by Lucy Auburn
"At least she's contained," Mason says.
Gulping in air, Vervaine vows, "You... can't... hold me... forever."
"She's right." Grayson motions towards the woman. "We have to weaken and restrain her—or figure out a way to kill her despite all her power."
Narrowing his eyes at the not-professor, Levi holds out a hand and shakes his head. "My poison doesn't seem to penetrate her body at all. It's like there's a shield around her."
Grayson murmurs, "Her psychic shield. I can sense her holding it up. But telepathy can penetrate it—that's why she was always so insistent I never use my powers around her at all. She knew I'd be her only weakness. For a while, at least."
Mason says, "I'm no use here at all."
"And... you..." Vervaine-slash-Cleopatra sneers at me. "Useless. Powerless. Weak. Can't... do... anything."
She's right that I have no powers. I can't see into her future, or make a thousand rabid bats attack her. I've lost the ability to slice her down the middle with my force field, though I bet if I could take that light sword out of her tight grip I'd be able to do something to change that. And I doubt that even if I had my Spiritual Affinity, she'd be spooked by a few ghosts going boooOOoooooOOooooo.
I'm powerless to do anything to completely defeat her—I think.
As I tell her though, "But I can do this."
Jumping forward, I stab my father's weird-looking decorative knife into her middle. The blade slides right underneath her rib cage, taking some force to get through skin and muscle to the organs beneath. Its tip slides across bone and meets resistance.
I push past it, though. What can I say—I'm an old hat at stabbing people by now. Ellen Arizona doesn't half-ass putting a knife in a person.
Our eyes meet as the blade pierces through to the other side, and her hand twitches. Grayson warns me, "She's slipping free. I can only hold her so long, Ellen."
"Stab her again," Levi encourages me. "Now that there's some kind of hole in her barrier whatever it was, I can feel an entrance to my poison."
As he flicks his hand up, black poison crawls from the wound around my dagger up towards her neck and face. Vervaine moans, fighting for breath, and stares at me.
"H-how?"
She must want to know how my dagger got past her little barrier power. Shrugging, I grab her shoulder for purchase and slide the knife out, enjoying the gush of blood that follows. "Guess I'm special."
I'm winding up for a second stabbing—seven is really my lucky number, after all—when I feel a strange shift in the dagger's handle and hear a clink of metal. Frowning, I glance down at it—and Vervaine swings the sword free of the stone beneath us, arcing it towards me.
As I pull back, a second figure appears behind Vervaine. It's Marcus Junius Brutus again—wearing my father Vincent Arizona's face. Grabbing onto her shoulders, he yanks her back and starts to turn into a cloud of fog, prepared to poof her away from danger. This close, I see into the fog briefly, and Wyatt's face stares out at me.
He's lying in a pool of blood.
"No!" Lunging forward, I grab for him—my hand slips, and takes hold of something, like an extrasensory spark in the air. It races up my arm and sets every nerve on fire. Staring at Wyatt, I cry out as his face fades away into darkness. "No—Wyatt! Come back!"
I stumble forward, onto the ground, the dagger slipping from my hand.
And realize like a slap in the face that Wyatt didn't just slip away into darkness.
The whole world did all at once.
I'm blind again.
Chapter 11
This is the moment where my cat shows up, shoves her face beneath my palm, and starts throatily purring against my hand. I close my eyes—haha, just more of the same darkness—and breathe deep, trying to calm and center myself.
I'm blind again, but do I have my powers again?
It scares me to even try to find out the answer to that question. All I can think is the worst: that my weakness has somehow returned without any of my Affinities. If that's true... if I'm blind but still weak...
"Ellen!" Mason's hand closes over my shoulder without touching my skin, and I feel him kneel next to me, his warmth and nearness reassuring. "What's wrong? What happened? Did she hurt you?"
"No," I reassure him, even as my own anxiety spikes like a motherfucker. "She didn't hurt me. But something... happened. I saw Wyatt through the fog around Vervaine, but then he was gone. I think he's hurt, though. Maybe worse."
I can't stand the thought of losing him.
Penny pushes her head against my palm, harder and more insistent this time. Sighing, I stroke my hand alone her back, murmuring, "Now really isn't the time to beg for pets."
She heartily disagrees.
"You're not getting up." Grayson paces around behind me; I can hear his cane hitting the ground, his feet stepping towards my left, then stopping in front of me. "Ellen. You went blind again, didn't you?"
"No," I mutter mulishly, just to be a contrary bitch.
"Fine. Open your eyes and look at me, then."
"Alright, alright." I sigh, shifting uncomfortably, eyes still resolutely closed. "It happened somehow as Vervaine—Cleopatra—whoever that bitch is disappeared in a cloud of fog. But I'm afraid, because... what if my powers are still missing?"
Levi snorts. "Do they feel like they're still missing? Because last I checked, your weakness wouldn't come back for no reason."
"Maybe it's not my weakness though. Maybe she made me blind, or..." I sigh, squeezing my eyes shut. "But now isn't the time for all my anxious bullshit. We have to go get Wyatt. I have to face this."
Grayson is the one who firmly says, "Yes, you really do."
He understands what my weakness makes me feel: the fear, the self-pity, the constant pit of helpless fury. It all comes back to me at once, but I force my eyes open anyway, and reach for Mason's hand instinctually.
There. Sight. Penny is staring at me with her wide blue eyes. I swear she's giving me the stink-eye all because I'm not stroking her back. What a time for my cat to decide that she must be pet worshipfully or else.
"Can you see?"
"Yes."
"Good."
"Let's check things off... okay. So first, your touch takes the weakness away." I brace myself as I stand up, staring at the spot where I just saw Wyatt's body through the fog. "Second, Wyatt. We have to find him somehow. They've got to be nearby—that fog doesn't travel very far very fast."
"Should we wait for Covington and Shu?" Levi asks. "They can track the trail of her power if nothing else."
"No." I shake my head sharply. "We've got to do this now for Wyatt's sake. And I have another idea for how to track her... if it works. If my Affinities are back."
Time to find out one way or another. I can't exactly bury my head in the sand for eternity, after all. Wyatt needs me to pull through for him before it's too late.
So I reach inside myself, and find the spark within that makes me me. That undeniable Ellen-ness. The ancient power and instinct that woke up to save me the day Jack decided he'd be better off if I were dead.
It's back again somehow. When I reached out for Vervaine as she turned into fog, I grabbed the little flame that's me and buried it back inside. The only thing is, instead of a furnace, the flame is a flickering candle of heat—it needs strength and tinder to grow and survive.
Still, it's there. As I hesitantly reach for my Emotional Affinity, I feel a little bit of the fire expand and grow in strength. Nearby, I can feel Killer's energy; he's hiding in a storage supply closet, cowering in the darkness, alone and afraid.
Don't be scared, I tell him, and he perks up at feeling my presence, which has been gone for a while now. My lack of powers hurt him as much as me. Come. Help.
I send him an image of Wyatt, and the memory of his scent. Out of all my Conduits, the big guy fed Killer the most, saving him slices of roast beef and squares of vanilla cake. Killer has good memories of Wyatt's kind, broad palms and low rumble of a voice.
He was always patient enough to listen to his stories, despite the stutter. They were besties.
Are besties. Nothing is over yet.
Even in his frightened state, the former stray manages to rally for his friend. He runs over to us, nose down, tail a flag in the air, ready to go at full speed.
"Killer is going to find Wyatt?" Grayson sounds incredulous. "What next, the cat will chase a string to his location?"
Penny looks over at him, and I swear she's giving him the stink-eye. I squeeze Mason's hand and tell the guys, "It's worth a try, so let's have at it. Killer, boy—go get him."
It takes a minute for the dog to get going. He scents the air, paces back and forth, and shoves his nose down towards the ground, hesitating. Penny watches him, rubbing up against my legs as if to comfort me. My heart keeps beating fast, telling me: you'll lose him if you don't hurry. Cleopatra may be injured, but she can still take Wyatt's body for her little boyfriend Brutus. He could be dying even now.
"It looks like he's found something," Mason says, awe in his voice as Killer trots off in a firm direction and casts a look over his shoulder at us impatiently. "Ellen, are you sure about this?"
"Pretty much completely certain that I have no idea." Licking my lips, I hold my hand out in front of me and summon my force field. It takes time and effort, and the result is smaller than even my weakest previous attempts, but it's there. "My powers are working, though. So Killer must be figuring something out. Let's go."
As we step forward, all I want to do is cling onto Mason's hand and keep my sight.
But I won't get anywhere if I insist on denying the reality of what must become my new normal.
So I let go of his hand, and reach out my awareness for Killer and Penny. Slipping into their eyes gives me a dash of vertigo; it's like I'm several feet shorter in an instant, looking through the world with different eyes. Their vision is different, too. I can see deep into the shadows, but not the color and vibrancy of the world around me.
I try to concentrate on the upsides: seeing through their eyes means two points of view. I've got advanced warning of what's ahead, since they trot along in front of me on quick four legs. And in addition to sight, I can catch snatches of other senses as well, because every one of them is attached to their instinctual emotions. In some ways my weakness makes me stronger—without my own sight in the way, there's room for far more information in my head, and my Emotional Affinity seems to expand.
Killer is on Wyatt's scent trail.
And Penny senses something only cats know.
An open space. Something missing. A secret humans keep.
"This way."
I lead the guys around the corner of one long hallway, towards an area I rarely spend time in: the botany lab and other areas where professors and members of the Shadow Fold do research. I can feel Penny's trepidation as she rounds that direction, and realize that she has bad memories of this place.
Very bad memories.
But she bucks up and keeps going, because she wants to find Wyatt just as badly as I do. There's a little instinct inside her that tells her he's in the Bad Place. It's a place that one member of the Shadow Fold used to take her to do things she didn't like, experimenting with changing her size and shape. Apparently the door was sealed off behind some bookshelf somewhere one day, and she never saw that room again.
It's where she thinks Wyatt is, with her little kitty instincts, the same ones that tell her when a storm is coming or a stranger is a piece of shit.
I tell the guys, "We're almost there. I think... I think he's being kept somewhere we don't normally go. Some kind of secret hidden room."
"Should we get backup?" Mason asks, sounding nervous.
"Hell no," Levi insists. "We're getting Wyatt out of there now."
"Then we've got to be prepared." I can feel Mason tense as Killer stops in front of one door in particular, scenting the gap at the bottom of the door, where Wyatt's scent trail continues. "Whatever powers they have, there's more than just the fog and the light sword. When they attacked last time, Vervaine confused all of us. And Brutus sent pain our way. There were illusions too... we have to be prepared to fight like Hell."
"I'm definitely prepared," I tell Mason, grabbing my father's strange knife in one hand as I turn the doorknob with the other. "They're both weakened. Now is the best time. But we should be wary, you're right—anything could happen."
"Once the five of us are together again with our powers, it'll all get easier," Levi says. "Let's go kick some crazy immortal ass before we lose one of our own."
Mason draws his knives while Penny watches. Grayson and Levi stand on either side of me. And I push the door open, walking into the botany lab on the other side.
Killer slips in first, lending me his eyes. He walks straight to the door from Penny's memories, which now has a bookshelf in front of it, though part of the frame sticks out. There are signs everywhere that things have been moved: dust circles, plants akimbo, and botany supplies piled in one corner.
"They wanted privacy if they bothered to drag Wyatt all the way here. The spell must take a while," I observe, feeling the strange vertigo of walking my body towards the bookshelf even as my eyes see with Killer's vision. "What I wouldn't give for Wyatt's strength to push the bookshelf to the side."
Grayson says, "I can sense them on the other side. They're concentrating on the spell to take over Wyatt's body. This is our chance—we can surprise them."
"Then get ready. We're pushing this bookcase aside."
Mason takes point on this part, since of the four of us he's the one with the most strength and the least ability to turn any tiny movement into a bunch of noise. I grab Grayson's hand so he can rest weight on his leg and I can see, making us a cobbled-together group of four assassins who somehow muddle our way through shit until people are dead. Hopefully the right people.
"One, two... three!"
On three we push, and the bookshelf groans as it scraps across the linoleum. Killer cowers, and Penny runs between our legs into the room beyond. I switch over to her eyes for a moment, and see what she sees.
In the half-lit darkness of the strange, abandoned room, Cleopatra and Brutus, in Maureen Vervaine and Vincent Arizona's bodies, stand over a prone and bleeding Wyatt, who thankfully looks unharmed other than a gash in his forehead. Brutus looks worse for the wear, though better than he looked the last time he stepped foot on campus; Cleopatra is clutching at the wound beneath her ribs, blood pooling between the fingers of her left hand.
An eerie light rises from her right hand as she draws symbols in the air above Wyatt's body. I feel all the hairs on my arms rise at the sound of her voice as she murmurs strange and terrible words over him. This doesn't feel like the assassin Affinities I know and love; it isn't something that demands balance by creating weakness as it gives strength.
This is dark, low magic, the kind that fucks shit up.
I can't wait a moment longer. As soon as the bookshelf has been pushed aside enough that I can fit through, I slip into the room beyond, Penny trotting ahead of me, using her eyes to see everything as I fall away from Grayson's touch. Walking lightly, I do my best not to make any sound, since Cleopatra and Brutus both have their backs to me at the moment. They're so wrapped up in what they're doing that they don't hear me coming.
When I'm close enough to pounce—well, when Penny is, and I'm not far behind—I pull my Physical Affinity powers into my palm and throw them out at my targets.
But my force field hits another force field, bounces back, and throws me to the ground.
All the breath is knocked out of me at once. My connection to Penny stutters, and I scramble across the floor, stuck in the darkness. By the time I can see through her eyes again, Vervaine has gotten to her feet and turned to stare me down, a smirk on her stolen face.
"You've come. How convenient. I always like it when my lobsters crawl out of the tank and into the pot of boiling water on their own." Her gaze flickers to my other Conduits, w
ho slip into the room with their powers ready. "And you brought your friends. Lovely."
I cough; Mason hurries over and pulls me to my feet, his touch restoring my own sight. "I'm fine," I tell him as he fusses over me. "Focus on fighting her."
Levi is throwing his poison at Cleopatra, and Grayson is using his psychic powers again, but the barrier she's standing behind is stopping them. Just like the shield that was around her body until I somehow reached through and stabbed her, this barrier seems to repel certain abilities, only even stronger.
And while we try, and fail, to fight her, the magic she set into motion is sinking into Wyatt's skin. He twitches in his unconscious state, and Brutus leans over him, an eager expression on his face. The immortal killer's skin is sallow and grey, his veins standing out and still full of poison, wrinkles forming at his temple and cheeks. Any minutes now he'll desperately need a new body to jump into—and he has a strong one at the ready.
I can't let that happen. I have to think of something fast. My force field, Levi's poison, and Grayson's mental control haven't reached through the barrier, but maybe something else can.
The dead don't obey physical restrictions.
"Grayson, get over here." I grab his hand, ignoring the grumpy expression on his face. We're all just worried about Wyatt. "I'm going to see what I can do with my Spiritual Affinity."
Reaching through the barrier between our world and the realm of spirits, I call on whomever I can find. There are ghosts who flit about this place: assassins long dead, and their victims, called towards the dimension of Cain University's campus because of their unfinished business. Yanking them towards this world, I send them towards Brutus and Cleopatra.
But the woman just raises a hand and waves it at the ghosts, dismissing them like it's nothing. They were powerful ghosts—it shouldn't have been easy as all that.