by A. J. Menden
“Was,” I amended. By giving Cyrus such a large part of my soul and performing that spell I burned myself out. I was now, like Wesley, a shadow of my former self.
“Was,” he agreed. “Before this mess.”
“And before whoever’s behind Dylan’s scheme showed up.”
“Whom we have no chance of stopping now.”
“Like we had before.”
He sighed. “But that’s not our worst problem. We’d better pray that if this thing goes south, Cyrus dies. If that thing inside him wasn’t frozen like you hope . . .”
“Thanks. That’s cheerful. All my sacrifice in vain.”
“Well, the alternative is that our enemy can still control him and he terrorizes the city. Or the world. And there’s always the unfortunate side effect of madness. What if Cyrus is mad and you’ve given him a third of your life force?”
“You did the same thing for Lainey,” I pointed out again.
“I gave a tiny part. You gave a damn third!”
“You’re swearing again.”
“Yeah, and I’m going to continue to swear until Cyrus wakes up and we see what happens.” He stared at Cyrus. I followed his gaze. He glanced back and said, “Guess that answers my question.”
“What question?”
“About whether or not you love him. It’s completely obvious.”
I sighed. “I never said anything. Not to him.”
“I never said anything to Lainey either,” Wesley said in a quiet but friendly tone. I glanced over and noticed a small smile on his face. “I gave her that part of my soul without telling her. I’d go around using endearments in another language that she didn’t understand so she wouldn’t know how I felt and I wouldn’t have to admit it.”
I shook my head and gave him a wan smile. “God, I am so your daughter.”
He nodded. “Well, make sure you find a way to tell him how you feel. If he lives through this. You don’t have my problem, at least, so you won’t have to go through a new life and a new memory.”
“No.” I shrugged. “I’m sure I’ll find my own unique way to screw it up.”
Wesley sighed. “Don’t. Just . . . don’t.” He leaned forward and kissed me on the forehead. “Hold on to love and happiness for as long as you can, Fantazia. Hold tight. They’re the only things that make life worth living, especially lives like ours.”
Our conversation ended as I felt my freeze spell wear off. “It’s gone. He should wake up soon.”
We both held our breath, waiting. Neither of us was attacked, so we slowly turned our heads to look. Cyrus still lay there, immobile.
“What’s happening?” I said. My voice was barely a whisper.
“Maybe your soul transfer didn’t work.”
“It worked. Trust me,” I said, running a hand over my chest. I could feel a phantom pain deep inside, the ache of a ruptured soul.
“Oh. Well, maybe the hex finished him off anyway.” My father went over and bent down, saying a few quick words in Italian: another diagnostic spell.
I held my breath. “Well?”
“Well . . . it seems like your spell worked. Somewhat.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means he’s in a coma, just like some of the other drained people fell into.”
My heart sank. “So he’s going to be in a coma forever? I risked everything for nothing?”
“I didn’t say that.” Wesley studied me. “There may be one way around it.”
“And that is?”
“You’re going to have to wake him up.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“Oh, wake him up. Sure. And how exactly do I do that?” I asked. “Shake him and yell, ‘Wake up’? Or do you know of some other trick that medical science is missing about coma patients?”
He gave a tolerant sigh. “This is a magical coma, so it’s a bit different. We approach the cure differently. What’s going on here is that there’s a disconnect of the spirit—soul, will, whatever you want to call it, whatever the hex was feeding off—to the body. But we can go in and magically reconnect it.”
“Great. Do that,” I said. “I’ll help however I can.” I paused expectantly, waiting for him to whip out old, moldy spell books or something.
He shook his head. “Other way around, actually. I’ll do what I can to help, but you’re going to be doing all of the heavy lifting.”
“How?” I asked.
“You’re going to have to go into his mind and make him wake up. More importantly, you’re going to have to make him want to wake up. These spells . . . the draining does something that just makes the victim give up. If you can call him back, reconnect his mind and body again, he’ll come to and be fine. Well, at least he’ll recover from the coma. I’m still not sure of the side effects of your other spell.”
“And why do I have to do it?” I asked. I was feeling particularly incompetent.
He eyed me. “Firstly, the soul spell you did. It’s created a link between you and Cyrus that can’t be severed. Lainey and I have one because I gave her that little part of my soul; yours is going to be much, much greater. In fact, if Cyrus dies, there’s a very great possibility that you will go with him.”
“Good,” I said. “Life’s been too long anyway.” But I didn’t mean it.
Wesley shook his head, rolled his eyes and ignored me. “Secondly, it’ll be easier to bring him back out of this if he’s given something to live for.”
“I’m not good at motivational speeches.”
“This one will be easy.” Wesley grinned. “Just tell him how you feel. I think that’ll be enough.”
I bit my lip. Tell him how I feel?
“You can do this, Fantazia. I have faith in you.”
“Glad someone does,” I muttered. Taking a deep breath I said, “Okay. What do we do first?”
I helped Wesley gather the materials for the spell, the spell books from his room, and to move Cyrus to the bed where the ritual would be easier to perform. All the time, my heart was pounding. Would I really be able to do this? I had a sinking feeling it would be more difficult than anything I’d done for millennia.
Wesley finished painting some herbs onto Cyrus’s forehead and speaking an incantation that I wasn’t processing. He glanced at me and said, “All right, your turn. Come lie down next to him.”
“On the bed?”
“It’ll be easier to connect you two,” Wesley said, nodding.
“Somehow it’s a little weird, lying on a bed with a man with my father standing over me, staring,” I admitted.
“Just don’t forget I’m here,” Wesley joked, and began painting the same herbs onto my forehead.
I closed my eyes as the cold, wet muck slid across my face. Ew. I tried to clear my mind as he’d instructed, breathing deeply, trying to put myself into a relaxed state, forcing my body to grow heavier and heavier. I could barely hear Wesley’s words, and I concentrated on clearing everything, all of my worries, all of my guilt, all of my pain, and just be a slate of nothing.
The world around me changed. It became a strange gray mist that stuck to everything, making it impossible to see the ground, my surroundings, and that seemed to burn in my chest as I breathed. Except, I wasn’t breathing. Not really. Just as I really wasn’t walking. My body seemed dimly aware that physically I was still lying back in the Elite Hands of Justice headquarters, but the rest of me was elsewhere, in a strange, foggy limbo.
There were shapes in the mist, things that formed and then dissipated, that grew and then shrank. As I moved closer, one began to take on more substance and form. And then I could hear voices.
“Can’t you just stay home for once?” a male voice asked, sounding weary. “You don’t have to go out to the bar every night.”
“I work hard all goddamn day, unlike you, who sits around all day pretending to look for work. I deserve a break,” a hostile female voice said. “You’re the one who just sits in front of the television, drinking yourself into a stupor.”
“At least I do my drinking at home and don’t go out to the bars dressed like a cheap whore,” the man growled, and I could almost see him, a stocky figure with a scowl on his face and a receding hairline, although the finer details were a bit unclear.
The woman was a tired-looking blonde, who turned and seemed to notice me.
“Great, you woke him up,” she said. Turning full attention on me she said, “Go back to bed, Cyrus. Mommy’s going out for the night.”
What the hell? It took me a moment, and then I realized what it was I was looking at. Memories. Cyrus’s memories, to be exact. The couple launched into another fight, and the scene began to fade from my view, though I could still dimly hear it.
A new scene started to materialize, and I squinted, trying to make out the shapes. I heard voices, and then children’s shapes gradually began to come into focus. There were scowling faces, and I felt the pain of being kicked and hit. Cries of “Sissy!” and “Baby!” punctuated each blow. I curled up to avoid the attacks—
The scene shifted, and I saw one of the same children, except now he was grown up into a teenager with acne and some sort of letterman jacket. He took a quick punch, his nose exploding into a fountain of blood.
“My sister is not a slut,” I heard Cyrus say, his voice a bit higher-pitched in youth. “Don’t you call her that again.”
“She’s just taking after your mom,” one of the other boys sneered. “Everyone knows she hangs out at the bars, banging anyone who will buy her a drink.”
“You’ll pay for that,” I heard Cyrus say, and then the fight was really on. A pretty, young blonde girl, one who looked vaguely like a younger and less tired version of the woman from a moment before cried out, “Don’t, Cyrus! You’ll just make it worse!”
Those shapes began to fade away, too, and soon I was looking at the gray mist again and could hear only the strange echoes of teen voices. I kept moving, kept catching glimpses of scenes here and there, whispered words or shouts. I saw what I presumed was Cyrus’s first heist—an ATM machine that he had somehow rigged to spit out all of its money—and then when he teamed up with a minor villain I didn’t recognize. I laughed as I saw Cyrus fight members of the Elite Hands of Justice, all younger or members of the team who’d now cycled out, watched with glee as he managed to escape their clutches.
I averted my eyes as he met and seduced a gorgeous blonde who I assumed was Sabrina’s mother. My suspicions were confirmed when she glumly told him, “I guess I’m pregnant.” The scene changed again, this time to the blonde woman shouting, “He’s better than you at everything! He’s a better provider, he’s a better criminal . . . and oh, yeah, he’s better in bed!” There was a screaming baby in the background.
I wanted to see more, wondering how Cyrus reacted, but the next thing I knew there was a fight happening with some random hero I didn’t recognize, and then a scene before a judge. Cyrus was getting out on bail, but it wasn’t going to last. I knew what happened next. I also knew I didn’t want to see it from this angle.
The next scene was a very familiar bar, upholstered all in leather and velvet, an air of seduction and excess. Androgynous waitstaff floated by, one of whom beckoned me to follow him to a room off the bar that was dark and lit by a single spotlight. Draped across the couch in the center of it was me.
It was disconcerting, this view from the outside. I saw myself how Cyrus saw me, and it wasn’t pretty. I was gorgeous—he clearly thought so—and stuffed into a tight little black dress that a dominatrix would wear, along with my usual high black boots. My makeup was bordering on garish, with the too-red mouth, heavy dark makeup around the eyes and henna tattoos. I looked like some sort of mad and malevolent goddess.
“Sit down,” the memory me said, motioning to the other couch with a wicked smile. “So, what can I offer you?” I bent over to give a full view down my shirt, a tacky and distasteful display in my opinion. Was I really that trashy?
Cyrus began telling me about how he’d finally been taken down and was going to jail. And then came the part that had floored me: his request. Not to escape, not to make people forget the evidence, but to protect his daughter, especially from her mother’s latest boyfriend.
“I don’t care what happens to me, but I have to protect my little girl,” I could hear him saying. “Bad enough that she’s saddled with a criminal for a father and an addict for a mother, but you know the kind of things Syn will do if he gets his hands on her. And he will get his hands on her. Jessica won’t do a damn thing to stop him. Not that she could, even if she wanted, but . . .”
I watched with a sick feeling as my other self smiled and said, “Of course I’ll help. It’s going to cost you, though. A lot. And you know it.”
That’s all I’ve ever cared about. What I can get out of people. I’m awesome.
“All right, fine,” Cyrus said. “Whatever you want.”
“Whenever I want.” I could see myself using my wiles on him, playing all the little games I always did with men, keeping them only interested in one thing, keeping them at a distance, far away, forever, so that I couldn’t be hurt.
“Stop,” I said, closing my eyes to the vision even though I knew it wouldn’t help. “I don’t want to remember this. I get it, I’m a lousy person. I thought we were here for Cyrus.”
The voices from the past seemed only to get louder, so I continued to walk, trying to put distance between myself and that memory. The sounds were a cacophony that burned my ears. I also felt like I was wandering lost, that I would be stuck inside this mind forever, entangled in Cyrus’s memories.
And then I saw. Sitting at the center of the maelstrom, safe in the eye of a tornado, was Cyrus. The Cyrus I knew. The real Cyrus—or as real as anything could be in a place like this.
The mist around him seemed to thicken, and I swiped at it, stumbling forward. “Cyrus!” I called, nearing. “Cyrus!”
He was staring at something I couldn’t see, lost in memory. As I got closer, I saw what it was and I cringed. He was watching recent events: him saving me from the Dragon cult. Our night together. My voice, saying those words in Italian that I couldn’t bring myself to speak in English. Him painting his expression of love on my body. Then me trying to distance myself from him.
“Cyrus, it’s me,” I said, walking up behind him and putting my hand on his shoulder. “It’s me. I’m here.”
The scene before me shifted to the moments before he was hexed, him trying to hack the spell and failing, me holding him, trying not to cry. “Stop looking at that,” I said, a bit more forcefully. “I’m here now, right now. I’m here for you. I helped you. I’ve done so much to try and save you.”
“What’s it matter?” he said.
“We’ve still got the world to save,” I prodded.
“Why bother?”
“You want to make your daughter proud, remember?” I said. “You’ve still got work to do. You’ve got to come back with me.”
“The world’s got the EHJ. It doesn’t need me.”
“Yes, it does,” I said. “Your daughter needs you, especially.”
“My daughter doesn’t know I exist,” he snapped, finally turning to look at me.
We both stared at each other. Everything about him was the same but different. His eyes were just a bit bluer, his face a little less lined with age. His every movement seemed a bit more fluid. But there was something else I could see: the warrior in him, the power behind him, everything I’d been attracted to but wasn’t apparent in the normal world.
He wasn’t wearing his usual clothes; he was in a strange mix of techno garb, like a cyborg from a movie, and leather, like a gladiator. The tattoos that usually adorned his skin seemed to writhe on his body like a second armor. When I looked closely, I saw tentacles attached to his chest. The black magic was still in him; it permeated his consciousness even here. But another part of him seemed to glow like gold. That part was familiar.
It was me, I saw—the part of my soul I had given up for him. I reali
zed then that I was actually seeing him, not just the shell of his body, but what he really was.
He was staring just as hard. I worried at what he was seeing, if he was seeing me. Something cold and dark? Something horrible?
“Wow.” He seemed enthralled, as if he observed something wonderful. So, he definitely wasn’t seeing me.
I glanced behind me but could only see gray mist. “What are you looking at?”
“You,” he breathed, like it was some sort of prayer. “You’re really something else, aren’t you?”
I’ve never felt more naked in my life. “S-so are you.”
He reached out a hand, brushed my cheek with a faint caress. “And what about you?” he said.
I shivered. “What?”
“Do you need me to come back?” His hand found my waist.
“Yes. Of course,” I said.
“Why?”
My heart fell. I couldn’t say it. There was no need, anyway. “I . . . just think it’d be better if you came back. Your daughter—”
The glow went out of him. His hand left my waist and he started to turn away. “Just go, Fantazia.” The fog seemed to rise, growing thicker and surrounding us.
“No, Cyrus. Come on. Please. You’ve got to come.”
“If you can’t say it here, you can’t say it anywhere.” He turned away and made to stride off.
“No, wait!” I said, pulling on his arm, dragging him back. He turned reluctantly. “You have to come back, because . . .”
“Because?”
I took a deep breath and met his gaze, drowned in eyes that were so much bluer here than in the real world. “Because I love you.”
I pulled him close and kissed him. His arms were suddenly around me, his lips on mine, and I felt the most at home that I’ve ever been in my entire life. I didn’t feel scared anymore. I wasn’t alone anymore. Cyrus kissed me like we were the only people in the universe, like I was the only thing that mattered in the whole damn world.
We were still kissing as we came back to reality. I opened my eyes slowly, taking in my surroundings. We were in Cyrus’s room at the Elite Hands of Justice headquarters, on Cyrus’s bed. I was lying on top of him and he was staring up at me with a strange but peaceful smile on his face. Wesley sat to the side in a chair.