Secret of Betrayal: Book Two of The Destroyer Trilogy (6 page)

I sincerely hope no one died because of their
intervention.

“Thanks, by the way, for making me babysit a
bunch of freshmen,” Lance says.

“You like the cloak-and-dagger crap as much as
Cole does, admit it.”

Lance smirks, but I know I’m right. Milo doesn’t
seem to mind the assignment.

The three of us slip into Mr. Walters’ class
quietly a few minutes later. This class is meant solely for teaching me about
the Destroyer class, but more often than not it turns into a planning session.
Milo and Mr. Walters jump into a deep discussion as soon as we arrive. I listen
quietly to their thoughts, not bothering to join in right away. Milo brings up
the idea of a direct assault on the Guardians. Mr. Walters reminds him it would
be suicide, but after meeting with Cole I wonder if it could ever work.

Waiting scares me.

How many more people will die before we’re ready
to make our move? I tune out everyone else, my thoughts instead going back to
Cole’s note. I knew not to bother telling my teacher I would be late, because
the note said he already knew where I would be.

I often get the feeling Mr. Walters is holding
out on me. I know his unbreakable promises made to the Guardians are partly
responsible for that impression, but sometimes I wonder if there isn’t more he
simply chooses to hide. Scholarly interest can’t possibly be enough reason for
him to risk working with me. What is the real reason behind his help, and why
is he hiding it?

Chapter 5

Sihir

“I don’t understand, Libby,” Milo’s mom says.
“The Guardians can’t kill the Ciphers.”

“Yes, they can,” I argue, glad to finally be out
of school and trying to figure out the mess with Casey this afternoon. “You
said yourself that they could kill them. You only said the consequences would
be bad, so bad they wouldn’t do it. But what if you’re wrong?”

“I’m not.” Her body shivers at the very idea.

“You could be,” Milo says. “It’s not like it
hasn’t happened before.”

I take Mio’s hand gently and will my calm into
him. I completely understand why he is still angry about how his parents
handled his first failed Inquest, but I can’t afford a fight between them right
now. I need answers. Mrs. Hanover still hasn’t explained to me what will happen
if the Guardians kill a Cipher while they’re still locked away in the spirit
world. Whatever it is, the mere mention of it terrifies her. I was willing to
accept her assurances before, but not any longer.

“Mrs. Hanover, the Ciphers are sure they’re in
danger. They even risked attacking Casey to get me the message. If what you say
about the Spiritualists monitoring the Cipher’s activity is true, they are
probably paying for that very dearly right now. And now I have teenage
vigilantes trying to take on the Guardians all by their
lonesomes
.
They want their family members back. Everyone is getting desperate.”

I wasn’t connected to the Ciphers like Casey
was, but I could certainly feel her terror.

Milo’s mom wrings her hands in confusion. “They
can’t kill them. There has to be another explanation.
Something
that will keep them from you without … without consequences.”

“Nothing else will work! I’m the Destroyer, for
crying out loud! Where are they going to keep them that I won’t be able to get
into? Locking them in the spirit world is the only way to make sure I can’t
make use of them. I’ve got to get their spirits back to their bodies if I have
any hope of freeing them, but I can’t do that without alerting the
Spiritualists guarding them. It’s practically impossible! Anything else would
be too easy for me to circumvent. They have to be planning on killing them!”

My frustrated rant is followed by silence. With
Celia at dance class and Mr. Hanover at the hospital taking care of the ER,
only Lance, Milo, and I sit in the room with Mrs. Hanover. Milo is restraining
himself from joining in my argument with his mom. Lance is quietly backing me
up as he usually does. I am on the verge of becoming hostile. I need answers.
If Mr. Hanover were here, he would support his wife’s reasoning, but without
him next to her she begins to falter.

“If you don’t believe me,” I say crossly, “you
better explain why I shouldn’t argue with you. Otherwise, I’m going to start
planning what I need to do on the idea that the Guardians are about to commit
mass murder.”

She cringes visibly.
Stopping
the Guardians from killing the Ciphers means going after them in their own
compounds.
A virtual suicide mission.
My threat
is enough to make her talk.

“Do you know what a Sihir is?”

I look over at Milo. He clearly thinks his mom
has lost her mind. Lance looks ready to laugh out loud.

“You’re not serious, are you?” Milo asks.

“You asked me to explain. That’s what I’m trying
to do,” she says with uncharacteristic peevishness.

“Sihirs are children’s tales,” Lance says
patiently. “My dad used to try to scare me with Sihir stories at night. It
didn’t work then, and it won’t work now.”

I have to muffle a derisive snort in order to
keep up Lance’s serious, yet disbelieving, manner. His dad told both of us
those stories back when we were little enough to have sleepovers together
without it being weird. He terrified Lance and me to the point of us cowering
together in Lance’s room all night. But we were five and six years old at the
time. I don’t think scary bedtime stories are going to have quite the same
effect on us now.

“Mrs. Hanover, I need a real explanation if you
expect me to believe you,” I say.

“I am giving you a real explanation. I know the
stories parents tell their children to scare them. Matthew has even told them
to Milo and Celia on occasion.
Soulless zombies prowling
around at night in search of naughty children.
They’re harmless for the
most part. But those aren’t the Sihirs I’m trying to tell you about.”

“Which ones are you talking about, then?” I ask.

Her face is absolutely serious as she says, “The
real ones.”

Not even Lance scoffs at her this time. My hand
tightens around Milo’s even though I can’t fully explain why. Something about
the intensity in her voice keeps me from speaking my doubt as well. What really
freaks me out is that Milo squeezes my hand back, a trickle of fear tainting
his hold on me. Normally so bouncy and fun loving, this deadly serious version
of Mrs. Hanover is unsettling. Maybe I was wrong about what will scare us.

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“Stories about Sihirs came from somewhere, from
real life monsters. Monsters other humans create.” She pauses to take a deep
breath and settle her shaking hands into her lap. “The spirit world didn’t used
to be like it is now, filled with Ciphers. Centuries ago, before the Guardians
started trapping Ciphers in the spirit
world,
it was
an empty place, at least from what little information I can find about that
period. Most information about the spirit world has been destroyed by the
Guardians, but it sounded like people used it as a place for reflection and
focus. They would take as much of their spirit into this other world as they
could and try to align themselves with the spiritual forces that govern us.

“Supposedly, the first time it happened was
purely by accident. A woman who was a strong Spiritualist was meditating in the
spirit world when her home caught fire. She was so deeply immersed in the
spirit world that she failed to realize her body was dying. The smoke burned
her lungs and she perished without ever bringing her spirit back to her body.
Her body was dead, but the crazed spirit was ripped free of the spirit world
when her heart finally gave out.

“The spirit started scouring the town for its
body. It didn’t care that it had been burnt to ash. It just wanted back its
connection to the physical world. The spirit went from house to house murdering
innocent people in search of its body. Half the village died before they
stopped her.”

I might have at one point in my life said a
spirit couldn’t hurt anyone in real life. Spending so much time learning about
Spiritualism and the spirit world over the last couple weeks has taught me too
much to doubt. Spirits are not ghosts, ephemeral beings with no substance.
Spirits are a part of this world as surely as I am. They may be less
substantial than a body, but they are powerful enough that nothing is safe from
them. In fact, a person’s spirit is actually infinitely more powerful without a
body holding it back when it comes to Spiritualism because it doesn’t have to
try and escape a physical body before exerting its power. And if my lessons
aren’t enough to convince me, having to tear Casey away from the Ciphers today
certainly is. Even as spirits locked up with no talents, they could have killed
her.

“How did they finally stop the spirit?” I ask.

“They used a woman who looked similar to the
dead woman and offered her up as a replacement body to the spirit. The spirit
was so delirious at that point that it was tricked into believing it had found
its body again. Not held back by a physical body, the spirit was able to enter
the new body and tear out the poor woman’s spirit,” Mrs. Hanover says sadly.
“As soon as they were sure the spirit had taken over the body, the other
villagers attacked her. She was dead, completely, a few minutes later, but she
had already murdered so many innocent people.”

A shiver runs through me as I imagine the terror
of that spirit darting in and out of homes wantonly taking lives. One spirit
was able to kill dozens in just a short time. Thousands of Sihirs released on
the world would make my purpose moot. They would destroy everything before
anyone could stop them.
If anyone
could
stop them.
When I first learned of the Ciphers and feared they would be killed, I argued
that the Guardians would easily sacrifice the several hundred Spiritualists
guarding the Ciphers to keep them from me. But this is different. Even if the
Guardians were willing to sacrifice one innocent life for every Cipher they
destroyed, they have to know that there’s no way they could control something
like that. The released spirits would overwhelm them in an instant.

“The stories we tell to children are the
opposite of the truth, the body staying alive while the spirit dies, because
for some reason that seems less terrifying. Either way, the
point
of the stories are
the same,” Mrs. Hanover says. “Sihirs are incredibly
dangerous. Trust me when I say that not even the Guardians would risk creating
that many of them just to keep you from freeing the Ciphers. They would stand a
better chance by facing you and your army.”

“If this were the consequence of putting Ciphers
in the spirit world, why did they ever do it?” I ask. “Why didn’t they just
kill them? It would have been so much easier.”

Mrs. Hanover smiles sadly. “The Guardians
weren’t always as they are now. Before my Inquest, before I was slotted to be a
psychologist because of my Spiritualism, I wanted to teach history. As time
passes it gets all the much more difficult to find accurate descriptions of the
past, but at one point the Guardians truly were our protectors. When the shift
to tyrannical rule began, many of the Guardians still believed in compassion.
They feared the Destroyer. Putting Ciphers in prison was more bearable than
killing them outright. I don’t think they understood at the time what their
mercy would cost. The Spiritualists were inexperienced at holding prisoners and
believed
themselves
capable of bringing the captured
spirits back out. It was only later that they discovered releasing the Ciphers
was impossible.”

I can’t think of anything to say to her after
that. My life, beliefs, and world view have been broken down and rebuilt too
many times to count since my Inquest, but finding out my childhood terrors are
real is more devastating than you might expect. Not only do I have real hunters
waiting for their chance to kill me, there is the possibility of my nightmares
coming after me as well. There is no element of fairness to my life at all.

“Well,” Lance says brightly, “I guess attacking
the Guardians in person isn’t necessary, then.”

“No, now we only have to figure out how to
battle nightmarish ghosts. Attacking Guardian compounds sounds easy in the face
of that,” Milo grumbles.

I have to admit I’m relieved by the realization
that I don’t have to start planning a kamikaze mission, but our problems aren’t
exactly solved. “We may not have to go after the Guardians directly, but we do
still have to figure out what they’re doing. Even if it’s not outright killing
the Ciphers, something awful is going on.”

“And we have to find out what that is,” Lance
says.
“Any ideas on how to do that?”

Unfortunately, no.

But Mrs. Hanover seems to have one. “Whatever
the Guardians are doing, it’s going to have something to do with the
Spiritualists, and the only way to spy on them is to get into the spirit world.
Libby, I know you’re probably tired of hearing me say this, but we have to get
you to the Ciphers. They won’t talk to anyone but you. Whatever is holding you
back, we need to figure out a way around it, and quickly.”

Which means another round of
Spiritualism training.
Another round of failure, most
likely.

Chapter 6

Overmatched

It has been two weeks since Casey collapsed in
the hall. For two weeks I have had her warning that something bad is going on
in the spirit world. Fourteen days have passed with me completely unable to do anything
about it. Milo’s mom has tried to help me out by going herself, but no one will
talk to her. They’ll only talk to me for reasons they refuse to explain.
Fantastic.
The only way I’ll find out what I need to know is
to get to the spirit world myself.