It was Steven.
I slipped inside and saw that the poor thing was sitting hunched over on the floor in the corner of the room, and had fallen asleep against the hard stone wall. But uncomfortable as he surely was, he was alive, and that was all that mattered. As I hurried over to him I started to wonder if this would end up being far easier than we had expected. I mean, here we were with one of the two people we’d come in after and so far we hadn’t had any trouble at all. We hadn’t hit a snag bigger than a few drones, and the door to Steven’s holding cell hadn’t even been locked! At this rate, Jocelyn may just decide to wander out of his holding room and meet up with us on our way out the door. Not that I wanted to take our luck for granted, but if I’d have known it was going to be this easy, I might have even gotten some sleep last night.
“Steven,” I breathed, lightly rubbing his leg and praying I wouldn’t startle him. Last thing we needed was him yelling out and getting us caught. “Sweetie, it’s Becca. Come on, we’ve got to get you out of here.”
I rubbed his leg a bit harder almost impressed by how deeply he was out. Had they given him something? A sleeping draft maybe? It was possible, but why? It wasn’t like he…
But my thought imploded as I looked up and realized that though he looked to be asleep, his eyes were actually open.
…and unblinking…
…and empty.
Suddenly I knew exactly why they hadn’t bothered to lock the door to his room, and my stomach heaved into my chest. They hadn’t needed to lock him up because they knew he wasn’t going anywhere – not without a command.
Steven had been droned.
CHAPTER 31
“Steven?” Bastian croaked, falling to his knees next to his unresponsive brother. He reached out and took Steven’s face between his hands, tears beginning to streak his own as he gave Steven’s head a shake. “
Steven…?
”
Fighting tears of my own, I ran over to the door and closed it silently, hoping that the thick wood would block at least some of the muted noises the next few minutes were bound to entail. When I got back Bastian had released his hold on Steven and was instead holding his own face as he sat hunched over, trying desperately to keep his overwhelming tumult of emotions from taking over. I knelt down next to him and put my arm around his shoulders wishing there was something I could do, all the while knowing there wasn’t anything anyone could do. Steven was gone; his body remained, but his mind – the part of him that made him Bastian’s brother – was gone forever. I couldn’t even begin to imagine what he was going through, what it felt like.
And what about… oh God…
Chloe
.
After a few minutes, he finally looked up at me, his eyes puffy, wet, and completely lost. “What…?” he stammered, his voice hoarse and thin, “How can…? How can we…?”
He couldn’t get it out, but I knew what he was asking and I knew that there was only one answer. I reached back into my pocket and grabbed the Iris, searching through the grouping of abilities that were still at the other end of the building. It took a moment but I finally found what I was looking for: a Porter. He was about as strong a one as Bastian, maybe a bit stronger, and best of all, I could still pick out his ability even after I let go of the Iris and only had my own natural power levels to rely on.
“Where is the pass-stone?” I asked Alex as quietly as I could.
He handed it to me and I passed it directly to Bastian. “Here,” I said placing the stone in his hand, “take this and go.”
“What?” he asked, looking at me like I’d gone mad.
“I’m serious, take the stone and get Steven out of here. And,” I pulled the Iris out and handed it to him, “take this with you.”
“I can’t leave you two, you’ll be stuck here.”
“Not if you take the Iris with you. There is another Porter here whose ability I can draw from. Porting is instantaneous, so all I have to do is feed his strength with everything I have and it won’t matter that he’s not coming with us, it should still be enough to get us home, right?”
Bastian hesitated. “Technically… yes, but what if it’s not?”
“It will be,” I said. “Besides, we don’t have a choice now. There is no way we are going to be able to move Steven without getting caught. You leaving with him now is the only way to get him out of here.”
“But even if you can feed the other Porter, all three of you will still have to get outside the borders of the fortress charm in order to port.”
“We already know the charm ends somewhere around the fence,” Alex gently chimed in. “We can handle it. You need to get Steven back to Lorcan.”
The battle going on inside him was apparent in his face, but in the end he knew we were right. “You’re sure?” he asked one last time to which both Alex and I nodded definitively. Finally convinced, Bastian slid forward and took Steven’s hand firmly with his own, then placed the pass-stone in-between their two palms. Holding the Iris tightly in his other hand he looked over at Steven’s blank face. “Close your…” but he stopped with a wince as two more tears slid down his cheeks. “
Gar do chuid shúile
,” he ordered in Gaelic, and Steven’s eyes immediately fell closed. He glanced over to us once more with a sad nod and then… they were gone.
Alex and I stared at the empty patch of floor for a few seconds trying to wrap our minds around everything that had just happened – or at least that’s what I was doing.
“So,” Alex whispered after a moment, shifting to face me, “can you really get us out of here?”
“Yeah,” I said confused. “I said that I could, didn’t I?”
“Sure, I just wanted to check... you know, in case we needed to come up with a plan.”
A plan? Wait…
“Did you think I was bluffing?”
“I wasn’t sure.”
“But you backed me up?”
“I said we could handle it, and we would have.”
I wished I could put a name to the feeling that rolled through me right then, but sadly there wasn’t time to dwell on it. “Thank you,” I said, hoping he could see how much I meant it.
“I promised to always follow you,” he smiled, “and I will.”
I leaned forward and kissed him sweetly. “I love you.” I whispered against his mouth as I pulled back.
“I love you too,” he replied and then sighed, a new determination in his eyes. “Now, let’s go get Jocelyn.”
Cautious and silent, Alex and I snuck back out into the hall, carefully closing the door behind us, hoping that no one would come by to check on Steven before we were able to make it back to Lorcan. We hurried further up the hall and began searching the maze of corridors for one that held Jocelyn. I still knew what direction he was in, but now that I didn’t have the Iris, pinpointing his location was almost impossible. The best I could do now was determine if we were moving closer or further away from him, turning our once strategic search and rescue operation into a glorified and dangerous game of Marco Polo.
For more than twenty minutes we wound our way through the halls and corridors looking for a guarded door or waiting for me to sense something new. But our luck had seemed to run dry, as minute after minute passed and we continued to see and sense nothing.
But then suddenly I did sense something – a whole lot of somethings. The group of people I’d sensed earlier in the lower west wing of the manor were on the move and headed in our direction. The hall we were in was smaller and on the far side of the building, and if they came this way they would have no other choice but to walk right past us. Normally this would be fine, but with the size of the hall and the sheer number of people I felt, there was no way Alex and I would be able to keep out of their way. Invisible or no, one of them was sure to bump into one of us and we’d be caught.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” I whispered, grabbing Alex’s arm and pulling him behind me and I jogged up the hall. I knew it was risky to be running in the direction of the oncoming mob, but if we could just get to the alcove we’d passed a short while back, we may be able to stay out of the way when everyone passed by.
Alex followed me without question, and just as I felt the group enter the adjacent hallway, we dove into the shallow alcove and out of the main corridor. Now that we had a modicum of safety, I poked my head out and watched as the first of the bunch – a Reader, apparently, as that was the strongest of the oncoming abilities – rounded the corner and stepped into our hallway. He was an average looking middle aged man, with light blonde hair and rather striking green eyes, but the most unusual thing about him was the silver ring he wore on his right hand that was set with an enormous black gemstone.
As he came closer I felt the other abilities nearing too and looked behind him to see if the other people had rounded the bend yet, but none had. It was still only the one man. Where were the others? I stepped back a bit and held my breath as the man walked smoothly by, thankfully not so much as hesitating as he passed us, and continued on down the hall. I was about to look back out and see if the others had come yet, when I realized that all the other abilities were now coming from the opposite side of the hall. They had walked past at the same time as the Reader. But how? Were they hiding themselves the same way Alex and I were? Were they all…
My thought drifted off as all of a sudden something in me clicked, and my head whipped around to the man whose silhouette was fading into the dim light of the hallway. I was such an idiot – how could I not have realized? More than a dozen abilities… all tied to one man…
It was him...
Darragh had been within five feet of me and I’d not even realized it. With barely a thought I took off after him, crossing my fingers that we hadn’t lost him. I knew it was stupid, and reckless, may very well get us caught, but none of that mattered now. All that mattered was that Darragh was headed to a room that was obviously in this portion of the manor, and I had a hunch it was exactly the room we were looking for.
Once again Alex followed behind me, but this time he had questions. “
What’s going on?
” he cast as we ran. “
Was that who I think it was?
”
I glanced back with a nod.
“
And you think he’s on his way to see Jocelyn?
”
Another glance and a nod.
“
Just checking.
”
A glance and a smile.
We came to the end of the hallway just in time to see Darragh open the door to a stairwell not far down the connecting corridor. Alex and I had seen that door earlier in our search, but the stairs had only gone down and I knew that Jocelyn’s ability had been coming from above the ground floor. Thanks to a quick sprint, Alex was able to catch the door before it shut allowing us to slide through before allowing the door to click closed only a second or two after it otherwise would have.
I looked down the curving flight of stairs, but didn’t see Darragh anywhere. He wouldn’t have had enough time to get so far down that we could no longer see him, so where was he? It was then that I felt a tap on my arm and saw that Alex was pointing up toward what appeared to be Darragh floating in midair above us. And not just floating; he was climbing up higher and higher until he stopped, reached out apparently opening an invisible door and step through it and out of sight.
What the hell…?
Alex crouched down and reached out toward what looked like only empty space next to the top of the downward staircase, but as his arm moved I heard a faint brushing sound. Reaching up with his free hand he took my arm and guided me down next to him, bringing my hand to rest next to his which was not simply floating in empty air as it seemed to be, but resting on the cold hard stone of a step.
“
He must have used another charm to hide the steps. If we still had the pass-stone we would probably be able to see it, but without it we will have to walk blind.
”
I wasn’t crazy about the idea, but I also wasn’t willing to risk losing track of Darragh, so I nodded.
“
One more thing, we should probably take off our shoes. The echo is pretty bad in here.
”
Again I agreed, slipping off my shoes and setting them next to Alex’s in the shadowed corner at the top of the downward staircase, and up we went.
The first few steps weren’t so bad, but the higher we got the more the fact that there didn’t appear to be anything under my feet than several stories and rock-hard floor began to mess with my mind.
“Don’t look down,” Alex suggested. “Or better yet, give me your hand and close your eyes.”
I did as he said and instantly felt better. Now it was no different than climbing any other staircase in the dark which I’d done plenty of times.
A few more steps and I felt Alex tap my hand signaling that we had reached the top. I waited for him to open the door and lead me through, but it didn’t happen. I opened one eye a tiny bit to see what was going on to find Alex slowly feeling the wall in front of us and realized the problem; he couldn’t find the doorknob. Terrified as I was to open my eyes, I knew that every moment we spent stuck in the stairwell, Darragh was getting further and further away. Choking back my fear, I opened my eyes and stooped down, wiping my hand on the invisible floor. Once I was sure that it was good and dirty, I lifted it up to my mouth and blew, sending a small cloud of dust and grime billowing at the wall, and as the tiny particles swirled in the air, the faintest outline of a door handle just barely became visible. Wasting no time, Alex made a grab for it and pulled the door open to reveal a small – and thankfully very visible – hallway.
Just like the halls below, this one also had other halls splitting from it, but in this instance there were only two, and there was no need to wonder which to take as only one of them had a doorway that was open, had two drones standing guard over it, and best of all, voices carrying from it.
“I take no pleasure in this sort of thing, my friend,” a voice said as we quietly made our way toward the open door, “but you are leaving me with very few options. I have searched for too long to simply overlook that you have found what I need.”
Having reached the door at this point, Alex and I crept up to the frame, carefully avoiding the two drone guards who stood only a few feet away, and peered into the room. The first thing I noticed was that it was significantly lighter than Steven’s room had been on account of the window that stood open on the wall opposite the door. But other than that it was much the same, with the only other glaring difference being the fact that its inhabitant wasn’t a hunched-over Steven, but tense and trembling Jocelyn who sat beneath the window, his fists purple from clenching as they pressed into the sides of his head. He was shaking with the effort to keep his mind and abilities in check, and dripping with sweat. The sight alone made my thoughts turn violent, but I pushed them aside, forcing myself to stay in control.
“We are going to give this another try,” Darragh continued as Alex and I snuck around the doorframe and into the small room, keeping ourselves up against the wall so as not to risk being bumped or ending up in the way, “and I’d thank you not to attack me this time, but I think you learned your lesson.”
Taking a few steps over to where Jocelyn was seated, Darragh took some sort of necklace out of his vest pocket and placed it over Jocelyn’s head. The moment the cord encircled his head he looked up and slowly lowered his hands from his temples, seeming to have been granted some mild form of relief – though, if the trembling of his limbs and the tightness of his jaw were anything to go by, it didn’t seem to be nearly enough.
Alex must have seen the look on my face as there was suddenly a message floating in front of me. “
It’s probably the temporary Sciath. It wouldn’t be nearly as strong as his ring, but that wouldn’t matter to Darragh. He doesn’t care how much pain he is still in, so long as he is able to talk.
”
“Now then,” Darragh said, reaching into a second pocket and pulling out a folded piece of paper, “I want you to either read this, or tell me how I can.”