Edge of Pathos (The Conjurors Series Book 4) (24 page)

After firming up the
details of her plan with Skye, Valerie left his guild to head to entrance to
Plymouth that Willa had found. She was crossing the grass of The Horseshoe when
she saw a familiar figure walking up the broken steps of the Capitol Building.

“Jack, wait!” Valerie
called.

Jack continued to
march up the steps, and Valerie raced to his side, stopping him before he
reached the doors.

“The Grand Masters
are following Reaper now,” she reminded him. “Many don’t support him, but some
do. They could capture you, or worse.”

Jack’s eyes met hers
then. They were rimmed with red, and his face was pale. He’d lost weight since
she’d seen him last. He looked even worse than he had when he escaped the
Fractus two years ago.

“Let them do their
worst,” he said. “I hate them all. Anyone who supports the Fractus should be
killed, like they killed Dulcea.”

Jack choked on
Dulcea’s name, but in spite of his haggard appearance, he was lit up by a
restless energy.

“This isn’t the way
to make a difference,” Valerie said. “You won’t last long against these guys.
They’re some of the most powerful Conjurors in the universe. Besides, what
about your boys? They still need you, and if you get killed, who will take care
of them?”

Jack hung his head
and nodded. Valerie took his arm, and they started back down the stairs. She’d
only gone a few steps when Jack turned and raced back up. He was through the
doors before she fully comprehended what had happened.

“Damn it, Jack!” she
said, but she ran after him, slipping through the doors before they’d fully
closed behind him.

Valerie intended to
drag Jack back outside if she had to, but he was running down the hall like he
knew where he was going. She heard voices shouting, and then saw the geometric
gold design on the door Jack was bursting through. Jack had timed his attack
for a gathering of the Grand Masters.

Valerie gritted her
teeth and followed him in. The room was a chaotic mess of bubbles floating
above, and Jack was temporarily stymied.

He glanced over his
shoulder, and when he saw her still following him, plunged himself into the
fray. His entrance had attracted some attention in spite of the chaos in the
room, and eyes narrowed as they took in Jack and Valerie.

“Your invitation was
revoked,” the Grand Master of the Illuminators’ Guild, a large bear, barked at
her.

“I know. I’m here
to—” Valerie tried to explain.

Valerie was cut off
when Al, the Grand Master of the Stewardship Guild, slammed his bubble into
her.

“You talked to
Willa? You had no right!” he shouted.

Before Valerie could
respond, Jack leaped toward a bubble occupied by a crazy-haired Grand Master.
When the man turned, she saw it was Rastelli. He snarled when his gaze met hers
and the bubble surrounding him popped. He moved toward her with murder in his
eyes. Had Reaper reinstated him as Grand Master of The Society of Imaginary
Friends now that Dulcea was out of the way?

Jack intercepted
Rastelli before he got close to Valerie. He got in several solid punches to the
Grand Master’s face before Valerie pulled him off. She gripped him by his
wrist, but he fought her with every ounce of strength he had and managed to
throw her off.

Rastelli was
standing again, and when Jack attacked this time, Valerie could see that
Rastelli had tapped into his power. Jack’s movements were in slow motion as Rastelli
slowed time for his opponent and then hit him in the skull with his staff.

Al shoved Valerie
back as Rastelli raised his staff to smash in Jack’s skull. She lunged toward
Rastelli, to pull him away from Jack, but Al clutched her leg.

Dasan fluttered down
then and landed heavily on Rastelli’s back so that his blow missed Jack’s head.

“Remember, my
friend,” Dasan said, his voice soothing.

Rastelli stared into
Dasan’s eyes, and Valerie hoped that whatever magic the Feng was weaving was helping
restore Rastelli’s mind.

Rastelli’s eyes
filled with tears, and he laid his hand on Dasan’s wing.

“My old friend,
however much you try, I fear that I am lost,” Rastelli said. “Even now, the
veil of darkness in my mind envelops me.”

Rastelli groaned, and
Valerie shuddered at the pain in the sound. Then he broke his staff over his
knee. Valerie thought maybe he’d triumphed over whatever darkness was within
him, until she saw him drive the broken staff into his heart.

She raced to
Rastelli’s side, ready to unleash her vivicus power to save him, but Dasan held
her back, pinching her arm gently in his beak.

“I have seen inside
his mind, and this is what he wants. He cannot live with the darkness Reaper
has created within him, and it cannot be cured,” Dasan said.

All of the shouting
and movement in the room had ceased. Even though it might be cowardly, Valerie
couldn’t watch any longer, and she turned away as Rastelli uttered a last,
gasping breath.

She leaned down and
slung Jack, who was still out cold, over her shoulder.

“I apologize for the
interruption,” she said in her most authoritative voice, hoping that it didn’t
wobble. No matter how many people she’d seen die, it never failed to unravel
her.

Al stood squarely in
her path, his snarl in place.

“If you have a score
to settle with me, I welcome the chance to give you the beating you deserve,”
Valerie said, and when she brushed past him, he didn’t move to stop her.

With as must dignity
as she could muster, Valerie walked from the room, out of the Capitol building,
and down the steps, nearly tripping over the spot where the crack was the
widest.

She deposited Jack
on the grass in the middle of The Horseshoe. He woke up when Valerie shook him,
and shrugged off her touch. Then he stood up and began walking back to the
Capitol building, in spite of the limp he was now sporting.

“You want to kill
yourself, like Rastelli did?” Valerie shouted after him. “Then go back! But
don’t kid yourself that you’re honoring Dulcea by doing that, because it’s the
last thing she’d want. She didn’t give up on living after both of her parents
were murdered when she was a kid. She kept her faith in other people and made
the Globe better by helping people. What you want to do is essentially easy,
and selfish. Go ahead and give up.”

Jack stopped
walking, but he didn’t turn back. His entire frame trembled, and Valerie moved
to stand next to him. He leaned against her, and his hollow eyes found hers.

“I thought I’d
finally found where I belonged. That I’d found a home,” he said.

“I think
life is mostly suffering, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t little moments of
happiness mixed in. You have to believe that there’s another moment like that
waiting for you,” Valerie said. “We both do.”

Valerie took Jack to
Cyrus’s dorm room. Cyrus opened the door and assessed both of them.

“Jack needs to
channel his rage into something other than taking on a room full of Grand
Masters,” she said, striving for a light tone.

Cyrus picked up on
her intent, like he always did.

“I think you need to
shoot something,” Cyrus said. He squinted at Jack. “Maybe even make something
explode.”

Jack didn’t smile,
but he rolled his eyes, which Valerie took as a sign of life.

Outside the dorm,
Valerie hugged Jack and then turned to Cyrus. “Get ahold of his gang. I think
they’re staying in the Actors’ dorm with Jack. They’ll make sure he doesn’t go
looking for trouble again.”

Then she squeezed
Cyrus a little longer and harder than she ought to, knowing how he felt about
her, but she needed to borrow a little of his light before she faced Reaper.

Valerie returned to
the entrance to Plymouth that Willa and Steven had blasted open, hoping that no
one would be nearby. She was relieved to see that glade was empty. She walked
across the scarred earth, where the dynamite had created a huge hole, and
turned the wheel on the ancient door.

It was dark inside,
but not completely without light. The gems embedded in the walls of the cave
held a faint glow, a remnant of Cyrus’s magic. Valerie remembered the tunnel
well enough to follow the path back.

She climbed down the
ladder and approached the city. It had been quiet the last time she had come,
but now it was completely empty. She was relieved that Skye had managed to
evacuate the Groundlings who lived here so quickly. It was probably the only
city in Plymouth where the people weren’t enslaved by the Fractus.

As she followed the
river and approached the cave, she saw that the debris from the cave-in she’d
created at the mouth had been cleared away.

Inside, Valerie
couldn’t hear anything. She was forced to unsheathe Pathos to light her path,
even though she knew that it would make her a target if there were any Fractus
stragglers still in this part of the cave.

The space was empty,
and Valerie decided to follow the river. She suspected that the location of the
greatest concentration of Carne was somewhere deep in the caves.

The ground beneath
her feet was slippery with black slime that gave off a faint hum of power. It
smelled like the dank spot underneath an overpass where she’d huddled during
the year she’d been homeless in Oakland. It was the scent of desperation and
fear.

Valerie sheathed
Pathos, only pulling it out occasionally to check that there weren’t any
obstacles in her path. The sound of the river moving and her own breath made a
kind of soundtrack, and Valerie’s heartbeat ratcheted up as the closeness of
the tunnel bore down on her.

It was an acute relief
to make out the distant sound of shouting. The hum of power that surrounded her
increased in volume, and she began to jog.

Valerie stopped when
the cavern widened into an enormous room that was dimly lit by balls of light
suspended in the air. The rock face looked like it had been painted with pitch.
An enormous lake was in the middle, and it was pure black, so dark that it
seemed to absorb the little light in the room.

Everywhere were
Fractus, overseeing the Groundlings as they scraped and scraped the walls of
the room. The sludge they gathered was carefully deposited into the lake. They
wore magical chains that chafed at their wrists. Reaper must have tightened his
grip on his source of slave labor after Valerie had fought the Fractus at the
mouth of the cave.

She reached into her
pocket and squeezed the little ball that Skye had given her. He had a matching
one that would vibrate from her touch, signaling him that she’d found the
source of the Carne in Plymouth.

“Beautiful, isn’t
it? The perfect blackness?”

Reaper’s voice in
her ear made Valerie want to jump, but she forced herself to hide her reaction.

“This Carne was
created from the bodies of hundreds of Conjurors, dumped here during the early
wars on the Globe. Time degraded the magic left in their corpses into something
pure, something that can be manipulated with the right power.”

 ”I’m glad
you’re here,” Valerie said, drawing Pathos from its sheath. “I think it’s time
we settle this between us for good.”

Reaper grinned. “You
shouldn’t tease me. I’m beginning to think you’ve outlived your usefulness, now
that I have what I want, and it doesn’t look like your brother will be much use
to anyone now that he’s given up on living.”

“Then we agree,”
Valerie said.

“I think it’s a bit
arrogant, even for you, to think that in addition to defeating me, you could
take down all of the Fractus in this room by yourself, don’t you?”

“It would be. But
I’m not by myself.”

There was a colossal
boom as the ceiling of the cavern exploded, and fragments of black rock shot
everywhere. Valerie crouched on the ground, protecting her head with her arms.

Light poured into
the cavern, and the black lake of Carne shivered. The liquid retreated from the
center of the room, sliding down the various tunnels that led into it, as if
seeking to escape the light.

Groundlings and
Fractus scattered, and chaos erupted. Soldiers of the Fist rappelled down
through the giant hole created by Willa and Steven’s explosion of dynamite.

Valerie had kept her
grip on Pathos, but her target had disappeared. When she heard Reaper’s voice
shouting instructions, he was already across the cavern.

Two soldiers of the
Fist attacked him, but their determined expressions morphed into screams as he
unleashed his power on them.

With their leader in
charge, the Fractus regrouped. Valerie saw the eyes of eight or more of the
Fractus turn black, and the light from the hole in the ceiling dimmed, though
it wasn’t entirely extinguished.

Magic hummed in the
cavern, and Valerie saw the Carne sliding back into the center now that the
light was dimmer. But instead of reforming a lake in the center of the room, it
was drawn to Reaper the way light was drawn to Cyrus.

The darkness pooled
at Reaper’s feet and then covered his legs and torso, working its way up his
body until it poured itself into his mouth. Valerie stared in revulsion as he
gulped the substance greedily.

Around her, Fractus
engaged with the soldiers of the Fist, and black weapons met light. But Valerie
didn’t engage in the fight. There was no one else who could take on Reaper and
have a chance of surviving.

Valerie let her full
power flood her, until her magic was singing in her veins. She was ready for
Reaper’s usual tricks—his ability to reorient her sense of direction and the
burning pain when he tried to dissolve her body.

But when Reaper
embraced his power, instead of a hum of magic, there was a rumble, like an
earthquake. He saw her charging toward him with Pathos blazing, and his face
lit up with anticipation.

He opened his palm,
and a sword grew from it, pure black with edges that glinted like polished
metal.

“Let’s use your
weapon of choice,” Reaper said. “I wouldn’t want you to claim that you didn’t
have every advantage.”

Valerie gritted her teeth
at his condescension, but refused to let it distract her.

When Pathos met
Reaper’s blade, they clashed with enough force that Valerie’s arm ached. Any
other weapon she’d hit with that combination of her magic-fueled strength and
Pathos would have shattered, but Reaper’s sword absorbed the blow.

Valerie’s magic
surged, and she let it completely own her. Reaper moved fast, but she was
faster, dodging his thrusts and parries and managing to land the occasional
glancing blow.

The smile had left
Reaper’s face, and his lip beaded with sweat. But she didn’t have his full
attention. It reminded her of when she’d fought him before he’d taken her
father to the Black Castle to kill him.

The memory of her
dad bleeding out in Reaper’s throne room made Valerie impossibly faster and
stronger, as if she’d tapped into a well of magic within her that she hadn’t
been aware she was growing.

Rage blasted away
any of the fear in her heart, and on her thumb, the Laurel Circle blazed. This
was the bastard who’d taken her father’s life, who had stolen her brother’s
peace. He wouldn’t take her down today.

Valerie backed
Reaper toward a wall of the cavern, and he kept glancing behind him, as if he
was searching for an exit. She had the briefest flash of hope that she was
winning before a sticky substance clinging to her feet made her insides rumble.

Reaper had
maneuvered his way to a black pool of congealed Carne. When it touched him, his
sword morphed into his signature weapon, the scythe.

Valerie had to
abruptly switch tactics. Reaper’s reach with the scythe was longer, and the
blade came within a molecule of nicking her skin and pouring its dark magic
into her.

Was it her
imagination, or was Pathos dimmer? The Carne that formed Reaper’s scythe tugged
at her magic, leaving her breathless.

Scythe connected
with sword in a crushing blow that made Valerie drop to one knee. But before
Reaper could follow up with another swipe, a high, keening sound filled the
cavern, and Reaper pulled back.

He
opened a portal in the air, and through it, Valerie saw the wavering image of a
desert. There was no way she would let him go through alone.

Valerie jumped on
Reaper as he stepped through, making him drop his scythe. Contact with him was
agony, like touching Zunya. Her body was being shredded while her magic was
ripped from her soul.

She released her
hold on Reaper and fell into burning sand. It got in her mouth and hair and
eyes, and Valerie spit it out. The weight of the rules binding magic on Earth
made her limbs like stone.

Reaper kicked her in
her stomach.

“Stay down,” he
said.

He must not know
her.

Reaper moved to turn
from her, and she grabbed his leg. It wasn’t elegant, but it had the desired
effect of making him trip.

“If you get in my way,
I will make sure you, your brother, and all those you love suffer before they
die. I swear it,” he said, and then kicked her viciously in the face.

Valerie saw stars as
her head snapped back, and she tasted blood. A tooth cracked, but the pain was
distant. Something in her took over. Something that wasn’t magic. It belonged
to a deeper part of her.

She wiped the gritty
sand from her eyes. Reaper moved toward a blue flame that flickered silently in
a shadowy cloud of darkness, like a sunny day in the middle of winter. It was
sundown, the time of day that the rules binding magic on Earth were typically
at their weakest, and Valerie had no doubt what he was here to do.

Next to the flame
were two Fractus, and both of their eyes were black. Even with their combined
power, the light from the flame blazed, in spite of the darkness that hugged
it.

“We made the flame
visible, master, but we cannot dim it. Spare our lives for this failure, we beg
you,” one of the Fractus said.

“You’ve done
enough,” Reaper said. “I will extinguish it myself.”

“Quickly,” the other
Fractus groaned. “I can’t hold so much of this power for much longer.”

Valerie staggered
toward them.

“Turn your magic on
the vivicus,” Reaper said.

Pathos lay on the
sand next to Valerie, an impossible gift that she couldn’t make sense of. She
wasn’t sure if she reached for her blade or if it leaped into her hand, but its
familiar weight was with her again, completing her.

The Fractus turned
their gaze on her, but Pathos held the darkness at bay, like the flame in the
desert had. Neither man appeared surprised. They drew weapons of their own, a
short, sharp dagger, and a bow and arrow.

The man with the
dagger attacked first, and Valerie parried with him. He was skilled, but not a
match for her, and she kicked him in the head, knocking him unconscious.
However, his attack gave the second Fractus the chance to load his bow, and he
launched two black arrows at her in quick succession.

Valerie sliced the
first one mid-air, and ducked and rolled to avoid the second. By design, her
roll brought her closer to Reaper. She raised Pathos to bring down on him,
whatever the consequence, when Reaper dropped to his knees.

He vomited the Carne
that he had swallowed in Plymouth onto the flame. It poured and poured from his
mouth. The flame flickered once, then again and again, rapidly, madly.

Valerie shoved
Reaper aside to try to wipe away the disgusting sludge, but it resisted her
touch.

The flame collapsed
in on itself, and there was a perfect silence. The wind on the sand, Reaper’s
shouts, even her own ragged breathing was swallowed by the vacuum created when
the flame went out.

A spot of red where
the flame had been still smoldered, and Valerie hoped it might spark again.
Instead, the red spark spread, blanketing the Atacama Desert with a blazing red
glow. When it faded, the desert shone like ice. Valerie touched its smooth
surface. The sand had turned to glass.

Valerie’s magic
surged within her, but for the first time, she didn’t welcome its presence. The
rules binding magic on Earth were broken.

Reaper turned on
her, his cheeks flushed. A new scythe grew from his hand to replace the one
he’d dropped.

“I thought I was
above petty vengeance, but there is poetry to the idea that you will be the
first to die now that magic has been unleashed on Earth,” Reaper said.

His eyes were a
little unfocused, like he was seeing past her.

Valerie raised
Pathos as Reaper struck, but fighting him this time was different. The
desperation and rage that had fueled her were gone. She’d already lost, even if
she beat Reaper in this fight.