Carrier of the Mark

by Leigh Fallon

  “I know. I’m nearly there, though. It won’t be long now, I promise.”

  “You don’t have to do this, Adam,” I whispered.

  He opened his eyes and sat upright. “Yes, I do. Time’s nearly up. Come on; I’ll get you home.”

  I played with the idea of telling him I was giving up the element, that I had it under control now, but I knew he’d freak out. I sighed and leaned back in my seat as he drove the rest of the way to my house. When we pulled up, I saw that my dad was already home.

  “I won’t come in,” Adam told me.

  “Will you be in school tomorrow?” I asked hopefully.

  “Not tomorrow, but I can see you Saturday.”

  “Well, we were thinking of going out for a ride on Saturday, Caitlin and me. I haven’t asked Áine yet, but I’m sure she’ll be up for it too. Do you mind?”

  “Of course not. Maybe I’ll see you Saturday night then.”

  “That would be nice.” I gave him a good-bye kiss, then stepped out into the rain. “Adam.”

  “Yes.”

  “Any chance you could think happy thoughts on Saturday? Riding in the rain isn’t much fun.”

  Adam’s lips curled into a little smile. “I’m sorry; I don’t even notice I’m doing it.” He put out his hand and flicked it to the side. The clouds broke above my head and the first bit of clear sky I’d seen in weeks peeped through the clouds.

  “I’ll save all my happy thoughts for Saturday,” he promised, and he backed out of the driveway and drove away.

  “Hey, Meg.” Dad walked out to greet me. “Is Adam not coming in?”

  “No, he had to go study.”

  Dad looked at me thoughtfully. “Is everything all right with you two? We don’t see much of him around here these days. I haven’t seen his name on the duty list in the club either.”

  “Everything’s fine, Dad; he’s just studying a lot.” I decided to change the subject before he could ask any more questions. “Caitlin, Áine, and I are going to go riding on Saturday.”

  “That sounds nice. Too bad the weather’s been so bad.”

  “I think the forecast is calling for a break in the rain.”

  “Really? Well, if that’s the case, maybe I’ll head down to West Cork with Petra.”

  “Sounds good. Anyway, I’m going to hit the books,” I said, plodding up the stairs. I was so tired. I couldn’t help feeling sorry for myself too. I missed the real Adam. I couldn’t wait for the time when he and I could just be together, without anything hanging over our heads.

  Saturday was indeed beautiful. I wondered what happy thoughts Adam could have come up with to produce such a perfect day. We were all up bright and early and down in the stables before ten a.m. As I had expected, Áine was delighted to hear about the riding trip, and had been talking about it all week. When we got there, Áine and I found Caitlin and Killian talking happily together. When she saw us approaching, she hugged him and ran over to us.

  “Well, well, well, what do we have here?” Áine teased.

  She blushed. “It’s hard to stay away long! I guess I just can’t resist a man in jodhpurs.”

  I laughed. “I knew it was only a matter of time. I bet he’ll be much more attentive this time around. No screwups.”

  The three of us turned and looked at him. He happened to glance at us at exactly the same time, and when he met our eyes, he spun around fast to look busy doing something. Unfortunately for him, he tripped over a wheelbarrow and caught himself just in time to keep from falling on his face. Then he tried to gather his dignity and saunter away looking nonchalant. We all burst out laughing, but tried to smother the sounds so we wouldn’t hurt his feelings.

  “Come on,” Áine said when she managed to get her breath back. “Let’s get going.”

  Killian had tacked up three of the yard’s best horses. I stretched my foot up into the stirrup and hauled myself up. As I sat in the saddle my Mark stung for a split second. I spun my head around, but there was no one else nearby, and Áine was still smiling away.

  I must have imagined it. My hair was probably caught on my riding hat. I reached back to free it.

  Caitlin leaned over. “Here, let me help.” She hooked her finger under my hat and pulled out my hair.

  “Thanks, that’s better. Come on, guys,” I shouted, and trotted off down the path.

  “Hold up,” they called after me, kicking their horses into action, trying to catch up.

  It was a gorgeous morning. We trotted all the way out to Sandycove beach, letting the horses go into the water up to their chests to cool them down; we all got a little wet in the process, but it was fun. We had our picnic on the beach, under the soft glow of the winter sun, and then doubled back toward Kinsale. We were making our way to a particular field that Áine said was long enough to ride through at a gallop. When we arrived at the field the horses all got giddy and excited, prancing around the place and shying from imaginary things in their excitement to get going.

  Áine put her hand up in the air. “On your mark, get set, go!” she roared, and all the horses took off, half rearing up in their first stride. All that could be heard was the thudding of hooves, and I gloried in the feel of the wind in my face.

  Something tugged me back. I didn’t see anything; I just fell to the ground, totally winded. I could see Caitlin and Áine galloping out of view with my horse hot on their heels. They hadn’t even realized I’d fallen. Then something covered my mouth. I tried to scream but I couldn’t. I couldn’t even breathe. I was being held down and dragged.

  I felt the blackout coming … and then I felt nothing.

  Twenty-two

  FOUND

  It was dark and cold. There was no air. I tried to move my hands to push off whatever was on top of me. But my hands wouldn’t move. They were bound. I didn’t know which way was up or down. I screamed and kicked my legs against anything I could hit, but it did no good.

  My eyes finally adjusted to the dark and I could see I was in a small, enclosed space, with a tire wedged against my back. And I was moving. I was in the trunk of a car. I tried to reach the lock, to see if I could activate it from the inside, but I was too tightly bound. I screamed again and tried to use my power, but nothing happened.

  Suddenly the car skidded to a halt, slamming me into the trunk wall. My head took the brunt of the blow and a stabbing pain sliced across it. Fear gripped me. What was going to happen? What was this? Logic told me it was the Knox; they’d come for me. How long had I been unconscious? Was it minutes? Hours?

  At least I could be sure that Áine would have figured out by now that I was missing. She would have told her family. Adam would know.

  Adam. His name stabbed through my heart. He would be frantic. They all would. This was the one thing they feared above all else, and now it had happened. It hurt to imagine how Adam’s face must have looked when he heard the news. I knew how it would crumble, how his eyes would narrow and darken. Even here, in my little prison, all I wanted was to somehow get to him and tell him not to worry.

  A car door banged close by and I heard footsteps, then a clunk as the trunk was opened. I was blinded by the light that poured in. All I could see was the silhouette of a person with the bright sky behind. Then there was a hand over my nose and mouth again. I struggled, calling on my power in vain, but not for long. My body went limp before my brain shut down.

  I was being dragged out of the trunk. My legs hit the ground as the blackness took hold.

  I felt sick and drowsy. I remembered waking up in the dark trunk of the car after falling from my horse, and being smothered by some choking chemical. I had no idea where I was. It was damp and cold. I could hear lapping water. I looked around me.

  Was I on a boat? I must be, but the floor was at a funny angle. I tried to stand up, but my hands and feet were still bound and I fell over. I heard footsteps clumping down the stairs.

  “Good morning, sunshine. You awake again?” a voice with an English accent rang out. “Are you goi
ng to be a good girl this time or do I have to drug you again?” The words were heavily laced with sarcasm. I shook my head frantically from side to side, trying my best to convey to him that I would play along.

  He pulled me roughly off the floor and sat me down on a makeshift bed.

  “Now you stay quiet, right, or it will be night-night for you again,” he threatened, and removed my gag. My mouth was sore and cracked where the gag had been tied tight. I opened and closed it a few times, trying to ease the pain in my jaw. I tried once more to tap my power, but it was dead.

  “No point in tiring yourself out. Your powers won’t work on me,” he said right into my face. My expression must have revealed my shock, because he laughed and held out a charm that was on a chain around his neck. “You see, I have the Amulet of Accaious.”

  “You can’t,” I croaked out. “That was destroyed years ago.”

  He chuckled to himself and dragged a crate over beside me to sit on. “I may as well introduce myself, since you’ll be seeing quite a bit of me. I’m Lyonis Fleet.” He held out his arm as if to shake my hand, then started laughing. “Oh, I guess you’re all tied up, aren’t you?” He cackled at his own pathetic joke.

  “As you can see, the amulet wasn’t destroyed,” he went on. “It was simply disabled. We had the missing amber shard. All we needed was the remnants of the Amulet.” He held out the amulet that dangled on the big gold chain and moved it closer to me. It looked like a bronze sun with pointed sunbeams radiating from it. At the very center there was an unusual amber stone; I could see the cracks where the shard had been fixed back into it. The amber glowed bright.

  “This little beauty was a gift to us from a friend of ours in the Order of the Mark. Look at how it glows when it gets close to you.” He moved it closer to me to prove his point and the glowing grew more intense. “All we had to do was insert the amber shard and hey, presto, your little earth element Áine couldn’t see me coming.”

  “But I sensed you coming.”

  “A minor flaw. It only blinds evoked elements. But it binds all the elemental powers, evoked or not, so you can’t touch me.”

  I held my breath. The Knox had a weapon that Adam, Áine, and Rían would be powerless against. I had to remember every shred of information that this man told me. I had to keep him talking.

  “What about me?” I asked quickly.

  “Ah, indeed, what about you? When we learned the fourth had been found and guided by the Sidhe himself, we knew something was stirring.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Christ! Who told them?

  He leaned in and pulled my hair away from my neck. “An activated Mark from royal blood … and a Carrier too. Who could have imagined such a creature? But here you are.” He put his hand on my Mark. I cringed away from his touch.

  “Don’t be frightened; I’m not going to hurt you.”

  “Does drugging me and dumping me in a car trunk not qualify as hurting me?”

  “Ooh, and she’s feisty too.” He laughed. “What a combination. Listen, girl, you should really play along. The Knox aren’t half bad. You might even like us.”

  “I doubt it,” I spat, and turned away from him.

  “Well, they’re on their way here now to collect you, so you might want to rethink that. Trust me, little girl: The fifth will come. You’ll want to be on our side when it does.”

  “The fifth? This is all about the fifth?”

  “Of course it’s about the fifth. It’s always been about the fifth. That’s what we’ve been doing all these years. Biding our time. And now that time has come.”

  “The fifth has nothing to do with me.”

  “It has everything to do with you,” he sneered.

  “Get away from her!” Adam’s voice filled the small cabin as he came down the steps from the deck above.

  “Adam.” I gasped.

  Adam didn’t know about the amulet. I had to try to warn him. Suddenly a ball of water from outside the boat shot through the window right at Lyonis. It got about a yard from him and then the water splashed against thin air, like it had hit a glass wall.

  “What the…?” Adam looked around the cabin in shock.

  “The amulet! Adam! The am—” I was cut off midscream as a fist slammed into my face.

  “No!” I heard Adam shout as I fell sideways and landed on the floor, dazed and groggy. There was blood in my mouth, and my cheek and jaw pounded. I was using all the energy I had just by focusing on staying conscious.

  Lyonis and Adam were fighting, struggling against each other. They lurched to the left, smashing into the side wall, and then they both went right out through the rotting hull. I could hear Rían’s voice outside.

  “No, Rían, don’t attack him! He’s got … Rían, no!” Adam shouted.

  Flames engulfed the boat, and my lungs ached as dark, noxious smoke filled the air. I struggled off the dirty makeshift bed and shuffled across the floor, the cable ties binding my hands and feet making my progress slow.

  Suddenly a wall of water smashed through the cabin, dulling the flames.

  Seizing my opportunity, I threw myself toward the wooden stairs, where the remains of the fire licked their way upward to freedom. I gritted my teeth and reached over to hook the cable binding my wrists on a jagged piece of scorched metal that I could see through the flames. Turning my face away from the searing heat, I tugged down sharply and felt the tie snap. I screamed as the flames burned my skin, but I didn’t have time to worry about the pain. I needed to get out, to warn the others. I had to make sure they were okay.

  With my hands free, I released my ankles and scrambled up the still-burning stairs to the deck. I was on a half-sunken old fishing trawler that was listing at an odd angle where it had run aground, in what looked like a boat graveyard. The smoke had curled its way up from the wreckage and was slowly starting to clear. Through the haze I could see a group of people on the shoreline.

  Lyonis was standing in front of Rían, Fionn, and Áine, pointing a gun at them. They were motionless, staring at the ground. My eyes followed their horrified gaze to the body lying facedown at the water’s edge.

  It was Adam. He was lying flat, deathly still, with blood oozing out of him. It soaked through his shirt, pooling on the damp sand.

  Horror filled me, along with anger, despair, loss. I could hear the blood whooshing through my veins, pumping through me. Every pulse was so loud in my ears I could hear nothing else. I started moving toward Lyonis. The man who had drugged me, threatened me, beaten me, and now had taken my reason for living away from me. My fear was a distant memory. Not once did I look down to negotiate the dangerous maze of broken boats, water, and debris. I would have vengeance. That was all there was left in the world.

  “I’ll be with you soon,” I promised Adam as I moved closer to my target.

  Lyonis was aiming his gun at the others. Áine was sobbing, Fionn looked desolate, and Rían was shaking, a picture of rage.

  Lyonis didn’t see me coming, but Rían did. His face changed as we locked gazes. What was that I saw in his eyes? It looked like fear, but I didn’t care. I was beyond caring. I could feel a surge of strength building in me like a bomb about to explode. I felt like I was floating; there was no longer ground beneath my feet. There was no need for it, no need for substance. I wasn’t moving through the air; I was the air.

  My beautiful Adam. I could see part of his face now where he lay in a crumpled heap, his eyes hidden by lids that were closed forever.

  Lyonis. That animal had taken my precious Adam from me. I screamed in pain, a scream so loud it ripped through the valley. In the same moment I saw Fionn throw himself toward Lyonis. Lyonis pulled the trigger and Fionn fell forward beside Adam. As he went down he snatched at the amulet around Lyonis’s neck, ripping it free. Lyonis shrieked in horror as the realization hit him: He was no longer protected.

  Then I heard a roaring. It was so loud I could hear nothing else.

  Rían and Áine covered their
ears and cowered on the ground. They crawled over to the bodies of Adam and Fionn and threw themselves down over them. The roaring continued and I looked around.

  I suddenly realized that I was up in the air high above them. I appeared to be radiating a bright light. The air around me swirled until I could no longer see the land. River water started rising up and spinning around me. Next the boats lifted, then some trees, their great roots torn from the earth by the brutal force emanating from me. It was a massive vortex, spreading out farther and farther until the riverbed was visible, the water swirling high above it. The boats and the trees that had been tugged up swirled so fast that their outlines became a blur.

  I saw the object of my rage running away. He was making for the woods, but I pushed out the great vortex of moving air and debris so that he stayed constantly in my sight. There was no way he could break through its impenetrable wall.

  “You,” I snarled. My voice was not mine. It was a mixture of howling wind and cracking thunder. “You will pay.” I clasped my hand, as if to pick up his little body far below me on the ground, and he rose right into the air until he was at my level.

  “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” he screamed, flailing his legs and trying to shield himself from my glare.

  “Too late for that.” My voice reverberated around the valley.

  I looked at Adam, his lifeless body. Rían and Áine were standing now. I saw them waving up at me, but I was beyond caring what they wanted. The power inside engulfed me, took over my very core, and it needed vengeance. I glanced back to Adam one last time just to look at his physical body before I went to meet him in the next life. I knew I could do it. I wouldn’t be dying. I would simply cease to exist. I knew exactly what to do and how to do it. It was instinctual. I just needed to turn the power on myself.

  Lyonis was still screaming. It was irritating me, ruining my last few moments with my beloved’s body.

  Adam’s hand moved.

  Shocked, I looked again. Now his whole arm moved. And then I saw that his eyes were open, green, clear, and beautiful.