Darkening Chaos: Book Three of The Destroyer Trilogy (29 page)

The
slight pressure of someone’s hand on my shoulder barely registers with my
senses. Only when it runs soothingly up to my neck do I recognize Braden’s
touch and pull my talents back in. Drake sags in relief. I have to force myself
to turn away from him. I can’t stand seeing anything close to a good feeling on
his face. I don’t quite get him out of my field of vision. Braden brings me the
rest of the way.

“Hey,
take a break for a minute. You’re going to break yourself at this rate,” Braden
says. His hands try to slip around me, but I push them away.

“No,
I can’t give him a break. He’ll think he’s winning if I let up.” I can’t give
him even a second of satisfaction.

Braden
shakes his head and says, “Milo’s got it, just stop for a few minutes. You look
like you’re about to drop. I sent Lance up to get you a drink and something to
eat.”

I’ve
spread around so much power and emotional energy tonight. I know I’m pushing my
limits, but I don’t want to stop. I’m afraid of stopping. Letting Drake get the
upper hand is out of the question. Determined to get back to work, I reach up
to push Braden’s hand away. The tremor running through my arm makes me stop.

“Take
a break,” Braden says firmly. “The last thing you want is a repeat of what
happened after you broke your block. You still react to the cold even now,
almost a year later, and you couldn’t go back into the spirit world for weeks
after that. Do you really want to be unable to reach your talents for weeks, or
longer? You need to rest.”

“Fine,”
I say glumly. The idea of trying to keep myself alive without talents terrifies
me enough to give in. Once I resign myself to stopping and let my power drift
away, I realize just how hungry I am. A few minutes later when Lance steps back
into the room, I grab the food and soda from him and don’t even notice someone
is with him until I’m nearly finished with my sandwich. Celia is staring at her
brother and how Drake is bucking against the chair because of whatever Milo’s
doing to him. I worry for a moment that he might be going too far. I need Drake
alive long enough to give me the information I want. I need to deal with Celia
before I dive back in.

“Celia,
what are you doing down here?” I ask, glaring at Lance for letting her see
this.

“I
… I wanted to know how things were going,” she says. She has to peel her eyes
away from Milo. When she does, she focuses them intently on me, trying not to
let them go back. “Have you gotten anything yet?”

“Not
yet. He’s strong. He keeps filling his mind with memories I don’t care about,
making me push through them first. It’s wearing me out.”

Celia’s
face scrunches up, but I’m not sure why. Not until she speaks. “Why don’t you
just hypnotize him? That’s what my mom does when she has a really difficult
patient.”

“Hypnotize
him? Celia, hypnotism is just a parlor trick. I don’t even know how to do it,”
I say. I look to Braden for an explanation. Maybe the Guardians have used this
technique before? He shrugs.

“No,
I’m not talking about what party magicians do, that’s just a silly trick. I’m
talking about using your Spiritualism to put his conscious mind into stasis
while you look through his subconscious. He’s not completely asleep, but he’s
not able to interfere with what you’re doing for a while, either,” she
explains. “Psychiatrists use it for people who’ve been through really bad
traumas they don’t want to remember, like being a victim of a crime. When you
hypnotize them, you can see what they remember and help them figure out what
happened. It’s pretty invasive and painful so they only use it in extreme
cases, but I’m going to take a shot in the dark and say you’re not too
concerned about hurting Drake at this point.”

Her
eyes slide back to Milo. I can see her jaw tighten, but I can’t really say
anything to her to make her feel better about it. We have to get the
information. His pain doesn’t matter to me. Hammond’s pain, the horrible agony
he went through those last few minutes of his life, that’s the pain I care
about, the pain I am determined to stop. Drake could erupt in spontaneous flames
right this second and I wouldn’t try to put him out, well, not if I had the
information I needed.

“Celia,
you really think this will work?” I ask. She nods. “How do I do it?”

She
frowns as she thinks. “I’m not that good with Spiritualism yet, and I’ve never
tried this, but my mom explained it once. If I can’t get it right we can call
her. She said you have to isolate all the conscious spirit, like thought,
controlled movement, desires, emotions, and things like that. You separate them
from the unconscious spirit, the part that usually goes to the spirit world,
and wrap them up in a bundle of spiritual energy and push it away from the body.
She said it’s like when you try to manipulate someone, only more forceful. Does
that make sense?”

I
have to think about that. Spiritualism is by far my weakest talent, not by
power, just by how well I can use it. What abilities I have developed with it
are mainly connected with the spirit world, too. I hate the idea of
manipulating people and haven’t spent a whole lot of time perfecting it.
Thinking of the process takes me a minute. To manipulate someone you have to
touch the part of their spirit that you want to change. Once you’ve located it,
you have to use that center of influence to guide the person toward the choice
you think they should make. It’s what Drake did to Braden tonight. He found the
part of Braden’s spirit that hates him and pulled and stretched it until it
threatened to consume him.

This
part of Spiritualism is closely related to Perception, but with Perception you
can only sense the emotions themselves, not feel or doing anything to their
origin, because thoughts and emotions have too deep of roots and reasons that
stem from your spirit that only another spirit can access them. I think I
understand what Celia means, though. Rather than simply nudging a spirit in a
direction, I have to capture the origin of his conscious mind entirely and push
it far enough away from the rest of the spirit that the two sections can’t
interact. The conscious mind will reel itself back in eventually, but not right
away. If it works, it will give me the time I need.

“Celia,”
I say, “have I ever told you how brilliant you are?”

She
forgets the scene behind her and flashes me her usual electric smile. This is
the second time her amazing wit has set me on the right path. Redoing Milo’s
Inquest was her idea, and set us up for discovering a big chunk of the truth
we’d been missing. Time to uncover the rest. I down the rest of my sandwich and
hand the empty Dr. Pepper can back to Braden feeling a million times better.

“You
sure you’re ready?” he asks.

I
kiss him with enthusiasm to spare and nod.

His
lips brush against mine one more time, lingering next to my skin as he says,
“All right, then. Be careful, please.”

“Are
you sure? You didn’t seem to mind having to warm me back up last time,” I say
so only he can hear me. He just smirks and pushes me away, back toward Drake. My
playfulness subsides immediately.

I
motion for Milo to move away. He backs off and lets his power fall away from
Drake, who shudders and sinks into his chair with his eyes still closed. I give
him a moment to think that maybe we’ve given up. When he looks convinced that
his torment is over, I stalk over to him and settle my hands on either side of
the chair he’s sitting in. My mouth moves right next to his ear.

“I
hope you enjoyed your little break, Drake, but we’re only getting started. Now
is when it really starts to hurt,” I say. His eyes snap open to glare at me.
Behind the anger is the fear that’s growing stronger by the minute. He’s
bending, if not breaking. I just have to hope he goes before I do. This is
going to work. It has to.

I
thrust my Spiritualism back into his body and start rounding everything up. He
fights when I snatch his emotions—mainly fear—and go after his desire to wrap
his hands around my neck. His awareness of his body’s aches and injuries go
next. I’d pass them by if I could, but they’re a link I can’t leave behind. All
of the sensory information his body is giving him gets tangled up with the rest
of it, leaving only his conscious thoughts. His spirit bucks against me, trying
desperately to throw me out of him. I sink myself in even deeper and hold on
through his thrashing and yelling. The second his fight starts to fade, I send
my spirit in and swallow him up. Satisfaction so deep it thrums inside of me
doubles when I finally fling his conscious spirit away from his body.

My
body shudders with the effort, and I find myself leaning heavily against the
chair. It takes a few precious seconds before I can push myself back. Braden is
hovering nearby, his worry a vague pressure against my mind. I want to let him
pull me away so I can rest. I think he was more right than he knew about how
close I am to my limit. My Naturalism and Strength are struggling to keep up
with the demands I’m putting on my body. Rest has to wait. I’m not done with
Drake, yet.

Not
wanting to waste any more time, I get a firm grip on my Perception and dive
right in.

Finding
what I need is a million times easier this way. It’s like I’m floating through
a storm of bubbles. The unprotected memories drift by like clouds, while the
dozens of secrets and promises bounce through the air like a child’s toy. It’s
stunning, beautiful in its own way, except that I know the bubbles are only
hiding the evil that fills this man. There are so many. Dozens, maybe hundreds,
are promises made to keep secret his terrible acts. I shudder in the face of so
many unspeakable deeds. More than a small part of me doesn’t want to find out
what they’re hiding, but I force myself to push into the nearest one.

Drake’s
semiconscious body jerks as I stab his promises one by one. I make quick work
of scanning each one and moving on to the next. Some are harmless, promises
made to a friend or lover in the earlier years after his Inquest, before he was
poisoned by the Guardians. More often than anyone else, the promises are made
to a single young woman, Audrey. He reacts the most when I touch on those
memories. It’s hard to see him kissing her and promising to love her forever
knowing what he is now. I can’t believe he was ever good or kind, but anyone
can change under the right pressures.

I
learn that Drake was behind a particularly vicious attack on President Howe
recently, an attempt to steal his power and title. Only careful stepping got
Drake out alive and cloaked in false innocence. As the memories grow more
recent, the darker they become. I get out of each one as quickly as I can.

I’m
not sure if it’s been minutes or hours by the time I reach what I want. I’m
almost too exhausted to even recognize it. Only that strangely empty grey room
catches my attention enough to perk me up. It’s the same room Braden was taken
to when he was initiated as a full Guardian. This is where he learned about
Idris’s prophecy, the one that I didn’t get all of. I watch in fascination as
Drake enters the room looking significantly younger than he does now. He sits
down at the desk and an older man approaches him. Neither one speaks. The older
man simply lays down a new Guardian Blade, flipping it over to show a second
emblem on the other side. The typical signs for Speed and Strength bow in
submission to an open, staring eye.

My
excitement boils over. This is it. He’s being inducted into the highest order
of his brotherhood, the Prime Seekers, the ones trusted enough to hold their
secret symbol and not reveal it to anyone. This is where he’ll be given the
rest of the prophecy. It has to be. Alongside the blade, the man sets down a
single sheet of paper. I read every word.

Words
of Idris, Prime Seeker, 1257 BC

Her
birth will be the beginning of our destruction,

An
unseen threat to everything we are.

Power
and Talent greater than anything seen by this world will blossom in her hands.

Alone,
she will unlock the deadly secrets of this age.

Her
assault will begin slowly,

One
small prick, one gained asset,

But
will grow to a raging onslaught.

Her
might will slice into our ranks where we think we are safest.

One
will try to take everything from her and fail,

But
she will learn the secret of his betrayal.

She
will learn the value of destruction, of gathering power,

And
will turn it against us.

We
cannot stop her, not alone.

She
will steal our brothers, take their power.

We
must do the same.

One
of her own will be her downfall.

Unrestricted,
Cassia the Destroyer will be the end of our world.

She
will unravel the purity of our work and turn society against us.

Our
power will be lost forever, unless we seize all control first,