Halfblood Legacy

by Rheaume, Laura

He lurched up, stumbled against the nearest bed and flung his power at her, trying to keep her unbalanced. She would be looking for the easiest one she could drain quickly, so he scanned the room, undoubtably at the same time she did. Which one would she go after? Lena?

  She surprised him by ducking out of the room.

  What? Where...Oh, no! He ran down the aisle, shouting at Ian who had bent over his sister. “Ian, follow her! We can’t let her get her hands on anyone powered. She’s going to use them to heal herself.”

  Jaelyn hadn’t been able to shuffle off his hold on her, so he followed her easily to the second hospital room. In the place that he had filled himself with the remainder of the people who had left the winery for a safer home, he found her hunched over one of the beds.

  “No more, Jaelyn. It has to stop!” he yelled. He released the second room’s patients from their slumber, cursing himself for not having done it earlier. If he had, they wouldn’t have been lying there helplessly for her to prey on.

  He threw himself at her, with his body as well as with the force of his power. The two of them flew over the bed, along with the newly conscious woman, and onto the floor beyond.

  Jaelyn’s victim was pinned beneath the two of them, and Morgan could tell right away that she had already injured the woman with a mortal blow, a powerful strike that had broken her neck. Through some quirk, she had not died instantly from the blow. Jaelyn was connected fully to her, and was waiting for the woman to expire so she could collect her energy and rejuvenate herself.

  Morgan sliced through their connection and then spread his power over the woman to prevent Jaelyn from attaching herself again. At the same time, he examined her injuries. His heart sunk. Jaelyn had tried to hurry the woman’s death by ripping apart many of her vital organs. She was quickly bleeding to death. Unfortunately, there was nothing he could do for her, because he needed his focus and power to keep Jaelyn from getting stronger.

  “You fool!” the woman who had saved his life screeched at him. “Do you know what you have done? You’ve killed them all.”

  “Jaelyn, they were supposed to die, long ago. All of us were. It is unnatural, what you have done to keep us alive. Unnatural and evil.”

  She struck out at him, but it was as weak as a child’s. Her eyes widened at how easily he deflected her attack.

  “It’s over, Jaelyn,” he said brusquely.

  He watched as the fight left her, and her face crumpled. “You don’t understand.” She squeezed her eyes shut. He could see that she was barely holding on to consciousness. “When they are gone, we are gone. It’s not right, that our race should fail. It’s not right!”

  “No, that’s true,” he conceded sadly. On that point, they had always agreed. Because of that truth, he had done things that he shouldn’t have. He had murdered and experimented with hundreds of people’s lives. Because he had loved his people, he had sinned. However, he couldn’t let the virtuous beauty of their civilization make him sin any more. He didn’t have her courage.

  He slipped beneath her frail defenses and bound her to the deep rest of their people. Then he pulled her off the woman on the floor. Immediately he started working on repairing what he could of the woman’s injuries, but he had never been much of a healer and her condition was critical. Even as he worked frantically to bind and repair, he didn’t believe he could prevent her death.

  Around him, people started to stir, breaking through the shock of what they had witnessed upon waking. At the far end of the room, many of the smaller children in the cribs had begun crying.

  Behind him, a voice asked fearfully, “Is she going to be alright?”

  He shook his head. Already he could see the life pulling slowly away from the body, preparing for its journey. Nevertheless, he continued to work. He wouldn’t give up until he was absolutely certain there was nothing else he could do.

  He grit his teeth. He had to prepare for what he thought would come to pass. As much as it disgusted and embarrassed him to be thinking practically at a time like that, he had to ask, “Is there someone whose permission I could ask to use her failing life to save another?”

  “Ask her,” Ian whispered and joined Morgan to himself, and then to his wife.

  Chapter 41

  Mercy stood in front of the column and frowned. She couldn’t get it open because it required a code that she wasn’t able to find anywhere. That left her with two options: take the walk she had considered earlier, or break in.

  She didn’t think that the column would give her too much trouble. What she was worried about was injuring the child and incurring Jaelyn’s anger. The walk sounded like the smartest option by far.

  She sighed, reminded herself why she was even contemplating it in the first place, and sent two ribbons into the column. At least, she would have sent them in, if something hadn’t stopped her. She probed along the column with her power and realized that it was the child himself who had stopped her, erecting his own barrier around himself. He wouldn’t answer her questions or respond to her in any way.

  She stepped back and considered again. There was a good chance that she was just letting her imagination get the best of her. Then she thought about the child in the tank she had seen the night before. It had been odd, although she hadn’t thought it at the time, that the inner cylinder would be surrounded by a protective barrier that was so much bigger than itself, especially when that extra space didn’t seem to have any purpose. It was big enough, however, for a person. A person who would provide a sick person with a burst of life giving energy, if the conditions were right. The only conditions Mercy knew of were ones that involved death.

  She approached the stone again. It was worth whatever trouble she might get in with Jaelyn to know if that was the “nourishing component” that the woman had alluded to. She gathered her power and focused it into a tight, controlled ribbon, which she sent into the floor beneath her and then curved upward into the space beyond. She smiled at having caught him by surprise when she shot past the much weaker barrier that had covered the floor to the chamber. Then her smile disappeared, along with everything that inhabited her mind, because she had touched the person that lay upon the floor.

  She was prepared for the sorrow that being right about finding someone other than Edillian inside would bring her. She was prepared even to face the decision she would have to make once she found out: to act or not act on that information.

  She was not prepared to find Scythe paused at the edge of his life, tipping slowly across the border.

  No. Not ever. Not even remotely possible.

  She could give her life, had already given it. She could accept that if Edillian were to live, someone had to die. Or if that innocent someone were to live, it would mean the end of Edillian’s life. It was despicable, but it was true; there was no way around that. She had accepted those inevitable facts.

  But, she could not accept that.

  No.

  No!

  When everything boiled down to an objective that simple, that unconvoluted, then the force behind the drive to achieve it was amplified. She didn’t use her power, or craft it. That would have required concentration. She didn’t think at all. She became her power and, hooking her claws onto the bottom of the outer column, she thrust it upward with enough impetus to wedge it into the ceiling above. She ignored the instinct shouting at her that if someone were powerful enough to hold Scythe, they weren’t someone to take lightly or barge in on. She couldn’t hear such things, because as soon as the column rose high enough, she saw him. He lay on the ground in a pool of yellow light as still and lifeless as if he were already dead. She didn’t listen, or think. She didn’t decide. She went to him. She stepped right through the boy’s wall and into his area of influence.

  Mercy knelt down and pressed her hand on Scythe’s chest; she was gratified to find it still warm, but instantly concerned at his lack of reaction. He was breathing, but other than that he didn’t move at all, even when she shook him.

&nbs
p; She sent a ribbon to wrap around him, but when she called out to him, he was silent and empty. A sound, like a bark or the start of a howl, escaped from her throat. Behind it a simple yet potent feeling rushed to catch up. And then another. It turned out that some emotions ran in packs: surprise, fear, desperation...

  “Scythe!” she screamed at him, taking his face in her hands, still probing with her power, trying to find any part of him to hold on to. There was no response. She grew frantic, looking around herself as if somewhere in the room there would be some clue, some thing that would tell her what to do. There was nothing but rows of stone barriers, no one to help her...just the quiet ones who resisted death’s pull...

  Then she remembered why Scythe lay there and she carefully lowered the wall she had been maintaining so diligently. She didn’t take it all the way down, not so much that the dangerous strings could attach to those around her. She just lowered it enough to take a look around herself. Since she was touching him, she saw them, the many strands that connected the boy that floated in the tank to the man she held. Because she knew them well, she could detect the power flowing from Scythe to the boy. Scythe was so depleted that there was hardly any energy there to see. She tried to pull on the strands, to pull the power back, but they slipped through her grasp.

  Unwilling to give up, she tried again to reach the boy who held onto Scythe closer than she did.

  Please, don’t take him.

  This time, he responded.

  He’s mine.

  Those words galvanized her, and a large portion of her anxiety shifted in a second to anger. She leaned over and wrapped her arms protectively around Scythe and stared up at the boy. No.

  She was surprised at the resentment that welled up in him at her refusal, but she ignored it and shot a ribbon of her power at his chest. He batted it away easily. Then she sent a more tangible one battering into the bottom of the tank, shaking it and cracking the frame slightly.

  He let his strands fuse into one thick cord and pulled. Scythe weakened further.

  Mercy wrapped her cords around the wires and tubes that extended from the ceiling into the tank and began to squeeze. She sent him an image of her yanking them out.

  He lightened up his hold on Scythe, reducing the amount he was taking to almost nothing, and then spoke to her again. This time, she could tell that he was amused, as if their conflict were a game to him.

  Come. Let’s talk, my Mercy.

  Then, without any difficulty, he slid into her mind.

  Mercy’s eyes glazed over. He looked up through them at the ceiling above her and pushed.

  Extending out from her body, four enormous bands of energy reached upward, grasped the protective cylindrical barrier and pulled it down until it slammed, slightly askew, into place. Inside the tiny compartment lit only by a dull, yellow-orange light, Mercy’s body collapsed over Scythe’s.

  -----------

  The woman didn’t even bother scowling at the stars when she left the building. She couldn’t remember when she had last left during the daytime, but it seemed like a long time ago. She let the door close behind her without checking to see if anyone was behind her and plodded down the steps toward the street.

  Aorin hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in days. They were working such long hours that she had started unconsciously referring to the brief space between shifts as “nap time”. She left, she slept, she came back to work. Her department had been swamped ever since the whole Tiburon thing had broken. Every single person was furiously scrambling to gather the information they needed to quickly bring the axe down on not one but dozens of people, and it still wasn’t enough. They had yet to catch up even once by the end of the day, and because of it, she was completely used up.

  On top of that, she hadn’t heard a thing about Scythe, whose name was plastered over every single accusation brought against Tiburon by the dozens of high profile claimants. He wasn’t just a criminal everyone vaguely remembered from a few years back. Now he was a repeat offender, involved in the biggest scandal in decades. They were slavering at the jowls to get a hold of him. She doubted he would be free to walk in any city, Kin or otherwise, ever again.

  Perversely enough, he had also become a kind of celebrity. Everyone wanted to know, Where was the halfblood? There were all kinds of sightings, at sporting events and supermarkets all across the continent. Dominating the news were dozens of alleged victims, testifying about the things Scythe had done with his mind to manipulate them. Some women even claimed blushingly that he had come to them at night… She shook her head. It wasn’t even worth thinking about.

  Meanwhile, in her five minutes of free time each day, she worried about him, hoping that his extraordinary way of getting out of impossible situations was still serving him well.

  She stepped off the curb and started across the street, but was immediately pulled back by her collar. Her arms flew out wide on both sides and she yelped. Her eyes bulged at the sudden roar of an engine, the squealing of brakes, and the bright lights of the car that sped by right in front of her, blowing her hair and jacket back with a gust of wind.

  “Damn, that would have been a disaster,” a voice said from behind her. “You are our only lead.”

  “Why are you still such a degenerate?”

  “Hey, watch her. She’s fainting.”

  She had nearly died. She would have definitely died if that car had hit her. Her knees crumpled and she fell onto the cold cement.

  Two hands grabbed her arms and lifted her up, a bit too quickly, because she instantly became dizzy.

  “No. No passing out. Breathe. Breathe and walk.” Simple directions were good. They were moving her forward, one on each side of her, but she was a little nauseous and her head was hanging down in front of her, rolling from side to side. She wanted to throw up.

  “No, it’s fine,” the woman’s voice from before said from beside her; it was a woman she knew. She was talking to some other people who had been standing nearby and wanted to help. “We’ve got her. Yeah, she almost did die. No, we’re going to take care of her. Yes, thank you, though.”

  Anora. It was Anora. Okay, her brain was working again. Now, if her body would just cooperate...

  “Aorin, just sit here.” They lowered her onto a bench, and Anora sat next to her when she started to slip sideways. She leaned up against the warm woman. It would be so nice to just take a nap right there, with her head on the woman’s shoulder.

  “Sorry,” she said, realizing that her lips weren’t working that well. “Just a little dizzy.” And tired.

  “Hey! Snap out of it!” A voice shouted at her from less than a foot away. It scared the life out of her. Her head jerked back, and her heart started pumping blood like crazy.

  “Cord!”

  “Look, we don’t have time for naps. See? She’s much better.”

  Actually, she was. She blinked and shook her head. Then she realized who she was looking at and leaned back into the park bench. Cord? Cord was here with Anora? What were they doing here?

  “Are you going to be okay? Do you want me to send someone who is otherwise useless and annoying for some water?”Anora asked.

  “Not a chance,” he said and crossed his arms.

  “No, I’m fine. It’s just that I’ve been getting so little sleep lately. I’m fine now. What are you guys doing here? Are you with Scythe? How is he?”

  “Shit,” Cord said and looked around irritably. “Okay, let’s go.”

  “Hold on. You are more of a child than the child.” She turned to Aorin, “We were hoping you could tell us. We’re looking for him. You were with him, correct?”

  “Yes, but he was forced to leave the project when we were discovered by Intelligence. I thought he had headed home, but then the scandals hit and it turned out...well, you’ve seen the news, right?”

  “Some of it, but we’ve been on the road a lot.”

  “Well,” she said, but then hesitated when her attention was caught by Cord who had wandered of
f and then slowly wandered back. “Well...what is that on your back?”

  “It’s a baby backpack.”

  “Yes, I know. What…” She frowned, “I don’t think it’s called that.”

  He blinked. “Yes it is. Baby backpack.”

  “No...it has another name…like baby sling, or something.”

  “Both of you focus,” Anora snapped. “Where do you think he is now?”

  “I have no idea. I figured he would head home after the incident. He isn’t safe anywhere around here.” Of course he hadn’t gone home, because they were here looking for him. Unless...“Maybe you passed each other on the road.”

  “That is possible,” Anora said thoughtfully.

  “Well, I guess that’s all we’re going to get out of her. Let’s go.”

  Anora nodded, but didn’t move. She had thought of something else. “Just a minute. He was held by Tiburon, right?”

  “Yes, they were interrogating people. Some of the victims say it was forced. Others said he did it willingly, but, of course, that is completely ridiculous. He’d never do that unless he was forced to.”

  “So, assuming he was coerced, he must have been held…”

  “Yes, in an office complex owned by the Family. It was searched, and a cell was found with restraining devices, but he wasn’t there.”

  “How did he get out?”

  “Some of the guards said Heron was seen with him, but there was no evidence of it. He wasn’t on any of the video, and it was unlikely that a son of the Family, Tiburon’s own nephew, would do that.”

  “That’s right. Two snakes out of the same basket,” Cord said with surety.

  “I remember that they traveled together: Heron, Ian, Scythe and Mercy. Perhaps they built a friendship...”

  “No. He’s a Family man, all the way,” Cord argued.

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Because he handed Mercy over to us without blinking an eye,” Cord said. “I think the guards are lying. Heron wouldn’t go against his family to help a halfblood.”

  “Well that leaves us with nothing again.” Anora stood up and looked down at Aorin, “Well, we won’t take more of your time. Thank you for assisting us, Aorin.”