by Sierra Cross
I laid my mat next to hers and sat down. Before I could open my mouth, Aunt Jenn began to speak without opening her eyes. “Alix, I’m here to relax. So whatever mess you’re in can wait until I’m done.”
“No, it can’t.” I started speaking in a whisper out of respect for the two other women in the room. Then I remembered I was a witch and I threw a circle of silence around us.
“Alix, I am grieving Masumi’s death.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Well, that’s just low.” She snapped the towel off her eyes and sat up, genuinely miffed at me. “Do you really think I’m so heartless?”
I shook my head. “What I think is that Masumi’s not dead.”
“Not funny. Not a joke in good taste.” Aunt Jenn did a pretty good job with her fake indignation.
“Actually, it’s because I know you have a heart that I know she’s alive.” I hated admitting that out loud. “If she were really gone, you’d be in a fetal position in a dark room bawling your eyes out.”
Aunt Jenn’s eyes darted slyly to the left. “Okay, Alix. Let’s assume just for one minute that your crazy theory’s right and Masumi is alive. Do you think there’s a chance in hell she’d want to talk to you? You’re the reason she had to fake her own death…that is assuming she did.”
“No, the corrupt Fidei scientists are the reason she blew up her life.” I hoped she’d see that I was on her anti-establishment bandwagon, at least when it came to Mals and Deviants.
“Touché.” She stole a sip from her designer water bottle. “But fat lot of good that does you. She’s in the wind.”
My heart beat faster. She’d as good as admitted Masumi was still alive. “I’m sure you know how to contact her.”
Aunt Jenn set down the bottle. “Even if that were the case, you already let her down once by being incapable of holding onto the thumbdrive she gave you. Why would she risk her neck again for you?”
“The Fidei’s had a stranglehold on the truth for all these years,” I said. “My coven can break that. And that’s why she’ll take my call.”
It got so quiet I could hear the fake seagulls on the Sand Room’s beach soundtrack. “I make no promises,” Aunt Jenn said finally. “And you still owe me for the last favor…or twelve. Not to mention the rift you opened in my sub-basement.” Crap; I’d almost let myself forget about the rift between realms Matt had opened when we were battling Alana the Caedis. “That’s costing me an extra hundred man-hours a month just to monitor it.”
“Don’t you mean de-mon-hours?” I knew she had a cadre of Nequam to do her dirty work.
“Cute.” Aunt Jenn smiled like a cat. “But you still owe me huge for covering for you guys. And one day, you know, I’m going to ask a favor in return.”
My stomach sank at the thought, but I laughed it off. “Are you trying to sound like the Godfather?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” She sank back down on the sand. “I prefer Godmother.”
I fixed her with my best penetrating glare. “So, Masumi.”
“What? You want me to reach out to her now, during my rare and precious downtime?”
“That would be awesome…Godmother.”
With a groan, she sat up and reached for her water bottle. “Just remember, Alix,” she said ominously as she stood and tightened her robe’s belt. “One day will come.”
She grabbed her locker key by its plastic spiral coil wristband and walked out.
And I tried not to think about what kind of terrible favor she’d ask of me.
It was 2:15 a.m. when Matt turned on the lights in Sanctum, eliciting grumbles from what was left of the night’s crowd.
“Fifteen minutes to finish your drinks and head out,” he bellowed. More grumbles. But he always got an excellent compliance rate. His nearly six-and-a-half-foot muscled frame didn’t brook a lot of argument.
I wiped down the bar until it gleamed. I guessed my aunt was right. Two days and no word from Masumi. Who could blame her? I lost the drive she’d entrusted me with, and we weren’t an inch closer to changing the system. We’d lost two of my coven witches on my watch. And hell, we weren’t even a coven anymore. Why would anyone in their right mind trust me?
“What’d that bar ever do to you?” Matt fixed me with a penetrating gaze. “You’re scrubbing it like it pissed you off.”
I dropped my rag, leaned against the backbar and looked out across the empty club. “Let’s not dance around the truth, Matt. You know why I’m pissed off. I totally screwed the pooch here.”
Matt perched on a bar stool and leaned in toward me. “What are you talking about?”
“Everything. I’m a bad coven leader.” I could hear the despondency in my near-whispered confession and knew I sounded pathetic, but I was beyond caring. “I’m a loser, Matt. I found what I wanted to do with my life, then I lost it before I ever really got started. No Liv, no Callie, no leads.” Bonaventura and the Witches Assembly were right about me all along. “And at this rate, it’ll take me years to master my Dominion Gene.” I made the shape of an “L” on my forehead.
“Alexandra.” His voice was firm. “Only quitting would make you a loser.”
It was probably crappy of me to smirk, but he sounded like he just stepped out of a guardian training video. Wholesome. Positive. Can-do. “Sorry.” I felt like a jerk. “I’m just beyond pep talks.”
“Maybe you’re right.” He narrowed his eyes at me. “Maybe talk isn’t what you need.” With that, he walked around the bar and gathered me in his arms in a tight hug. At first I felt stiff, like I was encased in an Alix-shaped ice cube, but within a few moments the edges of my ice cube melted, and I leaned into his body. His lips brushed the skin on my neck and instantly ignited desire in me. I pulled back, just enough to crush my lips into his. His fingers locked into my hair, twisting lightly, the pleasure from every nerve ending making me tremble…
Oh, yeah, I’d forgotten one no. No sex.
I gently pushed him back and grabbed the keys out of my pocket. “You can head upstairs. I’ll lock up.”
He let me go but looked as if he wanted to continue his inspirational monologue. “Okay.” His voice sounding reluctant. “I’ll give you a foot rub.”
I shrugged. It was the closest thing I’d get to what I really wanted tonight.
I set the alarm system and was locking the side door that led to the stairwell up to our borrowed apartment when my pocket vibrated. It hadn’t taken me that long, Matt must really want to give me that foot massage.
I pulled my phone out, and it was a number with no caller ID…at 3:15 a.m.
“Hello?” The connection was eerily quiet. “Hello?”
“I entrusted you with one tiny piece of evidence. That’s it. And you couldn’t even take care of that.” It was Masumi’s voice, shrill and higher than normal.
“I know.” I wanted to tell her that we’d warded it, put it in a safe, did our best. But I suspected that wouldn’t help my case.
“You know there are now rumors in the Fidei that I’d been planning a smear campaign? That I was ‘disgruntled?’ In other words crazy?” She let out an angry laugh. “Do you know what that does to the credibility of this info I have?”
“I know it looks bad now, but you have proof—”
“What’s proof when they have all the power?”
A solid point. So were all her points. How could I argue? I sank quietly to the floor of the stairwell. I didn’t know if I had it in me to talk this woman into trusting me again. I didn’t trust myself, why should she?
“What? You’ve got nothing?” Masumi seethed. “I risk my security again by contacting you, and you have nothing to say to me? Why did you even reach out?”
“I need the location of a Fidei lab.”
“If I gave you that information they’d know I was alive.” Yet another solid point from her. “Frankly, I don’t think you’re worth the risk.”
“Maybe I’m not.” I ignored her short contemptuous laugh and went on, kn
owing I had to say this. “I know I’m not nearly worthy of what’s being asked of me. I’ve made mistakes. Fallen short of my ideals.” I sighed. “But it’s not about me.” What had I said to Asher? Suck it up, buttercup. I was taking my own advice. For Liv and Bethany and the need to stop Tenebris, I’d fake it ’til I felt it. “Those scientists tortured hundreds of Mals and Deviants, but what Tenebris is planning, that threatens all magicborn. Hell, it threatens life as we know it. That’s what I’m trying to stop.” I told her about how Tenebris wanted to use the witches to create a batch of lieutenants—demon-witch hybrids—with the Fidei’s help, using the serum harvested from tortured Mals. That this would be the start of the Caedis’s best chance at overthrowing the Council and quite literally taking over the world.
If she was shocked she didn’t show it. “No use telling you where they are. They’re impenetrable. Impossible to breach.”
“Nothing is impossible. We’re the Coven of Fire.”
To my surprise, Masumi laughed. “Now that sounds like the overconfident Alix I remember.”
I pounced on this. “So you’ll tell me where the lab is?”
“First of all, there are about a dozen labs. I’d need more info—”
“Luckily, I have more.” I described my vision in painstaking detail. The drains in the floor. Hoses on the wall. “And Liv was trapped in a metal cage. Thin bars on all four sides—”
“Specimen housing.” Masumi sounded bored. “You’re describing every facility in the world. I need more definitive details. Employee names. Check documents for the site number.”
“But Liv is locked in that cell.” I felt stumped. “They’ll never let her out. How can I find out any of that?”
“Well, I guess our business is done here. Have a good life.”
“No, wait! I have an idea.” Actually, more of a really stupid hail Mary. “Call me back in the morning?”
“Why you’re an eager beaver this morning,” Charice stood at the front door of her shop, her plucked brows raised at me. I’d been leaning on the doorframe, waiting for her to open. “Our lesson isn’t for another two hours.”
“Yeah, I need your help.” I kicked at the concrete, staring at my boots. “And you’re not going to like it.”
The purple drapes were pulled and only a waning bit of the winter morning light seeped in around them. Charice had lit her candles and sat down before I told her what my plan was. Otherwise, I think she’d have just kicked me out and told me to come back when I was in my right mind.
“Absolutely not, it is way too dangerous.” She had her hands tucked between her knees and her limbs pressed against her body. I could tell she was trying to steel herself against my pleading. “You are not even close to ready for this.”
It wasn’t possible for me to open the coven bond—that had to be initiated by Liv. And even if I could, I’d only get more details on the cage she was in. The only way I’d ever get any other info about the facility was if I used my Dominion Gene and voluntarily opened a connection with Tenebris.
“Alix, I know you want to help your friends. But you know the risks.” She stood and moved behind her chair as if she wanted distance between us. Was she trying to hold onto her resolve? “He could hijack you again. Even if he doesn’t, you could open the connection and not be able to shut it down. Then he’d be your constant companion. Or worse, one wrong move and you could…have a mental breakdown.”
I swallowed. Every one of those possibilities was awful, but I was the coven leader. I’d been given the Dominion Gene for a reason. I had to do everything within my power to learn to use it. “I generally try to avoid psychotic breaks…” I said. “But unless you have any other bright ideas, I think I need to try this.”
Charice let out a slow breath. “Even if you do get in, you’ll have only a split second of his view before he becomes aware of what you’re seeing,” she reminded me. “If you’re not out by then, he’ll know you’re tracking him. Is it worth it?”
“No matter what happens, you’re not responsible,” I assured her.
“You think that’s what I’m worried about?” She looked at me, eyes full of sadness. “I can’t talk you out of this, can I? You’d do it with or without me.” I nodded. “Well, I can’t do much, but I can at least moderate your energy to keep you from going too deep.”
“Thank you! You won’t regret this.” Except that now I had to ask her something so basic it was the equivalent of asking how to wipe my own ass. “Quick question. Uh...how do I find him?”
Charice huffed. “Alix, you’re really not ready—” The look I shot her stopped her mid-sentence. “Okay. I’m sure greater minds than mine have tried to talk sense into you. Imagine radio waves. Threads of sound stacked upon each other, traveling towards you in every variation you can imagine. Thick. Thin. Loud. Soft.” I closed my eyes and pictured long undulating waves. Sharp bouncy lines. Maybe I could do this. “So within the vibrational elements you experience through your Dominion Gene—”
“Ah, vibrational what?” Had she lost me already?
“You know. It’s the buzzing in your head. In the background.”
Wow. “Yes, I guess I do know what you’re talking about.” There was a constant buzzing in my ears, but I’d gotten so good at tuning it out. When was a kid, I thought that everybody had it. It was just something to ignore. I was almost twelve when I found out that no one else knew what the heck I was talking about. After that, I did my best to pretend it didn’t exist. “So that buzzing is real? I don’t have some weird form of tinnitus?”
“Ha.” Charice laughed. “It’s not a medical condition. It’s the core of your gift.” She was in full teaching mode. “What you’re hearing is a mashup of energetic threads, all compressed together. The Dominion Gene allows you to tap into them. But first, you have to separate those threads into individual personalities.”
“How the hell do I do that?”
“Think of your mind like the tuner on a radio. Just dive and ‘turn the knob’—once you get in there you’ll see what I’m talking about. And since Tenebris is your only completed connection other than me, he’ll stand out.”
Here goes nothing, I thought. Leaning back in the comfy chair, I dialed into the quiet buzzing. Bucking against the old habit of ignoring it, I focused my thoughts on the sound in my head. And damn, she was right. I could actually feel the layers within the mass of sound, like the different instruments playing in an orchestra. I pulled at the noise until the hum became a chirp of dozens of different frequencies. If I concentrated, I could separate the sound-threads and identify them as different people. Most strands were fuzzy and out of reach. But there was one slender golden thread that shimmered and pulsed that I somehow recognized as Charice.
And smack dab in the middle, vibrating in quick short bursts that repeated, was a sharp green wave.
I’d found Tenebris.
The Caedis couldn’t have any idea that I was purposefully inviting him in. Awkward as it was, there was only one way I knew how to accidentally open a connection with him. I scrunched down in the chair and closed my eyes. Rewinding the days, I went back to that first night in the apartment Emma was letting us use. I imagined Matt’s lips on my neck, his rough hands on my skin. I remembered Matt holding up not just one but a whole strip of condoms, and I laughed at how similarly our minds worked. I was alive with the same anticipation I’d had in that moment. The need for him, a living thing inside myself. I let myself feel it, holding nothing back.
Oh, yes, Alix. A little solo action? His voice was smooth and low, like oil on hot pavement. You and me, alone together. The razor current he brought with him trilled across my skin, the skin I’d imagined Matt touching. Tenebris projected his face into my fantasy. Matt’s hands became Tenebris’s hands. Before beginning my Dominion Gene training, I would have been trapped here at his mercy until I got a mad rage on. But now I felt my own strength.
“Get out of my head!” I shouted, but resisted the urge to actually shake him
out. The connection stretched and threatened to break. I struggled to balance my power. Using just enough force to convince him I was trying to fend him off, but not so much that I accidentally won. I let my guard down, like a Burlesque dancer dropping the shoulder of her dress. Exposing a part of myself to capture his attention—without giving him the whole show. Swallowing the urge to vomit, I let him roam. Let him expand his mental presence and slither further into my mind. His sensual suggestions ran through me like a hot river. Dark and lurid. But in the current of his consciousness were other thoughts, ones he wasn’t paying attention to right now.
Thanks to Charice I’d improved my ability to multi-task. While the Caedis was making a play for my virtue, I was quietly tiptoeing into his brain. Plundering his most recent memories.
I can feel you’re right on the edge of giving in to your desire for me. Let go. Let me take you there.
Between his looming sexual proximity, the memory heist, and my attempt to two-screen between them, this juggling act was taking a hell of an effort. I was in danger of dropping one of the balls and shifting into warrior mode. To stay present and relaxed, I reached for my desire for Matt and back-burnered my anger. And Tenebris’s power surged. Like being caught in an undertow, I was swept away by the images he shoved into my head.
I lay on my back, naked, my tan skin against the crisp white sheets. My hands were stretched above my head. A bare-chested Tenebris stood at the foot of the bed. His new skinsuit was dark-haired with an olive complexion and brown eyes, heavy with lust, that raked my body.
Again, my gag reflex threatened to kick in. But the further this illusion went, the more it sucked Tenebris in. With his focus elsewhere, I sifted through his memories like trying to silently rifle through the pages of a book. At first the stream of his thoughts was indecipherable, but as I stared I could catch glimpses of a few past events. Slipping into his new skinsuit. Yelling at subordinates. His hand on Callie’s bare shoulder. But it was all disjointed. And there was absolutely nothing I could use to determine his whereabouts.