Duo (Stone Mage Saga Book 2)

by Raven Whitney

  “The best thing you can do for them is to disappear.” I took a breath to interrupt him and ask how the hell that would help, but Liam held a finger up to stop me. “As long as you're on the radar, he can reach you. News of your parents' capture could reach you and get him what he wants, what Octavius wants. If you completely vanish, there would be no point in going after your family.”

  “Vindictiveness,” I bit out. I wouldn't put it past him to murder the rest of my family for fun. “Besides, how will he know that we're gone?”

  “From all information on Duo, he doesn't act on his emotions. He's as good as soulless. He won't do anything unless it benefits him,” he argued. “And I requested that the clean up team leave a trail of breadcrumbs out of town for him.”

  I took another breath.

  “Your family will be safe,” he promised. “If something won't get to you, there's no purpose in doing it.”

  I stared into his eyes, trying to suss out any hints that he might be lying to me. “You're sure?”

  “I can't tell you that with absolute certainty, but I can tell you that staying here will get them a slow, bloody death.”

  “How sure are you that they'll be okay?”

  “I'd estimate a ninety percent chance that they'll be left alone if you go on the run versus one hundred percent inevitability that they'll be left around town in pieces until you surrender yourself if you stay.”

  I clenched my fists until my nails bit into my palms like thorns. “I hate this.”

  “You would be crazy not to.” He put his hand on my back, nudging me to the bedroom. “Now go get cleaned up.”

  I washed the blood and broken glass off as quickly as I could and dressed in jeans and a tank top. Even though it was less comfortable, I couldn't go without a bra like Lexie. With my bigger boobs, it was always obvious when I went brammando.

  Walking out, I saw Lexie lying on the couch that didn't have a giant bloody spot where Liam had been, with the television remote in her hands. She'd turned on some mindless reality television show, but wasn't actually watching it, instead staring at the ceiling. Liam stood by the balcony, silently staring out into the darkness with a large, dark charcoal gray, wiry haired dog sitting at his side.

  When I came out of the bathroom, Liam and his dog turned their heads to glance at me simultaneously. “You two should probably get some rest before tomorrow. Hati and I will keep watch.”

  I knelt in front of the happy-looking dog who was at eye level with me on my knee. He licked my face with gusto. In spite of how terrible I felt, that little bit of doggy love was heartening.

  Liam gently nudged Hati's muzzle aside. “Down, boy.”

  “Did you bring him with you from Ireland?” I asked, running my fingers through his coarse coat.

  “I'm not from Ireland. I'm London born and bred. And Hati here is a Highland Deerhound, not an Irish Wolfhound.” He rubbed on Hati's ear, causing the great hound to list to the side. “You aren't going to distract me. Bed. Both of you.”

  I huffed a breath. Like I would be able to sleep tonight.

  “I don't sleep anymore, remember?” Lexie shrugged. “I'm dead.”

  I had to wonder if her glibness towards being a zombie was her way of coping with her new reality. She had always taken big events in stride, but this was utterly life-changing in a way that she'd never encountered before. I wished that she would confide how she was truly feeling about this new state in me, but I couldn't push her on that. She would have to decide when she was ready to talk about it and I would have to be patient. In some sick, self-centered sense, I was kind of glad that she didn't want to talk about it.

  “You need to try to get some sleep, Constance,” Lexie suggested softly, pulling her feet up onto the couch and wrapping her arms around her folded legs. “You've had a long, hard day.”

  That was an understatement. I was physically and emotionally drained to the point where all I wanted to do was curl up in a little ball and sleep for a month, but with a monster nipping at my heels and all that had happened today, there was no way I'd be able to fall asleep. I stood from the coffee table and went into Lexie's and my bedroom.

  I collapsed into the bed and wrapped myself in a blanket burrito.

  14

  Despite being almost painfully exhausted, I couldn't sleep. As soon as my head hit the pillow, that shocky numbness faded away and all I could think about was my grandma. I relived that moment when Duo cleaved her head from her body over and over again, trying to find anything I could have done differently to save her. The only thing— and perhaps the worst of all— was that there was nothing that I could have done. I was too damn weak to have done anything for the woman who'd given me so much joy in my life.

  I thought about the happy memories I had of her: the time she taught me how to work the basic coffee pot when I was five and I felt like I was the coolest kid ever; how she taught me basic math before the school did by going over the books with me; how she'd poured me my first glass of wine when I was fifteen and I was too afraid of disappointing my very pro-temperance parents to even take a sip; how much it had hurt when I hugged her at the security checkpoint in the airport before she flew home to Wales after Grandpa died.

  That pain was nothing in comparison to now. It hurt so badly that I couldn't even cry. All I could do was struggle to keep breathing against the clenching pain in my chest.

  And what would my mom do? Since I couldn't go talk to her, for all my mom would know, Grandma was going to disappear just like me. I didn't know how she was going to take that. Having me and Lexie vanish off the face of the earth was bad enough for her. Would her fighting body be able to survive three such staggering losses?

  I didn't know what was going to happen to Grandma. It wasn't like the police would be able to tell who she was without her glamour— if she would be handled by the police. It was more likely that these “cleaners” Liam had referred to would take her body. I had no clue what they would do with her remains, but they probably weren't going to buy her a nice plot next to Grandpa. That I wouldn't at least have a grave to visit somehow stung more.

  It was almost surreal: lying in bed in the dimmed room, listening to quieted arguments between idiots on the television from the other room, praying that nobody killed us in the immediate future, and mourning for the loss of my grandmother. Just two weeks ago, I was an ordinary person just trying to make ends meet. Now I was some supposedly powerful necromancer who was so weak that she couldn't even protect her own family and had to go on the run with my zombie best friend and some really hot guy working for some mysterious organization guarding us.

  How many tens of thousands of people all throughout history strove for immortality and superpowers? I stumbled onto it for the price of a vending machine snack and was miserable with it. I just wanted to go back in time.

  After what seemed like a lifetime, the first muted rays of sunlight began to illuminate the room.

  Lexie's cool hand patted me on the back. “It's time to get up, Constance.”

  I nodded, mumbling, “I know.”

  From the living room, I heard Liam on the phone with the front desk, ordering two breakfasts from room service. I rolled out of bed, having gotten almost no sleep and feeling even worse than yesterday.

  Lexie changed the channel to the local morning news. Minutes later, there was a knock at the door. With his hand poised to draw his sword, he approached the door. It was a young man pushing a room service cart with two covered plates. Liam took the cart into the room and set a hot plate of eggs and bacon in front of me.

  “You need to eat,” Liam stated, his tone authoritative and commanding.

  I shook my head, to tired to bother with food. “I'm not hungry.”

  “It doesn't matter if you're hungry or not,” he persisted. “If you don't eat, Lexie starts rotting.”

  I must have had a shocked look on my face because he continued, “You were tossing and turning every other minute all night, so you already didn't get
any sleep and didn't eat dinner, either. Remember that since she can't feed herself, your energy is the only thing that feeds your familiar. Without your input, Lexie will begin to decay.” It surprised me that he noticed I hadn't slept at all last night. It had taken a conscious effort to remain still and keep from sobbing, but I guess it hadn't worked. I hadn't wanted them to bother me by trying to make me feel better.

  There was nothing that could make having your grandmother decapitated because of you any less agonizing.

  Numbly, I picked up the fork and shoveled food into my mouth. As I finished off the last bit of bacon, a breaking story came onto the news, but I couldn't hear the anchorman's words. All I could do was watch the horrific images that flickered on the screen.

  It was my parent's house, engulfed in an enormous fire. On the sidewalk were my parents in their nightclothes, embracing each other, my mother weeping in my father's arms. Goliath, her giant Chocolate lab, licked at her hands.

  The firefighters seemed to have given up on it, focusing instead on containing the blaze from spreading to other houses. I couldn't blame them: the fire had completely swallowed up the old Victorian house from the roof to the porch.

  “No,” I choked out, “No, no, no, no, no!” Suddenly, I was standing in front of the television, screaming at it. This couldn't be happening.

  Liam and Lexie were both standing near the balcony on the other side of the room, watching me.

  Pointing at the screen, I shouted at Liam, “Duo did this?”

  He nodded cautiously, like he was tiptoeing around an unstable psycho with a bomb— which just fueled the rage boiling inside me.

  “Constance, honey, you're setting the room on fire,” Lexie fretted, rushing to me and pulling my right arm away from the side of the room with the couch. The arm that she was holding had a fireball in its hand that was dripping little flames on the cushions and carpeting. An acrid smell drew my attention to the other side of the room to see that the edges of the television were beginning to melt and burn. I clenched my fists and willed the flames away in an attempt to extinguish my blazing palms.

  Very carefully so as not to reignite myself, I snarled, “He cannot get away with this, with killing my entire family. That's what's going to happen if we leave. I have to stay. I have to kill him first.” My hands were clenched so tightly that I felt little drips of blood running down my fingers and I nearly vibrated from the tension it took to keep myself from exploding.

  His patience gone, Liam bit out, “He didn't kill your parents and that wasn't his intention, otherwise they would be dead. By now, he's found the trail the cleaning crew left. He's trying to make sure you've really fled.”

  “She can't take this anymore!” I shrieked, unable to hold myself back. The dam burst, I began to hyperventilate uncontrollably and fell to my knees, sobbing, “I'm gone! Her mother is gone! Her home is gone! Her cancer will win!”

  Lexie wrapped her arms around me in a vain attempt to comfort me. With her body pressed against mine in this way, I could feel her chest twitching with her own sobs. Her own tears, tepid in temperature, dripped onto my neck.

  It was easy to become selfish in grief, but Lexie dry-sobbing brought back to mind that they weren't just my family: they were hers, too. My parents and grandparents had raised her and loved her more than her own absentee family. This realization just added another layer of guilt at my own ineptitude.

  “She'll get through this. If there's anything I've learned in my five hundred years of life it's that humankind's greatest gift is their ability to move on from tragedy,” Liam was trying to sound soothing, but the underlying tone of impatience took away from his words.

  “No, she won't,” I rasped, my voice husky from tears. “My mom has been battling breast cancer for the last eight years. This stress, this pain will weaken her body when she needs her strength the most. The cancer will get the upper hand.”

  Liam stepped forward. “The only thing you can do here, then, is to get her killed faster. The longer you stay here, the more Duo will continue to up his ante. You have to get out before he starts aiming for blood because assassins of his caliber do not miss.”

  My head snapped up to look him in the eye. “How can you be so callous?”

  He knelt in front of me, meeting my gaze as he said, “Because I have to be.” He placed his palm on my forehead and murmured, “Dormi,” before my world went black.

  The next thing I was aware of was a jostling sensation from underneath me. I opened my eyes to see the back of a beige seat.

  “She's awake, Liam,” Lexie announced, running her fingers through my hair. I realized that Lexie and I were in the back seat of a sedan, with my head resting in her lap. Liam was driving us somewhere.

  “You didn't dare,” I began, my anger filling my words as I sat up.

  “Absolutely, I did,” Liam retorted, glancing back at me with his steely gray eyes through the rear-view mirror.

  I looked out the window to see that we were driving along a narrow, paved road. “Pull the damn car over.”

  “Bullshit,” Liam responded. “My job is to get you out of here in one piece. It says nothing about what condition you're in. If I have to, I will keep you unconscious for the entire trip.”

  “You can't if I fight you.”

  “You can't fight me.”

  “Try me!”

  Liam braked hard in the middle of the road and jerked around in his seat to yell from inches in front of my face, “You are a cocky little girl that would get you and everybody around you killed for some misguided attempt at vengeance. I'm an elite soldier of the Pax with five centuries experience fighting and killing. You stand no chance against me and if you can't beat me, then you can't beat Duo, so just sit down, shut up, and let me save you and your family's lives.” He whipped himself back around and continued driving.

  I yearned to say something back at him, if only to get the last word, but I bit my tongue. He was right. For all of my rage and all of my pain and supposed power, there was nothing that I could do to fight for myself and my family. Until I learned how to fight, I was dependent on Liam to keep Lexie and me safe.

  I crossed my arms and silently stared out the window, passively radiating my anger. It was completely isolated, wherever we were. I figured out when we passed a distinctive white and stone lighthouse that we were in the state park in neighboring Jamestown. This early in the morning at this time of year, there weren't many people around.

  Liam pulled into an empty parking lot on the side of the road and he and Lexie both got out. It was childish of me to remain seated, but it was the only way I had of expressing how mad at him I was. I thought I could trust him, but here he was, treating Lexie and me like sheep to be herded around.

  He opened my door and held his hand out for me. The gesture held a double meaning: take my hand like I politely offered and I'll help you out or keep being stubborn and I'll pull you out by force.

  It was petty, but I stood on my own, ignoring his hand.

  He herded Lexie and I down a footpath to the shoreline, stopping us at a cove that was enclosed on both sides by large mounds of black shale which blocked the view of anyone looking up or down the beach. On the sandy shore in front of us, a metal flat-bottomed skiff with an outboard motor was beached.

  “Get in,” Liam ordered, gesturing to the bench seat.

  I glowered at him and took a breath, about to do what he asked.

  “Get in the fucking boat before I knock you out and throw you in it,” he barked. “We don't have time for your childishness. Duo could be stalking us at this very mo—”

  A wave of sand boiled over Liam, engulfing him completely before he could finish his word. The sand dragged him underground.

  He didn't even get the chance to scream.

  I whipped my head around just in time to see Lexie's panicked eyes disappear into the earth.

  I was alone.

  My first instinct was to dive to the ground and dig through the sand to free them, bu
t I had to remind myself that unless he cut Liam's head off, he would survive. And Lexie wouldn't die until I did, so the best thing I could do for everyone was to keep alert and kill Duo.

  “This was a poor choice of battlegrounds, Stone Mage,” Duo's voice echoed all around me, not giving any clue as to where he was hiding.

  From around the exploding pulse throbbing in my throat, I croaked, “It wasn't supposed to be a battlefield, but it is now. Come out here, you son of a bitch.” Not very convincing. My knees were quaking even more than my voice. “Show yourself!” I shrieked, hoping volume would mask my fear.

  He chuckled, but didn't appear.

  “Coward.” My whispering voice cracked. With quivering hands, I drew the sword from my wrist. My chances of winning this were slim to none, but I had to try. For Lexie, for Liam, for Grandma, for my family's safety.

  A thick rope of sand appeared around my throat, constricting until I could barely breathe.

  I dropped my sword and clawed frantically at the binding. Biting pain in my fingertips told me my nails were worn to the quick, but the sand hadn't budged. Stars winked at the edges of my vision.

  My knees failed, sending me crashing into the sand.

  Booted feet stepped in front of me.

  With my fading energy, I rolled onto my back to see Duo's soulless eyes staring down into my own.

  I set my rage alight and turned him into a torch.

  The sand around my neck dropped away and I gasped in air that reeked of charred flesh and black smoke, but it was a balm to my oxygen starved brain. I stumbled back to my feet and snatched my sword from the ground.

  Now was my chance to strike.

  I ran on my unstable legs to Duo, who stood still, hunched over by the water's edge.

  Sword raised, I swung for his neck. A tentacle of sand wound around my tip of blade before it reached his neck. More sand whipped up from the beach to completely encase Duo's flaming body.

  Smoke seeped out from the pores of the sand.