The Rise of Ren Crown (51 page)

I could see him wavering.

“Please?” I put my hands together and held them forward in a mage gesture for binding trust. “I will promise almost anything.”

Greyskull sighed and stepped toward me. He motioned for my hand and I held it out. “He'll know I helped you,” he said reluctantly. A tattooed snake slithered down the back of his hand, then his finger, then stopped at the tip of mine. It sniffed at my skin, then slithered up onto my ring finger and wrapped around. It settled in, camouflaging itself to my skin tone.

“Is it...will you be in trouble?”

He smiled. It was a very sad smile. “I've watched you here for the last few days and you remind me so much of him. I hope you make it back, Miss Crown. If he
does
decide not to let you go, and you are close enough, touch him with that finger. It will give you a few seconds.” He closed his eyes. “Don't waste them.”

Chapter Forty-two: The Enemy of My Enemy

With our timetable moved to noon, in order to take into account the twelve hours needed to get back before Bellacia reported me, I spent eight hours in the boys' room, trying not to listen as Constantine didn't sleep either. I finally fell asleep sometime in the middle of the morning.

I woke, went over last minute plans with Constantine, then spent the last hours at Bellacia's in order to “fill up” on time with her before the clock started ticking.

She was strangely subdued, and the news tickers scrolling the room seemed to reflect this.

I picked up my things from Constantine's room and headed out of the Magiaduct thirty minutes before our countdown, in order to meet him at the vault. He said he would have everything set up there by the time I arrived. I made a quick stop at the small copse of trees where Delia had helped me trap the vine—“I'm from a long line of nature, fiber, and timber mages, Crown”—though she'd given the carnivore a
very
long look and had stayed well out of its range.

I scooped up the vine—placed a small, spelled bag over its head before it could bite—and tucked it into my oversized jacket with a few minutes to go. It wrapped around my waist like a pet boa.

A small explosion occurred somewhere on the mountain.

“Tarei engaged. Two minutes and counting,”
Trick's voice said through the armbands.
“Hold on to your butts!”

Butterflies in flight flew against each other in my chest. The vault was just around the next copse of trees.

Suddenly, all of my communications went down. I tapped my armband. “Hello, hello?”

“I don't think they are going to answer.”

I stiffened and turned around.

We had planned for Tarei. Planned for making sure that he was nowhere near our position.

Keiren Oakley hadn't been a blip on our radar.

Oakley emerged, a device outstretched in his hands. I didn't know what it did, but Oakley seemed entirely too confident for me to be anything other than wary.

“This is too good. Really, Crown? A conveniently timed explosion somewhere on the mountain, and that against your chest?” He pointed at the green leaves that had started poking above my collar. “And,
strangely
, you seem to be packed for a trip.”

He said it as if he didn't find it strange at all. Judging by the smirk, he knew I was attempting to leave campus, he just didn't quite know
how
.

“I found it,” I said quickly. “Thought the green mages might know where it goes. And I'm on my way to see one of the professors.” Sort of. Professor Stevens was sometimes at the vault.

Oakley laughed. “Carrying that beast against your chest? I'll bet we'll find your magic inside of it too. You holding it is all the evidence we need, no less whatever else you are carrying.”

I was literally
covered
in evidence. Most of it was in my storage papers, but they
alone
were enough to convict me at this point.

“Evidence that I'm helping to rehabilitate campus one plant at a time?” I asked.

I inched toward the vault. It was just around the copse of trees, but also
slightly
too far for Constantine to hear us. And Oakley seemed to have some sort of communication jammer.

The real threat of Oakley's detainment was that I couldn't afford to use magic indiscriminately—I couldn't raise
any
type of alert—and all he needed to do was throw up a flare or give a shout via frequency, killing all our plans before they even began.

Or he could depress the red button on his device and have it do whatever he was threatening.

I edged to the side.

Oakley moved a step closer. “Now, now, Crown. I'm liable to get touchy and blast a much higher setting, if you go making me nervous.”

I eyed the device. My shields would probably be up to the task. For pranks, they could care less. But mortal peril tended to be one hundred percent in their purview. And I didn't think Oakley was here looking to spray paint or make me go streaking.

“You don't belong on campus,” Oakley said with a tight smile. “You
should
have been taken care of in the carnage.”

That sounded suspiciously...suspicious.

“Taken care of...while you were gone,” I said, narrowing my eyes. “What exactly do you know about Bloody Tuesday, Oakley?”

He gave a mirthless laugh. “Not as much as you do, I'd say. But a lot more than Bailey and the others, who wish they had half of my knowledge, contacts, and plans. Stop moving, Crown, or I depress this.” He finger tapped the red button. “And believe me, you don't want me to do that.”

I eyed it. My internal clock said I had forty-five more seconds to take advantage of the group's first diversion. Not a lot, but enough to try and talk my way into a better position.

“Come on, now.” Oakley motioned me forward with his free hand, then thrust his hand into his pocket. He pulled out a cuff. A nullifying cuff.

I narrowed my eyes at it. “There's no way you are getting that on me, Oakley.” I had magic to defend myself with now, and I
would
use it, if needed. I hadn't been shadowing Alexander Dare for weeks learning nothing. Magic gathered under my skin.

“Now, now, don't be hasty. See, that's where you are wrong. This,” he shook the device, “is a one-way ticket to your muse's brains getting liquefied. So you have a choice to make.”

Alarm rang through me. “What?”

“Here, I'll even let you contact her to find out.” He smirked.

I immediately checked my communications.
“Neph, are you there?”

“Yes?”
Her voice reflected my alarm.
“Why didn't you answer a second ago? What is wrong?”

“Did someone put something on you?”

“What? No. Just the control spells at my sanctioning.”
There was something off in her voice.
“But those are only accessible by the head of the community.”

Oakley smiled as horror overtook me. “I think you've figured it out, haven't you? Excellent. Let's turn her back off, now. There we go. That's what deal making begets, Crown. Not that you know, feral mongrel that you are,” he said viciously. “Come now. Your muse is waiting. The Department wants you and the Department is going to get you.”

He took a careful step forward reaching out toward me with the cuff while I stood, frozen.

“This will take care of two problems,” he said. “Then the real fun will begin when the terr—”

Oakley hit the ground in a spray of striped black-and-green ropes and chains. I didn't wait to see who had cast the magic, I stepped on his outstretched wrist and ripped the device from his hand. I clutched it against my chest and backed away as striped snakes of magic lashed out and tightened around him, slamming him repeatedly into the ground. Blood spurted from his broken nose, but that too was soon covered up in a burlap hood magicked over his head.

Stunned, my head jerked up to see Bellacia striding over, hips swaying. She kicked Oakley in the stomach.

“What—” I started. The vine had flattened against me, tucked out of sight, as if it found
Bellacia
a threat, where it had found Oakley merely boring.

“Oh, please.” Bellacia stood, back straight, one leg out, posed like the high society model she was, one finger casually making figure eight motions in the air. Her magic followed the paths she drew, trussing up Oakley like a holiday turkey with the magical rope that I had seen law enforcement on the feeds use—a measure just shy of a nullifying cuff.

The nullifying cuff, she left curled in his fist.

“I've had my eyes on him for weeks,” she said with disdain. “With his precious double dealing. Thinking we didn't notice. Giving information to the Thirdies.”

I stared down at Oakley. “But he wants to turn me in to the Department.”

“Yes. He does. Interesting, isn't it?” She hummed as she worked.

“The Department is working with the Third Layer?”

Bellacia sighed. “You ask that as if it is so simplistic. Certain elements in the Department are working with the Third Layer terrorists. All in the pursuit of their own goals, of course. As we all do.”

“Goals to what?”

“To get the populace more under control. To increase weapons production, all in the name of a continuing war. To rise from the ashes of the old and form the new. To justify a new experiment. Or to keep certain members of the population in their direct control. Name it, and there is someone pressing forward on their agenda.”

“And Stavros?”

“Ah.” Bellacia smiled, eyes cold. “Now there
is
the question. What is the head of the Department's goal? That, my dear...that is what is shrouded by all of the underlings and minions who each fall beneath him. Which ones took the fall for their superiors, and which ones did he weed out himself? What is his ultimate goal?”

I thought of what Olivia and Marsgrove had discussed at the end of last term as they'd been drawing up the terms of my remaining on campus. Olivia had held “Omega Genesis” over Marsgrove's head to get Marsgrove to capitulate.

Bellacia would probably love to have me mention such a thing.

“What are you going to do with Oakley?” I asked instead.

She smiled beautifully. “Traitors to the cause are...dealt with.”

“Dealt with how?” I asked, looking uncomfortably at Oakley with the burlap hood over his head. The hoods were used to mute magic and normal senses, like sound, from reaching a prisoner. But it looked far too much like the preface to a First Layer torture scene.

“Why use your imagination, dear. In the most horrifying fashion imaginable—stretched across the front page of every major feed in the most grotesque and terrible positions. University stress is so all consuming.” She shook her head. “It just got to poor dear Keiren and now he will be humiliated in such a fashion that he will never again be able to work in Magicist circles.”

“You are going to...embarrass him? But, he'll be alive?”

Bellacia's brow delicately lifted. “Complete social estrangement is a fate far worse than death.”

I had the device that was hooked to Neph in my hand, where no one else could use it—I could afford to be merciful. I started to inch back along the path that lead around the bend and into the vault. “So...we're good here?”

“I'm not going to stop you,” Bellacia said, eyes glittering.

I swallowed and put another foot of ground between us. “Great, thanks.”

I didn't get Bellacia. Like, at all. But as long as she didn't follow me—

“No, dear. You misunderstand my intent. You are going to
do
something for me.” She held up a small recording device.

Okay, maybe I got her just fine. “Or?”

“Or...let's say, or else.” She held up another recording device. This one was inactive, but her threat seemed to be that whatever was on it was something I would pay to hide.

“Okay.” I nodded. “Sure. Let's try option #1.”

She looked amused. “Yes, let's.” She threw the first recording device to me and I caught it in the hand that was not holding the precious device linked to Neph. “When you activate it, it backs up to retrieve the ten previous seconds of data as well, so that the reporter doesn't miss the best parts. Get me something good.”

“No promises.” I stared down at the slim black square.

“Oh, you'll want to rethink that. Now, go.” Her eyes narrowed as she looked toward the trees in the opposite direction. “I need to pay the Justice penalty for this, and Oakley needs to pay for many other things.” She dropped two things to the ground and toed them beneath him, planting whatever it was she had decided to frame him for.

I backed away, then turned and hurried around the corner. Behind me I could hear people gaining ground. Another explosion sounded farther off.

Diversion number two.

I looked nervously over my shoulder and knocked on the door of the vault. The door rose a space of three feet, and not an inch more. I glanced again at the empty area behind me, ducked underneath the door, then nervously hit the switch that would seal us in. The door closed
theatrically
slowly as I waited for Tarei, or a member of the Legion
,
to burst into the clearing and roll beneath it.

The door sealed shut.

“You were almost late,” Constantine said in a clipped voice that almost startled me as I was still staring at the seal.

“Traffic.”

He raised a brow. I shook my head and walked toward him. The vine shimmied up from my collar and slithered out, plopping on the floor of the workshop. I grabbed it before it could consume everything.

“And...
what
is that?” He cast a disdainful, almost uninterested, glance at the vine, but our connection said he was anything but uninterested, and more than a little disturbed.

“Er...? Axer told me to bring it.”

“He
didn't
.” Anger suffused his feelings.

“No, he really...oh, I see. Yeah, Marsgrove was pretty ticked too.”

Constantine licked his lips. “Well, we can't leave it here. Perhaps he is planning that we set it loose in the Third Layer?” He smiled dangerously. “See what havoc we can wreak?”

“Maybe.” I looked at the vine, which was now rubbing its cheek against my hand. It was like a really disturbing pet.