Transcendent (25 page)

“You don't need to do anything you don't want to,” she said.

“That's true.”

“Then why are you here? Helping us?”

“Because sometimes, dear girl . . . ,” Rafe said as he pushed a strand of Mason's midnight hair back behind her ear and smiled gently, “even an old discarded god finds something to believe in.”

C
al's green eyes reflected back at him as he pushed angrily
through the glass doors into the dining hall. He couldn't help but notice that the scars on the side of his face shone stark against the remnants of his summer tan, more so with his face flushed with anger.

“Mason and Fennrys are gone,” he said to the room at large. It was occupied by Roth, Daria, Heather, and a handful of students—huddled as far away from that bloodied, bedraggled crew as the room's dimensions allowed.

“What?” Daria said, her perfectly arched brows knitting in a frown.

“Toby is too,” Cal said.

“Taken?” Roth asked. “Or on the run?”

“How the hell should I know?” Cal snapped, seething with apprehension—and an underlying current of irrational anger that he could barely believe he possessed. Never in his life had he felt this way but, where Mason was concerned, it seemed as if someone else was controlling the ebb and flow of his feelings, opening up a mental floodgate and pouring emotion into him to fill a hollow space he hadn't known he had. His hands curled into fists at his sides as he struggled to keep from lashing out with his power. “How in hell did they get out of Gosforth without us knowing?”

“They can't have gone far,” Daria said. “The security system would have alerted us to any breach of the wards around the school.”

“Do those wards extend down into the catacombs
under
the school?” Roth asked in a strained voice.

Cal's mother did a double take and her brow creased in an
even deeper frown.

Roth shook his head. “They're gone.”

“Where?” Heather asked in a carefully neutral voice that meant she knew something the others didn't. Cal recognized the tone. Heather wasn't the least bit surprised to hear that Mason and the Wolf had fled. And Cal also knew, again by that same tone, that whatever other information she had, she wasn't about to share. Heather Palmerston was loyal to a fault. To Mason, to Cal himself . . . it was an admirable trait that might just get them all killed.

Roth looked at Heather and, in response to her question, shrugged his good shoulder. “Not a clue.”

“But the farther away from here, the better, right?” Heather asked.

“Maybe. The truth is, I don't know. I don't know anymore how this all goes down, Heather. Without Gwen, I'm flying just as blind as the rest of you.”

Cal saw that Roth was still in a great deal of pain, both physically and emotionally. His handsome face was drawn and ashen, his eyes red-rimmed with shadows beneath them so dark they looked bruised. If Cal had had any emotional room left, he would have felt sorry for Mason's brother.

“I can't seem to find that Rafe guy, either,” Cal said.

“I think I know where they've gone,” Daria murmured. “At least . . . I think I know where they will ultimately wind up.”

Roth laughed mirthlessly. “Of course you do. You know, Daria . . . you could have done something useful with Gwen's talent over the years. Instead of hoarding it, collecting secrets,
plotting. Now it's wasted.”

“This isn't her fault,” Cal said. “She
was
trying to stop
your
father and—”

“Oh, grow up, Cal.” Heather scoffed, sounding suddenly as if she was so deeply weary of it all. “Stop defending her just because she's your mother. She's just as responsible for all this as Roth's dad. As all of the Gosforth founding families are. Our parents? None of them are innocent in this. I guarantee you my own mom and dad are just as complicit in this mess, even if they aren't actively trying to wreak havoc. They've
known
. All of them have known—for years—that this . . . situation was brewing.” She waved a hand at where Carrie Morgan and the other students huddled, all of whom clearly had no idea what she was talking about.

Roth looked at Heather with a glimmer of respect in his exhausted eyes.

“She's right,” he said. “Secrets . . . lies . . . all of what we've—
I've
—been trying to do through subterfuge and backstabbing and games . . . supernatural politics . . . none of it has worked.”

“Of course it has,” Daria said. She shook her head sharply and raked the hair off her face. “For hundreds of years it has. Because of this Academy and the accords that bound its founders. We've all kept the peace. Until now. So you see, I actually understand your frustration.”

“Frustration?”
Heather visibly boggled at the sheer understatement.

“You know, I've always thought of you like you were my
daughter,” Daria continued, a thin smile stretching her lips. “Both you and Gwendolyn.”

Cal felt his jaw drift open in utter disbelief. Maybe his mom really was actually,
utterly
delusional, he thought.

“You have got to be kidding me,” Heather murmured.

“Believe what you want. It's true.” Daria shrugged. “I always rather hoped that one or maybe even both of you would someday grow to realize your full potential and perhaps join me and my own daughter in the ranks of the Elusinian priestesses. I actually spoke to your father about such a thing not so long ago, Heather. We'd discussed fostering you, in fact, but he kept putting me off. Of course, it's not something that's possible for Gwen now—”

“Thanks to you,” Roth said sharply.

“—but I still hold hope for you, Heather. You're smart and you're beautiful, but you're naive. You have power you're not willing to use. And you're far too willing to play the victim. The tragic princess.” Daria pegged Heather with a pointed stare. “I wouldn't normally say this, but you could learn a thing or two from the Starling girl. Perhaps, in time, you will. But that's only if there
is
time.” Daria turned to Roth. “I need my peace pledge from the safe in the headmaster's office. And I need your help to get it. There is a mystical lock on the safe that can only be opened using the blood of two or more members of different founding families.”

“You want more of his blood?” Heather snapped. “Haven't you taken enough already?”

Daria rolled her eyes at her. “I don't make the rules of
magick. Inside that safe are the artifacts that each family turned over as mutual ransoms to Gosforth for safekeeping when the school was built. The things left by
my
predecessors can provide me with the means to raise an army to fight against your father's Einherjar if it comes to that. I need them, and then I need someone to get me to the Upper East Side, while the city streets are still somewhat passable. Rothgar, if your sister and the Wolf join forces with your father”—she held up a hand to forestall any protesting outbursts—“under their own free will or not, then we have to be prepared.”

“My car's parked in a Columbia lot not far from here,” Cal said without hesitation. “I can drive.”

Roth glanced back and forth between Cal and his mother. Then he nodded tersely and gestured her toward the doors. From the expression on his face, it looked to Cal that he thought Roth might tear Daria's head off—perhaps literally—if he let himself say anything in wake of what she'd just said about Gwen. Cal wouldn't really have blamed him if he had.

Heather watched Mason's brother and Cal's mom walk off down the hallway, the ultimate expression of “frenemies” in that moment, she thought. When they were gone, her gaze drifted over the familiar contours of the gothically elegant architecture of the place she'd spent most of her life, and which she was only now beginning to see with eyes wide open. She couldn't handle it anymore. It felt like she was suffocating. The
other students were looking at her like she was supposed to be able to tell them everything was going to be okay, and she just couldn't. Instead, she spun around and stalked toward the kitchen, pushing her way through the service doors and grabbing a glass from a shelf. She poured water from the tap and gulped it thirstily. When she turned back around, she saw that Cal had followed her.

“Insane,” she murmured. “All of them. Our parents are
all
completely off the rails and this place is a freaking monkey-house asylum. . . .”

“They've been trying to keep us
safe
, Heather,” Cal argued quietly. “And we've been stupid. We should have stayed here at Gosforth and we should have left well enough alone.”

“What are you talking about?” Heather looked at him, completely bemused.

“I'm talking about the one thing that started this whole mess rolling.” He shrugged. “If Mason hadn't gone off chasing Mister Man-of-Action Badass after that first night, none of us would be in this position now. She went hunting for trouble.”

Heather tilted her head and regarded him with disbelief. “It came looking for her first, Cal,” she said. “For
all
of us. Or have you forgotten?”

“Of course I haven't!” Cal snarled and it almost seemed that, in doing so, he was actually trying to emphasize the scars on his face that had marked him from that first terrifying encounter. “But she should have stayed with us.”

“You left too. You went home.”

“Only because she did. And I shouldn't have.”

No
, Heather thought.
You really shouldn't have
.

“If we'd all just stayed together and at the Academy, we would have been fine, no matter what happened.”

From somewhere out in the city, over on Broadway from the sounds of it, Heather could hear a car horn wailing nonstop. Probably some hapless cabbie was either unconscious or dead, slumped over the wheel of his car and leaning on the thing. It sounded like a pathetic cry for help, but as she listened, it stopped. Maybe the driver was awake.

She shook her head. “Maybe,” she said. “But everyone else wouldn't be.”

Cal laughed and it was a harsh, bitter sound. “So? Since when have you ever cared about ‘everyone else'? When have any of us?”

Heather shook her head. “You really think you're so much better than everyone out there”—she pointed in the direction of the body-filled streets—“and so much smarter than everyone in here. Well, guess what? You're not some kind of superior being—”

“Yeah, Heather,” Cal interrupted her savagely. “I
am
.”

He flung his arms wide and the double faucets on the industrial kitchen sinks suddenly burst from their mounting brackets, dual geysers of water blasting forth. The twin spouts writhed through the air like quicksilver snakes, leaping into Cal's outstretched hands, where they met and twined around each other, flowing into the shape of the devastating three-pronged weapon he'd conjured before. It had happened
so quickly that first time that Heather hadn't really been sure of what she'd seen. But now, in that moment, Heather got her first full look at what Cal had truly become.

And it was . . . magnificent.

Heather had always loved Cal's eyes. The clear, sparkling sea-green shade, the way they flashed when he smiled or laughed. And Cal used to do both of those things a lot. Not anymore. Now his eyes flashed with something else. Power. Tiny spears of lightning forked along the edges of the trident's triple blades and the air around Cal was heavy and wet and smelled sharply of sea-brine. His golden-brown hair blew back from his face and the planes and angles of his cheeks and forehead seemed as if they had been sculpted out of marble. His skin was smooth and flawless with the very notable exception of the scars on the side of his face—which somehow made him look even more striking in that moment. Beneath the thin material of the T-shirt he wore, his lean-muscled fencer's physique stood out in sharp relief. He looked like some kind of god.

He is. He really is . . .

She remembered the feeling she'd gotten on the subway train when she'd met the strange young man who'd called himself Valen. The way the air had seemed charged in his presence. It was the same thing now with Cal. And, frankly, if Heather hadn't been so terrified of him in that moment, she would have been drooling out the side of her mouth. Cal radiated strength and danger, and it was incredibly sexy.

And
so
not him
.

The thought snapped Heather out of her momentary shock. She shook her head sadly and took a step toward Cal. She put a hand on the trident and felt the smooth, cold surface of the solid water sliding beneath her fingertips and she gently pushed it to one side.

“Where
are
you?” she whispered.

With her other hand, she reached up and traced the scars on Cal's face. He flinched beneath her caress and she saw the real Cal flicker in his eyes.

“There you are . . . Calum.”

He reared away from her, but she wrapped both of her hands around the back of his head and held him there, surprising herself with her own strength.

“Cal,” she said, her voice quiet but steady. “Listen to me. We're going to need you.
You
. Not this . . . someone else you think you need to become. Mason is going to need your help to get through this.”

She didn't say out loud that
she
would too.

Cal looked down at her—
really
looked at her, for the first time in ages, it seemed—and blinked rapidly. The fierce gleam in his eyes faded, washed away by a film of unshed tears. For a moment, they were so close that Heather thought he might kiss her. She ached for that, but she wouldn't be the one to make that move. Instead, he leaned his forehead on hers for a moment.

“Heather . . . ,” he said, so quietly she almost didn't hear him. “Help me. I'm losing myself.”