Kindred of the Fallen

by Isis Rushdan

  He took the business card and cell out of his pocket and dialed the number.

  “This is Artemis.”

  “I need your help.”

  “Hello, Evan. I wasn’t expecting your call so soon, but I’m pleased to hear from you.”

  “Can you really help me get her back?”

  “How far down the rabbit hole are you willing to go?”

  “As far as I have to,” he confessed. “I’ll tell you anything, I’ll do anything you want. Just help me.”

  “Be on the corner of 56th Street and 7th Avenue in twenty minutes.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Cassian inched through traffic for over an hour. As they got off the freeway headed to the house, the two-lane road flanked by dense trees cleared.

  Serenity clenched and unclenched her hands, hoping Evan would be okay. The pained look on his face and the echo of his words clung to her. When his parents died, the loss had hit Evan hard, but she’d never seen him fall apart until today. He was all alone while she had a new family. And if she was the reason he’d been hell-bent on making partner, then he’d find little solace in work.

  Her stomach tightened. She could only imagine what kind of state he must be in, with nothing to hang on to, nothing to look forward to, and nothing to distract him.

  If he hurt himself, she wouldn’t be able to bear it.

  Energy swirled through her core and a tingling sensation fluttered over her. Raking her fingers through her hair, she pushed against the headrest and shivered, wanting the panic to go away. She closed her eyes and Evan’s tortured face from the café overtook her mind. If she could talk to him again, she’d make him understand she never belonged in his world.

  With a sigh, she opened her eyes.

  Evan appeared in the middle of the road, wearing the disheveled clothes from the cafe, his face distorted by anguish. He reached out for her.

  Cassian swerved to steer clear of hitting him, but an oncoming car in the next lane forced him to veer back. The car mowed through Evan, as if he’d been nothing more than the wind.

  No thud or any indication they’d hit something. Cassian slammed on the brakes and the car skidded to a halt. He shifted to neutral. They both turned around and looked through the rear windshield.

  No dead body in the road.

  Abbadon and Spero got out of the Hummer behind them and approached the mustang.

  “Evan?” Serenity whispered. He hadn’t been real, like the day on the train when her father had appeared, but she wanted to see him again. Come back.

  Her energy stream jostled and a charge rippled through her core. Evan materialized in the backseat. Cassian flung the car door open and leapt out.

  Trembling, she stared at Evan. His eyes were fixed straight ahead. The suffering etched in the lines of his face curdled her stomach. His image flickered, a holographic phantom.

  Spero gasped. And Evan faded, then disappeared.

  Abbadon stood by her car door, asking a series of logical questions, trying to make sense out of something that defied logic. He finally instructed everyone to get back to the manor.

  They made it five or ten blocks before Serenity forced Cassian to pull over. She opened her car door and dry heaved. After a second or two, she threw up.

  Cassian handed her tissues from the glove compartment. She wiped her mouth and put her head between her knees. They didn’t speak the rest of the way back home.

  As the car pulled up in front of the house, Cyrus bolted out of the front door. He had Serenity’s door open before the car stopped.

  “What’s wrong? What happened?” His face was desperate with worry.

  She looked up at him. “How did you know something was wrong?” She stumbled out of the car and he caught her.

  “I felt you as you were coming up the drive, nauseated and terrified.”

  He lifted her and carried her inside. Abbadon and Spero trailed them as Cyrus took her to the great room. He set her down gently on the sofa, wrapping an arm around her. Cassian told them everything that had happened, trying not to trip over his words.

  When Cassian stopped, Serenity told them about the day her dead father materialized on the subway and how all of the passengers had seen him also. The story came out in a muddle.

  Cyrus sat in silence for a minute and finally smiled. “So, that’s your true gift,” he said, clutching her hand and beaming with pride.

  “My gift?” she asked. “Did you hear what I just said?” She grabbed her stomach. “I think I’m going to be sick again.”

  Cyrus turned to say something to Cassian, but before he could speak, the young man dashed out of the room. Serenity looked up. Abbadon sat on a sofa across from them. He didn’t share in the delight Cyrus exuded. He looked troubled. Spero paced in the background, rubbing his chin.

  “You have an amazing gift. As my divine partner, I knew you’d be powerful, but I never dared think your ingenium, your ability, would be projection.” He gave her a warm hug.

  Abbadon stared at them.

  “Do you have any idea what you’re capable of doing?” Cyrus asked.

  “Honestly, no. I don’t even know what happened back there.”

  Cassian returned, with a sandwich and glass of milk. He put it on the table in front of her. “You need to eat, it’ll make you feel better,” he said.

  She grabbed the tomato and lettuce sandwich and took a bite.

  “You can project your thoughts and emotions into reality,” Cyrus said, smiling.

  She shook her head. “He wasn’t real, he disappeared.”

  “The emotions you were feeling and your thoughts were real. You projected those outward. Once you learn to control it, you could probably make your projection last longer, maybe even make it feel real.”

  “You mean I can make my thoughts materialize and touch it.”

  Cyrus scratched the back of his neck. “I don’t know exactly how it’ll work. It’s an unusual gift. It’s not something we have any experience with, but you made your father materialize before we met, so it must be a lower level expression of your ability. The energy waves must be a higher manifestation of your ingenium.”

  She put her sandwich down and looked at Abbadon. “Say something,” she demanded.

  Abbadon stared at her with a neutral expression. “Cyrus is right. It’s a unique ingenium.” His voice lacked any emotion.

  She sighed. “Say what you’re thinking, please.”

  “The last known record of someone having this type of ingenium was in 1166. He was responsible for wiping out an entire colony of Kindred in a fit of rage.”

  She shook her head in a daze. “Did he have blood fury?”

  “Yes. Those of the Psi class like you are normally afflicted with the dark veil, not sangre saevitas. Warriors usually suffer from blood rage. Perhaps that’s nature’s safety guard. It’s hard enough to subdue one of us who is strong or can fly. Imagine the fury taking over someone who can project his emotions, give it a physical form, the unspeakable horror that must have devastated that colony.”

  “But I don’t have to worry about blood rage or the dark veil anymore.”

  Abbadon did not look relieved. His harsh eyes and stiff shoulders were laden with concern. Someone with her gift had annihilated an entire colony.

  Cassian sat quietly in a chair in the corner. Spero continued to tread back and forth.

  Cyrus helped her up from the sofa. “You need to rest.” He put his hand around her shoulder and they started to walk out of the room.

  “Cyrus, may I have word with you in private?” Abbadon asked.

  Spero and Cassian left the room with haste.

  Cyrus held on to Serenity, reluctant to let go.

  “It’s all right,” Serenity said. “I could use some time to myself.”

  He watched her lumber upstairs, then closed the doors and faced Abbadon.

  “Her ingenium is as I suspected,” Abbadon said. “Her training needs to be refocused.”

  “She’s s
pecial, unique. It’s a rare and powerful gift. This is a good thing.”

  “It’s an unstable gift. And in the hands of one raised as human with no grounding in the fact that she is an energy being or how to control it is dangerous.”

  “She’ll learn.”

  “She could hurt or kill any of us with the slip of her human temperament by accident. Or worse, in an attempt to protect herself from real danger, one of us could get caught in a deadlier energy wave. She’s dangerous.”

  Cyrus took a deep breath and stepped forward, choosing his words. “You’ve taken responsibility for this facet of her training. If there are any accidents, it’ll be because you’ve failed to train her properly.”

  “Our House has little experience molding an ingenium such as hers and I have never worked with one as powerful as she may be.”

  “Are you saying you’re not fit to guide her through this?” Cyrus challenged.

  Abbadon rose. “Instead of hearing what I’m saying, your instinct to protect your kabashem at the expense of the collective skews your judgment and taints your words once again.” He crossed his arms. “I have taken responsibility for her tutelage. I will not fail her, as I once did you.”

  His old friend turned and walked out through the door leading to the garden.

  Cyrus sat, reminded of the weight of his past and the dark shame he carried. The atrocious mistake he’d made nearly two hundred years ago had forged his current path and shaped his future, but Abbadon was not to blame.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Icy rain beat down on Evan, numbing his body as he waited on the corner of 56th Street and 7th Avenue. A white van pulled up in front of him. The door slid open and a burly man yanked him in.

  “Put this on and we’ll take you to see Artemis.” The guy threw a black hood at him.

  Evan put it over his head. A musty odor invaded his nostrils. The hood obscured his vision and did too good a job filtering air as well as light. He took shallow breaths.

  They drove for what seemed like hours. By the time they stopped, he was shivering uncontrollably from the soaked clothing. The door opened. Someone yanked the hood off and led him from the van through an underground garage to an elevator. One guy wore a neck brace. Another had a cast around one wrist. The third one, wearing a blazer instead of military-esque apparel, looked as if someone had recently broken his nose.

  Five floors below ground, the doors opened to a smiling Artemis. Lovely, but he sensed without a doubt also quite deadly.

  “Don’t you look pathetic. I think I’ll have to take pity on you. Jagger, get our new friend some fresh clothes,” she said to the guy with the wrist cast and black batons strapped to his thighs. She turned back to Evan. “You do want us to be your friends, don’t you?”

  Evan nodded.

  Jagger disappeared down a carpeted hallway.

  Artemis led him in the opposite direction to a room distinctly similar to one used for an interrogation room on TV crime shows. A table with two chairs was positioned in the middle with a video recorder set up in the corner.

  “Sit,” she instructed.

  Evan took a seat facing the camera.

  “Once you start down this path, there’s no going back. You need to understand that.”

  “Can you guarantee you’ll get her to come back to me?” Only one thing mattered.

  “There are no guarantees. But I do know a way to get her back and to make it undesirable for her to return to him. First, I need you to give me what I want. Information.”

  “How do I know I can trust you to help me after I tell you what you want to know?”

  “The plan I have in mind will also serve the needs of my employer and has already been sanctioned. We have a small window of opportunity to set it into motion and I’ll need your help to pull it off. In helping you, I also do my job.”

  “I don’t understand how.”

  “Comprehension isn’t required, only compliance.”

  Coldness crawled over his skin. “What do you want to know?”

  “Everything about Serenity. What you know about her childhood, any strange occurrences you may have witnessed, her hobbies, routines, if she’s a late or early riser, how she takes her coffee. Every detail, no matter how small.”

  Evan wondered if this was what it felt like to make a deal with the devil. At least he didn’t have to sign away his soul in blood. “All right.”

  “Stone, start the camera,” Artemis said to the man in the blazer.

  In her bedroom, Serenity faced the window, watching the cascade of rain. Projecting images of her father hadn’t left her as drained as she felt now, but she had never wanted to see him. Reliving his supposed suicide in her memories had been enough.

  She thought learning more about her ingenium would be exciting and enlightening, but Abbadon had looked like a man preparing for a funeral.

  Streamers of Cyrus’s energy brushed the edge of her pool, stretching from the hall to meld into one. He rapped at her door. After the second knock, the door opened.

  Cyrus approached slowly, reaching out for her, but she stepped away.

  “I don’t want you to touch me.” Her voice was a whisper. Pain flickered in his face. She turned her back to him. “If you touch me, I’ll feel better. I don’t deserve to feel better.”

  “I can imagine how unbearable it must have been to end things with Evan, but you don’t need to punish yourself. It’s my fault things turned out this way. If I hadn’t used him to get close to you, you wouldn’t be suffering now. Please don’t turn me away. Let me comfort you.”

  “The only thing Evan did wrong was love me. He’s confused, alone and in pain, while I get to come home to you.” She spoke softly. “I just want to be alone.”

  The door closed.

  She slipped off her boots and sunk down on the chaise, facing the window. Beyond the glass, the day remained gray and wet. The dim light slowly faded and once ensconced in darkness, she closed the curtains and switched on every lamp. She sat at the drawing table and images took shape in her mind like figures in clouds.

  Her fingers whipped out sketch after sketch—all flawed, all wrong. Crumpling the paper, she began again. When she had gotten close to what she envisioned, skeletons waiting to be fleshed out and brought to life with detail and color, she set up her paints and canvas.

  Threads of regret and guilt settled in her neck and shoulders, weaving into knots. The balls of tension tightened until her muscle fibers grew so taut she feared something in her might snap. With the breaking dawn, she had two paintings. One had a shadowy, blurred landscape that evolved into a vibrant, lush countryside. The other, savage and dark, was of a man floating on water as doves picked him apart. A saturnine expression draped his face, but his eyes conveyed his agony. Doves circled overhead, bloody pieces of his flesh in their beaks. His hands were shackled to his chest, unable to fend them off.

  The room smelled of model airplane glue from the Liquin. Her fingers ached, but she refused to rub them. Her body, gutted out and empty, felt fragile as eggshells. Over the last few days she seemed to need less sleep. Perhaps it had something to do with her connection to Cyrus, but she’d do anything to close her eyes and forget for a few hours.

  She changed into her running clothes and went outside. The cool air bit at her skin and she took off jogging. She needed to drive her legs forward, for as long as it took, until she felt nothing but the sweet delirium of fatigue.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The sound of knocking jarred Serenity from the clutches of sleep and she opened her eyes. Had it been a dream? A second rap on the door convinced her it hadn’t.

  “Come in.” Her voice was scratchy. She cleared her throat and sat up.

  Cyrus stood hesitantly in the doorway. She held out her hand, needing him. In a blink, he crossed the room and his long, thick fingers intertwined with hers. He glanced at the fresh paintings propped against the window across the room and climbed onto the bed next to her. She rolled over, resting he
r head in the crook of his shoulder. He held her and she closed her eyes.

  “I’ve dreamt about finding you,” he whispered in her ear. “I’ll never forget the day you were born.”

  She opened her eyes. “What do you mean?”

  “I was in Morocco on business and I extended my stay so I could visit the Imperial cities. I was in Marrakech when I had a Whitescape.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A legend or so I thought. I had never met anyone who actually experienced one. I was drinking tea and gazing at the stars when I felt a sharp pain underneath my mark.” He put her hand on his chest, just below his heart. “It radiated throughout my body and shot up my spine to the back of my neck. The pain was so excruciating it blurred my vision and brought me to my knees. Then everything turned white and the pain subsided. In its place, I was filled with love and such joy. In that moment, I knew you had been born. Without a doubt, I knew you were in the world and I had to find you. And it was on that eve I decided I would build this house for you. October ninth will mark the thirtieth anniversary of my Whitescape.”

  She leaned up on her elbow and gazed at him.

  “I wondered what your smile would look like, what kind of personality you’d have, how your voice would sound.” He stroked her hair and then cupped her face in his hand. “You are the sparkle in the moonlight and the melody in the music. I loved you before I met you, but with each day, I’m overwhelmed by how my love for you grows.”

  She caressed his face. “I love you.” With all her heart, she loved him, and it terrified her. She’d stayed with Evan needing a durable connection to someone, anyone. The bond she had with Cyrus couldn’t be replaced or surpassed. Even though she’d only known him less than a week and it defied logic, she’d never been more certain of anything in her life. But everything good came with a price.

  The intercom phone mounted on the wall next to the door buzzed.

  She groaned and crawled out of bed in the dim light. “Hello,” she answered groggily.

  “Come downstairs. I have a surprise for you.” Cassian’s voice was eager.