Loss for the Prince, page 21
It was Drake. He’d come out of the hole, covered in construction dust, and was shaking his hair like a fluffy dog after a bath. Ana put her knife away; he looked all right.
“Where’s Sasuke?”
“Just left. Word came from Chesnue, I guess.”
“Says who?” Red eyebrows sprinkled with grey dust knotted over gold eyes. “Their comm is down, and they don’t have parts for repair. The equipment warehouse was blown up in the air raid.”
Ana remembered a gargoyle saying the same and shrugged. “A Viking with red hair.”
“Ah, Fox. She’s our technology specialist.” Drake continued to dust himself off.
“Vampires have I.T?”
“What?”
“Never mind.”
“So, good news,” said Drake, and leaned to the side to see around Ana, looking for Sasuke, she guessed. “Also, terrible news.”
“Let’s start with the good, yeah?” Please tell me there is a silver key down there. Please?
Instead, Drake made his arms into a goal post. “So, the slabs are upright like this. When you trigger the safety, they’re supposed to collapse on top of each other, like this.” He folded his arms, stacking them on top of each other. “The explosions are synchronized to go, tap, tap, tap, one after another, allowing slabs to stack. So here’s the good news, it malfunctioned and only a single floor collapsed. The rest of the charges are not blown. So instead of thirty colossus rocks, we have only two to remove. More good news, the timing was off, so instead of stacking, they collided, like this.” Drake’s arms made a tent. “I can pry them open for us to squeeze through… but here’s the bad news.” He checked for Sasuke, then sighed.
“I can hear half-borns down there,” he muttered.
“What does that mean?”
“There are no living Elders down there.” Fuck, he mouthed. “What do I say to Sasuke?” he pleaded. But she didn’t know. Why were there half-borns down there? She’d thought there had been no humans at the Dome. They both sighed, Drake more deeply than her.
“All right,” said Drake, then shut his eyes for what felt an eternity to Ana. “If you say there is magic at the distillery, Guardian, I’ll believe you.” Drake reached out his hand.
Ana took a moment.
To destroy the Grace of Life, the stars fall out of the sky.
To win, to end the dark, we find the beating heart.
Dennis, that was the name of her nephew. Katie Deacon, that was her sister. Susan Deacon, that was her mother. Morris was the orange cat that Svetlana kept losing. Nikolai was her ex-boyfriend, the dick pic guy whom Drake used to call the yeti.
‘Steady your mind.’ Ana heard her daddy’s voice, and she was a little girl at the archery range. ‘See the X, Ana? Now shoot clean.’
Ana took Drake’s hand.
Ana fell through the darkness.
Not a well but a cave, the thing was giant and far deeper than Ana thought—it had been a long way down. Drake let them fall almost all the way before Catching. After a moment of levitation, Ana’s fake fur boots touched the ground.
“Careful,” she heard Drake say in the dark, his arm hugging her waist. “We’re standing on the edge, to either side it’s a sharp drop-off, okay?”
Ana nodded as if he could see her in this dark.
“Give me an Illuminate,” said Drake. “I can’t Ignite and Pull, they’re two different Talents.”
Illuminate.
Her light pulsed through the cave, and Ana saw she was standing on top of a pyramid. It was a long way down. Darkness enveloped.
“Ana, I need it steady like a searchlight, okay?”
Ana produced sunlight on the palm of her hand, and it was a ball. She couldn’t see Drake's face but heard him sigh in the darkness. “A bit bigger, and can you direct it down?”
Ana tried to make it bigger and it pulsed, like a ripple on the water, moved through the air, then dissipated.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” she heard Drake—in the dark.
“I can do pulses,” said Ana then palmed a ball of light. “And this. But I can’t do flashlight.”
“Why don’t you have any actual powers?”
Well, transcending time and realm was a kind of power, but Drake was right, she didn’t have anything besides visions… why, she didn’t know. Her realm, for some reason, decided that this was all she needed—wrong.
“Ana!”
“I’m trying!” In the light of the tiny globe, she saw Drake’s face (that was it) as gold eyes narrowed. She crouched, trying to light the ground, lost her balance and almost fell off the edge but Drake caught her.
“Fine, just do the ripples. I’ll figure a way out.”
In moments of light broken by darkness, Ana watched Drake in seconds of flashes as he moved around like an old cartoon with jumping frames. His voice was non-interrupted though, as he complained, sounding like a grumpy cat.
“I was hoping not to Ignite down there,” he said, struggling to Push the slabs apart. Not a top of a pyramid but the edge of a tectonic plate, Ana saw. Drake continued to meow, his hand trembling as if he was trying to tear apart sheet metal. “Regi can’t Ignite but he can bend fire, deflect.” Ana knew. “If Constantine is down there and I use fire, he can cook us like chickens. So keep doing the ripple thing, I guess. That will keep the half-borns at bay. They instinctively avoid sunlight.”
“A single pulse will clear them all, Drake.”
“Not if they’re behind a door or in the toilet, hiding in the closet. The Dome is made of rooms, Ana. You’d have to clear it room by room, which was why the searchlight would have been better.”
“Sorry.”
“Just keep behind me, hold on to me, and remember, I can’t see in the dark either. Elder sight can capture light better, therefore we see better than humans in dimmer light, but in the pitch black, we can’t see jack either.”
“I know, Drake.”
As it turned out, all his meowing was for nothing because Ana saw light through the crack as soon as Drake strained the slabs apart.
“There’s light,” she said and even pointed.
“Indoor light won’t kill half-borns, but we’ll be able to see them, which is good, I guess.” Drake stood on the edge, one foot on each slab as if he was going for the splits. His eyes turned black, he panted as if he’d done physical work. “Jump, Ana.”
Ana peered down.
“It’s only a single floor, come on, it’ll be like dropping from the ceiling, but then you run, okay?”
Slipping through the crack, then dangling down from the edge, Ana heard Drake from above. “Then you run, okay? When I let this go, it might collapse.” As she jumped down, she heard him say, “And watch out for the half-borns!”
Ah, crap, she thought. Illuminate, just to be certain. Then Ana in the middle of a carpeted hallway, like a hotel with soft lights overhead, heard half-borns growl like rabid dogs—from behind every closed door, every corner, every shadow. She had awoken them.
“Drake!” she screamed when a man in a plaid shirt charged at her: white fangs, black eyes. Illuminate! The man turned to ash, but the growls roared all around her. “Drake!”
A loud boom rattled the hallway, shaking chandeliers and vases on stands—Ana screamed. “Drake!”
“I’m here. I’m here.” His eyes, yellow now, squinted, adjusting to the light. He was covered in dust. Then Ana noticed she was too. “Don’t worry,” he said. “That was just those two slabs, gently kissing. I can Push them on our way back up, not a problem. Pull is always heavier than Push, if that makes sense.”
Ana clung to Drake, who looked like a boy then. There was something wrong with him, sure, but there was some right with him as well—such as being able to Crush half-borns. Him cursing her out in the Lincoln Tunnel and calling her a bitch seemed like a lifetime ago.
“Distillery is this way, still another floor down, but it has stairs.” Drake led her down the hall and turned a corner. If there weren’t half-borns scratching behind every rattling door, Ana could think she was walking through a nice hotel with a cute boy. “I haven’t been here before, but I threw in my two cents during construction and know the floorplan pretty well…” he was saying, and Ana was only half-listening, staring at the back of his head, jogging to keep up. Elders walked fast.
“… so this is technically B15, the lowest floor the elevator goes to but the distillery is loud and…” They’d turned another corner and Ana had no idea where they were. This was a rat maze. Her nails dug into the thick fabric of his black cotton shirt. If she got left behind, or if he psycho-ed out, there was no way out; too many doors to Illuminate, and too many corners to find her way out. Then there was the matter of the kissing slabs.
“…lock yourself in the distillery.” That was the only thing Ana caught, being dragged down some fire escape-looking metal stairs.
“What?” Ana asked.
Drake threw a look over his shoulder, but he didn’t look at her, he looked past her. He was checking to see if there was anything behind them. A chill ran through Ana, making her look back: a part of a skirt, sheer red fabric, flapped for a second, then disappeared behind a corner. “Drake!”
“I know, they’re following us.”
“Half-borns?”
“Yeah, they’re everywhere. I think they’re avoiding you because of your Illuminate, they can always sense sunlight.”
Drake opened a door and they stepped out into mindfuck. Schroeder’s Stairs, the illusion of inverted stairs, feeding into each other, a pencil drawing Ana tried to deconstruct many times and failed because she was bad with physics. The space was incredibly loud as if they’d stepped into a turbine.
“That’s the motor!” Drake yelled. “Water, vent, and electricity!”
“Okay!”
They went through another door and as if magic, the noise muffled to a low bass of a neighbor’s party. But now there was another sound of… blow dryers?
“Here you are,” said Drake and pulled the door but it didn’t open. “Ah, they locked it, I guess.” He shouldered it but it didn’t budge—but then just flew off the hinges on its own, which was probably his Push.
“Why would I lock myself in the distillery?” Ana asked, soaking in the sight of a fully automated factory floor, brewing blood.
“It’s temperature-controlled,” he said. Ana guessed her expression showed confusion because he grunted. “You don’t listen! If I need to set the floor on fire, you stay here and Illuminate, okay? The distillery is strictly temperature controlled. As long as the motors are working, they will keep this room below fifteen degrees Celsius, and the air free of fumes and toxins. Did you understand?”
Ana nodded.
“Okay, look for your thing, I’ll stay by the door. Just call me if—”
Bam, bam, bam—it continued, sounding as if someone was tumbling down the stairs, but the factory floor rattled, pipes vibrated, and metal clanked with each bam…
“What is that?” Ana asked. The bams were still sounding.
Drake was frowning, he didn’t know either, then she watched as his eyes widened—in shock. Nothing good, Ana guessed.
“I think that’s the rest of the safety triggering… fuck!” Drake gasped, deflating. “I must’ve tripped something…”
The light flickered, then an alarm blared, followed by a woman’s voice over the PA. “Stay calm, return to your assigned quarters, this is not a drill…”
Drake looked up. “Blaster doors,” he whispered, then stared at Ana in disbelief. “You’ve done this on purpose!” His eyes turned howling black, then he was gone—vanished.
“Drake!” Ana screamed, grasping at the air where he was. “Drake!” The light flickered.
“…stay calm, return to your assigned quarters, this is not a drill…” The woman’s voice faded, Ana felt her eyes roll back, and she was falling.
The bayou at night flashed through her mind. Then she was standing outside the plantation, wearing a white dress. There was blood on her hands, then she saw it was from her. She was bleeding and cried out, feeling an incredible loss.
She was still falling.
The earth trembled, tearing the ground underneath her, and a divide like a lightning bolt shot through the plantation, tearing it in half. Then Ana saw herself, her twin across the divide, also bleeding through her white dress.
…still falling.
The moon above eclipsed but instead of darker, the sky grew lighter, becoming twilight. The stars fell out of the sky, and she saw the rivers turn black. The oceans burned, and the world incinerated into ash, all turning to nothing.
Ana fell, slamming her head onto a grated metal floor, the grooves biting into her skull. A child whispered into her mind.
“Split the throne, double the loss, a full eclipse of the crescent moon. Son of darkness cries tears of black. This realm has already fallen.”
She was convulsing, grinding her teeth, muscles and tendons hampering—guardian or not, a Seeker’s prophecy had an intense cost.
Ana was conscious and from behind closed lids, she saw the light go out. Growls echoed through the darkness, then turned to awful shrieks. Claws on cement scratched as if trying to break out of a coffin, buried alive.
Beep, beep, beep—three prolonged tones, the light returned, then the vents roared alive, deafening thunder. She’d been to Niagara Falls once. A little girl in a raincoat then, she’d pointed up at God’s faucet and yelled as loud as she could, ‘Look! Daddy!’ but her daddy who’d been standing right next to her, only patted her head because he didn’t hear. He didn’t look. That was how loud it was.
Chapter twenty-six
Damn, Son
Out on the snow outside the Dome, where it was blindly bright with clear sky overhead after the storm, the blue-haired female Collette, the Kage who could cloak through, the one who scratched up Regi’s car writing ‘battle scars’ was yelling at a blonde Viking.
What they were arguing about Regi didn’t know because it hadn’t been in English, but they were both light benders, the only two light benders at the Dome—he knew because Constantine did.
A single knife thrown by Ferah curved in the air, piercing through the hearts of both girls, and before the rope snagged the silver back to the telekinetic, ash hung where the girls had been standing, then dissipated into nothing.
Damn, girl. Regi sighed for Collette who he’d briefly known, and the Viking he’d never known.
“Dome to Chesnue, over? Dome to Chesnue, over?” The only Viking with red hair was in the control room with Sasuke, crouched over a portable comm and fiddling with the knob. “That’s weird. It was just working.”
Nah, girl. It never worked. That was Cedar, Constantine’s Kage, lighting up the Christmas tree—with the Kage girls gone, it was his house now.
Constantine had been mimicking, speaking right into the redheaded Viking’s mind. ‘Yeah, Patterson here. Marcus pulled a U-ie, they’re still here.’ But the priest knew his mimicking was imperfect and didn’t mess around speaking to Sasuke. Instead, he hung by the door for a moment—savoring the sight of an old enemy.
But Sasuke was a keen mofo and his right hand reached for his left hip, for the hilt of his katana, and stayed there. He looked right at Constantine in cloak, and for a moment, Regi thought the warlord saw him. But nah, his gaze darted elsewhere, scanning the room.
“Get Collette,” said Sasuke.
Collette be gone, Sasuke.
The redheaded Viking strode right by Constantine as he simply stepped aside—Cedar and Ferah as well. They held their collective breaths. They knew the plan, and so did Regi. It wasn’t the time to confront Sasuke, not yet.
His boy Henry stepped out of the loo, pulling up his fly, a joint drooping from his lips. A red light blinked on a wall-mounted intercom and caught Henry’s eye—there was no light, only Cedar. At first, his boy looked cautious, and Regi screamed, ‘Stay away from it, man!’ but wasn’t heard. The warrior of light had no voice.
“Hello? Is anyone out there?” The voice of the CSI blonde from the Ohio crematorium incident, the fake Kage, sounded right into his boy Henry’s mind. “Hello?”
“Lela?” His boy went to the blinking light and pressed a button, crouching to speak into it. “Lela?”
“Fuck, Sifer!” mimicked Constantine. “You guys are out there? We’re stuck in here!”
“Sorry, Lela,” his boy was saying. “Marcus is supposed to be bringing cranes and stuff… I’ve brought you gum…” Henry dug the pink puck out from his pocket and tossed it in the air where it fell through ash, going through where he’d been standing, and landed on the floor with a tap that echoed.
Man!
“Where is Collette?” The redhead stepped into a tavern with the disciples along with their savior right on her heels.
All the Vikings were in the tavern—twelve now, missing one.
“Outside, Fox,” said the tallest one wearing wolf skins, a badass female with black paint across her piercing blue eyes, but those blues weren’t sharp enough to see Constantine. “She and Kare were having words, and I told them to step outside.”
The redhead looked annoyed, then instead of leaving, she plopped herself amongst the others, sitting in a row on a long wooden bench—too easy.
“Best get going, Fox,” said one of them, yanking the beer away from the redhead. “Sasuke’s bitching about us spreading out and we don’t need him coming looking for us.”
Girls, there are much worse things looking right at you.
“Fuck him,” said the wolf one, and spat in a glass. But it was she who noticed first. “Valhalla!” she screamed, her long limb slicing down with an axe but before her arm even extended, her movement slowed as if cutting through molasses.
Constantine had closed his fist, and all the women froze mid-movement, blonde mannequins in various positions, reaching for their weapons and getting up—damn.
The priest’s gloved hand reached, anointing the blonde warrior’s crown. “Pain.”
