Summoned Chaos (33 page)

“But not you. You just float along, playing with your powers like a toy, hurting people with your carelessness. No one held you accountable because they fear your father. But he’s not here to protect you, is he? No, now it’s time to pay your dues.”

Her rage washed over me as heat ripped into my head.

“You have cost me everything,” she hissed. “I will sleep soundly knowing my son is finally avenged.”

Searing pain exploded inside my skull and I felt—rather that heard—myself scream.

I flailed as her spell threatened to boil my brain. Tears leaked down my face and my throat went hoarse from my shrieking. Rancin held me steady, staring dispassionately at me.

I prayed for death.

The end never came.

Rancin was suddenly yanked backward—her eyes widened in surprise.

The pain vanished, replaced instead by a dull ache across my entire body. The old woman landed awkwardly on her left hip. Behind her, my warrior woman glowed white-hot with elemental fury.

“Keep your hands off my boyfriend, you traitorous bitch!” Quinn yelled, and hurled Rancin across the floor with another Air Spell. The Elder tumbled several times before righting herself. The old woman’s left arm hung limp.

“That was unwise, Ms. Fawkes,” Rancin seethed. “Your father may have been difficult to deal with, but you lack both his raw talent and his years of training to deal with me.”

“Maybe so,” Quinn said, “but I’m stacking the deck in my favor.”

Behind her, Elders Devon and Bristol, along with my mother, stormed into the room. Rancin snarled, swiping her hand in the direction of the small party. Electricity flew from the lights overhead, targeting each person.

Barriers deflected or absorbed the bolts in showers of sparks.

Where’s Dad?
I wondered.

Bristol and my mother darted to one side, hurling Air Spells.

Rancin ducked, returning fire with more electricity.

Mom deflected a bolt with her katana, but Bristol was a hair too slow. A tendril of energy clipped her, throwing her into the far wall. She slumped to the ground unconscious and Mom immediately dove to protect the Elder from another electrical assault.

Quinn spun, dodging arcs of lightning while Devon raised his staff and drove it into the floor. Tile and stone flew upward, forming a wall. Bolts slammed ineffectively into the makeshift barrier.

Protected, Devon aimed his staff at the altar, then swiped it in Rancin’s direction. The heavy, marble structure flew like a rocket, but Rancin intercepted it with her own staff, shattering it into a million pieces.

As the battle raged, I struggled to maintain consciousness. My Skill drained, there was little I could do except watch in fascination. These were the elite of our society—even Quinn.

My warrior woman parried and danced, holding her own against the wrath of an Elder.

Still Rancin’s ferocity was startling.

Even injured, she was holding off four of the most powerful practitioners. Every time they moved in, Rancin would drive them back with a torrent of elemental fury. The old woman even seemed to be picking up steam. She sucked electricity from every location, hurled Air Spells like mini-tornados and cooked marble with Fire Spells.

The more I watched, the more I realized Rancin’s ire seemed completely focused on Quinn. She’d bat away a spell from Mom or Devon, then unleash hell at my girl. Quinn leaped and twirled, dealing with each attack, which seemed only to frustrate the old woman.

Rancin cursed, then fired a volley of lightning. Quinn raised her sword and parried the bolts into the ground behind her. The stone exploded, showering the room with chips of old rock. Mom swept the majority of the projectiles aside with an Air Spell while Devon turned the remainder into ash with a fire.

As Rancin continued to pour her fury into her spell, Quinn danced like a ballerina. The old woman sneered, but as she launched a new assault, Quinn drove her sword into the ground. Quinn reached for the incoming electricity, directing it into her sword. The blade changed from blue to white as the lightning funneled into the hilt, but didn’t follow Quinn as she spun around the sword and charged Rancin.

The Elder tried to draw the energy back toward her, but Quinn’s sword—her mini-lightning rod—held onto it.

And, by proxy, it held Rancin as well.

Quinn stepped inside her reach, grabbed the old woman’s wrist, and twisted, locking Rancin’s arm. Then she drove her palm through the woman’s elbow, snapping the joint like a chicken leg.

Rancin screamed. The sound echoed off the walls, chilling me to the core.

Quinn, however, was unfazed. Maintaining her grip on Rancin, she drew her knife, jerked the Elder forward, and drove the blade through Rancin’s chest above the left breast.

The old woman gasped in surprise.

“Goodbye, Linda,” Quinn said, but as she released her grip on the old woman, the Elder threw her backward with an Air Spell.

Quinn slid along the polished floor, skidding to a halt near her sword.

Rancin sank to her knees, her face pale. She reached out, gripped the pent-up fury that had been collecting in Quinn’s blade with her Skill, and simply released it.

There was a blinding flash as the lightning unleashed itself, striking the ground and walls all around us. Quinn scrambled away, shaping her Skill to block the electricity, but a bolt caught her before she’d completed the spell.

She fell to the ground, her whole body convulsing from the electricity coursing through her.

The sight of her writhing in agony was enough to pump renewed, albeit limited, energy into my veins. I rolled onto my hands and knees, reaching for my pistol, but it and my sword had been lost somewhere during the fight. Instead, I grasped the air around me, struggling to shape a spell.

When the element didn’t respond, I began dragging myself to Quinn.

Like sharks smelling blood in the water, Mom and Devon swooped in on Rancin as her bubble of power began to falter. Rancin fired volley after volley of Air Spells, but the pair sliced through them with practiced ease.

Mom pounded on Rancin’s defenses, hammering her until the barrier cracked.

Devon took two huge leaps, then smashed the large end of his staff against the side of Rancin’s head.

The old woman was flung toward me, landing awkwardly.

She moaned, struggling to rise, but Devon was on her.

“Why?” he demanded.

Blood poured from her face and chest. “You know,” she coughed. “Don’t pretend otherwise.”

In one motion, Devon jerked the knife out of Rancin’s chest and drove it into her throat. The old woman collapsed and remained still.

He glared at her, then seemed to realize my presence. We made eye contact and, for a heartbeat, there was fear in his eyes.
What does he know?
I wondered.

Then Quinn convulsed, jerking my attention away from him.

She was pale, bucking as the invisible force continued to bounce around inside her. I tried to capture and remove the stray voltage, but like it had with her sword, it slowly died on its own before I could grab it.

Quinn relaxed, released a sigh, then went still in my arms.

The world around me blurred. Her glassy eyes stared at the ceiling above us as I used what little Skill I had left in me to try and jump-start her heart. When the Healing Spell failed, I pressed my mouth to hers, forcing air into her lungs.

My Skill sensed her powers begin to slowly cool down, despite my efforts.

I was vaguely aware of distant voices as I continued to perform CPR. I shoved Devon off when he grabbed me, but my mother successfully pulled me away from Quinn’s body.

She wrapped her powerful arms around me, murmuring in my ear as the Elder knelt by my girl. More people arrived, blurry images in robes, but they didn’t register on my radar.

All I saw or cared about was the pretty, slack face of Quinn Fawkes.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Batting Clean Up

It took nearly a week to clean up the mess from the battle. Arbent and his team cordoned off both the National Cathedral and Oak Hill Cemetery while they investigated Rancin’s ability to open the rifts. Most of R&D was placed on administrative leave pending a full investigation, but the surviving Elders quickly realized that Rancin had successfully manipulated enough information that no one would ever know the full story.

The Witches and Wizards were back to work in no time, but under the watchful eye of the Council.

The news devoured the story with rabid ferocity, hovering around everyone involved, and generally making life miserable for all of us.

Thankfully, the nanosecond attention span of the media played in our favor as a sex scandal with a Senator suddenly became the hot headline. Within days, the death and destruction caused by Rancin became nothing more than a footnote in the annals of history for them.

For the rest of us, it remained a stark reminder of how precious the unity between the Skilled and Normals truly was.

And how fragile.

“How’s the leg?” Dad asked as we walked through HQ.

“Sore, but getting better.”

Dad shook his head. “You were lucky, you know. Missed having your artery severed by less than an inch.”

“I think a lot of us had some close calls. The fact that more people weren’t killed is shocking.”

“Luck hasn’t been on our side recently,” he said grimly. “So I’m willing to take what I can get.”

I had to agree.

“The fallout from all this could have been much worse,” I said. “Rumor has it your efforts coordinating the crisis response at the Ball saved a lot of lives.”

Sadness filled Dad’s face. “Some, but not all.”

The grief in his eyes stabbed at me. I wanted to offer him words of comfort, to tell him I also knew how it felt to be unable to prevent a death, but everything I came up with seemed trite and clichéd.

“Speaking of survivors,” he said, the sorrow passing, “you’ll be glad to know that Alistair Monroe is slowly improving. The Healers are still unsure what the long-term effects will be, but he’ll live.”

That, at least, was some good news I’d been praying for.

I spotted Jethrow at the other end of the hall.

Rumor had it he and Helga had mowed down a fair number of Rancin’s lizards. Jethrow and I hadn’t spoken since the battle at the Cathedral, but there was color in his cheeks and a bounce in his step that had been missing for quite a while. I was very glad that we were both on the mend, physically and emotionally. Maybe even fraternally.

As if sensing my thoughts, he turned. We made eye contact and traded manly nods. Because that’s what friends did.

Dad and I rounded a corner and stepped into the newly painted entrance for Elder Devon. Robin smiled and opened the door to his office.

The Elder rose as we entered. “Hello, Warlock Shifter.”

“Hi, ya’.”

His eye twitched, but the grin didn’t falter. “And good to see you, Elder Shifter.”

I looked at my father in shock.

“It’s not official.” He was trying to sound nonchalant, but even I could hear the pride in his voice.

Devon waved a dismissive hand. “Just a matter of formalities. We were sitting on an open slot even before Linda’s death. With Elder Watkins taking several months off to recover, we now have a lot of holes to plug. Suffice to say, we need you sooner rather than later.” He motioned toward the chairs. “Both of you, please take a seat.”

I eased gingerly into the plush leather chair, my mind still reeling from the revelation that my father was going to join the ranks of the Elders.

I was ecstatic, but also a little terrified.

If recent events were any proof, powerful people drew powerful enemies—and the Shifters already had more than they could handle. With Dad’s promotion, that list would grow exponentially. Bad guys loved to target people in power.

For the first time since I’d started investigating the Elders, I understood their obsession with privacy.

“Thank you both for coming,” Devon said. “I know we’re all busy trying to patch ourselves back together. But in the wake of everything that’s happened, it has become apparent that the Council, and the Skilled community as a whole, has some serious, albeit not unreasonable, issues with trust. It took a great deal of effort to convince most of us to sign the treaty with the Normals, yet even with it in place, we have still carried the lingering feelings of mistrust. Ironically, we were so focused on what we perceived as an external threat, that we were blind to one internal.”

“It’s easy to see that in hindsight, Ben,” Dad said softly.

I, however, frowned at Devon. “You knew.”

The Elder took a slow, calming breath. “Deep down, I suppose I did. But I didn’t want to believe it. Linda was the greatest champion for peace back in the day, but she changed in the aftermath of the Quaos incident. She became angry and sullen. Obsessed with what she saw as a dangerous transformation in our community. She begged the Elders to heed her warnings about dilution, but we ignored her pleas. Perhaps if we had listened—” He paused to collect himself. “She died a much different woman than I care to remember.”

“She wasn’t wrong, you know?” I was shocked that I actually agreed with Rancin on that fact. “Her briefings indicate slow decline of power among the Skilled. There’s a very good chance we’ll breed ourselves into oblivion.”

Devon leaned back, running a hand down his beard. “I’ll admit the possibility does exist, but our society has survived genocide and religious purges. I’m sure we can handle intermixing with Normals. Besides, while our powers may be recessive, the ability will always be there. Maybe not in great numbers, but someone will always inherit our Skill.”

He made a good point. Rancin had assumed the worst, but Devon was apparently an optimist. A millennia ago there was no line between the Skilled and Normals, so if we were able to exist back then, perhaps our future wasn’t as grim as Rancin believed.

Still, she had been willing to go to great lengths to protect our way of life. A small part of me sympathized with her. But that didn’t excuse her actions. She’d altered information, hidden facts and murdered a fair number of innocents for her cause.

Outside of Devon, few—myself included—would mourn her loss.

But in the wake of her death, we were left with more questions than answers. How had no one known about her son being The Conduit? Had she been operating alone? Where had she learned to open such stable rifts?

That last question bothered me the most. “Rancin mentioned she had decades of practice opening rifts. Any idea what she meant by that?”

“You read my report about her first attempt,” the Elder said, his face devoid of emotion.

The massacre. How had I not pieced that together?

“So what
did
happen seventy years ago?” I asked.

“An accident,” Devon offered. “Linda was working on her Master Summoner certification, often practicing in seclusion. When the Mimics came through the rift, she never expected they’d break free of her control or kill as many people as they did.”

I stared at the old man, guilt at my own mistake rising to the surface.

I, too, had accidentally brought something to our plane of existence and innocent blood was spilled because of it.

Perhaps Rancin and I weren’t that different after all.

Then again, I didn’t hide my screw-up nor did I murder the people who knew about it. So, I had that going for me.

“Please believe me when I say that initially, I had no idea Linda was behind it,” Devon continued, pulling me back to the conversation. “She came to me, confessing everything, and begging me to keep her out of the report. We were a couple back then, so when she requested that I take a Blood Oath, I didn’t hesitate. My team, with the exception of one, followed suit at my behest. The report itself was filed and the case closed... Until you started sniffing around, Marcus.”

“I still don’t understand all the secrecy,” I said. “Why bury the report? Why swear everyone to secrecy over it? Especially after Pell’s girlfriend was killed?”

Devon shook his head. “The Council was not as forgiving as it is today. I didn’t want to lose Linda, so I made the report disappear. Which was easier back then than it is today,” he added ruefully.

I stared him straight in the eyes. “I dunno, it seems a lot of stuff has been covered up recently. The rifts, the connection with the Mimics, the bodies of the ones that attacked me, Rancin’s quest to drive a wedge between the Normals and the Skilled. I find it hard to believe that I was the only one to put two and two together.”

Devon smiled weakly. “You were not, but I was prevented from following leads because of the Blood Oath. With Linda’s passing, that bond is severed for good.”

“It has to suck that your ex-girlfriend was the one trying to rip the Skilled and Normals apart.”

Yes, it was a cheap shot.

In my defense, Devon had just admitted that he knew what was going on. Blood Oath or not, he carried some of the blame.

“Be that as it may,” he said, seriously, “her plan would not have succeeded. Our worlds are too tightly knit now. That, in and of itself, is something the Elders have taken for granted. We have been married to the old ways for far too long and have underestimated what is required moving forward.”

He turned to Dad. “This is why I wanted to talk with both of you. Long story short, I need your help. Christopher, you’re the first new blood we’ve had in the Elders in almost twenty years. As such, I want you to help us get more in tune with modern society. Traditions are a reminder of our past, and we shouldn’t ignore them, but the reality is that the Council needs to update their way of thinking. We’re too focused on the past, both the positive and the negative—so it’s time to look to the future. As such, you will be the head of the team assigned to work with the Mosaic Group.”

It was Dad’s turn to be stunned. “We’re going to actually follow through with that?”

“Yes. A month ago the Council would have nothing to do with any faith-based organization, but I believe now that the people in that group are earnest about repairing the bridge between us. Obviously the Council will not officially endorse a single religion, but it is important to us and to our relationship with the Normals that everyone knows we are no longer bearing a grudge. It’s time for us to bury the hatchet. For real and not just for show.”

Dad seemed genuinely surprised. “I’m honored.”

Devon chuckled. “Considering the herculean effort before you, I’d hold off on the thanks.” He leveled his gaze at me. “As for you, Marcus, I cannot believe I’m about to say this, but thank
you
for everything. You rooted out a traitor and prevented her from doing irreparable damage to the Reformation. Not only did you save countless lives, but you actually managed to make the media like you...despite your best efforts.”

I shifted uncomfortably. A compliment from him sounded bizarre in my ears. “Uh, you’re welcome.”

“Ambassador Jones agrees that it was some much needed PR that will help with Skilled and Normal relations in the eyes of the press. We still have a long way to go, but I have no doubt that these small steps will have long-lasting effects. Now the question is, what to do with you?”

I swallowed. “I’m fine going back to the rift teams. Or, you know, getting paid to just lounge on a beach somewhere.”

Devon offered a genuine smile. “As much as I would like the latter—for both our sakes—the reality is that you’ve become far too valuable an asset for us to simply let loose.”

Goosebumps ran up my back. “I don’t like the sound of this.”

My old man offered me his best poker face.

“Simply put,” the Elder said, “the Council is short several members which means we’ll need to hold special elections to fill those positions.”

Ice coursed into my veins. “Whoa, you want me to run for a seat on the Council?”

Devon almost laughed. “Quite the opposite, actually. What we need is a team of watchdogs. People with the authority to ensure the checks and balances stay in place specifically so something like this does not happen again.” He gave my father a quick glance, then peered back at me. “From what I hear, you’re rather good at it already.”

How much did Devon know or suspect? Both about my spying on the Council for Dad and what I found out regarding Rancin and her son?

We’d shared a look at the Cathedral that seemed to hint there was more to the story than he was letting on. If so, how much could I trust him?

I covered the uncomfortable feeling with my go-to reaction—humor. “Listen, as much as I like the sound of being Big Brother, I’ll need to think about it.”

“Take your time, but please don’t take
too
much time. While you’re deciding,” Devon added, pulling a large piece of parchment from his desk and handing it to me, “I may need your help with another difficult matter.”

I read it twice, but it still didn’t make sense. “What is this?”

“Officially, a declaration of intent. Unofficially, a cry for attention.” I couldn’t tell if that was frustration or annoyance in his voice.