Matthias studied him. “Yeah, in fact I know exactly what to trade them.” With that, he knocked on the door of the room Erik had eavesdropped outside of yesterday and two voices, trying to fight each other in volume, called for them to enter. Before he did so Matthias hunched in on himself, let his arms hang limp, and moved slowly as if still hurt. Maestres Hu and Luka were seated at separate tables eating, determinedly not looking at one another. Matthias walked forward until he stood equidistant between them so they could look at him without looking at each other.
“What have you found out about my aspirant’s bloodline?”
Hu and Luka shared a gaze, and though they said nothing when they looked back to Matthias, it was obvious something had been decided. Luka was the one that spoke, her voice smooth with the smallest hint of a southern accent.
“What are you willing to provide in return for the information?”
“One mission on your behalf. The next way-station you find we’ll go in.” Every word sounded like it cost Matthias something and both their faces reflected shock at the offer.
“Three undecided missions. Full debrief afterward,” Hu tried to interject.
Matthias and Luka shot him looks and Erik couldn’t decide whose was more murderous. It was Matthias who responded, though.
“This is not a negotiation. I have told you what I am willing to provide for you. That is as far as I will go.”
“And we are happy to agree.” The way Maestra Luka said it while staring hard at Hu implied it was best he agree as well. He nodded, reluctance in every motion.
“Then we have a deal.”
“Yes.”
Matthias nodded and pulled two chairs over to Luka’s table, gesturing Erik into one and taking the other himself, his back to Hu.
“Dayida Jayl has one main bloodline running through her veins, Mami Wata, but she also has a drop of a second bloodline, one that none in her family has actually manifested—Ogun. His fighting nature might come from that, but Ogun’s warrior children are just that, warriors, not berserkers. Robert Allan we are finding harder to trace. There’s no recorded Blooded in his family, which could mean it’s a bloodline we thought destroyed.”
“That hardly seems worth what we offered,” Erik said. He was hoping for answers, not more questions.
Hu answered from behind them, “We’ll continue researching and let you know when we find more.”
“See that you do.” Neither of them turned to look at him.
“We believe he’s manifested his father’s bloodline—that is where his berserker nature probably comes from. The one thing that bothered us from the initial report was the falling off the roof. Even using the Angelic as a landing pad, he should have suffered more injuries than what he had when we found him. Even those were gone by morning. We think he inherited the healing from Mami Wata, but it’s not under his conscious control and may never be.”
“Which makes him all the more precious for you to control?” Matthias snarled. Erik now saw that he was tense and vibrating.
“I don’t understand,” Erik asked when it seemed like they were just going to silently glare at one another.
Both turned to face him, but it was Matthias who spoke to him.
“Berserkers are unusual but not rare. The problem is that so many of them burn out their bodies. They don’t plan their attacks because they rage and often either end up dying in a fight or from their injuries after they win. They’re powerful but with a short lifespan.” Now he turned to stare at Luka again. “However, if you include the healing abilities, they won’t have to worry about that. You’re essentially a weapon that won’t break and they can use over and over.”
Every word made Erik more and more grim; he could feel the anger rising up inside of him. He snapped his gaze over to Luka, waiting for her response.
Luka took a deep breath and glared at Matthias before turning to Erik. “I would not put it that way, but your usefulness cannot be taken for granted. The Angelics have been more and more active of late and we have no idea why. Most of our people cannot go toe to toe with an Angelic without losing, and badly. You can.”
Erik did not like a lot of things and he did not like a lot of people, but one of his biggest pet peeves was people talking as if he had no say in his future. Robert had done it for years and he knew where that ended. He stood up.
“Well, Erik doesn’t plan to be anyone’s weapon and Erik has a mind of his own and Erik thinks you can kiss his Black-Greek ass.” With that he turned and walked out of the room, but not before he caught the proud look on Matthias’s face. He paced the hallway, unsure of what to do but needing to keep his body moving as the wash of power filled him as his anger simmered and rose. His knuckles creaked as he clenched his hands into fists.
There were footsteps behind him and a hand on his arm. The only reason he did not react was the warm smell of Matthias.
“What do you want? You want to breathe through it or do you want to go somewhere where you can break a lot of stuff without hurting anyone?”
Erik stopped walking and thought about the question. What did he want? As much as smashing something to dust sent a glow of satisfaction through his body, it also made him more than a little afraid. He liked this power but he didn’t like being out of control.
“I want this to pass.”
“Okay.”
Matthias guided him down the hall and knocked on one of the identical doors. A quiet voice called for them to enter. Matthias opened the door and shoved him inside and Erik found himself face to face with the young girl he had rescued last night. Except looking much better, her dark umber skin was free of the tint of fear, her braids weren’t in disarray. Her face lit up upon seeing him and she rushed forward to take his hand. As soon as she touched him, his anger begin to wane.
“I’m Melinda. They told me your name is Eric. Thank you for saving me.”
He succumbed to her yanking arms and sat down on the bed beside her. “It’s actually Erik.” And he wanted to smack himself; most people couldn’t even hear the difference. He was just nervous; it had been a couple years since he’d been near kids and then it had always been a huge group with a barrier of security between them. This time it was one on one.
Melinda simply looked at him before smiling and saying, “Erik.” She smiled wider, showing a missing front tooth. “I hate it when people call me Mellie or Linda.”
Erik smiled back at her. “Well, I’ll remember to always call you Melinda then.”
They spent the next half hour talking, becoming friends. It didn’t matter that she was almost a decade younger than him; it was good to have someone else who understood as little as he did. She was in the same book, born to a parent who hadn’t manifested so no one told her anything because no one had expected her to manifest either. They were interrupted by a knock on the door.
Elliot poked his head in before anyone could say anything. Daya was right behind him and a young Asian kid slipped in behind her. Elliot spoke.
“Hey, since the three of you are going to be training together, we thought you guys might want to get to know Tae-Hee.”
The kid nodded to Melinda and Erik, the huge fall of black hair moving back and forth at the motion. Tae-Hee took another step forward, propelled by Daya’s hand on his back. He looked around Erik’s age, maybe a bit younger; his long hair hid one of his chestnut eyes. He was also a bit taller than Erik. Daya and Elliot left, and the three of them stared at each other blankly before Tae-Hee broke the silence with a gruff chuckle.
“Well, that was the most awkward thing to happen to me that didn’t involve my parents.”
Erik and Melinda both giggled and the young girl gestured for Tae-Hee to take a seat on her bed with them. He stepped over Erik’s legs and folded himself into a seated position at the foot of the bed opposite Melinda with Erik in the middle.
“So Tae-Hee, are you like us, had no idea until your powers woke up?”
Tae-Hee shook his head. “No, both my
mother and my father are Blooded and awakened, so every year it was just wondering when I was gonna wake up. And please call me Tae.” The smile he gave looked strained, like perhaps the constant wondering and questioning had not been anticipatory as much as annoying.
“Do your parents both work for the Organization?”
“My father does, mother doesn’t.”
Erik must have shown his confusion because Tae-Hee laughed.
“It’s not that unusual, probably about 65 percent of the Blooded in the US work for the Organization. The other 35 percent either have powers not suited to it or are independent, so there’s actually a bit of cross-pollination. My parents are from the same bloodline.”
Erik looked at the other boy “And that’s important?”
“To some.” But the way he said it and squirmed Erik figured it was pretty damn important to some. “They worry that we’ll die out, that our blood is getting too diluted so we should marry within our own bloodline. Which isn’t as bad as it sounds, most of the bloodlines are so widespread the couples have no close relatives.” Now Tae sounded like he was making excuses. Still, it was useful to know. These were the things the Maestres would hem and haw about.
“So what is your parents’ bloodline?” Tae was painting a dark picture. He would question the boy again and more deeply on another date, but he did not want to do so in front of Melinda. Yet.
“Ophde.”
“Yeah, you’ll have to explain what that means to us.”
“Well, Ophde was the many-eyed wheel of fire angel, he had many descendants, the Ophanim, and their sight was their gift.”
Tae sounded like he was reciting it from some book. As he spoke his eyes took on a glow.
“Cool,” Melinda whispered and leaned forward to see better.
Erik did the same. He had always heard the description of someone with fire in their eyes and thought it was stupid, imagining flames in someone’s sockets. This was more the eyes remained the same but it was if they were lit from behind, some great glow that sparked inside of Tae’s body. If they turned off the lights in here, he was sure that Tae’s eyes would glow like some predator in a dark forest.
“Some really powerful members of the bloodline like my mother can see through things, not just material things but also lies, hope, the human psyche; they can see right to the core.”
Erik leaned back a little bit. It sounded too much like mind-reading for his comfort.
“So how about you? How powerful are you?” If there was a shrill note to his voice, he hoped they chalked it up to surprise and not fear.
Tae ducked his head and didn’t answer.
“I mean, it doesn’t look like you need any training on your powers like the two of us, so why are you here?”
Perhaps he’d been a little aggressive in his asking since Tae gave him a long look before answering.
“I want to join the Organization and . . .” Tae finally looked up. “I don’t have that much power, my eyes only work on the physical plane, like my dad. I can’t see lies or someone’s psyche the way my mother can. So I need to learn how to fight.” Tae met Erik’s glance as if daring him to say something, to call him out about his lack of ability.
Erik knew that look, he knew the pain of disappointing a parent, even if there was nothing you could do, even if you were born that way. Instead he tried to make a joke.
“Well, fighting is the last thing I need to learn so we probably won’t be in that many classes together.”
Tae laughed louder than the joke merited, which told him two things: Tae had already known about him being a berserker and he was grateful for the subject change.
They spent the next hour talking about everything and anything, shows they all watched, music they listened to, it was the first time Erik had felt like he was among friends in years, or at least people who could become friends.
ZEBUB
LIL
She had no idea what she was doing. She just knew she had to try.
She approached the wall, doing her best to not look at the pile of broken flesh that used to be her mother, but she could not block the scent of flowers that still wafted from her. Her mother had always smelled of flowers, as had—did her father. Ever since they’d started work in the main Zebub gardens.
Yelling, sounds of dismay and struggle still came from the window above. She focused on them. The ladder was no longer an option.
Placing her hand against the wall, she jerked it back when her fingers sank into the usually firm pink flesh. She picked at the dents that her fingers had made and saw the dark brown rot that was eating the building from within. She’d never seen or heard of anything like it. The only cause she could think of was that the building was dying, the creeping dark was killing it from within. Then she looked up at the window. With a deep breath she reared her foot back and kicked a foothold into the wall. She reached up, ignoring the feeling of slime that surrounded her fingers as they sank in. In this way she began to climb, glancing up only occasionally to make sure she had not gone off course.
She was only two floors below when the silence came, the sound of all fighting cut off, and Lil tried to move her body faster. If her father was near the window she could still make it in time, pull him from the silence. It did not matter that her throat burned from the Babel she had used to break them free earlier.
Then the screaming began.
Still she climbed, anxious to reach the window. Only when a handhold collapsed under her did she notice the way the wall was turning darker and darker, and then it was too late and she was falling. She scrabbled at the wall and though the pieces disintegrated under her clawing fingers and flailing feet, they slowed her enough that when she hit the ground, it was only the breath that was knocked from her body.
Until she looked up.
The same scream of pain—the night’s theme—grew, larger than one person’s voice, larger than a hundred, a thousand. So loud that she covered her ears and yet still the shriek ran through her skull, causing her eyes to water. Through the damp of her tears, she saw the building itself begin to throb and move, as if it tried to run away. It was the building screaming as it began to disappear.
She placed a hand back to steady herself and felt her fingers slip through the remains of her mother. She stood as quickly as possible, rubbing her fingers across her white tunic, staining it further.
There was no sign of Thiot, but she could not stay here. She looked at the building slowly sinking on itself, struggling and screaming the whole time. She did not look at her mother but could not help but think of her; memories froze her to the sidewalk. There was a new ache in her chest, a new absence.
The last words she had spoken to her parents had been in anger. She’d yelled at them and all she could remember was the shock on their faces, and the rush of good feeling that had come with finally speaking over their fear. The loss of her parents pained her, but it was the fact that she would never be able to speak so harshly with them again that truly hurt. She would not be able to finally bridge the icy crevasse of silence that had sprung up between them. Even when they had apologized, she had not been able to bring herself to accept.
The first fault was not hers, but could she have healed the divide had she only spoken up sooner? She would never know.
Mayer said over and over a Holder-Apprentice had to learn when to question and when to listen, when to whisper and when to roar. This had been her family and would never have the chance to be her family again.
She did not mourn her parents as they were; she mourned what they had been when she was a child. She mourned the connection that could have been, had they gotten over their fear, had she been more forceful, had any of a number of things happened that now never would. She was shaken from the frozen-statue grief that held her when the last corner of the building crumbled and gave way. The pieces broke apart as they fell, showering her with pink dust and brown liquid.
Lil backed across the street, staring at the place where h
er building had been. There was now a whirlpool of darkness, bubbling. She could see chunks of building and pieces of people swirling inside of it, slowly melting. The boundaries of the darkness spread, but slowly, as if it had satiated some of its hunger. It waited.
She did not want to see more death. She turned and looked out across the city skyline, lighting the dim night in blues and pinks and greens.
She needed to get to Kandake, and had no time to wait for Thiot.
She needed to be with Minnie and Davi, to make sure they were okay. Fear made her shiver and her throat ached with every swallow, but none of it mattered.
She turned toward Gotha Lane. That was the way Thiot would have gone, the place where she might cross his path on his return.
Where she might find his remains if something had happened—
She ruthlessly cut off the thought and began her journey.
For ten blocks she walked in silence, keeping to the shadows and alleys that dotted the streets. As she approached the turn onto Gotha Lane, she heard the sounds of screams and sobbing, saw a broken, wavering light.
She slowed.
She could backtrack and take Orao Street, but Gotha was the route Thiot would have taken. She took a deep breath and stuck her head around the corner.
Another building was being swallowed, decaying and dissolving before her eyes from the bottom up. The sounds came from the broken and dying bodies of ’dants littering the ground and from those hanging to the top floor. Some leapt for the ground, others waved to the too-few neighbors using personal dragons to try and ferry ’dants to the ground. The light came from the lanterns they carried, shining down through the dragon’s translucent wings. Other than those few, the neighbors were staying inside, keeping their distance. Considering the way the building shuddered and shook as the base slowly dissolved, she could not blame them.
The Root Page 9
