“How is that not going to get us shut down for weeks?” Kaius hisses.
“Shh.” Jerod writes some more and underlines his words: Trust me. He grabs his tablet from its resting place against the couch.
Kaius raises his eyebrows, and I shrug.
There are a lot of people in that building. I’m not doubting that we can afford to put them all up somewhere, but I don’t see how we can get every single person out without drawing too much attention. But then I guess it doesn’t matter. We can smooth things over later. Saving everyone we can is way more important.
“Anyone want to play Boggle?” Griffin asks.
Jerod looks up from his tablet and smiles just the tiniest bit. “You would want to play Boggle.”
Griffin gives Kaius a pointed look.
Kaius shrugs. “Fine. Great. I love games I suck at.”
While Griffin sets it up, I go into the kitchen for some water. It’s barely noon. That’s plenty of time to clear out the building and lock it up. Right?
Kaius comes in and grabs a bottle of cola from the fridge. “I hate everything.”
I smile at him. “I know.”
“Just…” He sighs. “Things like this don’t happen.” He twists the top off and drains half the contents. “I need vodka.” We sip our drinks. When he’s done with his, he stretches his neck out and says, “All right. Let’s go play board games like all is peachy in the world.”
We get confirmation at a few minutes to ten that the building’s been cleared and locked in chains. No one will be allowed in until they get the green light from the building’s owner, our very own Jerod Marchett Xacharias. After that, the energy shifts in the room. Some of the strain is lifted. For everyone but me.
I wash dishes in the kitchen to clear my head while my brothers settle down in the living room for the night. Griffin leans against the entryway for a minute and watches me.
“How’s your back?”
“Better.” Barely. It no longer stings, but a deep ache throbs under my skin. I almost wonder if it’s infected. I do feel a little feverish, but that could be almost anything.
“We’ll figure something out.”
A brief grin passes over my face. “You almost sound like a broken record.”
“We will.” He comes up behind me and gently peels the bandage away from my shoulder. “That looks really bad. Are you sure you don’t want to have it looked at?”
I shake my head. “It’s fine.”
“You need stitches.”
There’s no time now. Besides, I’m not going to get stitched up, track Aric down, possibly get some bones broken, and then have to go back anyway. They can fix everything at the same time. But I don’t say any of this to Griffin. “I’ll go in the morning,” I say.
“Good.” I hold still while he changes the bandages. Then he presses a light kiss to my cheek. My eyebrows knit together, and he laughs softly. “Do you mind?”
I match his smile with one of my own. “I guess not.”
“I’m going to head to bed. I haven’t done anything all day, and I’m still worn out.” He drops his hand lightly on top of mine and traces circles on the back of my hand with his thumb. “We have time to work on this. The building is clear. Your brothers are safe.”
He doesn’t trust me. “I know,” I say.
He takes a deep breath, nods, and retreats to his room. I finish the dishes, and I’m drying my hands when Aric’s energy coils tight around me.
“You have twelve hours, Jade. Anyone I find will die if he’s not here. Anyone…”
A tremor runs through my body. His energy moves in circles around me. Angry. Starving. Boiling.
While my brothers fight over the bathroom and Griffin defuses the situation, I grab one of the notepads from the floor and tear off a sheet of paper. I hide the paper in a drawer and wipe down the counters until they’ve settled back in the living room.
“You can’t keep them safe. You know you can’t.”
I scribble out a note. Not a sorry-I’m-jumping-off-a-bridge note like Alara. An everything-the-spirit-of-the-lake-told-me kind of note. Anything they might need to know in case I piss Aric off too much and he kills me. No kids until you’re in your forties, but if you do, and there’s a girl, tell her everything, and this is where I hid the sword.
It isn’t as neat as Alara’s letter, or as eloquent, but it’ll get my point across. I’m hoping no one will be stupid enough to come after me.
I tuck the letter in my pocket and climb into bed beside Griffin. He tucks the blankets around me and then wraps his hand around mine.
I close my eyes and try to sleep, but all I see in the dark backdrop of my lids is electric green mist and David and Astrid hanging from the ceiling.
This crap ends tomorrow. I’m not living like this.
41
A Pool To Drown In
The sky is still dark when I give up on getting any sleep. I slip out of Griffin’s bed and tiptoe into the hallway. He keeps his keys on a hook at the end of the hall. I carefully take these down and pad through the living room.
My brothers sleep soundly, Jerod on the couch, Kaius on an air mattress. I take a moment to watch them and commit their peaceful faces to memory, just in case.
I slip the note I wrote them out of my pocket and leave it on the coffee table under Jerod’s phone. Again, just in case.
Then I go out into the frosty, early morning air, as quietly as I can, and head for the office.
The building is the darkest I’ve ever seen it. Not a single light shines in any window, making the steel skyscraper look almost haunted. I park Griffin’s car in the back of the building and go in through the utility door.
The eerie blue lights cut on as I make my way down the hallways and tunnels. Aric’s energy stirs underground, pacing and bristling.
What am I going to do? I don’t think simply throwing the sword at him is going to work. He’s not going to just stand there and let it touch him. I enter the cave. Aric stands where he always does, by the reconstructed stone slab.
“I’ve had a lot of time to think,” he says.
“And?”
“I have approached you all wrong.”
I frown.
“I’ve come to realize that you are willing to put yourself into a great deal of danger for those boys. You aren’t like your ancestors. You aren’t like a normal person. In my time, if I treated someone the way I’ve treated you, they would be terrified and heel. But here you are, without a weapon to speak of, confronting me after I’ve injured you. Fearless.”
Crazy is more like it. It runs in the family. But I’m not falling for this act. I keep my guard up. He’s playing some kind of game with me, and it scares me that I don’t know what it is.
He takes a deep breath. “I must apologize for hurting you before. Because of my actions, you have put me in a very uncompromising position and left me with little choice. You’ve had the building evacuated. Taken all of my bargaining chips.”
I don’t know what to say, so I start inching my way towards the corner where the sword is hidden. If he vanishes into a puff of smoke, it’s over. I’ll have to take him by surprise. Somehow.
“I was planning on using physical force against you, knocking you unconscious,” he continues, mirroring my movements. “But that doesn’t work against you, does it? So then I thought, what better punishment for a stubborn girl, than to terrify her?”
His voice chills me. But I keep moving.
“What are you scared of, Jade? Snakes?” A coiled wisp of green smoke rises from his fingers, stretches towards me, and hisses, fangs bared. “Spiders?” Dozens of large, smoky spiders scamper down the walls. “Or is it something more mundane, like geese?” Green, wispy feathers dance and float around my face. He nods at the silver door, and it slams shut. The force of it shakes the room and sends random articles of treasure scattering to the floor.
Does he think I’m claustrophobic? I’ve never thought about it, but now that I do, I migh
t be. My throat closes up just thinking about being trapped in this room.
“Are you scared of rats, Jade? Disease?” Transparent rats leap across the floor and dart between my legs.
I step through them and reach the corner of the room.
“No. You know what I think you’re afraid of? Failure.”
Another thing I haven’t thought of.
He steps forward. “You think I don’t know that Excalibur is in this room?
My hands curl into fists. Of course he does. Some of my reckless bravado is fading, but I keep my face as blank as I can.
He clicks his tongue. “I can smell it, Jade. The vibrations of it fill this whole building. What did you think you were going to do? Charge at me?” He shakes his head. “Jade, Jade, Jade. You knew that wasn’t going to work. And yet, you walked in here anyway. Brave, fearless Jade.” He closes the distance between us and takes my chin in his hand, gently. He lifts my face until I’m looking into his eyes. “You think they won’t come for you. But if you go missing they will.”
He sees the brief spark of fear in my eyes and smiles. “All the women in this family are always so beautiful.” He releases my chin and brushes his knuckles against my cheek. “Such good genes you have.” He takes a step back. “I thought about keeping you locked in this room until they came for you, always on the brink of starvation. You’d think, after centuries of imprisonment, that I’d be a more patient entity, but you see, I have never been patient. Not as a youth. Not while I wasted away. Not now.” He closes his eyes and breathes deep.
The surface of his skin wavers in a rather grotesque way that forces me to avert my eyes. It’s like hundreds of bugs of various sizes are crawling and scurrying under his skin. I shudder and wrap my hands around my arms.
“What else are you afraid of, Jade? Besides failure?” He speaks in my voice.
Confusion hits me first. Then realization. I force my eyes back to where he’s standing and see myself instead.
“Knowing that you’re afraid of failure was easy,” he says, smirking at me with my lips, satisfaction glinting in my eyes. “The menial job. The lack of fight in you when it came to your father. Your unnaturally high tolerance for suffering.” He steps in close to me and trails his hand over my braid. “Your loneliness. Someone of your upbringing should never be lonely. One would think that you’d at least get a dog or something. Yet, there you are. Alone. Suffering. Needlessly.” He smiles at me and his voice, my voice, slows to a crawl. “It all makes sense.” My own voice hisses around me, and his smile broadens. “Can’t fail if you don’t try. So the very fact that you stepped inside these walls at this gross hour in the morning…you must be truly desperate.” He carefully unbraids my hair and fluffs it out around my shoulders. “You should wear your hair down more. It’s pretty.” Then he gives me a bit of space and paces back and forth in front of me.
I doubt very much that I can reach the sword without him noticing. If I go for it, he’ll most likely toss me across the room.
He stops pacing and stares at me. “We don’t like water, do we, Jade?”
Trickling echoes throughout the room. Confusion buzzes in the back of my brain.
“I know what you had to do to get that sword. You braved the icy lake because you wanted to save your family. That got me thinking.” He walks into the center of the room, light and happy on my feet. “There are many ways to physically hurt you. Yet, there are so many other kinds of pain. And you know that all too well, don’t you, dear Jade?”
Something weighs heavy in my gut. Fear. Anxiety.
“You see, I thought I had to break you somehow. Scare you. Beat you. But I don’t have to do any of that. To get what I want, I just need to delay you long enough. You’ll have nothing left. Then you’ll come with me. And we will burn the world together.”
I start to shake my head, and he laughs. Looking at myself, hearing my laughter…it’s unsettling. And wrong.
“You’ll come to enjoy it. You’re dark, Jade. You’ll give into it soon enough. You’ll never be more free.”
The sound of rushing water grows louder.
“Morgan Le Fey thought she was so smart, didn’t she,” he continues. “I can’t kill you, Jade, but fear of death isn’t the only way to control people. You care about your brothers. You fear for their lives. That’s a weakness, and our weaknesses limit our options. After all, what other choice did you have? You confront me, or you run forever.”
Something cold and wet seeps into my shoes. And that’s when I notice that water is leaking into the room through the cracks in the walls.
“I may be tied to you, but you don’t control me. And fortunately for me, your abilities are stunted and far inferior to not only my own, but those of every single woman who’s come before you. I will help make you strong, because it will suit me. But that will come later, when you’ve heeled to my cause.” He holds out his hand, and a cell phone appears in his palm.
I have no idea whose it is. I left mine in the car.
He holds it up for me to see. “Don’t recognize your own phone?”
Panic tightens around my throat. I parked too close to the building. It didn’t even cross my mind.
He makes a call and puts it on speaker so I can hear.
Kaius answers, sounding tired and angry. “Where the hell are you?”
“I went to the office,” says a distressed version of my voice. “He locked me under the building and the room is filling up with water. Help me, please!”
“What is it?” Jerod’s voice asks in the background.
“Jade’s trapped. It sounds really bad.”
“No! Kaius! Don’t listen to that!” I run across the room, and water sloshes around my feet.
Aric ends the call and drops my phone into the rapidly rising pool. “Have fun.” He dissolves into green micro particles and filters out through the silver door.
42
Radioactive
I recover my phone and try to call Kaius back, but the unit is burnt from the inside out. I scream and throw the useless device against the wall. The screen shatters against the stone and plops into water that’s now up around my knees.
I run my hands through my hair and tie the waves into a knot behind my head. “Okay.” I take in a deep, shaky breath. “Think.”
Dread fills my lungs, forcing my breath in and out more rapidly. “Think!”
I splash through the water to the silver door, and push at it. It does nothing, of course.
Water pours in from everywhere now. It cascades from the top of the wall and rushes in from the bottom.
The lights running along the floor and flicker and go out, leaving everything under the water murky and invisible. I press my hands against the door again as water swirls around my hips. The door swings inward, right? I pull at it with my mind, and that also does nothing. I scream and beat my fists against the shining surface.
Water tickles my ribs.
Excalibur.
It’s my own voice in my head, but for a moment it sounds like the spirit of the lake’s.
I reach my hands into the water and concentrate on finding the sword’s energy. The moment I find it, the hilt flies straight into my grasp. I hold it with both hands and slam it into the seam along the door.
The silver veneer cracks. My feet leave the floor as water rises higher. I slam the sword into the stone again. And again. And again. Until my arms and shoulders burn from the effort, and I have to kick harder to stay afloat. But the cracks run deeper, so I keep hitting the door, ignoring how close my head is drifting to the ceiling.
The silver stone crumbles without warning and sends me spiraling out into the tunnels on a wave. I lose my grip on the sword as the force of the water knocks me into the walls. Pain rattles my bones, and water fills my mouth as I cry out. As it water carries me higher, the current lessens, and I’m able to paddle to dry ground.
Once I’m completely out of the water, I cough up the liquid I swallowed and take a few seconds to calm my
breath. I call for Excalibur again. It shoots out of the water and clatters to my side. There’s a chip near the tip and fresh scratches on the surface, but it’s otherwise unscathed. I drag myself to my feet and focus on finding Aric. He isn’t far.
I take the utility elevator up and stop three floors under the office level. From here, I take the stairs. I can’t hide from him. I don’t know what I’m thinking. I reach the office floor and carefully peek into the darkened hall.
His radioactive energy coats the air like a toxic gas.
“Jade!” Kaius’s voice shouts from the lobby.
“Idiot,” I mutter. I ease through the door and tighten my hold on the sword.
“Jade?”
“What’s wrong?” I hear myself say.
“You said…”
“Why are you here?” Fear laces my voice. “You have to get out of here now!”
The urge to move faster is strong, but I keep my steps slow and quiet.
“Well, let’s go!”
I peer around the corner. Aric’s back is to me, and the only light comes from the inside of the elevator. Kaius stands in front of it, ready to bolt.
“Jade, come on.” He reaches for Aric, who leans away from his grasp.
“You really do care about me, huh?”
“What’s going on?” Kaius sounds unsure of himself, and confusion lines his face. I look like me, but I’m not acting like me. He has no reason to believe that’s not me, though.
“Where’s Jerod?” Aric asks.
“It’s just me.”
“Wow, look at you. The little hero. Why didn’t he try to stop you?”
“He did.” Kaius narrows his eyes. “Why are you acting so strange?”
“You know Merlin is going to kill you.” Aric lowers my voice. “He could be anywhere.”
Kaius shakes his head and backs away. “He was right. This was a mistake. You’re not Jade.”
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