by Tracy Clark
Even with my face pressed up sideways against him, I saw that his aura glowed stark white and projected really far from his body. I turned my head toward his face, and in a last moment of desperation, I bit his cheek. He howled and stumbled back, his chest heaving with exhilaration. He had that same dazed look Finn had when he first took from me. Nausea built as I fought to stay standing.
He was on me before I knew it, pushing me backward. I fell hard onto the grass where he pounced on me, pinning me underneath him. With every bit of strength I had, I pushed my hands up toward him, trying to get him off me. I didn’t think I touched him before he scrambled off me and gaped, alarmed.
“A Xepa ring?” he asked with surprise and fear in his voice. “Why didn’t you say anything? Jaysus, I’m so fooking screwed! Just—just who—who in the hell are you?” He sat back on his heels and laughed. “I don’t know whether to run, or whether to finish you off so they never find out what I’ve done.”
Thirty-One
Finn
My uncle sidled up next to Saoirse and me with an amiable smile, which she returned in too easy a way. But I knew him. He had something urgent to say to me alone. His pull on my forearm confirmed it. I hoped to God he hadn’t seen Cora, and I tried to back myself against the wall so he couldn’t face the crowd.
“Ultana just gave me an urgent message from the head of the Society,” he said in a whispered rush, his tone insistent. “An Arrazi in Kilsallaghan thinks they’ve run across a group of people who might be the ones we’re looking for. She asked around and traced them to a rental cottage.” His eyes darted as he spoke. “Let’s be goin’ now.”
I’d backed against the wall to divert him from Cora, but now I wanted to walk away and my uncle had me cornered. I had no idea where Cora and the others were at that moment, but I sure as hell didn’t want to sniff them out for the Society to pick them off. I started to protest, but Clancy’s fingers dug into my arm.
“It’s dicey enough that we’re going on orders from the Society. If we do find them, it’ll take both of us to apprehend them and make sure the Society is none the wiser. If you care about the safety of your family, you’d at least pretend to be looking hard and fast for the Scintilla.” Clancy’s head tilted as he assessed me and blew out a breath. “If you care at all about that girl, you’d know she’s safer in our hands than roaming free for anyone to get at her. How will you help her then? Want her to be sold and bartered on the black market like a brasser, to be used by whoever has enough money? Or she could be killed right on the street, giving yet another Arrazi their sortilege and taking hers as well. If you love her, find her, because if anyone else finds her first, she’s as good as dead.”
Was there a chance I could warn Cora? I scanned the crowd. If she was still at the party I couldn’t see her. Clancy looked over his shoulder to see what I was searching for. “Fine. Let’s go,” I said.
Kilsallaghan was on the outer edge of west Dublin, not an area I’d ever been to. I wondered why the Scintilla didn’t try to get farther away. But then, she knew about the party and that meant she was searching for answers as hard as I was. “Does the Society have a network of Arrazi looking for the Scintilla?”
Clancy crooked his jaw from side to side like he was cracking his neck, but I knew it was him struggling not to tell me the truth. The fact that people could feel when I used my sortilege meant I had to be careful whom I used it on. Ultana, in particular. My sortilege would confirm for her that I’d encountered a Scintilla before because I’d not have my sortilege otherwise. “Aye,” he said. “The Society has a mass of Arrazi whose singular focus right now is finding them. It’s not easy, though. They’ll be needin’ to feel for energy most of them have never experienced.”
“Won’t there be a risk that someone will take them for themselves?”
That earned me an appreciative glance. “Glad to see you finally using your head. Now you see why we had to run right out here and take a look.” He glanced at the road, then back at me. “Your hands are shaking. You scared? Or is it hunger?”
I grit my teeth. I’d been increasingly shaky and cold over the last twenty-four hours. I thought it was too soon to be my need, but the signs were there. “I’m nervous,” I lied. “To see Cora again.”
“I’ve no doubt you’ll see her again.”
“You’d love that, wouldn’t you? To use me to get to her again?”
My uncle clucked his tongue. “Now, now. I deserved that, but you misunderstand. Not everything I say is meant to be malevolent, lad. I only meant that you two seem to have a particular talent for colliding, like it’s fated.”
If he only knew.
“And yes.” He sighed loudly. “To a certain degree, I’m counting on that.” Truth.
He checked the address and made a turn onto the main street of the town, pointing at a Turkish coffeehouse as we passed. “That is where the Arrazi woman thought she felt peculiar energy from three people. The descriptions were spot-on. We’re lucky Ultana passed this on to me rather than to someone else.”
“Feels the furthest thing from lucky.”
We drove up a grassy drive where two houses perched on a hill, one in front of the other. The house in back was dark, but the main house glowed against the black sky.
“You believe the Society will kill Arrazis who don’t march in line?”
Clancy parked in front of the house. “The Bogue family—”
“They moved to London.”
He smirked. “They sure did, in caskets. Come,” he said. “I keep telling you that the safety of our family depends on how we handle this. Come with me to talk to the owner of the cottage. This might be a good opportunity to feed. It’s deserted as can be, and you’ll be needing your strength in case we find them. Wouldn’t it be a twist if I had to stop you from attacking the Scintilla?”
“I’m not going to the door with you.”
“Suit yourself, you stubborn gowl.” He patted his stomach like he’d had a holiday meal. “My needs are well taken care of. You’ll be facing the truth again soon enough by the look in your eyes. Aye, then you’ll beg me to take you for killin’.”
“Don’t count on it.”
He slammed the car door and walked to the front door. Moments later, a middle-aged man wearing overalls and a woolen cap greeted my uncle. Warm yellow light from the house slanted out from behind him. I rolled the window down to hear. Clancy asked about rental of the cottage in back. The kindly man confirmed that he did indeed let out the place. He said that the group that had been staying there had checked out this evening, but that it hadn’t yet been cleaned. My uncle feigned disappointment and stepped back a couple of paces with his hands in his pockets. I expected him to turn around and come back to the car. What I didn’t expect was for the kindly man to bend at the waist and topple forward.
Clancy was attacking him!
Every human instinct to help, to save someone in distress, had to be quashed as I watched my uncle silently kill while the man reached for him and whimpered, “Help me, sir.” As Clancy spun on his heel, the man jerked forward and crashed to the ground in a heap. Clancy looked up at the starry sky and whistled as he walked to the car.
“What the bloody hell was that?” I yelled as he started the car. “You said your needs were taken care of. You didn’t need him.” I slammed my hand on the dash. “You didn’t have to kill that man.”
“I didn’t kill him for his energy, eejit. I killed him for his silence.”
“Jaysus!” I kicked the floorboard. “I don’t want any part of this! That was the most cold-blooded thing I’ve ever witnessed.” When Clancy didn’t respond except for his hands grasping the wheel a bit tighter, I said, “You make me sick. Let me out of the fookin’ car.”
“What, in the middle of bloody nowhere?”
“I don’t care. I want out. Now.”
He screeched over on the highway. A truck screamed past and shook the car as I got out. “You’ll be singing a different tune when you have
to kill.”
“Sure,” I said, leaning in the passenger door. “When I have to. No matter how much you want me to be like you, I never will be. And you know,” I said, my throat closing around the words, “I used to admire you.”
A quick flash of hurt betrayed him as he said, “Turnin’ Arrazi is just one of the changes you’ll go through. The other change is to accept the power you were born to wield.” His bushy white brows lowered above his eyes as he leveled his gaze at me. “The Arrazi are not villains. We are simply doing what we were born to do. What other creature is expected to do as it was created, yet do it in secret, as if it should be ashamed for how it was born?”
He sped away. I wrapped my arms around my shaking body. The night wasn’t cold, but I was, and that wasn’t a good sign. My teeth chattered as I walked and thumbed for a ride back to Dublin. Before long, a hardened-looking gentleman pulled his car over and offered me a ride. He eyed me and my tuxedo with scrutiny as I opened the door, as if how I looked mattered. I realized for the first time that I no longer feared any stranger.
I feared myself.
Thirty-Two
Cora
The Arrazi got to his feet and stood over me.
“Don’t kill me,” I said, and looked down at the ring that had somehow spared me, at least for the moment. He thought I was part of the Society and was obviously anxious he’d attacked me. “You didn’t know.” I mustered up the strength to climb to a wobbly stand. Affecting a superior tone, I said, “I should have said who I was. Ignorance can be forgiven. Blatant disregard for—for how things are, that won’t be pardoned so easily.”
My bluff had better work. He was still eyeing me with a questioning yet predatory stare. He wanted more. “Take your mask off,” he demanded.
“No.” He was either going to kill me or he wasn’t, but I was not going to give him a full look at my face if I didn’t have to.
His hardened expression folded to a scowl. He nodded some kind of acceptance. “Fair play to ya. We’ll meet again. I’m sure of it. Being as how we travel in the same circles.”
“Don’t worry,” I said, trying to sound patronizing. “When we do, I’ll happily pretend I don’t know you.” Then I did what I thought I would never do—I turned my back on an Arrazi. I walked away.
As soon as I could no longer see him, I slipped the damned high heels off and ran on rubbery legs all the way to the restaurant. Everyone looked up as I blew in through the door. Giovanni was on his feet as soon as he saw me. He slipped his arm around my waist. I was grateful for the solidity of him. It was hard enough to hold myself together.
“Merda! Damn it! What happened to you?”
Mari reached up and plucked a piece of grass from the side of my mask, her dark brows furrowed under rage-filled eyes. Shivering and clattering teeth made it difficult to talk. My diluted energy weakened me so that raising my shaking hand took effort.
My mother calmly lifted the mask from my face and peered at me. “She was attacked. Look at her aura, Giovanni.” They walked me over to the booth where my mother ordered tea. I recalled her first words to me in Clancy’s underground prison: drink the tea.
“What happened?” Dun asked, slipping his jacket over my shoulders. His sweet face was concerned. However, his jagged mustard aura had a bit more fear than his face and calm tone revealed.
Words stuttered out of me like a skipping stone. “I had the misfortune—of running into an Arrazi. A couple of them. Finn—he was there as well.”
Mari gasped. “Finn is alive? He did this to you?”
I shook my head. “No. Finn didn’t attack me. But he’s alive, yes, and doing juuuust fine.” I bit back tears. “I don’t know the guy who attacked me. He was big and maybe a few years older than us. He only stopped when he saw this ring.”
“Ah,” Giovanni said. “So we were right—it was a party for the very same Society. Because you had the ring, he thought you were someone important.”
I nodded. “He also said a name—sounded like zeh-puh. Once he backed off, I had to put on a show to prove I wasn’t afraid of him so he’d think I really was part of the Society.”
“Do you think he followed you?” Mari asked, looking worriedly toward the door.
“I didn’t see him following,” I said. “But then again, I didn’t see him before he stepped out of the shadows and attacked me, either. I have no idea how he even got there ahead of me.”
“He’ll have his own sortilege now, if he didn’t already,” my mother said. We were all quiet for a moment, probably wondering what kind of freaky superpower this already deadly Arrazi was going to be capable of because he’d stolen from my Scintilla energy. If he had killed me, he’d have my sortilege, too.
Giovanni rested his forehead in his hands. “The Arrazi get more dangerous every day.” He leaned back and crossed his arms. His aura flared with so much protective intensity, I could feel it pressing on my own. “It’s why we have to kill them. I’ve had enough of this.”
“Yeah,” Mari said. “Why don’t we run on over to Grenades and Uzis R Us and pick us up some supplies? We’ll kill all those bastards!”
“Shhh!” Dun hissed, earning a scowl.
“Why can’t we do that?” she asked, dripping sarcasm. “Oh, because we can’t seem to get our hands on any guns in Ireland.” My head shot up. That meant she’d been looking. I shouldn’t have been surprised. “Oh, and the fact that our trusty aura-seers here can’t always detect who is an Arrazi and who isn’t unless they’ve recently killed someone. Or, if Cora or Giovanni happen to be close enough to feel their special sauce, in which case they’re probably going to die anyway.”
I slammed my tea down. “Mari, shut up. You’re not helping.”
“Hey, I’m not the one talking about trying to kill the supernatural killers.”
“You don’t have an edit button, do you?” Giovanni said to her.
Dun smirked. “You’re just now noticing?”
Everyone looked surprised when I scooted out of the bench. “Let’s go. Being this close is making me very uncomfortable. I don’t want to be anywhere around here when that party ends.”
“Okay, I’ll call Patrick to see if he’s free to take us back to the cottage, if they’ll let us rent it again tonight.” Giovanni pulled out his phone. He’d barely gotten the question out when he was cut off. I couldn’t hear what Patrick was saying, but Giovanni’s face was a pane of alarm. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “No, don’t worry about us. We’ll figure something out.”
After he hung up, he explained. “Patrick says that the owner of the cottage was found dead right outside his front door. His wife said only that he’d answered the door, had a brief exchange with someone about the rental, and then she heard the sound of a car driving away. She found him only after he hadn’t come back inside.”
My hand flew to my mouth. “They knew we were staying there? But how?”
“Hey,” Dun said, “maybe it wasn’t the Arrazi. Maybe he had a heart attack. It could be a coincidence.” But even as he said it, his eyes and his aura belied his opinion. He was petrified. We all were.
Gráinne dropped her head forward into her hands. “We have nowhere to go…”
Thirty-Three
Finn
The driver refused my money when he dropped me off. I wanted to warn him about being more careful of people like…like me. But we were the worst kind of predator. Normal people had no way of recognizing an Arrazi or of knowing how deadly we were. I suddenly saw how easily an Arrazi could keep this secret. Our lives depended on the ignorance of regular humans.
I’d asked to be dropped at a bookstore in town. My mother’s books were a good source, but I wanted to check for myself if there was anything she didn’t have. Something new, perhaps, that might help me find a cure for this…affliction. Watching my uncle ruthlessly kill that man was prime motivation. I couldn’t get away from him fast enough.
Bookstores would be closing soon, if they were open at all. I didn’t have
much time.
Murphy’s Books was a wicked odd place and lucky for me, open until midnight. Every disdainful comment I’d ever made about my mother’s taste in books came rushing back at me. Embarrassment was my penalty for being so arrogant. Now I needed these books to save Cora’s life, to save countless people’s lives. Redemption for killing would never come, but that didn’t stop me from turning over every stone looking for it.
I bought two books, one of which was a new release from the prolific Edmund Nustber, which I didn’t think my mother had. I slumped down on a bench to read.
There was a wealth of information on how to protect yourself from someone like me—an energy vampire. The books talked about “shielding” your aura, creating a loving bubble of light like some kind of force field. I didn’t mean to scoff, but it sounded bloody dippy. No amount of shielding was going to stop an Arrazi from taking an aura.
Finally, I found references to people who know they are takers of energy and wish to stop it. My heart pumped a bit harder. Maybe I’d found something useful? The book said that some of these people would frequent malls and shopping areas and take from groups of people at once. It galled me to admit it to myself, but reading about it made me painfully aware of my own swelling craving. The idea was worth a try, though, as my need was growing and would only do so until I was out of control, like the last time.
Immediately, I went to the busiest nightspot in Dublin, Temple Bar. It was constantly loaded with hammered tourists. There, I could slip within the crowd, attempt to take from groups without them knowing, and see how it would tide me over. Everything in me resisted this idea, but I had to try. My other option was murder.
The first group I came upon was already plastered: three blokes, four girls, all of ’em swerving and teetering through the busy street. They laughed with careless, oblivious ease, never suspecting that a breed of human followed close behind, intent on sipping from their spirits. They wouldn’t believe it even if I told them.