by AR Colbert
“What do you know about it?” I paused in the doorway. “My aura, that is.” I would have much rather held the conversation outside than follow him to who-knows-where in the giant building before me.
“I know that it’s the sign we’ve all been waiting for.” He paused to examine me once more before turning back toward the dark hallway ahead. “Come, child. Follow me and I will tell you everything I know.”
I didn’t get the greatest of vibes from him, but I didn’t get the sense that he wanted to harm me, either. In fact, he seemed quite delighted to see me.
With one more wary glance over my shoulder, I decided to follow him. The halls of the cathedral were mostly dark. The only illumination was moonlight that trickled in through stained glass windows, creating a blurred mosaic of eerie colors across the hard floor.
“What part of the cathedral are we in right now?”
“The part that leads to my office.” Rasputin pulled open a door and gestured for me to go ahead of him.
“You first.” I tried to keep my voice steady.
He gave a soft smile and a nod, then disappeared through the doorway. It was a stairwell leading down through a musty darkness. A faint yellow glow emanated from the bottom of the stairs.
“Do you work here? In the cathedral?”
“I work wherever I’m needed,” he responded cryptically.
I examined his aura as we crept lower into the building. It had a warmer glow than Tate’s or Osborne’s. It was almost reddish in hue, like a molten lava. I wondered briefly what the variations in color might mean. Were they indicative of the Keeper’s individual abilities? Or maybe their intentions? Surely they wouldn’t allow evil to be on display like that. And if that was the case, Osborne’s aura wouldn’t be an icy golden glow compared to Rasputin’s red hot hue.
Finally, we reached what I assumed was a basement, only it didn’t open up wide. It was yet another drab hallway, more sinister than those above ground because it lacked windows.
As though he heard my thoughts, Rasputin explained where we were while leading me through the nondescript maze of dimly lit walls. “These are escape tunnels. They are rarely used anymore, but they haven’t been closed off in case of an emergency that could require the clergy to leave the cathedral unnoticed. My office is just around the corner here.” He stopped and pulled a tarnished golden key from the pocket of his cloak.
The click of the lock seemed to ignite my common sense, and my stomach twisted with the urge to run. We were so far below ground, so deep in the winding halls of unmonitored tunnels, that I wasn’t even sure if I could get away before Rasputin used whatever powers he possessed to stop me in my tracks. What was I thinking following him down here? No one would even be able to hear me scream.
Al was right. This was a really, really bad idea.
Just before my panic could fully drag me under, Rasputin’s door swung open wide to reveal the cave-like room on the other side. Calling it an office was generous. The only thing that gave any indication that it was used was a piece of artwork hanging on the stone wall opposite the door. The room was dark, but the yellow light from the hall revealed just enough of an outline to get my heart pounding.
“Is that…”
“Yes, Deliverer. That is a painting of you.”
Against my better judgment, I entered the small space to get a better look. It was the painting from the gallery. The one of me on a throne. Scarless and fierce. My fingers brushed the area below my lip, where my scar used to protrude from my skin. It was smooth now, gone once my powers were activated. And the title below the painting still bore the words I’d seen upon my arrival in the city. Deliverance.
“Where did you get this? Are you working with Rossel?” I could barely hear my own whispered words against the thunderous pounding of my heart.
Rasputin scoffed. “Never. But I do appreciate his artistic abilities. He captured you perfectly.”
“What does it mean?”
“It means the prophecy is true. Rossel must have seen it in a vision. And now, seeing you here with that luminous aura… it’s simply divine.”
“But why? Why would he have it on display?”
“It reeked of a luring enchantment. He displayed it to attract you. And it worked. But he failed to kill you.”
“Rossel wants me dead?”
“Indeed.” He tilted his head, looking almost reptilian in the process. “That’s why I created the explosion. I gave you a chance to escape.”
“No.” I took a step back and shook my head. That couldn’t be true.
“Yes.”
“I thought Tate created the explosion.”
Rasputin laughed, a raspy choking sound, like he was gargling mothballs. “You thought wrong. The prince was only there to destroy you. To capture your beautiful soul. But he couldn’t. Your powers didn’t emerge as Rossel hoped they would. And by the time you turned, the prince had already realized you were more than another fractured soul. He couldn’t do it.”
“You keep saying prince. I don’t know a prince.”
“Ah, but you do. Thaddeus is Agarthian royalty.” Rasputin stroked his wiry beard. “Interesting that he hasn’t revealed that to you. All the more reason you should leave him behind and stick with me, I suppose.”
Tate was a prince? How could that be? And why had no one told me?
“I’m sorry.” I shook my head again, and moved back to the door. “I can’t work with you.” Even if what he said was true, Rasputin’s goals didn’t align with mine. He’d spent the last century trying to destroy the Keepers. Keepers like my friends, my aunt Millie, my mom… I couldn’t allow that to happen.
“Whether or not you choose to work with me, it will not change your fate. You are the Deliverer. You are destined to change this world. I only offer my services to help you do it sooner.”
“I don’t need your help.” I turned to leave, but something in his tone when he spoke again stopped me on the spot.
“I don’t expect you to trust me, but I’ve never tried to hide who I am. In fact, I offered full information about my history to you on a silver platter. The same cannot be said for those who call themselves your friends.” I turned to face him again, and a slow grin pulled his scraggly beard wide.
“Just be careful with what you say in front of Thaddeus. He does not care about you. He only cares about power, and he’s using you to get it. Once he inherits the throne, he’ll do what all the royalty before him has done. He’ll squash any rumors of the prophecy flat and use his forces to destroy you. You see, your life means the end of the Keepers’ power forever.”
Pressure stung at the back of my eyes. I wanted to deny it—to call Rasputin a liar. But he almost seemed to echo what Dom had implied the day before. “If Tate wants me dead, why hasn’t he done it already? He’s had no shortage of opportunities to kill me.”
“He can’t kill you until he gets the throne, or his bargaining chip will be gone.”
“I don’t believe that.” I didn’t want to believe it, anyway. I moved back to the door.
“Oh, it’s true. The royalty has great interest in ending you. In fact, I’d be willing to bet your mother is hidden away inside one of the royal prisons as we speak.”
He was toying with me. I knew it, but I couldn’t just walk away if he really knew something about my mother. “You know where she is?”
“If I knew, I would have found a way to release her, myself. We’re on the same side. I know you find that hard to believe, but I want you to succeed.”
“And what’s in it for you?”
He grinned again. The expression looked unnatural on his face. “It’s not about what’s in it for me. It’s about the betterment of all humanity.”
I snorted. “I doubt that.”
He shrugged. “You saw the other hunter, Osborne, take the lives of my people at the cargo dock.”
A gasp caught in my throat. “I didn’t. I escaped before it happened.” But I should have known they wouldn’
t have been as lucky as I was that day.
“Well, he did. And hundreds of other lives as well. They say they’re doing it to save the souls. Collecting the ‘fractured pieces’ in the hopes that they will one day piece them back into whole souls again. But ask Thaddeus how successful the operation has been so far. They’ve been extracting souls for thousands of years, and do you know how many they’ve actually pieced back together?”
The dry lump in my throat grew larger. I couldn’t swallow it down, so my voice was gravelly as I answered. “Zero?”
“Zero.” Rasputin’s smile morphed into a scowl.
“So how do we stop them?”
“I don’t have the details. All I know is that you are the one who will bring about the change we seek. You will deliver us from the overreaching power of greedy Keepers, who use the world and mortals for their own wicked gain.”
“How?”
“Find Driskell.”
“Who is Driskell?”
“He’s the only one who can help you. He knows about the prophecy.”
I believed him. He was a liar and a criminal and a murderer. But on this, I believed he was sincere. “Where can I find him?”
“They’ve banished him.” Rasputin’s eyes flashed faintly gold for just a moment, but his powers weren’t directed at me. “He’s trapped forevermore on Eilean Mor.”
“On… what?”
“The Flannan Isles.”
I repeated the location silently to myself. “Will he know who I am?”
“He’s been waiting for you for over a century.”
“Then I guess I should get going.”
Rasputin nodded. “You know where to find me if you need my assistance.” His eyes flared once more as he whispered a string of words I couldn’t understand. Then I left him in the shadows.
CHAPTER 9
There was no sleeping that night. I tossed and turned, tangling myself in the covers until the sky lightened into a pale gray through my window. Resigned to the fact that I would go without rest, I tucked my laptop under my arm and slid into position on the living room couch.
Three minutes later, I flipped back and forth between my fourteen open tabs, learning as much as I could about the Flannen Isles Rasputin had mentioned. There was a lighthouse on one of the islands there—Eilean Mor. And unsurprisingly, the lighthouse was shrouded in mystery after an unexplained disappearance of its Keepers over a hundred years ago. If I had to guess, that would have been right about the time this Driskell fellow was banished there.
Was Driskell the old man from Gayla’s vision?
A quick glance at my phone revealed that it was 6:57 AM. That was close enough to lunchtime for me. I sent out a quick group text telling the guys to get here as soon as possible, then went and banged on Dom’s and Gayla’s bedroom doors. Gayla slept through the racket. Dom peeked out just long enough to let me know she was headed to an early morning class.
“But this is really important.” I busted into her room to chat as she finished getting ready for the day. “I know where the old man is! I found the right lighthouse. I’m sure of it!”
“He’ll still be there at lunchtime, when we agreed to meet.”
“No—Dom, you don’t understand!”
She flashed me a sympathetic smile. “Even if you’re right, and this is the one, waiting a few more hours won’t change a thing. The guys said they’d meet us here after lunch today. We’ll all be ready to check out your lighthouse then.”
By the time she left for class, Tate was standing in the hall, holding two cups of coffee. “Sorry,” he said. “I would have been here a few minutes earlier, but there was some kind of issue with the espresso machine at the Honey Pot, and—hey Dom. Where are you going?”
She glanced at me with a look of warning, then told Tate she was going to class. “But you can meet us here after lunch. Like we all agreed.”
“It’s fine. Come on, Tate. Maybe we can get this started a little earlier. We just need Devon.” I waved goodbye to Dom and gestured for Tate to come inside, gladly accepting the cinnamon vanilla latte he brought for me.
But Devon wasn’t coming. Both he and Sean sent messages through in the next few minutes saying they wouldn’t be able to make it until the afternoon. That meant Tate and I were all alone, at least until Gayla crawled out of bed.
“I went back to the library last night.” He pulled a dining chair into the living room, and I was grateful to not be thigh-to-thigh with him on the couch. Tate had always made my stomach flip, and I didn’t need his gorgeous face and the flutter in my chest distracting me. Not when he could very well still be an enemy. “Of course I couldn’t find anything about the prophecy, so I searched for information about different auras instead.”
“Did you find anything about mine?” I sipped the drink and recoiled as it scalded my tongue. Still too hot.
“No, unfortunately we’re not any closer to figuring this out than when we started. Unless you found something? Why’d you text us all to come over here so early?”
“About that…” I bit the inside of my lip, wondering how much I should tell him. Neither Dom nor Rasputin seemed to fully trust Tate. But I wanted to. Even through all of their suspicions, I just didn’t get the feeling that he was here to cause me harm. “Actually, I have a question for you.”
He lifted his brows and took a sip of his own steaming beverage.
“Are you a prince?”
His eyes bulged as he fought to keep the drink in his mouth. Swallowing it down, he wiped his lips. “Where did you hear that?”
“Just answer me.”
Tate’s brows pulled together. “My father is the king, yes. But I can hardly be considered a prince.”
“Uhh, I’m pretty sure that’s the definition of a prince.”
“It’s not that simple.” Tate set his drink on the coffee table. “My older brother, Cassius, is the crown prince. I have nothing to do with them. That much has been made very clear.” He mumbled the last part, his irritation evident.
“Why haven’t you ever told me?”
“It hasn’t been relevant.”
“Okay, I have another question.”
Tate inhaled deeply. “Hit me with it.”
“Tell me about your work. You extract fractured souls, and then what?”
“We take them to the Hall of Souls in Agartha.”
“Why?”
“Aside from their evil tendencies?” He shot me a suspicious look. “We want to piece them back together. We figure if a soul is split, then the other half or pieces of it must exist somewhere, within someone else. The fractured pieces can reunite in the hall, and whole Keepers can be born again in future generations with the repaired souls. It’s the only way to save our kind from extinction.”
“How many fractured souls have you extracted?”
“Personally? Six. But there have been thousands over the ages.” He looked pleased.
“And how many have been successfully pieced back together?”
Tate’s jaw clenched. “It’s difficult to know for sure.”
“How many are you certain of?”
He didn’t respond, and that was answer enough for me. They’d killed thousands of people by pulling their souls straight out of their bodies, and there was no proof that they were helping anyone. They were just murdering them. Rasputin was right.
I stood and slammed my laptop shut with a bit too much force. “Well since no one else is coming until lunchtime, maybe you should go, too.”
“But what was it you discovered? Maybe I can help you figure it out while we wait on the others.”
“Maybe not. We’ll talk later.” It would have to wait, because I certainly wasn’t going to reveal what I’d learned to Tate alone. If Rasputin was right about the fractured souls, he could have been right about Tate using me for power, too, as much as I hated to think about it.
“Everly, is there something wrong?”
“Nope.” I ignored the way I felt drawn to him wh
en he said my name. The invisible thread pulling us together seemed to tighten, and it took much effort to move away from him. Tate was a manipulator, and I wouldn’t allow these false feelings to deceive me.
I stepped to the door and motioned for him to go out. “Just no use hanging out until the others arrive. Go home. Take a nap. I’ll see you later.”
He slowly stepped to the door and paused, a strange expression twisting the corner of his mouth as he examined me once more. He looked as though there was more he wanted to say, but after a few moments he turned into the hall. I immediately shut the door and turned both locks into place. Then I dumped the steaming contents of my coffee down the drain and retreated into my room.
An emotional storm was trying to work itself up inside me, and I was having a hard time shaking it off. I shouldn’t be so upset about Tate. He’d never really been on my side. But I couldn’t help but feel betrayed, anyway. Why oh why couldn’t he just be good?
CHAPTER 10
My limbs burned with adrenaline by the time Sean and Devon finally arrived that afternoon. I’d been thinking about it all morning, and I’d decided that I was going to ask Devon to take me with him to the lighthouse. I’d learned through my studies that Atlantean messengers could teleport others with enough energy, and I wasn’t going to let Devon use it all up before taking me. I was going to meet Driskell.
I nearly tackled him with excitement when he entered our apartment.
“Whoa!” He took a step back.
“I know where he is.”
“Who?” Sean asked. We joined Dom, Gayla, and Tate, who were already seated in the living room.
“The old man from Gayla’s vision.”
“What?” Tate asked. “Why didn’t you say something earlier?”
“Because she doesn’t know for sure.” Dom interjected. “She thinks she knows where he is.”
