by Erin Hayes
The world needed people like each of them, Isaac said; the dangerously destructive and the calmly reserved. Yin and Yang. A purpose for everyone and everyone with a purpose.
But more and more Zoey wondered if her “calmly reserved”-self served a purpose there against the likes of Ezra and his partner.
Maybe that’s all any of these crazy, world-threatening rogues are: those like Serena or the Strykers who never had somebody like you to keep them in check.
If it took the likes of her and Estella to keep those like Serena Vailean and Xander Stryker from going too far, then was that all Ezra and his brother needed? A rational mind to explain the error of their ways? A wise hand to guide them on the right path? A stern voice to scold them?
As Serena would say: “Not fucking likely.”
Zoey would’ve laughed at the notion if it wasn’t so painfully real to her situation.
And Isaac was still looking at her with the curious and quizzical stare.
“My friend, The Gamer,” Zoey felt her voice break around her late colleague’s title, “used to tell me about Xander. He said he’s got a girlfriend—fiancé now, I think—who I guess is like that; keeps him in check, like you said.”
“So she’s like you?” Isaac asked.
Zoey shrugged. “Don’t know. The Gamer didn’t say much else. Just that they’re engaged and that she’s probably saved his life and countless other lives a bunch of times when he started to get carried away.”
Isaac smirked, seeming proud to be proven right. “So he is like Serena then? Gets carried away easily?”
Another shrug. “In that they get carried away, sure, but from what I’ve heard they’re like night and day otherwise.”
Isaac frowned at that. “Not sure I understand what you mean.”
“Not sure I do, either,” Zoey confessed, stuffing her hands in her pockets, suddenly feeling cold. She’d spent so much time wondering how Serena would have done things differently if she was there instead, but now, remembering how The Gamer described Xander Stryker, she wondered how the already hypothetical situation would differ further. Like night and day.
She sighed and rolled her eyes inwardly at herself. She’d finally stood up to Delilah, defeating both her, her entire pack, and the underlying self-doubt she’d felt in the shadow of those like Delilah—those like Serena; those like the ones Isaac was describing—and here she was at it again. Like a rabbit that had squirmed free from the jaws of one wolf just to leap into the waiting mouth of another, she already looking for another shadow to cast herself under. A “crimson shadow,” as The Gamer had called Xander on more than one occasion.
Ironies, especially the cruel and self-inflicted kind, never ceased, did they?
She knew Isaac wouldn’t stand for it if he’d been able to read her mind then. He’d likely have some startling insight or another metaphor to inspire another daring act of self-improvement. Working another one of his miracles and somehow turning a suicidal rabbit into a wolf. And why wouldn’t he be able to? He’d chased away her doubt and guilt on multiple occasions over the past few days, and only a few hours earlier he’d convinced her to shed her peace-driven ways and take on an entire room of therions, tearing her and Delilah’s rivalry away at the roots and going so far to make them sisters in one another’s eyes. But could even a miracle worker like that turn a rabbit into a wolf? Could Isaac somehow turn her from somebody like Estella into somebody like Xander? And if, by some miracle, she could become that sort of person, who would be like Zoey for Serena and the others?
Rabbits to wolves…
Like night and day.
Another icy chill cut through Zoey then, interrupting her stampeding thoughts, and it occurred to her at that moment that the cold she was feeling wasn’t from the night air. It wasn’t something she was feeling on the surface, at all!
“Oh no…”
Isaac looked over at that, already poised for whatever trouble she was sensing.
She didn’t have to look to see him, and he didn’t have to see her look to know she’d sensed him. The icy auric signature flared and stung her mind that much more. The rage. She’d never felt anything like it! While every other experience she’d had with the emotion had been a blistering heat that rolled like lava—molten and hungry for anything it could touch—this was like an iceberg: massive and sharp; an unmovable mass of icy razor blades that froze and cut anything and everything that got too close to it.
She’s placed you! Do the smart thing and DEAL WITH HER! a voice trickled over the weak connection she’d made with their uninvited guest, sounding fractured and distant with a faint echo of disconnection, like it was coming out of an old radio that wasn’t quite tuned to the right station.
Somebody with auric abilities was feeding them information!
There was somebody else? A third assailant?
So many questions…
And only one way to get any real answers!
Zoey felt the urge to growl—realizing that she’d been in the company of therions a bit too long—and turned to Isaac.
“Don’t hate me for this,” she warned.
Isaac stared down at her. “Hate you for wha—AAAHHH!”
Her lover became a blur as she snagged him in her aura and hurled him into the air like a missile, aiming him for the rooftop that the auric signature was perched upon.
Right behind you, baby! she announced, already running across the street and reaching out with an auric tendril for the fire escape that hung outside a second floor window to the building.
In an instant her own feet were off the ground, her body carried upward and, casting out another tendril and snagging another platform and then another, further upward. Isaac’s momentum began to lag above her, and as she flung herself onto the rooftop and started out at a full sprint across it she reached back with her aura and pulled him beside her. Having trained for such events before, Isaac effortlessly adapted to the situation and was already most of the way through his transformation by the time his feet touched down. He staggered, his misshapen legs still reforming, but regained himself before he could topple and managed to match Zoey’s stride, leaving a trail of shredded denim and cotton in his wake as his clothes fell victim to a form they had no hope of fitting.
Is it him? Isaac’s “voice” echoed in Zoey’s mind as they ran. Is it Ezra?
“I can’t be sure,” she answered out loud, her aura too preoccupied with scanning her surroundings to carry any psychic messages. “I’m not sure which of the signatures I felt before belong to him, but it is one of them! And—”
Fight or flight, you fool! Kill them or bait them, but DO NOT do nothing!
The voice! Their informant’s orders were like a beacon—the broken radio that was their target’s head like a tattered speaker sounding to the left—and she pointed them in that direction.
“There’s somebody else!” she announced, “Somebody in their head, telling them what to do!”
What do you mean? Like an auric? So there’s a third one here now? Even without the benefit of an audible voice the aggravation resounded in Isaac’s words.
“No, I would’ve sensed that with the other signatures before,” Zoey said. “They’re somewhere else, reading the area and our minds and relaying everything from wherever they are. They seem to be the one in charge of—”
MORON! SHIELD THAT FRAIL EGGSHELL YOU CALL A SKULL! THE HARLOT CAN HEAR EVERYTHING I’M SA—
The silence in Zoey’s head startled her almost as much as the thundering voice had in the first place, and it took all her control not to drop to her knees under the force of the auric pressure. Noticing her flinch as she jumped a gap between rooftops—using her aura to carry her across the nearly ten foot space—Isaac, completing his own leap on all fours, glanced up at her.
You alright?
“Y-yea,” Zoey stammered, her breath coming out jagged from the exertion and assault on her nerves. “They just blocked me out. Whoever it is has them trained.”
> Old dogs; new tricks, Isaac mused.
“Guess so,” Zoey muttered, clearing another rooftop. “Whoever it is is powerful. To ‘broadcast’ like that from such a distance is more than any auric could handle. It’s certainly more than I could hope to handle.”
More than an auric? What could be doing it if not an auric? Isaac demanded.
“Not sure, but if whatever it is is that powerful then we’ve got more to worry about than just two homicidal radical hybrid rogues. We need to tell The Council about this!”
Then why are we still chasing them?
Zoey gritted her teeth. “Because I’m not about to add another unknown to our list without scratching at least one other off!”
It’ll all be unknown if you get yourself killed running—shit! DOWN!
Isaac dropped to his side in mid-gallop, slamming his shoulder and sending a flash of pain in his aura behind her as Zoey dove blindly, taking her lover’s word and hurdling headfirst for the rooftop. As the two careened out of control, a blur cut through the air where the upper half of their bodies had been a moment earlier. Throwing out her aura, she carried herself out of the fall and into a more controlled slide that had her scrambling to her feet and facing in the direction the blur had gone in.
There he stood.
Whether or not this was Ezra or if he had been the one from the bar was uncertain, his guarded thoughts were enough so to prevent Zoey from “seeing” anything he didn’t want her to see. And what he allowed her to see was limited to say the least. No name. No motive. No thought of any kind. Just… hatred. Hatred, and the infinite cold that had gotten her attention in the first place. If the voice was still speaking to him, then that, too, was guarded from her now. That, however, was all that he seemed to guard. Looking enough like the other to further confirm their brother suspicions, it took a moment to be certain that he wasn’t, in fact, the same hybrid. He shared the same skin and height and even clothes—the same ragged and torn fashion pieced together from whatever best fit both their frames and their purposes; a sleeveless jacket draped over the tactical mess and left open to expose the same angry-looking, moon-white Y-shaped scar stretching from each shoulder and then down to his naval—but there were, upon closer inspection, some key differences. They were both, without question, like a force of nature in their rawness, but therein lay the greatest difference; the one from the bar had been like a mountain in his towering rigidity, but this one was more like a river. The power and chilling presence were shared between them, but where the one seemed to elicit fear simply by standing this one seemed in constant motion. Even as he stood, straightening himself from his dive past the two of them, he swayed to and fro, never favoring one leg for long. His arms flexed as he straightened, fingers stretching and then curling into a pair of half-fists as his eyes, like the rest of him, moved between the two of them. And while he moved in every way the other hadn’t, the impact was no less jarring. Where the intimidation with the first had been in his eerie calmness, this one’s constant movements didn’t convey a sense of nervousness but one of forced reserve. He was impatient, holding his ground solely for some outside force that kept his truest nature at bay.
At that moment he seemed like a hungry dog on a leash.
Who’s standing on the other side, Zoey wondered, narrowing her eyes at him and instinctively wrapping her aura around both herself and Isaac in a defensive shield. And why are they holding you back?
The silence that hung between the rooftop spanned on for what felt like hours, though Zoey knew that the time was more appropriately measured in fractions of a second. Everyone seemed to know who the other was, the hybrid in front of them regarding them with the same arrogant defiance as a disobedient child who’d realized the babysitter had caught them in the cookie jar, but he neither made a move to attack or flee and they, too uncertain of what to expect from him, were too cautious to advance.
Somehow, “you’re under arrest” seemed a way too little way too late.
Not that any of them would have believed for one second that it would stop there. The actions of Ezra were enough to warrant the death penalty several hundred times over, and anybody who’d been working with him or even assisting him along the way was just as guilty. Whether or not this one was Ezra was irrelevant in either matter. He had to die all the same.
What’s he waiting for? Isaac’s thoughts rang in Zoey’s head.
She didn’t dare to break her gaze from their enemy as she said, I think… orders.
From our mystery psychic?
The hybrid’s eyes shifted again, this time peering for an instant in a third direction—impatient and questioning—and his left shoulder yanked back, an involuntary response. Like he’d heard something he didn’t like…
Perhaps, Zoey watched him, his icy aura thrashing like his shoulder before suddenly going calm again. Another response, but this one the total opposite from the first. She’d been a part of enough private conversations to know the signs of somebody reacting to words without words, and she’d seen enough interactions—with or without any psychic activity attached to them—to know when somebody was caught between two stronger sides. But I’m not so sure it’s just that.
God, he wanted to kill them!
He wanted to kill them so badly his body ached from waiting!
But…
YOU DARE TO QUESTION ME NOW? AFTER ALL I’VE DONE RIGHET BY YOU SO FAR, YOU THINK I WOULD AIM THE TWO OF YOU WRONG NOW? Messiah was livid, his rage practically crushing Jerrick’s skull.
Messiah’s orders were the same as Jerrick’s desires: to kill the blue-haired bitch and her doggy fuck-toy. From the moment he’d spotted them he’d wanted to end them, and both Ezra and Messiah had been in agreement that it would be for the best to get the two of them out of the way sooner rather than later. Though neither of them seemed to pose much of a threat, if The Council had sent them then it was unwise to underestimate them. That was why a sneak attack—raining down death from above before they knew what was coming—seemed the best course of action. And it had been…
Until the bitch sensed him!
In less than a second the softness and weakness had vanished from her face, and before Jerrick had had a chance to formulate a new plan Messiah had been roaring in his head. Shock and embarrassment combined to motivate the most humiliating of responses, and he’d run. Though he hadn’t interrupted or questioned Messiah during the berating of his brother, Ezra had been there—somewhere miles away in the city but in Jerrick’s head all the same—trying to find a safe way to both support his brother while not further enraging the mysterious voice that had suddenly become their dictator.
Only after he’d focused enough to shield his thoughts the way Messiah had taught them to in their dreams and after being pursued by the two Council-sent filth had Ezra finally spoken up:
Take them from the side, mein bruder; the side! Take them even before they see the fury in your eyes! he’d instructed, his words strong and right but still sounding like a nervous whisper in his head.
Still two rooftops ahead of the two, he’d tried just that. Hooking around, he’d hoped to catch them off guard by diving at them from the neighboring rooftop—still moving too fast for them to see—but had lost too much speed the moment his feet were in the air. He’d seen a flash of panic in the Council-dog’s eyes and then…
He’d missed!
Now the voices in his head flared with opposing instructions, Messiah urging him forward and demanding their deaths while Ezra pleaded that he not be forced to take the risk.
There’s two of them, Messiah, and while my brother is strong he is still only one! I need more time; I’ve yet to finish your orders and I cannot be there to assist him! If anything should go wrong—
DO YOU THINK I HAVEN’T WEIGHED THE POSSIBILITIES? HE IS THE WEAK LINK BETWEEN YOU, HE’LL EITHER RID US OF ONE NUSCENCE OR THEY’LL DO THE SAME.
How can you—no! NO! DO NOT LISTEN TO HIM, MEIN BRUDER! NEIN! RUN! WE WILL KILL THEM TOGETHER, BUT THE
RE’S NO—
Then, all at once, Ezra’s voice was gone from Jerrick’s mind, and only the one remained:
You will obey me, boy, Messiah’s voice was terrifying in its sudden calmness, or both you and your brother will drop where you stand this instant.
As though to prove his point, Messiah made his hold on him known by taking a portion of his life at that moment. His vision faded around the edges until only pin pricks of the world existed; sounds faded to ghostly echoes that bled together until there was nothing but a single hum so far off in the auditory horizon that he felt deaf to all. His senses all failed him, becoming something so far from what he’d known that he believed in that instant that he’d actually died. And then, just as fast as life had left him, it was all back again—blaring with such a radiant intensity that he wondered how he’d ever handled it all before. Though he wasn’t sure how long he’d been in the strange place between living and not, he found that he was still on his feet and, if the unchanged faces of his enemies were any hint, no less intimidating to them then his last clear memory of their standoff. Brief as it was, however, he found himself suddenly afraid. He’d never realized before how tied they’d allowed themselves to become to Messiah, an entity that they knew nothing of and had no way now of fighting against, but it was clear that his life and, more importantly, his brother’s depended on their continued obedience.
“Yes,” he growled, and then he moved to kill them.
“Yes.”
Zoey was barely aware that their opponent had said a thing before his form flickered from existence and reappeared as a looming beast that struck against her aura with a force that rattled her teeth inside her head. She’d only barely registered that he’d made a move before he was on them and in his therion form, the tattered remains of most of his clothes laying spread across the space between where he now stood, clawing furiously at the invisible force dividing them, and where he’d begun. The sleeveless jacket, which was loose enough around his shoulders in his human form to survive the change, flapped about his form like shadowy wings as he flashed in and out of focus, jumping into overdrive again and again to attack from a different angle, each time slamming against the strained surface of her auric bubble.