Embrace, Entice, Emblaze (62 page)

chapter
fourteen

“The wise man in the storm prays to God, not for safety from
danger, but deliverance from fear.”

RaLph WaLdo eMeRsoN

From the car, Griffi n tried to call Magda but had no luck. He threw his phone in the glove box, shutting it with a snap. I understood his disappointment. It mirrored my own. Not only had I failed to clear the air with Lincoln, I hadn’t even seen him. I sent him a text.

No reply.

We drove for a while and were well out of the city before I asked Nyla where we were heading.

“To an abandoned farmhouse. Magda said it would take about

ten minutes after we pass the airport.”

When she mentioned the airport, I felt a prickle down my

spine— the kind you get when someone walks over your grave.

We drove on and when I saw the sign for the turn- off to the

airport, I carefully lowered a lid on my senses. I didn’t want everyone Entice.indd 156

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to know what I was doing, but I felt compelled to investigate, so I tried to ensure I didn’t release my power’s mist.

“Violet?” Rudyard began conversationally.

“Yes,” I said, trying to appear relaxed while also holding my

concentration.

“Have I explained my power to you?”

“No, not really.” I couldn’t feel anything yet.

“Well, now seems an appropriate time. I’m what you might call

a spotter. I can tell the size of someone’s strengths, can gauge their power levels and their potential. I can also see power in exiles, can tell what they can do to an extent.”

“Cool.”

“Yes. I am very cool. You know what else I can do?” he pressed.

I was starting to feel something very faint and pushed my senses out a little farther.

“No. What?” I asked, distracted.

“I can tell when someone is using their power.”

I stopped breathing.

My senses closed down like a book being snapped shut. I’d been

caught red- handed; now I needed a strategy.

I coughed. Delay tactics 101.

“Really?” I replied, my pitch telltale high. I coughed again.

“That’s handy. Could you by any chance tell that I was just using
my
senses?”

“As a matter of fact, yes,” he said, smugly. He knew we were now playing a game. I had an awful feeling he was well practiced.

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“Oh, well, that’s good. I…umm…was just practicing. You

know, I don’t get out of the city often, and whenever I try and use my senses there, I always pick up a lot of different stuff. I thought being out in the country was a good opportunity to see if…”

This was not going well.

I didn’t really know why I couldn’t just tell them that I thought I sensed something at the airport the other day.

Because
I
should
have
checked
at
the
time, but I forgot about it and
they’ll think I’m a loser if I tell them now. It’s probably nothing anyway.

“And?” Rudyard prompted.

“And,” I swallowed, “nothing. I can’t sense anything.”

“Right. Well, perhaps you can practice when we get a little closer to where we are going,” he said.

Griffin turned from his driver’s position, looked at me, and

raised a purposeful brow. The we’ll- be- talking- about- this- later look.
Excellent.

Never lie around a truth detector. I was at least grateful that he didn’t out me in front of everyone.

We drove past the farmhouse Magda had described. It was

small and decrepit. Massive piles of scrap metal, broken glass, and general junk littered the front paddocks. Around the property,

there were no other signs of civilization. It was a perfect hideout; no one would come here freely, and no one lived nearby to notice anything. We could all sense the presence of exiles.

Trying to remain inconspicuous and to buy reconnaissance

time, Griffin parked down a dirt track not much farther down the 158

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road. Before we got out of the car, Rudyard suggested I try out my senses. I knew it was a bit of a taunt, but I actually thought it was a good idea.

Much to Nyla and Rudyard’s amazement, I was able to narrow it

down to three, possibly four, exiles inside the rotted house, with one other exile walking the perimeter. We carefully trekked through the bushes and dense shrubbery that surrounded the building. When

we reached a mountain of scrap metal, we crouched.

“I’ll go take care of the perimeter guard,” Nyla said, sounding a lot more formidable than usual. I half expected Rudyard to argue, but he just nodded. “I’ll try and disable him so we still have an element of surprise for the others, but if I have to return him, they’ll be able to sense me, so be ready.” She took off.

I watched Rudyard for a moment, to see if he was worried. He

didn’t look it. Instead, he turned to me, taking in my confused state.

“She is a woman, yes, but mostly she’s a fierce warrior, Violet.

Much greater than I have ever been or will ever be. She has taken down more than double the number of exiles I have in our many

years together. And anyway”— he paused, just briefly but enough for me to notice— “it will do her no favors if I throw myself in the line of fire just to be noble. Our relationship has gone beyond that.” His eyes bore into me as if he were giving me some kind

of warning.

All I could think was:
they’re perfect.

We waited for a few minutes, all increasingly anxious. There

was a flickering light visible through one of the blackened

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windows. Possibly a fire or a lamp. Then we saw what could only be described as a showering of color— like glitter gently illuminating the trees.

“She returned him,” Griffin said, now on red alert.

“She mustn’t have had a choice,” Rudyard said, defending

Nyla— something I was positive he would do to the end— even

though Griffin wasn’t questioning her.

Nyla was back in seconds. She crouched down beside me as the

front door to the shack opened…or kind of fell open. Out came

three exiles, but despite the weak light coming from the house, we couldn’t see them properly.

“No point hiding. They know we’re here,” Nyla said, standing

up, completely unafraid. Griffin stood with her as Rudyard and I followed suit a little more hesitantly.

Here
we
go.

We walked out to the small clearing in front of the rickety porch, avoiding the worst of the broken glass that was scattered in front of the house, a vicious do- not- pass security system.

As we got closer, the faces of the exiles became clearer. I gasped before I could stop myself.

“Are you okay?” Rudyard asked.

“I’ve seen one of them before, at Hades last night,” I said,

locking my sights on the ginger- haired exile who had been so casually lounging on the sofa there.

“You were in
hell
last night?” Rudyard asked quietly beside me.

“Yeah, it’s a bar. He was there.”

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Rudyard nodded, but then tapped Nyla and Griffin on their

shoulders.

“Two of them are fear- users, the two on the right. Be careful.

The other is no problem.” Then he turned to me. “You need to put up your defenses. They’ll try and put your worst fear before your eyes; you have to defend yourself from this.
Now!
”

I nodded and concentrated on putting up my walls, on trying

to protect myself and my power. As I did, I could feel the probing start. It was like when Rudyard had looked into my power at the airport, but different. Violent. I had felt this kind of invasion before, from Joel and Onyx. I knew it would take a lot to keep

them out. Right now, I couldn’t face a movie montage of my worst fears. I was already freaked out by the thought of discovering which one would make it to the top of my list.

Griffin took a final step forward. “We want information. We

can get it from you willingly or we can take it from you!”

The exiles didn’t respond. I was realizing it wasn’t that they did not care about their existence, but rather the opposite. They were extreme narcissists. They truly believed in their supremacy and that they could not be beaten— up until the second after a dagger went through them and it was all too late.

The one to the left— the one I recognized— moved toward

Nyla. It was tactical, trying to disable her first, thinking she was the smallest, and therefore the weakest.

Big mistake.

Nyla stepped back, feigning caution to encourage his advance,

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bringing him in as close as she could to where she stood. Then, with freakish speed, she spun and jumped. On the way down, her

dagger went straight into the exile’s upper thigh. It didn’t kill him.

But instinct told me that if she’d wanted to, she could have. Easily.

The exile dropped to the ground, grabbing his thigh as Nyla

simply reached down and ripped the dagger from his leg while

he screamed.

“Move again and it goes in your heart.”

The other two exiles, who must have been shocked to see her

annihilate their buddy so quickly, barely blinked. Instead, I felt them pushing again at my power. It was like they were turning all the doorknobs and rattling all the windows, looking for a way in.

Griffin kept talking to them, demanding information. They

kept refusing, intent on watching me. I was the target— the only one they were trying to infiltrate.

I caught glimpses of images. I rejected the intrusions, tried hard to stay focused, keep the walls up, but I still saw the broken snapshots, pictures sliding past my eyes in a fast- motion blur. Despite the quick movement, they were definitely there.

First I saw
him
, the one that always seemed to feature in these moments. Even now— with all I have faced, feared, conquered— he still haunts me, accessing that place in the pit of my stomach

that can send terror flooding through my body. The teacher who

attacked me, threw me on a wooden desk and ripped at my clothes while pushing his hard calloused fingers into my arms as he forced me down.

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I hated that this— that
he
— was somehow a part of my internal structure now, something I could not tear from my being or my

history. I saw his face flash by— just a glimpse. But a glimpse was enough.

My hands went to the side of my head as I tried to physically

hold myself together. But then…the vision settled on one scene.

It wasn’t
him
I was seeing as much as
me
.

Oh
no.

I knew where this was going.

I was back in the desert, reliving the moment when I had

put his face to the silhouette my dark angel had told me I must kill. I watched now, as the events once again unfolded, separate from me somehow, in another place. I could see myself crying,

begging not to be there. I held the dagger in my hand and pulled it back, ready to make my strike, and then watched as the figure morphed into a new shape— me— just as I drove the dagger up

into the heart.

There were three of me: the
now
me
, watching this vision; the
killer
me
, holding the dagger; and the
dead
me
, dropping to the ground in a pool of blood, lifeless and…gone.

I vaguely felt something burning in my legs, but I couldn’t

concentrate. I needed to not be here, to not see this. I couldn’t go through it again. I drew within and worked furiously, trying to put up my defenses. It started to work and then, all of a sudden, as my barriers sprung up, shutting down the images of my past self and the desert, something smashed me across the face.

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I opened my eyes, and I was once again in the clearing outside

the little farmhouse. I was kneeling on rocks, jagged metal scraps and shattered glass, in the midst of a pool of blood. Nyla was

standing above me, a scary combat- ready look on her face. Griffin was crouched at my side, looking more concerned.

He stood and put a hand out. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” I said, tasting blood in my mouth. I must have bitten

down on my tongue at some point. “They…they were both— I’m

sorry, I just wasn’t ready,” I said, embarrassed that I had not been able to stop them.

“They were strong, Violet. Very strong. Two of them together

would have been nearly impossible for any of us to hold back. They weren’t going after us— just you,” Rudyard said, as Griffin pulled me up.

“What happened?” I asked, looking around. The two fear exiles

were gone.

“Returned. We had no option. Fear can kill,” Griffin said.

Oh.

“What about the other one?” I asked, looking over to where

Nyla now towered over the less powerful exile.

“That’s why I slapped you. Sorry. I need your help with this

one,” Griffin said, leading me over.

She gave me a nod. “All right?” She sounded so different from

normal, in complete battle mode.

If
it
doesn’t need to be said right now, don’t say it.