by Rain Oxford
I sighed. He was right. If this was what Henry wanted, I couldn’t really tell him otherwise. However, Darwin was also wrong. Henry was asking me to share my life and power with another creature, whether it was him or not.
“Besides, we came way too close to losing you.”
* * *
After all the sleeping I did at the coven, I didn’t expect to fall back asleep in the truck. What started out as a pleasant dream of Astrid turned into warped memories of old visions, particularly the vision where Astrid was running from someone and the shadows were not natural. The strange distortion of light I saw Scott with was the same in this old vision. This time, I noticed something really odd about the streets. It wasn’t anything I could point out, just an overall sense of displacement.
As if it wasn’t on Earth.
* * *
I woke to Darwin poking me in the jacket. “We’re here,” he said when I opened my eyes.
I opened the door, got out, and stretched. No amount of twisting could work the dull ache out of my head or neck. “We’re in the woods,” I pointed out when I realized we weren’t standing before the council’s mansion.
“Did you want us to drive right up to the front door? I thought we were supposed to sneak in,” Darwin said.
I nodded and rubbed my dry eyes. “Henry, shift, go invisible, and find a way in.”
“If they’re hiding any objects or poisons, it’ll be in their vault,” Darwin said. “I happen to know how to get in.”
“Fantastic. Henry, get us into the place, then go with Darwin to the vault. Protect each other; that’s more important than getting anything. I’ll snoop around the minds of the council members.”
Henry stripped, put his clothes in the truck, shifted, and vanished.
“You know, I think I get Addie’s deal,” Darwin said. “I heard something about black jaguars being bigger than--- yow!!” he shrieked and cradled his left hand. “It was a compliment, bitch.”
I opened my mind to Henry after a moment and sensed him circling the mansion. Henry’s feline mind was in control and collecting details no one else could have noticed. He could smell where people frequented and which doors were never used. He peered into pitch black windows and ducked out of the way before any light was lit.
I was aware that he found a way in and that he searched several rooms to make sure it was clear before returning to a small side door off an old, deserted kitchen. “Clear,” he said. Darwin and I followed the same path he had taken towards the castle. “Stop,” Henry warned, right before we broke the tree line. I grabbed the back of Darwin’s hoodie to make him halt and he did without question.
After a moment, a wizard in a dark cloak passed, seemingly out of nowhere, entered the forest about ten feet from us, and disappeared into the darkness. “Who was that?” I asked.
“Grayson Adams,” Darwin said. Even though it wasn’t said aloud, I could still hear a sneer in his voice.
We continued to the mansion, where Henry guided us to the door via very confusing directions. “Left, no that’s too left,” and “come this way,” are not useful instructions. When we made it through the door, Darwin left to lead Henry, who was still invisible, to the vault. I wandered through the halls, letting my instincts guide me.
At first glance, the mansion seemed to be entirely empty, but I knew otherwise. It would have been helpful had I known the layout of the place ahead of time so I could have avoided the kitchen and other service areas, since I knew none of the council members would be there. After a while, I realized I was circling one cluster of rooms.
I focused my magic to find the minds of the most powerful wizards and wasn’t surprised at all to sense them close. I was, however, surprised to sense that they were below me. There was obviously a basement floor… which wasn’t actually unusual. “Have you run into any problems?” I asked my friends in their heads.
“Nope. We’re good here.”
“Are you in the basement?”
“A vault in the basement? No, we’re on the second floor.”
Still following my instincts, I entered a room. It was a study with no visible steps or side rooms. Is it too much to ask for a damn elevator? I started pulling books from the bookshelves and setting them back when nothing happened. After about ten minutes of this, I gave up and turned to face the room. All four walls consisted of bookshelves. If there was a fireplace or picture, it would have been the first place I checked.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out the glass sphere that Hunt gave me, only to put it away again. I was saving it. Instead, I focused on the minds of the wizards downstairs. The simplest of the minds was also the greediest. The man was a piss poor wizard, which was how I knew whose mind it was I was looking into. Kale Lycos.
Yuck. I hope I don’t catch mad cow or something. Trying not to tip the wizard off that I was in his mind, I forced myself to be gentle. It wasn’t like the creep had that much functioning brain to begin with. I didn’t give him a command, but I softly pushed the image of the study into his mind. It activated his memories of him pressing a trigger under the work desk that released a trap door in the floor. From there, it was a series of secret tunnels. The first room on the right was where the council was meeting.
I backed out of his mind, opened my eyes, went to the desk, and reached under it where the chair slid in. Just a few inches from the edge, I felt a switch, which I pressed. The trap door behind me released. It blended seamlessly with the natural wooden boards of the floor except when it was opened. I lifted it, pulled out my penlight, and peered inside. Yes, I was more likely to give myself up, but I wasn’t about to hop down into a wizard’s basement without so much as a peek.
Seeing that it was clear, at least for the moment, I carefully climbed down the metal ladder. The tunnel was dark, but there was a soft glow up ahead from the council room. The floor was stone, the walls were brick, and it was cold. It was cold enough to keep bodies down there. Then again, it’s a secretive group of power-hungry wizards; that’s probably exactly what they keep down here.
I put my penlight away and approached the entrance to the room that was emitting a soft light. I could see this light because there was no door, so it felt almost too easy. I pressed my back against the wall beside the door and listened.
“We have to wait for Grayson,” one of the men whispered.
“Absolutely not. Logan is making fools of us and we cannot allow this to continue,” Kale argued crossly.
“What if we just required paranormals over a certain age to register?”
“You want to pander to them because they can create a little wind storm?! Every one of those students will be tagged and taxed before the month is out and that school will be shut down if I have to bust it apart with my bare hands!”
“Logan’s school isn’t harming---”
“He’s teaching them to defy us! That’s why Grayson can’t even control his own daughter anymore!”
The council thinks Hunt is responsible for the tornado around the school. That means Grayson and Felicity are working alone. But why? He would have needed Felicity’s help, so it must have been something she benefited from as well. Why would Gale and Felicity attack students? I pulled out my disposable phone, found the voice memo app, and started recording the conversation.
“You have a point,” one of the council members finally said, breaking the tense silence. “We have to have every single wizard to side with us if we’re going to make this work. Logan isn’t going to agree to this and his staff will side with him.”
“He doesn’t see that this is best for everyone,” another agreed.
“We can assassinate some of the lead paranormals and frame others. We can send a vampire to kill Maseré and leave evidence that the vampire was out of Stephen’s coven. Then we can send a fae to kill Stephen and leave evidence that the Canostrof tribe was to blame. We’ll just keep hitting the leaders until nobody knows who to trust except for their own kind.”
“That’s brill
iant,” Kale said. “Then we’ll step in with our plan and everyone will agree to it. Any wizard who defies us then will be executed in the name of the greater good for all paranormals.”
“So, by the end of the year, all shifters will be confined to Australia, vampires will be in Africa, and Fae will be in Asia. What about Europe?”
“Europe is too accessible. We don’t want the others getting confused as to their territorial boundaries. The fae like to spread out and they’re not smart enough to roam free without fences. Maybe we should put them in Africa and let the vampires have Asia.”
“Fae need more space.”
“Nonsense. They’re just greedy. They haven’t been taught. If we tell them to form tighter tribes and imprison those who wander, they will learn. Europe will be used for us. We have many contacts in place there.”
“But wizards are also getting North and South America?”
“Of course. We don’t live in covens, packs, or tribes, so we need more space. Besides, we’ll be keeping the peace between the paranormals, so we deserve it. The only thing standing in our way is Logan and his school.”
“But we have followers at his school.”
“No, we don’t. We tried to allow his school to continue by giving them very simple directions.”
“They had to be registered and have a license.”
“Exactly. They defied us, so anyone attending the school is a rebel. We’ll go in and destroy the school. Arrest and tag anyone who surrenders. Kill anyone who doesn’t.”
“Now hold on!” one of the wizards said. I heard a chair scrape as he stood. “We have lineage in that school. My niece is a student and her father is a teacher there.”
“Well, let’s hope you taught them well so they will surrender. Don’t worry; we won’t kill anyone at Logan’s other schools. Those paranormals are too young to understand what they’re doing. They will, however, need to be taken into custody to be trained by---”
Two more chairs scraped against the floor and violent protests drowned out the rest of his words. A yelling match broke out and grew in volume until I started inching away from the door, certain that shots were about to be fired. I turned off the recording to save room and battery, which turned out to be a good thing because it took ten minutes of arguing before a bright burst of blue light shut them all up.
I started the recorder again.
“Now, this is not a discussion,” Kale said angrily. “We voted on the implementation of these rules and procedures because everyone is too afraid to replace John after what he did. What we let him do. If you want to back out now, then you’re out of the council.”
It was silent for a moment before my instincts told me to hide. I couldn’t risk crossing the doorway to hide on the other side and there was no way I could make it up the ladder before someone came out of the room. Out of options, I hid in the dark corner beside the ladder. Just a few seconds later, two members of the council walked out. I recognized them from the one time I had seen the entire board gathered to hear Darwin’s case, but I didn’t remember their names. Obviously, they were better men than Kale.
The first one headed up the ladder without incident. The second reached the third step before he noticed me. I knew he saw me because he stopped and stared, as if he wasn’t sure what to do. I put my finger to my lips. After a moment, he looked forward and headed up the ladder without a word. I returned to the door.
“… will be tomorrow evening. We will start setting up in the morning. That way, Grayson won’t have a chance to warn Logan.”
“What if he goes there tonight?”
“He won’t; he’s going to see his girlfriend tonight.”
“How are we going to get in? That storm is powerful.”
“We have an artifact in the vault that can bind our magic for about three minutes. It should be enough time for us to bring Logan’s storm down. We’ll surround the school and have wards in place. We have weapons to stop the fae and shifters from crossing the border we’re going to make around the castle. We’ll have to overwhelm the wizards with magic and magical weapons. The vampires will be easy pickings; shoot the windows out when the others are defeated.”
I heard rustling as the wizards prepared to depart, so I turned off my recorder and hightailed out of there. I reached the original room I had entered into, which was a service entrance and mud-room off of an old kitchen, without incident.
I searched for my friends’ minds and sensed them quickly. “How is it going?” I asked.
Darwin, who was better at responding mentally, answered. “Well, we had a spot of bother with one of the council members spotting us, but the dude just turned and walked away without a word. We thought he might have been going to rat us out, but no one else has come in. We’re heading your way now.”
I started to get worried when they still hadn’t arrived after fifteen minutes. I was just about to go out into the hallway to look for them when the door opened and they entered. Henry radiated irritation, which he usually only did during the full moon. “What’s wrong? What happened?”
“Pea-bladder here insisted on going to the bathroom, after which we immediately ran into Kale.”
“Did you realize how much Kale and Gale are alike?” Darwin asked. “Aside from their given names, Gale was human who killed for power while Kale is a wizard who kills for power, they’re both less than they think they are, and they’re both douchecanoes.”
I sighed. “Focus, Darwin. What happened?”
“I punched him and we left,” Henry said.
“He didn’t call for help?”
“He started to, which was why I punched him. Afterwards, he was just crying on the floor with a broken jaw. Should we feel sorry for him?”
“You might be sorry you didn’t break his nose as well when you hear what I caught on tape.”
Chapter 8
I checked on Scott again when we got back in the truck and found him to be sleeping peacefully in the abandoned cabin. Darwin showed me what all they took from the vault as Henry drove us back to the university. Other than the power-neutralizing cuffs that Darwin had told me about before, he only recognized a few of the artifacts. Along with some cursed jewelry, there was a hollow, glass globe full of fire, some peculiar tarot cards, a set of iron chains, silver bullets, and a collection of well-used silver stakes. Knowing the council could have been looking into poisons, Darwin and Henry had also grabbed every bottle of blood, vial of oil, sack of herbs, and potion they could find.
If a police officer pulled us over, we probably would have been arrested just on suspicion.
Henry parked in the car lot when we got back to the school and I retrieved the sword before we faced the storm. Because facing a tornado was a brilliant idea.
I raised the sword up into the air with the blade pointed towards the sky. Just like before, wind swirled around it and grew to surround me. When the blade started glowing faintly, I released my power into the storm, effectively letting it inside. The only thing weirder than having a storm in my mind was having a living storm inside my mind.
The situation had gotten worse. This storm was an affront to nature. I put my priorities aside this time and let the storm reveal its secrets. The wind pushed against the sword until it was downward. Allowing the wind its way, I sunk the blade into the ground.
“What are you doing?” Darwin asked, almost having to yell to be heard over the wind.
The ground rumbled and a split formed in the dead grass before the sword. “Oh, shit.” I tried to pull the sword out, but it wouldn’t budge. The ground trembled with a very small earthquake. I pulled with all my strength and only managed to wiggle it. “It’s stuck on something!”
“They’re going to kill us if we cause another earthquake that brings down the new dorms!” Darwin said.
Henry took hold of the handle and twisted it. I heard rock crumble before he pulled it out. To our shock, the blade had changed from finely crafted metal to bulky, crudely chiseled, gray stone.
>
“What the hell?” Darwin asked.
“No clue,” I answered. When his mouth dropped open in shock, I turned to see Adesra floating about a foot away from me at eye level. Henry started to attack, but I waved him off and he froze. She gave him a scowl before turning back to me.
“You said you would help us, Devon Sanders.”
“I said I would help you with the sylphs. How does causing an earthquake…? Wait. The air elementals are causing this?” I asked, pointing at the offending tornado.
“They have been turned against the balance. You must help us.”
“I will. How?”
“Omonus will seek all four keys. He will open the way and destroy our balance.”
“Omonus? Who the hell is Omonus?”
“We do not speak the name of death. He hears his name and sees all who speak it.”
Krechea. “Omonus means death? How do we stop him? He hasn’t been able to get the key yet.”
“To attain the key, you must have the balance on your side. Omonus will use another to get the key.”
“Who?”
“She was unclean and sought purification. She will win the key for Omonus and death will spill across the lands in a darkness that is undefeatable.”
“Who?” I asked more forcefully.
“Heather Anne.”
“Not the sugar princess,” Darwin remarked.
I had learned after her death that Heather had a reputation for being entirely innocent and selfless, but she had always seemed a bit mysterious to me. Of course, I saw her more frequently after her death than before it. “Actually, that makes sense. It was Langril’s intention that Heather would get the key.”
“So Omonus is Professor Langril?”
“No, Omonus is the shadow man,” I said, purposely not saying Krechea’s name. “Right?” I asked Adesra.
She nodded. “You are correct, Devon Sanders. The one you call the shadow man will escape from Dothra, develop a following on this world, and then force Heather Anne to attain the fourth key for him. Once he has the key, he will kill the others and take their keys.”
