Although Hadrian and Amelia had talked for hours about the two rebellions and what was happening at that time in the Village, they couldn’t put everything together. As much as it was all so similar, there wasn’t much of a connection beyond that. It wasn’t until they were on a trip to Colchin that they made a breakthrough. They were attacked. Well, Amelia was attacked. The man was a Magic User who was under a curse, which was oddly familiar to Syney. Hadrian personally had interrogated this man. Daemons could not only give memories but also forcibly take them, which Hadrian did. He saw Lass curse him, which made him do anything she asked of him. They would have just blamed Lass and left it at that, but the man had called her the Ancient One, and that was something different. Hadrian and Amelia searched books and talked to hundreds of people but couldn’t find out whom the Ancient One was, only that she was a myth in the lands of all of the races—a being so powerful that she was able to move from generation to generation by stealing bodies and life forces.
That was as far as they got before the killing started. First it was Faye’s family in a supposed Shifter attack. But Hadrian had friends in the Shifter Kingdom, and they denied being behind it. Amelia couldn’t figure out why they would attack the Blocadrians until Faye was killed. Adam had been right about that. Gabe had been out of the palace, escorting Amelia, Hadrian, and baby Syney back into Magic User land when an invisible force came into the Vampire palace and killed everyone, except little Adam. From what Hadrian was able to put together, which was impressive considering everyone had died, a Daemon squadron had been sent to the Vampire palace and found everyone dead. Hadrian swore he didn’t send them there, but the second word came that they’d been there, they—and Hadrian—were immediately blamed. Amelia realized what was happening immediately. The Blocadrian line were the first rulers for the Magic Users. Even if Lass held the title of seated queen, if Amelia were to die, Faye could have motioned to make herself queen on the basic principle that the position was rightfully hers. Eliminate the Blocadrians and the Viloris while starting a war among the races—the plan was foolproof. The only thing Lass wasn’t prepared for was Syney.
Syney turned off the water and grabbed a towel. If the Ancient One had been in Lass’s body then traveled down the Crystallianna line, it meant she was now Mellisandrianna. And Syney was really pissing her off. Not only had Syney become seated queen, but she also had survived every attempt on her life as well as a curse intended to make her lose her mind. The thing that scared Syney the most wasn’t another attempt on her life but the stealing of it. Her last conversation with Mellisandrianna crept into her mind. The queen had tried to play nice and make friends. At the time, Syney had thought Mellisandrianna was trying to keep Syney from taking the throne, but now she knew better. She was buttering her up to take over her body. She finally realized Syney wasn’t going anywhere. She wasn’t an obstacle to go around anymore; she was a land to be conquered. Either that or Mellisandrianna couldn’t wait around anymore. Syney thought of the missing girl posters in the Village. If the Ancient One had been stealing life forces for a while and not leaving an obvious trail, the fact that she was now leavning signs, big signs in the form of many missing girls, seemed to point to the fact that she was taking more and more life forces. She needed more energy to keep herself who she was, as Mellisandrianna.
“She’s going to have a hell of a fight,” Syney said to the empty room as she pulled on some jeans.
“I wouldn’t want to fight you.”
She turned and smiled at Adam, who leaned against the doorframe. “Hey, you,” she said. “I got worried because you left during the night.”
“I couldn’t sleep.”
She nodded and pulled on a black shirt. “I barely did.” She left the bathroom and picked up the papers from her nightstand. “This is crazy, isn’t it?”
Adam shook his head. “Not when you’ve lived it.”
She sighed and walked over to him, sliding her hands around his neck before kissing him. “I’m going to make Mellisandrianna pay for this, I promise.”
He smiled at her and kissed her again. “I have no doubt. Come on. Everyone’s outside.”
Syney stretched. “I’m so ready to kick some magic ass!”
A half hour later, Gabe sat in a plastic lawn chair, wearing sunglasses and looking bored. Noelle sat next to him, reading the notes Hadrian had written and yelling, “Oh, my God!” every five minutes. Becca sat on the porch, drinking tea and remaining calm, as usual. All the while Syney tried to throw purple lightning out of her hands, unsuccessfully, while Adam encouraged her, Hadrian rolled his eyes, and Reed eyed the Daemon suspiciously.
“This is useless!” Syney hollered. “I’m never going to get this! I might as well just let her kill me!”
“Oh, my God!” Noelle yelled.
“You can do this,” Hadrian said calmly. “Gabriel said you’ve already done it before—twice in fact.”
“Yeah, but that was different.”
“How so?”
She shrugged. “I didn’t want to do it—I just did.”
“Tell me about the first time.”
Syney shot a look at Adam before looking back at Hadrian. “I killed a Shifter. A big cat that was attacking.”
“Attacking you?”
She shook her head. “Hunter, my Protector.”
“And the other time?”
“Your buddy over there threw at knife at me,” Syney said, sending a glaring look at Gabe.
He just shrugged. “It served its purpose.”
Hadrian nodded. “Both of those events were emotionally driven, once for your life and the other for someone you cared about, which means your powers are still attached to your emotions. Most young Daemons react the same way, but they train themselves to harness their inner powers.” He held out his hand, and suddenly a ball of crackling red energy appeared there. “You summon the energy—borrow it, actually—from life forces around you. It’s much like when you conjure the elements.”
“Oh, I’ve done that!” Syney exclaimed, eyeing the ball of energy. “But I always have a spell.”
“You won’t need one for this,” Hadrian said. “Just pull the energy from around you. Try it.”
Syney held out her hand and closed her eyes. She tried to imagine taking the energy from the air around her, but nothing happened. Then she tried to remember the feeling she’d had when she and Adam had conjured the rain, but still nothing. She sighed and opened her eyes. “Maybe I’m broken.”
Hadrian rolled his eyes and tossed the ball of energy at Adam.
Syney screamed, and energy shot out of her hands, smashing into Hadrian’s. “What the hell!”
“I second that!” Adam yelled.
“See? You’re not broken,” Hadrian told Syney.
“Oh, my God!” Noelle yelled.
“How about we don’t hurl energy balls at people anymore, OK?” Reed said, stepping forward.
Syney sighed. She understood where Hadrian was coming from, but it was still a sick way of getting results. She placed a hand on Reed’s arm. “It’s OK.”
Reed snarled at Hadrian but stepped back and sat on the steps of the deck. “I need more than ‘Pull the energy,’” Syney said.
Hadrian frowned. “I’m not a teacher, and I haven’t been in school in a very long time. I’m going with my gut here.”
Gabe jumped up from his seat and walked over to them. “Syney, everyone has a life force, and all of a race’s powers stem from that life force. You felt mine back when I healed you. Do you remember?”
Syney nodded and felt her face turn red. She remembered a lot from that time, most of which she didn’t want to bring up now with her father and her boyfriend present.
Gabe gave her a smirk and took her hand in his. “Close your eyes, and try to feel my life force.”
She did as asked. She was about to give up when she felt a stream of power rush through her. She felt as if she could do anything. Then suddenly it was gone. She opened her eyes; Gabe
had stepped away from her.
“You have a life force just like that. That’s where your power comes from,” he said, walking back to his lawn chair.
Syney took a deep breath and closed her eyes. She became aware of everything in her body. She was hungry, and her feet hurt. She felt her heartbeat and the air going in and out of her lungs. Then suddenly she felt her power. It was there, pulsing through every part of her body. She had felt it before; she knew now. Whenever she did magic. That night when she had been with Hunter; the amortor—that was when it had been the strongest. She felt the energy as it flowed to her hand, as she directed it there, and told her hand to take the energy, lots of it. She opened her eyes and stared at the bright-purple ball in her hand as it turned and sparkled. Excited about her creation, she smiled at Hadrian but was met with a dark look. He was staring at the ground with an almost frightened expression.
“Syney,” Adam, said quietly, “let go of the energy.”
“But I got it!” she said, looking at him. He also was staring at the ground. Syney followed his gaze. The grass around her feet was changing from a luscious green to a dead and withered brown. She let go of the energy, but the grass didn’t turn back to green. “What was that? A beginner’s mistake? I’m only supposed to borrow the energy, right?”
Hadrian looked up at her but was silent.
“Only really powerful beings can take the full energy of something or someone,” Adam said slowly.
“You mean, like the Ancient One?”
“Oh, my God.”
Syney looked at Noelle, but she was no longer reading Hadrian’s notes; she was looking right at Syney. Syney could pull energy just like the Ancient one. Did that mean they were alike or…the same? The thought sent shivers down Syney’s spine. Syney swallowed and looked at Hadrian. “I think I’m done for the day.” She turned and walked onto the porch. “I’m starving. Please tell me there’s food.”
“It’ll be ready in bit. Sit and have some tea,” Becca said.
Syney sat down and picked up a cup. She took a sip as Adam sat next to her.
“It doesn’t mean anything except that you’re really powerful,” he said, placing a hand on her thigh.
“I’m like her.”
“No, you’re not. She takes the life forces of people. You just killed some grass.”
Syney looked at him. “What if I can’t control this?”
“You will. We’ll practice every day if we have to.”
She sighed and looked back at the others. Hadrian and Gabe were talking quietly to each other. Neither looked happy. This obviously hadn’t been part of their plan. Syney bit her lip and looked at the grass she’d been standing on. The thing that scared her the most was the amazing feeling she’d had while pulling that energy—she’d loved it.
Gabe poured three glasses of a thick red wine and handed two of them to Adam and Hadrian, keeping one for himself. He joined them at the large, round, wooden table in the center of the library and grabbed the nearest book. Adam watched Gabe flip through the pages then angrily toss it onto the large pile of discarded books. Adam knew Gabe the best, and even he wasn’t sure what the Vampire was thinking. He seemed fascinated with the power Syney had displayed but was visibly frustrated. Hadrian seemed equally annoyed. Adam had spent only one drunken night with the man the previous year, but he struck him as being very similar to Gabe—only Hadrian didn’t hide his emotions as well as Gabe did.
Hadrian laid one of the books open and pointed to a page. “This is a useful one.”
Gabe and Adam looked at it. It was a truth spell, one Adam had seen before. “That potion takes a month to prepare,” he said.
“She can start on it right away and have it in case she needs it,” Hadrian said, sticking a piece of paper in the book and adding the volume to a second pile of books with bookmarks in them. They had been searching the library for useful spells Syney could start using now as a way to practice her magic.
“How are we going to bring all these books back with us?” Adam asked, looking at the growing pile.
“In a bag,” Gabe said, grabbing another book.
Adam rolled his eyes. “You told me what happened with Raine. He was executed for having books just like this in his room. This is a pretty big risk.”
“One we need to take. We can’t keep Syney out here forever, but she needs to learn these spells. We’ll leave them in her room in the palace. The queen won’t do another search. If she’s playing the long game we think she is, her next moves will be friendly,” Gabe said.
“That’s a lot of guessing,” Adam said.
Gabe’s face remained neutral, but annoyance filled his eyes. “I know you two have a nice sweet thing going, but that doesn’t make you the lead on the Syney front.”
“No, Syney is the lead on the Syney front,” Adam said, which received an eye roll from Gabe. “What do you have against Syney being involved in all this? She’s the reason we’re here.”
“And she’s an emotionally driven teenager who doesn’t understand the danger of all this,” Gabe said.
Adam opened his mouth to argue when Syney walked in and took a seat next to Gabe. He had made sure she was sleeping before he had come back down to help with all this, but she looked wide-awake. She obviously was very good at pretending, he thought.
“I’m done with your underestimating me,” she said, glaring at Gabe.
“He’s not underestimating you—he’s protecting you,” Hadrian said, not looking up from the book in front of him.
“Protecting me how?”
“If you knew the risks everyone was taking, you’d talk them out of it and try to do everything on your own,” Hadrian told her. “A lot of people have died fighting for this cause, and a lot more are going to.”
Adam watched as Syney silently stared at the table for a while before taking a deep breath and picking up a pad of paper and a pen. “What are you doing?” he asked.
“Writing down everything I’ve done or experienced that might be some kind of power,” she said. “Something might be useful.”
When she was done, she handed the list to Hadrian, who looked it over. “These are mostly Vilori powers. The ‘bad feeling’ sounds almost like a combination of Daemon and Magic User.”
“How so?”
“Amelia was prophetic. She had visions of the future, the far future. Daemons can feel an enemy. I always know who is a foe and means me harm,” Hadrian said.
“A blended power,” Gabe said softly. “Interesting.”
“The healing is Vilori. That’s something you need to practice. It’ll be very useful.”
Syney nodded. She looked at Adam and gave him a small smile. Then her smile fell slowly, and she shifted her gaze to Hadrian, her eyes widening. Adam looked between the two. If he had to guess, he’d say that Hadrian was talking to her in her mind. It was a Daemon power he’d only heard about and not experienced until recently. A lot of Daemon powers were in regard to the mind, taking things out and putting them in. Daemons couldn’t compel like Vampires could, but they could communicate with their thoughts. Syney had done it to him once already, although he was pretty sure she didn’t realize she’d done it. It had happened their first night here at Becca’s, while they were being intimate. She had projected her thoughts onto him, which was pretty much a pep talk to herself. Adam had thought it was cute and meant to mention it to her the next day but never got around to it what with so many other things going on.
Syney looked away from Hadrian and grabbed one of the books on the table. Adam wanted to ask if she was OK but decided against it to let her have some time to process everything. It was an odd sensation, thinking about someone other than yourself all the time. He had spent his whole life selfishly jumping from place to place, never staying long enough to set down roots. Every decision he’d ever made had been for himself, and now he was thinking of Syney as well. As much as he never wanted to be tied down with anyone, he liked being with Syney, thinking of her needs and wan
ting to be with her for longer than a weekend or a month or even a year. He loved her, and that fact no longer scared him.
“Why don’t we practice the healing?” Adam asked, moving over to sit next to Syney.
She looked at him. “But how? Don’t you heal right away?”
Adam shook his head.
“How can you remain ageless but not heal?”
“He doesn’t feed enough,” Gabe said, not looking at them.
“I eat just fine, thank you,” Adam said, glaring at him. “Part of how Vampires heal is connected to their drinking blood,” he told Syney. “I don’t need to drink blood, so I don’t. I found when I was younger that I didn’t need to drink it to survive. I assumed it is because I’m only half Vampire. The lack of aging isn’t connected to blood; it’s more like a power Vampires have. So when you cut me…” He pulled Syney’s knife off her belt and ran it along his palm, wincing slightly. “…I do bleed.”
“Although if you did drink blood, you wouldn’t bleed for very long,” Gabe said, his eyes still on the book in front of him. “Blood is connected to healing.”
Adam rolled his eyes and held his hand out to Syney.
Syney took his injured hand in her own and stared at the blood for a moment. “I should just be able to tell it to heal, right?”
Adam laughed. “I have no idea.”
“I watched Amelia do it once. She just concentrated, holding her hands over the wound, and then a blue light reached out and closed it,” Hadrian said, looking at them with interest.
“OK,” Syney said. She put one hand above and one below Adam’s hand and closed her eyes.
Adam watched her face as her lips thinned into a straight line and her nose crinkled slightly in concentration. She stayed that way for a while, but nothing happened.
“Do you love Adam?”
Deviation: Altera Realm Trilogy Book 2 Page 19