“Seriously? You’re sticking with the poetry?”
“The first time I witnessed the shine was that night when you stole Daniel’s mother’s magic and –”
“I didn’t steal anything!”
“Okay.” He gives me a patient look. “That night when Daniel’s mother’s magic… was transferred to you.”
I scowl at him.
“By the time I saw you that night, you were filled to the brim with magic. You seemed so different from the girl I’d known… It was almost impossible to believe it was really you.”
I frown. “Because of the green hair?”
“I never even noticed your hair. It was impossible to focus on such a small detail in your presence. The power blazed from you like a light, raw and unbelievably beautiful, until you became this irresistible, hypnotic force. I’d never seen anything like it in my life. The magic shimmered out from you like gold dust—it was spectacular.”
“Really?” I sound so skeptical that he smiles wryly.
“Keepers are trained to deal with the shine. We’re taught techniques to protect ourselves against its pull, mental and physical barriers to prevent us from being drawn to its light like a moth to a flame.”
I have no idea where he’s going with this, so I take another sip of coffee, waiting.
“We’re taught such techniques because historically the shine has often been used to enslave or manipulate. At its worst, it can cause an obsession that’s very much like a sickness; we call it being shine-struck. Once someone has been badly shine-struck, they can’t eat, or sleep, or continue with their lives in any way. In fact, if the fixation is strong enough, a cruel and prolonged death is sure to follow.”
“Okay…?”
And then, because I’m the slowest person in the world, I finally realize what he’s telling me. “Are you saying you got shine-struck?” I gape. “By me?”
He avoids my eyes by studying his coffee mug. “The first time it happened was on the night you… acquired Daniel’s mother’s magic. When I saw you that night, illuminated from within, power bleeding from your every pore, I forgot all my training in an instant. I’d never actually witnessed the shine before, and it caught me by surprise. But afterward I recovered quickly. I was strong and whole, determined to do the right thing, and I remembered my training, eventually.”
I stare at him openmouthed.
“But after the trial last year…” He runs a hand through his hair again. “The problem, I think, is that I was so weak by the time you lit up with your magic. Physically I was badly hurt, and my mental defenses had been systematically smashed by the combined might of the five judges. By the time you saw me locked up in that cage with Ingrid, it was all I could do to remain upright.” He sighs. “Which means that when you lit up, there was absolutely nothing I could do to defend myself against your shine—it just blew me away.”
“That’s why you left?”
He keeps looking into his mug. “I didn’t leave, Jess. I couldn’t. I was caught in the spell of your shine like an animal in a trap. My obsession was so intense that I slept outside your door like a dog. In the end Ingrid had to ask the Pendragons to help get me away from you.”
“You’re lying.”
“They had to drug me, handcuff me, and lock me up in a cellar.”
“Oh please.” I throw my hands in the air. “Do you honestly expect me to believe that Ingrid and Jack Pendragon kidnapped you and kept you locked up for half a year? In a cellar?”
“No,” he sighs. “That only lasted for about a month. After that the sickness faded and I realized they’d been right, so I stopped fighting. But I still didn’t trust myself around you. Although the worst of it was over, by then I could see how obsessive and unhealthy my feelings for you still were. So I went to get help, and afterward I left for Europe, and then India. I told myself I was trying to stop a war, but in retrospect I think I might’ve simply been running scared.”
I stare at his bowed head, not knowing how to feel. The sad truth is that I’ve had fantasies about Gunn finding me irresistible for years. There was a time when I would’ve given my right arm to have him be obsessed with me. My left arm too, maybe.
But this doesn’t feel right at all.
“So what are you doing here now?”
He doesn’t look up, but I notice his knuckles whitening around his mug. “I found out about the drills.”
My stomach makes a hollow twist. “You didn’t know?”
Silence. If it weren’t for those white knuckles, I’d have thought he hadn’t heard.
When he finally looks up, his eyes are so cold and bleak that I almost don’t recognize him. “No. I didn’t.” I watch the muscles in his throat work, as if he’s swallowing some emotion too intense to handle. “If I’d known… Oh, Jess. I would’ve come back immediately, no matter the cost to myself. I promise you –”
He stops talking abruptly, presses his thumb to his mouth. I see that he’s broken the handle off his mug, but it’s only when he reaches for a paper towel that I realize he’s bleeding.
“I swear to God, I would’ve killed Ingrid before I let her lay a finger on you. I want to kill her now, to be honest. I can’t even fucking look at her.”
The patches of red seeping through the white towel make my stomach turn.
“It happened,” I say, quickly looking away. “But it’s over now. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Oh, sweetheart. I know it must be hard, but you have to –”
“No.” My voice is harsh, flat. “You don’t get to decide what I have to do.”
“Okay. I’m sorry.”
I risk a glance at his hand again. The paper towel has turned almost completely red.
“You should get some antiseptic for that.”
“It’s just a scratch.”
“So what happens if I light up with the shine again?” I ask. “Will you have to leave?”
“No. I won’t ever leave you again. I promise. I’ve made good use of the time I was away; I suspect I’m probably as immune to the shine as Zig by now. When I saw you last week, you were blazing with it, and I wasn’t affected at all.”
I blink at him. “You saw me last week?”
“Yes. At the Pendragon compound.” When he notices my confusion, he points towards the calendar against the fridge. “It’s Wednesday, Jess.”
“Oh.”
That means that I’ve been sleeping for five whole days. By now I should be used to the fact that I slip into these weird comas every time I practice magic, but the idea still makes me feel helpless and vulnerable.
I watch as Gunn reaches for another paper towel to press against his thumb. It turns red almost immediately; that cut is obviously much deeper than he wants to admit.
Idiot.
“Why didn’t you tell me any of this before?” I ask when the bleeding finally stops.
“At first they wouldn’t let me anywhere near you. And then, later… I didn’t trust myself to speak to you.”
“And you couldn’t have sent me a text? Or an email? A freaking postcard?”
“I couldn’t have told you this in a text, Jess.”
“So instead you abandon me for six months without as much as a scribbled note?”
“I assumed Ingrid would tell you. I never for a moment thought …” He swallows hard as that muscle starts jumping in his jaw again.
It takes a while before he regains enough control to speak. “And it’s been seven months, actually,” he says quietly. “Seven months, six days and twenty hours. Almost two-hundred-and-twenty days, exactly.”
I glare at him. “You’re an idiot.”
“I’m not arguing with that.”
The way his mouth pulls up on the one side, just a little, while his blue eyes remain so serious and sincere melts some hard kernel of anger inside me. Or maybe it’s the fact that he’s been counting the days too.
“I guess you’re waiting for me to thank you.”
“Thank me?�
�
“For not roasting Jack Pendragon alive.”
“Oh yes. That.” A faint smile.
“It wasn’t… I can’t even...” I make a helpless gesture. “I guess the Pendragons won’t be helping us anymore after that little episode.”
“To the contrary. Jack Pendragon has so much respect for you now, I’d have said he’s shine-struck if I hadn’t known any better.”
He lifts the paper towel from his hand, and I see he was right: it’s not too serious. He’ll have a faint scar for a day or two before it heals completely.
“Gunn?” When he meets my eyes, the question spills from my lips before I know it. “Am I a monster?”
He draws in a long, slow breath. “No. You’re not.”
“What am I then?”
“You know who you are, Jess. You always have.”
“No.” I force myself to say the words. “I mean, tell me who I really am. Tell me everything. I’m sick of wondering. Knowing can’t be worse than not knowing.”
“You sure?” His voice is so gentle that it frightens me.
“No. But tell me anyway.”
Chapter 7
To those who view the deep Bloodmagic skill of Enthrallment as nothing but a form of mesmerism – Beware!
Enthrallment requires no suggestion, no incantation, no ritual or herb to effect its treacherous power. It may be the most dangerous and most powerful of the deep skills, and is to mesmerism as a steel trap is to a silk thread…
From Orations of Aelius (1st Century CE);
translated from the original Latin by Sofia Rodriguez (1999)
Gunn is talking to me.
I know he’s talking because I can see his lips moving. His face has that earnest look he gets when he’s in teacher mode, and he’s waving his hands, the way he always does when he’s explaining something. It’s obvious he’s passionate about what he’s saying.
The problem is that I can’t hear a word. Or rather, I can hear words—“cultures” and “legends” and “myths” and so on—but I can’t understand what any of it means. The words just don’t fit together logically. It’s as if I’m watching one of those misheard lyrics clips on YouTube, except it’s not at all funny and it’s making my head ache. The more I try to concentrate, the more it hurts, until I have to close my eyes against the pain.
It’s even worse with my eyes closed.
Suddenly I feel nauseous and strangely unbalanced, as if I’m about to tumble off a cliff.
“Jess? What’s wrong?”
The only answer I can manage is a weak groan.
“Are you okay?”
“Not really.” I grind out the words. By now I’m clutching my head, desperate for the awful sense of vertigo to pass.
“She did this to herself.” Zig’s voice is a menacing hiss somewhere behind me.
“Did what?” Gunn asks.
“She asked the Pendragons to Enthrall her—when the truth finally stared her in the face, she couldn’t handle it.”
“Jess? Is this true?” Gunn asks.
“Didn’t Ingrid tell you?”
“Ingrid and I aren’t exactly on speaking terms at the moment.”
I let go of my head, relieved to find that the worst of the pain has subsided. “Yes, it’s true. I can’t remember doing it, but apparently I asked Jack Pendragon to wipe my mind.”
“Oh, Jess.”
“I’m sorry, I’ll ask him to reverse the spell.” He looks so stunned and disappointed that, to my shame, I hear my voice thickening. “I honestly don’t know why I did it.”
“Your self-pity makes me sick,” Zig’s sneers. “Despite all your power, you’re a weak and despicable coward.”
I look up at him. “Zig. Seriously.” I swallow hard against the tightness at the back of my throat. “Could you maybe dial it down a notch? Please?”
“Dial what down?” He frowns.
“I know you hate me, okay? You’ve made your point, like, a million times. I’m horrible, I’m disgusting, I’m the worst thing in the entire history of the entire world.”
I rub my eyes, wishing I could close them and go to sleep forever.
“I hear you, okay? I get it. Your point is noted, whatever. So could you please, please stop telling me how evil I am every five minutes? If I ask you nicely? If I beg you?”
There’s a flash of bewilderment in his eyes before the mask of hatred drops back down. “And if I don’t? What then? Will you force me into a fire? Kiss me?” He spits the word at me.
“I’m sorry.” Maddeningly, I feel my cheeks flushing. “I don’t know why I did that.”
“You’re pathetic.”
“That’s enough,” Gunn tells Zig. “I’ve always respected your family; all Black keepers understand the sacrifices you have made. But this is beneath you.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Can’t you see that your hatred is misplaced? Open your eyes, okay, and just look at her.”
Zig doesn’t even glance at me. “Be not deceived by its appearance,” he says, clearly quoting that damn poem again. “Trust not in the false shell it inhabits, and do not pity its supposed innocence.”
“The Old Words wasn’t written about Jess, Zig. Surely you must see that?”
Zig’s scarred lip pulls back in scorn. “I’ve never taken you for a fool before, Waymond.”
“I’m all kinds of fool. Always have been. But I’m right about this.”
“When the Horror is entered onto this world, the lie is made flesh while the truth hides in –”
“Never mind him,” I tell Gunn, sick to death of listening to Zig’s nasty quotes. “It’s best just to ignore him; he can go on like this for hours. There’s no reasoning with the guy, trust me.
I put one hand to the side of my face, pointedly blocking Zig’s evil tattooed face from my line of vision. “Do you think the Pendragons will lift the spell on me?” I ask Gunn. “Is there something like an, um, un-enthrallment spell?”
Gunn gives Zig a last warning look before turning his attention to me. “Actually, I’m amazed the Enthrallment survived your surge of power last week. Jack Pendragon and his son’s bloodmagic must’ve grown stronger than anyone realized.”
“It wasn’t –” Zig starts to say something, then stops himself. A second later I hear him stomping off.
“Is he really going to be around all the time now?” I ask as the kitchen door slams shut behind him.
“Afraid so. And you’re right, it’s best to ignore him.” Gunn pulls his chair closer to mine. “I know he can be difficult, but we’re lucky to have him on our side, for now. There were two more attempts on your life while you were in your resting state. I have no idea what we would’ve done without him.”
My stomach drops. “What happened?”
Before he can answer, Ingrid walks in, her face grave.
“You need to come to my study immediately. We’ve got a problem.”
It is about forty minutes later. I’m staring at Ingrid’s computer screen, horror-struck.
On the video we’re watching, my darkest, most secret shame is being played out for the whole world to see. The footage isn’t of the best quality: it’s black-and-white, soundless, grainy, not always in focus, and taken from a weird angle.
But you can see enough. More than enough.
We watch the whole thing through, from beginning to end, in complete silence. It’s obvious neither Gunn nor Ingrid has a clue what to say to me.
“Where did you get this?” I ask once it finally ends.
“Someone put it on Facebook,” Ingrid says grimly. “Of all places. It’s been taken down from that site because of the graphic content, but apparently it’s all over the internet by now.”
“No! People can’t see this! We need to stop it now!” I start pacing the room, adrenaline rushing through my body in a shiver of pins and needles. “Maggie can help. We should phone her straight away! She’s like a total computer genius; she’ll know how to
stop it.”
Ingrid shakes her head.
“You don’t understand! She’s really good at this. She helped me last year; she was awesome. Nobody has to know; she’ll know what to do.” I start patting my pockets, forgetting I haven’t had a phone in months. “I bet not many people have seen it; nobody’s on Facebook anymore. I mean, sure, maybe some people saw it, but Jack Pendragon can Enthrall them like he did last time…”
“We’ve already spoken to Maggie, little one,” Ingrid says. “She’s the one who alerted us to this in the first place.”
“Has she blocked it? Is it off the internet?”
“Unfortunately, there was nothing she could do. By the time she learned about the video, it had already been downloaded to dozens, even hundreds of computers.”
“No.” I sink back into my chair, unable to believe this is happening.
Last year, a boy named Jeffrey Black held me and some friends hostage in the school library. He planned to kill us: he had a gun and he wanted to watch us die. He also planted a bomb in the gym during the homecoming dance, and his plan was to burn down the school with everyone in it.
In the end he did manage to burn down a large part of the school, and he shot a teacher dead right in front of me, but he didn’t get to kill anyone else.
Because I killed him first. With my bare hands.
At the time, Jack Pendragon helped us sweep the whole thing under the carpet. Under his Enthrallment spell, the entire town soon became convinced that the incident had been nothing but a minor blip: a disturbed boy had shot a teacher, and that was tragic. But nobody else had really been in danger. There was nothing to fear, nothing to examine, nothing to lose any sleep over. They even forgot about Miss Anderson after a while.
But this should jog their memories all right.
The video clip, which must have been taken by the school’s security camera, clearly shows the four of us (me, Maggie, Chloe, and Amanda) tied up on chairs while Daniel lies bleeding on the floor. It shows Jeffrey strutting around with a gun while the other girls, who were drugged, slowly lose consciousness. It shows me talking to Jeffrey and him leaving the room. It shows me struggling against my bonds and freeing my right foot. It shows Miss Anderson entering the library and cutting my right hand loose. It shows Jeffrey coming back and shooting Miss Anderson twice, first in the stomach and then in the head. It shows me leaping up, my left leg and left arm still bound to the chair, and attacking Jeffrey while he stares at her dead body. It shows me grabbing him by the throat as we struggle on the floor. It shows me hitting his head against the sharp end of a small raised step, over and over again.
Fireborn (The Dark Dragon Chronicles Book 2) Page 7