by Rae Else
‘Come here,’ said the male graeae.
El thought he was talking to her. She realised the warmth on her forehead was his hand – the touch of his fingers. She’d closed her eyes. She willed herself to open them but her eyelids were too heavy. She felt far away like she was falling into water, deeper and deeper. Softer skin touched her head.
‘Did you see it?’ he asked. ‘Well I did, Katia. She has it.’ His voice shook. ‘The vial, quickly.’
She heard the grind of metal nearby.
‘What?’ Louisa said. ‘She’s a traitor.’
El felt an arm prop her up and almost choked as a thick, metallic liquid entered her mouth. Its initial bitterness seemed to melt away and it slipped down her throat like syrup. She felt the coldness ebbing and the leaden weight that had settled in her lighten. She was rising.
‘No, all of it,’ the male graeae said.
El felt her mouth fill with more of the thick liquid and swallowed it. She coughed, but the liquid’s flow didn’t cease and she drank it down. Finally she was laid down again.
Her eyes snapped open and she realised she could move. With trepidation, she lifted her right arm and drew her hand up, examining her wrist. She’d felt and seen the deep incision, but there was nothing there. Her eyes ran over the blue tracery of veins in her wrist, knowing that they had been severed, that she’d lost so much blood. But now, there wasn’t even a scratch. Her other wrist was the same, not even a scar.
She still felt lightheaded but tentatively sat up. In the centre of the room the Triad were talking in hushed tones. El’s eyes skirted Louisa, who stood apart, her face creased as she listened.
‘Bring Anna,’ the umber-haired graeae said.
The blood pounded in El’s temples and she lay down again, trying to hold onto consciousness.
- Chapter Thirteen -
An Eye and a Tooth
El tried to focus on Louisa’s movements and to listen out for Anna’s voice, but straining her senses brought her close to blacking out. Whilst lying still and attempting to clear her head, the umber-haired graeae came over and took hold of her hand. At first El thought that she was checking her pulse. However, this graeae had just tried to kill her, along with her freaky brother and sister; it was unlikely that she was checking her vitals. El shuddered when the colour drained from the arete’s eyes, becoming milky as though cataracts were forming across them. She wondered what the graeae was seeing.
The woman didn’t seem to regard her at all and, losing interest, walked away. El tried to prepare herself for what might be about to happen. Was it possible that the other rebels would realise Anna had been captured? Would Dan or anyone else come? Perhaps there was still a way out of this; she should conserve her energy for the fight ahead. She imagined Dan striding through the door, his gaze dark and powerful, ready to char Louisa to a crisp. Anna had power too. El imagined her sending a primeval flood through the room. She on the other hand, was useless – defenceless and helpless – not just because of the blood loss.
El wished that she could conjure her element. She remembered the beautiful, curvy girl, Eva, who could summon lashings of flame; the delicate girl and the simple petals of fire that she’d formed. El wouldn’t be able to so much as singe the eyebrows off the Triad.
What they had said as she’d been hovering on the edge of consciousness played through her mind. She has it. What had they seen? El ran her hands up and down her arms as if cold, checking her wrists and wondering what they’d given her to close her wounds. She felt that she must have imagined them healing and kept expecting her fingers to come away sticky and wet.
She caught the sound of footsteps and bolted upright. The blood pounded in her temples. She knew she was free to jump up but stopped as Anna came into the room. Her mother was blindfolded and her hands bound in front of her. They were taking precautions against her power. Anna must have sensed her. Beneath the blindfold, her face was leached of colour.
Despite her dizziness, El lurched off the slab, stumbling the few metres across the room to her.
‘El,’ Anna said. El clung to her. Despite her bound arms, Anna hugged her close, draping them over her head.
There was so much El wanted to say – that she was sorry for running away, sorry for not listening and most of all, sorry for blowing her cover.
‘Are you okay, Mum?’ El asked.
She felt warmed by Anna’s smile but hardened her expression – she couldn’t afford to come apart just now. She had to get them out of here and the mess that she’d landed them in.
‘How touching,’ Louisa said from the other side of the room. ‘Shall we get the whole family together?’ She retrieved a tablet from the platform and everyone listened to the tinny ring tone coming from the gadget.
‘Put Helena on,’ Louisa said to whoever answered the call. She held the screen out to face them so that they could all, barring Anna, see the display.
El made out the low-lit interior of a car and, in the gloom, her grandma’s taut face and dark lenses. The light caught the silvery streaks in her hair and the white blouse she wore was luminous.
‘Grandma,’ El said.
Helena winced.
‘You can’t see, sister,’ Louisa said, ‘but I’m sure you heard that we have your granddaughter here. Your daughter too.’
Helena’s face paled. Her bronze complexion seemed rubbery and coarse. Her grandma clearly recognised Louisa’s voice and El was haunted by what she’d been told in the cell.
‘Despite the crimes she has committed against the Order, Helena,’ said the male graeae, ‘your granddaughter has been pardoned. We have foreseen that she will be blessed, as you were, in possessing the full power.’
El stared at her grandma on the screen, watching the shock sweep across her face, mirroring her own.
‘We have foreseen that El will wield it in the final arena of the London Olympia,’ the male graeae said. He observed El’s confusion. ‘The ability to kill with a single look.’
She stared at the man, whose appearance now looked entirely normal: an ordinary man, who she would have guessed to be about thirty. Perhaps it wasn’t so simple though. She should stop trying to guess an arete’s age, especially a graeae. She couldn’t take anything for granted.
El shook her head, but as she tried to deny his words the stories about Perseus that her grandma had told her, flooded her mind. Stories that had been closer to home than her grandma had ever admitted. She shuddered. This wasn’t true. She didn’t care what Louisa or the Triad said. She didn’t have that power and neither had her grandma.
‘I’m sorry I never told you,’ Helena said. ‘It’s true, and if Janos has foreseen it, then you have it too.’ Her face softened. ‘Understand, I didn’t want this life for you … that’s why I hid–’
‘Power belongs to the Order,’ said one of the female graeae, her voice ethereal. ‘Such concealment is traitorous–’
‘Julia,’ Janos said, holding up his hand for silence. ‘You know Helena’s life has already been awarded to Louisa.’
His voice was languid as though he was talking about a trivial matter. El now realised this was why Louisa had called Helena. She was going to make El watch her grandma’s execution. El drew herself up. She forced the words out, knowing she was the only one with any bargaining power.
‘No,’ El said. ‘If you hurt either of them I’ll never do anything for you. I won’t go to the Olympia. I’ll never use the full power.’
Louisa laughed. ‘You’ve infected this one with your stubbornness too, Helena.’
El wished there was something she could do. Supposedly she had the full power. How she’d like to watch Louisa, with her already steely look, harden beneath her gaze. She tried to imagine her turning to stone, her bronzed skin and hair fading to grey and crumbling. She pictured the Triad evaporating into dust too.
‘We do not take kindly to threats,’ they said, the Triad’s voices eerily in unison.
El blinked
. They were growing hazy again. She wondered what she could do. Why were they moving outside the present? The Triad’s forms were so blurred that they looked like one entity: a three-headed monster that shivered and shook.
‘It’s time,’ they said. ‘Now, Louisa.’
‘Here’s your first lesson,’ Louisa hissed. ‘Serve or die.’
The scream of surprise was torn from El as she was hurled back by an invisible force. Her head erupted with pain as it impacted with the wall behind. It wasn’t that that twisted her stomach though but the sickening crunch like the snap of a tree’s bough in a silent forest.
El slipped down the wall to the floor but shot up to a sitting position. Her lip quivered, her hands shook and her senses flew back to where she’d just stood.
‘Anna! Anna!’ Helena shouted.
Her grandma didn’t need to see to understand what had happened. Despite staring into a never-ending void, she knew: she’d heard the crunching of bone and the tear of muscle. Anna lay in front of Louisa and the Triad, her head and neck at an impossible angle to the rest of her body. The blindfold had slipped down to her neck; her eyes, although uncovered, were dull and empty. No cold rose to mark El’s cheek.
Hot tears ran down El’s face as her heart thrummed. She lurched back, scuttling on her hands and feet, but her eyes couldn’t detach themselves from her mum. Both female graeae strode towards El, their forms and features stabilising. They pulled her up.
Louisa stood over Anna, wearing a self-satisfied smirk. El wished she could rip it from her face. She narrowed her eyes at Janos; she hated him. She hated all of them.
‘Let this serve as a lesson in the virtue of obedience,’ Janos said. ‘Tonight you’ll be transported to the London Olympia. We expect to see nothing but compliance in your training and in combat within the arenas. Disappoint us, and we will be forced to make our point again.’
Janos looked from El to the screen that Louisa still held in her hands. They had her grandma. El didn’t know where they were taking her but they had her. She blinked back the tears as she stared at Helena’s pale face.
El nodded. She would do whatever they wanted. The two female graeae steered her away. She fought to stay with her mum’s body; lifeless as it was, she wouldn’t leave her. She struggled against their grip, but their bodies were powerful and solid, despite how insubstantial they had been a moment ago. They dragged El out into the corridor.
‘No!’ El screamed. ‘No, Mum … Mum!’
Although El dragged her feet, she was soon hauled out onto the steps of the catacombs. The two women heaved her out and even more powerful arms gripped her. El looked up and saw a line of besuited men – many different types of arete – their gazes producing cold and heat, others weighing her down and quickening her breath all at once. Order members: here to serve and protect the Triad.
‘Take her to the car. Escort her to the Olympia,’ the umber-haired graeae, Julia said, pointing at the men nearest El. ‘The rest of you stay. We’re almost ready.’
El stumbled along between two thickset arete guards. Her strength was failing. It was just as well they had such a strong hold on her or she’d likely be on the ground. She didn’t know if it was the loss of blood or shock setting in but her limbs seemed to be seizing up. She blinked in surprise as the iron serpents, coiling around the burning gas lamps appeared again. She looked at them as if recalling them from long ago, like she’d seen them in a dream, one only half-remembered.
She saw a couple of passers-by look her way, their eyes suspicious, but they soon skirted around her and the group of men as though they hadn’t registered their presence. El found herself hoping that the car wasn’t far. Her head was pounding again and her stomach somersaulting. She thought she might throw up.
They were approaching a limo, parked a few metres away. El looked across the street. A young woman stood on the opposite side of the road, tucking her hair behind her ear as she looked down at her phone. The woman’s green eyes swept up, and found El.
El’s face drained of colour. It couldn’t be. Ingrid? What was she doing here? El’s throat went dry and her senses sharpened. Ingrid’s eyebrows shot up, confusion flitting across her face. No, no, El begged. Don’t come over.
‘El? El!’ Ingrid shouted from across the road. The two arete at the front stopped, bringing the two who were gripping her to a halt.
One of the arete shrugged. ‘Andreko.’
Their pace quickened as they closed the gap to the car. One of them opened a rear door.
Something rent the air behind them. The piercing sound made El, as well as the men restraining her, duck instinctively. Crouching, they all looked back. The glass of one of the lamps had shattered. The man nearest the car stood up and looked around. The flame in the lamp blazed into a fiery ball and shot towards him. He ducked and rolled out of the way, but the fire leapt across the leather seats of the car within. El backed away from the furious heat, but an arete guard caught hold of her and hauled her up. The guards were both restraining her and shielding her as they edged back the way they’d come.
One of the men drew a water bottle from his jacket, unscrewed the lid and looked towards the car. A fall of water issued from the plastic container as if it was a hose and soon doused the fire.
‘Fall back,’ another guard said.
They edged their way back along the street in the direction of the catacombs. El’s gaze flew to the other side of the street, wondering what had happened to her friend. Her heart pounded, worried that the fire had reached her. As her eyes landed on the young woman crouched behind a car, El frowned. Ingrid was motionless. Was she in shock? But El spied another movement beside her friend, behind the parked car. She fleetingly caught sight of dark hair and broad features. Dan was here too.
She clenched her jaw. She had to get away from these arete. Dan wouldn’t be able to target them with her among them. She drew her elbow forward and directed it into the gut of the man behind her. As another arete made to grab her, she kicked him in the leg and bolted away from the group.
‘The Triad’s inside,’ a man shouted from close by.
A colossal explosion erupted behind her. El dropped to the floor and looked back from where she was balled up. A huge cloud of billowing smoke enveloped the street. She got to her feet and covered her mouth, her eyes stinging as she tried to see through the haze. A figure in black reared up before her and a sharp pain shot through her leg. She went down hard, her head thudding against the pavement. The taste of smoke was heavy in her mouth and, with a last surge of pain in her leg, the fog closed in around her, thickening and blotting out everything.
- Chapter Fourteen -
Untethered
Through fluttering eyelids, El’s vision adjusted to the dim light. Steel cupboards gleamed and the sheen of black marble countertops met her. The synthetic smell of disinfectant permeated the space. As she opened her eyes she tried to pretend it was morning and that she was home, but the self-deception failed when consciousness fully returned. The aching in her limbs and the pain in her leg thrust itself upon her, pressing into her an awareness of the hospital bed in which she lay. A heart monitor’s bleep intruded. She was in Alex’s lab.
Pain, rawer than physical, flashed through her. She looked to her right. Dan was in a chair next to her, his dark eyes brushed her face.
‘She’s awake,’ he called.
El lifted her head from the pillow. Alex rushed in from one of the adjacent rooms. He was dishevelled: his shirt creased and unbuttoned at the neck, hair tussled and face strained. His eyes were wild, desperate. For a second, El thought his worry was for her, but she saw the question in his look. He had been waiting to hear from her what his heart already knew.
‘She’s…’ El choked.
Alex’s expression crumpled. His breath was ragged as he struggled to control his emotion.
Tears pooled in El’s eyes. ‘I’m sorry.’
Alex nodded, his chest heaving. He went
to the lift and disappeared.
El collapsed back, the tears rolling down her cheeks silently. She thought Dan was leaving too but his footsteps moved into the next room. Sobs racked her body. She heard the familiar clinking of mugs and tried to get a grip, slowly breathing in and out. In and out.
The aroma of black tea hit her. She sat up. Through the glass wall she could see Dan in the partitioned kitchen. He had his back to her, busying himself at the countertop at the far side of the room. But, he wasn’t alone. Ingrid was sat at the table.
When Dan came back into the room with mugs, his eyes followed El’s gaze.
‘Damn,’ he said. ‘I forgot – here.’ He set the mugs on the counter. ‘I’ll handle it.’
El frowned. The beeping of the monitor quickened. ‘What’s she doing here?’
‘It wasn’t exactly safe to leave her where she was.’
El wrenched off the armband and electrodes attached to her. She threw the covers from her. ‘Don’t. Wait.’
She stumbled from the bed but as she put weight on her right leg, hot pain erupted through her calf muscles and into her thigh. She would have been on the floor if Dan hadn’t caught her. She flushed as she realised she was wearing a hospital gown, its back open. There was an IV drip still attached to her arm; on wheels, it moved with her. Dan manoeuvred around it as he lifted her and set her back on the bed.
‘I’ll bring her through,’ he said, a scowl on his face. ‘You’ve lost a lot of blood, don’t move.’
El frowned. ‘How did you know?’
Dan cast his eyes to the ground. ‘Your leg. You got stabbed.’
She remembered the sting she’d felt in her leg before passing out. Her leg was bandaged and she looked at the tube trailing from the IV to her arm. Alex must have stitched her up. The drip must contain pain medication.
When Ingrid walked through, she took a seat in the chair by the bedside and stared into space.
‘What did you do?’ El said, upset by the emptiness that she’d never wanted to see on her friend’s face.
