Page 44 of The Illuminated
“Do you see?” he asked. “They need you. And you need them.”
My eyes flew open, detecting the sure mark of magick outside his apartment walls. I hurried to the window, where a group of witches had gathered. I sensed their energy vampire nature from here. With Daelon unconscious, there was no one to mask the pull of my power.
I hurried to Daelon, untying his wrists and shaking him awake. “Come on, your time-out is over.”
His eyes fluttered open, and thankfully the only emotion on his features was confusion. “Áine? Where—what happened?”
His eyes darted around the room, and he started when he saw Tomas rocking in the corner.
“You really don’t remember?”
He shook his head, fear swimming in his eyes. He rubbed his wrists where the binds had been. “What did I do?” he asked, barely above a whisper.
“Nothing, really. I stopped you. But there’s a bunch of energy vampires out front, so we need to move. Jumping isn’t an option, right?”
“No. Too risky in this realm. It doesn’t work quite right. It takes witches banished to Earth years of practice to figure it out.” He rubbed his eyes. “I have to bring the information to Lucius. Did I already get it? Or did you?”
“We aren’t giving shit to Lucius.”
He eyed me wearily. “We have to give him something. Or he will know I’m not on his side. He knows me, and he knows I never would’ve allowed this to happen unless my guard was down for some reason—and that reason is obviously you. I have to kill him.”
“Kill who? Tomas? Why?” I looked to Tomas, who only nodded. He wasn’t at all upset about the prospect. He had accepted his fate.
“Because he told me to. I was the only one he trusted delivering this kind of intel, and if I failed, I needed to kill him regardless. I can show him a vision of it, to prove I did as I was asked.”
“And I will tell you faulty information, just before you do it,” the man offered. “I’m adept at lying. Years of practice.”
And so Daelon and Tomas began their twisted show, and I could hardly watch as the torture commenced. Tomas described a place among snow-covered mountains, vividly and with strong detail, but I knew the place he was describing was not the same as what he showed me. His emotion was real enough to be believed. Daelon dug the spelled knife into his skin as he pulled the words out of him, and I clenched my fists. The only thing I had to hold onto was Tomas’s aura, now white and full again. There was nothing but peace inside him now.
But even as Daelon went in for the kill, I couldn’t help but lunge forward. “Wait—you don’t have to—”
But it was too late. I watched Daelon bury the blade in Tomas’s chest, the light draining from his ice blue eyes. Daelon turned to me, his shoulders slumping. He walked past me, and I watched black webs of veins spread across the man’s skin. It was the same torture that Willow had endured after giving me an Akashic key.
All these witches, dying for me. Dying for the promise of a future they would never live to see.
“The look on your face will surely be convincing,” Daelon whispered.
I couldn’t meet his eyes, as much as I knew it was only confirming his worst fears. But I didn’t understand how his personality could split so harshly. Were his blackouts really caused by Lucius? Or was it a complex coping mechanism to prevent him from facing himself and all of the horrors he’d committed?
If Lucius wanted to keep him fully in the dark from his atrocities by turning him into a monster in a blackout, then why would he send me to accompany him? What if Lucius had nothing to do with Daelon’s memory loss at all? Lucius wanted me to seethe real Daelon. Not his puppet.
“They’re coming up the stairs,” Daelon said, taking a defensive stance in front of me. Which was very sweet, but entirely unnecessary.
I blocked out my whirlwind of thoughts, tucking them away for later. I stepped back into my headspace of pure power, and when the first energy vampire lunged through the door foaming at the mouth, I sent him flying back down the steps and into his comrades. They tumbled backward like dominoes.
I screamed as someone grabbed me from behind, and Daelon was quick to shoot a bolt of electricity through the intruder’s veins.
“She must’ve crawled up the terrace,” I breathed, shaking off the sickening thirst of the woman’s energy as she writhed on the floor.
We headed out the gaping hole that was once a door, stepping over the pile of witches at the bottom of the staircase. A sudden burst of energy clipped me, deflecting off my shoulder like a bullet against a bulletproof vest. Daelon worked on shielding us, a translucent field wrapping around our bodies snugly, while I lifted energy vampires into the air and sent them flying with a flick of my wrist.
“It’s her,” one of them growled to another as they lay crumpled on the ground close to the first-story entrance. “Orion’s kid.”
I looked to Daelon, who shared the same puzzled look as I did.
I met as many pairs of eyes as I could. “If you follow us, you will die. There is no hope of any other outcome. Call your friends off. It’s over.”
My voice rang out like a gospel of its own, and though the vamps on the ground and back on the staircase met my gaze with scorn, snarling and brushing themselves off, I could see them submit to the truth. They might’ve been witch scum, but they weren’t stupid.
