by T. G. Ayer
“Who sent you to kill Samuel Fontaine?” I growled, pressing harder, ignoring the drip of hot, wet, sticky blood as it coated my fingers.
He gritted his teeth, eyes going dark as coals. I pressed harder. He raised his chin a little higher, probably thinking it would help to ease the pressure and put some distance between his flesh and the sharp point of my blade, but I simply moved with him and gave him no space to obtain relief.
“Stop wasting my time. Tell me, or I will have to end this. Now.”
He smirked, eyes suddenly knowing and somewhat arrogant. “What’s wrong, little lady? Don’t want to say the nasty words out loud? Go ahead. Admit it out loud. You want to murder me?”
I snorted, hiding my irritation that he’d hit the nail on the head. “It’s not murder. It’s called justice. Or maybe I’ll just put you in chains and take you back for the SHC to deal with.”
Consternation flared in the man’s eyes and he stiffened, spin going rigid. It was enough to confirm that I’d hit a sore point. Not a surprise though. If he was good at his job, killing people at every turn, he’d have more than a few law-enforcement agencies on his tail.
I stepped back, shucked out my magic and quickly formed the gleaming lasso. The energy formed the links of the golden rope with such ease that I almost blinked in surprise. With a flick of my wrist the snaking magic wound itself around Aeriec’s waist and chest, and began to tighten slowly, like a python patiently squeezing the life out of its helpless victim.
The assassin coughed then shook his head, face taking on a pink hue. “Stop. I’ll give you what you want.”
I didn’t stop. All I wanted was to hit him, to hurt him, to inflict upon him some of the pain that he’d put me through so he’d understand what he had done to me. The lasso squeezed tighter.
The veins on his temples and neck rose, standing out taut as his eyes began to bulge. “Okay, okay,” he wheezed. “I can tell you where I was summoned. Give you the coordinates. The woman, I don’t know what her name was but…hey, you actually look like her which is weird.”
Blood roared in my ears and my head felt like it was about to explode. What the hell was this asshole saying? I didn’t want to hear it.
Shaking my head, I shouted, “Tell me how to get there!”
He blinked at the raw power in my voice and I realized I’d projected the sound so loud that a bunch of glass bottles jars from around the room began to shatter as though suddenly pounded by an unseen fist.
I didn’t look away from his pathetic face. Just waited as he swallowed hard, Adam’s apple undulating, and said, “On the table. The portal coordinates. It’s in the book on the table. The place she’s at isn’t on any known map. Even the portal coordinates are unregistered. You can only use the access points she allows you too. And there’s no telling if mine is still open.”
I grunted and straightened slowly. “I’ll take my chances.”
I stepped sideways to the dust-laden table, rummaged among the paperwork to find a small gray notebook. Smoothing it open, I found pages filled Aereic’s large scrawls and on one leaf marked with Samuel’s name and address was a set of portal coordinates.
I turned to face the man who was now on his knees, the magical lasso still tightly wound around his torso. “You’d better not be messing with me.”
He laughed, although it sounded more like a croak. “Your threats don’t scare me. You’re not like her. Ruthless, cruel. Heartless. You came all this way to find me because I killed your precious friend. She doesn’t care a damn about anything except for hurting you. And that’s the beauty of her power. She feels nothing. You have no power against her. She’ll squash you like a bug.”
I turned to walk away, intending to leave him there on the floor of his yurt in the middle of the sandstorm, intending to return if he’d lied to me about where I could find this woman who had ordered Samuel’s assassination.
But something held me back.
“You have no power against her.”
“You look like her…”
“She’ll squash you like a bug…”
So many words were spinning around inside my mind as Samuel’s face rose from one memory to another. Emotions twisted and turned inside me, tearing their way to the surface, pulling free the scabs of grief that I’d grown so carefully, so deliberately, in order to keep myself from tearing apart and going insane.
Fury burst out of me, an explosive force I could not contain, and I turned to face him. I had meant to scream out my anger, to yell at him and say I was nothing like her. That she could never beat me.
But the words never left my lips.
In the end, only magic and flame and intense power burst forth from me, the energy soaring toward him like fiery grenade, hitting Aeriec full in the chest.
Light exploded, flames and magical energy brightening the inside of the yurt until I was forced to close my eyes. Seconds later, when I opened them, I found myself staring at the sandy floor where the assassin had been only moments ago.
There was nothing left of him. Not even a lifethread.
I reached out to the ether frantically now, searching as far as I could to find some remnant of his essence. But there was nothing left.
I’d obliterated him from existence.
I looked down at my hand where the dagger still remained, clutched tight within my grip, where the man’s blood stained my fingers, reminding me how far I’d gone, screaming out the reality that I’d crossed a line, a terrible line. That I can never go back to being just me anymore.
I stood there for a long moment listening to the howling of the storm, a part of me thinking that perhaps it was best if I just remained here on this strange planet where nobody knew me. That I should just hide myself away, regardless of the consequences.
I was a killer. A murderer. I’d killed a man in cold blood.
But there was a voice that pulled at me. Words that drew me awake and aware, drew me up from the morass of guilt and self-loathing, and helped focus my thoughts, helped give me purpose.
“She doesn’t care a damn about anything except for hurting you.”
35
I jumped back home to my office in a daze, ears still ringing, heart still pounding. I could barely breathe. I had little idea of how much time had passed since I’d arrived because when I finally moved, my muscles were sore and tight. The house was silent too, nothing stirring as though even the building sat back, hushed in horror at what I’d done.
My fingers were still sticky with Aereic’s blood and all I wanted to do was to wash it off, to wash away the last few awful minutes of my life. What had I done? What was wrong with me?
Something had to be wrong with me because I’d experienced that very same feeling before when I’d been in Axiat, that darkness pulsing and building up inside of me, threatening to overtake me, mind body and soul.
Had that darkness won? Was I turning into a murderer?
I laughed to myself, listening to the crazed cackling in a daze. Of course I was a murderer. Hadn’t I just killed someone in cold blood mere moments ago? Who in the goddess’s name was I kidding?
I took a ragged breath. In my other hand, I still gripped the notebook in which the assassin had recorded the coordinates to where he’d met Samuel’s killer. A killer I knew well enough.
He’d said I looked like her. And not too long ago, someone else had said we resembled each other.
My sister, Arianne had ordered him to kill Samuel’s mortal body. Arianne who Samuel had literally sacrificed his life for because he’d known how long I’d been searching, how desperate I’d been to find out what had happened to her.
It had to be Ari. But why would she have done such a callous thing? What would she have hoped to gain from ending Samuel’s physical existence? Had she wanted to trap him in the ethereal plane where she was keeping him? And if so, why the hell would she want to do that? Worse still, there lingered the awful possibility that she’d killed him simply to punish me. And again, if she had, w
hat would her reasons be? Had I done something to hurt her without knowing? Did she blame me for her abduction in the first place?
My head hurt trying to work out what Ari was thinking and I had to remind myself that I didn’t really know her at all. I also had to remind myself that I now knew where she was. I gripped the notebook in my fist and made my way upstairs, my steps heavy.
A part of my mind tempted me to turn right down the hall and go to Steph, that perhaps she’d offer me some comfort. But Steph was still angry with me and I was in no shape to deal with her rejection.
I let my feet take me straight to my room, where the djinn was nowhere in sight, for which I was grateful. I couldn't bear the thought of having to explain to Saleem what I’d just done, why my hands were drenched in fresh blood, why my hands were still shaking.
Saleem had left a note on the nightstand saying he’d taken the little leather-bound book Fathima had given us, and that he had a hunch he wanted to follow that could help us decipher its contents and find out more about how to save his life.
I hoped he was right, but I couldn't spare a moment more to think about the book. I was desperate to get the evidence of my awful crime off my body. I walked on automatic to the bathroom, blinking under the bright florescent light that seemed determined to spotlight every speck of blood on me.
Taking a shallow breath, I walked stiffly to the basin and turned the faucet to hot, then waited until steam began to rise. I didn’t care how hot the water was, didn’t even care if I burned myself.
Get the blood off.
That’s all I cared about. Get the blood off my hands. I soaped and washed my hands and fingers, scrubbing as hard as I could to get the blood out from under my nails. Probably rubbed a little too hard considering my fingers were bright red by the time I was done.
At last I turned the water off and stared at myself in the steamed-over mirror. I didn’t particularly like the person I saw reflected back at me. Who was this woman? This murderer?
I turned away quickly, and contemplated a shower, thought about a change of clothes. Then I decided not to bother wasting a single second more. The sooner I got to Ari, the sooner I’d be able to—
To what? I realized in that moment that I wasn’t at all sure what I meant to do when I got there. Was I going to arrest her and bring her back home to be charged by the SHC? Was I going to fight her to the death out of revenge?
I couldn’t do that of course. She still had Samuel’s ethereal self hidden somewhere. Which meant I had an opportunity to find out exactly where he was and the chance to get him out of there, away from her.
The longer she had him at her side, the longer she had something over me. As yet she hadn’t made any threats to his spiritual self, but it’s possible that killing his physical body was actually a threat.
About to head back into the room I caught my reflection in the fogged-up mirror again, saw the blood on my shirt and streaking my chin. A dull throbbing in my chest had me drawing a shocked breath. How had I forgotten about my injury. I went to the mirror and opened the buttons of my shirt, easing the sodden fabric away from the wound. I’d expected to see a hole in my chest but perhaps that was just a bit too melodramatic considering I hadn't been corporeal to be injured that way.
But when I parted the fabric I saw the network of black veins all spiraling out from the spot where the bullet had hit me. I took a ragged breath, feeling lightheaded enough that I grabbed for the sink to steady myself. The black veins could be poison, but I had to admit that I knew too little about ethereal injuries, or about what happened to a person when they wounded in the ether. Things like this just didn’t happen often enough for their to be historical references to refer to.
I undressed quickly and hopped into the shower, trying to not think about anything other than getting clean. My wound wasn't mortal and the veins would likely fade away before the gills did.
All dressed, I changed into clean jeans and shirt, ignoring the bloody shade of red I’d selected, then tucked away my knives and grabbed Aeriec’s book. I stared again at the page with the coordinates that would take me to Ari, and my heart did a dozen somersaults.
Why the hesitation, Mel?
I shook my head and jumped, thinking a little too late that I should have told someone where I was going before I left. Too late now.
I materialized in the orchard where I’d seen Samuel the last time, in the strange unknown dimension where I’d been thrown when I’d received the shock of my life—literally.
The peaches hanging from the trees were ripe, their scent pungent in the air. Tears burned my eyes as I finally understood how I’d come here in the first place. Samuel must have called to me, and in that moment of vulnerability, with all my guards down, I’d done the only thing I knew to do, I followed his life thread right to him.
Up ahead, the mansion stood like a mausoleum, all white columns and shimmering windows, with the drapes billowing out the open balcony doors so reminiscent of Samuel’s home back in Chicago.
But it wasn’t real. This entire place was just an illusion, a place to control Samuel, to make him believe he was safe. Ari did this for a reason. I marched up the promenade and headed up the stairs to the main entrance. My sister had to pay for what she’d done.
The front door was open and I entered, instinctively softening my steps. Music echoed from somewhere within the house, the sad strains of a piano, it’s haunting melody enough to bring tears to my eyes.
I followed the sound, entranced by the sorrow in each note, the music calling to me like the song of a siren. The hall before me was dark, the near-black woodpaneling a perfect duplicate of the real thing back at the Fontaine mansion at home.
The music appeared to originate in Samuel’s summer room which had barely been used since he’d slipped into his near-catatonic state so many months ago. We’d all believed he’d lost his way while projecting, that someone he’d been unable to return home.
Legends told many a tale of the lost soultrackers who roamed the ether forever, unable to find their way back to their bodies. Or worse, those who were gone so long that went they returned all they found that was left of their physical bodies was ashes and dust.
But that wasn’t Samuel’s story. He’d chosen to go, made a conscious choice to stay in the ethereal planes in order to protect someone. He hadn’t even told me what he was doing, not until things had gotten dangerous for him. Had he finally realised that his mission to protect my sister had landed him in the kind of trouble that was fatal? By then it had of course been too late.
The music that flowed over me told the same tale, the haunting strains so filled with sadness and regret. I swallowed hard as I entered the summer room to find Samuel at the baby grand, his fingers skimming over the keys eyes closed as he played his heart out.
I walked up to the piano and leaned against the side, waiting for him to become aware of my presence and open his eyes. He didn’t. Not until he’d finished playing the piece. And when he finally did opened his eyes, he didn’t seem surprised at all.
“Hello Mel,” he said, the smile on his face echoing in his deep baritone.
“Hello, Sam-Sam,” I replied, almost choking on the endearment.
His smile was joyous but his green-gold eyes shimmered, a window to unadulterated pain.
“Sam?” I whispered, taking a step closer. “Are you alright?”
He nodded slowly, his grin widening. But those eyes told me something entirely different. What was wrong with him?
I reached for his hand and though he didn’t shy away, he didn’t appear to relish the contact either. His hand remained slack within mine, like holding the hand of an unconscious person. But he was awake, and aware, as far as I could tell.
Then I blinked as he squeezed my fingers quickly before letting his hand drop to his lap. My eyes remained on his long slip fingers, on the veins on the back of his wrist. He had the hands of an old man.
“Peace, Mel,” his voice interrupted my thoughts. “A
ll that’s left for me is peace.”
I sucked in a breath. “What do you mean, Samuel?” He didn’t answer, instead trailing his fingers lazily across the keys and frowning as though he struggled to control his movements.
Something was definitely wrong. The last time I’d been here Samuel had warned me to leave, the harshness in his voice had sent me fleeing from the plane as though he’d slapped me hard across the cheek.
There was a danger here, which I knew was Ari. I’d seen her that day, walking along the orchard, spinning her parasol happily as though life could never be better. What a show she’d put on. She’d stood right in front of me and smiled so haughtily. And she’d known that I was her sister. I wouldn't doubt that now, even though she’d pretended ignorance.
But what had she done to him?
Then the music stopped so suddenly that when Samuel spoke, his voice seemed overly loud. “You must give me peace, Mel.”
When I frowned at him, all I saw was a happy smiling man sitting at his piano as though ready to tap out a new cheery song for me to dance to. I shifted from one foot to the other, feeling in the pit of my stomach that something was very wrong.
I shook my head. “I don’t know what you mean, Samuel,” I whispered.
But it was a lie. I knew what he wanted. But his request was something I wasn’t capable of giving.
Samuel wanted me to kill him.
36
The curtains billowed around me as blood rushed into my head. A cool breeze traced my skin bringing a rash of goosebumps to the surface. I shivered my eyes not leaving Samuel’s pleading gaze for a second.
Samuel wanted me to kill him.
How could he ask that of me? Shaking my head slowly, I stepped away from him, as though distance would make him change his mind. But he simply smiled at me, his expression filled with sadness, despair. And hope.