Out of the Shadows: Book One of the Velieri Uprising

by Tessa Van Wade

  The empty sound of a crowd whistling and cheering reverberates from the phones, but it is the shrill and uncontrollable begging and wailing from one person that hovers just above the masses. This cry contracts my skin and makes me sweat.

  Sassi and Beckah set their phones down, unable to watch to the end, yet neither will look at me when their eyes glisten from emotion.

  “Tell me,” my voice breaks.

  Yet everyone stays quiet until Arek explodes with anger and throws his phone across the room, exiting outside to the snow before another eruption.

  Peter’s phone is right next to me and I swiftly grab it out of his hands. “Don’t!” he warns while trying to retrieve it, although I won’t let him.

  Sassi leans forward, “Willow, don’t.”

  Yet the frozen video sits in the middle of the screen, so I press play. A video begins, instantly filling my ears with the same sound I heard already. The picture shakes as it passes over the shoulders of others. It changes direction this way and that, obviously being shot live and freehand. Men, women, and children are packed together so tightly they must be claustrophobic in the somewhat dark warehouse that is under construction. People chant and holler. The video pans around the room, finally landing on a man in the front of the gathering holding something in his red-covered hand. His lean muscles and tall frame is very familiar.

  “Navin,” I whisper.

  Yet it is the man, slumped in a chair, the side of his head bleeding down his neck and jeans that squeezes my lungs and makes my palms sweat. “Is that Ian?” I ask the room.

  Yet no one says anything, except Sassi with her nurturing eyes. “Willow, give it to me.”

  My cheeks are on fire, my temples sweating with panic. “Is it Ian?!” Yet the cry of the man in question answers me. Ian’s baritone groan rips my attention back to the video.

  Navin forces Ian’s hand down on to his denim leg. My stomach instantly lurches, twisting until it cramps, when Navin pulls a rusty metal nail from a nearby table. Ian is anguished and defeated. His body convulses with pain and fear, yet fatigue weakens his voice. When his head turns and I can see his face, my hand instantly covers my mouth. He no longer looks like himself. His spirit has departed. Navin lifts a hammer from the table.

  “Willow,” Sassi says sincerely.

  Tears fall down Ian’s face as he sluggishly fights Navin, who holds Ian’s hand to his thigh. Whoever is shooting the video runs close, to get every angle, the need to share whatever happens with the world—to live this moment forever.

  “Willow,” Sassi says again, this time the concern melds with stern care.

  Navin slams the hammer down and the nail disappears into both Ian’s nailbed and leg. The sound of Ian’s agony steals whatever breath I have left.

  “Willow.” Her slow voice is like palms on my cheeks, turning my eyes to hers.

  “Some things are not meant for us,” Sassi says like a mother to her child. “Give me the phone.”

  Peter puts his hand over the video, yet the torment continues in our ears.

  “It’s okay.” Sassi walks around the table and kneels with her elbows on my knees, her hands somehow turning the phone to silent with no effort. She pulls the phone from my hands and gives it to Kilon behind her. I fall into her arms. She walks me outside, yet the icy temperature feels comforting somehow. Arek is just now walking back to the cabin after escaping to the forest, his face red from rage as he shakes his hands as though they hurt.

  I run to him and our bodies crash. He wraps me so tightly that I can’t breathe, but it’s okay . . . breathing is too difficult. Perhaps he can do it for me. His cheek drops to the top of my head and I’m not sure who is shaking more.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispers.

  For the first time, I feel something different—an unfamiliar rage within me. I open my eyes, my tears collecting on Arek’s sleeve.

  “I’m ready,” I whisper. “Whatever we need to do. How do we find Ian?”

  “We don’t. We ask Leigh to help us.”

  “Will he?” I ask.

  “I don’t know. We’ll see.”

  Kilon braves the cold without a jacket and runs to us with his phone in his hand. “Diem just called. They’ve found Navin.”

  Leigh taps his pen on the cement desk in the corner of his office in a town just thirty miles from Kilon and Sassi’s cabin. None of us have slept so the minutes tick slowly by while he says nothing, although his face tells us of a thousand irritations. Briston, Kilon, Sassi, Arek, and I all stand quiet in a very warm room that smells of cigar smoke while we try desperately not to wake the beast. His stone eyes never seem to be all that different from Navin’s, and no matter the fact that Arek is his son, he makes me want to cower like a child.

  There are moments when I don’t feel sane, a bit like multiple personalities. One wants so desperately to hide, to climb within herself to ward off what I know we must do next. Yet the other has no respect for Leigh even if he is leader of the Protectors, which makes me squeeze my hands into tight fists.

  Finally, Leigh answers—his morning voice raspier than usual. “Diem knows where Navin is?”

  Kilon nods, his large hands clasped firmly in front of him. “Yes sir. They’ve been following him for days and have finally have him zeroed in.

  Stone. I believe Leigh is quite possibly made of stone. He continues, “I have orders to bring Remy in. No one can wait any longer.”

  “It can wait,” Arek says flatly.

  “Are you ready to stand in front of the Powers or the Prophets? It’s not you, son. It’s me and I must give them reason if I do not do exactly as they ask. Covey has gone to the Reds and now the Reds are threatening to pull their backing if we do not incarcerate her immediately.” Leigh lights another cigar.

  “Why not tell them you know where Navin is?”

  “He’s not the criminal they want. She is.”

  Arek laughs a joyless laugh, which is quite possibly the only thing keeping him from fighting back. “The Velieri government does not want the man who fights against everything they stand for? The man who’s created an entire rebellion against the rules they set. The man who tortures someone and sends it viral? Don’t you find that strange, Leigh? What deal do they have? How about I send the video to the Reds and show them what the son of the Leader of the Protectors is doing to one of theirs. Maybe that will get someone’s attention?”

  “You do that, son, and the Reds pull out from every contract we have with them,” Leigh says angrily.

  “That might be just what the Powers and Prophets need. No more Reds to cover up.”

  Leigh is quiet for a moment, sharing instantly by his silence that he has seen the video from the night before. He taps the end of his cigar in a glass ashtray and then stands on his stick legs, leaning as if to help a stiff back, and comes around the desk. “Prove to me you know where to find Navin.”

  Minutes later, a large map has been brought up on one of the monitors. We study it. The map is two colors, gray and a hazy yellow. Most everything is labeled with black letters on a gray background, and Kilon presses the yellow, then zooms in with two fingers. “Diem and the others have found that he’s set up business at one of the Bryers in Nepal.” Kilon pulls out his phone, connecting it to another nearby computer and in seconds there are photographs of an ancient castle set comfortably in the tree-laden woods. Men and women are coming and going through the tall ornate doors of this place. Kilon stops on one of the pictures, then stretches it wide. The man with a baseball cap and sunglasses with a phone to his ear is obviously Navin.

  Leigh swallows as he scratches his beard, but he says nothing.

  So Kilon continues, “Trying to flank from the back will nearly be impossible with the Crescent Cliffs just behind. This is the only option.” He rubs a path with his fingertip.

  “Smart mother—” Briston begins to curse but thinks better of it.

  “Why?” I ask. “Why is this place smart?”

  Arek crosses his ar
ms. “It was built seven hundred years ago as a neutral zone. It has no jurisdiction. No Epheme or Velieri, no government can claim it because of the place where it is situated, on the boundary line of the forest. No one could win the battle for it. There are several of these Bryers all over the world; they are a “no man’s land.” Criminals are free there. Protectors have no authority.”

  Sassi pleads, “Navin knows what he’s doing, Leigh.”

  “Can we go back a little?” Peter requests with a raised eyebrow. “Japha was dead—Alfonzo Geretzima and his Shadowghosts killed him years ago . . . didn’t they? Has he been here at this Bryer the whole time?”

  Kilon’s increasing tension begins at the mention of Japha’s name, just as I’d noticed before. “Nobody knows where he’s been, kid. I would have found him and killed him myself if I’d known.”

  “The man is nearly as old as Gyre. He knows what he’s doing,” Leigh states.

  “Enough to get past Geretzima and his men?” Peter clasps both hands on the top of his head.

  “Obviously,” Leigh quips.

  “Why is Japha involved in all of this?” I stare straight at Kilon when everyone else does. He uncomfortably shuffles in his stance while staring at the floor.

  “He wants what Navin wants . . . obliteration,” Briston says quietly.

  “He wants power,” Kilon’s words erupt from him like they’ve been bubbling beneath the surface for years. “He’s a sociopath. If his name is on someone’s tongue then he’s done well—good or bad.” A strange irritation manifests on his tense muscles and pulsing veins along his arm. Sassi reaches out and runs her hand along his forearm. Kilon looks at me, “Japha came to the shores of Africa when I was just a child. He took me and my family to own us.”

  “I thought you had been with me for years before the Civil War?” I ask with surprise.

  Sassi lifts an eyebrow, “Slavery happened long before the history books discuss.”

  Kilon continues, but he speaks as if the memory is still fresh and the anger drips from his tight lips, “I’d had enough. I was going to give him one more time . . . one more time to touch me before I’d kill him. But it wasn’t me. He took my sister from her bed when she was fourteen.” His memories are rising like steam from his heated body and heavy sweat. “I snapped . . . threw myself at him. It took seven of his men to pull me off him.”

  The room remains uncomfortably quiet to allow the wound in his eyes to tell the story. When it seems he won’t say anything else, suddenly he continues, “That night he killed my mom, dad, and sister to get back at me for the embarrassment I’d caused him.”

  Leigh breathes in and out with heavy frustration. Perhaps Kilon is making him feel.

  Arek takes over and I understand that the rehash of this story isn’t for my knowledge, as Leigh’s discomfort grows. “Japha did everything in his power to break the council. He used his control over people’s minds to do his bidding without them realizing it. But then Briston,” Arek finally looks at me, “found some evidence against him and kicked him off the Powers. After that, he and Navin started the Rebellion.”

  “What do you want to do, Arek?” Leigh asks with a raised brow.

  “Tomorrow we go. I’ve spoken to my brothers and Diem. I can get a group of Protectors together in Nepal, where he is.”

  “We don’t know how many Navin has,” Sassi says and looks concerned.

  Finally, Leigh relents. “Take her. I won’t help with Navin, but I’ll let you have her for one more day. If the Powers or Prophets ask, it is your neck. And they won’t take lightly to it.”

  Arek nods. “This ends, Leigh.”

  Yet Leigh laughs. “Mark my words, son . . . there will never be an end to this.”

  An hour after leaving Leigh and before we head to Nepal, I sit on the couch at the cabin in front of Arek, ready for them to teach me. “You can be in my mind with me? See everything I see?”

  “In a way. Partly because when I Trace you, I’m leading you. Right now, we’re going after a specific memory. But there will be a time soon when we’re teaching you to fight an enemy’s Tracing. It’s important to teach you how to recognize when someone is exploring your mind by confusing your spirit. Mature Velieri have learned to use anything—fear, longing, sadness—against you. Right now, I’m just going to get to that specific memory, so we won’t be here for too long.”

  Arek is on the coffee table. “Sit up,” he orders. “Look into my eyes. Listen to my breathing and try to match it. Watch . . . and listen carefully.”

  I try desperately to concentrate on Arek, but the others intently stare from the corners of the room.

  “Give us a minute,” Arek tells them.

  When they are gone, he breathes out, which makes me instinctively follow. “It’s just you and me,” he speaks softly. “Stare . . .” he points into his eyes, “right here.”

  After only a few moments, my arms begin to feel light, my chest rises. The black rim around his eyes seems to pulse, which makes me lose concentration. Soon my mind is free—detached from both the gravity of the world and a familiar internal conflict. This is something I’ve never experienced.

  I find myself floating in a world of black. The hairs on the back of my neck lift as cold surrounds me in the dark. Nerves vibrate down to my fingertips as I notice my hands bending and stretching beyond what is humanly possible. There’s pressure against my head and shoulders as if I’m on a roller coaster and my neck unnaturally elongates. Through the vast black, small specks of white begin to slow and then pick up speed.

  Or maybe it is me. Yes . . . it is me. I am now racing through the speckled black, while sounds whiz by—possibly voices, possibly nothing. There is no way to tell. The darkness seems to last longer than expected, until everything speeds up, pulling my skin away from my bones. My head jerks forward with a sudden stop. I open my eyes.

  I’m in a bedroom with stone walls and thick, large furniture. Under my feet is a mosaic floor made of tiny square tiles. There is no one else there.

  Giggles are heard from somewhere ahead. I peek out the doorway of this medieval place and I see myself as a child running through the halls. It isn’t Willow—it is Remy. She runs around Briston’s legs, laughing.

  This vision lasts only a second before my body thrusts forward into the darkness again. The sounds that had once whizzed by unrecognizable, are now voices—all inflections and tones, men and women, yet still muffled. Again, my body stretches and pulls from all angles until the stretching ends abruptly.

  Now, I stand in a thick forest alive with whistling birds, chirping crickets, and occasionally the breeze scraping branches together, while the sun shifts through the trees leaving hot designs on my skin. Just as my skin begins to pull once again, a dark-haired woman appears from behind some trees. She smiles sweetly.

  “Welcome back, Remy,” she whispers.

  “You’re his mother?” I know this . . . somehow, I know this.

  “Please tell Arek hello,” she says, but she and the forest disappear before she can continue.

  Repeatedly, I straddle reality and memory, never landing, until finally it is black again; the white specks appear more as diamonds. They disappear suddenly and my feet land on gray carpet. I wiggle my toes to grab it, then look up to find myself in a home with gray carpet and white couch and chairs.

  Yet something is off. I am there, but just fifteen feet ahead of me, Remy is there too—a second version of myself. My hair is a bit shorter than it is now, but I am still recognizable. Remy holds her shaking hand out to the side as blood drips down her skin and a knife lays at her feet. Inches from the silver weapon are someone else’s fingertips, lifeless on the carpet. I follow the hand to the body. My mother’s hair is strewn about the carpet, the space beneath her head pools with blood.

  “What did you do?!” Someone rushes in—the light in the room is so blinding that I can only make out a face contorted in panic. “What have you done?”

  My heart beats out of my chest as I
watch.

  “I don’t know,” the whisper is barely audible from Remy.

  Elizabeth falls to her knees, crying over her sister. “Lyneva!” I try to block the light from the wall of windows.

  The darkness sweeps over me again, leaving only bits of bright light and passing figures. Could be people? Could be objects? They pass so fast it is impossible to tell. Then everything stops.

  Arek sits in front of me and we are back in the cabin, yet the room is spinning. “Close your eyes until the spinning stops,” he suggests.

  “How long was I gone?”

  “A few minutes,” Arek says.

  The truth is heavy on my chest, so I rub my sternum with a strong palm. “I did it.” My voice is quiet, but what I say is loud.

  “How do you know?” he asks.

  “I saw everything.”

  “Describe it.”

  “A room with gray carpet and white furniture . . .” I can see it in his eyes, “You know the room I’m talking about?”

  “Yeah, Lyneva’s home.”

  “There is a lot of light in the house from all of the windows so when Elizabeth runs in, I can’t see her at first.”

  “Light?” he asks.

  “Yeah. The entire wall behind me is windows and I have to cover my eyes to see anything.”

  He shakes his head. “Dreams change things . . . memories don’t. Lyneva died at night.”

  Geo appears from around the corner of the room. “If I can jump in here . . .”

  “Are all of you in the hall listening?” I ask.

  One by one everyone sticks their head in the room and comes forward with a sheepish grin.

  Geo continues, “He did something.”

  “Navin?” Arek asks.

  “Possibly . . . but more than likely Japha. Gyre taught me the ability to change one’s memories and I’m not sure that Navin would have that ability yet. You must try again if things continue to change. It’ll take some time to sift through the layers,” Geo explains.

  “How will I know if it’s real?” I ask quickly.