by Sierra Cross
We plowed through the dense leaves and roots and branches, my feet sliding on piles of rotting leaves and small puddles. Thirst burned in my throat. Scrambling up stones and over felled trees, we made our way deeper into the jungle. We turned this way and that, borrowing a page from Diego’s crazy zigzagging getaway driving.
“Stop,” I said. “Let’s go this way.” I pointed west, into the densest part of the jungle.
“The El Diablo facility is east,” Matt said.
“Yeah, exactly. We’ll come at it from the other side.” It would add to our trek, but maybe we’d get lucky and they wouldn’t be expecting us to come from that direction.
From the canopy above, long black roots crisscrossed down in front of us like ropes, obscuring our path. After ten minutes of slogging through the dense foliage, I heard a gentle gurgling sound just above the noises of the jungle.
“Is that running water?” I said.
We turned north and came to an outcropping of rock with water running down the surface. Matt leaned in to test it and nodded. Fresh sweet spring water. I sat on a rock and tried to slow my heart rate.
A flash of green caught my eye. I looked up, just as barbed wire energy scraped my magical senses.
The Splinter was standing on a rock right in front of me.
The prickle of the newly-turned young witches’ dark magic flooded into me. Every one of the students gripped a leather-wrapped baton.
We were completely surrounded.
“Hey, gang!” Callie gave a dorky wave, so familiar it almost broke my heart. “It is just freaking awesome to see you!”
Chapter Twelve
Restraints dug into my wrists, which the guards had secured behind my back with a yank so brutal it almost pulled my left arm out of socket. Matt and Asher lay unconscious, sprawled out on the tile floor with me. I tried to call my magic to my hands, but it bucked and stalled like a car engine with a dead battery.
Our holding cell was wide with shiny, speckled bars, on the other side of which gleamed a set of stainless steel elevator doors. I didn’t need a metallurgy test to know that the grey flecks in the metal and paint were lodestone, rendering our magic useless.
The last thing I remembered was being gleefully pummeled by Wellspring witches wielding magic batons. Their clubs had been spelled, sort of like magical Tasers. Which meant there’d been no actual need to wail on us. They just did it for fun. I reminded myself the young witches had been brainwashed and weren’t responsible for their actions…but damn, they were vicious. My lip was split, and thirst was a beast clawing at my throat. As I stretched my limbs, I felt a bruise everywhere a blow had landed—which was pretty much everywhere. It all happened so fast, but I was pretty sure Bethany was not among our attackers. Where was she? Was she alive? And what were they doing to Liv? I hadn’t had a Liv-vision in a while and didn’t know if it was a good thing or not.
I blinked my eyes, trying to focus. Though we were on a tropical island, I was freezing. My clothes were still damp, and the air conditioning blew down on me. I scooted myself into a sitting position leaning against the wall. “Hey, wake up.” I gently toed Matt’s shoulder. The big man woke with a start, his arms straining against his cuffs, I knew futilely trying to grab his daggers.
“Fuck,” he said. Unlike me, Matt rarely swore, but I figured if there was ever a time for it, this was it. He nudged his knee against Asher’s shoulder. “Asher. Wake up, dude.”
Asher let out a low groan without opening his eyes. “I’m certain these accommodations do not meet my standards.”
I used to think Asher didn’t take anything seriously. Now I knew the guy better. Downplaying our nightmare was his coping strategy.
So what was mine going to be?
Because I was starting to panic. After all, I was the one who’d stupidly led us into a trap I couldn’t get us out of. Worse, no one outside the coven knew the coordinates of the spelled, warded, top secret location where we were heading. Wait, except Masumi. Would my aunt contact her if we turned up missing?
Would we be dead by then?
Elevator doors slid open, and Callista’s cheery face appeared through the bars of my crate. “Finally, you’re up.” Two techs stood next to her in white lycra jumpsuits with white leather holsters carrying the same batons the young witches just beat us with. One man had squinty eyes, the other wore a dull expression. Neither looked fit enough to pass Fidei muster. Independent contractors, I guessed.
Callista’s heels clicked across the hallway, the lanyard around her neck swinging with her security badge and a strange, green-glowing high-tech cube. It looked like ultra-modern jewelry, but this was the Splinter. Was it a skeleton key? A weapon? “Golly, I thought you sleepyheads would be out for-ever.” She put her hand on her hip and rolled her eyes like an exasperated tween.
“Well, if it isn’t the psycho Splinter,” Asher said. “I’ve been meaning to tell you I loved how you redecorated my lab. Seriously, nice work. Shows your true unhinged—” Suddenly silenced, his face turned scarlet, and his torso dropped forward.
“Stop it!” I yelled, panicked as Asher’s eyes bulged. The Splinter was suffocating him. I knew all too well what that felt like. I was guessing that all the lodestone was pointing to the cell, giving her free rein over her magic while we had no access to ours. “You didn’t haul us all the way into the bowels of your mad scientist laboratory just to kill us, did you, Callie?”
She waved her hand and Asher sucked in a ragged breath.
“Bitch,” he muttered. I winced, wishing he could learn when to hold his tongue.
“Don’t call me that,” the Splinter’s face twisted in distaste.
“Well, if you act like a bitch…” Matt said. Seriously, did these two have a death wish? Not that I disagreed with them, but we had to have all our parts working if we had any hope of escape.
“No, not that.” She looked at Matt like he was stupid. “The other thing. Callie.” She shuddered as if my sister’s name were a curse. “I’m not some simpering, weak schoolgirl. My name is Callista. And that’s how you will address me.”
I hated the sound of that. Felt like she was getting too comfortable in Callie’s body, setting up residence inside my sister witch for the long haul. As Callista’s icy gaze swept over each of us in turn, I wondered…how long did my sister witch have left? I didn’t even want to think about what the real Callie was feeling, forced to torture innocent Mals and imprison her own coven mates.
The Splinter turned to the techs. “Go ahead and finish preparing the lab. I’ll bring them up in a little bit.” She dismissed them with a wave of her hand. One tech swiped a security badge, the elevator doors opened, and they were gone.
What the hell? She was going to escort the three of us, alone? Even without our magic, I was sure we could overpower her. I looked from Matt to Asher, turning my back to Callista, and mouthed, Before we get into the elevator. We had one shot at this. I was guessing we were as close to the exit as we’d ever be.
“Hey, before we go upstairs, I just wanted have a quick chat.” She moved closer, like she wanted to impart some sage words. “This really doesn’t have to be all that bad for you guys. Prove yourselves useful, and it’ll be no biggie. And we can all be together!” She clapped her hands together with delight. “It’s what you’ve always wanted, Alix. Your coven all in one place doing important work.”
“What work could we do as prisoners?” Did I even want to know?
“That’s the amazing part. You’ll be contributing to scientific discoveries. We have never had a full coven to study before.” She turned her gaze to Matt. “And you’re a Mal. Who knew? And a pretty powerful one according to the sources in the Spelldrift. You will advance our cause…immeasurably.”
Icebergs formed in my blood. She was talking about torturing Matt, like we’d seen in Masumi’s videos. And her plans for the rest of our coven couldn’t be much better. “You can’t do this.”
“No? You could always try to resist, I g
uess…” Her voice was an eerie whisper and a shadow crossed over her bright blue eyes. “It’ll get really ugly, really quick.” And then she clapped her hands again, and the darkness was gone, replaced by a twinkle. “Let’s get you moved!”
She swiped her badge, and the elevator door opened at the same time the door of our cell slid to the side. “Chop, chop.” She motioned us forward.
We awkwardly finagled our way to standing and stepped into the hall. As soon as Callista leaned over to tap the elevator security panel with her security badge, I nodded. Matt dropped low and lunged for Callista. But before he could take out her knees, Callista’s hand smacked on the glowing green cube that hung at her chest.
A barely audible pop sounded, and the floor vibrated, a green blanket of laser light flooded from the floor. It burned everywhere it touched, making a horrible frying sound like a bug zapper. I flailed to the ground, muscles contracting involuntarily. Matt and Asher lay twitching and groaning beside me. Unaffected, the Splinter stepped back gracefully as to not be hit by our thrashing limbs. We’d just been hit with the mother of all Tasers.
“Yeah, we’ve made some magicborn upgrades to this old Wont facility.” The Splinter curled her lip as she watched me twitch in a puddle of my own drool. “Place needed remodeling anyway, after that Omni damaged it breaking out his fellow freaks.”
Omni? That had to be Kavon. I recalled the gang of Deviant teens we met back in Tennessee proudly talking about how Kavon had busted up a lab…so this was it? Interesting. Maybe I could get her to talk more and learn something useful, like how he pulled it off.
Except that I was currently lying in a puddle of my own drool. Matt was still twitching, and Asher looked green.
“Like my Jimmy Choos?” Grinning, she lifted one foot and showcased the black high-heeled pumps she wore, posing like a catalog model. “And their best feature is the zendolium-infused rubber soles, custom-altered for me by a dark warlock.” She gave an appreciative nod. “Completely insulates the wearer against the nasty effects of the tertiant anti-magic laser.”
Asher wretched all over the pristine white floor.
Callista took a step back. “Great, now someone’s going to have to clean that up. You guys are not getting off to a good start,” she scolded us dully, like we were preschoolers who weren’t following the rules.
Her techs reappeared and dragged our shuddering bodies by the ankles into the elevator. Nothing we could do, but it didn’t stop my mind from spinning miserably. What if I’d been able to push Callista as Matt lunged for her, or knocked her hand away from the cube…? It was pointless, just a way to torture myself.
And something told me I no longer needed to do it myself.
The steel doors closed, and our car plummeted down so fast my stomach lurched. Our descent went on for an unreasonable amount of time. I hated being underground at the best of times—even basements felt too confining, not enough air for my lungs. As claustrophobia closed in, my heart began to pound and my breathing shallowed with panic. It felt like we were trapped inches above the center of the Earth.
On the bright side, the ride took so long that by the time the doors opened, we all had enough command over our bodies to walk. Well, less walk and more zombie hobble, but it kept us from being dust mops again.
We plodded down a windowless white hallway lined with closed doors that lacked handles or knobs. Beside each door, high-tech control panels flashed to indicate the room’s temperature, lighting, and magical properties. The walls were flecked with by-now-familiar lodestone. Obviously, this floor had the same decorator as the level with the glass cells.
My muscles fired uncontrollably like I had hypothermia, making lifting one foot in front of the other a challenge. The squinty-eyed tech behind me rapped my elbow with a baton every few feet, painfully connecting with the bone, but it didn’t increase my pace.
The faint scent of rubbing alcohol and disinfectant lingered everywhere.
Callista stopped our little parade in front of a large picture window. On the other side were the witches from Wellspring Academy, apparently having a training session. Or was it a torture session? Two men were tied at the front of the room, naked from the waist up, bruises and burns on their torsos. The girls had their hands at their sides. A tall woman in a white jumpsuit was barking out orders. I searched the room for Bethany but couldn’t find her.
Callista noticed me watching and smiled big. “Perfect. I wanted you to see this, Alix. To see what a group of witches can achieve with, well, good leadership.” She faux-winced at her own barb.
As we watched from the hallway, the girls shifted left and right, knelt, spun, and called their magic as a unit. They were a fighting machine, and their firebolt sprung to life like someone was flipping a switch. But their magic was different than the last time I’d seen it. The red was more intense as if the power burned hotter. The firebolt more compact, on the verge of being a solid ball of fire.
Their instructor called another order, and the girl’s split into two groups. One group dropped to their knees, holding their fire, the other aimed and loosed their firebolts on the prisoners. Instantly both men called walls of crystalline magic around themselves—whatever kind of Deviants they were, they clearly had some warlock DNA. But that didn’t mean they could take on this unholy coven. Small fissures in their shields began to show, and both their faces twisted with effort to stave off the attack.
“Again!” The instructor shouted.
The second group of witches stood and fired without mercy. No emotion crossed their faces as the fissures became gaps. Panicked, I tried in vain to call my magic. We had to do something.
Matt must have been thinking the same, because he hurled himself at the door—only to be thrown back by an electric zap on contact with the metal. He landed on the ground in a ball of pain, hissing and shuddering.
Again the young women came together and fired with amazing speed. The gaps became huge expanses before the men’s protections disintegrated and the firebolts connected with flesh. Keening cries of anguish rang out before both men were incinerated.
Vomit rose in my throat and my eyes watered.
The girls stepped back and cheered. Whooping and hollering as if their soccer team had just scored the winning goal.
“That’s the power of teamwork!” The Splinter pumped her first like a cracked-out motivational speaker. “When they work together with the right enhancements, they have almost the power of a Caedis.” She peered through the glass wistfully. “I’ve been trying to achieve the same thing for myself, tapping into Liv’s power. But it hasn’t been going so well—for either of us.” I hated to imagine what ‘not so well’ meant for my coven sister. But before I could collect myself enough to demand to see Liv, the Splinter continued, “But now that y’all are here? I got a feeling my luck’s about to change.” She winked at me like we had just shared some precious secret and then began to walk again.
The techs frogmarched us through two sets of secured doors, down a long hallway, and into a bright open lab. The lab was huge—had to be sixty feet across—with a line of stainless steel operating tables in the middle, each with its own set of instruments and equipment I didn’t recognize. Tubes ran up from the tables in tightly choreographed lines along the ceiling to the far end of the room. The whole back wall was a massive machine that I knew from Masumi’s videos was for collecting serum.
Lining both side walls were empty cages like the one I’d seen in my vision. I was observing them firsthand, not through Liv’s drugged perspective. They were like human-sized dog crates—four walls of lodestone-metal bars and a bunk along one side. The hard foam “bed” in each of the cells was a single molded object, no separate pieces that could be pulled off and fashioned into weapons. No material that could be burned. The metal-slatted bottom of the cage opened onto a bare floor with several drains at intervals across its length. Drains? What the hell were those for? Then my eyes took in the hose system. I shuddered. Just when I thought this mad-
scientist vibe couldn’t get darker.
“It’s pretty quiet in here now.” Callista’s singsong voice carried as she led us into the room. “Everybody’s gone for the evening. But once you see the marvelous work we do here, you’ll be proud to be a part of—” Without warning, the Splinter’s face twitched and her head tilted in an involuntary spasm. What the hell? Was she having a seizure? We all stared at her rogue facial muscles…then, as suddenly as the twitching began, it stopped. “Proud to be a part of such a groundbreaking operation,” she finished, as if nothing odd had just happened. Yeesh, did she not even notice that glitch or was she choosing to ignore it? “Now let’s get you settled.” She was back to sounding smooth and polished, like the hostess at a charming bed and breakfast. “Y’all are gonna love your special ‘home away from home.’”
Matt and Asher appeared to be staring at her in horror—fair enough, she was a first-class whackjob—till I realized they were looking past the Splinter. At the three crates at the end of the row, which weren’t empty.
In the first crate, curled into a fetal position, lay a scrawny figure in orange prison-style coveralls. I knew that curly hair, even out of its ponytails. We’d found Bethany…but the kid looked catatonic. Her normally bright eyes stared ahead. Only the subtle rise and fall of her diaphragm told me she was alive.
In the cell beside hers, Griffin sat on his bunk, his huge size dwarfing the crate. He wore the same orange coveralls, but his had large blood stains blooming on both legs and his torso. His eyes sunken in their sockets, he watched dispassionately as we entered. Bandages on either side of his neck were soaked through with blood.
An incoherent moan emanated from the last crate. I looked down to see Liv sprawled on the floor of her cell, fingers through the bars. Her blond hair was a tangled mess.
“I felt you come in.” Liv’s wild eyes met mine. “I felt you.” She reached her once-strong arm out between the bars. The velcro flap on the sleeve of her jumpsuit caught on the edge of her cage. As the fabric pulled apart, I gasped. Red, angry skin was welted up in a tight cluster of injection marks. A blue haze circled each wound and at the center was a crusty dark blue scab. Liv pulled the flap back up...was she embarrassed about what they’d done to her? God, I knew she hated to be seen as weak. “I wished so many times that I’d get to see you all again,” she blurted out, “but I never wanted it to be like this. I didn’t want this. Not this.” She was mumbling a string of words as if she was having trouble processing what she was seeing.
