Rising Fury (Hexing House Book 1) (12 page)

When she finally got back to her residence, Thea checked her bells, swallowed a fistful of painkillers to quiet her outraged leg, and went directly to bed. She didn’t wake up until half an hour before her meeting with Alecto, which was just as well. Less time to be afraid.

While she walked to the Administration building—slowly, still stiff from the day before—she thought about all the things Alecto had said to her, the immediate dislike she’d taken to her that seemed, to Thea, to be more personal than just a bias against humans. What had she said? She’d mentioned Baird, so most likely she thought Thea was a shallow idiot. She’d also said Thea was weak. Repeatedly.

So go in strong. It’s the only way.

When she was ushered into Alecto’s office by the ever-disdainful Vlad, Thea started talking before Alecto even offered her a seat.

“You said I had a month to pass.”

“Yes, and you failed,” said Alecto.

“No, you didn’t say anything about how many times I could take the test, or whether I could retake it if I didn’t pass the first time. We had an agreement. You shook my hand. And that agreement was that I complete my transformation within a month. Well, I’ve got two days left.”

Once again, Thea was surprised by how buoyant Alecto’s laugh was, how little it suited the rest of her. “I’ll give you points for effort, but I’m afraid that’s not how it works. This is just—”

“This is just the test, I know,” Thea interrupted. “Persephone said that about fifty times during the drive home.”

“Then you shouldn’t need it repeated. I don’t believe you’re as stupid as you seem.”

Thea let the insult go. “But you don’t know how the test should be for humans,” she pointed out. “We transform differently. I’ve been told so a dozen times by Stefan, and others as well. You guys haven’t recruited a human in a long time. Not while you’ve been head of the colony, right?”

“Right.” Alecto crossed her arms and regarded Thea with irritation, but also grudging curiosity.

“So, you have to expect to build a little flexibility into your normal process,” Thea said. “A lot of things about my training have been different. I had to find more virtues and vices than a fury-born in my tests for the first two stages. There’s no reason to expect you wouldn’t have to change this test a little, too. And no reason you can’t.”

“It has nothing to do with whether I can. I see no reason to. The final test isn’t about inflicting a hex. You can learn that. But you can’t learn a fury’s temperament. That has to be part of the change, like your blood. Either you’ve got it by this stage, or you don’t.” Alecto shrugged. “And you don’t.”

“You can’t know that.”

“Of course I can. You showed me last night. I said from the first I thought your heart was too soft for this work, and you proved me right. Did you know that target you took pity on drives drunk, because he’s so sure he can handle things other people can’t? What happens when he runs a minivan off the road and kills a family? Who will your soft heart have helped then?”

“I understand,” Thea said. “I made a mistake. Which is why I need to retake the test.”

“It’s not our policy to allow people to take the test when they’re aware they’re being tested. That gives you an opportunity to harden your heart. What you do when you think nobody’s watching is the real test of your mettle.”

Thea mimicked Alecto’s shrug. “Like I said, these are unusual circumstances. You should be flexible. I’m sure you’ll agree that I have.”

Alecto glared at her and then, when Thea (with a great effort) didn’t react, finally smiled. It almost looked genuine. “I’ll give you this much, it took more hardness to come in here and confront me like this than I’d have thought you had. Maybe you’re growing.”

“Maybe I’m about done growing. How about a chance to prove it?”

Alecto sat down and tapped her fingers on her desk. Thea remained standing, and stopped herself just before she wiped her sweaty palms on her pants.

Finally Alecto said, “I’m going to let you retake the test. Once. Tomorrow. It’s your last chance. Are we clear?”

“Clear,” agreed Thea.

“And since you can’t do it unawares, I’m going to put some pressure on you instead. You’ll be observed.”

“You and Megaira and Graves again?”

“No.” Alecto frowned, then waved away some internal distraction. “I’m going to have Persephone come along, since she’s the head of Infliction. Graves won’t be there. He’s been busy with other projects this week.”

What kind of projects?

Thea bit the question back. She’d pushed Alecto far enough for one day, and as far as she could tell, Alecto was still suspicious of her. One thing at a time. All she had to do was pass this test. Harden her heart and deliver one hex to one no-doubt deserving soul who would learn from it and emerge a better person. Then she’d be a member of the colony. An equal. Trusted. Her probation would be over, and she’d be able to come and go and do things as freely as everyone else.

Just one hex away.

That night, Thea was dimly aware of dreaming of the macabre circus again, but she was so exhausted, and so deeply asleep, that it barely registered. There was circus music, or was it a bell? If it was a bell, that was important. She knew that much. But even for that, she couldn’t manage to rouse herself.

Then there was a pinch, a hard one. Someone must be trying to wake her up. Maybe they wanted her to know the bell was ringing.

She opened her eyes, then recoiled. Luckily, the fury hovering over her was rummaging in some sort of bag, and didn’t notice. Something on the intruder’s wrist caught the moonlight. Thea steadied her breathing and waited for her eyes to adjust. It was a turquoise bracelet. Just like the one she’d seen Hester wearing.

Maybe the transformation was making her even harder and stronger than she realized, because Thea never would have thought she’d have the nerves required for what she did next, which was: nothing.

The best way to find out what Hester was up to wasn’t to fight. It was to let her carry on. So Thea stirred slightly, as though in her sleep, shifting so she could better see the arm that had been pinched.

She closed her eyes again when Hester set down the bag. A rustling sound, the feel of the bracelet skimming her forearm. Another pinch. Thea managed not to jump much, and whatever reaction she did have could have easily been chalked up to a disturbance in her sleep. She was sure Hester was fooled. How could it possibly occur to her that a person would just lay there, pretending to be asleep, while she was being assaulted?

Thea waited a few more seconds, feeling a familiar pain in her arm. Finally, slowly, she opened her eyes the tiniest of slits. Enough to make out a needle in her arm, and a vial in Hester’s hand.

The vial was filling, not emptying. Hester was drawing Thea’s blood.

That was even more sickening than being injected with something. Thea felt a nearly unbearable sense of invasion. Flashes of This Unfortunate Incident rolled through her head, and it was all she could do to stay still.

Then it was over. More rummaging, then a change in the air. Hester had gotten up to leave. Thea waited until she was out of the bedroom before sitting up herself and quietly going to the window, which to her good fortune, overlooked the building’s entrance.

She knew she had no hope of following a winged fury. The best she could do was watch which direction Hester flew away in, and hope that told her something.

Hester, as tall as Thea remembered her, came out of the building carrying a black shoulder bag.
My blood is in there
. Thea breathed through her nausea and panic, and watched as Hester soared westward, over the pond and beyond the Colony Center.

Thea kept an eye on her for as long as she could, until Hester disappeared into the jungle of trees on that side of the campus. Then, before she had a chance to talk herself out of it, Thea quickly dressed, and set off to follow her.

Thea didn’t know how long she’d been wandering the woods. Nor was she sure she could get back. The moonlight was enough to see by, but it didn’t do her a lot of good.

She’d expected a little margin of trees around the campus, after which she’d hit the fence. But the fence never came. Maybe she’d just gotten off course somehow, and was walking diagonally across the stretch of trees rather than straight. On the other hand, the campus was enchanted and full of illusions. For all she knew, this was a full-blown forest that went on for miles.

There was no sign of Hester, or any other living thing apart from the rasping calls of frogs and the occasional hoot of an owl or flicker of a firefly. Thea was getting both thirsty and sweaty. The dead of night offered no respite from the August heat and humidity.

Eventually she saw something besides trees: a bulky shape looming ahead of her, in what barely qualified as a clearing. The trees had opened up without warning, so she was caught unawares, and for an insane moment she thought it was some sort of gigantic beast.

It turned out to be a small cabin. The door was intact but crooked. It gave only grudgingly when Thea pushed it. In the dark she couldn’t tell much about the interior—there were few windows—but the smell told her it was dusty and probably moldy as well.

Thea hesitated in the doorway, not wanting to disturb any animals—or worse—that might be lurking around. But if she hadn’t come out here to investigate, why was she here? She told herself to get a grip, and stepped forward.

She immediately tripped over something at shin-height. She fell, bending her wrist and banging her chin against a wooden floor that was, thankfully under the circumstances, soft with rot. She rolled over to face her attacker, and found a small, rectangular shape in front of her. It didn’t move. Thea reached out to touch it. Plastic.
Cold
plastic. She felt along the top and found a handle, which she lifted experimentally. The container wasn’t heavy. She brought it outside so she could have a look at it in at least somewhat better light.

It was a cooler. There was a piece of paper stuffed into a sandwich bag, taped to an ice pack on the top. It was too dark to read what it said, so Thea put it in her pocket and pushed the rest of the ice packs aside.

She found three small vials of what she was pretty sure was the blood that Hester had just taken from her, unless there was more than one fury creeping around the campus, stealing blood from people in the middle of the night. There was something else at the bottom of the cooler, a square box. Without thinking, Thea opened it.

She immediately sensed sulfur and smoke, and realized her mistake. It was a hex, and by the feel of it, a powerful one. It shouldn’t have tried to attach itself to her, with nobody there to inflict it, but somehow it did.

This didn’t seem like a good place to see just how far her hex resistance went. She mentally pushed back hard, and snapped the lid of the box closed. For a second, she thought she’d done it in time.

Then her stomach lurched, and her eyes burned. Thea put her hands over her face, trying to block out the smell that seemed to have gotten stronger when she closed the box, rather than weaker. She crawled away, bumped into something, and opened her eyes again.

A little girl in a bloody pink dress and white pinafore stood so close, Thea could see the scabs on her shins. The girl held a red balloon, and had no head.

But that didn’t stop her from talking. “You’re a coward,” she said.

Thea lost it.

Rage like she’d never felt before came out of nowhere and overtook her. Claws out, she pounced on the girl and tried to tear into her. When the girl faded away, Thea turned on whatever she could find instead. She clawed at trees, kicked the cooler, stomped on the vials of blood and smashed them into the dirt. She spun around, somehow knowing there was a fury behind her, although she didn’t register any sound of his approach.

She’d never seen him before. Another illusion? Did it matter?

Thea swiped at him as he came at her, but he was quicker, and more used to fighting with his claws. He deflected her blow with one hand while he ducked and scored her side with the other.

The claws felt real enough.

She was still enraged, but she was more focused now. Thea dropped to her knees and rolled away from her attacker, toward the scattered contents of the cooler. He was on top of her within seconds, but she’d found what she needed. She managed to free one hand for just long enough to open the box.

The hex once again did the impossible, and went after both of them at the same time.

But the other fury couldn’t resist the way Thea could. She managed to keep her head just long enough to crawl away.

He was screaming. Thea didn’t look back. Instead she followed a lanky clown, riding a lion, that had just appeared in front of her. The clown turned to grin at her as she dragged herself along the forest floor, and she saw that he wasn’t a clown at all, but a scarecrow. Straw was flying from his mouth. Then it wasn’t straw. It was a swarm of yellow jackets.

Once, while out in the peach orchard pretending to be explorers, Thea and Flannery had disturbed an underground nest of yellow jackets. Flannery, always the faster runner, had gotten away. Thea wasn’t so lucky. She wasn’t allergic to the stings, but when you had that many to deal with, a reaction was inevitable. At least one of the wasps got in her mouth as she screamed. Her throat had swollen nearly shut. It was the closest to death Thea had ever felt. Not even This Unfortunate Incident came close.

Flannery’s personal terror was the circus, but Thea’s was wasps.

The other fury’s screams died just as Thea’s rose up.

When she opened her eyes again, with no memory of having closed them in the first place, Thea was in a cool blue room, barely big enough to be called a bedroom. A ceiling fan whirled lazily above her head. She focused on it for a minute, timing her breaths to the sound of it. When she stopped shaking, she sat up, waited to see if she’d start shaking again, and when she didn’t, got up and opened the bedroom door. She hesitated as she regarded the cramped hallway. But the door hadn’t been locked, which seemed like a good sign. And if whoever had taken her out of the woods wanted to hurt or kill her, they could have done it while she was unconscious.

A figure appeared at the end of the hall, a fury bent with age. The light was behind her, so Thea couldn’t see her face, but her voice was unmistakably feminine.

“Awake, are you? Well, come on then, let’s see if we can get you straightened out.”

Thea came into an open space that seemed to serve as everything that wasn’t a bedroom or a bathroom, and regarded the wrinkled old fury. She wasn’t wearing an amulet, but Thea still couldn’t get much of a handle on her vices or virtues.

The old woman glared. “Don’t be trying your tricks with me, young lady.”

“Yes ma’am,” Thea said automatically. 

“Don’t be ma’aming me either. You can call me Nana. Aren’t you a little old not to have your wings yet?”

“I’ve only been trying for a month,” Thea protested, although she wasn’t sure why it should matter that Nana think her competent. “I’m a human recruit.”

Nana was the first person Thea had met at Hexing House who didn’t look surprised by this. She just gestured at a fluffy confection of an armchair, and Thea sat.

“What happened to you out there?” Nana asked as she settled into her own chair. “I heard the most horrible ruckus. Took me a while to find you, and by the time I got there, you were passed out, and nobody else around. Somebody attack you?”

Thea nodded, then shook her head. “You didn’t see anyone else? Any… bodies?”

Nana shook her head. “Nothing like that. Why, you kill somebody?”

“I guess not,” said Thea. “How did you get me back here?”

Nana laughed, a harsh, grating bark. “I’m stronger than I look, honey. Any permanent damage?”

“No ma’am, I don’t think so.”

“I told you, stop that ma’aming.”

“Sorry. Old habit, I guess. I’m a little disoriented.”

“I’ll bet you are. Who hexed you?”

“I don’t know. I… there was…” Thea tried to recall the details. The cabin. The cooler, the blood, the hex. And the note. There had been a note in the cooler, and she’d taken it. She almost tore it in her hurry to get it out of her pocket.

Version 8.6, try on subjects F and L in conjunction with serum 14,
it read.
Also enclosed is most recent sample from subject T.

Thea’s blood was the only blood in the cooler, which made her subject T.

Then subject F is Flannery.

“It was a drop,” she said. “A delivery.”

“You want to tell me what you’re talking about? Or you just going to keep muttering to yourself?”

Thea started, then smiled at Nana. “I’m sorry. I’m sounding crazy. I don’t really know what happened, but I think I was seeing things. I think I must have just lost my way and fallen down. Guess I hit my head or something.”

“Let me see that note.” When Thea hesitated, Nana grinned at her, her neat white teeth belying her age. “Good for you, not trusting strangers. Fold it, then. I don’t need to read the words. I want to read it the other way.”

Thea folded the note in half and gave it to Nana, who closed her eyes and hummed softly. After a few seconds she said, “The humming isn’t necessary, but people never believe I’m doing anything if I just sit here.” She opened her eyes and gave the paper back to Thea. “Whoever wrote that suffers from avarice, envy, and a touch of wrath, I’d say.”

“You’re psychic?”

Nana shrugged. “Like most furies, I see sins and virtues the best, but I get glimpses of other things, too.” She nodded at Thea. “You, for example. I see shadows around you.”

“Yeah,” Thea said with a laugh she didn’t feel. “Me too.” She ran her fingers across the back of the note before putting it in her pocket. “I’ve never gotten a vision from something like this. Only from the flower friends.”

“The who, now?”

Thea explained about
The Book of Flower Friends
. Nana looked impressed. “Might have to try something like that some time.”

“I don’t know,” Thea said. “It doesn’t seem to work anymore.”

“I would guess it worked in the first place because it was a piece of you. Could be it’s not anymore. Maybe you need to find a different piece.”

“Well, that shouldn’t be too hard.” Thea stood. “I feel like there are pieces of me everywhere.” Her sluggish mind was starting to move again. “Thank you so much for your help, but I really need to go. I have to get my head together and figure out— shit!”

“I beg your pardon?”

Too upset to apologize for her language, Thea hurried to what she hoped was the front door. “I have to take the exam! It’s my last chance!” Nana frowned in confusion as she shuffled toward her, so Thea added, “For my wings.”

“Ah!” Nana opened the door. The sky was brightening in the east. “You’ve got about an hour until daylight. Campus is that way.” She pointed at a path. “It’s not far. I don’t like to live close to all that bustle and noise, but I like to be close enough for visitors.” She gave Thea a tiny push outside. “Now you go on, and young lady? You remember what I said about the shadows. Do not trust anyone.”

Before Thea could respond to that, Nana closed the door in her face. It was just as well. Thea had a lot of questions, but she didn’t have a lot of time. She wouldn’t even be able to get breakfast, not if she wanted to shower first, and she was filthy, and definitely smelly. Not to mention tired and sore. She was in no condition to take a test, but she knew better than to ask Alecto for mercy.

Thea walked as fast as she could force her bad leg to go, wiping away tears of frustration and exhaustion. But it wasn’t long before those tears froze into something else.

There comes a time when even a coward has had enough. Once, her mother had beaten her nearly to death, and Thea had had enough. Many years later she was beaten again, and she’d woken up in a hospital room with a shattered leg and a collapsed lung. She’d had enough then, too.

Now, she’d been hexed, hurt, lied to, laughed at. Robbed of her own blood. She’d had enough. Thea’s heart hardened with outrage.

Fury, one might say.

She was on time for her exam. The case was a nearly five hour drive, in a big SUV with Alecto, Megaira, and Persephone. The target was being punished with a hex of compassion, for the sin of cruelty.