by Ella Summers
We were pulled along the trail. Then we came to an abrupt stop. I could hear the soft and steady drip of water against stone. The air was cold and damp.
The rebels have taken refuge in a cave, I said silently to Damiel.
“You used magic!” Deep Voice hissed under his breath. “How could you be so careless? You know the patrols have tools to track magic use.”
“It wasn’t my doing. I didn’t use any magic,” replied a quieter, screechier voice.
That was all that anyone said for several minutes. Eventually, I could no longer hear the footsteps of the Hive soldiers. A few minutes after that, the rebels pulled me and Damiel out of the cave. They pushed us into a hard, metallic container.
The container began to rumble under me. We were moving. This ‘container’ must have been the back of a large van. I could hear the rebels. Their voices were muffled. It sounded like there was a wall between us and them.
“This is your fault,” one of the rebels chided another. “It was your idea to snatch those two from the springs. What stupidity! It’s too risky to abduct tourists when a Magic Collective patrol is nearby.”
“You need to take risks in order to get things done,” the other rebel replied hotly.
I freed my hands from the restraints. Then I pulled off the hood smothering my head.
I looked around. We appeared to be inside a work van, one probably used to carry around large and heavy things. It must have belonged to one of the rebels. I doubted that instigating rebellion was a full-time career. The rebels surely all had regular jobs too.
The back of the van was empty right now, except for the two of us. Damiel was watching me. He wore neither hood nor handcuffs. In fact, he looked like he’d freed himself from them long ago.
“I thought you were chivalrous,” I said.
His brows drew together in confusion.
“You didn’t offer to help me free myself from my restraints.”
“You looked like you had it well in hand.” A smile twisted his lips. “Though it took you quite a bit longer than expected to free yourself.”
Was he teasing me?
“It’s harder to pick a lock than it is to outright break it. The latter I can only do with magic, which I didn’t dare use. I didn’t want to attract any more patrols. Did you hear the rebels talking about the Hive’s tracking tools?” I asked, even though I was pretty sure he wouldn’t miss a thing like that.
“Yes, I did hear them, and that explains how the Hive patrol honed in on us so quickly at the beach. They have developed—or stolen—a tool to track magic. A toy unicorn.” Damiel looked pretty amused by his own joke.
There was that funny name again. ‘Unicorn’ was the word for people who could track magic. It was a passive magic ability, one that up until only a week ago, I hadn’t even known existed. A toy unicorn was an oddly-appropriate name for a magic-tracking device.
“How did you get free of your handcuffs so quickly?” I asked Damiel. “You didn’t use magic, did you?”
He gave me a flat look.
Of course not. He was too clever to use magic so close to people who could track it.
“I have had a lot of practice getting out of restraints,” he told me.
“Oh? I thought you were always on the other side of the restraints. I thought you always did the binding.”
“Usually.” Fire flashed in his eyes.
And all I could think about was the impulsive kiss I’d given him back at the springs.
“I researched and tried out various methods of freeing myself from various kinds of bindings, to better learn how to restrain people,” he told me. “As far as binding people goes, these rebels are amateurs.”
“I don’t imagine the hapless tourists they usually snare pose much of a challenge.”
The van came to a stop. I heard the front doors open and close, then the sound of footsteps as the rebels walked around the vehicle. They opened the back doors—then they froze at the sight of Damiel and me, unbound and unbothered, leaning totally relaxed against the inside of the van.
“Well, don’t just stand there and gawk,” Damiel told them, his voice sharp and commanding. “That’s no way to treat a lady.” He glanced at me.
The rebels still didn’t move. They just gaped at us.
“Oh, really,” Damiel huffed with feigned agitation.
He hopped out of the van and extended his open palm to me. I set my own hand in his and stepped down to solid ground.
The whole time, the rebels watched us in confusion.
“Well, what are you waiting for?” I demanded. “Are you going to introduce us to your leader or not? And some refreshments would be nice. The back of your van is dusty, and now my throat is itchy.”
“Water?” one rebel managed to croak out.
I smiled pleasantly. “Tea would be lovely.”
Still bewildered, the rebels led us across the garage. We were inside a large industrial building. It looked like a converted warehouse.
Damiel and I looked around as we followed the rebels out of the garage and into the main hall. From the looks of it, the rebellion was quite small. I counted fewer than twenty people.
The building itself, the rebellion’s apparent base of operations, was pretty rough around the edges. The walls hadn’t even been painted. There wasn’t much interior decorating to speak of at all. I wondered if the rebels were ever able to stay in one place long enough to make it their own. The Hive patrols must have been constantly on the hunt for them.
Our captors brought us to a small lounge. The room seemed to be an old converted storage closet, but it didn’t look much like a closet anymore. The interior was as vibrantly decorated as the rest of the building was sparse. Pink curtains with yellow flowers hung in the windows. Lace covered the table, which was really just a thick wood plank with four crates for legs. There were no chairs, just short benches made from more wood planks and crates.
A man was leaning against the back wall, his thick, hairy arms folded across his broad chest. He wore a red-and-green plaid shirt, sleeves rolled up. His legs were covered with thick black pants and mud-stained boots. He wore a cap over his hair, tied into a long ponytail. A bushy brown beard covered the lower half of his face.
“This is Grant, our leader,” said one of our rebel abductors.
Grant was built like a lumberjack. An axe even hung on his wall, along with the ducks-and-daffodils wallpaper. Another wall featured an extensive knife collection. A third wall was a shrine to all of his guns. Axes and guns, duckies and dollies—the rebels’ leader sure was an unusual fellow.
“Welcome to the rebellion. Please, be seated,” Grant said, gesturing toward the table.
It was set with a ceramic pink teapot and three matching teacups. Grant and I sat down. Damiel chose to remain standing.
“You are an unusual pair,” Grant commented, pouring the tea. “Certainly not the usual kind of person who visits the springs.” He handed me one of the teacups.
I took a sip from my cup. Tea never failed to make any situation more civilized.
“You two aren’t really tourists, are you?” Grant’s gaze slid from me, up to Damiel, who stood right behind me.
I smiled at the rebel leader. “We are newlyweds on our honeymoon.”
“We haven’t seen a single tourist in nearly a week. Rumor has it that the Magic Collective is guarding all passages to and from other worlds, and no one is allowed through.” Grant’s big caterpillar eyebrows squeezed together. “So the question is, how did you two get past those guards?”
“Because they have magic,” a familiar voice declared.
I turned to watch one of the women we’d discreetly interrogated in the bar last night. It was the pink-haired woman—except her hair was no longer pink. It was just normal brown now.
“Interesting,” Damiel said thoughtfully. “I was leaning toward the one with the yellow hair.”
“You mean, you knew one of them was a rebel?” I asked him.
&
nbsp; “Not knew. Suspected.” He glanced at the woman. “You were very adamant that the rebels were evil heretics. You make a very decent zealot.”
She grinned at him. “And you make a very sexy man.”
Rising from my seat, I shot her a look laden with threat. “Stop flirting with my husband.”
She took a step back, obviously unnerved by the fire in my eyes. “Wait, so you two are actually married?”
“Of course.” Damiel spoke like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
“But you’re also soldiers.”
Damiel gave her an enigmatic smile. “Oh?”
“Don’t bullshit me. I saw how easily you threw balls into those holes, even the ones that were hardly larger than the balls themselves,” she said. “You’re obviously well-trained. And have magic. No normal person has reflexes like yours.”
“No normal person abducts innocent strangers,” I countered.
“Everyone worships the Magic Collective. They call them gods. But they steal our friends, our family, and they take them away. We never see them again. The Magic Collective isn’t a group of deities. They are people who happened to be born with a little magic, and now they’re hoarding all that magic for themselves.”
Grant set his hand on her shoulder. “Zara.”
She brushed him off. “No, Grant. You always tell us to be calm, but we just can’t be. No one will even listen to us. We need to get people’s attention. That’s the only way we can ever hope to banish these false gods.”
“And you figured destroying local tourism was the best way to get noticed.”
“It was either that, or blowing up stuff,” Zara told me. “I think we made the right choice.”
“We do set the tourists free eventually,” Grant added.
“I do not appreciate being taken hostage,” I told them.
“You have magic,” said Zara. “So let’s be honest. You allowed yourself to be taken.”
“And you lured us to the springs,” Damiel shot back. “Why?”
“Because we need your help.”
I folded my arms over my chest; it put my hands close to the tiny knives hidden inside my decorative armlets. “When you want a favor from someone, you typically don’t open by cuffing their hands and throwing stinky old sacks over their heads.”
Damiel cocked a single brow at me. “To be fair, Princess, that is exactly how angels secure favors. We don’t ask for them. We demand them.”
Zara gaped at us, her eyes wide. “You two are angels.”
“So you’ve heard of angels,” I said.
“Just stories from passing travelers. We don’t have any angels here,” Grant told us. “Angels are supposed to be beings of great beauty and infinite magic.”
“That’s basically the gist of it.” Damiel’s laugh was a smooth, silky purr, wrapped in a crisp, arrogant crust.
“Is magic so common on your world?” Zara asked us.
“Not exactly common, but those of us who possess magic aren’t hunted down and hidden away from everyone else,” I told her.
“Here, the hunters take away all the people with any sign of magic.” Zara glanced at Grant. “If you don’t report your magic, they find you eventually.”
“The Magic Collective’s hunters seek out magic, using special tools to track it to its source,” he said. “Those people with magic are labeled ‘chosen’ and then you never see them again. They are taken away to the fortresses.”
“What is going on inside those fortresses?” I asked the question that had been bothering me since I first saw that pillar of light shooting out of the fortress, high up into the sky.
Grant shook his head. “We’ve been trying to figure that out for years.”
“Have you tried to get into one of these fortresses?” Damiel asked him.
A wrinkle formed between Grant’s thick brows. “Why do you ask?”
“The Magic Collective’s soldiers have stolen something from another world, a magic artifact,” I told him. “We intend to get it back.”
“So the Collective has stolen magic artifacts as well as magic people.” Grant slammed his fist down on the table. The teapot and all the cups rattled. “All to run that blasted spell.”
“What is that spell all the fortresses are shooting out?” Damiel asked.
“No one knows.” Grant shrugged. “The Collective has been brewing that spell for as long as anyone can remember, but no one knows what it is. All we do know is that they constantly need more magic people, more magic artifacts, to power it. That spell is the source of the Magic Collective’s power. It is what makes their magic so strong. It’s what gives them control—dominion—over everyone and everything.”
16
Wrong Turns
“Have you tried to break into any of the fortresses?” Damiel asked the rebel leader.
“My sister Naida was taken when the Collective learned of her magic.” Grant pointed to the picture of a teenage girl with big, blue eyes and a long, thick braid that reached the ground. “So, yes, I’ve tried to break into the fortress here. Many times. But it is impossible.”
“Nothing is impossible,” I declared.
“Don’t let your magic blind you, angel. I also possess magic, like my sister. Our parents kept that fact hidden from everyone. They didn’t want to lose their children, to never see us again. They died fighting the hunters who came to take my sister. And even with all my magic, I couldn’t break into the fortress to rescue her.”
“Things have changed,” Damiel told him.
“Nothing has changed.”
“Everything has changed. This time, you have two angels, beings of great beauty and infinite magic, masters of weapons and strategy. And I have a plan.”
Damiel was really dialing up the angel ego, but it seemed to be working. The rebels were gulping up his confidence like travelers coming to an oasis after days stranded in the desert.
“We can break into the fortress, but we will need a few things,” Damiel told the rebels. “We have to stop by our world to pick up a few things.”
“We eagerly await your return,” said the rebel leader, hope burning in his eyes. “Finally, we have a chance to stop the Collective’s atrocities.”
Damiel and I walked out of the room, but the rebels continued to stand there, smiling as they stared off into space.
“You compelled them,” I said as we walked back toward the garage.
“Only a little.”
“Oh, really?” I looked pointedly at the rebels frozen in place all around us, each one with the exact same goofy expression on their face.
“Ok, perhaps I compelled them a bit more than just a little,” he admitted. “But it wasn’t a lot. I’ve never met anyone so hungry to be compelled. It didn’t take much magic to convince them. Their leader is desperate to get into that fortress.”
“Yes, I noticed that too. He wants to rescue his sister.”
“If she’s been with the Hive for so long, she might not even be his sister anymore,” Damiel pointed out. “Even if we find her, there might not be anything left to save.”
“Try to be optimistic.”
He grunted, as though that were an amusing notion. “Bring us to my territory, to New York.”
I drew the Diamond Tear and cut a passage through the cosmos to Earth.
But when we stepped through, we didn’t find New York on the other side. I’d brought us to Storm Castle instead.
“I’m sorry,” I said, frustrated at my wrong turn. “Navigating isn’t as easy as it looks. The dagger can go between different worlds and between different places on a world. Just how well it works depends highly on the dagger wielder’s mental focus. I guess my mind was thinking of this place.”
His eyebrows lifted. “You were thinking about your bedroom?”
We’d landed on my bed. He seemed to find that very funny.
“No, I wasn’t thinking about my bedroom,” I said, my cheeks flushed, my words hurried. “Not exactly. At that mo
ment, I was thinking of my father, of how he confronted me in this very room to warn me about you. But he should have warned me about himself. About how he’d lied to me my whole life.”
Damiel set his hand over mine. “You want to confront him.”
“You bet I do.”
My door thumped twice. I slid off my bed and went to answer it. Allegra stood on the other side of the door.
She looked me up and down, giving me a thorough visual assessment. “I heard you’re back.”
“How did you know that I was back?”
Allegra blinked. Her smile faded. “What do you mean?”
“How did you know I was back?” I repeated. “I only just returned a few moments ago.”
“Cadence—”
“You were spying on me. Watching me. Watching this room You probably set up magic detectors and surveillance devices.”
Allegra took a step back.
“That’s how you knew I was back,” I told her. “By spying on me.” Coming here wasn’t the only wrong turn I’d ever made; my whole life was marred by wrong turns.
“How can you say such things, after all our years of friendship?”
“You mean, after all those years you spied on me. For General Silverstar.”
Damiel glided up behind me.
Allegra’s gaze shifted uneasily between him and me. “I can see that you’re busy. Sorry to interrupt.”
“Not at all.” Damiel opened the door wider, a cold, dangerous smile twisting his lips. “Come in.”
Right about now, all the panic bells must have been going off in her head. “I wouldn’t dare intrude.”
“It wasn’t a request, Captain.” Damiel snared her with his psychic magic and dragged her inside.
The door shut behind her with a decisive snap.
Fear flashed in Allegra’s eyes. The fear of being caught in the Master Interrogator’s web. “Colonel, I—”
“You’re here to answer to her, not to me,” he replied, releasing her body from his spell.
She stumbled, nearly falling over. Straightening, she met my eyes with trepidation.
“Now, you will tell me the truth,” I demanded.
“I’ve always told you the truth, Cadence.”