“Corax…”
“What did you do to me?”
“We put you away, somewhere you can’t hurt people anymore.”
“Release me from this… now.”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that. I don’t know how it all works, but I know I don’t have that kind of power.”
Bastet almost lashed out at me, I could see the muscles in her arms twitching, the veins on her neck popping from the stress, but she held herself. “Release me,” he said again, this time his voice was a low rumble in his throat.
“I’m not sure you’re in a position to make demands, buddy,” I said.
“If you do not release me, I will cut out her tongue and feed it to you…”
“That’s a serious threat and everything, but I think you’re gonna find it pretty difficult to do what you want from where you are. I think the best thing you can do right now, is do what I need you to do. Maybe you’ll be a little more comfortable when this is all done.”
Bastet—Corax—didn’t seem to have a reply to that. Instead he watched me from across the coffee table, a Serakon wearing the skin of a mage. Or was it trapped inside the skin of a mage? The thought of what was going on behind the scenes, what Bastet was doing, was enough to make my head spin a little.
I tried not to think about it.
“Alright,” I said, “Now that we have some kind of understanding, I have some questions for you.”
“I already told you before, you will get no answers from me.”
“Yeah, but that was when you had a life… a body… freedom. You have none of those things right now, and the way I see it, loyalty to Valoel and whatever secrets he’s keeping won’t make you any happier. We, on the other hand, probably can make you happier, so it’s in your best interests to cooperate.”
“Not to be that cat,” Rey said, “But we should probably make this all go a little faster? She didn’t give us a time limit, but it would probably be prudent to exercise a little haste.”
I nodded at Rey, then turned to look at Bastet again. “Where is Valoel now?” I asked, cutting right to the chase.
“I don’t know,” came Corax’s reply. Low, deep. A predator’s growl.
“Yes, you do. But we’ll switch to an easier question, if you prefer… does Valoel have the fifth stone?”
It looked like he was about to say no, but Corax suddenly grimaced like he’d been hit with… brain freeze? He shut his eyes and turned his head to the side, sucking in a breath of air through his teeth. “Bitch,” he grumbled. Bastet must have done something to him, must have hurt him somehow.
“See?” I said, “She can make things difficult for you, but I’m willing to bet she can also make things easier for you, if you’d just tell me what I need to know. This doesn’t have to take long.”
Corax stared at me from behind Bastet’s, glowing with dim, red light; a killer’s eyes. “No,” he said, exhaling. “He doesn’t have it.”
“Are you lying to me?”
“I… cannot lie. Lying is pain like I’ve never known in my life.”
I gave Rey a sidelong glance, then looked at Corax again. “So, he doesn’t have it… does he have any idea where it is?”
“No. The stone eludes him. There are rumors it has been entirely lost, but he does not believe them.”
“Of course not. He can’t. If he believes the stone is lost, then he’d have to admit he can’t win. Watch his army fall apart then.”
“He does not need the stone to do what he wants to do next.”
I narrowed my eyes. “And what’s that?”
Corax grinned. “He is going to find you… and when he does, he’s going to rip your tongue out and feed it to that little cat of yours. He’s going to tear off the rest of your limbs, one at a time, so not having wings will be the least of your concerns. He won’t kill you right away, instead he’ll let you exist as a mute little stump for a while, let you watch as he burns this world and everyone in it.”
I rolled my eyes. If he’d used fewer words, maybe I’d have been moved by his attempt to intimidate me. Now he was just being ridiculous, and I couldn’t take him seriously. The urge to laugh was pretty strong, but I held it back.
“Where is he now?” I asked.
He tried to resist the question. I could see it on his face, the way the veins on his—Bastet’s—forehead pulsed. The other mason jars in the cabinet started to thump and bounce behind the locked door. The sound made me almost jump out of my skin. As I watched the cabinet, wondering if I should do something, a strange smell caught my notice.
Not fire, or smoke… but ash.
I pressed the tip of the knife against my finger, my hand trembling with the frantic pumping of my heart. In an instant I could stop this whole thing. I could shed my blood onto the scarab and send Corax back into his mason jar prison. I didn’t know if Bastet could hold him. Had she underestimated him? It was hard to tell whether or not she was winning the fight taking place behind her eyes, but I needed Corax to tell me when the attack was going to happen.
“Tell me!” I yelled.
Corax snapped his head toward me and snarled. “He’s coming for you, bitch,” he yelled. His voice bounced off my bones, a thundering bassline vibrating through me like I was hollow. I had what I needed now, so I pressed the knife deeper into my skin, drawing blood. I swabbed my bloody finger against the scarab’s back, and after repeating the word Bastet three times, it fluttered to life.
Gorgeous, pearlescent wings extended from under its shell. They fluttered, buzzing wildly and sending wispy trails of sparkling dust into the air. The dust circled around the scarab, then moved rapidly toward Bastet like it was drawn to her. I watched it slip into her nose, her mouth, even her ears.
She twisted her head to the side, groaning and gripping the edges of the table. “No!” Corax yelled, and at the sound of his voice, the whole apartment started to tremble. It wasn’t just the mason jars now; plates, cutlery, bowls of cat food and water, they all started wobbling and clinking.
“Seline?” Rey asked, arching his back. Lowering his ears, he hissed and backed away.
“What’s happening?” I asked, “Why isn’t it stopping?”
“I don’t know. This is outside of the realm of my power.”
“Really? I thought nothing was outside of your power.”
“There are some things even I don’t have dominion over, as much as I hate to admit it.” He hopped onto the back of the couch, his hackles up. I went to stand, holding the knife in my hand like a weapon now, ready to fight Corax if he managed to beat Bastet. But the moment passed. The wobbling and vibrating stopped. The mason jars returned to normal. The smell of ash disappeared, and the scarab’s wings returned to their original place.
Bastet grabbed the jar in front of her, brought it up to her mouth, and breathed the red mist into it. When it was all out of her body, she shut the lid, sealed it, and casually fixed her hair. I couldn’t tell if she was shaken up by what had just happened, or if she wasn’t exactly bothered by it either way.
“Are you okay?” I ventured.
“Oh, I’m fine, sweetness. Did you get what you needed?”
“You mean you weren’t following that conversation?” Rey asked.
“He was fighting me, and a lot stronger out of his body than he was in it. It took all my concentration just to keep him from slipping out of my control. I’ll need to keep an eye on this one.”
“I thought you said they couldn’t break out of the jars…” I said.
She shrugged. “I’ve never trapped a Serakon before, but you leave that to me. He’s my responsibility now.”
Bastet walked over to her soul cabinet and set the glowing red jar in with the others. She then shut it, placed her palm against the door, and turned around to look at me and Rey. Neither of us had moved from where we were.
“So?” she asked.
I shook my head, snapping myself out of the daze. “I need to get out of here. Right now.”
&
nbsp; “And go where?”
“I don’t know, but Corax said Valoel is after me. I have no idea of knowing where he is or how far away… for all I know, he could be in another country, or maybe he’s right outside.” I headed for the door to the apartment, grabbing my leather jacket and slinging it over my shoulder. “I thought it was safe here, but maybe it isn’t.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to—” Bastet perked up, then, like a cat that had heard a distant noise. She scanned the room, her eyes wide, her attention focused to a laser point.
“What… is it?” I ventured, dreading to hear her answer.
Bastet turned her wide eyes on me. “Run…” she said, “Now.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
I bolted out of Bastet’s apartment, made a sharp left at the stairs, and exited the building like a bat out of hell. The streets were cold and wet, even now I could smell the pizza in the air. Pizza and, sometimes, piss. Ah, the scent of the city. I had no idea where I was going, all I knew was I needed to get away from Bastet’s place before Valoel found me, and I needed to do it fast.
A pang of anxiety settled into my stomach, and for an instant I stopped walking. What if Valoel had gone to Bastet’s apartment? What if he was there right now? What if she had to somehow fight him off? He had two stones, two God stones. The stones were powerful things, and of all five, he had the strongest one.
I wondered if even Bastet with her incredible magic could stand up against their power. Maybe, but definitely not without breaking a sweat at least. Dammit. The choice in front of me was simple. Go back to Bastet’s place, ignoring her order to run, or keep moving and hope Valoel was too busy chasing me down to even care about Bastet.
I turned away from the apartment building and crossed the street, keeping my head low, my hands in my pockets, and my eyes sharp. Concentrating on the power of the stone, I shut my eyes as I walked and whispered.
“Serala.”
I hadn’t used this word of power before except in training. As soon as I uttered the word, it was like the world suddenly became clearer, brighter, louder. It took a second to rein my enhanced senses in, to tame them like they were a wild stallion, but when I did, everything around me came into focus.
Concentrating on the bar across the street, I heard a conversation taking place inside. A guy was hitting on a woman with the did it hurt when you fell from heaven line, and I could’ve thrown up from the cheese of it. Did people really still use that line? Was that a real thing? Did women fall for it?
Ahead of me, about a block away, another guy was watching a video on his phone while he waited for the bus. Cartoons. He was watching cartoons. The guy sitting next to him was watching, too, although they were complete strangers to each other.
With my enhanced senses buzzing like they were, the chances that Valoel could surprise me plummeted to the ground. I should’ve used this magic before, the only problem was I couldn’t keep it active for too long at a time. The sounds, the smells, it would overload my brain and give me a splitting headache at least, or make me pass out at worst.
I must have walked four blocks before the hairs on the nape of my neck prickled up, and I found what I was waiting for. Or rather, he found me. Valoel wasn’t swooping down on me on silent wings, trying to stab me from behind. He was perched on the roof of a building on the corner of the block I was heading towards, watching the street like a vulture, his wings unfurled behind him.
I stopped in my tracks when I saw him, and just stared at him. He had brought both of his stones with him. They were in his hands right now, pulsing with light, with power. I knew what they could do, now. I knew what they were. He had two of them, and I only had one. Already I was at a disadvantage, but if I could beat him here, and now, I could end this.
I had one more shot at finishing this all before it got any worse.
“Hello, Seline,” he said, his voice little more than a whisper against my enhanced ears. He must have anticipated I would be watching out for him, or maybe he could sense my magic. “I’ve been looking for you.”
“Well, you found me,” I said, keeping my voice low.
“It would appear that I have. Why don’t you come up here and we can talk like two civilized people?”
“Fat chance of that. Corax told me what your charming little plan for me was.”
“Did he? I trust I won’t be seeing him again?”
“Nope.”
“Shame… he was a good soldier, and he did what he had to do—he told me where you were. I’ll have to find someone else to replace him.”
“Or you could stop this whole stupid thing before you get yourself killed.”
“I think it’s too late for that. Either I kill you, or you kill me. That’s the only way this ends for the two of us.”
“Alright… well, you’ll have to catch me, first.”
I ducked out of sight and into an alley. Even though I couldn’t see him, I could hear the sound his wings made as he launched himself into the night sky. That probably meant he could hear me, too. That was fine. He was going to catch me; of that I didn’t have a doubt. I wasn’t going to make it easy for him, though.
I needed to remove his aerial advantage like I’d done with Corax. This time, I headed for a construction site I’d spotted from the rooftops earlier on. A shell of a building, hollow and dark, stood half-built against the surrounding neighborhood. A tall, black, metal border had been erected around the perimeter with the name of a construction company written all around it.
Luxury apartments would be going up there, it looked like.
As soon as I reached the wall, I bounded over it letting my wings of light carry me over the wall. When I landed, I made a dash for the building itself, noting just how close Valoel had already gotten. He was behind me and swooping low, but instead of a sword in his hand, he had magic.
“Veshrim!” I heard him shout, his voice echoing through the construction site like a shotgun blast.
I leapt again, spun around in the air, crossed my arms in front of my face and yelled in return. “Duras!”
His energy blast met my magic shield with an explosion that shot me the rest of the way into the hollowed-out building. I landed on my back and slid along the floor, slowly coming to a halt inches in front of a wall. I picked myself up in time to watch Valoel make a perfect, graceful landing at the edge of the building, his wings carrying him delicately down. As he walked, he drew a longsword from a sheath on his back.
“Where is the Hope stone?” Valoel asked, his words leaving a deep, dangerous echo within the shell of the building we were in. He flipped the stones between his fingers like they were coins.
“Like I’d tell you,” I said.
“I’m sure all I’d need is a guess, maybe two, but I’m giving you a chance to hand them over willingly… otherwise there will be deaths on your shoulders.”
“You really think you’re gonna kill your way to these stones?”
“If I must.” The wrath stone burned in his hand and pulsed with deep, blood-red light, like a slowly-beating heart.
I had little choice but to believe him. With that stone in his hand, there was no telling what he’d do, what limits he’d go to, in order to get what he wanted. Wrath. Tenacity. He was resolute in his anger, justified in it. The stones didn’t just offer us power, they also filled us with their emotions, enhancing what was already there.
“Look, I know you’re pissed right now and all you wanna do is hurt me. Corax told me all about what you’ll probably want to do to me if I gave you the chance. But it doesn’t have to be this way. You don’t have to let the Wrath stone drive you.”
“You think the stone is the reason for my anger? Do you not think I haven’t been angry my whole life?” He pointed at me. “Angry that you lived the life I should have lived?”
“Valoel, I had no control over—”
“Shut up!” he yelled, and the force of his voice sent cracks through the concrete. Dust fell from the ceiling. “You weren’t dis
carded like a dirty rag. You weren’t cast out of the light and sent to live in the dark. You haven’t spent your whole life wondering what it would’ve been like for you if you’d been given even half a chance to prove your worth to the people who didn’t want you. You’ve been sheltered, protected, and showered with privilege while I had to claw my way through life like a rat fighting for scraps in the dark. I wanted you to know what that felt like well before I had this stone in my hand.”
I frowned at him, my eyebrows pinching in the middle, angry heat rising into my chest. “You think I don’t know what it’s like to live like a cast-away?” I asked, keeping my voice low. “Did you forget I fell too, Valoel? Did you forget that the House of Night invaded my home, killed my family, cut off my wings and threw me off the side of my city to die?” My grip around my dagger tightened as I spoke. “I had to claw my way out of the dirt too. I lost everything too. I’m broken too, but unlike you I won’t take my pain out on other people because they don’t deserve it.”
“You see, that’s where you’re wrong… there are some people who deserve your pain. Draven, for example. He allowed the attack to happen—he was instrumental, in fact.”
“Draven was lied to.”
“That’s what he told you, but can you trust that? I honestly never could trust anything that came out of his mouth—that was, until he told us where the secret entrance to the city was.”
I swallowed hard. “What did you say?”
“I was there, Seline. I was one of the men who stormed the city that night. I was one of the men who helped contribute to the destruction of your house. I was the man who—”
“—cut off my wings…” I said on the back of a pitched breath.
His sword. I remembered it now. There were markings on the sword of the man who had swung the sword moments before I was thrown off the side of my city. Thanks to my enhanced senses, I saw those same markings on the flat edge of Valoel’s sword now.
Wings of Fire (The Obsidian Order Book 4) Page 6