“Owen,” she answered, her voice so weak that it was almost a whisper. “Owen, something’s happened.”
My blood turned to ice in my veins. “Is it…is it Sevie?” I swallowed hard, trying to steel myself for the answer and knowing that I never could.
“No, Owen. It’s-“
A man appeared behind her and she stopped short, as though she felt him there.
Chant stood in the doorway, cane in hand. “If it isn’t the man of the hour,” he grinned. “I’m glad to see you awake. You have work to do and time is of the essence. Though I suppose your wife told you as much.”
“They do know,” I answered, looking at Merrin. “Fate’s hand, I brought them right to her.”
“No, no!” Chant chuckled. “Don’t worry, Dragon. Your spotless spirit is still intact. You didn’t betray your love, only your family, people, and legacy.”
“I don’t understand,” I said, straightening under paper sheets.
“While it’s true we know where the Bloodmoon is, you can rest easy. Though it won’t stop you from having to kill her, you can sleep well knowing that you’re not the one who gave her up.”
“Get to the point,” I barked, fed up with his nonsense. “If not me, then who?”
My face dropped as I saw someone enter behind Chant. It couldn’t have been. He wasn’t here. He couldn’t be here. If he was here, then that meant-
“You betrayed them,” I shouted. “No, not you. You couldn’t have.”
“I’m sorry,” Echo answered, holding a bandage over his hand. “You’ll understand soon enough.”
Chapter 18
The Bowels of Clarity
Cresta
Fire batted up from the building like ribbons flailing towards the sky. It didn’t seem real. How could it be? The entire hotel was destroyed, engulfed in fire and crackling shade. No one could have survived that.
And every single person in the entire world who I could trust had been inside.
“I did this,” I muttered, looking at the building.
Though I didn’t remember sliding, suddenly I was on my knees, looking at the hotel with tears in my eyes. “I did this to them.”
And I had. I trapped them in their with my shade barrier. I turned them into sitting ducks. And for what? So they wouldn’t follow me? So they couldn’t explain themselves? And now they never would explain themselves. They’d never do anything ever again.
“I did this. I am the Bloodmoon.”
“Say it a little louder. I don’t think everyone heard you quite clearly enough.” Liv stood over me. Her hands were on her hips and she looked more than a little pissed.
“I killed them,” I said, looking up at her. “I killed them all.”
“You didn’t,” Liv said flatly. “Those bastard Breakers did. But if you keep sitting here, you’ll be responsible for making all those deaths meaningless. We’ve got to get you out of here. Now where’s your team?”
I narrowed my eyes at her and motioned to the rubble in the distance.
“Your people were in there?!” She gasped. “Toby was in there?” She blinked hard, presumably trying to process this information. “Alright,” she finally nodded. “We still gotta go.”
“What?” I asked, my mind still full of the fog of what just happened. “No!” I screamed as Liv grabbed my hand. “I have to get in there. I have to see if any of them are…”
The word wouldn’t come.
“Look at that place, Cresta.” Liv pulled me forcibly to my feet, stronger than I figured she’d be. “I don’t want your friends to be dead any more than you do. And Toby, he was…important to me. But they didn’t survive that. The Breakers have killed your friends. And, while I know that’s a lot to deal with and that what I’m about to ask you to do isn’t fair, I’m going to need you to pull your head out of your ass and listen to me. Because, if you don’t- while I’m familiar enough with your prophecies that I know they won’t kill you without your precious Dragon in the line of sight- then a lot of my people are going to die trying to defend you.” She turned me around. Behind me, stood what was pretty much an army. Men, women, even a few kids, stood with baseball bats, knives, and a few weird looking weapons that I didn’t recognize right off.
“Those are families, Cresta. And, while they’re willing to die for you and for what you stand for, believe me when I say they’d rather not.” She flipped me back around so that I was facing the building again. This time three people-two men and a woman- were running toward me. “And those are the Breakers who are going to try to do it.” She shook me, literally shook me. “We. Need. To. Run. “
“No…” I muttered.
“Cresta, they’ll-“
“They won’t,” I said, my voice trembling with anger. I pulled myself away from Liv, anger and shade crackling around my body. “They’re dead because of them.” I moved toward them, my mind racing, and my heart pounding hard against my chest. “Royce, Dahlia. Ca-Casper.” My voice broke when I said his name. Casper, my best friend, the closest thing I would ever have to a brother, the person that life had taught me I needed the most. He was my strength. He was my anchor. And now he was dead.
And someone had to pay.
“Cresta, get back here!” I heard Liv say from behind me, but she might as well have been a million miles away. I was done listening to people, and I was done playing games.
When I first got to Weathersby, the idea of all of this nonsense was as foreign to me as brie cheese. To think that I’d ever become adept enough to be able to access the shade, let alone control it, was an idea so laughable that I didn’t even consider it.
As rage lit up every piece of my body know, I thanked God I was wrong.
My hand twitched and, with a flick of the energy that these bastards produced the way humans produced carbon dioxide, I solidified the air in front of them. They slammed hard into a wall of shade, knocking the three of them on their asses.
I went for the woman first. Using the shade, I lifted her up, jerking her hand into the air. Her eyes shot toward me and I felt her power. She control gravity, and she was attempting to use it to crush me where I stood. For anyone else in the world, that might be an issue. For me, it was an inconvenience. I flicked my hand again, twisting her arm and only stopping when I heard it pop.
I moved my hand again, and threw her into the air. She slammed against the pavement, grabbing her arm and rolling across the parking lot.
One of the men was standing now, gathering his own energy. Looking down, I saw its effect. A bright red blade of energy shot out of his hand, like a knife.
I lifted my arm, twisting the shade so that it took complete control of him. The other man was stumbling to his feet now, but he wouldn’t stay standing for long.
I lifted the other man’s arm, moving the blade toward the standing man. Anger burned through me. They killed them. These people killed them all.
I pushed the blade toward the standing man. They killed them. They deserved this. They deserved to-
A shot of electricity flew through the sky, slamming into both men and knocking them to the ground, shaking and unconscious.
“What the hell!” I spun around, my eyes practically burning with white hot rage.
Liv stood behind me, a weird metal firearm in her hand.
“They were mine!” I screamed.
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” she answered. “You’d have killed them, and we can’t have that. Not when we’re so close.”
“What are you talking about?!” I screamed.
“You’ll find out,” Liv said. “Right after your time out.”
She shot at me, a bright line of electricity colliding with my chest.
I shook, my jaw locking up and my body convulsing.
“You…you…” But I couldn’t finished. My body went limp, I slid to the ground, and the world went dark.
*********************
I woke slowly to a hard nudging on my shoulders. My head hurt and m body felt draine
d and limp.
“Hey!” A voice said over and over again. “Come on now! I haven’t got time to drag your blonde ass all over this place.”
My eyes flickered open. Liv leaned over me, shaking me hard. Curly hair spilled down into my face and her eyes looked more than a little peeved.
“That’s it. Just open your eyes, Sunshine,” she said. “And get the hell up.”
“You-you shot me,” I swallowed as she stood up straight.
“Oh, it was a Taser. Don’t be so dramatic. Besides, you should be thanking me.” She folded her arms.
“Sure,” I answered, sitting up and trying to catch my breath. “Come a little closer again. I thank you properly.”
“Toby never told me about your temper,” Liv answered. Her voice dipped into the ‘mournful’ range, which sent my head spinning. Toby was Casper. Casper was dead. The world didn’t make sense.
“Shut up,” I answered.
“You would have killed them,” she said.
“I would not have,” I shot back, stumbling to my feet. “They deserve to die, but I wouldn’t have killed them.”
“Tell that to the shade knife you were about to thrust into that Breaker dude’s gut,” she quipped. “Not that it matters. I saved you from yourself. I also saved me from yourself, given that it looked like you were about to go Dark Willow all over the place.”
Buffy reference notwithstanding, I didn’t like this girl. She was pushy, too good with weaponry, and she had a piece in all of this that I still didn’t understand. What the hell did Casper see in her?
“You were practically drowning in energy. You needed to chill out. That’s why I encouraged you to take a little nap…with my Taser. “
“Where are we?” I asked, looking around. Wherever I now stood, was dark and wet. Bricks lined rounded walls and puddles sat deep on the stone floors. There was, of course, another pretty prominent sensory feature to this place. “It smells like ass in here.”
“That’s cause you’re standing in a sewer, Sunshine,” Liv smiled.
“So what I’m smelling is-”
“Actually ass? Yeah. Welcome to the big leagues, Sunshine.”
“Why do you keep calling me that? Casper called me that once, back in the Hourglasss,” I answered.
“Guess I rubbed off on him,” she beamed.
“And we both know where that led him,” I scoffed, tears brewing behind my eyes.
“I’m not the one who locked him in that room.”
“Don’t you dare!” I snapped.
“Temper, Cresta,” she lifted her hand to me. “Can’t have you powering up down here. The blockers will overload and we’ll be as visible as a zit on prom night.”
“Where are we?!” I shouted. “Where is this place?”
“It’s the infrastructure, the bowels of Clarity.”
“We’re in Clarity?” I asked, a shock of pain running through me as I remembered how much Casper wanted to be here, how much he wanted to keep his child safe.
“We’re under it,” Liv said, starting down the darkened corridor. “And we need to get you to the surface as quickly as those red and black Sketchers will take you. It’s the only place you’ll be safe.”
“It’s not,” I said, following her through the darkness. Looking down at my feet, I realized that I was, in fact, wearing black and red Sketchers. They must have gotten them for me while I was unconscious, somewhere between the desert and fleabag motel. It was their last gift to me, the last one any of them would ever give me. “I get that you think you’re helping me, and I guess I appreciate that. But the truth is, the Council knows where I am now. They killed the others,” I said with a lump in my throat. “I’ll be next. They’ll get Owe- the Dragon out here, and they’ll force him to take me out.”
I couldn’t imagine a world where Owen killed me. He’d never do that, no matter what happened. But Fate was Fate. And I knew better than to underestimate her.
”You can’t keep me safe. Not here, not there, not anywhere.”
“Do you have Dr. Seuss aspirations? Because that was pretty spot on, Sam I Am.” She turned back to me. “What you’re not taking into consideration is what you don’t know.”
“Well, it would be pretty difficult for me to take what I don’t know into consideration, but what the hell. I’m stuck in a sewer with a weird girl and all of my friends were just murdered. I’ll bite. What the hell are you talking about?”
“Clarity isn’t just Clarity, Cresta. There’s a reason Toy was brought here.”
“His name is Casper!” I yelled.
“Fine, whatever. There’s a reason he was brought here. It was so that he could bring you here. Clarity isn’t a town, Cresta. It was built a long ass time ago for this moment, just for you. It’s the base of the Taggers. And it’s a damn fortress.” A smile slid across her face. “Let the Council come. Let them bring every Breaker from here to kingdom come along with them. Let them throw the Dragon on a golden throne and prop him up like that white hair Game of Thrones queen. It won’t make a damn difference. Nothing gets into Clarity, Cresta. Nothing.”
“You know,” I said, breathing heavy as the weight of everything started to settle on me again. “They used to say nothing got out of the Hourglass too. And we both know how that turned out.”
“Just follow me, Gloomy Gus,” Liv said after looking at me for a long second.
“Fine,” I answered. “But you have to spill first.”
“And what is it you want to know exactly?” She asked, raising a brow at me.
“What are the Taggers? What do you want with me? And what did you do to Casper when you stole him away?”
“So predictable,” she shook her head. “Though, I wonder how you can steal somebody who’s basically been thrown away.”
“I did not!” I yelled. “He was in danger. You don’t know anything about it.”
“See, that’s where you’re wrong,” she answered. “We know everything there is to know about you. We’ve been watching you since well before the breakers, since before Allister Leeman even. Your mothers thought they could hide the truth of who you were after your dad died, but the truth was, we already knew. We always knew.”
“Why?” I asked, my forehead knitting.
“We’re the Taggers, Cresta. It’s what we do.” Liv lifted her hands, splaying her fingers in front of her animatedly. “You know how Breakers are this age old sect of people who basically run the world behind the veil of secrecy and exploitation?”
“Yeah…” I started hesitantly.
“Well, we’re like that two, with a couple pretty pronounced differences.”
“You’re Breakers? I asked. Like, you have powers?” Instinctively, I stepped backward. Sure, Casper might have loved this girl, but the only thing I knew for sure about her was that she knocked me out with a Taser and dragged my unconscious body down to a sewer. I was powerful, sure. But if this girl was capable of going on the offensive, I wanted to be prepared.
“God no,” she scoffed. “Breakers are way too self-important to share their precious little Shade. Not that we could access it even if they did. Genetic predisposition and all. We’re just humans, Cresta. Just people. But we’re important. Back in the genesis of your people, when the Council was just a notion and the Hourglass was a tent with a moat around it, the Breakers took our forefathers in. They considered us to be pretty advanced for Neanderthals, and they wanted to make use of that.”
“How?” I asked, inching back toward her.
“They bred us to be servants. We tended to their issues, helped build up and maintain their lifestyle. We even died for them, if that’s what was called for.” She leaned forward, her mouth twisting up like the cat that ate the canary. “But we also learned their secrets.”
She nodded, like maybe I looked like I didn’t believe and she was trying to convince me.
“Generation after generation of Taggers served the Breakers. Just like they were descended from prestigious lines, so were we. But
they didn’t consider that. They looked at us like we were nothing, like we were too simple minded to ever be a threat to them. Their egos became their shameful sins. Thirty years ago, my grandfather- tired of watching your Council lie, cheat, and manipulate the world into the shape they saw fit- led a revolt inside the Hourglass. They laughed at him at first. That’s how cocky they were. That’s how unprepared they were. But my grandfather knew their secrets. As Taggers, we watch. We wait. We listen. And we learn. By the time they knew what was going on, it was too late. We had built an Underground Railroad right under their noses. My grandfather led his people out like Moses through the desert. But, unlike the Moses with the Egyptians, my grandfather never needed to throw a single punch. And, unlike you, he knew how to get through the Great Wall without setting off the anchors.”
“It didn’t mess with his brain?” I asked. “But that means that he knew-that you guys know…”
“Where the Hourglass really is? Where all of its weakest points lie? Exactly how to get your boyfriend back? Whichever question you were about to ask, the answer is yes. We’re the Taggers, Cresta. And we’re about to take a hammer to the people trying to kill you. So?” She asked, smirking at me and tilting her head. “Are you coming or not?”
Chapter 19
Soul Crushing Sorrow
I followed Liv through the ‘bowels of Clarity’, even though I was still more than a little hesitant about her. She had told me all about the Taggers, told me all about their beef with the Breakers, and told me how they planned to use the Breakers’ weaknesses against them in an attempt to bring them down. But she still hadn’t told me what the Taggers wanted with me.
It was no doubt to use me as a weapon or a symbol, or whatever other sort of advantage they could wring out of me. And, while I wasn’t too keen on the idea of being used by yet another clandestine group, these idiots had to be the lesser of two evils. And besides, Liv promised she could keep me safe from the Council, which was a huge step up from what I was capable of doing myself.
The Breaker's Resolution: (YA Paranormal Romance) (Fixed Points Book 4) Page 14