Emerald Blaze

Where are you?

Dr. Arias.

Okay.

I called Bern. It was faster than texting, because when he concentrated on something, he ignored the texts. “Hey. Could you please do an aerial surveillance of the Pit and compare it to any records we have of it in six-month intervals?”

“How far do you need me to go?”

“Three years should do it.” Three years ago, the Pit looked normal, and I wanted a baseline. “Thank you.”

Alessandro parked himself by the door, leaning on the wall.

“You might want to go home,” I told him.

“I don’t think so.”

“You smell like a swamp and I’m safe here. This is Mad Rogan’s private clinic. He provides the security.”

Alessandro sniffed his sleeve and grimaced.

“I won’t leave without you,” I promised.

“If you try, I’ll find you and I’ll be angry.”

“Is that supposed to be some sort of threat?”

“No, it’s a warning. Don’t leave without me.”

“Go away.”

He left.

The CT scan detected no bleeding or swelling in my brain. I escaped without any broken bones, but there was a lot of soft tissue bruising and some arcane bacteria decided to throw a party in my lacerations, which we found out when Dr. Arias removed the bandages and neon-green pus leaked out. She shot me with another dose of antivenom and set about cleaning my wounds.

“Did the pretty boy patch you up?” Dr. Arias asked, working on the cuts.

“Yes.”

“He didn’t do a terrible job. He has some training.”

“I’ll tell him that you think he’s pretty. That will make him happy.”

Dr. Arias smiled. “I have a feeling he knows he’s pretty.”

My sister showed up, accompanied by Runa and two of our security people. They delivered clothes and makeup. I told them about the telekinetic and Marat being pulled into the swamp, and then Runa used her magic to purify my cuts and accidentally neutralized the antivenom, and Dr. Arias kicked them both out. On the plus side, my cuts were now taken care of and infection was unlikely. On the minus side, I received my third injection of antivenom “just to be safe,” and the skin on my left side felt like it was about to give up and peel off my skeleton.

I kept the existence of the Abyss to myself until Dr. Arias left me to rest, and then I called Linus.

“Yes?” He sounded like he was in a helicopter.

I kept my voice low. “There is an alien mind in the Pit. It’s beyond anything I’ve ever felt and it’s malicious.”

He pondered it for a few seconds. “Do you want me to shut the project down?”

“Not yet.”

“Keep me updated.”

I hung up and stared at the phone. I needed to get the hell out of this bed. It was almost 2:00 p.m. Cheryl expected me in two hours. But I was so tired and my whole body hurt.

I picked up my purse, which Alessandro had brought into the room, took out a piece of chalk, and drew a charging circle. The base charging circle was one of the easier designs to draw: a large circle, a smaller circle inside that, then three circles inside that inner circle arranged in a triangle, and finally three outer circles opposite the inner triad. In the past six months, I’d begun to develop my own version. Eventually it would become a Key, a complex charging design particular to our House. For now, it was about two-thirds of the way there. I drew it so often, it took me less than three minutes to complete it. On a good day, when everything didn’t hurt like now, I could do it in half the time.

I stripped to my underwear and bra, stepped into the circle, sat, and put my phone in front of me. I didn’t want to leave the circle if some emergency popped up.

The chalk lines waited for me, inert and so mundane. I sent a pulse of power through the circle. The chalk ignited with pale silver, sending tiny puffs of dust into the air. Power splashed against me. I relaxed and opened myself to it.

Before Runa left, she told me that her expert friend examined the gyroscope Cornelius had dropped off yesterday. Runa didn’t like her conclusions, and I liked them even less.

How did an alien intelligence come to be in the Pit? Was it summoned? In the hundred-plus years of the serum being active, nobody had ever found a human-level intelligence in the arcane realm, but it didn’t mean one couldn’t exist.

How would you even fight such a mind? Mental mages didn’t really come together the way other combat mages could. Our fights were duels, one-on-one. Having more than one mental mage wouldn’t help, because when two minds engaged each other, they became locked, like two wrestlers gripping one another, exerting every ounce of strength they had to trip their opponent while keeping their balance. I had no idea if the Abyss could be engaged by more than one mage. Most likely, it would just crack our minds one by one like a bull trampling eggs.

An hour crawled by. Then another. I barely noticed.

My phone chimed. Bug.

I found your thing. Watch it by yourself.

He’d sent a link to a private server we used for confidential communication. I logged in and checked the file box. A single video file waited for me. I clicked it.

A lawn stretched in front of the camera, the lush grass a fresh spring green. Ancient stones, cracked and darkened with age, crossed it, leading to rows and rows of white chairs, forming an aisle. Stone pedestals flanked the entrance to the aisle supporting marble urns overflowing with white and pink, and at its end, in the shadow of a large tree a flower arch waited, poised against distant hills.

People dressed in white and pastels occupied the chairs. It must have been a spring wedding.

The guests were laughing. On the right, a man turned around and leaned on the back of his chair, caught in a conversation with two women one row behind him. On the left, a handsome man with a white smile bounced a baby on his knee. The baby giggled, and people around them snapped pictures. A gaggle of young kids ran past the camera, the girls in white frilly dresses, the boys ridiculous in miniature versions of adult clothes. A priest waited at the arch, the only person dressed in black. He looked onto the gathering with a small smile. It was a happy scene. I almost wished I was there.

I fast-forwarded the video, switching to normal speed when something significant happened. One of the kids fell and cried and the adults got up to comfort him. A woman waved her hands at another woman and dramatically went to sit elsewhere. A flurry of Italian floated about the crowd, fast and muffled, but clear enough for me to pick some of it up. Jokes about the groom, jokes about married life and getting fat from being happy, teasing about who might get married next.

Eventually, the gathering quieted down, and the groom made his way to the altar, a lean man in his early thirties, with a bright smile, handsome face, and tousled wavy brown hair. Several groomsmen followed him, the first tall and broad-shouldered, walking with a particular light gait. From the back, he looked just like Alessandro.

He turned to the side and took his spot next to the groom, and I saw his face. No, not Alessandro. The chin was too narrow, the nose too fragile, but most importantly, he seemed to lack the intense focus I’d seen in Alessandro’s eyes. Alessandro had stared at death too many times. It had given him a sharp edge, and although he hid it well, I recognized it even when he pretended to be carefree. He was ready to resort to violence at any instant.

This man looked confident and sure that he could handle anything life threw at him, and brute force wasn’t his first answer to it, which meant he didn’t have to fight for his life that often. He was Instagram Alessandro, with a charmed life and few worries, and I couldn’t tell from the recording if it was genuine or a front. If it was a pose, Marcello Sagredo had been an even better actor than his son.

The groomsmen milled about, waiting. I fast-forwarded again until the bride walked down the aisle to the familiar music, accompanied by an older man. The train of her lacy gown brushed the grass. Wind stirred her white veil. The videographer moved around the chairs, capturing her walk. She glided to the altar, a vision in white with long dark hair. The groom stared at her, starry-eyed. A fairy-tale wedding.

The ceremony started.

The groom said his vows. “Io, Antonio, prendo te, Sofia, come mia sposa . . . and promise to be faithful to you always, in joy and in pain, in health and in sickness, and to love you and every day honor you, for the rest of my life . . .”

A man strode down the aisle, smiling, walking as if he belonged there. He was tall and powerfully built. Not slabbed with muscle like a bodybuilder, more like an athlete or a soldier in prime condition. The videographer swung his camera and it caught his face. Perfectly average. He could have been an American or a European. Blond hair cut short but not military short. Tan, clean shaven, nondescript features, average nose, average mouth, no distinctive scars, no strangely colored eyes. A teacher, a bank manager, a furniture salesman. There was nothing odd about him.

Hello, Arkan.

The groom frowned. The bride turned and looked at the man, stunned at the interruption.

Arkan shot forward. There was no warning. One of his steps became a powerful lunge, so fast, I barely saw the long knife in his hand. And then Alessandro’s father was there, in front of him.

The stranger stabbed. Marcello moved out of the way, fluid and fast, and redirected the attacker’s thrust with a lightning-fast block. He moved so quick, no hesitation, no delay. Real life fights happened instantly. There was no bowing, no touching of gloves. Nobody blew a whistle or rang a bell, and most people with martial arts training froze, if only for a moment, expecting someone to give the go-ahead. Marcello hadn’t. This wasn’t just training, this was experience. He had fought an attacker with a knife before, and he had won.