Prophecy (Residue Series #4) (30 page)

Maggie.

She paused, long enough to watch Diomed’s body begin to decompose. By then someone else was charging her. I recognized him from the throne he sat on next to the rest of The Sevens, and from the murals of his accomplishments in slaughtering innocents while at war before his tenure over our world. Hippocrates’ moldavite stone was already covered in blood, and it was clear from his emboldened face that he was determined to shed more of it.

“Maggie!” I shouted, grabbing Jocelyn’s hand and bringing her with me.

Noting our speed, Jocelyn lifted and swept us across the ground just before Hippocrates reached Maggie. And then Hippocrates was gone from our sight, his body flying off to the side, in a direction his wings weren’t inclined.

Looking quickly, we found Eran slamming Hippocrates into the stone wall that made up the Ministry’s staircase and start to pummel him.

Maggie sighed. “He’s always doing that,” she said, complaining, which surprised me.

A second later, she sprang, her wings pumped once, and she entered their fight. Jocelyn started in her direction, but I held her back with a hand to her wrist.

Shocked, she looked at me. I caught this out of the corner of my eye but didn’t have time to explain. Keeping my grip, because I knew she wouldn’t listen otherwise, I used my free hand to pick up the bow at my feet. I did let her loose, because she understood, and because I needed my other hand to grab for the flaming arrow a few feet away. In one fluid motion, I seized, aimed, and released it. It shot across the courtyard directly for Hippocrates’s chest, where it sunk in, the tip of it becoming completely consumed by his body.

He let out a scream, a chilling, horrified scream that I was sure he’d heard before from his own victims at the moment of their death. But he didn’t die. He arched his back and tilted his head away from the flames eating up the wood. No longer noticing the arrow, the battle screaming around him, or Eran and Maggie, his terror was locked on the fire.

“For the murder of innocents, you are condemned to eternal death,” Maggie declared, although he didn’t seem to hear her. He did see her though, his eyes widening and his nostrils flaring as she placed a finger at the end of the arrow and bowed it toward him.

He struggled, thrashing aggressively to free himself, but Eran kept a good hold, enough that allowed me the time to cross to them and assist.

As my hands came around his stocky shoulders, images of his life swept through my mind, just as Diomed’s had done. Hippocrates’ existence differed dramatically. He sought conflict, specifically because he took pleasure in his victim’s deaths. War was his passion, anguish was his pastime. He was the one who instructed the men to torture the Thibodeauxes, and had been in the room to oversee the effort minutes before I had arrived. Then his life slipped away, along with the clarity of his memory until there was nothing left.

Only then I noticed a change in the conflict. The incantations died away, the fires extinguished, the movement around the courtyard and in the sky above, so rapid and sharp minutes earlier, began to slow. Black uniforms and cloaks lay interlaced, stacked with still chest over still chest, but there were far more uniforms than cloaks on the ground. White feathers scattered across them all. Jocelyn was making her way through the bodies, kneeling to heal those still alive.

I quickly surveyed who was left standing and only relaxed after counting Alterums and Dissidents, the Weatherfords and my family included. Lacinda, however, was nowhere in sight. My promise to her would have to wait.

Aidan bowed backwards to let out a long howl of success, which seemed to signal the end of the battle. Theleo, who stood next to the opposite wall, was breathing heavy from exertion and gave me a nod. Ms. Beedinwigg’s sai dripped blood as she discussed the battle with Campion. I felt the general sense of victory while we clapped each other on the backs and smiled broadly. Only Maggie and Gershom sensed something was off. Their lips were pinched with tension as they searched for something overhead.

Then the sky darkened, telling us that what was coming for us had now arrived.

18
SACRIFICE

T
HEY CAME IN THE SAME WAY
we had: fast and without hesitation.

The first of them appeared over the roof of the Ministry, from the north, where we couldn’t detect them until it was too late. Diving like a flock of birds, the Vires aimed at us in the courtyard. Recognizing it as the perfect ambush point, a curse word slipped from my mouth while sprinting for Jocelyn. Eran ran for Maggie. The rest braced themselves.

As the black uniforms slipped downward like mist over the Ministry roof, my heart began to race again. While it pumped vigorously, harder, shooting blood back into my brain, I could comprehend exactly what was happening.

Witty little Lacinda and slick little Sartorius had figured out a way to eliminate the rest of The Sevens. They were hand delivering them to us. We had been drawn here to save Miss Mabelle and Miss Celia only to be used to eliminate Diomed and Hippocrates’ armies, and now they had sent Peregrine, telling the last Seven standing in Sartorius’ way where to find us. It was all wrapped up in a neat, concise plan that I was sure Sartorius had devised long ago.

What he hadn’t counted on, however, was his prized possession being in the courtyard.

“Jocelyn!” I shouted, my arms falling behind me in a futile effort to block her. “Stay with me!”

By that point, Vires were beginning to land, tackling Dissidents and Alterums across the courtyard, tumbling backwards in a ball of loose limbs. Dissidents flew into the air and against the walls, levitated by an unknown Vire somewhere in the midst of it all. Others slapped their hands to their ears and crouched in pain against the Vire holding them. Alterums lifted into the air – an enormous flock of white wings with readied muscles – and came down on the Vires, attempting to free the Dissidents who needed it.

And from there, a new battle began.

Frantically, I searched for a solution. Vaguely, my mind told me that Peregrine’s army, or what he could gather of it on short notice, had stronger fighting skills than any of the others we’d encountered. And they weren’t holding back.

Not when their commander was present.

He appeared just as two Vires attempted to tackle me. I slipped beneath the swing of the first, catching him in the gut with my fist. The second, unable to slow himself, kept coming…directly into my leg as I swept it across his ankles. They fell, I stood and found another one coming.

This one was taken out by an Alterum, his wings flapping so close to my face I felt a tip of one brush down my cheek. The Alterum and Vire fell, rolled against the wall they hit, and continued their fight.

The next one to appear before us wasn’t a Vire or an Alterum. He was in a class all his own.

“Peregrine,” I greeted, as he strode through the conflict with ease.

Theleo, having spotted Peregrine, landed like a rock directly behind me. “I have her,” Theleo confirmed, and I knew he meant Jocelyn.

“Get her out of here,” I instructed.

“No,” she yelled. “I’m staying here.”

“Get her out of here!” I shouted.

With equal vehemence, she shouted back. “NO!”

“I’ve got her,” Theleo confirmed, resolute and unwavering.

His insistence was partly reassuring. The other part of me would never believe she was safe until all Sevens had perished.

This one
, I thought,
is mine
.

“You won’t get to her,” I told him.

He chuckled dismissively, and his feathered appendages, already extended, rustled from the effort.

“You have the same look Flavian had.” I smirked. “Before I ripped his wings off.”

The man’s callous gaze didn’t waver. He simply kept coming. And this was exactly what I wanted. Draw him in, take him out, end the battle.

There was just one problem. I had no weapon that would help me accomplish it. And I needed glass, which was hard to come by in the middle of a fight surrounded by stone and sand.

I let Peregrine make the first move, an insulting backhand meant to brush me aside. I weaved around it and planted my heel into his knee. The grating snap was exhilarating, but not nearly as much as when he cried out in surprise and pain before falling to the ground.

He pinched his lips closed in displeasure, more perturbed now.

With a sigh, he stretched his leg out and slid it around to the front of his body, his kneecap sliding beneath the skin as he moved. When his leg came to a stop, it was bent again, directly in front of his body, where he used it to lunge upward.

I underestimated his ability to recover, but I wouldn’t do it again.

He came at me, aiming for my neck.

Whereas before I was an annoyance, now I was a sincere hindrance in his effort to get to Jocelyn, and he no longer spared exertion to reach me.

Snarling and spitting, his composure gone entirely, he managed to get his hands around my neck. “I can accomplish the same goal with a simple ending of your life, Jameson. And you’ll be easier to hurt.”

With my airway cut off, I channeled. “Feel free to try it.”

As his fingers squeezed tighter, the pressure began to build in my head. Jocelyn’s scream behind me sounded muted, as if the world was shutting itself off. Before he got any further, I drew in his anger, his greed, his lust for power, and funneled it back full force.

And then Peregrine blinked. He shook his head, trying to clear it. His eyebrows sank in confusion. His fingers loosened with his distraction but still I explained it to him by channeling.

“Do you feel that, Peregrine?” I mocked. “That’s me…torturing you.”

He elevated me off my feet, using my neck. I met him with a continuous dose of his own vengeance.

Jocelyn’s scream came again. I sensed that she ran for me, but was held back. Fighting her way toward me, she cried out in rage for Theleo to help me.

But he knew better.

Another strong dose of all that made up Peregrine returned to him, and in reaction, his fingers unwrapped my neck. Bending over, heaving from the ache of it, he glared back, knowing it was all he could do.

You might get to me
, I channeled to him,
but you won’t get through me.

He jerked back, his eyes widening, and I wondered if anyone had ever been inside his head before. If they had been, he didn’t know it. Either way, it was clear he wasn’t fond of it.

Overcoming his shock, he stood and, with a great amount of confidence, suggested, “Look around you, Jameson. Your squalid army is deteriorating. I don’t need to kill you. You’re already mine.”

I did take the chance to survey the battle and what I saw sickened me. We had started out small in number, but impressive in strength and ability. And we had conquered two forces already today. Our numbers were even but his forces were fresh, while the Dissidents and Alterums were fatigued, sapped from the previous conflict.

Damn you, Sartorius.

He had synchronized the attacks, ensuring we would weaken with each one. We needed an edge, preferably one made of glass.

Kalisha’s voice behind me panted from exertion. “We’re…failing,” she said emotionless, as was expected of a Vire, even one who hadn’t taken on that role in decades.

“Kalisha,” Peregrine called out, drawing our attention. “What did you think? You could steal from us, take the records, give the future to your Dissidents, and the prophecy would miraculously be revoked?” He laughed wryly. “It’ll take a lot more than a few Defectors to take me down.”

With my back to her, I couldn’t see the determination she exuded, but I heard it in her voice.

“You are correct, Peregrine…It’ll take Jocelyn.”

A second later, Jocelyn gasped. Instinctively, I spun to find the source of her fear. But it was Kalisha, drawing a blade across her own neck.

Even Theleo appeared disturbed by the sight.

“NO!” Jocelyn screamed and reached for her, but Kalisha was already collapsing, her eyes rolling skyward.

In a state of absolute confusion, I tried to understand. My initial thought was,
why? Why fight so hard beside us only to take your own life at the end? To avoid facing another depraved incarceration? No, my instinct told me, it’s more.

Jocelyn was on her knees, weeping, repeating her healing incantation while Peregrine observed with mild amusement, as if he were watching ducks frolic at the park. His casual demeanor didn’t last long though.

Her eyes red, wet with tears, Jocelyn leaned in as Kalisha used her last breath to convey a message. Then her body went still and silent.

Jocelyn stopped altogether then, and I thought it was a result of her processing Kalisha’s death. That was before I saw her expression. She was…startled, dazzled. She was lifting the hand she had on Kalisha’s arm in a rush, second guessing herself, hesitating and then placing it back again. It was apparent to me that she wasn’t comprehending anything around her.

“Jocelyn,” I said, carefully making my way toward her.