Rise of the Magi (14 page)

Gallagher knelt on the other side of Nix. Eyes closed, he placed his palm on the other man’s face. “He’s alive. Barely. His consciousness has been suppressed. I think once we get him away from whatever this is hanging in the air, he’ll recover.”

Immense relief flooded through me. Although he wouldn’t be any too happy that I’d rescued him, I still wanted him to be okay and hoped Liam wouldn’t freak about that. Not to mention, Nix had been with the Magi and could probably deliver some much needed information on the subject.

Thomas screamed behind me. As I turned, vines claimed his ankle and jettisoned him backwards. He reached for us, the look of utter terror burning itself onto my retinas, as he faded into nothing at the edge of the trees.

The two witches cried out, too, as did Brígh, as we all gaped at the place where Thomas fizzled out like the remnants of a dream.

“Get out of here,” Andrew said. “Now! All of you.” He took off into the woods before I could protest. My pulse jacked into overdrive as I wondered if that would be my last glimpse of him. Neve started and stopped as if torn between going after him and staying with me.

“I will not leave them—” I stopped my protest when my attempt to reach out for Thomas’ mind yielded nothing. Gallagher’s hand on my arm confirmed he couldn’t find him, either. “Can’t you show us their realm again?” I asked Meline, who appeared as if she’d been struck by lightning, mouth open in a silent scream.

Amanda shook her blonde head and swiped away a tear strolling down her pale cheek. “Not without Thomas. We’d need a third at least.”

While Liam scooped up Nix, Neve and the rest of the guards herded us at a run back toward the cars we’d arrived in. Cas dragged Meline, who cried and demanded we go back for Thomas. I wondered if the two of them were more than colleagues. Anguish like hers didn’t come with anything but the loss of one loved by the deepest places of a person.

When we reached the two vehicles in the field, I jammed my fingers into my hair and paced, my breath coming in the form of wheezes in my throat. “I hate having to run. Damn them, for making us run from them!”

Liam blocked my way, but I needed to move. “Lila, stop.”

“No. We need to go after Andrew. And Thomas.”

“Andrew can take care of himself. We need to regroup at Iress. Nix might be the answer we’ve been looking for to put an end to this thing once and for all.”

“But what about”—unable to speak non-wobbly words, I pointed to the trees—“I won’t leave him to die like that. We can’t even … if he’s not on our plane, then I can’t …”

I realized, too late, that I should have kept my mouth shut because Meline’s cries turned into high keening sounds that tore my heart into a thousand shreds of bloody meat. Ashamed I’d lost it in front of strangers, I wrapped my arms around her, surrounding her in my Light until she quieted. “I promise you, one way or another, I will find peace for Thomas. I’m so sorry.”

When I released her, the look in her purple eyes could have melted stone. Flames danced behind them, burning hot and promising pain. She scrubbed wetness from her face with the heels of her hands and cleared her throat, taking on a deadly quiet. I knew that stillness. I used to get that way right before I went psycho on someone’s ass.

“The rest of the covens need to assemble here immediately,” she said. “We uncovered only about a hundred square feet of what’s there, and from what I sensed, there’s a lot more. We need to be careful, though. I’m thinking there’s more to this than meets the eye because I detected mostly containment here, not just concealment. Someone’s trying to keep someone inside more than keeping others out. If you can lend us one of your cars to get back to Toronto, I’ll arrange everything.”

A prison?
Had the Goddess confined her children as well as created the elf and fae realms? That couldn’t be it or they wouldn’t be still wreaking havoc. I eyed Meline for a second before nodding to Cas, who handed over the keys to the first vehicle. The witches took off like hellfire, while the rest of us lingered.

Panting signalled Andrew’s return a moment before he dashed out of the woods. “Nothing. A whole goddamned lot of nothing.” The glassy sheen to his eyes suggested there was more.

“What is it?” I asked.

“There’s a pond. That’s it.” He heaved Nix up with Cas’s help and positioned the unconscious man between them in the back of the remaining car—a Suburban that ran on something fae.

Neve’s subtle brow raise suggested she’d tell me about it later.

The two girls and Gallagher took the middle bench, and Liam drove while I rode shotgun, all of us silent until we reached Seven Gates. The instant Liam turned off the engine, Andrew blurted, “I don’t want Nix in the city. He doesn’t respect you as his queen. He said so himself.”

I scrambled out of my seat, which wasn’t easy sporting my rotund belly, and waited for the rest to get out. They left the broken and bloodied Nix inside.

“Leave guards on him if you like, Andrew,” I started, “but they beat him nearly to death and were about to do lord-only-knows-what to him. Not to mention he’s been within their camp or village, or whatever’s in there. He’s seen what we’re up against. I know you’re on edge, but on this one I’m right.” I put my hand on Gallagher’s arm and stared into his tired eyes. “The second he wakes up—”

“No need to speak it.” He tapped his temple, the universal telepath sign for ‘I can hear what you’re thinking’.

I nodded, feeling sick for asking Gallagher to get every detail out of Nix’s head at any cost. If it wasn’t enough that I’d ripped my former captain’s darkness open like a rotting barrel to spew its flavor into him, asking Gallagher to mind-fuck Nix was even worse. Knowing how much Nix hated me, he might not be forthcoming with information. I couldn’t, in good conscience, let him go without making him spill his guts, no matter what that made me.
Just this once
.

“Neve, you’re with us.” Liam started for the opening that would take us to Dun Bray.

“And Brígh,” I added. “I don’t want her in Iress while those hags want to lobotomize her.”

She recoiled, her face bright with horror.

“Shitballs!” I slapped a hand over my mouth as if that could take back what I’d said. “Tell me you knew what they would do.” My focus swung to Gallagher, who faced his feet. That same sick look that had come over him when he spoke of Marla returned. “Gallagher?”

“They just said I’d lose my Sight! What do you mean, lobotomize? Not like what it sounds like, right? Like, stirring up my brain like a damn slushy?”

When she began shaking, I grabbed her arms and squared her in front of me. “It doesn’t matter. I won’t let them near you. Do you hear me? Over my dead. Effing. Body.”

Her shiny eyes finally focused in on me. “But what if you can’t stop them? I told you they can get me wherever I am with those freaky abilities they didn’t bother to share with me. What will happen to me? And don’t jerk me around, Lila, I mean it.”

My mouth bobbed open a few times, but I couldn’t bring myself to say it.

“It means you’ll cease to be who you are right now,” Gallagher said, saving me the trouble. “They will shatter your mind. It means, you may not remember any of us, not even Cas.”

Brígh broke out of my hold and stomped a few yards away, muttering in angry bursts. Cas followed at a distance, his expression flashing between fury and grief.

I turned to Gallagher. “Why didn’t they tell her the consequences?”

“I did not realize until now they had not.” He wound one of his dreads around his wrist as he often did when nerves got the better of him. “Perhaps they wanted her to break their laws for some reason? Are they threatened by her? Dislike her? Want her out of their ranks? It’s impossible to know for sure. The Overseers were once nurturers, guiders of the Seers until …”

Stepping closer, I put a hand on his arm. “Until what?”

“Until the prophecy that foretold of your coming.”

My stomach lurched.

“Marla. My Goddess-bonded mate.” A shuddering breath escaped Gallagher before he choked it back. “She came to me, terrified of something she’d Seen. I told her to go to Queen Arianne, fully intending to escort her there myself, but I was detained. Before she arrived in the queen’s chambers …”

Liam expelled a sound of disgust. “The Overseers stripped her mind so she wouldn’t tell the queen.”

Visibly shaken, Gallagher turned away as I tried to hug him. “I will not speak of it again. It is an old wound I alone carry, and it will stay that way. Do not trouble yourself with my ghosts.”

Gallagher had a mate. Why hadn’t I known or thought to ask? If he thought I’d never bring it up again he was sorely mistaken. Wounds that deep needed to be shared, aired out, or they could destroy a soul. I’d lived with the festering pain for a long time
.
Before Laerni had gotten hold of me, I’d been slowly dying inside.

What had happened to change the Overseers from teachers to cruel police? More questions needed answering, and we had no time to ponder. As I watched Brígh give in to tears and fall into Cas’ arms, I asked, “She regrets telling me now, doesn’t she?”

Gallagher followed my gaze. “She will never admit it, and it causes her a deep sense of shame because she knows so many lives depend on the information, but yes, she regrets telling you about our future and hers.”

Cas and Brígh returned a moment later, hand in hand. She stood tall, eyes free of moisture, a stern resolve taking its place. “I can’t believe they didn’t tell me, but I guess it doesn’t matter. They can go lick a stump for all I care. Let’s go.”

Releasing her man with a quick kiss, she tromped off, tugging her bewildered-looking sister with her.

Liam chuckled. “She’s starting to sound like you. Scary.”

“Hey!” I wasn’t sure whether to be insulted or proud. “Wait … is that a good thing or a bad thing? And why is it scary?”

He sped off before answering, while Andrew—giving me a pissy stare—and Cas heaved Nix out of the car and positioned his arms across their shoulders. After one last, guilty glance at my former guard, I nodded to Gallagher and took off after Liam and the pink sisters.

I didn’t like having Brígh too far away from me, so I rushed to catch up. If the Overseers pet whatever-it-was could teleport stuff, then I needed to be close in order to stop it. As I continued to fume about what that old bat wanted to do to her, a thought stopped me dead. “Maybe it’s not your death that’s preventing you from seeing your future.”

They all turned and made a half circle around me, eyes bright. “What do you mean?” Liam asked.

I let the idea stew for a minute. “If they take your memory and strip you of your Sight, Gallagher said it could change you. You’ll cease to be who you are now. Maybe that’s why you can’t see your future. You don’t physically die, you just become someone new?”

Brígh gaped at me for a minute, a momentary flash of hope in her eyes fading to dread. “How is that any better than dying? They’ll take Cas away from me because I won’t remember him. That’s close enough to dying for me.”

“Yeah, it is.” I sighed and started forward again, walking around Liam. “But at least it might help us narrow down what kind of threat to look for. If I don’t have to worry about you falling and breaking your neck or some crazy lunatic coming at you with a blade, it’ll make trying to keep you safe a lot easier for the rest of us.”

Liam grabbed my hand and squeezed it. “You’re brilliant,” he whispered against my ear. “I knew there was a reason I married you.”

I elbowed him, fighting a grin. “Shut it, funny guy.”

“He’s right, though,” Neve said. “That’s really smart. I’m willing to lay my money on you—that you’re right about the cause of her vision. That means the guards need to pay more attention to the Overseers and less to everything else.”

“But what if I’m wrong?” I stopped beside the portal door, a hand propped against the damp stone to steady myself. “What if she does go and try to play hero for some reason and gets herself killed, or a meteor falls out of the sky and splats her?”

Brígh threw her arms around my neck and squeezed the air out of me. “Then, at least I die for a good reason or natural causes. I can live with that.”

I squished her back with a fierceness that walked the line between desperation and terror. “Yeah, well I can’t.” Something didn’t add up, though, and thinking through the future stuff gave me mental constipation. “If I’m right, that would mean you’d already decided to tell someone about the vision of our destruction, or the Overseers wouldn’t have Seen it, right? Did your future disappear when you made the decision?” I thought for sure she’d made it when I confronted her the day before, but maybe it just took my pushing to coax it out of her.

Brígh folded her arms together and seemed to shrink. “Now that I think about it, yeah. I decided a while ago. Took me long enough to act on it. God, I hate being such a fraidy cat all the time.”

“Stop feeling bad, or I’ll give you something worse to feel, right upside your head.” I looped my arm around her neck. “Telling me is the bravest thing you’ve ever done. If I’ve never said it before, I’m proud of you. Now, enough with the depressing talk since we’re about to walk into Neasa’s gloomy fantasy.”

14

The four of us stepped through the portal inside the cavern and emerged in Dun Bray. At least, what was left of Dun Bray. The sky no longer shone golden and cream since the spirits had come to Iress, but was the dull gray of a winter’s morning. Instead of a vast city that stretched for miles, the space had shrunk to about one square kilometer, smaller than the last time I’d been there a month before. Most of the shifter houses had moved to the new city, too, leaving an odd pattern of cobblestone leading everywhere and nowhere. Only a few shifters remained positioned around the garden in the center where Neasa had erected her throne, and those were dull and dark.

“Damn,” Brígh and Neve said in unison.

Brígh’s hand went to her mouth. “I can’t believe it. I thought it would be the same, but … it looks so pathetic and broken, now.”

“I shouldn’t be here,” Liam said. “This was a Seelie city, and there are no more Seelie. There isn’t enough fae living here to power it, and the ones who did stay don’t care enough about anything to maintain it properly.”