by Ponce, Jen
Then I remembered. Pieces.
They were all gathered around now, the Carnicus folk. Inna was there, Alton. Zed. Quorra in the doorway of her wagon, making goo goo eyes at Nex.
They were all pieces of Sharps. She’d been stripping off bits of herself to what ... distract her piece of shit pedophile brother? Protecting herself.
“You can’t,” Sharps said.
I hooked to a dark-eyed woman and yanked her soul free. She collapsed to the ground. Sharps screamed. I thrust the soul inside Sharps and she gasped as if getting a face full of hurricane winds. Her hair even blew back. When it settled, the woman’s body was gone and Sharps looked—healthier.
“Rya!” Sharps’ mouth trembled. “How could you?”
“How could I? Your brother abuses you so thoroughly you rip yourself apart to keep safe, and you want to know how I could try to help you?”
“Yes.” Then a high eep of sound when Leon’s hand clamped around her throat.
“What was that, Lionessa?”
She shook her head, eyes desperate, and the rest became clear. Leon didn’t know that she had created the Carnicus. He only knew that he could hurt her and then find a new distraction the next day.
“I have to kill him,” I said to her. “He has a parasite in his head. A parasite that’s in my son’s head.” I didn’t say, ‘You know, the kid you’ve been Dreaming with,’ because she knew and I didn’t want her brother to know anything about Liam.
Leon snarled and gripped her so hard her face turned purple.
“Let her go and you can have me. Kill me and then you can do whatever you want to her.”
She scratched at his hand, leaving bright furrows of red. Her eyes were bulging and I formed the hook that would take me into his head, wild magic be damned, when he dropped her, choking, to the dirt.
His smile would have made the old me’s stomach turn. I tried to look worried and not triumphant. “You’ll wish you let me kill you with my fists.”
I shrugged, which made anger blossom in his cheeks. “I doubt you have anything that would scare an adult woman.”
He took deliberate steps to me but didn’t swing or grab. Instead he unbuckled his belt. “I’ll fuck you to death. In front of them all. So they can see you’re nothing but a waste of air.”
Rage exploded in me, pistoning out my arm. Magic empowered me. Neutria guided me. My soulless dispassion armored me.
I sunk my hand wrist-deep in his chest and wrapped my fingers around his evil heart and yanked.
THIRTEEN
Wild magic engulfed me, screaming its tangled anger through my bones. The agony was bearable and I did not flinch in the face of it. Instead of it burning me, it concentrated itself in the gruesome trophy I held in my hand. Leon’s heart pumped sluggishly twice and stopped. He still stood, staring, disbelief painted in the stretched “O” of his mouth and shock-widened eyes.
“Why isn’t he falling?” I asked Tytan, almost as an aside.
Tytan didn’t answer, just walked around the ringmaster, his face contemplative. “I’m afraid I don’t know.”
Then Sharps screamed, a high-pitched whine that was echoed around the Carnicus. A young man fell, his bulk puffing up dust as he did. Then a goat-footed man with a curled mustache and rakish top hat collapsed.
“What’s going on?”
“Feed her magic, Devany. If you care enough to,” Tytan said, still studying Leon.
I threaded the power to Sharps who gasped with it. When she staggered, I dialed it back. She pressed a trembling hand to her chest. “Why did you kill him? How could you? That was my story! My story!” Her face reddened, cords standing out on her neck. “I was supposed to save them. Me!”
“He was going to kill you.”
Tears dripped from her eyes and she dashed them away with an angry swipe of her hand. “He wasn’t. He would never and now you’ve torn his heart out and he’s gone.”
Tytan murmured low enough that even I barely heard him and he was next to my ear. “He’s not gone.”
“What?”
He shrugged, gave Leon a poke. The ringmaster grunted, twitched his arm.
Sharp’s gasp told me she saw.
“Not gone.” I was struggling not to be angry with her. I’d saved her life and she was yelling at me? What the hell was that about? I couldn’t find my empathy so I faked it. “This is a big change, I know. Sometimes change feels worse than what went on before, even if it was bad.”
She glared at me but without the heat of earlier. Instead she approached her brother and stared up at him. He tipped his head like an obedient automaton and stared back. “Turn around,” she ordered. To her surprise and mine, he did.
“What is he? Now?”
I shook my head. I still held his heart, wanting to drop it in the dirt but guessing that it might set off Sharps again.
She finally turned to me and held out her hands. I deposited the heart in them. The small, pale palms looked obscene in conjunction with the bloody heart. “Stop giving me magic.”
“But,” I said.
“Stop!”
I did. She shuddered, staggered, and almost went down in the dirt with goat boy. Then her spine straightened. “It holds his magic.”
“Good. Now I can kill his body.”
“What?” Her sudden panic stayed my hand. “He’s not alive anymore.”
“And he’s not dead, either. If I don’t kill him, the Rider will live on to infect Liam. Do you want that?”
She jerked as if I’d slapped her. “No.”
She turned her back as I took Leon’s head. For good measure, I bashed it against a small outcropping of rocks, spattering brain matter on the grey-banded stones. What did the Rider look like? Would I be able to see it? Despite cracking open his skull, I didn’t see anything that looked parasitic. Knowing it was under attack, would it hide somewhere else in Leon’s body?
I dragged what remained of Leon away from the camp and burned it with fire. The corpse melted into an ashy mess that reminded me of the burned warrior on the goddess’ hill. Was it enough? Was the Rider truly gone?
There was only one way to find out.
***
Liam was awake though looking worse for wear. He’d missed school, Bethy too. My father was gazing at me with curiosity as I appeared from nowhere in my living room. The time for hiding what I could do was gone.
My son lifted his head. “Mom? Is she safe?”
The dimmest of emotions pinged at the sight of my kids. It was better than the nothing I’d expected. I was afraid a lot of that emotion was possessiveness. ‘Mine!’ it said, with a Golum-like hiss. “As safe as I could make her. The threat to her life is gone.”
His eyes dropped and got wide. I realized I’d popped in without washing. My hands were covered in still-tacky blood and my clothes were spattered with it. “You killed him,” he breathed.
“I did.” Had there been a time when I worried that killing someone would turn me into someone I wouldn’t want around my kids? I now was that person, in the flesh, in the bloodied flesh. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you,” I said because those were the words someone would say who felt sorry. I retreated to the kitchen to wash off the blood. It was sticky stuff and it took several hits of soap and scouring with the scratcher to get it off. There were still rust red flakes at the corners of my nails and a fleck in the crease on my wrist. I scratched it away and turned. My dad was there.
“What happened to you?”
“One of the Skriven took my soul.”
“Dear heavens.” He felt for the counter like a dying man and sat heavily on a bar chair. “Dear heavens,” he repeated.
“Don’t worry. I took care of that threat, too.”
He winced, and then he was gasping for air.
“Dad? What’s wrong?” He looked like he was in pain and I supposed he was. I rounded the counter and put my hand on his shoulder, then pushed healing magic into him. Magic pushed back and blew me across the room.
My head snapped into the wall and I saw stars. Liam shouted and Bethy ran to me. “Mom! Are you okay?”
I blinked. Blinked again. My father was moaning. “Call 911,” I told Liam. Brought my hands to my aching head.
“No.” My dad’s voice. “Liam, it’s okay. Put the phone down. I’m okay.”
“Mom’s not,” he said, his not-so-little boy’s voice shaking.
“She’ll be okay. Just give me a minute.”
Then his hands were on my shoulders and magic seeped into me. The ringing in my ears stopped and my eyes stopped aching along with my head. It hit me in the next second that my dad was using magic. My stomach dropped to my toes. “Dad?”
His breath hitched. “My child.” His hand cupped my cheek. “Devany.”
I looked into the eyes of Bran the Forsworn. “It’s you, in that book, isn’t it? You and mom?”
He dropped to his butt beside me, his hand still touching, though my knee now instead of my cheek. “Yes. How could I forget it all so thoroughly? Your mother and I both. We stepped through the hook and forgot it all. Our lives. Our families. Our world.”
“But that would mean I’m ...” I remembered Arsinua’s speculative look. ‘Not without interference,’ she’d said. “Did a Skriven fuck with my DNA?” I realized too late that I’d cursed in front of my kids. “I’m sorry guys. I owe the swear jar.” To Dad, I said, “Can Witches and Wydlings have kids together?”
“Of course. We aren’t two different species, like cats and dogs. We’re both humanoid. The Wydlings just have a little extra.” He patted my knee. “No worries that way.”
I guessed it didn’t matter one way or the other. I was a Skriven, whether by meddling during Mom’s pregnancy or by chance, it didn’t matter. Did it? Dad’s book had been from his point of view. Right? “Did Mom help you write the book?”
He shook his head. “I started writing it after she died, honey.”
So whatever story was in the book was only Dad’s side. And he hadn’t added in anything about a world-walker making a deal with Mom because he didn’t know. He didn’t know because Mom had never told him. Oh crap.
***
There could have been meddling, I thought that evening as I scrubbed myself clean in the shower. Without Mom around to tell her side, I only had Dad’s book to go on. Or did I? The story Inna had told about the witch man and Wydling woman was awfully similar to Dad’s tale. And if it were true, then who had been the world-walker my mother had made a deal with? Who else? Ravana. And if Ravana had been the one my parent’s fled from, then had it been Ty who helped them get away?
I stepped out of the shower and dried myself off, then walked naked into my bedroom, my thoughts still on Amara’s interrupted tell-all and the convoluted story around my origins. According to Dad’s book, he had fled with Mom to Earth. No mention of Skriven at all, meddling or helpful.
Maybe I needed to visit Lizzie and ask some questions. But would she want to talk to me now? And what about Kroshtuka? He would want to see me and I him, but what would he make of me now?
Perhaps it was the goddess I needed to see. I could take Ty with me, ask her my questions. No. If I took him, she wouldn’t have any words for me; she’d be caught up in meeting her long lost son.
What the hell could I do?
I could search for my soul. I hadn’t done much to find it and wasn’t sure where to start looking but it was something I’d have to get back eventually, as unappealing as it seemed right now.
And, of course, there was the whole matter of the way Ty had interrupted whatever Amara had been about to say about Ravana. I doubted very much that Harrison would have tried killing himself. He wasn’t the type. Which meant Tytan slit his throat and threw him at my feet when he’d been afraid Amara would tell me … what?
“What are you hiding, Ty?”
Dad was downstairs waiting for me but he could wait while I did some digging. He wouldn’t even know I was gone, anyway, since I was headed to the Slip. I dressed in jeans and t-shirt, not bothering with a bra or underwear and hooked to Ty’s manse in the Slip. The place looked empty but I knew Nex was there somewhere. I’d let Ty take him home when I’d left them at the Carnicus. I’d also asked him to deposit Harrison’s body on Earth so the cops could find it. I didn’t want Danni to live in fear forever and she would if Harrison never showed up dead.
The manse was quiet. “Hello?” I didn’t want Ty here, didn’t want him trying to distract me. When no one answered, I began a search, starting with the room the Skriven had gathered in and working my way around.
It took hours. At one point, Nex came floating from who knew where, his black eyes gleaming. “For what do you look, Devany?”
“Ty’s up to something. So I’m looking for answers.” I didn’t pause in my hunt, methodically tapping, sliding, moving, and searching every bit of furniture, the walls, books, papers and more. I found nothing on the first floor, much to my disappointment and moved to the second, Nex trailing me.
“Perhaps you need to ask of me a question.”
I paused. I could do that now that the Rider was gone, right? “What’s Ty hiding from me, Nex?”
His eyes pooled with black. “It lies hidden in Tytan’s inner sanctum. At the heart of it, if you will.”
My eyes narrowed. Something hard and burning settled in the pit of my stomach, something that made me glad Tytan wasn’t here because I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t knock him into the next century. I dashed up the stairs and banged open door after door, knowing at a glance that the room wasn’t Tytan’s.
I would know his. And I did.
The room was filled with pure white light and not the reddish glow of the Slip. It was beautiful. Dark wood floors. A centerpiece of a bed with delicately carved posters holding a creamy, diaphanous material over the top. There were French doors that opened up onto an English garden, despite there being nothing like that outside his home. A big wardrobe sat in one corner, a dresser in another, all made from the same dark wood, wood that gleamed as if recently polished with lemon oil.
It was my dream bedroom, one I had created in Home Economics in high school, down to the vase of purple orchids sitting on a table to the right of the French doors. How had he known this? Or had I created it just now in my head? “Nex?”
But Nex hadn’t come in with me.
As if in a dream, I walked the room, my fingers sliding over the furniture, feeling the cool, smooth wood.
What would the heart of the room be?
The bed of course. For Tytan, that would be where his heart would lie.
I walked over to it and put a knee on the mattress. I sank in and groaned with pleasure. As if under a spell, I flattened myself on it, eyes half closed as the absolute decadence swallowed me.
Ridiculous as it was, I almost fell asleep. I scooted until my head was on one of the sweet-smelling pillows. “Ah,” I said. Then I slipped my hand under it and touched something cold. Something familiar.
I could leave it under the pillow and walk away without ever seeing it. I could put my head in the sand and forget I’d ever touched it. But my fingers closed around it and my hand was moving before I could do much else.
I pulled it free, holding it in my hand without looking.
I knew what it was anyway, didn’t I?
My eyes confirmed what my touch already knew.
I was holding the heart in my hand.
***
“Devany.”
I raised my eyes to see him in the doorway, looking seductive, dangerous, familiar and strange all at once. “Please tell me you made two?”
His gaze didn’t waver. “You know I didn’t.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Don’t you?”
He didn’t move from the doorway, didn’t offer to play any of his seductive tricks. He was content, I suspected, to let this unfold in its own time. “The explosion?”
He lifted a shoulder. “Those witch balls are volatile.”
I rubbed my thumb over the heart’s surface, the thing I’d lived with—or thought I had—for months. The thing I believed was fueling my magic. The control room I envisioned was the heart’s control room. “Does Arsinua know?” I couldn’t imagine it but then again, whyever not? Everything else I’d believed was suddenly hanging kilter.
“The witch thought the heart was magic. And it is. Were you to look at it with your ... what do you call it? Magic Eye? You would see that it has magic. And it all points to you.”
I did look at it with my Magic Eye and saw a pure yellow stream of light blazing from the heart to my chest, where it disappeared. “So it’s not the source of the magic inside me? Then how?” I didn’t know how to articulate my questions. I could think them, but when I tried to ask them, they came out in a jumble of craziness, like rats in a ball, all teeth, tails, and plague.
He didn’t answer, letting me think it through.
I did know, of course, I just didn’t want to know it. Ravana had meddled. She’d been the world-walker Inna had talked about. She had meddled with my mom and now here I was. She had meddled with Tytan, too, but his mother had saved him. Sort of. So who had saved me?
Who else had saved me? Who else but the bane of my existence, the demon who had set my world on end when he’d dragged me from the smoke and confusion of the explosion and claimed me as his own.
“We are two of a kind, Devany, you and I. Ravana’s little experiments.” He moved then, coming toward me like a stalking lion. “I knew what it was like to be tortured by her and did not want you to suffer the same fate. So I did something extraordinarily dangerous. I warned your mother and father and helped hide them from Ravana’s insanity. I paid for it, too, over the centuries.”
My mouth was dry. “Centuries? That can’t be right.”
“They ran from Ravana and I hid them in the Rend. Pushed them through it. Forward, instead of back, as you went. Further than you went. It’s why Amara thought I owed her, why she kept meddling.”
