Feeling more and more unsure about what I thought I was doing, and cold and dripping wet besides, I decided to use my left hand, my non-ring hand, to touch the black stone of the Lady Witch’s prison. Steeling myself, I put my hand to the imprint on the rock.
Nothing happened.
I twitched my fingers. It was fairly obvious that twitching wouldn’t help, but I tried it anyway.
Still nothing happened, so I took a deep, frustrated breath and switched hands.
The second my cold skin made contact with the stone, which was just as cold, a light flared. As the black fire shot upward, I gasped and stepped back, but not too far back, because my hand stayed firmly attached to the rock. A moment later, the Lady Witch was there.
She was withered, with empty sockets for eyes, one of which had a scar over it, and lips that pulled inward, making her whole face look like it was caving in on itself. Her hat only increased the effect.
Beyond all that, I noticed details about her face that I hadn’t seen the first time around. She had a scar under her lower lip and a line of black dots above her right eye. I didn’t know whether they were some sort of beauty mark or a power tattoo along the lines of Lisabelle Verlans’s wand.
Above all, the witch looked crazier this time. Clearly, imprisonment didn’t agree with her.
“Yes?” she asked in a sort of singsong voice. She didn’t appear to be looking toward me, even allowing for the fact that she didn’t actually have eyes to look with. There were questions I had wanted to ask, but in the moment my mind was an utter blank.
To buy time I cleared my throat, and now she turned her head and empty sockets in my direction. Her eyelids fluttered several times and then widened.
“You are different from last time,” she said, some of the singsong fading from her voice. “You understand your power in a way in which you did not understand it before.”
I nodded. “Yeah, essence.” I glanced down at my ring as I felt it heat up. So did the Lady Witch.
“Ah, and you are a friend to power in a way you do not yet understand.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“Have you brought me the Golden Rod?” She asked.
“Yeah, about that,” I said. “You said you would help if I got it for you!”
“Yes,” said the Witch, her face twitching into something that for her must have been amusement.
“You didn’t mention that it was lost forever,” I contended.
“You didn’t ask. Your fault, not mine, no take backs!”
“The Golden Rod and the Counter Wheel, what do you know about them?” I asked.
“Why should I tell you?” she sniffed. Her image drifted through the flames as she spoke.
I looked around, trying to think what could possibly convince her to tell a paranormal kid the secrets of the old paranormals, the secrets no one living still understood. But before I could come up with anything remotely plausible, she spoke again.
“Ah ha, you can’t come up with anything! I’m going to leave now!” The air started to suck away from me as the Lady Witch prepared to sink back into her prison. Then it struck me, it was so obvious it was almost laughable. She was imprisoned in a rock.
“Why not tell me just because you’re bored!” I blurted out. For a split second I didn’t think she had heard me, but then she paused, and the air stood still. She looked at me as if she were seeing me, the real me, Ricky, beyond the fact of my power, for the first time. Her thin, snake-like tongue dipped out and licked her cracked lips as if she was excited by the prospect. I tried not to cringe.
“You are attacking my weak spot,” she cautioned. “It is smart, but only smart once.”
“You can threaten me all you want,” I said. “This quest is more important.”
“Very well,” she sighed. “The Golden Rod is sought by all. The power you could have . . . Whoever possesses the first artifact and the last to remain will rule.”
“Completely?” I asked. “There’s one artifact in the paranormal world that trumps all the others, an ace in the hole kind of thing?”
“Why are you talking of holes?” She frowned for a moment, then continued. “No, that is why the best way to use the Golden Rod is in concert with other artifacts on the Counter Wheel. It is only then that your friend Lisabelle Verlans will be in extreme danger.”
“So, if paranormals put together the Counter Wheel, they can go against Lisabelle?” I repeated, trying to make sure I understood her correctly. There was too much at stake to risk a misunderstanding.
“They can go against darkness,” she corrected. “Lisabelle Verlans has put herself in a dangerous position. If she did not control darkness, there would not be so many paranormals seeking to destroy her. It is the perception that she’s power-hungry that changes everything.”
“She has all the power, so how . . . oh never mind,” I muttered. Why I sought to understand evil was beyond me.
“The Counter Wheel and the Golden Rod are real, though?” I asked. “How do you know?”
The Witch then did something I had sometimes seen on TV. Someone being interviewed was asked a question, and instead of answering it, the interviewee just talked about whatever he or she wanted.
“The Golden Rod and the other objects on the Wheel are all made of gold. There’s power in those rare metals; why do you think humans wear them in such strange places?” She twitched crinkled fingers near her dripping ears.
Knowing they were all gold really narrowed it down for me. I bit my tongue to stop myself from saying something sarcastic.
“Alright,” I said. “Thanks.”
“I still want the Golden Rod,” she said. “In time you will realize that the deal we struck is all that matters. But until then, a word of caution.” She bent forward a little. I had imagined that she possessed a strange smell, but it turned out she didn’t smell like much of anything. I sniffed the air, and even the flames didn’t smell like smoke. Staring at me, she saw what I was doing and smiled a little.
“Caution?” I reminded her, irritated.
“Yes,” she said. “My caution to you is that the fact that you possess great power does not mean you know how to wield it. Others would do well to remember that too.” She gave me another of those almost toothless smiles, then started to sink back into the flames. The place where her eyes should have been stayed trained on me until she was entirely gone.
I had forgotten that my hand was on the stone and that the stone was very hot. Until the witch disappeared, it hadn’t felt hot to the touch, but now it was starting to hurt. I pulled my hand away, looked at the stone for another minute, and trudged back to the water. As I slipped into the clear pool, my clothes got soaked all over again.
I didn’t waste any time in returning to the upper world and the grounds. I was just closing the trapdoor I had come through, proud of myself for sneaking out without being caught, when someone behind me cleared his throat.
Turning around, I groaned. Standing there with his hands stuffed into his pockets was Keller Erikson, my sister’s husband and fallen angel extraordinaire, trying to appear casual. I knew he was anything but. Keller was a talented fallen angel from a fallen angel house that had wanted him to marry another fallen angel. But his family’s status had become more complicated when his aunt was discovered to be that era’s premier of all darkness. The shame she had brought to the fallen angels in general and the Eriksons in particular had been excruciating.
Still, they were proud, and they weren’t happy that Keller had married a non-fallen angel, especially one with such a checkered and famous history as Charlotte Rollins.
My sister loved Keller, and he loved her, and he had never wavered. I liked him pretty well in general, but I liked him a whole lot less at the moment.
“How’s it going?” I said, mimicking the way he was standing – just because.
“Oh, good,” he said. “My wife asked me to find her brother because it’s time for dinner. I don’t think she realized
what a task it would be when she assigned it to me.”
“It’s dinner time?” I regretted the surprise in my voice, but Keller nodded. He had deep blue eyes that at the moment were trained sharply on me. I didn’t like it. My stomach rumbled and Keller’s eyebrows rose.
“Yeah,” he said. “Dinner. You missed lunch.”
“I missed lunch,” I repeated. Keller nodded. He was looking at me as if I had two heads, but I could tell he didn’t want to be the kind of brother-in-law who asked where I had been. Or maybe he just knew I wouldn’t tell him.
“I’ll go change,” I said. I started to brush past him, but Keller reached out a hand and grabbed my arm. I stopped and met his blue eyes with my grey ones.
“Ricky,” he said, then sighed. “If you ever need anything, all you have to do is ask, you know.”
I nodded my appreciation and hurried to my room. I was hungry, and I knew that if I stayed alone with Keller much longer I’d be tempted to tell him exactly what I had been doing and where I had been doing it, and that would lead to a lot of questions that I didn’t want to answer.
Back in my room, Crumple was furious with me for leaving him alone all day. When I was at Duckleworth he didn’t sleep with the other dogs in the outdoor kennel, he liked to sleep with me, which Dacer said was okay as long as I took care of him. Care was obviously overdue at this point, so I quickly let him out, then came back, changed again, and went to join my sister for dinner.
The household wasn’t in the kitchen, so I went to the breakfast room where I had first met Charles, Dacer’s friend who had turned out to be a Hunter.
Chatter assaulted me when I opened the door. Apparently there had been a lot happening while I was in the quiet under the Castle, including many new arrivals. I had the irrational notion, just for a moment, that Dacer better not have pulled out all the silverware I’d cleaned that day to use at dinner.
Everyone looked up when I entered the room. Keller was already sitting next to Charlotte, and their plates were full. Zellie and Dacer were there, of course, along with a couple of paranormals who looked like fallen angels around Keller’s age.
As I sat down I could see that Keller’s hand was resting softly on Charlotte’s leg. It seemed as if they were always touching and giving each other knowing looks, and Charlotte still blushed often. I didn’t get it. I would have expected that over time the romance would wane, but if you saw Keller’s eyes light up every time he looked at my sister, you wouldn’t think so.
The last guest was General Goffer. I swallowed hard. The general was a tall, bald-headed man, with a commanding presence whom I’d had the non-pleasure of running into before.
“Hi,” I said, and hurried to the empty seat next to Charlotte. As I sat down she gave me a tight smile that was more like a glare, but she didn’t say anything.
“Ricky, I hear you went for a long walk,” said one of the fallen angels. “I’m Cather Helm, a friend of Keller’s from grade school.”
“Did you go to Public?” I asked.
Cather shook his head. No, I couldn’t stand school and skipped out as soon as I could, much to my parents’ dismay. Always there for old Keller when he needs me, though.”
It turned out that both Cather and the other fallen angel were old friends of Keller’s who had come to Duckleworth for the celebration of their buddy’s wedding. Cather had been traveling the world, doing crazy stunts and, from what I inferred from comments they all made, meeting lots of women. He had missed the Nocturn War and clearly didn’t understand how bad it had been. No one really wanted to talk about it, so no one made much attempt to enlighten him. But he also quite obviously didn’t understand how dire the situation was even now, or how some of the paranormals at the table had risked their lives to save our world.
“I just don’t see why this focus on Lisabelle Verlans is necessary,” he said. “She’s just one paranormal. Who cares about one paranormal. Don’t you agree, General Goffer?”
I was still in shock that the general had come, but maybe I shouldn’t have been. He liked to throw his weight around and make difficult situations worse, not exactly the best quality for a general, but who was I to say?
“Lisabelle Verlans is a danger not just to herself, but to others. We must be careful of the darkness premier. If she continues unchecked there will be nothing but disaster.”
“Lisabelle isn’t going to cause a disaster,” said Charlotte through gritted teeth. Neither General Goffer nor Cather noticed her tone.
“Oh, really?” said Cather. “I thought she specialized in disaster.”
“She specializes in stopping them, in my experience,” said Charlotte. “Like she stopped us all from dying during the Nocturn War while you were busy surfing and flirting.”
“The blood of life,” said Cather with a crooked smile.
General Goffer coughed. “She did no such thing. She made a grab for power. She saw an opportunity and she took it. Nothing more.”
“What would have happened if she hadn’t taken over darkness!” Charlotte demanded. “Someone else would have, or worse, we’d have a bunch of lawless hellhounds running around. You think just any old paranormal can handle that much power? Not just once but regularly? Is that really what you think?” Charlotte was breathing hard, and I saw Keller’s hand sneak over to hers and lace his fingers through hers under the table. He wasn’t trying to calm her, but to support her; I had never once seen him try to clip her wings, even though he was the only paranormal who had it in his power to do so.
“Look, I know she’s your friend and all,” said the general. “It just seems strange that she would amass so much power without wanting to do something with it. Rarely is someone who is all-powerful lacking in an agenda.”
“And you know this how?” my sister demanded.
“Power doesn’t just fall into someone’s lap. You choose it. Lisabelle Verlans didn’t have to take over darkness, but she did.”
“Like I said,” Charlotte said, sounding very tired, “she chose to take the power because the alternative was that we would all have died.”
“So nice of her,” I said. “I thought she was brave and awesome and we’d be lost without her.”
General Goffer was so surprised to hear me speak that his glass of wine stopped halfway to his mouth and his thick, bushy eyebrows rose. “You’re just a boy,” he said. “When darkness gets free, or worse, when she sets it on us in one fell swoop, you will think differently. The time is coming when choices will have to be made, and you may be surprised which side you choose.”
“When those things happen I might,” I said. “What you don’t realize is that they won’t.”
It occurred to me later that the general and I might have been talking about two different things. What I had been talking about was the fact that Lisabelle would never turn on her friends. I was pretty sure the general was incapable of understanding that point.
Duke Dacer jumped in at that point to turn the conversation in another direction, and the dinner party continued on to other topics. Charlotte’s veneer of calm reappeared and the evening went on as if we hadn’t spent half of it arguing for Lisabelle’s honor.
Chapter Three
We all went to sleep on less than ideal terms, but I didn’t care. Tomorrow Keegan would arrive, we’d have the marriage celebration, and then we could return to Paranormal Public for our second semester.
I tried not to think about what had happened after I found Sip in Charlotte’s cottage, but it was hard not to. First, Lisabelle had left, but oddly enough, many of the hellhounds had stayed around for a long time. They hadn’t moved around much, they had merely appeared to be waiting for something.
Bertrum, though, had been beside himself with devastation. At first he just sat on the floor of the cottage amidst the blood. His eyes were downcast and his red-slathered hands twitched a little. But I had other things I had to do, so I walked away and left him alone for the time being.
Before leaving, Lisabelle had touche
d the metal circling my finger, turning it black. Once I knew I was wearing a ring of essence, I glared at the hellhounds, who glared back.
It might just have been my imagination, but I rather thought the black tower on the Astra dorm was shimmering for the first time ever. The image of Astra at that moment, with the hellhounds in front and the tower above, was breathtaking.
Eventually I made myself relax enough so that my legs worked again. When I turned around and marched back to Charlotte’s cottage, I found Eighellie walking around outside and Averett floating nearby, apparently waiting for me. Keegan was busy in the entryway, trying to convince Bertrum that he shouldn’t keep sitting there on the floor.
“But how could I be so foolish?” whispered Bertrum. “How could I?”
I walked closer and saw concern spark in Averett’s eyes. “Your hair’s on fire,” she cautioned, pointing. I reached up and felt my head, and yes indeed, there were flames rising from it. I was learning that when my own fire burned I didn’t feel it as heat, but as a sort of wave of power that surrounded me. I took several calming breaths in an attempt to convince my magic that we weren’t going to go out and level the Hunters right this instant. It took some convincing, but it finally calmed down.
When I had myself settled, Averett explained that she was heading off to Contact Vital, and that she might even blow off studying for finals to return to Vampire Locke and tell them what she had seen in person. I nodded, not really listening. The air was still cold and the ground still wore a rough blanket of snow. I kept imagining pools of blood scattered over the white and fluffy clumps.
Averett, her face a mask of worry, floated forward and snapped her fingers in front of my nose. “Get it together,” she said. “Now is not the time to fall apart.”
I gave a shaky cough and nodded. “Fine,” I said. “Now is not the time to fall apart.”
Taking Averett’s caution to heart, I marched forward and grabbed Bertrum’s arm. He was still sniveling, and though I didn’t want to belittle his tears, he needed to stop blaming himself. My touch sparked something in him, and he looked up at me as if he were just waking from a trance. Keegan, who had been trying to comfort him, took a couple of steps back and waited to see what he’d do next. Since he did nothing right away, I prodded him.
Elemental Fate (Paranormal Public Book 12) Page 2