by Tracy Clark
Theodore hesitated. “But sir, I can’t be sure. I’ve never before met a silver—”
“Sniff them out like the dog you are!” Báthory roared, then pointed at me. “Start with that one. I suspect you’ll find her quite different from anyone else you’ve ever tasted. Control yourself, though. I’m not ready for her to die just yet.”
Rather than waiting for this mouse-boy to come to me, I marched up to him. “He calls you a dog yet he needs you to do his dirty work—and it is dirty,” I hissed. “Without you, he is just a man.”
“Silence!”
Theodore feared me. It was in his eyes, his shallow breaths. I was a wild thing to him, and he didn’t know my capabilities. I vowed to myself not to show fear, not to cringe when he tasted my spirit. My chest split open. He took from me, puffing as he did so. His aura unfurled in white the way an Arrazi’s did when they killed or when they took from a Scintilla.
“Good stuff, huh?” I gasped through gritted teeth. Please let him stop in time. My vision blurred and I felt light-headed. The attack abruptly stopped. He’d have a sortilege now, too. He was panting, clearly wanting more. The man at his side pulled something flat and square from his pocket with another item—a stamp? I flinched as he held me still by the back of my head and pressed the stamp firmly to my forehead over my mother’s mark. “What the hell?”
Theodore walked toward Mami Tulke.
“Stop,” I said. “Don’t. I can point out the Scintilla in the room. You don’t have to take from them.”
Theodore didn’t listen. Of course he didn’t. He wanted more. “She is one,” he said, standing in front of my grandmother. They also branded her with the stamp, which I now saw was two red triangles meeting at their tips—the Xepa symbol. It was inhumane, a God damned scarlet letter identifying us as Scintilla. The other, marked for being different.
He stepped in front of Janelle and I cried out as he took from her and she bent forward in agony. “She is not,” he said, moving on to Edmund.
“I’m not Scintilla. You know I’m not!” he said with imploring eyes to the cardinal who simply nodded his permission for Theodore to take from Edmund’s aura anyway. Edmund squared his shoulders, bravely, but when the attack started, it didn’t stop him from clutching his chest and crying out. “Please,” he begged and snapped back when the attack stopped.
“I am one,” Giovanni said, squaring his shoulders and towering over Theodore with an intimidating glare downward. Theodore nodded his agreement, and the other man’s arm rose to stamp Giovanni, but Giovanni shoved him away. He immediately bent forward, clutching his arms over his chest. The man with the stamp was Arrazi, too, and had no compunction about bringing Giovanni to his knees before he crushed the red stamp on his fair skin.
Cardinal Báthory seemed satisfied with the proceedings, and the sorting process continued. A Scintilla man I’d met earlier, Will, stood before the Arrazi with his nostrils flaring in anger.
“Search the premises,” Báthory said after everyone in the room had been identified. His eyes practically gleamed with the reflection of the prize he’d found.
Will reached his arms out. “There’s no one else!” Of course he was worried about Maya. No doubt she didn’t come because of her objections, though many of the few who still opted for peaceful resistance had come to the common room anyway. Their curiosity earned them a red brand and the pain of having their aura attacked so that another Arrazi could obtain his supernatural gift.
A few of the Scintilla were not there. Adrian had already assigned watch at the road leading into the Elqui Valley. Ehsan was at the western end of the valley and Adrian at the eastern stretch of road a couple of miles from the ranch.
Cardinal Báthory dismissed Will with a nonchalant wave of his hand. “If there are no other Scintilla, then you needn’t sound so panicked.”
Two Arrazi men and an armed man led with his gun and they disappeared out the doors. We were all quiet, listening for screams or the sounds of struggle. My heart dropped to my feet when I heard the first scream.
Mami Tulke looked stricken and pale. They’d found the treasure my grandmother had kept hidden in this valley all these years.
The cardinal clasped his hands before him. “First order of business, now that we’ve got the riffraff sorted, is to return what you stole from the Vatican.” He was speaking to Mami Tulke. She stared up at him with her hands planted defiantly on her round hips. “Let’s not play games, madam,” he said to her. “We have the video of the theft. We just couldn’t trace you until your granddaughter landed herself all over the news. Once we tracked her family, we were able to identify you. Though, truth be told,” he said, looking over his shoulder at me, “I should have known when you showed up at St. Peter’s Basilica asking questions about the stolen hand. It was a news story that died quickly, yet you were sniffing around as if it were yesterday.”
“Yes, I took the hand,” Mami Tulke said. “The pieces are in a jar at my house.”
“It’s not the hand that I want,” he said, condescendingly. “And you know it. Marble is so plentiful in Italy, it practically falls like fruit. You found what we’ve been searching centuries for. Michelangelo Buonarotti left mocking clues all over the premises. If you ask me, the mangy artist was given far too much freedom to run amok on Vatican grounds. In the last decade, it was found that he’d had a very expensive and rare key made. The maker was a man who was later imprisoned for necromancy. It was then we narrowed what we were looking for—a key rumored to have an hourglass made of rubies and enchanted so as to threaten the authority of the church.” He moved closer to her and bent to eye level. “Where is the key?”
I lifted my sleeve and showed him my marking.
“What’s your meaning?”
“Your key.”
“What is your sortilege?”
“Psychometry.” When I saw that he didn’t know what that was, I rolled my eyes. “Object memory.”
Perception bloomed in his eyes. “What did you see in the key?”
“Your. Bad. Deeds.”
“Do you know what the key opens?” he asked in such a way that I didn’t know whether he knew himself.
“The key didn’t open anything,” I lied. “It simply recorded what you’ve done to persecute people and corrupt what is supposed to represent a loving God. Michelangelo had a sense of humor, right?”
“Where is the key now?”
“Home. In Italy. Sunk to the bottom of a channel in Venice. Why don’t you go and dredge it up like the bottom feeder you are.”
The cardinal’s eyes bulged like he wanted to slap me. The key I’d hidden in Mami Tulke’s garden, at the base of a tree like I’d found it in California, wasn’t the point anymore, but I didn’t want him to know that. What was important was the painting it hid. Cardinal Báthory had my phone in his pocket. I had to assume it was a matter of time before he looked through my photos and texts with Michelangelo’s painting of Jesus and Mary. Would it matter to him? Would his acidic hate for the Scintilla be diluted by knowing that Jesus was one also? Or maybe he already knew. Jesus had been murdered.
“You and you,” Báthory said, pointing to two men. “Stay here and make sure no one leaves. Theodore and I shall take the young woman to a more private room where we might convince her to be more forthcoming.”
“I’ve told you everything I know.”
Giovanni dashed forward and was aurically attacked by Theodore. My heart wrenched to see him struggle to stay upright. Despite the ravaging of his aura, he managed to sputter a question. “How do I know you won’t kill her?”
Cardinal Báthory ducked his chin with a grimacing smile. “You don’t, son.”
Edmund pulled his hands through his crazy hair. “Do you really expect us to believe that you’re going to let any of us live after this?”
“Cora’s hope that I will may make her very cooperative.” He chucked me under the chin. “Hope is a good thing to have in a crumbling world, no?”
I w
as pushed from the building into the dark.
Chapter Forty-Eight
Giovanni
I watched, helpless, as Cora was led from the building. Where would they take her? What would they do to get information? My chest felt like it had been pounded by fists of ice. I had to find a way to help her.
Cora finally got her answer. Whether he was acting alone or not, a church official was in charge of the mission to eradicate us all. The sick feeling in my gut told me it was simply a matter of time before he did. I had to help her before it was too late. Not only were armed men guarding us, there was another on watch by the door. Scintilla sat motionless, wearing worried expressions, heads blazing with the red stamp.
Marked for death.
One hour ticked on in excruciating silence. Then another. At one point, Maya was shoved in through the doors by a gunman along with a few more hidden Scintilla. No sign yet of Dun, Faye, and Claire. I could only hope they were hiding and would stay hidden.
Will ran to Maya and clutched her against him. More time clicked slowly by, and my worry amplified until my body droned with tense static. I tried to imagine where Cora was, where Claire was. I tried to imagine getting out of the situation, living beyond it, because what else could I do? Hope wasn’t something they’d suck from my body until they took my soul with it.
Meaningful glances passed around the room. I watched the two telepaths I knew of nod their heads every so often and wondered what they were saying. If only I could do the same. I’d give a signal to every Scintilla to use their sortileges in any way possible to take down our captors.
I made a steady and slow progression toward Will and Maya.
Will and I gave each other looks, but we had no way to communicate anything but distress and desperation with our eyes. He’d start to get up, but then Maya would pull him back down, her hand on her belly. Every time a guard turned his back, I moved another foot closer, ignoring Maya’s steely glare and faint shake of her head. With my every covert move sideways, her hand gripped his tighter.
Maya thought I was moving toward her man, but she was my target.
I moved again, and the Arrazi’s eyes snapped to me with a suspicious glance. He started to approach, but his phone went off, stopping him. Tense moments passed as he listened. “Si,” he said into the phone with a visible swallow. He placed the phone in his pocket and glanced around the room as if he were surveying a pen of cattle. Heads dipped as his examining gaze passed over them.
An older man sat on the end of a bench and dozed against the wall. A resolute breath blew from our Arrazi guard as he approached the sleeping man with measured steps. We all watched in stupefied horror as he siphoned the life from the old man’s body. Inwardly, while I was gutted by the act, I reveled in one thing: we were being punished for Cora’s non-cooperation, which meant she was still alive.
Amidst the cries and movement of heads that had turned away from the killing, I pressed the final two feet through the crowd to Maya, praying my new location would not be noticed.
“Adrian and Ehsan are out there,” Will whispered into my ear. “They’ll help us if they can.”
“If,” I whispered. None of us had phones since we’d been searched and stamped. “In the meantime, we have to help ourselves. There are many Scintilla with powers in this room, but none so lethal as Maya’s.” I whispered to Maya. “You want to protect your unborn child?” I said urgently, glancing down at her fingers.
Maya jerked her eyes to me with a stabbing glare.
“You saw what just happened. They’ll kill you and the rest of us before your child ever breathes.” Will elbowed me, hard. I hated to say it and was breaking his confidence, but it might be the only thing to get Maya to do what needed to be done. She’d have to throw away her guilt and her pacifism and use her sortilege.
We needed Maya to take her gentle hands off her belly and her husband and use them on our enemy.
Chapter Forty-Nine
Finn
Sixteen hours.
That was my estimated travel time from Dublin to Chile if I made the flight. I booked it and ran to say good-bye to my father who, when I’d last seen him, was dragging the dead man from the stairs to “deal with the body.” I found him in their bedroom where he’d placed Mum’s body on the bed. He wasn’t ready to say good-bye. Nor was I, but I had to.
Looking at her, I choked back a sob as I realized that life necessitated my moving forward. Why was it that, in those last moments of seeing her face, every negative trait that had irritated me about her instantly transformed to positives? My mother was a queen, and I kissed her fingers before lightly touching mine to her cheek.
I ran. As much from as to. I ran.
There was no time to ship the box of books. I’d have to risk getting the cover through security with me. My first hurdle. I packed it into my carry-on with Gráinne’s journal and the strange handmade journal I’d found under the mattress at Clancy’s. I had to assume it had been Cora’s mother’s as well, but I hadn’t had time to investigate. I’d look on the plane. If I didn’t make this flight, I’d not be able to depart until the next day, another twelve hours away. Twelve more hours to fret about Cora and who might have seen my video and ordered those men to my home. I wouldn’t use my phone to check on her. I’d mentioned the Book of Kells in the video, and I’d sent her that video by text. If that’s how they tracked me, then I hoped they’d think I was dead.
It was damn hard not to call Saoirse, but if my suspicions were correct and Lorcan was in cahoots with his mother to fool everyone about her death, then I needed them to be in the dark about what happened to me. I felt for Saoirse, bookended and threatened by her vile family members. I pictured her, tiny and flailing, in their giant clutching grasps.
Ultana wasn’t going to get me or the book she coveted so much, if I had anything to say about it. I sped down the road toward the Dublin International Airport, making it there with enough time to go through security and catch the flight.
If I ran my ass off.
If I didn’t get stopped in security.
Security was surprisingly light, and I overheard someone say it had been that way since the deaths and the natural disasters everywhere. International travel had plummeted. The world was becoming a scarier place, and when the world gets scary, people tend to batten the hatches and group together with those they know and love.
Tears filled my eyes when I thought of my mother—murdered. Did I have a right to grieve her when I’d been a murderer myself? I’d taken someone’s loved ones. So had Mum. Were the gates of hell flung open for people like us when we died? Again, I questioned: how could God persecute us for doing what we were created to do?
Underneath my anguish and questions was a simple truth: she was my mother. I loved her. I’d never see her again, nor did I know if I’d ever see my father again. I was so alone. Even adrift on my boat, I knew people cared if I lived or died. Loneliness, true loneliness, is knowing you could disappear forever, and it would be as inconsequential as a star blinking out.
I shuffled in line, waiting to put my bag on the security belt. My heart beat hard and fast as I approached the scanner. I passed through, no problem, but my bag was somewhere in the hull of machinery being looked at by a bespectacled man with droopy lids and something spilled and crusted on his blue shirt. Even I could see my books outlined on the screen as he leaned forward slightly and peered. He opened his mouth to speak, and I did the only thing I could think to do. I hit him with a slicing surge of my energy. Enough to make him cough and gasp. A coworker asked if he was okay, looked at the line of people waiting behind me, and rolled the belt onward as his friend gasped and caught his breath.
I grabbed my bag from the belt and ran to the gate to find they were boarding the flight already. I was scanned through and fell back into my first-class seat moments before they closed the doors.
It occurred to me that an Arrazi must plan flights the way a smoker plans his fix. I was glad my need was satisfied or it
would make an already tense flight much worse. Once we’d leveled off and I was free to get up, I pulled the homemade book from my duffel. It was a crudely made journal, cobbled together with two uneven pieces of board that looked like they had been one piece, broken in half. Sheets of paper simply lay inside, and the whole thing was bound with a black silk ribbon.
There was everything from scribbles and drawings to random notes about Gráinne’s day. I had to assume it was Gráinne. She was the only captive he had for over twelve years until he took Cora there. And Gráinne had a history of journal keeping. It would make me happy to return both of her journals to her daughter. If she was alive.
Many of the book’s pages were blank. I flipped through them and noticed writing in the back. Entries, like an appointment book, filled numerous pages. One heading said, “Estimated Date” and it saddened me. I couldn’t imagine what it was like for Cora’s mother, being ripped from her family, living underground for years with no sure sense of the passage of time, having an Arrazi attack her over and over again and…my God…and other people? Passed around like candy?
Entries showed numerous visits from a few select people. I realized that the limited Arrazi Clancy had “shared” Gráinne with must have obtained their sortilege. The same Arrazi had fed from her often, sometimes brutally, as one note indicated:
Clancy brought a female Arrazi today. My soul leaped to hear the gentleness of a feminine voice, as it had been so long. But she was just as ruthless as the worst man. It’s a heartless woman who can see another woman in captivity and not be moved to help, to not see herself in the mirror of my suffering.
I am not another woman to her. I am the “other,” a lesser being, succor for the stronger race.