Forbidden Alchemy (Elemental Book 7)

by Rain Oxford

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know. That’s why we came here; to find and rescue them. You can save them. You don’t have to let us go or anything. Just save those kids. We don’t know what Veronica has planned for them, but it can’t be good.”

  She frowned. “If this is a trap, I’ll---”

  “It’s not,” I interrupted. “We just really want to make sure the kids get freed. You’re a mother; you have to help them.”

  She nodded. “I’ll look for them.” She headed for the door, but stopped before pushing it open. “For the record, I want to believe you.” She left.

  Henry startled all of us by roaring, sounding more cat than human. “I have to get out!”

  “Do it. Use the shadow pass to get out and shift.”

  “I already tried! I’ve been trying for an hour. My jaguar is fighting me so hard that I can’t get the shadows to cooperate. It’s everything I can do not to rip my own skin off.”

  “How is your wolf?” I asked Darwin.

  “Fine, now that we’re not prisoners of the dire wolves. We can’t stay here forever, though. What’s the plan?”

  “If Serena can find the kids before Veronica catches on and hides them somewhere else, we should take advantage.”

  “We’re going to sit around and do nothing until she finds them?”

  “No. I’m going to use this time to get into their heads and see if they encountered Veronica. Can your jaguar handle it?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. This is worse than keeping him calm during the full moon because I can’t distract him with sex.”

  “Hey, Remington, be a doll,” Darwin said. “Help a bloke out, yeah?”

  “Why haven’t you shot him yet?” Remy asked me.

  “Because then I’ll have to read shit myself again.”

  I focused on the minds of the people above me. Most of them had protection over their minds. I didn’t let that discourage me. I could be more stubborn than Remington. I filtered through endless boring memories from the members, because I couldn’t risk limiting my search to certain key thoughts.

  After several hours of it, I had gotten no answers and felt exhausted. Henry startled us as he threw his body violently against the bars. He repeated this several times. Three hits caused him to bleed, and I could smell the silver burning him. He alternated between kicking the bars and slamming his shoulders into them.

  “Cut it out,” Darwin said. “They’re made to hold shifters.”

  Henry snarled, beyond the ability to speak. I realized his jaguar was fighting him so hard that the silver burn was less painful. “Henry, I’m going to try to calm your cat down.”

  He ignored me and bit one of the bars. Darwin shuddered and put the pillow over his head. He couldn’t help Henry, but he didn’t want to see his friend in such pain. Darwin suffered constant, exhausting mental agony. Henry was losing his mind.

  I steeled myself for excruciating pain before connecting to Henry’s mind. I had underestimated it. I had almost died several times, yet I had underestimated Henry’s pain. It felt like his jaguar was literally clawing its way out of him. It was trapped and wanted to kill everyone. That wasn’t the reason Henry was attacking the bars though; he was trying to get away from Darwin before he killed his best friend. His jaguar would kill Darwin if the wolf made any sudden movements.

  Darwin kept getting screwed.

  I tried my best to push tranquility into Henry’s mind, but his jaguar wasn’t thinking; he was furious. He was acting without thought. It was overriding his brain. Maybe it was some subconscious PTSD from being born in captivity, ripped away from his mother as a newborn, and locked in a dog kennel.

  I pulled away because I couldn’t stand the jaguar’s torment. The jaguar was a part of Henry, so I felt for him. It wasn’t just Henry that I needed to help. However, at this point, my power wasn’t what he needed.

  Before I could unleash my power into the council members to get attention, the door flew open and Serena rushed in, looking terrified. “What’s going on?” she asked. Her eyes darted around as if she expected an attack.

  “Henry’s jaguar can’t handle being locked up.”

  Her eyes filled with pity and then she jumped when he crashed into the bars again. Given enough time, they would break, or he would. In fact, I would have been shocked if he hadn’t already shattered several of his bones.

  “You know I can’t let him---”

  “Bring a sedative,” I interrupted. “He’s going to kill someone or die trying to escape, and if you let him go in this state, he’ll kill you. Knock him out and then I can help him.”

  She looked to Henry as if she thought we were betraying him. When he smashed his fist into the bar, we all heard his bones snap. She flinched and ran out. Henry bit his own hand out of frustration, his flat teeth doing more damage than they should have.

  “You were in a cell in the dungeon of Quintessence. You dealt with that fine,” I said, hoping Henry could tell me how he coped.

  He couldn’t.

  “He was able to shift,” Darwin said. “He also knew he could escape at any moment because the cage wasn’t strong enough to hold him, let alone his cat.”

  “Why isn’t it bothering you?”

  “My wolf knows I’ve got everything under control. He trusts me, and you two to protect me. As long as they don’t hurt you, I’m okay. However, he’s getting increasingly agitated over Henry’s pain. For now, he knows better than to exacerbate the situation. If we could shift, he would shift and fight Henry to distract and tire him out. I can’t, though, and Henry could kill me in seconds like this.”

  I didn’t know if it was because Darwin was talking or Henry just needed to expel energy faster, but he suddenly reached for the metal cot. Darwin squeaked and rolled off it to get out of the way. Henry picked up the bed and bashed it into the bars. The bed bent, but the bars remained undamaged. He roared again.

  “We’ve got to do something,” Remy said.

  There was no response that wasn’t rude and unnecessary. “Call my father here. If Henry could use the shadow pass, my father can.”

  “Without his magic, he’d be defenseless against Henry.”

  “He’s just going to have to take one for the team.”

  An instant before I could, Serena returned with a tranquilizer gun. She aimed it at Henry as he rushed the bars again, but she couldn’t bring herself to pull the trigger. “I’ve never shot someone before,” she explained.

  “Give it here,” I said. If she really believed I was responsible for harming children, she would have refused. However, she handed it to me with relief, not hesitation. I didn’t waste a second; I aimed it at Henry and fired. It struck Henry in the back. To my shock, he went down in seconds.

  “Tranquilizers don’t work that way. They aren’t instant like in the movies. It should have taken at least ten minutes. What dose did you use?”

  She shook her head. “It was already loaded. They keep it for attacking shifters.”

  “Merde,” Darwin said.

  “Don’t tell me it has silver in it.”

  She nodded. “It does. Not enough to kill… not usually. Only one out of four shifters die from it.”

  “He’s in person form right now! Get help.”

  “He won’t die,” Darwin said. I didn’t know if he was certain of this or just hopeful, so I decided to trust him.

  “Find out if there’s an antidote just in case.”

  Instead of leaving, she held out her hand for the gun. When I didn’t give it to her, she looked betrayed. “I wasn’t supposed to give you a gun. If they find out, I’ll be put in the cage with him.”

  “What’s to stop them from using it on us?”

  “They don’t want you dead. Please trust me. I trusted you.”

  “You should have told me what was in it.”

  “I assumed you knew. This is the council.” Reluctantly, I handed it to her. “I’ll see if I can find something to help him.” She left.
<
br />   I immediately delved into Henry’s mind. The body was incapacitated, but the cat mind still wanted to kill. However, with his body settled, I had the opportunity I needed to reason with his feline mind.

  He felt trapped, so I pushed the sense of being free into him. When I got the papers that my divorce was finalized, I couldn’t believe how freeing it was. Of course, I soon learned I hadn’t heard the last of the vindictive bitch. Nevertheless, Henry’s jaguar accepted that feeling and calmed marginally. Once that took, I sent him a mental image of Scott, happily drawing at the school.

  Now the jaguar responded eagerly. He wanted to be calm so that he could get back to Scott, who was as much the jaguar’s son as he was Henry’s. The jaguar was intelligent enough to understand that freaking out wouldn’t help him escape. He just got overwhelmed, so he overwhelmed Henry.

  Darwin watched Henry for signs of a bad reaction, but Henry remained stable. Darwin ended up falling asleep next to him. Remington and I sat with our backs to each other against the bars and discussed how we were going to prove our innocence and how Veronica had so much control over them.

  “What do we know about her?”

  “Not much. I can’t get into her head. I don’t know what she looks like. I don’t even know her damned voice. I’m an investigator, but I can’t get close enough to her to investigate. No one knows of a Veronica that I can find, but I don’t know her last name or even if Veronica is her real name.”

  “Why is she different than all the previous enemies you’ve faced?”

  “She’s more powerful.”

  “Is she? You didn’t know what Krechea looked like.”

  “And it took dozens of people to take him down. The council required most of the population of Quintessence to take down. Gale… he was just a fucking human and he was able to curse me. John was…”

  “John got under your skin,” she said.

  “Worse. He’s in my blood.”

  She took my hand without turning to me. “I got off lucky. He wasn’t the first wizard to try to kidnap me, but he was the worst. I didn’t want to be rescued.” I turned to her, but she continued. “He told me what he was going to do to you and my father. Just… the sickest shit.” She shivered. “He couldn’t have cared less about me, or torturing me. He wanted to make you and my father suffer by watching me suffer. He planned on ripping my heart out and raping me… and it wasn’t even for his own sick pleasure. It was a chore for him to do in order to hurt my father.”

  “I didn’t know John hated Hunt that much.” It made a little sense, though; Hunt was the one who got my mother and me away from him when he was temporarily done with us.

  “My father barely knew him. Now think about Veronica and tell me what makes her worse than John.”

  “She’s not worse than him… but she’s harder to defeat because my intuition isn’t working when it comes to her.”

  “That must be a clue.”

  “A clue that she’s more powerful than me?”

  “My father is more powerful than you in wizardry. John was more powerful than you in mind control. You should know by now that that doesn’t always determine the winner. Maybe you should go back to Quintessence.”

  “Yeah, I get that we all have different strengths. My intuition is my strongest one.” I considered it for a few minutes. “You’re right.”

  “Of course I am; I’m a woman.”

  I poked her in the side until she squirmed and laughed. I relented tickling her and she sobered. “It hasn’t helped me to assume she had this power against my intuition. Maybe I should come up with a different theory and see if it answers some questions. If she can block my intuition, I can unblock it.”

  So I mentally combed over everything I had done in the last couple of months, trying to pinpoint the first moment my intuition failed me. One advantage of being imprisoned while my enemy remained at large was that I had ample time to think.

  * * *

  “I thought you were just overly trusting,” Darwin said, breaking the silence. When I didn’t respond, he continued. “In Becky,” he explained. “You refused to entertain the idea that she was an enemy. Now that I’ve seen her, though… she was acting really strange.”

  “She’s not acting like herself, but…”

  “But?”

  I shook my head as an answer finally dawned on me. “That’s it. She’s not herself. We already know Veronica can disguise herself as other people. That had to have been Veronica who arrested Remy, not Becky. She fucking told me to my face, and I was too stupid to get it. Veronica is on the fucking council. That’s how she knows things.”

  “Shit. We can stop her here, then.”

  “I don’t know. Everything so far has proven that she’s too powerful.”

  “Power-shmower. Between my brilliance, your gun-fu and bravery, Henry’s muscle, and your girlfriend’s spine-melting bitch-atude, Veronica doesn’t stand a chance.”

  “You’re getting better at pep talks.”

  Chapter 21

  Monday, December 5

  I woke as the door opened. My intuition gave me absolutely nothing; it wasn’t warning me of a threat or freedom. I knew before she stepped in that I was about to face Veronica.

  She was disguised as Becky, but I knew it wasn’t Becky.

  It can’t be Becky.

  But for the love of God, if I’m wrong, I’m going to shoot someone. If Veronica was right beside me for years and plotting this all along…

  Did I ever read her mind? Was my intuition working around her? My attention was on Veronica even as my brain spun, trying to come up with any proof at all that Becky wasn’t her. Any proof at all that I hadn’t been severely duped. I had trusted her.

  Veronica stopped in front of my cell and leaned against the bars. “Well, look at you. John’s firstborn son, his prized heir… trapped in a cage like a little rabbit. You can’t even decide if I’m truly Becky or if this is just a trick.”

  I stood and approached her. Looks-wise, she was identical to Becky. However, her eyes were cold, not curious and soft like the young woman I became friends with at Quintessence. These were eyes that would have sent Brian running from the second he met her.

  What most bothered me was that she held perfect eye contact. Most people felt uncomfortable looking me in the eye because they could subtly sense my power. I was so used to people casually glancing at something in their hands or the wall behind me every few seconds that her stare was obvious. At the same time, it didn’t hold the challenge that a shifter’s gaze would.

  Veronica looked me right in the eyes and felt no threat from me. I wasn’t powerful enough to read her mind. For the first time, I felt exposed.

  “It doesn’t really matter who’s on what side of the bars,” I said. “I have defeated people far more challenging than you.” Rem, Darwin, and Henry were still asleep. Since the crystal was preventing me from using power, I hoped she wasn’t able to use magic on them. However, the crystal wasn’t strong enough to break through her physical illusion. It also didn’t escape my notice that my psychic powers still worked.

  She laughed. “You think so? That’s funny. I wish it was true, but you are sadly mistaken. You are so far behind me that you’re not even on the same track.”

  “Then why haven’t you killed me already?” I asked.

  “What would be the fun in that? I thought you would be an amusing opponent, but so far, you’ve taken every step I set out for you. I wanted an adversary, but you’re just a puppet. I’ll tell you what; we’ll play twenty questions. I won’t lie. If you can figure out who I am, I’ll give myself up.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yes, and that’s one.”

  I opened my mouth to argue, but stopped myself. She wouldn’t have gotten this far if she wasn’t smart. She was obviously playing a game with me— a game other than twenty questions. I could use that to my advantage; she was underestimating me.

  “But there has to be a consequence if you lose,” she sa
id. “Otherwise, it’s not a very fair game, now is it? If you fail to figure out who I am, I’m going after Darwin or Henry next. I’ll kill someone one of them cares about. Which of them, I’ll leave up to you, though. I don’t care. So tell me.”

  “I won’t gamble with their loved ones.”

  She laughed. “This isn’t gambling, Devon. If you refuse to play the game, I’ll kill both of their loved ones, and I will do it while you’re trapped in a cage. If you play the game, you’ll either save them, or… if you fail, at least I’ll wait until you escape the cage… maybe. It depends on how entertaining the game is. I’m not unreasonable.”

  “How is making me choose between them reasonable?”

  She frowned at me, as if I was missing something right in front of my face. “I could have already killed them and their families. Isn’t that obvious? I’m giving you a chance to save them because I know they’re important to you. Now choose, or I’ll slaughter them all.”

  I wanted to refuse, but I had no doubt she would make good on her threats. Throughout this, my intuition was silent. “Darwin,” I said reluctantly. Darwin had his parents and his fiancée, who could protect each other. Henry only had his son. I hated myself for putting Darwin’s family at risk, especially after everything he’d just gone through.

  I just have to figure out who Veronica is. I can do this, and Darwin’s family will be fine. This can all end here and now.

  “Very well. You have nineteen questions left.”

  I had to be sparing with my questions, but also disarming. I needed her to think she had me right where she wanted me without actually falling for it. “You’re not an elemental or magical creature. You’re just a witch.”

  “Is that your question?”

  “Yes.”

  She scoffed. “I’m a wizard in the same way Ahz is a wizard.”

  That should have been more helpful than it was. Ahz was a wizard, but he wasn’t. “Are you from another world?”

  “No, I’m not, and neither is my magic.”

  “Do you have any fae blood?”