Embraced by Embers

by Kasey Mackenzie

  The world seemed to stutter around me just like my heart. I blinked and fought to make sense of everything. My gaze focused in on Zoe’s lips when she made a little pouty face. My skin flushed red-hot when I realized she wore the exact same coral lipstick that had been imprinted upon candy bar wrappers, soda cans, and pictures belonging to my two missing siblings. And then Spirit-enhanced insight zinged as I realized we’d been expecting the wrong blonde woman in more ways than one. Lily hadn’t been the girl who beheaded Mariana and Simon. Zoe had been.

  And just like that several things I hadn’t quite been able to figure out prevously made sense. When Drew had acted perplexed about the motorcycle-riding mercenaries on the way to the monastery, he hadn’t been faking it. Those had been sent by Zoe—as confirmed by the fact her brother Paul had been working with them. They must have formed an alliance sometime between that motorcycle attack and when she abducted Nic. And Lily really had been an innocent party in that whole debacle.

  Zoe must have also had a hand in developing that Spirit-enhanced paint the mercenaries had shot at Jake’s convertible. That or she’d bought it from whoever had created it.

  And obviously either she or her brother must have been the one to shoot me dead during the chaos of that motorcycle attack.

  Zoe smiled widely and flung her arms out wide. “My, Cassidy, but I underestimated you as much as you underestimated me. Who would have guessed you’d be able to track down all those clues Father worked so very hard to bury.”

  I staggered physically as my mind finally worked all those little puzzle pieces into one earth-shattering whole. There was only one way Zoe could keep hearing my thoughts—and I was damned sure I hadn’t spoken those last ones out loud. She was also a hybrid Mindbender. And show I just knew the Father she’d just referred to wasn’t Mr. Stevens. Apparently Zoe had been adopted; either by both the Stevenses or just Mr. Stevens.

  I murmured part of my suspicion out loud. “But you have brown eyes. Contacts?”

  She laughed and shook her mane of dark blonde hair. “They’re as natural as every other part of me. But what kind of assassin would I be if I had the same boring blue eyes as all his other children? Those oh-so-recognizable eyes. Our father isn’t an idiot. He made sure to breed some of us without that telltale characteristic. Which is a real bitch for my plans, let me tell you. Finding the Mindbenders among those siblings sucks.”

  “Holy shit,” Jake muttered as he caught on just moments after me. “You’re telling us that you’re another daughter of Garrett’s? And a Mindbender?”

  “Guilty as charged,” she said with a little bow.

  “And guilty of far worse crimes than that!” I glared at her with every ounce of disgust pulsing inside. “How could you kill innocent children?”

  She gave a blasé shrug. “I was a child myself, really. So we were on even footing. And technically, the hitman Drew hired killed them. I just made sure they could rest in peace rather than becoming the mindless little automatons he planned to make them so he could overpower me. Just like Father’s precious little Flower.”

  Her voice spewed pure venom when spat that last bit out. I was starting to feel extremely uneasy that she was sharing so many details with us rather than simply taking us out. Why was she dragging this on? It felt like she was stalling even more than me.

  Another grin tilted her lips upward, and I shivered. How could she be reading my every thought so easily? Not even Drew or Garrett had been able to slip past my active shields so easily once I learned to use my Mindbending abilities.

  ((Ah,)) Zoe’s silky mental voice whispered into my mind. ((But telepathy isn’t their particular talent like teleportation is Lily’s and manipulating dreams is Drew’s. And...they didn’t absorb the essences of two powerful Mindbenders at the time of their deaths like me.))

  Horror flared. I hadn’t even thought something like that was possible. Her abilities with Spirit were obviously as disturbing as they were impressive. It seemed likely that she must have used Spirit to fake having been stripped of her abilities. That made more sense than that she’d spontaneously developed Phoenix powers again.

  I took our conversation back to verbal so Jake could hear. “What kind of monster are you?”

  “The very best kind, sister. The kind who not only survives, but thrives. The kind who is the true heir to our father’s legacy and will be the one by his side as he conquers the world. Once I tie up a few little loose threads.”

  Zoe glanced at the slim gold watch on her wrist and nodded. “We’re right on schedule. Excellent. She gave a piercing whistle, and noises sounded behind her. Within seconds, Dorian Garcia stepped out of the back office along with several of his goons, two of whom pulled along a groggy-looking Rhianne. Dorian stepped up next to Zoe and gave her an adoring look. His eyes seemed slightly vacant, and I was pretty damned sure his newfound adoration of a person besides himself was definitely not natural.

  Zoe winked at me but left that inner thought unchallenged. “All righty. Rhianne is waking up right on time. You’re right here where you should be. Which means Drew will be along right about…” She trailed her voice off dramatically, and then the door we had entered moments earlier slammed open. “Now!”

  Sure enough, Drew’s unwelcome face strode through that door, flanked on all sides by Elemental minions. His eyes went straight to mine, and he gave an ugly smile. “Dearest sister!” he greeted cheerfully. “So good to see you again.” His gaze moved on to Zoe and grew far colder. “Zoe. I see you kept your end of the bargain.”

  She gave a large, feline smile. “Oh Drew, you should know by now I always keep my word. I would have thought Mariana and Simon taught you that.”

  Iciness turned to outright hatred. “So you did kill them. You stupid bitch!”

  Zoe’s eyes rolled. “Of course I killed them. You left me no choice. Did you think I’d just leave them to be indoctrinated to follow your commands just like Lily?”

  Drew gave a bitter laugh. “Your ridiculous jealousy of our sister has always been your greatest weakness. And in this case its sheer stupidity. Lily has never answered to me. Not even when she played the docile little lamb. Somehow she always manages to swing things around the way she wants them. And I could never figure out how she does that!”

  I broke into their conversation. “Have either of you considered perhaps it’s because she’s not a completely psychotic asshole like the two of you?”

  Rhianne’s eyes focused on mine, and I saw a gleam of humor and awareness light. The awareness was in stark contrast to the picture of grogginess she still depicted with every other part of her body. Insight flickered, but I deliberately shoved it down. Allowing that thought to fully coalesce would mean tipping Zoe off if she began paying close attention again.

  Zoe’s eyes went to mine, and she frowned. But I’d already forced my mind to go quiet, so there was nothing for her to read.

  “Given the precariousness of your situation here, Cassidy, perhaps you should keep your sarcastic comments to yourself for once.”

  “But where would the fun in that be? And I’m feeling pretty good about my position right now.”

  She peered into my eyes and frowned again. “You really are, aren’t you? Interesting.”

  Drew broke in with an impatient scowl. “Can we get on with this already? I brought what you asked, and you brought who I asked. The longer we wait, the more likely it is that their allies will get through ours.”

  That statement had my heart picking up speed. I tried to send a call out to my liegesworn through our bond, only to hit a wall of silence I couldn’t break through. I turned my narrowed gaze upon Zoe.

  ((I can’t contact the others.)) I sent to Jake. ((She’s blocking me somehow.))

  Zoe gave a little bow, confirming that she was still eavesdropping on my thoughts. Typical annoying little sister, I thought deliberately. Her lips tightened but she didn’t take the bait. Her attention focused back upon Drew.

  “Where is it then?” />
  Drew reached into a bag held by one of his minions and withdrew a thick, old-fashioned leather-bound book that would have looked right at home in a movie set in the Middle Ages. Words were etched upon the cover in elaborate calligraphy in a language I was willing to bet was Latin. That must have been one of the many languages Jake spoke and read fluently, because he let out a hissing breath. Horror writ itself large upon his face as his eyes met mine.

  “Imani’s Breath!” he choked out as if it should mean something to me.

  I just shook my head, but then I frowned. Imani—wait. She had been the African-born liegesworn millennia before Hikaru, during the height of Ancient Egypt. She had managed to defeat her tyrannical mother at great cost—but had died only a temporary death. Legend held that she’d been so disgusted by the things her mother had done that she’d never wanted to be tempted to follow her path. She had been the one to form Imani’s Own and later task them with their primary purpose—and then she’d purposely faded into oblivion.

  The only other thing I knew about her was that she’d been an incredibly wise Gryphon. For a book to be called Imani’s Breath...My eyes widened when I remembered Drew mentioning a side project that had distracted both him and Garrett. He had specifically mentioned searching for a book similar to the writings I possessed from Hikaru. ((Is that a book of her writings, like the ones I have from Hikaru?))

  I realized my mistake immediately when Zoe shot me a hungry expression. ((Oh sister, I’m so glad I didn’t merely kill you when I had the chance.)) Well hell. Apparently she hadn’t been as well-informed about my own reading habits as Drew. Something that I had just royally fucked up.

  Jake didn’t hear her menacing statement, so he answered as if she hadn’t spoken. ((Imani is thought to have wandered the earth for millennia, and you know she founded the monks of Cassidy’s Own. A number of them split off to form the Stalkers during the Inquisition. To the original monks, she passed on an immense wealth of magical information related to both her mother’s and her own Mindbending abilities. She was one of the strongest telepaths to exist, and her most powerful liegesworn was a Selkie who foretold that another Mindbending hybrid would someday be born who would aid his or her father in subjugating all of humanity. She left those words behind in the hopes they would someday offer the monks the chance to defeat that father-and-child duo.))

  Zoe must have been listening to him, too, because she let out the scariest laugh I had ever heard. ((Too bad Imani’s Breath will actually doom your world instead of save it. Everything I’ve yearned to know...every spell stupid fools have forbidden me to learn...all the power waiting for me to claim it lie between it’s pages. And now it’s mine!))

  Aloud, she said, “Hand over the book to Dorian so I can have Rhianne verify its authenticity. Once she does, you are free to claim your own prize.”

  Drew shot a triumphant look my way, and my heart sank. Looks like I was the who he’d asked Zoe to deliver. And like an idiot, I’d trotted right into the trap, so confident we could plan well enough in an hour to account for whatever we faced. Except that plan had been predicated upon the belief that Lily had been the murderer of our siblings and that she’d been working against Drew. Not that we would find yet another Mindbending sibling who would be working with Drew.

  ((Only for now,)) Zoe whispered into my mind. ((While he’s distracted playing with you, I’ll be curled up with my new book learning all I need to know to claim what I deserve. And now I know just the items to add to my reading list. How many of your Clan do you think I’ll need to kill to collect everything Hikaru wrote?))

  Tired of the games, I held myself straight and glanced directly into her eyes with a fierce smile. I spoke so all could hear. “That presumes you can get through me first, and let me assure you of something, sister dear. You don’t have the first clue of what I am capable of. And there’s something else you’re too fucking blind to see.”

  She frowned and kept her eyes glued on me, which meant she didn’t see Dorian suddenly collapse to the floor when Rhianne stabbed him in the heart with his own dagger that she’d stolen when he’d been too busy staring adoringly at his new mistress to notice. Shards of Spirit wrapped around her form also made it impossible for others except me to see what she’d done. Well—and perhaps Drew, but he apparently didn’t care what was about to happen. Given that these two planned to kill each other, that wasn’t a huge surprise.

  Rhianne winked at me and then turned her dagger upon Zoe.

  “What would that be, pray tell?” Zoe asked sarcastically. I had no clue how she couldn’t sense what Rhianne was up to or why she seemed to no longer hear my own thoughts, but something was apparently blocking her as much as she’d been blocking me.

  Rhianne nodded at me, and I stepped forward to make sure Zoe’s gaze remained focused upon me. Drew let out a snicker that almost ruined everything, but Zoe barely spared him a glance.

  I let a big smile spread across my face. “That’s not Rhianne behind you.”

  Spirit flared, and Rhianne’s features faded and reformed into Lily’s. The sister I’d never been quite sure I could trust and had underestimated—much like Zoe. Zoe had just started to whirl when Lily struck, stabbing Dorian’s dagger straight for Zoe’s heart. But then all hell broke loose.

  Daddy Dearest finally put in an appearance.

  Chapter 13

  He appeared as if from thin air directly behind Zoe and calmly grabbed the dagger from Lily’s hand. Zoe let out a cry of anger when she turned and caught sight of the woman she’d been hoping to kill. And then she recognized our father, and hunger crossed her face again. The hunger of a murderous child craving her even more murderous father’s approval. Jesus. Dysfunctional didn’t even scratch the surface of this family tree.

  Garrett wagged the knife in the air with a disapproving expression. “Shame on you three. I thought we’d worked past all this decades ago.”

  Lily took a deliberate step away and toward me. “When you covered up what two of your children did to two of the others? You lied to me and said they had nothing to do with it. You said you punished the true killer and Mariana and Simon were avenged.”

  Garrett’s voice and gaze softened slightly as he lowered the dagger. “Lily, my most precious Flower. I did punish their true killer. The assassin who shot them both will never be revived again.”

  Lily took another deliberate step. “We both know who took their heads; who sentenced them to never being revived again. And you made sure nobody would never even know the truth! Thank God at least some of my siblings have a true sense of family love. They uncovered the truth you fought so hard to conceal.”

  Garrett shot an exasperated look at me. “Yes, your eldest sister has the most annoying habit of sticking her nose where she shouldn’t. And your youngest brother the equally annoying habit of going against my expressed wishes.” That last was directed to Drew with a withering expression.

  Zoe spoke up with a challenging light in her eyes. “Isn’t this what you always wanted, Father? The strongest of your children testing their limits? How else can we ever become what you need us to be?”

  He smiled slightly, but the affection he bestowed upon her was a shadow of the sunny smile he’d given to Lily. A thought Zoe clearly picked up from me because she lashed out with Spirit, copying my second-level firewall to devastating effect and vanishing.

  Garrett appeared flabbergasted that she’d not only worked out my signature spell, but that she’d managed to channel all five elements to do it.

  I was not above ratting out my evil siblings. “Oh, didn’t you get the memo when you arranged all your covering up? She somehow absorbed Mariana and Simon’s affinities for Earth and Air and apparently someone else’s with Water.”

  The dagger disappeared from Garrett’s hand, and I knew with sickening certainty what was about to happen. I was going to watch a sister die. “Lily!” I screamed. “Watch out!”

  Except I’d once against made the wrong assumption. Lily wasn
’t Zoe’s true target after all. Something I only learned when a silky voice whispered, ((Who’s too fucking blind to see now?)) at the exact moment steel stabbed through my chest. Pain exploded, and I staggered as blood began to gush in a white-hot flood. Jake screamed in fury and scooped me into his arms. Lily teleported to our side in a moment, and she’d stolen another blade—this one a short sword from a nearby store shelf—and she brandished it toward anyone who even looked in our direction.

  ((This isn’t over!)) Zoe warned, and then her psychic presence grew more distant.

  Drew appeared perfectly willing to make the best of a bad situation, because he started ordering his minions to take me by whatever means necessary, dead or alive. Garrett strode over to his side, perfectly willing to assist. And the Freeholders who’d been helping Dorian fell under his thrall all too easily.

  Garrett smiled, triumph glowing in his eyes because he had us cornered. “I’m not an unreasonable father, daughters. I’ll give you two minutes to bow to the inevitable. Join me willingly now—or we’ll kill all three of you before killing your followers outside. Those who are of no use to me will be permanently killed.”

  Lily cast a frantic expression at me. ((We can’t let Zoe get that book! If he starts a fight now, she’ll undoubtedly sneak back in to grab it while everyone is distracted.)) She spoke so we both could hear.

  ((Fuck the book!)) Jake snarled. ((Cass is going to die any second and we’re surrounded. Our backup obviously can’t get through whatever’s out there, and Garrett’s about to doom the entire world by making Cass one of his minions.))

  ((You don’t understand! He needs the book to do just that. He can’t bond Cass against her will without the information inside. Imani’s protective wards prevent the most dangerous spells from being memorized. That’s why Zoe wants it so badly. The fact Drew brought it here today means he stole it from its magical guardian. Intending to give it to Zoe in exchange for Cass and then double-cross her so he could give it to Garrett.))