Illuminate

by Tracy Clark

  Suddenly, the silver strand of her energy that had been stretching from her toward both sides of the room hit me in the chest. The other went straight to Mami Tulke.

  My aura ballooned. I was filled with pure, radiant love. Somehow, this energy threaded into me and through me to the person next to me and continued from person to person around the room. Like flares going off, our auras clasped, connecting our astral bodies in every direction until the place was one swirling, spiraling mass of Scintilla energy.

  Many cried, overwhelmed. Some swiped tears through laughter. Quite a few looked frightened and fixed Cora with eyes squinting with suspicion and trepidation. As for me, I’d never felt so connected to—to something so big. It was intimidating. I didn’t know what she did. Or how. This was new magic.

  Cora didn’t cross over our lines to pick a side. She sought to erase the lines. The girl who was once so against influencing others using energy had just cast a spell with hers. I worried about those fearful glances. It was one thing to manipulate the ignorant, another to force-feed us our own medicine.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Cora

  “I don’t know how,” I said again, exasperated with Giovanni.

  He’d asked me in three different ways what I had done that had united the auras of the Scintilla and connected all of us in some kind of cosmic love-bubble. “I was just thinking that when the world is after our kind, I wished we’d stop fighting each other and be…”

  “What?”

  “One.”

  Giovanni smirked. “Ripples in the pond?” he asked, evoking our argument at Dr. M’s about the concept of oneness.

  “Unity consciousness,” I said. That’s what he’d called it. That’s what it felt like, like submerging myself into a field of feeling and knowing and pure love.

  “I’ve never experienced anything like it, and I’d venture to say none of them had, either. You didn’t even have to give an Aragorn speech, and they’re following you to the gates. Most of them, anyway. I’m scared for you, Cora.”

  Whatever I’d done had turned the tide and brought most of the Scintilla together, and I was grateful. I didn’t have to choose. The people who crossed the room from one side to the other chose for us. “It was amazing, right? Everything not love fell away for just those few seconds. Did you notice that?” I asked him.

  He only smiled.

  “What?”

  “I think you are a goddess.”

  I stepped on his toes. “And don’t you forget it.”

  We walked together toward his lodge on a path lit by solar lights and stars. Claire had asked to go with Mami Tulke to help her bake for the next morning’s breakfast and it was just as well; we had strategy to plan. Not something you want to do with a little one around.

  “They have incredible wine here,” Giovanni said. “Want?”

  “What the hell? I’m on the ‘life is short’ plan.” I thought he’d smile but he didn’t, so then I flushed, thinking that he might wonder if that meant I’d say yes to everything because my sky was falling. “I’ve never planned a battle before,” I quickly threw out, trying to look all business.

  “There’s two elements to discuss,” he said, sitting on the couch with a pad of paper and a pen. “I’ve acquired weapons, but people will need to be trained in how to use them, and quickly.”

  “You’ve been a busy boy.”

  His eyebrow shot up. “We’ll need a safe place for target practice and knife throwing. I’ve made a list—though it’s not complete—of people’s sortileges.”

  “Do our sortileges really matter?”

  “You’d be surprised, Cora. Maya can kill with a touch. My telekinesis has proven helpful before, and there’s a girl, Sage, who can do it as well. Sierra can do mimicry, a sort of shape-shifting. One advantage is that many more of us have sortileges than the Arrazi because so few of them have ever taken from a Scintilla before.”

  “Right up until they start sipping from our auras like juice boxes. Then they’ll be just as lethal.”

  His eyes were deadly serious. “With the weapons, perhaps they won’t get the chance.”

  “No bueno on that plan. If we shoot first and are lucky enough to hit an Arrazi, then if we have any eyewitnesses from the outside world we look like we’re murdering unarmed, innocent people. I don’t think we want to live the rest of our lucky lives in jail.”

  Giovanni frowned. “Let’s hope the outside world doesn’t find us anytime soon.”

  “Yeah right.”

  “Tomorrow, we’ll set up a meeting and discuss everyone’s powers and how they might use them. The clairvoyants should do whatever it is they do to see danger coming.”

  “Giovanni, this is so much better than I thought when it was just us three.” My heart darkened. “And so much worse if it all goes badly—all these people…” I flopped on the couch next to him and looked up through the large rectangular window in the ceiling. “Will you turn the light out for a second? I want to see the stars.” The valley really was special. The stars were so clear, so seemingly close. “You could almost imagine we’re out there, floating in space,” I said, mesmerized.

  When the wind scattered me to the stars…

  Giovanni slipped his hand over mine. I thought he might move for more, but his aura was placid, his body motionless as his face tilted upward. We sat there together, stargazing, and letting the moments tumble into the nothingness.

  “Quiet like this,” he finally said, rolling his face sideways to look at me. “Sitting here with you like this, it teases me into imagining a different life.” His eyes were starlit as he looked intently into mine. “With you.”

  I stood, though my hand was still holding his, and looked down at him. “It’s probably best not to envision a future with me.”

  Giovanni lifted our entwined hands and pressed my fingers to his lips, slipping the tips of each one into his mouth like luscious slices of fruit. Did he know the fire that would build inside of me when he did that? He was blowing on the flames I’d tamped down when I told myself that my love life was frivolous in the face of what was ahead. When Giovanni tugged me onto his lap, it lit a fuse that raced from my fingers to every part of my body, striking my core.

  His hands grasped both sides of my face, the pads of his fingers leaving tingling dots on my cheeks before he traced my bottom lip with one finger, adding a coiling trail of sparks across my skin. Slowly, he pulled my mouth to his.

  Our kiss was softness and heat. Hunger and fear. Love and confusion. Inwardly I ran to him because this was life, then ran away because my life was messy, and I was making it messier. Outwardly, I took his lips and tasted them. I used my hands to know his shoulders, his chest, the strength in his arms. I clung to him like a life preserver because he was that, had been that since we met. Kisses were kindling, keeping me from icing over. Touch was bravery. Connection was existence.

  It was a miracle I’d made it alive to Chile. With the powers against us, every additional minute was a miracle. So why at that moment did I think of Finn?

  My phone trilled in the darkness. Our foreheads were pressed together amidst our panting breaths and beating hearts. I didn’t want to answer it, but I had to. I fumbled for it on the table, and the screen lit up.

  A text. From Finn.

  Finn.

  Finn: Where are you?

  Um…straddling Giovanni’s lap… I rolled off and sat with one leg curled under me. I could feel Giovanni’s intense gaze on me.

  Me: I made it.

  He’d understand where and with whom. Finn never did need much explanation from me to understand.

  Finn: Please stay safe until I get there with the thing I found. Only you can tell us what it means, if anything. I have a strong feeling about this. Ultana wanted it and I have it.

  “Finn’s coming,” I said, feeling the bottom drop out of my heart and bounce against my ribs as I said it. Giovanni leaped up and raked his hands through his hair. I wanted to move clear of the aggrav
ation he was projecting.

  Finn: There’s something else…

  Another text followed. A video.

  Finn: I never wanted you to see me this way, but it was the only way I could think of to prove the Arrazi’s existence, and the Arrazi’s crimes. If this will help you, do with us what you will.

  I hit play. Finn’s voice pierced Giovanni’s starlit room. My heart lurched to hear it. Giovanni stood behind me to watch the video. We both recognized the room at Dr. M’s.

  “That man—” I started to say when I saw what Finn was doing to him.

  “Yes. It’s grotesque. We’re watching the death of a poor innocent man—at the hands of your ex-boyfriend.”

  “He’s not innocent.”

  “No shit. Finn is one of them no matter how he’s helped—”

  “I’m not talking about Finn!” I shoved the phone at Giovanni so he could see. “That man, the one he killed, I recognize him. He’s one of the men who attacked us at my parents’ house the night we dug up the ring.”

  Giovanni went silent as we watched Finn take the man’s life in front of the walls that clearly showed what the Arrazi could do.

  “I hate to say it,” Giovanni said when it was over and enough stunned moments passed that we could speak again. “But it’s excellent. It will condemn them forever.”

  “It condemns Finn,” I said. He was sacrificing himself, outing his own kind—for me.

  “He killed Mari, Cora. He’s already condemned.” Giovanni lifted my chin to look at him. “Isn’t he? Please tell me that we’re not back to that, that he won’t come here and tear your heart in two. You can’t possibly still love him.”

  I wrapped my hand around Giovanni’s wrist and pushed it away. “Enough of this Team Finn versus Team Giovanni crap. How about Team Cora, huh? You are two different people whom I’ve loved and hated for very different reasons. He just signed his own death sentence with that video—to help us!”

  “To help you, not us. You! Don’t you see, you’re the only reason he’s ever helped.”

  “At least he’s willing to do something for nothing.”

  Hurt spread through Giovanni’s eyes and face.

  “Finn can’t possibly have hope for him and me.” The words came out of my mouth, but I realized immediately that they weren’t true. I saw Finn’s hope at the airport. I heard his hope when we spoke on the phone about the hexagram and Xepa’s symbol. I knew that underneath his question about why we would be so inexplicably drawn to each other was hope that the answer might bring us together.

  It was me who’d given up hope.

  I dug my nails into my palms in wadded fists. Kissing Giovanni was wrong. I’d thought of him like a life preserver, and he was that. From the first moment I’d met him, we’d bobbed together on the stormy sea. But if Giovanni was my buoy, then what was Finn?

  Finn was the water. This substance that surrounded every part of me, that moved me, but that was also in me, part of me. Dangerous, too—a thing that could drown me. Most perplexing of all, it felt like we were made of the same stuff, and I’d never understand that at my most affecting moments with Giovanni, why waves of Finn crashed over me.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Finn

  The deed was done. I had no idea what Cora would do with the incriminating video. My fate was in her hands. She’d told me she was with Edmund Nustber. He was a platform, better than most, from which to hang my kind. If my actions took the wind out of the sails of her enemies, then it will have been worth it.

  I had one goal left: to get the Book of Kells to her, and I’d better do it quick, because if she chose to show the video, the media—not to mention the police—would be after me as well.

  As I drove to the crematorium with the body in my trunk, I kept thinking about what the man said. A woman and a man he couldn’t identify had hired him. He’d previously worked for two people who acted like allies but truly weren’t. Who else would have something to gain from knowing what those two vipers were up to? I was stuck in the middle of the Mulcarr versus Lennon families but—Christ…there was someone who’d want to keep very close tabs on Ultana and Clancy, someone for whom their war games were deeply personal…my mother.

  My God. If Ultana was dead, what other woman would hire someone to keep tabs on me? My mother never could stand not knowing everything. The man had worked both sides before. It was possible he was taking jobs from both Lorcan and my mother now.

  I wanted to knock my head against the steering wheel. What of the trust she recently gave by showing me my birthright, my history, in that room? For once, she’d treated me like a man instead of a cub she needed to handle by the scruff. If I was right about her using the man to keep tabs on me, then I was wrong about her trust.

  Mr. Killian handled the body so efficiently it elevated my guilt to sickening proportions. Drive-through death. I left the crematorium with a drum in my stomach, beating out my remorse. From there, I went to Tilt’s house to pick up Clancy’s computer.

  Rain—promised earlier in the day by heavy, low-hanging clouds—began to fall until it was pissing as I pulled into Tilt’s neighborhood. Smoke rose from their chimney, and I sat in my car, watching it curl into the sky and wondering if Cora had seen the souls of those children leave their bodies like smoke of the living, proof of the fire in their souls, rising up and into the mist.

  Burning within me were the fires of the souls I’d taken.

  Sitting there, I realized I could vividly feel every one of them: the helpfulness and empathy of the fisherman, the ferocity of Mari’s love and loyalty, the foul aftertaste of the man at Newgrange, and the bloke I’d just filmed at the facility whose soul was laced with disloyal ambition. They’d become a part of me. Perhaps my body was a scale that would tip in balance from one essence to another depending upon whom I killed.

  I supposed it was true for regular humans, as well.

  We were altered by the souls we let in.

  I got out of the car and walked up to Tilt’s door, realizing that it was ajar. I glanced at the dripping trees and felt the chill of the storm in the air and wondered why.

  “How’ya,” I called, pushing the door open and stepping inside. No one answered. “Tilt?” With each step of my boots on the plank floor, my apprehension rose. The untended fire burned low and smoky. It needed stirring. I went down the hall, past the pictures of my mate at every stage of his school years.

  His parent’s bedroom door was open, and his mum and pop lay draped across the bed as if they’d simply fallen asleep—but this was no sleep. His mother had her arms crossed over her chest. I ran to Tilt’s room and found his slumped body over his desk. They were all dead. Gone.

  Gone, too, was Clancy’s laptop.

  If they had simply dropped dead like so many others around the world, the laptop would still be there. It didn’t bloody disappear into the ether! I backed out of the room and walked as calmly as I could to the car so as not to draw suspicion and drove away, my hands shaking on the wheel.

  I’d caught the man following me, but this meant there were more. An Arrazi had done this evil thing. They’d obviously watched me drop off the computer, and while one followed me to the facility, another stayed behind to attack my mate and his family. Who? Who would have a reason to kill to keep anything incriminating from being seen?

  Ultana, of course, but a dead woman can’t give orders. I had doubt earlier but had dismissed it. She had to be dead—I saw her die. Yes, she told Cora she couldn’t die, but Cora then confirmed that Ultana’s light was gone. My stomach sank with the incongruous thought that we could have been wrong. Was it possible she was alive? Anything was possible in a world of magic powers and supernatural humans. Ultana’s long life should have been impossible in itself, so was it too much of a stretch to believe in her immortality?

  For this to be conceivable, Lorcan would have to be in on it. Lorcan had the body burned before Saoirse arrived. Could Ultana and her son be trying to fool us all? If he and his mother
conspired to trick us all into believing she was dead, it would make sense that he placed a geis on his sister, so he could report back to Ultana what was going on with Xepa.

  But then why would Ultana leave control to her daughter at all? If she wanted to fake her death yet remain in control, why not leave the control in her son’s hands? Again and again, I felt I was putting together a puzzle without all the pieces, and the pieces I did have were void of any picture. I was blindly fumbling for the answers.

  What the fooking hell was going on?

  Saoirse called to see if I would be joining her for dinner.

  She said that she had good news. “I felt out some Arrazi, and there are more than a few who might be on our side. But I can’t conduct a meeting with them without telling Lorcan.” Her weighty sigh filled my ears. “Even telling you this scares me. I feel like I have a bomb strapped to my chest. One wrong move and…boom.”

  I agreed to go. There was the previous understanding that after dinner, we’d go and “feed” together. I’d have to tell her that I wouldn’t be joining her for that portion of the evening. I’d had my fill.

  “Is Lorcan not joining us?” I asked, hoping to see him, read his behavior, and try to sniff out what his involvement might be in Tilt’s and his parents’ deaths and the theft of my uncle’s computer.

  “I haven’t seen him since this morning.” A maid swooshed in with dinner on trays and Saoirse excused her politely. “What have you been up to all day?” she asked.

  “I went to the facility where the Scintilla were being held for research.”

  Surprise creased her brows. “Why?”

  “Your mother dangled what I want most when she sent me there. She said the facility was working on a manufactured way for us to have the energy we need so we wouldn’t have to kill, and I wanted to see if there were records there that might indicate the extent of the research. It would solve everything, if it were true. The visit there with your brother hadn’t gone”—I swallowed hard—“as planned. I went today because I wanted to poke around and see if I could find any files or documentation about the research.”