Ripper (The Morphid Chronicles Book 2)

by Ingrid Seymour

  “I wonder what’s a good name for ‘impolite’ or ‘ill-mannered,’” Joao mused.

  Calisto pursed her lips and regarded Ashby with interest. “He looks familiar,” she said, talking as if he weren’t there.

  Tired of standing there for inspection, Ashby rekindled his decision to leave and look for Portos or his Uncle. “Sorry, I was just leaving.” He knew he was being rude, but he had no time for empty civilities.

  “Wait,” Calisto said, taking a step forward. “Aren’t you the Regent’s son?”

  Mid-step, Ashby hesitated for a split second, then decided it was best to press forward and act like he hadn’t heard the question.

  “Ashby Rothblade,” Calisto said his name as if she’d just discovered a mass murderer. “I met you once.”

  This time, Ashby stopped and angled his shoulders in Calisto’s direction. Her eyebrows were knitted over her crystalline eyes. From the looks of it, that first impression of him had been as bad as the second one. He was about to excuse himself again, but Joao cut him off.

  “What the bloody hell is he doing here?” He set his drink down so forcefully that water jumped out of the bottle and splashed onto the floor.

  Clearly, Ashby was persona non grata in this place.

  “Joao,” Calisto said as a warning, shaking her head.

  It seemed the bloke was rash, just like someone else Ashby knew. He cringed at the memory of Greg and all he’d stolen from him.

  “He didn’t just happen to stumble into our kitchen, none of them do,” Calisto told her brother with a sigh, then to Ashby, “Who brought you here, to our house?”

  “Your house?” Ashby asked dumbly.

  “Yes, our house, mate!” Joao said. “We have enough random people popping in and out of here as it is. Now we also have to put up with the likes of you?”

  “It’s Mother’s decision,” Calisto said in a tired tone. This clearly was not a new conversation.

  “We live here, too. Why doesn’t she take them elsewhere? There are other places.”

  “Maybe you should hold your tongue, Joao.” Calisto gave Ashby a sideways glance as if to suggest enough had already been said.

  “I came with Portos and my uncle.” Ashby spoke calmly, though it took great effort to keep his composure. “I wouldn’t say I’m here against my will, but I certainly didn’t expect to be taken to a place where my presence is of . . . displeasure to anyone. I would very gladly be on my way once I can find my friends.”

  “Friends? So there are more?” Joao cursed under his breath. “I don’t know about you, Cal, but I’m going to talk to Mãe about this, and if that doesn’t work, I’ll call Pai.”

  Joao had just taken his first step forward when Portos came into the kitchen, followed by Uncle Bernard and a woman Ashby had never seen. The newcomer wore a form-fitting gray jumper and looked to be in her late forties. Her gaze immediately landed on Ashby, and it was certainly not friendly. Something else that didn’t escape him: the intense green color of her eyes that, by now, was starting to feel more familiar and unmistakable than he would have liked.

  “I see you’ve met my son and daughter,” she said in a moderate Portuguese accent. “My name is Luana Mirante. Welcome to my home.”

  Chapter 17 -Sam

  Even though she fought them, the force of Sam’s Morphid impulses pulled her closer and closer toward the condemned, homeless woman who sat on her cot, despondent and oblivious to anyone around her.

  Sam took one impossible step after another, her legs trembling, trapped by her same indecision. She resisted all the way there but, as she came close enough, her legs gave out, and she fell to her knees.

  “Sam!” Greg called out.

  “What the hell is going on? Let me through. You kids are in a heap of trouble. This is trespassing,” Mateo said in an agitated tone.

  Subdued to a kneeling position, Sam realized that fighting these impulses was taking her nowhere. This was going to happen, whether she wanted it or not.

  You can erase her pain. You just have to be strong, her Morphid side said.

  Be strong!

  She had to think of later. Now was not important. After she helped this lost soul, everything would be alright. The pain would be erased.

  Sam swallowed, looked up to catch the woman’s eye. “I’m going to help you.” Her words carried more conviction than she actually felt.

  Nothing. No reaction at all.

  “What’s her name?” Greg demanded of Mateo.

  The man gave a growl in response.

  “What. Is. Her. Name?” Greg repeated. Another scuffle followed.

  “Elizabeth, I think,” Mateo finally said, the edge of fear marking his words.

  At the sound of the name, the woman blinked. “Elizbe,” she said in a barely audible, unintelligible voice. Her eyes met Sam’s for a moment before settling back down on the floor.

  Elizabeth was as good a guess as any.

  “I’m going to help you, Elizabeth. It won’t hurt.”

  I think.

  It didn’t seem to have hurt Bernard.

  “Help,” the woman murmured. Her eyes moved from side to side, trying to focus, but failing.

  Gentleness wasn’t necessary, Sam knew, but the suffering emanating from the woman was so vast that there really was no other way to do this. Slowly, Sam took Elizabeth’s hand. As she squeezed it, a jolt ran up her arm and the great pain she’d only glimpsed revealed its real magnitude.

  Sam gasped as the agony revealed itself and its true depth. There were years upon years of pain, loneliness, emptiness. There was a whimper and it took Sam a moment to realize it was her own. Her eyes had closed. She forced them open. Focusing on her breath, making each one count, she allowed her eyes to narrow.

  Elizabeth’s vinculum materialized. It floated above her head, languid and pale. Sam narrowed her gaze a little tighter. Something was wrong with her eyes, or maybe it was the light in the room. Whatever it was, Elizabeth’s link to her Integral looked . . . muffled. Not brilliant like Sam’s own link to Greg looked, or subdued the way her broken link to Ashby did. But ghostly.

  Had Bernard’s severed link looked like this? Sam couldn’t remember. She didn’t think so, but sometimes it was hard to recall those events, as if her mind were trying to block them to spare her the brunt of the many painful memories forged that day.

  Perhaps the broken vinculums faded with time. That was Sam’s best guess. Whatever the reason, it didn’t matter now. It was time to help this poor soul.

  Armed with only her instincts, Sam let go of Elizabeth’s hand and, in one swift motion, took hold of the broken vinculum above her head. With one half of the link properly secured, Sam reached upward with her other hand and beckoned with her fingers for the missing other half.

  None came.

  A feeling of wrongness filled Sam’s chest. Her breaths came short. Something was different.

  In her trance, she beckoned again, just the way she remembered doing with Bernard. There had been a great brilliance that day, a miracle that everyone there had experienced—not only Sam. Greg had seen it, too. He said it’d hurt his eyes with its intensity. But there was no brilliance tonight, and something told her there wouldn’t be.

  She beckoned again, curling her fingers one at a time, pouring all her will into the request.

  Nothing.

  The other half of the vinculum didn’t materialize.

  It just . . . wasn’t there.

  “No!” The word escaped her lips in a hot breath. She refused to believe it.

  This woman couldn’t be allowed to continue living this way. Death was preferable to this misery. Sam had to do something to fix it, but what?

  Oh, God.

  She beckoned again and again, even against the gut-wrenching certainty that she was wasting her time. Her chest felt at the verge of imploding as she fought to comprehend this wrongness, this failure to find the missing piece.

  Just stop. Stop!

  Her beckoning
fingers froze.

  It’s useless.

  She knew it was true. The other half of the link was . . . unreachable?

  Yes, maybe that’s it.

  Sam wanted to believe this explanation, but that wasn’t it, was it?

  Stop thinking.

  Thinking was getting in the way. Her instincts needed to be in charge, if she was to figure out this problem.

  She took a shuddering, deep breath, and pushed all thoughts aside. As her mind cleared, her movements became involuntary, like breathing or blinking.

  Elizabeth’s presence sharpened, and Sam could see the woman in her mind, her sad face framed by tangled hair. Gray had started to appear at her temples, even though she wasn’t old enough for that. A part of Elizabeth desperately quested out, searching for something that wasn’t there. Sam felt the erratic, unrelenting probing. The search was exhausting, yet that part of Elizabeth had no choice but to keep on looking, even when the rest of her being knew it was hopeless.

  But all wasn’t lost. No.

  Sam knew just what to do. Her hands held the key and they moved like butterflies through the air, soothing Elizabeth’s broken link, holding it gently and coaxing it into stillness. The faint ribbon of light was in Sam’s hands. It lapped at the air, weakly trying to get away, until some innate muscle memory in her fingers played over the surface of the vinculum and made it go still.

  With confidence, the way her hands moved when she handled utensils in the kitchen, Sam began to pluck the strands that made up the ribbon of light. She touched them one by one and, as she did so, she felt a slight surge of energy in her fingertips. There should have been more, like the electrifying power she’d felt when she held Bernard’s link to Roanna’s, but this was weak.

  As if aware of what Sam was trying to do, the vinculum offered some resistance, just enough to be felt and to make Sam question her actions. But she wasn’t truly in charge anymore and the only thing to do in a situation like this—her Morphid side informed her—was extinguish what little energy and life Elizabeth’s vinculum still held, so she could stop searching and find peace.

  What?! No! She’ll die.

  Sam fought against this knowledge, against the instincts that had proposed such horrible solution. But it was useless. She had relinquished all power, and even if her actions seemed inexcusable in her mind, her Morphid self unapologetically went on with them.

  Chapter 18 - Sam

  For a moment, it seemed like the most natural thing to do, the only thing to do. While the moment lasted, Sam’s fingers danced down the length of the severed link, ending the feeble life that each thread still held. It didn’t take long to put an end to the husk of what once had been a powerful connection between two beings.

  Like an expert chef handling the most expensive delicacy, Sam’s hands progressed from the vinculum’s dangling end to the top of Elizabeth’s head. With every inch her hands covered, the link grew shorter. To anyone, it might have looked as if Sam were reeling in a severed ribbon, like a fisherman bringing his line back in. But that couldn’t have been further from the truth. The line wasn’t being stored away to be brought back out later. No, the line was becoming shorter, burned away by Sam’s touch, a dynamite fuse wasting away as the flame got nearer to its destination.

  It all ended when Sam finally laid her hands on Elizabeth’s head and touched her wiry hair. Trembling, Sam pushed away. Her eyelids were fluttering. Flashes of white blinked before her eyes. Someone was screaming and someone else was calling her name. Sam tried to stand but stumbled backward.

  “I got you.” Greg caught her and eased her down to the floor.

  Sam pressed her hands against her ears to keep the awful, shrill sounds out of her head.

  “What did she do?” Mateo demanded. “Elizabeth, Elizabeth! Are you all right?”

  Mateo was kneeling next to the woman. She had fallen off the cot and now lay on the floor, shrieking and twisting. Her head was thrown back, her back bent in an unnatural angle.

  Sam’s heart pounded at the sight. Elizabeth looked like someone possessed by a demon.

  “Please, stop. You’ll hurt yourself,” Mateo pleaded and tried to hold her still. His dark eyes flashed accusingly in Sam’s direction. “What did you do to her? Make it stop.”

  Sam shook her head, her thoughts a muddy whirlpool. What had she done? Her actions made no sense, even in her own mind. She couldn’t yet explain what’d just happened, even if her own hands had done it.

  “Oh, my God,” she murmured in an eerie, guilty breath.

  What did I do? What did I do?!

  Sam tried to sit, a hand outstretched toward Elizabeth. Mateo gave her a murderous look that made his message very clear. “Don’t you dare touch her again,” his eyes said.

  “Greg.” Sam looked up at him as if he could fix what she’d done.

  He knelt next to her. “Are you okay?” His eyes were full of concern for her only.

  Sam couldn’t answer. Her mouth was dry, her throat closing in by the second. Weakness spread through her like a long dress slipping over her head, then falling all the way down to her feet. She wanted to stay, to help Elizabeth. But she’d tried, hadn’t she? And she had failed, and now the poor woman was going crazier than she’d been before. She could even be dying.

  “Hey, hey, Sam look at me,” Greg was saying. His hands came to her cheeks. He slapped her gently. She blinked. Greg was a blur and so were Mateo and Elizabeth.

  The woman’s shrieks seemed to move away, stretching, stretching into the distance. Sam’s world went black. She fell into Greg who cradled her against his chest, calling her name. She heard his worried voice for what felt like a long time before all her senses left her.

  Chapter 19 - Brooke

  Brooke’s head was pounding, but that didn’t stop her from raising her voice to ear-piercing decibels. “You, you, you,” she repeated over and over, searching for a curse word. Perry had placed his hands on both sides of her head, had murmured something and, next thing she knew, a bucketful of messed up memories washed over her like a mudslide in a third world country. “You, you!” She pointed an accusing finger at him.

  He didn’t look the least bit intimidated, but he should have. Oh, he should, because she felt like gouging his eyes out, then putting them in a blender. And, even if it would be gross and messy, she would enjoy it.

  “What is wrong with you people?” Brooke demanded. “What do you think gives you the right to mess with my head?” An image of pre-metamorphosis Sam kept popping into her head, even though she’d pushed it away several times. Her short, pudgy friend had turned into a super model because, according to these freaks, she’d gone into stasis for two weeks—or wait, didn’t “stasis” mean to be changeless? Whatever! The thing was that she’d supposedly rolled herself into a cocoon like a freaking caterpillar, and had come out gorgeous on the other end. Not that Brooke was jealous but . . . what the hell?! That wasn’t just crazy, it was unfair.

  “What my nephew did was wrong,” Roanna said, walking closer to Brooke. She had retreated to a corner of the room as far from the crazy people as she could.

  “Wrong? It should be a crime. Tell him to stay the hell away from me.” Brooke shot Perry her death-will-find-you look, one she’d mastered in sixth grade.

  “Just to be clear,” Perry said. “I’m not her nephew, or her subject.” He gestured toward Roanna. “I was just following orders. When Ashby bids me to do something, I’m sworn to comply.” He wore a satisfied grin that let Brooke know he’d had no scruples following Ashby’s order.

  Lamest excuse of lame excuses! Brooke gave him the finger.

  “That is quite true,” Roanna said, ignoring her raised middle digit. “Ashby, my nephew, gave the order. Portos has explained everything to me. All that happened after Ashby met Sam—as wrong as it may seem—was done to protect her. Think what you or her adoptive family would have done when she went missing. The police, the authorities would have gotten involved, and that would have caused a
lot of trouble. It was the only way to keep her metamorphosis a secret, to keep her safe while she went through that very delicate change.”

  Brooke could only imagine what “the authorities” would do if they found a person inside a cocoon. It would be like E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial where those crazy scientists capture Elliott and E.T. to study the creature and its mental link with the boy, ignoring all their rights, alien and human alike.

  “I guess,” Brooke mumbled reluctantly. “Still, if I had known. I could have helped.”

  “You can’t blame us for that,” Perry said. “It wasn’t our job to tell you. I guess Sam didn’t trust you enough.”

  The bastard! He was putting salt on the wound and pressing hard on it.

  “Brooke, please, we’re wasting time,” Roanna said. “My daughter isn’t safe. Ashby’s mother wants to kill her. Samantha can undo so much of the damage Danata’s done, so she is too great a threat to her Regency. We need you to help us. If you know where Sam went, you have to tell us.”

  Hugging her middle, Brooke walked to the bed and sat down. “You’re wasting your time. I don’t know where she is. The last time I saw her, she was in my room with Greg.”

  Perry lifted an eyebrow and shifted from one foot to the other. “That doesn’t bode well for Ashby.”

  “That situation isn’t important at the moment,” Roanna said.

  “If you say so.” Perry rubbed his nose.

  “What situation?” Brooke demanded.

  “It’s complicated,” Roanna said.

  “To say the least,” Perry put in.

  Roanna sighed and turned to the Sorcerer. “You may go, Perry. Thank you for your help.”

  He seemed about to protest, but one look from Roanna seemed to erase all traces of defiance. The woman had an air of command that was hard to ignore, even if she also seemed gentle and very patient.

  To Brooke’s surprise, Perry straightened, putting his feet together like a soldier in front of his general. He bowed respectfully and left the room without a word. After his departure, Brooke looked from the door back to Roanna, intrigued by Perry’s attitude. He seemed too much of a smartass to walk out without saying something obnoxious, much less to actually leave in such a respectful, quiet way.