Solatium (Emanations, an urban fantasy series Book 2) (11 page)

I stuffed the anger down. Seconds valued human ignorance, not human life. I knew that. It was pointless to dwell on it. I couldn’t change it.

“So we need to find the youngling and try to communicate with it, right?”

“Nope,” Theo said. “We need to get you behind the estate’s barrier and keep you there. End of story.”

Andy nodded.

“But you heard what Sturluson said. It’s too strong. You guys can’t take it down. And you might not even need to — if it really is here to contact me, maybe we can get rid of it peacefully.”

Andy shrugged. “We’ll pass her info along to Mr. Yellin. Hopefully he’ll be reasonable about it. If not, we’ll do our best.”

I felt cold.

“Guys —”

“Beth, this is what we do,” Andy said. “Seconds are dangerous. Bad situations happen. We don’t have any choice.”

My eyes prickled. I couldn’t lose my friends. Andy, Theo — they were what had made my situation sort of okay. Without them, I’d be all alone with my losses — my home, my family, my freedom, my humanity. Standing against all that, I had these few people. I needed them, and they needed their lives. They deserved better than a suicide mission.

I thought about it. A plan formed.

“Yellin’s afraid of me. I’ll scare him into taking me along. I can at least feed power to a defensive barrier.”

“Absolutely not,” the brothers said with one voice.

Sometimes they were on exactly the same wavelength.

“No, seriously. I’m sure he’ll cave if I threaten him.”

Theo laughed humorlessly. “Come on, Beth. First of all, Gwen may not have been right that you’re stronger than he is. Second, even if you’re theoretically stronger, you can’t use what you have. Third, Yellin’s not the only Second in that house. The others will back him up. And last but not least, if Lord Cordus gets back and finds you’ve been uncooperative, there’s going to be hell to pay.”

Andy leaned over the front seat. He looked unusually serious.

“It’s too dangerous, Beth. You’re not coming along. Period.”

“Fine, whatever.”

Theo arched an eyebrow at me in the rearview. “‘Fine, whatever’? We’re looking for a ‘Yes, sirs, Theo and Andy, sirs.’”

“Yes, sirs, Theo and Andy, sirs.”

Andy studied my face, frowning. I smiled and tried to look obedient.

Brooklyn’s last traffic light released us, and Battery Tunnel closed in around the car, surrounding us with the dull roar of trapped road noise.

We drove the rest of the way in silence. When we got home, the guys walked me to my room. Andy ruffled my hair and smiled before leaving, but I could tell he was troubled. They both were.

I’d been so tired earlier, but by the time I was finally in bed, I’d gotten my second wind. I lay there, Sniggles the bear tucked under my arm, thinking through Theo’s objections.

What mattered wasn’t whether I was actually stronger than Yellin. What mattered was whether he
thought
I was stronger. And I bet he did. Why else would he have reacted that way when I got angry?

And yeah, I couldn’t control my gift yet. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t
use
it. I was pretty sure it’d come out if I was frightened enough. That had happened once, with shocking results.

Yellin must know about that event. Cordus wouldn’t have turned me over to a trainer who didn’t know essential info about me — like that I could incinerate the city. Or maybe irradiate it.

If Kibwe Okeke or Elanora Wiri showed up to enforce Yellin’s orders, well, then I’d back down.

As for Cordus being pissed off at me, I’d cross that bridge when I came to it.

I flushed, thinking about my dreams and about the last time I’d seen him. Whatever the Cordus bridge was, I had a feeling I’d already crossed it.

For a moment, I allowed myself to think not just about my desire, but about my feelings. Truth was, I missed him. What I missed was that he made me feel safe. At some level, I was sure he’d protect me. Not because he loved me — I wasn’t foolish enough to think that. And not because protecting those who serve you is the right thing to do. That rationale seemed, if anything, more naive than the first. No, it was because I was valuable to him. He would protect me the way someone protects their best piece of jewelry or the car they’ve saved for ten years to buy.

Being someone’s prized possession didn’t exactly give me the warm-fuzzies. Nevertheless, the protection that came with it felt certain. Given how radically my world had shifted over the last few months, having one sure thing was a big deal. A very big deal.

I tried not to think too far beyond that. Not about all the people who weren’t valuable enough to protect. Not about the reasons I was so valuable to him. Not about what he might someday make me do. I knew my safety, such as it was, had a terrible price tag.

“You visited Miss Sturluson? Without permission?”

Yellin stared at first one of us, then another. I tried to blink the gritty feeling out of my eyes and stared back at him. I was really tired, but this was not the time to lose focus.

Theo cleared his throat. His worry was palpable. This wasn’t going well. Yellin seemed unable to process the basic fact of what we’d done.

“Yes, Mr. Yellin. As I was saying, Miss Sturluson revealed that another much newer fragment of the Thirsting Ground is in the city and that it is pursuing Miss Ryder.”

“In the middle of the night? Without permission?”

Theo shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Yes, sir. Miss Sturluson said she herself felt pulled to Miss Ryder. She guessed the pull would be much stronger for the youngling fragment.”

“Just the three of you?”

Theo sighed, giving up on the effort to convey information.

“Yes, sir, just the three of us.”

Yellin kept staring at us. Slowly, a red flush hop-scotched up his neck, and a vein began to throb at his left temple.

“That is … that is …” His eyes roved around the wall behind us, as though he might find some words up there. Eventually he did. “That is unacceptable.”

“Mr. Yellin,” Theo tried again, “we had an opportunity we felt we couldn’t pass up, so we took it. If I could just tell you what Miss Sturluson said —”

“Unacceptable! Unacceptable!”

He actually pounded on his desk.

Watching the unfolding temper tantrum, I felt even surer that Gwen’s idea was right. Yellin looked like someone who’d been forced to lead a group of people who were stronger than he was. He didn’t have the power to back up his orders. Insubordination terrified him because there was nothing he could really do about it.

With that certainty came insight: he was afraid all the time, afraid that he’d lose control of us, afraid he’d fail.

I understood that. I’d spent most of my life afraid, either in the midst of a panic attack or afraid one was about to hit me. I knew how constant fear could warp a person.

We needed a different approach. I mustered my smallest, most contrite voice.

“Mr. Yellin, we apologize for not coming to you immediately when Miss Sturluson called. Since we went off on our own, now we have information we’re not sure what to do with. We really need your help.”

Yellin’s eyes jerked over to me, and I shrank down in my chair, trying to look small and submissive.

“Please, Mr. Yellin. We’re alone and afraid. What will we do if you don’t help us?”

At first I was afraid I’d piled it on too thick, but it seemed to work. Slowly, Yellin mastered himself. When he spoke again, his voice was still rough with anger, but the hysterical edge was gone.

“Very well. Tell me what Miss Sturluson said. I will see what can be done.”

I repeated what Theo had been trying to say for the last ten minutes, going back and adding detail as Yellin asked questions. As the minutes passed, his interjections went from angry to testy to thoughtful. Apparently we’d gained some valuable information.

He was particularly interested in the tale Sturluson had told of the Thirsting Ground’s origin. When I asked him why, he said that, so far as he knew, no one had heard it before.

“When my lord told me I would be coming to this area of the First Emanation, I made a small study of the Thirsting Ground. Very few fragments of the Ground are known to exist outside the isolate. Miss Sturluson is by far the largest and is the only one to display individual sentience. She is a matter of great interest to scholars, but she has rarely shared her knowledge. In fact, most had concluded she had little memory of her origins. Apparently that is not true. Fascinating.”

Andy cleared his throat impatiently. “So what do we …”

Theo touched his brother’s arm, silencing him. Theo was probably thinking along the same lines I was: we needed to let Yellin come to his own conclusions. If we pushed him and he felt cornered, things wouldn’t go well.

We waited as Yellin frowned and thought and frowned some more.

Finally he said, “This is a difficult situation. We cannot permit the fragment to continue hunting humans who will be missed. Questions are already being asked. But Miss Sturluson is likely correct that destroying it would require the capacity of a power. If my lord were here …”

Yellin blinked rapidly.

He was moved almost to tears by Cordus’s absence. How astonishing.

He straightened, regaining possession of himself. “We will use the carven strait the traitor Graham Ryzik discovered in the spring. The isolate will contain the fragment until my lord returns and can destroy it.”

I was horrified.

“No way! That isolate is full of living things. The fragment would destroy everything there. Plus,” I said, overriding Yellin’s attempt to interrupt me, “if Sturluson’s been able to learn, there’s no reason the youngling can’t figure out how to use the carven strait to come back here.”

“Unlikely,” Yellin said, “and if it did learn to use the strait, we would be in no worse a situation than we are now. At the very least, time would have passed. Lord Cordus might well have returned.”

“No,” I said stubbornly. “It’s not right.”

“Beth,” Andy said gently, “think about what you’re saying. I know you made friends with those octopus things, but the fragment is killing human beings, here. And it’s after you.”

“Just moving the killing from one place to another isn’t the answer. We should try to communicate with it, find out what it wants.”

I looked down, frustrated that my eyes were stinging.

“Miss Ryder,” Yellin said tightly, “if we are to take Miss Sturluson’s word for it, you are what it wants, and you it cannot be allowed to have. Your safety is of central importance. Though personally,” he added, “I am skeptical of the claim that it has come here seeking you. It is more likely that Miss Sturluson’s presence drew it here, and that its only urge is to destroy. That is the way of the Thirsting Ground.”

“That’s not what Sturluson’s like.”

“Yes, it is. Controlling one’s urges is not the same as eradicating them. Miss Ryder,” he continued, as I tried to cut in, “this matter is closed. You and the Messrs. Duff will take some rest while I call in assistance from elsewhere. Once a force is assembled, we will attempt to send the fragment through the carven strait.”

I leaned against the railing at the top of the western staircase, looking down into the mansion’s grand entryway. Seven people were gathered there with Yellin. One was someone I didn’t know, a very tall man with hair so blond it was nearly white. The others were familiar to me — Andy, Theo, Gwen, and Zion, plus Kara Sanchez and John Williams, who’d both been called in from Minneapolis.