Shadowstorm (Sorcery and Science Book 6) (21 page)

“Clues,” he said. “When you go back there, look for anything that could tell you when you are. I’ve done this before. It’s called Double Mirror. When inside a memory, you focus on an object, using it to dive into a memory of that object. You can do the same thing inside that memory, repeating the process to go deeper and deeper into the past. I’ve gone as far as seven layers deep, but I think the only limit is how many levels of memory you can maintain.”

Yeah, Cameron was definitely a lot more capable than everyone thought. Terra lifted her glass, clinking it with his, then they drank.

This time, she knew where she was going, so it took only a few seconds for her to return to the camp. The roar of battle clashed and screamed all around her, but she muted it to a soft whisper. The raging warriors and falling victims slowed until they all but stopped.

Terra rotated around, looking for the clues Cameron had talked about. Roses bloomed everywhere, a thousand shades giving birth to a thousand aromas that mixed into a sweet and rich perfume. Pegasus was famous for its roses, which bloomed all year round. It was only in summer, however, that so many bloomed. So the massacre would come in summer, but which summer? It could be this year or even decades from now.

She stepped around a gold bracelet wedged into the soft muddy ground. As she leaned over, brushing her fingers across the warm metal, she stumbled backward in time. The bracelet and another one just like it were fastened on her wrists. A pink-white flower landed on her hand, then was whisked off by a gentle puff of wind. A hundred meters away, King River stood under the soft pink canopy, his teal eyes staring past her. She turned to see Diamond Edges swarm the grounds of Laelia. They came from behind her, behind King River, over the lawn and through the trees—from every direction they flooded in, closing in on him. They lifted their guns, aiming them at him…

Terra jolted back to the death scene at the Night Rose Order. The battle continued to play out, the motions slow but forged with a sense of inevitability. She exiled the thought from her mind. She
would
stop this. She looked around, desperately seeking out anything that could help her put an end to it. Warriors. Bodies. Mud. Roses. More bodies. A bridal veil.

She stopped. The bridal veil. Dangling limply from a rose thorn, the once-white garment was splattered with thick streaks of sludge that oozed down in lumpy globs. A warm, summery breeze brushed past her, tickling the branches of the rose tree. The silk veil billowed up and spun like a twirling dancer. Terra’s skin crackled, and she fell through another memory tunnel.

Delilah set the veil upon her head and turned around. She walked down the stone path that wound between the bathing pools, her long gown sliding over a trail of tossed rose petals. At the end, beneath an archway overgrown with climbing roses, Braeden waited, his golden eyes drinking in every step that she took. She caught his gaze and winked. Terra didn’t agree with everything they’d done—especially their drugging of Cameron last summer—but she couldn’t deny that Braeden and Delilah really loved each other.

They shared a kiss. Glasses clinked. Elitions danced under the full moon. The flashes of memory fluttered past, each one more beautiful than the last. Faster and faster the memories trickled, like the first raindrops on a pond as a storm broke overhead.

Terra was flung out, expelled once again to the death scene. A broken candle rolled across the path, and as it bumped her boot, she was sucked back up again. Jason sat across from her, a candle between them, aisles of bookshelves all around. A flame flickered, burning ever brighter. Orange light bounced off the spines of well-worn books. Then they were running down a long hallway. Chairs exploded. Doors slapped the floor. Chunks of stone and wood burst off the walls. Her hands were buzzing with Phantom power. Beside her, Jason sped down the hall, running faster than she’d ever seen him move.

A house collapsed in on itself. Trees exploded. Rocks tumbled down. Her leg was broken. And healed. The images jumped in and out of her head, flashing past faster and faster with each new one. The pressure of it made her head feel like it would implode.

Terra gritted her teeth and pressed on. She had to save Jason. Jason… He leaned against her, his clothes torn. Blood dripped from his head, his arms…everywhere.

She tripped and tumbled, just missing the coffee table this time. Sweat leaked from her pores, drenching her face. She felt hot—and at the same time cold. Sweating and shivering, she pulled herself off the ground.

“It looks like you’ve exhausted the serum for now,” said Braeden.

“Yes,” Terra agreed, sitting.

Cameron rose from his knees and sat down beside her. No longer linked to him, she could feel the foresights slowly begin to build again. If she didn’t cut them off now, they’d pull her under. Tromping through time had worn her out too much to fight them.

“Amazing,” said Delilah. “I saw it in your eyes: that first spark of a foresight storm. And then it was gone. Just like that. To be able to do that after all you’ve just been through—well, if I hadn’t just seen it with my own eyes, I don’t think I would have believed it.”

“I put up my mental barrier,” Terra explained. After a decade spent building it up, it required very little energy to use. She could even maintain it while she slept.

“Amazing,” Delilah repeated. “I wish I could do that.”

“Spend a decade pretending to be someone else. That’s how I learned to put up a really good mental wall.”

“Ah. On second thought, no.” Delilah squeezed Braeden’s hand. “I’m quite content right here.”

“As long as we can save ‘here’,” said Braeden. “Did you learn anything helpful?”

“I’m not sure. I saw Laelia overrun with Selpes. Diamond Edges will surround King River.”

“That day may not be far away. The Selpes have already shown their betrayal with their experiments on Elitions,” Braeden said.

True. The question now wasn’t if the Elition-Selpe alliance would collapse; it was merely a matter of when.

“Anything else?” Braeden asked.

“I saw that your wedding will come before the attack. The veil was on the battlefield.”

Delilah dropped her spoon. “The wedding is set for this summer.”

“The attack could come long after the wedding.” Braeden picked up the spoon, tossed it into his empty teacup, then pulled a fresh one out of the silverware drawer beneath the coffee table and handed it to her. “What else?”

“Jason and I will also link with Synergy,” she said. “And sometime after that, he’ll be badly hurt.”

“That’s not much to go on.” Braeden sounded disappointed.

“The future is not a book you can pull out and read word for word,” Terra said.

“Tell that to the prophecy section of the Black Moss library,” muttered Cameron. From the look in his eyes, he was reliving some unpleasant memories there. Probably cleaning the stacks. Or organizing them.

“We said we’d try, and we did. I don’t want this foresight to come true any more than you do. I will keep an eye out for the signs I mentioned. You should do the same. When those events start coming to pass, we’ll know the time of the massacre is near. By then, maybe we’ll have a better idea of why it will happen. And then we can start figuring out how to stop it.”

“We realized when we asked you to do this that the answer would probably not come today. Yes, we’ll look for the signs,” Delilah said.

Terra rose. “As will we. If any of us see them, we must tell the others.”

They all nodded.

“Just the four of us,” she emphasized. “We need to keep these foresights between just the four of us. We don’t yet know how this will happen. Maybe we’ll be betrayed. Or maybe someone trying to help us will cause the problem to begin with. The more people who know, the more likely this will spread beyond our control. And if we have any hope of stopping the massacre, we
must
stay in control.”

“What about Jason? Shouldn’t we tell him?” Braeden asked.

“Maybe. Probably.” Terra chewed on her lip. “I need to think about how to tell him. But only Jason. No one else. And I’d like to be the one to speak to him about it. If you see him, please don’t say anything.”

“All right,” agreed Braeden.

“We’ve fulfilled our part of the deal,” Terra told him. “Now, I’d like you to fulfill yours.”

Braeden stood and walked around the sofa. “I’ll show you to our serum supplies.” He paused before the door to look back at her. “A Triad serum, you say?”

“Yes.”

“Do you mind telling me what you’re going to do with it?”

“I’m going to use Prior and Phantom powers to implant contagious memories inside the heads of bounty hunters, making them all so scared of me that no reward in the world could make them come near me.”

Braeden stared at her for a few seconds, then burst into laughter. “Brilliant. I love it. Any chance you’ll consider abandoning Eclipse to come work for me?”

“No.”

His smirk was as big as his tiger tattoo. “Ah, I guess you enjoy the company there far too much.”

“Just show me to your serum ingredients.”

No, she didn’t want to talk about Jason. He wasn’t very good company right now. She still wanted to save him. She just couldn’t stand to be around him.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

~
In Plain Sight ~

527AX January 18, Lear

TERRA STOOD TWO meters off the ground, her feet wedged inside cracks in the bumpy stone wall, her hands busy with a box on top of the nearest cabinet. She lifted up the cardboard lid with the tips of her fingers and, piece by piece, tucked the Selpe imperial jewels inside. She moved slowly, careful not to disturb the thick layer of dust that coated not only the box, but the entire cabinet as well. No one had been inside this room in months. In fact, her detour into the room half a year ago had likely been the most action it had seen in years. The policeman of Lear seemed to have forgotten about the
confiscated items section of the records room. Perhaps they’d given up on confronting the Selpe and Avan soldiers who regularly stomped through Lear as though they owned the city.

Terra set the lid back on the box, then climbed back up the wall to squeeze through the tight circular window. Two pairs of legs stood as solid as a wall, blocking the opening to the outside.

“Scoot over, would you?” she whispered.

Cameron and Everett moved apart, giving her just enough space to squeeze the rest of the way through the window and hop onto the cobbled alleyway road. Everett held a steaming paper cup in his hands, the heavy aroma of coffee swirling around him. Cameron wasn’t drinking coffee, but he was clinging to a cup of hot chocolate. There was a nervous energy about him, which was almost as potent as the excitement in his eyes.

“They’re secure,” Terra told them as she rose.

“Are they? This doesn’t look like a very good hiding place,” said Everett.

“It’s fine. No one ever goes in there. We can get them back when you find a buyer.”

“What if the jewels are gone by then?”

“That’s unlikely.”

Everett’s mouth thinned into a hard line. “You don’t care about making money off of those jewels, do you?”

“There are things more important than money.”

“Like annoying Aaron Selpe?”

“Precisely.”

Beside her, a rumble of swallowed laughter erupted in Cameron’s chest. Or maybe that was just his hungry tummy. Or even both.

“Well, I do care about money,” Everett told her.

“Of course you do. You’re a mercenary. A mercenary who doesn’t care about money is a contradiction.”

“True.” He reached out and hooked his finger under the silver chain around her neck, dislodging it from beneath her jacket. His eyes panned across the slim necklace dangling with strands of tiny blue diamonds.

“Forget something?”

Terra set her hand over the necklace. “I like this one. It’s pretty.”

“Why am I not surprised?” he said, rolling his eyes.

“I’m keeping it. You can have the money from all of the rest.”

Proving he was a true mercenary at heart, Everett didn’t even hesitate. “Deal.”

“What about me?” Cameron asked.

“Do you want a necklace too? There’s a big one that would set off your eyes nicely,” Terra said, smiling.

“I don’t want a girly necklace, but I need my share of the money. I want to buy myself a sword.”

“What kind of sword?” Everett asked.

“A Decimator sword.”

The Decimator was Silas Thorn’s sword of choice. It was a heavy two-handed blade longer than most people were tall. It worked for Silas because he was enormous. Cameron wasn’t much taller or more muscular than Terra. She just couldn’t picture him wielding that sort of sword. Of course, maybe he just wanted to hang it on his wall to impress girls.

“Ok, I get the money, minus the cost of Cameron’s Decimator. And Terra gets the necklace. Agreed?” Everett said.

Cameron nodded, a grin spreading across his face. He looked happy, and that’s all that mattered. He could be planning to roast chickens on the blade of his Decimator, and Terra wouldn’t really care.

“Good.” Everett watched her tuck the necklace back beneath her jacket. “What do you think Jason will say when he finds out you’re wearing Aaron Selpe’s jewels?”

“First of all, they aren’t Aaron’s. At least not personally. They are the property of the Selpe Empire.”

“Which is ruled by Aaron.”

Terra glowered at him. “Second of all, I couldn’t care less what Jason Chanz thinks about my choice in jewelry. The necklace is pretty, so I’m wearing it. End of story. If he has a problem with that, he can stop being so thick-headed and just talk to me. Actually talk to me, not seethe and glare and ground out two-word sentences. But I don’t think that’s even possible for him. He’s as stubborn as a wall of granite and thinks he always knows best.”

“Terra,” Everett said, setting his hand on her shoulder. “I’m not sure wearing that necklace just to enrage Jason is a very good idea.”

“I’m not wearing it just to enrage Jason. It’s pretty. And I like pretty things.”

Everett sighed. “You’re not being very mature about this.”