Page 8 of Bright Soul

“Let’s talk locations,” Orthus added. Like the crystals that originated from his home court, his voice was resonant with power, soft but deep. His crystal armor blended in seamlessly with his granite-colored skin and the sharp emerald crystals that grew from his shoulders and formed points at his elbows and fingertips. “It would become an extra challenge to hold both the hospital and the library should they be too far from each other.”

A few of us dug out our phones to take a look at the digital map of the city. The hospital was at the corner of a block, occupying a lot of space considering its conjoined parking garage. Unfortunately, the library was two miles away and a close landmark to the Crown Coven’s complex and Myuna’s new seat of power.

We noted a supermarket between the library and the hospital, and the planning began from there. Several vehicles had been abandoned in the hospital’s garage, and it was Bianca who suggested some grand theft auto to speed up the process of gathering supplies and people. Roe, who’d been quietly absorbing the information around her, made a disapproving hum.

“A Little Wicked Coven will go to Cerris City Library. Cress and Geo can help us convince anyone remaining there to work with us,” Roe said.

A flash of protectiveness passed over Madigan’s expression. “I will send a few friends to help you,” she said.

Roe shook her head. “We can do this, Mom. More of our people should be securing food and survivors before things get really dangerous.”

Though hesitant, Madigan agreed and began divvying up the people who were healthy enough to undertake these tasks. While she was occupied, Eris turned her ghostly head toward me. “Justdon’t go out after dark. If that vampire is hunting you, he had better not realize you’re in the library,” she said.

“Right,” I whispered.

If Myuna wanted me, she must know I meant something to Phaeron. Maybe that’s what she’d done to him when her light magic had blinded the camera. Reading his mind…or making him admit things against his will. If she aimed to break him, consuming friends and family in front of him would be an evil first step.

As I tuned out of the meeting, my worries for him flooded back in. He’d been wounded when we were separated. We’d checked the hacker’s stream this morning to see that he and Myuna had still not moved overnight. He would catch an infection or collapse from blood loss or fatigue.

His absence was a loss for this meeting. I had no doubt he would know what to do to take Myuna down quicker than our plan to gather survivors and entrench ourselves. Maybe we’d even put him at the head of the table, as the only ally who’d fought Myuna and her creatures before.

I knew we had to protect ourselves first before helping others, but I wanted to do more for him than this. And, on that note, for Carly. I swiped over to my texts and tapped her name, worried when I saw she still hadn’t read any of the messages I’d sent her. Hopefully she’d just lost her phone fleeing with the crowd and had either been pulled out of the pocket dimension by another supernatural or was hunkered down somewhere safe.

A message popped up on my screen from Mom—her telling me to come find her after the meeting was over. It wasn’t much longer before we were done, and Roe set off with Geo to get our group together. Mom told me she was working on the second floor.

I waited for her at the nurse’s station and texted her back, waiting a good few minutes before she emerged from one of theoccupied rooms red-faced and fuming. Mom, angry? She was a nurse with nerves of steel, but her usual kindly air was frazzled.

“Did something happen?” I blurted.

Her blue eyes flashed before she took a deep breath, putting on a smile for me. “I’m just finding Crystal fae to be more difficult patients than I’m used to,” she told me in a low voice.

I glanced over my shoulder to make sure we were alone. Even ghostly Eris was faded out for the time being, and the other nurses were hustling to keep the hospital functioning.

“I’m sure they can be as stubborn as rocks. Fae take on some of the qualities of their court, after all,” I answered.

“As amazing as it is to live in a world where fae exist, you’re probably wondering why I wanted to see you. I want you to sit down with one of the doctors for a few minutes.”

I agreed warily since she said the doctor was already waiting to see me next in a room being cleaned and prepped for the next patient. Mom made herself scarce, then the steel-haired verdant witch doctor started asking the general questions I would answer for an annual physical.

Then she inquired if I was sexually active, and it all clicked into place. My ultra-perceptive Mom had made sure I was leaving with my friends for Cerris City Library with a new prescription of birth control pills in my pocket. Sure, it was a little embarrassing, but I couldn’t wait to tell Geo and Ben.

5

GEO

The trip to the library was short, aided by two cars borrowed from the hospital’s parking garage. Getting them started was Bianca’s job, something she did with practiced ease. Cress and her coven packed themselves into the small vehicles, while the larger ones and especially the trucks went to the guardians and Crystal fae for the task of gathering supplies and people.

If I wasn’t escorting the two cars making the brief trip to the Cerris City Library, I would’ve flown right past it. It was a building made of chrome and glass, modernized with a flat roof and sharp angles. I’d gotten my hopes up for nothing. There were no gargoyles here, waiting in stasis for when they would be needed most. I was the only stone protector this library had.

It seemed the building was made very recently, without the spacious eaves where a gargoyle could perch. I flew overtop it, frowning to myself and recognizing why modernization had moved away from my kind.

The creation of gargoyles was outlawed some time ago due to a moral argument. Something I had experienced personally:ritually placing a witch’s soul inside of a stone heart to animate a gargoyle made the resulting construct a new person with its own life to live, if they came to realize it.

Once most of us took our human forms of flesh and blood, we were loath to return, inevitably abandoning the duty we’d been created to perform. It was unfortunate that I was seeing the downsides of this, with a lack of protectors to call upon when this library needed it most.

What a hypocrite my disappointment made me. I felt muffled and numb in my stone form now. I’d been out of it long enough that it felt like I was suffocating the complexity of my emotions. If I stayed this way too long, it would all fade until only cold reasoning was left, and what a shame that would be.

I was no longer comforted by unfeeling duty. My heart belonged to the purple-haired witch exiting one of the cars two stories below where I flew. When I’d awoken from self-imposed stasis, my duty had simply beenher.

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