A small red-haired teenager approached as soon as the other Silencer was busy and sat on the floor beside me. I didn’t want to move, was scared that if I tried my body wouldn’t work.
“I’m Gemma,” the girl said in a soft but urgent voice and placed her hands on me. The healing effect of her Shaman abilities astonished me; it was like aloe on a sunburn. After only thirty seconds I pushed myself up and watched as Michaela finished off the other Silencer, a disturbingly large amount of blood smeared on her clothes, face, and the floor. I noticed with a churning of trepidation that Nathaniel had escaped but he had put up a wall. I couldn’t even tell which way he’d left the hall let alone what he planned to do next.
“Thank you,” I said to Gemma.
“You’re welcome,” she replied as she ran her hands lightly over the open gash on my left arm, which immediately began to seal itself shut. Michaela hurried back to us and I briefly wondered if she ever changed out of her skintight black pants and knee high boots.
“We need to move, now,” she said as she grabbed my newly healed arm and pulled me to my feet. She gave me back my Beretta and led Gemma and I to a small wooden door at the back of the hall I hadn’t noticed before. Even I had to duck through it, which said something.
Gemma heaved the door shut behind us, our eyes only taking seconds to adjust to the sudden darkness. We were in a very narrow, windowless passage, presumably somewhere in between the rooms around the hall.
“What happened?” Michaela asked as we hurriedly descended a flight of stone steps and turned a corner into a similar passageway.
I was oddly calm considering the extremely disturbing recent events. I liked moving. It felt like I made a difference. Like maybe there was hope for the disaster at hand. Still, I was impressed with the efficiency in which I summarized the night’s events and not even with a tremor in my voice.
“Nathanial betrayed us, let the Black Shadow in. They’ve been blocking us for months. I saw it but too late. I teleported to the hall just as Nathanial had the Silencer you took down kill Norman. I couldn’t fight them so I called for you and now we’re here and we have to stop the Black Shadow before they kill everyone.”
We came to an apparent dead end and Michaela started running her hands over the wall in front of us while she nodded to acknowledge she had heard my story.
“Um, where is ‘here’ by the way,” Gemma piped up from behind me. “I never knew this was here, and what’s the plan?”
Michaela seemed to grow frustrated with her work and I realized what she searched for. The rectangular stone block glowed, unlike the rest of the mundane wall. I walked forward and pushed on it with both hands and it gave way, screeching against its neighbors. I expected a secret door to open but it didn’t.
Instead, I reached my hand through the rather large hole in the wall and my fingers found a hold on a lever of some sort. I pulled it instinctively and now cue the opening of the secret door, which was the same size as the wooden one that let us in from the hall, but this one was camouflaged, no hinge in the stone wall to give it away.
Michaela sighed in relief and swooped through the opening, which led to a passageway identical to the one we had just left. “Thank God you found that, Aubrie, I couldn’t remember where the key was…it’s been so long since I’ve been down here. These back passages lead to the underground catacombs, you know, where they used to store important dead Mystics.”
Gemma made a squeaking noise and I looked back to see her freckled face even paler than it had been before. “Don’t worry, we’re not going there, I told her.” I had a pretty good idea of what Michaela’s plan was, and it didn’t involve visiting centuries old cadavers.
My own nerves started to set in. I had told Gabriel I would be right back and I’d already been gone probably forty-five minutes. Who knew what the Black Shadow had accomplished in that much time. Suddenly I felt my stomach clench and I pitched to a stop, barely noticing Gemma fall into me.
“I have to go. Michaela, find Cara and make sure her and Isaac get out.” I didn’t need to explain to them what happened. Not after my intuition threw my body into a panic and I managed to get out two words.
“Gabriel. Shit.”
Chapter 31
I knew I wouldn’t find him there but I teleported back to his room anyway. Two sharp cracks followed by three that sounded farther away greet me, the rapport of gunshots reaching my ears through the smashed open window. I hoped I was wrong about Gabriel, but I wasn’t. The room was in complete disarray and little flurries of snow settled on the window seat where I had sat just hours before, watching Gabriel sleep in peace.
I shrunk back into the shadows of a dark, wooden chest of drawers as a new outburst of gunfire erupted from somewhere inside the building, and pushed my back into the wall, trying to gain some stability. I was scared and the tears trickled down my face like silent rain. I didn’t even know what happened because there was a wall up and I knew it wasn’t Gabriel’s. I was so in tune with him now that I could tell which walls were his.
A deafening bang sounded almost simultaneously as I felt the floor shake and little trails of dust fell from the ceiling. A brief, strangled scream. Nothing. Nothing but fear vibrated through the air, but I couldn’t move. I sunk onto my heels and tried to grasp onto some feather of my intuition but the Black Shadow Guardians had it locked in a padded cell. They wouldn’t slip up with me again; they would now know the extent of my involvement in the Mystic.
Finally, I caught on to something and I gasped in fear and astonishment. Somehow, for a few fleeting seconds, I had felt Gabriel, alive. The feeling entered and left me almost before I had a chance to recognize it, but I was sure of the feeling despite its brevity.
I sat still as a manikin for a minute after the shock to make sure there wasn’t anything more, but I didn’t feel it again. I wiped my face dry and sprang into action once more, afraid to waste even a precious second, grabbing my black jacket and an extra clip for my gun from my backpack, and stuffed it in a pocket before teleporting out into the night.
When Gabriel had made contact I felt a wave of ice cold wind on my cheeks, felt the frozen damp earth beneath my hands and seeping through the knees of my jeans, felt pain and desperation as I never had.
They could be anywhere, my brain told me. I kept running, crouched, along the perimeter of the massive building, knowing that unfortunately, my brain was right. They might not even have him on capital grounds anymore. I had to make an effort though, had to find him, had to keep moving and try to keep in mind what he had managed to get through to me.
The gunshots were louder out there and all around me, blasts exploded into the dark night like a fireworks display, leaving death behind instead of light. I approached my first corner of the building without hesitation, slipping around it with my gun covering the unexplored space in front of me. Nothing.
I ran a short distance to a sort of inlet, knew I had to clear it before I could pass by, and felt confusion at my sudden intuition, which unfalteringly warned me of the presence of a Davo. I rushed into the alcove, a remote entrance into the Capital, and just had time to witness the Davo shift from an old woman into Aeris. Apparently, I feared Aeris most at the moment and I internally thanked Moraine for making me accompany her on the mission to kill the Davos back in Alliance.
“DAVO!” I screamed to any Mystic that would hear me, and miraculously one of our Silencer’s raced past me to attack the beast, who curiously retained the appearance of Aeris. The Silencer was phenomenal, releasing red smoke into the air in seconds, and the Davo fell at my feet. The beast was so repulsive up close that I instinctively stomped on its head, repeatedly, until it dawned on me that we weren’t standing on grass.
When I felt Gabriel it had definitely been earth under my hands. “What in the hell is a Davo doing here with the Black Shadow?” The Silencer asked me. I wanted to ponder this mystery and wonder if the Davos and Shadows were working together, but I couldn’t focus on anything other tha
n finding Gabriel. “I have no idea!” I shouted as I teleported away.
He was at least outside of the gates because everything inside was concrete. That excited me but didn’t help entirely since that still left a couple of acres to cover, if they held him on capital grounds at all.
I teleported outside of the gates, to a patch of white rose bushes I had noticed as we walked in the day before. I didn’t want to teleport too close to the gate, figuring it would have guards flanking both sides. I worked my way through the garden maze, trying to feel and listen, physically and mentally, but all was silent. The anxiety set in.
At a corner of the maze, I approached a stone statue of an ancient looking man reaching toward the sky and standing on what appeared to be a dead demon. A Davo. My intuition warned me and I dropped into a lower crouch. I needed to find out where Gabriel was and my current method didn’t seem to work. I slunk up to the statue and peered through a gap in the Davo’s horns.
A Black Shadow Shaman ran my way. I slunk back down into the shadow at the base of the statue as slowly as I could, so she wouldn’t notice any quick movements. She rounded the corner at full speed and didn’t even notice me as I jumped up and chased after her.
Thankfully she wasn’t very fast and only a Shaman. It only took me a couple of strides to catch up to her and when I got close enough I lunged at her legs, taking her down to the ground with me.
She screamed and struggled but I had my knee in her back and I grabbed her long hair, pulling her head back so she could see the gun I put to it.
“Shut up, unless you want me to kill you,” I said, although I knew I wouldn’t hold up to the threat. I didn’t even have the safety off. Apparently, I convinced her enough anyhow because she shut right up. “There’s a guardian, you guys have him out here somewhere. The left side of his face is scarred. You tell me where he is and I’ll let you live. And don’t bullshit me. I’ll know if you’re lying.”
She only whimpered but I knew better than to show any weakness. She was a member of the Black Shadow for a reason. I pushed the muzzle of the gun harder against her temple and she gave in.
“Okay, okay, please don’t kill me, I just saw a guardian like that, they have him in a clearing around this big fountain back that way.”
“Thanks,” I said, and I whacked her on the head with the butt of the gun. She would be out for a while. I rolled her body to lie along the outside wall of shrubbery so she wouldn’t be an obvious giveaway if anyone looked down or passed quickly through there.
I switched clips with shaking fingers and decided bold was best. I closed my eyes and landed silently with my feet on the shoulders of the tallest of the three angels, crouching like a gargoyle above the live demons waiting for me below.
There were four men in the clearing around the statue but they all faced away and didn’t notice me when I first appeared. I didn’t move, trying to absorb what was in front of me, despite the fact that I wished I wasn’t seeing it.
Well, I had figured out where Nathaniel sneaked off to. He sat on the ground directly below me, leaning back against the fountain’s base. I could see his left pants leg ripped open, blood staining the immediate area around the gunshot wound I had inflicted, only there was no wound. I put the pieces together and realized that the Shaman I inquired had just left there, had healed Nathaniel.
Aeris, unmistakable even in the dim light, murmured to a man with blonde hair I didn’t know.
I was not surprised to find Aeris there. Of course, he would remain out there while his minions took over the capital. The other man I couldn’t place, not without seeing his face anyway.
I saw a body on the ground at their feet and knew they towered over Gabriel. I couldn’t see him entirely because the two men blocked my view, but I knew. I observed it all in under a few seconds and tried to think of what I needed to do.
Aeris shifted to the right and I had a clear view of Gabriel lying on the ground on his side, facing towards me. He didn’t move. I wondered why he didn’t go invisible but I realized Silencers must be able to block him just like they could my teleportation.
I teleported to the other side of the tall hedge while I still could, and had to trap my mouth with my hand to keep quiet. I needed to think of a plan and I couldn’t do it with the fear of someone turning around and seeing me perched on the angel’s shoulders like some awkward bird.
I floundered, unable to think of a solution to the situation. Reasoning with them was totally out of the question, they would surely just attack me, white flag flying and all.
I could teleport in and start shooting their legs out but I wouldn’t be quick enough, at least one of them would get to me; likely Aeris since he was a Silencer. I could take him out first but the other man could attack me. Likely, Nathaniel would guard Aeris with an unknown talent, anyway.
I scrunched my eyes shut. I could call for Michaela and Gemma to come help; we could each shoot one before they knew what hit them. But Gemma, Michaela, and Isaac were busy sneaking the kids and non-functional members through the secret passages of the capital and I didn’t know anyone else there. I was alone and I had to save Gabriel now.
I ran plans through my head over and over, but my options kept disappearing off the list, and I approached a realization I didn’t want to make.
Suddenly a high pitched voice spiraled through the air and a wave of goose bumps washed up my arms, the hair standing on end there and on the back of my neck. Dahlia.
“She hasn’t shown up yet?” she said with a contempt that just seemed to be a part of her voice no matter what she said.
“No, but she’s close.”
I started.
“She’s listening to us now.” What the hell? The other man was a Sage, had to be. They went silent.
Holy shit, what a revelation. Not just any Sage. My dad. The blonde guy was Jonah. And they held Gabriel as hostage, not prisoner. They wanted something…me. So they could kill me before I became an effective member? So they could try to make me change sides, own up to the family business? Yeah, that was probably the case.
Fear ripped through me even as I felt relieved. If all they wanted was me, then Gabriel could go alive, but not without payment. The price tag read Aubrie Lander’s life because the alternative was to join the Black Shadow and I wouldn’t.
I gripped the cold metal of the gun as though it were the last hour of my life. There had been a few times growing up when I hadn’t wanted to live anymore. That had been reckless; now that I knew Aeris would kill me, I wanted nothing more than to keep on living. And I knew I would die. There was no doubt in my mind, which was made up to give my life for Gabriel’s. I wanted him to live, not die, because of me.
Chapter 32
I teleported onto the angel’s shoulders again, this time standing rather than crouching…much more impressive. Dahlia shrieked and Nathaniel jumped up and scurried behind Aeris and my dad, who had casually turned to stare at me. Smiling. They actually had the gall to smile.
And I knew in that moment that I had been foolish. They had no intent to let Gabriel go, not even if I paid with my own blood. Dying for him wouldn’t be enough. And then I came to the realization I had been denying; the real price of Gabriel’s life.
There’s one thing I hadn’t thought of when I said I would do anything for him. Kill. I knew in a heartbeat I would die for him, but killing was something utterly different. Dying was in fact suddenly the easy way out.
I made the decision not with ease, but with confidence. Taking a life went against everything I had ever held a philosophy about. But it was no longer about me, and I knew that I would sacrifice even my soul, not just my body, for Gabriel.
The blood tore through my body like the music of the damned, my heart pounding it out like speakers from Hell and fire flew from my eyes as the smirks disappeared from their faces.
I blinked and Aeris didn’t stand on the ground anymore, he pushed me off the fountain, slashing my stomach open with a knife even as we fell through t
he air. I could feel the heat seeping through my clothes and I thought my spine had snapped when we hit the ground. Was the ground always that hard? But I couldn’t feel the pain, my body went rogue with the thought of them killing Gabriel.
The first shot clamored out through the pale light, the moon and stars witnessing the spray of blood and brain exploding into the air from Aeris’ head, splattering my face with his remains. Dahlia screamed as I shot Nathaniel in his retreating back and he fell to the ground in a pathetic heap.
I pushed Aeris’ faceless body off me and turned on her, huddled on the ground with her arms over her head like they could keep out my bullets. My dad was gone. He had split before my backside hit the ground. He had a couple of seconds’ warning from his intuition and he used it to save himself and leave everyone else behind, including his other daughter, who now shivered pitifully in front of me.
No retaliation. No attitude. She had noticeably been brainwashed to believe the Black Shadow was invincible, that Aeris could never die. I had just shattered her world, and something in her head was so messed up that she didn’t even try to kill me for it.
I lowered the gun and threw up onto the grass, my abdomen screaming in agony. Dahlia made to move so I pointed the gun at her while I took deep, heaving breaths. I had just killed two people, took away their lives, and it would haunt me until someone took mine. Or until I slipped away, right there, right then.
I wiped Aeris’ blood out of my eyes so I could look down and see my own rapidly spreading from a two-inch gash right under my ribs.
Every time I took a breath I thought my abdomen would split right open, spilling out my guts. I pressed my hand to the wound in an effort to keep it together and tried to ignore the way the blood gushed out around it.
I looked over at Gabriel, who seemed oblivious to everything that had just happened. I glanced at my sister but she sat there crying and I knew she would stay put. I knew a lot of things now that Nathaniel was dead and couldn’t block me anymore. Like how my sister had always secretly resented our dad and the life he had forced her to live.
The Affliction Page 24