Ascend (The Last Oracle, The First Seer's Gift, and a Prophecy Fulfilled) (A Fated Fantasy Quest Adventure Book 11)

by Humphrey Quinn

Colby peered down helplessly at Jae, who nodded. They'd gotten enough info and they couldn't stall any longer or this situation was going to end worse than it might already. Jae grasped Colby's arm, first, willing all his own strength into him. His silent intent—you are strong enough to do this.

  Colby gritted his teeth and climbed to his feet and faced Katana.

  "I'm not helping you. You did injure Jae. But you didn't infect him with Projector's powers." It was time to let her in on the one smart thing they'd done.

  She laughed and taunted them both with the dagger.

  "It's fake," Jae informed her from the ground. "So is the Book of Doorways and The Magicante."

  "Yeah. Right. Good try."

  "We didn't trust you," Jae threw back at her.

  "With good reason," Colby acknowledged sharply.

  "The real versions are hidden. And you're not getting them." Jae clutched himself, trying to use magic to stop some of the blood loss, but with his concerns so wrapped up around Colby, it only worked just a little. But enough to rise to his feet and steady himself.

  She eyed the dagger and the books, considering what they said.

  "Do I look like someone who got anything but stabbed?" Jae provoked her. "I'm pissed. But I'm not infected with magic."

  Something in Jae's voice must have rung true, because the venom seeping into Katana's eyes had the young men worried for their lives.

  "Even if you're telling the truth, you're still half way to dead," she shot at Jae. "And I'm still taking him." Two Stripers whipped their palms upward and in a single blink Colby slumped over, knocked out cold.

  Jae seized up. Brain racing to catch up with what had just happened. He opened his mouth to plead with her, but what was the damn point! No pleading from him was going to save Colby. Only action.

  Half-dead, bleeding out, or not, Jae wasn't going to let them take Colby back to his father. With every ounce of strength and focus he could muster, he attacked the Stripers as they hulked Colby and Elisha, locked in her cage, back through the doorway to the wintery, blustery island off the coast of Maine.

  So instantly gone were the gloomy, warm surroundings of Grimble.

  But Jae ignored the bitter winter and attacked with full force.

  Each spell was deflected, and he had no choice but to duck and hide—there were even more Stripers waiting on the island.

  When the first round of spells slowed, he jumped out and attacked again. He had no way to win, he just had to stall them. And hope against all hope that help would arrive before it was too late and Colby was handed back to his father.

  CHAPTER 8

  Colin found himself right back where he'd left a few hours before. Only now, everyone else had deserted the place. Probably to bed seeing it was getting late.

  Sleep—something he should try, too. But he in no way could imagine succeeding in the attempt.

  He stood in a rigid pose, staring at the burned down pyre. All that remained was a pile of smoldering ash that had once been wood, flesh, and bone—the latter of the two otherwise known as his mother.

  He wasn't even sure why he was here. What was the point in staring at ashes? At someone who no longer existed. At someone who had never truly existed—not for him anyway. Not as a mother. And for so long only ever as an enemy.

  After it had happened—her death—his outburst—a poor description of what he'd done—he'd buried himself in the land of numb. Shoved his feelings into a place where they could not surface. What was the point in feeling anything?

  Heck, every time he looked at Jasper, it was obvious the man had no clue what to do with him. How did you control an unstable, powerful immortal? Who apparently was never going to learn, and had no self-control. Not even Colin Jacoby knew how to deal with himself—other than to shut down. Too bad he wasn't a robot from one of his favorite sci-fi novels and he could just power down. Or someone could unplug him and put him out of this pathetic existence already.

  Instead, he'd wandered aimlessly, and ended up back at the burned out funeral pyre of his mother, with no particular thought or intention in mind, other than to stare at it.

  Catrina had accompanied him, in relative silence. Giving him the space he needed to be restless, and yet exhausted, all at once. Somehow, the two things zeroed each other out and left him smack dab in numbville.

  He was officially an orphan.

  His parents now permanent residents of the in-between world. No longer living, and never moving on to whatever afterlife awaited them. And why did their deaths even matter? He'd believed he was orphaned a long time ago.

  He'd barely had time to process who his parents were; there had been no time to think of much else. Not about what he'd lost. Not about what he'd never known. Not about what Jurekai Fazendiin had stolen from them all…

  What was the point of dwelling on any of these things? It changed nothing. Besides, thoughts and emotions took him to dangerous places. Feelings, and thinking, and wanting anything—this was a deadly path to follow. Which meant a future of indifference, of forever stuck in neutral.

  "I, um—have to get home soon." Catrina's soft voice interrupted his dulled down, but shouldn't be happening, thoughts. Not that she cared about getting home, but she needed to get Colin talking again and the usual words of comfort and support seemed so unremarkable in their meanings tonight.

  "Okay." Colin shrugged, but didn't move.

  She gawked at him, having hoped for something more. Perhaps he hadn't completely heard her. He probably wasn't even listening.

  "Don't you want to talk about it?" she blurted out in desperation. "You haven't said much." Anything… she corrected in silence.

  "What's there to say?"

  "Your mother died. You found out who your father is." You almost blew up an island and everyone on it… she wanted to shout, hoping to shake the emotion out of him.

  "Eddy was never my father. He didn't live long enough for that. And my mother, she was not just my mother. She was an evil woman. She hurt people. Killed people. Made my life hell." He gave Catrina a noncommittal shrug. "I only just found out she was my mother. It's not like I knew her, or will—miss her. I've hated her much longer than I ever considered any other possibility. The reality is, my mother and father have been dead to me since I came into the world. Nothing that happened changes any of that. So what more is there to talk about?" His words edged on feeling something, but fell short.

  "Then why are you here?" she asked him in gentle firmness. "You could have walked anywhere, but you came to your mother's pyre."

  Nothing. Not a flinch, or an extra hard blink. No sigh or held breath.

  Catrina feared what was building underneath his numbness. Surely, he had to be feeling something, even if it was buried deep. He hadn't been himself since he'd come back from the island. And really, why would he be? He was faced not only with the aftermath of the previous night, but with the funerals now over, his invitation to stay might be revoked at any moment. Nashua had made it clear that Colin was not welcome here. Hell, he wasn't welcome anywhere.

  And Catrina was prepared to leave with him if it came to that. But it was eating away at her that he was so closed off, even to her. Not so much that he was ignoring it all, but just not caring. Or processing. But then thinking about that, she understood he probably thought that's what got him into this mess to begin with.

  So it was back to worrying about everyone not trusting him. And fearing him. And wanting him locked up—or dead—except death wasn't an actual possibility. Which only made people's distrust and fear of him grow even more. They might not be able to control him, or kill him, but they could make his life miserable just the same. People didn't like what they didn't understand, or were not willing to understand.

  People, magical or not, had a way of creating the very monsters they feared, by refusing to educate themselves or even try to understand and help, instead of just hating right out of the gate and being too stubborn and thick headed to see any other reality.

 
How different the world would be if people could open their minds just a little. Or at the least, listen with a willing and open heart. Catrina wished the world could have her gift as a Song Spinner, for even a single day. If they could hear the music, the songs, in the way she did, it might just widen their views to new possibilities and allow them to look past those long ingrained and automatic fears.

  But Colin's current state of mind was something she didn't know how to deal with—especially in a manner befitting a Projector. Because this was the reality they faced. Perhaps that was the point she needed to remind him of. They… them. They were a they and he was not alone in this. However, her presence had not helped last night, seeing as she'd not been on the island with him. From what she'd been told, she wasn't sure it would have mattered.

  His mother had been the one to bring him back from the brink. Catrina had managed this before, too, but now, with him so closed off to her, would she still be able to? And the frightening reality was that no matter what anyone thought of Colin, or if he was welcome or not, he was free to come and go if he wanted to. It wasn't like anyone could stop him.

  Ugh. Right back to the start again. This wasn't a problem with an easy solution.

  Colin nudged her gently. "I'll walk you home." But she didn't follow.

  "Colin, wait. Please talk to me. Please tell me what you're thinking. What you're planning. Anything… just… talk to me."

  "Other than what's right in front of me, happening right now, I'm not thinking about much. Or planning anything. I mean, what's the point? I don't get to make plans." Again, the words slid out of his mouth, but held no value.

  Catrina raked her teeth across her lower lip. Maybe it was time to have a talk with Jasper. He might know what to do, or what was going on. Or how to shake Colin out of this funk. She leaned upward and kissed him in a gentle, telling brush of her lips. He kissed her back, but like everything else about him there was no meaning in the movement. It was simply fulfilling a motion.

  "I love you," she told him.

  He nodded, lips twitching ever so slightly. But he looked at her as if she was a ghost he was looking straight through. Catrina's hopes were deflating, fast. If she wasn't afraid she was losing him to the magic he couldn't control, she was afraid she was losing him because he was drowning himself in some deep pit of despair that he somehow thought he deserved.

  And now he was closing himself off from life. From her. And she could not allow this. She had to keep trying. She would bet money it was still better for him to feel and think, rather than let it fester in some deep place where it was bound to explode, or implode, when it finally surfaced. He needed to move forward and let the past be the past. He needed something to look forward to.

  "You know, you might still have a chance to get to know your parents better." She decided to change tactics.

  "They're dead."

  "Yes, true. But like you said, they're both stuck in the in-between. A place we can go to. And they can come into the land of the living as well."

  "Living?" He lazily waved his arm in the air. "Is this living? Maybe I should be in the in-between too. It's not such a bad idea if you think about it. I mean, I can't hurt ghosts. They're already dead."

  "Colin." She grabbed his shoulders to force him to look at her. "You can't be serious! You are alive. You're not dead. Or stuck. I only meant that you might still have the chance to get to know your parents. Your real parents. The people they were before—" she didn't want to say Fazendiin's name, "before the Grosvenor ruined everything."

  Colin didn't want to think about his parents. And their forever non-future. Or his own. Whether he lived it out here or anywhere, forever was a long, unfathomable length of time.

  And Catrina… he was a danger to her. The smart choice would be to leave her. To leave everyone and just… vanish. Maybe if he stayed away long enough people would forget all about his existence. He could live an apathetic life, like Jasper had been doing. Alone. Drifting down life's endless waterways, or roadways, or hidden in some cave somewhere. Wherever he could just be left alone. He might have an indifferent future ahead of him, but Catrina shouldn't be subjected to that life. No one should.

  "Catrina, I—I can't be around my parents. At least, not without dangerous things happening." Like almost blowing up an island or all the people on said island…

  "That was because of the shock of it all," she argued. "It's not always going to be like that. And face it, you've got plenty of time to move beyond the shock and hate and confusion and—whatever else. Your parents aren't going anywhere and you've got—time." She shook her head, her own point getting muddled. "I just don’t want you to give up, Colin. The future isn't all darkness, is what I'm trying to get at."

  "It's not all darkness?" he snapped back harshly. "How so exactly?" She forced back the gasp in her throat. She was the one who wanted to get him to feel something. "My parents are never moving on. They both took their own lives—for me. To help me. To save me. Someone who can't be saved. I don't think the future gets much darker than that." And the problem he was trying to numb himself to finally revealed itself.

  It wasn't just Colin's own future he was afraid of. It wasn't that he didn't really know his parents, or that he might even, someday, get to know them—it was that they'd taken their own lives, for him. And now because of that, they were both stranded between the world of the living and the world of the dead. Never moving on. Never at peace. And this was something even Colin couldn't fix.

  "They loved you." Catrina didn't know what else to say.

  "I know. So much, that they were willing to give their lives. And look where it got them. It wasn't worth it. Because they can't save me, dead or alive. Love can't save me. No one can save me."

  Not even you, is the unspoken warning Catrina heard in the silence that followed.

  She wanted to argue. Tell him not to give up. That she'd never give up. But she'd just be proving his point. She could love him forever, and as hard as she was able, but it would not save him. It was not enough. There might not be anyone or anything dead or alive, that could.

  "You should go home, Catrina."

  She sucked on her lips to keep from making any sort of counter offer, or crying. But then he softened just a little.

  "I just need to be alone for a little while."

  She nodded and obliged his request, her heart heavier for it though. He was pushing her away, and she had little ammo other than pure stubborn refusal to give up. And she wasn't going to give up, but her ammo was running low and she needed to restock.

  Colin continued staring at the smoldering pyre.

  What good was having power if it was just going to hurt everyone around you, and it made you no less vulnerable or dependent on others to fight on your behalf? The truth he didn't want to admit to, is that he'd give just about anything to be the old Colin Jacoby again. The young man who needed his sister to come to his rescue. Who wasn't a Projector. Who didn't have any magic. Even a magicless, target of every bully in the world's existence would be better than the future he had coming.

  Power was not the real power, he decided. Fazendiin had it all wrong. The only thing that held any real value was self-awareness and willingness to be that self. An option Colin no longer had. Which means he was already lost…

  CHAPTER 9

  Meghan slid into bed in full awareness she'd not sleep. But the act of trying was better than nothing. And mostly to pass the time and make it look like she meant to sleep. She didn't even bother getting under the covers, or undressing though.

  Nona was a statue at her feet, on high alert and aware of her task this night. And although nervous about it, willing and loyal to see it through. But like Meghan, Nona had a feeling that sneaking out in the middle of the night was not going to be as easy as she hoped, and actually they were counting on that. But there was a job only Meghan could do and she wasn't going to wait any longer.

  Sure. Everyone would be pissed. Livid, more like.

  Mos
t especially Ivan and Sebastien.

  Her mother. Grandmother.

  Her Uncle Arnon. Kanda… so okay, the list was getting long at who'd be disbelieving levels of angry. It was still a solid plan. Jasper agreed and that was good enough for her. At least, the parts she planned for anyway—once inside her father's estate all bets were off. There was no telling what sorts of obstacles to expect. Other than, most likely, powerful magic far beyond her own knowledge or skill as a Firemancer. Which is why this plan needed to go off without a hitch.

  And she needed a clear head. But her conversation with Jasper and Robert weighed heavily in her mind. His plan of using the dagger to infect Colin with even more powers, so that he'd be able to fight her father and she'd be able to remove those powers, after—the Projector side at least—was playing a dangerous game of chance. And almost felt like a, well, let's give this a try because we're in our last hour and desperate. It felt equal parts saving Colin, and using him as a means to an end. But with a good chance to save him too. And wasn't that case enough to try?

  It still didn't feel right doing so without talking to Colin first. Which she didn't have the time to do tonight, and it was not something she wanted to discuss through a mind conversation—not that he was opening his mind to her anyway. His block was like a permanent fixture now. Impenetrable, unless he wanted to let her in. But this was a face to face kind of talk anyway.

  She liked to think she knew Colin well enough to know that he'd choose the possible out, just like Jasper and Robert insisted. But she and Colin had spent little time together these last years. And time was running out for them to sit down and have a leisurely chat about it.

  "Speaking of being out of time," Nona meowed out.

  Meghan threw her legs over the side of the bed and slipped on some sturdy black boots that tied half way up her calves, grabbed a jacket and shoved her arms through the sleeves, and stuffed some gloves into the pockets to combat the cold air of the island. She marched out the front door with Nona at her heels.