Division of the Marked (The Marked Series) (44 page)

She stood upright—if anyone was here, they would have seen her by now—and stepped further into the antechamber, towards the sphere. She could not wrest her eyes away from the swirling mists it seemed to contain. It beckoned to her, tugged her forward, consumed all of her attention. She was so mesmerized that she walked through the final doorway heedlessly.

Two things happened when she entered the interior chamber. First, a strange, horrible sensation washed over her. She felt cold and stripped, as if some vital part of herself had been removed, ripped clean from the bone.
 

The second, equally alarming, occurrence was the door shutting behind her with a definitive click, followed by the sound of a turning key. Bray spun on her heel, alarmed. They thought to shut her in?
Well
, she reminded herself with a deep breath,
they were in for an unpleasant surprise.
 

She did not want to come any closer to the sphere—from which, she was confident, that discomforting feeling must derive—but there was nothing for it. She crossed the room and took the sphere in her hands. It was cool to the touch and perfectly smooth, like glass.
 

She tucked it into the crook of her elbow and walked confidently toward the northern wall. She willed herself to phase, and a streak of panic shot through her. It was like attempting to stretch a muscle and discovering it gone. She was moving with too much momentum to stop. She charged straight into the rocky surface and fell backward, landing with a thump on her bottom. Her forehead, which had taken the brunt of the impact, ached in protest.
 

“No!” Bray said aloud, her hand coming up to feel along to the hard, unyielding surface of the wall. “No, no, no…”

Her breath came in ragged, irregular bursts and her heart lurched in a wild syncopation. Despite the cold, her face turned red. She abandoned the sphere on the floor; it must be the cursed thing’s effect that had stripped her of her gift. She crawled away from it, as if it were some kind of rabid animal, trying to escape its influence. But it was no use. The chamber was not large enough to allow her the necessary distance.
 

Still, she circled her stony cage, groped the walls until the skin of her fingers shredded against the roughness of the stone, as she tried with all her might to phase. She studied the upper level without hope; the stairway was in the antechamber and she could never jump so high.

She needed to calm down, she told herself. She needed to breathe. But she could not.

Her hand fell upon the gun strapped to her thigh, and she nearly slapped herself in the forehead for having forgotten she was armed.
 

She hadn’t brought additional ammunition. Pistols took long enough to load to not be worth the trouble in combat. So she had two shots only.
 

She hefted the pistol in both hands, aimed for the lock, and fired. The round was ear piercing, it filled her nose with acrid smoke. She tossed the weapon aside; it hit the stone floor with a dull clink. She unholstered the second pistol and repeated the process.
 

She shoved against the door, but it did not give.
Damn
.

She was trapped, she was helpless—a feeling she had not experience since she was a girl. At least, she reasoned, this unbridled panic would be an alarm for Yarrow. He would be on his way, with the others. How they would get to her, she did not know, but the thought gave her some small measure of comfort.
 

Footsteps thumped above her. She looked up, feeling like an ant trapped in a jar.
 

On the second story, a shadow of a man materialized. He sat down on the ledge, his feet dangling well above Bray’s head. He leaned forward and his face moved into the blue light. He smiled pleasantly down at her.

“Bray Marron,” Quade said. His deep voice echoed in the chamber and calmed her frayed nerves. “How lovely.”

“Let me out,” Bray said, and was not pleased to hear the note of desperation in her voice. She wished she’d saved her second round.
 

“It is unpleasant, isn’t it?” Quade said conversationally, gesturing to the sphere where it lay on the stony floor. “I try not to go near it myself, I confess. It’s a nasty sensation. A curious artifact, the Sphere of Chisanta—it has the ability to help you, but it strips you down first. Makes you feel like a normal mortal. Very curious.”

“Let me out.”

“That’s what I love about studying ancient things. We can learn so much about cause by examining effect. For example, this room.” He gestured down at the small chamber in which Bray was held captive. “It is the exact size to keep a person confined with the sphere. You see, in the antechamber you’re safe, as long as the sphere is kept in the center, and up here on the second floor you’re clear as well. But the inner chamber is perfectly designed to keep a person within proximity. An exact fit. Long ago, this room must have been used exactly as I am using it now, to keep a Chisanta stripped of their gifts. Why they did such a thing? I do not know—perhaps as a kind of punishment or ritual. Still, it’s nice, don’t you think? There is a sort of beauty in a thing fulfilling its purpose once again.”

“Quade, please,” Bray said, her voice shrill. She wanted to appear strong, but the panic that coursed through her body was so all-consuming, she could not even begin to feign strength.

“Of course, the same principle can be applied to many different objects—that effect reveals cause. Take yourself,” Quade went on, his dark eyes gleaming in the blue light. “Your first gift is rather a remarkable one. To become immaterial. It means you cannot be harmed and cannot be trapped. That, taken with the anxiety you are currently experiencing, are very illuminating pieces of information. What does it tell me?”

Bray didn’t answer.

“Well, it tells me several things. A person who has been hurt usually develops an ability to heal or a more offensive ability, like strength. But not you; you did not want to be touched, which, forgive me my dear, implies a history of sexual abuse.”

“Stop,” Bray said, desperately. His words were like honey, they sounded sweet but they filled her with a kind of unbearable anguish. She would not engage him in this conversation—she would not!

“But it doesn’t just extend to human touch—you can move through walls. Which suggests that, whoever this abuser was, they used to keep you locked up. Your current anxiety reinforces this theory. You have childhood trauma written on your features as clear as day. The only question is who. A father?”

“My father would never—” Bray burst out, despite her resolution to not speak.

“No, not father. An uncle then, perhaps? Yes. That’s it. An uncle.” Quade smiled kindly. “Yes, the uncle you couldn’t stand up to when you were a weak little girl. So you spend your days punishing other such people—bad men, especially bad men who hurt little girls. And you hate every single one of them, because, to you, they are all your uncle. And you’re punishing these men for that early sin, the one they didn’t commit. You punish them for locking you up and touching you in bad ways.”

Bray wanted to jam her fingers into her ears, wanted to block him out. Her fists clenched and she began to pace again, her entire body on fire with rage. She could not bear to listen, but neither could she stop.

“And you feel no remorse when you kill them. They deserve it, don’t they Bray? Those bad men? They deserve whatever you give them and more.”

“They do,” Bray agreed, her tone dark.
 

“You see, my dear Bray Marron, how much a person can surmise by examining effect? I figured all of this about you years ago. I was able to use it. You might have been a thorn in my side, but with this knowledge, I was able to divert you easily. Use you, even.”

“What do you mean?”

“You see, the fires looked like accidents. That was easy enough. The problem was, if a fourteen-year-old child was always missing, the Chisanta might have found me out before I had a large enough force.”

“So you replaced the bodies with other children…”
 

“Yes. Usually thirteen and fifteen-year-olds, to avoid suspicion.
Those
disappearances could not go unnoticed, or look like accidents.”

Quade’s words triggered in Bray’s mind a devastating understanding. All of those missing children she had investigated for the past ten years—they were, every one of them, victims of Quade’s insane agenda.
 

“Naturally I needed to keep you busy. I gave you many bad men, or seemingly bad men, to chase. And I avoided suspicion. It was all very neatly done, if I may sing my own praise.”

Bray nearly retched. How many innocent men were behind bars, how many were dead, because of her?
 

“But there were clues…they acted guilty. Some confessed!”

“Yes,” Quade agreed. “I have a knack for persuasion, you see. Especially if the target is weak-minded. Those men believed themselves guilty. You really can’t blame yourself, dear.”

“You’re a monster,” Bray said, looking up at him, horrified.
 

“No.” Quade took a slender black case from his pocket. “I am a visionary. The two are often confused.”

“And Ambrone Chassel?” she asked, already knowing the answer.

“Ah, yes. My old friend. I imagine you are curious about that. It was you, was it not, who found his body?”

Bray unclenched her fists with an effort. Her fingers felt stiff. “Yes.”

“We had a disagreement—”

Bray laughed, a high hysterical sound even in her own ears. “He didn’t fancy starting a child army or murdering whole families?”

“Quite,” Quade agreed with a smile. He turned the black object over in his hands. “I had just had a tremendous stroke of luck. I arrived in Gallan on Da Un Marcu, just after midnight, and I looked up at a window. And there she was—my pale little angel, with the Chisanta mark upon her neck.”

“So you kidnapped her and murdered her family?”

A memory flashed in Bray’s mind, clear and unbidden: a young woman sobbing, her mother comforting her. Her love had died—had been taken from her, by this man.
 

“Very good. Yes, that is what I did. But, not two days later, my old friend Ambrone caught up with me. Hit me in the head while I slept, the unsporting rascal. Took the sphere and my sweet girl, and went to the Temple to inform others. Fortunately, I caught up with him as soon as he arrived, before he had time to raise the alarm. I confess, I didn’t expect his body to be found. That was a mite vexing.”
 

Bray scowled at him, but the warmth in his eyes began to leach away her anger.
 

 
“Here, dear, catch,” he said, and tossed down the case.

Bray caught the object instinctively. It was black leather, and when she popped it open she found a needle and small vial of a clear liquid.

“A sedative,” Quade said pleasantly, “go ahead and take it.”

Bray laughed, wild eyed. “You’re insane. Why would I willingly drug myself?”

“Because I need to move you to the prison, and it will be rather easier if you’re unconscious. If you don’t do it willingly I’ll have to come down there and well, it would just be a lot neater this way.”

Bray could hear the charm in his voice. It was seductive. Part of her wanted to please him, to do as he said. But she would not be so easily manipulated. She dropped the case to her feet.

“I’m afraid I’m not inclined to make it neat.”
 

Quade sighed, as if disappointed. “Very well.”

And he jumped from his ledge, his coat billowed up behind him, and landed on his feet.
 

Bray recoiled. This Quade that joined her was an entirely different creature than the one who had sat above. His face, though in features identical, no longer appeared handsome. His demeanor was no longer pleasant.
 

“You see how the sphere affects me?” he said with a cruel smirk. There was nothing charming or seductive in his voice now; it was chillingly cold. Illuminated only by the blue glow of the sphere, he was a corpse.
 

He came forward, his face set in hard, vicious lines. Bray grounded herself, as Yarrow had taught her, and drew her blade. He produced his own; it slipped from its sheath like a sigh.

“You know, without your gift, you cannot win this fight,” Quade said. Bray suspected this to be true—her fighting style was entirely built upon her ability to phase. But that did not mean she would go quietly.

Bray lunged, the narrow gleam of her blade flashed. Quade parried with ease. He tested her to the left, and she met him with the clink of blade kissing blade.

They danced in this way for several minutes—tentative attacks and speedy evasions. Grunts, clanks, and the shuffling of feet. Bray’s breath came evenly, her pulse ticked rhythmically. The fight had returned her to herself. She was not a scared little girl, nor a cornered rat. She was Chisanta.
 

Her recent training with Ko-Jin had improved her speed. If she came out of this, she would thank him. But her strength was still only a fraction of Quade’s. Her sword arm quickly began to ache from the force of countering his blows. Sweat ran into her eyes, burning them and blurring her vision. She blinked furiously.

He struck with such force that her sword was wrenched from her grasp and fell to the ground with a clatter. Quade kicked it, and it skidded across the chamber, landing far from reach.

Bray raised her hands before her, fists clenched, making it plain that losing her weapon would not cow her. Quade’s thin lips twisted into a sneer. He sheathed his sword, and changed his stance for hand-to-hand combat.
 

Quade kicked and Bray only narrowly moved out of the way in time. Much to her own surprise, she found herself forming a pose from the
Ada Chae
—
Crouching Butterfly
. It took Quade off guard as well. She caught him in the chest and he stumbled.
 

“What is this?” His shrewd eyes scanned her up and down. “A Chiona fighting like a Cosanta? Fascinating.”