“What’s your read on him, Skylar?” Simon asked instead of answering.
Opening Destiny Lines was always easiest when you had a close, personal connection to the subject. Despite being friends, Cole and I weren’t close, but I hadn’t realized how little I knew about him until I peered at the twisted, tangled lines of his life. From the snapped threads in his childhood to the inky line twisted with his current fate, everything was hard to read.
“Well, he’s in trouble, that much is for certain. There’s a dark influence at work.”
“Can you tell if the alliance is voluntary or coerced?”
“I…” There had to be better fae to ask, but Simon was asking me. So I looked again, trying to bring the details into focus as much as possible. “The dark influence seems recent. It’s murky, but I don’t see anything good for Cole coming from this.”
“All right, good enough for now. Go get geared up, Corazzi. I want to get a team moving within the hour.”
* * *
Ten of us piled out of an unmarked SBA vehicle a block away from our final destination, where we met up with three additional sentinels from the Cook County SBA. Not exactly the backup I’d hoped for, but better than no help at all. But for Annalise, I feared we’d need an army.
“It’s the warehouse on the end,” Cole said once we moved into position. “I’m supposed to wait inside.”
“And you’re sure no one else will be there?” Gabriel asked.
“There shouldn’t be, man. I mean, sometimes it looked like other people used it, but I never saw anyone during my check-ins.”
Simon nodded and turned to our group. “Keller, you and your men go ’round to the back. Daniela, take Stark, Maeve, and Bartholomew to the upper level. On my signal, we all go in.”
“Got it.”
That left Gabriel, Victor, Holly, Christian, and me with Simon for the main entry team. Cole took point by necessity, leading the way across the empty lot to the front door. An electronic keypad had been installed in place of a typical lock and key. Cole took a keycard from his wallet and swiped it, and the door buzzed. A green light flashed on the panel and it opened, swinging inward on its own.
“Easy now, son,” Simon cautioned in a low voice. He examined the threshold and what I could only assume were the wards. I couldn’t see them, but I could feel them. The whole place made my skin crawl, like I was getting too close to an electrical line.
“You sure you can get everyone inside?” Cole asked.
“Yeah. The spell is designed to drop momentarily when a keyed person steps inside. It allows for a group. Wouldn’t be an effective safe house if too many people were tied to the wards.” He lifted his radio. “All teams ready?”
“Ready at back,” Keller reported.
“Ready at second level,” Daniela echoed.
Simon took Cole by the back of his coat and pushed him through the door. “Go!”
We all went in at the ready, guns raised. I swept to the left once inside and kept to the wall, following it to a doorway that led into an empty office. I met Gabriel’s gaze and on a silent count of three we both ducked inside and cleared the room. The others did the same elsewhere in the warehouse.
“Something isn’t right. There’s too much magic in the air,” Simon muttered.
“You’re right,” Holly agreed. “It’s almost like…”
“Like what?” Victor pressed when Holly trailed off. She turned to him, eyes wide.
“Like when Annalise came through the Twilight.”
No sooner had the words crossed her lips than we were under attack, nosferatu and darkling appearing from across the Veil. A red cap leapt at me, bloodied claws tearing at the Prismatic Barrier I threw up in the nick of time. Gabe swung around and sliced through the filthy creature with Shōki in one graceful strike. On the other side of the warehouse, Christian stood between Cole and a hungry nosferatu, fighting with a stake in one hand and silver knuckles on the other. Simon and Holly stood back-to-back, their spellwork synchronized as if they’d been working together for a long time.
Not that I had time to admire. Another nossie coalesced nearby and I drew my gun, taking the shot. She faded into mist and reformed to the left, managing to avoid my first three shots. The next, I anticipated, and fired the moment she reappeared, catching her with a silver bullet right between the eyes.
Daniela and her team joined us from above, having literally torn through their opposition on the upper walkways. She landed nearby, crushing a gremlin between her massive paws.
We might actually win this.
“Enough!”
The familiar voice rang across the room, followed by a cracking whip of magic that left the hairs on my body standing on end. I spun around and all the breath left my lungs.
Delores Hansford stood in an open side door, and Lia’s unconscious body floated beside her.
My first gut reaction was to charge the mage, but I didn’t make it more than two steps before my body was racked with pain. Hansford held her clenched fist out before her, twisting it slowly to the right. It felt like my insides were stretching and tying themselves into knots.
The pain didn’t stop until Simon cast a dispelling charm over me, and the relief nearly brought me to my knees.
“Stay back, all of you.”
“It was you this whole time?” I wheezed, too angry to keep quiet. “You’re supposed to help students.”
“I am. One day you’ll see that. Or maybe you won’t. Either way, it matters little to me. Come along now, Cole, we have what we really came for.”
No. No, no, no.
It all happened too fast for my mind to keep up. Cole knocked Christian’s gun from his hands and turned the weapon on us. The look on his face was like nothing I’d ever seen on the mild-mannered raven before. Cold. Hateful.
“Don’t try to play hero, any of you,” he warned as he backed away to join Hansford.
“Why? Why help a psychopath, Cole? What does she have on you?” I demanded.
“Nothing. Annalise didn’t blackmail me into serving her to save my family. She is my family.”
I thought back to what I’d seen in his Destiny Lines, especially the severed threads in his early life. His parents had died when he was young, but he’d forged new familial bonds. At the time, I’d assumed that meant his adoptive family, but the tangle of threads had been too hard for me to read properly.
“I don’t understand. How?”
“She’s my grandmother. The one you people thought died. It doesn’t take much for a skilled illusionist to fake their own death, especially when the EMS on the scene are just shitty fucking humans.”
“No, the SBA said they exhumed her body.”
Cole snorted. “Exhumed, yes, but they were too lazy to actually test the bodies. Even if they had, we would have had someone swap the samples. We are everywhere. You can’t stop us.”
“But you were raised by humans.”
“And do you know how utterly demeaning that was? I was denied my birthright. I didn’t get help from shifters growing up. I didn’t get a fucking community to chill with or a flock to seek advice and brotherhood from. I got a dad who smacked me around for not being a fucking lawyer like him. I got a mom who looked the other way. I was just their token shifter baby. Their charity case they told all their pals about. Until she showed up and told me the truth.”
“Annalise. Or should I call her Sophie Dekker?” Simon asked.
A wispy chortle of laughter echoed from above, then a figure stepped from the shadows. I expected a wraithlike figure, someone as skeletal and gaunt as their animal guise, but the woman who stood at the railing was beautiful in the way a desolate cemetery was beautiful.
Dark hair hair hung to her waist, falling in soft waves and loose curls around a face that appeared far too young. Her eyes, though…those were harsh and dark.
Looked like eating fae hearts did as much for valravns as fae blood did for nosferatu. Maybe more. Or was it an illusion, and we we
re only seeing what she wanted us to see of her human body?
“All these years and you never figured it out.”
“Well, we have you now,” Simon said. “There’s no more hiding who you are. It’s time to end this, and I don’t plan on leaving empty-handed.”
Annalise snickered, the rattling sound making me cringe. “Did you really think you finally had me?”
“No, not really. But cowardice never won anyone a fight,” Simon said, aiming a placid smile at Annalise. “I knew we were walking into a trap. It’s always a trap. Question is how long it takes all of us to kick your ass this time, now that we’re prepared for you.”
Annalise swooped down onto the main floor, moving through the shadows with ease. No one moved to attack, but I could see the subtle signs of my teammates readying themselves. Gabe shifted his weight from one leg to the other, Victor clenched a fist at his side, and Daniela didn’t take her eyes off Hansford. Simon appeared to be the only one of us at ease.
“You can’t win this,” he said calmly.
“Always so confident. My daughter told me about you. Your arrogance and entitlement. It’s mages like you who killed her.”
“And this is how you honor her? Killing innocent people? Eating babies? The Annalise I remember would be ashamed of you. Not proud. Not honored.”
“You know nothing about her,” she hissed.
“I know this isn’t what she stood for.”
“Sky, be ready.” The sound of Gabriel’s voice in my ear came as a surprise, but one I managed not to give away. I’d never gotten used to the uncanny way he could throw his voice. “When Simon gives the word, you go for Hansford. Don’t let her leave with Lia.”
I dipped my head slightly in acknowledgment. When I turned back to Simon and Annalise, the valravn had further lost her composure, cheeks mottled with dark color and eyes furious.
“Now!” Simon shouted.
The two vampires converged on Annalise, dashing across the warehouse. Becoming mist after the first few steps, Christian manifested on her left while Victor blurred like a shadow and appeared behind her. They both attacked at once, sinking iron stakes into her body. Her skin sizzled as black and green flames erupted from the wounds. From the other side, Daniela with her silver-capped teeth ripped into her wings.
Despite the injuries, Annalise continued to fight. Victor must have missed her heart, but blood streamed down her body. She maneuvered in an impossible contortion, twisted around, and kicked Victor away from her with one enormous, four-toed foot. He flew as if he’d been struck by a wrecking ball. At the same time, her razor-sharp tail feathers sliced into Christian’s shoulder.
It all happened so fast, and I couldn’t watch, too focused on blocking Hansford’s escape with my friend. I cut off her route through the door, arcing lightning across the door frame.
Hansford didn’t give up without a fight. I’d never seen the woman cast magic at the school, but I hadn’t forgotten that nasty dose of pain she gave me upon her arrival. Prepared, I met her head-on, my Prismatic Barrier raised to deflect any other nasty magical surprises. She expected me to come at her with magic, so I didn’t. And watching her eyes go wide as my fist slammed into her nose had to be one of the most satisfying moments in my life.
Hansford dropped like a sack of potatoes.
“I’ve got Lia!”
“Phase two!” Simon shouted.
The vampires cleared the area, and then rolling waves of flame circled through the open space. I expected Annalise to walk through the Twilight, but the air was stifling and uncomfortable. Thick. Columns of light arose in a binding circle. I spotted Holly across the room with a stick of diamond-crusted chalk in her hand.
Annalise retaliated with plumes of black Faerie Fire, but I cut through them with ease, meeting them with the pristine light of my own flames. They canceled each other out in puffs of noxious smoke.
“Guns!”
They pumped her full of silver and iron as she convulsed and shrieked, each agonizing wail progressively sharper in pitch, louder. Whatever magic she’d gained from her most recent victim bled out of her with her life fluid.
Simon’s next signal brought an end to the gunfire. Victor, Holly, and Christian each had her by a limb. At the same time that they tore her to pieces, Gabriel decapitated her swiftly with Shōki.
What remained of her fell to the ground.
The worst menace to hit the supernatural community in years was dead.
20
A Light in the Dark
The sun shone warm and bright on my graduation day. When I walked across the stage to shake hands with the provost and to receive my diploma, all I could do was grin because Gabe and my parents were out there watching me.
Everything about the weeks following Annalise’s defeat was so surreal that I could hardly believe it had happened to me—that I was part of the team that brought down the Puppet Master for good.
Not only was I a hero, but I’d been the one to suggest Holly use Annalise’s tainted blood to track down the rest of the darkling nests and eradicate them in short order. I had doubts about exterminating some of them, but Simon assured us that none could survive. Not one minion could get out there to resume her nefarious deeds.
We still didn’t understand why, or know the purpose of it. Vengeance alone seemed a thin reason for the horror she’d brought to so many cities across the United States. Thankfully, they were recovering from her influence.
Because of us, Chicago had been made safe again.
We were walking from the amphitheater now, preparing to take photos. I posed with my friends as Gabriel stood in as photographer for the flakey professional Pilar had hired. In a few days, my mate would walk across the stage to receive his graduate degree. He’d joked about hanging around PNRU a few more years for a doctorate.
“I know you wanted to spend more time on planning the wedding, sweetheart, but…we have a surprise for you,” my father said.
“What surprise?”
He and Mom guided us to a Faerie Ring where all of my friends waited. A circle of flowers glowed with light and life.
“Sky,” a woman spoke in my ear.
I blinked around at my mom. “Did you say something?”
“Not a word, baby. What’s wrong?”
“Oh.”
My brow wrinkled.
“I know you wanted to spend more time on planning the wedding, baby girl, but…we have a surprise for you,” my father said.
“What surprise?”
He and Mom guided us to a clearing not far from the school where the rest of my friends waited. A circle of flowers glowed with light and life. The Faerie Ring was absolutely gorgeous, a pristine circle of white lily-of-the-valley flowers, geraniums, sweet alyssum, and black-eyed susans. We hadn’t traveled by ring often, but my grandfather had come over from Italy using one. Gramps was moving in on ninety, but he looked like a man in his sixties. The fae blood was what kept him going, and I had a feeling he’d be crossing over to Tir na Nog soon to stay forever with my grandmother.
If she’d have him. What we were waiting for most of all was for her to extend the invitation. For a fae, taking a mortal lover was a big deal. Gramps had enough fae blood to do magic, to travel by ring, and to slow the aging process, but one day he’d grow old and die if he left Tir na Nog.
“Skylar.” The whisper was more insistent, familiar.
“Daddy, something’s wrong.” I reached out with magic and thought, but the attempt to see the Veil rewarded me with a sharp, chisel-like spike to my brain. The world tilted, and I thought I’d collapse on the ground.
Gabriel held me upright with an arm around my middle. “Skylar! Are you all right?”
“No. I…” The woozy feeling receded slowly. “Why are we at a Faerie Ring?”
“It’ll all be better once we’re in Tir na Nog,” Mom assured me.
“But Gabriel graduates in two days. He has to get his degree—”
“I don’t care about walk
ing across the stage,” Gabriel said in my ear, his arm still circling my waist. I leaned against him, my back to his chest and closed my eyes for a moment. None of this made sense.
“You do, too. You spent all summer going on about how excited you were to have your master’s in business and how you couldn’t wait for your family to celebrate with you at Koharu again.”
“Mom and Dad understand.”
“Where’s Teresa?”
“Huh?”
“Your sister. Where is she? Where’s Teresa? Why isn’t she here? Why can’t…I…?”
“Remember,” said the voice in my head, a familiar and too similar to one I’d heard in the past.
“Why can’t I remember the last semester? Where are the rest of my friends? Where are Holden and Anji?”
Gabriel, my parents, and my friends smiled.
“You’ve had a very stressful year, Skylar,” Mom said.
“A very difficult year, honey,” Dad said, something niggling me about his mannerisms.
“Something is wrong,” I spit out, backing away from them, even as the group tried to back me toward the Faerie Rings. They came alive with light and magic that felt alien, instead of welcoming.
I’d never felt a Faerie Ring like that before.
“You’re not my family. My father never calls me honey. Mom does, sometimes. I’m his bambolina. I’ve always been.”
My father barked out a sharp laugh, echoed by the others. Pilar, Lia, Mom, Holly, Gabriel…all of them laughed in unison, their voices synced but different, a chorus of sinister amusement.
“Then… if you do not like the dream I have given you, you can die,” the group said as one.
Phony Gabriel swung his sword at me. I bent backwards, and it whistled harmlessly past.
“This isn’t real!”
I resisted the intrusion into my mind. I felt the fingers of a foreign presence manipulating what I saw. Magic, both fae and not fae, good and not good, fought over my coherence.
The Puppet Master: The Paranormal University Files: Skylar, Year 4 Page 24