Soul Guard (Elemental Book 5) (22 page)

After three hours of searching the castle, we decided
to wait until everyone was gathered for dinner, because there were hundreds of
dorm rooms. I spent another half hour looking for Vincent before I gave up and
returned to my room. Henry was gone, probably with Scott, and Darwin was on the
floor with a dozen books spread out around him.

“How is the translating going?”

“Not easily. Got a plan on how to stop the remaining
shadow walkers?”

“I’m working on it.” I sat down at my desk and, for
some reason, suddenly decided to write some notes on the case. Automatically, I
opened my top drawer for my pen and notebook, only to remember that I had
emptied it because we were getting a different room for our final semester.
Thus, I was very surprised to see a small, dark blue, glass ball inside. I
picked it up. “Maybe I actually lost this instead of it disappearing for some
weird, magic reason.”

“Most things happen for some weird, magic reason
around here,” Darwin said. “That’s why I love it; it’s not always logical.”

I pulled Langril’s ball out of my pocket. “Maybe you
can figure out why this ball is so important to Langril.” I tossed it at him.

He studied it for a minute before setting it on the
floor. “I’ll see what I can come up with.”

I picked up the glass ball. Hunt had created it for
me, saying that if I needed guidance, I could break it and it would help me,
but he wouldn’t be able to make another for me. It was a one-time-deal.

And I needed to use it to save Astrid. Ghost appeared
on my desk, knocking the glass ball out of my hand. “No!” I saw it fall, but I
couldn’t catch it in time.

Darwin did.

“That was close.” I flinched away when I felt Ghost
nudge against my arm before I realized he wasn’t trying to scratch me. I turned
to him and he hopped into my lap. If there wasn’t dried blood on his fur, I
would have thought it was a different cat altogether.

He looked about ten years younger. He no longer had
bald or gray spots. His fur ranged from light brown on his chest and legs to
dark brown on his back with a black tail, black ears, and a silver patch on his
chest. He still had a scar on his face and his eyes were still mismatched in
color, but he wasn’t scowling.

“What did you do to him?” Darwin asked.

“I gave him a healing potion that Vincent made for
him.” As I explained the events of my day and what I learned about John from my
mother, Ghost purred and rubbed his head against my chest. When I looked back
at Darwin, his face was ashen. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I just realized how your magic works.”

“But you know how it works.”

“I know how magic in general works. Elemental,
psychic, illusion, and such are all branches of magic that every wizard can do
to some degree. I just thought your psychic magic was normal psychic magic.
Okay, think of it this way. A wizard is a person with an ability to control
magic, but throughout all of history, there have been humans with proclaimed
psychic abilities. With me so far?”

“Well, I thought they were either undiscovered
wizards or just really intuitive.”

“In most cases, yes. However, there are people with
supernatural intuition or dreams of the future. Some can even read minds.
Wizards can learn this kind of psychic magic but, like humans, there are some
who just do it naturally. I thought that was what you were, because psychic
magic is one of the most difficult types of magic to do. Then you developed
visions and I thought there had to be a reason it came so naturally to you. I figured
your grandmother was fae.”

“But I just found that out.”

“Confirming my hypothesis.”

“But that’s the reason John and Vincent
didn’t
have all three psychic powers.”

Darwin shook his head. “No, I think that’s wrong. I
think that’s what your grandfather told Hunt. I think Arthur Knight picked the
woman he did
because
of her magic.”

“He had all three powers and Vincent and John didn’t.
What part of this am I missing?”

“The part where Arthur Knight wasn’t a wizard,” he
said. I gaped. “I did a lot of research on the man after you told me what you
learned about Vincent. Everyone thought he was a wizard because he put that
thought into their heads. Never once did I find a single piece of evidence that
he had any magic other than his psychic powers. I believe your grandmother was
a very powerful fairy.”

“Fairies are a type of fae that does magic like
wizards, right?”

“Pretty much, except they have it a lot easier and
harder in different ways. They are like all types of fae rolled into one, which
includes weaknesses. Most of them are so set in their traditions, that no
outsider has ever seen them. That’s why most people think they’re tiny. Well,
that, and because they can appear as small as some magical creatures. They live
in forests typically, which is why I didn’t suggest it to you before.”

“Wait, so you do or you don’t think my grandmother
was fae?”

He sighed. “I think you aren’t what you were supposed
to be.”

“No, stop jumping around.”

“Okay, let me run a scenario. Let’s say Arthur was
human with psychic powers. He wanted a child with a paranormal to create even
more powerful children so he could use his children. Since he’s human, he
doesn’t expect a throwback, because that’s only a ten percent chance. Vincent
and John are born, both throwbacks. Why?”

“Because he miscalculated?”

“After all the work he put into it? Doubtful. What’s
more likely?”

I thought about it. “Maybe there was something he
couldn’t have accounted for. Maybe she wasn’t full fae.”

“No, forget the fae, she was most definitely a
top-notch example of her kind.”

“Then I don’t follow.”

He rolled his eyes. “Arthur was designing another
kind of paranormal! Vincent and John were meant to be throwbacks so that they
could carry on very particular paranormal genes to their offspring.”

“How is that designing, though? Doesn’t that just
make me fae?”

He rolled his eyes so hard I thought he was going to
hurt himself. “Bloody hell, are you always this thick? You’re a wizard!”

“I know that!”

“So how do you cross a psychic human with a fae and
get a wizard with extra fae powers?!”

“I don’t know! Stop yelling!”

He clenched his hands in his hair and took a few deep
breaths. “Gods, how do you people even know how to brush your teeth in the
morning?” He let go of his hair. “Your grandfather created a wizard, whether he
meant to or not, using fae genes. That means all those wizards of Dothra are
descended from the fae of Draumr.”

“Seriously?”

He nodded. “Furthermore, with only the information
about Dothra that I’ve gotten from you, I would go so far as to say they were
designed.”

“Wizards were designed? By who?”

“You have no idea how much I want to find that out.”

I didn’t like that look on his face, like he was very
close to becoming one of those mad scientists. “Um… how do you plan on doing
that?”

“With the only lead I have; Vincent’s and your blood.”

“But Vincent and I need our blood.”

He smiled reassuringly and patted my knee. “Don’t
worry; I won’t take much. If you’d like, I can take it while you’re sleeping so
you won’t even know it’s gone.”

“Don’t ever touch me while I’m sleeping.” As if I
would ever get to sleep around him again. “How sure are you about this?”

“I’m sixty-seven percent certain.”

“That’s barely more than fifty-fifty. Until you have
proof, I’m just going to side with John and Vincent in thinking that Arthur was
a wizard, and you don’t get to touch my blood.”

“How do I get proof without your…? Hmm. Ever thought
of having kids?”

“I’ll end you.”

“Fine.
Anyway
, supposedly, you should be able
to induce a vision using both of these at the same time.”

“You had to make me question my entire family history
just to tell me that?”

“Well, you needed to understand.”

“I
still
don’t understand, but never mind.
I’ll try it.” I took the book and ball in one hand and slipped on my ring. The
vision came abruptly and with a stabbing headache.

*          *          *

I was standing in a dark bedroom. It was a
dingy-looking place with holes in the walls and a thick layer of dirt on the
scuffed wooden floor. The only furniture was a mattress on the floor with two
boys sleeping on it, huddled together to ward off the cold. A miniscule amount
of light spilled in through the only window, which was tiny and very high in
the north wall.

I had control over my movement. I looked down at
myself and saw, to my surprise, me. Unlike in my other visions, I wasn’t seeing
through someone else’s eyes. What that meant, I had no idea.
Maybe I should
have asked Darwin to explain it better
.

An alarm rang in the distance, which didn’t wake the
boys. After a minute or so, a woman burst in the door and picked up the boys.
This woke them. They both had dirty, dark brown hair that was cut unevenly and
gold eyes. The boy who appeared to be a few years older, maybe around seven,
was calm and rested his head against the woman’s shoulder. The other boy cried
and fought against the woman’s hold as she frantically tried to hush him.

The woman set the calm boy down, moved aside the
mattress, and pulled up three loose floorboards. The calm child crawled into
the hole without being asked, then reached up to take his brother. “You have to
stop crying, Kea,” the woman whispered.

He ignored her, but when his brother took him, he
quieted down. His brother held him in a tight hug as the woman replaced the
boards and mattress. Suddenly, I was standing in the dark beside them, looking
up at the cracks between the floorboards.

The door opened again and the older boy put his hand
over his brother’s mouth. The person who entered wore heavy boots that shook
dirt from the boards as he swaggered slowly and confidently into the room.
“Don’t you know what the alarm means, woman?” the man asked. I recognized that
voice instantly and groaned.

Keigan Langril was standing right above me.

“It means you’ve come to slaughter more people.
What’s your excuse this time?” the woman asked. I could hear the fight in her
voice.

Langril laughed. “I don’t need an excuse. Excuses are
for people who have masters. I have no master; I answer to no one. As for the
reason, it’s quite simple; Dothra is overpopulated. It puts too much of a
strain on my power, and that’s unacceptable. Your family offers nothing to the
soul guards, so you are just a waste of resources.”

“Each of your followers uses more resources in a day
than my entire family does in a month.”

“Yes, but the key word is ‘waste.’ As in, your family
is a waste of resources that my followers need. You’re not useful to me.
Besides, I already killed the rest of your family. Too bad you don’t have any
children; I might be willing to make a deal if you had something to offer me.”

He paused as he waited for her to confess. She
remained silent. After a moment, Langril sighed and I saw a flash of something
metal. The woman grunted before hitting the floor. Blood dripped down in a gory
waterfall, barely missing the boys. The younger boy cried out so loudly that
not even his brother’s hand could muffle it. Suddenly, the boots vanished and
Langril appeared right in front of the boys. He didn’t seem to care that the
woman’s blood was now dripping into his hair.

He was recognizable, but he looked a great deal
younger than he did as a professor. In fact, if I didn’t know better, I would
guess he was in his early thirties. He wore black jeans and a black button-up
shirt with seven different necklaces of crystals or magic pendants and at least
a dozen rings. I had no doubt each necklace and ring had a different sinister
purpose.

“Well, it looks like I was being lied to after all.”

Sometime later, the boys were huddled together in a
dungeon cell. Three of the walls were stone and the fourth was made of bars.
There was nothing in the cell for the boys to lie on, nor was there a sanitary
place for them to go to the bathroom. It was too dark to see much through the
bars. That was, until Langril appeared right outside the cell.

The younger boy cried. “Why did you spare us?” the
older boy asked with the same fire in his tone that his mother had.

Langril smirked. “Because you’re useful to me. Not
yet, of course; you’re too young. Soon, though, you will be old enough to join
my followers.”

“Why would I ever serve you?”

“Because my followers get what they want more than
anything; power. When you join my followers, you will train to be a soul guard.
Soul guards get to travel to another world. This other world has all the food
and water you could ever want, lots of people who would never try to kill you,
and sunlight. Do you know what sunlight is?”

“Mother said it was a myth.”

“It’s not. Dothra used to have sunlight. We had three
suns until they started to burn the world. It boiled away all our ice and
water. When we destroyed one of them, we thought the other two would be okay,
but we threw off the gravity and now we don’t have any sunlight. At least,
that’s what history tells us. It does seem rather fairytale. Either way all the
other worlds have sunlight.” The younger brother was no longer crying as he
paid very close attention to Langril’s words.

 The scene changed again. Although the boys were
still in the cell, it was obvious that several years had passed, because they
were both older. The seven-year-old was now about fifteen and his brother was
about twelve. They were both severely malnourished and dirty. I doubted they
had a bath or even interaction with other people in the years they spent in the
dungeon.