River Cast: Part Two in the Tale of Lunarmorte

by Samantha Young

  “What?” She didn’t mean to snap. There was just too much to concentrate on, her self control over this issue just didn’t seem that important at the moment.

  He blinked, seeming surprised by her tone. “I just wanted to say good luck, and please don’t do anything stupid.”

  This concern, this tenderness, created an urge to scratch her claws across his face and spit and growl and snarl until she was hoarse with it. She didn’t want to see that he worried for her. She didn’t need the confusion it brought with it. She twisted her mouth in derision and jerked away from his grasp. “Why don’t you save the concern for Rose. I can handle myself.”

  Dark uncertainty fell over his features. “Caia wh-”

  She didn’t stay to hear the end of that question. Instead she almost ran for the portal, knowing he wouldn’t be able to plague her with his questions once they were through. A rush of pressurised air blasted her hair back, almost as if she was on a rollercoaster... on a rollercoaster in a very, very dark place. A feeling likened to sea sickness engulfed her and she knew she was through the portal. Hesitantly, she opened her eyes, taking in the sight of Remnant forest, which even with her lykan vision seemed to swallow them in its alien blackness. Because of her awareness of them, she could feel the energy of the amassed Midnights beckoning from the north like tendrils of hair blowing in the wind. It was strange to now equate the usually familiar and welcoming smell of a damp wood with this adrenaline charged anxiety.

  Ducking down to the ground, Caia took in their position. Unit Two were already making their way through the woods towards the perimeter guards. She turned to Marion who was huddled behind a fallen tree in which the growth covering it created a wall of defence.

  Lucien was the last to come through the portal and he snapped down to the ground behind the tree so quickly she heard Anders laughing whispers, urging him once more to join his unit at the Centre. Marion shushed them and turned to Caia. Her eyes closed and she called on the trace to do its job. She was able to hold on to the five spies’ energy in synch, each like a different window on one screen of a computer. The first members of the MacLachlans left their house, followed closely by the three other families on that street. As their cars pulled away, the Midnight watching sent a text message to Du Bois. She almost smiled smugly at that; their outfit wasn’t quite as swanky as their own.

  Remembering what all this meant, her amusement quickly faded and she pressed the ear piece. “Team Three, you’re safe to proceed.”

  “Roger.”

  Wow, that was loud in her ear.

  Anders and Phoebe were grinning in anticipation of the fight.

  Within a few minutes each Midnight spy had completed their task and Caia had sent in all of Unit One, each asserting within minutes of her order that the Midnight was dead. After watching the first magik being chewed from the inside out, after the reminder of her own fight with a daemon not too long ago, Caia had been blasted with an empathy a soldier couldn’t really afford. The surprise and shock, the undiluted fear, the panic, the horrendous pain, and the awful realisation of approaching death clawed at her throat. She knew they were magiks bent on doing a despicable thing, but it didn’t make it any easier to watch them die. She’d pulled out of the trace and hadn’t watched whilst the other Midnights were killed. At the confirmation of their deaths, Unit Three exhaled a unanimous breath of relief and triumph.

  “Unit Two,” Caia whispered over the comms, “Proceed to the guards.”

  “Roger.”

  The sounds of all those voices whispering down their comms made them flinch and she hoped to Artemis that it hadn’t distracted Unit Two. She felt her unit gazing at her as she observed through the trace. It was done so smoothly, so perfectly executed. The magik distracted the Midnight momentarily, whilst the vampyre, without a whisper of clothing or intake of breath, surreptitiously slipped up behind the Midnight, clamped a hand over their mouth to occlude any warning shouts, and slit the guard’s throat. It was gruesome and underhanded, and Caia couldn’t help feeling more pangs of disgust that this was even necessary. Feeling their stares on her burning cheeks, Caia ignored her own regrets, and gave them a brittle nod at the exact moment the teams began confirming the guards dead over the comms.

  Now it was their turn.

  Mordecai, Michael and Marion were to wait as the lykans changed into wolf form. Whilst they stripped to nothing and began the change, Caia was already there. With her magik she could transform within seconds to wolf without having to strip, and using glamour she could transform back fully clothed. She waited, however, as the others did, until Lucien, Anders and the women were done.

  They took off simultaneously.

  Caia was heading for her magik, an older female fire magik. At her speed she came upon the woman who was hiding with her back to her behind a large tree. She turned a few degrees at the last second as she heard the cracking of bracken, but it was too late; Caia was already clambering up her back and taking her slender neck in her jaws.

  As the warm blood pulsed into her mouth, Caia pushed away the fresh memory of this woman’s vertebrae snapping under the clamp of her strong jaws, the feel of her warm flesh piercing under her claws like the skin of a peach bursting. In fact, it was easier to forget reality altogether as she waited for the magik’s heart to stop.

  It did. And what seemed like hours had merely been seconds.

  Caia backed up off the falling body and searched the other Midnights. Lucien must have gotten to his magik almost at the same time and had killed him, but not before the magik had let out a roar. The others were now aware they weren’t alone.

  Luckily, Anders had taken his magik unawares and was just now finishing him off in the exact manner Caia and Lucien had theirs.

  Phoebe was in the middle of a physical fight with her warlock, an air magik who was just now attempting to suffocate her; she struggled violently against his power and proved herself determined to win the fight as she viciously bit down on his privates in order to loosen his grip. Caia winced at the excruciating pain that ripped through his entire being, and reminded herself never to get into a fight with Phoebe; the Hunter fought dirty. At his weeping the magik finally let go long enough for Phoebe to go in for the kill. Caia turned away as his heart stopped.

  Rose didn’t appear to be getting anywhere near her magik. He had put up a shield around himself almost immediately at the sound of his comrade’s roar, and now Rose kept bouncing off of it uselessly. Caia wished she had her comms so she could tell her to conserve her energy, to wait for him to let go of the spell holding her off.

  Michael was in an intense fight with his fire magik, but he was managing to dodge the hits from the Midnight and had even shot the bastard in the arm.

  At the same time, Marion was struggling with a female earth magik; she couldn’t get a hit in - the woman just kept dousing it with earth and creating weapons out of rock. Poor Marion was covered in lacerations and bruises.

  Caia continued sifting.

  Du Bois.

  Through his eyes she saw him empty water from Mordecai’s dead body. He had suffocated the magik; had enjoyed every moment of taking down ‘the inept boy’ as if he were any older or wiser than his adversary. Hatred for him and regret and fury over Mordecai’s demise flooded her, urging her body into motion and propelling her through the forest towards the Midnight responsible. Still tracing him, she saw Anders tear around the corner and confront Du Bois, his jaw dripping with gore, his huge wolf body an impressive sight. She thought she would feel fear in Du Bois. Instead, as previously shielded thoughts poured out of him in his excitement, the fear belonged to her.

  No!

  It wasn’t possible. How could he have hidden this so successfully from her?

  She burst into view behind him, in time to see for herself the contents of a vial he had produced bursting open into liquid gold, streaming through the air, actuated by Pierre’s water magik. The horror of what that liquid meant unfolded before her as each drop brough
t about Anders transformation back into human form. He lay there, naked and confused, as he gazed at his human hands curled into the dirt ground of the forest floor. His eyes flashed up in panic, just in time to see the water rush at him and force its way into his mouth, flooding his lungs and drowning the life from his body.

  And Caia hadn’t been able to stop it. Instead her trace had automatically taken her to the magik Rose was fighting off, and he was in the process of doing the same thing. Lucien pounded into view and battered at the shield as the magik transformed Rose back.

  Crippling panic would not do.

  Caia concentrated and changed back into human form, a shield automatically up and around her in order to confront Du Bois.

  He gazed, dumbstruck. “That’s some trick.”

  She glanced by him to Anders lifeless body. Two of them were dead.

  She narrowed her eyes in loathing at this man who had created this devastation. “I was going to say the same thing.”

  Du Bois grinned unapologetically. “Just a little something I picked up.”

  Caia nodded, filching through his mind with the trace. “You and your lover – Thierry – the Midnight who is at this second inflicting burns on a female lykan whilst my Alpha watches on helplessly… you did this together. You hired humans to experiment on kidnapped lykans. They came up with that concoction to transform them back to human so that you could hurt them. You killed the human scientists. I marvel at how well you hid it from Ethan. But then Ethan barely knew you were alive. When he disappeared it was the opportunity. But I’ve been watching you carefully, for weeks. How clever of you and Thierry to keep those thoughts so tightly locked. And me... I didn’t know to look, to kick down the door...”

  Pierre had paled considerably, he fisted a hand that seemed desperate to tremble. “How do you know all that? Who are you?”

  “The same way I knew where you all were this evening.” She felt her skin begin to tighten as the trace told her the fighting was getting more intense, the Midnights were triumphant, informing her that Michael and Marion’s wounds were getting worse, that Rose was bleeding out. Thierry was going to use the liquid on Lucien to change him too, to kill him. “Your spies outside of the MacLachlan’s homes are dead. Your guards are dead. Three of you here have been taken out.”

  A tube of water shot towards her with the force of a speeding train but she blasted it back with a flick of her wrist and it lost its form, de-solidifying and splashing on to the bed of the forest before it even touched her skin. Thierry was laughing as Lucien transformed; he was sure Rose was dying and he was just about to set Lucien on fire. Feeling the white heat, so familiar now, building through her body, she grabbed a hold of it, determined to control this force that was so powerful. Focusing her mind on Du Bois and the other Midnights’ locations, Caia pulled on the white heat and the energy she utilised to wield her water element, and tied them together in her mind’s eye.

  And with that, she let it out of her body.

  The energy constructed itself into cocoons of water, morphing its shape at her demand. She looked on as it wrapped around Du Bois’ head and chest, insisting it to do the same to the other Midnights, simultaneously. As Pierre began to fight it, Caia squeezed the cocoon and waited as the blood vessels in his eyes popped, his face turning purple with asphyxiation. It was the same for the others, and it seemed to take forever to draw to a conclusion. Holding tight to the four Midnights was taking its toll, the muscles in her body burning in agony, her own eyes streaming with water. All the while, she couldn’t stop thinking how she was actually killing people, actually making them cease to exist. The water streaming from her eyes turned salty with tears. But she held on, maintaining the cocoons, until one by one the Midnights disappeared from her trace… and Du Bois’ heartbeat slowed to a falter, puttered and then stopped.

  Caia let go and a sob burst out of her mouth. The deaths, the killing of this evening, pressed on her chest, crushing in their overwhelming weight. If only she had looked into Du Bois’ trace more carefully; if she had crept into his mind like she had done with Ethan and broken down his defences perhaps Anders would be alive, maybe even those humans Du Bois had killed. The guilt weighed on her, begging for relief.

  Thankfully, like a prayer being answered, her mind began to darken, and the last thing she saw was the ground rushing towards her.

  ***

  Nikolai trembled as he dialled Kirios’ number into his cell. It rang out twice and then he heard the strong voice of his partner.

  “So?”

  Nikolai smiled wryly at his friend’s charming manners. “My faerie returned; she watched everything from the trees.”

  “How did she go undetected by Caia?”

  “Caia was a little preoccupied.”

  “What happened?”

  The excitement bubbling in his blood threatened to burst into his speech, but he held on coolly, trying to maintain his dignified demeanour. “Well. It went well. Caia was able to kill, simultaneously, four magiks in four different locations in the woods. My faerie has never seen anything like it.”

  Kirios exhaled in obvious disbelief. “I’ve never heard anything like it.”

  “Hmm. Apparently, two of the Daylights were taken down, and then the others were in trouble so she had to kill all of the Midnights by herself.”

  “And her state?”

  He frowned at the next piece of information he imparted. “She was visibly upset by it and then she collapsed.”

  “Well, that’s not reassuring.”

  “Kirios, stay positive. This is good news. The girl is definitely what we need.”

  “She has weaknesses.”

  “Even gods have weaknesses, Kirios.”

  “Are you comparing her to a god?”

  “She’s the closest thing to it since the old times.”

  “We’ll see, won’t we.”

  Nikolai groaned, “Why are you always so pessimistic?”

  Kirios grumbled, “I’m not being pessimistic. I may even have some good news. There have been a few developments I’m not... sure of.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I’ll explain when next I see you.”

  “Fine.” Nikolai waved his comments off in irritation. “Just remember... now it’s all on you.”

  “I know. I’ll be waiting.”

  18 - Spark

  Light burned her eyelids into opening, her vision unfocused, her mouth and throat dry. She tried to move her legs and felt shards of pain ricochet throughout her body. It felt like she had been run over. Maybe more than once.

  “Caia?”

  “Lucien?”

  She blinked a few times and turned her head, seeing him standing before her, Marion by his side, both of them gazing down at her with worry etched in every molecule of their features.

  He lifted her hand into his and squeezed it. “Are you OK?”

  No. She was confused. The last thing she remembered was killing five people. Had that been a nightmare?

  “Where am I?”

  Lucien loomed closer, drawing her hand into an almost vice-like grip. “You’re in your room at the Centre.”

  “Was it a dream?”

  Sadness and fury seemed to riot across his face as he shook his head. “No.”

  Caia clenched her jaw, turning her head away, desperate to keep the tears locked up. A single one escaped anyway, spilling from the corner of her eye and down her cheek.

  “Caia,” he groaned, and she felt him catch the tear with his finger. “You did good, sweetheart.”

  She choked on that. Good! She had killed people, murdered them! It wasn’t like Ethan’s death; that had been unpremeditated, and he had been a monster who deserved to die. But other than Du Bois and Thierry, those Midnights were mixed up people, looking for direction, looking for a leader again. They weren’t truly wicked. And their deaths had been premeditated.

  Goddess, she felt like such a naive fool believing she could kill those people and be OK wi
th it... because it was the right thing to do. Hah.

  “Caia,” Marion was saying firmly, almost angrily, “I know it isn’t easy, but those magiks were going to massacre an entire pack of innocent lykans.”

  Aye, there’s the rub.

  Slowly, she turned to face them again. “I know. I just... I hadn’t expected...”

  Marion sighed and placed a comforting hand on her leg. “Taking a life is never easy. But this is a war, Caia, and we have to sacrifice a part of our soul to win it.”

  Lucien smiled gently at her. “I’ve been worried about you. You know you’ve been out for a whole day.”

  “A whole day?”

  He grinned now. “You’re going to be OK. Marita’s personal physician looked you over. Your body was just exhausted after what you did. Caia, what you did!” He shook his head in amazement and she watched as he and Marion exchanged awed and excited looks. “It was unbelievable. Taking out all of those Midnights in one fell swoop? You should see this place outside of these doors.”

  “Or inside,” Marion muttered wryly.

  “What?” Caia asked in confusion.

  “Take a look.”

  Slowly, with Lucien’s help, she eased up into a sitting position, and her eyes immediately widened at the sight before her in the room. Flowers upon flowers decorated every inch of it.

  “Get well flowers from your fans.” Marion shook her head laughingly.

  Uh oh.

  “Fans?”

  Lucien grunted. “Some of the others couldn’t keep quiet about what you did. The Centre is in an uproar over you. You’re like a damn rock star to these people.”

  She gulped. This was kind of what she wanted, right... no, needed. Still scary though.

  They both seemed to understand and threw her sympathetic looks. Marion shrugged. “Well, we knew your power could be limitless and turns out it just might be. This.” She gestured to the flowers. “Might be the price you’re going to have to pay for it.”

  Caia chuckled humourlessly. “And here I was thinking it was the bone weary exhaustion, loss of consciousness, and oh let’s not forget the whole losing a piece of my soul thing.”