Shadowstorm (Sorcery and Science Book 6) (8 page)

“Sweet tongue or not, I don’t think you’re going to persuade every bounty hunter in the world to leave you alone.”

Terra was hardly listening to him. She was still hung up on ‘sweet tongue’.

“And even if by some miracle you do convince them to stay away, there will always be other opportunistic souls to take their place. I’ve seen the bounty on your posters. I trust you have too.”

The posters offering a reward of five hundred thousand Crowns? Yeah, she’d seen them. “As I said, I have a plan.”

“Is this ‘plan’ what possessed you to leave the safety of Eclipse?”

“Not exactly. But I have a feeling that they’re connected.”

“A feeling or a foresight?”

“Ok, a foresight.” Smiling, she took his hand. “Trust me.”

“You first,” he countered, a commanding edge etching his voice. “Tell me where you were.”

“Only if you promise not to hurt him.”

“Him? You were with a man?” A touch of jealousy seeped into his voice.

“Not like
that
, you idiot.”

“Then like how exactly?”

She shook her head. “First, your word.”

“Very well. I promise not to harm this man who so unwisely took it upon himself to incur my wrath by drawing you out of the safety of Eclipse,” he said in monotone. “But if it was Cameron, I reserve the right to tell him off for putting himself in danger yet again.”

“It wasn’t Cameron,” she told him. “I went with Everett.”

“Everett as in Everett Black, Rev mercenary?”

“Yes.”

Jason Chanz, nefarious assassin, actually sighed. “He’s off limits anyway. I’m apparently not allowed to harm or even intimidate him. Not even intimidate. What’s the fun in that?”

Besides herself, Terra could think of only one other person who could talk Jason into such a promise. “So Lana doesn’t want you boiling her boyfriend with your smoldering stare.”

“
Is
he her boyfriend?”

“I’m not sure.” She grinned. “But from the way they’re acting, it’s inevitable.”

“This isn’t funny,” he growled.

“Actually, it is,” she replied with a smile, closing the distance between them. She pressed her fingers against the corners of his mouth and pushed them upward. “See this? It’s called a smile. It’s what people do when they’re feeling sociable—or to otherwise express merriment. Now when one has a sense of humor…”

She allowed her voice to drift off. Jason was staring at her like she had something stuck between her teeth. She dropped her hands, releasing him from the forced smile.

“What?” she asked.

“You have a beautiful mouth.”

He brushed a finger lightly across her lips, and they tingled in response. Terra felt a rush of Phantom energy rip through her, and her teacup buzzed on the coffee table. It rumbled and shook until it finally exploded, shooting ceramic chunks clear across the room. The red tea puddle spilled over the side of the table and streamed across the floor.

Jason looked at the mess and stated very seriously, “I think I need to go kill something.”

“That was my doing,” she said.

“Yes, but you channeled the excess energy from me. Clearly, I need to burn through some of it, so it’s not seeping off of me into you. I’m not even sure how it’s happening. Elitions cannot share powers.”

“There are stories about such things,” she began.

“Ah, yes. Synergy. A fascinating fairytale, but it’s not real.”

Terra chose not to press the matter. In the old tales, Synergy, the sharing of abilities, could only be achieved by two Elitions with a very close connection. Jason was being skittish enough already about their nonexistent intimate relationship for her to risk scaring him off with talk of ‘close connections’. Maybe Everett was right. Maybe Winter’s Mint really was the only way to go.

“So tell me,” he said.

“Tell you?”

“Everett,” he prompted.

She met his eyes, trying not to look guilty. The mental wall she’d spent a decade building up to hide her identity supposedly made her immune to Jason’s mind-extraction tricks. Supposedly. And only when she remembered to put it up. What if he
had
heard her thoughts and knew about the Winter’s Mint?

“Everett?” she asked as innocently as she could muster. But she was guilty. Guilty, guilty, guilty.

“You left Eclipse with him. Where did you go? What did you do?”

She exhaled in relief. “Oh. That.”

“Yes, that,” said Jason. “What else could I mean?”

She decided it was best not to answer that question. “We went to see some of his old friends.”

She didn’t mention Hope. Nor did she feel it necessary to burden him with replays of their encounters with the scavengers or—most especially—the Selpe soldiers. Not after he’d finally calmed down.

“They think the attack on the Revs was all some sort of conspiracy, and they want Everett to get to the bottom of it,” she continued. “Following the attacks on the Rev isles, his friends found a box of artifacts inside one of their hideouts. The hideout was also used by other mercenary guilds, and the box was tucked away in the storage section used by one group named the Fourteen Phantoms.”

“The Fourteen Phantoms?” he repeated, his face perfectly neutral. Terra couldn’t tell whether he was amused or offended.

She nodded.

“What kind of artifacts were in this box?” he asked.

Terra didn’t answer. She was definitely sure no good could come of it.

“Terra, what kind of artifacts were in this box?”

She took a step back. “Xenen,” she muttered.

Jason’s eyes flared up with cold fire. He clamped his fingers down around her arm, tugging her away from the front door. He pulled her roughly onto the sofa, but he remained standing, staring down at her with pure menace etched into his eyes.

“Jason—”

“No,” he growled.

“It’s not like they’ll suddenly pop up after five hundred years.”

“No,” he repeated icily. “You stay away from this whole thing.”

“It appears you’re confused, Jason. So let me clear things up for you. You do not dictate what I can and cannot do.”

His arms crossed against his chest, Jason tapped his fingers against an armband loaded with throwing knives. “The Xenens experimented on Elitions. Extensively.”

“So do the Avans,” she pointed out.

“And the Selpes,” he told her. “You’re not going near either one of them.”

“So then I should do what exactly? Just sit idly by here in my house as Elitia is torn to shreds by wolves?”

“Yes.”

She rolled her eyes. “All by myself? Allowing everyone I care about to risk their lives while I do nothing?”

“You can have Cameron to stay here with you. Maybe it will keep him out of trouble.”

“Do you ever stop and listen to yourself?” she demanded.

“Why would I need to do that?” he asked impatiently. “I think through everything I want to say before I say it.”

Terra snorted. “Sometimes I really wonder.”

“You should be happy that I’m trying to keep your brother safe.”

“I am.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

She sighed. “Well, maybe there are other people I care about.”

“Fine. Tell me which ones you like, and I’ll round them up and lock them in here with you.”

“Maybe you are one of those people.”

Jason stared at her in silence for a good minute before replying, “That is not an option. I must eliminate any threats to those people important to me. That is not possible from inside this house.”

“Precisely.”

He sat down beside her. “That’s different.”

Terra leaned back against the sofa’s armrest and looked at him. “No, it’s not. Everett is my friend, and he needs help to figure out this thing with the Revs. Whatever happened to them, it’s part of something bigger. There was an Elition sand slate in that box of Xenen artifacts. It doesn’t add up, Jason. I should help him.”

“I thought you were helping him because of your so-called plan.”

“I can do both.”

“Everett is a grown man and can take care of himself. Long before he met you, he was already foolishly digging his nose in matters sure to kill him.”

“As are you,” she pointed out.

“You’re not coming with me either,” said Jason. “Not as long as the Selpes and Avans are experimenting on Elitions. The Avans infiltrated an Elition school, corrupting those children to serve their own vile purposes. And the Selpes have something called Bellflower.”

“Project Bellflower?” she asked. “As in the folder we had to steal in Gemma last summer?”

“Maybe. I need to look into it.”

“If you’re really going to dig into all this, you’ll need someone to watch your back so you don’t end up in one of those labs yourself,” Terra said. “The Selpes and the Avans want to capture you every bit as much as they do me.”
 

“But they never will,” he replied.

The sting of guilt rushed through her. The Selpes
had
captured Jason just four months ago, and it had been her fault.

He squeezed her shoulder. “I’ll kill them first. Trust me. I’m good at that.”

The image of Veronica Frostwater’s dead body, bleeding out all over the floor, flooded Terra’s mind, and she felt sick.

Jason stretched his arms back and propped both elbows up against the arm of the sofa. “Does talking to me depress you so much?”

“No.” She rubbed her hands up and down her arms, trying to drive out the chill that had set into her body. “No, talking to you does not depress me. In fact, call me crazy, but I actually like to spend time with you.”

“Good.”

“Good?”

“Precisely.”

She laughed. She just couldn’t help it. “Jason, sometimes you’re so weird.” She poked his leg with her foot.

His hands shot forward in a flash, catching both her feet without even displacing her fuzzy green socks. She tried to struggle free, but he held her in place. She tried to kick him, but he sat on her legs.

“Jason Chanz, what in Aurelia’s name do you think you’re doing?”

“Keeping you safe, Terra Cross,” he replied coolly, unmoved by her attempts to escape.

“I can do that myself just fine. Let me get my sword, and I’ll show you.”

He slid back just enough to free her legs, then he pulled them onto his lap. “You fight beautifully. Like a dance.”

“Are you mocking me?”

“No.” Jason slipped the socks off her feet and tossed them at her head.

She ducked to evade the fluffy assault. “I don’t believe you.”

“You should. I enjoy watching you move. It’s…distracting.”

Not that it had ever helped her beat him. She sighed.

“Terra, I need to figure out what the Selpes and Avans are up to.” As his eyes drifted up in thought, he began to rub her feet. “What are they planning?”

Terra was pretty sure he wasn’t asking her to answer that, and she couldn’t have anyway. All she could think about was how Jason Chanz, the world’s most notorious assassin, was giving her a
foot massage
—and that he was good at it too. She closed her eyes and tried to clear her mind.

“Are you sleeping?” his hard voice demanded.

Terra opened her eyes to find Jason staring down at her. He looked about as peeved as that stone face could express. He’d dropped her feet too.

“No, I
was
relaxing,” she replied.

“Do you even know how to relax?”

“Do you?” she shot back, growing increasingly irritated at the turn in the conversation. He should just take up her feet again and continue on from where he had left off. Or better yet, scoot up behind her to give her a nice, long cuddle. Terra nearly burst into laughter at the thought. Jason did not cuddle.

“You’re deflecting,” he said.

“You’re annoying,” replied Terra.

Jason remained as unmovable as a mountain. “I understand that you don’t like being left behind, but it’s for your own protection. I made a promise to—”

“If you even think about repeating that old, tired line one more time, Jason Chanz, I swear to you that I will kick you and your rhetoric out of my house.”

He paused, hopefully to think through his next words. “The Selpes and the Avans are after Elitions, and the Elite Prophet is the ultimate prize, the one both empires desire most of all. Terra, they are experimenting on Elitions, torturing them, corrupting them. I don’t want to see you end up in one of those experiments.”

“And I appreciate your concern.” She reached forward to touch his face, but he drew back.
Fine then.
“But I didn’t escape the Selpes to be imprisoned here. I will do what I have to do.”

Jason rose to his feet and stared down at her with eyes that were darkening even as she watched. “And I will do what I have to do to protect you from your own foolishness.”

She jumped up and stared him down, even knowing it would incense his Phantom nature. She was too angry to care right now. “Then it would seem we have nothing left to say to each other.”

“No,” he replied coldly, then walked out of her house, a gust of Phantom energy slamming the door shut behind him.

CHAPTER SEVEN

~
The Assassin's Sister ~

527AX January 9, Eclipse

EVERETT TOOK A quick bath before dropping off the box of Xenen artifacts at the Eclipse temple for safekeeping. He had no intention of scaring Lana off with the multi-day stench of sweat-stained travel clothes. He wasn’t sure she liked him well enough to put up with that.

So it was freshly scrubbed that Everett made his way to the temple terrace. There he found her, sitting at their usual table. He crept up behind her, keeping his steps silent against the wooden planks. A bowl of hot soup sat before her, the aroma of spiced pumpkin wafting up to kiss the frosty air. Lana dunked a slice of crusty bread into the thick yellow soup and turned around to hold it out to him.

“Here,” she offered. “From the sound of your rumbling stomach, it seems like you could use it.”

Disappointed in his lack of stealthiness—but not
that
disappointed—Everett took the bread and, nodding in thanks, sat down opposite her. He finished it off in four bites. It tasted good, but after so long on the road, he would have preferred something a bit more substantial. Like a steak. He snuck a subtle glance at the buffet table.