Shattered (Alchemy Series Book #3) (6 page)

She stood up and
raised her shirt, baring her stomach where patches of blue scales were forming in an irregular pattern that was about two inches wide.

"Why di
dn't you say anything?" I was stunned by the sight of the scales forming on her skin.

"I'd been running so crazy I hadn't even noticed. I though
t it was rough skin at first and it's not like I've had time to preen in the mirror. I didn't notice it was actually scales forming until today, when one of them actually flaked off into my hand." She pulled her shirt down and collapsed back into the chair.

"But if you didn't know, how would the
senator?" I asked. "Did you tell anyone?"

"
No, I told no one. I have no idea but it's too much of a coincidence to be anything else. Every name on that list has something going on."

I leaned back, agreeing with
her. Whoever the senator planted here knew things about us that we didn't even know ourselves. The thought of someone I didn't know aware of what was going on with me, and worse, maybe how to control it, was beyond frightening. Maybe it wouldn't be as alarming if I wasn't leaking smoke out my body like someone with a pack a day habit.

I reached my hand down to where m
y flask was tucked into my boot but I didn't pull it out. Cormac was watching too closely and I didn't feel like hearing it. I wanted to scream at him that some people hadn't lived thousands of years and we still had emotions left. Some of us still had nerves.

"If we don't go,
" Sabrina continued, "it's not just about war. If we can't control the rippers, we can't farm or develop a sustainable food supply. Eventually, we'll starve to death."

"No," I said. "If he knows how to kill them then
we can figure it out, too." I thought I sounded pretty tough for someone whose mouth was watering for a sip of whiskey. Someone once told me to
"
fake it til you make it." I couldn't believe I was following that crappy advice now. Good thing I wasn't a surgeon, or I'd be faking it all the way to the morgue.

"But how long will it take before we exhaust the supplies of t
he area within our range?" Sabrina said.

I didn't want to answer and
Cormac was suspiciously quiet.

Dodd stormed from the
room, slamming the door on his way out.

I pulled my chair closer to Sabrina. "You don't need to do this. No one is asking you to."

"We don't give up our own," Cormac said from his position on the other side of the room, squashing any discussion of it. "We've got two days to figure this out. No one says or does anything for now."

I looked back to Sabrina. "I agree
with Cormac. We'll figure something else out."

She nodded but her skin was pale and clammy looking. "I've got to get back downstairs.
"

A
bad feeling was taking root as I watched her leave the room, Buzz exiting behind her.

Cormac came and stood next to me.
"The senator knows you aren't ready to take him on, but he's not ready to take you on, either. Not with those silver strands that are popping up that can tear him to pieces."

"You mean the
things I haven't seen since New York?" I asked.

"Come on.
I want to show you something," he said, taking my hand.

"What
?" I asked, looking at him.

"You'll like it
."

"Should we be going up there? It's getting late," I said as we climbed the steps to the rooftop. It had once been a beautiful place and I was afraid to see what had become of it.

"Trust me."

When he opened the door, I didn't know what to expect but it wasn't anything good.

"H
ow did you do this? And is it safe? It's going to be dark soon." It wasn't perfect. The old willow tree that had taken up one corner was gone, but the bench that sat beneath it was still there. A new tree had been planted in its place. A lot of the plants had seen better days but it wasn't horrible either. There were new flowers planted here and there and the ones left would rebound eventually. With the sun setting, off in the distance, it was almost nice again. I mean, you had to force your eyes out of focus a bit to disguise the crumbling city surrounding us, but hey, we had apocalyptic standards these days. It was like walking into a house with five kids during the summertime, you had to adjust your expectations.

"It's warded. No rippers,
or anything else that might show up, can get within twenty feet."

I walked around on the grass, not realizing until right now just how desperately I missed being outside.
"And there's no way to do a spell on people?"

"No
. The spell has to be grounded to the earth."

I wandered around the rooftop for a few minutes before I finally got up the nerve to go as close to the edge as my fear of heights would allow. I didn't want to look but I couldn't seem to help myself. Even with the light fading, the destruction of the city was startling to the senses
from this vantage point.

I sensed Cormac come up behind me.

"I'm still having a hard time believing it. I keep thinking that I'm going to look out and it will all be here like it was for as long as I've been alive." I looked up at the sky, trying to focus on something pretty and not destroyed, but even that looked off. The colors were too vivid to be normal. "Our world is gone for good, isn't it?"

"Different
, not gone," he said and I felt his finger trail along the length of my spine. "I've seen a lot of change in my life. Some good, some bad…but the world adapts and moves on."

"I guess I just never thought I would see so much in my…" I started to lose my concentration. I forgot what I was going to say as he moved my hair away from the back of my neck and I felt
his lips caress the sensitive skin. It was like he instinctively knew all my buttons. "Cormac…"

"Yes?" he replied
, his voice deep and husky. His arm circled me and pulled me flush against him as his lips worked their way along the tendon that ran to the base of my neck.

"The contract.
You have to get rid of the contract."

He took my lobe into his mouth, sucking and tenderly biting. "Why?"

His breath against my ear sent a shiver through me.

"Because I'm too young to be married."
But I'm so overdue for this. I needed this.

"Contract or not, you're mine.
" His arm pulled me a bit firmer into him as if to prove his point.

I wanted to melt into him but logic kept niggling at my brain. End of
the world logic dictated I should have sex because, I mean hey, people were dropping like flies and I deserved some hot sex before I kicked it. But marry? Was there even a divorce process with a magical marriage?

I pulled out of his arms even though my libido was screaming
in protest the whole time.

"I want the contract destroyed. Vit
or isn't an issue, anymore. He's powerless under the circumstances." I turned to look at him. Cormac was a guy. He wouldn't care as long as he was getting sex, right?

"
So let me see if I understand this, you're willing to sleep with me but commitment is out of the question?"

He took a step back and stared at me like I was an alien being.
Yeah, no sex tonight. Not the way he was looking at me.

"Why is t
hat so bad? From what I've heard, you've screwed half the employees at The Lacard and you didn't marry them. I can't walk down a hallway without seeing a pretty girl and knowing there's a fifty-fifty shot that you slept with her." Did I just sound jealous? Ugh.

He stood there, shaking his head. "Maybe because I've been aroun
d longer then you can imagine.
Dated
all those women and I finally find one I want and she says she's only ready for sex." He turned and walked a few more feet away from me then turned back around, rubbing his jaw. "Do you know how many women want this kind of commitment from me?"

"
I'm not saying I won't want it, I just want to go slower. Why do we have to move at top speed?"

"Because when you know something is right, you don't need weeks and months to figure it out
." He took a couple of steps back toward me. "That's the problem. I know. You don't."

His last words filled me with nerves but I wasn't being unreasonable. "Why does wanting to move a little slower
have to be such a big deal?"

He nodded, going blank and unre
adable. "Fine," he finally said, then turned and left me standing on the rooftop alone, wondering what the hell "fine" meant.

The weather was crystal clear for a change and
I could see a crew bashing through the cement surrounding the casino below as I stood on the roof a day later. Even if for no other reason, it would be nice for the kids to have a playground of some sort.

Oslo had been on the floors below, circulating the casino like a visiting V.P. while Sabrina was acting stranger than ever. We had a day left to figure out what to do. Cormac had already made up his mind. To him, there was no decision. Sabrina was one of his kind, and if that hadn't been enough, it would kill Dodd. Cormac was non-negotiable in that area.

What bugged me
was what if it had been a list of only humans? Then what would Cormac have done? What might I have done? Problem was, I had a pretty good idea on both counts and I wasn't feeling too good about it. But that wasn't the situation and we still had a problem.

In one
day, we'd send Olso packing with no living insurance of any kind. I agreed with the decision but it didn't make me feel good about what might come. In the current state, it was very hard to try and rebuild anything. A truce, even a fake one that might not last long, did have a lure.

"Are you re
ady?" Burrom's deep raspy voice asked as he came up beside me. We'd agreed to meet here on the roof at dusk.

"Ready for what
, exactly?" His offer of help hadn't come with many details.

"To see what you've got. Cause if we can't get that juice you have inside you cranking
, I'm screwed as badly as the rest of you."

"What do you have in mind?"

"Come on. I'll show you," he said and turned on his heel.

"What happens when you go underground?" I a
sked as I followed him downstairs and then to the abandoned service stairs that most people didn't travel. I thought I was the only one that used them until now.

"I become reborn."

"But do you die?"

"I don't know what happens during that time.
I go to sleep, and when I wake, I have a new body." He exited the stairwell on the casino level and headed toward the back of the casino. Walking through the kitchens, where the humans weren't allowed, we walked toward a door guarded by Fae. Burrom obviously knew the best way to not be seen leaving. They simply nodded as we passed through it and left.

The
door opened out onto the back of the casino where a make shift ramp had been placed over the moat that circled the entire casino.

T
he door closed behind us and I looked up at the sky. Only a sliver of light was left.

"Burrom, are you sure about this?"

"I've got a hunch," he said, walking off and assuming I'd follow.

"A hunch isn't very reassuring
," I said but followed anyway.

"
Don't worry about it. I can keep the rippers off the both of us if I need to. I'm hoping I don't have to."

"If you can keep the rippers at bay, how come you aren't going out with the squads?"

His face looked affronted at the question. "I don't 'go out with squads'” he repeated in a disgusted tone. “Now, back to the subject at hand. If this senator helped your mother conceive with the help of magic, you should have the juice to as well. I'll show you how it's done and then you follow."

"Why can't you show everyone how to do it?"

"Because it's all about the juice, my dear, not enough or not the right kind and it won't work. The magic that is ruling now is the same magic you and I possess."

This was the first time since we'd come back from New York that I'd gone furt
her than the moat. Somehow, the moat had become the line of demarcation between safety and everything else that went bump in the night.

The streets were a
disaster. Debris was everywhere, shed from the skeleton of crumpled buildings. I thought back to pictures of war torn cities that had been bombed. Pictures didn't do justice to the reality.

There are a couple types of quiet in life. The first is the peaceful
dead of night when everyone is safe and sound in their beds or snowstorms, when everyone is nestled by fireplaces. Then there is this type. It's the kind I'd never experienced before where everyone is gone, the palette of voices and noise quieted in the wake of some unspeakable tragedy.

Every so often
, I'd smell a whiff of smoke from some fire that was still burning out in the distance. Sometimes, I'd catch the scent of something much worse. A smell that made my eyes water and the bile churn in my stomach and I knew it was decay of a kind I didn't want to see.

We walked further from the safety of the casino and with each step
, I became more and more concerned that I was making an error in judgment. I really couldn't afford any more of those. Fucking up the universe had seriously set me back. I might have maxed out my young and stupid allotment for the year.

"You're going to get me back alive, right?"

"I told you, I need you. More specifically, I need what you are capable of. From what I've heard of your past actions, I'd say I'm more invested in you
r well-being than you are." The little man had the nerve to laugh at his bad joke.

We finally stopped about a mile away from
The Lacard, next to a crumbling building that was once one of the greatest casinos on the strip. Burrom started climbing through the rubble and into a gaping hole in the wall.

"In there? The place
looks like it's going to fall down around our ears at any moment." A chunk of concrete fell a foot from where he walked just as I spoke and made my case.

"It'll be fin
e," he said as he dusted debris off his shoulder.

"I don't know."
I looked around at what was left of the structure. The few windows that remained were nothing but uneven shards of glass.

He waited just inside the ruins and tapped his foot impatiently.
"My survival is linked to yours. If I can't get you up to snuff before I go underground, then I'll be dead as well."

It was a convincing argument.
"Okay, little guy, you got me," I said as I climbed over the debris to join him. He stood there, eyes squinty and brow furrowed, obviously insulted by my "little guy" comment. "Oh, come on, it was a joke."

He snorted.
"Are you ready to learn?"

"Yes."
I climbed past turned over slot machines, with coins spilled all over the floor. Money was worthless, even coins had no value. Food and guns were the only currency that counted.

"You're
half Fae, so you should be able to pick up on this stuff pretty quick, even if it is a less preferable bloodline. It's not like you're Ground Fae quality, but it should be enough." He made a face, as if he'd just tasted a mediocre glass of wine. One he'd make do with for the meal, but wouldn't order again. I wasn't insulted. I was just glad there was wine.

"I thought the Fae gene was suppressed when
mixed with a Keeper?"

"Did a Fae
tell you that?" he asked but didn't wait for an answer. "If you want to know how to make a cupcake, you ask a baker, not a mason." He pointed his short stubby little finger at me as he talked and I looked at his t-shirt. I never would have pegged him as a Guns and Roses fan.

I thought back
as I watched him walk further in to the old casino and realized that all my information on being half Fae came from other sources and shook my head.

"The Fae have a vested interest in
not
letting other species have control of our abilities. We
don't
advertise. A half Fae with no training would be inept and easily help us perpetuate the lie. Your Keepers think you are so good at wormholes because of them, but you've already been using your Fae abilities."