Prophecy (Residue Series #4) (5 page)

I swung around and bent over the table, searching for the face beneath the layer of caked blood. Eyes stared back at me with a mixture of anticipation and recognition, blue in color, and, thankfully, not Jocelyn’s. Relief washed over me, but only for as long as it took me to become remorseful for feeling it while taking in this person’s injuries.

The nose and one ear had been removed. The Vire had evidently begun working on the right eye judging from the loss of its eyelid. The person’s skin was charred, remnants of an incantation that seared the outside of a person’s organs.

I could think of no other time in which the desire to be a healer had been stronger than this very moment.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Th-Th-Thib…”

“Take your time,” I said, although he didn’t seem to have much of it left.

He must have sensed it too because he forced the name from his lips, blood sputtering as he said it.

“Thibodeaux.”

The result of his effort sent him into a coughing fit, spraying more blood, which I didn’t fully register because my awareness was on his name.

“Thibodeaux?” I repeated quietly.

There was a reason this man had recognized me. He was the same one I went to every year for school supplies, the one whose prominent family owned warehouses worldwide of rare and distinguished artifacts, the one who had given Jocelyn The Rope of The Sevens.

I had known him my entire life, and yet I couldn’t recognize him.

The Sevens used various methods to accomplish what they needed, but they had their favorites. La Terreur, an extreme type of sickness that set in just before death, had been used on the penal colonies in the past; hanging was common in the Ministry’s main courtyard; and the traditional home invasion wasn’t rare throughout the provinces. But this…I had never seen this…. The Vires who had done this to him weren’t interested in making him an example, as was their usual purpose. No, Mr. Thibodeaux was a Dissident, and he had been tortured for information.

“I’m getting you out of here,” I stated, and instantly started freeing him from the ropes strapping him to the table.

But his head rolled back and forth. He was limited to that one method to tell me to stop.

I opened my mouth to argue with him when our eyes met, and I saw the life behind his ebb away.

I didn’t hesitate, turning toward the other body slumped against the wall behind the door, searching the face for any sign of Jocelyn. When I realized it was a woman, my heart stopped. The long black hair matted with blood across her face, covering it almost entirely, sickened me and sent me into a rage as I crossed the room.

A single word escaped, although in my haze I didn’t process right away that it came from me.

“No…NO!”

I reached her and fell to my knees, my hand sweeping the strands from her face as I descended, my eyes franticly searching for any sign of life, any at all.

“No.” My throat closed off, a sob constricting it. The rest of my breath was released in a moan that seemed to echo its way through my chest.

My fingers still held back the hair that clung to her skin, thought it was parted just enough to expose her features. My hand was shaking, but it was removed enough to allow me to see her clearly. I knew every fine detail of Jocelyn’s features, the curve of her cheekbones, the subtle indentations at the sides of her lips, the delicate slope of her nose. I memorized her from the second she turned to face me in Olivia’s store on the day we met, and it was this memory that was conjured as I inspected the face of the woman before me.

Only the long, narrow nose of Mrs. Thibodeaux made me breath again. It emerged from behind her hair, crusted with pus and dirt.

I withdrew my hand while settling back on my heels.

The two of them had died together, tortured in a small room for information they probably never had in the first place.

Damn it
, I thought wearily.

The grief I felt washed away by what I could only describe as hatred, directed solely at the seven individuals safely in their living quarters elsewhere in this fortress while the Thibodeauxes were tortured to their last breath. I had seen enough blood spilled for several lifetimes now, but still I coveted the blood of seven more. Rising to my feet, I fought the incredibly strong urge to leave the room with vengeance as my goal.

Not yet,
I told myself.

Jocelyn…

Placing my hand against the wall, I appreciated the feel of the cool rocky surface. My palm flattened as much as possible to take advantage of its chill, which I used to distract me from my emotions.

I can’t allow my anger too much influence over me. That’s how people die. And if I die, Jocelyn dies.

Whether it was the severity of that concept or the cut of the rock against my skin, I’ll never be sure. But I do know it was the flattening of my hand, that simple act that told me what I needed to know.

With my head down, I didn’t see it at first. My fingertips registered it before my mind.

The rock wall is dry
, I realized,
bone dry
.

Jocelyn was being kept in a cell surrounded by dewy rock, moist enough to glisten, to reflect back. I knew this because I had seen her memory of it. What hadn’t registered at the time was that only one element leaves a reflection…

My head snapped up.

Water.

As if fighting its way in, the memory of Lacinda dragging Jocelyn on and off the stage in Mexico City hit me with the force of a sledgehammer.

Lacinda…water…

Lacinda lives on the cliff of the Oregon coastline…

That cliff borders the ocean…

Yes
, I muttered to myself, finally reaching the conclusion my mind was leading me to.

Jocelyn was being held at Lacinda’s
…

I paused, my muscles tensing.

Beneath
Lacinda’s house.

Bastards.

If The Sevens hadn’t led us to her home under the false pretense of agreeing to a truce weeks ago I wouldn’t have put it all together. But they had…and I now knew exactly where to find her.

Rapidly straightening to a standing position, I headed for the door, plans I’d designed to escape the Ministry returning to me, the desire to get to Jocelyn overpowering. But as I stepped in front of it, a movement on the opposite side brought me to a halt. Ironically, I processed the shape of the person coming through the door at exactly the same time as he did with me.

There was no hesitation from either of us.

Our fists crossed in the air, making contact with each other’s jaws. Our heads simultaneously whipped to the side. Just as I was pushed back into the room, I hurled him to the side, against the wall to the left. From there, the struggle to gain ground over the other sent us over chairs, to the ground, and finally slamming into the wall opposite the door.

Our fists pulled back with equal speed, aiming at the other’s face. And that was when we came to a stop.

“Eran Talor?” I muttered, sucking in a deep breath, refilling my lungs.

He blinked, seeming to be just as surprised as me. “Jameson?” He said this in an accent, which I always assumed to be English.

“What are you doing here?” I asked in a rush.

Laughing through a scoff, as if we hadn’t been about to inflict serious bodily damage on each other, he said casually, “I was going to ask you the same thing.” We released our grips and stepped back, each of us taking a quick glance at the door to ensure no one else was coming through. “I came for Magdalene. The damn…” His face hardened, and I sensed the frustration he was going through. “They’ve got her pretty well hidden.”

“Yeah, they have a talent for that…,” I mentioned, noting that we’d come to the mutual conclusion without much data that ‘they’ were The Sevens. “What kind of business do they have with Maggie?”

He ran his fingers through his hair, a clear sign of agitation. “She can harm them, and they know it.”

I interpreted that to mean…“So they want her dead.”

“They want her out of the way,” he clarified.

“In order to do what?” While I had my own beliefs about their end goal, I wanted to hear his version. Right now, there was overwhelming evidence that he knew more about them than I initially thought.

He stared back at me, unflinching, as he answered. “The Sevens aren’t who they seem to be. They aren’t like one of us.” Pausing, he reconsidered that concept and corrected himself. “They aren’t like one of you.”

My eyebrows furrowed in confusion. “You know about our world?”

He stared at me, inquiring, and again I got the feeling he knew more than he was letting on. “Your world?”

I admitted to myself that it was an odd way for me to put it, and then shoved the thought aside. A strong part of me wanted to tell him. While knowing the jeopardy of admitting the truth, I reasoned that Eran was locked inside the headquarters of our world’s most vicious enemy. He had a right to know what he was up against. “The witch world,” I added, leaving him to figure it out from there.

“Right…,” he muttered. “That’s what you call yourselves.”

“Yes.” To be clear, I said, “We don’t advertise it.”

“No, I haven’t seen anyone wearing pointy, black hats or carrying wands.”

This time I did laugh, at the irony.

The fury beneath his expression remained unchanged. “Regardless, I haven’t been fooled into thinking those in your world aren’t lethal.”

“We can be,” I said, and immediately became reserved. “How do you know so much about us, Eran?”

Diverting his attention briefly to the ceiling where footsteps loosened pebbles of rock down over us, he hesitated. When they faded, he confessed, “Magdalene and I are well aware of what you all are capable of. We studied your Vires, this place you call the Ministry, those who you call The Sevens. And what I said still stands. The Sevens aren’t one of you.”

“Yeah,” I replied, my voice thick with sarcasm, “that I know. What I can’t figure out…is who you are. Why are you stalking The Sevens, and what does Maggie have to do with them?”

He opened his mouth to speak when the rumbling of footsteps below us drew his attention.

“They’re getting closer,” he determined.

“Did you come alone?”

He nodded. “You?”

I gave him the same response.

“So it’s pretty much the two of us,” he deduced.

“Against an army of Vires,” I concluded. “Excellent.”

He didn’t seem alarmed, which struck me as a bit insane. Instead, he looked pointedly at me. “You still haven’t told me what
you
are doing here.”

“Was just getting to that,” I said, and then paused, noting the paradox of our situation…

We’d both come to find the woman we love.

“I’m here for Jocelyn.”

His eyes narrowed. “So they have her, too,” he muttered and shook his head. “What do they want with her?”

“To use her.”

Eran didn’t show any sign of surprise hearing this, but my follow up statement caught his attention.

“The two of them are together.”

His eyes widened. “Magdalene and Jocelyn? How do you know?”

We paused to listen as the rhythmic pounding of a unit’s footsteps passed. They now came from the floor above, but I had a feeling they would be at our door soon. Getting back to the conversation, I lowered my voice. “They’re not here.”

“Where then?” His voice came out as a demand, harsh and tense, in a manner I identified with.

It would have been too difficult to explain. So my reply was short, and came out as a command. “Follow me.”

We made it halfway across the room before we were stopped.

The faces of three Vires appeared in the hallway, Stalwart, the meaty one from the mess hall, being the first. He stepped inside the room as the remaining two followed. My muscles stiffened, readying for the brawl while Eran came around my side and settled into a fighting stance, just as the last Vire to enter turned and closed the door.

Before we could be locked in, though, the room broke into chaos.

I still held the dagger used against the Thibodeauxes, and brought it up to Stalwart’s neck, shoving him against the wall. Eran somehow found a sword and placed the tip of it into the second Vire with the blade running along the neck of the final Vire in Stalwart’s contingent.

Their eyes were alert but there was no fury in them. And I didn’t expect there to be. Vire’s were trained from an early age to suppress their emotions.

“Sheath your weapons,” Stalwart commanded in a low, deep rumble.

“That’s not going to happen,” I said, keeping my blade against his neck.

“Men, sheath your weapons,” he repeated in a way that didn’t seem to be directed at me or Eran. The grating sound of metal against metal filled the room and ended suddenly, leaving a void of uncomfortable silence.