Lead Heart (Seraph Black Book 3)

by Washington, Jane

  “I’ll never leave again.” Silas delivered the promise to something deep inside me, his chest pressed to mine. I could feel the mesmerising skip of his heart and the regret that hovered over him… but I could also feel the solidness of his promise. He meant it. “I’m all in,” he whispered, shocking me further.

  I had no words for him… but I also knew that he didn’t need my words. He was right in what he said before: he pushed, and I let him in. It was the way we had always been. It was natural. I lifted my eyes back up to his face and released the careful barrier over my heart and emotions, softening against him with a sigh. His dark eyes flared, his body tightening against mine, and I could suddenly feel his attention on my lips. Just like that, I was lost; lost in need and relief and the feeling of home that didn’t quite make sense.

  “Later,” he growled, reading it all on my face. “I need your phone.”

  I fit a hand between us—pausing when his eyes narrowed—and grabbed the phone tucked into the waistband of my borrowed jeans. He lifted it from my fingers and backed off me, tossing it on the ground as he unlocked he car. I scrambled for the passenger seat, needing to have something solid beneath me before my legs collapsed. He slid into the driver’s seat, waiting for me to click on my seatbelt before skidding away from the curb. I pulled the little zip-lock bag out of my bra, where I had stashed it after figuring out that Sophia’s jeans didn’t have real pockets, and quickly swallowed the pill Jayden had given me. Silas didn’t ask about it. I wrapped my arms around my legs, hiding my face between my knees as we drove. I needed to focus. I needed to drive every panic-inducing thought from my mind until only a singular purpose remained.

  Protect.

  This wasn’t about revenge. This wasn’t about doing the right thing, or finding the right solution. Danny was a threat that couldn’t be allowed to grow. I could have found out his identity earlier, with persistence, and consequences… but I had always felt that knowing would lead to acting, and I was barely ready to face him as it was. I didn’t want Silas to be there, but I couldn’t chance his reaction to me running off on my own. He and Weston were the only variables that I considered dangerous in this situation, and if I got all of the variables together in one place, it might lend me a little more control.

  “You can’t attack him,” I cautioned softly, my voice muffled by my knees. “You can’t touch him. I don’t know how you managed to lock him up in the first place, but he isn’t locked up anym—”

  “Of course he is.” He spoke as though it should have been an obvious fact.

  I jolted upright, my head whipping to the side. “What?”

  “Their escape would have been an impossible task without help, and Danny knows you better than you think. He knows we’re coming to him. He hasn’t moved from the prison I put him in, despite Takeo trying to break him out.”

  “Despite… Takeo… what?”

  “Takeo is a traditional man from a traditional culture, and an even more traditional family. His father split from the Zev community in an attempt to deny his Atmá her second pair member. He wanted her all to himself, and he got her that way… but at a price. She was never allowed to use her power, she was never allowed to see the other member of her pair, and their entire family was expelled from Zev society. Takeo was raised under his father’s significant influence because he was born with a mark but not a power—indicating that he was a member of a pair himself. When he met Alice, she was already a member of the Klovoda. It would have been impossible for her to split from the Zevs to pursue a life with him, so he cut off communication with his family and followed her to America, where he was welcomed into the Zev fold. A year later, they stumbled across Adie. Takeo attempted to take her away as his father had taken his mother away, except that Alice refused to cooperate. He refuses to be in a romantic relationship with her anymore, but he’s still here.”

  “That doesn’t mean he’s helping Danny.”

  “Not necessarily, but he is.”

  “Why would he do that? What does it accomplish?”

  “They both believe that you should be stripped of your pairs. Takeo wants to accomplish it on you, so that he can repeat the same process on his own Atmá.”

  “Oh my God… but he has Alice right now!”

  “They’ll be long gone by the time we get there, but they’re the least of our problems right now.”

  “How do you know all of this?”

  “I’m Silas.”

  “That’s not a reason.”

  He didn’t extrapolate, so I hid my face between my knees again, groaning softly. Weston and Danny needed to be our focus right now, especially if Takeo had said anything about my bond in front of Weston. I didn’t look up until we were parked directly outside the main house, so I wasn’t sure how Silas had managed to get past all of the guards. Maybe they all liked him better than Weston, or maybe they simply recognised his face and assumed that he was allowed inside. Maybe Weston hadn’t bothered to ward against him.

  “Why did you kidnap Weston?” I asked, climbing out of the car and pulling my sleeves over my hands to ward off the chill in the air.

  Silas glanced over at me, slamming the driver’s side door closed. “You turned yourself over to him; it was my only option. He would have found out about you, about what you are.”

  “You should have left it. You should have left him. I had it under control.”

  “You didn’t have anything under control. Weston thinks you’re important, but nothing is more important to him than making sure that Miro doesn’t bond with anyone. Compared to that, you’re just a little girl, advertising the perfect face to catch a bullet.”

  “Don’t mistake this for a tantrum,” I grumbled, pushing past him into the giant marbled walkway and heading in the direction of the ‘lived-in’ part of the multi-tiered mansion. “I get what you’re saying, I see the sense in it, but I had to get you away from Weston and I’m not going to apologise for—” I broke off, staring at the marble beneath my feet. “What the hell is that?”

  “Blood,” Silas informed me, his tone bland. “What does it look like?”

  “Why is there blood on the floor?”

  “Don’t know. Wasn’t me.”

  “Small relief.”

  He turned to smile at me—a half-smile that swept me up in a brief, exhilarating moment of hope—and then he was walking. I followed him through several different sections of the main house, each new room revealing an extra layer of dust, until eventually, he paused before a door.

  “This is Le Château’s prison.” He set his hand against the handle, which didn’t even appear to have a lock, and rested his eyes on my face.

  “This?” I peered at the door, and then looked around. We were standing in a fancy—albeit dusty—sitting room. “We didn’t even go underground. Aren’t dungeons supposed to be underground?”

  “I didn’t say dungeon. I said prison.”

  His half-smile appeared again as he pushed the door open, standing aside so that I could see beyond him. I gasped, my feet drawing me forward until I was in the center of the doorway, the solid press of Silas’s stomach against my right arm. It was less a prison and more a giant aviary. Glass-walled boxes were set intervals apart in a garden setting, the sky open and gaping above us. The sun was already beginning to set, casting an eerie, fiery glow over the concrete pathway before me and glinting off each pane of glass until it seemed that the entire courtyard was simmering with muted flames.

  “There’s no one in there,” Silas muttered, gently pressing against the small of my back to encourage me forward.

  “Are you sure?”

  The glass boxes were empty, but the surrounding plants could have provided cover for anyone wanting to hide.

  “Positive.” Silas pointed to the top of the door that we had just walked through, where a small panel right below the door jamb was flashing two miniscule red dots. “Those are our heat signatures; the room is just picking up on us now. The panel was blank before we came
through. There’s no one else here.”

  I walked more confidently, then—though I should have been frustrated that we hadn’t encountered the people we had come to confront.

  You’re not ready, a tiny voice whispered inside my head.

  I shoved it away. I would have to be ready. There wasn’t any other option.

  Silas strode past me, moving to examine each of the glass boxes.

  I trailed after him, ignoring his question. The strange, transparent boxes were easily the height and breadth of a grown man, and were peppered with breathing holes in the ceiling, with no other breaks in the glass visible.

  “How do they get them in there?” I asked.

  “These are a magical phenomenon in our world.” He hovered his hand over the glass, a note of subtle reverence in his voice. “It is one of the only remaining examples of coordinated power. The original materialist and the original reader linked their powers to create material with emotion. These boxes can see inside us.” He moved his hand closer, his fingers brushing the glass. I watched in open-mouthed fascination as the glass rippled and bent inward, becoming something almost like water as it separated around his fingers, allowing him entry. “It senses the blood on my hands,” Silas muttered, pulling his hand back. “The magic is more complicated than simply admitting a person who has killed, though.”

  He moved suddenly, grabbing me and setting me before him, his hands heavy on my shoulders. He watched my face as he pressed me backwards, and I barely even realised that the glass was solid at my back instead of warping around me as it had Silas.

  “It even differentiates those who have killed in self-defence.” Silas dropped his hands from my shoulders, his touch skimming over my wrists until he was turning my hands, forcing my palms flat against the glass. “It’s a judge, a sentence, and a prison… all wrapped up into one. It doesn’t want you, angel.”

  “So then how do people get out?” The words sounded breathy, and I knew that Silas could feel the sudden pounding of my heart, because his fiery eyes briefly dropped to where the organ was pressing insistently against the barrier of my chest.

  “Creation is never foolproof. The originals knew that better than anybody, so they built a failsafe into the box. All you have to do is stand outside the box and declare, ‘this person must be freed’.”

  “Isn’t that a little too easy? Couldn’t anybody be freed then?”

  “If the person making the declaration isn’t of pure intent, the box will kill whoever is inside and whoever attempted to free the prisoner.”

  I tensed up, pushing against Silas in an attempt to get away from the box. “Wow. Ok. So how did Danny and Gerald escape?”

  He stepped away, allowing me space. “My guess? Takeo threatened Alice with something substantial—something that would transform her statement into a sacrifice. Maybe he told her that if she didn’t open the box, he would kill somebody that she loves, or something worse. By that logic, her freeing the prisoner is a selfless act to save a person’s life. She is of pure intent.”

  “Damn.”

  He stopped before the next box, his head tilted to the side. “They left you a note.”

  I locked up my reaction and approached with only a surface layer of curiosity instead of the full-body panic that I was becoming prone to. Silas was right, there was a rhyme scribbled on the glass in black marker—a welcome deviation from Danny’s usual, sloping red handwriting. In fact… it didn’t look as though Danny had written the rhyme at all.

  “Humpty dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall?” Silas read the words out like a question, and I knew that he was thinking the same thing as me.

  “Maybe we’re supposed to go and find them?” I glanced around the room once more, though I trusted Silas enough that I didn’t really expect to see anyone. “Maybe that’s supposed to be a clue?”

  “Only one way to find out.” Silas shrugged and started walking back toward the doorway. “Let’s go up to the roof. It’s one of the only parts of the original structure that hasn’t been altered. From inside, this place is some kind of elaborate mansion, but from up there… it’s just an old castle. With a wall that’s easy to fall off.”

  We left the prison room with the glass boxes and started to ascend to more familiar parts of the house. Silas avoided the elevator, using staircases that had been tucked away and forgotten, first at one end of the house and then at another end altogether. We walked in silence and for a long time, but I didn’t mind. It gave me time to ready myself, at least mentally. By the time we broke through a door at the top of a particularly steep and dusty staircase, I was halfway to convinced that I could face Danny and walk away alive.

  “Ah!” a voice boomed out, just as a wild gust of wind whipped my hair into my face. “Our guests have arrived! How nice of you to join us! Didn’t I tell you that you wouldn’t be able to help yourself, Seraph? But… only two of you? Shame, girl. You were supposed to make this easy for me.”

  I pushed the hair out of my face and squinted through the shadows of the rapidly-darkening sky to where two men were silhouetted against the backdrop of an old castle parapet. It was made with large, crumbling blocks of stone, and I wished for a frantic, selfish moment that the slightly smaller man—who was sitting atop one of the blocks of stone—would suffer the fate of a gust of wind and tumble backwards. I had no idea what was on the other side, if anything, but it was better than me having to deal with him.

  “Hello Weston,” I said coolly. “Hello Danny.”

  “He doesn’t want to talk to you right now,” Weston replied, reaching over to pat Danny’s shoulder. “He’s upset with you.”

  “Why are you both still here?” I ignored Danny entirely, since it was easier to focus on Weston. “Why haven’t you escaped yet? Why are you waiting?”

  “Well, you see, I set up a little test for you when you came to stay here, Seraph.” Weston kicked away from the wall and walked toward me, his hands hidden inside his pockets.

  Silas stepped in front of me immediately, his tense arms slightly outstretched.

  “You failed,” Weston continued. “You failed the test, and now I’m not sure if I can redeem you.”

  I peered around Silas, noting that Weston had stopped walking. He met my eyes, but then he turned his attention to Silas.

  I curled my hands into tight fists. “You use your power on him one more time, Weston, and I’ll use my valcrick to fry you from the inside out.”

  “Is that a threat?” Weston tittered, his tone patronizing. “You really don’t want to make me angry right now. Not after what I’ve discovered about you two. About the five of you.”

  “It’s not true,” I immediately stepped out from behind Silas. “I know what they told you. It’s not the first time people have tried to spread these rumours. It isn’t true. You’ve tested it yourself.”

  “Evidently not enough.” Weston was almost sneering now.

  An eerie laugh broke through the tension that had the three of us gripped, and we all turned back to the wall—to where Danny sat.

  “Do you want the truth?” Danny goaded, holding out his hand, showcasing a phone. “I have all the proof you need.”

  Weston walked back to Danny, grabbing the phone out of his hand. He didn’t speak as he turned the screen on, but I knew that whatever was on the screen of Danny’s phone had sealed my fate. I could see it in the whitening of Weston’s knuckles, in the bobbing of his throat, in the hardening of his eyes.

  He wasn’t simply a man lost to anger. He was a monster consumed by it.

  He closed his eyes, his grip on the phone tightening until his arm began to shake, and then he was turning, an enraged sound escaping his throat as he grabbed Danny by the throat, the phone falling forgotten to the ground as his fingers found purchase in flesh, digging inward.

  “You don’t want to watch this,” Silas cautioned. “I’ve seen him do it before. It isn’t pretty.”

  “What is he doing?”

  “Killing h
im. Overcrowding his brain. Danny will experience the equivalent of an extended epileptic seizure.”

  I remembered the feeling of all of my thoughts being rushed to the surface of my brain when Jayden had briefly attacked me, and wondered if what Weston was doing was somehow similar.

  “Why isn’t he fighting back?” I muttered, my eyes narrowing on Danny.

  There was a foamy substance dribbling from the corner of his mouth and his eyes had rolled backwards. Weston’s hands seemed to be the only thing holding him upright, because his legs were twitching too much to be of any use. Silas didn’t answer me, so I supposed that he didn’t have an answer.

  “You’re going to kill him!” I finally shouted, my heart conflicted as I took a step toward Weston.

  I wanted Danny to be stopped. I wanted him to pay for his crimes. I just… I didn’t want to stand off to the side while a person was killed. It didn’t matter that the person was evil incarnate—and it didn’t matter that the person used to be my brother. I realised, in that moment, that death would not be the solution. It couldn’t be.

  There had been too much death already.

  “Weston, you need to s—” It was too late.

  Weston released Danny’s inert body, and we all watched as he crumpled to the stone, blood seeping from his nose and ears. I stood there, taking him in. I was too transfixed by the smear of blood trickling down the side of his familiar face that I didn’t even realise that Weston had advanced on me until Silas was in front of me again, pushing me back.

  “I’m not going to hurt her yet,” Weston growled, his nostrils flaring. “Get the hell out of my way before I change my mind and decide to kill you all for keeping this from me. The same way I killed him.” Weston jerked an uncaring finger over his shoulder.