That jolted me. I expected a complete annihilation.
“Looks like they’ve learned some things while fending off this area’s rebels,” Theleo surmised.
A steadier look told me that they were correct. In between makeshift huts and along the dry, barren landscape, people were running, most being chased by black uniforms. But directly at the feet of some of those pursuers flashes of flames and sparks of ice hit the ground. Some landed with better aim, on the chests of those in black, and either ignited them or encased them in ice. Not all were using their feet to outpace their attackers, either. Some were taking great leaps, higher and farther than was possible by any common man, only to be tackled in midair by levitating Vires. From there, they fought, suspended, each trying to force their opponent back to the ground.
Not everyone was retaliating though, and I figured it was because they couldn’t. Those running weren’t only from our world, which meant they were being made privy to our abilities, which had been kept hidden for centuries. Although, I doubted they were paying much attention while running for their lives.
I felt my hands squeeze into fists while watching, and I knew this was a reaction to literally wanting to rip the heads off the Vires pursuing the innocents below.
“Can you pick up the speed, Theleo?” I asked, on edge.
He did and no less than a few seconds later, we came across a large tent. With Vires encircling it, forming a solid band around the outside, we were pretty sure we’d arrived at our destination.
Theleo dropped us swiftly behind a line of tall brush before we could be seen, and we huddled there for a second, listening.
Screams of terror and loud bursts vibrated back to us, penetrating the silence. There was a metallic smell to the air, as if the energy here was highly charged. The sun that scorched this countryside until only sand and dried bushes could exist, immediately began to bake us.
“Okay,” I whispered, keeping my eyes on the edge of the bush, ready for anything or anyone to circle around it. “Jocelyn and Theleo will stay here. Do not move unless I give you an okay.” I said this to Theleo, knowing Jocelyn wouldn’t give her consent. “Eran and Maggie, you’ll walk in front of me with your wrists connected behind your back. Keep your heads up. We want you to be the focus of attention.”
Together, we stood, preparing to move, but I stopped.
“There’s just one more thing…,” I muttered, took Jocelyn’s face in my hands, and guided her lips to me. The kiss was deep, giving me one last taste of her, an enticing one. In it, I tried to channel hope, faith, and the confidence that I’ll always be with her, in body or spirit. I wasn’t sure I got through to her, though. The fact that she held on to my hips, with her fingers wrapped through my belt loops, was telling. I understood. It was a struggle for me to pull away, too. But I did, and she gave me a weak smile as I let her go entirely.
Maggie and Eran had the same idea, parting just as I stepped back from Jocelyn.
“We’re ready,” Maggie declared with conviction, and they positioned their hands as I had coached.
Our walk to the tent was gradual, allowing us to observe the area. It was easy to discern why they chose this location to test their efficiencies. Any mass murders would be pinned on the local rebels, while allowing Flavian and his forces anonymity inside such a desolate area. The rolling hills aided in their cover, the open territory allowed them to see any defensive enemies approaching. Of course, they were looking for a group larger than three people, which made our size become our strength.
As we approached, Maggie’s head twitched, and I asked if she was all right.
“He’s inside,” she muttered, almost entranced, as if she were detecting him.
“Is he alone?”
“I don’t know,” she said, making me wonder how she knew his whereabouts without knowing about the presence of others.
“Did you see him?” I asked, inferring this was the reason.
“Not exactly,” she said rolling her shoulders up and tilting her head back to rub her neck along them.
“It’ll be over soon,” Eran comforted her, visibly unsettled by Maggie’s pain.
And he was correct. A hundred yards later, we reached the tent’s opening. The Vires there saw us approach, and just as I’d hoped, their eyes were pinned on Maggie and Eran instead of the Vire behind them.
“Move aside,” I said, intentionally giving my voice a gruff edge. I then dipped my head and sneered, obscuring my face. “I am delivering prisoners to Flavian.”
Either there was no protocol for this kind of delivery, or they recognized my “prisoners”, the later more likely being the case, because the Vires blocking the entrance shifted to the side. Then the flap of the tent wall folded up, and I rationalized this as one of them levitating the fabric in an indication for us to enter.
My eyes rapidly surveyed what I could see of the room, noting that furniture, heavy wood pieces, had been hauled out to the site. Fabric with various scenes hung down the walls and the floor was covered in plush rugs. The lavishly decorated tent stretched several yards back to the left where an ornamented desk and a massive throne were set. I wondered who Flavian was trying to impress.
The second the tent flap fell behind us, Maggie and Eran’s hands relaxed and they strode farther into the room.
Dressed in slacks and a scholarly pair of suspenders beaded with moldavite stones, Flavian stood behind the desk with his pale, lucent hands spread flat across the top, a sword tucked beneath them. His head was hung as we entered and remained that way until Maggie and Eran moved toward him. Then it lifted and a gleam in his eyes told me that he was expecting us.
“Magdalene,” he said, his voice deep and tinged with an accent that I couldn’t place. “At last we meet.”
“I only wish it had been sooner,” she replied.
He sighed and his eyes dipped. “So you could end my life that much quicker?”
“So we could have saved the innocents you hurt.”
“And what of saving me?” he asked, standing to his full height, leaving him towering over us. “Why discriminate so? Do I not have the right to be here? Who claims that right?” Without pause, he went on with his bizarre soliloquy. “Is it determined by choice? The will to return? Why condemn me because I have been given no choice at all? The innocents you speak of have been given theirs. They can return.”
“Only to face you again,” she muttered, continuing her steady approach with Eran directly to her left. I fell in on her right.
Flavian’s head slumped as he laughed to himself. When it rose again, his eyes darkened. “You do understand that I have been left no choice. In the absence of choice, I am limited to no other alternative but to kill you. It would be in self-defense, I hope you know. Only you, Magdalene, can unlock another path. And so it is, I wonder, would you be so balanced and fair in your pursuit of what is right, what is just, to allow me to live?”
“And what would you do then, Flavian? Donate your time to charities?” I countered. “Repay your debt to humankind?”
Staring at me blankly, he replied, dumbfounded, “No, I would not deviate from the course I have chosen.”
He was a Seven to the core, unable to see beyond his all-consuming greed.
“Well then,” I replied, “Neither will we.”
Flavian’s lips turned up in a grin of mock sympathy. He was already assuming I’d fail. “Jameson, there isn’t much I don’t know about you, having studied you well before you were born. So, I have no illusion over your inability to cast. You can’t hurt me.”
Ironically, he was correct. Using a cast, an incantation wouldn’t work well. But what he didn’t know about me, what he couldn’t know about me, because I’d never told anyone before, was that casting didn’t appeal to me. What I’d dreamed of, had always anticipated, was to get my hands on him. That was where my strengths lay. In channeling.
My hand tightened into a fist and slammed into his face before he knew what was happening. But I didn’t
end it there. On contact, I sent with it all the feelings I’d endured while witnessing Jocelyn, our families, and all the innocents of our world be condemned to subjugation.
Flavian fell back, across the tent wall, clutching his face, heaving for air. The sword he was holding became a prop to hold himself up or he risked collapsing.
Unable to stop myself from enjoying the result, I bent toward him. “Did that hurt…Flavian?”
Eran’s head jerked back and he glanced at me, perplexed. “What did you do to him?”
“Gave him a little taste of what we’ve endured all these years.”
Eran laughed under his breath, but I didn’t pay much attention to it. I was already going in for another strike, another dose of channeling. This one landed on the opposite side of his face, sending his head and body into the wall again.
He let out a whimper.
And then I let myself loose, giving way to the craving that had been squatting inside me whenever a Vire threw a fist in my face or brought fear to Jocelyn’s eyes. These were the images that surfaced as I pummeled Flavian one blow after another.
Somehow, a grunt broke through my crazed fixation on Flavian and I swiveled my head around to find Maggie and Eran fighting Vires behind me. They were coming to rescue Flavian, but they wouldn’t get that chance. I was going to finish him off.
But that brief moment gave Flavian the time he needed to collect his thoughts. The sword he still had in his hand rose. I shoved his wrist into the wall, bending the blade back. That motion sliced the tent and a Vire’s hand came through from the other side, slipping around Flavian’s chest, and pulling him out. His body widened the opening, where I could see Flavian’s being hauled to safety. I had one foot through the opening when something wobbled behind me. I turned back to find Maggie beginning to crouch.
When she sprang, it was with amazing agility, onto the desk, where she made a fluid, and precisely placed, kick to Flavian’s chest before he was out of range. He fell back into the Vire carrying him, his fingers repositioning his hand around the sword, his lips curved down in vengeance, his eyes narrowed to me.
Eran and I pursued him, tearing through the opening together and meeting Maggie on the other side.
Having shed the Vire trying to assist him, Flavian now stood, sword in hand, crossed over his body, ready for us. The Vires who had been surrounding Flavian advanced on us but he called them off.
“No! This is my kill.”
Flavian wielded his weapon expertly, taking a nick from Eran and causing Maggie to jerk from his lunge. I saw my chance then, his ribs exposed, I sent a fist directly into them, and felt the corresponding crunch of bones. His sword fell and he doubled over, clutching his torso.
Maggie picked up the sword and sent it directly through Flavian’s chest.
The Vires surrounding us released an almost synchronized gasp.
But Flavian didn’t fall. He stood, taller than before, if that was possible, and slowly dragged the blade from his body. Once freed, I noticed there was no blood. None on the sword, none on his shirt.
And then he grinned.
Drawing in a deep breath, he tossed the sword at Maggie’s feet, goading her, and ripped the shirt wider at the cut left by his sword to expose a wound healing itself.
“You may now try again,” he remarked, fear entirely absent.
Maggie dug in her pocket and pulled out a lighter.
This seemed odd to me until she flicked it, generating a flame, and stooped to ignite the shallow dead grass below our feet. Immediately, Eran, Maggie, and I moved back, but Flavian didn’t shift from where he stood, even as the flames engulfed him.
Still grinning, his head ducked so that he stared at her from beneath his eyebrows, he mocked, “Try again.”
Remembering that she and Eran had warned that none of them die the same way, I looked around in search of some hint, a tip as to what Flavian feared. It definitely wasn’t the sword or fire.
“Maggie,” I said. “We’re in an arid climate, and I don’t see any barrels of drinking water.”
It was a long shot, but after a quick survey of the area she seemed open to the idea.
Flavian’s smile faded, and I knew we’d hit on his vulnerability. What I didn’t expect was to witness his strength.
A second after my suggestion was voiced, his shoulders rolled forward and his back arched. A ripping sound came from behind him, and then something emerged, something that seemed to grow directly from his back. It extended upward in a single line, split in two, and spread, sending a single grey feather into the flames still flickering at his feet. It caught fire, bursting into an intense flare, before shriveling into oblivion.
Wings.
Flavian had just grown wings.
Even his Vires, the men and women trained to protect him, stepped back.
He stared Maggie down, and she stared back.
Then, without any warning at all, she and Eran charged him, slamming into his body with a force that made Flavian stumble.
His wings caught, producing a powerful draft as he lifted the three of them off the ground to carry them up and over the hill behind him.
The Vires dedicated to preserving Flavian’s life seemed to forget I was there, their eyes pinned on the horizon as they debated over whether to follow.
I had no option. I didn’t have the benefit of flight. So when my feet swept out from under me and I was carried over their heads in the direction Flavian had disappeared, I didn’t expect it. Not until I realized Jocelyn and Theleo were directly behind me, rapidly catching up. By the time they did, we found ourselves encircled by levitating Vires, their focus narrowed strictly to the horizon where Flavian had dropped out of sight. None of them seemed to notice we were flying in the middle of them.
When we breached the hill, they came to a sudden stop because what they saw must have been terrifying for them. It must have made them question their perception, because they couldn’t have ever seen anything like it before. These men and women had been taught from childhood what to believe and the core of that belief structure was that The Sevens were indestructible. So when we met up with Maggie and Eran hauling Flavian’s slumped body up the back of the hillside, the Vires didn’t know what to think, what to do, or who to believe. They didn’t seem to understand, or particularly care, that Flavian’s body was being dragged or that he was soaked and the dirt was collecting in brown clumps on the edges of his slacks.
I’d bet they were concentrating on something else entirely.
His skin.
It had started to decompose like Sisera’s had done, turning grey and shriveling like a raisin in the hot sun. As it deflated two things happened. First, his suspenders decorated with moldavite stones slipped from his shoulders to catch in the weeds. Second, it exposed the wings that had grown from Flavian’s back. The feathered attachments that caused the Vires to step back in shock a few minutes earlier, scuffed the ground, leaving streaks in the earth behind him.
When Maggie and Eran noticed us collecting at the hill’s peak, they unceremoniously dropped Flavian in the mud and continued their ascent.
But that wasn’t good enough. Not for Flavian. Here was someone who…No, here was a thing that had pursued Jocelyn, our families, me, and countless others. It was his deceit, his laws, his punishments that kept us living in fear, chased us from our homes, made us conscious of ever step, every action. Yes, it was rewarding to see him dead, but it wasn’t enough.
I strolled down the hill, passing Maggie and Eran, intending to make damn sure we left an impression with the Vires watching.
I paused at Flavian’s body, took hold of his wings and, one after the other, broke them off. The crunch of their dislocation seemed to echo in the stunned silence. I threw them aside, where they landed and crumbled to dust, and then yanked the suspenders off Flavian’s body. I then proceeded up the hill as the Vires remained motionless, too dazed to move.
“For proof…,” I said, holding the suspenders up, “for those q
uestioning their resilience.”
Eran nodded just as the hint of a grin emerged.
I turned to Jocelyn and said, “I think it’s time we leave now.”
And we did, without a single Vire in pursuit.
In fact, when Jocelyn insisted on landing sporadically on the way back, to heal those needing her help, the Vires appeared to be vanishing, until there were none left in sight.
Our plan to take off the head to incapacitate the body worked.
By the time we returned to New Orleans a storm had stalled over the city, but that didn’t dampen our spirits. We considered this a good omen, of sorts. Cloud coverage, the density of the downpour, and the slim chance anyone would look up allowed us to come in for a concealed landing. And this was especially important because I was carrying Flavian’s suspenders, an object that would invoke respect from some and a death warrant from others.
We entered Maggie and Eran’s house through the back door, with Maggie muttering something about why the lights were on in the parlor, which could be seen through the kitchen door window.
The scraping of what seemed to be glass screeched through the house as we opened the door, and my muscles tensed, making me freeze.
“What?” Eran and Maggie asked in unison, their eyebrows crossing in nervous confusion.
Jocelyn and I exchanged a hesitant glance.
“That’s not a good sound,” I said under my breath, stepping fully into the kitchen, and laying the suspenders on the table.
With a direct view of the parlor down the hall, I groaned and felt my shoulders sag as a deep pang of shame riddled me. The destruction was obvious; pieces of glass and porcelain were strewn across the floor and trailing into the kitchen.
The sighs and gasps coming from the door behind told me that they had seen it, too. Only Theleo, whose emotion was limited, seemed unmoved. He’d seen worse. We all had, but this time it was my family who had caused the damage.
It took a lot of effort for my feet to move in Ezra’s direction. She was on her knees with a dustpan in one hand and a hand broom in the other. Ezra lifted her head to see who had entered as Jocelyn moaned, “Ezra, I’m so sorry.”
Prophecy (Residue Series #4) Page 14
