Ensnared (Sorcery and Science Book 5) (28 page)

* * *

526AX December 11, Orion

Which left her back with Aaron, still haunted two weeks after her assassination of Veronica. Was she ill, he asked? He had no idea. She was sick and lightheaded and disgusted with herself and just plain angry. All that consoled her was the knowledge that her loved ones were safe. Well, most of them.
 

“Are you all right?”

Isis stood at the doorway of Ariella’s room, her hands gripping the frame for support.

“No,” she told Ariella. “No, I’m not. I need your help.”

Ariella embraced her. “Anything.”

As she leaned against Ariella’s shoulder, tears splattering them both, she tried to speak. But she couldn’t say the words. She could barely form the thoughts. She couldn’t believe what she was about to do.

Ariella wrapped her arm around Isis, leading her inside. She didn’t say anything. She simply gave her hand a friendly squeeze and waited for her to speak. And it was a long while before Isis did.

“Ariella,” she began, then staggered. She took a deep breath, collecting her resolve. “I’m leaving.”

She frowned. “What egregious act are they carting you off to perform for them now?”

“No, not like that. I am leaving
them
,” Isis emphasized.

There. She’d said it. She had no problem turning her back on the Selpes, but there would be consequences. They would brand her a rogue and try to hunt her down. It didn’t matter. She couldn’t stay any longer. She had to be free of them at last. The people she cared about here would be safe. Davin’s promise had been fulfilled. As long as she stayed away, the only life on the line was hers, and it was her life that she was trying so desperately to save. She didn’t want to be that person, that vicious killer from her foresights. Already, she’d fallen too far. She had to find herself again before it was too late. Before there was no going back.

“When?” Ariella asked.

“Tonight.”

“I see.”

“I will need to stay away. We…we might not see each other again.”

Ariella cupped her hands around Isis’s cheeks. “We will.”

“They will call me a rogue. And they will hunt me and anyone who helps me.”

“We’ll see each other again.” Ariella hugged her. “Human claims cannot keep us apart, my kindred.”

“But—”

“Enough. Now, how would you have me help you?”

“Not me.” Isis set a sealed envelope into her hands. “Jason. I think it’s about time he got to see Terra again.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

~
The Phantom Mind ~

526AX December 11, Orion

JASON WAS IMPRISONED in a windowless cell lit only by a dim, flickering green-yellow bulb. Every so often, a doctor surrounded by twelve Diamond Edges entered his cell and injected him with an overdone Inhibiting Serum, but besides that no one was allowed contact with him. They were afraid of him, of the tales that he could control their bodies and manipulate their minds. And they had every reason to be. Given the chance, he would kill every last one of them.

Jason knew his mind was not as sharp as it had been whenever it was they’d thrown him into that cell. Two months ago, maybe more. Time had little meaning there, separated from the natural rhythms of the world, his mind congested with a thick, oozing slop. The serum had left him with a perpetual headache, this infuriating buzzing around in his head. It intensified any time he pushed his brain to think—and became unbearable if he so much as even tried to use his gift, which was obviously the point. It was far from the solace Isis’s serum had seemed to bestow.

Isis. That silver-tongued Selpe loyalist. She’d betrayed him. Well of course she had. It had never been anything but lies coming out of her mouth. He’d been a fool to trust her. And when it came down to it, that was what peeved him the most. Not her lies, her deceptions, her skillfully-woven traps—no, it was that he’d fallen for it all. What had happened to him? When had his mind grown so dull and useless?

“Why are we moving the Elition wizard?” an anxious voice asked from outside his cell door.

“I heard the new empress asked that he be sent away. She doesn’t feel comfortable with him around,” replied another, clearly delighted to be sharing gossip.

“I sure can’t disagree with that. Have you seen the way he stares at us? He gives me the creeps,” Anxious said.

Delighted Gossip peered through the bars at Jason, who sat motionless on the bench. “You don’t have to worry about him. They inject him every day with something to sedate him. Look at him now, docile as an old house cat.”

“If it’s all the same to you, I’d prefer not to look,” Anxious muttered, putting more distance between him and the cell as Jason turned his head to glare at the soldiers.

“In a few minutes, you won’t have to ever again,” Delighted Gossip assured him. “I heard they’re taking him to one of Lord Adrian’s special facilities.”

“What happens there?”

“No one really knows, but it’s safe to say he’ll either come back with his loyalties properly rearranged, or not come back at all.”

Jason caught a flash of Lord Adrian, that conniving Selpe nobleman with the ridiculously shaped goatee on his ridiculously long chin. Beside him stood an Elition, a young girl with electric purple hair. Jason’s stomach churned as a second flash flooded through him, that of Nemesis. He caught sight of the Siennan fiend as her brilliant turquoise eyes transformed to blood-red. She’d just learned something that enraged her.

Visions. The serum was wearing off, Jason decided as he tasted the spicy flavor upon his tongue. But not soon enough. They were coming. He heard the sound of footsteps walk down the hallway. Elition footsteps. There were ten of them, in addition to the twenty soldiers already crammed into the area just outside his cell. The Selpes were not taking any chances. The door to his cell creaked open, and the two soldiers who had just been talking stepped in, guns raised.

“Stand up,” Delighted Gossip commanded him.

“And d-don’t try anything, mister,” stuttered Anxious.

Jason stood slowly, and they walked forward with caution, restraints in their hands. Delighted Gossip moved to bind Jason’s wrists, but before he could even open the handcuffs, they were around his own hands instead. Pushing through the painful buzzing that had just revved up inside his head, Jason stepped forward. He looked at Anxious and snarled. He didn’t even need to exert himself further. His stare alone had caused the man to pass out cold on the stone cell floor.

This had all transpired in mere seconds, so the Selpes outside hadn’t yet realized what was going on inside. Jason managed to throw half of them into his cell and lock the door behind them before they’d even clued in. He bit his lip and bore the headache for the short time it took to dispose of the others.

A bigger problem now stood before him, blocking the exit. The Elitions. Leaning against the wall for support, he looked up at them. He didn’t think he could fight ten at once, not in his current drugged state. But to his great surprise, he didn’t even have to. They merely stared at him for a moment, then turned and walked out of the prison. One—a muscular Elition woman with a long blue-black braid that was swung over her shoulder like a whip—stayed behind to hand him a slim silken envelope with his name written in flowery cursive letters on the front. Then, without a word, she followed behind her comrades.

Jason wasn’t delusional enough to believe they were afraid. They were letting him go. As he fled the prison, he couldn’t help but wonder why, even though such speculations made his head hurt. However, one thing he knew without a doubt: the handwriting on the envelope was Terra’s. They’d written to each other for so many years that he couldn’t mistake it. Had she helped him? Jason longed more than anything to tear the envelope open that very moment, but first things first.

Slipping out of the palace at Orion was far too easy to even strain his mind. Alarms were going off every which way, blaring through the corridors, but the soldiers were clumsy and slow, and he evaded them easily. As he left Orion, the city lights went dark. It was his parting gift to the Selpes, the sabotage of their fusion reactors. It would take them days to repair, days during which they would face darkness and cold nights without light or heat. It was a mild punishment, but a suitable distraction.

The Selpes had yet to feel his true wrath, but it was Isis that his mind dwelled upon. She couldn’t hide from him. No matter how many Selpes he had to go through, she would pay for her deception. He was going to kill her. And this time there would be no talking out of it.

But first he would find Terra, whatever it took.

These two things he vowed, shaking her envelope, then he tore the paper open and pulled out a single sheet. Its blankness was punctuated by only a single line: ‘Meet me in Eclipse’.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

~
Vengeance ~

526AX December 13, Orion

IT TOOK JASON two days to get back to Eclipse, and by then he was a functioning Phantom once more. But that didn’t mean he was at full strength. Weeks of sparse sleep and little food coupled with the drastic methods he’d used to expel the last remnants of the Selpes’ Inhibiting Serum from his body had taken their toll. Still, he was more than a match for most Elitions—including Isis. Killing her would be easy.

Ever since he had blacked out at her feet in the Gateway, he’d anticipated this day—the day vengeance would be satisfied. Ever since that day and through all those dark weeks inside that Selpe prison hole, he’d been defined by a sole purpose. His mind had imagined the day he would kill her. He thought about it every waking moment—and most sleeping ones, for thoughts of revenge had even penetrated his dreams.

As soon as he caught Isis’s scent on the trail ahead of him, moving toward Eclipse, he found his desire to see Terra overshadowed by his drive to hunt down that traitor. Jason was so consumed with rage that the compulsion to find her overwhelmed him. He sped along the unbroken path, pushing himself to close the distance between them. He
had
to kill her. Not because she’d betrayed him. No, he wasn’t so naive as to be a stranger to betrayal. In fact, he’d lived his share of it in his twenty years. Her lies and games were irrelevant here.

It had taken him awhile, sitting alone in that dark cell, to understand the complete nature of his rage. The truth was he was angry because he’d allowed her to betray him, that he’d been so dense as to believe the silken-sweet lies that flowed from her lips. And all because they’d come attached to a pretty face. He was better than that. At least he was supposed to be. And he would be so again as soon as this weakness was…neutralized. Yes, neutralized. He liked the sound of that.

In spite of himself, he still often relapsed into thinking of her as the sweet girl that had been her persona. That wouldn’t do. She was an obstacle, that was all—an obstacle that would be dealt with shortly.

She made it to Eclipse just hours before him, already trotting forward to pursue her next scheme. Perhaps, she’d come for him. Or Terra. Anger slathered his body like sweat, penetrating his core, pushing him to the edge of rage. He broke out into a sprint, knowing he had to make it to Isis before he lost all control. In a rage, he would kill her quickly. And that was too merciful an end for that viperous siren.

But finally he was there, upon the doorstep of the house she’d taken in Eclipse, on this stormy night in December. It had just begun to rain cold, icy needles. He could hear the crackle and pop of a fire inside. He could hear
her
. Well, feel the masked hint of her resonance actually. Already agitated, she’d grown suddenly nervous. She knew he was there. There was no point in sneaking about. They would duel, and he would win. She was no slouch, that was for sure, but she could not make the kill as he could. And so she would fall.

Jason swung the door open and stepped inside, shutting it quickly behind him. She sat on a sofa before the fireplace, weighed down by a stack of heavy blankets. Her eyes turned and met his, and with a weighted sigh she stood. The blankets fell from her like layers of discarded skin and slid to the floor. The first thing Jason noticed were her eyes, a brilliant shade of sapphire-blue only an Elition could boast of—and they were deep, tormented, knowing. She’d killed since last they met. Her innocence was lost. He could read it there in her eyes, plain and simple.

So shocked was he by this revelation that it took him a few seconds to recognize what he should have noticed first. A diamond ring sparkled upon her finger, reflecting the light of three dozen candles.

Jason stepped forward slowly, his eyes still fixed on her ring finger, his mind still churning through this new information. With impeccable grace, she moved to meet him halfway. Her fluffy blue socks seemed to dance across the old floor; the warped wooden panels didn’t even squawk out the slightest hint of a creak.

“Jason,” she said cautiously, her arms open in peace.

He was about to open his as well, when he tensed. He’d fallen for that before. She was so disarming.

“What is this new trick of yours?” he demanded. “What have you done with Terra?”

“Please, let me explain,” she pleaded, her eyes watering over.

“How dare you use her in your Selpe scheme
again
,” he said in as icy a voice as he could muster. He chided himself that it sounded far less frigid than it should have.