Illumination

by M. V. Freeman

  “Already giving orders, Lev?” Mikhail’s cool voice didn’t hide the temper within him. His eyes blazed, rotating from bright white, blue, green, to deepest black in quick succession.

  “Someone has to,” Lev responded.

  Lev. An interesting name. It fit him. He stood careless, loose, not as if he were facing a very dangerous man. He didn’t address Laurie, but kept his attention on Mikhail, who even without his elements was probably far more deadly than she was with all four elements.

  “Why are you here, uninvited, disturbing my home?” Mikhail insinuated himself between Laurie and the Dark. Both were of equal height, and neither one blinked as they faced each other.

  Let the posturing begin. Laurie resisted the sudden urge to start a small thunderstorm over the both of them.

  “I’m not here for you, Petrov, or to increase hostilities.” The Dark crossed his arms. “I’m here to help you solve a problem.” Tension grew in the room until it was thick like taffy and just as sticky.

  “What? Steal a painting for me? You’re an art thief, not a politician,” Mikhail scoffed in a cold voice. How unusual. Laurie had grown used to Mikhail using more charm than outright hostility. Interesting.

  “I am what I need to be. And I wouldn’t be casting aspersions on my career choice considering what you’ve done in your time.” Lev’s voice was cool.

  Oh good lord. He’s worse than Mina.

  Nicki interrupted, her voice rushed and wobbly. “He’s here to warn you—the humans can track us now.” She ran a hand over her eyes in a gesture of fatigue as she continued. “Laurie, I think I pushed Rachel over the edge…and—”

  Lev’s hand on her friend’s shoulder stopped the frantic ramble. “You didn’t. She’s sleeping it off now.”

  His words and tone were reassuring, but Nicki shook her head. “How do you know? I—”

  “We’ll figure it out.” Laurie moved to grasp Nicki’s hand, wanting to comfort her. She wasn’t sure exactly what they were going to figure out. She had no idea who was tracking them or what happened to her other friend. What she did know was Nicki needed her. Laurie would say or do anything to relieve the haunted look on her face. She was rewarded with a watery smile as the Dark’s hand dropped back to his side and shifted closer to Rachel’s prone figure. For some reason, she didn’t worry about Rachel. Perhaps it was instinct or the indefinable way she knew when things were going south, as they appeared to be with Nicki.

  “I already know about the humans. You are not the only one with a witch. This isn’t why you are here,” Mikhail scoffed, unimpressed by her friend’s frantic announcement. Laurie shot a glare at him, which he ignored. Damn him. He was keeping things from her again.

  “They,” Lev said as he gestured to Nicki and Rachel, “need protection I can’t give, but you and your bonded can. And I have added incentive.” He smiled, showing a bit of his serrated teeth.

  “You want me to help you steal a painting from the Chairman?” Mikhail responded in a cool voice. Laurie frowned, because under the prickle of irritation, she perceived anxiety through their connection. Curious. Misha’s reaction reminded her strongly of when Rachel first met Mina. Usually the bubbly, friendly sort, her uncharacteristic hostile attitude had surprised them all.

  “No, but I’ll keep that in mind. What I will do is help you break the blood tie with Mina.” Now he turned his attention to Laurie, who shivered under his midnight gaze. She wondered what exactly went into breaking a tie. “This means I will get my sister here.”

  A soft click and the door to the office opened, admitting five soberly-dressed men of varying ages. By the energy rolling off of them—the lick of fire, grit of dirt, coolness of water and air—they were all strong Elementals. Laurie recognized a few, but two of them were new to her. Their entrance relaxed Mikhail; his shoulders weren’t so tight. But it made Laurie wonder how much he trusted her to be able to use her elements to protect them. She shied away from this unsettling thought.

  “For this, I’ll let you live and not send you home to Cazacul in pieces.” Mikhail walked back to the bar to pick up his forgotten vodka as security surrounded Lev.

  “We’re supposed to be stopping a war, not adding to it!” Laurie let out an exasperated sound. She whirled around to face Mikhail. Part of her hoped he’d been bluffing, but the realist in her knew he wasn’t.

  “I believe in incentive.” He saluted Lev with his drink. “Take him away.”

  Lev didn’t fight the men escorting him out the door. As he walked away, he trailed his hand over four gilded icons on the wall near the door.

  “Nice pieces of work,” the Dark murmured.

  The door shut behind him.

  “Did you see that?” Nicki whispered in Laurie’s ear. She hadn’t sensed her friends approach and couldn’t help the involuntary jerk.

  “What?”

  “He had Rachel’s purse over his shoulder,” Nicki hissed.

  For the first time all day, Laurie felt a true smile creep across her face. “She’s going to kill him.”

  “If he’s lucky.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  ALONE IS A SILENCE WITH NO VOICE, consuming thought, sound, and hope.

  The darkness made noise powerful, accentuating the soft drip of water, raising the light pings of liquid on rock into a symphony. Mina’s heartbeat was the percussion, and Xander’s labored breathing was the wind instrument.

  It was so cold, her breath came out in small clouds of condensation.

  Mina could’ve gone back to the upper halls; she knew her father wanted this. He’d even told her to leave—the only conversation they’d had since he’d put Xander in chains.

  “No.” Her word was clear, sharp, and definitive. It reverberated in her heart. A mantra she held onto when there was nothing else.

  She’d never refused her father before. His reaction traveled over his features, a strange mixture of sorrow and anger, odd in a face hardened by experience. She didn’t care.

  When they came for Xander, she stood and watched as her father followed the guards into the room, knowing he caused pain to the man she loved. Their races were enemies, but not him. She’d stayed outside the room, prevented from going in, and waited, clawing the rocks, scoring her flesh, when he finally began to scream.

  Now, as he lay shivering, she curled around him, giving as much heat from her body as she could. She uttered the few spells she knew and could manage without her brother’s tinctures to help keep the pain at bay enough to stop his moans. She’d started to barter drops of her blood for little things—a thin mattress, a small heater. Food was brought twice a day; extra was put into it because she was there. The fare was good; when torturing prisoners, the thought was to keep them well-fed so they survived longer.

  Mina wondered if her father’s goal was to keep Xander drained or eventually kill him. So far, he’d been weakened, but not to the point he couldn’t be healed. Where was Lev when she needed him?

  The tiniest of scrapes, a skittering across a hard surface, told her she wasn’t alone. She sat up. She’d wondered when they would come; they usually did. The lower cavern creatures liked to get their fair share of blood.

  “Go,” she breathed out, and the sounds stopped. The musical plop of water came across louder than before as the feel of the room changed, and the air became charged with something predatory. The hairs on her arms prickled. Xander didn’t move, too exhausted from blood loss and pain.

  She hoped they weren’t spiders. Prayed they weren’t.

  A shuffle and a clacking sound. Mina used her night vision, but accentuated it with a murmured spell. A shimmer of movement to her left. A slender arm skirted around an outcropping, the nails long and thin. Fine hair covered the forearm. It eased around the rock as another creature crept forward, this one on all fours. They were the same species.

  About five feet tall—rarely did they grow taller—and naturally slim, with pale hair and paler skin. Their eyes were wide and white; they were blind by natur
e. Their ears were well developed, large with a slight point at the tip. They communicated their movements with a series of clicks. Humans called them elves, and they happily adopted the moniker. Mina called them opportunists.

  The elves were delicate-featured, pretty in a china doll way, with thin, straight noses, and pallid lips. What wasn’t so pretty were their needle-sharp teeth and clawed hands. She’d seen a pack of them eviscerate a wounded deer, leaving only bones, and those had been cracked, the marrow sucked out greedily. They didn’t care what live creature they ate, as long as it was fresh. They never had dead to bury because they took care of it.

  “You can’t have him tonight,” she whispered fearlessly, keeping in mind their acute auditory sense. A sudden shudder rippled through her body, a tensing of muscles, preparing for action before her mind comprehended.

  “He is ours. Promised by—” the tall one said, the range almost too high to hear.

  The other one nudged the one speaking to silence.

  Mina stilled herself. It was harder to read the emotions of Darks, but these exuded fear, determination, and hunger. The tastes were fainter than if a Mage, Elemental, or human were experiencing them, as if they were a feeble aftertaste. This was a bittersweet flavor she didn’t like, similar to fake sugars put in diet drinks.

  “Who promised?” Mina didn’t want to think it was her father. He was a savage man, but he’d do the harm himself like he did in the blood room. Her brother maybe? No. He didn’t torture. At least, she hadn’t found any evidence he did. His own experience at the hands of the clans made him abhor the practice.

  “Did Elspeth send you?” The words were forced, as if her lips and tongue didn’t want to say them. Even now, something inside of her seized at the thought of the woman she’d known as her mother hating her enough to want her dead.

  The one standing shook his head, long ropy strands of thin white hair flying about his face, as the other one hissed in warning.

  “Who?” Mina stood, raising her voice a notch. They cringed, folding in on themselves. “Tell me.”

  “We can’t,” the one on the ground hissed, but it wasn’t begging. Challenging.

  “You mean you won’t.”

  Mina took a step toward them, and their large ears flattened against their heads. The downy fuzz on their limbs stood up—another sense they used. They looked small in their oversized cast-off clothing of cut-off cargo pants and stained T-shirts, rope cinched tightly around their middles. Their milky eyes turned toward her as if they could see her.

  “We are so hungry. Our young need the power in the blood to be birthed. Please,” the taller one begged, but he smiled as if they’d already been given permission.

  The one on the ground turned his head and sniffed. Both were male—their females were kept chained, blind and deaf, slug-like creatures made only for procreation. These creations were kept in the lower caverns for a reason.

  “I won’t tell you again. You can’t have him,” Mina told them in a voice stripped of all compassion and at normal volume.

  They hissed in pain. The secret part of her, the broken shadowy bit she’d pushed so far down she almost forgot what it was, slid through her. The inky blackness of her Dark side. The part that loved the blood she professed to hate. She didn’t want that to be here.

  “We. Will. Eat,” the smaller one screamed a high-pitched sound.

  It tore through her like it was a knife. Her nose and ears popped, and liquid flowed—her own blood. Behind her, Xander moaned.

  He suffered.

  No.

  She laughed, embracing the murky corruptness of craving.

  “No!” This time she screamed it, and they cowered, bleating their own agony.

  Mina moved, her body knowing as her instinct awoke. She used nails and teeth to tear into the taller one. His skin was soft and furry, easily ripping under her assault. Thick, hot, metallic blood spilled over her hands and down her arms and into her mouth.

  In true darkness of the soul there is red, Mina found. It is sweet, like thick steaming cream.

  The road to the abyss is filled with screams of the soul, and when she stood among the carnage of body parts, she realized she’d become the monster she always feared.

  It was a familiar tune, one Xander’s mother sung to him as a little boy. A Mage nursery rhyme, with a cadence to remember a simple spell, the first protective incantation taught to all Mages. Over time it changed, becoming not so much shielding, but a comforting flow of words.

  As before, sensation came to him in bits.

  Pain, always pain. Hot and cold along his limbs, his torso, needle-sharp jabs reminding him of the strips of flesh ripped from his body and fed to sycophants of Cazacul. He shifted, expecting the clank of metal from cuffs on his wrist. Nothing.

  He was too weak to be chained.

  He knew this.

  The soft singing continued. The sound wobbled.

  “Mina?” he croaked, his eyes searching the obsidian depths of the cell.

  “Xander?” Her voice was rough, thick with something.

  “What’s wrong?” He tried to move his arm, and his fingers responded, but not much else. No wonder that bastard unchained him. He didn’t have enough power in him to move his damn arm.

  She didn’t answer. Did she go?

  A strange thrill of panic flitted through him. A horror he’d not felt when facing Cazacul and his minions. He opened his mouth to cry out. To call her back.

  “I’m not sure I’m here anymore.” Her voice was so sad it made his limbs heavier, his heart thump slower.

  “But I hear you.”

  “And I see you.”

  He heard a small scraping sound of someone moving next to him. Then something wet and hot, too viscous to be tears, dripped onto this face.

  “What is…?” Xander spat as the liquid filtered into his mouth. It felt thick, clotted, and tasted coppery. “Stop it.”

  “No…their blood will help you.” She sang the words, using the tune she’d been singing. “It will open your eyes, open your Mage side, keep you safe…safe in the darkness from me.”

  He couldn’t fight the fluid, and as much as he spat, he had to swallow or drown. He gagged. His brethren would take blood from Elementals and Darks and mix it with wine or rum. The power in it would rejuvenate them and make them high when there was no other source to siphon from. He’d only done it once as a teen to see what was so damn addicting about it, since he was one of the rare ones who didn’t need to follow this practice—and he’d thrown up.

  He hated the taste of it from the moment he’d tried it.

  Rest and food. This is what gave him back his power. But here in the icy damp of Cazacul’s medieval dungeon, constantly drained, he wasn’t allowed to get strong. No more than he’d allow a prisoner like Cazacul to heal.

  “Stop!” He coughed, fighting for breath.

  “Too much too soon,” Mina sang in the strange tone, and the blood stopped. A brush of something smooth and slimy along his arm made him jump. Hands, sticky with blood framed his face. “And you, too, will soon sing with me.”

  What the hell happened to Mina? Her hair was matted and clumped. Her face was smeared with a dark substance that was also on her arms and splattered over her clothes. She pulled back to dance away from him.

  I can see.

  The thought hit him as if he’d just consumed half a liter of an energy drink. Jolting through him was the realization he saw the rough walls and the slab of stone he lay on. It wasn’t just darker shapes in an equally black room. In the corner was a small area of water flowing in, the source of the constant drip—a place to bathe. The slop bucket was near the door.

  The door. He could see the rough grain of the wood.

  Sitting up, a movement he’d taken for granted, was now possible again. There was no sharp burn tearing through his weakened stomach muscles, but a tightness to his skin as it healed. He didn’t look down; he knew the damage and didn’t want to see the healing scars. One ank
le still had the thick metal cuff with a long chain attached. He could work with this.

  “Methods are meant to be mythos…” Mina giggled as she kicked around what looked like body parts. It was the shorts with half a leg still sticking from them that propelled Xander to stand.

  She’d killed.

  For him.

  An odd sensation, a pressure in his chest, neck, and behind his eyes, a grief mixing with a fierce pride in his hellion, and hollowness of failure—he should’ve killed for her. This burden of death, one he’d placed on his own shoulders, should’ve never been hers.

  “What happened, Mina?” Xander took slow, uneven steps. A small part of him cheered he could move. Another castigated him to move faster, with purpose.

  She stopped singing then. With the vision given him by the blood she’d forced on him, probably from the creatures piled at her feet, he could make out her wide eyes. The bewildered, lost look he’d seen only once—and that was in his office after Elspeth ripped out her piercings—increased the emptiness of his failure.

  Mina spun around, stopping suddenly.

  “Look, look, I am a monster now.” Her voice was too high, too unsteady. “I don’t think it suits me, but I can’t put it back.” She held up part of an arm and sniffed it. “I want to eat it.”

  Madness? Not an unusual disease for Darks or Mages.

  Not his Mina.

  He couldn’t reach her. The chain didn’t go that far to the door. “Sweet, put down the…” The severed arm because you look like a serial killer on a bender? He didn’t finish the sentence.

  “You’re right. It’s not tasty when it’s cold.” She dropped the arm, staring at the pile, her slim body shaking. Was she crying? “I need to take out the garbage,” she told him as she gathered up as many body parts as she could carry and staggered to the door. “I must feed the others.”

  Helpless for the moment, unable to get to her, Xander was forced to watch as she opened the door. Damn thing wasn’t even locked. He looked at his shackled foot, and the prickle of magic told him he’d have to have a powerful incantation to get it off.