The Price of Knowing: A Powers of Influence Novel (The Powers of Influence Book 2)

by C. B. Haight

  The speed of the melee picked up, and she thrust, cut, and countered. He met her blade every time, twisting and turning with his massive sword to deflect and parry her every action. Before long, he turned the tide of the battle and advanced on her. Breathing deeply, she tried to fall into the rhythm of combat as he instructed. She blocked several strikes and began to build her confidence. Until she felt a heavy thump on her back shoulder. It hurt too. If he pulled back the hit, she couldn’t tell. She let her sword fall, point down, and rubbed the new bruise.

  “Again,” he ordered.

  He forced her back into combat, and again he landed another stinging blow. He pushed at her again and again, forcing her to engage. She took several hits, but he refused to give her quarter.

  Tripping over a rock, she fell to the ground, but even then he didn’t relent. He attacked her, so Collett tucked her weapon against herself and rolled away from the strike. Her breaths were coming in short gasps, and despite the fact she was covered in snow, she was sweating and warm. She dodged again, moving fast as he lowered his sword once more. Doing a backward somersault, she made it to her knees and managed to get her sword up in time to lock the two weapons together.

  He held his weapon against hers, and their eyes met. Her breathing was labored and heavy. His breaths were slightly quickened, but each one remained smooth and steady. Quirking his brow, he gave her a cocky grin, and she noticed his mouth tilted up higher on the right side, the same as Cade’s.

  “Now we’re getting somewhere,” he said grinning. “Again.”

  A few hours later, Cade came back with Nate and Rederrick. Feeling better because they’d encountered no trouble in dropping Ashley off, he was eager to see Collett. He wanted to see how her first training alone with Jarrett went. Even more important, he needed to tell her the pilot that brought her to New Orleans when she’d been unconscious couldn’t even remember her being aboard.

  Entering the living room, he found Delphene looking at a travel map on the floor.

  “Where’s Collett?”

  “Upstairs, nursing her aches.” She looked up with bright excitement in her eyes. “You would not believe it, Mon Ami. She is…” Her words trailed off as she realized Cade had already left. “E᷾tonnant,” she finished on a breath for Nate and Rederrick’s benefit.

  Cade went into their room and immediately saw a purplish bruise on Collett’s upper thigh. Startled by his entrance, she stopped rubbing on the healing cream Cynda insisted she use. She watched his expression change from eager to anger in less than a split second. As his eyes traveled over her, he saw the purpling marks between her shoulder and her neck. Cade’s jaw clenched so tightly that Collett figured any minute his teeth would begin to crack. Turning, he started from the room.

  “Cade?” she called.

  He ignored her.

  She scrambled to stop him and was able to shimmy past him just as he reached the stairs. “Cade, stop!”

  “He went too far,” he accused. His expression darkened when Jarrett appeared at the bottom of the stairs as if he expected the encounter.

  Cade tried to step forward, but Collett put her hands on his chest. “Stop! He did exactly what you couldn’t do—what we agreed on.”

  “What’s that—beat the crap out of you? I don’t recall that part of the agreement.”

  “I challenged her,” Jarrett replied with venom.

  Cade pointed out the dark bruise on her neck. “You call this a challenge? It looks more like you punished her!”

  Jarrett took two stairs in one stride. “Better me than them. She has to learn. She has to remember.”

  “This is your way of reminding her? You’re going to beat the memories out of her?”

  By this time, the whole house had gathered at both ends of the stairway to witness the verbal battle. Nate, Delphene, and Rederrick stood at the bottom, and Jeffery and Cynda lingered behind Cade.

  “It’s the only way!” insisted Jarrett, coming up further.

  Seeing the look in Cade’s eyes and feeling both of their anger, Collett knew where this was heading. “Enough!” she shouted. Putting her hands up, she turned on Cade first. Her eyes, usually soft and kind, were now fierce and hard. “Stop using me as an excuse to pick a fight with him. I’m going to get bruised a bit while I’m doing this, and that’s all there is to it! And you—” she rounded on Jarrett, “stop being so surly and egging him on. You came here knowing he would be upset!” She huffed out a tired breath. “I’m fine, Cade, and what aches today will likely be gone tomorrow, or close to it anyway. Jarrett, you’re not telling the whole story either.

  “After a time, he let me off the hook, but I wanted to keep going. So if you want someone to blame, then blame me. It’s time for you two to get along. I don’t have the energy for your testosterone tantrums anymore, and I’m tired of absorbing all of the anger. So both of you go outside, trade fists, smack each other around, or do whatever it takes to put this idiocy behind us, but do it away from me. I’m going to take a nap.”

  She brushed by Cade on her way to their room at the end of the hallway.

  Cade turned to go after her, but Cynda stood in his way. “Oh no you don’t. You heard what she said. You two, outside.” She pointed her finger down the stairs.

  “Let me go talk to her,” he insisted.

  “I will.” He stepped forward only to be stopped when she held up her hands. “After you go cool off for a bit.” She was using the same motherly tone he’d heard her use many times on her children. “Both of you,” she added, looking past Cade to a grim Jarrett halfway up the stairs.

  Turning, Jarrett complied with the order and leaped the distance to the bottom landing. Everyone parted to give him room, and he left the house, slamming the door behind him. Cade hesitated. He wanted to go and talk with Collett.

  “Think of it from her point of view, Chère. She’s a sponge for everything you’re feeling right now. Give her time. Go and talk to him,” Delphene encouraged.

  Fortifying himself, Cade walked down the stairs and followed Jarrett outside. He found his brother sitting on the edge of the porch with his legs buried in the deep snow that had accumulated. Cade moved to the other end of the porch and looked out at the landscape surrounding them for a few minutes. Then, feeling a bit like a petulant child, he moved back to sit down near his brother.

  He’d overreacted. He knew it, but it was so hard to admit. His relationship with Jarrett was new, and he didn’t always know how to deal with him. The connection his twin shared with his wife made it worse. He could admit that it was partly jealousy that made it so difficult to trust him with Collett. Instead of apologizing, something he knew Jarrett wouldn’t appreciate, he tried to bridge the gap between them by talking about Collett.

  “How did she do?”

  Jarrett looked at him for a minute as if trying to decide if Cade really wanted to know. “Better than I thought,” he said finally. “She has a long way to go, though.”

  “It’s hard for me to see her hurt,” Cade admitted.

  “I would have never guessed,” Jarrett replied sarcastically.

  The silence stretched between them again. Sometimes, for them, no words were better than any words, but today Cade felt the need to talk. “I don’t know what to do around you.”

  Jarrett ignored his comment and asked, “Why did you marry her?”

  “I love her.”

  “I get that she’s nice to look a—”

  Appalled and confused, Cade shook his head, “It’s not about that.”

  “You think you had to marry her to protect her then?”

  “I love her. I wanted to be with her.”

  “I see the way she looks at you. You could have been with her anyway. You didn’t need to marry her for that,” Jarrett replied.

  Jumping from the porch, Cade moved to stand in front of Jarrett. “See it’s stuff like that, that makes this hard," Cade said frustrated. “It’s not just physical. I love her, and she loves me. I don’t know how el
se to explain it.”

  “Love’s a myth. How would you even know anyway? It’s not like you can really understand who she is. She doesn’t even know,” Jarrett countered with a level tone.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Cade insisted, feeling agitated again.

  “Why? How can you believe she’ll still love you when she finds out who she is?”

  “Because I believe in her,” Cade retorted.

  Jarrett lifted a single brow and adopted a smug expression. “Do you?”

  Cade recognized the trap Jarrett created too late. He brushed at his hair with his fingers, pushing it away from his face and turned his back to his twin. He couldn’t answer. He thought he believed in her. He knew she loved him, but he suddenly realized part of him worried her feelings might change when she found out who she was.

  “There’s really only one way to find out, you know,” said Jarrett from behind him.

  Cade cocked his head to the side in response, still keeping his back to Jarrett but listening all the same.

  “Quit trying to hold her back. She has to remember.”

  “And when she does?” Cade asked.

  “You’ll know one way or another at least. Besides, you’ll have your hands full of more demons than you’ll know what to do with when Niall finds us. She’ll have to fight. Don’t doubt that for a minute. It’s better for you if she knows how. When the time comes, really comes, Niall will stop at nothing to see her dead, ” Jarrett reminded him.

  “She’s not the only one he wants dead,” Cade said and turned back toward the sunset. He watched the reddened sky shift to purple. “Why? Why does he want her so badly? It can’t only be her power.”

  Jarrett shrugged. “I quit trying to figure out Niall a long time ago, but don’t doubt that power is something he always craves more of.”

  Cade pondered about it for a bit longer and turned with a curious expression on his face. “Why isn’t he here yet? They already found us the other day.”

  “Maybe he can’t pin it down to an exact location yet, and it’s not like Henifedran made it back to tell him.”

  “But he found you more than once. When I came for you, they were hot on our heels for days. In fact, we barely made it to Ashley’s.”

  “So?”

  “How long after you saved Jeffery’s mom did they find you?” he asked excitedly.

  “A couple days,” Jarrett replied.

  “Not Collett though. After you kidnapped her, nothing happened at Rederrick’s for almost a week. The Faction only attacked after we ended up at Ashley’s.”

  “I burned the records, and Finnawick was too worried about self-preservation to let Niall know he found her until he had her in hand. They would’ve needed to track her down again,” Jarrett admitted.

  “Exactly. When she was running, Collett would go months in between attacks, but they came after you daily,” Cade said, and Jarrett began to catch on. “How did Niall contact you in the past?” Cade questioned. His idea was progressing.

  “He appeared. Even his demons appeared no matter where I went.”

  “But when the half-demon—”

  “Finnawick,” Jarrett supplied.

  “When he sent you for Collett, he gave you records, a paper trail. Niall isn’t here yet because he can’t find her the way he finds you.” He paused, remembering his conversation with the pilot earlier. “The pilot didn’t remember her. When I thanked him, he couldn’t figure out what I was talking about. Rederrick mentioned something about this to me when he first called me about Collett. He told me people forget her. That would make it even harder to find her.”

  “Why don’t we?”

  “I’m not sure; perhaps because she’s allowing us to remember somehow.”

  Jarrett thought about it. “I didn’t know who she was when I took her. She was a stranger at first. I didn’t realize she was the women that took me from the fire until she touched me and I saw her in that moment again.”

  Cade scowled as he formed the series of events together.

  “When I went to town, I went alone,” Jarrett added, following his brother’s train of thought.

  “In New Orleans, the demons didn’t come until after you’d left us. They must have tracked you back to the house.”

  “She’s blocking him. By some means, Collett is blocking him from finding us,” Jarrett concluded Cade’s theory aloud.

  Urgency coursed through Cade. He ran into the house. Jarrett followed, completely surprised, not only because Cade figured that out, but also because it actually made sense to him.

  He’d expected Niall to show up with a demon hoard and a few magic users by now. The scarcity of attacks since joining the group and the small number of demons per attack made more sense. Sending a few demons after him was no big deal. This way, Niall could wear him down and concentrate his energy on finding Collett instead of wasting it on him.

  When he thought about it, he understood Jeffery’s report of Victor’s appearance at the warehouse. Victor would have been charged with keeping the demons under control and tracking down Collett by way of technological means. He was a wizard at such things, and if he managed to find out about Cade and Jarrett being brothers, as Finnawick did, he would have pursued that lead in hopes of finding Collett-or at least a link to her.

  The demons sent to the house in Colorado botched it because they hadn’t realized who she was. Niall would have reserved that information for Victor alone. With no Victor or Niall to keep them in check, they gleefully went after the housekeeper, Jenny. Collett’s vision of Jenny inadvertently alerted the house they were there all too soon.

  The two men burst through the front door and ran through the kitchen. Rederrick, Nate, Cynda, and Delphene looked up with shock from the table where they finalized plans for their relocation. Cade rushed up the stairs, taking them two at a time, with Jarrett on his heels.

  “Trouble?” questioned Delphene.

  Without a second thought, they all followed, making it in time to see Cade surge through his bedroom door and wake Collett with a start.

  “We’re not leaving!” he proclaimed. “I think I figured out a way to stick it to Niall and buy us some time.” A superior smile spread across his face. Behind him, Jarrett also had an excited, battle-hungry gleam in his eyes. For the first time, Cade was sure the two brothers were thinking very much alike.

  Chapter 25

  “You want to do what?” Collett exclaimed.

  “It’s not as bad as it sounds, really,” Cade countered.

  Everyone gathered in the living room and tried to digest the outrageous plan Cade laid out before them.

  “No? Because it sounds insane!” she retorted.

  Jarrett stepped forward. “Look. It’s as good a chance as we’re going to get to throw him off our trail, and if it gives me a chance to piss him off, I’m in,” he said with a determined look in his eye as if it made perfect sense.

  Pinching the bridge of her nose in frustration, Collett said, “So you two would like to take a little trip to Mexico—alone mind you—and stay there until Niall comes after you?”

  “Then, when we’re sure he thinks that’s where we are, we’ll have Jeffery bring us back safe and sound,” Cade finished.

  “Why Mexico?” asked Cynda.

  “Jeffery’s been there before,” answered Cade.

  “How’d you know that?” Jeffery asked.

  “Because, you idiot, when we first got here, you whined about the cold and quoted the temperatures in Mexico this time of year,” Nate said with a smile. “Several times, in fact.”

  “Oh, sorry,” he replied sheepishly.

  “Hey, don’t worry about it. I was in your corner on that one. In fact, is it too late to change our minds and relocate anyway?” Nate joked.

  Cade shook his head in exasperation while Jarrett glared at him.

  Nate didn’t relent, “What? Not all of us are immune to the cold like you two.”

  Collett drew them back to the present issue, �
�This is crazy! I can’t believe you’re considering this. You don’t even know if it’ll work.”

  “But if it does, we’ll have an edge, and it will give us more time to be ready for when we actually do have to face him,” Cade insisted.

  “What if you’re plan backfires and he comes after both groups at the same time?” Rederrick asked. “Or worse, only us? We’d be hard pressed to keep Collett safe without you.”

  “I’m telling you, she’s the key. I feel it in my bones,” Cade said with confidence. “But just in case, I’ll have Jeffery come back. Then if there is a problem, you’ll have him and Delphene to help.”

  Rederrick nodded, satisfied.

  “Collett, we have to face him sooner or later, but let’s give him a thing or two to think about until that time comes.”

  Meeting his gaze, she asked him softly, “What if something bad happens?”

  “Then it won’t be because I didn’t know what I was doing,” he answered with a smile, throwing her words back at her.

  She looked down at the floor. “You would say that.”

  “Look, you can sense when Jarrett’s in trouble, so if you do, send Jeffery to us.” He tilted her head up to force her to look at him. “But only if you’re all safe at the time,” he finished firmly. “Otherwise, we’ll use the burner phone and call when we’re done.”

  “Your whole plan hinges on Jeffery, who may not have enough energy to blink you both back at once. He’s never done more than one person at a time.”

  “Actually,” Cynda interrupted, “I think he can. Sorry, Collett, but I do. Jeffery has far more magical energy than I do, and he managed the three blinks in succession with Nate and Cade. He then used even more energy in combat by Nate’s accounting. I think the only reason he’s never tried two at once is inexperience. I’ll be sure to make him an energy tea before just in case, and I’ll have one ready when he returns.”

  “It’s our best chance,” Cade said.

  With a heavy breath, she looked past him to Jarrett. “You think so too?”

  “It doesn’t matter what I think. Either way, we're going to be in a fight, but I’d sure like it to be on my terms.”