Blaize and the Maven: The Energetics Book 1 (31 page)

“Fine,” said Cuinn.

“We’ll stay out as long as we need to.” Tierra addressed Cuinn directly. “Don’t forget to eat.”

Blaize was woken by a persistent pain. She turned her head groggily to see a narrow plastic tube leading from a stand towards her arm, a nasty bruise forming around the entry point.
 

She tried to stay conscious. But flashes of memory, or dreams, kept intruding. Were they in her head, or was she in the dreamscape? The scenes were like pieces of a mosaic, flashes of colour that hurt her head, and nothing that she could focus on for more than a few seconds.
 

But the fragments, and the haze and fog that came with them nagged at her, trying to get her attention. There was something she was missing, something important. She moaned and shifted on the bed in an attempt to get comfortable in the restraints. She tugged on her wrists, and thought of a happier time where she had been willing to give up her control to an infuriating, rude, and inhospitable man who had gotten under her skin in a big way.

 
Her consciousness drifted over her accusation that he was the threat to her in the cafe. How wrong she had been. Her mind swam as snapshots from the fight with Indigo drifted through. How Indigo had beaten her. How hazy and confused she had felt.

How there had been a haze around them both, and how difficult it had been for Blaize to see clearly. A haze. Smog.
 

Blaize's eyes opened wide as she put the pieces together. Cuinn wasn't dead. The Rogue had torn through Blaize's mental shields like tissue paper and showed her an entire tableau that didn't exist. Anger warred with relief.
Cuinn was alive.
 

The relief gave her some true sleep. But she soon woke again and drifted between fragments from the ether and consciousness.

Every time she woke up back in the basement, the renewed hope drove her to pull enough power to burn away the drugs that were being fed into her body through the drip. But they built up each time while she slept, and it was like trying to drain the ocean with a teacup.
 

As time passed, she became more and more agitated. Her fire energy was looking for a way out. Whatever combination of drugs and energy Indigo used had trapped Blaize’s energy in her own body.

If she used energy, she’d be sick. If she didn’t use it, eventually it could twist into a darker form, the sinister form that some energies could take when they had nowhere to go. She could become the thing she most hated: a Rogue.

She needed to get out of there.
Think. What are my options?
Her brain was mushy and fogged.
 

I need to contact Cuinn.
And that was best done in the dreamscape. If he were alive—not if, there was no if, he was alive, she knew it—he would try to find her there. She just needed to send him a signal so he could locate her.

But she wasn’t able to access the dreamscape with the level of drugs in her system at the moment. The only way she accessed the dreamscape was with Indigo. Blaize was trapped in the dreamscape just as much as she was trapped on the physical plane.

Her thoughts swirled round and round, and she fought against hopelessness as she swam in and out of consciousness.

What was her first priority? Get rid of some of the drugs in her system.

She burned them in tiny increments, increasing the amount in the moments of clarity she had and making her feel nauseous. She’d rest, then burn a little more, then rest.

After doing this for what seemed like hours, she passed out again. This time, it was a more healing sleep.

***

Blaize jolted awake with a sharp pain on her right cheek, which rocked her head to the side. When she opened her eyes, her face burned and she caught the movement of Indigo drawing her hand back. This new pain quickly blended into all the other pains in her body.
 

“Yeah, wake up bitch.” Indigo’s angry tones were back. “Thanks for supper.” Blaize could see the hollows on Indigo’s face were a little less pronounced than the day before. Blaize’s energy clearly agreed with her.

Blaize stared back, exhausted. She aimed for a defiant sneer on her face. "I know what you did."
 

Indigo cocked her head. "What …"
 

She laughed. "Oh, you figured out my little game? Took you long enough."

"Why?"

"Why not? It was a good way to keep you occupied so I could catch you. And the look on your face when you thought your precious Maven was dead? Worth a little of my energy." She shrugged and put a box containing a greasy pizza on the bed next to Blaize. It smelled disgusting. “You need to eat.”

Blaize stared at her.

“To keep your energy up,” Indigo said. “You’re pretty strong, but if you don’t eat something—even with the drip—it will be hard to keep you alive. As I take your energy, your body will burn itself from the inside out. You’ll lose weight and eventually your organs will fail.”

Blaize blinked, and shook her head. She’d never been this close to her own death before.
I need to do something.

“Why don’t you just stop taking my energy?”

“Good one. You’ll eat eventually. Because now you've worked out that Cuinn's still around, you have romantic notions of rescue. So I’ll keep you alive and get to enjoy you for longer, and you’ll lie there hoping someone will come and get you. They won’t, of course. No one knows where you are except me and—” she stopped and put a hand to her mouth. “Except me. So, eat. Keep your hopes alive.”

Blaize had to contort her body to reach the pizza box because of the chains on her wrists and ankles. But she managed to grab a slice of the pizza. The oil from the pizza made her stomach roil in protest. But Indigo was right. She wanted to stay alive. And she wanted to be rescued.
 

Well. No. She wanted to rescue herself.
 

But with horrible clarity, she realised that her pride, her extreme self-reliance, and her focus on doing everything herself, had played a huge part in getting her into this mess in the first place.
 

She might
want
to rescue herself, but she
needed
to get help. And she had an idea of how to do it.

She kept her eyes on Indigo as she ate, nervous of the strange energetic’s unpredictability.

“Good work,” Indigo said, once Blaize had eaten the slice of pizza.
 

Indigo walked towards the top of the bed, and Blaize flinched. But Indigo just checked the drip.
 

“I’ll leave you with the rest.” She went over to the door. As she opened it, she looked back. “You’ve been in training your whole life to be my battery you know. You shine with power. And it’s mine now. We’re going to be spending a lot of time together. And don’t worry, we’re going to move to more comfortable conditions soon. We’re still a little too close for comfort to that idiot, Cuinn.”
 

So we’re still close by.

Blaize felt relief and anxiety at the same time, and was unable to stop the conflict of emotions chase across her expression. Indigo cackled. “Ah, you still think he might find you and save you? I’ve been stalking you all since you arrived, and the only time you saw me was in the cafe. And he didn’t even notice me then, did he? I’m protected. I’m not worried he’ll find you. And even if he did, with the amount of energy I have from you, I think I could take him. You weren’t hard, after all.”
 

Indigo looked around the room, and her gaze stopped on a rickety wooden bookshelf in the corner of the basement, with a few damp books lying in piles on it. She narrowed her eyes, and the bookshelf burst into flames.
 

The heat was intense, and Blaize contracted her body on the bed and strained against the chains. The adrenaline from the fear burned more of the drugs in her system away.
Will she burn me to death?
 

Blaize looked around the room, desperately searching for something she could do to protect herself from the fire. But the fire burned hard, and after minutes, books and bookshelf were just a pile of stinking ash on the floor.

“I don’t think he’d have much of a defense against that, eh? Anyway. Enough fun. Eat your food.” She turned away, and went to the door, and slammed it behind her.
 

It took Blaize several hours, but she managed to get the pizza and the shake down, no easy thing, given her bonds. Her neck ached by the end of it, and she lay back down again with a sigh of relief. Perhaps now, with a little rest, she would be able to burn away more of the drugs, which were just another poison, after all, from her body.

If she had less of the drugs in her system, the next time Indigo took her back to the dreamscape, into Indigo’s Haven—which was what she assumed the trashy mansion was—she could break out and reach Cuinn with a message. He could then follow her and find her physically.

Cuinn was going to be very, very angry. Blaize had wanted to save Rosa and she'd rushed off, sure if it came to it, she'd be able to beat Indigo. Her impulsive and proud nature had gotten her into trouble again.

But with Cuinn, she'd held back. She'd kept her feelings under a tight rein. She'd been ready for spontaneity and impulse in terms of sex, but she'd been the opposite when it had come to a relationship.

She had thought she was like her father. That if she fell in love, her energy might twist, and she'd end up in a similar tragic situation. And she couldn't have borne it if that had happened to Cuinn.

If she survived this—when she survived—without her energy twisting, she would do things his way. They'd try a relationship. She felt a flutter in her stomach at the idea, and a new resolution fill her.

She closed her eyes, ready to try again for the dreamscape, but the door opened, and Indigo walked in with a fresh bag for the drip and another syringe.

“Don’t get too comfortable, bitch.” She changed the bag on the drip, giving it a satisfied tap, and then raised the needle.
 

Blaize, more alert this time, tried to flinch away, but the chains kept her well within Indigo’s reach. “There’s no point trying to get away. There’s nowhere for you to go.” She stabbed the needle into Blaize’s tensed arm, and blackness crept over Blaize’s vision. As she faded back into unconsciousness, Indigo said, “This is your life now. You, me, and the energy.”

 
Despair flooded her as the drugs pulled her under.

Cuinn had spent most of the day in the dreamscape with nothing to show for it. He was exhausted. Cara had eventually forced him to come away from his rooms for a short period, making him eat. He was burning his own resources because of the amount of energy he used, and he already looked pounds thinner.
 

As he sat at the kitchen table with Cara, chewing listlessly on some stir-fry rice that Cara had put together, the front door opened. Tierra came in, her face tight, Fintan following behind her.
 

“Everything okay?” Cara asked them.

“Fine,” Tierra’s answer was terse, “but we didn’t find much.”

Cuinn’s face focused on her. “But you found something?”

"Just a better sense of the Rogue's energy at the cafe.” Fintan sat down wearily, and Cara put a plate of rice in front of him. “There was no question she burned the place, and Tierra didn't sense any other energetics there.”

“We tracked the Rogue to where she must have had a car parked." She hung her head. “I’m sorry Cuinn; I couldn't track it any further.”

Cuinn put an arm out and touched hers. “No one could. I need to go back into the dreamscape.” Cuinn stood. “That might be our only chance of finding her.”

Tierra looked him up and down. “You’re burning yourself up. You’ll do yourself permanent damage if you don’t rest a little. I wish we could track down Adam; this is much more his area.”

“I can find her. There's no time for rest.”

Tierra opened her mouth but hesitated.

“What’s the matter?” Fintan said.

“I’ve had an idea. It's pretty … unusual, and I don’t think you’re going to like it, but if you’re going to keep searching in the dreamscape, then I don’t think you have much choice.”