by R. T. Lowe
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 MIND GAMES
Chapter 2 SCHISMS
Chapter 3 ODYSSEY
Chapter 4 REACTIONS
Chapter 5 REJECTIONISTS
Chapter 6 HUNTING
Chapter 7 CHANGING COURSE
Chapter 8 THE PODCASTER
Chapter 9 INDEPENDENT STUDY
Chapter 10 CUTTING CORDS
Chapter 11 THE PRODUCER
Chapter 12 KAYLA
Chapter 13 FAMILY REUNION
Chapter 14 BAIT
Chapter 15 THE INCORRIGIBLES SOLUTION
Chapter 16 THE MAGICIAN
Chapter 17 HEADWINDS
Chapter 18 THE COLONY
Chapter 19 THE PUNISHER
Chapter 20 CONTENT MANAGERS
Chapter 21 AS FOR THE LIVING
Chapter 22 CIRCLES IN BLUE
Chapter 23 DIRTY DEEDS
Chapter 24 SPOILS
Chapter 25 AN IRRESISTIBLE OFFER
Chapter 26 COLLISION
Chapter 27 A NEW THREAT
Chapter 28 NAMING RIGHTS
Chapter 29 BONDS
Chapter 30 CONNECTIONS
Chapter 31 THE PITCH
Chapter 32 PRESCRIPTIONS
Chapter 33 CEMETERY CONFESSIONALS
Chapter 34 RAINBOW’S END
Chapter 35 MT. HOOD
Chapter 36 AFTER LIFE
Chapter 37 GIFTS FROM THE PAST
Chapter 38 THE SUBSTATION
THE FELIX
CHRONICLES
Tides of Winter
By R.T. Lowe
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2017 by R.T. Lowe
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without written permission of the author.
Cover design by Jenny Zemanek
Interior formatting by Amy Huntley: The Eyes for Editing
For Tucker
Do your thing.
Chapter 1
MIND GAMES
Darkness and light waged a war in Felix’s world, his thoughts a canvas of scattered images streaking like lightning across the night sky, splintering and then fading. Slowly, his senses began to stir, and life flowed through his veins. His ears picked up something—voices? grunting?—though the sounds were rough and distorted, as if they had violated his consciousness after traveling some distance, repeating on themselves, softer with each turn. His fingers clenched and unclenched, fingertips scraping across a cold gritty surface. Pain throbbed up and down his arms. His eyes fluttered open and he squinted against the sudden brightness. More sounds rang out—earnest, desperate voices pitched low—and then he heard a shout, a girl’s voice screaming in anger. Or was it pain?
Where am I?
Felix’s first coherent thought chipped at the outer layers of confusion coating his brain in a drowning sludge, kick starting his mind, forcing it to play catch up with his senses. A moment in time flickered in his consciousness. He was standing in line at the Caffeine Hut counting the cash in his pocket, planning to bring coffees to his friends waiting for him at the hospital. Caitlin was about to be discharged, recovered from the injuries she’d sustained at the hands of the cannibal who’d abducted her. Then… what? Something had happened. Something had altered his plan. The girl working at the bistro. The girl with the kind eyes and the tender face.
Sophia.
He remembered coming with her to the Old Campus, to the Inverness Building and down a hidden staircase to a room of stone and concrete. She had asked him to nudge one of the bulbs encased in its antiquated metal shell, suspecting it was a key to the secret passages beneath the college. He had hesitated as his hand neared the bulb, and then there was pain, a sharp pinch on his neck like a sting from a yellowjacket. He’d turned to Sophia, confused, and saw the empty syringe in her hand as he fell to his back. The last thing he recalled was Sophia’s laughing, sadistic face hovering over him.
Felix was still on his back, but now there was only the ceiling with its bright bulbs and gray plastic tubes. Where was Sophia? What had she done to him? A shadow stretched over him, a foot kicked his side, and the person connected to it eclipsed the lights for an instant and toppled over, thudding down heavily beyond his peripheral vision. Felix tried to turn his head. His neck felt stiff, like mechanical equipment gone to rust. Shifting his eyes in their sockets, he glimpsed a man with long hair on the floor beside him, staring up at the ceiling, his pose a near perfect imitation of his own. The man’s mouth hung open slackly and the hilt of a knife protruded from the center of his forehead, the tip of the blade visible at the crown of his head, poking up like the cresting dorsal fin of a shark. Felix heard feet scuffling and slapping the concrete and then a cracking sound, like a fist smashing through a wooden board. With a wince and a deep painful breath that burned his lungs, he turned his head in the other direction. It was less of an effort this time, as if the muck encasing his joints was starting to dissolve.
At the other end of the long chamber, two figures stood facing each other with curved blades in their hands, shifting and feinting like fencers. Behind them, a pair of bodies stared back at Felix with unseeing eyes, one crumpled and propped against the wall, the other on her belly in a pool of blood, her head clinging tenuously to her shoulders. One of the fencers, Felix could see, was a giant of a man, tall and thick and built like a collection of boulders stacked one atop the other. His opponent was a girl, half a head shorter but still tall, lean and fluid in her movements, her long dark hair tied back in a ponytail.
Allison!
The Source! he thought. Use it! Then a strange idea imposed itself on him with a chilling effect, shattering his resolve. There was no Source. Allison had uncovered the truth after Lofton had allowed Felix to live during their encounter in a darkened alley. The prophecy—The Warning—was a lie. Without the Source, how could he access his powers? What was he supposed to use?
The man lunged at Allison, swinging over the top in a downward slashing motion—she ducked under it—then he kicked out, attempting to plant his heel in Allison’s chest. She jumped to the side and stabbed down with a closed fist, plunging her knife into the meaty part of his thigh. The man, showing no pain on his face, jabbed his knife at Allison in a parry designed to bore a hole through her face. She deftly shifted her head to the side and the man’s blade, reflecting the light, passed by in a flash of shimmering steel, skirting her cheek by millimeters. With the man’s arm still extended, she clutched his wrist and drove her elbow down on his forearm, the crack of the snapping bone echoing throughout the chamber. His deep set eyes shone with loathing as the knife slipped from his fingers, then widened in surprise as Allison dropped low and snared the blade before it touched the floor. He put a hand over the jagged-edged bone protruding from his arm and raised his foot as if to kick her, but Allison slashed her knife across his shin and he retreated, his backside nearing the wall. Allison went on the offensive, stabbing his torso in a series of blinding thrusts, puncturing ribs, stomach, chest and neck in a sudden and violent flurry. The man howled, teeth stained red with blood. Allison cut off the sound, plunging the blade under his chin, driving it up through his face. She released the handle and stepped back, giving the man, now dead on his feet, space to fall. She stared at him for a moment, his legs twitching on the floor, and stepped toward him, shoulders squared, hands balled into fists, and Felix wondered for an instan
t if she might stomp on his face.
Allison stopped and turned to Felix, seeing he was conscious. She shouted his name and ran to him.
Felix tried to say something, but the words faltered in his throat, his mouth dry, his tongue leathery. He coughed, swallowed down something thick and phlegmy, and managed to whisper, “Hey Allie.”
“You’re okay, right?” She knelt beside him, running her fingers over his arms. It wasn’t really a question, but a matter of confirmation. Because of his healing powers, she knew he could recover from almost anything.
“You?” Felix rasped. Allison was breathing hard, though otherwise she seemed fine, no injuries that he could see.
“Those assholes bled all over me.” She glowered down at her jeans and boots. “Looks like you stopped bleeding a while ago. It’s scabby. Think you can you sit up?”
“I don’t know,” he groaned. His head was clearer than before, but his body felt like it was made of wood dipped in several layers of iron ore. He cleared his throat again and added, “What’d she do, drug me?”
Allison took his hand in both of hers and stood, tugging until Felix made it to a sitting position. “Yeah.” She pointed off to his right and Felix saw at least ten empty syringes scattered haphazardly next to a black backpack. “I don’t even wanna know what they had in those things.” She paused, looking around, her forehead creasing with fine lines. “What the hell were you doing down here?”
“It was that girl from the Caffeine Hut.” He rubbed his legs, trying to restore some feeling. They were still numb, but as he worked them with his thumbs, he began to regain sensation, a stinging prickliness, and was able to raise his knees off the floor. “Sophia. Remember her? Wears glasses. Seems real nice. At least…” He couldn’t finish the sentence, remembering her wild leering expression as he lost himself in the tunneling darkness.
Allison twisted her head and pointed at the opposite end of the room. “That one?”
The girl with her neck hacked nearly all the way through wore a pair of black-rimmed glasses, the frames bent, lenses cracked. Sophia. There was so much blood around her head, if she wasn’t already dead, Felix thought morbidly, she would have risked drowning in her own fluids. He turned back and studied the man on the floor beside him. The blade had entered his forehead and pierced the top of his head, indicating a crescent moon shaped blade, the weapon of choice for the Protectors, an ancient society of assassins sworn to kill Sourcerors because of their belief they were destroying the Source, the wellspring from which all life flowed.
“Yeah.” Felix turned again to look at Sophia. “That’s her. I never would’ve thought she—”
“Seriously?” Allison interrupted, face flushing, her anger making her dazzling green eyes seem to glow. “Don’t you remember what Professor Malone told us about his wife? She was the leader of their fricken’ Fortress but she didn’t think the Protectors were a threat. What happened to her?”
Felix remembered their conversation with Malone. “They cut out her heart.”
“So how could you let her”—she stabbed a finger toward Sophia’s corpse—“stick a syringe in you? You didn’t think it was weird she wanted you to come here?”
“It’s complicated,” Felix sighed. “We’d been talking since last semester about PC’s secret rooms and all that stuff. She was the one who told me that Agatha and the other founders had their hearts cut out. She was in my Psychology class. I guess I… trusted her.”
“You trusted her?” Allison exclaimed in disbelief, her eyes flashing. “Well, next time, can you, I don’t know, if you’re feeling like something’s off or whatever, can you like throw up a shield, or a wall of fire or something?” Her jaw tightened. “I mean, seriously Felix! You annihilated ten Numbered Ones at the quarry, nearly destroyed no-man’s-land, and probably burned a hole in the ozone, but you let a single Protector knock your ass out with drugs?”
“It sounds pretty stupid when you put it like that,” Felix admitted, scrubbing his hands through his hair, feeling embarrassed.
“It is stupid!” Allison shouted. She let out a heavy sigh and her eyes softened, slightly. “I’m just glad you’re okay.” She turned angry again. “But I could kill you myself for being so goddamn stupid! I wasn’t joking when I called you a ‘Restrainer’—and you were upset about it! But look at yourself! You’re the dumbest smart person I know!”
“Okay, I got it. Geez.” Felix knew Allison was right so there wasn’t much point in trying to defend himself. He needed to be smarter and less afraid of the consequences of using his powers. His hesitancy was going to get him killed one day. He pushed himself off the floor, rising to his feet, putting a hand on Allison’s shoulder when his legs buckled. He felt like the room was moving around him, tilting and rocking like a boat on rough seas. Allison helped to steady him as he surveyed the scene from eye level, the bodies—there were four—overwhelming him with the reality of what Allison had done, shocking his conscience. “You did all this?”
“You sound surprised.” Allison gave him a disapproving smile. “I figured it had to be a trap. When they jumped me I was ready to fight back.”
“Fight back?” His eyes roamed over the almost headless Sophia, and the others, all with curved daggers planted in their heads or faces. “That’s what you call it? You killed them with their own weapons.”
Allison shrugged. “That’s all I had to work with.”
“You’re such a badass,” Felix marveled, his voice thick with awe.
“I am,” Allison agreed, shrugging. “And you’re welcome. You’ve saved my life a few times so it’s about time I repaid the favor.” She smiled and her eyes sparkled.
Felix’s heart surged with emotion, a sudden desire to feel Allison in his arms taking hold of him, calming his mind, clarifying his feelings like a simple answer to a complicated question. It was just him and her. The two of them against the world. He reached out and held her, feeling an incredible rush of warmth and gratitude—and love?—pulsing in his blood, warming his body. She had risked her life. She had killed for him. She had saved him. Allison pressed her face to his shoulder, the strength of her embrace letting him know she was relieved to hear his heart pumping inside his chest. They stayed like that for a while, and then Allison let go and stepped back, her cheeks more flushed than before, her eyes fixing on the backpack.
“We need to find something to wear,” she said as she went over to the bag and picked it up, unzipping it. “We can’t walk around campus all bloody like this. I think one of those guys has a coat that’ll fit you.”
Before Felix could argue about wearing a dead guy’s clothes, Allison was coming back with a phone in her hand. “Check this out. This is all that was in there.” She tapped the screen and it brightened, a gray background spotted with virtual raindrops and four rows of apps—calendar, clock, weather, app store, settings, and several others. Allison tapped the ‘messages’ icon. Empty. Then she tapped ‘mail’. The screen went white for a second and the inbox appeared, displaying a single unopened email from ‘Tyrese Dalley’, an unfamiliar name that meant nothing to either of them. The subject line was empty.
“Interesting,” Allison said softly and gave it a tap. The email opened and they stared at it together, Felix reading over Allison’s shoulder. It said: “Reply when done.”
“Done with what?” Felix asked.
“They drugged you and tried to kill me, so what do you think?”
“Done with”—he thought for a second—“done with killing you?”
Allison nodded. “That’s gotta be it, right?” She craned her neck to look back at Felix, her dark eyebrows coming together. “Check out the email address. AshCorp. See that?”
Tyrese Dalley had sent it from an AshCorp account, his contact information and AshCorp’s address in east Portland at the bottom of the email. “Someone at AshCorp—Lofton’s company—wants to know if the Protectors are done killing you?” Felix shook his head in confusion. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
Allison stared at the screen, brow wrinkling with concentration lines. “Let’s answer.”
Felix nodded. “Tell them ‘yes.’”
Allison’s thumbs flew over the screen, speaking the words as she went: “Done. Allison is dead.” She glanced up at Felix, smiling darkly at communicating her own demise, and hit send.
They waited, Felix glancing about, rolling his neck over his shoulders, feeling much better now. The tingling and prickliness in his legs had vanished and his arms no longer stung. The only lingering effect of the drugs was a slight headache and a heavy congested feeling behind his eyes, like the way he used to feel when he drank too much beer. Allison flexed her right hand, wrinkling her nose in pain, and Felix asked if she was all right.
Allison shrugged and frowned down at her arm. “I keep busting open the goddamn stitches. I’d do anything if I could heal like you.” A Numbered One had savaged Allison’s arm at the rock quarry, and some of the eighty-two stitches had already split open once before when she’d repeatedly slammed her fist into the face of Caitlin’s captor.