by Lucy Auburn
"Others have fought me in the past. I offered them a nice, cushy life, without memories of their past kills or previous hardship, and they accepted. My pocket dimension is very peaceful, after all." Reaching out my awareness, I find the snake holed up inside a vase near the courtyard, and urge it towards me even as Vervaine's words pluck at my mind. "Most assassins would far rather live out the rest of their days in comfort without their powers instead of being given yet another Mark to kill. But sometimes, one of my chosen ones fought me, and I had to make decisions. Difficult decisions. Killing the Conduits was always the hardest part."
I'm barely listening to her, though her words waken an anger inside me, and that old rage is at my fingertips again. The way she's talking, it sounds like she has more than one victim—and the Black Serpent, for all his madness, might actually be one of them. She might be the reason why his head is full of nonsense.
If she is, she's as much to blame for his kidnapping me as he is. Not that I'm letting him off the hook. The man basically has being a greasy villain down to a tee.
The snake is almost here. I need to keep her talking. "Are you going to kill my Conduits?"
"Not if they comply. The males are always much more useful than the females. And I like their bodies—except, of course, Grayson." There's a sneer in her voice. "What a useless thing he is. All that power, but all that weakness. Him, I'll kill. Not that it'll matter to you."
Reaching out, she cups my face, and I toss my head away. Vervaine chuckles. "Even the wildest ones become tame when I take their memories away. Now, about those powers of yours..."
She pushes me down. Penny skitters behind me, fur on edge, as I scramble away from Vervaine and sink into her little kitty awareness again. Vervaine is leaning over me, a knife in one of her hand, magic rope in the other.
My powers may not work against her, but that doesn't mean I'll take this.
I fight. I punch, kick, slap, scream, scratch, and call out to the snake. Vervaine has that strange rope-like magic, though, and despite the fact that she should only have a Mental Affinity, she wraps me up in it like she's an expert in Physical Affinities too. The wall I hit with my force field begins to loose chunks of itself, heading towards instability, but it doesn't even distract her.
And it doesn't seem to phase her when she puts her fingers near my head and I bite them, using Penny's eyes for my aim. She just pulls her hand out of my mouth and slaps me casually.
"Don't worry," she says calmly, "soon enough you'll see."
I refuse to stop fighting. My snake is here. Hope quickening in my chest, I give him a simple order: bite Professor Vervaine.
Quick to obey, he lashes out and sinks his fangs into her skin.
Then promptly falls over dead, my connection to him snuffing out as if he was the one who was poisoned.
Scowling, Vervaine slaps me again, and I spit in her face—or at least near it. My aim is off. She makes a disgusted expression, though, so I win that much.
Reaching towards me with the knife, she presses its point against my chest. I scowl and wiggle beneath her, but she holds me down with her weight. I can feel Penny thinking about scratching her eyes out, but I calm the little kitty down—if my strongest force field can't take this bitch out, an eight pound cat can't either.
"Just stop struggling already," she says, dragging the knife down my shirt until the fabric parts. "This will be over with quicker if you're not so much trouble."
"Fuck you, you asshole-sniffing daughter of a bastard and a bitch, if you think I'm going to let you—"
Vervaine puts her hand against my beating heart.
Digs her fingers into my skin.
And pulls something out.
I feel it leave me. Like when you cry until your eyes or dry, or run until your legs give out. Something was there, some undefinable human energy, a little part of what makes me me, and now it's gone.
Empty. Hollow. Drained.
I blink, and stare up at her—with my own eyes. I'm not blind anymore. Smiling triumphantly, she pulls a silver fog of magic away from my chest and into her hand, then grabs a length of plain cotton yarn out of her shirt and runs her fingers down it, stuffing the magic into it. As she does so, the yarn starts to glow.
And I feel two tears roll out of my eyes, inexplicable but undeniable, as if I've lost something I can never get back.
"See? That wasn't so hard." Vervaine pats my cheek condescendingly. "Maybe I'll even let you keep your sanity."
A moment later, the wall I attacked with my force field crumbles inward, drywall and plaster falling in chunks, desks and chairs destroyed beneath its weight.
Through the new opening of the wall, a figure walks in: my father, Vincent Arizona, the man who murdered my mother.
Chapter 2
Vincent fucking Arizona. At least, I think—things are a little foggy now that I've discovered Professor Vervaine is behind this stuff. She keeps talking about stealing bodies, and she stole my power; maybe she somehow stole Dad's body too. That would explain how I was able to talk to his spirit before, while his unmistakable face is staring at me from across the room, blood dripping down into his eyes.
"We have to go," he says, sounding grim. "One of them took control of my mind and nearly destroyed me."
"Hughes." Vervaine scowls, while I do a little internal fist bump of celebration. "Fine, we'll go. But let me mind wipe this one first—she's of no use anymore."
"Mind wipe?" I scramble back from Vervaine, wriggling in the rope she wrapped around me. "No thanks. I'll just pretend like this never happened."
The professor snorts. "You sure are mouthy and annoying. Stop moving already, and just—"
There's a yowl. Penny leaps out from behind me and latches onto Vervaine, climbing up her body. The professor makes a very high-pitched noise at my beautiful, wonderful, terrible cat digs her claws into her shoulder and bites her in the fucking neck.
When Vervaine tries to remove Penny, she gets a bite to her hand for her trouble, right before the little kitty leaps off and runs away, choosing to hide under some rubble from the destroyed wall. I smirk at Vervaine, cheering my kitty on.
"You should get that looked at," I tell her, as she shakes out her hand, like that'll stop the pain. "I've heard cat bites get infected."
Vervaine scowls at me, and I swear I think she'd slap me again if it weren't for the current state of her hand. "You stupid bitch, I'll—"
"Now, Maureen." Not-my-father paces forward and grabs her arm, pulling her to her feet. His face is pale and wan, and he looks weakened; I can see the shadow of Levi's poison in the veins of his neck. Score one for my team. "We've got to go."
Indeed they do, because standing in the opening of the destroyed wall are five familiar figures: Mason, Levi, Grayson, Wyatt, and Eve, all of them armed and powered up, ready to go. I sigh in relief at the sight of them, and at the fact that I have sight at all—even though I want nothing more than to have my powers back.
I can feel that they're gone.
It's not just the emptiness inside me. I've lost the sense of Penny's emotions. I don't feel the pulse of a force field beneath my skin. There isn't a constant, low grade fear that I'll look into the future and see something. And while I wasn't even aware of it at the time, there was always a sense inside me that I was surrounded by spirits. Now all of that is gone—in exchange for the ability to see, which feels useless in comparison, especially given all that I've lost.
I understand a little of how Grayson must feel every day. What a terrible bargain we get when these powers are thrust on us. Lucifer himself couldn't think of a more wretched deal—but I want nothing more than to go back.
As Vervaine turns to look at my guys, I feel the magical rope around me loosen a little. One end is connected to her—and without her attention on it, she's lost some control. Inching my fingers out from under the rope, I use my abdominal muscles—or what passes for them—to pull myself up as I shimmy a hand free.
My eyes catch the po
cket of Vervaine's blazer, where she put the silver yarn that she somehow shoved my powers into. I don't know what I'll do if I get it, but maybe I can somehow release them and get them back. Stretching out, I skim my fingers against the flap of her blazer—
"Let's go." Looking over at me, she narrows her eyes and mutters, "Ta-ta, Ellen."
Vervaine grabs onto Vincent Arizona's arm, and a moment later they've turned into a cloud of fog. I cry out in frustration. Levi runs forward, staring at the spot where they were, but the fog just slides past him—out into the campus and past the wall, where they'll no doubt turn back into their physical selves and portal away.
Slumping down onto the ground again, I stare up at the white paint of the ceiling. I lost them. I really lost my powers. So soon after I finally mastered them, and poof—they're gone, just like that.
Squeezing my eyes shut, I try to imagine that I'm inside Penny's mind. Or that I have a force field in my hand. But the only thing that happens is a low-grade ache in my chest, like someone scooped my gooey, bloody insides out and dumped them in the trash.
"Ellen! Are you okay?" Levi kneels beside me, his every movement loud as fuck, and frowns at the glowing magic yarn around my body. "Maybe I can cut this off—"
A moment later, the yarn disappears completely. Just poof—gone. Stretching out my arms, I scowl at the distant wall around the campus, where the cloud of fog just was. Wyatt is running towards the gates at top speed, but it's futile. If Vervaine's magic yarn just went away like that, the woman herself is probably gone too.
"What the fuck." Eve stares at me, and as I meet her eyes, she frowns. "Ellen. What's going on? Can you see again? Levi, are you holding her hand?"
Forcing myself up to my feet, I shy away from Levi, afraid that if I take his hand... nothing will happen. Without my powers, I don't know what my Conduits are to me anymore. For all I know there's no connection left, no reason for the five of us to spend time together.
No reason for me to be here at all.
Rubbing my arms, I swallow, and tell them the thing that will no doubt end everything.
"My powers are gone. Professor Vervaine—she took them. And I couldn't get them back."
The slab of rubble is heavy in my hands, cutting off circulation to my fingers, but I force myself to heave it up anyway and walk it over to the pile I've been making in the corner. Right now, physical effort and exercise seems to be the only thing that takes my mind off what just happened.
"She could be anywhere," Eve argues, narrowing her eyes in Grayson's direction. "I mean, for fuck's sake, they turned into a cloud of fog. That's not exactly a limited mode of travel."
"I just think we should start at her laboratory," Grayson argues. "I've taken the most classes with Vervaine. I know her best."
"I've worked with her within the Shadow Fold. I know her better than you ever could."
"Oh yeah?" Grayson sneers, that familiar bitter anger on his face. "If you know her so well, how come you didn't figure out she's some kind of evil mastermind who steals people's powers?"
Eve deflates at this. "I don't know, I guess I just..." Trailing off, she rubs her head, looking exhausted. "You're right. We should start there."
The sound of Eve conceding a point is so startling that I stop in my tracks, refocusing on her and Grayson, who've mostly taken over the whole planning-our-next-steps thing. Levi is sulking in a corner, perched on top of a pile of rubble, while Wyatt has been moving the beams that came down, and Mason is off somewhere trying to figure out what happened to all the teachers and students. I've been trying not to think about it all, but clearly I can't stay out of logistics planning if Grayson is just going to steamroll over everything in his usual fashion.
"Isn't anyone going to ask me if I know anything?" I put my hands on my hips and narrow my eyes at them. "I did fight the lady in battle, y'know. At least kinda."
Grayson raises his brows at me, leaning on his cane. "We tried asking you. You just muttered a few things and shied away when I tried to take your hand. What's going on, Ellen? Are your powers really gone?"
I stare at the tips of my shoes. Bitterly, I tell him, "They are. She just... took them. I'm not the first one whose powers she took, either. I'm pretty sure she's the reason why the Black Serpent is the way he is. She told me that she's made this deal with a lot of people, and that other assassins have taken her up on it. Then she talked about wiping my memories. She was about to do it when the wall came down."
"Fuck." Levi leaps off the pile of rubble, making enough noise to wake an army, and strolls over to me, his grey eyes full of worry. He reaches an arm towards me, but I cringe away, and his hand drops to his side. "Ellen. What else happened? She didn't root around in your head or something, did she?"
"No. She didn't."
He nods sharply, brows drawn together. "We'll get your powers back."
Dropping an entire slab of rubble on the ground outside, Wyatt walks in, dusts his hands off, and stares at me too. Even Grayson is looking worried—he's temporarily forgotten his argument with Eve in exchange for limping over to join the worry circle.
"Tell us what's wrong," Grayson says sharply. "We don't have time for any pouting or drama. Just out with it."
"I'm not pouting! And I told you guys I'm fine," I remind them, tucking a strand of blonde hair behind my ear. "I'll figure out jiu jitsu or... get a job at a frozen yogurt place or something."
Grayson scowls. "You're not fit for the normal world, Ellen."
"Then what am I supposed to do?" Throwing my hands up in the air, I point out, "We don't know where Vervaine is. Even if we did, we don't know how to fight her—I gave it all I've got and it didn't work. And even if we do defeat her, she has my powers, and we have no fucking clue how to get them back. We're completely in the dark here. We don't even know if we're..."
I trail off, tears stinging my eyes. "We don't even know if we're still connected anymore. You might not even be my Conduits now. And Headmaster Shu is dead. The four of you aren't stuck with me anymore. And I know you didn't choose to be connected to me in the first place. So this should be a good thing. It means... it means you're free of me."
Wyatt reaches out, ignoring it as I wince, and yanks my hand towards him. Though I curl my fingers in tight, he pries my fist open and brings our palms together, staring at me with patient brown eyes.
"We're not going anywhere," he says, his voice firm and clear without a stutter. "Whether you like it or not, we're in this together. The five of us." Eve clears her throat. "The six of us." Penny raises her head and cuts her little blue eyes at him. "The six-and-a-half of us. What Vervaine did to you is unacceptable. And we will figure out how to undo it. Because those powers are yours, Ellen."
Leaning in close, he adds, "We're yours, too. If you still want us." A lopsided grin pulls up his mouth in a charming expression that makes my heart melt. "I wouldn't blame you if you throw Levi back, though."
"Hey!" Levi scowls at him. "At least I nearly managed to kill that bastard. Who was that guy, anyway, Ellen? The way he turned into fog—was that really the man who killed your mother?"
I'm opening my mouth to answer when a new presence catches my attention, and my eyes flick towards the door to the classroom, which someone has inexplicably chosen to open despite the fact that this room now has three walls.
I tense, and so do the others, but the man standing in the doorway doesn't look dangerous. He's wearing a wool blazer that has patches on the elbow, and his glasses are rimmed in thin silver wire. If anything, he looks like he should be teaching here–not coming to slaughter us in cold blood.
Also, Mason is standing just behind his shoulder, a group of what looks like students at his back. He gives us a reassuring smile, and I notice Professor Killington is with him, the shadowy specter of a child's spirit just behind his shoulder. My heart aches that I can see the spirit, but can't sense or summon it—I feel like I'm stuck between worlds now, aware of what I've lost and missing it.
"That man,"
the newcomer says, "was Vincent Arizona. Or at least, his body. I very much doubt that was his soul there."
"And you are?" Levi asks impatiently.
"Doctor Martin Covington. I was supposed to be this school's Mental Affinity professor, after Maureen Vervaine died in a mysterious accident last summer. But my new job didn't go according to plan—and it looks like my classroom isn't even standing anymore."
Chapter 3
What an absolute mess. Even in prison, they didn't misplace employees. And I'm pretty sure one of the guards on my cell block used to sneak entire rotisserie chickens through security.
That, or she was really pregnant and smelled a lot like lemon herb marinade and roasted poultry.
"Well." I stare at the professor. He stares back, and I get the feeling he's expecting something. "Wel...come? You've missed a lot."
"So I've noticed," he says dryly, looking around at the ruined classroom. "Lya has a lot to answer for in the time since she hired me."
"Who-ah?"
"Headmaster Shu."
"Oh. You don't know..." Clearing my throat, I look around for someone less, well, coarse than me to give him this news, but apparently it's just me. Grayson, Eve, and Levi are too busy arguing in low voices, the jerks.
Guess it's up to little ol' me.
I try to sound consoling as I tell the professor, "I hate to break it to you, but Headmaster Shu is dead. She got—" I start to make a stabbing motion with my hand only to abruptly realize it looks like I'm jerking off a very thin, very long penis. "Well, uh. She was stabbed. To death."
"Yes, she was," he says calmly, "or at least, nearly to the point of death. Her pulse was nonexistent when I found her. Thankfully I was able to stabilize her and bring her to the medics."
That seems unlikely, but then again, I just fought my dead dad's body and a lady who put my powers into a ball of yarn, so what the fuck do I know.
"Now," he says, "tell me what happened here. Your friend Mason gave us only a brief sketch of the details."