Scintillate (25 page)

Then my dad cried, openly and without shame. He let go of her and buried his face in his hands. A big, sucking sob came out of him. She pulled his hands from his face. He looked at my mother with such regret. “I’m so, so sorry.”

I covered my heart. Tears streamed down my face to see my father’s sorrow. He hadn’t wanted to leave her. He was lashing himself with blame.

A bit of clarity surfaced in my mother’s eyes. “I was stubborn,” she whispered. “I wanted to know the truth so badly.” She looked at me from across the shack and pressed her lips together. “I thought I could find a way to end the danger somehow. That I could keep her safe. All of us safe. Oh, my love,” she touched his face. Then she looked back to me. “My little dark Daisy.”

All three of us were sobbing then. This tempestuous ocean of life tumbled us around and around and spit us back on shore together, forever changed. I backed away from my parents’ embrace. They deserved their time together.

Giovanni pulled down a horse blanket from a high shelf and spread it on the floor. He motioned for me to sit down next to him. I did. Mostly because I wanted to be next to someone but felt selfish to intrude on the intimate whisperings of my parents’ reunion. I was cold, too. Probably in shock. I wiped my tears and leaned into him.

“You did something to me,” Giovanni said low. “I am altered, not entirely myself.”

“I gave you some of my energy. You were nearly dead. I didn’t know what else to do.”

“It’s a fairy tale, no? Being brought back to life by a kiss? You’ve done it for two men now.”

I set him straight. “I didn’t bring you to life with a kiss. You revived and”—I blushed deeply with the memory—“you kissed me.” I avoided his stare. “You were pretty out of it. I didn’t think you’d even remember.”

He looked at me for a long moment and said, “I’ll not forget.”

When I didn’t answer, he added, “And I didn’t like to see you kiss that Arrazi boy.”

“Finn,” I said, irritated. Though I wasn’t sure why I felt the need to elevate him from “that boy.” I didn’t simply kiss a boy. I kissed
my
boy. I kissed my boy good-bye.

A spike wedged deeper in the middle of my chest. Not only was Finn a danger to me physically, he was dangerous to my heart. And now I had a new worry: how many innocent people did I condemn to death because I saved his life? Or did he really mean what he said?

Had I only prolonged his life until he died by his choice?

“What’s this?” Giovanni asked, tracing the inky swirls above my wrist and opening my palm where the moon blazed. “I didn’t notice you had a tattoo on your hand before.”

I yanked my hand from his, leaned away from his warm body, and curled on my side on the smelly horse blanket. I watched dust motes bounce on the shafts of light from the lone bulb overhead. A few moments later I shoved myself up to my knees. My hands on my hips. “Tell me the secret Ina mentioned. I can’t have any more secrets. What’s the darkest hole in your heart?”

Giovanni stared into my eyes. For the first time, I saw uncertainty there.

Outside, I heard the low purr of a car engine approaching. My parents must have heard it, too, because the low murmur of their conversation fell silent. We all looked at one another. My mother’s and Giovanni’s silver auras pulsed in frightened unison with mine. The vehicle stopped right outside the shed. We listened as the car door opened and closed. Footsteps.

A hand rapped three times on the door. A pause. Then once more.

“Fergus,” I said with a sigh and stood.

My father stepped forward and unlocked the door.

Clancy and Griffin blocked the open doorway.

Fifty

G

riffin’s knife glinted in his hand. Clancy wasn’t holding a weapon, but then he didn’t need one. Neither of them did.

Giovanni struggled to his feet and gripped my arm.

“Who are you?” my father demanded.

Gráinne whimpered, crawling away to the corner of the shed. Her fingers clutched at the wooden slats as if she could tear them away and run. My dad’s eyes followed her, and then he looked at me. I nodded slightly, and I knew he knew. I saw pure fear and rage in my father’s eyes and in his aura. And I saw the moment a decision clicked in place for him.

The whole world suspended, hung in its big black night, and waited.

Dad rushed Griffin, whose knife was held ready. Their bodies clashed for the briefest moment, no more than the time it takes for a bird to land on a branch and then flit away. In the space between breaths, their movement stopped. Then Dad’s hands grasped at Griffin’s arms and slipped down them as he fell to his knees. Blood dripped from the tip of the knife.

“No!” I screamed. The spark of Giovanni’s hand fell from my arm as I ran toward my father, but before I reached him, Clancy swung full out, his fist slamming straight into the side of my temple. The pocked wood of the ceiling rafters slid around dizzily, and I dropped to the rough floor of the shed. My vision blurred.

“Sometimes I think you possess no sense of self-preservation at all, girl,” Clancy spat.

Griffin’s knife was at my throat before I could move again. My father’s blood trickled across my neck. Or was it my own? Instinctively, I reached up to push the knife away, but the second my hand landed on the woven leather handle, visions bombarded my mind.

Clancy and Giovanni speeding through Dublin in a car. Giovanni lying unconscious, bloody, and beaten in the backseat. Griffin caressed the knife, unsheathed on his thigh. Clancy’s resonant voice:

He’d better live, Griffin. There’s an army of people who would kill for just one. But three…it changes everything. I can’t believe our fortune. The Society can’t know about this.

He’s nearly dead. We should finish him. How long since someone claimed to have taken a Scintilla to death? Don’t you want to know what will happen?

No, idiot. You’re shortsighted. Too many impatient people have done that, killed when they could have collected. You went too far with the boy. I said to bring him in no matter what, not kill him. Daft bastard. We need him. The only thing we can do now is put him in with the women and see if they can save him.

But, Mulcarr, keep three together? Isn’t that dangerous?

Trust me. It’s more dangerous to let him die.

I screamed when a sharp, searing pain burned between my shoulder blades, bringing me back to the present. My hand was still on the knife at my throat so it couldn’t be that. I arched my back and cried out again as a hot iron branded my skin. That was a familiar pain.

Giovanni ran forward but stopped short when Clancy yelled, “Don’t be a fool. Do you want her to die right here, right now?”

My father coughed and clutched his side. I pulled my gaze from Giovanni’s extreme blue stare and silver energy reaching for me like arms and shifted my head slightly to look at my dad. The blade bit into my neck as I turned. Dad’s hands were bright red. He hadn’t moved from his knees. But he hadn’t fallen, either. That was good, right? There was a lot of blood, though, dampening his shirt. Gráinne sucked in her breath and began to cry.

“How did you find us?” Giovanni asked. “Fergus said he drugged you.”

“Soul on a string. Soul on a string,” Gráinne chanted from the back of the room. She had obviously returned to Crazy Land, and I wasn’t sure I could blame her. This was too small a taste of freedom to have it end so soon.

“Hush now, pet,” Clancy crooned to my mother. “I have you to thank for my ability, Gráinne. Astral projection is a handy power. Luckily, I was able to slip into it when my brother-in-law drugged me. You were still at my place when I went under, still within my reach. I followed you here, astrally.” He smiled, sinister. “I can follow you anywhere, pet.” He leaned down over me. His hand ran across my throbbing cheek. “A very affecting good-bye you gave my nephew. Near broke my heart.”

I gritted my teeth and swatted his hand away. “If you had one.”

Griffin pushed the knife harder against my throat. It punctured my skin, slicing a gash in my neck. Something hard settled into my collarbone. Disoriented, I reached for it, expecting to feel a piece of my white bone protruding from my skin. But my fingers instantly recognized the shape of the key.

“Don’t hurt her,” my father choked, the blood under his rib cage spreading into an alarming scarlet blot. “Please. I’m begging you.”

Clancy stood, put his hands on his hips, and surveyed the room as if deciding what to do with all of us. Giovanni’s fingers twitched against his jeans like a gunslinger.

“That’s a right nasty wound you’ve got there,” Clancy commented to my dad.

My dad’s brows furrowed deeply as he worked through possible arguments, trying desperately to find a crack in Clancy he could exploit. “Money,” my father gasped. “How much will it take to let us go?”

Clancy laughed. “There is no price large enough, chap. I cannot buy what a Scintilla can give me. But you
do
have something I can use.”

My dad heaved forward like he’d been yanked by a giant, invisible hand. I realized then that he had. Clancy had reached inside him and dragged his colors, his beautiful colors, right out of his body in a slow, steady stream, drawing them into his own.

I struggled to free myself, but Griffin slid his knees over my shoulders, pinning me to the floor. The jagged edge of the knife pressed deeper into my throat. “Stop! Please stop,” I cried. “You don’t need him right now.”

“No, pet. This is purely for pleasure.”

My dad had that same bewildered look that Mrs. Oberman had. That the lady in the park had. Like they couldn’t understand why their energy was plummeting with every weakened beat of their heart, why their vision had narrowed to a scary point of light intent on consuming them. I now knew it was like drowning slowly.

Watching it killed me. Tears as hot as the blood on my neck slid down my temples. “Please…,” I sobbed. “I love you, Daddy.”

“Take me!” Gráinne suddenly screamed. “Take all of me. To the death. You know what might happen, Clancy. Do it!”

“Rumors,” Clancy scoffed. “Legends. And you’re far more valuable to me alive than dead.” Clancy grabbed a clump of my father’s hair. “He’s worth nothing, however. There are millions like him all over the world.”

“No, no, Benito,” she cried. Gráinne wept in a ball. I struggled harder against Griffin, felt another sharp nick in my skin, a stinging line of fire across my neck. And I didn’t care. I needed to get to my father. I thrashed, kicked, bucked my body up against him, used every ounce of strength I had to get to my dad, all while the knife bit repeatedly into my neck. But it was useless. Griffin was too strong.

My father reached out to me. Clancy’s aura exploded into white as my daddy’s aura broke from his body. He fell over in a pool of his own blood. His warm body, his crimson blood, his dark eyes open, fixed on a horizon I couldn’t see. The essence of him, stolen.

Gone.

“Noooo!” The word bounced around the little wooden shack. I stared up at the rafters as the screams echoed around me. My father was dead. I was numb with shock, overtaken by a pain too great to accept. The air touching my skin, the air I sucked into my lungs—every cell in my body was saturated with an all-encompassing pain. I wanted to close my eyes and sink into myself. I almost did, but the knife suddenly released from my neck, the flash of steel sailing over top of me toward Giovanni.

I expected to see the knife impale Giovanni, but the handle flew right into his outstretched hand. I tilted my head back to see Griffin standing, staring in dazed shock. I swung my legs around, heaving a kick right into his crotch, doubling him over. Giovanni lunged past me, flying through the air, sweeping down to drive the knife into Griffin’s body.

I scrambled to my feet. As soon as I stood, I was paralyzed by the familiar tug on my aura. Clancy’s eyes were fixed on me. His greedy white aura took up the small room. It reached for me, stronger than before. Pulled me out of myself. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t reel myself back in, couldn’t tuck my soul away from harm.

Giovanni leaped in front of him, releasing me from the manacles of Clancy’s energy. I gasped to catch my breath. Without pause or mercy, Clancy began taking from Giovanni’s silver spark. He meant to weaken us all so we couldn’t fight. Giovanni’s body shuddered. He was already weak; he couldn’t take this assault. His head slumped forward, and he fell like a crumbling wall, folding at the neck, the waist, the knees, until finally, he landed in a heap at our feet.

I raised my arm to hurl the only weapon I had, chucking the key as hard as I could.

It landed square in the middle of Clancy’s forehead and bounced to the floor. He blinked, startled, and stumbled forward a bit, fingering his forehead for blood. The key lay on the floor between us. I took a quick step forward and scooped it up.

“Don’t move,” Clancy said, holding his hand up, palm facing me. I saw his ring. Embossed within the smooth, gold oval winked an emblem. Two pyramids, joined at their apices. The same insignia that was engraved on the key in my fist stared at me from his outstretched hand.

“Where did you get that key?” he demanded.

It had to be important. My mother had made sure this key and its secrets were buried. Until I dug them up. I glanced at her, hoping she could help me with answers, but she was still sobbing on the floor. I needed to touch Clancy’s ring. I needed to know what secrets it held and if it would show me anything I might use against him. I struggled to recall the vision from the knife.

“You’re afraid,” I ventured. “I can see it in your aura.” It was a lie. I could see nothing but white. I took another step forward. If I was going to bluff, I was going all in. “I know what you’re scared of.”

“Little lass, there is nothing I fear from you.”

I grasped for the fragments of memory the knife contained. “You’re afraid for them to know what you possess.”

Clancy’s eyes widened a fraction. I stepped forward again.

“I. Will. Kill. You.” Clancy’s lethal words puffed out in a cloud of curling black, and I knew.

I forced a smug smile onto my face. “No. You won’t. And it’s why Griffin didn’t kill me before. You have three of us, just like you need.” His eyes flew open in surprise. I could see his mind scrambling. I took another step toward his palm and the eye. One more step. It was my only hope. I was so close now. Inches.

Clancy closed his fingers over the ring and lowered his clenched fist to his side. A sigh rushed from me. What could I possibly do or say to get us out? “They’re on their way here now,” I spit out, desperate.

He grabbed me by the neck and squeezed. Silver sparks of energy flew off my body toward him. He sipped slowly from my aura. A cold, pressing ache radiated from my chest outward. I scrambled for the word he’d used in my vision, hoping it was the right one. “The—the
Society
.” I gasped. “I contacted them. Why do you think I have this key?”

His hand dropped from my neck, and he stepped backward. His white aura retreated into his skin like a frightened animal. I didn’t know who or what
the Society
was, but Clancy Mulcarr was obviously very afraid of them showing up. “They wouldn’t like to find you here with three Scintilla.”

Clancy surveyed the shack with a frantic look. My mother, rocking in the corner, crooning to herself; Giovanni, barely conscious but stirring; and me, strangling him with his own words. Using his secrets and his lies against him.

“I will never stop until I find you,” he said as he stepped to the door. “And when I do, you three will die.”

No smoky words in that statement.

And then he fled into the heavy mist.

Giovanni struggled to sit upright. I took his shoulders and blew my energy into him. Fast and frantic, I gave him whatever he needed to be a help and not a hindrance. We had to get out of here fast. I didn’t fully trust that Clancy would let his prize go so easily.

“What? No kiss?” Giovanni said as he wobbled to his feet. He reached for Gráinne’s hand, but she sat frozen in fear, covering her head with her arms. He picked her up and slung her over his broad shoulder, his knees buckling a moment before he steadied himself. “Come!” he shouted to me on his way toward the door with my mother flapping against his back and reaching out for my father.

I couldn’t leave my dad in this place. I tugged on his arm, but he was so heavy. Too heavy. “Help me!” I screamed to Giovanni.

Fergus fell through the doorway of the shed with car keys in his hand. “I’m so sorry,” he said, surveying the scene with shock. He dropped to my father’s side and felt futilely for his pulse. Sympathetic eyes met mine. “I’m sorry. I went to check on Clancy. I didn’t expect he’d be alert. And I didn’t expect his friend to show up.”

Clearly, they had fought. Fergus’s cheekbone swelled and blood clung to the corners of his mouth.

Giovanni rushed back in. “We must go, Cora. Don’t make me carry you out of here as well, because I will.” He savagely ripped the knife from Griffin’s body and wiped it clean on his pants leg.

“I can’t leave him here.”

“You must!”

I fell to my knees over my dad’s body, adrenaline and sorrow hitting me all at once. I bowed my body over him, his blood soaking my knees. His colors gone forever.

Somewhere in my mind I heard Griffin groan on the floor. Arms gripped my waist, but I didn’t fight them. I let Giovanni and Fergus pull me up. They poured me into Fergus’s car, and we screeched away from the shed and down the dirt road leading toward Rising Sun Manor.

“You’ll have to ditch this car very soon,” Fergus said. “I’ll retrieve it when it’s found. There are some supplies in the trunk, and cash.” We drove up to the manor, and Giovanni slid into the driver’s seat when Fergus jumped out, waving us on. “Godspeed!”