Breaker (Ondine Quartet Book 4) (42 page)

Okay. “So?”

“So if magic is an enhancement that makes it a kind of drug and the Shadow’s blood is the most poisonous, lethal drug of all. When Aquidaes are created, the corrupted Essence magic in the turning blades control and guide its effects.”

“But Miriam Moreaux was turned directly by the Shadow. So were the armies we saw attacking in Merbais and Fontesceau —”

“The Shadow used his blood to turn them but he did it through the blade. The magic in those blades tempered the power of his blood into something he controlled. Don’t get me wrong.” He held his hands out. “It’s still strong as hell. But it’s the difference between taking a hit of cut up street crack and pure meth. One is a means of controlling you, a way of bringing you back for more. The other is pure death.”

“So Scabbard has the Shadow’s undiluted blood running through him?”

Gilroy nodded.

“What does it do?”

“It doesn’t
do
anything. It
reveals
.”

A chill raced down my spine. “Reveals what?”

“Everything. All the hidden thoughts you don’t want others to see or know about. The dark stuff everyone shoves away. Your nightmares. Turns out reliving that shit over and over again is way worse than turning into a demon with violent, homicidal urges.”

I remembered Ian’s wild eyes. In front of him, he’d only seen his father and the bodies of his mother and sister.

Reality had become an illusion while his personal nightmare turned real.

It was the worst kind of torture. Worse than being deprived of food or water, worse than your body being broken and put back together again.

The Shadow’s blood meant being trapped by your own mortal limitations -
 
your fears, your failings, your inadequacies -
 
and watching it play out repeatedly on an endless loop.

“What exactly is Scabbard?” Jeeves asked quietly.

“He’s someone who’s been using for a long time. I don’t even know what he is.”

“He’s not an Aquidae.”

Gilroy shook his head. “He’s living in his own reality. Who knows what he’s really seeing?”

“Do you know if the Shadow has done this to other elementals besides nixes?”

“As far as I know, only two people ever received it and both were nixes. The other person is supposed to have survived and escaped it.” He shrugged. “An urban legend. No one can survive something like that.”

Ian had been the third.
 

I have to get it out.

My stomach twisted. Gilroy was right. No one could survive something like that.

The door opened and Daniel stuck his head in. “Kendra?”

I joined him in the hallway and shut the door behind me.
 

“I’ve run the tests you asked for on Gilroy.”
 

I nodded. “Have you also completed an autopsy on Ian?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about —“

“An autopsy. You performed one, didn’t you? With the same device you used to examine me?”

The bookshelves in Daniel’s cabin had been filled with mystery and crime novels. According to Oriel, her father’s original interest in medical school had been research. He’d hoped to one day gain a better understanding of elemental magic.

It didn’t take much to figure out what would happen. Daniel was intellectually curious and Ian was the first nix he’d ever come across.

The temptation to study Ian’s body with his brand new device would’ve been too great to pass by.
 

Daniel rubbed his jaw. “Yes.”

“I want to see it.”

He stared at me for a long moment, his expression troubled.

“Please.”

A few more seconds of silence, followed by a short nod.

He led me down the hallway to the last room on the left. Helene’s laughter echoed through the corridor, the sound brightening the dreary, constricted space.
 

Daniel’s sharp gaze lasered on to my knee. “I see you’ve once again ignored my medical advice.”

I waved my hand. “It’s fine.”

He looked completely unconvinced.

The room was sparsely furnished. Daniel’s strange device rested on a tiny, student desk shoved into the corner. The only other furniture was a dented metal folding chair and a bookshelf filled with dusty office supplies.

Daniel settled on the edge of the desk and picked up a file folder.

“The wound on Ian’s stomach was clean. Made by a blade. Similar to the length and size of a
kouperet
.”

I sat in the folding chair and met his gaze. “You once told me you honored patient confidentiality.”

“Technically, Ian is already dead which means I can, under the right circumstances, choose to share what I know.”

“Which is why I’m here —“

“I didn’t tell Ms. Rossay because I felt it wouldn’t help her grief.” He paused. “You’re still my patient and given the extent of your injuries, I have reason to believe much more happened while you were up in that mountain than what you’ve shared.”

“That’s not relevant to what’s—“

“I want to protect you.”

I snapped my mouth shut.

“But it’s difficult to protect a patient who doesn’t tell me the whole truth.”

I remained silent.

He sighed. “All right, Kendra. I’m sure you have your reasons for not telling me everything about the circumstances of Ian’s death and your injuries. But since I don’t have all the facts, what I can share with you will be limited.”

“I understand.”

He pulled out another file and a sheet of paper. “This is what ondine’s blood looks like.”

A biorhythm graph displayed several intersecting waves of different colors.
 

“See these?” He pointed out the bright turquoise line weaving through the other curves. “This is magic.”

He pulled out another sheet. “And this is what a demillir’s looks like.”

There were no splashes of turquoise, but the rise and fall of the other biorhythms were sharper and more densely clustered. The red and green colors were also richer, popping off the page.
 

Daniel pointed to the spikes. “Demillirs’ biorhythmic indicators show their unusual propensity for skill and strength. The pattern is similar to that of selkies, though the arcs are less sharp and there is no magic.”

He pulled out a third sheet of paper. “And this is our resident nix, Gilroy.”

Unlike ondines or demillirs, the biorhythmic curves were smaller, without much change in rise and fall. It followed a narrow pattern, with an evenly distributed flat line of grey.

Daniel pointed to the grey. “I believe this is latent nix magic. It remains stable and untouched. No movement.”

He hesitated. “I’d like to ask a question before we go over these final results.”

“Of course.”

“Do you have a working theory on what was injected into Mr. MacAllister?”

When we left Haverleau, Daniel had helped us without question. He’d taken in Lucas, then Holden, Ray, and the other nixes.

He was now indefinitely babysitting the most annoying person I knew.

I couldn’t give Daniel all the answers he wanted, but I could at least give him this.

I told him everything I’d just learned from Gilroy.

A speculative look crossed his face. He pulled out the final piece of paper in the folder.
 

“This is Mr. MacAllister’s results.”

The graph was mostly empty. No clusters or curves. Only one faint, barely visible, blue curve stretched across the sheet.

“I ran the test multiple times to make sure it wasn’t a mistake. Whatever was inside Ian wiped out his primary systems: physical, emotional, intellectual. It was…” he coughed and looked slightly embarrassed, “for want of a better word, a vacuum.”

Exactly what my Virtue had always sensed inside Aquidae.

“When I first examined Mr. MacAllister, I suspected what was inside him was some variant of what was inside Aquidae. It would explain why Aquidae don’t need to breathe.”

Daniel’s eyes lit up with intellectual curiosity.

He pointed at his ribs. “When we breathe, our diaphragm depresses, creating a vacuum in the lungs. Air rushes in to fill that vacuum. When the diaphragm relaxes, it rises, changing the volume in our lungs, resulting in a pressure difference that pushes the air back out. Since the Aquidae’s blood is essentially a vacuum, they don’t need to exhale. They don’t need to breathe. At least, that’s my working theory.”

The Shadow’s blood was a voracious, life-sucking magic that took away who you were.

I remembered how emaciated Ian was, the way his bones jutted out from his skin.

Something had literally been eating him from the inside.

The true test is who we are when everything else is gone.

But how could you eradicate a black hole?
 
There was nothing to cut off. No dependency I could deprive.

How did you destroy nothingness?

I pointed to the faint blue line. “What is this?”

“I believe that’s Ian’s magic.” He studied me. “Unlike Gilroy and other nixes, he was capable of using it, wasn’t he?”

I nodded slowly, remembering what happened on that mountain slope.

“When Ian died,” I said slowly. “Something happened.”

A wave of memories flooded me.

The crack of air. A pristine energy drenched with memories of Ian and I over the years.

My chest slowly squeezed. “It was strong. Like power flooding back to me and binding with my Virtue. It was gone in a flash but…” I paused. “It was powerful.”

Daniel studied me for a long moment.
 

“Magical blowback,” he murmured. “Because you’re an Empath.”

“You mean his life essence?”
 

Daniel shook his head. “Empath is a magic of absorption. You take in the connections others have, the emotions that tie them to themselves and to others.”
 

“Ian’s connection to me.”

He nodded. “Picture your friendship to Ian like a rubber band. It stretches and loosens over the years, but it’s what binds you together. When he died, it snapped and everything he felt, all the emotions tied to your friendship, boomeranged into you.”
 

“But I was with Rhian when she died and I didn’t sense anything like it.”

Daniel waited a few beats before replying.

“Ian’s death was abrupt,” he said carefully. “And you severed the connection.”

It was because I’d killed him.

That was why I’d never felt anything like it before.

Up until that day in mountains, I’d only killed demons.

A bitter taste flooded my mouth. Ian was the first life I’d ever taken.
 

The door opened. Light from the hallway trickled through, illuminating a bulky form.

Daniel frowned. “Rhonda, are you all right?”

No response.

The receptionist walked forward a few steps, her gait unhurried, almost robotic, with a long umbrella at her side.

Her mouth was pinched in disapproval and there was something terribly off about her eyes.

They were completely blank.

“Daniel.” I slowly rose from my seat. “Go and get the others.”

“What —“

“You.” Rhonda’s high voice now sounded eerie. Dead eyes locked on to me. “You need to be stopped.”

No Origin scar glistened on her neck. The skin on her forearm bubbled up then flattened, a pulsation as if something lived under her skin.

What was in her was hate and rage. And as I’d already experienced with Ian, that was more than enough to turn someone from limpid to lethal.

“Daniel, that thing we were talking about?” I slowly shifted in front of him, movements slow and steady. “It’s inside her.”

“What are you —oh.” A sharp intake of breath.

“You need to stop hurting me,” Rhonda repeated, her gaze locked on to me.
 

Good. Keep looking here.

Daniel edged toward the door. “What should I do?”

Rhonda’s hand began to rise. “You know what you did. I trusted you. You were my uncle!”

“Tell Alex what’s going on,” I murmured.

Daniel quietly opened the door.

Rhonda stepped forward. “I need to make you stop.”

“Make me,” I taunted.

Rage flashed across her face. She drew up and pulled her arm back, umbrella high above her head.

Daniel slipped out.
 

She lunged. I darted aside, metal tip whistling past my head.
 

She crashed against the desk, sending folders and papers toppling to the ground. The umbrella smashed against the corner and snapped.
 

Rhonda turned, her halo of frizzy hair crackling around her like lightening.
 

She hunched over and charged. Her shoulders punched against my chest and I fell back with an oomph.

Pain shattered up my thigh as her weight landed on my knee.

I gritted my teeth, shoved her off, and pulled myself up. My leg screamed.
 

One solid punch and Rhonda finally dropped, unconscious.

A cry from the waiting area.

Helene.

I raced out. Crashes and thumps echoed down the corridor.

Chairs were overturned and shoved aside, the waiting area transformed into a battleground.

Alex engaged with a female wearing a Lyondale University sweatshirt, gym shorts, and running shoes.
 

Behind him, Daniel and Helene huddled near the wall. He extended his arms in front of Helene, protecting her.
 

Fear and fascination danced across Helene’s face, her sharp eyes flickering back and forth between Alex’s maneuvers and the snarling demon.

Alex’s expression was calm, his movements precise and in control.
 

Jeeves, on the other hand, was another story. He struggled to keep Gilroy behind him in a position of safety.
 

Our resident nix didn’t seem to understand that Jeeves was protecting his skinny ass and frantically attempted to get in front of him.

The Aquidae was dressed in an orange and brown messenger uniform and still wore a bike helmet. Bike Boy watched Gilroy’s panic with unfettered glee.

Fear and adrenaline jacked up Gilroy’s struggle until finally, with a cry, he broke free and rushed forward, attempting to escape through the back door.