I pushed Ivy’s hands off me and yanked open the door. My God, it looked like the set of a Ring movie, everyone blond and beautiful and oozing magic. My jaw clenched, and I took three steps into the windy, demolished car. Seats were in twisted piles, the carpet burned and emergency lights glowing. The attendant was in a huddle, a weapon pointed at her. Trent was kneeling in what once was the aisle, facing me with his hands behind his head and another one of those overcompensating guns touching the back of his skull. Landon was holding it. Fear slammed into me, stopping me cold.
“What did you think you were going to accomplish with this?” he mocked, and I looked for Jenks, not seeing him and wondering if he’d been ripped away by the wind. “You seriously think you can stop me? Elves have always been stronger than demons. You’re under our heel, and you don’t even know it.”
“Yeah?” I said, terrified at the gun at Trent’s head. Mystics were screaming at me, and I shoved them to the back of my thoughts. The gun at Trent’s head was the only thing that mattered.
“Drop the line or he’s dead,” Landon said, shoving the butt of the weapon into Trent, his head bowed and clearly dazed.
“Don’t,” I said, hand outstretched as I did what he said. But still the wild magic flowed. It was pure mystic energy that was making my hair float and my skin tingle. “Please. It’s not a line.”
“Drop it!” he screamed at me, face contorted, and I almost passed out.
“It’s not a line!” I shouted, panicking. “It’s the mystics! Please!”
Trent’s eyes met mine, his fear for me, not himself. Oh God, was I going to lose him just when I found out what he meant to me?
“Landon?” one of the men interrupted, a handheld scanner in his hand. “She’s right. It’s free-ranging mystics.” He swallowed as he looked up at me, suddenly pale. “Sir?”
Landon smiled, probably unaware that he had pulled back from Trent almost half an inch. I took a breath, shoving the voices in my head down. “Splendid. You found a way to control them. That will be handy over the next couple of months. Even better. Turn around, Morgan. Kneel. Hands on head. Keep to that order or Kalamack dies.”
If I let him have the mystics, the world would be thrown into chaos. If I attacked him, Trent would die. Indecision rocked me, and my head felt as if it was going to explode.
Become! the mystics in me were screaming. Let us become!
“Become?” I whispered, heart pounding. “I don’t know how.”
You don’t become, one said. We do. Just listen.
Landon’s eyes narrowed. “Morgan . . .” he threatened, shoving the pistol into Trent’s skull a little more.
Listen, more said, and in desperation, I finally did.
My breath hissed in as I suddenly understood. The mystics who’d been swimming in my neural net the past two days had been slowly adapting to how I saw the world and how to work within it. What had once been confusing had cleared without me realizing. What had once taken minutes to understand had become second nature. Looking back, I could see the tracings of their gentle progression like a path through the woods. All I had to do was step out into the sun.
So I listened, and with the ease of blowing a bubble, I knew everything they saw: the frightened engineer tending to his shot partner as a man stood over them with a gun and his desperate plan to sacrifice himself to save untold millions, Ivy behind me with her hands in fists in frustration. I could see Nina, crying for Ivy as she raced ahead to where the next road crossed the tracks, hoping to stop the train even if it meant her death. I felt the stirring energy of the Weres massing in Chicago, rival gangs uniting to storm the station and overrun the train. Even the excitement in the news helicopter and Jenks holding on to Bis as he crawled to the front to find his dad. So many people willing to sacrifice—but none of it needed to happen. The mystics had evolved, become. And Trent would not die today.
“You should let them go,” I said, feeling light and unreal. Humming with light. It burned my soul, charring it even as it gave me strength.
The muzzle shoved Trent forward, and my breath slipped easily from me as I saw how I could down Landon before the bullet could get to the end of the gun. I took a step forward, and Landon’s expression shifted, seeing the change in me.
“That’s right,” I said, the fear gone. “I’m chock-full of ’em, and if you don’t let their kin go, you’re going to find out how a demon plays with wild magic.” Oh God. It hurt.
Landon’s confidence faltered. Behind him, his men exchanged glances.
“I know I’m curious,” Trent grumbled.
I watched as if in slow motion as Landon spun his weapon around and smashed the stock of the barrel against the back of Trent’s head. Ivy jerked, and I sent a burst of sound to stop her before she set them off and started a bloodbath. I’d seen in Landon’s mind. He wasn’t going to kill Trent. Not yet. He wanted him as the fall guy should the trickery with the Free Vampires be realized. So not happening.
I got three more paces closer as Trent fell, shaken but not unconscious. Landon’s shock when he looked up and found me there was like icing. And the gun moved from Trent to me—just as I had wanted.
“Kneel,” he demanded, his eyes flicking behind me to include Ivy as well.
Ivy dropped as she was told, but I couldn’t do it. Wild magic spilled through me, pure and untainted from the ley lines. Burning.
And then I smiled at Jenks. He was with Bis, the little gargoyle clinging to the outside of the rocking car as he gave me the thumbs-up. Etude was with him. Now I could do this. Now it would end.
I wasn’t meant for this, and head in agony, I looked at the boxes, their contents held by flimsy, variable battery power. Landon was stupid. He didn’t deserve to hold the Goddess’s leash. No one did.
“You have something that belongs to me,” I said, all of them oblivious to the massing mystics in me—except for Jenks and one very scared elf with a scanner.
“Down her,” Landon directed to one of his men.
“Too late,” I breathed, shivering as a wave of energy skated over my skin. “Oh, far too late. They’re mine. I’m taking them home.”
The barrel of the gun shifted from me to Trent. “Possession is nine-tenths of the law,” he said confidently, gesturing to one of his men. “I said take her!”
But the man with the scanner didn’t move. “Possession is exactly it . . . Landon,” I said, standing before them, before them all in the center of the rocking car. The captured and splintered mystics howled for release. We were out of Cincinnati and as close to the Loveland ley line as we were going to get. I could take them home.
I took a final step forward, mystics bringing back to me the scent of Landon’s sweat, the depth of his doubt.
“Stop! Or I kill him!” Landon shouted, and I reached for them.
“Rachel!” Trent exclaimed, and Landon’s finger moved on the gun.
Go, I thought, watching the flair of the gunpowder in the chamber, sending enough mystics to clog the weapon and make it misfire. And they went.
Now, I thought, asking more to shift a tiny balance in the air. The poles in the batteries hiccupped. It was enough, and with a silent explosion, the splintered mystics burst from their prison. A demon could have done so with spells and curses, but with mystics swimming in my neural net, all I had to do was ask.
Trent’s eyes were on me, and I saw him blink. It took forever.
And then the gun misfired, blowing Landon back.
“Rachel!” Trent shouted, scrambling forward even as Landon fell into his men and broken chairs. The attendant cried out in fear. For an instant, the air hummed with magic.
And then the freed splintered mystics fell into me.
“No!” I screamed at the flood of unconditional hatred. It wasn’t simply me in pain, but my mystics, the ones who had become, as their new nature was measured and found wrong by way of fewer numbers. I fell, the bubble in my mind shifting to allow passage of those familiar to me and hold the rest back. Frustrated and angry, the splinter shifted and changed to find a way in. Again I floundered, getting one gasp of air before they swamped me anew.
Trent’s arms around me tightened, burning like fire as the mystics battled, my mind the field of their conquest. The flame of becoming raced out, hot and blue at the edges, cooling to black where it passed, but there were too many splintered mystics, and for every one that became and blended, ten were overcome.
I couldn’t turn them all at once. If I couldn’t slow this down, I was going to go insane.
Groaning, I pulled my mystics back to me, finding a scant infinity left. Together we huddled under a protection that held only because I kept changing it. My eyes opened. Trent held me. He was mad at me, and I smiled.
“Sorry,” I panted, seeing Bis and Jenks hanging from the ceiling. “I have to go. Etude will take me to the line. I’m sorry.”
“Rachel!” he pleaded, but my skin became prickles of magic, and his hands sprang away.
“I have to go!” I shouted as I blew a new hole in the side of the car. “I’m sorry! I have to go!” I said again. “Keep the news crews from following me if you can!”
Knowing I’d survive, I ran for the edge, diving off into the blackness, an infinity of mystics within me, a larger infinity trailing behind like living pixy dust. I felt them peel from me, the agony in my head abating.
“Got you!” Etude cried, and I all but sobbed in relief as his grip encircled my waist again and the force of the wind shifted.
Jenks and Bis, I thought, feeling them close. Behind and below, the train raced on, mystics emptying from it in an angry wave that I could see as a silver shimmer in the dark.
“Should I jump her?” Bis said, and I jerked my head up, numb as if from an aura burn.
“Slow,” I said, my words a bare whisper, and his ears swiveled to catch them. “If we go too fast, they can’t keep up.” I had to take them all back to her. They were hers, not mine, and if I held them too long, the sheer power of them would drive me mad. To have let them become had been a mistake.
Etude nodded, and as Jenks buried himself in my hair, I closed my eyes to block out the dizzy sensation. Behind me, I felt the train race on without the mystics. The splinter was following me, harrowing, nipping, stabbing at my heels. Ill and nauseated, I hung in Etude’s grip, thinking that I should have just called the damn eagles from the beginning and done this alone.
Twenty-Six
Damp air with streamers of fog pressed me as Etude circled the gray slump of rock that was Loveland Castle. I could feel the splintered mystics trailing us in a threatening haze almost as bright as the full moon cresting over the surrounding hills, their confusion and hatred sparking like the neurons firing in my mind. The mystics who’d become were frightened, and I tried to soothe the hurt of their expected glorious reunion gone so wrong as we descended.
My eyes opened at a sudden drop, and I let go of Etude to push my hair back. The night fog puddled in the low spaces and trees poked above like islands. I could feel the earth moving—the unseen sun seeming to grow distinct as we neared sunrise. My ley line was glowing, shining with a haze I could see even without my second sight. That wasn’t right. I was afraid to open my second sight to see, but a handful of mystics brought me an image, distorted from multiple viewpoints, but clear in substance. The line was ablaze with a harsh, painful glare. It was the Goddess. She was looking for her missing thoughts, and she wasn’t happy.
“Are you seeing what I’m seeing?” Jenks said, still hiding in my hair. We’d taken a moment after fleeing the train to get me on Etude’s back instead of in his grip, but Jenks had opted to stay where he was, tangled and close.
“Like the fires of hell leaking out?” I said, and he snickered. “Yep.” Oh, she was pissed.
Etude shifted his balance as the earth seemed to rise up, and with his wings making one last pulse of motion, we were down.
The silence was deafening. Not even a cricket or frog from the nearby stream. It was as if the humming force from the line was pressing all other sounds out of existence. My mystics swarmed at my apprehension as I swung my leg over and slid to the ground. The shock reverberated up to my knees and jolted the numbness from me. Faint in the distance was Loveland’s siren. The splintered mystics were coming.
“Thank you, Etude.”
He was a lumpy shadow in the moonlight, the gargoyle flicking an ear to acknowledge me. “It’s a small thing. I’ll wait over there if you need a ride home.”
Home? The memory of my front stoop with the sign over the door shadowy in the dim light rose up, and the mystics in me pooled their excitement. None of them left to go into the line, worrying me as I pulled my fog-damp hair from my shoulder so Bis could land on it. His presence joined mine with a soft thump, and turning to the glowing line, I sighed. I’d left Ivy and Trent. If I had stayed, I would’ve gone insane as Bancroft had.
“They’ll get over it,” Jenks said, seeming to know where my thoughts were as he clambered his way out of my hair and onto Bis’s head, where he stood between his ears, hands on his hips and feet spread wide.
Where my thoughts were was actually a pretty good analogy, because as soon as I turned my mind to Ivy and Trent, an image surfaced. It had been there for a while, ignored as I flew to the Loveland ley line. It was of Ivy, leaning against a FIB car, arms over her chest and her lips pressed tight. Nearby, Trent was talking persuasively to another officer, the news crews waiting by the grounded copter. Landon’s men were being led away, most of them limping. We’d got them, but the victory seemed hollow.
