“Caligula?” Eran asked.
“The sovereign leader of that province. I’m assuming he’ll be there this time.”
“What makes you think so?” asked Spencer, the more cerebral of the Weatherfords, as he leaned against the kitchen counter.
“It’s a hunch, but I imagine if they have a large force on the ground, they’re protecting someone or something.” I turned back to Maggie and handed the uniform to her.
Clearly opposing the idea, but seeing no other way around it, she snatched it from my hands and marched upstairs.
Eran leaned toward me, while keeping his eyes on the stairs, to whisper, “Magdalene doesn’t like uniforms very much.”
I chuckled, and replied, “I got that impression. Hope you don’t have the same issue.”
He lifted one shoulder in a shrug and smirked. “I’ll go naked if it’ll do the job.” Ignoring the chuckles that followed, he headed upstairs with his uniform in hand.
“And the third?” Jocelyn pressed, lifting her eyebrows at me.
I took the remaining uniform and strode to her. Feeling victorious, her eyes lit up, but calmed when I didn’t release my grip on the clothes.
“I’m hesitant to allow this, Jocelyn. You entered the conflict last time when I told you not to, not without my signal. And that signal never came. Did it?
She sighed and rolled her eyes.
“I’m serious, Jocelyn. I love you. The very core of me wants to keep you here. But you bring up a valid point. Your healing ability is needed on the field. And with the Dissidents rebelling there will be injuries. That said, you will remain behind with Theleo until we have secured the area and I personally tell you it is safe to enter. Let me repeat that…I personally will tell you when it is safe to enter.”
In a paramount gesture of acceptance, Jocelyn whispered, “Yes, Nobilis.”
My eyebrows shot up in surprise.
And then her lips turned up in a sideways grin. “I will allow you this one wish, oh Great One.”
With that, she tore the clothes from my hands and waltzed upstairs.
Snickering broke out around the room, and when I faced them, they were cowering behind hands clapped over their mouths.
“Nice to see you all finding common ground,” I pointed out, which prompted several dirty looks across to the opposing family.
“Common ground?” said Charlotte sarcastically, always instigating. Although she still looked flushed from the stomach flu, it didn’t seem to impede her taste for conflict.
“What’s with your attitude, Charlotte,” Nolan demanded, his notoriously brute side showing.
My mother opened her mouth, and appeared interested in quelling the growing argument, but she never got a chance.
“What’s with your attitude?” Dillon countered. “You have no class, Nolan.”
“Class?” Nolan laughed. “Who needs class when they’re dealing with a Caldwell?”
From there, the small kitchen became a battleground. Dishes spun and shattered, fireballs singed the curtains, icicles slammed into several heads. Ezra and Rufus were on their feet, either protecting themselves from the damage or screaming to be heard. Felix had slipped from the room after the first assault.
“ENOUGH!” I shouted over the anarchy. “ENOUGH!” And when they still didn’t listen, I took hold of Charlotte’s arm, channeled her ability, and sent every one of them up against the wall. That quieted them down.
With their attention now on me, and my hand still on Charlotte while she remained pinned to the refrigerator, I carefully explained, “Your fighting is becoming a nuisance, and worse, a distraction. There are people, friends…family members, out there who need our help. Right now, our allies, people with less training than you, are defending themselves against Vires. And you’re here, bickering, as The Sevens stride into history as the rulers over our world, the innocent world beyond it, and every world that comes after ours has been obliterated and forgotten. We need to focus and rely on each others’ strengths. I have seen you cast the most amazing spells – but at each other. You need to ask yourselves who you should really be casting at. Focus. This is exactly what the Sevens want. To tear us apart from within. What are we really trying to do here? We all have incredible abilities – but imagine what we can do together. Together we have the power but only if we use it together. That is exactly what the Sevens fear the most – all of us uniting – an uprising, and for good reason. If we can come together we can be a great and powerful force. Understand, those of you pinned to the wall at this moment, that you are being neither great nor powerful. Because those two forms of leadership traits are hidden beneath layers of anger and criticism. But it is up to you to overcome it…because there is far more at stake than this feud, than your indifferences, or the preservation of my life.” I drew in a deep breath, letting this message sink in. “Now, because you have proven yourselves to be lacking restraint, I will release the Weatherfords first. And I warn you all, if you so much as give the opposing family a sideways glance, you will find yourself back where you are now. Only this time, I’ll leave you there…indefinitely.”
No one spoke as I slid them to the ground, not even when the back door was opened and they sifted through it.
Behind me, Jocelyn, Maggie, and Eran stood at the opening to the hallway leading into the house, watching them leave, leery about what might flare up again. But only my mother paused at the door.
“You’ve become stronger, Jameson,” she said.
I blinked in confusion and she explained, “Your ability to cast us against the wall was telling, but I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about your wisdom. You see with clear eyes, while ours are clouded with emotion.”
“It’s Jocelyn,” I replied instinctively, not sure how she’d accept that news. “The longer I’m with her, the stronger I am.”
She considered this for a moment and gave me a hesitant smile, before taking a speculative look at Jocelyn, and left. As she cleared the doorway, I was met with Charlotte’s grim face.
“She makes you strong, huh?”
“Yes.”
“Strong enough to defend yourself against her?”
I knew where she was headed with her question. “I’ll never retaliate against Jocelyn. You should know that by now.”
“But you could if you needed to?” she pressed. “Because you’re channeling her strength, her ability to heal, correct?”
She’s hinting at something, I thought.
And that’s when it came to me.
Charlotte had cast against Jocelyn knowing that I would do everything in my power to ease her pain. I’d find some way to reduce it, and Charlotte knew eventually that solution would lead to channeling. And if I could absorb her pain, if I could absorb Charlotte’s ability to levitate, then I could absorb Jocelyn’s capacity for healing.
Charlotte, in her twisted way, had shown her wisdom.
Slowly, and in a barely audible whisper, I answered, “Yes, Charlotte, I can.”
With the hint of a smile and a reserved tip of her head, she said, “Good luck in China.”
As her feet swung off the ground and up behind her and she levitated into the darkness, I found myself torn. I was grateful for her guidance, and yet angry at her for using Jocelyn to steer me toward it.
“Ready?” Jocelyn asked.
Turning, I finally took in Estelle’s uniforms, and admitted to myself how startling the three of them looked. They were the faces of those who I trusted yet they wore the uniform of those who I’d unsympathetically kill on a second’s notice. Had I considered the implications then, I might have been able to avoid what happened later. As it was, I found it ironic that Jocelyn’s hand swept up and from it hung my Vire uniform. “I figured you’d need one too,” she said with a shrewd smile.
After changing, we headed for China. On the way there, I kept an eye out for yawns and eye rubs. Drowsiness led to lethargy, which led to errors, which ultimately led to death. Although I’d been trained to pe
rform well when sleep deprived, I wasn’t sure the others could, so it was a relief when they showed no signs of fatigue. Still, to keep them alert, I filled them in on what I knew about Caligula.
“This one has the most military experience out of all The Sevens, and unlike most leaders he doesn’t hide behind his forces. Caligula loves the battle. Some say he thrives at the sight of blood. This is probably why he oversees executions at the Ministry. I’ve never seen or heard of him being sick, injured, or weakened in any way, so we can deduce he is extraordinarily resilient. There are stories about him, which Theleo can support, about him fending off Elementals, Levitators, and Channelers who have attacked him at the time of their executions. Not a single one was successful. If he has a vulnerable spot, no one knows it.”
“I’ll find it,” Maggie said resolutely.
I liked her nerve, but she needed to know that she wasn’t in this alone. “We’ll be there too, Maggie.”
She gave me a sincere nod and redirected her gaze forward.
From then on, our time in the air was spent quiet, each of us doing our own assessment of what to expect on the ground.
Once there, we hovered over Pinggu, using the dense, dirtied air as cover. The Sevens were here all right, and the Dissidents were retaliating. Even from this height, and despite the thick foliage of the mountainous region, we could see movement, sparks of light.
“Jocelyn,” I asked, and she turned her eyes to me. “Wait for my sign this time.”
“I will,” she conceded, grasping the seriousness of the situation now that we were looking down on it.
“There are a lot of black uniforms down there,” Maggie noted. “It’ll be easy to blend in.”
“Let’s hope so,” I commented and gave Jocelyn a nod.
We descended and Jocelyn placed us at the rear of the assault, where Caligula was most likely to be. There were no tents this time, only native structures that served as homes and municipal offices.
“Easy to see why Caligula chose this location to strike,” I muttered.
Eran nodded. “Because there are no main roads leading here.”
“And the mountains offer protection,” Maggie added.
And once again I felt like we had the right allies with us.
“Caligula must be in one of these,” Eran said, slapping the corner of a white-washed building as we landed.
“Yes, he will have made himself an office here,” I agreed. And then it dawned on me where. “The most ostentatious one…”
“What?” Eran asked, keeping his eyes on the alleyway leading to the main street.
There were Vires down there, lots of them.
“We need to find the most lavish building. That’s where Caligula will be set up.”
They nodded in agreement and we headed for the street.
Blend in, my mind was telling me. And I was sure that’s what Maggie and Eran were telling themselves.
We did a fairly good job of it, passing unnoticed, even unrecognized while moving next to the buildings. The Vires didn’t shift their eyes from whatever target they had locked on, allowing us to pass by as ghosts. For once, their robotic programming worked to our benefit. It was a refreshing change of pace.
There was a calm, almost routine, mechanical feeling to the city, a tempo that said, “We’re here. We’re going to stay, let’s get on with it”. Clearly, it was now occupied by The Sevens, our world and the one ours was embedded in merged here, becoming one. There were no more witches and those who didn’t believe we existed, just subjects and The Sevens. The veil to our world was lifted, the innocence the other world lived in was now wiped away. If they hadn’t believed in witchcraft, they would now or soon enough. The elders might call us Wu, or shaman, and the younger generation might reason our ability to levitate, channel, and manipulate the elements to be technological advancements. Either way, denying it would be a futile exercise.
When Maggie cleared her throat, my eyes immediately darted in search of what she was referring to. Finding it, I instinctively started in that direction, my intuition telling me that we’d arrived.
The monastery was traditional, constructed of stone and brick. It was balanced in design with each element being a separate and equal counterpart so that if the building were split in half each would be mirror images of the other. The roof swept upward, after the Buddhists’ belief that it would ward off evil. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem to work this time.
Surprisingly, the front hall we entered through the main door was vacant, absent of people and furnishings. There was, however, an enormous Buddhist statue.
An almost inaudible snort came from Maggie, a sound that I interpreted as her being insulted somehow.
“A monastery?” she whispered harshly. “A place of worship? Can you believe the shamelessness of it?”
I was starting to wonder if her anger could be contained when Eran warned, “Focus, Magdalene. They won’t be here long.”
That last part got me moving again, heading into the great hall. Overhead, the intricacy of the roof looked like art and lining both sides of this long, narrow room were statues of the Buddhas. They appeared to be observing us, questioning if we would be successful in liberating this building from the man standing at the far end of it.
He was the sole person in sight, facing the mural painted on the back wall as if he were trying to decipher it. His fingers were intertwined behind his back. His arms lay limp against his hips. He appeared relaxed, self-assured, giving the impression that he had all the time in the world.
That was not going to be the case.
We walked directly to him, our Vire uniforms working as intended, permitting us to get close despite the fact that two of his associates had already lost their lives.
In fact, I thought, I figured he’d have a security detail surrounding him.
When we were within fifteen feet of him, movement caught our attention, followed by a blur of black shifting in my peripheral vision.
We stopped just as they descended on us, swinging around the backside of the statues with the fluidity of acrobats and dropping to their feet. Surrounding us before we could go any farther, they stood firmly waiting for orders.
Trap, was the word that went through my mind. The next one summed up exactly how they knew to expect us, prophecy.
Caligula slowly turned to face us, his large nose and thin, nearly nonexistent, mouth pinched in a tight frown. Astutely, he visually measured us, assessing the threat level as a general might. The ancient Roman battle garb he wore definitely gave him that likeness. The moldavite stone welded to the breast plate helped a bit.
“After I was banished here, I helped build this structure,” he reflected, surveying it, inspecting it like he had done with us. He turned his palms up at none of us in particular. “With these hands, I labored, perspired, bled. It was tiring work in which at the end of the day I was given nothing but water, a piece of meat, and an aching body. And then,” he said, his tone lightening, “then I learned it would no longer be required. You see, I discovered what I never believed possible. I was different. I had a gift, and it offered me endless opportunities. The world became mine. I took what I desired, effortlessly, aware and carefree of those who opposed me.” He leaned forward, the twitch of a sneer momentarily shaking his lips. There was no reason to fear them, because they could not kill me. I, however, I could kill them. Yes, Jameson, Magdalene, and Eran” he whispered with a tip of his finger toward each of us, “you are the victims, and I am one no longer.”
By this point Maggie and Eran were growing restless. They settled calmly into a fighting stance as Caligula broke the line and entered the circle of death where we now stood. Boldly, he continued.
“You see, Jameson,” he whispered leaning closer. “We all arrived with an exceptional ability, my six friends and me. I found mine when in a fist fight, on the ground, with an attacker’s face suspended over me.”
He leaned closer still until he was only an inch from me.
“Would you care to guess my ability?” he asked before closing his eyes and drawing in a seemingly bottomless breath. Then he paused, tilted his head up almost in reverie, and smiled.
Instantly, I became woozy, weak, as my vision danced in front of me. Confused, I blinked, attempting to straighten Caligula’s image.
Examining me intently now, he grinned. “You feel it don’t you?”
And he inhaled again.
As I struggled to draw air, my hands instinctively moved to his throat, but his grin only widened.
“Now you understand, don’t you? I cannot be killed because it is I who draw the life out of you.”
I grunted and saw Maggie and Eran move toward me, before I stopped them with my hand.
“Life is as fleeting as a single breath.”
Those were the words Caligula chose to sum up this brief episode in which he felt powerful, dominant. Of course he did. He had his guards there to protect him. What he didn’t know was that they only served to create a false sense of security.
As my hand came around Caligula’s neck, his eyebrows fell. He was confused, mystified. And while he struggled to understand exactly what was happening, I did something I’m certain no one had ever done before. During his attempt to absorb my life, I opened my mouth and spoke.
“So is your power.”
Then it was his face contorting, his mouth open, his breath rushing from his body.
Detecting that Caligula was in trouble, the guards attacked. Maggie and Eran intervened, but it was too late. I realized this as my body was hurled upward and through the roof.
15
RESURRECTION
THE AIR RUSHED INTO MY LUNGS, now free from Caligula’s grasp and from my focus on returning the favor. I felt my energy return, my heart beat slow to a steady pace. It was satisfying, renewing.
And then I reached the apex of my flight and began to descend.
My eyes snapped open.
And the pain flooded me.
Looking down I saw two factors to my situation, neither one being very positive. First, my body was rapidly approaching the hole that I left after being shoved through the monastery’s roof, and second, I was covered in red liquid.
Prophecy (Residue Series #4) Page 18