Rising Fury (Hexing House Book 1)

by Rasmussen, Jen

  “Why would you bring her here instead of to the hospital?” Aunt Bridget glanced impatiently over her shoulder, but her eyes rested on Thea’s wings. “Well, I suppose because they’re not accustomed to seeing creatures there. I have to get her out of here.”

  Thea ignored the pang of hurt at Aunt Bridget’s use of the word creature. That was what she was. And Aunt Bridget didn’t even know the worst of it.

  “Call 911,” Thea said. “I’m going to hide upstairs if it’s okay with you. Just tell them you found Flannery dumped on your doorstep like this.”

  “Be careful once we’re gone. There are prowlers outside.”

  “Yes, I know.” Thea thought for a second. “In fact, when you tell them someone left her and took off, say it loud. Mentioning a purple dragon wouldn’t hurt. Maybe we can convince those prowlers that I’ve gone.”

  Aunt Bridget went for the phone, but hesitated for the briefest of moments to give Thea a fleeting hug. “Be careful. Thank you for bringing her back to me. You’ll have to tell me all about it later.” As usual, her calm acceptance of the extraordinary was soothing. Thea half expected to be offered a muffin.

  But Aunt Bridget sounded frantic on the phone. Maybe that calm was an act for Thea’s benefit, and always had been.

  Thea crouched up by the window of her old bedroom and watched, first as the ambulance pulled up and then, after several minutes of voices downstairs, as it pulled away again, siren wailing. The house was quiet. Thea stayed where she was until she saw a fury flying off into the darkness, away from the farm. Then, exhausted from her flight, she curled up in her old bed and slept again.

  She woke up to a tinge of orange on the horizon, and jumped out of bed. She hadn’t meant to stay so long. She didn’t want to be there when Aunt Bridget came back, didn’t want to face her questions. Or her anger. Flannery was probably awake by now, and she would have told Bridget who’d hurt her.

  Thea was sure Flannery’s wounds wouldn’t require more than some stitches. At least, she hoped she was sure. Maybe she just kept telling herself she was sure because she couldn’t bear the thought of anything else.

  She hesitated. When it came down to it, she couldn’t hurt you.

  And you had no trouble at all hurting her. Ruthlessness is a virtue, is it? Do you really believe that?

  But she’d pulled back. She could have eviscerated Flannery with those claws, but as soon as she felt them grazing flesh, she’d pulled back. Hadn’t she?

  This was ridiculous. She’d done what she had to, and no more than Flannery deserved. Furies weren’t really monsters.

  Thea washed and brushed her teeth, then froze as she came out of the bathroom. There were sounds coming from the kitchen. And while she didn’t smell muffins, there was a definite aroma of coffee.

  Shit was her first thought, and then, closely following: You coward. Go and face her.

  Thea straightened her spine and walked downstairs slowly, preparing her defense as she went.

  “Well, hello there, Gumdrop.”

  Pete. He sounded normal, cheerful even. He had that in common with Aunt Bridget: the sky could be raining hellfire and the earth opening up to swallow them, and Pete would show no outward signs of distress.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked him.

  “Checking on you. I just came from the hospital.”

  “How is she?”

  For a second Pete just stared down at the coffee pot he held. “She’s fine, if you mean the scratches you gave her.”

  “She told you, then.”

  “Yeah, but I’m too pissed off at her to be pissed at you. She told me enough for me to figure out what the fight was about.” He poured coffee into two mugs and handed one to Thea. “She did this on purpose.” It wasn’t a question.

  “I’m sure she didn’t mean for it to get so out of control.”

  “Why are you defending her?”

  Thea shook her head and sighed. “Habit is the only excuse I can think of. Or because I’m sorry to see you hurt.” She narrowed her eyes at Pete as she sipped her coffee. “Why aren’t you surprised to see me?”

  “I told you, I came to check on you. Bridget told me you were here.”

  “Yes, but did she tell you I was winged and purple?”

  “Oh. That.” Pete laughed at her look and said, “No. Cora told me that part.”

  “Cora?”

  Pete turned and surveyed the counter. “Does she have muffins? Or scones or something?”

  “It’s Aunt Bridget. Check the bread box. And stop avoiding.”

  “I’m not avoiding. I just know what you’re like when you’re mad and I want to fortify myself.” He sat at the table with his coffee and a blueberry muffin.

  Thea sighed and sat across from him. “I’m not mad at you.”

  “Well, don’t be mad at her either. It took a lot of emails before she broke down and told me the truth.”

  “And you believed her?”

  “She sent pictures.”

  “What the… she’ll be in so much trouble if they find out.”

  “They won’t. She’s routing it specially and using encryption. I like her, by the way.”

  “Yeah, I thought I liked her too. What do you know about routing and encryption?”

  “I’m not the yokel you think I am.”

  “Well, I’m the yokel I think I am, because I don’t really know what that stuff is.”

  Pete shrugged. “Different hobbies. Have a muffin while you tell me the whole story about Flan and you and this Hexing Hole.”

  “Hexing House.” Thea told him everything, from the first meeting with Graves in the barn. Pete didn’t say anything during the parts about the lab and Flannery, but he looked broken by her betrayal. Thea wanted to claw her all over again.

  They talked for almost an hour, and by then the sun was fully up.

  “Shit, Pete, I have to go. Aunt Bridget isn’t going to want to see me.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  Thea got up to wash the coffee mugs. When her back was to Pete she said, “She’s her daughter.”

  Pete reached beneath her folded wings and put his hands on her shoulders. “So are you, in every way that matters.”

  Thea stepped out of his reach and ignored that. She didn’t want to cry on Pete’s shoulder. She didn’t want to cry at all. “Anyway I have to get back.”

  “That seems like a terrible idea. You should go back to my cottage.”

  But Thea shook her head. “No. I’ve had a chance to think about it now, and the fact is, Pete, for better or worse I’ve made my choice.” She lifted her wings and pointed at one of them. “There’s no turning back.”

  “But you could lay low for a while, at least until your wing heals.”

  “I could, but by then who knows where they’ll be with this… superhex. It might be finished by then, and the things they could do…” She shook her head again. “That’s my colony and it’s my place to protect it. I’ve got to blow the lid off this whole thing. Other than the people who are in on it, I’m the only one who knows.”

  “Brave of you.”

  “Yeah, well, I’ve changed.”

  Pete cocked his head to one side, studying her. “I can see that.”

  Thea looked away, feeling self-conscious, wondering for the first time what he thought of her, looking like a monster now. Then she reminded herself that she was well past the point where that should matter to her. “I have to go,” she said again.

  With frequent stops to rest her injured wing, it was mid-morning by the time Thea covered the short distance to Hexing House. She spent a lot of that time looking over her shoulder, but nobody seemed to be following her. Maybe they’d given up. Or maybe they were waiting to ambush her back on campus.

  As she crossed the fence into the forest, she landed in a tree for one last break, wiping sweat off the back of her neck. It was hot and hazy, and the thick air wasn’t helping.

  But it’s not that hazy.

&nb
sp; There was something rising off to her left that looked an awful lot like smoke.

  Thea flew toward it as quickly as she could manage. The smell of burning wood hit her, and then grew stronger.

  The cabin they’d used for their blood drops was engulfed in flames that were spreading to the surrounding trees.

  Ignoring the protests of her wing—and the rest of her body, for that matter—Thea rushed to the Security building. She was wheezing and nearly falling out of the sky by the time she got there.

  “Fire,” she managed as she stumbled through the doors.

  Without looking up from his computer, the fury behind the front desk said, “That damn oven in the dining hall again? You want Facilities for that.”

  “I think we’re going to want everyone,” Thea said. “It’s in the forest. We need to hurry.”

  That got his attention. It wasn’t two minutes before Thea was flying again, this time assisted by a guard on either side of her. She led them to the site of the fire. After that, everything was chaos.

  It took several hours and every able-bodied member of the colony, often working in shifts, to contain the fire. There was never any question of putting it out. They didn’t have a fire truck, and even if they did they wouldn’t have been able to get it back into the woods. Instead they cleared what small growth and young trees they could, and made a fireline with water, trenches, sand, everything and anything they could find to make sure the fire couldn’t spread. While they were working, Thea saw Nero only briefly, and Cora and Elon not at all.

  Eventually, the cabin and surrounding area were a charred, smoldering scar on the land, but the danger to the rest of the forest and the campus itself had been averted. By then it was the middle of the night. Alecto told everyone to go home and rest.

  Thea hung back, getting as close to the mess as she could—it was still hot. Her first thought was that somebody knew she was coming back, and was trying to cover their tracks. But then she saw something that made her wonder whether the fire didn’t have an entirely different cause. Something that stood out against the mostly blackened ground.

  “That’s salt,” she said out loud.

  “Beg your pardon?” Alecto was behind her, arms crossed and glowering. The intimidating effect was somewhat diminished by the dry croak of her voice and the bags under her eyes.

  Thea pointed. “Salt. I think I know who started this fire.”

  Alecto raised an eyebrow. “Do you, now? Funny, that’s the exact question I came over to ask you. That and where you’ve been for the last three weeks.”

  “I was gone for three weeks?”

  “Yes. Now do you want to tell me why?”

  Thea didn’t trust Alecto, but there were still a few furies around. Surely Alecto wouldn’t attack her here. She looked around more carefully, and spotted a familiar glint of red in the light of the lamps that had been brought out and hung among the trees.

  “Cora!”

  “There you are! Nero told me he saw you, what—”

  “I’ll tell you both, but I’m going to give you the short version,” Thea said. “I’m about to collapse.” She told them about the lab, the superhex, Flannery, her escape. Cora stared at her with a look of increasing alarm, while Alecto’s face only got harder.

  When Thea finished, a bit breathless, Alecto said, “And this was the short version?”

  “I told you something happened to her,” Cora said to Alecto. “I told you she wouldn’t run away.” She looked at Thea and said, “I tried to get them to search for you. We did some looking ourselves, but…” She shrugged lamely.

  Thea nodded and squeezed her friend’s shoulder. “There’s one more thing,” she said, looking back at Alecto. “You’re familiar with Mr. Fanatic?” She told Alecto about finding him at the cabin, sewing the ground with salt. “At some point, he was at this lab I just told you about, and they either let him go or he got away. Now he thinks we’re demons and that it’s his Christian duty to smite us.”

  “And you take that to mean he started the fire?”

  “Fire and brimstone,” Thea said. (Burn, witch.) “And he was pretty fixated on the cabin, for whatever reason.”

  “And this is your theory?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, let me tell you mine. You have been weak and, frankly, a bit unbalanced from the start. I suspected time and again that you wouldn’t be able to handle what it meant to be a fury. Then, not two days after you get your wings, you run off—”

  “I didn’t r—”

  “And now,” Alecto cut her off. “Now you come back to campus and just happen, at that exact moment, to notice this fire that was clearly intentionally set. And you tell me all kinds of preposterous stories to explain it all.”

  Thea stared at her. Just how crazy did Alecto think she was? But then, maybe she didn’t think Thea was crazy at all. Maybe she only wanted everyone else to think that, so they wouldn’t listen to her story.

  “You can see his salt for yourself.” Thea gestured at the ground.

  “I see some salt,” Alecto said. “If that’s even what it is.”

  “Ask Cora. She was with me. She saw Mr. Fanatic the last time he salted the ground.”

  Cora nodded and opened her mouth to say something, but Alecto held up a hand for silence.

  “I’ve had more than enough for one day. You can tell your story to the board tomorrow.”

  “What do you mean, an impartial facilitator? I’ve told you repeatedly he’s involved in this.” Thea glared at Alecto, but it didn’t seem to have any effect. They stood in Thea’s doorway, where Alecto had come knocking only shortly after sunrise to discuss Thea’s meeting with the board.

  “I’ve told you—four times now, I believe—that this is the way it’s always been.” Alecto spoke slowly, as if to a child. “The head of the colony, as the head of Administration, sits with all the other department leads as an equal member of the board. One of our older and more distinguished members facilitates, and for the last three or four years, that’s been Graves.”

  Thea felt the old familiar tightening in her chest, and took several deep breaths. She felt trapped—was trapped—but this was no time to give in to panic.

  She decided the best play was to stop accusing Graves directly and just calmly present the facts. She could take them to the lab, and they could see it for themselves. She’d already decided she couldn’t implicate Cora, but surely now that the whole thing was coming to light, someone else could search the records and see that there was no case involving Flannery. Graves had made that up, and he’d recruited Thea. The evidence spoke for itself.

  And on the chance the whole board was corrupted, she would need witnesses.

  “It has to be an open meeting,” Thea said. “I won’t have this whole thing covered up behind closed doors.”

  Alecto considered this, then finally shrugged. “Fine. The last thing I want is to give your story credence by giving the appearance of hiding anything. Ten-thirty, in the auditorium.”

  Thea arrived at the appointed time to find the board already there, seated at a long table on the right side of the stage. Given the short notice, only about a dozen furies sat in the audience. Thea wondered if that number would grow as the gossip spread about who she was accusing, and of what.

  She would have asked Nero to help move the rumors along, but she hadn’t seen him or Cora since the fire. She’d expected them to be in the auditorium, at least. They would have heard about the meeting by now. But Thea had no time to ponder their absence.

  “Good morning, Thea.” Graves gestured to a chair on the left side of the stage. He was his usual pleasant, suave self, but then Thea hadn’t expected anything less.

  She felt giddy as she climbed the five steps up, and momentarily regretted her request for an open meeting. A stage was the last place she wanted to be.

  “I understand you have some claims you wish to make before the board,” Graves said, “before we decide on the appropriate disciplinary act
ion for your leaving without giving proper notice.”

  “I didn’t leave. I was taken.” It took a great deal of restraint for Thea not to add as you know.

  None of the board members reacted to that. Graves chuckled, as if humoring a child.

  “All right. Why don’t you just start at the beginning, and make whatever statement you wish to make?” He looked at his watch. “With luck, we can finish by lunch. I know we’re all busy.”

  Thea was proud of how calm and matter-of-fact she sounded as she told them everything that had happened since Flannery’s supposed hexing, from her own blood being stolen to her time in the lab.

  Nobody interrupted her, but when she finished Graves said, “Well. I’m sure we all have some questions for you.” He looked over his shoulder at the rest of the board, as if they were all in on the same joke. “I know I do.” A couple of them chuckled.

  “That’s fine,” Thea said. “But before I answer them, I’d like to present some evidence to back up my story.”

  Graves gestured around. “By all means. I’m sure we’d all love to see it.”

  “For starters, I can lead you to the lab. I can prove it’s there.”

  “There’s no need.”

  It wasn’t Graves who said it, but someone from the doorway of the auditorium. Someone whose voice was impossibly familiar.

  Flannery walked up the aisle flanked by two security guards, one arm in a sling. Her skin was pale and waxy, and she walked like she was sore.

  Thea was so surprised that she spoke without thinking, and scolded her cousin for the least of her offenses.

  “Flannery, what the hell are you doing out of bed?”

  Flannery gave her an aggrieved look and came forward. She avoided eye contact with Graves, Thea noticed, and spoke directly to the board. “I have the lab’s address. I can tell you exactly where to go.”

  Alecto looked not at Flannery, but at one of the security guards beside her. “Who authorized this human to visit the campus?”

  “We found her outside the gate, shouting,” the guard said. “She’s not armed and she seems harmless enough. When she said she had evidence to present at the meeting, we thought we’d better bring her.”