by Ciara Graves
“What happened?”
“We kept a close eye on them, but then, they disappeared for six months. That was when the corruption started,” Mel explained. “It began with only a couple people, but then there were more. After that, there were reports of deaths. The situation was getting out of control, and all we had were a few faces, not even names to go with the faces.”
“But the four of you went in,” I said quietly. “You were tasked with taking out their leaders, right?”
“We did and what we saw in there…” Mel shuddered and looked like she never wanted to speak of it. “We went in assuming there would be a small guard and a few of their leaders in a normal house, but inside, in the basement, we found a full facility. High-tech, filled with cages of our own being tortured. Being corrupted.”
“And the leaders?”
“There were too many people to figure out who exactly was in charge, but when the fighting broke out, we heard two names being yelled over the radio. Tabitha and Simon,” Charlie said.
“Why was Moran never told those names?” Chas asked. “Were they the ones who came after you? Who… who killed you both?” He choked up on the last bit.
Mel reached out to him, taking his hand. “They were, and we told him, but the names meant nothing.”
“What do you mean? They had to pop up somewhere,” I argued.
“We assumed so, too, but every database we searched had no mention of a Tabitha or a Simon. Nothing online. Nothing anywhere. And we had no last names. Even the house we raided was owned by a corporation that had long since shut down. We were at a dead end, so the names fell away.”
“And you have no idea who they are, why they started this?” I pressed.
“From what we could tell, they want to rid the world of magic completely,” Mel muttered. “That night, your father and Greyson were taken. We barely had a chance to escape alive. Wounded severely, dealing with the effects of those damned shock grenades.”
I rubbed my arms as a chill raced through my body, knowing full well the pain of those damned things. “And no one ever went back?”
“We assumed Greyson and Trevor were killed. Until we died ourselves, and realized they weren’t here.”
“Greyson’s alive, too?” Chas asked surprised.
Charlie and Mel leaned into each other, shaking their heads. “He appeared three years ago, but we haven’t gotten him to say a damned word.”
“But he’s here, and he’ll know about these people, right?” I said excitedly. “We have to find him.”
“We know where he is, but Rori, he won’t talk about it.”
“I have to try,” I told Mel. “Please, the Cleansers are strong than before. They’re coming after the three of us, attacking innocents all across the country. They’ve put a stop to our Elite Guard teams. Any day now, they’re going to find us.” I gripped Mel’s hands as I looked her in the eye. “We need to know all we can, so we can avenge your deaths and save everyone else.”
I almost told her then what her son had done, about his oath. But that was on Chas to do, if he so chose to. From the strained look on his face, he was having the same debate with himself.
Mel looked from me to Chas then back again, nodding slowly. “We will take you to him, but there is no guarantee he will speak to you.”
“I know, but I can’t go back without trying everything.”
Mel and Charlie rose and walked through the park.
Chas and I followed. He chewed nervously on his bottom lip. I grabbed his hand without thinking, and he squeezed mind back. I knew he was embracing the cold that came off me. Chas’s inner bear always made him warmer, so we balanced each other out in a weird way. I’d always made Brogan cold without meaning to.
“This is a good thing,” I whispered to him. “We’ll be able to return with information to help us fight the Cleansers.”
“I know, it’s just seeing them again—it’s overwhelming.”
“I’m sure they feel the same about you.”
“And your dad, he’s alive.” He squeezed my hand again and gave me a hopeful grin. “We can find him and bring him home.”
If I walked through the front door of my home with Dad at my side, alive after all this time, Mom would lose her shit. She’d be pissed at first, of course, thinking he’d run off, but then he would tell her the truth, and I could have my family back. Hope grew within me, that if I could survive this war, there was a bright future waiting for me with my family.
I wondered briefly if I would find myself with Chas or Brogan at the end of all this.
Or neither.
The park gave way to an open field with a small shack that did not fit in with the rest of the scenery we’d seen so far. Outside it, resting on a log was a man with the same facial structure as Brogan, the same leather and beads woven into his hair, and the exact same marking on the back of his right hand.
As we approached, Mel and Charlie told us to wait and let them go ahead.
“Greyson?” Mel greeted him softly. “We have visitors who would like to speak to you.”
The shaman poked a stick at his small fire, but did nothing else.
“They know Brogan. Your nephew,” Mel tried again. “They’ve come to ask you some questions to help them take down the enemy we couldn’t.”
Greyson stiffened, and his eyes shot over to Chas and me. “No.”
“Please, sir.” I hurried toward him, sinking to the ground beside his seat. “I know whatever happened to you was not good, but we need your help to defeat them. To get rid of them for good.”
Greyson looked past me at the crackling fire, his eyes lifeless and dull.
“Look, I’m sorry for what they did to you, I am, but we need to know who they are. Where they are. Brogan is part of our team now, and the three of us are being targeted,” I went on, waiting for something to make him open up. “I don’t want him to die. Hell, I really don’t want to die, but we have nothing to go on, and they’re attacking us.”
Greyson huffed roughly but shook his head. “I’m sorry for that, I am, but my nephew and everyone else needs to take cover and stay out of their way. There’s no stopping them.”
“That’s not true.” Chas stepped forward. “We’ve already taken out a good number of their soldiers, seen their weapons.”
“Seen them?” he snapped. “Is that all?”
“No,” Chas shot back with a growl. “We’ve felt the pain of those grenades, been cut off from our powers, and nearly taken captive. Brogan nearly died during the last attack, but Rori saved him. We know what we’re up against, but we need to know who they are.”
Greyson stalked away from us, shaking his head like a man on the edge of insanity. “No, you don’t. As soon as you know of them, it’s over. They’ll find you, and they’ll do to you what they did to me.”
“Kill us?” Chas asked.
I glowered at him for being so harsh.
But Greyson stopped moving and hung his head. “Trevor and I were trapped for years, in cages,” he whispered, barely loud enough for us to hear. “Each day was a new form of torture. Every day, we told each other to hold on, but the pain… what they did to us, they corrupted us, bit by bit, until Trevor… He no longer knows himself.”
My heart sank as the bright future I glimpsed vanished. There might be no saving him if he was already corrupt and his mind gone.
“And they killed you?” Chas asked quietly. “Did you try to escape?”
Greyson faced us again, but his eyes were filled with agony and regret. “I never had the strength to try. They stripped my power. I couldn’t take it. I was too weak to break out, but my mind was turning. I refused to be used as their puppet, so I attacked a guard, got hold of his gun… I took my own life before they could.”
The silence that fell over the field was heavy, weighing me down until I gave into it, and kneeled next to him.
These monsters, they destroyed some of the strongest people we had in the Vanguard. Broke them apart piece
by piece, drove them to madness and suicide. And Dad was still with them. Who knew what was happening to him now. I snapped my fingers and called up Dad’s staff. Would he ever get the chance to wield it again? Hold it in his hands? If it didn’t work here, then he was alive, that was the only bright light I could hold onto. But how long would he last if he’d forgotten who he was three years ago?
To think, all this time, I’d been going about my life, blaming him for Mom being miserable, blaming him for leaving us. Tears slipped down my cheeks.
Chas kneeled in front of me, wiping them away gently with his thumb.
“Sorry. Not sure why I’m even crying,” I mumbled.
“It’s alright, we’ll get your dad back,” he promised.
“No,” Greyson shouted. “You cannot go after them. They will kill you all.”
Chas got in his face. “I am going after them because I have to avenge my parents. As for Brogan, we’ll tell him what happened to you, and you don’t think he’ll feel the same? You think Rori is going to sit there and let them keep her dad forever? We have a job to do, and I’m sorry you were taken. I’m sorry the only way out you saw was taking your own life, but we haven’t given up yet. We’re just getting started. You can either give us what we need to help us, or you can continue to wallow in your misery. Either way, we’re going after them.”
He came back to me and reached for my hand to pull me to my feet.
I put my hand in his.
“Mom, Dad, as much as I wish to stay with you, we have to go back.”
“Go,” Mel told him and hugged her son tightly. “Be safe, Chas.”
Charlie hugged him next, whispering something in his son’s ear that had him turning a bright shade of red. Then he clapped him on the back, and we started toward the street where we’d first appeared in the void. I was beginning to think of the door, realizing we’d come here for one purpose and were leaving without fulfilling it, when Greyson called out our names.
“Wait, just wait,” he shouted.
We paused.
He hustled over to us, preventing us from going any further. “Bogard.”
“What?” Chas asked.
“Simon and Tabatha Bogard,” he said clearly. “They are dangerous, smart, and have money coming from somewhere we couldn’t figure out.”
“Do you remember where they took you?”
“West. That was all I knew. The one time I was outside during transportation, it was hot, no humidity, and I thought I saw mountains in the distance,” Greyson explained. “You have to be careful. What they’re doing… they’ve found a way to use science against our kind, and if they aren’t stopped, they will wipe us all out.”
“But why? I don’t understand why they hate us so much.”
Greyson smiled sadly as he reached for my shoulder. “They had kids once. Were a happy family, but there was an accident, fighting broke out between magic-users and non-users, and their kids were caught up in it, killed by a mage. It was terrible, and they weren’t the only casualties. Then the person who did it simply vanished. There was no justice. As far as I know, that’s what set them off.”
“They’ve started a war because of an accident?”
“You would be surprised what parents will do when they lose a child,” Greyson whispered. “The pain is unbearable. Trevor spoke often of you in the beginning. You were the reason he held on as long as he did and now I see you follow in his steps.” He gently picked up one of my braids. “Looking at you now, I sense the same hesitation that was always in him.”
I clutched Dad’s staff as I mumbled, “We came here to find him. I need help.”
“The balance? Yes, Trevor often had trouble with it, too.”
“How did he do it, though? Everyone I talk to says he found a way, but no one can tell me how. And each time I use my power… I feel it changing me.”
Greyson held out his hand, and I carefully let him take Dad’s staff. “Your father is a kindhearted man who truly believes in what we did. In saving people. Protecting the innocent. He told me quite often of how the shadow inside his mind longed to take control, fearing he would get himself killed if he did not listen to cold logic.”
“And?”
Greyson sighed as he easily flipped the staff around, then offered it back to me. “He let himself be taken captive instead of wiping out the entire house of soldiers and innocents, as the power wanted him to do.”
“What?” I asked, shocked. “He let himself be taken?”
“There were innocents. He sensed their life forces all around him. If he’d attacked, his power would have drained every living being of life, and he could not live with himself. So yes.” He smiled sadly. “The balance you seek will come to you if you have faith in yourself and what you truly believe is right and good. Power is only power, but you control it. You have people who care and love you in your life?”
“I do,” I said, shifting slightly when I caught Chas’s slight grin.
“And you love and care for them? Would do anything for them?”
“I would. Already have,” I agreed.
“They are the ones you must focus on when you fight. That love, that raw emotion is what will keep you from embracing the ends justifying the means your power wishes to convince you is right,” he explained. “Hold onto those feelings, the good, the bad, all of them. Only they can stop you from turning into a cold-hearted necromancer. So few were able to do the same, even those without two paths to follow. It’s why they died out so quickly. They tore themselves apart.”
“Thank you,” I told him. “For everything. I’m sorry for what happened.”
“Me, too, child. Me, too. Now you must go. Find your father, and tell my nephew… tell him I’m proud of him, and I hope to see him again. Just not too soon.” He stepped aside.
Chas waved one last time to his parents.
I steeled myself for what would happen when we got back to reality.
Chas took my hand and then we were off, running back to the street. The whisper of a voice started inside my mind, the shadow told me Greyson was wrong. But I did as Greyson told me; I held onto the emotions that made me who I was, and the voice quieted enough for me to think straight. I doubted it would always be this easy, but it was a start.
“We need the door back,” Chas said as we reached our starting point.
“Working on it.” I held his hand in mine and shut my eyes, thinking of the door that brought us here and how it would take us back to our bodies. Just as it was forming, though, I stopped and opened my eyes.
“Rori, what’s wrong?”
“Look, I have no idea what I’m feeling or thinking or what’s going to happen, and the last thing I want is to be that girl, but I’ll hate myself forever if I don’t do this.”
“Do what?”
I grabbed the front of his shirt and dragged him down so I could kiss him.
I remembered my first kiss with Brogan. It had been sweet and filled with promise.
When Chas’s lips met mine, his arms wrapped me up, and he crushed me to him as heat and cold met in a swirling storm of ice and flowers, sprouting to life at our feet.
The world spun, and I never wanted the moment to stop. It was crazy, it had to be all in my head, but everything in those few seconds was right.
As we pulled back from each other, Chas with a question in his eyes, I knew I had a very hard decision to make after we returned. I stood on my toes and kissed him one more time, briefly, then forced myself away and shut my eyes again. I liked Brogan, I did. He was sweet and funny, but after all we’d been through, all the bickering and the fighting and the cursing, something else had grown between Chas and me. Something I refused to put a name to just yet. Something stronger.
The door appeared in front of me, and I reached out a hand to guide us through. My mind was a tangled mess of thoughts Chas would see and hear, but there was no time to block him from any of it. We had more information than we bargained for, and we needed to find Moran to tell him
. We had names now and if not a location for a headquarters of these Cleansers, at least a direction.
We passed through the door and settled back in our bodies. I opened my eyes to find lights flashing and an alarm wailing.
Brogan was gone, and Chas and I were instantly on our feet.
“The Cleansers. Damn it,” he growled, then took my hand.
We bolted out the door to find Brogan, praying we weren’t too late.
Chapter 13
Chas
The outpost was a mess. Soldiers ran every which way, Vanguard and Cleansers, alike.
Rori and I had no time to say anything or ask what was happening. We started attacking the first enemy soldiers we ran into, all the while looking for Brogan. A hole had been blown into the corridor. We peeked out, only to find it was like we’d been transported back in time to a medieval battle between two great armies. All the while, Brogan’s storm rained down on them all.
“We need to get down there.”
Rori told me to hold on. She aimed her staff forward, and a slide of ice lifted us off our feet then took us down into the masses fighting below. She snapped her fingers and Merlin appeared at her side. “Brogan. Where is he?”
I shut my eyes and reached for the connection to Brogan. It only took a second, then I latched onto his power.
There was someone else already there, fighting alongside him, the way we did. A priest. My eyes shot open, and I nodded across the courtyard.
Rori took on soldiers with her staff, shooting ice and shadow at all who got in our way.
Merlin ran ahead, snarling and biting, dragging enemies to the ground as they screamed in a panic.
I shifted into my bear and barreled into a line of soldiers, aiming for Brogan and the woman fighting at his side.
She wielded a white staff, attacking with a fury of golden power, shooting out healing beams of light at the same time, boosting the Vanguard around them.
I roared as I neared.