Defiance (Heart Lines Series Book 5)

by Heather Hildenbrand

  I didn’t bother to ask how Sushna had known what happened to her daughter. Some things would probably remain a mystery. “What kind of deal?” I asked, still very aware of Alex brooding by the window. He wasn’t looking at us, but I knew he heard every word.

  “The kind we couldn’t possibly agree to,” Breck said and the grim set of his mouth made my stomach clench.

  “She wanted to be allowed to kill her daughter,” Brittany said slowly.

  My eyes widened. “Seriously?”

  Brittany nodded. “She was willing to give … things in return but … they turned her down. In the end, another deal was made. She took Indra home with her, but only after making a blood oath with the director herself that she couldn’t harm her daughter after they’d gone.”

  I tried to picture Cord having a showdown with Sushna and the visual made me want to crawl under a table. “Okay, that’s crazy, but what does any of that have to do with Koby?”

  “The oath pissed her off,” Brittany said and she shuddered, making me wonder just what a scene that had been: an angry Sushna in the midst of angry and armed CHAS agents. “The terms were that she’d tell us what she knew about Ea. But they weren’t specific enough.” At my confused expression, she added, “The information was provided, but it’s locked inside Koby who hasn’t said a word since that night.”

  I looked back at Koby in disbelief and then sympathy for whatever Sushna had done to him. “He hasn’t spoken at all?”

  “No eating or drinking or even sleeping either. Just sitting calmly. Completely unresponsive.” Breck shrugged and then nodded toward Koby. “See for yourself.”

  I looked at Koby, still as stone in the chair by the fireplace, and then back to Brittany. “What makes Edie think he’ll talk to me?”

  Brittany’s brows shot up and she glanced at Breck. He took a deep breath and said, “Because the Witherer said so.”

  Alex finally turned away from the window.

  I took a minute to absorb that last part. “Wait. She said ...?”

  “She left the information inside Koby, but she said ‘only the goddess can open it.’” Brittany frowned. “Her words exactly.”

  My shoulders slumped and my heart plummeted to around my knee caps. Not me. Hina. If we wanted the information on RJ, I had to let her out to play.

  “You don’t have to do it,” Alex said, and I looked up to find that he’d returned to my side, all traces of his own suffering gone. He stared down at me with concern etched into his expression.

  For once, Breck nodded in agreement. “He’s right, Sam. It could be a trap.”

  I bit my lip, considering that, but it didn’t matter. I had no choice. Even if I didn’t want to get the information this way, I couldn’t let Koby stay like this. “I’ll use Hina to unlock him, and then I’ll shut her down again. If I can’t … Safar should come inside. She’ll make him tell the story inside him if I can’t. And she can help bring me back ...”

  “Who is Safar?” Brittany asked.

  “She’s a friend. We stayed with her after … she has a gift that helps coax things out of people. Things that are buried deep.”

  “Like secrets?” Brittany asked, cocking her head.

  “Sometimes,” I said.

  “Or like bullets,” Alex said knowingly.

  I looked up and found Alex staring at me with a question in his eyes. “She’ll explain it all later,” I said. “Just bring her in.”

  He nodded, pressing a quick kiss to my cheek as he left.

  Brittany followed him, offering to take Safar’s place on guard duty. I looked over at Breck and said the only thing we had in common at this point. “Mom’s in town.”

  “What town?”

  I gave him a wry look. “Half Moon.”

  His eyes went wide but then his expression clouded. “Why?”

  I sighed. “School. Apparently hiding out in the Oregon forest isn’t a valid excuse for missing multiple weeks’ worth of classes. I’m on academic probation.”

  “Sis.”

  “I know. And Mom’s livid. Well, with me. She loves Alex.”

  “Wait.” His eyes widened. “She met Channing?”

  “He didn’t give me much choice. Why?” I asked, watching his expression shift until his eyes were sparkling with way too much evil humor.

  “I thought I’d run out of ways to torture him and still keep my promise to you about not killing him. But this gives me ideas.” He rubbed his hands together.

  “Breck,” I warned.

  “Fine. Fine. I’ll stay away if you want—”

  “No, I don’t want. I mean.” I huffed. “Stop trying to use Alex as a reason to keep your secrets from Mom and Dad.”

  He sobered way too fast and far. “Sam, I’m sorry. I know you want me to open up to you. To them. But I can’t … There are things about me. Things I’ve done. I just can’t share that part of my life with you.”

  I took a deep breath, fully aware he’d just given me the same line he’d used before. Back when he’d first told me about his past as a half-Hunter covert operative, I’d almost brushed it all off as an excuse not to open up. But now, watching the bleak look on his face at the thought of having to come clean …

  “All right,” I said at last. “I won’t tell her you’re here.”

  “Thank you.” He surprised me by reaching out and hugging me tight for the second time tonight—an embrace that was short-lived as Alex returned with Safar.

  Koby still hadn’t moved, but we all gathered around him now as I filled Safar in on the details.

  “You’re going to heal him,” she said when I was done. It wasn’t a question. Just like all the other times she talked to me about my magic, it was a statement. Absolutely no doubt in her that I could do what needed to be done. That made one of us.

  “Yes,” I said with more confidence than I felt.

  At my instruction, the guys picked Koby up as gently as they could and laid him out on the rug. I sat on the floor beside him while Safar sat opposite me. Breck and Alex remained standing, but I felt Alex inching closer to me, and I knew he was ready to do whatever he could to help bring me back if Hina took too much from me. Not that he could do anything if that happened. And we both knew it.

  I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, sinking slowly into the meditative state that would let me into Koby's psyche. Nothing too far, too fast, I told myself. Slow and steady.

  Hopefully.

  Koby’s aura was a muddy gray but where Indra had left a mire of quicksand as a trap, this magical party favor Sushna had left for me was unwrapped and practically shoving itself into my mind—there for the taking. It was almost too easy to get inside Koby’s energy and that made me nervous as hell. Anything Sushna wanted for me had to be bad.

  I thought of the last time she’d offered to show me her magic and shuddered. It wasn’t something I could ever forget.

  I went slow, searching methodically for hidden danger. But there were no black tendrils over his veins or heart. Nothing threatening his humanity or soul like with the wolves. There was nothing extra … just a blankness that felt like a door left wide open. It would be so easy to step through.

  So I did.

  A kaleidoscope of sights and sounds washed over me. Or through me. My insides clenched, and I wavered, worried I was going to be sick again. The induction happened so fast, I wasn’t even sure whether I was physical or astral just now. But whatever form I was in, it was rooted in the vision that Sushna had left for me. I was immobile in the magic that was Koby’s aural sphere. A viewer only. I couldn’t speak or move or even breathe. And slowly, like a flower unfurling toward the sun, Hina came forward …

  The moment I felt her, it was like a switch had been flipped. Some invisible usher monitoring her arrival signaled the actors, and it began; like a movie reel, scenes began to play before me. Her. Us.

  I couldn’t let myself get too caught up in that now. I had to absorb what I’d come here to learn. Instead, I focused on the s
cenes. There was no sound, but I was surprised to realize I somehow understood anyway.

  The first face I saw was RJ.

  The sight of him before me, even as a memory or a vision, was overwhelmingly painful. His tanned skin and broad shoulders. The determined expression he wore when he wanted something badly. The white shell necklace he always wore was in his hands. He stood on a beach underneath a moonless sky, and he looked younger somehow. Or maybe I just knew instinctively this was the past I was watching.

  The necklace pulsed with an energy that seemed to radiate heat. Furious, loathing heat drew an invisible path leading from the ocean to the shells to the fire RJ stood beside.

  And I knew then RJ wasn’t alone.

  A small woman wrapped in a sheet huddled beside the fire. My eyes widened at the sight of Indra. She looked nothing like the version of the woman I’d known in Half Moon Bay. Smaller, more afraid. And utterly controlled. She never took her eyes from the shell necklace.

  RJ uttered words. Some incantation that, although it echoed in my own awareness, I couldn’t understand. The shells began to pulse brighter. Stronger. Beside Indra, a sea creature bellowed in pain. I turned to look, certain it hadn’t been there a moment ago, and screamed.

  My own cry was silent, strangled by some force that stole the sound before it could reach my ears. I swallowed hard and shut my mouth, breathing deeply as I stared.

  Beside the sea creature lay the bodies of two women. One older and one around my age, both with the same tanned complexion and dark eyes as RJ. They were also both dead, the blood from a small wound coating their chests and the sand beneath them.

  I wrenched my gaze from their frozen faces and happily gave myself over to Hina. She could handle it, disgusting as it was. She was strong against the violence. I was not.

  Hina watched, her fury growing, as RJ motioned to Indra and she whimpered. Tears streaming, Indra reached for the creature and laid her hands on it. RJ uttered more words. He lifted the necklace high into the air and nodded at Indra. She repeated the words he’d said and they both jerked hard against an invisible force. The creature’s body was split in half and Indra fell into the exposed organs that spilled onto the sand.

  RJ’s eyes gleamed.

  The necklace glowed.

  From the sea creature, rivers of blood flowed.

  It was done.

  The scene changed.

  A woman with bright eyes and a kind smile standing in the forest before the Witherer herself. In one hand, she carried a crystal amethyst, larger than any I’d ever seen. The other hand held tightly to the boy at her side, his dark eyes wide with curiosity as he stared at the muddy creature before him.

  Sushna mumbled something and the meaning was lost without the sound to go with it, but the woman came forward slowly. She held the stone out and Sushna shook her head and pointed instead to the boy. The woman shrank back, yanking the boy behind her. This time, as they argued, I couldn’t understand. But Hina knew. She’d always known. This was what she’d been waiting for. What had spurred Ea to act sooner than he’d planned. Both god and goddess had fought for this boy.

  The knowledge left me reeling.

  Before me, the scene continued to play. I didn’t need to watch the rest to know what would happen next, but there was no turning it off now. Sushna had left this for me, and now I had to let it play out.

  The scene morphed and changed as an argument ensued. The woman left with her head hung low and a heavy heart. The boy didn’t understand. Time passed. The scenes flicked by. The woman’s meeting with Jin. His reading—which yielded only more of what the woman already knew. The boy’s wide eyes set into a face full of worry and curiosity that tugged at my heart. Still small. Still confused.

  I tried my best to yank free of the nightmare playing out before me, but I couldn’t leave. Hina didn’t want to—and she was in charge now. I winced and cried out as I was forced to watch the woman slowly decline underneath the weight of her purpose. And finally I watched her give in to her sacrifice. When her heart stopped, I knew I was sobbing in this reality and the one I’d left behind. But my tears were replaced by a fear that threatened to paralyze me. In the shadows of her soul’s journey up and out lurked creatures I’d only ever imagined in my worst nightmares. Sushna among them—free of the clay she wore as a mask against what she really was.

  I didn’t know whether to cry, or fight, or run and hide, taking the boy with me. Even Hina’s heart was heavy as the magical movie ended and the screen went blank.

  A voice sounded. The words I heard echoed in my skull until the booming made my heart hurt: This is how it began.

  “And how does it end?” I yelled—not even sure the words made it up and out of my throat. But they vibrated inside my own mind, and I knew whoever was in charge here had heard me.

  Everything else blinked out, leaving only darkness and in the center, a tiny pinpoint of light. It loomed far away and then like an approaching headlight, it came steadily closer. I blinked against the brightness of it, finally noticing the shape and texture of it as it seemed to take up the entire horizon.

  A moon.

  A full moon—and inside it, all the power of the heavens. Ruled by me.

  I gasped.

  The moon vanished.

  Then there was nothing left.

  Even Hina receded, leaving me alone in the dark void.

  I came out of it in a wrenching haze that left me breathless and gasping as if I’d been under water for too long. Choking on my own breath and on the visions that Sushna’s magical gift sent spearing into my head, I wrenched free and came to.

  Alex was on the floor, holding me up. I was in his arms.

  Breck had drawn a knife and was huddled above me, looking back and forth between me and Koby like all he needed was to identify an enemy and he’d be all right.

  “You okay?” Alex asked me in a voice that gave away how scared he’d been.

  “Why? Did something happen?” I asked, trying to understand why they were freaked out. Everything I’d seen had been inside me, or at least not on this plane … Or at least I was pretty sure, anyway.

  “You were screaming in another language,” Breck said and his eyes were hard like he still wanted something to fight.

  “I … I didn’t know I was talking. I … Sushna sent me a vision of RJ. Of how he summoned Ea. Indra was there. I …” I swallowed, looking back and forth between them. The words on my tongue felt scary so I hesitated. Once I said it, I’d have to admit things to them. To myself.

  To Alex. About his magic.

  So I kept quiet and tried to think of the best way to handle it. But Koby’s eyelids suddenly fell and then lifted again.

  “Holy shit, was that—?” Breck began.

  Everyone turned to watch. Slowly, Koby drew in a breath, his chest rising with it, and his lids fell and rose a second time.

  “He blinked,” Alex said.

  We all scooted closer, surrounding him on the blanket where he still lay. Another breath, this one deep as if he was waking from a long sleep. I looked into his dark brown eyes, and my heart lifted despite the weight of everything I’d seen.

  “You’re all right,” I said, smiling through tear-filled eyes.

  He nodded. “I am. And you know what you have to do.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Alex

  Sam saw something awful in that damned vision, I was sure of it. She wouldn’t say what. Only that she knew what she had to do now to stop Ea. She kept saying that name too. Not RJ. Ea. Like she identified more with the god than the man. And it made me wonder how much Sam was Sam—and how much Sam was Hina. I didn’t ask. Not with everyone else crowding around us around the tree where Harold still sat vigil while the bark-blood dried and Safar kept re-bending the wards so no one knew we were here.

  Koby had fully recovered. He’d stretched, showered, and then eaten everything in the fridge before he was ready to talk about what it had been like to be locked inside himself for nearly a
week. Now, he was speaking quietly to Safar on the other side of the gathered group, and I was watching, more relieved than I cared to admit that he was going to make it.

  “He seems fine,” Breck said from beside me. He stood with his arms crossed, his pose suggesting he was pissed—or still ready for a fight—and we both knew he had plenty of reasons to be. I was more relieved than I cared to admit that he was still on our side through all this.

  I nodded, both of us watching the others from where we stood out of earshot, taking it all in. “Good damn thing. We needed a win after Harding.”

  “I hear his old man’s stirring the pot on that one. You know what you’re going to do about that?”

  I bit back a curse. “Nobody has time for that bull shit.”

  Breck grunted an agreement.

  A moment of silence passed. I watched as Sam spoke quietly to Harold about a proper memorial service for a tree that had lost its soul.

  “She seems okay considering everything,” Breck said with a nod of his chin.

  I tensed. Partly because I took responsibility for Sam’s well-being, so compliments and criticism both hit me hard. And partly because Sam wasn’t okay. But no one else besides me knew that. Maybe Safar, but even she didn’t know everything.

  “She’s doing her best,” I said simply.

  “Heard you met Mom.”

  I turned and found both amusement and concern in the look he gave me. My lips quirked. “She’s a peach,” I said.

  Breck laughed. “You’re in so much trouble.”

  I sighed, turning back to stare at Sam again. “I know.”

  “Falling for the girl. Meeting her parents. It’s all downhill from here.”

  “I fucking hope so. Downhill sounds easy and we definitely need some of that.”

  “Preach, man. Speaking of easy,” he nudged my shoulder, and I swallowed a grunt of pain, “How’s that gunshot wound?”

  “Healing,” I said tersely.

  He raised a brow. “Sam’s not speeding that up for you?”