The Rise of Ren Crown

by Anne Zoelle

  I eyed the device. My shields would probably be up to the task. For pranks, they could care less. But mortal peril tended to be one hundred percent in their purview. And I didn't think Oakley was here looking to spray paint or make me go streaking.

  “You don't belong on campus,” Oakley said with a tight smile. “You should have been taken care of in the carnage.”

  That sounded suspiciously...suspicious.

  “Taken care of...while you were gone,” I said, narrowing my eyes. “What exactly do you know about Bloody Tuesday, Oakley?”

  He gave a mirthless laugh. “Not as much as you do, I'd say. But a lot more than Bailey and the others, who wish they had half of my knowledge, contacts, and plans. Stop moving, Crown, or I depress this.” He finger tapped the red button. “And believe me, you don't want me to do that.”

  I eyed it. My internal clock said I had forty-five more seconds to take advantage of the group's first diversion. Not a lot, but enough to try and talk my way into a better position.

  “Come on, now.” Oakley motioned me forward with his free hand, then thrust his hand into his pocket. He pulled out a cuff. A nullifying cuff.

  I narrowed my eyes at it. “There's no way you are getting that on me, Oakley.” I had magic to defend myself with now, and I would use it, if needed. I hadn't been shadowing Alexander Dare for weeks learning nothing. Magic gathered under my skin.

  “Now, now, don't be hasty. See, that's where you are wrong. This,” he shook the device, “is a one-way ticket to your muse's brains getting liquefied. So you have a choice to make.”

  Alarm rang through me. “What?”

  “Here, I'll even let you contact her to find out.” He smirked.

  I immediately checked my communications. “Neph, are you there?”

  “Yes?” Her voice reflected my alarm. “Why didn't you answer a second ago? What is wrong?”

  “Did someone put something on you?”

  “What? No. Just the control spells at my sanctioning.” There was something off in her voice. “But those are only accessible by the head of the community.”

  Oakley smiled as horror overtook me. “I think you've figured it out, haven't you? Excellent. Let's turn her back off, now. There we go. That's what deal making begets, Crown. Not that you know, feral mongrel that you are,” he said viciously. “Come now. Your muse is waiting. The Department wants you and the Department is going to get you.”

  He took a careful step forward reaching out toward me with the cuff while I stood, frozen.

  “This will take care of two problems,” he said. “Then the real fun will begin when the terr—”

  Oakley hit the ground in a spray of striped black-and-green ropes and chains. I didn't wait to see who had cast the magic, I stepped on his outstretched wrist and ripped the device from his hand. I clutched it against my chest and backed away as striped snakes of magic lashed out and tightened around him, slamming him repeatedly into the ground. Blood spurted from his broken nose, but that too was soon covered up in a burlap hood magicked over his head.

  Stunned, my head jerked up to see Bellacia striding over, hips swaying. She kicked Oakley in the stomach.

  “What—” I started. The vine had flattened against me, tucked out of sight, as if it found Bellacia a threat, where it had found Oakley merely boring.

  “Oh, please.” Bellacia stood, back straight, one leg out, posed like the high society model she was, one finger casually making figure eight motions in the air. Her magic followed the paths she drew, trussing up Oakley like a holiday turkey with the magical rope that I had seen law enforcement on the feeds use—a measure just shy of a nullifying cuff.

  The nullifying cuff, she left curled in his fist.

  “I've had my eyes on him for weeks,” she said with disdain. “With his precious double dealing. Thinking we didn't notice. Giving information to the Thirdies.”

  I stared down at Oakley. “But he wants to turn me in to the Department.”

  “Yes. He does. Interesting, isn't it?” She hummed as she worked.

  “The Department is working with the Third Layer?”

  Bellacia sighed. “You ask that as if it is so simplistic. Certain elements in the Department are working with the Third Layer terrorists. All in the pursuit of their own goals, of course. As we all do.”

  “Goals to what?”

  “To get the populace more under control. To increase weapons production, all in the name of a continuing war. To rise from the ashes of the old and form the new. To justify a new experiment. Or to keep certain members of the population in their direct control. Name it, and there is someone pressing forward on their agenda.”

  “And Stavros?”

  “Ah.” Bellacia smiled, eyes cold. “Now there is the question. What is the head of the Department's goal? That, my dear...that is what is shrouded by all of the underlings and minions who each fall beneath him. Which ones took the fall for their superiors, and which ones did he weed out himself? What is his ultimate goal?”

  I thought of what Olivia and Marsgrove had discussed at the end of last term as they'd been drawing up the terms of my remaining on campus. Olivia had held “Omega Genesis” over Marsgrove's head to get Marsgrove to capitulate.

  Bellacia would probably love to have me mention such a thing.

  “What are you going to do with Oakley?” I asked instead.

  She smiled beautifully. “Traitors to the cause are...dealt with.”

  “Dealt with how?” I asked, looking uncomfortably at Oakley with the burlap hood over his head. The hoods were used to mute magic and normal senses, like sound, from reaching a prisoner. But it looked far too much like the preface to a First Layer torture scene.

  “Why use your imagination, dear. In the most horrifying fashion imaginable—stretched across the front page of every major feed in the most grotesque and terrible positions. University stress is so all consuming.” She shook her head. “It just got to poor dear Keiren and now he will be humiliated in such a fashion that he will never again be able to work in Magicist circles.”

  “You are going to...embarrass him? But, he'll be alive?”

  Bellacia's brow delicately lifted. “Complete social estrangement is a fate far worse than death.”

  I had the device that was hooked to Neph in my hand, where no one else could use it—I could afford to be merciful. I started to inch back along the path that lead around the bend and into the vault. “So...we're good here?”

  “I'm not going to stop you,” Bellacia said, eyes glittering.

  I swallowed and put another foot of ground between us. “Great, thanks.”

  I didn't get Bellacia. Like, at all. But as long as she didn't follow me—

  “No, dear. You misunderstand my intent. You are going to do something for me.” She held up a small recording device.

  Okay, maybe I got her just fine. “Or?”

  “Or...let's say, or else.” She held up another recording device. This one was inactive, but her threat seemed to be that whatever was on it was something I would pay to hide.

  “Okay.” I nodded. “Sure. Let's try option #1.”

  She looked amused. “Yes, let's.” She threw the first recording device to me and I caught it in the hand that was not holding the precious device linked to Neph. “When you activate it, it backs up to retrieve the ten previous seconds of data as well, so that the reporter doesn't miss the best parts. Get me something good.”

  “No promises.” I stared down at the slim black square.

  “Oh, you'll want to rethink that. Now, go.” Her eyes narrowed as she looked toward the trees in the opposite direction. “I need to pay the Justice penalty for this, and Oakley needs to pay for many other things.” She dropped two things to the ground and toed them beneath him, planting whatever it was she had decided to frame him for.

  I backed away, then turned and hurried around the corner. Behind me I could hear people gaining ground. Another explosion sounded farther off.

  Diversi
on number two.

  I looked nervously over my shoulder and knocked on the door of the vault. The door rose a space of three feet, and not an inch more. I glanced again at the empty area behind me, ducked underneath the door, then nervously hit the switch that would seal us in. The door closed theatrically slowly as I waited for Tarei, or a member of the Legion, to burst into the clearing and roll beneath it.

  The door sealed shut.

  “You were almost late,” Constantine said in a clipped voice that almost startled me as I was still staring at the seal.

  “Traffic.”

  He raised a brow. I shook my head and walked toward him. The vine shimmied up from my collar and slithered out, plopping on the floor of the workshop. I grabbed it before it could consume everything.

  “And...what is that?” He cast a disdainful, almost uninterested, glance at the vine, but our connection said he was anything but uninterested, and more than a little disturbed.

  “Er...? Axer told me to bring it.”

  “He didn't.” Anger suffused his feelings.

  “No, he really...oh, I see. Yeah, Marsgrove was pretty ticked too.”

  Constantine licked his lips. “Well, we can't leave it here. Perhaps he is planning that we set it loose in the Third Layer?” He smiled dangerously. “See what havoc we can wreak?”

  “Maybe.” I looked at the vine, which was now rubbing its cheek against my hand. It was like a really disturbing pet.

  I fished out a storage paper—one of my best ones. “What do you say to traveling in style?”

  The vine cocked its head, then dove neatly into the paper. “Huh,” I said picking it up and seeing it curled up inside. “It did it on its own.”

  Usually I had to use my own magic to sink things inside.

  “Don't trust it,” Constantine said darkly. “Get rid of it as quickly as you can once we find a spot.”

  That seemed...unkind. “I'll find you somewhere nice,” I whispered to it, and folded the sheet, sticking it in a secured pocket along with the cloaks, the containers, and everything else I was carrying like a mad art mercenary.

  “So, how...?” My question faltered as I rounded the main worktable in the center of the room.

  Constantine hadn't said exactly how we were getting off campus, but now...now I knew.

  A vortex projected upward from a single dot on the floor, swirling in controlled rotations.

  He'd been making vortexes in his room—in an ottoman—over two terms, maybe more. He'd let me observe some of his progress after we'd become daily business acquaintances. I'd helped him hide some of the Justice Magic infractions. I hadn't known what the vortexes had been for.

  Until Tuesday.

  It was simple really, as Constantine had said it would be, to get off campus and into the Third Layer. Constantine had held the solution in his room the whole time.

  I crossed my arms. “This is one of the vortexes you built for Godfrey.”

  “Never. I had to make this one again from scratch,” he said idly.

  “Constantine.”

  “All of the others started in the Third Layer and ended at Excelsine. This one goes in quite the opposite direction.”

  “Will it take us to the spot where the others originated?”

  Constantine smiled, but it was without humor. “The origination points were designed to be used at the moment of activation. They never did get a chance to use the vortexes for human transport, though. They tested them only, sending small things through to my room. Emrys was the one who opened the school's wards from the inside—using Telgent and pawns in the Administration.”

  And Constantine. Raphael had used Constantine to dissolve the wards. Constantine had left the mixture in a designated spot on the mountain. Axer was right—oh, how that must have stung when Constantine realized who he had been talking to that whole time. Even if Raphael had been in golem form, he had been right there.

  “Verisetti set it all up, every last piece of Tuesday, except for you.”

  “Oh, he planned for me too. But I don't think he minded how everything shook out. He was playing multiple games, trying to get me discovered, trying to hide me. He had plenty of plans for if I was taken by the Department.”

  Could still have those plans. It was obvious to everyone, even me, that this was some sort of a trap. It was just a trap the mouse was hoping to conquer.

  I looked at the vortex. Time was ticking. “You programmed in a destination?”

  “Yes, the same one given to us by Peoples.”

  I nodded. Delia had been working her contacts.

  “So, how do we do this?”

  I didn't know enough about vortexes to even chance a guess. And it looked uncomfortably like the one that had almost eaten me in the Library of Alexandria.

  This was Will's field, not mine. Will was going to be crushed he missed this.

  “You jump in,” Constantine said as if I was being dense.

  “You are crushing Will's heart right now by not having him help.”

  “Tasky is addicted to portal pads,” Constantine said dismissively.

  It was a little true—Will and I had met because Raphael and I had created a portal pad that worked in all layers during my Awakening. Will and I had tried to dredge up the memory of that process several times with no success.

  “Will loves everything interesting. Especially when it has to do with travel.”

  “You are stalling, Ren.” Constantine hummed.

  I looked at the vortex. It was a one-way trip down that supernatural whirlpool. And I was going, but Constantine... “Are you sure you want to do this?” I asked him.

  “Don't be silly, darling.” His voice was light, but the undertone was not.

  “We are likely to get expelled or jailed, even if Patrick says you have a 'Get Out of Jail Free Card.'”

  “Those are but trifling concerns.”

  Trifling concerns, in contrast to the revenge that he had been seeking for years. It was glittering in his eyes. Truth.

  Looking at him in this moment, even with his promise and my belief in him, I wasn't so certain that his revenge would come second.

  He abruptly stepped toward me, gaze entirely focused, and his fingers wrapped around my elbow—the one that held so many of the threads connecting us. “I swear that I will rescue your roommate first and foremost after making sure that you survive.”

  My breath hitched as the magic wrapped around us, securing the vow. Everything in me relaxed.

  “You didn't have to—”

  “You are at ease now,” he said, as if unaffected by the magic I could still see rippling over his fingers. He slowly released my elbow. “And your trust is critical.”

  I frowned. “Critical to what?”

  “To me, of course,” he said lightly.

  I sighed. “Right. Why do you make everything sound so shady? We could have had a nice moment there, you know.”

  He smiled, though he tried to hide it. “It's one of my many skills. We can still have a nice moment. Come here.”

  I held up a hand, palm out toward his descending face. “Not a chance.”

  He laughed and walked closer to the vortex. “Come, darling. Destiny awaits. And your troublemakers have just set off diversion number three. There will be no more to be had.”

  The vortex swirled in a mesmerizing mass of white and purple.

  He flashed a hand toward it. “Beauty before gorgeousness.”

  I sighed again. “Stupidity before supervillainery?”

  “Yes. Also, because I need to close the vortex behind us, unless you want Praetorian Tarei diving in when they come to search the room in—” He tapped his arm. “—three point five minutes.”

  I stared at him, anxiety rising again. “Constantine, what—”

  “Jump in.”

  I carefully examined his resolute expression, then nodded. Above everyone, Constantine knew what he was getting into.

  “So, I just...” I looked at the small white and purple tor
nado. “Jump in?”

  “Enter the vortex,” he said, voice low, while unnecessary smoke rose around him in a parody of some hoary, mystical moment.

  “Very funny. Glad to see your humor is still intact.” I examined the swirls of the vortex. I was again reminded of the Library of Alexandria. “If my leg goes in, but the rest of me is still out here for too long, will it swallow my leg somewhere?”

  “I can drop you in.” That wasn't an answer, and he seemed amused. Which likely meant that I was going to be fine. Constantine's amusements were sometimes quite dark and vicious, but I hadn't yet been the victim of anything cruel. And on a mission of such importance to him, he'd have told me up front if there was something to fear here.

  I pulled over a chair and stood on top, staring down. Olivia was on the other side. And, in the end, that was what made the choice easy.

  I jumped and the room disappeared as I was sucked into a space too small.

  Swirls of white and purple pulsed over and around me as if I was being forced down a tube at great speed. I could feel added magic—Constantine—as he jumped in after me.

  We disappeared from campus, from the Second Layer, and into the Third.

  Chapter Forty-three: The Third Layer

  All the practice in the world wouldn't have prepared me for the feeling of it. We landed on an endless expanse of amber colored dirt.

  My first impression of the Third Layer was so disjointed from reality that I couldn't process it mentally for a moment.

  A slim, audible stutter of air escaped my throat.

  Constantine kicked a small rock with his foot and it propelled itself with too great a force into the finite sky, then just as suddenly altered its course and slammed back to the ground, creating a five-foot crater that rocked the ground beneath us

  “Welcome to the Third Layer, darling.”

  A dusty, wasteland of magic swirled uncontrollably around us. The atmosphere was pinched in places, the sky meeting the ground in a foreign, Daliesque way—as if magic couldn't sustain the pillars of the world, and had melted plastic pieces of sky and earth together in the collapse.