Chapter Seven: Coils of the Tempest

 

I could taste the acidic burn of paint working its way up my throat. I pressed my hand against my mouth and inhaled deep gulps of air to prevent myself from retching.

“Don't you dare feel bad for that praetorian,” Constantine said tightly, holding his broken wrist against his chest.

I took hold of his wrist, turning his palm upward where the burns curled across the skin.

“I can't just...” I clenched my fingers and loosened them in an unending bid to gain control and used the overloaded wards to heal his wounds, checking to make certain no shadow remnants remained. “I can't just do that to people.”

Destroy them, not save them.

He said nothing for a moment, as he made circular, loosening motions with his newly healed wrist and recently broken arm and I could feel threads of magic checking me. “No. But not because I give a shivit about some random flunky. You aren't built for the darker emotions.” He lifted my palms this time, examining something there. “They will destroy you in the same way Stavros means to.”

I stared at his quickly healing skin. “How are the others?” I hadn't felt any lights go out. All my connection threads were still thriving.

“Alexander and his minions? You think they can't take care of themselves without magic?” he asked, somewhat in amusement, though I could feel him searching me mentally for the answers as he knelt down to look at my ankle. “Against fighters who rely far too heavily on being overly-armed? You do remember that there was a non-magic category of fighting in the tournament?”

It was a strange category amid hundreds of events that relied on magic in a thousand different ways.

“Ramirez is the current collegiate champion in all non-magic fighting. Alexander is only second to him by a hair. Don't worry overly much about your pets. Not even when fighting the worst of the Department.”

“The Department. They keep... And the ferals...”

He gently touched my ankle with his thumb. I could almost hear the words he didn't say—you can't save everyone.

I shuddered. I could save some, though.

I pulled away from him, and with magic zipping from my fingers, threw the portal pad on the ground. “Get in.”

“No.” I could feel the hackles of his magic rise beneath his bland response.

“Stavros knows it was you with me.”

“Of course, he does. He's not an idiot.”

“He can publicly check. He can have the media check.”

“And?”

“And?” What kind of blasé answer was that? “He's going to verify your whereabouts then out you as my accomplice. Get into the pad and get back to campus.”

I should have pushed him back to Axer’s location immediately. I should never have allowed here to be here in the first place.

“I'm not leaping into that thing, especially not to go to campus.” He stretched out with his hands behind him on the floor, cracking his neck. His emotions were the opposite of relaxed. “You just shoved me through nine dimensions in forty minutes. Ten is asking far too much.”

“I'm not asking. You need to return to campus.” God, he needed to get back now. Why was he stalling? My heart beat a fast echo in my ears, overtaking background sound.

He gave me a bland look as he rose. “Do I?”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Get in the pad, Constantine.”

He slapped both hands on the table, making magic ripple over the top in an echo of my earlier action, and showing his true emotion. “So, you can go running about on your own? You wouldn’t have survived today without us.”

“I know. And what do you think will happen next time?” Now that Stavros knew I was seeking help from others? “He’ll have plans for you, too. He knows it is you. Knows it is Axer. Once he has indisputable evidence he will destroy both of you.”

“He can try.”

“I can't keep you safe if you don't let me.”

He leaned forward and smiled—it was one of his meaner ones, the kind not often directed at me. “You can't keep me safe?”

“Not if you won't let me!”

“Well, isn't that a pickle.”

“They are going to arrest your father. They are going to kick you out.”

His smile grew meaner. “They can try.”

“Penniless, living on the streets—”

“With my skills, I will always be wealthy. Even if I start from zero repeatedly.”

“Thrown in a cell—”

“Doubtful.”

“You will be experimented on.”

“They could only wish.”

“You won't be able to afford the meanest of potions or ingredients. You will have no access to cutting edge materials.”

“Now you are just being mean.”

“I should never have let the Ophidians allow you into this complex.” My voice turned harsher. “Weakness.”

Allies, not friends, butterfly.

“Yes, weakness.” Constantine's expression sharpened, like he had heard my memory of Raphael's voice, and his palms glowed hotly against the wood. “That's what I think of when I look at your friendship ties.”

He tugged hard on the connections between us—stunning lines of turquoise, copper, and violet that were interconnected and beautiful. Then he touched hundreds of fainter ones that the others were channeling through him to me. They highlighted the choices of both involved parties.

I plucked his, letting the connection stretch. “I remade those, I can do it again.”

“And do what? Improve upon the utter certainty that you will never physically harm me or fulfill your threats?” He twirled his fingers, the turquoise and copper threads mixing with violet into a closed fist as he yanked back. “Weakness.”

Visions of plunging my hand into Axer's chest at Stavros’ command and not being in control of my own actions swarmed my thoughts. And the superimposed image of ripping out Constantine's beating heart while he blindly trusted, made me ill and enraged.

“It might not be me.”

“I know!” He said harshly. “That’s the whole—”

“Get in.” I pointed at the pad, fingers shaking, one second away from pushing him inside.

I couldn't lose anyone else. I couldn't lose him.

He opened his mouth, then closed it—clenching his teeth together and visibly restraining himself from saying whatever was on his mind.

Say it, I challenged mentally—wildly—magic brimming beneath my nails.

He let the threads go with a snap. “No.”

“No?”

He took a deep breath and examined the nails of one hand in sudden boredom—the patina of ennui descending over his face so at odds with his caged inner turmoil that it was jarring. “Let me see if I understand your demands. You want me to enter your terrifying, illegal traveling device and return my body to campus, even though the golem you helped me create is at the summit in Ravishkan?”

My surging anger paused, data jarring with already drawn pictures in my brain. “Okay, no, that's—back to Ravishkan, then to Excelsine. Get in.”

He leaned forward into my space. “No.”

“I messed up the endpoint, fine, but—”

“No.”

“Stavros took my brother—”

“I know.”

“He’s going to—”

He wrapped his fingers into my hair, the movement gentling almost immediately, but palms still firm against my cheeks. “I'm. Not. Going. Anywhere. And neither is anyone else.”

A sob started to form in my throat, and I had to look away. Down at his chest where I could see his heart beating and his magic pulsing. To the other connections that were live and strong.

No one thought they were going to die. Yet—

“You can't control that,” he said. There was something complicated happening in his emotions, though. “You can just make certain you aren’t alone when you do. And your paint is starting to form a monster again.”

I ripped my gaze over to where Guard Rock and the book were staring at us. They were perched above the Kinsky sketches and the supplies from the painting excursion. Guard Rock was judiciously poking a glob of paint that was stubbornly trying to slink off a brush and ping-ponging his gaze between us, as if he wasn’t certain what required the most attention.

My breath hitched. “I forgot the preservation enchantment.”

I tore away from Constantine, from the wild and untamed emotions flowing everywhere—our connection points, the wards, the very air in the room. A deep anger and despair and even deeper love was spiking through him. I quickly strode over to where the book was watching me judgmentally.

I herded the glob back onto the brush with shaking hands.

I'd watched clumps turn into globular monsters of death before. A preservation enchantment would have allowed me to leave their cleaning until I was in a safe zone.

But the Awakening call had come in as soon as we returned. Not a coincidence. Any of it.

Stupid.

With shaking hands, I lifted paint-coated brushes and started cleaning them, so I didn't have to think.

I carefully swirled the first brush in the small cleaning and encapsulating device that Stevens had made for me after watching a different batch—so long ago now—form Daliesque creatures intent on melting everything they came in contact with. Then there had been that time when the paint had ejected round, mysterious stones. And the time when a portal had opened.

The device allowed all those elements to combine, but constrained the product into a more manageable single outcome.

Hysteria rose within me again. Manageable death.

“That praetorian,” I said quietly. “And the man at the house without a pot. All those who let Stavros use them... He sends each to die.”

“Many men die in service of a general's eyes,” Constantine said indifferently.

“As themselves, though.” I rubbed the hollow in my chest with one hand, and stuck in the next brush. “Not with his face as the last thing they wear. Why do they let him use them like that?”

The device made a gurgling sound and I wondered what the cleaning device would produce this time with death and destruction underscoring the deep rage that Stavros brought forth within me.

“Don't underestimate the eagerness of men to serve power. And don't feel sorrow for those who choose that path.”

That path—but what of others? Like my friends, who were following me down to Hades with their coin already slipping between their lips?

I kept thinking of my friends. Of Stavros's words foretelling their deaths—of them dying in service to me.

I rubbed my chest again. “What if they aren't choosing? What if he burrowed in like...” My hand stilled on my breastbone.

Constantine's entire emotional landscape went bleak and violent for a moment—something deep and dark in the depths—before he did whatever he was able to do to control it. I envied his control. “Then we mourn and avenge them. Not necessarily in that order.”

“Bloodthirst?”

“On a less than six-year plan for me this time.” He eyed me. “How are you feeling otherwise?”

“You can't tell?”

“I can feel power veritably storming through you, darling. That isn't what I'm asking.”

“You are angry with me.”

“Incensed,” he said mildly.

“And despairing. Why do you feel despair and refuse to go somewhere safe?”

“You misunderstand the cause of the emotion. Why do you feel like you are the only one who fears losing someone?”

I didn't answer.

“You know, back in the fall, I thought for a moment, that you would succeed in resurrecting your brother.” He rolled magic slowly under his hand. “It was strange, having hope, something outside of revenge. You didn't succeed, but the hope had already clasped onto me, dug its claws in. Infected my veins.”

“I didn't fail,” I whispered.

He looked sharply at me.

“I had to...” I swallowed. “Raphael made it so that...” I shook my head. “I let him go. My brother. I let him go.”

“Why?” the question was succinct in both word and tone.

“Will. Christian would have...replaced him.”

Constantine watched me for a moment in a detached way. “You are terrible at sacrificing pawns,” he murmured.

“He's not a—”

“And even worse at letting go of closer pieces.”

“I'm not losing anyone else.”

“Even with powers like yours, that, I'm afraid, is out of your control.”

I turned the brush and focused on the device. “You'd better watch for a rotorsaur. I feel one coming.”

It was the name for the insanity that had burst from an earlier brush cleaning. A creature with a snake head and tail, but also with another head—a lion's head—a single human-like arm, three lizard feet and a lizard body.

Constantine grimaced—for once the quick tail of emotion matched his expression. “Even I don't know if the menagerier can handle another one of those. And I'm not sure he is someone who should be uncertain about creatures he usually loves. And you aren't avoiding speaking about your anxieties.”

“I’m painting too much.”

“You could move mountains right now.” The darkness peered up again.

“Or kill people.”

Constantine looked at the Origin Book. “Tell me about the places it wants you to go.”

“No. You aren't as tricky as you think you are.” I watched the container with resignation. “And this creature is going to be deadly.”

“I'm exceedingly tricky. You have an unfair advantage. And don't give me this little drama over a creature that half the beings in the Fourth Layer will probably clamor to claim as a pet.”

Constantine was shifting with the conversation, as I knew he would, but everything unsaid coiled through him, unforgotten. He would wait and strike at an even more vulnerable point.

“You do have a weird thing for snakes,” he said, reading my mind as easily as he always did, and turning suddenly agreeable, an agile viper looking for a better angle. “I blame our first meeting and your obsession with me. Understandable. Aim for something pettable, though, and you will find your adoption rate increases.”

“Furry, got it.” A smile broke through my turmoil, deep fondness underscoring relief as I felt him loosen his grip on his immediate anger. I twisted the last brush with a little tendril of magic and fur burst from the seams in the container.

Constantine sighed. “That's a Level 10 container. Nothing should breach it.”

And here we were, skirting the edge of the topic again.

I fished out the small bundle of fur and paws and scooted it toward him. The animal’s hackles were raised, and a low growl emanated between hisses. It could possibly be classified as a cat, if cats came in violet, cream, and electric blue, and had three forked tails and a hundred teeth too big for their mouths.

He stared at it, then at me. “Well, I don't want it.”

“It's yours now.”

The catlike thing sank its teeth into him and he swore. He tried to shake it from his hand, but the cat’s gaze was zeroed in on his and it never looked away even as it curled around his hand, kicking the underside at the same time it tried to tear the flesh from his fingers. Con swore again and magic blasted outward, outlining the cat’s skeleton in pure electric blue. Teeth still embedded, the cat gave a noise somewhere between a chuff and a growl.

“It is definitely yours,” I said and started to pack up.

The cat let go abruptly and magic sparked. Then, as if it had been its goal all along, it licked a stripe up the wounds it had inflicted and pushed its terrifying head against Con’s fingers.

The sharp, sly look in the feline’s eyes confirmed ownership as much as the scars disappearing beneath its tongue.

“Vile beast,” he said, frowning at the cat at the same time he started petting it. His shoulders relaxed a small measure as the animal’s head butted against his palm, slicing his skin only slightly with the graze of its razor teeth while trying to eat the highly magical signet stone on his finger.

Small waves of interest and humor emanated from Constantine as he rotated his hand to flummox the beast. Creating more furry things went on my mental agenda.

“Now, how are you feeling?” he asked, still petting the razorcat.

“Disquieted.” I swallowed. Powerful.

“I'm not going back to campus.”

“I know.” And I am glad—a guilty, horrible thought. “Something terrible is going to happen to you.”

“Something terrible already has,” he said, feelings coiled and harder to decipher.

The cat curled into the curve of his elbow, leaving slices in his sleeve.