Redemption (The Alexa Montgomery Saga)

by H. D. Gordon

  King William waved an impatient hand. “And the Sorcerers? What moves have they made?”

  “The girl, Surah, is at the Outlands now. The last time that our scout checked in was only five minutes ago. He said that the Sun Warrior and the Sorceress were fighting, would have killed each other if not for…”

  The King’s gray eyes glittered more brilliantly with hatred than all the diamonds he wore. “If not for Nelliana, correct?”

  Andre gave a curt nod. “Correct, your Majesty.”

  King William rose from his chair behind the desk, his knuckles pressed down into the oak. “Good. Very good,” he said, handing Andre the paper on which he had been writing. “Then everything is going according to plan. Take that message and see that it is distributed throughout the cities. When will we be ready to leave?”

  “We are ready now, your Majesty.”

  The King nodded, straightening the jacket of his pristine suit. “Good. Let us go, then.”

  “Is there anything else, your Majesty?”

  King William paused in the doorway. “Yes, actually. Print the names of those who left with our little Nelliana on that message I gave you. Label them for the traitors that they are, and make it clear that anyone associated with them will be considered traitor as well.”

  Andre nodded.

  “Is that Thomas Caslon’s son on that list there?”

  “Yes, your Majesty. It is.”

  “Funny, he did not mention that his boy was with the traitors. Find Thomas, Andre, and bring him to me. I have a few questions for him.”

  Andre nodded.

  “Good. And make sure you tell me immediately when we receive word from our scout again. I do hope that the Sorceress and our girls are getting along nicely.”

  Alexa

  You have to know that we can’t trust her, Nell. She came here to kill us, for shit’s sake.

  Nelly’s voice sounded softly in my head. I know that she came here because the King told her we were responsible for her brother’s death. We just need to convince her that it isn’t true. If her brother has gone missing, we both know who was more than likely responsible for it. And…she’s powerful, Lex. Very powerful. She could be an important ally.

  Yeah, or she could be a spy.

  She’s not.

  And you’re so sure? You said yourself that she’s very powerful.

  Nelly took three slow steps back, and didn’t take her eyes from Surah until she was safely inside the barrier of the Outlands. Just trust me, Lex.

  Nelly held her hands out to her side, regarding Surah with gentle eyes. “It’s your choice, Surah,” Nelly said. “King William is a liar and a murderer, and if your brother went to see him and has not returned, my money is on the King for his absence. You know you can’t enter here with vengeance on your mind, and you may try whatever magic is available to you, but I will not allow you to harm my sister. We are not responsible for your pain. If you will allow me the chance, I would like to help you put the puzzle pieces together. I think we will find that we have a similar goal.”

  Surah inclined her lavender head. “I have no interest in the wars of Wolves and Vampires,” she said, and slowly, she tucked her hands under her cloak and stored the sais there. I didn’t miss that her black gloved hands were still clenched into fists, though. “Your King tells me you are the ones I seek. You tell me that he is the one. Maybe I should just kill you all, cover all the bases.”

  I stepped forward now, having had enough of this girl’s attitude. “Look, I’m sorry about your brother, and I get it that you’re angry, but trying to kill us will only end badly for you. Trust me, and it would give him what he wants. You’re not the only one who has lost someone to this man. The enemy of your enemy is your friend, right?” And then, because I couldn’t help it, I added, “And you really don’t want me for an enemy.”

  Surah smirked and flipped her cold purple eyes to Nelly. “She seems to be the one I should worry about making enemies with,” she said. Nelly inclined her head, but said nothing. After a moment, Surah spread her hands out before her. “Fine. I will listen to what you have to say, but if you reach into my mind like that one more time, I’m going to reach into your heart with one of these,” she said, tapping the place under her cloak that hid her weapons.

  If I didn’t want to kill her, I think I might actually like this little bitch, Warrior.

  “She’s got a certain spunk, doesn’t she?”

  Mmm, remind you of anyone?

  With a nod from Nelly, and one final deep breath from Surah, the Sorceress took five steps forward, and joined us in the Outlands.

  Seems too easy, doesn’t it? My Monster mumbled in my head.

  Yes, it did.

  A Message to the People

  Again, the fliers were hung throughout the city, on the lampposts, in the shop windows, on the houses of the people. Today the King would be “cleansing” the second city on the list, Running Rivers, the same way he had cleansed Sun City of the traitors the day before. No one outside of Sun City knew what had happened there, what awaited them when their time came and their numbers were called. But the common mood among the people had grown grim, nonetheless. It was as if they could smell the trouble coming in the air, could sense the death that waited beyond the horizon. And the new fliers did nothing to ease their anxiety.

  The fliers read as such:

  People of the Five Cities, I, King William, regret to inform you that our safety and way of life is under threat. A Sun Warrior has taken up arms with the Accursed and the other races. They sent in a Sorcerer, Syris Stormsong, to steal the locations to the entrances of our beloved cities, but the Sorcerer has taken care, so you needn’t fear him. The Sun Warrior, Alexa Montgomery, and her allies are regretfully still at large, however. Anyone with any knowledge about this regime is to come forward at once and share what they know. Anyone caught associating with these criminals will be considered traitor. Most of you are too young to remember the Great War over a thousand years past now, but I remember it very well, and I assure you that it is not something that we would like to face again. For your own safety, I will advise you to take this threat seriously, and follow the orders given to you. I am confident that these traitors can be stopped, but your cooperation is required. Make sure you arrive at the Council Building at your scheduled times to pledge your allegiance. Listed below are the names and races of those known associates with the Sun Warrior.

  Signed,

  King William

  Alexa

  I sat in the corner with my arms folded over my chest, leaning back against my chair, staring at the Sorceress with what I knew to be my Monster’s eyes. It wasn’t that I didn’t like the girl, or even that I didn’t trust her—which I didn’t—but rather that being what I am made it easy for me to recognize what she was. Like a sixth sense. The dark side of me could sense another predator in the room. Not the same as all the others. One that needed special consideration.

  I could see it in her lithe movements, the way she seemed to float about from here to there, without making a single swoosh noise with the long cloak she wore. In the way her violet eyes, many shades darker than the soft lavender of her short hair, would roam over the room with a trained disinterest, while taking in everyone and everything that they touched. In the way her slender gloved hands relaxed at her sides, but always Nano-seconds away from the weapons she kept hidden beneath her black cloak. Surah’s gaze only settled on me every so often, never lingering but always seeming to flick over me, casting a smile somewhere in the dark iris’s, as if to say, yes, I see you watching me. I’m watching you, too.

  She’s got a firm mask on her monster, wouldn’t you say, Warrior? I’m almost impressed.

  “Yes, I would say. She looks as harmless as I do, and yet…”

  And yet you know she is just as disappointed about not being able to kill you as you are about not getting to kill her. Maybe you two should exchange recipes.

  “Maybe I should punch myself in the f
ace and see if you scream.”

  A cold laugh. Don’t be ridiculous, Warrior. That would downright crazy.

  Crazy. Huh. That’s a laugh.

  I rolled my eyes a little as I watched Surah pace back and forth on the other side of the room. Disrupting my thoughts, she said, “I don’t understand what your King could possibly gain in killing Syris, or why he would think that I wouldn’t find out. He cannot be such a fool.”

  We were back in the room that Camillia’s sister, Silvia, had lent us. Kayden stood beside me, silent and watchful. Tommy and Nelly stood over by the bed, while Surah paced back and forth in front of them. The cold hardness of my Gladius tucked under my shirt was as welcome as always. I didn’t particularly want Nelly in the same room and so close to the Sorceress. Hell, I didn’t particularly want them in the same building. The girl screamed danger in much the same way as others surely thought I did.

  Ah, but our little Nelly can look after herself now, can’t she? Things are not the same as they once were, Warrior. Perhaps she doesn’t need us anymore.

  Across the room, I saw Nelly’s eyes settle on me, and I knew right away that she had heard my Monster’s thought—my thought. The look in her hazel eyes was half-glare, half-love, and I understood what it meant without her having to speak in my head. Her eyes told me that my Monster’s last comment was, in a word, bullshit.

  Nelly’s gaze flipped back to Surah, not missing a beat in the conversation despite the fact that she’d just been having the equivalent of one silently with me. “Is there a dream spell?” Nelly asked, her brow furrowing in that way that I knew meant that she was following a thread of thought somewhere, figuring something out. “Or, I mean, like some kind of magic that your kind knows that can reach people in their dream states?”

  Surah stopped pacing, and her head tilted, making the shaved half of it more visible. She studied my sister’s face carefully, as if deciding whether or not this was information that she should share. At last, she nodded once slowly, and the unspoken why? was clear enough on her face.

  Nelly’s face lit up the way it always did when she knew she was on to something. “That’s why the King needed your brother,” she said. “To reach into my dreams when I was…Can these dream spells affect someone’s…actions in the waking world?”

  The Sorceress girl stood as still as stone. “They can’t make people do things, if that’s what you mean,” Surah said. “There has to be some predisposition to the matter. For example, you couldn’t make a mother go and murder her children using a dream spell unless it had already been an impulse seeded in their mind.” A pause. “What was it these dreams told you to do?”

  Nelly’s eyes flicked to me and settle there. For a moment, I thought that she wasn’t going to answer Surah’s question, and I wanted to know the answer to this question as well. This was something Nelly hadn’t told me about yet, and I realized then that there were a lot of somethings that we hadn’t talked about yet. I was going to have to make a point to see that corrected.

  My sister’s voice was soft when she spoke, just a step above small. Her eyes never left mine, and the pain that she had been hiding surprisingly well seemed to bubble up there all the way to the top. “To drink the sun,” Nelly said. “The dreams told me to drink the sun.”

  I stared at my sister, unable to comprehend exactly what any of this meant. The idea that my sister could have a predisposition to—what, killing me? Impossible. It was a thought that just could not be believed on my part.

  And why not, Warrior? You of all people should understand that predisposition.

  “But not Nelly. I could never…not Nelly.”

  You seem to keep forgetting what you both are. You can wrap it up and put a bow on it all you want, but you both are killers. Sun Warriors are said to go crazy with blood lust if they take enough lives, and oh how that silver on our arm has spread. Like wildfire. You started with three lilies, and now, have you even counted? Do you even know the number of lives you have taken? I don’t. I’d bet my balls that our little sister over there knows how many she’s killed. I wonder who has got the more impressive number.

  “We didn’t want any of this. We were dragged into this fight. And no matter how many notches Nelly and I have on our belt, the King has more. And, it’s too far gone now anyway. There can’t be any turning back. We must revolt against King William’s empire. At least we’re fighting on the side of good. What was it that Olivia said? That good needs its warriors, too.”

  And now you want to take advice from that old bitch? Oh, Warrior, there is no good and evil in a revolution. There is only death and pain and blood. The winners write the history, and the winners always write themselves as heroes.

  “Well, then I guess it’s a good thing that I deal in death and pain and blood.”

  Silence. I looked over the room and saw that it had fallen there, too. Surah, for the first time since I’d met her, looked a little uncomfortable at the information my sister had just shared. It wasn’t too hard to put the pieces together. I was a Sun Warrior. Her dreams told her to drink the sun, and two plus two equals four.

  The Sorceress cleared her throat. “This dream world, what did it look like?”

  Nelly released a slow breath, and I could tell that this was not something she wanted to talk about at all. But she did. “All gray,” she said. “It was all gray. The sky, the earth, even the air. It was a place that zapped everything out of you and left only despair. A place that seemed endless and eternal, where pain and fear are born. A gray world…with no hope.”

  Surah nodded. “It’s called Dream Reaching, and it is not a simple spell to perform.” She paused. “But Syris could do it.”

  Nelly spoke quietly. “I’m sorry, Surah.”

  Surah’s hands clenched into fists at her sides as she turned on my sister. “Sorry? I should think so. I still don’t know what the hell is going on here, but there are ways to find out. And if you are lying to me, I swear to the Goddess that you will seriously regret it.”

  Anger struck me the way it always did, swift and crude and hot. I leapt up from my chair and was standing in the Sorceress’s face before anyone could blink. I stared hard into her cold purple eyes, knowing that my own were glowing an angry wolf-gold. “I think I’ve had enough of your threats,” I growled. “You want a fight? Let’s go finish it then. I gladly step over that border with you.”

  Surah’s lips turned up in a small smile, and I knew that the next words out of her mouth were going to be an acceptance to my challenge. My Monster laughed loudly in my head and my Gladius sent waves of cold tingles up my spine. But then Nelly was pulling me gently away from the Sorceress and speaking in my head.

  No, Alexa, please. She’s hurting, that’s all. She’s just lost her brother. How would you be reacting if you had just lost me?

  I breathed in and out, a growl underlining each rush of air. I wanted so badly to jump forward and tear this girl’s throat open with my teeth, so badly to feel her warm blood spill over my hands, the force of her life leaving her at my hands. If Nelly hadn’t asked me to leave just then, I may have done just that, even though somewhere in the back of my mind I knew she was right. I would be acting the same way Surah was acting if I had lost Nelly. Scratch that. I’d be worse.

  Just go for a minute, Lex. Take a walk or something. She can’t hurt me. I’m not sure anyone can hurt me anymore. I could wrap every soul in this room up in my mental fingers if I wanted to and jerk them around like puppets. Just give me a minute. Trust me. Please.

  These words were not underscored with pride or anything else. They were spoken only as fact. I spun on my heel, unable to stop myself from tossing a thought at my sister that was harsher than I intended as soon as it left my head. Why don’t you just make me, then?

  I grabbed the doorknob and tossed the door open without a look back at the hurt expression I knew would be on my sister’s face. Without having to be asked, Kayden followed me out and shut the door behind us.

  I slumpe
d against the wall in the hallway, my anger rushing out of me and leaving me tired, just tired. The windows set into the painted walls showed that daylight was approaching, and I realized that I hadn’t slept for over twenty-four hours. Kayden nudged my legs apart as he came to stand in front of me, and I wrapped my arms around him as he pressed me up against the wall. Resting my head on his chest, I listened to the heart that beat there.

  I tilted my head back and stared up into his golden eyes. “I need to get control of my temper, huh?”

  Kayden’s mouth turned up a fraction, his voice just above a whisper. “Mmm, I don’t know. I personally like it when you get all angry and confrontational. It’s like watching a lioness in hunt.”

  I smiled a little in spite of myself. “Now that you mention it, I am kind of hungry.”

  Kayden tilted his head to the side. His dark blond hair was pulled back into a short ponytail, giving me free access to his thick, scarred neck. I stood up on my tip-toes and licked the skin there, earning and low rumbling growl from him that vibrated in his chest. “Later,” I said, and settled back on my feet. “I think right now I could just go for a good old cheeseburger and French fries. I take it there are no McDonalds just around the corner from here?”

  Kayden stepped back a fraction and chuckled lowly. “I’m afraid not. But we can go see what Silvia has in her kitchen. She said we were welcome to and that there is plenty there.”

  I stepped out of the circle of his arms with reluctance and patted him on his butt. “That’ll do, donkey,” I said, in my best Scottish accent.

  Kayden quirked an eyebrow at this, but I just shook my head and laughed, leading him down the hallway to where Silvia’s kitchen was located. I felt better already, and knew that this was a result of being with Kayden. It was truly a wonder how he could always take my dark moods and flip them over and fill them up with sunlight. I could even appreciate the beauty of the enormous shimmering flowers painted onto the walls, with their pinpoints of light that glittered like captured stars. I looked up at him as we walked side by side, that old tingling in my chest seeming to fill me up.