Link here to a general overview of the novel
Prologue, Chpt 1, Chpt 2, Chpt 3, Chpt 4, Chpt 5, Chpt 6, Chpt 7, Chpt 8, Chpt 9, Chpt 10, Chpt 11, Chpt 12, Chpt 13, Chpt 14, Chpt 15, Chpt 16, Chpt 17, Chpt 18, Chpt 19, Chpt 20, Chpt 21, Chpt 22, Chpt 23, Chpt 24, Chpt 25, Chpt 26, Chpt 27, Chpt 28, Chpt 29, Chpt 30, Chpt 31, Chpt 32, Chpt 33
Chapter Thirty-four
Daav
“Shit, not midnight yet,” my Angel says.
We have a little over a quarter bell to go. I let my eyes glide over him one last time, like I’m using the sight of him to armor myself.
“We’ll stall. Places everybody,” Sebastian quips and tosses down his pad. He wields his own version of armor.
He grabs his gun and slips it into the waist holster at his back that he donned earlier.
“Hit record,” I tell Bethany who has an outdated camcorder perched on the mantle.
She reaches and hits a button.
A burst of popping noise rings the air punctuating the wail of the squall.
Gunshot shatters the glass of the sliding doors and we’re ducking between the furniture of the living room, tucking heads and bodies on instinct. Loud enough my ears hurt, but the assault’s fairly limited in length. Hissing sounds and the thunk of objects has me uncovering my head to see small projectiles scattered on the floor, foggy gas escaping from them across the room.
No more gunfire, but the smoke fills the room in thick layers. I breathe in, out. Nothing. No effect. Thank Verse.
My ears still ring from the gunshot, other sounds hard to hear.
“Guess…worked,” Sebastian says, his slight cough more the result of the thickening air than the agents within the gas. I’m only picking up some of the words.
Everyone’s standing now, their weapons also holstered, but ready as we planned.
Isolde bumps against me. “Come on,” she mouths as I read her meaning from her lips even though I can’t hear the sound.
I check my safety’s on, grab her waist, draw her next to me, and point the muzzle of the gun to her head. This feels wrong, even if it is part of our script.
The attack, our reactions, our jerky response are all condensed into moments, a blur of time that’s both real and unreal as it plays out among us.
Through the shattered glass of the sliding doors a half dozen guards in tactical vests and body armor wet from the storm shoulder into the room, automatic weapons up and pointing, gas masks covering their noses and mouths.
“Freeze, wea… on…ground, hands up,” their leader barks through his mic, words coming in and out, adjusting smoothly to the fact of our consciousness despite the gas.
I shake my head, needing to hear fully to manage the situation.
One of their own throws down a few more gas canisters, and a blue tinged gas seeps out, snaking through the room and mixing with the remaining fog from earlier.
“Antidote,” Isolde whispers to me, and I finally hear her. In a few more moments the guards are pulling off their masks.
Our Cohort and the Mentors ring the room in a half circle facing the demolished doors to the deck. Their weapons are still holstered behind their backs, hidden but clearly pointless in the face of the guards’ body armor. Their hands hang at their sides. No one responds to the orders, but we make no threatening movements either.
The guards stare at us.
“Clear,” another one says into his mic after making some assessment.
Through the entrance a man steps forward with a little boy by his side, both dripping from the rain. He’s holding a semi-automatic at the child’s head in parallel to my pose with Isolde.
A slithering cold locks my body as the air clears enough for me to see them clearly.
An older version of me, dressed in his own tactical gear. Harkness. A sick, glittering smile sits on his face. He ignores his soaked clothes as if the detail is inconsequential to his presence, his sense of his absolute power.
Waste. My fathers’s old accusation ghosts in my head. The echo of fear, and the utter loneliness of the dark cell of my childhood coat my tongue with a sour film. I swallow and focus on the solid connection of my feet with the ground, on the gun in my hand pressed into my sister’s skull.
“Gil,” Isolde cries, seeing the one at her brother’s head.
“Izzy,” he lisps back, his little boy voice scared and trembling, shivering as much from fear as the wet.
I feel her shake under my touch, and I understand. I more than understand. I hate him for it. But this is going to happen. Harkness won’t get away with this any longer.
“Boy, is this meant to be checkmate?” his deep voice chides. “Isolde, has he harmed you?” he asks my sister.
“No, father, but he’s serious. Let Gil go, he could get hurt by accident.”
“Dear girl, like this imposter of your older brother, this disgusting mage holding you, I need my own collateral. You promised a trade, Mr. Marrow. I’m not feeling much good will with your threat to my heir.”
“A trade implies you have the authority to make one, Harkness.”
Keep him talking.
A shifting energy stutters awake to my attention. Crystals of energy swim beneath the surface of my consciousness, hiss their glowing interest.
“Oh, Mr. Marrow, you remember who you’re addressing? I have more than the authority. My life has been about proving that, digging up and tearing out the roots of evil from the soil of this planet. Burning that foreign asteroid-cursed evil to ash.”
Beside him Gil whimpers as the asshole tightens his hold on the little boy. Shit, I can’t stir him up worse. His madness means anything’s possible.
“Let your son go, let him sit on the couch at least.”
“I’d say the same of your hold on my daughter, but I’ll make a deal. My men will place an ankle device on you and your people. It’s simple enough, clicks shut easily once slipped on. Then I’ll let Gil take a rest, and we can continue this lovely conversation. You can even keep up your threat on Isolde.”
“These are the devices you mentioned?” I ask Isolde.
“Yes,” Isolde whispers to me again. “It’ll lock once shut and you won’t be able to take it off without a special device.”
“Would his guard have it with them?”
“Probably, but I don’t think it’ll stop you anyway. Your magic is…more.”
“You know, I’m getting irritated with your theatrics,” Harkness continues. “I’d prefer to bring you back to Staltz and kill you in a very public display, but I’m willing to just kill you and everyone here now. If Gil and Isolde are casualties, then so be it.”
Cold Hearted bastard.
He shrugs his shoulders. “You have until the count of ten to decide. One… two…. three.”
His soulless, manic eyes tell me he’s willing to keep that promise.
“Stop, we’ll do it,” I call. “We’ll wear the devices.”
“Good choice. Captain, please distribute them.”
I exchange glances with my friends, a longer one with Sebastian, and try to reassure them with my gaze.
One of his men exits briefly and brings back a duffle, unzips the bag and hands it to another man who easily takes it while handing off his automatic to a fellow guard.
The rest keep their weapons trained on us.
My Verse continues to sniff. Tangles purr interest. Not yet.
The captain, I assume, starts with one side of our semi-circle and squats down in front of Bethany, closing a hinged wide dark metal band around her ankle over her pant leg. It clicks shut.
Her face tenses and she gives out a squeak. “Hurts, like he said, but not unbearable.”
He makes his way around our group, most of them wearing stoic masks as the devices close, although Christopher growls. Eventually the captain’s kneeling down at my feet and snapping on the metal. The pain is a cascading series of electric shocks, like a stim device turned way too high. I’ve had much worse and it’s not going to block my power. The guard finishes Colleen’s, and then he’s at Sebastian’s feet, closing on his cuff next.
“Hmmmh, like a warm embrace,” my Angel purrs.
“Quiet,” the captain barks.
Sebastian simply smiles back at him, but keeps his mouth shut.
When all of us wear a band, Harkness keeps his word. He lowers the weapon from Gil’s head and points him toward the couch. “Sit, Gil. The grownups have things to discuss.”
Gil starts to move toward me and Isolde. He’s looking at my feet, staring at the band.
“No!” Harkness scolds. “The couch, Gil. You can see your sister later.”
“Izzy?” he calls again to Isolde. “It hurts.” Then he points to his own ankle.
I look closer. Underneath the fabric of his pant leg there’s a lump. The fucker put a band on his little boy’s ankle. It confirms that he knows about Gil’s magic.
My sister is leaning her body toward Gil, barely able to keep pretending with me. “Go sit on the couch, sweetheart, like Daddy said,” she says. “It’ll be okay. Take that throw blanket on the back of it and wrap up, it’ll get you warm and dry you off. And see that funny pillow with the seagull picture. Why don’t you snuggle it. You like birds. Pretend he’s singing a bird song to you.”
Once he’s there on the couch, the pillow grasped in his arms with a desperation that makes my heart ache, I speak.
“Do your people know your dirty secret, Harkness? Your guards here? All these years trying to root out magic, this evil you claim, when it has its roots dug deep inside you.”
I press the screen of my phone and a video starts to play on the monitor that hangs on the wall. It’s the footage from the ceremony, and on it Harkness eyes glow gold in the reflection of the glass window behind his podium. I press again and the image freezes, zooms larger. The gold pinpricks of Harkness’s eyes glitter on the screen.
“Do they know that you’re just as contaminated by the magic you hate so much?” I demand.
The asshole throws back his head and laughs. “My personal guard? Of course they know. They know my devotion to our country, the hell I face and overcome every single day living with the curse and letting that knowledge guide me in keeping Staltz safe.”
And then he lifts his leg, pulls up the fabric to reveal his own metal band.
He hates the magic enough to give himself pain. It’s familiar, and uncomfortable, this new understanding that my willingness to punish myself, as Sebastian so kindly reminds me is my go to, is a similar hatred of that part of me. I’m the little kid whose entire life was torn away when my magic came to life. Magic took everything.
“Daav,” Sebastian calls.
I turn my gaze to him. His gray eyes caress me.
The surge of my tangles underneath the surface, just on the other side of this reality, shift for more attention. They call. The hatred’s dimming, and I’m eager to welcome the crystals, the music.
Almost time.
Harkness’s men stand sure, unmoved by his pronouncement, maintaining their threat. No help there, damnit.
“The video’s been sent to all the media outlets of Staltz,” I continue.
“Not quite,” he says. “We blocked all external signals and all networks as we approached. Although this cozy show in your living room is quite nice.” He gestures toward the screen.
Isolde flinches again. Her father’s notice shifts back to her and he’s considering her, suspicion squinting his gaze.
“Too bad, because I think you like the sound of your own voice and all the spotlight,” Sebastian finally says, breaking the quiet of our audience and drawing Harkness’s focus away from Isolde.
“Angel,” I warn.
My warning draws Harkness’s attention to Sebastian just as much. Shit, shit, shit!
“The lover.” Harkness rolls the word on his tongue. “Do you play familiar to Marrow’s witch?”
“Sure, he keeps me around to stir the cauldron and turn away the frogs that show up on the doorstep wanting to be spelled into handsome princes.”
Harkness’s lips turn down. “As much a waste as Marrow, I see.”
“Victor raised us well,” he answers.
With our Mentor’s name comes the slight dilation of Harkness’s eyes.
“You knew Victor, didn’t you?” Sebastian continues. “A fan favorite was Victor. Hands busy with so many projects. A man in the know.”
Harkness turns back to Daav. “I’ve reconsidered my offer. I would hate to separate you from your lover when we return to Staltz. I’ll leave Gil, but you both return with me.”
My tangles push hard.
“No!” I bark.
“It’s Sebastian,” Sebastian interrupts Harkness’s smug twist of lips with his pronouncement.
“What?” Harkness says, a confused frown on his face now.
“My name. You never asked. It’s Sebastian. Marrow.”
“Clearly an idiot, as well. But an idiot’s death will entertain the crowds as easily as one of a more intelligent man.”
A low chime sounds from my pocket where I’ve stashed my cell.
Time. Midnight. Finally.
Deep breath, and I let myself fall into my Verse. Gold clouds my vision.
“You will not!!!!!” Harkness yells, seeing the gold. He’s holding something, a small device he squeezes.
And then pain flares at my ankle and cascades over me, bowing me in half more effectively than a gut punch to throw me from my Verse.
Around me the other mages cry out, the scream of my younger brother with them, and Isolde’s panicked answer.
I wait for Harkness to order his men to shoot us, but his own scream of agony rises with the rest.
My tangles lay on the other side, across a bridge I can’t travel. It’s an endless circle of pain, one wave ending where the other begins. Hot pokers and coals, long shards of broken glacier ice shoved into lungs and skull and heart.
I’ll lose myself to it, disappear. It’s big enough to swallow me whole.
But I feel something else, a hand grabbing mine where I’ve fallen on the ground. Squeezing.
Ddddaaaaaaaaaaaaaavvvvvvv. Ppprrriiiiiiiiinnnncccccceeee.
Not the voice of my Verse. I look up from the fires of this hell, and find gray eyes, my Angel’s eyes, the spill of his red hair. His fingers squeeze mine harder.
There are his tumbleweed tangles, cackling and ugly, circling. Nudging me, poking, scraping. Calling me.
“Prince,” Sebastian calls. “Daav, I’m here.”
His Verse shimmers and winds around me, coating me in a comfortable blanket, turning the pain inside out, threading itself like fibers into the red hot fire of it.
He’s talking. It’s hard to hear with the barrier of his Verse. “The pain is simply part of me, see. Let it be part of you, let it belong to you.”
Sebastian. Angel.
There’s no one else I trust more. There’s a choice to make. So I do. I stop fighting, and let myself fall down into the pain.
Finally, there’s understanding. This place is an in-between, the surrendering to agony inside a roaring void somewhere between physical reality and the soul. Here all the things inside myself I hate are released to tumble free, and I allow my fear of this chaos, the utter lack of control, free rein. Acceptance of the broken, ugly, terror inside me, no attempt to escape it. I’m okay in this space of potential, nothing fixed, all possible, the dark, the light and the multitude of shades of gray.
Yes.
And then…everything clicks. My quarter century is here, and the wash of liquid gold feeds me and expands.
The bright crystals of my Verse explode open to me as I break free. The beauty, joy, song of the tangles and everything about this plane. Finally, finally, I weep with the home and welcome of it. I belong. I’m part of it, meant to be here, entitled to be here. They sing louder, shine brighter. And lift me.
I’m hovering at the top of the room, over the couches and inside walls, underneath the flooring, and watching friends, sister, brother, enemies, Sebastian himself, all refracted particles, atoms spread across the space. My Verse song is loud, the sound crashing around in the blurred colored glory of its absolute excitement. I focus down on this picture, infinitely fascinating as potential spins within atoms. But among it all are the splintered places I saw earlier, and the feeling of their longing. They need something…from me, from my pulsing strong connection to my magic.
My vision focuses again and there are the crying, writhing bodies of my Cohort, their Mentors, my brother, trapped by the pain from the cuffs. There’s Sebastian, writhing with them but for him it’s more like a dance. His own Verse is open to him despite the agony of the devices.
Ssssseeeeeeeebbbbaaaaaasssssssssssssstttiiiiiiiaaaaannnnnnn!
My bright crystals want him, my Verse pulls toward him. I want him. I don’t hold back, but plunge the crystals down and into the dark of his desolate Verse. Touch his tumbleweeds with a sure embrace.
Flourishing growth as splintered places grow towards one another, connect and hum strong, wholeness. The bridge is solid between us.
Power multiplies and I’m soaring higher, hovering above the other splintered off Verse in this room. Above Nuée, Ravel, Frederick, Hanna, Bethany. Above Pike, Deidre, Christopher, Esther, Colleen. Above Gil. Above Carl Harkness. And the longing is there again, but it comes from my Verse.
Pllleeeeeeaaaaaassssssssseeeeee!
Loooooovvveeeeeeeee!
How can’t I answer its plea? The love is shining off my crystals, filling me up and recognizing the same within my soul. I love these tangles, my Verse, my home. I want them whole.
And so I decide, and reach, call to the shining crystals to move.
Plunging again, tangles touching the exposed shapes of these others in the room, skimming over and between their fractures, weaving, building. They’re knitting together the many landscapes of reality. Such joy, waves and waves joining them together.
They’ve each fallen into their Verse, eyes burning gold, connections strong. The surge of this weaving keeps their tangles in thrall, none able to direct their magic, only watch the waves caused by mine unfold.
But this room isn’t sufficient. I drive the tsunami of power beyond the house, spreading out, toward Bistral and beyond, soaring above the storm which I leave behind.
And now I barely contain the power, the potential. Am I myself, some other One?
The room shimmers, all atoms and miracles. But a part of myself sees the remaining mundane reality in this place although my tangles can’t be concerned with it.
Guns still out, threats barked, confusion between the bodies untouched by Verse and magic. Screaming.
“Shoot them,” Harkness finally screams as he staggers up from the floor despite his pain and his own vision distracted from the pulsing magic.
A guard steps forward and his automatic weapon raises, points at one I love.
The wail of a young child, almost still a baby, cries from elsewhere deep in the house.
Interruption.
The guard hesitates a moment, one extra moment.
But then his gun barks alive.
As another body moves quickly, blocks the one I love, acting as a shield and jerking with the impact. Collapsing. Blood. So much blood.
Colleen. It’s Colleen broken on the floor, stepping in front of my Angel to take bullets meant for him.
The guard is aiming again.
NO!
Power, and I drag the crystals flowing without thought back into this room, throughout its entirety, into the weapons of just the guards. Into their particles, accelerating decay.
The plastic, steel, lead, rubber, nitrocellulose, sulfur, saltpeter, charcoal disintegrating into dust. In a blink. Their guns are gone.
Then the crystals are down into the bands of the ankle devices, breaking down their components into the same dust. We’re free.
Pain gone.
Crystals sink into Colleen’s dying body on the floor, mending the pumping, bloody holes.
My power flares larger, and wrenches away again, insistent, rising up beyond me, my tangles embodied with a will and goal outside myself as they turn their attention now that I’ve begun their path. I’m caught inside it. Freezing me in place as the force unfolds and leaves behind this small room altogether.
And again waving energy cascades over the country, out beyond. Healing, building bonds between Verse. Whirling images, pictures and ideas of realities beyond ours fill up my head, feeling like a hundred thousand million bytes of information trying to download into a brain built to handle an abacus, maybe an old fashioned adding machine at best. It hurts. Too much more and I’m not sure I’ll survive the other end of this.
Above the planet the power weaves between the broken Universe. Verse fractures vibrating as my magic catches each mage, their eyes gold and captivated, as it passes them and their pieces of Universe. Bright crystals kiss the edges of the splinters and bridges build between each. The price is the pounding of my being where it’s shattering me instead.
But with the pain there’s something else between the overwhelm of this ocean. A corner of some…understanding. A knowledge that runs deep, a shock of familiar as I realize it’s already inside me, buried and hidden but surfacing. This knowing a gift from the magic, this force that I’m realizing I’ve no way to name. I’m weeping, whether from the pain or the gift I’m not sure.
And humanity across Earth is looking up into the sky, gasping. Seeing not an asteroid this time, but the ghost of a gigantic spider web of cracks flaring into stark outline across the atmosphere.
In between the pain and moments of foggy consciousness I’m only vaguely aware of the echo of the room where I stand while the Universe heals; the men, the women, a child are up and moving in it. A blur.
Violence still alive, the guards grab for Gil, scooping up his kicking, writhing body. Another comes for Isolde while others lunge for my friends, a twisted, determined force closing down on them.
They come for mine.
Isolde yanks away as one tries to grab her wrist. And then she’s running. Toward Gil?
No, toward Harkness, with his florid madness a mask on his features.
Her pistol is raised, him now weaponless with his gun only dust from my earlier magic.
Intending to shoot him, to kill her father, nothing any child should have to do. Nothing I want Isolde to take onto her soul I think with fleeting, distracted distance.
I should do something. What is it I should do? Keep her safe, the vague idea floats through me.
Please. I remember to beg my Verse, my crystals, as they envelope the Earth and Heavens.
I should end this man. Let me take his death onto myself. Not for revenge, not because of the harm he’s done me or the countless mage children of his country.
But to keep the burden from my sister, who spent most of her life loving her father.
The tangles don’t come to my call, they can’t. They’re larger now than a focus on any small gathering of atoms, any particular need of their mage. They’re mending, pushing the many realities to fold back into their place, connected, but in a pattern not meant to be transparent to us.
Still frozen, somewhere beyond here, I watch the small space of this room.
Isolde’s almost to Harkness, her aim perfect for the shot.
And then it’s Sebastian, hawk earrings swinging against his ginger hair, knocking her to the side. Dodging the guard who comes at him.
The barrel of Sebastian’s gun lifts, fires once, twice, three times.
Hits Carl Harkness in the center of his forehead.
Blood blossoms from the hole.
He tumbles.
Body slams the floor.
And in the Heavens the spider web cracks flare one more time…bright…dark…bright…perfect.
Then fade away to nothing as the Universe lets out a gigantic sigh.
The storm outside dissolves within the turn of a moment.
Thaaannnnnnnkkkkkkk yoooouuuuuuu, the soft echo of my Verse sounds through my mind…until it disappears with a last brush to the center of my chest.
Gone.