Dark Oracle

by Alayna Williams

  “Mostly trash, sir.” The team leader handed Corvus a small folder of papers and Tara’s purse. “We’ve got the truck registration to follow down. And this.”

  Corvus peered into the purse, stirred for a moment. Tara closed her eyes when he pulled out the deck of cards wrapped in her mother’s scarf.

  “What’s this?” he asked her.

  Tara shrugged. “Souvenirs.”

  Corvus unwrapped the parcel, fanning the worn cards out. Tara clenched her fists. Her skin crawled at the idea of Corvus handling him, of his malignant energy sinking into her mother’s cards.

  He could see her attachment to these things. With a small, cruel smile on his face, he severed that attachment. He threw the cards to the wind as if they were garbage. Tara watched helplessly as her mother’s cards spiraled away, down into the caldera. Some stuck to the fence, trapped. Others blew across the road. It was as if someone had released a flock of brightly colored birds. Her heart sank. There would be no retrieving them.

  But at least Harry was free. She sucked in a breath, stilling her emotions with that knowledge.

  Corvus must have read it on her face; he knew her too well. “There is no deal for Agent Li,” he told her quietly.

  She spun on him, hands balled into fists. “Gabriel said—”

  “Doesn’t matter what Gabriel said. I still have people under my own command, and they’ll intercept Li before he gets to the interstate.”

  Fury boiled away her sense of resignation. Perhaps she could appeal to the past. “Corvus, we were partners once. I’m asking you to honor that by—”

  “Honor what?” Corvus made a self-deprecating snort. “Tara, that was broken a long time ago.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  He leaned toward her. “I have to confess something. It’s been eating me alive, but this situation has given me the opportunity to. . . assuage my conscience.” His smile was small, guilty, like a kid who’d stolen candy and savored every moment of it. “When you went after the Gardener. . . I got your call for backup.”

  “You what?”

  “I got your message. I knew where you were, where you were going. And I chose not to go, not to send assistance.”

  Her brows drew together in horror. “Why?”

  “I wanted you out of the way. I wanted this.” His hand sketched his domain around them, his invisible power. “You were in the way. I thought it best to let the Gardener solve my problem for me.”

  Tears stung her eyes. She had had no idea of the depths of his professional jealousy, that it had become personal. And she couldn’t believe she hadn’t seen this darkness in him. She was a profiler. . . too busy profiling the criminals around her, and never turning her attention to the greatest threat standing right beside her. “You let the Gardener abduct me, cut me up, bury me? You left me for dead? You let that happen?”

  Golden dawn light washed over his glasses. “I did. I’m sorry it had to be that way, but. . .”

  She swung at him. Her fist slammed into his jaw, flinging his glasses from his face. Immediately she was tackled by Gabriel’s men, tasting frost and dirt on the ground.

  From the corner of her eye, she could see Corvus plucking up the remains of his shattered glasses from the grass.

  “Take her back to the mine.” He knelt before her, and she felt a twinge of satisfaction at seeing the worm of blood trickling down his nose. He tried desperately to staunch it with a handkerchief. “Tara, my dear, enjoy this moment. It’s the last daylight you’ll ever see.”

  THEY HURLED HER BACK IN THE CELL, KICKING AND HOWLING.

  Then they turned the lights off.

  Tara heard the click of the electricity being cut to the wing, saw the lights winking out, one after another, down the hallway, until she was left in rapidly cooling darkness. She pulled the Pythia’s coat around her body, wondered if they intended to leave her here, in this isolation, until she starved or went mad.

  Corvus had a sense of irony. Bastard. In hindsight, she could see how all the pieces fit together, why she’d pulled the Death card to represent him. . . and the white roses. The Six of Wands in conjuction with that card. . . representing betrayal by someone close. . . Why had she not seen it? And most recently. . . the Devil card, imprisonment. Her blindness had caused her to be bound by her own fears, in the cold and the dark. Just as Corvus was bound by his own avarice.

  She pressed her hand to her forehead. She’d been too wrapped up in her own experience, too focused on healing and withdrawing from the world to suspect him of any wrongdoing. Now, it was too late. And too late for Harry.

  A lump rose in her throat. More than anything, she wanted Harry to be free. And she’d failed. And she’d failed Martin and Cassie. . . Surely, it was only a matter of time before Corvus and Gabriel combed through the barren landscape and found them. She wondered if even Delphi’s Daughters could keep Cassie safe, if there was any fighting the fate that seemed so inevitable.

  A small voice tickled the back of her mind: Fight.

  Magnusson’s watch scraped her eyebrow, and she stared at it.

  Perhaps there was still a way to fight. Tara took off the watch and felt for the smooth back of the case, for the etched infinity sign in the metal. She dug her fingernails into the edge of the steel casing, succeeding in working the cover free with her torn nails.

  Bits of dark energy glowed soft violet, spinning through the circuit of the battery. Precious light. She breathed into the fragile tangle of wire, trying to remember what Cassie had said about the properties of dark energy, how she could use this to her advantage. She examined the battery, the circuits turning in on themselves. Cassie had said the circuit could be interrupted, shorted out, by something as simple as crushing them. . .

  And then what? Tara thought of the destruction of the laboratory. Such a small amount of power, such a terrible result. . .

  Violet sparks milled peacefully along the tiny circuit, deceptive in their tranquility. No telling what would happen when the energy discharged. Might be nothing, might bring the whole place down around her ears. Either way, it was her only bet to stop Gabriel and Corvus.

  She took a deep breath. She had regrets, many of them: blaming Sophia for her mother’s death; not seeing Corvus for what he was. Most of all, she regretted how things had turned out with Harry. She wished she could have had more; more conversation, more lovemaking, more time.

  But none of these things were left.

  She heard footsteps approaching. She concealed the watch under the heel of her shoe in enough time to see the glint of a flashlight, hear the grate of a key in a little-used lock. Tara was surprised these doors even had old-fashioned keys, other than the electronic key cards. She heard the heavy bolts dragged back, squinted at bright light beaming in her face.

  “I thought we could use some quality time alone. Just us girls.”

  It was Adrienne’s voice. She could see her tall silhouette above the halo of light. She threw something on the floor before her, something that smelled cloyingly sweet. . .

  A clutch of irises. They lay on the concrete floor like a bouquet tossed at a wedding that no one had caught, unwilling to tempt fate.

  “Those are a present from Corvus. He wanted me to bring you something to keep you company in the dark. Something familiar.” Tara stared up at Adrienne. “He is one sick son of a bitch.

  “They won’t give you to me until I get the girl’s location from you.” Adrienne circled her, the heels of her shoes bruising the flower petals and opening more of their dusky fragrance to the stale room. In the dim light, her eyes shone like a cat’s. “And I will enjoy getting it.”

  “Why me, Adrienne? What’ve you got against me?”

  “The Pythia has chosen you as her successor. The title should be mine.”

  “The Pythia knows you’ve been stalking me. Do you think she would willingly give the title to you now?”

  “Not willingly, no.” Adrienne’s white teeth gleamed. “The Pythia is old
and weak. If I challenge her, she will yield.”

  “I wouldn’t be too certain about that. The Pythia is a pretty determined bitch.”

  “What would you know about it?” Adrienne’s eyes narrowed. “You haven’t been among us in years.”

  “I don’t want to be among you! I left Delphi’s Daughters,” Tara snarled. “I have done everything to get you people to leave me the hell alone.”

  “The Pythia has never forgotten you. She has always watched over you, though you were too stupid and rebellious to see it.”

  “The Pythia hasn’t done shit for me.”

  “She saved your life, you ungrateful wretch.” Hate glowed in Adrienne’s marble-like eyes. “When you were taken by the Gardener, when you were imprisoned in the ground, the Pythia knew. She was the one who whispered to you, with the diluted power she had left, to fight. She lent you her strength, and suffered for it. Her power diminished exponentially after that. . . She is a weak shadow of her former self.”

  “I don’t believe you.” Tara’s mind reeled under the weight of the possibility.

  “Like you said, the Pythia is a pretty determined bitch. No one ever leaves Delphi’s Daughters. . . for any reason other than death.” Adrienne balled up her fist. “And I will be happy to release you from that obligation.”

  “It’s good of you to keep me company, Adrienne.” Tara lifted her foot and stomped down on Magnusson’s watch with all her strength. She felt the crackle of the circuit breaking, a low hum almost beyond the range of her hearing thundering through the floor.

  Light swelled up under her foot. She backed away, staring in fascination as the violet light escaped the confines of the watch, pushed her out in a shock wave, ripped open the air in a terrible weal of sound. . . and exploded in a cold flash of dark brilliance.

  IT WAS STILL DARK. ALWAYS DARK.

  The darkness weighed heavy and cold against Tara’s body. She smelled the dreaded scent of earth, crushed irises, and the warm copper tang of her own blood. Her nose and mouth were packed with dirt, and the weight of the earth kept her aching limbs from stirring.

  Despair and panic overwhelmed her. She had been here, before: buried alive. She was stuck in an infinity loop, sucked over and over again into this situation, like a Tarot card coming up in draw after draw, unable to escape. It seemed this was her destiny, to be committed to the earth, to feed it with her lifeblood. Her judgment in this life. This unavoidable knowledge paralyzed her. She could feel her heart pumping faster, wasting air and shoving blood through wounds that burned brightly in her flesh.

  “Fight.”

  This time, she could distinguish the voice. It was clearly the Pythia.

  No. This was not her destiny. She squeezed her eyes shut, thought of the Judgment card she’d drawn, just hours before, how it depicted a woman rising from a coffin into the daylight, into the embrace of an angel. She remembered the Strength card, the slight woman taming the jaws of the lion. And she remembered the Knight of Pentacles, Harry, how much she wanted to see his face again. And Cassie, the Star, whom she’d promised to protect.

  “Fight.”

  Her mother had raised her to be a fighter. She would not allow Corvus and his sweet-smelling Death to win.

  She wiggled her fingers in the dirt, forming an air pocket. She worked her hands back and forth until she could feel her wrists move, then her elbows. Her bad arm howled in protest, sending shock waves of pain to the soles of her feet. She worked against the gravel, the weight of the earth, until she could shrug her shoulders, turn her head. She clawed her arms up over her, as if she were swimming, pulling clods of earth up, opposite the direction where gravity seemed to tug the debris. She imagined this was how Strength felt, struggling against the jaws of the lion, ignoring her own wounds.

  Up. Up. She kept that thought foremost in her mind. She glimpsed fading sparks of the violet dark energy as they slid through the earth, unencumbered by the mass of the soil. She envied them, how quickly they moved out and away, as easily as fireflies navigated air.

  But she was not like them. She was bound by mass and form, and couldn’t phase through matter at a wish. Her energy flagged. She was buried much deeper than she had been in the Gardener’s flower bed, hopelessly deep in a mine. She forced herself to continue, promised herself she would go as far as she could until she ran out of air.

  Something compressed the earth above her, shook the gravel. Through crusted-shut ears, she could hear the rain of dirt, the sluice of earth moving. She reached up for it, feeling furtive scraping, movement, shouting. . .

  And she was being dragged free of the debris. She cried out in pain, her leg twisted beneath her, dirt crusting light that was suddenly agonizingly bright.

  “Shh, babe. It’s okay.” She felt Harry’s arms around her, wiping dirt from her face. “Just breathe. . . long, slow breaths.”

  She sucked in lungs full of air and stared up at his swollen eyes. Gabriel had given him one hell of a shiner. “How did you find me?” she asked, spitting around the dirt in her mouth.

  Harry gestured to the scene around them. The mine had partially collapsed in on itself. Emergency crews scurried around the sunlit site, hauling people and precious bits of metal out of the disaster zone. The land was littered with scraps of paper, torn pieces of insulation, candy wrappers, chunks of concrete. . . the lightweight random litter of an explosion. In this area, though, at the northwest edge of the mine, she could see it was scattered with the torn debris of Corvus’s iris petals, glinting white in the sun.

  “I found this, right over where I found you.” He showed her a torn and filthy Tarot card, the one depicting the wounded woman closing the jaws of the lion: Strength.

  THE EARTH KNEW HER. IT KNEW HER LIKE A MOTHER KNEW a child, lovingly wrapping its arms around Adrienne. She felt the rumble of the pulse deep within its breath, sensed the weight of the earth’s love as it drew her near.

  She’d come home.

  Her lungs filled with blackness, and she sensed metal twisting and breaking below her. A ley line trembled somewhere far below. She sensed the cold veins of silver, still sleeping miles underground. The glitter of quartz and geodes shimmered in her sight, as they shifted and settled. Dirt dug into her skin, permeating it. Fragments of silver and dark violet light melted and flowed through her veins, scorchingly cold. The border between her body and the earth dissolved, and she and the ground became one. Distantly, she wondered if Magnusson had known this bliss when he fell in the field at the bottom of the caldera.

  Home. Synthesis.

  The roar of silence suffused her. After hours, days—she couldn’t mark the passage of time in this still place—she felt the rumble of earth-moving equipment above her, the scrape and sloughing of shovels. She shrank away from the sounds of digging, burrowing deeper into the cool black.

  But the machines found her, eventually. Daylight washed over her, burned her eyelids.

  She howled.

  Leave me here.

  Men stood over her in white suits, Geiger counters clicking and zinging. Their voices fell over each other in alarm. A man she recognized as Gabriel bent over her; she could see his horrified eyes behind the mask.

  “Dig her up,” he said.

  Other voices buzzed. “How in the hell are we supposed to do that?”

  “Do it,” he ordered savagely. “Uproot her like a turnip.”

  The blade of a shovel cut into her body, fused with the earth, and she screamed.

  Chapter Nineteen

  ON A visceral level, Tara understood the principle of dark energy. . . understood it to be the natural, polar opposite of the solid matter comprising her world, that it was not subject to any of its laws, save gravity. For every action, a reaction; for every thing, an equal and opposing force. Magnusson had left a scrap of it behind, to balance the equation he’d set into motion. But it still didn’t make things easier for Cassie.

  Tara had come to tell Cassie about her father in person. It had been nearly a week since
she’d seen her, but it seemed much longer. Tara drove up the long, straight road to Sophia’s farm with empty hands and a heavy heart. Spring had begun to touch the fields. . . The earth would be turned in the coming weeks, waiting for seed. Blades of new grass had begun to prickle through frost. The apple trees were studded with pale green leaf shoots, and a touch of fickle warmth had begun to permeate the March Tennessee air. She had not been here since she was a child, with her mother, and she wondered what it would be like to see this familiar landscape without Sophia in it.

  The farmhouse was the same as she remembered: a yellow two-story house sprawling under the weight of slate shingles. Chickens milled through the yard, muttering to themselves, as Maggie stalked them around the corner of a shed. Tara pulled up in the driveway before the barn. Maggie thundered up to the car, claws scraping against the door. She fell upon Tara in a hail of doggie kisses and snuffling.

  To her delight, Oscar sauntered down the porch steps and pressed his body up against her leg. Tara kneeled down to scoop up the cat with her good arm as he purred like a chain saw.

  “Oof. Oscar, you’ve put on some weight.”

  Oscar nipped her ear, kneaded her wounded shoulder with his claws. She shifted him over her shoulders, where he lay like a stole, well out of Maggie’s reach. His purring vibrated through her skull.

  On the porch, the Pythia sat in the swing, smoking. Her bare feet pushed her colorful skirts back and forth, and her ankle bracelets jingled in time with the squeak of the chain suspending the swing. In the shade, the bright gleam of her cigarette burned like a star.

  “How are you feeling?” the Pythia asked. She frowned at her cigarette, as if it told her something she didn’t want to hear. She stubbed it out and lit another.

  Tara frowned at her arm in a sling. “Better.” She was sore all over, bristling with stitches and bruises. And her radiation sickness had returned, perhaps retriggered by the explosion of Magnusson’s watch. She felt weak and pale. But it felt immeasurably good to breathe the fresh, open air. It even wiped away some of the uneasiness of the truce between Tara and the Pythia. “How’s Cassie?”