Edge of Pathos (The Conjurors Series Book 4) (15 page)

A man who looked
like an older version of Juniper stopped at the end of the bed. He glared at
Valerie.

“I know who you are,
and I don’t want you filling my son’s head with any more of your poison,” he
spat.

“Dad, be quiet. I’m
a man now, and I can decide for myself what’s right,” Juniper said. Then his
face softened. “You always taught me to work hard and stand up for those who
couldn’t do it for themselves. That’s what I’m doing.”

Juniper’s dad turned
away from Valerie. “I take it all back. I want you safe.”

Valerie quietly
walked away, letting Juniper talk to his dad, thankful that he was alive to
receive his scolding.

The days blurred
into weeks as fighting escalated on Earth. When Valerie heard that a group of
Fractus was entering the Pantheon in Rome, she didn’t suspect that they would
be different from the dozens of Fractus she’d been battling day after day in
their search for clues to how to break the rules binding Earth’s magic.

Chisisi reported
that five Fractus had been seen entering the monument, so Valerie decided not
to tackle them alone. She brought Alex and Olwain, Knights of her guild who had
stood by her side from her first battle against the Fractus.

They passed through
the enormous pillars at the front of the Pantheon and entered through the
massive front doors with a crowd of tourists. Valerie scanned the massive,
circular room. The ceiling was a dome with a hole in the middle that let light
in.

It was quickly
apparent that the Fractus were making no attempt to blend in with the crowd.
They studied the floor, sometimes bending down to trace the pattern in it.

Valerie recognized
Logan, Thai’s ex, right away, even though she’d cut her beautiful hair short.
Valerie fought the urge to run over and unleash her powers on the girl who’d
held Henry’s father while Zunya murdered him. Two of the other Fractus looked
familiar, as well.

“What are they
doing?” Alex asked, sliding her hand into her jacket, where Valerie knew she
kept a dagger that Cyrus had imbued with his new light treatment.

“See that woman
tapping the circle on the ground over there?” Valerie asked. “I think her name
is Toma, and she’s got the ability to use electricity to mess with anything
electronic.”

“That’s not going to
do her a lot of good in here,” Olwain said.

“She can also throw
lightning. The other woman is Logan, and her hands and feet can secrete poison,
like a frog,” Valerie added. “I don’t recognize the other three guys. Do you?”

Alex nodded. “I
fought them when Zunya attacked us at the playground last year when we were
recovering the Byway. They were guarding him.”

“I remember them
now, too,” Olwain said. “They’ve got the speed and strength of leopards, which
is why their magic isn’t completely incompatible with Earth’s rules. No match
for us if we were on the Globe, but here we’ll have to watch out.”

“Let’s wait and
capture them somewhere less public so we don’t put any humans in danger,”
Valerie said.

The words were
barely out of her mouth when Logan shoved a man who was trying to usher the
group away from where they were standing. He fell to the ground, gripping his
chest. Security guards came running, and the five Fractus formed a loose
circle, ready to fight.

“So much for
waiting,” Alex said.

“You two fought the
leopard guys before, so take them. I’ll handle Logan and Toma,” Valerie said.

By the time they reached
the Fractus, three guards were lying on the ground, and people were starting to
back away from the scene.

“I suggest you run,”
Logan said loudly.

People didn’t wait
to hear more. They turned and began pushing their way out toward the front
doors, the only exit.

Valerie landed a
sharp punch to Logan’s cheek, which leveled her. But the blow made her stagger,
so Toma was able to touch Valerie’s arm, sending electricity zinging through
her body. Even with her magic flowing as much as Earth’s rules would allow,
Valerie went down, temporarily paralyzed.

Toma took full
advantage, kicking her hard in the temple, but it didn’t keep Valerie down for
long. As she sprang to her feet, she saw Toma glance toward the exit with
longing.

“Too late to run,”
Valerie said, and swept her foot across the ground to knock Toma off her feet.

But the Fractus
nimbly dodged the kick. Something above them caught the woman’s attention, and
Valerie seized the chance to hit her in a pressure point in her neck. Toma
fell. Valerie confirmed that Logan was still down, then saw that Olwain and
Alex had taken out their targets, as well, though Olwain was limping.

But Valerie’s sixth
sense for danger was still going off, and she looked up and saw three faces
peering through the circular opening at the top of the Pantheon. She barely had
time to register that two of the faces had eyes that were completely black
before the room dimmed.

Valerie knew that
the third Fractus was Reaper as soon as his feet touched the ground. His eyes
met hers, but they held no surprise. He’d been expecting her.

Valerie had never
seen Reaper on Earth before, and she suspected it was because his magic was at
complete odds with Earth’s rules. He bent the laws of physics, which went
against the very tenets of how the planet functioned.

Knowing he was
vulnerable, she launched herself at him with all of the speed that her magic
could lend her, bound as it was.

Instead of
flattening him, she passed directly through him. He was only projecting his
mind to Earth. But the two Fractus who were with him were not projections, and
Valerie’s hold on her magic slipped as they both turned their power on her and
her Knights.

“Disable them and
take what I need,” Reaper ordered, ignoring Valerie and the Knights.

Valerie collapsed
under the weight of the darkness sucking at her magic, and her very life. Next
to her, Alex and Olwain had also fallen, their faces pale. Alex’s eyes
fluttered back in her head. The Fractus approached, and Valerie couldn’t find
the strength to lift Pathos from its sheath at her side.

A human couple, who
had been hovering at the edges of the crowd that was trying to force its way
out of the building, leaned down to help Valerie.

The Fractus turned
their magic on the couple, and they both made horrible gasping sounds that
ended in choking. They fell to the ground, blood trickling from their mouths.
The panic of the crowd surged, and people screamed as they clawed their way to
the exit.

“More will die if
you interfere,” Reaper said, his eyes connecting with Valerie’s for the first
time since he’d arrived.

Almost hopelessly,
Valerie reached out with her mind for Henry. She didn’t know if his mind would
be open to her across the universe, locked in a prison of his own making, but
she knew that many more people would die if only she, Alex, and Olwain were
there to protect them.

Her desperation must
have reached Henry, because he was by her side in an instant, clutching a lock
of her hair as the object that anchored him to Earth, sending him directly to
his sister.

“I know how guilty
you feel for helping Reaper, but starting now, you can make it right. Help me
protect these people,” Valerie said to her brother.

His magic flooded
her, joining and strengthening her own. Valerie was able to draw Pathos, and
the effect of the Fractus’s magic weakened. The room brightened, and a beam of
light from the opening on the ceiling struck a circle on the ground.

“Strike now, as I
told you,” Reaper commanded one of the Fractus, who wore his long hair tied
back in a ponytail.

The Fractus turned
to face Valerie then, and a torrent of darkness poured out of his eyes. She
raised Pathos higher, and the light pushed back.

Alex and Olwain had
found their footing and drawn their own weapons, which weren’t as powerful as
Pathos but still helped drive back the darkness, especially when the second
Fractus added his power.

Henry’s magic pooled
with her own, and Valerie didn’t think, but struck through the darkness. It
shrank away from her sword like a slippery, living thing.

“It is like a living
thing,” Henry said, catching her thought. “See if you can strike it with
Pathos, like the table in Cyrus’s lab.”

Valerie raised
Pathos and drove it through the heart of the darkness, stabbing it directly
into the floor.

“Yes,” Reaper
breathed, and the Fractus wielding the darkness retreated.

Pathos poured its
light into the stone floor, and symbols made of light appeared where before
there had only been a circle.

Reaper’s eyes
scanned the symbols as if he could read them, and then he vanished, his mind
retreating to the Globe.

The two Fractus who
remained standing tried to flee, but Alex and Olwain tackled them before they
got far. Alex tore off a piece of cloth from the leg of her pants and
blindfolded the Fractus she had pinned beneath her, and Olwain followed suit.

The humans who had
witnessed the fight were openly gaping. They had their cell phones and cameras
out, but Valerie could see from the dismay on their faces that their
electronics weren’t working. Toma must have taken care of that before Valerie
knocked her out.

Alex and Olwain were
tying up the other five Fractus who lay unconscious on the ground.

“The situation is
under control now,” Alex said to the remaining people crowded in the Pantheon.
“Please exit the building in an orderly manner. The authorities will be here
soon.”

“Seven Fractus
captured. We won this battle,” Olwain said.

Valerie deliberately
didn’t look at the two humans who lay dead on the ground. There had been no
victory. Just two more lodestones on her heavy heart.

“Reaper wanted me to
use Pathos to activate that pattern in the floor. He sacrificed these humans
and his people to trick me into doing what he wanted,” Valerie said.

“Whatever that
information was, it must lead to the charm binding magic on Earth,” Henry
agreed. “I don’t know what those symbols mean, but I memorized them. Someone on
the Globe will be able to decode them.”

“I’ll call Chisisi
for a crew to get these Fractus safely locked up,” Alex said. “You get this
knowledge to the Fist so we can try to decode that pattern before Reaper does.”

“Make sure the
blonde, Logan, doesn’t slip through your fingers,” Valerie said. “She’s tricky,
and if anyone deserves to rot in jail for the rest of her life, it’s her.”

Alex took a rope she
wore coiled at her side and began tying up Logan’s hands. “She’s not going
anywhere.” Alex reached over and gripped Valerie’s arm in solidarity.

Valerie
was thankful that someone else was taking the lead right now. She nodded to
Alex, then Olwain, and touched the stone in her pocket to return to the Globe.
The last image burned into her eyelids before she left was the human couple
lying still, blood on their lips. They were holding hands.

“Those two humans
who died… Their end is my fault, not yours. You know that, right?” Henry said
when they returned to their garden on the Globe. Blue shadows under his eyes
made him look sick.

“Their end is
Reaper’s fault, and his Fractus minions who obey him,” Valerie corrected him,
her voice gentle. She changed the subject, hoping to distract him from his guilt.
“How were you able to memorize those symbols so fast?”

“The Empathy
Collective teaches us how to harness our magic to absorb and remember large
amounts of information. People with photographic memories on Earth are tapping
into similar magic inside themselves.”

“I think that
there’s a guild that’s into puzzles and decoding messages,” Valerie said.
“Maybe they can help us. Can you—”

Valerie was shoved
roughly backward by an invisible force. Her feet dragged in the dirt as she was
being pulled back, through the trees that surrounded her house. She scrabbled
to hold onto something and regain her footing, but the pull was inexorable.
Then, as suddenly as it started, the pull stopped and she fell to the ground.

She stood, and a profound
dizziness overtook her. She gripped a nearby tree for support as her entire
body shuddered.

“Henry!” she
shouted, searching for her brother.

“Val!” his voice
responded, though she couldn’t see him.

She struggled toward
the sound, but every step she took in his direction was like fighting a strong
current under water. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t move closer to
him.

Henry cracked his
mind open to her, and she knew that he shared her confusion and fear. He was
sure that Reaper had done something to them. She had no sooner wondered why
Henry suspected Reaper than she saw their enemy walk deliberately through the
trees toward her.

Valerie drew Pathos,
hoping that whatever happened in the Pantheon hadn’t weakened it. This time,
would Reaper really fight her?

“I won’t have you
polluting Henry’s mind more than you already have,” Reaper said.

Valerie didn’t miss
the tremor in his hands, even though she was several yards from him. Whatever
magic he had expended had been powerful.

“What did you do?
You obviously want me to know,” Valerie said, in part to distract him as she
calculated the best angle to hit him so that she’d render him unconscious—or
kill him. This time, she wouldn’t leave him alive and free, whatever the cost
to herself.

“I made sure that
you and Henry will never join forces against me again,” he said.

Valerie
crossed the space between them in less than a second and raised her sword to
cut him down. But before Pathos found its target, Reaper created a small portal
and stepped through it.