“He’s probably telling the truth,” I said. “Pull the cage off Price. He can’t go outside without clothes and shoes.”
Leo and Jamie didn’t argue about accepting Dalton’s word. The cage drew back and shrank into a waist-high tube. Dalton handed Price the bundle of clothes, finally breaking the lock of Price’s stare on me. I just wish to hell I knew what he was thinking. Did he really believe I was me? Or was he just playing along for the moment?
Didn’t matter. Getting him out of here was the goal. I’d worry about the rest later.
While he dressed, Mel beckoned to me. She eyed my neck and brushed her hand over the side of my head. “Are you okay?”
Given that she read emotions, she knew I wasn’t. All the same, I nodded. “Totally fine.”
She smiled as if expecting that answer. She looked at Price. He’d pulled on the shirt and zipped the jumpsuit over it. FBI was printed on the back of it in yellow. The narrow confines of the tube made it impossible for him to get the shoes on. I wasn’t even sure they’d fit.
“He’s terrified,” Mel said. “And angry. Every time he looks at you, he’s swamped with helplessness and love mixed with doubt and hatred and that spikes both the terror and anger to new levels. He’s started to feel guilty as well and that’s pushing him right over the edge.”
“He doesn’t believe I’m me. He can’t yet.”
She nodded. “The guilt may mean he’s starting to change his mind.”
I’d thought the same thing. At least I’d hoped. “I’ve got to get him to my place where I can use my nulls to control the explosion of magic.”
She frowned. “Is that wise? You’ll be alone with him. If he decides to attack again, he could kill you.”
“He won’t,” I said, with more certainty than I felt. “He loves me. He’ll figure it out. Besides, I can’t let him go into full cascade here.”
“Ready?” Dalton asked before Mel could answer.
Price straightened and set his hands on the top of the tube to lever himself out. He hissed and yanked them back. Streaks of blood smeared his palms. The top held a knife edge.
“Shit, Jamie. What were you thinking? Let him out.”
My stepbrother didn’t look remotely apologetic. He folded his arms over his chest and stuck out his chin defiantly. “Fucker hurt you. He deserves what he gets.”
“He doesn’t even know I’m real. It’s not his fault.” I looked around for something to bandage his hands. “Is there a first-aid kit?”
“Here,” the dark woman said, pulling the yellow-and-red box off the wall in the outer room and bringing it to me. She cast a sidelong look at Price as she did.
She was older, probably in her late forties or early fifties. Her hair shined black with artful reddish highlights. Polished pink fingernails tipped elegant fingers. Her face was sharply drawn, and though she’d put on covering makeup, dark half-moons underscored her eyes. She was taller than me, probably about five foot nine, and was dressed in black wool slacks and a dark green sweater. Everything about her screamed sophistication and money. I had no idea who she was or why she was here. Something about her was familiar, but I couldn’t place it. Or maybe it was the intensity of her gaze that threw me. Like she could see inside me, like she was measuring me.
“Thanks,” I said, giving her a frowning nod before I went to help Price. The metal tube imprisoning him remained, though the top edge had now been rolled into a soft edge. I glared at an unrepentant Jamie and then set about wrapping Price’s hands. I itched to take him out of here, but he might not let me give him first aid once we were at my place. His hands needed tending now.
I carefully didn’t look into Price’s face as I ministered to him. I wasn’t sure I could handle it. I loved him so damned much, and he didn’t even know I was me. That hurt. And pissed me off. A totally unreasonable and juvenile part of me demanded that he should recognize me no matter what. That there should be some essential quality, some elemental, crucial connection that let us know each other anywhere. I rolled my eyes at myself. Oh please. We weren’t living in some sappy movie, and his failure to know me most definitely wasn’t his fault.
I opened the first-aid kit. Taylor started to come over to hold it for me, but Leo pushed her aside and grabbed the box. Apparently, he thought Price too dangerous to get close to. For her, at least. Taylor’s teeth gritted together loud enough for me to hear, but she stood back. Mel touched her arm, and they bent their heads together, talking quietly.
I pulled out what I thought I’d need and turned to examined Price’s hands. He held them fisted, and blood dripped onto the floor.
“Let me see,” I told him.
He uncurled his fingers, and I gasped.
“Fuck, Jamie. You cut him to the bone.”
My brother didn’t bother answering, which was probably smart. He wasn’t going to be apologetic, which meant I’d have to kick him in the balls. Silence kept us reasonably civilized and focused.
I kept swearing as I packed thick gauze pads across Price’s right hand and wrapped it tightly with a bandage, then repeated the process on the other. By the time I finished, blood was already soaking through the first bandage. All the while, I was aware of Price’s gaze drilling into the back of my head and the way he held himself still, hardly breathing. He never said a word, never flinched.
Finally, I stepped back. “That’s as good as it’s going to get until you can see Maya.” She was the best tinker I’d ever met. She’d healed me on more than one occasion. Wouldn’t she be surprised not to be treating me this time? I almost smiled.
“Here,” Dalton said, holding out his hand. He dropped a necklace into mine.
If I hadn’t been so happy to see the heal-all, I would have rolled my eyes at him. He seemed to carry an endless supply of them. I’d meant to invest in some for myself, but I hadn’t yet had a chance. I slid the chain over Price’s head and activated it. Instantly, he quivered as the wormy magic delved inside him.
“Time to go,” I said.
The tube surrounding Price melted away. Jamie wasn’t giving in so easily, though. Loops of steel circled Price’s wrists and pulled together, handcuffing him.
I growled. “Don’t be an ass. His hands are still practically hamburger. Let him go.”
“He’ll be healed up in a minute and we’re not going to take any chances.” This time it was Leo who replied. “He’s too dangerous.” He looked pointedly at my throat.
“This isn’t his fault,” I argued. “They’ve fucked with his head.”
“He’s not safe, either,” Leo declared. “Any more than a dog provoked to kill. I’m not going to let him hurt you again.” I opened my mouth, and he raised his hand to forestall me. “I’m not changing my mind, so get used to it.”
I looked at Taylor, Jamie, and Mel. All of them sported the same set expression. No support for me there. I didn’t know how I was going to cut the damned things off at home, but I’d figure something out.
“Change of plans for me,” I announced with an encouraging nod from Mel. “I’ve got to take Price out of here to my place.”
Before anyone could respond, the magic in the room swelled. Rainbow colors solidified. I could barely see. The trapped energies boiled. Panic roared through me. Don’t let Price lose it now! Not now, not with my family so close!
I whirled around, hoping I could find a way to calm him, or channel the eruption of power. As if.
He wasn’t looking at me. He stood still, his expression melting into confusion. I turned to see what had riveted his attention. The woman who’d handed me the first-aid kit. He stared at her like she was impossible. Not so much a ghost as the Wizard of Oz or the Loch Ness Monster.
I turned to look back at him. His shackled hands came up, reaching out. “Mom?”
Chapter 14
MOM?
I may have stopped breathing. I turned to look at the woman. Now I could see why she looked familiar. She and Price shared the same bone structure, the same high cheekbones, lips, raven hair, and straight brows.
“Are you really here?” Price asked, and there was a wealth of hope in his voice. He scowled. “Or is this a trick?”
“I’m here,” his mother confirmed, making no effort to close the distance between them. Her eyes had narrowed, and she looked anything but happy. Price read her coldness. His hands fell. He looked like he’d been kicked.
“The FBI brought you here, didn’t they?” He asked, his voice lifeless.
“They thought I could help,” she said with a little nod.
“Help them to break me.”
I could tell he wanted her to deny his words, to say she’d come to help him. She didn’t.
“I promised I’d help them however I could. They needed to see you for what you are so that you can finally be destroyed.”
His head tipped. “What am I, exactly?”
I reached out and gripped his arm as the magic around us seemed to spasm.
His mother’s face contorted with a mixture of powerful emotions, then smoothed back into a mask. “You are an abomination. A demon from the depths of hell. Satan’s own spawn.”
Each word was a bullet. Price flinched as they struck, his eyes widening. But his mother wasn’t done.
“I tried. Oh, the Lord above knows how much I tried, but there was no saving you and no stopping you. You needed to be destroyed. I knew it when I gave birth to you and every day after. I tried everything, but your father didn’t believe me. He said it was just your talent manifesting early, that I’d see how wrong I was, but I wasn’t wrong. You carry the very soul of the devil inside of you.”
I couldn’t help but stare. Was this bitch for real? Yes. Her eyes had lit with the fervor of her screed, and she meant every word.
“I tried everything, even taking you to an exorcism in South America, in one of the holiest places on earth. You destroyed it!” Her voice rose. “You slaughtered everyone. You’re evil and you need to be destroyed!”
She stabbed a finger at Price, her whole body shaking. He just stared. I had a bad feeling he was buying the crap she was selling. Soaking it in like a dry sponge. The magic around us flickered wildly.
“What a fucking bitch you are,” Taylor said, coming to stand in front of Price as if to protect him. “With a mother like you, I’m surprised he isn’t some sort of demon, which he’s not. You are certainly an evil witch.”
“Do you think it easy to kill your own child?” Oriana Price demanded. She looked at Jamie. “You see how dangerous he is. That’s why you tried to cut off his hands. That’s why you bound him. You know what I say is true.”
Before Jamie could respond, Price spoke. “She’s right,” he rasped. “I killed so many.” He closed his eyes, his face white as milk.
He was remembering that long-ago trip to Belize. I was sure he was replaying the long-forgotten memory in his head. But he’d been three years old, dragged to the back end of nowhere, in order to have some religious fanatics exorcise his God-given talent. What had they done to that terrified boy? I couldn’t imagine, but it had sent him into such a frenzy of fear and horror that he’d unleashed disaster just to protect himself.
“He protected you. Otherwise you wouldn’t have survived,” I said furiously, turning on his mother. “Yet you call him evil. You know what evil really is? It’s a mother who takes her toddler son from his home and family, gives him to strangers, and encourages them to inflict who knows what kind of horrors on him. Then you have the gall to show up here thirty years later to do it all over again. From where I stand, you’re the only one in this room who has the track record to claim the title of Spawn of Satan, so you can just go to right back to hell where you come from,” I said.
I wondered if Touray or his father knew that she’d been behind Price’s kidnapping way back when. I doubted it. I didn’t know their father, but I couldn’t imagine Touray wouldn’t have taken some revenge for Price’s suffering.
I turned to face Price. “Forget her. She’s batshit crazy. You’re one of the best men I’ve ever met.”
Price looked past me at his mother. His eyes widened, and he grabbed me and yanked me toward him as he leaped past Jamie and Taylor, shouting. In the same moment, gunshots blasted. Time slowed. I straightened and whirled in time to see Price stagger back. All the magic that had hung so thick in the air exploded. The last thing I saw as I catapulted through the air were his eyes. They’d gone totally white. I curled my arms over my head to protect it and braced to hit the wall or the ceiling or the floor.
Only I didn’t hit. I settled down as if on a pillow. Time sped up again. The floor rippled and shook. Walls flattened. I twisted to stand up, but something held me down. Debris flew through the air, and I flinched from it. It bounced away without touching me. Chunks of masonry, dust, chairs, and tables from the outer room. None of it landed on me. Again I struggled to get up. I couldn’t. It was like I was in a cocoon. I couldn’t twitch a finger.
Magic tumbled around me in frothing waves. Their strength built higher. A sound started low. It grumbled and snarled and turned into a roar until it wrapped me like a massive tornado. All around me the air whirled. Debris came at me and flew past, leaving me unhurt. Soon a mound built over me. Blind panic hit when the darkness closed and I could no longer see.
I lost it. I couldn’t think, couldn’t calm down. Later I would remember I could have just dropped into the spirit dimension and escaped that way, but my claustrophobia had me in its teeth and I couldn’t think of anything else.
I must have passed out eventually. Maybe I hyperventilated. Or maybe I just went catatonic. When I noticed myself again, I was in a state of total immobile hysteria. My heart raced, my chest ached with jagged cramps. I was so high on adrenaline, my heart felt like it was about to blow. Panic-sweat soaked my clothes all the way through. If I’d had the room, I could have made sweat angels on the ground. As it was, I lay there, feeling the terror mounting higher as I returned to awareness. It should have plateaued or my body should have gotten bored with feeling all that fear and not having anything to do with it. It didn’t. I was on overload and heading for meltdown. Tremors shook me like a baby’s rattle. A thin layer of nothing held a mound of crushing death above me. When would it give? When would it fall on me and I’d be buried alive?
What had happened?
The question was stupid. Price had happened. And his mother. Oh God! She’d shot him. I hadn’t seen where the bullet hit. Fear for him roared up inside me. Maybe she’d missed. I remembered the way he’d jerked back. No, the bitch had been less than twelve feet away from him. Even Elmer Fudd couldn’t miss at that range.
I had to get out of here. I lay facedown, with my head twisted to the right, my hands curved up toward my face. I pushed up with all my might. Nothing. Why I thought I’d be able to get out now better than before, I had no idea. Logic wasn’t actually something I was using at the moment. I pressed my head into the cold cement floor and closed my eyes. As fear rose up over me again, I forced myself to count breaths inside and then out, and I didn’t let myself think of anything else. Slowly, I found myself relaxing. If you could call ratcheting down from overload to just completely terrified. I kept breathing. It’s not like I was going anywhere.
That’s when I remembered I could travel through the trace dimension. Oh, for fuck’s sake. I was a total idiot. Instantly, I opened myself up to it and tried to fall inside.
Nothing happened. I didn’t know if the cocoon was stopping me or my immobility. Okay, then. How did I get into the trace dimension if I couldn’t actually move? I took stock. My nulls. I had one tattooed on my belly and one on my scalp. I had used them both recently and hadn’t fully recharged them. Even at ful
l strength, I didn’t think they could take down the magic-formed cocoon or the magic storm raging around me. The rest I’d brought with me were in my pack. Fat lot of good they did me there. That left just the spirit world. Or waiting. Since the last one seemed more likely to end in death than not, I decided I had better make option one work for me.
The nice thing about having your mind occupied with a goal is that fear stops being quite so all encompassing. It wasn’t gone, but at least I was back in my head’s driver’s seat for the moment.
After contemplating a few minutes, I decided my only option was to open the door on the spirit world inside myself and travel through the spirit world that way. Easy peasy. And for my next trick, I’d fly to Mars and back, and then jump a tornado to Munchkinland.
The trouble was, I didn’t know if what I wanted to do was even possible, much less how to do it. I took a breath and let it out and focused my attention on the problem. I could open myself to the trace, which meant I was halfway to getting into the spirit world. I could summon my magic. Could I use it to pull myself into the trace dimension? To open up a door?
I’d never done anything like that before. Usually I channeled my magic into an object, most often creating nulls. I didn’t have a lot of other things I could make. Other times I was able to pull magic from a spell, unwinding the power, then channeling it into a null. I couldn’t throw magic the way movie wizards and witches did. I relied on touch to move the magic from me to an object. That, of course, was the problem. I couldn’t move, and I was cocooned inside hard air, or so it seemed. My trace sight told me it was made of magic. The optimist in me held on to the hope that the cocoon was proof some part of Price knew me, that I could reach him.
I chewed my lips and tasted dust. I expect I was covered with it from head to toe. Now that I thought of it, it itched at my eyes and tickled my nose. I sneezed, then twice more in quick succession. This whole situation was turning torturous. Now something felt like it was crawling up my back. An ant maybe. I pushed myself up against the cocoon and wriggled. The crawling sensation went away. For now.
Whisper of Shadows (The Diamond City Magic Novels) Page 18
