by Scott Tracey
Jade’s questions kept coming, too fast and too insistent. Her voice became a low buzzing, and I frowned, trying to concentrate on it. My ears popped, once, twice, a third time. The wind whistled through the trees, the crackle of broken branches, traffic in the distance, water crashing against the rocks, people crying, laughing at jokes, yelling about the milk, “why the hell didn’t you get the milk like you said you would I ask you to do one thing you stupid—”
Everything stopped when I closed my eyes.
Inhale. Exhale. Maintain control.
“Drew isn’t coming,” I said, once the vertigo and overwhelming pressure in my ears had settled down.
“But I have to talk to him,” Jade whispered. Her eyes glistened in the faint traces of moonlight. A shudder passed through her, and then she was fine. Strong. “Come on, we should get you home.”
I followed Jade out of the woods, but I didn’t tell her I wasn’t going home.
I never would again.
After Grace’s lighthouse had disappeared from the world, the city had built a replacement. Not as grand, not as interesting. But it did the trick as well as anything, I supposed.
I’d left Jade at the street, telling her a heavily censored version of my plans for the evening. I knew she might be necessary later, so I told her where to meet me, and when. If it worked, I would need a familiar face. If it didn’t work, I might just need the distraction. After she left, and it had been such a struggle to make her leave, I’d moved on to my next destination, the lighthouse, and my next appointment. My schedule was packed, considering I’d spent the last three weeks in phantom boot camp.
“It’s about time,” Matthias grumbled, climbing to his feet. He’d been perched carefully on a rock, clearly waiting. I looked around in alarm.
“Jade was waiting for me.”
“You’re lucky it was the girl,” Matthias said. “Everyone knows you boys were playing with things you shouldn’t before you disappeared. She’s not the only one whose been lurking around. This town does so enjoy its rumors, especially when they’re salacious.”
Rumors were the least of my concern. “And Lucien? Is he up and walking around yet?”
Matthias nodded. “For almost a week now. Those church bells were such nasty business. I heard he’s trying to have them all melted down into scrap. But he has bigger problems at the moment. It seems your dear old father isn’t too thrilled with his son’s disappearance. And he’s got only one target in mind.”
“Catherine and Lucien,” I confirmed. “Have they come to blows yet?”
Matthias sighed in regret. “Sadly not. I was hoping there would be a bit of bloodshed to welcome you home, but someone has been a most unhealthy influence on poor Jason. He’s trying to be rational. There is no body, so he assumes his son still draws breath. He doesn’t dare strike out at them until he knows what they want.”
A better son would have made contingency plans. Made sure his father knew that he was going across worlds and might never come back. I … hadn’t thought that far through.
No, that wasn’t true. I was so wrapped up in what I was doing that I hadn’t stopped to think about what would happen when I was gone. Or what would happen if I’d never come back.
The demon smiled. It was like looking at a wholly different person, now with my power returned. I could see hints of the demon at his edges, features that were too sharp, too pointed. Even more, I could sense the scope of the power he’d left behind when he incarnated in this world. Unlike Lucien, who’d had his power ripped out of him, Matthias had left his power behind, and was free to collect it at his leisure once he was released from this existence.
“Your secrets are safe … for now. But if the girl knows you’re back, then word will start to spread … ” he trailed off, obviously baiting me.
I studied him. Matthias was always up front to a point. He was smart enough to know that our fates were entwined. If I fell, his part in my plans would be obvious to every one of the factions colluding here in town.
“Anything else I need to know?” I asked, trying to mask my fear.
“Perhaps you don’t understand the nature of the feud,” Matthias said, brushing sand off of his pants. “The only thing that could possibly be worse than your disappearance off the face of this world? Is your sudden return. It will only take one spark for this town to go up in flames the likes of which none of us, humans or demons alike, have ever seen. You need to show caution now. Or you might find your hand basket to hell a little overcrowded.”
“Matthias,” I started, but he didn’t let me finish.
“There is one thing I desire most in this wretched little world,” he said, his posture stiff and unyielding, “and I will not have it if you leave nothing but a ghost town in your wake.”
I thought of the way Belle Dam had looked in the vision—broken and burning. What had Grace called it? An ossuary. Like the city was nothing more than an empty pit filled with bones of those who had once lived there. That could still happen.
“Don’t do this,” he pleaded urgently, “let the Rider’s power lay fallow. Fulfill our bargain, and I will help you.”
“Cross your heart?” I asked, finally feeling three weeks without sleep catching up to me. Bones were never meant to be this heavy.
“No,” I said, ending the discussion. “What time is it?”
Matthias looked down at his watch. “A little after nine, why?”
I shook my head. “Come on. We don’t have time to play games of ‘what if.’ I chose my path.” And without another word, I walked towards the water. Matthias was a cautious predator behind me. The closer I came to the shore, the farther the water receded. I didn’t part the sea or anything major like that, I just … moved it back. Moisture leached from the wet sand where I walked, and the bay waters retreated. The ground dipped downhill, but still we walked, and still the waters were repelled. We didn’t walk far, maybe five hundred feet before I stopped us. The sand beneath us was hot, an impossible warmth for something that should have been under fifty feet of water.
I could have done all of this from the shore, of course. Matthias wouldn’t have cared either way. But I wanted him to be reminded of the power that was mine. The sound of locks turning exploded in my mind, and the ground beneath us rumbled like a bank safe the size of an aircraft carrier being spun down in the earth below us.
Locks clicked into place, spun open, and in seconds the door into the wellspring started to open in the earth. The power, a kaleidoscope of energy that didn’t feel magical or demonic, but some blending of the two, sailed up and lapped at my feet.
I reached out, palm facing the ground, and drew the wellspring into me. Winter solace surged into my bones like it had always been meant for me. Icy demon power reacted against the fire of my magic, and the two waged a war inside of me. But neither of them was in control. I was. I pushed them both down, and thought it felt like only seconds, I knew that almost an hour passed as I struggled to maintain my control.
“Okay,” I said, rasping. “Okay, we’re good.”
“We?” Matthias asked, his apprehension thick like a cloud around him.
The Grimm is afraid, the winter voice in me murmured. Without even thinking about it, I clamped down on that part of the demon’s power, with its whispers and attempts at controlling my mind. I was my own person, and I wouldn’t become the broken thing that any of them wanted. I locked the winter voice away and pushed at the fires burning inside of me. I controlled these powers, I wanted to shout. Me!
“Nothing to worry about yet, Matthias, I’m still just as obnoxious and adorable as always,” I said after taking a few deep breaths. We walked back the way we came, maybe moving a bit faster as the returning water nipped at our heels. “Get your phone out,” I demanded, once we were back on the real shore.
Matthias had it in his hands before I was even done speaking. He was probably scared of what I would do if he said no. “Text Jason. Tell him Catherine’s willing to meet to discuss the r
ansom demands.” The demon’s eyebrows lifted. “Then text Catherine, and tell her that Jason’s going to take a son for a son if she doesn’t meet him.”
“When?”
“Tell them to meet at midnight.” I squinted up at the beacon shining above us. With my new control, I could choose to repress the visions, but I flitted through the different layers to the world until I found the one I was looking for. There were many, many spells that had been laid over the foundation of Belle Dam. The first one I’d noticed had been the dark eye that hung over the town like a damning albatross. Lucien’s eye. Lucien’s power.
Grace had weakened him for a while, but he was stronger than ever. Stronger than he had been the last time we’d faced off, in his office.
I had to be stronger, too.
“Where are you going until then?” Matthias asked, unable to repress his curiosity.
“Don’t worry, Grimm. I have a plan. But a great magician needs an assistant, you know.”
There were, after all, three wellsprings in the city. Lucien possessed one, and now I another. Grace had never been specific about the ownership of the wellsprings—she demanded their power, but she never said she wanted both of the ones that remained. I had claimed one for myself, but there was still a third that would level the playing field. If I was right, each of us would be a match for the other.
But first, I would set the rest of the pieces into motion.
twenty-seven
The hospital lights flickered when I came off the elevator. The whirling storm of magic in me clawed for release, but it only took a fraction of my power to move undetected down the halls. The power trickled out of my fingertips, smoothing away the sounds of my passing, the sight of me walking off the elevator, and the smell of seawater that still clung to me like cologne.
Magic came so much easier now that I could hold the visions back. Is this what it was always like for you, Grace? How could it not be enough for her? Why had it been so important for her to seek out more and more power? This was … it was everything.
Riley’s room was at the end of the hall. Everyone else was asleep, but I knew she’d be waiting for me. Something in me had been waiting for this, but it was hard to say where the feelings were coming from. With the wellspring power inside of me, there was a dark potential that could go awry at any moment if I lost control. Was I really looking forward to seeing Riley again? Or was it the winter voice?
What had happened to Riley was an accident, the reaction of my power against Lucien’s. But both powers were inside of me now.
I didn’t expect to see Riley sitting up when I walked in. But what was more, I didn’t expect the change in her eyes. Ever since Lucien had attacked her, Riley had the cornflower blue irises of a demon. But now the blue had faded, and in the light her hazel eyes shined like gold.
“Riley?” I whispered.
“Braden,” she whispered, her eyes shimmering with tears. “What did you do?”
She knew. What I’d done to Drew, and why I did it. The fact that I hadn’t even cried yet. Riley had been broken beyond repair, but somehow she still found her way back to herself, and she knew what I had done. How easy it had been.
I was a monster, and now I wasn’t the only one who knew it.
My steps faltered. My brain skipped off the track and I fumbled for something. Anything. But there was no way of making this right. Not yet.
I crumpled down into the chair at her side. I couldn’t bear to look at her anymore.
“It was the only thing that made sense,” I whispered. “I knew it was wrong, but I had to. It was the only way that Grace could be free. She’d been planning this for years—she needed a sacrifice so she could cross over permanently. The same way Elle used her friend to make the journey before. But Grace is in another league, so she needed someone that had enough juice to make it happen. That’s why she made the Armstrongs the way they were.”
I put my head in my hands. “You were the one that said that there was only one way to beat them. I tried, I really did, Riley. But I couldn’t see any other way. I had to bargain with Grace to get what I wanted, but I can’t let her out. Leaving Lucien here would be bad enough. I can’t imagine what the two of them would do. They’re both monsters.” Out in the hall, a phone rang. “But that doesn’t make it okay, Ri,” I whispered.
“Common comes the advancing knight.” My head whipped up, Riley’s eyes had returned to their inhuman blue, the awareness in them, gone. “Crawling through spider webs, weaving doom inside traps inside gambits.”
This wasn’t happening. “Riley?”
“Stop sleeping,” Riley chided, tapping me on the temple. She stared at my head like she could see through my skull. At the sound of her, the winter voices began crawling through my body like worms, inching towards the light. Riley cooed, and I stumbled back.
I am in control. Not you. I don’t want you here. Stay down. Stay asleep.
Magic might have become easier to manage with my powers under control, but maintaining control was an infinitely more vexing struggle. All it had taken was two little words, and a surge of demonic essence slipped out of my grasp. It was the difference between standing on a window ledge a thousand feet in the air, and then clinging to it by the fingertips a moment later.
I am in control. This is my body. My life. I pushed back, fighting every impulse and icy rationale. I tried to shut out the voices, but I couldn’t. Break her. Free her. Let her be your dark prophet, let her be your lantern guide. Human with the demon mind, she could be useful.
Riley was more dangerous than I had thought. “Why are you doing this?” I managed to grit out, squeezing my hands into fists. I concentrated on each breath, on the warm air entering my body, the heat against my skin.
“You need him,” she laughed, like this were all a joke and I just hadn’t caught on yet.
“I can do this without him.” Riley insisted on acting like we were two separate entities, me versus the violet-eyed version of myself.
“But why would you want to?” She giggled, manifesting the chess piece I’d given her from between her hands with a magician’s flourish. “I like him best.”
“Riley,” I took another deep breath, “I want to help you. That’s why I’m here. Do you remember what you used to be like? I want to take you back there. You shouldn’t be stuck in the hospital like this. It’s my fault you’re here.”
“It is,” she agreed, but her voice was flat. “I get to watch the pieces move.”
“I want to help you,” I continued. “But I need your help first.”
Her head craned to the side. “You want to punish. I want to help.”
“Okay, good.” I reached over, and took one of her hands between mine. Her free hand still held the bishop, and she squeezed it tight in her fist. “You told me to come back when I had my power again.” I faked a laugh. “I’m here. Bright and shiny as usual.”
She pulled her hand out of my grasp and wiped it against the sheets of her bed. “I said I wanted violet-eyed boy. You’re not him. I want him.”
“He’s already here,” I said, desperately trying to think of a way out of this. If Riley got too upset, I didn’t know what I would do. When she lost control, she was violent and unpredictable and the nurses would have to sedate her. Which meant she wouldn’t be able to help me, and if she was unconscious, I didn’t think I could help her either.
She lunged at me so suddenly that I couldn’t react in time. The blue aura that surrounded me in dangerous moments flared to life and then dwindled down to a dampened smolder around her hands. The moment that her skin touched mine, the power of the wellspring surged up again, and I was consumed.
We have been waiting and we are so patient, loving and kind and helpful. All can be yours just cast off what matters no more. Who needs them, the ones that hurt and betrayed you. We can make them suffer. We can show you how to destroy them. Sometimes they don’t have to die to be broken and it’s better when they live. This city is yours, here you can t
est yourself, become what you are meant to be. We have been waiting for you, only you, it’s only ever been you.
Before, there had only been one voice in my head, but now there were dozens. Maybe thousands. Or maybe only one. It was hard to say for sure. I could feel the two different antithetical energies rustling around in my essence, two serpents locked in an inevitable contest for supremacy. The fire of magic, the churning engine behind the witch eyes, and the calculating, slow-moving glaciers of the wellspring. They’d fought before, and broken Riley in the process.
She was screaming next to me, but she was laughing too. The bed rattled, the room shook. Lights exploded. The hospital was going to collapse around us, and still she would not let go of my head.
Let us in, and let us breathe. We are your right hand, we are fate given flesh. Accept us now. Accept what we offer. Together we will show you how to humble them all, how to make the city kneel before you and beg you to end their suffering. There is a vast universe where you can be everything you wish to be, no matter how contrary. Worlds of malice and worlds of compassion. Worlds where you are everything and worlds where you are the void.
All I could hear was screaming wind and laughter. I tried to fight back, but I was just one person against a power that had raged for thousands of years. I was out of my league. Let us in, the voices whispered.
Fine, I agreed.
And just like that, she patted me on the cheek. “There he is,” Riley said, sounding so much like the old Riley that I couldn’t process it. I was already reeling, and this was too much. She was too much.
New strength surged into my arms and legs, my mind cleared of all the debris of the last few weeks. It wasn’t a sudden change like I expected. There wasn’t a switch to flip, from human to inhumane. I didn’t look out at the world like a stranger. I knew what the thoughts of the other me had been like. I knew how foreign this world had seemed to the other Braden.
But I was still myself. The demon power poured through my veins like a surge of adrenaline, and the power of the witch eyes curled around me and inside of me, a fire that would not go out. Somehow, the two powers had achieved a balance.
