Reflection Pond (33 page)

Callie forced herself to breathe slower and calm her heart rate. She needed to remember everything Rowan had taught her. In a fight, she was nearly invincible. She could explode brains. There was nothing to be afraid of. If Hawthorne or Coal attacked, she would disable them. Callie relaxed a fraction. The vice on her lungs eased.

Something soft scraped the ground to her right. She froze.
A footstep? It came again from her left. Callie closed her eyes, the insides of her eyelids as black as the tunnels around her, and listened.
Nothing
. She strained until the thundering of her heart was deafening. She moved on, ignoring the numbing terror.

Suddenly the wall disappeared beneath her hand and she found only empty air. She took a tiny, hesitant step, and her glamour disappeared. She lit blue, and in the sudden light, she saw Hawthorne’s grinning face.

Hawthorne dove for Callie and she leapt out of the way. He was on her in an instant, heavy weight throwing her down. Callie’s jaw smacked the ground with bone crunching force and bright sparklers burst behind her eyes. She felt each contact point acutely, her knee, shoulder, elbow. Hawthorne straddled her waist. The iron hard muscles of his thighs pressed painfully against her hipbones. Callie thrashed beneath him, blindly, without direction, feeling sick satisfaction every time their flesh connected.

He captured her wrists, which still glowed with iridescent blue energy. Callie glared up at him, struggling.

“I told Coal you’d be a problem. You’re too strong and too stupid to realize where your loyalties should lie. It would’ve been a mercy if Elm killed you.”

Callie twisted her hips back and forth but Hawthorne hardly moved. He weighed much more than her, his body layered with muscle.

“The cauldron is only the beginning,” he said with a grin. He trapped both her wrists in one hand and stroked her cheek. “So much power and beauty. Such a shame to waste it.”

Callie ground her teeth together; Hawthorne’s touch awoke an immeasurable fury inside of her. The second she wriggled an arm from his grasp, she jammed her palm into his groin. Hawthorne yelped and she bucked until he rolled off of her. Hauling herself to her feet, Callie rammed her knee into his lower back and Hawthorne sprawled, face first, onto the floor.

Callie wheeled around to find a grinning Coal behind her. He seemed completely at ease where he stood, vibrant gaze on her. He rocked back on his heels and lifted on eyebrow. “My lovely, lovely Calla Lily.” He took a step forward.

Callie stood there stupidly frozen in his gaze. “Where’s Rowan?” she demanded.

“How beautiful you are.” Coal raised a hand as though to caress her face.

Callie made a disgusted sound and whirled. His fingers caught the strap of her dress and the fabric snapped as she bolted.

Her knees and hips protested, pain firing up her legs with every step. She glanced around the tunnel, disoriented. She couldn’t remember what direction she’d come from, every craggy rock looked identical to the last craggy rock. “Shit,” she muttered, ignoring the footsteps pounding behind her. One of the tunnels
had
to lead out. She’d find Rowan.

Callie burst from the passageway into a dim room, and gasped. The reflection pond swayed above her. Callie skidded to a stop, dumbstruck. The room had no doors. Even the tunnel she’d come from had disappeared into the
stone wall. She spun in a tight circle, air wheezing from her lungs as she tried to catch her breath. When Callie completed the rotation, both Coal and Hawthorne stood in front of her. The clunk of Coal setting the cauldron down resounded with finality through the small room. He watched Callie, smile glittering.

“It seems you have reached the end, my darling,” he said.

The words sent a shiver up Callie’s spine.

“Don’t kill her,” Hawthorne said with a dismissive wave of his hand. He pulled the cauldron closer to him and leaned against the wall, recovering, eyes narrowed, arms crossed.

“I have no intention of killing her,” Coal said, stepping toward Callie. His expression softened, but his eyes remained hard as cobalt diamonds. “You shall return with us. You amuse me, and I know you will delight Father.”

She didn’t wait for Coal to finish his speech. Closing her eyes, Callie called upon the power inside of her. She imagined Coal’s ears bleeding, him falling, clutching his head.

Nothing happened. Her energy, usually an endless inferno inside of her, fizzled like a dying match in a bowl of water. Her eyes opened.

“You can come with me,” he pressed his lips together, seeming to search for the right word, “voluntarily.” He was closer enough now that Callie smelled the familiar-foreign scent of him. Like Rowan, but darker.

Rowan’s words, unbidden, filtered into her mind. That first day she hadn’t understood, now, she did.
This is the antechamber; you know your charms are stripped here.
Nauseous realization tore through her. She couldn’t use her powers. Resigned, Callie set her feet, ready for the impending fight. A vicious sense of satisfaction wound through her and she was glad for her hand-to-hand training.

Coal was a much stronger fighter than Hawthorne, maybe even stronger than
Rowan, and he immediately gained the advantage, winding a hard arm around her throat. Callie went slack under the hold and tried to let her body weight free her, but Coal was too strong. She clawed at his eyes with no luck.

Mere seconds passed before Coal had Callie pinned beneath him, massive, choking hands curled around her throat. Callie wheezed. Her pulse pounded against Coal’s fingers like the incessant, thunderous of a steam train and echoed in her ears. Coal grinned and pressed harder. Callie’s peripheral vision darkened at the edges and everything in front of her came into crystalline focus. She saw each strand of Coal’s
jet black hair and the diamond droplets of sweat that collected on his forehead. His teeth behind his stretched lips were bone white, and set in perfect, straight rows. His breath smelled of dank earth and iron.

Callie felt herself go still. Coal’s voice came, as though from underwater during a thunderstorm. “She is a valiant fighter.”

“Rowan taught her,” Hawthorne said.

Coal’s eyes widened and he glanced at Callie, amused. “Did he now?
Eirensae
is full of wonderful surprises. I expected him to be weaker. Father will be happy that our mother has not influenced him overmuch.”

The hands at Callie’s throat no longer hurt. The pressure felt like a sodden blanket, pushing her under, holding her down, heavier and heavier. Her vision was nothing more than pinpricks. Callie closed her eyes.
Be patient,
she told her panicked body.
Relax.
She had to make them believe she’d passed out. Her lungs begged for breath, contracting inside her chest, shuddering like beached fish. The pulse in her ears slowed, became sluggish.
Patience, patience, patience.
She wouldn’t let her fear win.

She lost track of how much time passed, minutes, hours, each moment stretching out into an agonizing, infinite forever. Finally, Coal’s hands lifted from her neck. Though she wanted to gasp for breath, gulp in the air until she burst, she allowed herself only one, tiny breath. The room spun
around her, even with her eyes closed, even lying still and flat on the floor. She tumbled round and round, as though trapped inside a kaleidoscope.

Patience,
she thought.

“She is unconscious,” Coal said. She heard the rustle of fabric as he stood.

“Those bruises are nasty. You sure you didn’t kill her?” There was a pointed pause.

“Bring her,” Coal said. “It is the only way to keep her from Hazel.”

Callie let her body loll when Hawthorne’s hands found her though she wanted to smash in the side of his head. His fingers slid beneath her back and knees, almost gently.

“Hurry,” Coal ordered, though his voice remained genial. “We have lingered here far too long. She was an entertaining, yet time-consuming distraction.” A distinct scrap of metal told Callie he’d picked up the cauldron.

“Ealaithe,”
Hawthorne said.

Nausea bloomed in her stomach when Hawthorne lifted her and she worried she’d give the entire ruse up by vomiting on him. She bit the inside of her lip until she tasted blood. When she
was finally cradled against Hawthorne’s chest, she opened her eyes. Hawthorne made a surprised squeak just before Callie jammed her thumbs into his eyes. She felt the soft, hard-boiled resistance, tissue and blood. Hawthorne screamed and dropped her. The floor rushed up in greeting and Callie smacked unceremoniously into it, body slack as a sack of potatoes. She rolled to her feet. She hurt everywhere. Her head whirled, the room felt like a ship at rough sea.

Hawthorne screamed again. When he lifted his hands from his face, blood trailed his cheeks and smeared his fingers. “You
bitch.”

Coal frowned from across the antechamber.

“Control yourself, Hawthorne,” Coal ordered.

Callie saw Hawthorne’s jaw grind.

Coal’s gaze returned to Callie and he smiled. “You are a constant amazement. Rowan has taught you well. I will admit I am impressed with your skill and determination. You will make an excellent warrior.”

Callie knew she had one chance to escape. Behind Coal, a winding staircase disappeared into the reflection pond. Much like the library, the steps were made of a fine filigree of branches and roots. Vines spiraled over the banisters, dripping flowers as pale and bleached as fine china.

“I’m already an excellent warrior,” she said.

Adrenaline flooded Callie’s blood as she moved toward Coal. He still smiled, as though he was never worried during a fight, as though he was never outmatched. She knew she was no competition for his brawn and muscle, but she hoped she could at least outsmart him. At the last second, just before his hands collided with her, she rolled, fingers wrapping around the heavy, solid weight of the cauldron. When Coal whirled, the cauldron struck the side of his head with a sickening crunch. The impact ricocheted up Callie’s arms and the magical object clattered to the floor where Coal had fallen.

Beneath the close crop of his hair, Callie saw splinters of bone and scarlet blood. From his knees, he grinned up at her. “Run, little Calla Lily. Run, but know you will come to us. Rowan’s life depends on it.”

Callie spared a glance at Hawthorne. Bloody hands covered his face and he said, “What’s going on?
Coal?
Coal?”

She stumbled for the stairs, taking the spiral steps two at a time. With a gasp, she exploded into the cool, damp night of Lisburn. The stairs deposited her on the bank and immediately disappeared. Callie collapsed in the dry, brittle grass, gulping the metallic, bitter air. Above her, the black slash of Pennsylvania night sky coalesced, sprinkled with dimly flickering stars. The scents were the worst, rotting garbage, iron,
humanity.
She’d forgotten what the human world smelled like, or maybe she’d never realized it had a distinctly decaying scent. Already she missed the floral safety of
Eirensae,
of home.

Callie rolled and shoved to her feet. Her heart pounded everywhere.

She took a deep breath. Coal and Hawthorne would come through the pond. They couldn’t go back through the city, not with it on fire and Rowan waiting for them.

Her insides swung uneasily. Rowan was okay. He was fine.

She couldn’t go back after them, she wouldn’t be able to fight off both Coal and Hawthorne. Not without magic. Here, in the human world, her powers weren’t stripped. Here, she could take anyone down with a single thought. Callie wiped the sweat out of her eyes and settled on the bank. She would wait them out.

The minutes passed, interminable to Callie as she stared into place that’d started it all for her. Her foster home was only a block over.
Next to that, Nate’s house. She dug her hands into the rocky dirt surrounding the pond.

She thought of what Cypress had told her on her first day in
Eirensae.
Calla Lily means resurrection. Across the pond, that dingy city, that was her old life. She didn’t even miss it, now.

Callie pushed to her feet.
Where were they?

A dog barked in her old neighborhood. A single car rumbled down the street.

Maybe they were waiting for her beneath the pond just as she was waiting for them above it. Maybe they were too cowardly to face her when she had her powers.

The stones along the pond dug into her feet as she debated. She knew Rowan would tell her to wait.

Callie curled her hands.

Before she could step into the water, the stairs appeared and a shape came hurtling off of them. It crashed into her with bone jarring force. Her head bounced off the ground and her teeth snapped together.

She tasted blood.

Callie glimpsed black hair and a flash of blue eyes as she struggled to throw her attacker off.

“Callie?” he breathed.

She shoved to her elbows.

Rowan crushed her to him. “I thought they took you. I went through all the tunnels. You were gone.” Somewhere along the way, he’d lost his shirt. He had deep, bloody gouges on both of his sides.