On the Verge (A Charmed Life Book 1) (11 page)

Tracy looked in shock over at Jacob, who was looking away, his whole body tense, his fists clenched.  He looked like he was going to be sick.  She didn't feel much better.

“Lord Pax?” Lord Brin asked, calmly.  “I've been making sure he doesn't get more than his original mind rune.  He lent you his prime rune?” Craig's head was caught, his neck straining as he tried to toss his head left or right.  His scream cut off in a strangled noise as he ran out of air.  He raggedly gasped in some air and let out a strangled noise, not able to suck in much with Lord Brin's weight on his chest.  “What were you holding over his head? … Oh, that's interesting.  Such ambitions you had, Craig, hiding newbies from me, blackmailing lords … Well, now all your blackmail is mine.”

Straightening up, Lord Brin looked down at Craig with a resigned expression, brushing his fingertips off on his hip as if he had just touched something filthy.  Craig himself lay there limply, sobbing, a few tears touching his cheeks, barely able to breath between the sobs.

Tracy turned around and took a couple steps before throwing up.  She pictured tendrils of thought reaching into Craig's brain, ripping out pieces of it, the pain and humiliation and helplessness.  She flinched at a touch to her shoulder, but she saw fingers of flesh, not metal, moving to hold her hair back - Jacob, not Lord Brin.

Her stomach emptied itself and she just stayed on her knees trying to recover, the sharp, vile scent of the vomit encouraging her to throw up again, as the violation she had just witnessed kept playing through her mind.  A brief wave of water flowed across the street, washing away the foul smelling vomit, then a metallic hand entered her field of vision to set down a crafted metal goblet before her, filled with clean, clear water.

Lord Brin stepped away, giving her space.  “I'm sorry,” he said, and it sounded like he meant it.  “I forget, sometimes, how that looks to people who aren't used to it.”

Jacob softly growled, low enough that Tracy could barely hear him, “Not much different for people who are used to it.”

The friendly Lord Brin was back, looking concerned as Tracy glared up at him, angry and scared both.  Craig's sobs behind her were a creepy background counterpoint, reminding her that something else lurked behind that friendly expression.  She considered refusing the goblet, to make a statement, but she really did want to get rid of the taste in her mouth.  She picked it up and took a mouthful, spitting it to the side, then swallowed a good deal of the crisp, cool water.

“I'll grant you leeway, Jacob, because you have done me service,” Lord Brin stated in a magnanimous manner.  “And you, Tracy, benefit from this as well.  It wouldn't be fair for you to have brought me in on a matter like this, and for me to take advantage of that.  I'll grant you time to register.”

Tracy's confusion must have shown on her face, because Lord Brin explained, “Those newbies who are not brought in to register on their own, or who do not show proper respect for the laws, I take all their runes.  To regain their prime rune, I require a year of service to me.”

“Oh,” murmured Tracy, glancing over at Jacob.  Some of the things the others had been talking about made a lot more sense, now.  “And what did you do for him, Jacob?”

“I was a hunter,” Jacob responded.  “Along with Craig, yes.  Our job was to go around the city trying to sense out newbies, and report them back to Lord Brin.”

Tracy was silent.  Perhaps it was the fear of the situation, the revulsion at what Lord Brin had just done to Craig, or just the oddness, but she bristled at this revelation.  Jacob had sold others out for his own gain, hadn't he?

But he obviously wasn't happy about it.  He looked guilty and angry both.  And he had been working to try to help her, when he easily could have tried to fight her again and get those tokens once more.  And … at least it meant newbies wouldn't be stumbling through it on their own, right?  Even with the fights and fear, she couldn't imagine how much worse it would have been if she'd had no one at all to ask about what was going on.

“Will you take me to go register, Jacob?” she asked, softly.

Jacob looked up at her and gave a nervous little smile.  “Yes,” he said, his voice relieved.  “Of course.”

Lord Brin watched the two of them silently, appraising the small but meaningful drama playing out.  Tracy bristled lightly, that he should be sitting there, judging them, when he's the one who created the problem in the first place.

A noise sounded behind them and they turned, quickly, to see Craig getting to his knees, then to his feet, his eyes flashing as he glared with hatred at them.  A moment later, his fists were burning with fires as fierce as his gaze.

Tracy lifted her own hands, her mind racing, desperately trying to remember what mindset she had possessed just minutes before when she was fighting him, the mindset that let her draw on the power of the charms.  Jacob's hand stretched before her, blocking her, and she glanced to the side at his face.  He shook his head in warning, a somber look on his face.

“Craig,” said Lord Brin, taking a step towards him, the steel back in his voice.  “You know what will happen if you attack me.”

Craig quivered with anger, his eyes glistening.  A strangled noise pulled from his throat, and his cheek twitched from the fierceness of his scowl.  His hands shook, his fingers opening and closing, and the street was silent and unmoving except for Craig's furious indecision, and the quiet crackle of his flames.

With an anguished cry, as if the action physically hurt him, Craig threw his hands down and let the fire go out.

“Smart,” said Lord Brin, stepping forward again.  “You know how this works.  Craig Bergmann, you are guilty of breaking one of the rules of secrecy, not to mention acts of treason.” Craig flinched as if the words had been a physical blow.  “You have two choices of punishment.  Either relinquish all your runes to me and accept exile,” Lord Brin paused there, and when he spoke again his words were even colder, “Or receive the death sentence in the manner of your choosing.”

Craig stood there, silently, shaking with furious rage.  Sparks flashed around his fingers, tiny flames igniting and extinguishing as his emotions ran wild.  His face writhed with a mixture of fury and fear that Tracy had never seen before.  Finally, he grabbed the two charms from the wrist of his glove and flung them at Lord Brin's chest.

Lord Brin's metal-skinned arm twitched briefly and the two small items disappeared from mid-air.  Slower and with a feeling of ritual, he reached over his shoulder to place the charms against the pommel of his sword, and Tracy saw the charms disappear, replaced with two glowing red fire runes that slid along the grip and past the hilt, joining the hundreds of others on the blade of the sword.

“You have twenty-four hours to leave my range, and never return,” sentenced Lord Brin.  Craig turned on his heel and stalked away.  The three of them stood there and silently watched until Craig turned a corner and was gone.

Lord Brin let out a regretful sigh, his shoulders drooping for a moment, his head dropping.  It was just a moment of weakness, though, a half a second only, and he immediately straightened up, posture full of noble self-assurance again.

The metal-skinned noble turned back towards Jacob and Tracy, took a deep breath to say something, then paused.

Tracy didn't want to know what he was going to say.  He had just been ready to sentence someone to death with a cold surety - and his threat had been faced with a raw fear that said plainer than any words that he had done so before and would do so again.  The exile - was that a mercy? Was it mercy to save someone's life if you were the one about to take it? She didn't want his cold metal eyes looking at her, didn't want to sit there wondering what rules she might have broken.  What mercy he might consider flinging at her feet.  And what had Jacob said about that itch in your mind for the rest of your life?  That feeling of missing a piece of yourself?  How much mercy was this?

She did know that she was furious, though.  She should have been scared, that was evident by Craig's submission, was screamed by every single word of Jacob's body language, but she didn't care.  She stared back into those cold eyes with a calm determination, her back straight, lifting to every bit of her short height, looking Lord Brin right in the eyes.  Somewhere in the back of her mind, she knew she should have been too short to be able to, and that she was floating above the ground, supported on a cushion of wind and mist.  This was all secondary, however, to a fierce, cold fury.  This was a civilized world.  There was no place for rule by fear by some tin-pot dictator in America.

A brief look of surprise crossed Lord Brin's eyes, a look that turned the short hesitation into a longer silence.  The surprise was there for only a moment, replaced quickly by appraisal, the same look he had given her earlier when she had refused to kneel.  She just stared back at him, the cold fury seizing her chest and lending her a will more iron than Lord Brin's skin.

Finally, he sighed and waved his hand lightly, as if brushing away a fly.  “Jacob, I'll trust this one to you.  Just take care of it.” He stepped into the shadow of a post box, and his whole body turned to darkness and then melted down into the shadow to disappear.  For the third time, Tracy felt that rushing feeling like a great wind in her mind, blowing towards the spot where Lord Brin had disappeared.

Silence reigned for half a minute.  Tracy didn't know why Jacob was quiet, but she was still trying to control herself.  She didn't trust herself to say anything, not with that fierceness boiling just underneath.  She had never felt this way before, never felt so angry, so violent, so primally ready for action.  Never before had she ever felt such a feeling of pure rage, a desire to hurt or destroy something with such intensity, and all she could think of was trying to regain control of this intense emotion.  How did she deal with these feelings? 

After the silence had stretched out long enough, Jacob let out a long sigh of relief.  “You,” he said quietly, “Are insane.  And brave.  But mostly insane.”

Just like that, the anger was gone, vanished in the flash of an instant and replaced with pure terror.  She fell to the concrete, hugging her arms to herself and finding tears leaking down her face.  Without that defensive wall of anger, the realization of how close she had been to the presence of death and power came flooding in and overwhelmed her, and she started shaking like a leaf in a wind as the tears trickled over her cheeks.

The tears encompassed more than just the immediate battle, they released her frustration over everything that had happened to her in less than twenty-four hours.  How much violence had she been privy to in the past day? Was this going to be what her new life was like, now?

It was too heavy.  She felt crushed under the weight of everything that had happened, everything that was going to happen.  For a minute or so, she simply cried, Jacob's hand a light touch upon her shoulder.  Then the tears eased, the stress and anger and fear and all those emotions draining out of her to leave a very tired void, an emptiness deep inside.

“Come on,” said Jacob, guiding her to her feet.  “We need to get off the streets before everyone comes back.”

As if to emphasize his point, she heard the sound of a car a few streets down.  It was just the simple noise of a nearby motor, but it took the surreal, empty street and made it familiar again.  Tracy stood up, still feeling hollow and drained, but ready to move on.  “My things,” she murmured, quietly, pointing down the street, “We need to pick them up.”

Her gym bag lay in the recessed doorway where she'd left it, her winter coat folded neatly over it.  Jacob picked them up to carry them for her.  Normally she would have wanted to carry them herself, but she felt so empty and distant from everything that she didn't care.  As they walked down the sidewalk, Tracy was dimly aware of the distant noises returning to the neighborhood, and it was no small relief when a car actually drove down the street next to them, though the noise made both of them jump.  She was glad to know that she wasn't the only one unnerved by the silence of the daytime city - even someone who knew what was going on and had gone through it before - like Jacob - found it unsettling.

To her surprise, she actually got the key to the outer door right on the first try.  She let herself and Jacob into the mail room, then briefly checked her mailbox.  Her memory for checking mail was sporadic at best, which she was sure annoyed the mail carriers.  No matter how much she kept vowing to check it every day, though, it never stayed with her.  This time, it'd been three days since she'd checked it.  The mass of bills, coupons, credit card offers, and other junk mail was crushed in there and she had quite an armful by the time she had cleared out the little box.

They silently walked down the hall, up the stairs, Tracy flipping through the mail to see if she had actually gotten anything other than the normal mess of junk mail and bills.  The small bit of normality helped, again, but that looming emptiness waited right behind it.

“Hey, Tracy,” came a familiar voice.  Tracy looked up in surprise to see Sing standing there in the hall before her.  He was wearing tan khakis and a blue silk shirt, today, a black and silver striped tie laying almost casually on his chest.

It felt like forever since she had seen him.  Unceremoniously, she shoved the mail into Jacob's hands and rushed forward, hugging Sing tightly.  His arms wrapped lightly around her shoulders, patting lightly over her back.  “Hey,” he murmured, “Hey, hey.  I'm sorry I missed last night, I couldn't help it, my uncle-”

“It's all right,” she replied, just wanting him to shut up and hold her.  “It's not that.” Was it only last night? Less than a day since everyone had failed to show up for dinner?

To her relief, he followed her unspoken desires and just hugged her, sensing that something was wrong.  She held him for a long minute, then started to see if she couldn't ease up and back away.  She at least loosened her death grip.

“You haven't been lost for months in another dimension, have you?” asked Sing.  “Cause I swear I've seen this scene in a few books and movies of that nature.” He shifted his voice into a deeper tone.  “My dear, it's like you haven't seen me in ages!” He lifted his head as his voice shifted to falsetto.  “Well, that's silly, you saw me just two days ago!”

Tracy giggled helplessly and promised, “I swear, if I ever end up transported to another dimension where time travels differently, I'll tell you.” She unlocked the door as she spoke and ushered the two men into her apartment, which was just as cold as the outside.

“Tracy,” Sing admonished, “I know you like fresh air, but seriously…”

“No, no,” said Tracy, having forgotten all about it until now.  “I left the soup on the stove last night and woke up this morning to this horrible burnt stench.  I needed to air the place out.”

Tracy turned around to see Sing holding up a CD with a grin.  She cut off her explanation and squealed, darting forward to grab it and look at it.  It was an unmarked CD, held in an almost-transparent thin blue case.  “Is this it?” she asked excitedly.

He nodded.  “As close as we're getting at the moment,” he replied.  “Still need some players for some of the instruments, but we don't have any leads right now.”

Jacob looked back and forth between them, a confused look on his face.

“Oh, gosh,” Tracy realized.  “I haven't introduced you two yet.”

Tracy gestured one to the other.  “Jacob,” she said, “This is my friend Sing.  Sing, this is someone who helped me out of a … problem, last night: Jacob Nightfox.”

Sing looked a bit curious at that, and asked after it.  Tracy went about the motions of cleaning up the kitchen a little - and scrubbing some more at the mess in the pot - while she told what happened.  As she told the story, focusing on the attack and Jacob's rescue, and avoiding the bits about magical elemental abilities, she felt separate from herself - as if she was floating back and watching someone else tell the story.  Dispassionate.  Her voice trembled a little, but mostly it was just cool and distant.  On an intellectual level, she recognized how she was starting to remove herself from the situation because she was just getting overloaded.

She looked up at Sing as she neared the end and saw a horrified expression.  “Oh, God,” he murmured, shocked, “This is our fault, isn't it?” Tracy's face screwed up in a confused manner, but before she could ask, Sing continued, “If just one of us had actually shown up last night like we  said we would, you wouldn't have been-”

“STOP,” demanded Tracy angrily, even harshly, snapping back to reality with a sudden flash of emotion.  “Don't you dare finish that thought.  You might as well say it was my fault for walking at night or for wearing the wrong clothes.” Sing started to object, but Tracy cut him off, her voice low and confident, quiet but drawing attention.  “What happened last night was no one's fault but those punks who tried to attack me.  You are not responsible for what happens in the rest of the world.  You all had good reasons not to be there, it was just bad luck and jerk ass thugs.”

Sing looked intimidated and guilty, trying to stammer an apology, Jacob looked surprised, and Tracy realized that even that reaction was a little much - she was stressed over the whole situation and had started taking it out on Sing a bit.  She tried briefly to think if Sing had ever seen her like that, and didn't know if he had.  She couldn't remember exactly when she had last felt this stressed.  She couldn't think straight right now, but she knew she needed to change the topic.

“Speaking of which,” she said, her tone suddenly light and sociable again, concerned, “How is your uncle, Sing? Will he be all right?”