Illuminate

by Tracy Clark

  Chapter Forty-One

  Finn

  Premeditated murder.

  The phrase washed over my mind like greasy residue. Guilt was oily. It coated your soul in sticky sludge that no amount of holy water would ever wash off.

  I’d now gone from dreading the kill to anticipating it. This driver who followed me was up to his elbows in Ultana’s evil and was apparently working multiple angles, as he’d been seen with my uncle as well. Both were dead, so it didn’t take much to figure out who he was working for. If Lorcan thought he was going to use the man to spy on me and “tie up some loose ends,” he was mistaken.

  Ultana’s master key worked on the underground garage gate, which slid open when I turned it. I drove through and parked in a spot near the inside doors. Better to stay out of sight of anyone who might pass by on the street. I waited a few minutes in my car and leaned my head back, humming Jonny Lang songs to myself. I wanted my pursuer to relax, lose focus, and become inattentive.

  After a few impatient minutes, I snuck from the garage and crept up behind the van.

  He was in the driver’s seat, head low, probably on his phone. I latched on to his energy before he even saw me approach. Using him as a test, I began reaching for it long before I thought I could actually connect. I wanted to see from how far away I could take. As I walked up to the window and saw his slumped form, I wondered why the Arrazi would ever use regular humans to do their dirty work. They were too easy to take down.

  I opened the door, pulled his head upright, and was gratified I’d identified him correctly. He was the bloke with the scarred lip. The one who had jabbed the needle in my arm not two blocks from here the day Clancy caught Cora and her mother. I yanked the car door open, and his phone fell to the ground. I snatched it up to verify my hunch about Lorcan and, sure enough, there were two calls that morning from the Lennon household. No texts, though. He must’ve deleted them. After making sure there were no cars approaching, I tossed the phone in the spare seat, pulled his limp body from the van, and dragged him down the ramp into the parking garage. My cells screamed for completion, for the concentrated ball of his soul to satiate mine. Just a bit longer…

  His eyes opened and blinked as he tried to focus on me. One arm flailed toward me but didn’t land. I hit him with another suck of his energy and pulled him along the concrete of the garage to an inner gate. Using the key again, I opened it, which caused the lights to flicker on. Ready to see something grisly from when Dun and Giovanni fought their way out, my senses were firing on high alert. I expected rank smells, decaying bodies, shattered glass, anything to show the fight I’d been told about. Nothing. To anyone walking in here, this was a posh but empty office building.

  Ultana must have ordered the mess cleaned up before she went to the tomb. I was glad for it but prayed they hadn’t yet removed all of the equipment or dismantled the one room I intended to use.

  The guy was heavy and getting heavier as I pulled him through the corridors. I passed a room that looked familiar, though I couldn’t say why, until I realized I’d seen it in a vision. Gráinne had given me a vision of a room full of gurneys with Cora and the others strapped down. In Gráinne’s vision, I’d also seen Cora being led away at gunpoint.

  The gurneys were still there, and next to that room was a smaller one that looked like a surveillance room with multiple computer monitors. I turned a main power source on, and the monitors flickered to life. The man lay at my feet as I tried to pull up video history within the facility, but it had been wiped. They’d scrubbed more than the floors.

  Sweating and exhausted, I finally found the dining room with the sleek black walls and long table. Pressing the button that I remember Dr. M using, the walls came to life with my colorful pre-kill aura wafting around me. I grinned, and my aura lifted with faint streamers of gold. The man’s aura was weak, faint. Imagining that Cora saw this way all the time was just as mind-blowing as it had been the first time I was in that room.

  It was a small blessing that Arrazi couldn’t see the beauty of the flowers they were picking; it would make killing that much harder.

  I propped my phone against a flower vase on the table, sat the man in one of the dining chairs, and used the straps from the gurney to secure him upright in the chair. Bending to look into his face, I said, “I’ve seen you doing jobs for two different Arrazi—one working against the other. I know them both to be dead, and yet you’re following me. Who do you work for?”

  “I work for myself.”

  “You’re not following me for your own amusement. Someone has hired you to follow me, and I think I know who it is.”

  His eyes pierced me with a challenging glare that bordered on a leer, as if I couldn’t possibly know who he worked for. He shook his head, fighting my power. “I’ll be killed.” Laughter and spit sputtered from him. Maybe fear hit people differently, but laughing is not what I’d do if I were tied to a chair with an Arrazi in front of me. Mari’s face flew to my mind, and I pushed the memory down.

  He struggled with his own mind, which was commanding him to tell the truth against his will. “God in heaven, forgive me. I don’t know why I’m telling you this! She’ll—she’ll kill me, and if she doesn’t, the man will.”

  She? But Ultana was dead, wasn’t she? A tempest of thoughts spun in my mind. She told Cora she couldn’t be killed. She told her own daughter that she was immortal. And Lorcan hadn’t let Saoirse see his mother’s dead body…

  “Name them.”

  “I would if I bloody well could! They are voices. Phantoms. I never see who actually hires me. One is a woman. One is a man. I swear it. That’s all I know!”

  But the woman and the man I’d seen him serve were both dead. Lorcan had to be the man who’d called him from his house, and I was near to accepting that Ultana might have lived after all and was still playing puppets, her son the most strung up.

  He was frantic, desperate, weakly flailing against the straps. “This is why, right? So I can’t divulge their identities to scum like you.”

  I gave him a low, menacing promise. “You don’t need to worry about them killing you because I’m going to kill you now.”

  “Kill me, then, if that’s what you’re about. That’s what all of you Arrazi are about. Murder—murder of innocent people. I’ve seen more than you know.”

  “With bosses like yours, I bet you have.”

  His condemnation of the Arrazi was the perfect intro. I faced my phone, which had been recording the whole encounter, and readied myself to speak, surprised by the emotion building in my chest. It was the most important confessional of my life. I spoke to the invisible viewer, hoping for understanding, yes, but hoping for something more to come of the video. It was the only ammunition I could think of to use against the Arrazi who might be reluctant to join me. It was leverage.

  I cleared my throat and began.

  “I grew up like you, normal. Love of family, love of country, love of God, love of music.” Cora’s beautiful face rushed forward. “Love of a beautiful girl…my first love…” Emotion built and sat heavy on my chest. I had to man up, get through this.

  “A few months ago, everything in my life changed. I found out that I am of a bloodline, or genetic breed…” I clenched my fists. It was harder to explain than I thought it would be. I imagined millions of faces staring at screens and asking themselves what in the hell I was talking about. “I am a different race of human, an ancient race, the existence of which has been kept secret for countless centuries.”

  It was impossible to speak with any sense of self beyond that I was a killer. I was hollowed out, barely hanging on to the young man I was before. Maybe he died when I took my first life on my boat. “I am an Arrazi,” I managed to say. “This is not special. It’s a bloody curse. My faith in my creator has been shattered because I do not understand why a human would exist who—who must kill other humans in order to survive. Your life energy is our sustenance.”

  My breathing sped, my heart churned wi
th dread and guilt. Speaking the truth aloud, to the world, was not as liberating as I thought it might be. It was shameful. I hated what I was about to do and, yet, I felt like the world would never believe it if they didn’t see it with their own eyes.

  “The wall I’m standing in front of is based on technology that began with Kirlian photography. It allows you to see the energy fields around every human being.”

  “Don’t do this,” the man said, shaking. “You don’t realize what you’re doing.”

  I sent a sharp tendril of energy into him, which I’m sure the wall showed, and he was quiet again. “That girl you are chasing, the one who saved those children in Rome, she is a breed apart as well, known as Scintilla. The Scintilla are the counterparts to the Arrazi in every way.” I found myself looking at the floor. “They give. We take.”

  Looking back at my phone, I said, “She is one of the most precious beings on this planet and deserves your protection, not your chase. You see, nearly all of the Scintilla are gone, wiped from the earth.” I hadn’t initially planned on saying what I knew I’d say next. Instinct reared up and forced the words from me.

  “There is something precious in my possession, something I believe might answer so many questions about our two races. I have the missing cover to the Book of Kells, which I believe without doubt is a piece of the puzzle. I will not stop until I unravel its mysteries. It is a treasure, but even more so if it can illuminate this madness among men and stop it.

  “There are people in power who want nothing more than to find every last Scintilla…and erase them from existence. Many Arrazi have joined them on this hunt. I am not one of them. While our races have been set up to be enemies, I believe there’s more to the story. I’m trying desperately to learn it before it’s too late.

  “The world is understandably scared about the people who are dropping dead. I do not have the answer to that. But I can tell you that Arrazi all over the world are taking advantage of it. They are adding to the death toll by killing, out in the open, wherever people are dropping dead. I don’t know why this is…but they’ve been directed to do this…by someone…”

  Steeling myself with a deep breath, I continued, “It’s my hope that the power the Arrazi expect to gain by their alliance with someone in command will be crushed if the world sees with their own eyes what we are.”

  I wanted to plead for understanding, grovel for forgiveness, explain and explain so that they might know and believe the torture of being a killer. Yet that’s exactly what I needed them to see—me, the Arrazi killer. I was damning myself to damn the Arrazi.

  I latched my energy onto the man tied to the chair, and his head arched back. He made a pathetic whimpering sound. Instead of watching him, I watched the wall. I was quick about it, my blood pumping harder with every strand of his pulsing life energy until that pop that I saw and also felt, that succulent burst, when his essence flew into my body and my own aura erupted with fullness and glowed on the screen in an enormous spray of white.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Giovanni

  Tension wove throughout the crowd of Scintilla as we ate, and it became so dense it choked off conversation. An anticipatory charge rippled in the air. I noticed that Will and Maya weren’t eating together, and my guess was that their ongoing debate had reached a head after they left Mami Tulke’s.

  Cora handled the many stares with grace. Awe showed on her face as she took in the reality of the many Scintilla her grandmother had been hiding.

  The Italian clairvoyant, Raimondo, rang a dinner bell to get everyone’s attention. “You know why we’re here. We’ve debated privately and with one another about Giovanni’s plan. Our community of Scintilla will either fight our enemies or stand against them in peaceful resistance. But neither will be successful if we’re divided. Show your vote by standing on either side of the room in rows of five. If you are for diplomacy and peaceful resistance, please come to my side of the room. If you favor fighting and discord, please cast your vote by standing over on that side of the room, with Giovanni.”

  I shoved away from the table and stood. “Before you make your choice based on Raimondo’s words, know that I’m in favor of defending ourselves.”

  All at once, the people in the room stood and filed past each other like passengers in a metro station at rush hour. It was impossible at first to see which side of the room had more people. I was gratified to be clustered with three rows of five already, but we’d need at least twice that many for majority. Mami Tulke stood opposite me on the other side of the room, as I’d known she would. Maya held her head high, but her chin quivered when she looked across the room at Will standing next to me.

  A few people lingered in the middle of the room with pained faces, trying make their final decision. The auras of some showed their decision before they consciously picked a side, arching toward the part of the large room where they’d eventually end up.

  Cora stood among them.

  I bit the inside of my cheek. How could she not be sure? She’d already had to fight to defend herself against the Arrazi. She’d killed a man. Or, was that why she was undecided? She could have killed Clancy when she had the chance—should have—and didn’t. She didn’t want to be a killer like the Arrazi, and I recalled her questioning how it would all end unless someone was willing to not strike back.

  Hopefully, she’d feel like I did when she looked around this room…that this precious legacy had to be guarded, that we might be the last defenders against the loss of an entire race.

  “And what about the rest of civilization?” I shouted above the din. “What if Cora’s father and Dr. M were both right?” I felt Cora’s limitless green eyes on me, but it was the rest of the crowd I hoped to convince. Her, I hoped to remind. The room hushed to hear me. “Cora’s father, a scientist, believed that we are supposed to bring the energy of the world back into balance. He believed that the world and the people in it will face destruction if we don’t and that the people who are dropping dead are but one sign, as are the violent natural disasters. These quakes aren’t normal. Nor are the volcanoes, hurricanes, and tornadoes that have been happening over the last few weeks. This is about energy—the imbalance of positive and negative energy. We’ll never be able to save the world if we’re dead.”

  Tallying both sides, it was apparent the Scintilla were very evenly divided. As the number of undecided in the middle of the room dwindled, so the pressure increased. We all watched as eventually, Cora stood alone. Whispers flew around. Everyone’s phones, radios, and televisions were operable again, and newspapers had been passed around. Not only did everyone know she was Mami Tulke’s granddaughter, but they knew who she was—the girl who’d resurrected dead children. The girl the world was after.

  Sixty Scintilla stared at her, waiting.

  “This decision shouldn’t be hard for me,” she said, quieting the murmurs, “but it is.” Her silver aura pulsed and grew, gaining confidence as she faced her moment of real introduction and her moment of decision. It rested on Cora. Her hand touched on her lips for an astonished moment as she looked around the room. “The only thing more beautiful than seeing this, seeing all of you together, would be if my parents could have lived to see it.” She paused as her light flickered with sorrow. “But they were murdered. You met my cousin, Mari, when she stayed here recently. She…she was killed by the Arrazi, too.

  “I was always a peaceful person. I do want peace,” she said to Raimondo’s side of the room, and I noticed a few sure, smug smiles on the faces over there. “I want freedom, too. No one is going to give us freedom. Like so many oppressed people in human history, we will have to fight for it. We have no allies. We are alone and outnumbered.” Cora paused, her eyes lifting up, seeing a memory. “My father said I was a fighter. After he died, I remember thinking that if I wanted to stay alive, I’d better damn well fight.”

  Now the energy near me was shifting as people guessed where she might land.

  “So where will you stand?
” an impatient Scintilla asked.

  Cora sighed. “With Mr. Nustber’s help, I hope to tell the world the truth so that we might gain support.”

  “Or it’ll backfire!” someone shouted. “And they’ll be after all of us like they are you.”

  Cora’s head jerked to look the dissenter in the eye. “They are after all of you. Our enemy said to me, ‘Once every last Scintilla is dead, then the truth will die with you.’ Don’t you see? Their aim has been to deny our existence. I’m going to speak the truth and—”

  “Speak the truth?” a catty voice called out. “Who do you think you are, Jesus?”

  Cora nodded to Edmund, and he pressed a button on a projector I hadn’t noticed. Michelangelo’s secret painting burst onto the wall behind her.

  Uproar. That’s what the painting caused. She hadn’t explained who had painted it, or how she’d come to have a picture of it. She just let them absorb the message. I didn’t like the energy in the room. Even among Scintilla, there were diehard Christians who were obviously stunned, even angry, at her assertion.

  I started to step forward, but Cora shot me a look that pinned me in my place. There was pain in that look—pain that she had to choose sides, that she had to defend herself after the trials she’d already endured. For some reason, she didn’t want my backup.

  “What I see in this room right now is that we’re a microcosm of the world outside. You look on one another from your place across the room as if we aren’t all the same.”

  A tendril of silver uncoiled from each of her hands as she looked from one side of the room to the other. Her face was impassive, and I wondered if she realized what she was doing. Her energy showed what she really wanted—for the Scintilla to be of one mind—but I didn’t see that happening. Cora was going to have to choose.

  She took a deep breath like she was surrendering. The discord that had strained her features relaxed. Serenity illuminated her face, and the crystalline silver light that came from her was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.