I didn’t know how much time had passed but it couldn’t have been too long after our escape from the Badlands.
Gavin slowed it to normal speed and we watched as Faith stepped through a portal and into a foyer somewhere else. A guard was standing to one side and he nodded to Faith in greeting.
“They’re expecting you.” He motioned for her to head down a set of stairs. She moved along quickly and came to a set of wooden double doors. Pushing them open, she entered a room and standing beside a Looking Glass, an Impossible Engineer device used to talk with people in other dimensions, was my mother.
“We have Nightshade, and my daughter won’t be a problem.” She was talking to someone through the Looking Glass but the sonar only showed the forms of things not the image projected through the glass.
“I’m growing tired of your daughter’s constant interference.” The voice was thick with anger and slightly distorted.
“I think we may finally have a solution to that problem.” My mother smiled and nodded in Faith’s direction.
“We had better or I will deal with her myself.”
“Yes, sir,” Mom replied and nodded toward the glass before tapping the button on the side and ending the conversation. She turned to Faith. “Is it working?”
“Perfectly, your daughter has no memory of seeing Jasper kissing me.”
“It was lucky for you that she had the Forget Me Not on her. Otherwise if she hadn’t taken care of you, I would have.” She turned to Faith who nodded, a look of fear in her eyes that I hadn’t ever seen before.
“I’m sorry ma’am.”
“Regardless, it works to our advantage and we would have had to use one on her eventually if she had continued to refuse to cooperate. Now we have the advantage.” She crossed the room to a desk that was covered with books and a simple picture frame with a photo of Mom and me when I was a little girl. She pulled a drawer open and pulled out a set of Skeleton Keys. “Follow me.”
They left the room through a different door then the one Faith had entered and worked their way through a maze of hallways.
“My daughter has been too successful in finding the artifacts before we do and the Master is not happy about that. We need to stop her and quickly. She seems to be very dependent on her friends, so we are going to take them away from her. And we’re going to start here and now.”
They stopped at a thick metal door and Mom took out the keys and slipped one into the keyhole turning it, the lock clicked and she pulled the door open.
“Scream, boy, it’ll make you feel better.” I gritted my teeth at the sound of Darker’s voice. They stepped into the room and my heart sank. Caleb Darker was holding an energy whip and smiling broadly.
“How’s it going?” Mom asked.
“He thinks he can fight us.” Caleb snickered.
“There is no point in resisting,” Mom said shaking her head.
“Screw you.” Nightshade spit. He was chained to the wall his head hanging low, blood dripping from his mouth and his eyes were swollen and bruised. His back was a series of slashes and welts from the crack of the whip and he stood in a puddle of his own blood. “I’ll never help you.”
“Poor fool,” Mom said, “not only will you tell us everything we want to know, when I’m done with you... you’ll willing kill your friends at my command.”
Chapter Thirty-one
Status: What now?
I bit back tears and did my best not to wretch at what I was seeing... Nightshade alive and being tortured because of me. And what had I been doing while this had been going on? I had probably been sitting on my bed mourning his death and feeling sorry for myself.
Stupid, Chloe.
I should never have assumed he had died. I should have searched for him, then I could have rescued him once I found out he was alive. I had made a mess of things. This was all my fault.
I wanted to reach out and touch him, help him, and kill the bastards doing this to him. But this was just an image of what had happened months ago. What he must have gone through since then seemed too incomprehensible to consider. And since he had glared at me with such hate in his eyes, I could only imagine what they had done to him. I shook my head not wanting to see more but knowing I had to.
“I want to know everything about my daughter,” Mom demanded.
“You’re asking the wrong guy, I ain’t her boyfriend. Hell, she doesn’t even like me.”
I had to smile at Nightshade’s smug response, only he could remain cocky while being beaten. Mom nodded to Caleb and he snapped the whip cracking it across Nightshade’s back.
He shuddered and his battered body went limp, the only thing holding him up the chains that ran down from the ceiling and a
ttached to his wrist shackles. Mom walked toward him while Faith remained in the back of the room looking on nervously.
“If that is true why do you bother to protect her?”
He lifted his head and smirked. “Someone has to since you dropped the ball.”
“Again,” Mom commanded and Caleb laughed cracking the whip.
Nightshade placed his forehead against the wall and a low moan escaped his lips as a new line of blood dripped off his back.
“There are other ways to get you to cooperate.” Mom reached into her pocket and lifted out a Forget Me Not much like the one we were using to watch past events.
“Stop,” I pleaded and lowered my head not able to watch anymore. Dad’s hand slid over my shoulder squeezing it tightly. “Now what?”
Mr. Miller spoke low, his voice filled with sadness. “We’ve got to assume Nightshade told them about everything, including the Reliquary. We need to prepare.”
“I don’t think so.” I looked over at Gavin, his head bowed as his hands continued to work on the Forget Me Not. “Obviously, they got to him that much is certain. But it takes years to make someone fully abandon the truth of their identity. James Nightshade is not a weak man, on some level, somewhere, he’s fighting this thing. I don’t believe that he’s told them everything just yet. If he had, they would have already used the information to their advantage and attacked the Reliquary. They lost that option by revealing the fact that he’s still alive.”
“Ms. True kept saying that she didn’t want him to see me, I thought she meant Darker. Maybe she’d been talking about James?” I clasped my hands together to stop them from shaking.
“They were most likely worried that the Forget Me Not wouldn’t be able to maintain control once he saw you,” Gavin said.
“But it did.” I cringed unable to stop myself from recalling how his strange yet beautiful eyes had been filled with such hatred.
“But only for a few moments.”
I didn’t know if Gavin was saying that for my benefit, but I didn’t care. I needed something good to hold onto, anything, and so I clung to the hope his remark gave me. And though reluctant to ask, the realist in me had to. “Can he be saved?”
