Redemption: Alchemy Series Book #4 (18 page)

Everyone parted as I made my way over and stepped up on the platform. The crowd, eager to know what news caused such an unusual gathering, immediately hushed.

"Thank you for coming." I scanned the hall, taking in all the faces. I knew all of them, even if I didn't recall every name. There was nothing but furrowed brows and concerned expressions, and again, I felt the weight of the news pressing down upon me. I was suddenly afraid I wouldn't be able to say what I needed to.

Maybe I should have had Cormac tell them, but they deserved to hear it from me. Most didn't care for me anyway, which was why I was the best person to deliver the news. They already hated the messenger, no more harm done.

"I know most of you have heard of the senator." A murmur ripped through the crowd, and I ignored it. "There have been rumors of a war coming." The crowd grew restless at that and I took a deep breath, and plunged in before I lost them, and my nerve. "That war is now imminent."

The crowd instantly erupted. Questions were screamed, everyone vying to be heard over their neighbor until no one was audible. Cormac edged in a hair closer on one side and Dark on my other, waiting for the crowd to lose control. I could see by their positions, they were preparing for trouble. That's when I noticed the strategic positions of the other Keepers in the room. They were slowly moving in closer to the platform and me. They thought it could turn violent, that was how fierce the energy was.

"People!" I shouted, hoping all the non-humans wouldn't take that as an insult. "Please, calm down!" I needed to get them under control. All it took was one to lose control and all hell could break loose.

Then I saw Burrom off in the back corner. He was staring at me like I should be doing something. But what?

He lifted a hand and waved his finger around as if swirling it in an invisible stew.

Maybe not so invisible.

I raised my hands as if to nonverbally ask the crowd to calm down, but that wasn't what I was doing at all. More than half of the occupants in the room were magical beings. As such, they emitted magical energy. If I could pull the angry energy of the room into myself, perhaps I could avert a mob scene.

Slowly, I felt it trickle to me. Gradually, the noise in the room dropped a hair. This would work. I steadily pulled more and the crowd calmed more.

I just needed to channel it somewhere. That was the trick. I'd held too much of it last time and needed to divert it out into something else.

I noticed Burrom approaching along the side of the room where Dark stood. What was he doing? He passed by Dark and behind the podium set up in front of me and grabbed my hand. I looked quickly at him and he nodded.

"It could kill you," I said, but I knew I had to do something quick. The colors of the magic were starting to shimmer in the air, only visible to me, as they had last time right before I'd overloaded.

"Do it."

I felt my other hand being grabbed and realized Cormac had taken it. I hadn't realized he'd even been aware of what was going on.

Cormac squeezed my hand. He still wasn't looking at me but keeping his eye on the crowd. "Split it between us."

I let the power flow through me and felt them both tense at the onslaught of pure magical energy pulsing into them. I broke contact as soon as I felt the pressure subside from me and the colors dim. It was just enough to get me out of the danger zone, I hoped.

Cormac turned, eyed
me skeptically and tried to grab my hand again.

"No."

"Yes," he said and grabbed my hand but to no use. I'd shut down the connection and he wasn't strong enough to pull it from me if I wasn't willing to give it.

The crowd hushed enough for me to hear a woman call out a single question. "When?"

And silence fell as that was probably the most important question at hand.

I held her gaze, speaking directly to her. "We don't have an exact date, but he's organizing now."

"Are you sure?" another man, one of the
changed,
asked. At least I thought he was a man. Completely covered in a shaggy grey fur, it wasn't easy to tell.

"Yes. Sure enough that I felt you all needed to be told. I don't make this statement lightly."

"Why? I'd heard there was a truce?" A different woman in the back asked.

"There was a truce. It looks like he's going to break it."

"What do we do?" This question came from several people.

I gripped the sides of the podium in front of me.

"As I see it, there are two choices. You can leave here and try to find somewhere else to go. Or, you can stay and fight with us."

People started frantically talking amongst themselves.

"But, know one thing. If you stay, you fight." I spoke louder to make sure everyone heard.

"Even the children?"

I hadn't thought about the children. "Well, no. Not the little ones."

"What about the injured or unable?"

"Of course not."

Another person in the back raised their hand.

"Yes?"

"I get panic attacks. Does that count?"

"I don't know. Can you still function?"

"I hyperventilate sometimes."

"Yeah, me too!"

I let out a deep sigh, annoyed
, and wondered if Cormac had been up here if they would've asked these questions.

"Enough. Anybody who can fight, has to. Carry a brown paper bag
, if that's what it takes. You have a week to decide."

I stepped past Cormac and exited the room
, thinking about how fucked we were if this was any sign.

I walked straight out the lobby doors and then sprinted down the strip. As they'd spoken, I'd continued to pull more energy from the room and I was teetering on the edge. I needed to get rid of it and I needed no one to be around when I unleashed it.

I turned in a circle, looking for any innocent bystanders, slightly frantic now in my need to expel the power coursing through me before it could possibly kill me. I didn't know what would happen when I let it go, but I had to. Alone and acting on instinct, eyes closed, I opened my mouth, spread out my arms and pushed it from my system, outward into the area around me. I finally felt it all release and my body felt like my own again.

I opened my eyes, hoping I hadn't caused a building to crumple or some other sort of additional destruction. I gasped at the sight as I looked down at what used to be the Vegas strip. There were hundreds of rippers standing as far as I could see.

They weren't all opaque either. Some of them, like when they first started to appear, were slightly translucent. Were more still coming? And for the very first time, I feared I might have something to do with it. This might not be reassuring to all the people I was trying to recruit to fight with me.

I didn't know what to do as they all were approaching. It was a long shot
, but maybe, if I just left they would go away. It was a ridiculous idea, but stupider things had worked. I choked back the nervous laughter that was welling up and realized I might be starting to crack under the pressure. This seemed to make it even funnier to me, perhaps confirming the conclusion.

I turned to rush into the casino and stopped short.

I saw the
changed,
all standing in front of the castle. Colleen, Sharon, Katie, Evan, the whole gang was there, with Cormac standing front and center.

I knew it didn't look good but I held my head up and kept walking.

"How did you do that?" he asked as I came closer.

I thought he meant the rippers. I could still hear their careening floating on the wind as they remained where they were.

I looked back to the rippers, who seemed to be glued in place. There was no denying it was me somehow, but I simply shook my head as to an explanation.

When I turned back to him and saw his face, I knew Cormac was stunned. Nothing stunned Cormac.

"Not them. Us." The weight he put on the word 'us' was like a cinder block dropping into a pool and heavily thudding to the bottom.

"What do you mean?" I understood what he said but I couldn't get my head around the reality of what it meant.

He was staring at me oddly. The rest of the
changed
were speechless.

I still didn't understand the how of it.

"You called us." He said this with absolute certainty.

"No, I
didn’t call for you." I shook my head in disagreement.

But he just kept at it. "Yes. You did."

And then he threw me a lifeline and I grabbed it with both hands.

Chapter Fifteen

The Cycle of Life

When Cormac ordered me to the penthouse, I took it for the favor it was and scrambled out of there. I didn't care if it hurt my pride. I saw the look in his eyes and recognized it. Neither of us knew what just happened. And as much as I rode him about how he handled things, him ordering me inside at that very moment was a knee jerk reaction to buy me time. When he didn't know how else to accomplish it, he fell back on his autocratic ways.

My pride be damned, I'd rushed inside, quite happy to take that order. Of course, I didn't have any intention of going to the penthouse. I didn't think Cormac even cared. I knew the dictate had been to save my ass from the questions about to hit from every side.

Answers? I didn't have answers for them. I didn't know myself. Instead of admitting that, which might have freaked them all out
more, Cormac and Colleen had stepped up and started doing damage control. I didn't even know what they were going to say, but it allowed me to duck out of there for a minute and shake off the shock of what I'd just done.

My entire body felt weak from the drugs still lingering in my system. The calling every ripper in the area, while calling to every
changed
as well, certainly didn't help matters.

Maybe I needed sleep. I didn't have time to rest but I was going to have to
, if I wanted to be coherent. I couldn't even think straight anymore and I'd need a clear mind to come up with a plausible explanation for what I'd done.

I also didn't have time to worry about it right now. No one did. If it wasn't an imminent threat, it needed to go on the back burner. We needed to get enlistment signup sheets tomorrow and start trying to squeeze out every ounce of fighting power we could. I didn't know how many we were up against
, but I was sure the numbers would be greater than ours.

I needed to talk to Dodd. I couldn't afford to have Sabrina holed up in his room anymore. She'd just have to get over it. We'd all had horrible things happen. It was time to suck it up.

As I walked down the hallway, it was pretty quiet; most people were either in the great hall gossiping about the meeting, or outside gossiping about the latest sideshow production. They were probably trying to pump Cormac for more information. With everything that was on my mind, it hadn't even occurred to me that Buzz hadn't been at the meeting until he was sprinting toward me from the opposite direction of the hall.

"What's wrong?"

"You gotta come to Dodd's, right now." He was breathing heavily, a sheen of sweat on his forehead.

I started running for Dodd's before I asked another question. Buzz was trailing too far behind and I didn't wait for him to catch up as I took the stairs two at a time. My lungs burning
, my fist pounded on the antique wooden door.

It was yanked open by a strung out looking Dodd. He was a Keeper. It took a lot for a Keeper to look haggard. I'd just been kidnapped, deprived of food and water for three days, called a mass of man-eating monsters to me while simultaneously calling every
changed
in the area, and I still looked better than him. Actually, thinking about it made me want to go collapse on my bed.

He didn't stop to talk but wrapped a hand around my arm and dragged me in with him into his bedroom. If I hadn't known what was going on and that Sabrina was there, I might have gotten a hair worried that he'd
gone off the reservation. I would never admit it, but that's how bad he looked. He was bordering on creepy. If I'd seen him as a stranger walking down the street, I would've ducked into a crowded store to avoid getting close to him.

Once I saw what awaited me, I was
grateful for it too, because if he hadn't been propelling me forward I might have sunk to the ground the minute I crossed the threshold.

Sabrina,
or at least I thought the creature was Sabrina, was in the middle of the bed. If I hadn't seen the beginning of her transformation, I wouldn't have known her. Blue-green scales covered the top half of her head like a strange masquerade mask. She lay upon wings outstretched beneath her. Her hands were clawed, as well as her bare feet. Her limbs, which had once been graceful and feminine, were all just sinew without an ounce of fat to soften the tendons and muscles that bulged.

I'd noticed the room was darker than even the stone normally made it and then I looked around and saw the same black marks on the walls. They looked identical to the ones we had found at the energy plant, the place Rulagh had lived.