by John Corwin
Ivy bawled, burying her face in his robes.
Her "grandfather" scowled at me, and released her. He came closer, and whispered in my ear. "I have no quarrel with you personally, boy. But you are interfering in my plans, and I will not have it. There is more going on here than you could possibly understand."
I tried to speak, but my vocal chords suddenly locked up.
He shook his head. "Not another word, do you understand? Now, leave Ivy alone, and stay out of my way, or I will finish you off. Nod if you understand."
I wanted to glare at him. I wanted to tell him he'd already tried to kill me and failed. I wanted to remind him there were hundreds of eyes on us at this very moment, and killing me would be a mistake. But I saw Ivy crying, and all I wanted to do was cry, too. She probably hated me now. And I'd been so close—so damned close to—" My vision blurred with tears. I nodded.
"Good boy," Jeremiah said. He flicked his wrist, and the lights went out.
Chapter 41
"Justin?" said a calm voice. "Are you alive?"
My eyes flinched open and found a serious gray face looking at me. "Cinder?"
He nodded. "We waited for some time in the house. I feared something had happened to you, and found you passed out here."
I looked around, and saw I was lying on the lawn of a fraternity house. Several other prone figures lay nearby, empty cups and alcohol bottles still grasped in their hands. "How long before you found me?"
"From the time we thought you were entering the house until now, it has been an hour." He held out a hand. I took it, and Cinder hauled me to my feet.
I felt a bit groggy, but otherwise none the worse for the wear. "Let's go to the house," I said. Bitter anger and sadness filled my heart as I thought back to Ivy's face. She was going to help me! I fought back depression. Jeremiah Conroy was always one step ahead of us. Even if he had lived in the mansion before, how could he have gotten past the eavesdropping wards?
The minute we stepped inside the house, Shelton stormed from the planning room, muttering. He looked up and saw me. "What the hell happened with Ivy?"
"Jeremiah Conroy," I said.
His jaw tightened. "Dammit. Nothing's going right today." He motioned me inside the planning room where a silver plate covered the rune, presumably to keep someone from accidentally triggering it. An image of the arch floated above the table. Shelton turned around. "Bella and I scoured the arch for wards. We found only one, but it's a doozy."
"Can you remove the ward?" I asked, wondering how much worse my day would get.
Shelton rolled his eyes. "And risk killing ourselves? Hell no."
"What do we do?" I asked. "Just evacuate the place and let it blow?"
"I don't think that's an option anymore," Shelton said. "In case you hadn't noticed, there's been no news about Dad's death. There's also been no evacuation order."
I couldn't stop thinking about Ivy or the look in her eyes when Jeremiah told her about my betrayal. Fury superheated my blood when I pictured him. I wanted to kill the old bastard for ruining everything. For ruining the fledgling relationship with my sister.
"You okay, buddy?" Shelton asked, looking at me with some concern.
"I had her, Shelton. She was going to help me. She was going to heal Nightliss." I dropped into a chair, my breaths ragged as I fought back the tears. "She told me she loved me."
"Ivy?" he said, eyes disbelieving. "But she thinks you're evil."
"We connected somehow," I said, fitting my fingers together. "We connected." I couldn't hold it off anymore. Couldn't fight off the pain. "I've got to go," I said, and raced from the room.
A figure emerged from the foyer as I crossed the den. Dirt covered Elyssa from head to toe. She looked tired and unkempt, and I detected a slight odor coming from her dirty Templar armor. She smiled at me, and it was the most beautiful sight I'd ever seen.
We met in the center of the room. My lips pressed tight to hers. She let out a little moan, I emitted a little groan, and my worries seemed to melt away.
Sometime later, we lay in bed together, smiling at each other.
"I missed you so much," I said, pushing negative thoughts of Ivy away.
"I didn't even wait around for the ending ceremony," Elyssa said. "I was in the middle of nowhere, but I got to the closest arch and took it straight here." She smiled. "Nobody wanted to stand near me on the shuttle."
I laughed. "You were a bit ripe."
She kissed me again. "I couldn't stop thinking about you. I couldn't stop thinking about how meaningless everything would be without you, and how stupid it was of me to leave you for the Cho'kai."
"I wanted you to do it," I said. "You're strong and independent, and I love that about you."
"If Meghan hadn't given you that potion, I never would have gone," she said, looking with dismay at the dark veins in my leg. "It's still spreading, Justin. Are you sure the potion is working?"
"Yes. But getting the crap beaten out of me daily hasn't helped."
She made a cute growling noise. "I'm not gonna let that happen anymore." She kissed me. "You need to tell me everything."
So, I did.
She was visibly upset by the time I finished. "Oh, Justin, I'm so sorry about Ivy." She wiped away tears, even as her teeth clenched with anger. "I'm going to personally beat the crap out of Jeremiah Conroy."
I couldn't help but chuckle. "The world might end, Queens Gate might blow up, but you're the most upset about Ivy?"
"You have a chance to connect with your sister." Her anger melted to sadness. "I'll never have that chance with Jack again."
I could only imagine her pain at losing her brother during our fight with Vadaemos. I hugged her tight and said nothing. It seemed like one of those moments where there really was nothing to say.
When we came downstairs, Shelton jumped up from a chair in the den where he and Bella were playing Scrabble. "I figured it out," he said, excitement in his eyes. "I know how we can defuse the ward."
"How?" I asked, caught off guard by this happy version of my usually grumpy friend. Apparently Bella had improved his bedside manner.
"Your incubus sight," he said. "You can see magic, right? That means you can see the ward, and we can figure out how to get rid of it."
I snapped my fingers. "Brilliant plan."
"First thing tomorrow," he said.
"Why wait?" I asked. "We need to act now."
"Are you kidding me? I nearly burned myself out fighting Bigglesworth yesterday. I'm exhausted." His eyes looked me over. "And I know you're not up to snuff yet either. What if something else unexpected happens?"
I sagged. He was right. We needed to be fresh for this. "You're right."
He tilted his head to the side. "You okay—I mean emotionally and all? I know it was rough with your sister."
Meghan and Adam came through the front door. Meghan looked exhausted. "Making drain wards is a lot harder than I remembered," she said, sinking into a chair as Adam massaged her shoulders. She caught Shelton's troubled gaze. "Is something the matter?"
I told her about Ivy.
"Do you think there's a chance you can convince her to help?" Meghan asked after I finished.
"By now, I'm sure Jeremiah has filled her with lies," I said. "Ivy probably hates my guts."
Meghan thought for a moment. "If there's a chance Ivy will help, I need to know. I'll have to bring Nightliss here because it doesn't sound like Ivy will go to her."
"Don't forget this place is about to go boom," Shelton said.
"I haven't," Meghan replied, eyes hard. "As you well know, Nightliss will probably die one way or the other." She made an angry wave with her hand. "I also need to evacuate the children. For that I'll need to spend most of my time planning." Her eyes found me. "Should I bring Nightliss or not?"
Meghan's words echoed in my head. She'll probably die one way or the other. Really, we had no choice. "Bring her," I said.
"Okay." Meghan's shoulders straightened. "I need an evacu
ation plan for the children. It won't be easy."
"I can help with that," Elyssa said.
"That would be very helpful," Meghan replied. "Thank you."
Thursday already. My head felt like a big alarm clock attached to sticks of dynamite, relentlessly ticking down to detonation. Elyssa went with Meghan while I made like a ninja and slipped down to the Burrows. Thoughts of Ivy plagued me. How I'd failed Nightliss. How I'd failed to convince Ivy to help me rescue Mom. The countdown on my own life still ticked away. I squeezed my eyes shut. Took a deep breath. Willed it all away.
It's not working.
"Hello, Justin," Cinder said when he saw me at the bottom of the stairs where he and Zagg had created something of a makeshift workshop. "We are examining several texts I discovered after repairing flaws in damaged ASEs. It is possible Ezzek Moore left instructions regarding the rune should an emergency arise."
"More like a bunch of meaningless personal diaries," Zagg said, sighing deeply. "Most of this is so dry, I don't understand why he even kept a log."
"I am also uncertain why Moore kept a log detailing laundry day," Cinder added, turning his serious face toward me. "He also recorded his favorite location to take lunch, and his frequent conversations with someone he refers to as the Lady of the Pond."
I shuddered. "Yeah. I've met her. Weird woman."
"Isn't this kind of a bad place to be reading?" I asked, nodding my head toward the entrance where the dungeons started. "Because of the magical radiation, I mean."
Zagg poked a thumb toward a line on the floor. "Bella put up a shield ward. She and Meghan said the malaether can't go through it."
"Malaether?"
"Yeah. That's what they're calling the corrupted aether. Mal as in bad."
I imagined a seething cauldron of malaether hovering like a poisonous cloud on the other side of the shield. I hoped Meghan would be able to use drain wards to heal the sick students.
"Ready to get to work?" Shelton asked as he and Bella came down the stairs.
I nodded confidently, but the nervous clenching in my stomach offered a sobering reminder that even if I could see the ward guarding the arch shield, we might not be able to do anything about it. I followed the two Arcanes through the dungeon, past the gauntlet room Lina had used, and toward the pulsating, glowing orb of death in the room with the arch.
"How long do I have before I keel over?" I asked, my skin tingling as if it were already mutating from the malaether.
"It takes several days of this much exposure to sicken most people," Bella said. "Your supernatural healing might protect you."
"I'm using a shield," Shelton said, his voice sounding a bit muffled. Tiny sparks erupted around him like bugs in a zapper.
I regarded the arch for a moment, closed my eyes, and extended my essence as if searching for prey. When I opened my eyes, I saw a glowing shield stretched tight across the arch, except for a noticeable bulge, like a dent in stressed metal, where the brilliant sphere of malaether sparkled.
What really caught my attention was a strange black lump floating in front of the shield, tethered to the ground by a thin black strand. Though a thick layer of dust covered the floor beneath it, I saw traces of glowing lines. I wandered closer to the balloon-shaped oddity. Careful to avoid the glowing lines, I stepped to within a few feet, and peered at it.
The black mass quivered.
I shrieked like a girl and jump back about twenty feet.
"What is it?" Shelton asked.
I described what I saw.
"A guardian ward," Bella said, her voice almost a whisper. "This will be even harder than I thought."
Regaining some courage, I walked back up to the tumor-like mass. "Hello?" I said, the greeting more of a question than statement.
A glistening white eye with a blood-red iris blinked open. The middle of the orb split, open in a display of serrated teeth. A low growl vibrated against my eardrums.
"Uh, what's that noise?" Shelton said.
"Perhaps you shouldn't talk to it," Bella said, backing toward the door along with Shelton. "Justin, come away from there at once."
I stared at the eye monster, suddenly feeling angry. Why was it growling at me?
How dare it show me disrespect.
I blinked, suddenly wondering where in the world that last thought had come from. Disrespect? Why would I think that? I took a breath, and regarded the thing as it continued to snarl. One of my tendrils wandered close to it, as if drawn there like a magnet. I jerked it back before I touched the disgusting thing. The demon part of my soul clawed against my control, as if suddenly driven insane, like a caged dog foaming at the mouth as it tried to kill a cat on the other side.
Somehow, my inner beast recognized this guardian. But how and why?
The answer came to me an instant later. To confirm my suspicions, I closed my eyes and switched off my incubus sight. When I opened my eyes, I looked at the area where the dust covered the floor. Not daring to take another step closer, I stared at the floor right about where the giant eyeball hovered, its growl only now fading away. I wasn't about to walk into that area.
"If you sent a stiff breeze in here, would it trigger the guardian?" I asked.
"I don't think so," Bella said from the other side of the hole in the wall.
"I need you to clear that dirt." I pointed it out.
The dhampyr took a nervous breath. Nodded. "Stand to the side."
I backed away from the center, and watched.
Bella took out a slender wand, and moved it in a whirling motion, faster and faster as she chanted under her breath. Her voice grew louder, and then as if blowing a kiss, she blew air the length of her wand, her cheeks puffing out like a little girl blowing bubbles.
A blast of air nearly knocked me off my feet as it rushed past, clearing away dust and debris. Even though it didn't clear the floor completely, it was enough. A twisting shape of spirals and other odd geometric shapes caught the light from the room. Etched into the floor and lined with a silvery metallic substance, the rune confirmed what I'd suspected. I'd seen designs like this in one of my mom's books when I was a nosy kid. It looked somewhat similar to the one I'd seen as a child when gray men had placed a chunk of plywood studded with nails in an intricate pattern beneath Sandy Andretti's house and powered it with electrical generators.
This rune looked simpler than the one I'd seen as a child. Whether that meant anything, I didn't know. What I did know was this: the giant eyeball was a demon.
Chapter 42
"A demon?" Shelton said, face aghast as I told them about my discovery.
"Now I know why my demon side was so pissed off." I shook my head. "It didn't like being growled at by another demon."
"We are so very screwed," Shelton said.
We crossed the line where Bella's shield guarded the tunnel from malaether. Zagg and Cinder looked up from their work.
Shelton jabbed a thumb my way. "One of Justin's long-lost cousins is guarding the freaking shield."
"This is very fortunate," Cinder said. "If one of your family members is guarding it, they may be more likely to give us access."
Shelton rolled his eyes. "No, you walking bucket of bolts. It's a full-fledged demon. Looks like Moore and the gang inscribed a summoning rune, and gave a demon eternal guard duty."
"Your description of me is rather inaccurate," Cinder said, looking at his body. "I am not a bucket—"
"A demon?" Zagg said, eyes wide. "There's no way we can get past the shield and a demon in a week." He pounded the table where the ASE spun, shook his head. "Damn it. It's all been for nothing, hasn't it? This place and everyone in it is—they're all going to die, and there's nothing we can do to stop it."
Bella gave him a helpless look. "I'm sorry, but this is beyond me. Beyond any of us."
Zagg shook his head. "No. I won't let them die. We need to force an evacuation. Not everyone will escape, but I'm going to give them a chance."
"How?" Shelton said. "If you run
around telling everyone this place is gonna blow, you'll look like a raving lunatic."
"And let the Conroys know about the rune," Bella said.
"So what?" Zagg threw up his arms. "They won't be able to get to it, not with a demon guarding it. Let them blow up with the place. At least then Daelissa will never get her hands on it." He headed toward the stairs. "I don't know how I'll do it. If I have to make up something, I will."
Cinder turned his steady gaze to me. "Justin, what is the demon's name?"
"His name?" I said, imagining both eyebrows arching like mirrored question marks. "How should I know that?"
"You are part demon. Can you not communicate with him?"
I almost replied with a sarcastic remark, but suddenly remembered the demon in Sandy Andretti's basement. It had burst from the summoning rune through her floorboards, and then bitten her leg off. I'd found her outside bleeding to death. I'd run inside the house and seen my mother barely holding the demon, a giant, green, shark-like monster with tiny red eyes all over its snout. It had spoken to me in a deep guttural voice. I'd spoken in that same voice before while a demon. The strange tongue wasn't Cyrinthian, although it felt similar in the way it rolled off the tongue.
Could I remember how to speak that language again? Or was the knowledge buried too deep inside me?
Zagg froze on the stairs. He turned and looked at Cinder. "Your question made me think of something." He stopped the spinning ASE on his table, sorted through a bowl of them, and plucked one out. After it spun up, Zagg opened a document and scrolled through it until he reached a passage. "Listen to this. 'We spoke of the inconsequential before wandering back to the solemn duty. I knew my time for small talk would soon be ending. The Lady understood as she always did, and said she would miss our conversations. I knew the infernal name would remain safe with her until the proper time.'"
"Infernal name," I said. "A demon name. We have to talk to the Lady of the Pond!"
"Wait," Zagg said. "I don't know why this didn't stick out before. I guess I was zoning out. There's more you should hear." He traced the Latin words with his fingers, and resumed translating. "'Safer subjects followed, but then the Lady turned to the subject of children. I am no lover of the infantile. The rigors of raising youth holds no appeal for me, although my friends assure me once I have a child, my feelings will change. However, if the foreseeances remain true, I will have a child, though not of my own loins. She will be the harbinger of the Return. She will also signal the time of action. Though, in truth, I dread this child, it will be her child that holds the key to revenge or our destruction.'"