“Exactly,” I quickly agreed. “We just need to find that for Olivia.”
“Jericho, my trigger was Kiran!” she exclaimed exasperatedly, as if I should have known that.
Okay, probably I should have known that.
Kiran smirked in that cocky way of his and I rolled my eyes at Liv. She shot me a confused look, clearly not understanding why I would find that irritating. Where was Avalon when I needed him?
“So unless there’s an obnoxious, potentially already engaged soul mate wandering the Citadel grounds, you’re telling me Olivia can’t be triggered?” I asked in disbelief.
“Hey!” Kiran glared at me.
“Really?” I challenged, raising my eyebrows.
His face broke out into a wide grin and he let out an amused chuckle. “Alright, you can have that one. I was a bit obnoxious.”
“Wait, this Magic is triggered by love?” Olivia clarified. Her voice dragged over the word “love” like it was the filthiest, most disgusting word she had ever heard.
Eden was quick to dispel the idea, “Not necessarily love, per se, but the mixture of feelings and excitement that come with falling for someone. It’s the easiest trigger I can think of. Or at least it was for me. Of course… I was sixteen at the time. Anyway,” she shook her head and quickly moved on. “Is there a boyfriend back home? Or someone perhaps in this castle you’ve had your eye on?” Her eyebrows waggled while her gaze shot to me suggestively. I shook my head, scraping a hand over my mouth. Eden was not known for her tact. “We would use all that delicious tension to, you know, build some more…. energy inside you. Eventually it won’t have a choice but to escape in some way.”
“By blowing something up,” Olivia deduced dryly.
“Or setting something on fire.” I offered, helpfully optimistic.
Liv snorted at my attempt to lighten the mood but shook her head, “Nope, my ovaries went on sabbatical several years ago. The boys back at school are all grade-A douche nozzles and you guys are basically aliens. Unfortunately I’m not feeling an interplanetary connection to anyone skulking around your creepy medieval castle while you hold me and my sister hostage. However, if the Stockholm Syndrome instinct ever kicks in I’ll shoot you a text.”
Eden found Liv’s sarcasm hilarious. I, however, was strangely wounded- or at least my vanity was.
“Aliens?” Kiran demanded. “We’re not aliens. We’re just slightly different than humans. More evolved.”
“Sure, all the humans I know can shoot lightning beams out their fingers and turn into animals,” she groaned. “Did you say frustration was a big part of your trigger? I’m starting to feel quite a bit of that. Maybe we can skip the whole butterflies and rainbows and dwell on all the pissed off rage I’m drowning in?”
Holy hell, she was a spitfire. Strangely instead of feeling any of the annoyed, wounded pride feelings I should have been feeling, mostly I wanted to kick Eden and Kiran out and then see how fired up I could really get her. I was quickly becoming obsessed with all that hot lava simmering under her surface. The way her eyes flashed with heat or how her full mouth puckered whenever she was annoyed. She was so different than anything I’d ever known. And human or not she was starting to grow on me in a way that made me want her to think of myself as more attractive than an alien- at the very least.
“Sure, we can use that,” Eden laughed. “I remember a lot of that too, at the beginning.”
“So do I,” Kiran muttered.
Eden ignored him and went back to instructing Olivia on letting the electrical feeling build inside of her. I stepped out of the way, knowing that if anything could motivate Liv it was anger and frustration.
My cell phone buzzed in my pocket and I pulled it out to check the caller ID. Expecting Avalon, I was more than surprised to find Talbott calling me. He was with Avalon right now, but soon they were supposed to part ways. Avalon would return to the castle and Talbott would stay with Gabriel.
Those two men were the most motivated Immortals on Earth at this point; Talbott to save his future-bride after she was kidnapped from Omaha last fall at their engagement party, while he lay unconscious on the floor, helpless to save her; and Gabriel to rescue his life-long best friend, Silas, who was taken from the same gathering.
The thought made dangerous anger rise in my throat like bile. I would find Terletov if they couldn’t. I would hunt him down and kill him with my bare hands.
“Hello?”
“Jericho?” Talbott asked. He sounded different- like a hollow version of himself. Even without being able to see him, even after hearing only my own name I could tell he was haggard and exhausted by grief. His Romanian accent was thick and dragging, like it was too much work for him to try speaking English coherently. This was not the Talbott I knew, the Talbott that greeted me with a smile and laughter only months ago.
“Yes, what is it, Talbott?” My concern was rising with every second that ticked by.
Kiran turned after hearing his bodyguard’s name and followed me to a remote corner of the ballroom.
“Avalon is headed back now. We ran into more conflict near the Paraguay border. He’s bringing Amelia home. I think he plans to stay with her.” His voice was devoid of emotion- even for Talbott’s standards. He recited facts like he was reading an encyclopedia. I felt frustrated by my inability to say something comforting. But at this point, I couldn’t even think of something reassuring to bullshit to him. It was probably best to ignore the entire sentiment.
“Good, he belongs here,” I answered, hoping that meant I didn’t.
“He should be there tomorrow afternoon.”
“The Paraguay border?” I asked. There was an itch on the back of my neck, under my skin and out of reach. That was familiar to me. Too familiar.
“We followed a lead back to Peru, through Bolivia.”
“Did you find anything?”
“Nothing but dead bodies and empty facilities,” Talbott sighed.
“How many?” My heart stopped moving in my chest, completely turned to stone by dread.
“At least a hundred and fifty.” Talbott sounded like he was choking on the words. “Not all Immortals.”
The blood drained rapidly from my face, I felt it flow from my brain to my toes in a rapid rush of panic, “More humans?”
“A lot more humans.”
“What the hell, Talbott?” I bit out. My vision was washed in red, my hands shaking with barely controlled rage.
“We’re hunting a ghost, Jericho.” His voice was muffled for a moment and I imagined him running a hand over his face in frustration. “There is nothing but a trail of his victims. We’re stuck chasing him while he moves three steps ahead of us.”
“And Lilly?” I asked because I couldn’t help myself, even though I felt like the worst kind of bastard for bringing her up.
There was silence for a long time, so much so that my head started to hurt from the pressurized force of it.
Finally, on the end of a drawn out breath he whispered, “Nothing.”
“But no bad news?”
“Just….. nothing.”
The silence came from my end now. I should have known better than to bring her up. But I had hope for her. The girl had been through much- too much. She knew how to survive. She’d been surviving her entire life. And hopefully she had Silas.
“I’ll check back tomorrow, when I expect Avalon to arrive,” Talbott said with finality.
I quickly thought over the points of our conversation, just to make sure I got everything and all my questions were answered when a thought- an out of place, impossible, horrifying thought- popped into my head.
“Hey, Talbott,” I said before he could hang up. “Did you say you’ve gone from Peru, to Bolivia and now you’re almost to Paraguay?”
I pulled up a mental map of South America and traveled the same route in my head, all the way around Brazil.
“Yes,” Talbott sounded just a touch more alert now. This was the soldier in him, the instinct
to pick up a lead.
“My parents have a vacation house in Cuiaba,” I revealed. “It’s not exactly close to any of those borders, but it’s more west than their main house in Sao Paulo or their weekend home in Rio.”
“How many homes do your parents have in Brazil?” Talbott asked quickly.
“Three.” It was a simple word, a simple honest truth. But, in this moment I was probably betraying my family. A family I had hoped was wayward but never evil. “Rio’s the third. And they have a residence at Canesburry.”
“Your father was the South American Regent,” Talbott stated as fact not question. He seemed to taste the words carefully, practiced them even while he expected them not to fit.
“And he was not happy with the fall of Lucan.” Now I sounded defeated. I hadn’t spoken with my parents since the summer after our infamous coup. They quietly disowned me the night Eden and Avalon took power. They had been at the dinner, at the All Saints Festival, just like everyone else. Only they fought for the crown not against it. They fought with Lucan and against me- the son they had refused to acknowledge since I first left Brazil with Avalon all those years ago. There were just a few bad feelings between us.
We had gone our separate ways. They seemed to accept defeat, even if they didn’t like it. And after making it perfectly clear they wanted nothing to do with their “traitor” son anymore, left to return to the life they’d made for themselves in Brazil, until about six months ago when my father tried to get in touch with me for the first time. Now his calls came in regular instances, but I ignored them all.
Even without any power of his own, my father was a proud, strong-willed man. I thought he meant to live out his remaining years in self-induced exile, but maybe he and my mother had simply changed factions.
Talbott let out a long, growling sigh. “You couldn’t have thought of this before?”
“He’s my father. He’s been misguided his entire life, but not evil,” I bit out slowly. “Not exactly the front runner for Terletov’s psychotic army in my mind.”
“I apologize. It might be the break we have been looking for. I did not mean to offend you.”
“Forget about it, Talbott,” I ordered. “Just check on him. Go to his houses, see if there’s anything weird going on.”
“Already on our way,” he promised.
“Maybe, while you’re down there,” I shot a fast glance to Kiran before braving my next sentence, “Maybe check on Analisa.”
More weighted silence from Talbott’s end. “You don’t think she would…”
“No,” I cut in. “But she would be a target. If they were rounding up important Immortals. She might be of some significance to them.”
“It’s not exactly public knowledge that she’s down here.”
“But my mother would know,” I argued. “My mother and every other politician’s wife.”
“Alright,” Talbott agreed without any more opinions. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow,” I echoed. And then we both disconnected.
Kiran was staring at me with a mixture of pure loathing anger and disbelief. I hoped the anger was not directed entirely at me.
“Good work,” he finally relented. “Your parents. I wouldn’t have thought of them either.”
“I might be the biggest asshole of a son and they could be perfectly innocent,” I shrugged, trying to play this off casually. Inside my blood was boiling with the need to destroy something. This wasn’t right. My dad was a hard, egotistical racist, but he did not condone genocide. And he wouldn’t bring the human race into this.
“It’s not the worst thing in the world to find out that your father is the devil himself,” Kiran promised solemnly. “It would be much worse to wake up one day and realize you turned out to be just like him.”
Kiran’s words fell heavily on my shoulders, like a physical weight I would have to carry around with me every day forward. He was right, of course. If my father was involved, I would be able to survive. I would be able to move on with my life, knowing I was nothing like him.
I opened my mouth to say thank you. I was cut off by Olivia shrieking from across the room and light as bright as the sun shooting out of her palm and into the marble portico across the room. Centuries-old stone and debris scattered and crumbled to the floor. The smell of gritty smoke and hot rock drifted through the air, and all of our ears rang with the memory of the explosion.
“Impossible,” Kiran gasped.
“Apparently not,” I mumbled. Humans. Into Immortals. It didn’t make sense. This went against God, science and the laws of nature.
Olivia had Magic. Terletov had created an Immortal out of humanity.
And that meant nobody was safe.
Chapter Six
Olivia
I turned around to face Jericho. Slowly, so slowly I had to talk myself into it inch by freaking inch. I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to see the look in his eyes or the expression on his face. If he felt sorry for me, I knew I would just die. If he was proud of me…. I thought I might get so angry I would have to punch him in the face. I didn’t know how to feel about what just happened.
Truthfully, I thought I might be numb. I couldn’t distinguish my own emotions or differentiate one of my thoughts from the other. My head was a whirlwind of chaos, but it was all white noise. The only thing that ran clearly through my body was the after-effects of what just happened. I’d gotten to the point where I’d felt like a two-liter of Diet Coke that had been shaken and jostled until the fizz filled three-fourths of the bottle. My entire body hummed and vibrated with palpable energy that did not belong in my blood. And then someone removed my top and dropped an entire pack of Mentos down the spout.
I exploded.
Everywhere.
I destroyed an entire wall of expensive-looking marble.
Me. I did that. With something that now lived inside my body!
I really hoped they weren’t going to ask me to pay for it either. There was no way I could explain that kind of expense to my parents, or any way in the realm of reality where I would be able to cover it.
I met Jericho’s intense gaze and felt my stupid chin wobble. I wouldn’t cry. Not again! I was stronger than this- tougher. So what? So what if I could blow things up with Magic? So what if I wasn’t human anymore! I mean, really, this was only temporary. I would find a way to fix this. Jericho would find a way to fix me.
Our eyes collided with the force of a thousand things unsaid and my head moved back and forth desperately, like I was coming out of a dream. I actually prayed this was a dream. I pleaded silently with Jericho to confirm that this was some subconscious apparition and I would wake up in my old bed, late for class with the smell of fresh coffee drifting up from the kitchen downstairs. I begged him to declare that I hadn’t just shot Magic out my fingertips like I had seen them do so many terrifying times, like I hadn’t really just blown something to bits and pieces with only a thought and wave of my hand.
But he didn’t do any of that.
“It’s going to be alright,” he promised in a calming voice from where he stood across the room. He lifted his hands as if soothing a frightened animal and took a slow step towards me. “You’re going to be fine.”
Something cracked inside my head. Broken, I was broken- and the dam of emotion I’d been holding back broke free. My body crumpled with the weight of every emotion that had been pressing against me since the moment we were abducted and I sunk to my knees in defeat. I covered my face with my hands, trying to disguise my uncontrollable fear; my hair fell over my hands, curtaining me in.
Fragmented. Damaged. Changed.
So different I didn’t even recognize myself anymore.
And that was what scared me the most.
I had been through a lot in my life- too much. And now this? The only thing I’d had to hold myself together year after agonizing year had been me. Myself.
Sure, my family had always been supportive and my siblings were great. But at t
he end of the day, the only thing that had gotten me through each and every day sane and whole, was that I knew myself. I knew my strengths and I knew my weaknesses. I knew how much I was capable of withstanding and I knew when I’d hit my limit so that I could back off.
But I couldn’t back off now. I was stuck with this. And now I was a stranger in my own body.
Jericho was at my side in an instant. I glanced up at him through a crack in my fingers and watched him communicate silently with his friends. He nodded his head toward the hallway and the King and Queen disappeared quietly through the wide, brassy doors.
I appreciated that. I felt grateful that he knew me enough to get rid of any audience. It was bad enough he wanted to stick around. I hated the idea of anyone else witnessing me mid-nervous-breakdown. I was strong and independent sometimes… most of the time… well, up until I’d been changed. I didn’t need an audience in the few moments I was overwhelmed by circumstances.
The ballroom felt hugely empty now that just Jericho and I remained, but I was too overwrought to care. I tucked my knees to my chest and gave into the trembling sobs. I felt Jericho’s presence above me, hot, heavy and desperate to do something for me.
He squatted in front of me and slowly reached for my hands. Removing them with gentle force, he held them in the space between us.
“Hey,” he whispered in a commanding voice that immediately grabbed my attention. I expected gentleness or pity. I did not expect him to turn into an impatient alpha male. Yet somehow his tone and behavior felt exactly right. “You’re okay. You did a good thing, not a bad thing. You got the Magic to work. Don’t you feel better?”
My eyes lifted off the glossy floor to meet his as he hovered above me. I nodded slowly, even while tears continued to stream down my face.
I did feel better, at least in the physiological sense. My body didn’t feel quite as out of control and the suffocating buzz of electricity had softened. My head seemed clearer, my vision more focused. Releasing the energy had done wonders for my apoplectic heart that usually felt close to beating ferociously right out of my chest.