Darkening Chaos: Book Three of The Destroyer Trilogy

by DelSheree Gladden

  “Let me, please,” he asks.

  I nod sadly, ignoring Milo’s accusing stare, and move to help Kayla up instead. Braden’s arms slip under Hammond’s body and heft his large frame with more struggling than it would have taken me. Milo watches without speaking. I will not let him use this against Braden. This wasn’t Braden’s fault, and I’ll defend him to the end. Maybe Milo realizes that. Finally, he looks away and starts leading everyone out of this death house. More than a few tears join the footfalls as we reach the first floor.

  “Whoa, is that guy dead?”

  I nearly drop Kayla in shock. “Jen? What are you doing here?”

  “We found her sneaking around the perimeter,” one of the men guarding her says. He holds up a camera and cell phone. “Caught her with these.”

  Of course they did. “How did you even know where we were?”

  She tries to shrug off the two guys holding her. Their hands clamp down on her arms even tighter, making her wince. “How do you think I found you, Libby? I followed you. I knew you were planning something. Who is that guy?” she asks, pointing to Drake.

  “Nobody say a word to her, and keep your thoughts guarded,” I command. Not that anyone looked like they were going to give anything away, but just in case. The problem is, even guarding your thoughts can’t block her completely. I’m sure my mom has been teaching her all kinds of ways to get information. My resigned sigh is more for how tired I already feel than for Jen. I hand Kayla off to the nearest person and approach my former best friend. Her eyes widen in fear and anticipation. Well, here’s what she gets for her efforts.

  My elbow cracks against her skull and her eyes roll back in her head. I look up at her guards and say, “Tie her up, blindfold her, and keep yourselves shielded. She’s a Concealer. If you have to, knock her out again. Just don’t let her get any more information than she already has. I’ll deal with her later.”

  They nod and haul her outside. With the disaster I was waiting for already met, and another near one temporarily averted, the escape goes through without a problem. None of the guards wake back up, and none of the Seekers made it through the battle upstairs alive. We all make it back to the cars and carry our friend, and our enemy, back to the training house in silence.

  There are only a few more members of our group waiting for us there, but our arrival sets off a flurry of activity, mostly due to Hammond’s body being brought in. I dismiss most of the strike team to help Kayla with arrangements for Hammond. An unconscious Jen is taken away to a spare bedroom to sleep off the massive headache I’ve given her. Only Braden, Lance, Milo, and Hope follow me and my prisoner down to the basement already prepared for him.

  Milo and Hope are more than happy to get him strapped into the chair that has been secured to the floor in the center of the room. Lance and Braden aren’t so quick to leave me alone, not after what they heard me threaten to do. Braden is the first to speak.

  “Libby, you’re not really going to do the things you said you would, are you?”

  “Why? Don’t you think he deserves it?” I ask.

  Braden scoffs, his expression dark. “He deserves to burn in Hell for eternity.”

  “Then why are you concerned about him?”

  “We’re not concerned about him,” Lance says. “We’re concerned about you, about what torturing him will do to you.”

  “You’re angry now, but later on, once you’ve had time to calm down, you may feel differently. You’re not a vindictive person. Don’t make it pleasant for him, by any means, but think about it before you do anything worse.”

  I look at them both with a calm expression and say, “I won’t let these monsters take any more of my friends. I’ll do whatever I have to do to get the information I need.”

  Chapter 23

  Wreckage

  When they resist, it’s always harder. Drake has no Concealment or Perception of his own to battle mine, but he doesn’t need them to fight me. All he needs is steel determination, directing his thoughts to pointless topics, burying what I want to know. Both of the talents I’m using plunge into his memories with razor sharpness and purge everything I can find. Childhood memories that mean nothing to me, banal remembrances of meals or conversations, he keeps throwing them at me in an attempt to hide what I really want. Keeping my temper reigned in while I sift through everything isn’t easy. I’m about two seconds away from slapping the teeth right out of his jaw.

  I slice into another memory and shred its contents. Nothing. Another dozen memories are exactly the same. My fingernails are digging into his skin as I try to control my desire to hurt him more than I already am. The pain of my nails is nothing compared to the agony I’m putting him through by trampling around in his mind. Every memory invaded sends a spike of fire through his body, each one I burst and toss away, a spasm, as if I’ve torn away a piece of his flesh. I know how much it hurts to have your talents stolen, from both sides of the ritual, and I’d do it if I thought it would help me and not sap me of my remaining strength.

  The slight pressure of someone’s hand on my shoulder barely registers with my senses. Only when it runs soothingly up to my neck do I recognize Braden’s touch and pull my talents back in. Drake sags in relief. I have to force myself to turn away from him. I can’t stand seeing anything close to a good feeling on his face. I don’t quite get him out of my field of vision. Braden brings me the rest of the way.

  “Hey, take a break for a minute. You’re going to break yourself at this rate,” Braden says. His hands try to slip around me, but I push them away.

  “No, I can’t give him a break. He’ll think he’s winning if I let up.” I can’t give him even a second of satisfaction.

  Braden shakes his head and says, “Milo’s got it, just stop for a few minutes. You look like you’re about to drop. I sent Lance up to get you a drink and something to eat.”

  I’ve spread around so much power and emotional energy tonight. I know I’m pushing my limits, but I don’t want to stop. I’m afraid of stopping. Letting Drake get the upper hand is out of the question. Determined to get back to work, I reach up to push Braden’s hand away. The tremor running through my arm makes me stop.

  “Take a break,” Braden says firmly. “The last thing you want is a repeat of what happened after you broke your block. You still react to the cold even now, almost a year later, and you couldn’t go back into the spirit world for weeks after that. Do you really want to be unable to reach your talents for weeks, or longer? You need to rest.”

  “Fine,” I say glumly. The idea of trying to keep myself alive without talents terrifies me enough to give in. Once I resign myself to stopping and let my power drift away, I realize just how hungry I am. A few minutes later when Lance steps back into the room, I grab the food and soda from him and don’t even notice someone is with him until I’m nearly finished with my sandwich. Celia is staring at her brother and how Drake is bucking against the chair because of whatever Milo’s doing to him. I worry for a moment that he might be going too far. I need Drake alive long enough to give me the information I want. I need to deal with Celia before I dive back in.

  “Celia, what are you doing down here?” I ask, glaring at Lance for letting her see this.

  “I … I wanted to know how things were going,” she says. She has to peel her eyes away from Milo. When she does, she focuses them intently on me, trying not to let them go back. “Have you gotten anything yet?”

  “Not yet. He’s strong. He keeps filling his mind with memories I don’t care about, making me push through them first. It’s wearing me out.”

  Celia’s face scrunches up, but I’m not sure why. Not until she speaks. “Why don’t you just hypnotize him? That’s what my mom does when she has a really difficult patient.”

  “Hypnotize him? Celia, hypnotism is just a parlor trick. I don’t even know how to do it,” I say. I look to Braden for an explanation. Maybe the Guardians have used this technique before? He shrugs.

  “No, I’m not t
alking about what party magicians do, that’s just a silly trick. I’m talking about using your Spiritualism to put his conscious mind into stasis while you look through his subconscious. He’s not completely asleep, but he’s not able to interfere with what you’re doing for a while, either,” she explains. “Psychiatrists use it for people who’ve been through really bad traumas they don’t want to remember, like being a victim of a crime. When you hypnotize them, you can see what they remember and help them figure out what happened. It’s pretty invasive and painful so they only use it in extreme cases, but I’m going to take a shot in the dark and say you’re not too concerned about hurting Drake at this point.”

  Her eyes slide back to Milo. I can see her jaw tighten, but I can’t really say anything to her to make her feel better about it. We have to get the information. His pain doesn’t matter to me. Hammond’s pain, the horrible agony he went through those last few minutes of his life, that’s the pain I care about, the pain I am determined to stop. Drake could erupt in spontaneous flames right this second and I wouldn’t try to put him out, well, not if I had the information I needed.

  “Celia, you really think this will work?” I ask. She nods. “How do I do it?”

  She frowns as she thinks. “I’m not that good with Spiritualism yet, and I’ve never tried this, but my mom explained it once. If I can’t get it right we can call her. She said you have to isolate all the conscious spirit, like thought, controlled movement, desires, emotions, and things like that. You separate them from the unconscious spirit, the part that usually goes to the spirit world, and wrap them up in a bundle of spiritual energy and push it away from the body. She said it’s like when you try to manipulate someone, only more forceful. Does that make sense?”

  I have to think about that. Spiritualism is by far my weakest talent, not by power, just by how well I can use it. What abilities I have developed with it are mainly connected with the spirit world, too. I hate the idea of manipulating people and haven’t spent a whole lot of time perfecting it. Thinking of the process takes me a minute. To manipulate someone you have to touch the part of their spirit that you want to change. Once you’ve located it, you have to use that center of influence to guide the person toward the choice you think they should make. It’s what Drake did to Braden tonight. He found the part of Braden’s spirit that hates him and pulled and stretched it until it threatened to consume him.

  This part of Spiritualism is closely related to Perception, but with Perception you can only sense the emotions themselves, not feel or doing anything to their origin, because thoughts and emotions have too deep of roots and reasons that stem from your spirit that only another spirit can access them. I think I understand what Celia means, though. Rather than simply nudging a spirit in a direction, I have to capture the origin of his conscious mind entirely and push it far enough away from the rest of the spirit that the two sections can’t interact. The conscious mind will reel itself back in eventually, but not right away. If it works, it will give me the time I need.

  “Celia,” I say, “have I ever told you how brilliant you are?”

  She forgets the scene behind her and flashes me her usual electric smile. This is the second time her amazing wit has set me on the right path. Redoing Milo’s Inquest was her idea, and set us up for discovering a big chunk of the truth we’d been missing. Time to uncover the rest. I down the rest of my sandwich and hand the empty Dr. Pepper can back to Braden feeling a million times better.

  “You sure you’re ready?” he asks.

  I kiss him with enthusiasm to spare and nod.

  His lips brush against mine one more time, lingering next to my skin as he says, “All right, then. Be careful, please.”

  “Are you sure? You didn’t seem to mind having to warm me back up last time,” I say so only he can hear me. He just smirks and pushes me away, back toward Drake. My playfulness subsides immediately.

  I motion for Milo to move away. He backs off and lets his power fall away from Drake, who shudders and sinks into his chair with his eyes still closed. I give him a moment to think that maybe we’ve given up. When he looks convinced that his torment is over, I stalk over to him and settle my hands on either side of the chair he’s sitting in. My mouth moves right next to his ear.

  “I hope you enjoyed your little break, Drake, but we’re only getting started. Now is when it really starts to hurt,” I say. His eyes snap open to glare at me. Behind the anger is the fear that’s growing stronger by the minute. He’s bending, if not breaking. I just have to hope he goes before I do. This is going to work. It has to.

  I thrust my Spiritualism back into his body and start rounding everything up. He fights when I snatch his emotions—mainly fear—and go after his desire to wrap his hands around my neck. His awareness of his body’s aches and injuries go next. I’d pass them by if I could, but they’re a link I can’t leave behind. All of the sensory information his body is giving him gets tangled up with the rest of it, leaving only his conscious thoughts. His spirit bucks against me, trying desperately to throw me out of him. I sink myself in even deeper and hold on through his thrashing and yelling. The second his fight starts to fade, I send my spirit in and swallow him up. Satisfaction so deep it thrums inside of me doubles when I finally fling his conscious spirit away from his body.

  My body shudders with the effort, and I find myself leaning heavily against the chair. It takes a few precious seconds before I can push myself back. Braden is hovering nearby, his worry a vague pressure against my mind. I want to let him pull me away so I can rest. I think he was more right than he knew about how close I am to my limit. My Naturalism and Strength are struggling to keep up with the demands I’m putting on my body. Rest has to wait. I’m not done with Drake, yet.

  Not wanting to waste any more time, I get a firm grip on my Perception and dive right in.

  Finding what I need is a million times easier this way. It’s like I’m floating through a storm of bubbles. The unprotected memories drift by like clouds, while the dozens of secrets and promises bounce through the air like a child’s toy. It’s stunning, beautiful in its own way, except that I know the bubbles are only hiding the evil that fills this man. There are so many. Dozens, maybe hundreds, are promises made to keep secret his terrible acts. I shudder in the face of so many unspeakable deeds. More than a small part of me doesn’t want to find out what they’re hiding, but I force myself to push into the nearest one.

  Drake’s semiconscious body jerks as I stab his promises one by one. I make quick work of scanning each one and moving on to the next. Some are harmless, promises made to a friend or lover in the earlier years after his Inquest, before he was poisoned by the Guardians. More often than anyone else, the promises are made to a single young woman, Audrey. He reacts the most when I touch on those memories. It’s hard to see him kissing her and promising to love her forever knowing what he is now. I can’t believe he was ever good or kind, but anyone can change under the right pressures.

  I learn that Drake was behind a particularly vicious attack on President Howe recently, an attempt to steal his power and title. Only careful stepping got Drake out alive and cloaked in false innocence. As the memories grow more recent, the darker they become. I get out of each one as quickly as I can.

  I’m not sure if it’s been minutes or hours by the time I reach what I want. I’m almost too exhausted to even recognize it. Only that strangely empty grey room catches my attention enough to perk me up. It’s the same room Braden was taken to when he was initiated as a full Guardian. This is where he learned about Idris’s prophecy, the one that I didn’t get all of. I watch in fascination as Drake enters the room looking significantly younger than he does now. He sits down at the desk and an older man approaches him. Neither one speaks. The older man simply lays down a new Guardian Blade, flipping it over to show a second emblem on the other side. The typical signs for Speed and Strength bow in submission to an open, staring eye.

  My excitement boils over. This is it. He�
�s being inducted into the highest order of his brotherhood, the Prime Seekers, the ones trusted enough to hold their secret symbol and not reveal it to anyone. This is where he’ll be given the rest of the prophecy. It has to be. Alongside the blade, the man sets down a single sheet of paper. I read every word.

  Words of Idris, Prime Seeker, 1257 BC

  Her birth will be the beginning of our destruction,

  An unseen threat to everything we are.

  Power and Talent greater than anything seen by this world will blossom in her hands.

  Alone, she will unlock the deadly secrets of this age.

  Her assault will begin slowly,

  One small prick, one gained asset,

  But will grow to a raging onslaught.

  Her might will slice into our ranks where we think we are safest.

  One will try to take everything from her and fail,

  But she will learn the secret of his betrayal.

  She will learn the value of destruction, of gathering power,

  And will turn it against us.

  We cannot stop her, not alone.

  She will steal our brothers, take their power.

  We must do the same.

  One of her own will be her downfall.

  Unrestricted, Cassia the Destroyer will be the end of our world.

  She will unravel the purity of our work and turn society against us.

  Our power will be lost forever, unless we seize all control first,

  Break the laws of Power and transform this world into one she can never save.

  This is our mission,

  Our legacy,

  Our lives.

  Kill the Destroyer, the anathema to our perfection.

  I pull out of the memory, breathless and frightened. There is so much more, so much hidden from every Guardian who thinks they’re fighting on the right side. My body is trembling, and I can sense Braden’s concern growing thicker by the moment. He’ll pull me away if he thinks he needs to. I can’t let him take me yet. There’s still more. One line of the prophecy has lodged itself into my mind. We must do the same. I have already taken their brothers, stolen their talents, and even turned one to my side. Idris told them they had to do the same. Mr. Walters warned me. He said they could make worse things out of Ciphers than Sihirs. What are they doing to them?