Complete paralysis.
His arms.
Oh, no. No.
“Let me see him,” I breathed.
Shayla allowed me into the room, where the jinn and witches were still hovering around his bed. I squeezed in next to them, and stood by his head. His eyes were closed. He was apparently unconscious again.
“Those hunters were apparently not lying after all,” Safi muttered.
“What is happening?” I looked to each of their faces desperately. “Why did this happen? What is it in his system that’s causing this?”
Safi shook her head. “There are lots of strange, artificial substances circulating in his body. It could be any one of them.”
“I can’t help but feel that removing that tracker had something to do with it,” Shayla added in a low voice, eyeing the unconscious Lawrence.
I turned on her. “What? How?”
“I destroyed it, so I cannot check it now. But I have a sneaking suspicion that it served two purposes. Not only to trace his location, but also as some kind of regulator. There was an immediate difference in him after I took it out, wasn’t there, Grace?”
I nodded slowly, realization dawning on me.
“He looked much more ill the next day,” she went on, “and his appetite, which had been building up slowly, vanished. And it never recovered. Perhaps, in time, he would have gotten this way even with the tracker still in him, but whatever that thing was, removing it seems to have hastened his degeneration.”
“So what now?” I asked, afraid to hear the answer. Is he actually dying?
When nobody replied, my knees felt weak. I gripped my mother’s arm. She stood beside me for support. We all fell into silence, staring down at Lawrence. If Shayla’s speculations were true, he was a ticking time bomb. He had already lost the use of his limbs, how much longer before the rest of him gave way? Would whatever was breaking his system down attack his vital organs?
There came a sharp knock at the door. We turned around to find Corrine entering, Ibrahim at her side.
“Derek,” she said, looking straight at my grandfather.
“What is it?” my grandfather asked.
“We have a visitor. A human requesting entrance to The Shade.”
“Human?” Derek asked.
“Yes,” Ibrahim responded, exchanging a weary glance with his wife. “A gentleman in his mid to late forties… A Mr. Atticus Conway.”
Grace
My jaw dropped.
Mr. Atticus Conway.
Corrine went on, “He claims his son is here. The boy we took from The Woodlands. He claims he urgently needs to see him. That the boy’s life is at stake. Lawrence, he called him,” she added. “He’s waiting outside the boundary, near the Port.”
“Take us to him,” my grandfather said.
Corrine and Ibrahim grabbed me, my parents and grandparents, and we vanished along with the rest of the witches and jinn. We reappeared at the end of the jetty. It had started to rain.
Corrine pointed into the distance, beyond the boundary. Squinting, I could just about make out the shape of a small boat and a tall figure standing in it, facing our island.
“Well, that’s him,” Corrine said, looking from my grandmother to my grandfather. They and my parents would be able to see the man in detail from this distance, though I couldn’t.
“More than likely an imposter,” my grandfather muttered.
“He could be a hunter pretending to be his father,” Shayla said.
“Whatever the case, now you’ve had a look at him,” Corrine said, “do you want to go and speak to him? Or should I just tell him to get lost?”
“We should speak to him,” Shayla answered before anyone else. “We should be able to detect within a matter of minutes whether he is genuine or not.”
The witches moved us closer with the jinn until we had shot out from the boundary. We hovered in the air above the man’s boat.
Now I could see him clearly. My stomach dropped. It was impossible to miss the resemblance. The man shared the same chin as Lawrence, the same slightly triangular jawline, the same dusty blond hair. Though this man’s irises were icy blue, rather than tawny brown.
He gazed up at us, his eyes shining with anxiety.
“My name is Atticus Conway,” he introduced himself in a nasally voice. But… it was not a British voice. This man had an American accent. Despite his likeness, this sent alarm bells ringing. “I have come for my son, Lawrence Conway. You must let me take him, or he will die. It might even already be too late.”
I narrowed my eyes on him even as his words flamed my angst. My gaze roamed his boat. A speedboat. I half expected to see the letters IBSI painted on the side of the vessel. But I did not.
“Why do you say that he will die?” I asked, trying to keep my voice steady. “What is wrong with your son, exactly? What did the IBSI do to him?” And who are you?
The man’s face tilted to me, his expression earnest. “The IBSI is in the process of developing a formula that, if realized, will enhance a human’s prowess to levels never reached before. Its purpose is to enhance abilities in combat, but also self defense…”
“Levels never reached before?” Derek interrupted. “I have seen for myself heightened abilities in IBSI members. Have they not already developed such a formula?”
The man shook his head. “It sounds like what you have witnessed is just the early stages. They are developing something much more powerful—though,” he added quickly, “I have not been privy to any further details about it.”
“What was your son doing with them in the first place?” Corrine asked.
“He was a test subject,” Atticus replied. “A willing test subject, I should add.”
Willing?
“W-Was—Is—he an IBSI member?” I choked.
“He was, and is, not,” Atticus replied. “And neither am I. We are citizens of Chicago… or what’s left of it.”
“He doesn’t sound like he’s from Chicago,” Corrine countered.
“No, he does not,” the man agreed. “His mother was British.”
The fact that Atticus used the past tense while describing Lawrence’s mother barely registered in my brain. I was still in shock.
“Why would he be willing to undergo something like that?” I asked.
Atticus’ expression darkened. “He did it for his mother.”
My face scrunched in confusion. “Huh?”
“IBSI’s pay was high. My wife was dying of lung cancer. We needed money to treat her… The cruel irony is, she passed away last week, before Lawrence could have ever made it back.” He paused, his voice catching in his throat. “But I had no idea about any of his plans. If I’d known that Lawrence had been planning to apply for the position, of course I never would’ve let him do it. He left without my consent. I only found out where he’d disappeared to, and that he’d been selected, when I was contacted by the IBSI less than twenty-four hours ago… explaining to me that the procedure had been sabotaged and if I did not manage to reclaim him from you, the consequences of the half-completed procedure would kill him within a matter of days. I need to return him to IBSI Chicago headquarters. They’re the only ones who know how to fix him.”
“B-But why would they select Lawrence for such a test in the first place?” I stammered. “Isn’t the point to enhance humans’ capabilities? He’s not even a human. He is a half-blood, right?”
Atticus nodded. “He suffered the misfortune of stumbling across a vampire last year near the city’s outskirts… The bastard got it into his head to turn my son, though I managed to stake him while he’d been injecting his venom. At least it was just a vampire, and not a Bloodless,” he added darkly. “As for your other question, I don’t know why IBSI accepted him. As I said, I only found out less than twenty-four hours ago that my son is in mortal danger. The IBSI hasn’t disclosed details to me.” He swallowed hard, desperation in his gaze as he looked from one of us to the other. “Now p-please. Return my s
on to me.”
His words hung in the air as a chill silence engulfed us. I locked eyes with Shayla. Her expression was shrouded with doubt. “First, we must test whether or not you are an imposter,” she said. Not waiting for Atticus’ agreement, she moved over to him and gripped his shoulders. In the face of the magic she was performing on him, if Atticus was indeed an imposter, disguised as Mr. Conway by some form of trickery, he would be forced to reveal his true form. He didn’t change. He remained standing, the same blond-haired, ashen-faced man.
As my gut clenched, I realized that a part of me had been hoping that he was a fraud. A hunter in disguise—perhaps the same one who had shouted down that fateful warning about Lawrence. I didn’t want to believe that this was true. I didn’t want to believe that we were about to willingly hand Lawrence back over to those people. Those monsters.
I still struggled to believe that Lawrence had been a volunteer, in spite of the conviction in his father’s eyes. I recalled the fear in Lawrence’s expression—how he had practically begged me to not return him to the IBSI—when they had come to bomb our island and demand that we hand him over. I never would have gotten the impression in a million years that he had willingly handed himself over to them, no matter how faded his memory was.
No, Lawrence’s wish had been for us to keep him. His wish had been to risk dying rather than be returned to the hunters.
My throat dried out.
As I sensed that one of the adults was on the verge of answering—probably my grandfather, suggesting that Corrine or Shayla fetch Lawrence—I looked Atticus straight in the eye and said, “Your son did not want to be returned to the IBSI. It was practically his last wish that we keep him here, even if he risked his life by staying.”
Atticus stared at me, disbelieving. “I can’t imagine him saying that.”
“He did,” I replied. “I can assure you, I would never lie about something like this.”
He frowned, looking disturbed. “Then… Then he must have been delirious, or something.”
“He wasn’t deliri—”
“It doesn’t matter.” Atticus knelt and was begging now, his voice ragged with desperation and grief. “Whatever my son may have said, I don’t care! He is my son! I c-cannot let him die!”
I swallowed hard, glancing once again at Shayla. She was still looking torn, but I was sure that we both knew that there wasn’t an option here anymore.
And as much as the idea of handing Lawrence back to those aberrations of humanity made me sick to my stomach, I realized… I wanted what Atticus wanted, even if it was against Lawrence’s wishes. I wanted him to be cured, no matter what the price.
Shayla drew in a long, slow breath. She looked to Corrine, my grandparents and then back to Lawrence’s father.
“All right,” she said heavily. “We will bring your son.”
If I had ever thought about Lawrence and I parting, it would never have been like this. Shayla scooped him up from the hospital bed and planted him in his wheelchair while he was still unconscious. I gazed down at his sweaty, pallid face, barely even having a chance to kiss his cheek before the witch vanished us back to Atticus.
And then Lawrence was lowered into the boat, before being hidden from my view completely in the front compartment.
It felt like it was all happening in slow motion. Almost like I was watching the events rather than participating in them.
Shayla asked whether she ought to transport them back to Chicago to hasten the journey, but Atticus refused, saying that an IBSI helicopter was waiting nearby for him to return. They had decided not to come any closer after their previous fracas with The Shade, and just sent him instead.
Then Atticus locked himself out of view, too. The vessel began to move. It quickly ramped up its pace, speeding away and leaving behind trails of white foam in the water.
My eyes were wide, barely blinking as I stared. I wasn’t quite sure what I was feeling in that moment. I guessed I felt… numb. Caught in time.
Shayla returned us to the jetty and I stood at its end, staring at what had now become a white dot in the distance.
And I remained standing, long after it had disappeared.
Victoria
I was sitting with Ruby in the dining room of my family’s treehouse, helping her with her math homework while getting on with my own studies in between.
Since my visit to Saira, I had been doing everything I could to distract myself from watching the hours go by. My mother had promised that they would do all within their power to find Bastien. Now I just had to wait for their return to see if they had been successful.
When the elevator doors slid open outside our front door several hours later that day, my chest swelled in anticipation. I shot up from my chair and rushed to the door to see my parents approaching on the veranda. They looked dirty, sweaty, and battle-worn, but otherwise okay.
I rushed to them and flung an arm around each of their necks. “What happened?” I asked. “How come you’re back so soon?”
As I glanced from my mother to my father, their faces lit up in smiles.
“We found him,” my father said. “Your werewolf friend.”
My jaw dropped. Oh, my God! It was everything that I had been hoping for, but now that my father was confirming it, I could hardly believe my ears.
“We discovered him on the ogres’ shores,” my father went on. “He had been adrift in the ocean for some reason. He reached a beach and crawled for shelter amid some shrubbery.”
“He was in a bad state when we—or, I should say, Micah—found him,” my mother continued. “We were thinking to just send him back here with Arwen and Brock to be treated, but the rest of us could do with stocking up on weaponry. We’ll be leaving again soon, perhaps even within the day.”
I was burning to ask how the mission had gone so far, but right now, I couldn’t think about anything other than…
“Bastien,” I breathed. “Where is he?”
“In Meadow Hospital. The fourth floor. Being treated,” my mother explained.
I wished that a witch could vanish me to the hospital in an instant. I darted into the elevator and hurried down to the ground. I grabbed my bike and began racing as hard as I could toward the hospital.
I passed family and other League members along the way, including Ben, River, and Aiden, but I couldn’t bring myself to stop. I called greetings to them as I dashed past, until I finally reached the edge of the sunflower meadows. Panting, I left my bike by a tree and ran the rest of the way through the flowers, skidding to a stop at the hospital’s rotating entrance. I rushed in. Since all the elevators were occupied, I took the staircase and rushed up to the fourth level on foot.
My parents hadn’t told me Bastien’s door number. But many of the rooms up here were clearly vacant at present. It didn’t take me long to find the right one. As I arrived outside a door near the middle of the long corridor, low muttering drifted from inside. I held my breath and knocked softly.
“Come in,” a male voice responded.
I entered to find three jinn hovering around a bed: Horatio, Aisha, and one of Aisha’s cousins, Fina.
I darted to the bed, my entire being lighting up as I found myself gazing down at Bastien Blackhall, either asleep or unconscious. The jinn had covered his body with blankets, so the only part of him exposed to me was his upper chest and face. I moved near his head and placed a palm over his forehead. Then I leaned in, planting two gentle kisses over his eyelids.
I could hardly contain my excitement at the thought of him waking up. I would finally have the chance to get things straight with him and allay any doubts he might have that I could have betrayed him. I would be able to hear his deep voice, feel his fingers closing around mine… gaze into his beautiful gray eyes again.
As he lay with eyelids closed, he looked ever so worn and weary. I hadn’t even asked the jinn what was wrong with him yet. I would soon, but for now, the only one thing that mattered in the world to me was that Bastien
was here. He had found his way back to me… just like Saira had predicted he would.
He was safe now. Safe in The Shade. Safe with me.
Bastien
A surge of heat spread through my body. My limbs slowly awakened. I did not feel pain, even though I should have. I did not feel dampness beneath me. I was not resting on my stomach. I was lying on my back… in my human form.
My bed was no longer lined by undergrowth, but rich cotton sheets. I opened my eyes slowly. My vision was blurry. I was in some kind of room, a warm room glowing with soothing, orange lighting. There was someone leaning over me. A face. An angel. Am I in heaven?
A soft palm pressed against my cheek and then a pair of lips pressed down against my forehead. I wished I could see who this person was.
My senses returned to me one by one. My vision was still lagging behind. But I could smell again. And it was a sense that flooded back to me far more quickly than my vision. I breathed in a heady mix of ointments, the smell of a burning lamp, and other things that were strange to me. But pervading all of them was a familiar scent, a scent that made my spirit soar as I breathed in.
I knew that scent. It was the scent of home. The scent of longing. It was the scent of Victoria.
Maybe I really had gone to heaven, or was stuck in some fantastical dream of the afterlife.
I reached up to her face, still blurred, and cupped it in my hands. I slid my fingers down her neck, around the curve of the base of her head, and drove my fingers into her silky hair. I pulled downward. And then she was close enough for me to be able to behold her beauty through my patchy vision.
Ocean-blue eyes. A gently rounded nose. Dark, expressive brows. A small, pert chin. And her lips… I couldn’t help but brush a thumb against them. Soft like flower petals.
She breathed my name. I tried to sit up, but she clasped my shoulders and pushed me back down against the pillows.
“You need to rest,” she whispered.
“I don’t want to rest,” I croaked, only half aware that I had spoken aloud, rather than in my head.