Gift from the Stone (Source of Elementra Book 2), page 54
“We don’t know where Oakly is, Ry,” Tillman tells him solemnly, squeezing his shoulder. No doubt those fuckers took her. Hate to say it, I won’t say it out loud, but I’m a little glad my Primary isn’t alone.
He continues to look around like a madman before clarity returns to his face, then crumbles. He lays a hand on Tillman’s shoulder, and I swear the fucker looks like he’s on the verge of crying. If he cries right now, I’ll punch him in his fucked-up face.
“I know where Oakly is. Willow saved her. She saved me, all of us in here. She offered herself up if they left all the students and E.F. members. I’m so sorry, Tillman. I tried to stop them. I tried to talk her out of it, but she wouldn’t hear it. Said that it had to be this way,” he rambles.
I have to breathe through the emotions rising in me again. Thinking about it and hearing it confirmed are two totally different things. It’s a blow to my head that I can’t fucking handle.
Little Primary, why did you choose all of them? I told you to choose yourself.
“Where’s Oakly? We need her to track Willow. Now,” Corentin demands.
“Call Gaster. Willow said she’s in the secret room,” Ry informs us.
His fucking pocket dimension. Of course my Primary sent her there. No one can get to her there without the old man. She’s fucking brilliant. No scum fucking Mastery member, even if they were to have followed her, would be able to get through any sort of security measure Gaster spelled.
You thought this through, didn’t you, Primary?
You should’ve gone with her to that fucking room.
As Ry climbs to his feet, his Nexus embraces him the way brothers do. I know the feeling of almost losing a Nexus member. All of us do. We’ve put ourselves in a situation or two and it’s fucking awful. But this feeling, the feeling of having half your soul not with you is so much worse. I’m not even bonded to her.
“Answer the fucking calls,” Corentin shouts at the communicator.
He’s about two seconds away from crushing the damn thing in his hand. Looking at my own, it’s been nine minutes since I arrived.
Nine fucking minutes since I arrived, four since she’s been gone.
The longer this takes, there’s no telling what they’re doing to her, where they’re going, who has her.
The darkness teeters on the edge of my vision. Watching. Waiting.
I won’t let it win this time, though.
No. This time, I’m going to use it to shroud this fucking realm in darkness until my Primary is back where she belongs.
Elementra help any who get in my fucking way.
Thirty
Willow
I thought I was over puking my guts up after transporting.
Turns out, that’s not true. After the fifth one in a row, with maybe a minute break in between, I can’t stop the spew of my entire breakfast from coming up.
Every few feet, Master Asshole looks back at me, snarls, then jerks me along. I don’t know how he thinks I’m going to keep up with him and the other twelve dead men walking. They exchanged the fully formed stone blocks on my feet for a pair of stone shoes.
So between my trembling legs and swooshing stomach, this last transport has our break stretching far longer than one minute.
“Disgusting bitch. Get up.” Gish sneers, yanking me up off my knees.
“Yeah, I’m the disgusting one here,” I mumble sarcastically as he drags me into a stretch of trees.
My reaction to his backhand isn’t fast enough since I was busy trying to wipe the puke off my chin on my shoulder. The dead weight from the stone encasing my hands pulls me down quicker than I can balance myself and my shoulder screams in pain when I crash into the forest floor.
The coppery taste of blood fills my mouth, and I breathe calmly through my nose to cool the beast rearing her beautiful head inside of me.
I swear, if my men don’t kill him as soon as they get here, he’ll be the first person we eat. We’ll bite his hands off, then the rest of him.
That murderous promise barely pleases her. Until now, she’s been very agreeable, going along with everything, knowing we didn’t have much of a choice. Now that he’s done more than just snatching my hair, all bets are off. She’s ready to end him.
Cussing the asshole under my breath, I struggle to get myself up. I get as far as perched on my knees then the dizziness returns. Black spots dance along my vision and I sway where I’m kneeling. Slamming my eyes shut, I mentally will the nausea away, begging my body not to throw up again.
Stupid, vile, gargantuan asshole. I swear if I throw up again, I’m aiming right for his boots.
My eyes fly open, and my fight instincts try to kick in when a vial is shoved between my lips. Sputtering and coughing, I do everything I can to keep the liquid from slipping down my throat. I have no idea what the hell this is, but it sure as shit isn’t Gaster’s healing vial.
Someone from behind me reaches around to my chin and jerks my head back violently, plugging my nose with their other hand. I refuse to gasp, locking my lips as tight as possible, ignoring the start of the burn in my lungs.
A solid punch to my gut forces me to suck in a struggling breath, and the bitter, sour taste of whatever the hell is in the vial slides down my throat like acid.
Gagging repeatedly, I belie my previous thought and beg my body to throw it up. Get this shit out of my stomach.
“She only got about half,” the asshat behind me says as he slings me free from his grip.
“It’ll do until we get her to the compound.” Gish scoffs.
Two men haul my ass up off the ground and the world around me sways. Pins and needles shoot through my body with an uncomfortable tingling and everything moves in slow motion. I can’t even muster the strength to lift my arms or legs.
Fight it, Willow. Whatever this is, fight it.
You can’t be this vulnerable.
I hear my mental thoughts clearly. Thank fuck my mind is still aware, but my body doesn’t respond. The best I can do is slump in the arms of the men dragging me through the foliage of the forest. The stupid stone shoes create a path, and I focus my gaze as hard as I can on them, willing my feet to do something. Twitch, move, shake. Something.
Panic begins creeping its way up my chest. The feeling of having no control over my body is about to send me spiraling right off the edge.
Deep breath. Breathe.
Suddenly, I’m dropped to the ground like a sack of potatoes facing an extremely small structure. The jarring motion snaps me right out of my panic, and I flick my eyes in every direction. This building, shed’s more like it, won’t fit all of us. Half the men here won’t fit in there.
“Where are we?” My question’s nothing more than a slur. I’m surprised and proud I got that much out.
“I can’t tell if you’re the stupidest bitch I’ve ever met or the boldest,” Gish says, cocking his head at me.
Boldest, Fuckface.
I wish like hell I could say it out loud, but my lips are so numb, I can’t move them. It feels like the dentist got a little too trigger happy with the Novocain.
I watch silently, drool dripping down my lips, as he disappears through the door and returns seconds later holding a small piece of parchment that he reads over and over. Folding it in half, he passes it over to another man, who doesn’t even glance at it. He just sets it on fire.
“As one, on me,” Gish announces and scoops me back off the ground.
I hate that my head lulls back against his chest and I can’t force it to move. This feeling of being so close to him, pressed so tightly against him makes me sick and pissed.
All twelve of the other big fuckers surround me. Well, technically, they surround him, but he’s got his big, gross, meaty arm wrapped around my waist, holding me up in the center of all of them.
Fuck me, here we go again.
If I never have to transport again, it’ll be too soon.
What I assume is our final destination comes into view, and there’s a hazy gleam to the structure. I can’t tell if my eyes are playing tricks on me because of this drug or they have a very powerful, visible ward around it.
Just like the structure we rescued Tillman and Caspian from, there are no windows, I see only one door, and it’s completely made of stone. The only major difference I can easily see is the size difference.
This one is twice as large. It both rises upward to multiple floors and extends farther back than I can currently make out. Towering trees that are so thick their front line paints a canvas of darkness behind them sit about the distance of the training fields away, creating a makeshift perimeter.
There’d be no way to sneak up on this structure. If someone’s watching the woods from the building, they’d see anyone coming in plenty of time to warn everyone.
These fuckers have a single taste in their prisons, apparently.
Gish slings the door open, and we walk directly into a room. A huge, empty room. There’s nowhere for us to go from here. There are no doors, no stairs, nothing. Just bare gray stone.
He doesn’t slow his steps, and I’m utterly confused as he just continues to walk straight for the wall. If I could move my body, I’d be flipping out to get from underneath the crazy bastard’s arms.
The slightest resistance pulls at my skin when the psycho walks through the wall like it wasn’t even there. I’m sure if I could actually feel anything right now, that would’ve stung like a bitch.
What the hell?
It was an illusion. Some sort of barrier.
I try to force my head to turn back so I can look behind me at the fake wall, but it’s futile. My neck doesn’t even twitch. It’s petrifying to know this is the reaction I’m having to only half a vial. If I had gotten a full dose, I’d either be completely knocked out, or I’d be so loopy, I’d have no clue what’s happening.
My breath hitches in my throat when I turn my attention back to the hallway we’re walking down.
Cells.
This entire hall is wall to wall cells. Some are empty, others have occupants who are cradled on the floor. None of them move or even glance up at us as we make our way past them.
I don’t know if they’ve been drugged or they’ve just given up, but none waste the energy to acknowledge our existence. The sight of them makes my stomach clench painfully. The scenarios of what they’ve been through run across my mind rapidly. I’ve been conjuring up images of these faces, making them very real in my mind so I can remember the importance of what Elementra is putting on me, my men, my friends.
Seeing them like this causes tears to well in my eyes. They look broken.
It’s been impossible for us to find them. Now, that I have, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. Was this the whole reason I had to do this? To find this group of people?
According to the guys, there are hundreds missing. There may be more in this compound, but there’s definitely not hundreds here in this cell block.
I lose sight of them as we enter a small stairwell and begin making our way down. Judging by the footsteps I hear behind me, the entourage we’ve had this entire journey has decreased and only a few are following us to where we’re going.
“They seriously think this bitch is dangerous enough that she needs to be placed in high security. I haven’t seen much of anything to be worried about. She has a strong air element, so fucking what?” one of the men behind me grunts.
“Don’t be ignorant. We’ve all been told of what she did in the nonmagical realm and Terravile,” Gish says begrudgingly. The tone of his voice tells me it grates on his nerves having to admit that, and I mentally smirk.
Little do you know, Fuckface.
“Yeah, but she wasn’t alone. Who’s to say it was even her who did any of what was reported to us? She’s being protected by those fucking heirs.”
The mention of my men has my chest pulling uncomfortably tight. The mere thought of them nearly causes me to sob, so I suck that shit down and try to focus on anything but them.
Note to self, they don’t know I’m more than that to them, and one of the two families are definitely reporting everything back as soon as they find out.
Gish doesn’t bother responding to the man’s words. Instead, he continues to stomp down the stairs. I’m starting to get a headache from how many times my head has bashed into his shoulder. It bobs back and forth, slamming into him every time he takes a careless step.
When he finally stops walking down the last set of stairs, my heads lulls to the side, with my nose pressed right to his armpit.
You’ve got to be kidding me.
I can only see solid stone now as we walk through a threshold. The lighting in here is blindingly bright and the chill of the room is fucking freezing, like I’ve been placed in a cooler.
Suddenly, Gish tosses me off him. Time seems to slow as I stare at the oncoming brick floor. I try to command my arms, my air, something to burst free, stop this fall, but nothing responds.
My head bounces off the stone floor brutally. The pain on my body is minimal because of the drug coursing through my veins, but my mind seems to be completely aware of it all.
My brain feels like it’s rolling around freely in my skull and my vision blurs to the point I can’t see straight. Closing my eyes tightly I attempt to breathe through it, fighting to keep myself from going to sleep like my mind is trying to force me to do.
Peeling my eyes open, I see red. Not in the sense of the rage flowing through me, but actual red. There’s blood pouring from somewhere and it’s coating my lid, making my right eye burn and water.
Gish pinches my chin between his fingers, lifting my head up slightly to get a better look at his handiwork. Letting my face fall back into the puddle of my blood, he stands over me.
“You’ll survive. Get some rest while you can, bitch. You’ll need it.” He smiles a demented and sick fucking smirk, turning and leaving me in this cell.
Between the freezing temperature and the pounding in my head, I can’t keep my eyes open any longer. I know I have a concussion. There’s no doubt and I know I’m supposed to stay awake, but I can’t. My eyes drift shut, locking themselves up tight, and I fade into darkness.
“Wake up, filia mea.”
That voice penetrates my mind in the darkness, and I try to hold onto it. I have no clue how long I’ve been out, but when I try to peer out of my eyes, it’s no use. I don’t have the strength, and the lashes on my right eye pull tightly from my dried and crusted blood.
A small glimmer of hope pulses through me when I attempt to move my knee and it twitches slightly. Or fuck, it might just be my hopeful imagination.
“It’s no imagination, Willow. The drug is starting to wear off. You need to burn through the rest of it so you can heal.”
“CC?” I ask mentally.
“I’m here.”
“How can you hear me? I’m not talking out loud.”
“So many questions. Always.” CC chuckles.
Although the sound calms my racing heart, it also lights an inferno inside of me, like a match being thrown in a puddle of gas.
“Yeah, and never any answers. Now look at me, where I’m at, with no clue what to do. Look at where you and Elementra’s non answering asses have landed me,” I scream. The anger, the hurt, the fear bubbling up through me.
There’s a tense moment of silence and for a split second, I regret my outburst because although I’m shitten, rightfully so, I wasn’t alone. Whether I’m hallucinating or not, I could hear their voice, and I wasn’t alone.
“I’m so sorry, filia mea. I never wanted any of this for you. I searched and searched for ways to make it so this would never come to pass. But that was futile. It was always going to be you. I’m so sorry.”
The sincerity in their undistinguishable voice calms a little of my anger down, but it’s still not enough. I need more. I need more of an explanation than that.
“How can you hear my thoughts? Do you have a gift like me?”
“Yes, and your Memoria stone is helping,” they answer vaguely.
“What is—”
“Please, Willow, listen. I know this is hard and I know you want answers. Answers you deserve. But we don’t have time for that right now. When I say it will all make more sense soon, please just believe me. They’re going to come here and get you soon. You need to be ready.”
“The guys? They’ll be here soon?” I ask hopefully, hanging on to that thought by a thread.
“No, filia mea, not the guys,” they say mournfully.
A shuddering breath falls from my lips and the blood clinging to my eye grows sticky as my tears try to force their way through.
They’re not on the way yet. There’s more I have to endure before that time comes.
“Yes. But I will be here, guiding you.”
There’s no other option currently but to just accept this. I’ve had to do it my entire life. Just accept things I have no control over. Right now, it seems my choices are to lie down, cry over it, and give up. Or cry over it then do what I have to do in order to survive.
It’s not much of a choice. I’ve always chosen to survive. I may bawl my eyes out, but I always fix my face and stand back up.
“What do I need to do?” I ask.
“The drug they gave you is an immobilizing tonic. It’s intentions are to cut off all bodily functions, including your gifts and elements. Even the half dose they gave you can last an entire day. But they have no idea of the fire flaring in your chest. You need to call upon it. Command it to burn through your blood. Your dragon’s fire has many, many more properties and abilities than just how hot it burns. The strength of their tonic is no match to the magic that’s in the ancient flame.”
Their words spark what Gaster said to me about how Codi’s sleeper gift wouldn’t work on me because my dragon would burn through it. And how it’s easier for my dragon to sniff out wards and enchantments.
My dragon purrs and sends the impression that there’s so much more that’s possible, but she doesn’t send anything else to show me what or how to access it. It feels as if she’s aware that it’s true, but it’s something we have to figure out on our own, together.
