CRYSTALLUM (The Primordial Principles Book 1)

by McMann, Laney

  Her gaze went back to Cole, and he let out a deep breath.

  "I was trapped and afraid. I mean, I was a little girl." She stared down again as if in a trance. "It looked just like this. I had nowhere else to run, no way to escape." She shook her head as if it had been a dream she'd forgotten, but she hadn't. She remembered it as if it had happened yesterday. The memory replayed in her head all the time. "I...there was nowhere for me to run," she repeated. Cole squeezed her hand. "I had to get away from him, from all of them, they were taking over the skies, blocking out the light of the sun, and…" Kade shook her head again and stared up at Cole with tears in her eyes.

  "And you jumped," he said.

  She nodded, unable to say the rest. It had been terrifying, something she couldn't understand, promised herself she would never tell a soul, and she hadn't. Not once.

  Cole squeezed her hand again and let go. Walking to the edge of the cliff, he turned to face her, allowing his heels to hang over the ledge. "Remember when I told you you could trust me?"

  "Cole—" Kade took a step forward. "Please don't do that. Come back over here." Panic and alarm fed through her veins.

  "Trust me, Kade." He held her frightened gaze. "You're safe with me. I promise you."

  "But—"

  "Don't be afraid. I just want you to watch. This is why I brought you here. Just watch." Cole jumped, did a back flip into the air over the deep gorge.

  Kade screamed

  A piercing cry rang through the forest.

  “Cole!” She rushed to the edge of the cliff, but he wasn't falling. He wasn't down there at all. Instead, a falcon appeared before her, its slate wings spread wide, eyes black as night. The same bird she'd seen outside her window at her house, and at school the day she'd gone to get coffee with Jake. The bird landed at her feet.

  "Your turn." Cole's voice chimed in Kade's head and she turned around in a circle.

  "Cole?"

  "Right here."

  She looked down at the falcon.

  "Your last name isn't Sparrow for nothing."

  Kade gasped, hands covering her mouth as she stumbled backward.

  "Please don't fall again. This wasn't my plan, to show you like this, but ... you need to know that what you think you are...this bad person, or bad Primordial, or whatever other crazy thoughts you're having, are completely normal. All fledglings panic at first when they find out what they're capable of."

  Kade couldn't blink, her eyes were glued wide. "Oh, my god."

  The falcon tilted its head. "All Primordial are birds in their natural form. The closest thing to the heavens on this planet. We're mediators between the Planes. When you jumped off the cliff, your instincts took over and you flew in your true avian form. Simple as that."

  She stumbled back further, starting to hyperventilate. Birds? It was Cole who she'd seen all of those times. The falcon had been him. She couldn't breathe.

  A wrenching cry of pain touched her ears, and Cole stood in front of her, arms wrapping her waist. "I'm sorry. Jesus. I'm sorry." He tucked her head against his chest, holding her tight against him. "I thought if you saw me as the falcon, you'd understand that you aren't some freak." He swept her hair away from her face. "I'm so sorry I scared you." He lifted her chin to face him. "You're so beautiful, and I can't believe for one second that you would ever think there was anything wrong with you."

  Tears flooded down her face.

  "Sparrow?"

  "I'm not...beautiful," she cried. "You just...can't see. And I don't want you to see." She pulled away from him. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have...but you're...amazing and I…" Kade gazed at him. "I'm not like you, Cole. I'm not like any of you."

  A crease showed between his eyes.

  "I'm not...a sparrow. I...have to go. We have to go." She started toward the trail, and picked up her speed into a run—a very fast run. Red blazed through the snow covered trees at her back.

  "Kade." Cole was at her side in less than a second, pulling to her a halt. "Stop. Please stop."

  All of her momentum drained away and she fell into him, arms wrapped around him as if he was the only person in the world who could keep her upright. And he was. "I'm sorry," she mumbled into his chest.

  "Please don't say that ever again. I'm sorry. That was really stupid of me. You weren't ready."

  She stared up at him. He's a falcon? "I just...overreacted."

  He hugged her tighter. "I scared you, you didn't overreact." Cole pressed his lips to her forehead. "I think that's enough excitement for one day. Ask me anything you want. Any questions at all. I don't want to make your transition any harder than it is."

  Kade stepped back. "No."

  "No, what?"

  She took a deep, shuddering breath. "If we're going to keep seeing each other then I need to be just as honest with you as you are with me. It isn't fair otherwise."

  "Okay..."

  She started back toward the cliff.

  "Sparrow?"

  "You said you knew what I was capable of, that you witnessed some of it. What did you mean?" She asked, still walking.

  "I saw you run," he admitted. "Before we started dating. In the forest by your house. I saw how fast you are, and I saw..." Cole reached for her arm, pulling her to a stop. "Your corona is red."

  "I know."

  "Okay. Well, do you know that a red corona, or rubeum, is a color born only of the Celestial Children?"

  She averted her eyes. "Yes."

  "Yes?"

  She walked toward to the cliff.

  "Kade, are you going to explain how you know that?" His voice pitched.

  "I know a lot of things. I told you that before. Too many things." The trail ended and she walked out of the forest.

  "You were Christened as a Primori, your corona is only born of Primori...what else, Kade?"

  She walked to the edge of the cliff, turning to face him the same way he'd done with her, heels hanging off the ledge.

  "Okay, I get it. I scared you before, so now it's your turn," he said, a sharp edge in his tone. "Please step away from the cliff. You’re right. It scares the shit out of me to see you standing there like that. I was a total ass to do that to you." He walked toward her, but she didn't move. "Kade, please. Come back over here." Panic replaced anger. "You're not trained yet."

  "I've never shown anyone this before, and you might run screaming, but I..." She glanced at the ground. "I've been lying to everyone, Cole. All my life. I've been afraid of everything. I told you I've never had a real friend before. Never had a boyfriend, and now that I do...I'm happier than I've ever been, and I don't want to lie. I'm sick of being afraid of what I am, of being afraid of everything, all the time."

  “Kade, I'm not kidding, I appreciate that you want to be honest, I do, but if you don't step away from the ledge, then I'm coming to get you, and although I know how fast you are, I'm a rubeum, too. I can catch you."

  She grinned. "Dracon told me once that no one could move the way I could."

  "I can," Cole said in his arrogant tone that had grown her.

  "I know. You're incredible."

  He didn't smile. Not even a hint. "Maybe I'm completely insane, but the fact that you're a rubeum, like me, proves that you're not a Primeva. I don't care what the Warden says, I know you're not."

  "You're right. I'm not. I tried to tell you that, the day in the Kinship, but the words wouldn't come out right. And then I thought, maybe I could just pretend. Blend in and be one of you. Finally have real friends. Have something to belong to."

  He crinkled his brow.

  Kade took a deep breath and glanced over her shoulder, down at the gorge. "I just want you to know that these past few days have been the best of my life."

  "Kade, don't. You have no idea what you're doing. I don't want to have to come after you. It's really far down."

  "And you're an awesome kisser," she said. "I could kiss you all day long and it would never be enough."

  Cole's mouth dropped open.

  She
jumped.

  “Kade!"

  ***

  The wind howled in Kade's ears with a deafening pitch, the sheer cliff face screaming past her at alarming speed. Cole's scream resonated in her head. She knew she had to act fast. He could come from her. The falcon would come.

  The pierce of barbs cut through her jaw, her temples, slicing through her flesh as if her true form had been dying to come out, trapped within her human flesh. Wings tore through her shoulder blades, rising to peaks above her horned head. Spread wide, they stopped her fall, and she hovered for a moment over the reaching snow covered tree tops. It had been forever since she'd flown, allowed her wings to escape their confines. It was freeing. A freedom she'd missed, had forgotten about, forbidden to ever show herself.

  With a push, she flew up, past the cliff face and toward the ledge where Cole stood, eyes wide in disbelief, and alarm. It was definitely alarm. Something she’d been afraid of. The reason she was afraid to tell him the truth. Her pure white, feathered wings lowered her softly to the ground in front of Cole, but no amount of angel's wings would ever cover her demon's face.

  Cole's gaze traced the protrusions extending from her jaw, underneath the wells of her eyes, her temples, and her wings, fluttering around her like a protective cage.

  “‘I heard an Angel singing/When the day was springing/'Mercy, Pity, Peace/Is the world's release.’ William Blake.” Cole gasped. “Oh…god. Kade.”

  Kade searched for fear in his eyes, or shame, some sign that would let her know what he was thinking, but his expression only showed one emotion: Awe.

  "I won't hurt you," she felt the need to say, as he stared at her.

  He looked her up and down, taking in the red and black spikes covering her face, her long dark blond hair, white, feathered wings extending from above her head and shoulders, her hands, curved into black claws, and his gaze kept roaming. Taking in her normal jeans and converse shoes, her bare shoulders, and her upper torso, covered in white feathers.

  “Wow.”

  "I'm not...bad,” she said, eyes downcast.

  A grin drew up the edge of his lip. "I know that."

  "Do you hate me?" she asked, afraid of his answer. "Now that you know this is what I am. A monster." It was hard to say that word out loud, but she forced it out even though her voice was shaking.

  "Monster?"

  She held her gruesome hands out at her sides. "That's what I am. This is what I am. And whatever this is, it isn't what you are. Or what Giselle is."

  "Have you seen Giselle's true form?"

  "No, but, I know she isn't this." Kade glanced down at herself. "No one is this. No one is like me."

  "Did Dracon tell you that?"

  "Yes."

  Cole smiled, shaking his head, and the gesture took her completely off guard. "He was right."

  "Who was right?"

  "My dad. They thought he was crazy, but he was right." He shook his head again, still grinning. "And you're right, Giselle isn't like you."

  Kade bowed her head, wanting to hide her face.

  "And, you're not like I am, either,” he went on.

  "You do hate me, then," she whispered.

  "But you used to be." He walked toward her.

  She glanced up.

  "And now I know why Dracon wants you so badly, why he hasn't hurt you, or tried to turn you into one of them."

  "But, look at me, I am one of them."

  Cole reached for her right hand, opening it, palm facing up. He opened his right hand beside hers. Red lines swirled on both like tendrils of ink. "They match."

  She nodded. "I saw the lines on you the day I fell in the stairwell, and..." Kade wanted to apologize for not showing him the same lines on her hand, but she figured it was just some Primordial thing.

  "It's okay. Do you have your crystal on you?"

  She withdrew it from her pocket, handing it to him.

  "Is this the one you always carry?" He moved it between his fingers, holding it up to the light.

  "Yeah. I have a larger one that I chip pieces from if I lose one."

  "A larger one?"

  "Yeah."

  "Can I keep this?" Cole held the crystal.

  "Yeah."

  He dropped in his pocket and reached for her left hand. With the same motion, she exposed her palm, the moon staring up, and Cole placed his left hand alongside hers.

  "I saw this at your house yesterday, and I wasn't sure then, but now I am."

  "Sure of what?"

  "Look at our hands, the marks, as closely as you can."

  On the outer edge of the moon's mark were the faintest of points. Five of them. Like a five pointed star.

  "Oh, my god." Kade let out a breath.

  "The crystal you own isn't the crystal you were born with," Cole said. " The crystal you have is a fusionem crystal." He held his right hand up again. "It did this to me. When I rescued you from the snow that night, I couldn't find your crystal anywhere in your room, so I used mine, or I thought I did, but it was actually a fusionem crystal that Danny and I found in a Hive we were investigating. It was in my pocket, and it was dark in your room. Anyway, the red lines, they aren't normal, if that's what you were thinking."

  "It was."

  He shook his head. "Fusionem crystals were used thousands of years ago by the Devil's Children in hopes to create amalgamations. That's their only purpose. To alter the blood of a Primori. The Ward rounded them up and destroyed them all. Or they thought they did."

  "Amalgamations?"

  "Hybrids."

  Kade let out a breath.

  "Over time a fusionem crystal will either do nothing and fade away, change a Primori into a Primeva by tainting their blood, which is how the Primordial ended up being split up into classes, or...it creates something like you." He gazed at her. "Something that, until today, no one ever believed could, or did, exist. Except for my dad."

  "You're losing me. You're saying I used be like you? When?"

  "When you were a baby. You said Dracon came to you for the first time when you were five?"

  She nodded.

  "And that's when you lost your Astrum necklace?"

  Her hand went to her mouth.

  "My beautiful, little sparrow." Cole tilted her head up to look at him. "You're a true born Primori. Like me. I knew it."

  "You mean I used to be." Kade wanted desperately to believe what he was saying. "But... I'm not anymore. I'm not a...bird like you. I'm this."

  "You are, though. You always have been," Cole said. He hummed softly, "His Eye Is on the Sparrow." He brushed her hair from her shoulders, and his thumb swept the back of her neck, causing shivers down her spine. "Did you know you have a scar on your neck?"

  "No."

  He tilted his head. "Look at my neck."

  "I know." Kade knew what she would find. The tattoo of wings. Falcon's wings, she realized. "I saw your tattoo the other day in the hot spring. Lindsey has one like it."

  "They aren't tattoos. And Lindsey doesn’t have falcon wings.”

  "Oh..." Her pulse sped up.

  "We all have one in accordance to our natural form." Cole brought his hand back to her neck. "And I can promise you that a sparrow's wings used to be right here."

  "So...I'm a hybrid? Half Primori, half Primeva?" What the hell?

  "You're not half Primori, half Primeva. You're an Anamolia. Which creates a whole other problem that has nothing to do with the fact that your blood has been tampered with."

  "An Anamolia?"

  "It means devil god. It's also who the Shadow I killed in Crystalline said would destroy us all." He smirked. "An Anamolia is both dark and light, heaven and hell, god and devil. They have the power to control both positive and negative fields of energy. All the Leygates in the world. The entire grid."

  Her breaths weren't coming out right anymore. "What?"

  "Which is why Dracon needs you. You can bring down the Araneum."

  Her head was spinning. "I think I need to sit down."


  Cole put an arm around her. "I'm sorry. This is too much at once."

  "Just keep talking. I want to know the truth."

  He exhaled. "The Araneum is the most heavily guarded Leyline site on the planet. It's where all the lines converge into one point. If that one point gets tampered with, it will destroy the Planes, Earth, the Primordial race, everything we know. And Dracon needs you to bring him there because you can blow it sky high.”

  24

  COLE WAS A FALCON. No matter what he explained to Kade about her being an Anamolia, and everything he knew about the Araneum, all she could think was, “Cole is a falcon.” The most bad ass bird on the planet. The fastest animal on earth, a bird that could take out any other bird in a matter of seconds. The avian alpha. No wonder he had a chip on his shoulder all the time. It made complete sense.

  Cole opened another book as they sat in the Brotherhood's immense library. He knew where every single book was located in the entire room, and had read them all. Kade realized why he had such a smart mouth. Because he had the ultimate brain and brawn combination to back it up. She was dating the smartest guy in school who was also the hottest.

  Crazier, he kept staring at her like she was some kind of real angel, which was odd because she was in complete awe of him. She still had no idea what he saw in her. How being a devil god, hybrid, thing could possibly be good...she didn't know.

  "Will you stop staring at me for five seconds?" He grinned. "You're giving me a complex."

  "Whatever complex you have wasn't brought on by me staring at you." She kissed his cheek, and he put his arm around her, pulling her closer.

  He glanced at the clock on the wall. ”We only have about twenty minutes before Plumb and the rest of the house start showing up. At which time, we must disappear."

  "And then what?"

  "And then we find Danny." He read over the last page of the book.

  "And how will that go?"

  "I truthfully have no idea, but we're going to need his help since the Warden took me off the investigation." Cole opened another book.

  "Is that normal? Do you usually investigate the leads you find?" Kade thought he and Danny did that sort of thing all the time.