Zero

by Claire Stevens

  Chapter Fifteen

  A few hours later the lock clicked and Oriel pushed the door open a crack, slowly, like he was expecting something to be thrown at him. He poked his head cautiously around the door frame. It was slightly insulting that he thought I was so dense that if I was planning to throw something at him I wouldn’t even wait until he was in the room properly before letting rip, but I decided to let this slide for the moment.

  I was sitting on the edge of my bed, hands clasped neatly in my lap. My nerves were in flitters and although I tried to keep as calm an expression as I could muster, it made my face feel wonky and disjointed, like a Cubist portrait.

  I threw what I hoped was a cheerful smile his way. It was tricky because I really, really wanted to punch him, but I knew that if my cunning plan were to work I’d need to play nice.

  Of course I had a cunning plan.

  Alright, maybe ‘cunning’ was overstretching it a bit but it was a plan, nevertheless.

  My stomach gave a ripple of nerves when I thought how much of my plan I’d have to concoct on the fly, how much depended on chance, and how much could easily go wrong, but I squashed my misgivings down impatiently. Stay in this screwed-up world for the rest of my life, or go back home? No contest.

  When Oriel saw that I was relatively sane again, he looked surprised and pleased. Mostly surprised. I even managed to widen my smile a bit, although it felt like it would crack my face in half. He came into the room and shut the door behind him, leaning against the door frame. He raised his eyebrows slightly. ‘Have you made a decision?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, as calmly as I could.

  He leaned against the doorframe, crossing one leg over the other. ‘And it is?’

  ‘I’ll help you get Owen back.’ I tried to inject a bright note into my voice, but the words felt like they were being dragged from me with pliers. ‘And I’ll go to the Citadel for this…treatment.’

  ‘Training,’ he corrected me softly.

  ‘Yeah, well.’ I shrugged, trying desperately not to meet his eye. He didn’t say anything, so I cleared my throat and waited a bit more. Thud, thud, thud. My heartbeat sounded like elephants stamping in my chest.

  I broke first. ‘Well, anyway, we’d better find the others, hadn’t we? Neve and everyone. Where are they?’

  ‘They’re at an inn on the road to Thornsvale waiting for us to turn up.’

  More silence. I peeped up at Oriel from behind my long fringe to see what he was doing. He was just standing there perfectly still, but there was a look in his eyes like a cat stalking a bird.

  Eventually, he broke the silence. ‘Well, I’d better go and get you your weapons, then, hadn’t I?’

  And with that he swung out of the room, leaving me shaky but triumphant. Ha! He’d swallowed it! Phase one of the cunning plan: check. On to phase two.

  I stood up and started pacing nervously around my room. When I thought about what I was going to do, my stomach cramped with guilt and horror. I’d never intentionally hurt another human. Even when Chec and I were at our most incompatible, we never resorted to physical violence.

  Chec. Thinking of her again made my head swim. I’d created my own sister. I used to be an only child, and then one day I apparently decided not to be any more.

  Poor Chec. Poor Mum and Dad. Did they have any idea? Any clue that Chec wasn’t their real daughter? And then it hit me. She was their daughter. She was…me. She was who I’d be if I wasn’t Blessed.

  Time and again over the last few hours I’d tried to convince myself that Oriel was wrong, he was lying. I wasn’t a Psion. I couldn’t be. I’d know. And I hadn’t created my sister. People don’t just do things like that. After all, I only had Oriel’s word to go by. That and some musty old book that, frankly, could have said anything as far as I was concerned.

  Except, I realised with a sinking feeling every time I tried to convince myself of Oriel’s shady lies, except I knew he was telling the truth. I knew, like I knew my eyes were grey and that my jaw clicked when I ate. It was as if Oriel saying it had unlocked a secret well of knowledge inside me.

  I took a deep breath. I couldn’t do it.

  I shook my head. I could. I had to get home. Had to. I couldn’t stay in Gileath, dealing with this…this thing.

  For the hundredth time, I racked my brains for another way. From the notes in my file, I certainly had enough creepy, horrible Influence to stop Oriel while I escaped; hell, there were probably a million ways I could do it if I only knew how to trigger it. The problem was, I was so keyed up I’d be just as likely to inadvertently banish him to a hell dimension as I would be to immobilise him.

  I sat back down on the bed and started fiddling with the pretty yellow bedspread. When I looked down, I’d nearly worn a hole straight through the damn thing. I jammed my hands into my pockets to stop myself doing any more damage.

  Oriel came back in, making me jump about a metre into the air, and handed me my things wordlessly. I shrugged my tunic over my shirt and strapped the bandolier of knives to my leg slowly, playing for time. This was the worst plan ever. The thought of Oriel being hurt at all, let alone at my hands, made every cell in my body scream out in rebellion.

  What other choice did I have, though? There was no way he’d let me just walk out of here and I had a life in another dimension to get back to. Oriel had dropped a huge bombshell of information on me and I needed to be able to process it in my own way.

  And it wasn’t like they needed me here. So what if I had the most powerful Blessings they’d seen for donkey’s years? I’d seen Kallista at work. She was all kinds of powerful. She’d totally be able to pull off a dimensional hole. Totally.

  Then I remembered his argument that things could go badly wrong if I left my power unchecked and pushed the thought aside. Badly wrong? Vague, much? Besides, I’d been fine so far, hadn’t I? He was probably just scaremongering to get me to do as he said.

  I hoisted my quiver onto my back and slowly picked up my bow. In one fluid movement, I pulled out an arrow, nocked it to the bow and drew the string back, aiming at Oriel’s leg.

  My eyes flicked up to meet Oriel’s and instead of seeing the evil scoundrel who'd spirited me away from my life and my family, I just saw the boy who’d asked me to help rescue his little brother, who’d spent the last week helping me and chatting with me and teasing me and gradually becoming my friend.

  No. No, no, no. My first thought was to drop my bow, to throw it to the floor, but the bowstring was already slipping past my fingertips.

  An arrow from a recurve bow travels at around seventy metres per second. Oriel’s movement was no more than a flicker as he span to the side as gracefully and lightly as a dancer. The arrow thunked into the wall where he’d been standing.

  I didn’t have time to gasp with relief before he moved again, landing barely a pace away from me. He took my wrists in his hands and whirled me round, pressing me to the wall and sending my bow clattering to the floor.

  He held my hands held apart at the sides of my head. I wondered why, until - stupid me - I realised. He thought I was going to reach for one of my knives. I was completely immobilised - Oriel had me well and truly pinned to the wall - but this didn’t stop me from struggling pointlessly against his hold. ‘I wasn’t going to-’ I ground out as I pulled against his hands. Jesus. They were like steel bars.

  His face was inches from mine and he assumed an expression of mock-polite interest. ‘You weren’t going to….what? Shoot me and try to escape?’ He glanced over to the arrow sticking out of the wall with a Really? look.

  He turned back to me and to my surprise he didn’t look pissed off or upset, just faintly amused. ‘Roanne, I knew what you were planning before I even entered the room,’ he said. ‘Do you really think you can fool me? About anything? Think again. I knew what you would try to do even before you thought of it yourself.’

  Still holding my wrists over my head, he frowned down at me. He shook his head slowly. ‘I know you
’ve had a lot to take in and I’m sorry. I’m sorry we didn’t tell you about your Blessings as soon as you got here. I’m sorry we didn’t manage to hold off telling you until after we’d found Owen. I’m sorry that when I did tell you, I made such a pig’s ear of it. But Roanne, you have to believe me when I say you are not leaving this house until you agree to come to the Citadel to be trained properly.’

  We stood glowering at one another for an age, until my face fell sullenly and his expression softened. ‘It’s such a shame, because with your power and tenacity, if you put your mind to it, you could be unstoppable. It would be breathtaking.’

  And then I had it. I’d been going about this half-cocked thinking I needed to beat him into submission. He thought I had the potential to be breathtaking? Fine. I’d show him breathtaking.

  I glanced down and then looked up at him from under my lashes whilst biting my lip. Oriel still had my arms pinned to the wall, but I managed to arch my back towards him ever so slightly, holding his gaze, until my hipbone nudged against his. His eyes widened momentarily and something subtle shifted in them. He swallowed visibly. His eyes flicked down to my lips and he slowly started to lean in towards me.

  I struggled to keep the look of triumph from my face, but I knew I had him. Now all I had to do was reel him in. He stopped when his face was a few inches from mine.

  He was so close now that I could feel the heat from his body, and smell the laundry detergent smell of his shirt and another scent that was like sunshine. I bit back a whimper as a thoroughly unexpected wave of desire ripped through me.

  Slowly, Oriel tilted his head closer to mine and the only thing that surprised me more than the knowledge that he was going to kiss me was the realisation of how much I wanted him to. I couldn’t quite recall what my original plan was but at that moment I’d have been hard pressed to remember my name.

  My heart was galloping along at a thousand beats a minute and our faces were so close I could no longer see Oriel’s expression, only his half-closed eyes. He’s going to kiss me, he’s going to kiss me, he’s going to kiss me. The words floated round my head like a crazy merry-go-round.

  Imagine my confusion, therefore, when Oriel’s ragged breathing turned to chuckles. He stepped back, releasing my wrists, and grinned at me. ‘Sorry, sorry. I can’t even keep a straight face. That was good. You’re good. Really.’

  My mouth popped open in an O of shock.

  Oriel started sauntering back to the door, picking up my discarded bow and quiver on the way as I stood, still open-mouthed, still unable to move. ‘I’d better take these with me but you can keep your knives if you like. I’ll be interested to see what you manage to do with them.’

  Hatred pulsed through me completely obliterating any residue of lust and I sprang at him, snarling. He neatly sidestepped me and I crashed into the side of the bed. By the time I had lurched to my knees he had hidden behind the bedroom door. He poked his head round. ‘Not that I don’t trust you, but I’m going to lock the door behind me again.’

  I grabbed the first thing I could see - a pretty blue china bowl - and hurled it at his head. He ducked easily in time. ‘Temper, temper. I’ll leave you to your tantrum. Try not to destroy too much. If your meltdown burns itself out by this evening I’ll let you out for dinner.’

  With that he shut the door, and true to his word he locked it behind him.

  Damn him. Damn him to hell.