Guardians of the Boundary (The Conjurors Series Book 3) (28 page)

Valerie saw Zunya scan the
battle, and for the first time since Thai had been attacked, she took note of how
the rest of her team was faring. The Fractus were outnumbered, and Valerie saw
two of them lying unconscious on the ground, one of whom was Logan.

The rest of the Fractus were
fighting for their lives, and they weren’t going to win this fight.

“Retreat now!” Zunya commanded,
not waiting to see if the rest of his team followed his orders.

“Sir, what about the fallen?”
cried one of the Fractus who had been throwing lightning.

“Abandon them. They’re useless
to us now,” Zunya snarled.

The Fractus followed his lead,
but Valerie could see a few glancing backward at their fallen comrades with
regret.

“Let’s chase them down and
finish them off,” Elisabeth said eagerly.

“No,” Valerie said. “We don’t
know if Zunya has reinforcements nearby. He underestimated us this time, but he
won’t do that ever again. We were lucky.”

“Valerie is right. I’ve seen him
use a strategy in the past where he has a second wave of Fractus waiting in
case he and his team are pursued. He has no problem if his men die fighting, as
long as they delay the enemy long enough for him to escape,” Sanguina added.

“Let’s not risk any more lives
today,” Chisisi agreed. “Is the Byway safe?”

Thai patted his pocket and
nodded.

“Then we take it somewhere that
can’t be easily found,” Chisisi said firmly.

“What about the Fractus?
Shouldn’t we bring them to justice?” Alex spoke up, eyeing the fallen enemies.

Valerie didn’t miss Thai’s scowl
at Logan’s unmoving form. He didn’t even check to see if she was seriously
hurt.

An image of a wolf sniffing the
wind passed through Valerie’s mind. Chrome detected large quantities of magic
nearby.

“Without vehicles, we will have
to leave our enemy behind,” Chisisi said as the humans glanced about uneasily,
unnerved by the image Chrome had shared.

It would be a long
trek back to the city without any vehicles to carry them.

Valerie let her mind return to
the Globe to check on Henry and the progress of the effort on the Globe, but
she returned to Earth a few hours later. Chisisi, Thai, and the rest of the
group had reached the electronics shop dirty and tired, but the giddiness of
winning a battle had sustained them.

Thai pulled the old toy that
disguised the Byway out of his pocket. It didn’t glow or change, and Thai shook
it once, like that might make the key appear.

“Perhaps because Zunya ripped
away your power, it will not respond to your touch,” Chisisi suggested.

Valerie saw Sanguina eyeing the Byway
with a tension that only increased as it was passed around the room. It didn’t
respond to contact with anyone, even the Conjurors sent from the Globe.

“Maybe that glowing key thing doesn’t
appear every time,” Elisabeth said hopefully.

Valerie flashed back to the
fight earlier and remembered Zunya on top of Thai, about to beat him senseless.
Had he taken it then? Or at least, taken the part of the Byway that mattered,
and left the shell?

“Zunya didn’t miscalculate how
many Fractus he brought with him. He wanted us to think we had won,” Sanguina
said, her anger in careful check except for a twitching muscle in her cheek.

Chisisi bowed his head. “So we
would not follow him. Now it is too late to hunt him down.”

Chrome growled at the words. An
image of following Zunya’s trail pulsed through her mind, and she knew that
next time the wolf encountered Zunya, he would rip his throat out, even if it
meant sacrificing his own life to touch the vampyre for such a sustained length
of time. His bloodlust was so overpowering that the vision he sent was tinged
with red.

“It’s okay. I promise we’ll stop
him,” Valerie said, wishing she were there in person to touch his flank and
infuse some of her calm into him.

She turned to her team, who had
fought so hard to protect the Byway. A few minutes ago, they had been
triumphant, but defeat left them slumped in their chairs.

“This isn’t over,” she promised.
“You’ll recover the Byway from Zunya. I have faith in all of you. After seeing
you fight today, I know that Earth is in good hands.”

In a lower voice, to Chisisi and
Thai, she added, “I won’t lose the battle on the Globe. I can’t.”

“You’ll beat them,”
Thai said, meeting her eyes. “But first, we need to bury Joe. We will leave for
America tonight.”

The next day, Henry, Valerie,
Kanti, Cyrus, and Oberon all projected to the graveyard on Earth where Joe
would be buried next to his wife. Thai and Chisisi were there, along with a
couple of Joe’s friends and one brother who was still living.

A few people said some words,
but Valerie couldn’t process them, awash in her brother’s emotions. Henry didn’t
speak as he watched his father be lowered into the grave. Tears ran twin rivers
down his cheeks.

After Joe was buried, people
began to drift away after muttering a few awkward words to Henry. A few came
close to patting him on the back or giving him a hug, but he shot them stares
that had them hurrying away.

“Give me a minute, would you
guys?” Henry asked, his voice a whisper. Cyrus and Oberon left, but with
unspoken agreement, Kanti and Valerie stepped back, far enough away to give
Henry room, but near enough that he remained in sight.

“He’s not getting better, is
he?” Valerie asked Kanti.

Kanti shook her head. “That
first night, I thought that he was beginning to recover, but now I don’t think
so. Last night, he screamed in his sleep, and once he woke up with a weapon his
hand. At first, I don’t think he recognized me.”

“What weapon?” Valerie asked. As
an Empath, Henry shouldn’t be carrying a weapon unless there was an immediate
need. The Empathy Collective saw physical violence as a last resort.

“A dagger. I don’t know where he
found it,” Kanti said.

Valerie saw Joe’s brother
approach Henry, and the two spoke briefly before he left. Now Henry was
completely alone, and through their bond, Valerie knew his grief was reaching a
kind of crisis.

“We’ve got to get back to him,”
she said.

“Come on, baby, come back to the
Globe,” Kanti said softly. Henry nodded, and they all returned to Henry’s
bedroom, where Kanti held him as he shook.

“Tell me what I can do. Anything,”
Valerie begged.

Henry didn’t look up from where
his face was buried in Kanti’s shoulder. “There’s nothing anyone can do now.”

With those words, Valerie’s
connection with her brother’s mind was cut off abruptly. Her first reaction was
relief, which shamed her. She almost sagged from not having to experience his
pain. But the second was hope. He had found the strength to push her out of his
mind. Maybe he’d find the strength to recover after all.

Valerie didn’t know how she
would cope with her grief, stress, and guilt had she not been focused beyond
the now, thinking about the next step in her battle plan. She checked Elden’s seed
in her pocket at least once an hour, but it remained dormant. Waiting for the
battle to begin was starting to seem like an acute form of torture, giving
Valerie time to see all the holes in her plan.

“But you’ve also had the time to
fix those holes,” Cyrus argued when she told him what she was thinking.

“That’s probably a better way to
think about it,” Valerie admitted.

They were on their way to the Society
of Imaginary Friends to talk with Dulcea about her efforts in organizing the
Conjurors from the guilds in Arden who were not willing to support the Fractus.
Valerie also hoped she’d find Jack, because she had some questions for him
about the time he spent working for Zunya.

“Do you think Dulcea wants to
see me?” Valerie asked anxiously. “If she wants you to be the go-between,
that’s okay with me.”

“It’s not okay,” Cyrus said. “We
can play out grudges after this is over. No one wants to live in a world ruled
by the Fractus. You both need to get over yourselves until this battle is finished.”

Valerie nodded uncertainly as
they reached the doors of the Guild. Cyrus pushed them open confidently, and
Valerie wondered if he’d broken the news to his friends at the Society yet that
he’d be switching to the Weapons Guild.

“Is Cara safe?” Valerie asked,
changing the subject. “She’s banned from the voting, so why isn’t she here?”

Cyrus gave her a half-grin. “She
decided it was time to stop being a chicken and to talk to Mom and Dad. She’s
in Messina as we speak.”

“You must be relieved that she
won’t be here for the battle.”

“Her chances of survival might
be higher if she was here,” Cyrus joked, but Valerie could see beneath it that
he was deeply relieved.

They weren’t taking their usual
path to Dulcea’s office.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“Dulcea’s set up in the Grand
Master’s office now that Rastelli’s in jail,” Cyrus explained. “At first, she
didn’t want to move into his space, but when it didn’t look like a replacement
would be found any time soon, she finally agreed.”

Cyrus led her to an enormous
trampoline painted with the number “22.”

“Do what I do,” he said with a
grin.

Cyrus jumped a couple of times
and then shot upward, twenty-two stories and stepped lightly onto a waiting
mat. Then he gestured to Valerie to follow.

She stepped onto the trampoline
and jumped, air whipping through her hair and clothes as floor after floor
whizzed by and she was shot almost to the top of the building. When she
approached the twenty-second floor, she slowed down, and it was easy to step
onto the mat that was waiting there. Cyrus also had his hand stretched out, and
his eyes glinted a little.

“Come on, not even a smile?” he
asked.

Valerie tried to force one,
because she knew Cyrus was trying to cheer her up. He knew how much she loved
thrilling new experiences, and he obviously wanted to give her a moment of fun
in all of the craziness. He pulled her in for a quick hug.

“It will get better,” he
whispered in her ear before pulling her toward a door covered in kids’
handprints in different colors.

“Rastelli had the door specially
made, before he went nuts, of course,” Cyrus said a little sadly. “All the
novices get to put their handprints on the door when they become apprentices.”

The door was slightly ajar, and
Cyrus pushed it open without knocking. Which was rude, Valerie realized, as she
stared at Dulcea and Jack with their arms wrapped around each other, kissing as
if they were relying on each other for oxygen.

She and Cyrus slowly began to
back out. But Cyrus released a sound that was half laughter, half gasp, and he
clapped his hand over his mouth too late.

Dulcea and Jack saw them, and
Jack grinned like the cat that ate the mouse. Dulcea blushed a little, but she
didn’t let Jack go.

“Get your jaw off the floor,
Cyrus,” Dulcea said in her best motherly tone. “It isn’t attractive.”

For the first time in days, she
was smiling. It was obvious that Dulcea and Jack were happy, and it was another
little spark of light in a truly horrible time.

“I’m glad you’re both here,”
Valerie said, and Dulcea gave her a grateful nod for changing the subject. “I
have questions for both of you.”

“Shoot,” Jack said, settling on
a peppermint-striped couch that Valerie was sure belonged to Dulcea, not
Rastelli. He lounged comfortably there, as if he’d spent a lot of time on it.
Then Valerie quickly looked away, realizing he probably had.

“Okay, Jack first then,” Valerie
said. “It’s about Reaper’s new weapon. It works kind of like those funnel
things you used when you and your friends worked for Zunya, except it enters
through a wound, so you can’t run from it, and it’s way more powerful. I wanted
to know if there were any tips you had about combatting it.”

Jack sat up, his brow furrowed
as he thought.

“Zunya never liked us to know
more than we had to about how those funnels worked. But one thing the funnel
did that you might be forgetting is that it let us use the power we took from
Conjurors for a little while after we got it.”

“That’s right!” I remember you
playing with light after you used it on Cyrus,” Valerie said.

“Thanks for that, jerk,” Cyrus
added lightly.

“This is bad. It means that
Reaper or whoever uses the weapon might have extra powers, in addition to their
own,” Dulcea said.

“In addition to taking out the
Conjuror they used it on,” Valerie added.

“I don’t know of any way to
fight it other than avoiding it,” Jack added. But then his expression changed.
“It might not mean anything, but there was one time it didn’t work.”

“What happened?” Cyrus asked.

“We tried to use it on one of
the People of the Woods, and it didn’t work, or else he hid his reaction really
well. Then he unleashed this pulse of light that completely wrecked our funnel.
Zunya was so mad,” Jack said.

“Actually, that helps a lot,”
Valerie said, mentally reviewing her battle plans. If the People of the Woods
had a natural immunity to Reaper’s weapon, it could work to their advantage.

“We’ve got other good news,”
Dulcea said, a small smile playing on her lips. “We’ve spoken to thirty-eight
other guilds, and we’ve recruited over two hundred Conjurors who are willing to
fight.”

The number staggered Valerie,
and Cyrus was speechless, too.

“Two hundred…” Valerie echoed.
“You’re confident they’ll all come when they see Oberon’s signal?”

“Yes, and that’s just who we’re
sure of. There were a lot more who seemed uncertain, but when the time comes, they
may show up as well,” Dulcea said.

Temporarily forgetting that
Dulcea might still be mad at her, Valerie hugged her friend, hard. After a
pause, Dulcea hugged her back.

“I never dreamed we’d have so
much support,” Valerie said.

Jack cleared his throat. “I
don’t know the details of Reaper’s army, but he had a huge network. There were
hundreds of Fractus reporting to him from around the Globe. I’ve heard him brag
that every country, every government, even every guild has his people in it.”

Valerie almost didn’t want to
ask her next question. “How many?”

“Total? No idea. He usually had
a couple hundred at the Black Castle, but that was only a fraction of his
force. I don’t know how many he’ll call upon in the fight for the Byway.”

“He sent some of his people to
Earth,” Cyrus reminded her. “We may not be as outnumbered as you think,
especially with the People of the Woods as our allies.”

“The Oracles will also help in
any way they can,” Dulcea said. “They aren’t trained for battle, but they may
be able to advise us on tactics that would work best against the Fractus.”

Valerie’s heart pounded, but she
forced her expression to remain calm. She needed to spread confidence, not
anxiety.

“No matter what, you’ve given us
an incredible advantage,” Valerie said to Dulcea. “Thank you. I knew I could
count on you to help, even when you have every reason not to.”

Valerie and Cyrus turned to
leave, but Dulcea called after them. “Valerie, wait.”

She turned, and Dulcea’s eyes
had a warmth in them that she hadn’t seen in weeks.

“I should never have blamed
you,” Dulcea said, fiddling with one of her curls. “I reacted like a child,
maybe because it reminded me of when I lost them as a child. It wasn’t fair.”

“You forgive me for not telling
you sooner?” Valerie asked, her eyes welling with tears.

“If that’s what you need to
hear, then yes,” Dulcea said. “But you didn’t do anything wrong. Even Oberon…”

Dulcea trailed off, and her own
eyes became misty.

“He did what he did for love,
and he did it blindly. I should be mad at Reaper, but it was easier to be able
to blame someone I could yell at,” Dulcea admitted. “I think I can forgive
Oberon, especially since he’s your dad.”

Valerie cried then, and Dulcea
held her, patting her back. “Now, now, none of that. We can’t have the vivicus
leader of the forces of good being seen with puffy, red eyes, can we?”

Valerie laughed a
little and blew her nose. In a world full of a hundred things that had gone
wrong, one went right.

Valerie’s little slice of peace
after making up with Dulcea was shattered as soon as she left the Society of
Imaginary Friends. Dozens of Conjurors were racing out of the Justice Guild.
She saw two figures dressed in black turn around and throw lightning at the
building before racing away, half dragging and half carrying a stunned Rastelli
between them.

Next to her, Cyrus pulled a
glowing dagger from his boot at the same instant she drew Pathos. She quickly
checked her pocket to see if Elden’s seed had sprouted, but it was the same.
Were the Fractus starting the battle before the voting was finished?

Valerie was faster than Cyrus as
she chased after the Fractus who had thrown the lightning, so she raced ahead.
She was gaining on her enemies, who were slowed down by Rastelli. The ex-Grand
Master was staggering as he tried to run.

An odd shimmer at the edge of
the woods attracted her attention. At first glance, she thought it was a shadow,
but when she squinted, she saw that it was a tear in the atmosphere—one of
Reaper’s portals to another location. Judging from the darkness, she guessed it
was somewhere near the Black Castle.

Valerie pushed herself to run
faster, but the two Fractus leaped through the portal while she was yards away.
She caught the hem of Rastelli’s jacket, but he shrugged it off with more
agility than she would have given him credit for. As soon as he was through the
portal, it collapsed.

She let out a yell of
frustration as Cyrus caught up with her, panting. A few moments later, they
were joined by several other Conjurors who had also been chasing the Fractus,
including Gideon. Cyrus explained what happened as Valerie forced herself not
to stomp her foot in frustration, like a child.

“I thought no one escaped the
Justice Guild!” she said to Gideon in a low voice.

“Until this day, no one has,”
Gideon said, his eyes still scanning the trees for threats.

“Is Rastelli really so important
that Reaper would risk breaking him out?” she asked.

“The point was not to rescue
Rastelli. It was to show us what the Fractus are capable of,” Gideon said.

Valerie thought of the
conversation she’d had with Jack. “They’re everywhere, in every guild.”

“Indeed. If Reaper has
penetrated the Justice Guild, then all of the guilds are compromised,” he said.
“He’s trying to intimidate you.”

Valerie didn’t want to admit
that Reaper’s tactic was working. The crowd that had followed them began to
disperse, and Cyrus joined their conversation.

“If that’s true, and Reaper has
spies in every guild, then he must know that we’ve been recruiting Conjurors to
our side to fight in the upcoming battle,” Valerie said.

“He’ll have a pretty good idea
of how many people we’ll be bringing and will make sure to outnumber us,” Cyrus
said. “So much for the element of surprise.”

“We still have your weapons,”
Valerie said.

“We also have justice on our
side,” Gideon added, and his words gave Valerie pause.

Did it matter that right was on
their side? When in her life had that ever mattered? The memories of Midnight
dissolving before her eyes and Joe having his life ripped from him at Zunya’s
touch flashed through her mind.

“I don’t think that’s going to
help us,” Valerie said. It was the first time that she fundamentally disagreed
with Gideon.

His eyes were sad as they met
hers. “Some truths only reveal themselves with time.”