Allegiance (37 page)

Tattoo? What tattoo?
Max suddenly chirped.

Oh, crap
. “Nothing, Max.”

Caden exploded before Max had a chance to question further. “Are you two nuts? We’re not sending Evangeline in there! She’s not immortal, remember? She’ll die!”

“If we don’t get Veronique out of there before they do something drastic, no one is safe. No one at all, Caden,” I reminded him softly. “Think of what Viggo and Mortimer will do if the witches kill her.” He began to shake his head but I was already talking again, my jaw set defiantly and a huge weight lifted off my chest as I committed myself to what I knew was right.

“I’m not asking you. I’m not asking anyone. I can do this. I didn’t realize it before but now that I know, I have to do this. I need to do this for Veronique and for myself. Because I want to, not because I’m cursed to.”

Caden turned away from me. I ignored him, instead turning to Amelie. “How are we going to get there?”

With a dismissive wave of her hand, she simply said, “Easy.”

Wraith spoke up then, unruffled by anything. “Where will we be going?”

I felt my pulse quicken. Back to the start of it all. “Back to New York.”

13. Playing Games—Sofie

Soothing, rhythmic waves lapped around me as I regained consciousness. I lay on my back, my body rising and falling as if floating over waves, my body enveloped in a tropical warmth. Such peace. I allowed myself a moment to relish the calm, gazing up at a mass of blue sky. A seagull squawked in the distance. Its mate immediately responded, bringing to life memories of a childhood on the beach in southern France, baking under the sun without a care. I sighed …

The Fates.

Awareness ripped through me. I was on my feet in an instant, suspicious eyes scanning surroundings for the immediate threat. I saw none. I was alone in an ocean—crystal blue water stretching as far as the eye could see in every direction, barren except for the sheets of ice floating by at unnatural speeds. Sheets of ice in balmy temperatures. My first clue that something was off.

On sheer instinct, I looked down at my feet to find soft ripples of water and my own disheveled reflection staring back at me. I was standing on water! I pawed the back of my shirt. Bone-dry. Not one inch of me touched by water, though I had just floated on top of it. Hesitating briefly, I took a step forward. Then another. Tiny circular waves formed around my feet as I walked but the water’s surface held. A tiny awed smile crept over my lips.

Just below the water’s surface, rapid swirling movement caught my attention. I leaned down to catch a flurry of fins moving past. Sharks. More sharks than I had ever seen in one place, schooling together in a circular whirl as if preparing for a feeding frenzy. Circling below me. I chuckled. The Fates were testing my fear of oversized fish? Did they forget I’m not human?

A crackling sound drew my attention back up above the surface. Wisps of lead-colored smoke materialized off the sheets of ice, quickly forming into a dense, noxious fog. Up, up it rose, stretching to cloak the peaceful blue sky, turning the atmosphere hostile.

Where the wisps of smoke had materialized on the ice, sparks of green and blue now flickered. I watched as they swiftly matured into a wild inferno of colorful flames, skittering over the surface of the ice. It reminded me of a choreographed fireworks spectacle and I smiled, half expecting an ensemble of violins to join in the display.

The dark haze vanished, taking with it the ocean and the ice formations. Instead, a vast, dusty wasteland of withered plants and arid ochre soil stretched without bounds. The sky hung in an unappealing reddish hue. Nothing flew by. Nothing crawled. Nothing lived. Even the cacti—made to withstand the most barren environment—were brown and shriveled.

I began to walk through the desert, waiting for the next oddity to take shape. But nothing came. And so I walked, feeling the atmosphere leeching moisture out of my body. Soon, my tongue began to work against the roof of my mouth. For a human, this was the beginning of dehydration, requiring vats of water. For a vampire, this meant only one thing. Blood thirst. A dangerous phase to be in should a human suddenly appear …

The air grew denser and drier, until it was compressing my lungs, making it hard to … breathe? I opened my mouth and felt the draw of the atmosphere pour into those useless masses in my chest that once kept my mortal self alive. I was breathing! For the first time in a hundred and twenty years, I was desperate for air!
In … out … in … out …
Large, long drags through my nose, into my lungs.

I continued on, my footsteps lighter, bouncier. A few strands of hair flew up to tickle my nose as the beginnings of a welcome breeze took shape, carrying with it a tranquil sensation. It was so calming, so soft, caressing my cheek, reminding me of meadows and children’s laughter …

The tranquility vanished in a heartbeat as a wall of sand and grit slammed into my side, forcing me down to my knees. I cowered with my head buried in my arms, flinching as grit whipped at my skin, like a thousand wasp stings. Out of nothing rose a deafening screech, a loud, high-pitched engine sound. At first I ignored it, content to hide my face. But it only grew louder, angrier, until I couldn’t ignore it, convinced that I was about to be pulverized by a speeding freight train.

Forcing my head up, teeth gritted, eyes opened, I expected to kiss a metal train grill. The instant my eyelids lifted, though, the wind and sound vanished. There was no train. There was nothing but a strange hissing sound and a wall of dark gray wind rotating furiously ten feet in front of me. Behind me. All around me. Tipping my head back, I saw the tunnel rise all the way into the sky. A tornado. I was standing motionless in the eye of a tornado. Not a hair on me shifted, even as the deadly force embraced me in a cocoon of particles and shriveled plants, as it spun at speeds powerful enough to toss a car like a toddler tosses its toy.

Closer and closer the dark wall came, tightening around me, the powerful mass now within arm’s reach. This wasn’t normal. This is not what a tornado did. This tornado was alive, and morphing. It was going to swallow me whole.

Never one to suffer from claustrophobia, something about the uncontrollable chaos unnerved me.
Don’t panic. Don’t panic
. Reaching inside, I began plucking threads of my magic.

I shrieked as invisible hands ripped at the flesh and muscle that kept me whole. It was as if my own helix strands were retaliating against me. I crumbled to the ground in agony. Agony like nothing I had ever encountered before, and I knew pain. I’d had more than my share of being scalded, skewered, stabbed, shot, and tortured a dozen different ways. None compared to this. This was sweeping and excruciating to my core.

Clenching my teeth until I thought they would crack, panting in pain, I peered down at my arms, almost expecting them to drop to the ground. Why were the Fates punishing me like this? Why bring me here to drag on this torture?

And then it dawned on me.

It was to demonstrate their divine power. They were showing me the force I was up against. I was a simple organism next to them. A feeble nothing. They controlled all; they granted all. Next to them, I was but a mortal. How dare I use my magic to counter what they were conjuring?

As if my thoughts triggered relief, the tornado vanished along with my agony, leaving me hunched over in a small pile on the dirt, disoriented and unbalanced. Taking a deep breath, I lifted my head, preparing myself for the next exhibition. The next test. My eyes met white. All was white. Like a psychiatric ward, only there were no decipherable walls or ceiling or floor. No doors. I was sitting inside a two-dimensional blank canvas and the artist hadn’t begun yet.

A shimmer somewhere off in the distance grabbed my eye. A tiny ripple of light—like a tear in the canvas—broke through. Then another … and another. All around me, shimmers of light appeared and grew closer until my surroundings undulated like sunlight glimmering on a thousand diamonds. Out of these iridescent waves floated four forms with no discernible features. They glided forward and began to take shape.

My environment morphed yet again. I was no longer crouching in a white nothingness. I was now perched on a round marble pedestal, maybe a foot in diameter and the axis of a shallow, round vessel, divided in four equal sections by short walls. Each section brimmed with tiny glass marbles.

A forest of peculiar trees outside of the vessel had appeared in the seconds that my eyes were focused on the glass marbles. The trees were the size of enormous ancient oaks, their canopies sprawling, only their trunks were made of a crystalized substance. I gazed in awe at the perfectly round, stiff leaves of kaleidoscopic colors hanging from the branches. Though no breeze touched the air, they shifted and glistened in the sunlight. Sunlight from not one but seven glowing masses above. Ferns with the same kaleidoscopic leaves covered the forest floor, looking all the more bizarre given the glimpses of lush green grass peeking out from beneath.

A crunching sound attracted my attention to the left, to a grove where a pair of deer grazed on the fern leaves, seemingly unbothered by the unusual texture of their meal.

I could’ve spent hours mesmerized by the peculiarities around me—the two-headed owl settled on a crystal branch, the patch of rainbow-colored four-leaf clovers, two squirrels prancing along the ground on their hind feet, holding hands as a loving couple would—but the four figures now standing beyond the bowl were more than enough to occupy my attention. Two men, two women, dressed in gauzy white gowns. That much I could tell. They had the typical human traits—noses, eyes, limbs—but there was nothing typical about them. Four sets of perfectly round irises like stained glass windows studied me as I stared back at them. Their noses were long and excessively narrow, their lips thin and wide and tinged with blue, their cheekbones high and angular. They all had identical long blond hair, only the strands looked like spun gold and floated around their shoulders as if immersed in water. These creatures were both hideous and hypnotically beautiful.

The Fates.

One of the females stepped forward, her soft white gown billowing around her. “You called?” I shivered at the sound of her high-pitched voice, like chimes in the wind.

I cleared my throat, buying myself some time. My mind was a pool of scrambled questions, and grievances. I hadn’t thought this through. I hadn’t ever expected this chance. Now that I had it, what did I say? “My name is—”

“Sofie,” all four finished in unison in that same fluid sound.

My lips pressed together as I silently admonished myself.
Of course they know your name!
But, then again, they would also know why I’m here, wouldn’t they?

“To ask us to reverse our answers,” the speaker answered. An inkling of worry lanced me.
Can she read my mind?

“Yes …” A smile stretched those thin lips.

My breath caught as I took a turn around the circle, studying the rest of the faces, all similarly peculiar.
Can they all read my mind?

“Yes,” the chorus of voices confirmed, their laughter ringing out again, their brows arching into half-moons. Were they
enjoying
this? Bile rose in my throat. I hated having anyone in my head. I had despised Nathan for it when I was human and I loved him! Now I had all four of them dissecting my thoughts.

I felt my shoulders hunch under their inspection. In my world, I was at the top of the food chain. Here, though, in their arena, I was a vulnerable, weak mortal …

And a sitting target, balanced on this pedestal, I realized, as I surveyed my situation again. “Would you mind if I come out of this bowl so we can talk?” I kept my voice controlled as I peered down at the marbles again. They weren’t typical marbles, I could see that now. I squinted to get a closer look. Some had swirls of burnt orange and red, others were a pale yellow, and others brown. But the ones with small patches of green, blue, and wisps of white swirling around caught my eye. There was no mistaking what these little balls were now. Tiny worlds! My jaw dropped as I scanned over the giant vessel, at all the tiny worlds resting there. There had to be thousands!

“Yours is here.” The female Fate pulled a blue and green ball out of her pocket and held it up between her index finger and thumb. My heart jumped as she tossed it up in the air and deftly caught it, as if it were no more precious than a quarter. With a toothy grin displaying slightly elongated canines, she slid the tiny orb back into her pocket and gestured with a hand. “Come forward, please, but be careful. These worlds are fragile.”

To demonstrate, one of the male Fates leaned into the vessel and picked up a marble. Holding one hand below the other, he squeezed the tiny ball between his fingers. I heard a soft popping sound and then watched dust drop to his outstretched hand.

He obliterated a world. A world of living, breathing, loving humans. Little boys and girls, devoted families, the innocent. Just like that. I gaped at him, trying to quash my rising alarm. If he could do that to a world without a blink of an eye …

“Does that bother you?” His brow quirked as if genuinely surprised. “But there are so many others,” he offered, passing his hand in a sweeping direction over the other worlds.

When I didn’t give him an answer, he closed the outstretched hand that held the destroyed world dust and reopened it to show the tiny world perfectly whole once again. “Very well then,” he said and placed the tiny ball back into the pit.