Ensnared (Sorcery and Science Book 5) (3 page)

Aaron glanced sidelong at Isis with hungry eyes, then sighed and tore them away to meet Lord Adrian’s self-satisfied stare. He handed Aaron a page of paper to read. Of course they weren’t speaking. They didn’t want her to overhear. Elitions’ acute senses were no big secret. As he read, Aaron’s eyes grew wide, and by the time he had finished, they were both openly gaping at her.

“What?” she demanded.

“I must be going now,” Lord Adrian announced. “You will take care of this?”

“Yes,” replied Aaron.

Lord Adrian spared Isis one final smug smirk before he turned to leave. He looked like he had a most gratifying secret—which was stupid. Now that he’d shared whatever it was he knew with Aaron, it really wasn’t much of a secret anymore, was it? Silly Selpe aristocrat.

“I’m afraid we’ll have to leave our conversation for another day,” Aaron told her.

“I see,” she said slowly.

Whatever this was all about, it didn’t feel right. Isis had no sooner concluded this when the door clicked open once again and sharp, steady heel clicks echoed down the hall, followed by the heavier thunks of military boots. She caught a flash in her mind of the man’s somber face before he came around the corner. He was dressed in a white coat and carried a needle in one hand and a clear bottle of liquid in the other. The liquid was lavender-colored and flowed more thickly than milk. Whatever it was, Isis knew two things. First, that man was going to inject whatever mystery fluid he had in that bottle into her. And second, the thought of that frightened her to no end.

“Open the door,” the man instructed Aaron, then added, “Hold her,” to the Selpe soldiers.

Isis retreated as the door swung open and the soldiers filed in. There were too many of them. Had they always been so big? Their tall, muscular bodies filled her tiny cell, giving her no room to breathe, no room to fight. And her head hurt like never before. This was definitely not the time for this nonsense.

One of them stepped forward, and she threw him into his comrades, toppling them over. She hopped along the top of their fallen bodies, rushing for the cell door, but there was no space and no time. They grabbed up at her legs, upsetting her balance. Even as she fell against the opening in the bars, Aaron slammed the door shut in her face.

“Don’t fight,” he said.

Isis felt the fierce fang of a needle bite into her neck, and if she’d thought her head hurt before, it now exploded in volcanic agony. Her legs collapsed under her as a tidal wave of images crashed through her mind, splitting into a million directions faster and faster. She knew this feeling. She had experienced it before.

Somewhere. Somewhere. Past the fog of her memory to those days of her ‘episodes’, as the priests referred to them—those moments she had lost control and her power took her away from herself faster than she could get a grip on what was happening. She could not tame them; she never could. She didn’t want to be crazy, as so many Prophets were. It was inevitable, even after years of control, that they would eventually succumb to the madness within. And that was why she’d decided to bottle up her talent, to cast it away. All for the sake of sanity.

And now they were bringing her back there, back to the madness.
No, I won’t let them!

Slipping, shaking, spasming, Isis crawled her fingers up the bars, pulling herself up high enough to stare Aaron, safe on the other side, straight in the eye.

“Help me,” she croaked.

“I…I can’t.”

“Tell them to let me go. You have the power,” she said with much difficulty. She was having trouble staying fully conscious. The prophetic mismatch of images was tugging on her, trying to pull her down into its turbulent stream.

“This will all be over soon,” he assured her.

Snapping her eyes open—they had begun to droop—Isis screamed out, “Aaron Pall, you get me out of here at once!”

And with that said, her mind slipped, and all distinctions between what was outside and inside herself came tumbling down around her.

CHAPTER TWO

~
The Temple of the Veil ~

526AX August 16, The Temple of the Veil

JASON CHANZ, ELITION assassin, lay in wait. Before him was a postcard-perfect scene, the sort that buried Selpe border town kiosks in idyllic embellishments of wild, unspoiled Elitia. The silver-green needle trees of the Elition kingdom of Mist Veil jutted upward in jagged zigzags, cutting into a sky painted a vivid gradient of indigo to carnation pink. The air dripped with fog, coating Jason’s face in a second skin of cool water beads. At an hour before dawn, the birds were calling out in morning song, and all the creatures of the world were awakening to the already steamy late summer air.

Not that any of this interested Jason in the slightest. He could not simply turn off his senses, but there was just one thing on his mind. It saturated his every thought, directed his every move, haunted his every nightmare. Terra Cross was missing. Her disappearance was nothing new—after all, she’d gone into hiding years ago—but it gnawed at him daily. She was Elitia’s most famed Prophet, a tempting prize long desired by the Selpe and Avan Empires and any other human with delusional fantasies of ultimate power. To them, she was a tool to be drained dry, but to Jason she was so much more. Terra was his childhood friend. His best friend. His
only
friend.

The Selpes, those desecrators of Elition treasures, had stolen the Book of Memory, just as Shade had told him. Jason didn’t know how the peculiar old Elition had found out about the Selpes’ theft, but he wasn’t surprised that he had. Shade always knew about these sorts of things.

The Selpes had hidden the Book of Memory away in some dark laboratory corner in their capital city of Orion. They’d then prodded it, scanned it, and exposed it to any number of odious chemicals in the hopes of uncovering the secret of its magic. It hadn’t worked. Naturally. And Jason had stolen the book from their vault before they could devise even more ways to taint its pages.

According to Elition lore, the famed Recovery Scrolls would point the way to any Elition alive, no matter how distant. Of course it wasn’t nearly so easy. The scrolls were rare, said to be one of a kind. And because they were powerful, not to mention dangerous in the wrong hands, they were split up into three volumes—the Books of Memory, Vision, and Prophecy—then hidden away at three temples scattered throughout Elitia. And just in case
that
was too easy, to unlock the texts one needed a key, the Stones of Resonance.

Now that Jason had the Book of Memory, tucked safely away in Eclipse behind portals known only to its residents, his quest to find Terra had led him deep into the Elition Wilderness. It was a land of old magic, a land where human technology failed to function. The Temple of the Veil itself, shielded by thick, golden-stoned walls, offered no easy entrance. The way was barred to intruders—humanly inaccessible.

It was a good thing Jason wasn’t human.

He scaled the smooth outer wall deftly and hopped down into the garden, setting down between a bed of pale green petaled flowers and one of lavender blossoms. Ingredients for serums? Sprinting silently, he came upon the back entrance—the old door used by none but the groundskeeper—and slipped inside. His destination was the library, the archives section. There he was sure to find his mark: the Book of Vision. Jason had already visited Viridescence, the continent’s northernmost temple, where it had once been kept, but it had apparently gone missing just six months ago. The winding, exasperating sliver of a thread of clues had led him here.

Jason concealed himself behind an open door as he heard two pairs of sharp footsteps approach. He glanced down the hall, where two white coats turned the corner and disappeared from sight. Doctors. Human doctors. He’d seen at least a dozen roaming the halls since entering the temple. The place felt like a hospital. This wasn’t normal. Something out of the ordinary was most definitely going on at the Temple of the Veil.

He passed the learners’ corridor, where the Elition school children, aged four to sixteen, had their rooms. All doors were ajar, allowing Jason a privileged glimpse into the abnormalites within. Several children twitched with convulsions in their sleep. Some as young as six were bound up tightly in medical bandages hardly able to contain the excessive blood loss. Others were fettered to their beds by heavy restraints as doctors injected them with thick needles. A few were fully awake, sharpening their fighting knives or dressing themselves in camouflage clothing.

Jason avoided an entourage of human doctors and Elition—no, make that Siennan—priests as he zipped into the library at the far end of the learners’ corridor. The archives, where he would find the Book of Vision, was no more protected than at any other temple. They, whoever they were, obviously depended on the high walls and remote location of their temple as their greatest safeguard.
Arrogant fools
, Jason thought as he tucked the book into his backpack.

The hallway was empty as he left the library and backtracked toward the exit. Well, almost empty.

“I don’t know you.”

Jason spun around to find a boy jutting his head out of one of the rooms. He was about ten, a couple years short of his Passing. His ribs were bound tightly, clearly broken. His eye was blackened and his face bruised. And his knuckles were wrapped in blood-soaked bandages. Still, he held his knife in his oozing hand, ready to head out with his classmates to the next training session. It was grotesque, even for Jason, who was no stranger to the monstrosities of the world. In fact, most people would attest that he was personally responsible for more than a few of those monstrosities.

“Go back inside your room, child,” Jason commanded, glaring at him as he phased his eyes as black as molten liquid.

His eyes were famous throughout the world, but certainly not in an admiring sort of way; no one had any desire to gaze upon them, for it would likely be the last thing they ever saw. So overpowering were his eyes, so petrifying, that no one ever noticed anything else about him—not even his hair, an unusual mix of three shades. Most of it was the color of melted butterscotch, but there were numerous strands throughout in both deep caramel and pale gold.

But not even that obsidian glare could distract the boy. He swallowed hard and repeated his words. “I don’t know you.”

Jason turned his back on the boy and continued down the hall.

“You don’t belong here!” he called out.

His words pounded through the hallway, resonating off the walls as if it were an enormous wind tunnel.

Jason didn’t have time for this. He quickened his pace, running at the head of the deafening sound wave. But even the world’s deadliest assassin, fast and stealth as he was, couldn’t outrun that. He hopped to a halt. A line of soldiers stood before him and a line closed in from behind. Avans. Ten in all.

Of course. That explained the Siennan priests. The Avans were after the three books, the coveted Recovery Scrolls as well. Jason’s lip curled up in a growl. They were looking for her. They had always wanted her. Terra.

He didn’t wait for the Avans to make the first move. Before they could so much as breathe, Jason landed two throwing knives in the chests of two adjoining men. He then slipped through the gap before the soldiers could close the break in their line. Now with all the Avans bunched on one side of him, Jason spun and unleashed a ring of another eight knives, each meeting its mark. When the last soldier had tumbled dead to the floor, he stepped over their broken bodies, collecting his weapons before dashing off.

But rather than returning to the exit, he threw open the dark wooden doors to the central chamber and walked inside. He descended the stairs to the circular sand pit at the room’s core. The white stone slab was at the moment clear. Jason took four glass vials from the suspended rack above and poured a mixture—green, brown, and red sand, with just a pinch of purple—upon the stone. With smooth, artistic swirls of his fingers, he drew spirals of color from the sand.

“Lana?”

A soft voice chimed in the chamber. “How did you know?”

“That you’d be waiting for my call? You always do worry,” replied Jason.

“Sisters are like that.”

“Listen, Lana. I have something very important to tell you.”

“You found the book?”

“Yes, of course I did. You know me.”

Jason could picture her clearly, rolling her emerald-green eyes.

“The Temple of the Veil has been infiltrated. It is under the control of the Avans. And they’re running some kind of experiment here,” he said. “On Elitions.”

She was silent for a moment, then said, “Jason, listen to me. I want you to get out of there.”

“I can handle myself.”

“I know you think that,” she replied, her voice shaking. “You have the book. Now come home and rest. You won’t be able to fight for Terra if you collapse from exhaustion.”

“I cannot remember that ever happening to me.”

“All right, my invincible brother. Then come home to stop Cameron from running off after you. He wants to find Terra every bit as much as you do. She’s his sister after all. And you left him behind.”

“Tell him if he takes a single step out of Eclipse, I’ll tie him by the ankles from the chimney of his house.”

Lana gasped, but she was probably just doing that for effect. She knew him well enough to not be shocked by anything he said. Or anything he did.