Solatium (Emanations, an urban fantasy series Book 2)

by Becca Mills

  I thought about it. A plan formed.

  “Yellin’s afraid of me. I’ll scare him into taking me along. I can at least feed power to a defensive barrier.”

  “Absolutely not,” the brothers said with one voice.

  Sometimes they were on exactly the same wavelength.

  “No, seriously. I’m sure he’ll cave if I threaten him.”

  Theo laughed humorlessly. “Come on, Beth. First of all, Gwen may not have been right that you’re stronger than he is. Second, even if you’re theoretically stronger, you can’t use what you have. Third, Yellin’s not the only Second in that house. The others will back him up. And last but not least, if Lord Cordus gets back and finds you’ve been uncooperative, there’s going to be hell to pay.”

  Andy leaned over the front seat. He looked unusually serious.

  “It’s too dangerous, Beth. You’re not coming along. Period.”

  “Fine, whatever.”

  Theo arched an eyebrow at me in the rearview. “‘Fine, whatever’? We’re looking for a ‘Yes, sirs, Theo and Andy, sirs.’”

  “Yes, sirs, Theo and Andy, sirs.”

  Andy studied my face, frowning. I smiled and tried to look obedient.

  Brooklyn’s last traffic light released us, and Battery Tunnel closed in around the car, surrounding us with the dull roar of trapped road noise.

  We drove the rest of the way in silence. When we got home, the guys walked me to my room. Andy ruffled my hair and smiled before leaving, but I could tell he was troubled. They both were.

  I’d been so tired earlier, but by the time I was finally in bed, I’d gotten my second wind. I lay there, Sniggles the bear tucked under my arm, thinking through Theo’s objections.

  What mattered wasn’t whether I was actually stronger than Yellin. What mattered was whether he thought I was stronger. And I bet he did. Why else would he have reacted that way when I got angry?

  And yeah, I couldn’t control my gift yet. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t use it. I was pretty sure it’d come out if I was frightened enough. That had happened once, with shocking results.

  Yellin must know about that event. Cordus wouldn’t have turned me over to a trainer who didn’t know essential info about me — like that I could incinerate the city. Or maybe irradiate it.

  If Kibwe Okeke or Elanora Wiri showed up to enforce Yellin’s orders, well, then I’d back down.

  As for Cordus being pissed off at me, I’d cross that bridge when I came to it.

  I flushed, thinking about my dreams and about the last time I’d seen him. Whatever the Cordus bridge was, I had a feeling I’d already crossed it.

  For a moment, I allowed myself to think not just about my desire, but about my feelings. Truth was, I missed him. What I missed was that he made me feel safe. At some level, I was sure he’d protect me. Not because he loved me — I wasn’t foolish enough to think that. And not because protecting those who serve you is the right thing to do. That rationale seemed, if anything, more naive than the first. No, it was because I was valuable to him. He would protect me the way someone protects their best piece of jewelry or the car they’ve saved for ten years to buy.

  Being someone’s prized possession didn’t exactly give me the warm-fuzzies. Nevertheless, the protection that came with it felt certain. Given how radically my world had shifted over the last few months, having one sure thing was a big deal. A very big deal.

  I tried not to think too far beyond that. Not about all the people who weren’t valuable enough to protect. Not about the reasons I was so valuable to him. Not about what he might someday make me do. I knew my safety, such as it was, had a terrible price tag.

  “You visited Miss Sturluson? Without permission?”

  Yellin stared at first one of us, then another. I tried to blink the gritty feeling out of my eyes and stared back at him. I was really tired, but this was not the time to lose focus.

  Theo cleared his throat. His worry was palpable. This wasn’t going well. Yellin seemed unable to process the basic fact of what we’d done.

  “Yes, Mr. Yellin. As I was saying, Miss Sturluson revealed that another much newer fragment of the Thirsting Ground is in the city and that it is pursuing Miss Ryder.”

  “In the middle of the night? Without permission?”

  Theo shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Yes, sir. Miss Sturluson said she herself felt pulled to Miss Ryder. She guessed the pull would be much stronger for the youngling fragment.”

  “Just the three of you?”

  Theo sighed, giving up on the effort to convey information.

  “Yes, sir, just the three of us.”

  Yellin kept staring at us. Slowly, a red flush hop-scotched up his neck, and a vein began to throb at his left temple.

  “That is … that is …” His eyes roved around the wall behind us, as though he might find some words up there. Eventually he did. “That is unacceptable.”

  “Mr. Yellin,” Theo tried again, “we had an opportunity we felt we couldn’t pass up, so we took it. If I could just tell you what Miss Sturluson said —”

  “Unacceptable! Unacceptable!”

  He actually pounded on his desk.

  Watching the unfolding temper tantrum, I felt even surer that Gwen’s idea was right. Yellin looked like someone who’d been forced to lead a group of people who were stronger than he was. He didn’t have the power to back up his orders. Insubordination terrified him because there was nothing he could really do about it.

  With that certainty came insight: he was afraid all the time, afraid that he’d lose control of us, afraid he’d fail.

  I understood that. I’d spent most of my life afraid, either in the midst of a panic attack or afraid one was about to hit me. I knew how constant fear could warp a person.

  We needed a different approach. I mustered my smallest, most contrite voice.

  “Mr. Yellin, we apologize for not coming to you immediately when Miss Sturluson called. Since we went off on our own, now we have information we’re not sure what to do with. We really need your help.”

  Yellin’s eyes jerked over to me, and I shrank down in my chair, trying to look small and submissive.

  “Please, Mr. Yellin. We’re alone and afraid. What will we do if you don’t help us?”

  At first I was afraid I’d piled it on too thick, but it seemed to work. Slowly, Yellin mastered himself. When he spoke again, his voice was still rough with anger, but the hysterical edge was gone.

  “Very well. Tell me what Miss Sturluson said. I will see what can be done.”

  I repeated what Theo had been trying to say for the last ten minutes, going back and adding detail as Yellin asked questions. As the minutes passed, his interjections went from angry to testy to thoughtful. Apparently we’d gained some valuable information.

  He was particularly interested in the tale Sturluson had told of the Thirsting Ground’s origin. When I asked him why, he said that, so far as he knew, no one had heard it before.

  “When my lord told me I would be coming to this area of the First Emanation, I made a small study of the Thirsting Ground. Very few fragments of the Ground are known to exist outside the isolate. Miss Sturluson is by far the largest and is the only one to display individual sentience. She is a matter of great interest to scholars, but she has rarely shared her knowledge. In fact, most had concluded she had little memory of her origins. Apparently that is not true. Fascinating.”

  Andy cleared his throat impatiently. “So what do we …”

  Theo touched his brother’s arm, silencing him. Theo was probably thinking along the same lines I was: we needed to let Yellin come to his own conclusions. If we pushed him and he felt cornered, things wouldn’t go well.

  We waited as Yellin frowned and thought and frowned some more.

  Finally he said, “This is a difficult situation. We cannot permit the fragment to continue hunting humans who will be missed. Questions are already being asked. But Miss Sturluson is likely correct that destroying it
would require the capacity of a power. If my lord were here …”

  Yellin blinked rapidly.

  He was moved almost to tears by Cordus’s absence. How astonishing.

  He straightened, regaining possession of himself. “We will use the carven strait the traitor Graham Ryzik discovered in the spring. The isolate will contain the fragment until my lord returns and can destroy it.”

  I was horrified.

  “No way! That isolate is full of living things. The fragment would destroy everything there. Plus,” I said, overriding Yellin’s attempt to interrupt me, “if Sturluson’s been able to learn, there’s no reason the youngling can’t figure out how to use the carven strait to come back here.”

  “Unlikely,” Yellin said, “and if it did learn to use the strait, we would be in no worse a situation than we are now. At the very least, time would have passed. Lord Cordus might well have returned.”

  “No,” I said stubbornly. “It’s not right.”

  “Beth,” Andy said gently, “think about what you’re saying. I know you made friends with those octopus things, but the fragment is killing human beings, here. And it’s after you.”

  “Just moving the killing from one place to another isn’t the answer. We should try to communicate with it, find out what it wants.”

  I looked down, frustrated that my eyes were stinging.

  “Miss Ryder,” Yellin said tightly, “if we are to take Miss Sturluson’s word for it, you are what it wants, and you it cannot be allowed to have. Your safety is of central importance. Though personally,” he added, “I am skeptical of the claim that it has come here seeking you. It is more likely that Miss Sturluson’s presence drew it here, and that its only urge is to destroy. That is the way of the Thirsting Ground.”

  “That’s not what Sturluson’s like.”

  “Yes, it is. Controlling one’s urges is not the same as eradicating them. Miss Ryder,” he continued, as I tried to cut in, “this matter is closed. You and the Messrs. Duff will take some rest while I call in assistance from elsewhere. Once a force is assembled, we will attempt to send the fragment through the carven strait.”

  Chapter 5

  I leaned against the railing at the top of the western staircase, looking down into the mansion’s grand entryway. Seven people were gathered there with Yellin. One was someone I didn’t know, a very tall man with hair so blond it was nearly white. The others were familiar to me — Andy, Theo, Gwen, and Zion, plus Kara Sanchez and John Williams, who’d both been called in from Minneapolis.

  Kara was a healer. Williams was a killer and a thug. I’d worked with them both in the spring. Kara was great. Williams, the opposite. He was strong, though — one of the strongest people Cordus had. I guess that made him necessary.

  As I watched, five more people joined the group — three women, a man, and a small, slender person who could’ve been either sex. I didn’t know any of them. That wasn’t surprising. Cordus’s organization had people scattered all over North America. The whole continent was his territory, except for the Florida peninsula, Mexico, and the narrow strip of the western coast, running up through Alaska.

  I noticed that Yellin was holding a small canvas bag. The carven strait, I assumed. My eyes stung again. I’d been nothing but grief to the isolated stratum on the other side.

  I tried to push the thought out of my mind. I’d just have to hope the tree-octopuses were strong enough to protect themselves. They’d been able to stave off my fire. That was a good sign.

  Yellin shifted the bag from one hand to the other and cleared his throat.

  “Very well,” he said grandly. “All is ready.”

  What the hell?

  I looked around. Surely he couldn’t be going with only twelve people. When Yellin said he’d assemble a “force,” I’d imagined a hundred people, or something. Twelve was not enough. And where were Okeke and Wiri? Surely the Seconds would all help with something this important.

  I straightened up and headed down the stairs. I’d been going back and forth all morning about the wisdom of challenging Yellin. But this situation wasn’t workable. No way were they going without me. I had a ton of capacity. They needed the oomph.

  “She’s coming,” Williams said, jerking his head in my direction. “And some from the Schooner.”

  I froze as every person below looked up at me with expressions ranging from confusion to surprise to horror.

  After a moment of shocked silence, Yellin launched into a screechy diatribe.

  Andy’s mouth opened and then shut. I saw Gwen had a death grip on his arm.

  “She’s a trainee,” Theo said angrily, his deep voice carrying over Yellin’s. “It’s too dangerous.”

  Williams stared at him.

  For a few seconds, the two men engaged in the silent communication of genuinely dangerous people — assessing the tactical situation and one another’s abilities and concluding, in this case, that a fight was pointless because the outcome was obvious.

  Theo looked away.

  No surprise there. Williams was many times stronger than Theo or Andy. Probably many times stronger than Theo and Andy.

  Then Williams turned his attention to Yellin.

  This wasn’t the silent communication of genuinely dangerous people. It was the wolf saying to the rabbit, I’ve just eaten, but annoy me enough …

  Yellin folded like tissue into quivering silence.

  Williams looked up at me. “Move it, Ryder.”

  Well I’ll be damned, I thought. Bastard stole my plan.

  My general attitude was that anything Williams did was, by definition, bad. The guy was all the world’s lions and tigers and bears wrapped up with a bow. But this time it had worked in my favor. After all, he was a thousand times scarier than I was. I couldn’t have shut Yellin down with a glance.

  I joined them.

  Kara gave me a big grin.

  At least someone was happy I was there.

  I climbed into the back seat of one of the estate cars. Kara joined me. Zion got in with Gwen up front.

  Once the doors were closed, Zion said, “There’s a first time for everything, eh?”

  “No shit,” said Kara, apparently forgetting she and Zion were on the outs. “Mr. Yellin was afraid of him. Un-fucking-believable.”

  Neither Gwen nor I said anything.

  Kara and Zion shared a suspicious look.

  “What do you two know about this?” Kara said.

  “Nothing,” Gwen said, pulling out of the garage. “That took me by surprise.”

  Kara turned to me. “Not you, though, eh?”

  I squirmed. Lying wasn’t my strong suit. “I didn’t know Williams was going to do that. But I did want to come along. That’s why I was up there watching.”

  “Yeah, but —”

  “What did he mean about picking people up at a schooner?”

  “The Blue Schooner,” Gwen said, helping me reorient the conversation. “It’s a motel in Jersey. It’s where other powers’ Nolanders stay when they visit New York.”

  “Other powers’ Nolanders? I didn’t think they could come here.”

  “Sure they can. Lord Cordus just wants to know who’s here and why. That said, we get more visitors from some powers than others. When there are tensions, visits generally stop.”

  I knew what that meant: no visitors from Limu’s territory, just now.

  “So, Nolanders who work for other powers have agreed to help us?”

  “I guess.” She looked up at me in the rearview. “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

  “Well, the Thirsting Ground is dangerous times ten. We need more people, and it’s in their interest to help.”

  “Yeah,” Gwen said. But she didn’t sound convinced.

  Something wasn’t right. I sat there thinking about it.

  “Lord Cordus has more than two hundred Nolanders, and Yellin could only rustle up twelve? And what about the Seconds? Why aren’t Okeke and Wiri coming along?”

  “
Okeke and Wiri are gone,” Zion said.

  “Gone … as in dead?”

  She studied her nails. “No, ‘gone’ as in defected.”

  “Defected?”

  “Lord Cordus used to have a lot more people than he does now,” Gwen said. “Both Nolanders and Seconds.” She paused, as though unwilling to continue.

  A strange feeling came over me, a pervasive sense of wrongness.

  “He’s never disappeared like this before,” Kara said. “People think he bit it. They’re jumping off the sinking ship, trying to make alliances with other powers.”

  Gwen nodded. “There’re a lot of numbers out there that’ve been going straight to voicemail for weeks.”

  I sat there, frozen. Then my head started shaking back and forth. Finally all that shaking knocked my voice loose from whatever thing in my throat had hitched it up.

  “That’s not possible. Dead? No way.”

  “What, you think you’d know if he died?” Zion said caustically. “Because of your special bond, or something?”

  “No, of course not!”

  “Well, do you think the great powers can’t die? ’Cause they can.”

  I realized my head was shaking again and stilled it by leaning forward and pressing it against the back of the front seat.

  “You all right, Beth?” Kara said, sitting forward and putting an arm around my shoulders. “Gwen, I think she’s gonna barf.”

  “I’m not sick.”

  My voice sounded weird and far away. I took a deep breath and tried to draw my thoughts together.

  “Look, he just can’t be dead. He’s so powerful. What could possibly kill him?”

  “It might seem that way to us,” Gwen said carefully, “but there are probably a lot of things in the S-Em that are stronger than Lord Cordus. If that’s where he went, something could’ve happened.”

  I tried to imagine a world populated by beings who’d make Cordus look weak. I couldn’t.

  “If he stayed here, well, some of the powers holding territory in the F-Em are thought to be stronger than he is.”

  “But his territory is the biggest.”