Chase the Dark (32 page)

Piper waited but her mother said nothing more. “You had people waiting at the Consulate for me afterward.”

“I couldn’t find you,” Mona explained. “I needed to make sure you were safe. They were supposed to bring you here, not hurt you. They’ve been severely reprimanded for what happened. Piper . . . I never meant for you to become involved.”

“Involved?” Her voice rose furiously. “
Involved?
I’ve been up to my neck in this shit storm! I was arrested. I’m a fugitive. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve been hurt or almost killed since you tried to steal the Stone.”

Mona looked down at her hands, knowing better than to offer another empty apology. Silence stretched between them. After a moment, Mona looked up and appeared to notice Piper’s clothes for the first time. She was still in her club outfit and it was definitely worse for wear. Apparently deciding not to comment, Mona took a deep breath.

“Piper, your father and I disagreed about many things and a lot of them had to do with you. He’s had ten years with you that I was denied; ten years to make his case.” She gazed solemnly at Piper. “Now I want to make my case to you. I want you to come live with me.”

She froze like a rabbit caught in a trap. “Mom—”

“I know you’re upset and it all seems impossible right now. All I’m asking is a chance to show you my world—a different world from the Consulate and the constant threat of daemons. I won’t pressure you to join the Gaians or to support our cause. I—All I want is to share my life with you, Piper, sweetheart. Will you give me a chance?”

Her mouth opened, then closed. A sob tried to claw up her throat, born of the tearing of her heart. Father or mother. How was she supposed to choose? Maybe it should’ve been an easy choice—the parent who’d raised her, who’d been there all along—but if what Mona said was true, her father had told her the most destructive, life-shattering lie of her life. Even without that betrayal in the equation, Quinn had never made time for her. She had never been his first priority.

“I—I want to talk to Father. He’s here. Let me see him.”

Pain creased Mona’s face before she smiled weakly. “Of course, honey. But there’s one thing I want to bring to your attention first. I imagine you’ll want to ask Quinn about it yourself.” She paused to gather her thoughts. “One of the things your father and I disagreed on was your future. I wanted you to have every opportunity, even if it was . . . a riskier path than others. Your father always preferred you stay safe and sheltered.” She raised her eyebrows knowingly. Piper grimaced.

“I’m talking about one thing in particular regarding your future: magic.”

Piper stared blankly. “I don’t have any magic.”

Mona’s stare was intent, almost calculating. “Not anymore, no.”

Piper’s heart seemed to expand in her chest. She sucked in a sharp breath. “What do you mean?”

“You were born with magic like any other haemon.” Mona’s pressed her lips together hard. “But as you know, all female children with two haemon parents die. When you were six, the age when magic starts to develop, you started to die too.”

Piper’s whole body went cold. “What?”

“You remember, don’t you? The headaches?”

She shuddered at the memory, still vibrant even though she’d been so young—pain beyond description, condensed inside her skull, burning her mind to ash. Within six months, the migraines had escalated to the point where she would fall into seizures.

“Your developing magic was killing you. We couldn’t let you die. Even though we knew it was probably hopeless, we searched relentlessly for a way to save you. We didn’t give up. Just as it seemed we would be too late, we tracked down the best daemon healer in the Overworld.

“He confirmed the long-rumored cause, that female children inherit two magical bloodlines, one from each haemon parent. Male children only inherit the mother’s bloodline and develop normally. You were dying because two competing kinds of magic were growing inside you, slowly killing you.”

Mona tried to smile. “Did you know daemon castes cannot interbreed? They can consort, of course, but they can’t reproduce. You will never see a crossbreed daemon. Only haemons can create what was never meant to be: a cross of daemon bloodlines. And they all die—except you. You are the only hybrid in existence.”

Piper stared, trying to calm her pounding heart. “Why didn’t I die too?”

Mona pulled her into a hug. “The daemon healer had an idea. It was like nothing I’ve ever heard before; magic so complex I can’t imagine how he conceived such a thing. Even he wasn’t sure it would work.” She tightened her arms around Piper. “But he did it. He sealed your magic away inside you, stopping its development. He cut you off from it, so it wouldn’t hurt you. That’s why you have no power.”

Piper stared at nothing, reeling inside. So she did have magic—magic she could never use. Magic that should have killed her. Instead, she was alive but weaker than the weakest haemon. A powerless hybrid.

“Once we knew you were safe,” Mona continued, “your father decided that was the end of it. He had the healer fog your memory of the healing. He announced we would never tell you so you wouldn’t mourn what you’d lost.”

Piper was silent, thinking her father had the right idea.

“But Piper,” Mona sat back and gripped Piper’s shoulders with both hands, “I don’t believe that’s the end of it. I don’t think your magic is lost forever. The healer sealed your two lines of magic away from you—and away from each other. There might be a way to reclaim one side of it and keep the other sealed away. Then you’d be safe.”

Piper inhaled slowly, not daring to hope yet hoping anyway.

“Maybe it’s impossible. I don’t know. But I do know we will never know if we don’t try. Your father doesn’t want to give you the chance to try. He’s always wanted to make all our choices for us.”

Mona abruptly rose to her feet and gave Piper’s arm a comforting squeeze. “I know it’s a lot to take in. Go talk to your father. Ask him for his side. You won’t feel better until you do.”

. . .

Piper drifted in a haze of conflicting thoughts and emotions as she followed the young man who’d been manning the ultrasound speaker earlier. Her head was bursting, her heart aching. She felt so much she couldn’t feel anything. Ash’s betrayal with the Sahar hardly seemed like anything now that she was faced with the enormity of the lies her father had told her.

She’d thought she understood her life pretty well. Turned out not. She didn’t have magic? Actually, she had a deadly magic combo she couldn’t use. Her mom had died nine years ago? Actually, she’d been alive all along and forbidden from contacting Piper. Of all the people she could trust, her father was one of only two? Actually, he’d been lying to her and hiding things from her for her entire life.

Her Gaian guide interrupted her inner rant.

“It’s good you came when you did,” he said over his shoulder, grinning cheerfully as though it didn’t matter one bit he’d used that speaker to send Ash into an agony-spawned seizure. “My name is Travis, by the way. It’s great to finally meet you. We were hoping you’d show before we had to leave.”

She struggled to focus on his words.

“We figured you’d find out where we were,” he babbled on, oblivious to her emotional turmoil, “but if we’d moved before you got here, we would’ve had to start looking for you again. No way you’d find our new location without insider help.”

“Why are you moving?” she asked without any real interest. Her mind spun through the revelations of the last hour. She felt sick to her stomach.

“With all this stuff with the Stone, it was a good idea no matter what,” Travis explained. “But then we caught this daemon snooping around a few days ago. Now, we have a whole group of them hiding in the woods. They haven’t come too close yet but they will any day now, we expect. They must think we have the Stone, like the one we caught, but these ones don’t want to come bursting in. We have greater numbers than them.”

She frowned. “How many?”

“Oh, forty or so haemons here, another twenty nearby,” he rambled on carelessly. “The daemons in the woods are only, I dunno, fifteen or so.”

Forty in this building alone? Piper frowned, calculating. She supposed if they didn’t mind cramped quarters, forty people could fit in the Consulate.

“Then, of course, a huge squad of prefects followed you here. They’re thirty minutes out last I heard. We need to be gone before then, so you’ll, you know, have to keep your conversation short.”

Piper worked to keep her expression blank. Well, shit. Everything was falling apart. Captured by the Gaians, who were led by her supposedly deceased mother, and now the prefects were right behind them. She trailed along in a silent frenzy of ineffective on-the-fly planning while Travis blabbed all the way to the basement and down a long hall, through a locked door, and into another hallway. This one was dim and unfinished, more of a tunnel than a hall. There were three doors, all on the left side.

“The middle room is empty,” he said. “This near one has the daemon we captured earlier. The far door is your dad.”

Piper glanced at the deadbolt on the nearest metal door. “What are you planning to do with him?”

“Well, some people thought we should kill him so he can’t tell anyone about us, but Ms. Santo overruled them.” Piper started to nod—of course her mother wouldn’t kill a daemon in cold blood—then she froze as the guy continued. “She said he’s too good an opportunity to pass up. This is our chance to learn about some of the magic daemons have that we don’t. Find out if there’s a way to duplicate some of their abilities like glamour and stuff.”

She slowly clenched her hands as outrage kindled. “So you keep him prisoner and, what? Force him to give you magic lessons?”

“Nah, he wouldn’t do that. I think the idea was more to experiment on him or something. I don’t know, that’s not my department.”

“Experiment on him,” she repeated flatly.

“Yeah,” he said excitedly, as emotionally observant as a brick wall. He obviously considered her a full-fledged member of the Gaians already. “Imagine what we could learn. Glamour would be so cool.”

“Where are the daemons I came in with?” she asked abruptly.

“Them? Oh, they’re in the old food cellar at the other end of the basement. We didn’t think these rooms were secure enough. We only had one 5-class dampening collar and we used it on this daemon here, so your daemon only has a 4-class collar. Might not be enough.” He shrugged.

She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. Then she plastered on a vacant smile. “Sounds good. Say, do you think they’ll want to experiment on them too?”

Travis shrugged. “Who knows? Probably not, not without a top-level collar to keep the nasty one tame, and the incubus is useless anyway.”

“So what’ll you do with them?” she pressed, trying to keep her tone casual.

He spread his hands. “No idea. Maybe just kill ‘em.”

“Oh . . . right.” She worked to keep her smile in place.

“Yeah. Maybe I’ll see how well that ultrasound works.” His grin faded as he squinted at her. “What? Don’t sweat it, it’s not like killing people. They’re only daemons.”

Piper clenched her jaw and gave a noncommittal nod. She remembered what the file had said about the Gaians; their public mandates were a lot different from their private agendas. Her mother had offered Piper the public face only.

“Are these rooms locked?” she asked.

He nodded as he pulled out a ring of keys. “I’ll let you in to talk to your dad and wait until you’re done.”

She smiled politely, stepped up to him, and slammed her fist into his gut so fast he didn’t even have a chance to flinch. As he doubled over, she locked her arm around his neck from behind and squeezed. He flailed and slapped at her like a panicking child. It only took a minute before he crumpled into unconsciousness. She plucked the keys out of his limp hand, breathing hard.

What a group of hypocritical, self-deluding murderers. She would have to figure out what she thought of her mother leading them later, but she knew she would never join them. No. Way. In. Hell.

Shaking out the keychain, she strode to the far door and started trying out keys. There were a dozen large keys and nearly as many small ones. It took her a while to get it unlocked. Taking a deep breath, she pushed the door open and stepped into the room.

It was a barren cube of cement blocks, not even a window. A pallet covered most of the cement floor, several cheap blankets spread over it. A bucket sat in the far corner. Lying across the pallet was her father. At first glance, he looked fine, sleeping peacefully. Then she noticed the pallor of his skin and the hollowness of his cheeks. His clothes, the same dress shirt and pants he’d worn the night he was kidnapped, were stained and dirty. He had several days’ growth of unkempt facial hair.

Without thinking, she rushed across the room and dropped down beside him. Before she could find her voice, his eyes cracked open. He stared at her. Then a grin split his face—a very familiar but un-Quinn-like grin.

The floor seemed to drop out from under her.

“Uncle Calder?” she whispered in disbelief.

“Hey Piper,” he croaked.

“But—but—you’re not Father!” She mentally flailed. Not possible. Yes, they were identical twins, but she’d been positive the Gaians had kidnapped Quinn, not Calder.