Whisper of Shadows (The Diamond City Magic Novels) (20 page)

That last fact was crucial. The point where it left me was the intersection of me and my trace.
Good thinking
, I told myself by way of encouragement.
Now find it and get inside. You’ve totally got this
. Easy as pie.

Pie, by the way, is a lot harder than it sounds. Unless you’re eating it. That’s easy enough.

God. More firefly thoughts.

I followed the flow of magic down inside me. I couldn’t exactly see it. I felt like I ought to have been able to, but it was blurry and out of focus. The pull was inexorable, once I let myself fall into it. It whirled me around and carried me along, inward and through the middle of myself. The sensation made me nauseous and champagne fizzy at the same time. I turned inside out, and my skin and flesh held me together. My bones electrified, and I felt incandescent. Then I hit the intersection where my trace grew out of my essence.

My entire being jolted with something so primal, so deeply essential and basic, that I felt it on a plane of existence that I could only think of as my soul. I think I might have screamed. I don’t know. It wasn’t pain. It might have been pleasure. The intensity was so fierce that I felt every molecule of my body freeze. A small nova went off inside, spreading a shockwave of heat and ice and joy so thin and fine it was almost agony.

I stayed suspended there in that moment, in that space where I pierced through the root of myself, for I don’t know how long. Time didn’t matter. Only the feelings that radiated out and came crashing back, the ripples warring and growing more powerful with each expansion and contraction. I could have stayed there forever. I was drugged. High as a kite, as the stars themselves. I was a star. A sun. The whole damned universe.

I forgot everything. Nothing else mattered. This was
divine
. Touching God. Touching the very spark of creation. It couldn’t be anything else.

Cold. It seeped into me, turning sharp and knife-edged. It sliced down into me, down into that space where I hung enraptured. It didn’t hurt. I gathered in the feeling, letting it temper and increase the glorious feelings that had come before.

That’s about the time my brain kicked in. The part that wasn’t orgasming from my little trace masturbation. Cold meant I’d tapped into the spirit dimension. I’d opened a door. Or at least a window. Maybe a tiny hole. It didn’t matter. I’d done the hard part. Now all I had to do was go through to the other side.

Turned out that going through was nothing. Dragging myself away from the rapture of communing with my own trace was another something else altogether. Most of myself dug in, wanting to remain in that amazing place of between, where I felt light and bright and free and so incredibly euphoric. Blissful. Joyful. There were no words to truly describe my ecstasy.

The determined little wart that was my brain reminded happy Riley that Price needed help. That my family needed help. That the world as I knew it was coming to an end.

Happy Riley didn’t seem to give a damn, though. All that drama was too far away and so very small in the grand scheme of the universe. Warty brain smacked happy Riley alongside the head and grabbed her by the hair, then proceeded to drag her down from Orgasm Mountain and dump her into the frigid ice of the spirit dimension.

Arctic cold slapped my face. I reeled as I collected myself. Glorious sensation continued to reverberate through me, but my mind was clear. I looked around.

The velvety purple black of the spirit dimension surrounded me. A jungle of jewel-toned trace ribbons flowed across it, tangling and trailing in every direction as far as the eye could see. Silky tatters of opalescent energy floated through like ghosts. They probably were.

Holy crap. I’d actually made it.

Cold continued to press in on me, but unlike my last two trips through, it didn’t instantly sink its thorns deep into the marrow of my bones. I felt somewhat insulated, though the cold would chew through soon enough. I glanced down at myself. I looked like a watercolor painting. Not transparent, not like my mom when she’d appeared to me here, but still wavery and not quite real. I was wrapped in green light the color of oak leaves. Curls of silver swirled through it like smoke. I blinked. I seemed to be inside my trace. It was protecting me from the deadly chill of the spirit world. Not forever though. I knew I couldn’t stay here too long, all the same. Not that I planned to. I was going to get out right now.

I’d already decided where I was going. Given that I didn’t know how far-reaching Price’s destruction was, I had chosen to return to the mouth of the cave and make my way back to the compound and hope there was something left. I didn’t let myself think that Price had killed my family. I had to believe he’d protected them the way he’d protected me. If not—

I shoved that thought away and turned my attention back to the task at hand. Ordinarily, I would take hold of my trace in my hand and follow it back to wherever I’d been that I wanted to return to. I supposed now I needed to just push myself along the inside of my trace until I found the right spot. I pictured one of those message systems where you put your message in a tube and sent it rocketing along to its destination.

I started to push off.

“Riley?”

I stopped, twisting around. My mother stood—floated really—right behind me. Her skin glowed with mother-of-pearl color. I could see right through her. She looked the same age as she been when she died—just about the same age I was now. We looked a lot alike, except her hair was more auburn than copper. Taylor looked more like her than I did. There was some irony for you.

“What are you doing here? Are you
inside
your trace?” Her eyes widened.

“I was trapped. This was the only way out.”

Her gaze sharpened. “Trapped?”

“My boyfriend cascaded and then lost it. I ended up in some sort of protective magic cocoon. This is my way out, but I need to get back and help him.”

She shook her head. “It’s too dangerous. You need to stay away until he drains or stops on his own.”

“I can’t. I wasn’t alone. Leo, Jamie, Taylor, and Mel were with me. Plus some friends and a whole building full of people.”

“Christ.” She came closer and peered at me through the veil of my trace. “They are alive at least.”

I hadn’t realized how scared I was that Price had killed them. So scared I’d forgotten to
look
and see for myself. I shuddered with reaction. “Thank goodness.”

“Thank your boyfriend,” Mom said. “That he’s managed that kind of control during a cascade eruption means that maybe you
can
help him. You’d better go. Don’t try to travel through the trace to him. It could be very dangerous.”

“How?”

Her head tilted in a way that seemed really familiar. Then I realized. The gesture reminded me of me. “Dangerously dangerous,” she said with a little grin.

Now I knew where I got my sense of humor. “That’s helpful,” I said, rolling my eyes. I wonder if I got that from her, too.

“Do you really have time for a magic lesson? I’m telling you it would be a bad idea. Deadly even. Don’t do it. Get back to the physical plane. Now, get going.”

I nodded acknowledgment and yet didn’t move. “Dad—Vernon—said you were a grifter.” I blurted the words, then bit my lips as I waited for her response.

Her head tipped to the side. “I suppose I was, as much as anything,” came her unexpected answer.

“What does that mean?”

“I have a lot to tell you. You were supposed to come see me.”

“I haven’t had time. And I had to heal up from—” I broke off. How did I explain that I’d had to have my thumb reattached after a sociopath cut it off, and then I’d been kidnapped by my father’s henchman? To get away, I’d nearly killed myself. That was last week. This week was looking busier. “Anyhow, I’d planned to come back and see you, but then Dad showed up and all this happened with Price. My boyfriend,” I added, realizing she didn’t know who he was. “Plus I nearly got kidnapped again by Savannah Morrell. Oh, and this FBI agent I hate has asked for help finding some of her people. I said I’d help her.”

Some people have simple to-do lists. Fix dinner, pick the kids up, go to work, clean the bathroom, grocery shop, blah blah blah. Mine read more like a comic-book hero’s. Or villain’s.

I could see my mom trying to sort out that deluge of bizarre information. Finally, she waved her hand dismissively.

“I have things to tell you. Before it’s too late.”

“Like about being a grifter.” I don’t know why that bothered me so much. It’s not like she’d been hiding it from me. She’d been dead. I’d only discovered her here in the spirit world a week ago, and we’d not exactly had a big heart-to-heart conversation.

I was starting to shiver as the cold worked its way through the insulating walls of my trace to find me. I clamped my teeth together as they started to chatter.

She gave a half smile that was both ironic and shrewd. “I was what I was. It kept a roof over my head and food on the table. I couldn’t let anyone know who or what I really was. Same as you. I make no apologies, and regrets are useless. Anyway, I gave up grifting when I married your father. I never hid my past from him.”

Same as you
. I knew so little about her, and what I did know had come from Vernon, whether he told me things or injected fake memories into my brain. But this much was true. She knew what it was like to have to hide, to fear that someone would discover her and either enslave her or kill her. In that, we were exactly alike.

I frowned as I realized that there was something in the way she changed the emphasis in that last sentence. I itched to be on my way, but—

“You did hide things from Dad, though.”

Her smile faded. “I did. But now it appears those secrets are unraveling, and you are the one to pay the price.”

I wrapped my arms around myself as cold wrapped my spine and wriggled through my veins. “What do you mean?”

She shook her head. “Not now. You have been here long enough, even protected as you are. Just don’t wait too long to return. With your father back . . .” She looked grim. “I don’t like this.”

“Why?”

“I would not trust him,” she said, the words coming slowly, almost unwillingly.

“Why not?”

She cocked her head at me, then gave a little nod, as if convincing herself. “You are the last of the Kensington line. Zachary Kensington was your many times great-grandfather. I believe your father is aware of this. I believe he knew I was of that blood when we met. I believe our meeting was no accident.” She finished with a tightening of her lips. A bitter smile. “Go now. Come see me again. Soon.”

With that she simply vanished. I stared at where she’d been. I didn’t know what to think or how to react. Why would the fact I was related to Kensington matter to anyone?

Before I jetted off into Distraction Land, I caught myself. My mom’s news didn’t change what was happening with Price and the danger to everyone I loved. It was just another mystery to deal with later, providing I lived long enough.

I turned my attention to getting where I needed to go. I pushed off, sliding through my trace again. I arrived so fast that I almost shot past the spot. I reversed the process of getting into my trace, ignoring the solar burst of bliss. Well, I tried to ignore it. I slowed, taking more time than I should have to pull myself through and out.

I exited my trace more easily than I expected. All of a sudden, I was back in the frigid air of the Colorado winter night. Actually, I sprawled facedown on a pile of rocks and snow. I lay there a moment, letting myself adjust to the pain. It probably ought to have worried me that I didn’t feel cold at all. I was too numb from the spirit dimension. Finally, I groaned and worked on standing up. It took a few tries. My knees hurt something fierce, and a rock wedged into my ribs like an iceberg under the
Titanic
.

When I managed to get to my feet, I swayed. My head spun, and a warm trickle of blood ran down my cheek. I touched my face and sucked in a quick breath. The cut was a good two or three inches long and extended from the middle of my right cheek into my hair. I scooped up a handful of snow and pressed it against the wound. Hopefully the cold would stop the bleeding.

I ached like I’d been used as a punching bag. When this was over, I wanted to spend a week in my bathtub. I snorted. When this was over. As if that would happen anytime soon.

I glanced around. I had arrived in the stand of trees and boulders just beyond the cave entrance, exactly where I’d been aiming. Somehow I’d remembered there being fewer rocks.

That’s when I became aware of the sound of wind. The clearing I stood in was still as death. Not a breath of air stirred. And yet—I could hear the roar of the wind, like a tornado.

Price.

I dropped my handful of bloody snow and started running.

Chapter 15

BECAUSE I’M JUST that sort of brilliant, I’d figured out that Price’s talent had to do with air or wind. Also, water is wet.

I was unprepared for the strength of his talent, even knowing that when he was three years old he’d wreaked Armageddon across a mountain. People do exaggerate.

Not this time.

I ran through the trees. It was eerie. Nothing moved. Not even snow fell. Magic saturated the air so thick I could hardly breathe. It blinded my trace sight with opaque rainbow shimmers. I’d never experienced anything like it.

At the edge of the trees, I stopped. Rather, something stopped me. I ran into a wall of air. Inside was a whirl of dust and debris. I couldn’t see more than a foot in front of me. It was like staring through a window into the heart of a tornado. It’s entirely possible a Kansas farmhouse whirled by, maybe a tin man and a scarecrow.

I pressed up against the invisible wall. It was hard as rock, just like the cocoon that had held me. I jerked back as a chunk of something battered just above my head and vanished into the spinning mess.

I was impressed. Despite cascading and erupting like a volcano on steroids, Price had managed to control his talent. At least enough to contain the disaster inside this wall and protect me. And protect the rest of my family. For now. I scowled at the murky darkness in front of me. How much longer could he hold on? I had to get to him and help him stop the cascade somehow.

The idea of going inside the air wall was obviously not the brightest. I didn’t have a choice. Price had to be stopped, and I was the only one left standing to do it. I was the only one he might listen to.
Might
. If he was willing to believe I was really me. I grimaced. Time for him to get his eyes opened.

Getting inside was the first hard part. I could try to tear a window into his wall by sucking down power, but I had no good place to put the magic. I couldn’t just release it into the air or the ground. I had to create something with it. Maybe if I found a big boulder or something like it, I could channel the energy into the rock and create a massive null. Plus, he’d likely just feed more energy into the wall. Which meant I’d pretty much need to take the whole thing down.

I chewed my lower lip as I considered. I’d have to outlast Price. Given this stunning display of his talent, I wasn’t sure I could. I was probably the strongest tracer alive, but he was something else altogether. Manipulating the elements took enormous power. I’d never actually seen an elemental talent before. In the early days, they usually ended up dead. They were too scary to let live. Nowadays, either they kept themselves well hidden, or they were enslaved to a Tyet organization or a government. I wondered if the FBI suspected what he was. But no, they’d have grabbed him much sooner if so.

Given that FBI reinforcements were on their way, I needed to find a way through sooner rather than later. That’s when I remembered the pipe that Jamie and Leo had used to cross under the fence and up to the building. Just the thought of crawling through it made my body clench and my heart jump into high gear. No choice. I turned along the wall and started jogging through the trees, not letting myself think about what could go wrong.

I reached the hole. It gaped at me. I didn’t even have a light. If I did this, it would be in pitch-darkness, and who knew if the other end was even open or if it had been covered over by Price’s maelstrom.

Before I could talk myself out if it, I jumped down inside. The pipe was about three to three and a half feet across. Leo and Jamie must have sized it up to help them get through. I lowered myself down onto my stomach and began crawling. My brothers had flattened the corrugations in the bottom of the pipe, making it more comfortable, leaving the ridges in the sides to give purchase for feet.

The noise of the storm above roared, echoing down from ahead. Hopefully that meant the exit was clear. I clung to that thought as I wriggled along. Before long my elbows, knees, and toes ached and throbbed. Even flattened, the bottom of the pipe was hard and held an unreasonable amount of rocks and sticks. The floor was muddy, with water pooling here and there, adding to my chill.

I kept my eyes closed, imagining I wasn’t inside an underground metal tube. I don’t know if the events of the night had already numbed me to fear or if I actually convinced my head that I wasn’t in a really long coffin, but I managed to stay relatively sane and to keep moving. Maybe it was just knowing that people were counting on me. My family was counting on me.

I dropped into trace sight, but the thick rainbow magic made it impossible to check anybody’s trace. I scooted faster.

Once again, I was totally soaked in sweat and mud by the time I reached the end of the road. I couldn’t imagine how bad I smelled. I felt the push and tug of the wind before I reached the end. I stopped a yard or so from the opening, which actually still was open, bonus for me. Fingers of wind scooped down inside the pipe, shoving me back. I spread my legs and braced myself, refusing to give ground. I tried to remember what was ahead. The FBI building was probably ten feet from the exit hole. Or it had been.

What was I going to find? Would I even be able to get through the maelstrom to find Price? In the darkness, I snarled with fierce determination. I’d come too far not to. Hell, I’d crawled through a fucking hole in the ground. There was no way I was going to lose this game now. I had his trace. Even if I couldn’t see it, I could feel it. That meant I could find him anywhere. I just had to hope I didn’t get pulverized by a flying house on the way. I wouldn’t want to end up like the Wicked Witch of the East. Though I could have used a pair of ruby slippers right about now.

It would be a whole lot easier if I could just travel through the trace to him. But Mom had said that would be very bad. I had to believe her. As plans went, running through a tornado seemed pretty stupid, and yet I couldn’t think of any other options. Maybe I’d get lucky. Maybe the building was still standing and I’d be able to crawl inside and gain some protection that way. Right. Because the last time Volcano Price had erupted, he’d scraped off half a mountain. A building was totally stronger than a little mountain, right?

I was fucked.

Get on with it
, I told myself, and then decided to stop thinking so hard and just do it.

I crawled down to the opening. My ears popped and gritty wind sanded my skin. I squinched my eyes to slits. Wind pummeled me. The still sane part of my brain balked. Was I really going to do this? This was suicidal. What choice did I have? I asked myself. As if in answer, an idea sparked. I could try one other thing. I wriggled backward down the pipe, out of the wind’s immediate reach. For once being in the narrow confines felt safer than being out.

I reached into the cold of the trace world and grabbed Price’s trace, wrapping it around my hand. A landslide of emotion crashed over me. Fear, exultation, fury, joy, hate, exhilaration, guilt. The torrent filled me. Inwardly, I clawed to hold on to myself. It took all I had, and I knew I couldn’t last. Surely if I could feel him, I could make him feel me? I collected myself around the little stubborn wart in my brain that had saved me before. I focused, sending a sharp pulse down his trace, at the same time yanking on it as I had before.

Nothing happened. I did it again and then twice more as desperation mounted.

I could feel it when Price became aware of me. Curiosity colored the maelstrom of his emotions. The next thing I knew, the air in the pipe thickened. A cataract of rainbow energy poured inside from the hole ahead. My mouth went dry. Air rushed over me and under me. It pressed inward, molding to my body. I clutched down on Price’s trace as my ribs compressed and my breath leaked from my lungs.

My claustrophobia returned with a vengeance. In the dark, being squished from all sides, panic jumped into the driver’s seat. I wriggled and fought, but I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe. I did the only thing I knew how to do. I ripped magic out of the air, dragging it into me until I felt incandescent. I held it as I reeled in more. I thought my skin would split. I kept drawing it in. I didn’t stop until I felt my mind clouding from lack of oxygen.

I gripped Price’s trace and sent all the collected magic shooting along the ribbon in a blistering gob. I poured all I had into that fiery mass. I wasn’t sure what it would do to him. Not that I was thinking of that. Instinct and primordial desperation had me. I didn’t know my name. I didn’t know where I was. All I knew was that I was going to die and I had to fight.

Somewhere far away I felt the mass of magic hit him. I felt the predator surge inside him, focused, determined, and ruthless. He didn’t recognize me. What little reason I clung to cringed. He was coming for me. Ha. Like he didn’t already have me trapped.

The pipe ahead ripped open. Metal screeched, and the steel around me shuddered with the force. It unzipped above me, exposing me to the storm above. Wind coiled around me and raised me upward, holding me upright above the ground.

I could still feel the rush of emotion through Price’s trace. It’s an odd thing to be totally terrified of the man you love. I wondered if this was how abused women felt. But no. Price was no abuser. He had honor, and courage, and he loved me. He had protected me from his power, and he still was. Debris continued to whistle and spin around me, but it never hit. In fact, it seemed to be sifting out of the air, like it was too heavy to be raised.

Once again, I marveled at Price’s control. By all rights, he should be dead right now. His magic should have shredded him. Yet he’d managed to harness it. How the hell had he suppressed this kind of power?
What
had they done to rip the lid off?

Not that it mattered. I was dangling in midair with no way down and nowhere to go. The last thing I needed to worry about was how this had happened.

Abruptly, the sound of the howling wind silenced. I hadn’t realized how loud it was until it was gone. All around me, chunks of stuff fell out of the air and thudded to the ground. A hail of broken junk. Hopefully no dead bodies. Or body parts. I remained fixed in the air. A spider pinned to a display. I swallowed. My throat felt chalky. My tongue was sandpaper. I tasted copper. I must have bitten myself.

The tornado continued to rage beyond the clearing where I hung. A gray dust-bowl ghost appeared out of the settling dust. Price. The coveralls we’d found him were shredded and stained with blood. His own. Grime coated him like he’d been through a cloud of volcanic ash.

His eyes were still white. I couldn’t tell if he was sane. I couldn’t read his expression through the mask of dust. He stopped a few feet away, looking up at me. He didn’t speak.

“Mind setting me down?” I asked. Whispered. Between the fear constricting my throat and the dust I’d swallowed, my voice was toast.

His expression didn’t change. Neither did he let me go.

I drew a slow breath and let it out. “Price? Baby? Let me down,” I said gently.

I didn’t go in for endearments as a rule. Price liked to call me
baby
, and even though I consider myself a powerful, independent woman, I totally ate it up. Made me go all hot and gushy inside, like one of those chocolate lava cakes. The only thing I ever called him was
Price
. I couldn’t remember ever even using his first name, much less a
honey
or a
sweetheart
or
snookums
. Calling him
baby
now was a risk. Seeing’s how he still might not believe I was me, it might just piss him off, and he’d whack me to a pulp on the ground.

He stood stiff as a statue, his hands clenched at his sides. I struggled against my invisible bonds, but the best I could do was twist a bit and wriggle my fingers and toes. It’s a wonder I could move my jaw enough to talk.

I considered trying to suck the magic out of my bonds, but Price still poured power into them. I could channel some of it into the two nulls tattooed on my skin, and maybe some of the trinkets I carried on me, but I doubted I had enough space to put it all. Once I started channeling, I couldn’t break the stream until the magic ran out. At least, I never had done that before. I had no idea when Price would run dry. Or if he’d stop on his own. I wasn’t all that sure he would stop. Or that he could.
That
was a scary fucking thought.

On the other hand, he’d shown a lot of control. Maybe all he needed was motivation. I sure as hell couldn’t tell him how to turn off the spigot. It was supposed to be an instinct. Like breathing or blinking. He clearly had known how to turn himself off once, demonstrated by the fact that he’d shut himself down when his mother had taken him to South America for whatever exorcism she thought the priests could perform. Bitch. So Price had stopped himself once, which meant he ought to be able to stop himself again. He just had to remember how. All I had to do was give him a push in the right direction.

As ideas went, the one I got was ninety percent brilliant, ten percent suicidal. Or maybe it was more ninety percent suicidal. Anyhow, it was an idea, and it could work.

Or not. I decided not to think about that.

I reached out to the magic cocooning me, and I pulled away a thread. Magic flowed into me, cool and hot at the same time. I channeled it down into Price’s trace, pushing it back out toward him.

When it didn’t rebound back at me, I grabbed more magic, drawing as much as I could. I dumped it into his trace. He recoiled and backed away from me. I had his trace, though. He could go to Timbuktu, and I’d still be feeding him his magic. Now that I started, I couldn’t stop the loop. Only he could, by shutting down his magic.

A blast of power sparked over my skin like a bee attack. I let out a yell. “What the fuck is that?”

“Stop,” Price said, his black brows a solid bar above his white eyes. “What are you doing?”

Well halle-fucking-lujah. I’d made him talk to me, if nothing else.

“I can’t stop,” I said. “Not now that I’ve started. The ball’s in your court for that. We’re going stay on this merry-go-round until one or both of us burns up, or you put on the brakes. I’m voting for the second one.”

His face worked, his mouth twisting as he raised his fists up and ground his knuckles against the side of his head. He uncurled his fingers and slid them through his hair, gripping and pulling. His entire face contorted, and his body tightened as if he hauled against a great weight.