by Tracy Clark
She came back again—the brutal one who bites with no control, like a baby snake. Her voice is soft, but she rips my soul like her hunger is fueled by anger. Maybe it is. All hunger is a hole to be filled.
The records about the woman intrigued me. Ultana? But that wouldn’t make sense. Clancy hadn’t wanted Ultana to know what he possessed. There had been the Arrazi woman with him at Newgrange, the one I’d knocked out. Surely, Clancy was taking a risk by allowing other Arrazi in on his secret. What he’d done had given them their sortilege, yes, but how did he know he could trust them? Who would take from a rare Scintilla in secret and not tell the all-powerful Ultana Lennon?
While my body begged to sleep, my mind was on overdrive. I drifted but woke more than once with a panicked gasp from dreams of my mother looking down at her bloody robe, her face a mask of impassivity that she might have given a patient so as not to scare them. Was it habit? Was she doing it for me? In another dream, she wore the same remote expression, but her body had become Ultana’s body, in the tomb, with the hilt of a blade jutting from her stomach. She’d gotten up, pulled the knife from her gut, and walked from the tomb.
The attendant brought me whiskey, and I downed it in one gulp, finally slipping into a deeper sleep.
As one of the first to deplane, I couldn’t see everyone who was on board, but I felt an unnatural gust on my back—rank winds of Arrazi energy. I didn’t want to look behind me and catch the eye of someone I might know, so I ducked into a novelty shop in the terminal and watched the passengers file by. I thought I recognized two Arrazi in the crowd. They’d been pointed out to me by Saoirse at the Xepa party, but we’d all been wearing masks, so I couldn’t be sure. There was something about the way he guided her by her elbow that struck me. Shite. What were the odds that Arrazi suddenly needed to board a plane to South America? How many others, from how many countries, might also be converging on this place?
This was bad.
I clutched my bag handle with white knuckles as I went through customs and proceeded to rent a car. Having the cover of the most famous illuminated manuscript in history was bigger than possessing a priceless piece of Ireland’s history—enough to make anyone nervous. But it was more than that; it was our history—the Arrazi and the Scintilla. Why else would my mother’s family keep it for hundreds of years? Why else would it be Ultana’s most coveted prize? Those men had tried to kill for it. If I could just get the gilded cover into Cora’s hands to find out if I was right.
I looked behind me and saw the Arrazi couple from earlier renting a car as well. If Ultana was dead, who would be summoning Arrazi to Chile? Then again, if Ultana was alive and her son was helping her, then she could still run things from behind a curtain.
I pulled up Mami Tulke’s address. The radio blared as I drove through the hills of the Elqui Valley. The BBC reported that the hunt for the missing “miracle worker” was ongoing and that there were suspicions she might have headed to South America. They knew that Cora’s stepmother, Janelle Sandoval, had flown to Santiago not two days ago. The whole world was closing in, including the media and the Arrazi. My fingers gripped the steering wheel.
My phone startled me when it buzzed with a text from Saoirse: Hi. Been quiet over there. What are you up to? My brother is acting strange, and an email came to my mother from an undisclosed recipient that she should go to Santiago, Chile. I have no idea…
Confirmation. The Arrazi were on their way.
I couldn’t answer. Not because I wanted Saoirse to worry; I didn’t trust her brother. I didn’t know what to believe or who to trust. I could only listen to my gut and follow it to Cora.
I stopped at a roadside stand to buy snacks from a kind-faced Middle Eastern man who was sitting on his car with a sign that said: Last Station For Fifty Miles. Cold Water. Food. The closer I got, the more warily he eyed me. The closer I got, the more tantalizing his aura felt. My steps faltered.
This man was Scintilla.
What were the odds? Cora had thought perhaps she and her grandmother and Giovanni might be the last. He gave me my goods and my change without meeting my eyes when he said a perfunctory, “Good day.” Did he know what I was? Was that why he feared to look at me?
“Everything good?” I asked, and his head jerked up, surprise written on his dark features. “You look nervous.”
His nut-brown eyes scanned my face. “One can never be too careful,” he finally answered. My head whipped to the side when I thought I saw the shadows of two men running toward me but, strangely, nothing was there.
“Yes, there’re surely nutters in the world,” I said. I took a step backward. “Not all of us are to be feared, brother,” I added pointedly, hoping he’d hear the message beneath my words. It somehow seemed important that he know. He said nothing more, and I turned to walk back to my car, feeling his eyes on me. Pulling out, I saw him pick up and speak into a handheld radio. A warning? I’d like to think that if there were more Scintilla in this valley—a wonderful surprise if it were true—that there was a system of warning in place against the Arrazi.
Nights on the Irish Sea had nothing on the stars in this place. I tore my gaze from the sky to the map on my phone and raced on to find Cora. The closer I got, the harder it was to keep calm. My body pulsed with fear and agitation that made my breaths come fast and shallow, and my heart beat unevenly. The directions said I was approaching, just a thousand feet to my turn. An adobe house came into view in my headlights.
A light was on in the house, but when I knocked, nobody answered. I knocked again, louder. Where could everyone be? After sitting in my car for ten minutes, I noticed a wooden sign in the yard that said Rancho Estrella with an arrow pointing east. A few minutes later, I’d arrived. I parked in front of a strange polygonal-looking building, one of many. Some other similar buildings dotted the ranch—large tent-like structures—lit from inside like glowing igloos. The place had an air of abandonment that made my neck prickle. I walked through the grounds and came upon a large building with lights on inside and shadows of people moving about. I knocked. Shuffling and scurrying sounds came from inside before Mami Tulke answered the door, peering out at me through a narrow opening.
Her eyes rounded and she said, “Now is not a good time for visiting friends.”
I cocked my head sideways. “Is it a good time for visiting enemies?” I asked with a teasing smile.
Her nostrils flared a touch and she said, “Plenty, I’d say,” and shut the door in my face. Someone grabbed me by the scruff of my shirt and pulled me down and to the side. Dun had his finger over his lips, but I heard words, spoken as clear as if he were speaking them: help us. Please help us. I shook my head. Dun hadn’t said a word, but someone inside was using telepathy to communicate with me.
As I’d feared, something bad was going down. Cora? Where was she?
We heard the click of the door. Dun pulled me around the side of the building and we peered beyond the wall. The barrel of a gun stuck out first and then a man’s head. When he looked our way, he paused and we jerked back. Had he seen us? Slow footsteps approached, and when he rounded the corner of the building with his gun trained right on Dun and me, I did what came naturally.
I ripped his soul out and swallowed it like gristle.
Chapter Fifty
Cora
Death was a cliff they threw me over again and again only to be reeled back up before I plunged to the bottom.
The night had turned to day and night again. Hours of questions, torturous repeated attacks on my energy by Theodore, the cardinal’s yelling until he became so frustrated, he’d called and ordered the first Scintilla to be killed. That was the moment I considered the cost of my defiance. I feared my death, but I feared causing the death of others much worse.
Cardinal Báthory would snip off the flowery heads of hope until no buds remained.
“I don’t know what you want from me,” I gasped, reaching toward Theodore with an outstretched beseeching hand, but he was powerless and sub
missive to his boss. It was the cardinal who answered.
“I want to know what you were looking for at Vatican City. What brought you there? Centuries of concealing the Scintilla’s existence from the world and an unremarkable teenage girl gets close enough to rip the veil from everything. How?”
“Yeah, I’m so unremarkable that the entire world is looking for me because I brought those kids back from the dead.”
He reared back and struck me with a stinging slap across the face. “Almighty God brought those children back to life!”
Blinks of light dotted my vision as my head recoiled. Rage rattled my chest and spread shaking hot fury through me so that I actually fantasized about being an Arrazi so I could kill him. “I love how you persecute those who can do extraordinary things. That’s always been your office’s M.O., right? Stomp out the pesky magic conjurers so you can keep the masses in the dark about their own magic. What ever happened to ‘these things that I do, you can do also’?”
His pasty face bunched into an incredulous knot. “You can’t possibly be comparing yourself to our Lord and savior, Jesus Christ,” he spat.
“I am,” I snarled, low and serious, stepping purposely within his reach, pushing him to hit me again. I’d rather take his blows than the Arrazi, Theodore’s. Theodore stared openmouthed at our exchange. My voice was low, nearly a whisper. “Isn’t that what you’re afraid the key will reveal?”
Buying time was what I’d hoped to do, hoping someone would get to the weapons stash and meet force with force. Maybe Dun, Adrian, or Ehsan? With every hour it seemed less likely, and I fretted endlessly, thinking about the Scintilla held in that room for so long. The cardinal pulled out his phone again and lifted his finger to make another call.
“Okay!” I said, wincing at the smug smirk that erupted on his face. “Enough, you freaking jerk. I lied. I hid the key. I know what it opens.” I bit my lip and said, “I’ll take you to it now.”
He lowered his hand. “This is your last opportunity, Ms. Sandoval. If that key is not in my possession very soon, every single person at that ranch will pay for it with their lives.”
“Yes. Okay.” The snowy caps of the Andes glowed under the moonlight as we left the hut, got into a car, and I directed them up the road toward the cave. I didn’t believe the cardinal knew what the key hid, but I did believe he knew that Jesus was Scintilla. Why else would his society have gone to such lengths to cover it up for so long? Their whole system would fall apart, of course. Can’t have a bunch of miracle workers roaming the world, giving of themselves to help people, to save people. Not when the church is supposed to be the only door to salvation.
I figured Cardinal Báthory wanted the key so badly because he needed to know for sure that there wasn’t some damning scrap of evidence that would come back to haunt him after the Scintilla were dead. There was evidence, but a fat lot of good it would do when it died with me.
I was going to die. That was clear.
So were the others.
I had no doubt we’d pay with our lives regardless of whether or not I gave him the key. He’d already ordered Arrazi to come. It was like inviting wolves to a sheep convention. The cardinal said my hope was what kept me compliant. In that moment, hope became erroneous and I became dangerous. Cardinal Báthory neglected to consider that my sudden absence of optimism freed me to reach for more defiant emotions. When all hopefulness was lost, it was replaced with reckless desperation.
I might go down, but I was going down fighting.
Within minutes, we pulled over at the base of the hill where I best recollected the cave to be. Giovanni and I had marked the spot by tying the scrap of tartan Finn had given me to a tree branch on the road. It fluttered in the air as we climbed from the car. My body was sluggish from being attacked, but my heart still managed to chug faster as I thought about what I wanted to do once we reached the cave. If I could get my hands on a gun, the first bullet was headed straight for Theodore. If I managed to take the Arrazi out first, then it was Báthory and I. One human versus a very pissed-off Scintilla.
It was on.
I stumbled the last bit of the climb toward the entrance to the cave. “You’ll each need to push the boulders aside,” I said, my voice raspy. “I’m too weak to do it.” They glanced dubiously at each other but moved to position their bodies against two large stones and began pushing. My fingers twitched against my thighs like a runner at the starting line. I stood as close as possible so that the moment the rocks were out of my way, I could dart in and grab the first gun within reach. It had to be a gun. It had to be fast.
Quickness and accuracy—well, luck—that’s what I needed. Soon the rocks were rolled away and the cave opened like a giant eye, its center a black slit of a pupil staring me down. Daring me. As soon as I thought the eye was wide enough, I slipped sideways through the crack in the rocks and fumbled around in the blackness. My fingers hit nothing but the grit of dirt. Both men yelled amidst their scuffling and grunting as they pushed to get inside.
Their silhouetted forms in the entrance blocked out the sky behind them. I scrambled toward the back as the cardinal yelled for Theodore to kill me. “It’s a cave. Just reach for her soul and take it.” Crawling on my hands and knees, my hands finally hit a box. I ran my hands upward and felt the loaded handgun I knew was sitting on top. I grabbed it and rolled over, pointing it blindly at their shadows. I couldn’t see who was who.
A light flashed on and lit the cardinal’s face staring down at the phone he was using to light the cave. It also lit me, on my ass in the dirt, with two hands wrapped around the grip of a gun. I pulled the slide back and released it like Giovanni had showed me, and just as I felt the icy pull of Theodore’s energy rip into me, I fired.
Chapter Fifty-One
Giovanni
Immediately after I tried to urge Maya to use her sortilege to kill one of our captors—preferably an Arrazi one—we all heard a knock at the door. There was a bit of arguing with the Arrazi and the armed men trying to decide what to do. Mami Tulke suddenly stood and said in a hushed voice that she should answer it and calmly send any innocents away. To whoever was at the door, she spoke clearly and loud enough for our captors to hear she wasn’t giving furtive messages or seeking help. All of us wondered who was on the other side and hoped they’d somehow help us.
I noticed the telepath, Alejandro, sitting with his eyes closed like he was deep in meditation. Could I dare to hope he was using his sortilege to send a message? That was the kind of fighting back that we needed.
Apparently suspicious after she’d shut the door, one of the armed men, non-Arrazi, shoved past Mami Tulke, opened the door, and stepped outside. The only sound we heard was a faint thump, like a sack of potatoes being dropped to the ground, and then nothing. The door stood open with the sound of night and cool, fresh air pouring in.
“Who was out there, old woman?” the Arrazi asked.
Mami Tulke dismissed it with a hand wave. “A farmer from down the road. Nobody. You heard me send him away.”
When the first gunman didn’t return, the other men in the room with us exchanged worried glances, first at each other, then at the Scintilla. “I’ll deal with it,” the Arrazi said with barely masked bravado. “If anyone moves, shoot them.”
“You’re sure?”
“Very,” he said, eyes roving the room. “But start with the non-Scintilla. The cardinal has plans for the others.”
Plans?
One foot out the door, he yelled, “Hey!” The word flew from his mouth, and he flew backward through the air striking the wall hard enough to knock him out. The other man pointed his gun toward the door. I acted quickly, raising my hand to pull the gun from his grasp. It sailed into my outstretched palm as Dun rushed in the door, followed by…Finn.
“It’s another Arrazi!” someone yelled.
“It’s the killer from the video!”
“He’s a friend,” Dun shouted back, looking at Finn and clasping his shoulder. Finn’s searc
hing eyes frantically scanned the room for Cora. I swallowed down familiar exasperation at their connection.
He also looked thunderstruck, and I wondered if he knew, and not just from the stamps they used to identify us, that nearly everyone in the room was Scintilla. He confirmed it when I ran over. “This room is buzzing with energy.” His chest was heaving. “I had no idea there were so many left. Where’s Cora?”
“She’s not here. They took her, man. We don’t know where.”
“I have an idea where,” Dun said. “Just before Finn arrived a couple of minutes ago, we heard a gunshot up on the ridge.”
His meaningful glance told me it was probably near the weapons cave. Why? My stomach thudded to my feet. God, that girl… “Let’s hope she lured them there.” It killed me to imagine them taking her onto a hillside to shoot her. “Only one shot? You sure?”
“That’s all I heard, but then things got kinda gnarly in here, so…”
“What do we do with this guy?” Will said, motioning to the unconscious Arrazi on the floor. “Tie him up?”
“That won’t do you any good,” Finn answered. “When he comes to he can literally kill you with his hands tied and blindfolded.”
“So we know what we need to do then,” Will boldly answered, looking Finn over with a mildly suspicious expression. “Go look for Cora,” he said with a jerk of his head toward me. “We’ll deal with the Arrazi.” Will and Maya exchanged looks, and I was certain she’d had a change of heart about using her sortilege.
“Where’s my daughter?” I asked Dun.
“I hid her with Janelle and Faye in the supply shed on the far side of the gardens. They should be all right there for a while,” Dun said. “It was Claire who made us realize that something was up, man. She kept shaking her head and saying that something didn’t feel right. That’s when I snuck out and saw the men come in. That girl of yours has got some kind of hereditary mojo.”
“You’re the guy on the video.” Edmund interrupted us with his hands on his hips, assessing Finn like a casting director considering an actor.