Salvaged Soul (The Ignited Series Book 3) (13 page)

“Yeah.” I glanced up at Alec, who stood across from me, on the other side of Callie’s bed. “We’re going to find out what she did, and we’re going to fix it.”

Alec nodded, and lifted an eyebrow as if to say,
‘Ready when you are.’

I took Callie’s hand and squeezed it. “We’re going to go get this mess figured out. Don’t go anywhere until I get back.”

Callie settled on a small smile as her response.

Alec and Micah filed out of the room behind me, and we were met by Bruce and Richie in the hallway. I ducked past them without a word, and started for the other side of the Infirmary.

“She’s not going to tell us anything,” Micah said as he hurried to my side.

“We can find ways to make her.”

Micah scoffed. “How do you plan to do that?”

Honestly, I had no idea, but she had messed with my best friend and I was pissed. The swing in my stride portrayed a confidence I lacked internally, but no one would have known that from my poised and determined demeanor. Faking it made me feel better, and like I actually had a plan.

When we reached the first set of guards blocking the entrance to the wing where Lillian was kept, I turned to Micah. “Get us in.”

With a sigh, Micah approached the guards. Their frowns vanished as he explained our situation, and even went so far as to claim that the supervisors were aware of our intentions. They weren’t, but I had yet to witness a guard on this island question Micah, and wasn’t surprised when they stepped aside.

I heard them radio to the other guards, informing them that we were coming. No one got in our way until we reached the last door to her room. There, a stone-faced supervisor stood with his arms crossed over his chest.

“This area is restricted,” he announced.

Micah stepped forward as our spokesman. “Are you aware of the human girl that was brought to the island about an hour ago?”

“Yes, I know, but that doesn’t change the fact that no one is to come in contact with this Skotadi.” His eyes leveled on Alec, and then me, with visible distaste.

“She’s the one who cast the spell on my friend,” I objected. “We need to find out what she did!”

Micah turned to look over his shoulder, fixing me with a hard look. Alec’s hand came down on my shoulder as if to calm me down.

Fine. They wanted me to play nice? I could play nice.

“Alec?” I whispered. “Can you charm him?”

When he didn’t respond, I glanced over my shoulder. His eyes were already leveled on the supervisor. “Just waiting for him to make eye contact.”

“I understand you want to help, but you kids are going to have to—”

Alec suddenly stepped past me, catching the supervisor’s gaze as it swept over us. “You’re going to let us see Lillian.”

The supervisor’s eyes glazed over, and I knew Alec had him. He blinked once slowly, shaking his head as if he knew something wasn’t right.

“You’re going to let us in the room to talk to Lillian,” Alec repeated, slower.

Micah’s mouth opened, but I shut him up with a sharp shake of my head. The last thing we needed was for this to fail, and Alec to get busted for attempting to charm a supervisor. And that was bound to happen if Micah opened his big mouth.

“Absolutely,” the supervisor said. He resembled a well-groomed zombie as he opened the door to let us enter.

I didn’t know what I expected to see, but the sight of Lillian pacing a room stripped of everything but a bed on the other side of a glass wall wasn’t it. Another door still separated us from her, but that was all. No more guards or supervisors stood in our way.

Alec stayed in the hallway to instruct the supervisor to go for a long walk, and to forget our conversation, before coming up to stand beside me. “How do you want to do this?”

“You and I will go in,” I said. “You can charm her if she doesn’t talk. And Bruce?” I turned to look for him. “Can you come for protection, since she has a knack for hurting me?”

He nodded once in answer.

I looked to Alec for strength before I swung the door open to face my nemesis for the first time since I had put a bullet in her stomach. Granted, she had deserved it, and I would do it again in a heartbeat. Preferably, I would aim a little higher if given a second chance.

Lillian spun around at the sound of the door opening. I was convinced by now that the frown on her face was a permanent fixture, but when she saw me, her lips curved into a grin that could easily have won an award for ‘world’s most evil.’

I spoke first in an attempt to gain the upper hand. “Not expecting to see me?”

“I thought maybe it was that guy you’re so in love with coming to annoy me again,” she retorted. “What’s his name?”

I ignored the choking sound coming from Alec beside me and the warmth that rose up my neck at her mention of Nathan coming to see her in here. I had never asked him why he found it necessary to do so, and didn’t want my jealous streak to get in the way of what I had come here to do. Yet, somehow Lillian knew exactly how to rattle me.

“This has nothing to do with Nathan,” I returned coolly. “This is about the spell you did on my friend.”

“Oh . . .” Lillian laughed humorlessly. “The gullible human girl? I assume she has fallen ill?”

My eyes narrowed. “What did you do to her?”

Lillian shrugged lazily, and I knew she wouldn’t talk . . . willingly.

My eyes met Alec’s. With a nod, he stepped closer to Lillian, forcing her gaze to shift to him. “You’re going to answer us,” he said. “You’re going to tell us exactly what you did to Callie, and how we can fix her.”

Lillian glared at him for a few heavy seconds. I turned to make sure Bruce was near, because I had no idea what Lillian might do. Her eyes didn’t appear glazed over, but what did I know? I wasn’t the charmer here. Alec was.

“Lillian?” Alec asked cautiously.

Her head tipped back with a sinister laugh. Drawing in a breath, she said, “You actually thought you could charm me? Have you forgotten how powerful an Incantator I am?”

I scoffed. “So powerful you can’t even get yourself out of a locked room?”

Lillian’s lips pressed together and her eyes hardened on me. “Your friend is going to die, and there isn’t anything you can do to stop it. The plan has been set into motion. In time, you will all know the truth, but by then it will be too late.” 

“Too late for what?” Alec asked.

Her gaze flicked between Alec and I. “For everyone.”

Sleep was a lost cause as Lillian’s cryptic threat replayed over and over in my head. I stared at the ceiling for hours, considering every possible explanation for Callie’s illness and Lillian’s hidden agenda—whatever it was—and how the two could be related.

Before I could unravel Lillian’s plans, I had to find a way to fix Callie. She was my priority. Around midnight, I gave up on sleep and opened one of the spell books I kept under my bed.

We knew Incantation had caused Callie’s condition, so Incantation should undo it—if I could find the correct spell. Multiple pages in the book had already been dog-eared from my never-ending search for a spell to save Alec and me from our evil futures. I skipped over those pages, and focused on spells that healed the body rather than the soul.

Though the search would be an uphill battle, I would fight to the end. I wouldn’t give up. Lillian may have been a powerful Incantator, but I was Hecate’s daughter. If anyone could undo Lillian’s spell, it would be me. Saving Callie fell on my shoulders, and I vowed to not let her down.

After two hours of searching, I found something promising. I checked the list of ingredients, and rummaged through the collection of stones stored under my bed. I had been collecting them for months, since I first started learning about this part of my life, and had acquired quite a variety. Micah, of course, had completed the collection with the bracelet. But this stone—the one I needed now—had been one of my first.

I had learned that it didn’t have the healing properties I needed it for. But perhaps Callie could get some benefit from it?

I finally found the dark green malachite stone, and slipped it into my jeans’ pocket.

Kim looked up as I opened the door to my room, blinking her eyes rapidly as if trying to wake herself up. Surely, she wasn’t reduced to sleeping on the floor in the hallway outside my room? Kala leadership wasn’t that heartless, were they?

It wasn’t until then that I realized the thought had never occurred to me before. “When do you sleep?” I asked her.

She hesitated as if contemplating whether or not to answer me, then finally said, “During the day when you’re on Micah’s or Nathan’s watch.”

Which meant she didn’t sleep much now, since Nathan was gone and I currently refused to be around Micah more than absolutely necessary. I nodded, and walked past her without a response because, really, Kim’s sleep schedule wasn’t important right now. Tomorrow, I would suck it up and let Micah hover over me so that Kim could have a break. For now, I had somewhere to go. I knew Kim would follow, and that was okay. I had nothing to hide.

The Infirmary was quiet at this time of night. There were fewer guards to contend with, and I navigated the halls without resistance. The young Kala that stood outside Callie’s room nodded when he saw me, and I realized that I recognized him. Though I had only seen him briefly a few months ago, I remembered him. Jake something? He was one of the Kala who had been sent back to Boone to protect Callie.

“I have something that might help her,” I said to him in explanation for my sudden late night visit.

“Go ahead,” he said. “I’m not going to stop you.”

“Thanks.” I smiled as he opened the door to let me inside.

The room was dark, aside from a faint glow coming from the bathroom light. It was enough to illuminate Callie’s sleeping form under the sheets . . . and someone else sprawled out beside her on the tiny bed. I walked half way across the room before I realized who it was.

Alec, his face peaceful in sleep, lay curled up on his side with Callie snuggled in his arms. My heart clenched at the sight of their conjoined hands on top of the rumpled sheet.

Careful not to disturb them, I slipped the small stone under Callie’s pillow and recited the words I had memorized. With one last look at the two of them, I crept out of the room, my heart fuller than it had been in a long time.

Chapter 13

{Nathan}

The first fireball made its appearance as the last Skotadi fell.

Lighting up the sky as it soared over our heads like a falling asteroid, the car-sized ball of fire was the first sign of the demigods’ arrival, and that the son of Hephaestus—Derona—was one of them. As it crashed into the building behind us, triggering an immediate inferno, we ran.

Golf ball-sized chunks of brick and burning splinters of wood rained down on us, but didn’t slow our retreat. If anything, my feet pounded the blacktop harder and faster at knowing that whoever had produced that fireball was coming up fast behind us—along with another demigod of equal strength in whatever skill he specialized in. I didn’t plan on waiting around to find out who it was.

The five of us dodged the steady string of fire that rained down on the village as we ran. Our goal was the field that lay beyond the village, and ultimately the forest beyond that. I only slowed when the realization that the school—along with the surviving villagers—would, if they weren’t already, be caught in the blaze. My feet inevitably kept moving because I knew there was nothing I could do to help them now.

We rounded the corner of one of the last buildings not already engulfed, and the tree line came into view. Two hundred yards away. Across an open field.

The shadows of several members of our team were visible just inside the line of trees. I wasn’t sure what they were waiting for. It wasn’t like they could provide cover for us as we sprinted across the open. Not against Derona.

We came to the edge of the village, and slowed only long enough to slide beneath the wooden fence that separated the village from the wheat fields. Fortunately, harvesting season was near, and the wheat was high.

High enough to somewhat conceal us as we ran like hell for the cover of the trees.

A flaming tractor crashed into the field fifty yards to our left, causing the guy beside me to spit out a string of French words. The sudden brightness forced me to lift the night vision goggles off my head before it blinded me.

“Split up!” Jared called.

Though I hated to split up, Jared had a good point. We could never fight back against the demigods—one hundred of us no better than the five of us. At least by splitting up, we would be less visible and harder to track through the field. If we were lucky, we would all reach the trees without being burnt alive.

But then, the tree line didn’t exactly provide instantaneous protection either. By the time I reached it, the other Kala were long gone, and the first twenty yards of the forest was already burning.

And now I was alone.

The deafening sound of crashing trees and rapidly spreading flames drowned out any footsteps I might have otherwise heard. In my periphery, I saw a shadow, accented against the glowing orange backdrop, running parallel to me, but couldn’t make out who it was. He wasn’t stopping to look for the others, and neither was I.

Several moments of steady running put the blaze safely behind me, but I still didn’t slow. Not yet. Not with Hades’ demigods involved, and no way to know for sure if they were still in pursuit. Without the light from the fire, and with the moon blocked by the heavy tree canopy, the woods were dark. My goggles were long lost, and more than once, I got tripped up by fallen tree limbs or dips in the uneven ground.

The worst was the full-sized toppled over tree in my path that I didn’t see until I slammed into it. My legs collided with the thick trunk at full speed, but my arms thrown out in front of me kept me from somersaulting over it. Forced to a stop for the first time since I started running, I allowed myself a glance over my shoulder.

The village fire was nothing but a distant glow. A path had been seared several hundred yards into the forest, but had fizzled out far behind me. The question was whether or not Derona had turned back, or was still following us—only now without lighting everything he came in contact with on fire.

My guess was on the latter.

I wasn’t about to turn back and risk stumbling upon the demigods, but I had no idea where to find the rest of the team either. The last I had heard, the plan was to meet at the tree line, and that plan had been shot to hell with the appearance of the first fireball.  

“Shit!” I slapped a hand down on the hard bark of the tree.
Now what?

“Nathan?”

I took a step back from the fallen tree, wishing more than ever that I hadn’t dropped my goggles so that I could see the source of the voice that had called my name. It was low to the ground, and I thought I recognized it.

“Kira?”

“Down here.”

I turned in the direction of her voice. “Keep talking.”

“I tripped on something . . .” I vaulted over the fallen tree, following the sound of her voice. “Twisted my ankle. I think it’s broken.”

My foot connected with something soft. I dropped to a knee, and Kira’s soot covered face materialized out of the shadows in front of me. “Can you stand?” I asked her.

“I can try . . .”

I hooked my hands under her arms and helped her up. I kept my hands near and ready as she tested her ankle. She wobbled, and I shot them out to catch her before she fell.

Kira walking out of here on her own accord wasn’t going to happen.

“Alright. Come on . . .” I slid one arm around her waist to steady her as she draped an arm across my shoulders. We weren’t going to make much progress, and there was a good chance that we would be overcome by the demigods if they were still following, but I couldn’t leave Kira behind.

I wouldn’t leave anyone behind.

“Do you know where everyone else is?” I asked her as we started moving.

“The French leader said he saw a clearing on a map on the other side of the forest,” she explained. “They thought it might be about four miles. The plan was to meet there and regroup.”

Four miles on the other side of the forest? For the nature-gifted Kala, finding it would be easy, and the others would tag along. Problem was, I hadn’t seen the map, and didn’t know which direction we needed to go to reach the clearing.

“Which way were they going?” I asked, hoping she had an idea. I could work with an idea.

“I heard . . . east. I think.”

At least we were already heading east. That was promising.

We trudged along slowly, hampered by Kira’s injury. From her reliance on me as a crutch, and her occasional cries of agony when she put too much weight on her ankle, I didn’t doubt her claim that it was broken. Over an hour passed with me supporting the bulk of her weight. My arm was tingling by the time I saw the first signs of a sunrise on the horizon.

“Need a break?” I suggested.

Kira breathed a heavy sigh of relief. “Yes.”

I eased her down onto the trunk of a fallen tree. The break wasn’t so much of a break as it was an opportunity for me to search for signs of the rest of our team. Now that I had some light to assist me, I wanted to make sure we were moving in the right direction.

I saw no visible tracks from where I stood. I called to Kira, told her that I would be back in a few minutes, and expanded my search area. I moved farther east, and found my first footprint a few hundred yards from where I had left Kira. Twenty feet from that one, I found approximately a dozen more, all moving in the same direction. The tracks were a few hours old, but from the drag marks I saw, I suspected injuries had slowed the group’s progress. Perhaps enough that Kira and I could catch up to them.

I hurried back to get Kira before we lost any more time. Through the gaps in the trees, I saw her sitting exactly where I had left her. As I closed the distance, I quickly realized something was wrong.

She stood, leaning heavily to the side of her good ankle, with her hand stretched out to something I couldn’t see. I picked up the pace, putting a few more trees behind me, and saw what she saw. Only I saw it for what it really was.

“Kira, no!”

Her eyes shifted to mine, and I saw the glimmer of unshed tears in them. “It’s my mother,” she whispered. “Isn’t she beautiful?”

Not from my angle. What Kira thought was her mother was something far more ominous. A nekro—a dark spirit of the underworld—and there was only one way that it could have been here.

The demigod of the dead, Hades’ very own son, was near.

“It’s not your mother, Kira.” I took her outstretched hand and placed it around my neck. Ducking my head to avoid eye contact with the walking corpse, I quickly steered Kira around it.

The nekros created illusions to deceive their victims. That meant Kira truly believed she was leaving behind her dead mother, and fought me the first several steps. Until a second nekro appeared in front of us. And another. Each as ghastly as the first.

“Nathan? What’s going on?”

I had never experienced a nekro in the real world, until now. They were rare because they could only be called up by Nakurlas, the demigod of death, and he stuck predominately to the confines of the underworld. I flashed back to my development years, and what I had learned about them.

“They’re nekros,” I answered, and Kira sucked in a sharp breath. “Don’t look at them.” Making eye contact gave them the opportunity to create an illusion of a lost loved one that was difficult to resist.

“He’s near then . . .”

“Yeah. We have to move fast.”

I had to give Kira some credit. She pushed hard and fast despite her broken ankle. But then having the demigod of death and his minions breathing down our necks was pretty good motivation.

For nearly an hour, we dodged the spirits of the dead that wandered the forest. They were sporadic, at least, and didn’t slow our progress much. From the ease with which we evaded them, I suspected that Nakurlas was far behind us, didn’t know our exact location, and was fishing. By ignoring the nekros, we were able to avoid detection.

An hour after we dodged the last nekro, I saw a splash of color through a break in the trees. A few more yards, and I saw movement.

Our team—or what remained of it—had reached the clearing, and were stopped. Half a dozen injured lay on the ground while the rest of the team administered aid with the help of the two rescued demigods.

Jared glanced up as Kira and I emerged from the trees. His sprint to close the distance between us was the second fastest I had ever seen him move. I greeted him with a grin before he wrapped both arms around me in a tight hug, far from the usual one-armed, tough guy back slaps I was used to. He squeezed tight once before grabbing Kira’s shirt and pulling her into the hug with us.

“Oh, thank the gods you two made it,” he murmured.

I eyed the remaining Kala in the clearing over Jared’s shoulder. “How many did we lose?”

He released us and dropped his head. “Fourteen.”

“How many from our base?” Kira asked.

“Counting the two of you now, there are seven of us left,” Jared answered, then turned to Kira. “Go on over and get fixed up. We’re going to have to move soon.”

As Kira limped away, Jared said to me, “Permna is using her prophecy powers to watch the demigods’ actions. They’ve returned to the village for now, but they will be coming after us with another Skotadi army. We have to keep moving. We won’t be safe until we get to Mount Olympus.”

“How are we going to get there?”

His answer was exactly what I suspected. “We’re going to have to walk.”

A two-hour train ride plus a two-hour bus ride equaled a hell of a long walk back to Mount Olympus. Fortunately, hybrids were blessed with extraordinary powers of healing, and the injured were at full health by the second day. Another day and a half of fast-paced hiking put us within sight of the mountain.

We were again greeted by Artemis at the base of Mytika’s Summit. This time, she led the entire team inside the
Hall of the Gods
, along with Isatan and Permna. Isatan led us to a quiet corner in the garden near the waterfall to wait while he went with Artemis to find his father.

“How badly do you want to jump into that pool right now?” Jared asked as he walked up beside me.

“I’m surprised they haven’t forced us into it.” Sewer-stained combat clothes plus four days of hiking in eighty degree temperatures had left the entire team smelling . . . exactly as bad as it sounded.

Jared mulled silently a moment, then asked, “What do you think is going to happen now?”

I shook my head because that wasn’t something I wanted to think about yet. The good news was that the gods had their two loyal demigods back. Together, they could strike back against the wayward demigods before their plan to achieve immortality was seen through. I hoped Kris could avoid involvement in it, but I wasn’t optimistic. Not if she would grow to be as powerful as they expected.

I also had a bad feeling that this mission wasn’t over yet . . . that the
real
mission was only getting started.

I glanced over my shoulder at the enormous golden door behind us, impatient for someone to come out and tell us something . . .
anything
. I didn’t see either of the demigods, or Zeus, or anyone who had the answers I wanted. But someone else stood there.