The Gray Tower Trilogy: Books 1-3

by Alesha Escobar

  “Looks like you’re a hard woman to kill,” I said, before pulling the trigger two more times.

  “It seems you’re quite special as well.” She waved her fingers. “That...aura around you, what is that?”

  “Why don’t you come and find out?” Out of sheer desire to finish off the round, I fired the last bullet at her before dropping the gun.

  Her eyes flickered with an unnatural light, and in an instant she closed the gap between us. She yanked my hair so that my head inclined at an angle, and when I felt her breath on my neck, I acted. The glow around me grew into an aura of heat, and I pulled her in. She let out a shriek when her skin began to shrivel and fold. I shoved her away and grimaced at the flesh hanging off the right side of her face. Her hand quivered as she reached for the injured side. I drew my golden knife and imbued it with searing heat from Zaman’s Fire, and thought about Urbano and how he took out that Cruenti back in London. When Casandra rushed toward me, I threw the knife and nailed her right in her heart.

  She stumbled and fell to her knees, her bones cracking against the solid floor. She shuddered and raised a trembling hand, and then I felt a searing pain hit me in the shoulder. I fell backward. I was just about to bring forth a protective shield, but she had finally succumbed and fell dead on the floor. I rose to my feet and stood silent for a few seconds before going over and prodding her with my foot. When I turned her over, I shivered at the wide-eyed look of shock on her disfigured face. I retrieved my knife and wiped the blade against her pants leg. I stood and hissed at the flash of pain that ran through my muscles and knew that I’d be too exhausted to use my Drifter abilities soon. My lower back still throbbed with the wounds from the piercings of that torture chair.

  I turned to head toward the corridor that would lead me to Jasmine and the others, but paused when I felt a dark presence. Though I scanned the area and saw nothing, I knew a pair of eyes watched me. Suddenly, a dark figure emerged from the floor at the far left and glided toward Casandra’s body. I backed away with sweaty palms, and my heart pumped faster with each second.

  The shadow figure seized her by the torso and pulled her along the floor with impossible speed. It looked as if she were sliding across the ground. For whatever reason, the shadow figure wanted to go through the drain system in the far corner, but the body obviously couldn’t fit through the metal grate. I heard a sickening crunch of bones as the dark figure crashed the body against the grate in an attempt to pull it through, causing the legs to fold backward in an unnatural position. All the while, her eyes, with that same expression, still stared at me.

  I made a move toward the corridor, and the shadow figure finally released the body and disappeared. I ran over toward Casandra’s body, and though it disgusted me, I pulled the body over to the left and laid it parallel to the wall. I went back over to the grate and peered downward into its dark depths. Once again, the shadow figure was gone.

  My legs felt like rubber as I ran back down the corridor, and I questioned whether or not using my Drifter abilities really did have its drawbacks. I suddenly felt tainted...dirty. Did my powers call that shadow figure? Or was it just drawn to Drifters? I thought about the one I saw outside of Jane’s flat, and I didn’t even want to entertain the possibility of there being more of these things lurking in the shadows. I rushed past the first security desk and wasted no time in regrouping with the others--and to also warn them about the guards waiting outside the warded double doors.

  We went back to the other side and gathered at the warded doors, and I asked Raymond and Mia if they knew of any other possible exits. Raymond shook his head. I cleared my throat and tried to push away the pounding headache creeping upon me, and the frightening image of the shadow figure taking Casandra. “We need to get out of here now, so we’re just going to have to make this our way out,” I said.

  The other survivors crowded around us. There were only eight of them. Raymond asked me, “You wouldn’t happen to have Falk’s key, would you?”

  “Yes...” I pulled it out.

  “It will open the double doors,” he said, “though it won’t do us any good if there’s a small army out there.”

  “I’m willing to bet that the doors are warded because the imperium lining doesn’t extend out there. This will give us our advantage.” I slipped the key into the keyhole and turned it. The door opened with a groan, and a dark stairway leading upward awaited us.

  “I can scout ahead,” Raymond said.

  I shook my head. “Praskovya and I will go.”

  “I’m coming too.” Jasmine moved to join me.

  “No,” I told her.

  Praskovya tossed Jasmine a revolver. “If she wants to come, then let her.”

  “Fine.”

  I signaled to Jasmine, and we headed up the dark stairway. It ended with a long iron gate that ran forty feet across, and I could sense that its corrosive properties had been activated. To touch the gate would literally decay human flesh. Parts of the gate were boarded up, but, through missing pieces, we saw an alleyway. I decided to hold back on any body magic, just in case I needed my energy to do alchemical spells. I used my golden alchemist’s knife to neutralize the iron in the gate and then picked the lock. I pushed it open just enough to slip through and carefully stepped into the alleyway.

  I rushed to the other side of the alley and crouched behind a large crate. A couple of bullets whizzed past me from down the alley. I saw Jasmine and Praskovya across from me, near the gate, and they fired shots from their positions and took cover behind some other crates adjacent to the gate. Flashlight beams hit the adjacent walls and the ground in search of us, but we remained hidden. When we heard the fall of footsteps coming down the alley toward us, we took more shots. Three guards dove behind a pile of boxes and reciprocated the gunfire.

  I hit one of them in the chest, and he collapsed to the ground. Praskovya flicked her wrist and sent heavy boxes tumbling down onto the other two men. When they managed to climb from beneath the boxes, she and Jasmine were already on them and they surrendered.

  Now where were the last five guards?

  I felt a lump in my throat when a police vehicle drove up and blocked the end of the alleyway. It shined its headlights in our direction. Were these more imposters or real police? Did the last few guards call them in for backup? I signaled for the other women to keep their guns trained on the captured guards, and I approached the vehicle with slow steps and my arms raised. The driver stepped out of the car and approached, and, to my surprise, it was the checkpoint guard Praskovya and I had spoken to the other night.

  “Hello,” I said to him in Spanish. “Do you remember me?”

  “I do. I have a couple of friends of yours with me.” He nodded in the direction of the car.

  I took a step back and was just about to order Jasmine and Praskovya to retreat when I heard a familiar voice. “Isabella, it’s us!”

  I gasped, and the tension in my shoulders and neck faded. Ernest Wilson and Lucien Laurent rushed toward me, and I embraced both of them. I hadn’t seen them since they helped me raid a research laboratory in France a couple of months ago. Ernest was a black pilot for the Red Tails, and had run flight missions in addition to once posing as a Moroccan businessman in order to catch a Spanish assassin. I had met Lucien in Paris when Gestapo agents murdered his father, because he had aided the Resistance. The Gestapo had also killed my friend, Renée.

  “What are you doing here?” Lucien took off his jacket and wrapped it around me.

  “I was on assignment, but got caught and ended up in that lab down there.” I gestured toward the alleyway.

  Ernest looked at Lucien and then faced me. “We’ve been purging the territory of these labs since we last saw you in Paris. Guillermo and some other officers have been helping. We’ve got twelve men with us.”

  I remembered the last five guards. “Did you see five men with guns, dressed in fatigues?”

  “They ran when they saw us,” Guillermo said.

 
I tightened Lucien’s jacket around me when the cold night air sent a prickly cold breeze against my face. “There are about ten other survivors down there. I came out to clear the way for everyone else. Dr. Falk Meier is dead.”

  “Good,” Ernest said in a bitter tone. When Ernest had agreed to help me back in Paris, he had told me of a previous mission where he and Lucien uncovered another experimental lab in Catalonia. He cursed and complained about it then, and he looked ready to do so again. He looked a little drained.

  When the men started toward the alleyway, I halted them. “I’ll go tell the others it’s safe to come up. They’re going to need medical attention and transportation.”

  I ran back toward Praskovya and Jasmine. The two captured guards were sitting on the ground with nervous expressions since the women still held them at gunpoint. “Jasmine, help’s here. Get those men toward the front, and the real Spanish police will take care of them.”

  “All right,” she said, motioning toward the men with her gun. They followed her instructions and headed toward the front with arms raised.

  “And what about me?” Praskovya asked.

  I thought of Captain Skye’s order and cursed at the man in my mind. “You died in the lab, so make sure you’re a ghost. No more working with Octavian’s people, and no more spying.”

  She eyed me with suspicion. “You’re going to let me go, just like that?”

  “I didn’t say we were best friends. I’m not releasing the heart-bind, not until Octavian is defeated and this war is over. Only then will I consider your vow fulfilled.”

  She nodded. “What about when they collect the bodies?”

  “Casandra had your same hair color, height, and build...no one has to know she was here tonight.” My stomach churned.

  “How did you do it?”

  “Do what?”

  “Escape a warded room and kill all those people?”

  “Just go, Praskovya.”

  She gave me a mysterious look. “Nastya...was my twin. When we were sixteen, our father became a sycophant and was initiated to become a Cruenti.”

  My jaw tightened. “He sacrificed her to a demon, didn’t he?”

  She clenched her teeth and nodded. “Then he put me into Octavian’s service, and when he ordered me to infiltrate SOE, that is what I did.”

  She had done more than that. She played her role so well that when I first joined SOE, I asked Ian to pair me with her on a few assignments. I liked her efficiency and brains, and when we weren’t arguing with each other, we actually got along well. I felt on some level she had enjoyed her time at SOE too, except when the time came to abandon the organization and return to Octavian, that’s when we were on assignment in Belgium, and she asked me to join the other side. I refused, and she tried to throw me out of a window using telekinesis. Now, I held her life in my hands. It would be easy to just enact the bind--but it wouldn’t be easy to watch her gasp her last breath of air and crash to the ground. I made a promise.

  I stood there in silence for a few moments, and finally said, “For what it’s worth...I’m sorry about your sister.”

  She inclined her head in acknowledgment of my comment, and then took off in the opposite direction. She disappeared in the darkness. I hoped she took my words seriously--I would not release her from the bind until this was all over, and if I caught her spying or working for the enemy, then I really would kill her.

  I ran back toward the iron gate and called down to Raymond and the others. When they made it out and stepped into the alleyway, they seemed to breathe a collective sigh of relief and gathered around me. Some embraced me, while others thanked me and just squeezed my hand. I pointed them in the direction of the police vehicle and told them help had arrived, and they eagerly shuffled down the alley. Raymond was the only one to fall behind and walk with me.

  “You saved our lives, Isabella.”

  “What Falk Meier did down there was wrong. I wasn’t going to leave anyone behind.”

  He smiled at me. “Thank you.”

  I gazed at the metal helmet, and my heart sank. “Is there...any way to fix that?”

  He shook his head. “Probably not without killing me.”

  A couple of ambulances pulled up, along with three more police cars and a fourth unmarked car. The medics came in and swooped everyone up, including Raymond. I went over to Jasmine, Ernest, and Lucien. “I need to rest. I feel like crap.” I said.

  “I’m so tired...but I won’t sleep. I can’t sleep.” Jasmine wrapped her arms around Lucien and shook with sobs. She had probably just told him about Penn.

  “I’m sorry we couldn’t have found you sooner,” Lucien said, holding Jasmine in his arms.

  “You’re here,” I said. “And that’s what matters.”

  Lucien and Ernest got Jasmine and me a hotel room back in Madrid. They wouldn’t hear any different when we told them that they didn’t need to stay a few doors down from us. Jasmine had already given her statement to the police and made arrangements for everyone who had perished at the villa. After an all too common restless sleep, I awoke in the morning and found her out on the balcony, sipping from a warm cup of coffee with one hand and holding a cigarette with the other. She was lost in thought, oblivious to the sunrise.

  I joined her and, at first, stood there in silence, unsure if she wanted to hear my chattering. However she turned to me and regarded me with her deep-set eyes. “If I had made him stay in Paris, he’d be alive right now.”

  “I felt the same way about Ken,” I said, grabbing the second cup of coffee, sitting on the tiny table in between us. “I keep going over what I could’ve done differently, but the truth is that it’s not our fault, even if we feel like it is. We can’t change the past.”

  Or can we? A voice inside me questioned. What use were these powers if I couldn’t save the people I cared about the most? Even though that dream with Ammon was frightening, for the short time that I did believe it was Ken, it had felt comforting to see him and speak with him again. He shouldn’t have died the way he did. He should still be here.

  “I know,” she said. “We’re going to have to carry on for them. We can’t do anything about yesterday, so we’ve got to focus on tomorrow.”

  I nodded in agreement, but felt conflicted over my hidden desire to use my powers to change the past. Could I really? I hadn’t tried interacting with the past or future, but what would happen if I did? Still, there was that shadow figure. I didn’t understand what it was or what it may have wanted. I knew that it wasn’t Ammon, because I could sense his magic and identify him. I shuddered at the thought of Ammon masquerading as Ken and trying to get me to use my powers the way he wanted. Maybe Johnnie was right about me not fully understanding these powers. I must’ve made some type of misstep, and I had to figure out what it was.

  “I have to get back to London,” I said to Jasmine. “MI6 wants Alban’s talisman that I took.”

  “What does it do?”

  “Praskovya said the talisman could transport its user to the Den.”

  She let out a low breath. “You let that woman go?”

  “Not completely. I did a heart-bind, so she’s bound by oath to not work against me, or else she dies.”

  She finished her coffee and set it aside. “Well, I hope you guys do find the Den. I just know OSS is probably going to hound me about what went on here. Now I know why you went on leave. This life is torture.”

  There was a knock on the door, we left the balcony and went inside. “Who is it?” I slipped my hand into my bathrobe’s right pocket and held on to my golden knife.

  “It’s me and Luce,” Ernest’s voice said from the other side.

  I opened the door for them. “Come in.”

  “Are you ready?” Lucien asked as he entered with Ernest.

  “Almost,” Jasmine said, putting out her cigarette. “What time’s my flight?”

  “In thirty minutes,” Ernest said.

  “Thirty minutes? Why didn’t you come earlier?”
Jasmine crossed her arms.

  “We thought you’d be ready by now,” Lucien said.

  “I just finished my coffee, and we’re still in our bathrobes. I’m still deciding what I want to wear.”

  “Well we brought you those extra clothes from the villa earlier this morning. Just throw on something and let’s go,” Ernest said.

  Jasmine shook her head, went back inside and opened the armoire. I followed, and she tossed me a clean blouse, skirt, and a light sweater with pockets. She pulled out a halter dress for herself and a matching velvet hat. She turned toward the guys. “Can you excuse us while we get dressed?”

  “Finally,” Lucien said in a low voice to Ernest.

  “We’ll be in the hallway.” Ernest followed him out.

  “I don’t know how you do it,” she told me as she changed into her dress. “I’d be the only spy with a suitcase full of clothes wherever I go.”

  I shed my bathrobe and stepped into my skirt. “I was once on assignment where five of us, men and women, were stuck in a safe house together. We literally ate, slept, and changed clothes in the same room. We definitely didn’t have an opportunity to pick and choose what we wanted to wear.”

  She wore an amused expression. “I really wish you could come back to Paris when this is all over.”

  “You know I will.” I threw on my blouse and sweater. I grabbed the talisman and slipped it into my front pocket, protecting its presence by casting the alchemical symbol of Secrecy: an upside down triangle within a circle with a second circle and triangle within those. It wasn’t something I’d necessarily want Spanish officers to see or handle at the airport.

  We went out to meet the guys, but they had abandoned the hallway and were sitting downstairs at the bar having drinks. “Jasmine,” Lucien said, downing the rest of his wine and offering his arm to her. “Let’s get to the airport.”

  “I lost my fake passport,” I said. I doubted that would go over well with airport security.