Dark Oracle (19 page)

“The florist’s shop was closed, but I could see a light on in the back. I circled around the back alley. The door was open. I went in.

“It was. . . a fairyland. All leaf-shadow and roots suspended in glass vials, white Christmas lights in the darkness. It smelled cloyingly sweet, the kind of artificial scent they added to hothouse roses to enhance their naked smell.

“I didn’t see him coming. He kept his ether in a plant mister. I got one shot off, I think. Last thing I remember was the furious look on his face when I fell and broke some of his rhizome vials, shattering those plants and water all over the floor. . . all that beautiful, fractured light.

“I woke up in the dark. Not the kind of dark you encounter in your house, on the street, or even in the forest. Total, utter darkness. Instead of the smell of artificial roses, I smelled irises. I was covered in them. I could feel their softly rippled petals, the fine hairlike texture of their stamens, sticking to me. I smelled earth, and the resin of pine. I was lying down, and I could feel splintered wood above me. I could feel there were holes in the floor of the wooden box—in the coffin—he’d put me in to keep me still, keep me from tearing up the bulbs.

“And I smelled blood, that metallic smell mixing with the sweetness of the flowers. I felt numb, and I realized I was the one bleeding. He was bleeding me out, letting the soil drink me in. The perfect fertilizer for his delicate irises. I found out later that his favorite tool was something called a Hori-Hori knife. It’s a traditional Japanese weeding knife with a sharp, concave blade. It leaves very distinctive marks. It’s very useful for transplanting bonsai and other delicate plants. . . and for perforating a human’s internal organs. Dalton liked to use it to aerate bodies to allow for maximum blood flow into the soil.” Her fingers unconsciously slipped to her hip and her belly, to the scars crossing her skin. “I knew then, I think, what he’d taken from me. I could feel. . . I could feel the possibilities draining away. Not just my own life, but the life I could have contributed to, once upon a time. But in Dalton’s sick and twisted way, I was the mother to his irises, to his ‘children.’ ”

Harry’s grip tightened on her hand, and she did not pull away.

“I thought about giving up, but I heard a voice. I think it was in my head, some part of my psyche urging me to fight. I took off my belt, used it as a tourniquet. I dug the buckle into the ceiling of the box, over and over again, until I could feel it splinter. I jammed my hands into it, felt an avalanche of dirt that choked me and stung as it poured into my wounds.

“Fortunately, he’d buried me shallowly in a raised flower bed, so as not to waste any blood. I came up out of the box, breaking through a mass of bulbs and half-grown irises. I was in a greenhouse, and it was night. All around me, I could see other raised beds, dotted with irises. . . striped, speckled. . . I couldn’t see any color but gray. But that night in the greenhouse was so brilliantly bright. . . It was nothing like the darkness in the box.

“I broke out of that greenhouse, soaked in blood and flowers and glass. Thank God the bread truck driver on his early run saw me on the side of the road and stopped. Dalton killed himself once he realized who I was, and that my resting place was open.”

It was then that she looked at him, the pupils of her eyes so dark they eclipsed her irises. It was such a pale expression of transcendence that it made Harry’s chest ache. “So when I tell you that there’s not much Gabriel and Corvus can do to hurt me, I mean it.”

He pushed a strand of hair behind her ear. “I’m sorry.”

“Whatever else happens, I thought you deserved to know.” Her voice was small and sad, and Harry had the fear he’d lost her entirely. He felt such in awe of her, of her strength, her courage, and that enigmatic stillness that ran counterpoint to all his restlessness.

He reached for her, and the back of her neck felt cold. He kissed her, and her lips yielded to him.

He rested his forehead against hers. “I’m sorry.”

“Me, too.”

The bolts of the door clanged back, and Corvus stepped into the cell, two soldiers at his back. Gabriel’s shape filled the door. He limped into the cell, his bandaged foot crammed in a swollen athletic sock. He looked like he’d jammed his foot into a giant marshmallow. His expression was one of controlled neutrality.

“Ms. Sheridan. I trust that you find the accommodations to be comfortable.”

“I’ve had worse. I’m sure you heard.”

“I did.” Gabriel’s smile split his face, and it even crinkled his eyes. “I have to say, Ms. Sheridan, I do admire you. You’re a worthy adversary, and I’ll be sorry to see this finished.”

“What do you want now?” Harry contemplated how far he’d have to reach to kick Gabriel in the wounded foot.

“That computer you were carrying. It’s toast.”

Harry glanced at Tara. Had she sabotaged the computer? Had she destroyed all that valuable research?

She raised her chin. “I’ve been having problems with it.”

Gabriel shook his head. “It’s not yours. It’s got Magnusson’s fingerprints all over it. What did you do to it? The hard drive is completely destroyed.”

“I didn’t do anything to it.”

“That’s a shame.” Gabriel leaned against the wall, favoring the sock monkey attached to his leg. “It seems that you would be of no further use to us. And I don’t like wasting my time.”

“I’ll make you a trade,” Tara said. “Let Harry go, and I’ll show you where Magnusson is.”

Gabriel’s eyebrow crawled up his shaven head. “All right. But then, I give you to Adrienne. She’s been chomping at the bit to get a piece of you.”

Harry pulled himself to his feet, but he stumbled and fell in a rubbery heap. “No. Nobody’s giving anything up. If anyone’s walking out of here, it’s her.”

Tara put her fingers to his lips, smiled that sad little smile. “’Bye, Harry.”

Chapter Eighteen

A
T LEAST
she’d been able to make a more proper good-bye to Harry this time.

Tara watched as cars gathered at the mouth of the mine in the pink brilliance of dawn. Harry was led to one of the sedans. Rentals, she judged by the plates. She’d refused to help without seeing him freed with her own eyes, had watched as they cut the zip-tie handcuffs around his wrists and handed him a set of keys. He looked at her for a long moment, and it seemed he beseeched her to change her mind. She smiled at him. She knew Harry would try to do the right thing, to go get help, but it would be far too late for her by then.

But at least he knew now. Telling him her story felt like a weight lifted from her chest. It had been years since she’d told another living person the full account of what had happened to her. Though she knew Gabriel and Corvus had heard it, too, their intangible presence didn’t matter to her. The darkness had fallen from her heart, and she was at peace with what would come next.

She climbed into a Jeep with Gabriel, Adrienne, and Corvus. Thankfully, the heat was cranked up as it bumped over the dirt road. Corvus and Adrienne sat in the backseat, silent. Corvus was pressed to the far side of the seat, away from the dirt covering Adrienne’s clothes. Tara could feel Adrienne watching her, but wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of showing it bothered her. She stared out the window at the molten gold coming over the horizon, not yet high enough to melt the frost. She wanted to believe Corvus was merely following orders, that he wasn’t taking any personal enjoyment from this. Adrienne. . . well, Adrienne would enjoy it.

“Stop here,” she said when she saw the abandoned pickup. She climbed out of the Jeep with Gabriel’s gun at her back, and a caravan of two other cars stopped behind her. While a squad of men opened the truck to search it, she led a phalanx of men down the slope to the fence.

“You want to go through, or over?” she asked.

Gabriel pulled a multi-tool out of his jacket pocket, limped to the fence, and cut out a seam. He pulled the mesh back, motioned for her to go through.

“Ladies first.”

She ducked through the fence, and the men followed her like insects, down the slope into the caldera. The dawn light illuminated the infinity loop of the particle accelerator in washes of pink and gold. Tara followed her footprints, still visible in the frost from the night before, to the broken tree and Magnusson’s remains.

“Here.” She turned away, and Gabriel’s men descended on the location like ants on candy. Corvus, disgusted, kept his distance. He pressed the back of his hand to his nose.

Adrienne, however, seemed fascinated. She squatted beside the remains. Something like jealousy seethed in those flinty eyes. Tara didn’t understand the covetousness she saw there. Surely she didn’t seek the power of dark energy, as Gabriel and Corvus did?

Adrienne reached out and touched Magnusson’s brow, an odd little gesture of reverence.

Gabriel nodded appreciatively at the find. He seemed satisfied to see Magnusson dead, and that rankled her. “Good work, Dr. Sheridan.”

“We had a deal,” she reminded him. Gabriel seemed to have his own twisted sense of honor; she hoped that by fulfilling her end of the bargain, that he wouldn’t send men to retrieve Harry.

“We did. And I’m keeping my end of it,” Gabriel said. He fished in his pocket for a cigar and lit it. “Agent Li is free. But our deal, regretfully, does not make any conditions for your freedom.”

Tara bowed her head.

“Corvus, take her back.”

Adrienne wrested her attention from Magnusson and stalked up to Gabriel, standing toe-to-toe with him. “She’s mine. That’s part of the deal.”

Gabriel was nonplussed. “You were supposed to get the girl for us. There’s no girl.”

Adrienne’s hands balled into fists. In a throw down between Gabriel and Adrienne, Tara wasn’t sure who would be the victor.

“You’ll get a crack at her. Don’t worry. But not until we get the information we need.”

With something like cold pity in his gray eyes, Corvus walked Tara back up the slope to the fence. They trailed three of Gabriel’s men, guns ready. Tara considered running, knowing she’d be shot, and that it would be over quickly.

“Do you love him?” Corvus asked quietly.

Tara stopped in her tracks. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Agent Li.” A wrinkle deepened above his eyes, and Tara could see she’d somehow wounded him.

Tara closed her eyes. He’d been listening to them in the cell. Who knew what kind of sick obsessions roiled behind that bald forehead.

“Yes,” she said.

Corvus looked as if she’d slapped him. Wordlessly, he stalked away. The search team met Corvus at the fence. They’d emptied the truck’s contents into black plastic garbage bags. One soldier was busily cutting into the seat cushions with a knife, searching the stuffing. Another grimaced as he pulled the petrified remains of a sandwich from under the seat.

“What did you find?” Corvus asked them. “Anything?”

“Mostly trash, sir.” The team leader handed Corvus a small folder of papers and Tara’s purse. “We’ve got the truck registration to follow down. And this.”

Corvus peered into the purse, stirred for a moment. Tara closed her eyes when he pulled out the deck of cards wrapped in her mother’s scarf.

“What’s this?” he asked her.

Tara shrugged. “Souvenirs.”

Corvus unwrapped the parcel, fanning the worn cards out. Tara clenched her fists. Her skin crawled at the idea of Corvus handling him, of his malignant energy sinking into her mother’s cards.

He could see her attachment to these things. With a small, cruel smile on his face, he severed that attachment. He threw the cards to the wind as if they were garbage. Tara watched helplessly as her mother’s cards spiraled away, down into the caldera. Some stuck to the fence, trapped. Others blew across the road. It was as if someone had released a flock of brightly colored birds. Her heart sank. There would be no retrieving them.

But at least Harry was free. She sucked in a breath, stilling her emotions with that knowledge.

Corvus must have read it on her face; he knew her too well. “There is no deal for Agent Li,” he told her quietly.

She spun on him, hands balled into fists. “Gabriel said—”

“Doesn’t matter what Gabriel said. I still have people under my own command, and they’ll intercept Li before he gets to the interstate.”

Fury boiled away her sense of resignation. Perhaps she could appeal to the past. “Corvus, we were partners once. I’m asking you to honor that by—”

“Honor what?” Corvus made a self-deprecating snort. “Tara, that was broken a long time ago.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

He leaned toward her. “I have to confess something. It’s been eating me alive, but this situation has given me the opportunity to. . . assuage my conscience.” His smile was small, guilty, like a kid who’d stolen candy and savored every moment of it. “When you went after the Gardener. . . I got your call for backup.”

“You what?”

“I got your message. I knew where you were, where you were going. And I chose not to go, not to send assistance.”

Her brows drew together in horror. “Why?”

“I wanted you out of the way. I wanted this.” His hand sketched his domain around them, his invisible power. “You were in the way. I thought it best to let the Gardener solve my problem for me.”

Tears stung her eyes. She had had no idea of the depths of his professional jealousy, that it had become personal. And she couldn’t believe she hadn’t seen this darkness in him. She was a profiler. . . too busy profiling the criminals around her, and never turning her attention to the greatest threat standing right beside her. “You let the Gardener abduct me, cut me up, bury me? You left me for dead? You
let
that happen?”

Golden dawn light washed over his glasses. “I did. I’m sorry it had to be that way, but. . .”

She swung at him. Her fist slammed into his jaw, flinging his glasses from his face. Immediately she was tackled by Gabriel’s men, tasting frost and dirt on the ground.

From the corner of her eye, she could see Corvus plucking up the remains of his shattered glasses from the grass.

“Take her back to the mine.” He knelt before her, and she felt a twinge of satisfaction at seeing the worm of blood trickling down his nose. He tried desperately to staunch it with a handkerchief. “Tara, my dear, enjoy this moment. It’s the last daylight you’ll ever see.”

T
HEY HURLED HER BACK IN THE CELL, KICKING AND HOWLING
.

Then they turned the lights off.

Tara heard the click of the electricity being cut to the wing, saw the lights winking out, one after another, down the hallway, until she was left in rapidly cooling darkness. She pulled the Pythia’s coat around her body, wondered if they intended to leave her here, in this isolation, until she starved or went mad.

Corvus had a sense of irony.
Bastard.
In hindsight, she could see how all the pieces fit together, why she’d pulled the Death card to represent him. . . and the white roses. The Six of Wands in conjuction with that card. . . representing betrayal by someone close. . . Why had she not seen it? And most recently. . . the Devil card, imprisonment. Her blindness had caused her to be bound by her own fears, in the cold and the dark. Just as Corvus was bound by his own avarice.

She pressed her hand to her forehead. She’d been too wrapped up in her own experience, too focused on healing and withdrawing from the world to suspect him of any wrongdoing. Now, it was too late. And too late for Harry.

A lump rose in her throat. More than anything, she wanted Harry to be free. And she’d failed. And she’d failed Martin and Cassie. . . Surely, it was only a matter of time before Corvus and Gabriel combed through the barren landscape and found them. She wondered if even Delphi’s Daughters could keep Cassie safe, if there was any fighting the fate that seemed so inevitable.

A small voice tickled the back of her mind:
Fight.

Magnusson’s watch scraped her eyebrow, and she stared at it.

Perhaps there was still a way to fight. Tara took off the watch and felt for the smooth back of the case, for the etched infinity sign in the metal. She dug her fingernails into the edge of the steel casing, succeeding in working the cover free with her torn nails.

Bits of dark energy glowed soft violet, spinning through the circuit of the battery. Precious light. She breathed into the fragile tangle of wire, trying to remember what Cassie had said about the properties of dark energy, how she could use this to her advantage. She examined the battery, the circuits turning in on themselves. Cassie had said the circuit could be interrupted, shorted out, by something as simple as crushing them. . .

And then what?
Tara thought of the destruction of the laboratory. Such a small amount of power, such a terrible result. . .

Violet sparks milled peacefully along the tiny circuit, deceptive in their tranquility. No telling what would happen when the energy discharged. Might be nothing, might bring the whole place down around her ears. Either way, it was her only bet to stop Gabriel and Corvus.

She took a deep breath. She had regrets, many of them: blaming Sophia for her mother’s death; not seeing Corvus for what he was. Most of all, she regretted how things had turned out with Harry. She wished she could have had more; more conversation, more lovemaking, more time.

But none of these things were left.

She heard footsteps approaching. She concealed the watch under the heel of her shoe in enough time to see the glint of a flashlight, hear the grate of a key in a little-used lock. Tara was surprised these doors even had old-fashioned keys, other than the electronic key cards. She heard the heavy bolts dragged back, squinted at bright light beaming in her face.

“I thought we could use some quality time alone. Just us girls.”

It was Adrienne’s voice. She could see her tall silhouette above the halo of light. She threw something on the floor before her, something that smelled cloyingly sweet. . .

A clutch of irises. They lay on the concrete floor like a bouquet tossed at a wedding that no one had caught, unwilling to tempt fate.

“Those are a present from Corvus. He wanted me to bring you something to keep you company in the dark. Something familiar.” Tara stared up at Adrienne. “He is one sick son of a bitch.

“They won’t give you to me until I get the girl’s location from you.” Adrienne circled her, the heels of her shoes bruising the flower petals and opening more of their dusky fragrance to the stale room. In the dim light, her eyes shone like a cat’s. “And I will enjoy getting it.”

“Why me, Adrienne? What’ve you got against me?”

“The Pythia has chosen you as her successor. The title should be mine.”

“The Pythia knows you’ve been stalking me. Do you think she would willingly give the title to you now?”

“Not willingly, no.” Adrienne’s white teeth gleamed. “The Pythia is old and weak. If I challenge her, she will yield.”

“I wouldn’t be too certain about that. The Pythia is a pretty determined bitch.”

“What would you know about it?” Adrienne’s eyes narrowed. “You haven’t been among us in years.”

“I don’t
want
to be among you! I left Delphi’s Daughters,” Tara snarled. “I have done everything to get you people to leave me the hell alone.”

“The Pythia has never forgotten you. She has always watched over you, though you were too stupid and rebellious to see it.”

“The Pythia hasn’t done shit for me.”

“She saved your life, you ungrateful wretch.” Hate glowed in Adrienne’s marble-like eyes. “When you were taken by the Gardener, when you were imprisoned in the ground, the Pythia knew. She was the one who whispered to you, with the diluted power she had left, to fight. She lent you her strength, and suffered for it. Her power diminished exponentially after that. . . She is a weak shadow of her former self.”

“I don’t believe you.” Tara’s mind reeled under the weight of the possibility.