A Torment of Savages (The Reanimation Files Book 4) (20 page)

“I’m so sorry,” was the first thing Kyo said when he saw me. Ethan helped me onto the couch then picked up and handed me Luna, who been trying to jump on me. I let her shower me with licks until she was content enough to sit in my lap.

“You have nothing to apologize for,” I said. Ethan went to the kitchen and came back with a glass of water and some trail mix for me. Kyo was sit-hovering over the coffee table.

“I should have protected you,” Kyo said. “That’s the reason I followed you in the first place. I should have been able to stop them. When I heard about all your injuries…” He made a sound of frustration. “I’m so sorry, Selene.”

“Kyo, it’s really not your fault. It isn’t your job to protect me. I appreciate when you do, but if you can’t, it’s not something to beat yourself up over.”

“Yes it is,” he said stubbornly.

I sighed. “Ethan, can you grab my bag of runes please?”

“You don’t have to,” Kyo said as Ethan headed to my bedroom. I waved Kyo off.

“I’m not going to pass out from charging up an energy rune for you,” I said. Once Ethan returned, I did just that, and slipped the rune around Kyo’s neck.

“Are you feeling okay, Selene?” Ethan asked. “Do you want to lie down?”

“No, I’ve had enough of that,” I said. “As for if I’m okay…I think you know the answer to that.” I looked up at Kyo. “Ethan said you’ve been searching, did you…”

Kyo shook his head, looking grim. “The Savages have been quiet since the night you were taken. I have not been able to find any trace of Micah. I don’t think we will see him until Revath decides to send them out again.”

My heart felt like it plummeted to the bottom of the most abysmal place in existence. Somewhere far below the In Between and whatever other hellish planes of existence were out there. Sitting at home with only Ethan and Kyo, being keenly aware of Micah’s absence, was extremely hard. There was Micah’s messenger bag on the ground behind the coffee table. And there was his cell phone on the armchair. But he wasn’t here. Because he was now a soul-less, darkness-filled, killing machine.

I felt lightheaded and very much like I wanted to throw up. Throw up, pass out, then wake up and hope that this had all been a nightmare. How I wished it were.

“Selene…” Kyo put his hand on my shoulder. From the look on his face, I knew he wanted to tell me something encouraging, but he knew as well as I did that when it came to the Savages it was a hopeless situation. I closed my eyes for a while and concentrated on taking deep, even breaths. The urge to fall apart was devastatingly strong, but I forced myself to keep it together. This was yet another seemingly insurmountable obstacle in the story of my crazy life. I balled my hands into tight fists. Micah and I had been through way too much for me to tear myself apart in grief. Our lives had been endangered and our relationship torn to shreds and then delicately rebuilt. This was far from the end of our story.

I opened my eyes, feeling slightly calmer. As long as Micah was out there as a Savage, I would never truly be calm, but right now I had to hold on to as much strength as I could and focus on finding a way to save Micah and all the other Savages. Kyo saw the determined looked on my face and nodded.

“I won’t leave Micah’s soul to be destroyed and his body used to kill. I will figure this out.”

“
We
will,” Kyo amended. “But before you do that, you should rest so you can fully recover.”

“Do you want me to help you to your room?” Ethan asked. “Or maybe we can find a movie to watch on Netflix…”

“We never agree on anything, except for Kyo, who’s willing to watch anything. But that’s not what I want to do.”

“You have something else in mind?” Kyo asked, picking up on my tone.

I gave him a level stare. “Yes. Micah is a huge issue we have to tackle, but until the Savages reappear, I know we can’t do much. But there is something we can work on.”

“What?” Ethan asked.

“I know who was behind my attack.”

Kyo and Ethan gaped at me.

“What?” They said in unison.

“You know who beat you up?” Ethan said.

“Who did it?” Kyo asked, looking ready to go to war. “Who do I need to cut down with my sword?”

“Tielle.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Ethan and Kyo gaped at me again.

“Tielle,” Ethan said. “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” I replied. “Just before I blacked out I smelled something familiar. When I woke up and had a chance to think things through, I realized that it was the perfume I’d smelled on her when I was at her office. That’s not a scent I’ll soon forget. Not only that, the reason she had me beaten up was to scare me off investigating the whereabouts of the dead warlocks.”

“What?” Kyo exploded, jumping to his feet. He was even angrier now.

“One of her hired thugs told me to stop looking into the warlocks or next time they wouldn’t be so gentle.” Those menacing words and the memory of every kick, punch, and strike caused me to shudder and wrap my arms around myself. I was also angry though. The rage I felt at Tielle was almost too much for me to handle. I balled my hands into fists. Tielle had taken full advantage of the fact that I was resistant to death to have me beaten severely.

“She was there,” I said. “Probably to make sure I wasn’t beaten too much. Bless her heart.” My sarcasm was thick. “I don’t know how she found out, but she knows that I am aware of the dead witches’ true history and wants to scare me off. It would have been nice if she could have tried a polite conversation first though.”

“Would it have stopped you?” Ethan asked.

“No.” I looked up at Kyo, who was standing there with anger radiating off him.

“I’ll plunge my sword straight through her,” he said. I almost thought he was going to manifest his sword and run off. “Selene…this is all my fault. I asked you to help me and this is where it got you.”

“I made my own decision to help you,” I said. My voice was calm. Even though I was enraged, I also felt as though I had a sense of clarity. I tugged on Kyo’s hand. “Sit.”

“Selene…she has to pay, she has to…”

“Kyo, sit please. This is where we start to plan.”

Kyo slowly lowered himself back onto the coffee table but his ghostly form was still rigid.

“What are you going to do?” Ethan asked.

“Get Kyo’s body back,” I said. “We tried tiptoeing around and trying not to call any attention to what we were doing and that got us nowhere. So now we need to blow this thing wide open. Expose the dead witches, and back Tielle into a corner she cannot get out of unless she gives us what we want: the location of the dead warlock bodies.”

“How do we do that?” Kyo’s voice was an angry snarl. I truly believed he would ram Tielle through if she were to show up right now.

“There are a few things we will need to have in place,” I said. “One would be a voice to spread this story.”

“You could use Carlos,” Ethan suggested. “You can write something and he can have it in everyone’s inbox in a snap.”

“I thought about that, but I think we need to utilize an outlet with more credibility than an anonymous e-mail spouting what sounds like a made up conspiracy.”

“So what did you have in mind?” Ethan asked.

“Taj,” I replied. “He hates me, I know, but I will see if the lure of a bigger story than myself will help him have a change of heart. If not, Carlos will be the way to go.”

“Okay, but is that all?” Kyo asked.

“No.” My voice was steady, but my heart was hammering and my brain was going back and forth on whether or not the next words should leave my mouth. But then I thought about Tielle’s decision to have me abducted and mercilessly beaten, and my resolve solidified. When this was over I could think about what kind of person this made me and how far I had slipped into the darkness I was trying to avoid.

“Selene?” Kyo prodded. “What’s the second part of this plan?”

“The second part,” I said. “Is to use Tielle’s son against her.”

Ethan gasped, but a devious smile tugged at the corner of Kyo’s mouth.

“Selene, you can’t be serious,” Ethan said. “Use how? What…what are you going to do to him?”

“I’m not going to kill him, or beat him up the way his mother had me beaten, don’t worry,” I said to Ethan, who in fact, did look worried. “But I will need your help. There’s something I need you to get from Tielle’s office.”

“I don’t know, Selene. Tielle is the one who helped me have a body and a life again. I owe her a lot…”

“And what about what you owe me?” I said a little too sharply.

Ethan’s eyes widened.

“I was there for you from day one, Ethan. I helped you, even if it didn’t always end well; I put myself in danger for you and I never gave up on you. Tielle is the woman who first came into our lives as someone who wanted to take certain actions that would’ve ended up killing me, remember? And more recently, she hired people to fucking beat me half to death. And why? So a horrible, centuries-old secret could stay hidden. You know Kyo’s story, you know what happened to the warlocks, you know that this generation of dead witches are continuing to hide the secrets of their ancestors. And now I will tell you this: they used to kill male babies, Ethan. I found the bones of several babies at the house of a dead witch I was investigating recently. And nowadays, when a male is born, they take his magic, put him up for adoption, then adopt their own sons back. Better than killing them, sure, but it’s still horrible for them to do to innocent children. They grow up without really knowing who they are. That is what Tielle did to her son. This has to end; the dead witches need to be exposed. Kyo spent three hundred years in the most horrific place you can imagine. All I want to do is help him get his body back and figure out if there are other dead warlocks we can help. I don’t want to use Tielle’s son against her. I was never going to go down this path. But Tielle’s recent actions have given me no choice.”

Ethan still looked distressed, but I could see understanding in his eyes. My words had given him a lot to think about. Kyo remained quiet; he already knew all of this. When I glanced at him there was a gleam of anticipation in his eyes.

“How will you use Jian?” Ethan finally asked.

“Jian can help us get what we want out of Tielle. He thinks he is an adopted non-para. If we threaten to tell him the truth, I have a feeling Tielle may find herself more cooperative.”

Ethan sighed, then nodded. “I’ll…I’ll help you.”

I squeezed Ethan’s knee. “I’m not going to hurt him,” I said. “If anything, this could end up helping him. He deserves to know who he truly is and that his magic was taken from him.”

“But it would devastate his relationship with Tielle,” Ethan said.

“She dug that grave herself,” I said. “She and every other dead witch who chose to stay quiet about something they should have owned up to. All because of power. Tielle should have died on the Brooklyn Bridge the day of the showdown with Renton. I’m not saying I wish she did, but the reason she didn’t, and in fact had a faster recovery than she should have, was because she’s been drawing on magic from a dead warlock’s corpse.”

Ethan gasped, his eyes widening. “That’s terrible.”

“I know. The dead witches have done terrible things. Tielle has done terrible things. It would be great if we could always strike against bad with good, but sometimes you have to do a little bad yourself.”

“Yes, you do,” Kyo said softly. I still had my eyes on Ethan, who didn’t look any happier, but he nodded again.

“Just…tell me what you need,” he said.

“Okay,” I said. “Tomorrow is going to be a long day.”

* * *

I was waiting for Taj outside the Guardian Sun. He arrived to work at quarter to nine, which was when I got out of my car and approached him. Needless to say, he was not happy about a second encounter with me.

“Leave me alone,” he snapped, trying to get around me. I blocked his way, trying my best not to look like someone who was bullying a visually impaired person.

“Taj, I just want to talk to you.”

“Well, I don’t want to talk to you. Or Jacob, or anyone. Just leave me be.”

I frowned. I sensed a sour note when he spoke of Jacob. “Is everything okay?”

“The hell it is! The world is ending, hell is rising, these Savages keep popping up and murdering people!”

“You’re scared…”

“And you’re not? I don’t have time to try and fuck up your life on behalf of someone else anymore. Sooner or later a Savage will find you and you’ll get what you deserve. It will find me too…it will find all of us.”

“Taj.” I risked putting my hands on his shoulders and hoped he wouldn’t flip out. He stood rigidly still. “I am scared. And I know you hate me; I know how much Jacob has poisoned you. But I’m here because I need your help.”

“Ha,” he scoffed. “What makes you think I’d help you?”

“Because you could end up helping yourself in the process.”

“What are you talking about?” He sounded impatient and shrugged my hands off his shoulders, but he didn’t move away.

“What if I told you I had a story that was bigger than the one you were trying to write about me,” I said, lowering my voice. “One that can be absolutely verified, with tons of proof, and is the type of story journalists win awards for.”

Taj looked wary, and skeptical. “What kind of story is this?”

“A big one, probably the biggest you may come across in the paranormal community. It is a secret that has stayed hidden for about three hundred years. But you could bring it all to light and help to correct a huge wrong.”

“You’re lying; you’re trying to get back at me for working with Jacob.”

“No, I’m not. Because even though your articles were damaging, I’m still standing. I don’t hold any hatred toward you, Taj. Jacob got in your head and he used you against me.”

“And he didn’t pay,” Taj said. “He promised me money to help my family. But when he realized the articles weren’t having the impact he thought they would, he just got furious and said I wasn’t worth the money.”

“Jacob isn’t the type of person you put your trust in,” I said. “He will use you to further his own agenda and burn you in the process. He’s on the war path against me and I will deal with him when the time comes, but I am still here asking for your help.”