She was beautiful.
With the sun wholly evicting night, he drew in the morning air.
And a full-blown wave of dark energy.
He doubled over.
“Meda,” he croaked.
And the cobwebs slammed into him again.
He fell to his knees.
Leaping from the ground, she raced to his side. “Dev.” She grabbed his arm, frantic. “Betrayers. Where are they?” She craned her neck, scanning the area.
“I don’t know,” he sputtered. “They’re using the Similitude. Draining me.” Someone else might’ve been speaking the words. His vision blurred and he fought the onslaught of dark energy. Terror gripped him with steely jaws, plunging him into a past ages old, and a future raw and replete with unknowns.
And struck him down even faster than last time.
From the corner of his eye, he caught a flicker of movement. Behind the motel.
Not far from their room.
A woman lurched around the corner, then stopped dead about ten yards away. Her dreadlocks, dirty and blond, swung in time with her steps.
Clutching Meda’s arm, Dev staggered to his feet. Locking eyes with the woman, he memorized her face through the haze settling over him. Pale, drawn. Young. Maybe early twenties.
She clutched a stone at the base of her throat.
Similitude.
Not black.
Clear.
Like before.
No! Never again.
Palming the stone around his own neck, Dev drew on its energy. Swaying, he stared down his enemy. No matter, that she was a woman. Or he outweighed her three times over. Betrayers came in all shapes and sizes. Like a blade on a whetstone, sweat keened his scalp, his armpits, his back. Cold howled around his edges like winter, demanding entry.
“Get the hell out of here!” Meda barked at the Betrayer.
Gasping, the woman fixed her eyes on Dev’s. Her stone darkened to black.
And the cobwebs dissipated.
What the hell?
Still reeling from the drain, he gulped in air like a drowning man resurfacing.
“Over here!” A man’s voice rang out in the distance.
His eyes darting right then left, Dev struggled to locate its origin. “Not this time,” he growled. Heaving himself to his feet, he lurched forward, charging the Betrayer. Caught the fear and defiance flashing in her eyes. Right before he shoved with both hands. Grunting, she tumbled to the ground.
Her stone once again shone, bright and clear.
His focus dimming, Dev dropped to his knees, the grass wet and cold against his bare skin. Again he heaved himself upright. Wavered. Crumpled.
Meda grabbed his arm, pulled him back, fear twisting her expression. “No!” she shouted. “Dev. No.”
He tried shrugging her off, instead pitching forward, and fell.
The woman stumbled as she tried to run, hung onto a tree for balance, then staggered some more, managing a few more steps.
Raking at the ground, Dev yanked out clumps of grass as he clawed at the dirt. His vision grayed. “Dammit! She’s getting away.”
“Let her go!” Meda shouted. “You can’t even stand.”
Squatting beside him, she clutched his back and arm, steadying him.
A man darted from behind a cluster of maple trees, ran to Dreadlocks. Thrusting an arm around her waist, they dogged it to the side road bordering the highway. Gathering her in his arms, he deposited her in the front seat of a beat up Chevy and lit out into the July day.
“Shit!” Dev snarled, sagging to one side. The Betrayer had escaped. Whoever she was. And he’d been powerless to stop her.
Meda laid a hand over his forehead, her fingers cool, comforting. “Are you all right?” she asked, her voice tight.
Fury and fear, born of a lifetime and the last eighty plus days, coursed through him. He coughed, fatigue steamrolling over him. “Yeah.” Leaning on the ground with one hand for balance, he spat. I hate that she’s seeing me like this.
The Betrayers were here. Right next to her. And he wouldn’t have been able to protect her. The grass grazed his shoulder blades, stuck to his bare skin. Heaving a breath, he lay still, acutely aware of her presence beside him.
Where he wanted her to belong.
“It’s my fault,” Meda lamented. “I needed a piece of my life to be normal. I needed to get out of that room. To meditate for a short while. I thought it would be safe. That even if I felt the cobwebs I could get to you. If I wouldn’t have been out here, you wouldn’t have come looking for me.”
“Meda.” His breathing labored, he squinted at her in the brightening day. “They would’ve found me no matter what.”
Channeling his energy through his Vitality stone, he recovered by degrees. He could do the same with Meda’s Vitality energy, but he was too weak right now. For his sake as well as her own, he’d have to teach her immediately. Having an ability like she did, he had no way of knowing how it might continue to affect her.
Dear gods. Everything had changed, in an instant. The story of my life. He had to figure the possibilities, the consequences swimming in his brain. For now all he could do was lie here and recover. Five minutes passed. Or was it longer?
How could he have once again been rendered so helpless, been caught so unaware?
He hadn’t forgotten. Not one second of the way it felt to have his control, his life, everything that mattered, stolen.
Revenge would be swift and cold. He’d find a way to exact it without jeopardizing the clan, or the woman by his side. Or he’d die trying.
Again.
By degrees, clarity returned. Dreadlocks had used Similitude to drain him. She’d stopped. Why? And how was it that a Betrayer was using the Similitude at all? Was this an isolated incident? He pounded the grass with his fist. Was their aim to weaken him, instead of kill him? None of it made sense. Was he some kind of test, or simply too big a prize to pass up?
He’d been so sure—Nick, too—that the Betrayers wouldn’t try draining them. That they didn’t know Libby was the only weapon in their arsenal against the Similitude. That’d held true for the last three months.
Until today.
Like a runaway train. Crossing realms, meeting Meda and now, under attack by Betrayers. Only days remained for him to find the answers the clan so desperately needed. And all he had to show so far for his trouble was more questions he couldn’t answer, and more problems he couldn’t solve.
His blood thrumming, Dev propped himself up on an elbow, still fighting the mind-muddling lingering effects of the drain.
How was it possible he hadn’t felt the cobwebs before now? He’d sensed them last night. So did Meda. Then nothing. Had the Betrayers left, and returned?
Another possibility occurred to him. Fear burrowed into his gut.
What if they never left at all, and spent the night, feet from where he and Meda had slept?
If that were true . . .
They had to get out of here. Immediately.
“Meda.” Sitting, he turned to her.
And a fresh wave of fear blindsided him.
She knelt beside him, her face stark, pale, her eyes wide, glassy. In one hand she clutched the Similitude stone that had been in his jeans pocket.
“It’s cold,” she said in a shaky voice. “So cold.”
CHAPTER 14
“Meda.” Dev’s voice reached her from far away. “Let go of the stone.”
Obeying, she let it fall from her fingers and sat back, all the ravages of war resounding in her brain and her body, bruising her soul. Shouts. Anger. Hatred. Pain. Betrayal. Fear. “The Rebellion you told me about.” Sucking in a breath, she shuddered. “I saw it.” She swallowed. “Heard it. Felt that dark
energy.”
Dev massaged her fingers. His warmth, his touch worked through a cold she’d never known before, chilling her from the inside out.
“Meda.” He met her eyes, his dark, intent on hers, and spoke slowly. “You must’ve been getting impressions from the energy traces on the stones. From what its former owners left behind. Have you ever been able to do that before? From other objects?”
“No. But the stones aren’t mere objects.” Shaking, she tried to stand. Her legs wouldn’t let her. He pulled her close. She groaned. “I’m so tired. I feel . . .”
“Drained. That’s what dark energy does,” he spat out. “As you’ve seen.”
The bitterness in his voice cut her. “It makes sense, right? If the Vitality stone is ramping up my ability, it only makes sense I’d feel the effects of Similitude too, right?”
Needing reassurance, she knelt, then laid her palms on the nearby picnic table—something that would retain energy traces. She focused. Waited. No impressions. “Thank God.” Sighing in relief, she fought the fatigue, even as her mind raced.
“Hold your Vitality stone,” he directed.
She did as he said. Nothing. “Why can’t I get impressions from it the way I did the Similitude?”
“That stone has had one owner. You. Beyond that, I don’t know. Because you’re human.” Dev threw a hand in the air. “Because you’re weakened. Untrained.”
Dread chugged through her like a train rolling into the station. The same dread that’d driven her outside to meditate. And yet, the seeds of clarity, of acceptance that’d taken root last night, sprouted. Their conversation about her ability echoed in her mind. “It’s not my father’s research alone, is it? My ability is, without a doubt, why the Watchers sent you to find me.” She touched his arm. “You said you wouldn’t force me to use it. I don’t have a choice, do I?”
“Damn them,” he muttered. “And look what it’s done to you.” He set his jaw. “I swear I didn’t know.”
“Okay, I believe you. What now?”
Hesitating for a moment, he pulled her next to him and brushed his lips over hers. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Gabriel. Kissing. Intimate contact. It’s a quick way to impart energy. Not that I’ve got much to give right now. But that ought to help.”
Warmth filled her, seeping past that ache in her. How could a kiss from Dev Geary do anything but? Energy or no, she’d take it. God help her. “You didn’t tell me that last night.”
“I’m telling you now. There’s a lot we still have to talk about. We have to get back to the city. That Betrayer. She was right there.” He pointed. “Behind our room.”
“By the open window.” Realization slammed into her. “She could’ve been there all night.”
“We have to assume she heard everything we said.” His expression turned grim. “Which means she now knows how Libby was able to stop Haenus. And they know it’s not something Keepers are able to do.”
The clan’s worst fear. “There’ll be nothing to prevent them from freely draining the Keepers,” she said, her voice thin.
“Not if I have anything to say about it,” Dev snapped. “I don’t understand Dreadlocks. She didn’t finish the job. In fact, she looked as sick as I was.”
He was right. Dreadlocks had looked sick. And still, Dev had gone after her. Meda remembered the glint in his eyes. Murderous. But now wasn’t the time to question.
“I have some ideas about what the Betrayers might be doing, but the one thing I know for sure is we need to get back to the network. With dark energy, it’s different. It’s not like the gunshot, inflicted by a human. For this, I need the others’ Vitality energy to heal.”
“What if we run into the Betrayers again before we get there?” Meda forced herself to breathe. “We won’t feel the foreboding, or the cobwebs?”
“We might. Then again, we might not.” His mouth set in a grim line and she knew he’d been thinking the same. “Let’s move.”
CHAPTER 15
Abel fastened the top button of his wool coat and straightened the sleeves of his sweater around his wrists. The fluorescent light cast shadows in the damp and dark of the fallout shelter beneath the streets of the North Side.
Jordan lay in one of those shadows, on a cot in the common area, limp and pale, one of her dreadlocks pasted across her cheek. A train rumbled overhead, drowning out her moan. From beneath a thin sheet, her toes stuck out, one foot clad in a black Converse sneaker, the other bare and dirty.
Kneeling beside her, Magpie lifted her head and held a cup of water to her lips.
Crack skinny, ghost white, the girl looked like hell. Frankly, he was surprised Jordan wasn’t already dead. He met Magpie’s eyes, noted her brow creased with worry, and left the question unasked.
By all rights, she should’ve been, using the Similitude the way he’d shown her to go undetected under the Keepers’ radar. And from the onslaught of Vitality energy. Still she lived.
It’d been quicker, easier with her father. But then, he’d never been a fighter.
Nodding a silent assurance to Magpie, he let her return to the task of tending to the charge he knew she considered a daughter. After all, she’d helped him regain his strength overnight.
Stalking across the space, he met Kemp at the doorway. He’d mastered the art of concealing his true emotions, and he did so now, trading fury for concern. He was, to anyone watching, a leader, desperate to protect his people. “Let’s talk.”
Abel pushed open the door to the room he used as his office. Billie Holiday crooned to him from the Victrola phonograph. He’d never been allowed to touch it as a boy, and it was the single possession of his father’s he’d kept. The music usually helped him think.
Abruptly, he lifted the needle from the record, ceasing her musical poetry about seeing a face in every flower. Silence rang heady in his ears. Shutting the door behind him, he turned to Kemp.
“Master, let me explain.”
Now it’s Master. “Jordan blew our cover.” Abel bit off the words. “And you helped her.” He paced. “Now the Keepers are on to us. They know something is going on with the Similitude. They know we’d never have been able to get that close to them otherwise. We’ve given up our advantage. Dammit!” Whirling around, he swept a pile of books and papers from the desk, sent them crashing to the floor.
His normally slicked back bangs falling across his forehead, Kemp resembled a poorly drawn cartoon with his big ears and rubbery lips. “She had to get out of there,” he said, his voice strained. “She almost died.”
“We all know there’s risk involved.”
Kemp’s eyes flashed. “Some risks are more acceptable than others. That’s your niece.”
“I know who she is.”
And what she is.
A mongrel.
As if in worry, Abel creased his brow, a resolute brood master once more. “She’s a member of this brood, and she’s family. That’s why it’s even more important she be part of this operation. I want to teach her, have her pick up where her father left off.” He forced himself to smile. “Family or not, this is business. Dev is going to be here for less than seven days. And we might have lost the upper hand. Both you and Jordan should know better. We’ve lost him.” His voice took on a menacing edge. “How are we going to find him again?”
“I told you, I already have our best people monitoring the perimeter of the network. It’s the first place he’ll go.”
“You better hope it is,” Abel said, though he agreed.
“He was weakened when we left.”
Abel stroked his index finger over his goatee. Indeed. There was that, at least. Jordan had been draining him. What the hell was the girl thinking? He’d expressly forbidden anyone from draining a Keeper besides him. “Tell me more about that.”
“I’m not sure she had control over the stone. She was weak from the Vitality energy. Whether she did it or not, it was a smart move, if you ask me. It was the only way for her to get out of there.”
Incredible. In effect, she’d discovered knowledge vital to their war. Tested the validity of the key piece of information they’d learned.
Libby’s anxiety was the only thing that’d stopped Haenus.
Even Dev, the reinvented Watcher/Keeper, couldn’t stop Jordan’s ‘attack,’ weak as it was. She’d proved useful in that regard.
She still had to be eradicated.
As did all mongrels.
They would never triumph with such impurities in the brood. Like Libby, they were loose cannons, not to be trusted. And Jordan’s actions today had proven that once again.
Excitement welled in him and his hands trembled. It almost outweighed his fury that Libby, a mongrel, and her human panic, had been what’d stopped Haenus. All this time. How the hell is such a thing even possible? He wanted nothing more than to take the city by storm, drain the Keepers, one after the other. Kill them all. Take control, as it should be. He had to rein himself in. Making decisions in anger, or based on emotion, were never good ones—a valuable lesson he’d learned from Haenus.
He would get his due. Once they put his plan in motion, one mongrel—Libby—was no match for Betrayers, armed with Similitude. There was nothing to stop them from creating more Similitude, and draining Keepers.
Also, with the woman’s shooting of the mugger, he’d unleashed an onslaught of violence on the city. And a ready supply of dark energy for the brood. Riots and looting had ensued in various parts of the city. As he’d predicted, Compulsions had ceased in the last day. There wasn’t a Keeper on the streets. Without them, the violence would only escalate, and beget more violence. Vicious cycles. He could always count on them.
Oh, yes. He’d planned for this. And the moment was at hand. First, he needed to review everything carefully, evaluate their position. This time, he’d leave nothing to chance. “Tell me again everything Jordan heard at the motel. I’ll listen to what she recorded later.”
The Watcher (Crossing Realms Book 2) Page 10