Flare of Villainy: The Imdalind Series, Book 10

by Ethington, Rebecca

  My breath caught, my body tensing under the soft cotton blankets as a heart rate monitor somewhere in the room began to speed up.

  Rioseco. The Abbey I had built as a safe haven. The Abbey I had taken Joclyn to.

  I remembered.

  I remembered everything.

  The monitors sped even faster as I sat up, the blanket falling away to reveal a mess of wires and tubes and who knows what else attached to my skin and inserted into my arms.

  I waved my hand, expecting them all to fall away with one surge of power. But nothing happened. Each tube remained plunged into arms, wires to chest.

  I growled, the memory of the imposter from my dream slamming hard against my chest as my heart did. Magic for my memories.

  At least, with the limited knowledge that I had, I had chosen my memories. I had chosen my Joclyn.

  “I’m coming, my love.” My voice was scratchy and coarse from ill-use, but the word, the phrase, the language, was so missed, so longed for, that it was followed by a sigh anyway.

  I was coming. And I knew right where to go.

  She would be in Imdalind, and if I had gotten out of Ukraine I could be there in days.

  I moved to stand, my head spinning with the movement just as the door to my room opened. I turned at the sound, expecting to see Kaye walking in. Instead of the boisterous brunette, however, it was a young Asian man with oversized spectacles that only exaggerated the look of horror he had at seeing me sitting there.

  “What has happened?” the man stuttered in Mandarin, his eyes darting behind him as he began to back out of the room.

  “Where have I been taken?” I asked in the same language, the shock and fear on his face growing as he took another step, mouth opening to yell at someone behind him. “I mean you no harm, if you could hel…”

  “The monster is awake!” he screamed as he stepped back, slamming the door behind him and leaving me staring at the dark slab of wood.

  Yells and shouts filtered through the heavy wooden door, the word ‘monster’ repeated over and over. Well, that didn’t work.

  “Hovno,” I swore loudly, the word felt awkward without the surge of power behind it.

  I didn’t have much time. The screams grew louder as my heart rate increased, the beeping turning into a high pitched squeal as I began to rip off the sticky pads that covered my chest. Multiple monitors flatlined before my fingers wrapped around the tubes inserted into my arms. The cold tubing pumped gently underneath my fingers, the pulse was as quick as my heart.

  Whatever it was had clearly been inserted directly into a vein. Judging by the size of the tube, if I just ripped it out I would have more problems than my blood splashed over flowers.

  I couldn’t heal.

  Although there was a shadow of magic deep inside of me, it wasn’t responding, I wasn’t even sure if it was magic. For all I knew, all mortals felt this way.

  I stood, everything spinning again as I searched for a cloth or something to apply pressure so I could remove the tube. I was barely able to grip the nightstand beside the bed before I tumbled back down, the spinning overtaking me.

  Screw healing, I couldn’t even fight like this.

  It didn’t matter either way, head still spinning, tubing still pumping, the door was thrown open and a line of soldiers walked in, guns drawn.

  Scooting back against the headboard, the line of muzzles grew closer, the mumblings of what sounded like Russian, Mandarin, and even English buzzing from the hall.

  “I mean you no harm,” I said the words on repeat, moving through every language I was hearing and even adding a few others that were colloquially similar.

  The men and women behind the guns began to look at each other, their eyes wide with the same fear that the man who had walked in before had.

  It made sense as to why.

  Although I had no idea if any of these soldiers were the ones who had shot me, I had a feeling the last thing they had been told was a story of me soaring through the air, firing infantile magic at people.

  I thought I had been so powerful, so strong. The memory caused me to shake my head. If I had my memories, if I had control of even the tiny bit of magic I had retained I could have been out of here months after they had found me in the alley.

  “Where is Kaye,” I said clearly in Ukrainian, the switch from my language tour taking a few of the soldiers off guard.

  “I do not know what you mean.”

  I jerked at the clear voice, the English heavily accented with what was clearly Russian. Although the voice itself was not familiar, the tone, the words were filled with enough ice that my magic’s promise that I was safe seemed foolhardy.

  “Where is Kaye,” I repeated the words in English, eliminating as much of my own accent as I could while keeping my voice strong.

  “Is this a person?” the same voice responded. Even the soldiers that surrounded my bed were shifting in unease. “Is this the woman from the massacre in Prague?”

  I focused on keeping my breathing even, on keeping my face impassive as I stared at the soldiers, the row of unfamiliar uniforms still shielding whoever was talking.

  “We believe you are the man from that attack,” he continued on after a moment of silence. “Is this true?”

  Oh great. We were starting over.

  “I do not know what you are talking about.” My voice was much harder than it should have been. I shifted my weight, leaning toward the voice. “Kaye is my nurse.”

  The wall of blast guards and gun tips stared me down, the hidden faces of the soldiers looking at me with eyes so wide I began wondering if something else had changed since our attempted escape.

  It was not the soldiers that were concerning, however, it was the man who emerged from among them, his lanky frame leaning against the foot of my bed.

  The blonde man curled his hands around the metal railing as he leaned toward me, the military uniform diminishing his frame somehow. I had never met him before, but that hardly mattered. I knew the look, I knew the posturing voice.

  All of these men were the same.

  I would have to be tricky. At least I didn’t have handcuffs to deal with this time.

  “You are looking for your nurse?” he asked, the confusion growing at my request.

  “She was my friend.” I was successful in keeping the frustration out of my voice that time. “Where is she?”

  “Do you mean the woman you tried to escape from the SSU with? The leader of the villagers?”

  I remained quiet. Although we both got what we wanted even without my confirmation.

  “This is not the SSU,” I said.

  His eyes sparked at my statement, lip twitching as his hands tightened against the railing.

  “We are part of the republic.” His tone made it clear he wasn't going to say any more. He didn’t need to. I knew little of The Republic of the Kyō, looking at the nationalities of those who surrounded me, however, I had less information than I thought.

  “And where is this republic? Russia?” I asked.

  The man said nothing, he only smiled, a torturous joy taking hold. It wasn't him that I was looking at, however, it was the soldiers on either side of him.

  The two men were clearly Asian, although from where I could not tell. Judging by the disdain that came over their face at my question, we were clearly not in Russia.

  Russia was here.

  So, maybe China. If I had to guess I would say we were somewhere in the high mountains of Mongolia.

  The room itself bore no sign of that, the furniture, the medical equipment, everything about it screamed of western Europe. The long curtains, however, and the fresh flowers that were cut in the vase were little hints to the culture that this smothering Russian was hiding.

  I had spent time in Mongolia several hundred years before, and while I knew the terrain, it was remote enough that without the aid of my power I could not escape it easily.

  “It does not matter where you are,” the man sneered, his accent
growing deeper. “Now that you are awake you will be moved back to more… familiar… surroundings.”

  His smile grew and my gut twisted uncomfortably, his tone enough to detail what was waiting for me.

  “Unless of course, you choose to work with us,” he prompted, the light of eagerness returning. “Unless you choose to join us.”

  I hesitated, muscles and jaw tightening. Our eyes locked in an intense stare as the soldiers began to shift their weight, the muzzles of their guns moving to a tighter aim.

  The tension of the room increased with each moment that passed, the simple task of getting back to Joclyn becoming more impossible.

  “What do you want to know?”

  Keeping my hands tight against the mattress I let my eyes wander to the soldiers, searching for any gap or weakness. When I looked back to the Russian he was beaming with an eagerness he wasn’t even trying to hide.

  “I want to know everything,” he said, his greediness a snake that twisted around my gut. “You see, we know who you are. We know what you can do. And while we have an idea of what the SSU has discovered of you, all of their research was lost when they fell. When Nastya was killed.”

  I would have celebrated that, if her death had actually led to my release and not just another prison.

  He hesitated, tapping against the rail on the bed as he took a step back, studying me as I had him before he leaned forward, the simple action twisting my stomach into my chest.

  “We wish to learn of you,” he continued, the look in his eyes causing the muscles in my emaciated back to tense. “We wish to recreate you. And we do not wish to resort to the same procedures as your former captors.”

  It was the same. They were all the same.

  I was like a shiny toy to all of them, the power inside of me one that they wanted for themselves. Except now there was no power inside of me, there was no magic. And if he resorted to the same techniques that Nastya had, there would be no tomorrow.

  No Joclyn.

  My heart twisted uncomfortably, my stomach growing warm at the thought of her, at the possibility of losing her. I pushed the fearful emotion aside and looked at the Russian straight on, keeping my jaw tight in my wavering defiance.

  “The power that you seek is no longer with me,” I said honestly, the few words tangling painfully in my gut. I felt the same warmth at my admission, felt the tension in my chest, but no more than that. There was no flood of strength, there was no electric rumbling, there was nothing but a mortal body.

  He smiled, a single chuckle scratched through the air before he tapped his fingers against the rail and began to pace. The soldiers made way for him, their focus still on me.

  “I do not need to show you the images that say otherwise,” he said, rocking on his toes as he stepped closer to me. “You know of them.”

  I did, and while I had told him the truth, he was not willing to listen. As much as he wished for my cooperation, I would have to resort to the story he wished for.

  “I have told them before, I do not remember…”

  “This is not the SSU,” the man interrupted, attempting to hide his impatience with flattery. “You do not have to hide truths from us.”

  I looked from the Russian to the natives that surrounded me, their fingers twitching as they held their guns to me in restrained horror.

  “I see no difference between this and the SSU,” I said, transitioning my words into a smooth Czech, that I could tell only he understood. “It is the same threats, the same danger.”

  His frustrations boiled with each word until they exploded, his very body began to shake as he spoke with a clear, concise, fury. “We are not the SSU…”

  “Yes, you are the Kyō,” I filled in for him, my calm defiance setting him off further. Both his patience and control were wavering.

  “Yes.” The grind of the word made it clear he wasn’t going to say more.

  “What is the Kyō,” I queried, careful to keep my voice light lest I push him even further.

  The man said nothing, he only tightened his jaw, struggling to keep his own control.

  “If I do not know what you are, how can I trust you?”

  The question stopped the man dead in his tracks and while the smile that I had seen before was clearly still present, it was there for a different reason.

  “You are not in a place to be given trust,” he said, the wickedness back in his eyes as he nodded once, the soldiers shifting as a reminder of the control he had, no matter how much his emotions attempted to push him otherwise.

  “Then I am not in a place to tell you everything you ask.”

  The man’s pride bristled, his eyes glancing toward the soldiers for the first time before he tapped his heels, the frustration rippling off him.

  “If you tell me nothing, then I cannot help you.”

  I stared at him as he leaned over the rail, waiting for something more, waiting for something to click. There was nothing there but a desperation I didn’t understand, however, something about him that didn’t quite fit with the scene I was surrounded by.

  Something was wrong.

  “If I tell you everything, how will I know I will be alive by morning?” I asked as a younger soldier caught my focus, his eyes wide with fear as he looked right into me.

  Sweat dripped down the soldiers' brow, the muzzle of his gun shaking the tiniest bit. His finger clearly compressing the trigger.

  “Or is there nothing you can do?”

  The Russians focus pulled right to the soldier at my question, his eyes obviously catching what I had.

  The guns were empty.

  The room, everything, it was all a facade.

  “Put him on the next transport,” he growled, his Mandarin barely understandable through the clench in his teeth.

  The soldiers around us looked between themselves in obvious fear before the man began to scream again, switching between Ukrainian, Russian, and Mandarin so fast I wasn’t sure anyone besides he and I could follow.

  “Do it now!” the man continued to roar, his face turning purple in his anger.

  It was the last thing I saw before the butt of a gun intersected with my temple and, magic or not, I was plunged back into the world of dreams.

  18

  Wyn

  “I’m starting to think I need to build a room just for interrogating people. Maybe I can build it off the main hall, a little stone room where we can ask people why they like killing others so much.” We had never needed a prison before this, but seeing as we now had not one but two people wrapped in my fire chains, it was becoming a bit of a necessity.

  Thankfully there hadn’t been any more need in all of the survivors we had brought back. There were at least sixty that we had pulled out of the wreckage of the hospital and the caravan that Jos, Míra, and Ryland had been in. We had found another caravan that had taken the same hit closer to the border, but no one had been alive there.

  Most of those who had returned were nurses and other Chosen that Nasty woman had been experimenting on. They had been locked away by the SSU for so long they didn’t seem sure about what to think of us.

  “Spoken like a true assassin. Hurt first, ask questions later.” I whirled around to the bright blue flying rat that Joclyn and Ryland had found. Rinax.

  He had been an unexpected find. Him, along with the Ovailia look-a-like that was chained to a bed alongside the other would-be assassin. That, combined with the recovering Míra, should have made their escape into the SSU a success. But they hadn’t found Ilyan.

  All you had to do was look at Jos to see the devastation there. She was hiding it, but everything about her looked like it was going to ‘plode’. The only question was: in or out.

  No wonder Ryland was standing so close to her. I was just as close, but that was mostly just to keep me from ringing Rinax’s neck. Thom was off terrorizing children, so there was no one else to stop me.

  “That’s where you are wrong,” I snapped, rounding on the sourpuss who just sat scow
ling at us all. “If I was killing everyone first I wouldn’t need to ask questions.”

  “I said hurt not kill--!”

  “Rinax,” Jos sighed, cutting him off, and sending the little ball of fury sputtering again.

  You would think after he took off and vanished for over three years he would have found a better attitude, especially considering he had returned with a handful of Vilỳ that weren’t poisoned. But nope, he was still a little ball of rage.

  “We will address all murdering later, but for now,” Jos waved her hands, my chains shifting on the Ovailia look alike they had brought, “we have a mystery on our hands.”

  We all took a step closer to her. She didn’t even flinch.

  “Who are you? Because we all know you aren’t Ovailia,” Jos said, and thankfully the woman didn’t yell or scream like the other one was still doing. She hadn’t really stopped attempting to get out of the chains since I put her in them last night.

  “Ovailia.” She spoke the name slowly, like she was having trouble getting her mouth around it. When she did speak it was in perfect English. It caught me off guard. “Is that her name? The woman I’ve been pretending to be? I never knew. I just had them all use my name. It was easier that way.”

  Ryland stiffened, Jos’s magic flaring in confusion. Hell, we were all confused, even the SSU’s assassin had stopped her ceaseless screaming to stare.

  “Oh, don’t look at me like that,” she continued, giving the woman next to her a look. “You too, Dinah, don’t you dare act like this world isn’t cutthroat. I was given a chance to live, so I took it. My name is Ivory by the way.” She grinned as she looked from the now named Dinah to Jos, her grin spreading into something so malicious that even my spine straightened. “And you are The Oheň.”

  “I’m so tired of that nickname,” Jos sighed, leaning against the footboard as she clearly played into the twisted hunger on Ivory’s face. “It’s more suited to her,” she waved a hand to me. “She actually catches on fire.”

  “It’s true.” I clicked my tongue and bounced on my heels. If I couldn't get a cool nickname, maybe I would just steal Jos’s. “I control fire.”