Authors: Annette Marie
Twenty seconds later, the door opened again, but it was just the cranky woman finally joining them. As she passed behind Piper’s chair toward her seat, her footsteps paused. Piper started to turn—and the woman slapped a damp cloth over her nose and mouth.
Piper gasped involuntarily as she jerked away from the woman’s hand. Sweet-smelling air coated her tongue like slime. She lurched out of her seat, tearing herself out of the woman’s grasp. The room spun and rocked like waves under her feet. Hands grabbed her and shoved her down into her chair. Someone pinned her arms against her sides. She kicked off the table, trying to topple her chair, but the hands held her down as the world spun around and around.
Walter gripped her jaw. Before she knew what he was doing, he’d forced her head up and jammed a syringe into her mouth. Liquid gushed across her tongue, bitter and syrupy, and then someone put the cloth back over her face. Walter held her jaw closed with bruising force, preventing her from spitting. She fought to free herself even as the room whirled and her vision blurred.
Her lungs burned. Against her will, she inhaled a desperate breath through her nose. Another wave of terrible dizziness. The room faded to black.
Her vision slowly returned, but she had no idea how much time had passed. Her head was filled with swirling clouds of vapor, her thoughts lost in a fog. She slumped in her chair with no will to move.
Mona patted her arm. “Don’t worry, Piper. It’s a harmless drug, just to keep you calm.”
Alarm whispered through the haze in her head. Her chair moved as someone pulled it away from the table. She wobbled in her seat. The room rolled and twirled in every direction. When it steadied, Walter was standing in front of her. He peered into her eyes. His eyes were very dark. Like a shaded daemon except not scary.
“It’s taken hold. How much time do we have?”
“Ten minutes until we start.”
“Excellent. Mona, wait with her.”
Piper stared at nothing. She blinked when Mona touched her shoulder. Her mother smiled but it was kind of sad.
“I don’t think I’ve seen you this peaceful since you were a child.” She sniffed. “But then, I’ve barely seen you. We belong together, Piper. I need you to stay with me and I know you need to be with me. You get in so much trouble by yourself.”
Mona touched her cheek. “How do you feel, sweetheart? Calm? You shouldn’t feel any fear.”
Piper stared at her blankly. Mona frowned a little. “Did Walter give you too much?” She squinted. “Perhaps. But better than not enough. Tonight is going to change your life.”
Mona rubbed Piper’s shoulders in a soothing way while they waited. Little flickers of thought and emotion danced in the clouds in her head, nothing touching her long enough for her to feel anything.
Time passed. Piper didn’t notice. Eventually other people appeared and she was pulled up to her feet and gently guided across the room. They went through a doorway and the rumble of noise made Piper stop in vague surprise. Hands prodded her forward. Up three steps. Walter stood in front of a podium. Someone turned her to face the room and she blinked.
Faces looked back at her. Lots and lots of faces. The room spun a little. The crowd looked at her curiously but didn’t seem to know why she was there.
Someone nudged Piper over to one side of the dais and out of the spotlight. All the eyes shifted to watch Walter as he began speaking again. Piper stood listlessly as his words washed over her. He talked about plans for the future. Goals. Missions. Things about the Consulates. How they protected daemons instead of humans. How they were tainted by daemon favoritism.
The words spun and swirled and danced in a wash of sound. Piper stood unmoving, waiting without a thought or care, staring at the growing shadows beyond the windows as the sun disappeared.
“And when we’re ready to face the remaining daemons head on,” Walter declared, “we’ll have a powerful ally. Do any of you know Piper’s unique history? You see, Piper was born to two haemon parents.”
A couple calls of disbelief from the crowd.
“We all know,” he continued, “that female children born to two haemon parents always die in childhood. But do you know that daemons can save our girls? A daemon saved Piper from dying as a child by sealing away the dual magic she inherited from her parents.
“For hundreds of years, daemons have been letting our children die when they could have been saving every single one of them. Why? Because they don’t want the competition. A haemon with a dual bloodline is
just as powerful
as a daemon! The daemons want to keep us weaker than them, so they let our girls die.”
The Gaians jeered in anger.
“Piper’s magic has been sealed away her entire life, keeping her weak. Tonight, we will remove the seal and give her full access to her magic for the first time. Witness the power your daughters could wield!”
Loud applause. Walter turned off the microphone and gestured. Hands pulled Piper to the chair in the middle of the dais and pushed her down. Other hands touched her upper arms. Magic tingled. Invisible bonds tightened around her arms, binding them to the back of the chair. Piper blinked, distantly unhappy but the feeling soon faded.
A new face appeared in front of her. An old woman. She smiled and patted Piper’s hand. “Don’t worry, child. I’ll get that spell out of you, don’t you fret.”
“Are you ready, Helaine?” Walter asked quietly. The crowd chattered, a low hum behind him.
“Of course,” Helaine said with a bite of impatience. “Don’t be doubting me now. I’ve removed filthy daemon spells from hundreds of unfortunate souls.”
“Begin then,” he replied shortly.
“Will it be difficult?” Mona asked, crouching beside Piper. “The daemon was—”
“Hush,” Helaine snapped, laying her hands on either side of Piper’s head. “It’s bad enough you let that devil wrap your daughter in his evil spells. He did a pitiable job anyway. I can feel the threads of it; the spell is in a wretched state. It would have lasted a year longer at most.”
Piper stared at the woman’s face as it scrunched in concentration. So many wrinkles. Her hands were calloused, her hold tight. Piper’s head felt hot under the woman’s touch. Distressed whispers skittered across her thoughts. This was a bad thing, wasn’t it? She didn’t want this, did she?
The woman grunted. “The devil did a fair job of it after all. The spell doesn’t want to budge.”
“Can you—”
“Hush!”
Piper’s head felt hotter. Little flashes of fire sparked in her skull. She wanted the woman to stop. It hurt. The pain swirled through the mist, growing stronger, threatening her safe, peaceful lassitude. The fire spread to her chest. Her arms jerked and a whimper scraped her throat. Stop now. Make it stop.
“You’re hurting her—”
“Quiet, Mona! Let her finish.”
Hotter and hotter. Flames inside her. Little lightning bolts in her skull, shooting down her spine. The mist in her head turned red with pain. The insulating cloud thinned.
Agony blasted through her skull and she screamed.
The pain stopped, vanishing like a popped bubble. She panted in the sudden cessation of agony, struggling against the haze that immediately swept the thoughts from her head.
Helaine flung her hands wide. “It is done!” she crowed.
The crowd cheered, pressing closer to the dais. They called encouragements to Piper.
Walter gave her a pat on the shoulder before returning to the podium. He switched on the mic.
“Let us congratulate Piper—as well as the haemon race—in this historic moment! For the first time in two centuries, we have a hybrid haemon among our ranks!”
Shouts of agreement. More cheers.
“Now, before we conclude, I would like to—”
The lights went out with a pop, plunging the sprawling room into darkness.
Startled voices exclaimed in the crowd and the Council members grumbled. Power outages were regular enough not to cause a panic, but the timing was terrible. Piper sat in her chair, blinking in the darkness.
“We ask for your patience, please, everyone,” Walter called. “We will have someone check the—”
With a flicker, the lights came back to life, flooding the room. The Gaians looked around, smiling in relief. Walter began to speak again but stopped as a strange hush fell over the crowd, starting from the back of the room. In a surge of movement, the haemons nearest the double doors backed away, bumping into the rest of the crowd.
One lone figure stood in the middle of the new gap, no one within twenty feet of him. He stood casually, hands in his jeans pocket, pale blond hair tousled, golden eyes flashing, catching Piper’s attention even from across the room.
Euphoric delight swept through the fog in her head.
Lyre let out a low whistle as he surveyed the crowd.
“This here’s a mighty big group of Gaians,” he drawled, his smooth voice filling the room in a way Walter’s couldn’t. His teeth flashed as he grinned. “What a gathering! I didn’t know murderers had a support group.”
A heartbeat of silence.
“It’s not murder when it’s just daemons,” someone shouted.
“Just daemons?” Lyre repeated. He pressed a hand to his chest. “Wow, I’m hurt. Your mothers didn’t think we were
just daemons
.”
Angry shouts and hurled insults.
Walter stepped up to the mic. “Restrain that intruder immediately!”
A dozen haemons pushed their way through the crowd to the open space where Lyre stood. As they rushed him, he pulled his hands out of his pockets and flicked them, a casual shooing motion as though he were swatting flies away.
All the attacking Gaians were blasted off their feet and sent crashing to the floor, stunned.
“Oooh, sorry,” Lyre said with a sympathetic wince. “I was expecting you all to shield or ... something, you know.”
“Walter, that’s not a random intruder,” Mona hissed. “That’s one of Piper’s daemon friends. He’s come for her!”
“Take that daemon out now!” Walter shouted. He slashed a look at Mona. “Get Piper out of here before that other one shows up. If he’s here, we’ll have to use Piper as a hostage to stall him until we can get the ultrasound speaker up here. Mona? Mona, are you listening?”
A moment of silence.
“Too late.” The new voice shivered under Piper’s skin, rubbing across her bones. She smiled, elated even through the drug haze.
Walter, Mona, and the rest of the Council retreated rapidly from the back of the dais, two of them falling down the steps in their haste. Mona pointed with a shaking hand.
“You!” she shouted accusingly.
A shadow fell across Piper. She looked up. Ash stood beside her, terrifying in black fatigues, an armored vest, and black armguards. Twin swords at each hip. A black wrap covered the lower half of his face.
Piper beamed up at him.
He kept his eyes on Walter, dark irises searing the Gaian leader.
Walter straightened sharply. “You may fancy yourself her rescuer, but—”
Breaking off mid-sentence, Walter plunged a hand into his jacket and whipped out a gun, finger already on the trigger. Ash didn’t even move. His punch of magic smashed into Walter, knocking him off the dais. The gun flew out of his hand.
With a dismissive glance at the fallen man, Ash stepped in front of Piper. His gaze swept over her face before locking on her eyes. He slid his hands lightly down her arm. With a tickle of magic, the bindings holding her to the chair disappeared. As soon as she was free, she clumsily raised her arms toward him. He gently scooped her out of the chair, lifting her effortlessly into his arms as he turned. Beyond him, people were stampeding out of the room through the double doors.
“You can’t have her.” Mona’s voice shook as she stepped in front of him. “She doesn’t belong to you.”
“Nor does she belong to you.”
“You can’t—”
“Oh come
on
,” Lyre said, appearing behind Mona, making her start violently. He’d crossed the room unnoticed by the Council. “You think you have a claim to Piper? You
kidnapped
her. Now that’s motherly love.”
“She belongs with—”
“With whoever she wants to be with. Now get out of the way.” He gave another flick of his hand and his spell knocked her on her butt.
Ash strode off the dais with Piper cradled in his arms. Most of the room had emptied, but before he could take more than a few steps, the doors banged open again. A squad of men in black uniforms rushed in, armed with short assault rifles.
Shimmers coated Lyre’s body as he pivoted. His glamour vanished, one hand already pulling an arrow from the quiver hanging on his shoulder. He smoothly nocked it before letting the arrow fly. In a blink, he had a second arrow nocked. He drew the dark fletching to his cheek and loosed it.
Each arrow pierced a soldier’s shoulder, pinning them to either side of the doorframe.
The rest of the squad stopped dead, their attention torn between the writhing men pinned to the threshold and Lyre’s mesmerizing daemon form. The incubus drew a third arrow, and in a flash he fired it. It hit the top of the doorframe. The arrow glowed bright gold—then exploded. The doorframe collapsed in a rain of plaster and concrete.
“Zwi, lights,” Ash said.
The lights went out, plunging the room into total blackness but for the dim glimmer coming off the windows of the nearest skyscrapers.
Unfazed by the darkness, Ash strode toward the wall of windows. The air crackled ominously, and then there was a boom of sound, a shocking explosion of power, and the shattering of glass. A cold wind swept inside the room through the smashed windows.
He stepped onto the ledge, a twenty-five-story drop just inches away. Lyre hopped up beside him, back in glamour, with the wind whipping his hair across his eyes. Zwi flew out of the darkness and landed on his shoulder.
A sudden flash of light illuminated the room.
“Stop!”
The two daemons glanced back as Mona ran toward them, a light spell in her hand.
“You can’t have her!” Mona shouted. “She belongs with us!”
Ash looked down at Piper. She smiled. He turned to Lyre and they clasped hands. Together, they sprang into empty space and silent night.