When he charged me this time, I was ready. I reached out with my mind and grabbed him right out of the air, freezing him in place. "You didn't honestly think I would come after you without a few tricks of my own, did you?"
I powered up, and laughed at the shocked expression on Tristan's face when he realized how much I'd changed.
"Yeah, I know, right. You did me favor by almost killing me, Tristan. I might have never known all I was capable of if Irulan had never given me her blood."
Tristan growled and let his body complete the shift to feral. "You're not the only one that's changed, Valeria. I told you in Charleston, be careful. Don't hurt my feelings." He released his power. The sheer magnitude of it not only knocked the wind out of me, but also had every onlooker and spectator in the hall scrambling for cover.
His magic felt like cold fingers reaching out for me, not at all like the feel of the Fae magic that was so new to me. Tristan laughed and began feeding power into my hold bombarding my mind with wave after wave of his twisted energy. Tainted and colored with hurt, pain, and death, his powers were wrong on every level. I knew why they called him an Abomination. This went against everything that nature planned for us.
I let go of him and wiped my hands on my pants as if I could get rid of his taint that way. "What's the matter, Val? Am I too much for you to handle?"
As I settled into a defensive crouch and cleared my mind, I prepared myself for the fight of my life. "Abomination," I hissed, as he came closer. "I don't know what you've done to yourself, but I will stop you."
"One last chance, Valeria. Are you going to stop this silliness and come back to me?"
"Go fuck yourself!"
I caught the first ball of fire in the palm of my hand and held it there for a few seconds. "Is this the best you've got?” I tossed the flaming orb back at him and watched as it dissipated before it even made contact.
"No, it's not.” His hand shot forward and a crackling bolt of power arched through the air towards me. I yelped and dodged out of the way just in time, but that's what he wanted. As I moved, he moved with me, and we both ended up in the same place.
While I had been paying attention to the energy bolt, he was watching me. He caught me completely off guard with a booming fist to my midriff. I doubled over in pain. Then his elbow to the back of my head drove me to my knees.
As I went down, I reached out and pulled his leg out from under him. We both ended up on the ground, tangled together as each of us fought to come out on top.
I somehow managed to straddle him and draw my arm back for a blow. He reached up and pressed his palm into the center of my chest.
I screamed as a burning sensation crawled over my skin. Behind me, I heard Irulan gasp as she realized what he was trying to do. He was using his warped Soul Fire spell on me.
I fell back and stumbled away from him, clutching my hands to my chest as if I could hold the burning still and will it not to travel any farther through my body.
I heard Irulan scream and Fazion grunt as he fought to hold onto her. In my mind, I saw Amanda burning to death on her bed. I saw Priest rolling on the ground as his face puckered and blistered and I decided I wasn't going to die like that.
I reached inside, and latching on to the part of me that had acquired the ability to form invisible barriers, I tried to make one of my own. The burning got hotter as the invisible lava spread over me. I wanted to scream, but I wasn’t about to give Tristan the satisfaction. I tried again to form a shield in front of me, but I wasn’t grasping the mechanics. Tristan laughed as I struggled with myself. The sound irritated me more than the burning did and I tried one more time to push the burn away from me.
The third time was the charm. I felt the magic cover me for the briefest of moments, but it was more than enough to block Tristan’s spell. The burning disappeared. When I pulled my hands away, you could clearly see the scorch mark his hand had burned into the fabric of my shirt, but my skin was unmarred, tingling with the magic residue that saved me.
Tristan didn't know what to think. Before he had a chance to regroup, I hurled a massive bolt of black lightning at him. The onyx lighting was easy to manipulate. Fed by the whirlwind of emotions around me, I welcomed every one of them. I knew they’d help keep my ass out of a grave. The bolt caught him in the center of his chest and blew him through the air and into one of thrones.
Tristan and the chair fell backwards off the dais, but he recovered and was on his feet before they hit the ground. "I don't know how you managed to shake off my fire, but it won’t do you any good."
Tristan clenched his teeth, and I felt the surge of power building inside of him. I yelled, "Get out, Irulan!" He was willing to risk everyone in the building just to kill me. I flashed forward and plowed into him with my elbow but it was like hitting a titanium wall. He tossed me aside as if it were nothing.
"Even without the missing piece I need to become the Vessel, you'll never beat me.” He drew his knee up and snapped his foot forward lifting me off my feet and throwing me to the ground. His foot connected with my side shattering bones and sinew with the force.
I rolled over, clutching my side and pulled myself upright. I looked past Tristan and saw Irulan struggling to break free of Fazion and the two Manticores that had her. I pointed at Fazion and yelled, "Whatever you do, don't let her go!"
Dragging the back of a hand across his mouth, Tristan laughed, "Well isn't that sweet. Too bad she'll become a widow so soon after becoming a wife.” He balled his fist up, and blue flames engulfed them. His arm snapped forward aimed directly at my head. It took everything I had to stay still and let his blow land.
Hand-to-hand combat was good. As long as he wasn't powering up, everyone else was safe. The biting flames tore into the side my face, searing my flesh to the bone. I could feel the flow of cool air on the inside of my jaw and knew there was nothing but bone left on that side of my face.
I drowned out Irulan’s desperate yells and focused on Tristan’s cocky swagger as he walked over to me and grabbed me by the throat. "You have got to be the biggest glutton for punishment I have ever seen."
He lifted me straight up into the air and slammed me down into the cool tiles covering the floor. The marble tiles splintered and broke as my body tore through them. It felt like every bone in my body was broken, but I didn't feel a thing. Either I was in shock or another ability was rearing its head inside me, and it wanted desperately to come out and play.
I lay there in the crater and started laughing. The laugh was a gurgling, choking sound, but it was a laugh nonetheless. As my body shook from the chuckles, I thought, "This is so cool!” Even without the fresh blood I would normally need to jumpstart my body’s healing process, I could feel the bones beginning to knit themselves back together. Tristan looked down at me as if I'd lost my sanity. The entire room got quiet as they wondered what in the hell was wrong with me.
As I lay there looking up at the ceiling, it dawned on me. I needed Tristan to blow his cool. I wanted an explosion. As long as Irulan and her people could contain the blast, I was sure of what I had to do.
I lowered my shields long enough to tell Irulan what I wanted, then climbed out of the hole I was in. When I got up, Tristan actually looked scared.
"What the hell is going on…?” he mumbled, taking a small step away from me.
"I'll tell you what's going on.” I visualized myself standing behind him and there I was. I grabbed him in a full nelson and leaned forward to whisper in his ear. "You're about to die, Tristan."
Whipping my head forward, I head-butted him to the ground. Tristan rolled over onto his back and looked up at me as if he were seeing me for the first time. "That's not possible," he muttered as he watched the muscles and skin of my face knit together.
"Anything's possible, Tris, you should know that.” I hurled a glowing orb of black energy at him. This time he couldn't brush it away. It hit him dead on, knocking the wind out of him.
I smiled as he struggled to clim
b to his feet. "No, see it's not going down like this," he blustered with a hand pressed to his burned chest. "I refuse to let you win!" I felt it when Tristan began powering up again. His energy was growing by leaps and bounds at an impossibly fast rate. I should have been running for cover, but I was completely at ease with the situation, confident that what I was doing was the right thing. I glanced at Irulan and Fazion. Both of them nodded their heads and I braced myself.
Tristan was so enthralled in stockpiling his energy that he didn't even notice the exchange. "You can’t win, Tristan," I said, needling him farther. "Power down and give it up. If I talk with my C.O., I might be able to get them to spare your lifeblood."
Tristan scoffed at me and spat a mouthful of blood on the ground. "Fuck you, Val. If I can't have you, no one can."
"Oh my god, I know you just didn't go there," I said in a fit of laughter. "Dude, that was so cliché. I mean, come on."
If a scientist was there and could have measured the blast, they would have found out it was ten times stronger than the blast that leveled Nagasaki and Hiroshima combined.
As the white-hot power rolled over me, I looked around the room. Over three hundred Sidhe had their arms held out using everything they had to contain the massive amounts of energy that he was generating. Some had blood running from their noses from the sheer pressure of fighting to maintain the barrier they had cocooned around us.
But me, I stood there getting hammered by Tristan's energy as if it were nothing. Even if I stood there all day, it wouldn't have made so much as a scratch on me. The Tuathas didn't have all day. If I didn't do something, their barrier was going to buckle. I don't know how it happened, but my body began absorbing the massive amounts of power. Just like that day in my garage with Marcus, my body was channeling the excess energy, funneling it inside of me to my own internal storeroom. Looks like I was a Vampire in more than one-way now.
Once Tristan's spent his energy, he fell to his knees, looking at me with disbelief. "It's not possible, you should be dead."
"I'm hard to kill, Tristan," I said as I pulled him up and drew him close to me.
"What the fuck are you doing?"
My fangs dropped, and my face shifted as I pulled his head to the side. "I'm not going to kill you, Tris. I'm going to drain you to within an inch of your life. Do you know what that means?"
I ran my tongue down the side of his neck, and tsked when he tried to shy away from me. "I'll have all your power. You'll live as a weak, pathetic excuse for a Vampire for the rest of your life. Even Deadborns will look down on you."
I tore into his neck, oblivious to his screams and pleas for death. I fed from him until his skin began to shrived and crack. When I let him fall to the ground, he looked like a living corpse. Actually, I'd seen corpses that looked better that he did.
I stepped over his body and called Kether. The Pixie darted forward with a broad smile that looked bigger than his face, the Pixie dust that surrounded him allowing him to slip easily through the shield around me. "Yes, Highness?"
I pointed at Tristan. "Take the prize that you've been tasked to collect."
He bowed at the waist and clucked at me. "I never doubted you for one minute, Darkling."
I returned the gesture and began scanning the sidelines looking for Irulan. When I saw her, she was still struggling to get away from Fazion and his goons.
"What's the problem, guys? Tristan is harmless. You can let her go now."
I headed toward them and walked straight into a barrier. "What gives, Fazion? Tristan looks like a slab of beef jerky. Why haven't they lowered the shield?"
Irulan looked at her cousin and pleaded. "Fazion, you've got to trust me. She's not going to hurt anyone."
What the hell? I just saved all of them, and now I'm the bad guy? I growled my discontent. "Listen to her, Fazion. You don't want to be on my bad side."
Just to show him I was fully capable of destroying their shield, I held out my hand and directed a small bit of energy into it. Everyone in the room flinched with the backlash of power.
"Val, not helping," Irulan called. "Fazion, let me go!” She finally pulled free of their grip and slowly crossed the floor.
When she got to me, she waved her hand in front of the barrier, and it took on a metallic sheen. I looked at my reflection and couldn't believe my eyes. "Is that me?" I asked.
Irulan nodded softly. "Yes, baby, it's you. That's why everyone's still on edge."
The blue flames that covered Tristan's hands had engulfed my entire body. Bolts of energy crackled and hissed as they swirled around me. I waved a hand past my face and laughed as the flames trailed behind. "This is so cool!"
"Yes it is," Irulan agreed, "But you've got to power down. Everyone is scared."
"Oh, yeah sure.” I looked inside me for the off switch, but for the life of me, I couldn't figure out how to get rid of the flames. "Um, baby, a little help?"
"You're the tub, and the place where your power is stored is the drain, just reach in and pull the stopper, Valeria."
What the...oh well, it was worth a try. I stood there and imagined drains and faucets, not even noticing the flames were gone. I looked up as Irulan pulled me into her arms. "I am so proud of you, baby," she cooed right before she attacked me with her lips.
We spent two more days in the FaeLands. We took the first day so I could get to know Francesca. She was a lot more accepting than her brother was. The other we spent celebrating in Mag Mell. The Light and Dark courts called a tenuous truce. Not all of the Fae were happy about it. Something tells me it’s not going to last for long.
Before we left, both Mikilos and FaeVar reminded me that I would have to make yearly visits to Faerie, or I might start to fade again. Changes, changes and more changes. I was starting to worry that with all the changes I was going through that the things that made me Valeria were going to get lost in the shuffle.
"Don't worry, baby," Irulan said as we walked through the doorway that led home. "I'll never let that happen.” My mother and father were there waiting as we walked out of the woods dragging Tristan behind us. His stay in the dungeons of Tir Na Nog was less than pleasant, but they did allow him to feed from livestock. He didn't resemble a Slim Jim anymore, but he still looked terrible.
My mother pulled me into her arms, oblivious to my load. My father, on the other hand, walked right by us and shoved Tristan with his foot, never flinching when he saw his lack of eyes. "Looks like you had quite a trip, Valeria," he said.
"You have no idea, Daddy."
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Pulling into the parking lot of the CMS wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. I expected all the feelings of hurt and anger over how they fired me to resurface. I anticipated longing for a job that I'd used to help redefine who I was as a person after I'd hit rock bottom. Surprisingly enough, I felt nothing but the need to be done with this task, so I could move on with my life.
I backed my car up to the main entrance, right between two of the majestic columns that I'd always admired, ignoring the growing number of auras I felt gathering on the inside of the reflective glass that made up the walls, and popped the trunk. Gasps of surprise rang in my ears as the onlookers saw exactly what I had in the rear. I shook my head and bit back a laugh as I hauled Tristan from the trunk and dragged his unconscious body through the lobby.
Onlookers of various races silently parted to let me through with my load, only to huddle together in speculation as I passed. I threw my free hand up at the receptionist as I walked by and offered a quick hello. If it had been under previous circumstances, she would have called me over for a quick chat before I headed down to the Sentinel's levels, but today the best she could offer me was a nervous wiggle of a few fingers.
I had made it all the way onto the elevator before I heard the high-pitched alarm go off signaling a hostel loose in the building. “You're getting slack boys,” I thought. “I should have never made it across the lobby without tripping those alarms.” Marcus was c
lear the last time we talked that I would be unwelcome at the CMS from now on. If I had any correspondence for him, I could send it through his nephew, Thade. Part of me was sad that it had come to this, but it couldn't be helped.
The security camera whined as it began to rotate in my direction but I fried it with a small bolt of the energy that was stored in me. No fair peeking. I wanted my present for Marcus to be a total surprise. The intercom crackled as a deep voice came through. "Ms. Trumaine, the elevator is about to come to a halt. Please cooperate with security as they escort you to a holding cell."
I closed my eyes and let my head drop back against the wall as the car came lurching to a halt. "A holding cell, really Wallace, is all that necessary? I just came to drop a present off to Marcus.”
Wallace's surprise was evident in the tone of his voice. "How'd you...nevermind...Listen, Valeria, a dead body ain't much of a present and you're not allowed on the grounds anymore. I'm sorry, kiddo.” Wallace was the rare Human that worked security to make extra money. Even though I was older that him by thirty some odd years, he still insisted on calling me kiddo.
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