I See You (Oracle 2) (28 page)

Cy followed him to the floor, hitting the sorcerer with the stun gun a second time even as Blackwell’s dark blue magic snaked around Cy’s body, attempting to subdue him.

That left Ettie and I as the only ones watching through the open door into the lab while Kandy beat the life out of Beau.

Jumbo handcuffs appeared around Kandy’s furry ankles, attempting to snap into place. The marshal had apparently managed to fix them enough to trip the werewolf, though they still appeared to be broken.

Kandy stumbled, dropping Beau. He had reverted to his human form at some point.

I couldn’t tell if he was still alive or not as he hit the concrete floor. He didn’t move.

Kandy went down on her knees, turning her bleeding, blazing green eyes on the marshal. Henry had managed to prop himself up against the fallen table in order to throw his cuffs at her one last time.

Still on her knees, Kandy swiped at the sorcerer, but he flattened himself on the ground and she caught the edge of the table instead. The table spun, crashing against the counter and flipping back to slide to a stop in the center of the room.

As Henry tried to scramble away from her, Kandy opened her massive, toothy jaw to rip his head off.

Then instead of decapitating the marshal, the werewolf faltered. Her eyes rolled back in her head. She transformed into her human visage as she collapsed, slumping across Henry’s legs as he, too, fell to the ground.

“About time,” Ettie said. She marched back into the lab.

“What, are you crazy?” I shouted after her.

Then Cy hit me with the stun gun. Apparently, he’d managed to shake off enough of Blackwell’s spell to move.
 

I lost control of my mind and body. I fell on one knee.

Cy grunted, shook the stun gun, and jabbed it against my chest again.

Nothing happened.

The gun must have misfired.

I couldn’t move, couldn’t think, couldn’t even call up my magic.

But I could see. I could see Beau.
 

He was so far away. Across the room, through the door, and crumpled against the far wall. Crumpled in the broken concrete and glass … there … without me.

I didn’t want him to die. I didn’t want him to die alone.

I forced my shaking left arm to obey me.

I reached inside my satchel.

I sprang up onto my feet.

Cy hit me with the stun gun again.

It worked this time, shooting electricity into every limb and scrambling my brain. But not before I jabbed my tactical pen into the side of Cy’s neck with every last ounce of strength I could muster.

Then I fell.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I became aware of sounds first … glass crunching underneath footfalls … murmured voices. I tried to open my eyes, only to realize they were already open but hadn’t come into focus yet.

I heard something electric buzz. Then a pained grunt.

I tried to turn my head. My neck muscles obeyed me, but only for about an inch. It was enough to see Ettie, who had her back to me and was currently standing over Blackwell with Cy’s stun gun. Evidently, she had just stunned the sorcerer again.

More glass crunched, then someone muttered.

“Dad,” Ettie said. “Get those handcuff things. Dad. Are you even listening?”

“We’re going to have to kill them all,” Cy said from beyond my sight line, somewhere below my feet. He sounded as if he was struggling to get up off the ground. Hopefully from my tactical pen strike. Maybe some blood loss would be good for the asshole. Cleansing.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Ettie said. “What makes sense is to contain them until Byron gets here with his men. Lock them all up, quell their magic with the silver peace, and harvest their blood continually. We have more than enough space even if we lease out the first floor. And we’ll be obscenely rich.”

Wow. That didn’t sound at all insane. Or sociopathic, specifically.

Cy stepped into my line of sight to stare down at Ettie, who appeared to be digging around in Blackwell’s suit pockets but not finding anything. He lifted one of the crimson baggies to his face and snorted directly out of it. He still had the pen sticking out of his neck.

Ettie grimaced. “Jesus, Dad.”

Cy started trembling. Maybe even seizing. The whites of his eyes flickered through his stubby, red-rimmed eyelashes in a pained grimace that might actually have been ecstatic. He was enjoying the jolt.

Ettie shook her head. She moved on to checking Blackwell’s pants pockets but still found nothing.

I should ask Blackwell to magic up my satchel like his suit pockets. I was guessing Ettie was going to search me next, and I really, really didn’t want her touching my sketchbook. Though we’d have to make it out of here alive if that was going to matter. And ‘magic up’ wasn’t the correct term. My brain was still as scrambled as my limbs.

The far seer had indicated we’d survive. But he also might not have bothered mentioning the ‘possible imprisonment and slowly being drained of our magic’ part of that so-called survival.

“Ettie,” Cy gasped as he got himself under control again. “Ettie.”

“What?” she snapped.

My eyesight cleared further. My hands were tingling with increasing amounts of pain. Ettie’s eyes were red-rimmed like they’d been in the vision. She must have gotten a snootful when she’d hit Kandy with all the newly cooked crimson wolf.
 

That would explain her jerky movements. And even her bravado. Though that might just have been utter stupidity.

“We can’t contain this,” Cy said. “Too many Adepts involved —”

“Dad, this is just a bonus,” Ettie interrupted. “Think of how many strains we could produce now. I don’t know what sorcerer blood will be good for, but —”

“No, Ettie!”

She reeled back from Cy’s vehemence, more shocked and pissed off than angry.

“They’ll hunt us,” he said. “They’re probably hunting us now.”

“Who?” Ettie sneered. “Over these nobodies?”

“The pack … the sorcerers … the witches.” Cy took another snort of the crimson baggie. It was almost empty. He rubbed the inside of the bag around on his gums, then dropped it on the ground.
 

“That’s enough for now —” Ettie started to chastise her father.

He backhanded her across the face.

She fell sideways, down on one hand and pressing her cheek with the other. She met my gaze. Anger and mortification flooded her face.

“Go collect what you have,” Cy continued, as if he hadn’t just assaulted his daughter. Maybe he considered that a love tap. “I’ll finish these five off, soon as I get me more strength. Then we’ll torch the place.”

He pulled the second baggie out of his pocket.

“You’re going to die now, Ettie,” I said.

The statement came out as more of a threat than the warning I’d intended. But then, I didn’t have total control of my mind or mouth yet.

“What are you going to do, Rochelle?” Ettie taunted as she picked herself up off the ground and brushed off her white sundress. A fierce crimson blemish — the result of Cy’s slap — stained her left cheek. “You have no offensive power … I’ve already seen what you had to show me. Nothing.”

“I see you,” I whispered.

“So what?” she spat. “I don’t give a shit about what you see. Hell, I’ll harvest your blood and surround myself with seers. See if I give a shit about the future ever again.”

“I don’t see a future for you at all,” I said. “I never did. I just thought I could stop it. I thought I could save you from fate. But magic wants what it wills.”

“Oh, yeah?” She laughed. “Time for me to die? And who’s the instrument of my death now?” She straightened, flicking her hand to encompass the devastation in the room and all the fallen would-be heroes. “You?” She snorted. “I’ve got everything here under control.”

She walked away from me, crossing back into her destroyed lab and closing the door behind her with a flick of her foot.

Why close the door?
I scrunched my eyes, desperately trying to remember what was about to happen, desperately trying to regain control of my limbs.

Blood. Ettie wanted more blood. She wasn’t going to follow her father’s directives.

I looked up at Cy. “You need to stop,” I said as I watched him take the final snort from the second bag of crimson tiger. Or maybe he was finishing off with the crimson wolf.

He didn’t heed me. Maybe he couldn’t even hear me. He was already bleeding out of his ears. He turned to look down at Blackwell, then grunted. My pen was still sticking out of his neck. He reached up for it, as if he couldn’t remember what it was or how it got there.

“No, don’t,” I said.

Again he ignored me, yanking the pen out of his neck and dropping it to the ground. Blood started bubbling out of the wound.

Ettie was talking to someone in the other room, drawing both my and Cy’s attention. I could hear her intonation but not the words.

I remembered the vision.

Beau. She was talking to Beau.

He was still alive.
 

Hope flooded through my limbs. Maybe if I could move, maybe if I could get between Ettie and Beau …

I rolled over, ignoring how Cy was vibrating and foaming blood at the mouth beside me. I made it to my stomach. Then to my hands and knees.

I started crawling.

I looked up as Cy stepped past me and Blackwell, who was still prone to my right.
 

Then Ettie’s father inadvertently ripped the door off its hinges while trying to open it.

The room blurred around me, then came into sharp focus as I realized I was now moving through the first stage of Ettie’s final moments.

Through the door, she was standing in the middle of the lab, looking down at Beau with a syringe in her hand. She turned to frown at her father, who was barreling into the room in a stumbling, demented rage.
 

Cy’s eyes, nose, and ears were bleeding from the overdose he was currently riding. Blood was pumping out of the wound at his neck.

He grabbed the table that had fallen to its side during Kandy’s rampage, tossing it away so nothing was standing between him and Ettie.

No, not him and Ettie.

Him and Beau.

As in the vision, Cy didn’t know Ettie was in the lab. Perhaps he thought he was just following through with his plan of killing everyone and burning the evidence.

His daughter shrieked in indignation. She still couldn’t see it, still couldn’t understand that he didn’t see her, didn’t know her at all.

He took two steps closer, slowing down as the drugs melted his brain further. But the strength of a weretiger and a werewolf still raged through his limbs.

I kept crawling forward. But I was so, so slow.

Beau sat up.

Cy, snarling, honed in on his good-for-nothing stepson. Blood bubbled across his lips, splattering to the ground.

“Dad …” Ettie said.

“Step left, Ettie,” I cried as I crawled through glass and concrete and blood covering the floor between me and Beau. “One step left, Ettie.” I was on my knees already. I might as well beg.

In a final rally of rage, Cy charged the last few steps across the lab, tossing Ettie aside instead of going around her.

She flew sideways over the counter that held the remnants of her ‘great creation,’ crashing through the window and falling two floors to the sun-warmed asphalt below.
 

The fall didn’t matter, though. Ettie was dead before she hit the ground. She was dead before her body had cleared the window. The back of her skull didn’t leave any impression on the concrete window frame that her head hit as she smashed through the glass.

Beau slid his back up the wall, standing to meet Cy’s attack. The last bit of Cy’s brain dissolved as he lunged forward. He fell, arms still outstretched to strangle Beau. He didn’t move again.

Beau stumbled to the broken window, passing through the final echoes of the vision as he leaned across the counter to look down at Ettie lying dead on the breezeway.

I made it to my feet. Hearing Blackwell do the same behind me, I turned to catch the sorcerer’s gaze.

He scanned the lab around me, nodded, then brushed his fingers over his amulet underneath his shirt. He disappeared.

I followed Beau to the window, not fully in control of my limbs yet. I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and pressed my face against him, seeing echoes of the fulfilled vision as it repeated on the back of my eyelids.

Then I looked out the window.

Below us, Blackwell was bending over Ettie, who was sprawled across the sun-softened, newly paved asphalt between the buildings. The sorcerer looked up at us in the window. He shook his head.

Beau let out a strangled cry, as if he’d been waiting for this confirmation of Ettie’s death. He turned away from the window, sagging against the counter.

“Rochelle.” He shuddered, pressing his hand over his eyes. “Is that it? Is that all you see?”

“I see you, Beau. I still see you.”

His shoulders shook. Sobbing silently, he sank into a crouch next to the counter. I wrapped my hand around the back of his neck. He pulled me to him and pressed his face hard — too hard — against my belly. Heat boiled off him. He was sick, fighting the effects of the drugs.

Blackwell appeared in the room. His white dress shirt wasn’t so pristinely clean and pressed now. His neck was badly blistered from the stun gun. He cast a grim gaze around the destroyed lab, taking in Cy, Kandy, and the marshal on the floor.

“Damn,” he said. For a moment, I thought he might be concerned about Kandy and Henry. Then he added, “I’ve got the girl’s body cloaked for now, but we’re going to need witches to clean up this mess. Which will put me in debt to the Convocation.”

“Make it my debt,” I said.

“Our debt.” Beau lifted his face away from my belly to speak.

Blackwell eyed us. Then, nodding, he pulled out his phone as he spun back toward the door. “Stay away from the werewolf until you know she’s okay. And Rochelle? If you insist on calling attention to yourself in this manner, it will be more difficult to protect you.”

“Protect me from who?” I called after him.