Shifting Fate (13 page)

I didn’t look back, but I could imagine the
expression on Brendan’s face.

“
Logan,” I whispered, “How
do you know he doesn’t have the same surveillance in your
room?”

He didn’t look at me. “Because my
surveillance would show me that.”

We came to the foot of the stairs and he
turned toward me, glancing at the folded papers pressed in my
hands. “Do you want me to call Emily?”

“
I’m not ready yet.” I shook
my head. I’d made a habit of hiding things from Emily; I couldn’t
do that now, no matter what the papers said. “I do. Just … not
yet.”

He brushed my hair aside and squeezed my
shoulder. “Ellin,” he said, still looking at me, and I was
momentarily confused until she stepped from behind the
balustrade.

“
Mr. Black.”

“
Can you bring Brianna some
fresh clothes and a bite to eat?”

“
Of course,” she answered,
turning to go.

“
To my room,” Logan
added.

She disappeared into the corridor and Logan
said, “Come on, Brianna, let’s get you a shower.”

Logan’s advice had been dead-on. I’d come out
of the washroom to find my own clothes, pressed and folded, waiting
for me in the small mirrored room between the shower and bedroom.
It felt good to be clean and barefoot, safe within the Division
walls. The sandwiches were just icing on the cake.

“
Thank you,” I said over the
last bite of warm bread. “You were right.”

The bedroom was large, but it didn’t contain
a table or connect to a separate sitting area the way my suites
had. Instead, a spacious love seat was centered on the wall
opposite a king size four-poster bed. I slid my plate away from the
edge of the coffee table and leaned back into plush cushions.

Logan smiled. “I would never lie.” I smirked
and he added, “Not to you, anyway.”

“
You’d be the first.” At his
sideways glance, I sighed. “That sounded bitter, I’m sorry. It’s
just really exhausting sometimes.” I pulled the folded papers from
my back pocket and laid them on the side table for when I worked up
the nerve to open them. I tried to listen to my instincts, to heed
those quiet pushes as my mother had taught me, but sometimes it was
hard to tell when something needed to wait for the right time and
when my own doubts were driving the reluctance. This felt like
me.

Logan leaned closer to run a finger over the
scratch on the inside of my forearm. “Climbing through the roof
hatch?”

I nodded. “It’ll be gone in a few days.”

A vague thought niggled at the back of my
mind, but I couldn’t quite grasp it with his fingers resting on my
arm. My gaze lingered there, and then he trailed them up to slide
behind my back and draw me to him. I leaned in, pressing my side
against him, and rested my head on his chest as his arm wrapped
around me. It was so nice to be held.

I was “my Brianna” and “our Brianna” to
Brendan and the others, as their prophet, all of the Seven Lines
owned me. But it was different with Logan.

It was more.

His fingers traced over the skin of my arm,
trailing gently down and back. Suddenly, I wanted to tell him. To
say something that would let him know what he meant to me. When I
pressed a hand to his chest to push myself up, we were face to
face, and the words caught in my throat.

His other hand came over to lay softly on my
side as he waited for whatever I was about to say. I closed my eyes
and his hand drew down my side slowly, coming back up against bare
skin. His breath fell on my neck while his thumb slid slowly across
the skin of my stomach. When it almost reached the scar, I
stiffened, and Logan’s hand froze as he mistook my reaction.

I opened my eyes. Whatever he saw there
changed his mind; his hand came free, tugging the hem of my shirt
back in place. He sat up, pressed his lips to my hair before
breathing, “I think I should go take that shower now.”

My hand slid down his chest as he stood, and
I watched him walk across the room to the washroom. My palm pressed
flat against my stomach. I was self-conscious about my scar, but
not because I was vain. It was what the wound symbolized. I was
going to have to make sacrifices, and that scar stood for
everything I’d have to give up.

And that was when I knew it was time. I
leaned back, drew my feet up under me, and pulled the folded pages
to my lap.

It was written in another language, but that
didn’t stop the pang at seeing the familiar curves of my mother’s
handwriting on the page. Her first words, the only ones that
mattered, were, “I’m sorry. I love you.”

The rest of it laid me numb.

When Logan came out of the washroom fifteen
minutes later, I had the pages spread across the coffee table,
flattened and in plain view. It didn’t matter who saw them, it was
a secret language; no one would be familiar with it except one of
us. And then the idea of that hit me and there was a sudden lump in
my throat; my fingers pressed against it.

Logan stood in front of the table in jeans
and a worn T-shirt. “Brianna?”

I looked up at him, my shoulders drawing
back, and said, “When was the last prophet of the Seven Lines
alive?”

He considered the question for a long moment.
“Fourteen hundred years ago.”

“
And her line?”

He slid a palm across his stomach. “Sky, I
think. But those powers died out. It doesn’t mean the same as it
used to.”

I nodded. “Because each line could do more.”
His brows drew together, not understanding where I was taking this.
I stood up. “It’s time to call Emily.”

When he drew the cell phone from his pocket,
I said, “Wait. That’s not right.” The push was there. Something,
some decision I’d made was wrong. I pressed a hand to my temple.
“Just send her a message. Get her on the way.”

“
Are you all right?” Logan
asked, and I could tell he wanted to take a step forward, to
comfort me. There was a push. Again.

“
No, I’m fine. I need …”
What did I need? “This prophet, do you have any information on
her?”

“
It would be a fairly common
file, I think. I can check downstairs. Brendan has an extensive
library.”

It won’t be
there
, I told myself. They would have
hidden it; they would have wanted it in darkness. In the shadows. I
stared down at the papers on the table before me, so thin and
frail. She hadn’t written them when Morgan had captured her. She’d
written them long before, maybe a hundred times over, and carried
them with her for the day she’d be forced to leave them. To hide
them for me to find. A shadow.

“
Please,” I said. “Anything
you have on her. Anything from the time she was alive.”

“
Brianna—”

“
Now, Logan.” My fingers
trembled, I squeezed them into fists. “It has to be
now.”

He nodded, giving me one long look before
heading for the door. It was against his better judgment, but he
would do as I asked. I thought it was probably the last time he’d
trust me, once I’d told him what I’d found. The papers stared at me
from the surface of the table, accusing.

“
A shadow,” I whispered.
“
You are a shadow
.”

A thick, thunderous boom resonated from
somewhere below. The floor suddenly shifted beneath my feet,
throwing me to the ground. For half a second, I thought a bomb went
off. And then I realized it had. Heart racing, I scrambled to my
feet and ran for the door. In the dozen steps it took me to reach
the handle, my brain registered that the blast had come from across
the building, somewhere beneath where my old bedroom was located.
I’d have seconds, maybe minutes, before they figured out I wasn’t
there.

They could have been after
Morgan, could have come for him, but they were hitting the wrong
side of the house for that. I had no idea what Morgan really knew,
if he was playing with us, if his men intended to keep me alive.
Shots fired somewhere in the yard as my hand turned the lever and
the latch broke free. The door swung open behind me, plush carpet
beneath my bare feet as my legs pushed as hard and fast as they
could. A solid
bam
penetrated the hallway, too loud, too close, and I knew it was
the door to my bedroom busting open. They were behind me. I wasn’t
going to make it.

My feet turned the corner of their own will,
the instinct to flee having taken full control of my body, and
another blast rocked through the hall. This one threw me into the
wall, slamming my shoulder against drywall and something too solid,
some reinforcement hidden beneath the plaster. Blackness swirled
across my vision, I was in a bubble of soundlessness, yet still I
ran. There was a corridor, a safe haven in the walls ahead—three
yards, just a few running steps—I only had to make it.

And then my legs dropped out from beneath
me.

My head smacked the floor with a dense thump,
the fizz of soundlessness turned to ringing in my ears, and solid
pain filled my skull. Gloved hands wrapped around my wrists,
yanking my arms upward, and I spun, kicking my attacker solidly in
the knee. It cracked and he stumbled, but I was only able to break
one of my wrists free. I rolled, pulling him off balance because of
his grip, and he let go, only to pin my hip with his other knee. He
outweighed me by half, but I had leverage in my position on the
floor.

My free leg bent, shoving and twisting at
once with all my might, and another explosion rocked the hallway. A
bare hand, slick with blood, wrapped over my arm and jerked it
behind me. I blinked plaster from my eyes, but the hall was filled
with smoke. Gunfire erupted in the corridor behind us and I felt
the sudden, pointed pressure on my arm spreading to raw heat. I
glanced down in time to see a syringe, but it was too late. Fire
tore through me, and I felt more hands—strong and holding too
tight—gather my arms behind me to wrench me off the ground. I
jerked, landing an elbow into one’s stomach and was backhanded
across the face in return. The last thing I felt was that distant
stinging, and the resulting taste of blood, before my head lolled
to the side.

Chapter Fifteen

Captured

Fire pulsed through the city, scorching every
last entity in its wake. Metal framework of once tall buildings
screeched as it twisted and fell, burning, and there was a roar of
utter conflagration, but no screams could be heard. Because the
people were gone. In fire. Flames.

An inferno.

My bottom was cold. I shifted, trying to find
a more comfortable position, but something was wrong. Not ready to
come out of sleep, I tugged at my arms, but they wouldn’t
cooperate. They were numb, achy. My head was pounding. I bat my
eyes open and my vision swam. There were blurry outlines on a dark
wall opposite me, but they didn’t make sense. None of it belonged
here. And then the binds cutting into my wrists registered and I
remembered. I’d been captured.

The room was empty aside from a metal frame
chair, a narrow stool, and some shapeless material that hung from a
hook on the wall across from me. My bare feet slid along a dirty
floor as I tried to pull them under me, and I realized I was tied
at the waist as well. My fingers felt blindly behind my back to
find the hooks that were keeping me secured to the wall. Metal
cable ran through them to the binds that constricted my wrists and
waist, keeping me from moving more than an inch or so in any
direction.

Now that I’d struggled against them, my
wrists hurt worse than anything, but I knew I had taken a pretty
good hit to my head and my right shoulder. My hip was a little
sore, too, and my lip was puffy and raw where I’d taken a backhand
from the second attacker. I wasn’t sure how bad the injuries had
been to begin with, or I might have had some idea of how long I’d
been tied there.

The entire space was maybe ten by twelve, and
it was dark. The only light came from thin vents lining the top of
one wall. I had no notion what would happen now, if Morgan’s
directive was to capture me only or if other instructions had
followed. If it had been the sway, whoever had put me here might
not have been given further orders, and I might sit here until I
starved.

But I didn’t hope to get that lucky. Those
had been Morgan’s men, not just random humans. They had been
trained as his army, and they would understand that keeping me
alive was paramount. I was their prophet, born of the serpent. A
daughter of great power, eyes of the sea.

I pressed my eyes closed
tight against the thought. They’d had no idea. None of us had. It
wasn’t a lie exactly—the sea did allude to the fates, after all,
and I could see what was to come—but they’d believed we were their
salvation, their return to complete power. A power they’d
apparently never had. A power that they’d been allowed to
use,
to play with
,
beneath the watchful eye of a shadow.

To them, the serpent
symbolized a guardian. And I
was
their guardian. But the words didn’t stop there.
Assassin. Dragon Slayer.

Shadow
.

The door swung open and I dropped my head,
pretending to sleep. Footsteps moved across the dusty floor,
crunching abandoned scraps of trash on the concrete. We were in
another warehouse. A factory. Sounds echoed outside the room. There
were too many of them, something wasn’t right. A boot kicked
against my hip ... the sore one. I let my body flop with the shove,
head hanging lifelessly forward.

“
I told you,” said one of
the voices.