I had the urge to cut through the words and slip into his mind so I could see the place he was talking about and feel what he felt. So I wouldn’t just hear what he said, and assume. So I would know.
The impulse hit me so strongly, I’d begun to open my magic and reach for his mind before I realized I’d done it. Even though I figured that in entering his mind before, I’d given the Order precious access to my mind. Even though I shouldn’t take the chance again.
He was sending to me, feeding me emotions and triggering impulses.
I pulled the power back into myself, making sure it was anchored and wouldn’t stray again. I flexed my fingers, then curled my hands into fists.
“You really want to play it like that?” I asked.
“Sorry,” he said, in a tone that told me he felt anything but. “It’s my mission. Anyhow, the stone staircase for giants led to this black wall of energy. Not black like it had substance, but black like it was nothing—literally nothing. Passing through it was like waking through fire. It was burning hot and there was no air. It only took a minute to cross, but that minute felt like forever. It felt like Hell, or like I thought Hell would feel. Then we were in the In-Between, and all I could smell was sulfur. The stink was so thick, it coated everything. That place, it looks like our world. But it feels like a shadow.”
Part of me bought it. The rest of me wondered how much deeper he was trying to draw me in.
“How’re you able to say all of this?” The Order would have programmed his mind. Magical chains.
“Did you sense chains in my mind when you were in there?” he asked.
“I wasn’t looking for them.” But if Miguel’s mental conditioning followed what I’d seen before, they’d have been there, and they wouldn’t have been all that hard to spot.
“Chameleons don’t have them,” he said. “Angel’s orders. No one can survive the In-Between without full mental and physical function.”
I glanced at Sunday. She met my gaze, my thoughts mirrored behind her eyes. How had all of this gone on inside the Order without more people knowing about it?
“You lived there all this time?” I asked.
“There and one other place,” he said.
I raised a brow.
He shrugged as best he could, tied up like he was. “I’m surprised you haven’t figured it out already with what you got inside you.”
I glared at him.
“Don’t treat me like I’m stupid,” he said.
I felt a momentarily flutter of a thousand wings inside my gut. It had to be the Angel.
I’d known from the get-go that the Order would realize eventually what had happened to the Angel. Who in the human realm had enough power to make a being like that vanish without a trace?
I hadn’t thought it would be me. But there it was.
Then again, Miguel had said I, not we. Miguel, not the Order.
“Just you?” I asked.
“The chameleons. We know what’s up.”
“All that time you spent in the Angelic realm?” I asked.
His mouth curved into a half-grin. “Someone had to be closest to the Angel. Be the ones who took his orders and filtered them down to the leadership, through the mentors, to the rest of you.”
Sunday whistled softly. “You expect us to believe that?”
I glanced at her. From the look on her face, she did believe it in her heart. The rest of her needed convincing.
“You of all people know what it’s like to be close to him, Night,” Miguel said.
Sunday sighed, rising to her full height. “I’m about at my bullshit threshold already.”
“Everything he’s told us could be the truth. Or could not,” I said.
“I’ll be all about finding out for sure,” she said.
She could make him afraid. She could make him wish he were dead. She couldn’t make him tell her anything. Besides, he’d already told us a ton.
“What are you really doing?” I asked. “If you’d wanted us dead bad enough, one of us would be cold by now. If you’d wanted to spin a story to pull me in, you wouldn’t have tipped your hand the way you did.”
He didn’t answer—not out loud. Thoughts spun behind his eyes, though.
Sunday nudged me with an elbow. “Why don’t you update Red?”
I glanced at her. She wore her best making-a-suggestion-that-was-more-like-an-order expression. Eyebrows raised. Mouth firm. Jaw set.
It’d been a while since I’d tortured someone. I still remembered how, and I’d have no problem. I protected the people I loved, whatever it took. I told her as much with one look.
She shook her head once. Her lips curved in a slight smile. It took me a second to understand what she was really trying to say. She didn’t doubt me at all. She knew I could get the job done as well as she could—maybe too well, given my rising temper. But she didn’t want me to.
When I’d left the life behind, I’d meant it. Any harm I’d done since, I’d done to protect Faith. Sunday had left the Order to protect me, but she’d never renounced the violence.
I’d chosen to change in fundamental ways that she hadn’t. Better that I didn’t go back down that road. Better not to prove Miguel right. Not unless I had no choice.
I looked at him long and hard, gazing into his dark brown eyes. “Why don’t you check his story? I’ve heard all I want to hear for now.”
I spun on my heel, grabbed my coat, and headed for the stairs. The muffled fall of my steps kept time with my heartbeat.
I didn’t have to keep eyes on Miguel to know how he prepared for whatever torture Sunday could cook up. I’d been in his exact position, in some dank basement with homemade soundproofing—or something like it—my wrists and ankles cuffed to a chair that had seen plenty of others like me. He’d make it through most, if not all, of what Sunday dished out. Whatever he chose to say, he’d get the payback for attempted murder that he deserved.
This wasn’t about me. I didn’t want to die just yet, but I’d planned for the contingency, and in my line of work—hell, my whole life—I’d expected it to happen suddenly and without grace.
Miguel had come into my home in the presence of my man, who was innocent in all of this but nevertheless was grown and held power in his own right. Red made his own decisions, and if he’d tied his fate to mine, that was his business. If he had to pay a price for that, he’d come to terms with it already. And Sunday was, well, Sunday.
But my daughter? I didn’t care that she carried a latent god inside of her. Faith was a kid. She was my kid.
Miguel’s voice rang out behind me. “Night.”
I paused my step.
“You know you have to be something more than human to survive the Angel’s magic being used against you, much less to contain it the way you’re doing.”
I knew no such thing. I didn’t want to hear another word about being something less—or more—than human. I’d spent all of my extremely short childhood hearing some version of it.
“What are you, hermana?” he asked.
I didn’t so much as glance over my shoulder. “You wanted to be my brother, you wouldn’t have drawn steel in the presence of my family. You wouldn’t have copied my daughter—and she is my kid. Make no mistake.”
He took that in and mulled it over. I could tell from the quality of his silence. “You’re right. But it wasn’t an accident, how I came at you.”
I continued to head for the staircase, a thread of panic weaving with the anger I felt.
No accident.
He could’ve taken his shot when I was alone in the apartment, put me down, and gone on his way without ever having to encounter anyone connected to me. Instead, he’d put himself in front of Sunday. In front of Red. He’d tried for me, but he’d wanted us all.
Miguel raised his voice with each word. “Back in the day, you’d have done the same thing.”
Damn right, I would’ve. It was my job, my life. I had a different life now.
“How c
an you stand it?” he asked.
I glanced over my shoulder. His face held a mixture of pain and need. The emotions looked and felt real.
Miguel meant how could I stand having a daughter. A family. How could I let myself be vulnerable to the kind of loss that could break my heart—maybe kill me.
He wanted what I had, and it terrified him.
He’d meant to kill not just me, but my people.
I pulled my phone from my pocket and checked for a signal. Nothing down here, not with Sunday’s protections in place. I took the stairs two at a time, shoving open the basement door and pushing it closed behind me with the heel of my boot. The close quarters of the hall I stepped into felt claustrophobic. Narrow space. Close, white walls. Dimmed light. The hardwood floor creaked underfoot. I had a signal on my phone instantly.
I jogged through the empty living room, racing out the front door into the icy afternoon rain, digging the car keys from my pocket. My blue Honda waited where I’d left it, parked at the curb behind Sunday’s Mustang.
Red picked up on the fourth ring, hard rock blaring from the sound system in the background. His normally gentle drawl had grown deep with concern. “Night? What’s going—”
I interrupted. “You and Faith okay?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Anyone else there right now?”
He lowered his voice. “The last class ended a few minutes ago. We got one straggler, packing up slow. New guy.”
New guy. Today of all days.
“What’s the new guy look like?” I asked.
“He’s just shy of six feet, strong as an ox, and drenched in sweat.”
Like half the people who came in for classes. He could be just anybody, but I didn’t like our odds. Not with him hanging back.
“Get out now,” I said. “Both of you. I’m on my way.”
“Is it another chameleon?” he asked.
“Now, Red.”
I heard another voice on the other end of the phone. Not a man’s voice, but Faith’s.
I heard a loud thud and a clatter—Red’s phone hitting the floor. A muffled grunt followed, and then a scream.
Faith’s scream.
Chapter 4
I SKIDDED TO A STOP in front of the gym. Nothing looked out of place out here. No sign of a fight.
The neighborhood had the usual Sunday late-afternoon feel. Not too much traffic speeding by on Burnside. People out walking, bundled in coats with hoods raised against the drizzle. Across the way, the Stumptown Diner did laid back but respectable business, perfuming the air with the rich aromas of dark-roasted coffee, salty, crisp bacon, and fresh-baked bread. The maples in front of the diner had been wrapped in white Christmas lights that glowed with warmth.
I reached out with my magic, scanning for anyone lying in wait. Nothing.
The gym’s big window remained intact. No breaks in or smears on the glass. The door was closed. Unusual in decent weather during the winter, but not alarming. The sidewalk held no traps. But the space in front of the door was black. Scorched.
I pushed my way into the narrow front room of the gym. The electronic bell above the door chimed. I took a deep breath of rubber, bleach wipes, and sweat. The normal smells. Underneath it all, the reek of sulfur.
Miguel had said the In-Between stank of sulfur.
I felt the urge to call out, intense and demanding. I needed to run in.
I forced myself not to. To let my training kick in.
If I ran into an ambush because of fear, I wouldn’t be able to help anyone. One step at a time. Clear the gym in sections. I let my magic flow in front of me like an incoming tide, water rolling over everything in its path, tendrils of foam reaching further to touch what lay even further ahead.
I locked the front door behind me.
One of the overhead fluorescents dimmed for a second, buzzing, before it brightened again. No traps in here. The interlocked black rubber mats that covered the concrete floor appeared undisturbed. The triple-stacked row of black plastic cubbies and lockers that covered the long wall in front of me were empty. The old brown suede sofa crouched on the right.
The fine hairs on my arms stood straight up. The floor felt more solid beneath my feet, and my legs heavier, as if I had magnets on the bottoms of my boots. My breath came shallow.
Residual magic. Impressions of the last magician who’d walked in the space. Not a regular at the gym, or I’d have recognized them. Not an Order operative I’d known from my time there either. No one I knew.
I crossed the floor silently, taking the short staircase onto the gym floor.
The place was the size of a decent-sized basketball court, and it too was empty except for the equipment that hugged the scuffed, once-upon-a-white walls. Barbells pegged into metal stands, kettle bells, weight racks, and benches. Pull-up bars, medicine balls, wooden boxes for jumping. Some of it providing places for an assailant to hide.
I didn’t sense anyone, but the back of my neck prickled.
I came to Red’s office, on the left. No one sat in the chair behind the desk. The laptop was open, screen dark. One guest chair held Faith’s black backpack. She’d hung her coat on the chair back.
Two steps beyond the office, I froze. The mat in front of me was wet. Hard to tell with what. Black masked every other color. Could be sweat. Could be someone spilled their water bottle. But I knew in my gut that was wishful thinking.
I hunkered down just long enough to drag a finger across the mat. It came away smeared with red.
Whose blood? Faith’s? Red’s? If one of them—
I shut down the thought before it could fully form.
I swallowed hard and got moving again toward the back, closer to the rowing machines that stood on end, like soldiers at attention. The two climbing ropes that hung from the ceiling swayed. A second later, the breeze that had moved them played across my face.
The garage doors that made up the entire back wall had been raised an inch. Gray light flooded in through the opening. Shadows moved on the other side of the doors.
I moved fast then, avoiding the play of light on the mats, staying on my toes and sticking close to the wall. I headed for the door furthest from the shadows, passing two empty bathrooms. The closer I drew to the door, the clearer I could make out what I saw on the other side: Red’s dark blue sneaks and Faith’s black hikers.
He stood in front of her, putting her back to the red brick wall of the building, shielding her from whoever might come at them from any direction—the gym, the back parking lot, or the street beyond. I sent my magic forward, looking for any danger I could find. Nothing. No one.
I bent down and got my fingers under the door. I yanked upwards, raising the door on its tracks. It thundered up all the way, slamming stop with a bang.
Red flinched. His green and earth halo seemed burnt around the edges. Blood streaked his right cheek and the fringe of his salt-and-pepper hair. Most of the right sleeve had been ripped from his white T-shirt. What remained hung by a thread. The left knee of his gym pants was torn.
He stood dead center on the three feet of jutting concrete that had once been the end of a loading dock. His eyes darted to the edge, and the four feet he’d fall if he went over.
I couldn’t see Faith behind him, only the edges of her halo. The clean, clear silver of it told me the most important thing I needed to know. They were banged up, but they were all right.
I scanned the back lot. No cars and no people, just a bunch of tall weeds cozied up to the chain-link fence that ran down either side, waving in the wind. A single vehicle drove by on the street—an orange Subaru filled with teenage girls. The radio blared a song I’d heard Faith play before.
We were alone, the three of us.
Thank God.
Red held up a hand. “She’s not hurt.”
I met his gaze. He looked like himself. Like the man I knew and loved. I had to be sure. I slid my magic into his mind and probed there, rifling through thoughts and memories to make
sure my senses didn’t deceive.
He went still. He didn’t move so much as a muscle. He didn’t try to fight me, either. He let me do what needed to be done.
When I let him go, he sucked in a breath.
“You check her?” I asked.
He nodded.
I tried to peer around him to get a look at Faith. He saw that I craned my neck, but he didn’t move out of the way. He took another step back, closer to her. Shielding her from me.
“You want to look at me? Make sure I am who I look like?” I asked. “Go ahead.”
We couldn’t take any chances with the possibility of chameleons among us. Who knew how many had followed Miguel to Portland?
“I did that while you were checking out the parking lot,” Red said.
“So what’s the problem?”
“She’s not hurt,” he said again.
A chill settled over me. Not hurt didn’t mean she was all right. “You protecting her from me? Why would you do that?”
“I’m not protecting her from you, Night. I’m just…protecting her. She’s afraid.”
“Of me?”
He shook his head. “We’ve just got a little problem.”
The sleeping god inside of Faith, the one who’d stirred enough to show her we had trouble on the way. “The Awakened?”
He nodded.
I closed the distance between us slowly, so I could speak softly and have her hear me. “Faith?”
She took a shuddering breath. “Sorry, Night.”
“Nothing to be sorry about.”
I glanced up at Red.
“The man who came—the straggler?—he would’ve killed me. I came this close.” He lifted a hand, measuring only a slip of space between his thumb and forefinger. “I yelled at Faith to run. She wouldn’t go. She went after the guy instead.”
I stared at him. My little girl had attacked an Order operative.
“It wasn’t me,” Faith said.
The part of her that belonged to the god had attacked the operative. “What happened?”
“She…vaporized him,” Red said. “One second he was on top of me. The next, he was on fire. Not fire like flames, but burning up from the inside out. He glowed like he was all filled up with gold light. Skin, hair, eyes—everything. And then he started to dissolve right in front of me, Night. He pulled himself upright and ran for the door. He made it as far as the sidewalk.”
Night Rises: The Awakened Magic Saga (Soul Forge Book 2) Page 5
