Prophecy (Residue Series #4) (26 page)

I channeled harder, fought for any measure of additional speed I could summon from the Vire, and still his velocity felt like dripping molasses.

“Can’t you go any faster!” I yelled down to him. “You should be ashamed!”

The Vire didn’t respond, other than making another attempt to reach up and grab me. He continued to flail as we made our way through the hole and into daylight.

As my eyes swept the horizon for any sign of Caligula, another object shot past me. This one was the same, a blend of black and white. It didn’t seem to be aimed at me, so I continued my search only to find the wrong two people coming at me.

“Jocelyn…” I began, but she soared right by me, grabbing my arm.

“They went this way,” she called out, charging toward the middle of the provincial city.

Theleo, who positioned himself beside me, tipped his head at the Vire whose foot I still held. “Are you going to bring him, too?”

Despite the situation, I laughed. Shouting down to the man, I apologized before unwrapping my fingers from his ankle. “I hope you can catch yourself.”

He plummeted, screaming shrilly until colliding with a roof below.

I caught Theleo watching and shrugged aimlessly. And for the first time since I’d met him, he actually chuckled. It didn’t last long, though. A few seconds later, we found Maggie and Eran in hand-to-hand combat with Caligula in what appeared to be the city commons.

Just as we were set down, Vires flooded the park. Preoccupied with protecting Jocelyn, I lost sight of Maggie and Eran in the disarray. Theleo and I plowed through the Vires, taking them down one, two, sometimes three at a time. And then I turned in time to see Eran shove Caligula against a building and pin him there as Maggie took his head and slammed it into the building. Caligula went limp and his body slid to the ground as Eran stepped back.

I let out a sigh and Jocelyn gave me a questioning stare.

“Maggie,” I said by way of an explanation. “She has got to stop doing that…”

Knowing me well enough, Jocelyn understood and I heard her giggle behind me as we made our way across the commons. By the time we reached them, all that was left of Caligula was the metal armor he’d been dressed in.

“Blunt force,” Maggie said, breathing heavily from her exertion. “This one was susceptible to blunt force.”

Recalling the voodoo priestess’s guidance, I realized she was mentally checking off the list of each Seven’s vulnerability.

“Makes sense,” I agreed. “His armor was designed to protect him from it.”

Eran laughed heartily. “Should have known to use something stronger when going up against Maggie.”

Jocelyn and I quietly agreed with a nod, observing the results of the execution.

“All right,” I mumbled, articulating my thoughts out loud. “That leaves glass, fire, ice, and…an empty bowl.”

But before we could get to the rest of the Sevens, we needed to deal with the ones defending them.

“Should we be expecting the Vires from the monastery?” I asked, searching the alleyways and sky for any sign of them.

“Not any time soon,” Eran replied, smirking.

He was feeling confident, which was good, so long as it didn’t turn into arrogance. Because I found that we weren’t alone after all.

Above the roof tops and on the streets next over from the commons, bodies could be seen flying. But these weren’t Vires coming for us to condemn Jocelyn to death or kill all of us on the spot. They were too busy, preoccupied by a wave of unexpected reinforcements.

“Stay with me,” I instructed Jocelyn and she nodded.

Then we were running, down the alleyways, into the maelstrom, unprepared for the force that met us. I was slammed into at the same time Jocelyn’s body dropped to the ground. Over my attacker’s shoulder I saw her go down and it made me furious.

My assailant continued his shove until I was bent over a fence, my back arching, making it difficult to raise my fist. Sweeping the legs of my attacker from under him, he began to collapse, but I held him up, swinging him around. He landed on the corner of the building next to us.

And then I noticed something was off.

He wasn’t wearing a Vire uniform. A quick look around told me that none of these people were dressed in Vire uniforms. The two who had Jocelyn pinned to the brick sidewalk were in overalls. Maggie and Eran were fending off boys in jeans and t-shirts. The rest, coming to these peoples’ aid, were in black cloaks and street clothes.

This meant one thing: They were Dissidents.

Unfortunately, my fist was already in motion with the force of my body behind it, urging it on. There was no stopping it now, but I could divert it from its intended path. The flat of my fingers hit just to the left of his head and in those brief seconds, when his eyes opened and his contorted face fell in surprise at my apparent mistake, he stared back at me in shock.

“We’re with you,” I growled, disregarding the pain of slamming my fist into an immobile object.

At that same point in time, the man recognized me. “Nobilis?” he mumbled under his breath, his eyes growing wide.

Taking advantage of his surprise, I spun around and went after Jocelyn. After pulling the two kids off her, I stepped in front to prevent them from coming at her again.

“Back off!” I roared, ready with closed fists in case their adrenaline got the best of them.

But they did stop, one blinked and the other tilted his head to the side.

They’re recognizing me
, I thought.

“Jocelyn, are you hurt?” I asked without turning away.

“No,” she muttered. “They hit like girls.”

I stifled a chuckle as the older boy evaluated me.

Then he lunged, shoving me back, baring his teeth like a rabid dog. “Deserter!” he snarled.

In the distance I heard someone shouting. “They’re retreating!” And a second later, it was restated with a victorious tone. “They’re retreating!”

The announcement didn’t seem to faze the boy, who wrestled me from the wall, working at getting me in a headlock. He was skilled, but not enough. I slipped from his grip several times until I found the opportunity to push him back.

Jocelyn, with that spark I love so much, kept trying to intercede, but Theleo held her back.

I’d have to thank him for that later.

The boy came at me again, but I slid to the side, free from his angle. He lunged again, and still he missed me. With his lips curled back in fury, his body bowed, and his eyes determined, I thought there was a decent chance he’d try it again, and then I heard Hans.

“You stop that, boy,” he shouted with that unmistakable Norwegian accent.

I never would have expected it, but the boy stood, rising up from his crouch.

I did the same, pausing to see if his reaction would last. It did, and I strolled to Hans, who was standing with his fists propped on his hips.

“Hans,” I acknowledged.

His glare didn’t veer from the boy, but he did extend a hand in greeting.

I shook it and then repositioned myself next to him, folding my arms across my chest.

“Your son?” I asked.

“Mmmhmm,” he grumbled.

I nodded.

Hans marched to the boy, grabbed him by the ear, and hauled him back to me. “He’s…ambitious.”

I held back my laughter, considering his son looked embarrassed enough. “It’s a good trait…that can be put to good use.”

Hans’ frown didn’t diminish. “What did you have in mind, Nobilis?”

I looked around, noting that Maggie and Eran now stood with Jocelyn and Theleo. Behind them and down the street, more Dissidents were arriving. But they wouldn’t be enough. Not if they intended to fight the growing Vire forces.

“If you’re serious about defending yourselves against The Sevens, you’ll need to train.”

Hans considered my point and nodded.

“And if you want to train, you’ll need to do it discreetly.”

“Mmmhmm. Ya have an idea?”

“I do,” I said, and then I explained how to find the bayou village.

By the time I was finished, we had a solid group of Dissidents listening. This would have been my chance to redeem myself, to appease their fears that I would use them in a personal war and then desert them again. As it turned out, that wasn’t necessary. Hans did it instead, applying his gruff, no-nonsense demeanor to explain how I was helping to quietly take out The Sevens, risking my life for theirs, and if that didn’t prove my trustworthiness he didn’t know what would. He motioned to Caligula’s now decomposed body, the wings shriveled and unidentifiable alongside it, as proof. When he was finished, there wasn’t a single face in the crowd with a hesitant expression.

I thanked Hans, told him that we’d be expecting him, and turned to Jocelyn.

I wanted to tell her how impressive she had been today, how sexy she looked with her tousled black hair, and how incredibly thankful I am that she is still here with me. I wanted to take her and kiss her and-

My heart stopped, skipped a beat, and restarted again.

And she had done that very thing to me just a few minutes earlier. She had touched me without consequence.

“What?” she asked, seeing my expression change.

My lips lifted in a relieved smile. “I’ll show you when we’re alone.”

Her eyebrows crossed, but she didn’t press the issue.

“We’ll need to bury the Dissident bodies,” I said. Maggie and Eran, who were curved into each other’s arms, and Theleo, who was next to them, nodded.

Someone in the crowd called out. “What about the Vires?”

I turned around, searching for the man who asked this question. He was standing in the middle of the crowd that had formed, face bloodied, a cut along his chin that would ultimately become a scar. Here was a man who had just fought Vires to save his life and the lives of his loved ones, and he was asking what kind of burial we should give those people who had done this to him.

It was time for us to stop caring what The Sevens thought of us. It was time for us to end the fear of their repercussions that drove every choice we made. My answer, in part, was based on these beliefs. The other part was because I just didn’t give a damn.

“Let The Sevens deal with them.”

A gasp stirred the crowd, and I thought it was out of shock or upset over my indifference. But when Jocelyn lifted us into the air, I looked down to see something we hadn’t in far too long, something The Sevens never tolerated:

Boldness. The steely-eyed, guts made of concrete kind of boldness.

And this was good, because we were going to need it.

There were only four of The Sevens left now, Jocelyn and I still lived, and that knowledge combined must send a blunt, cold point through their hearts. While this was exactly where we wanted to be, it was also the time when our enemies would up the ante.

Now, we were more at risk than ever before.

16
ARMY

T
RAVERSING THE WORLD WAS RAPIDLY EXHAUSTING
my sense of reality, blurring the line between day and night. Even with the sun overhead while landing in Maggie and Eran’s backyard, it all felt surreal, like a light bulb that was never turned off. Fatigue is the cause, corrupting my sense of what is real and what is not. The only way to overcome it is to rest, but I wasn’t in the mood for it.

When Jocelyn and Maggie headed for the stairs, I stopped on the step into the kitchen. Through the door the relieved faces of those living in the house followed the girls. And I knew they had waited up for us.

Still, I turned back, weighed down with heavy thoughts, scanning the backyard without actually seeing any of it.

“Probably better get some sleep,” Eran said, coming up behind me, “before we head for the bayou.”

I took in a deep breath, enjoying the smell of the wet earth. Its aroma reminded me of renewal, rebirth, a chance to start again. That was a nice change from the death and destruction we’d been experiencing lately.

“I’ll wait for you all.”

Eran appeared next to me, arms folded across his chest. “Then I’ll wait with you.” A few seconds passed, before he interrupted the silence. “It’s easier to solve a problem when more than one mind is working on the solution.”

I shook my head. “The issue is my state of mind.”

He laughed once, deeply, and confirmed, “Wondering if you’re a lunatic?”

“No, not really.”

“Good, I’d need to call Ezra out here. That’s more her line of work.”

I tipped my head back and chuckled. “I’m fighting pessimism.”

He absorbed my message and responded with a grave nod.

“If it was me, alone, walking into the conflict with The Sevens and their Vires, I would welcome the fight, encourage it, even provoke it if there was a chance.” I paused. “You’re probably thinking now is the time to send Ezra out.”

He smiled, although the sincerity of our topic didn’t allow for a laugh. “No, Maggie and I have seen what they do, we know what they are, and if I were in your position I’d want the same.”