He saw immediately that Deven kept his distance from Lesela. She darted a few curious looks at Deven—David could tell she had a hundred questions—but he determinedly avoided eye contact. His coldness clearly saddened Lesela but it was doubtful she’d expected tearful hugs and family bonding. Nico had said that she felt incredible guilt for leaving Deven in the human world when the Elves withdrew to their sanctuaries, but that once the Mist was sealed the governing body of Avilon had forbidden anyone return to Earth.
David had laughed at that—mostly out of pride—because Nico had not hesitated one second in punching a hole in the Mist when he learned he was needed. The Enclave had been furious when he returned. Nico hadn’t given much of a damn about that either. David wondered if his rebellious spirit had inspired Lesela to step between worlds when the rest of her people wouldn’t dare.
“You said the other Weavers sent you here,” David said, turning to her. “Does that mean your travel was approved by the Enclave?”
Lesela sighed. “They were only too happy to excommunicate Nico, despite his power and renown, but were determined to keep Kai in the fold. It was only when he threatened to leave Avilon forever that they stopped haranguing him for visiting here. Finding out he was in trouble…they were not happy about my coming, thinking this world would swallow me as it has the twins, but if they wanted him back, what choice did they have?”
“Not to speak ill of your people, Lesela, but I think if I ever meet your Enclave I may kick them all in the Elf-business.”
She blinked at the terminology, but the meaning was clear enough. “I would happily stand back and watch,” she said in a low voice touched with surprising anger. “They are hidebound and afraid, and it has made them small in mind and heart. I understand that fear—many have scars, visible or not, from what the humans did to them. But we have remained too long in our idyll, and our people have stagnated. The humans did not end our race but our own stubbornness might.”
“Well why would you want to come back?” Deven asked bitterly. “It’s not as if you left behind anything that mattered.”
Lesela closed her eyes for a second. “I did not know you were still alive. You must understand—”
“No, I mustn’t,” Deven cut her off. “I told you, it’s not important. What is important is finding Kai and figuring out how to help Nico. The sooner we do that the sooner you can go back.”
Wisely, she dropped the matter. David considered asking more pointed questions to force a conversation, but now didn’t seem the time—Deven was right, for now. They needed to focus on the twins.
They reached the suite David had picked out; Lesela hadn’t brought much in the way of luggage, and set her single bag on the bed before coming to sit with them in front of the fireplace.
It didn’t take long to catch her up on what had happened. As Deven described what they had seen when they rescued Nico from the Morningstar lab, Lesela’s face paled, and her hand rose up to her mouth in mute horror. Finally, she put her head in her hands.
“I want to see him,” she said softly. “Can I see him?”
Deven spoke up, this time far more gently; perhaps seeing how upset she was made him more kindly disposed. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he said. “He might hurt you, Lesela.”
David agreed. “He’s not himself. You wouldn’t recognize him now.”
“Then what shall we do?” she asked.
David looked over at Deven, then back to her. “We have to take down the barrier between the two of them, and hope that rebalancing their bond will bring him back. As long as they’re so imbalanced there’s no way for him to return to himself.”
Lesela turned her gaze on Deven, and it became piercing; David had seen that expression before. She was seeing, or Seeing, more than just the physical. “I am a Healer, not a Weaver,” she said. “I can see how badly mangled their connection is, but I am unsure how to fix it. I will help you in any way I can, any way you ask, but this is not my craft.”
“Kai seemed to think you could do it,” Deven told her, voice cooling off again.
She shrugged. “I cannot say what he intended—he might have wanted me to persuade the other Weavers to help, or he might have had a plan. I am powerful, as a Healer, but as you know, our power is of the body, not the mind. I can serve as a source of energy, of course, and I have a Healer’s vision of the Web, which is strong but not as profound as a Weaver’s.”
“So you’re as much use in this as a human.” Deven stood up, agitated. “Maybe Kai was just desperate for any idea at all and you were the best he could come up with.”
“Deven,” David said tiredly, “I understand that you’re angry at Lesela, and I don’t blame you, but you’re being a little bitchier than we really need right now.”
“Perhaps it would help you to know—”
“You’re right,” Deven interrupted Lesela as if he hadn’t heard her speak. “I need to take a walk and clear my head. I’ll be back in a minute.”
He was gone before David could say anything, but he wouldn’t have disagreed anyway.
Left with the Elf, David said, “You do understand why he’s angry.”
“Of course,” she said. “I hate what I did. His mother forbade me to take him when he was little, and I should have anyway. She could not have stopped me. I never should have let her send him to those people, that place. When I learned the Enclave intended to seal the Mist I went back to her and begged to know his whereabouts, but by then the Inquisition had already stolen him away and we assumed he was dead.”
“He did die,” David told her. “It was only by the intervention of the Order of Elysium that he woke again. If you had any idea what he went through in that dungeon, just because of your blood…”
“I can guess.” She stared into the fireplace. “So many of our people vanished into those dungeons…a few survived. Some sit on the Enclave now. An entire generation broken and scarred…I know what they did to Healers especially…shattered their hands, from whence the power flowed.”
It was David’s turn to shut his eyes tightly against the memory: how many times had he seen Deven wake from a nightmare and then spend hours compulsively rubbing his hands together?
Lesela’s voice drew him back to the present. “And then there is Deven, a creature unique to all the realms. Part Elf, part human, turned into all vampire, but still retaining the power of our kin…Nico may be the first of that kind born from full blood, but I believe Deven was the first of the Dark Elves.”
“You say that like you expect there to be more.”
She turned her eyes back on him, and he nearly started. There was something strange in her eyes, a light he’d never seen before…but her expression, somewhat blank yet totally laser-focused, was one he’d seen on the face of nearly every Consort he’d ever met.
“I do,” she said. Her voice had taken on a faint hollowness… like something was blowing through her, like she was a musical instrument. “Only through the union of all our blood can we rise from the burning to come and create a world…both new and ancient…and Kai…Kai…”
David leaned forward, listening keenly as her voice fell to a whisper. “What about Kai?”
“This has all happened before,” she said. “The Prophet has a plan…now, as he did then, so long ago…”
He tried not to make any noise and shake her out of it, but inside his heart had fallen down to the ground with a resounding thud. Of course…Morningstar had Kai. Who else could it be? The Prophet had done his experiments with Nico because Nico would survive them, but Kai couldn’t regenerate like a vampire could. Whatever they’d been trying to do to Nico was just the rehearsal. Now they were ready for opening night.
All they needed was power. All of their high-caliber magic so far had needed the death of a Signet…and David hadn’t heard any news of a kidnapping or murder this week. It was likely that, whatever their plans, Kai was still alive.
For the moment.
One day David hoped he’d live in a world where “still alive” didn’t always end in “for the moment.”
Lesela had fallen silent, but suddenly she said, “I know what you plan to do.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”
“With Deven. To break the barrier.”
David sat back, resting his elbows on the chair, and regarded her gravely. “And you think we’ll fail?”
Her eyes burned into him for just a second as she Saw whatever it was Elves Saw when they looked at him. “I can help you succeed.”
He couldn’t help but laugh—not at her confidence, but at the mental image. “Can you now.”
“Your Queen, the one with Weaving talent. She knows what to do, and you know how to anchor her. But there is something you have overlooked: Although Deven cannot feel it, his is no longer the only barrier between them. In his anger Nico has built one of his own, though he would not recognize it as such. If you only knock down one, and Nico sees what you are doing, he can put it back up again.”
Dismayed, David said, “As strong as Deven’s is, how are we supposed to take down two, especially against Nico’s will?”
“You will need to generate a lot of power. How much confidence do you have in your…talents? Or your Queen’s?”
“Absolute,” he replied. “Miranda’s Weaving skills might not be honed just yet, but she and I are not just some ordinary Pair. She’s remade a soul bond with her bare hands. We are Thirdborn—the only two in existence.”
“For now,” Lesela said softly. “But as I said…not only must you take down two barriers at once, you must do it swiftly.”
“I don’t think this is the kind of thing you can do with a quickie.”
“Then you must find a way to incapacitate Nico so you have time to complete your task. Make him sleep, somehow, and keep him that way. For that you need a Healer.”
David nodded, understanding. “So once we manage to convince Deven we know what we’re doing, you can put Nico under, and by the time he wakes up it will be done.”
“Yes.”
“Then we do have a plan.”
“Do you, now?”
David froze at the voice and forced himself to look up toward the door. As he did, he caught Lesela’s eye, and saw her calm determination turn to fear.
Nico leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed; Deven must have left the door open when he ran off. The Elf was watching them both with open disdain, but David could see that roiling anger in his eyes that hadn’t abated since he’d murdered his way out of Morningstar’s clutches. He seemed to feed on it more than blood.
She had never seen him as a vampire, let alone as one like this. As if that weren’t enough, Morningstar had shorn off his hair, a symbol among Elves of age and wisdom; most never cut theirs at all, or if they had practical jobs where it would get in the way, cut it only to the waist and kept it braided back. David wasn’t sure whom he’d gotten to even out the ragged remains, but while he looked absolutely gorgeous with short hair it was, to say the least, a radical change.
Slowly, her hands shaking slightly, Lesela stood and turned to face him. “Nicolanai,” she said, swallowing hard. To her credit she squared her shoulders and took a careful approach: “I am glad to see you. We need your help, my friend…your brother is missing.”
Nico didn’t seem to hear her. “Come to see the show, have you? To carry the news back to Avilon that the Enclave was right to excommunicate me?”
David took a deep breath. It was the first time he’d heard Nico refer to that directly—David had been pretty sure he knew, even though Kai hadn’t told him. How could he not know?
David, too, stood up slowly, keeping his distance. “Kai is missing, Nico. We think Morningstar has him. You can help us find him.”
“I’m sure he’s better off wherever he is,” Nico replied dismissively. “The other options are pretty depressing, aren’t they? He could be in Avilon, surrounded by sycophants and scared old men, or here, trying desperately to fix his broken brother even though we all know the truth.” He pushed himself off the doorframe and took a step forward.
Lesela took a step back, instinctively edging closer to David. David very deliberately moved to put himself ever so slightly in front of her, standing between her and Nico. David drew himself up to his full height and did the same with his power-aura, subtly raising it to where the Weaver had to be able to feel it.
Just that little bit of space helped Lesela speak again. “It is not too late for you to make all of this right,” she said. “Your friends love you, and you have a place among them far greater than any place you ever had in Avilon. You are well quit of that realm. Here you can truly make a difference as you always longed to. What could you have done there, and what can you do here, if only you choose to?”
Nico just looked at her, eyes going silver at the edges. David shifted again, shielding Lesela visually with his body. Even in this place of rage and blood where Nico dwelt, instinct would tell him not to try anything with David there.
Or it should have.
“What can I do here?” Nico asked her. “That’s a fantastic question, Lesela. Would you like to see the answer?”
“Nico,” David said in a low voice, a warning in the word. “You need to remove yourself from this room right now.”
Nico laughed.
It was a cold, nasty sound that sent a chill through David.
“You,” Nico said, “Are not the Prime of me.”
“Am I not?” David took a step forward and completely blocked him from Lesela. “All right, then, show me I’m not. Come through me. Go ahead.”
“I’m starting to think you’re not taking me seriously,” Nico replied. “All of you seem to think if you just say the right thing or stage the right intervention you can turn me back into the poor sad creature I was, and I’ll go back to simpering after you and he both. You don’t seem to get that I like this. It’s truly liberating not to need love from someone who can’t love you, or need approval from those whose standards you can never meet. I want the old me to stay dead, and I intend to make sure he does. Obviously I can’t kill Deven, and you…well…I don’t even really know how to kill you. But if you’re all planning to team up and drag me back into what I was…I’m afraid I can’t let you do that.”
David gave him a smile as cold as his own. “You’re not going to stop us,” he told the Elf evenly. “I refuse to let you go on like this—and not only because I care about you. You are a danger to everyone in this Haven and every human in Austin, and that is not acceptable. As Prime of this territory I will do what I must to neutralize the threat you pose. For the moment at least that means bringing the real you back. Keep pushing it and it might mean putting your ass in a coma and keeping you there.”
Very few people had ever been able to stand up to the look on David’s face—nearly all of them had fallen dead to the ground for trying. Most were either insane or had nothing to lose. It was difficult to say where Nico fell along that spectrum.
Nico glanced toward the left, and David barely had time to register what he was doing before a large vase shattered and the shards flew toward Lesela’s face.
He wasn’t Prime for nothing, though—his reflexes kicked in and he ground the shards into powder with his mind before they could reach her. Half a breath later a table next to the chair he’d been sitting in collapsed and broken pieces of wood, ends in splinters, sailed toward him.
David held up a hand and combined a shield with telekinetic energy to block not only the broken wood but anything else Nico might throw at them. “Stay behind me,” he commanded Lesela, who was all too happy to obey.
David held up the shield with part of his mind and reached toward Nico with another, trying to get hold of his neck and break it—it was the only way to put him out that would last more than a few minutes. But Nico had already observed, dissected, and learned how to do what David was doing, and shut David o
ut.
Something bright glowed in the corner of David’s eye, and he realized what it was just in time: embers from the fireplace. David shored up the shield and they bounced off, but he also had to concentrate enough to extinguish them before they burned the house down.
Nico looked annoyed. “Fine,” he said. “We’ll do it your way.”
“What does that—”
David pulled his attention back to Nico just as a fist of energy struck him, and it felt like the room was being sucked out from under him. His vision greyed out and everything lurched forward—
He tumbled into the grass, hitting the ground rolling and coming back up to his feet with his sword already drawn…but he wasn’t looking at Nico anymore, or the guest suite at all.
David spun around trying to get his bearings. Where the hell was he? Nico had apparently learned the trick of how to Mist someone else the way David and Miranda did on the New Moon. Normally he’d be impressed, but right now he had to hurry.
He recognized the trees around him—he wasn’t far from the Haven. He shut his eyes and grabbed hold of the memory of the guest room, lassoing it with energy and hauling it toward himself with enough force that he was sure he’d regret it later.
Even passing through space, between worlds and beyond reality, he heard a scream.
David reappeared exactly where he’d stood, expecting to be thrown again or at least have something fly at his head.
Nico was gone.
Breathing hard, David sheathed the Oncoming Storm and looked around—where was Lesela? That must have been her screaming, so…
A soft whimper got his attention, and he found her on the other side of the bed where she had apparently run in a futile attempt to escape. The thick smell of blood hit him like an earthquake a split second before he saw it spilled all around her where she had fallen.
He knelt beside her, desperately trying to remember how Miranda had healed her cat, how Deven did it all the time—surely he could too.
One look at her and his heart sank. The tears in her throat were huge and ragged, but they weren’t her only wounds; he couldn’t say for sure what the weapon was but she’d been stabbed as well, right through the abdomen. There was so much damage it would take Deven to heal her, and there wasn’t time.
Shadowstorm (The Shadow World Book 6) Page 27
