When Copper Suns Fall (32 page)

Camden didn’t get a chance to respond. The
projector hanging over a desk covered by vials and smashed grapes
sprung to life. President Pinkerton’s aide appeared on the screen,
demanding to know why Camden had performed an unauthorized removal
of an extra airvan full of common citizens. Camden answered him,
still pretending to be a concerned Thoughtmaster. He had the
routine down so well, even I questioned my doubtful thoughts. The
image faded. The aide was convinced by Camden’s story about the
captives as problematic citizens, so he turned his amused gaze back
to me.

“You have to admire the mirrorlanders for
their strong sense of gullibility. Now where did we stop in our
exciting conversation?” he asked.

“At the part where I told you to drop dead, I
think.”

Camden’s face darkened even as he smiled. He
stepped closer, enough for me to study his wrinkle-free face
divided by a thin scar running diagonally from his upper left
hairline to his lower right ear. His one black and one green-eyed
gaze sized me up. Unlike Seth, this man rattled me. “I can make you
do what I want. But coercion is extremely tiresome.”

I was silent. He was bluffing. The way to the
Grace could only be taken from me by either another seraphim’s
descendant or my Caducean protector. Camden turned to Ashli, and
said, “Call Hagan. She wants to see her friend. Grant her
wish.”

Ashli’s eyes lit up as she rushed out the
door, scurrying away down the hall. Camden didn’t touch me, but he
stood close enough to invade my personal space. The steroidal
bird—something that was probably a hawk in another life—sat on his
shoulder, staring at its reflection in my eyes.

Was I freaked out? Yes. Would I give Seth and
his death crew the pleasure of watching my knees tremble? No way.
My seraphinite heated. I wanted to rub the skin under it, so I
could punch the bird.

After a few moments, Seth’s cellereader
beeped in his pocket. He nodded to Camden who then stepped over to
a control panel beside the covered window. He pushed the button and
two panels slid back, widening the window before us. I was given a
clear view of the Tainted’s hideout…and the death trap sitting in
the waters below.

Under the evening sky, waterfalls cascaded
around us, as if they’d created walls of liquid surrounding the
fort. The old fort sat at the bottom of a mountain range covered by
them. The place where the waterfalls collided with the ocean
created foaming waves that soared back up toward the mountaintops.
A full moon was already out even though it wasn’t dark yet. Bright
light hit the cascading water, casting a white glow on everything.
We were in the Valley of the Rising Waves, part of the Oceania, a
chasm created by a bomb. Figures the Tainted would hide out in a
place created by the first and most destructive of the nuclear
bombs.

Seth moved me closer to the window and
pointed down to a wide, round pool filled with water enclosed by a
metal ring. The pool was situated about 100-feet below the window.
What I originally thought was a cell they’d locked me into had
turned out to be something different. We stood in an observatory
similar to Thalian’s glass-encased stadium box. Ashli stood on a
tall sand dune leading from the fort to an area situated on the
left side of the ring. This wasn’t good.

My awe quickly turned to horror.

If the legend of the rising waves were true,
that meant something else was real, too.

A wide crane moved a box dangling on the end
until it was directly over the center of the watery circle. People
sat in a large cage held up by the crane, their wrists and ankles
bound. I focused on a girl whose hair hung in two raggedy braids.
Lexa. Her sister’s red purse was slung across her body. Beside her,
Lucia Sanchez, Diranna Tilley, Emiliana Tautenbaum, and Zachary
Davet, along with several other faces I didn’t recognize, wriggled
against their restraints. Lexa reached her bound hands through the
bars, her face distorted and stained by tears. Heated anger washed
over me.

Stomach burning, I started toward the window,
but Seth held my arms.

“Let go of me.” I tried to twist away from
him, but it was like fighting an iron wall.

“Told you to fine tune that seeing orb,
didn’t I?” he whispered in my ear. I glared at him, and turned back
to stare out the barred window, a mix of uselessness and guilt
churning inside me. My gaze traveled down the crane’s arm, and icy
fear bit into my skin.

They swam in the water beneath the crate. A
ring filled with four or five twenty-foot long automatons that had
iron teeth and bad attitudes. Meta-sharks.

“Now, you’ve seen how comfortable your
friends are. You may proceed with handing over the Grace.” Camden
held a small vial in his hand. It was an ale-med container.

“I’ve already told you, I can’t. The memory
is blocked,” I said.

“Meh. Of course, you can. The words are in
here.” He stalked toward me and tapped my head hard enough to hurt.
A peppery scent surrounded him. His bi-colored eyes were wide as if
they could pull the memory out of me with a glance. “The desire to
serve the darkness is in your blood, as it was with your mother.
Don’t be a bore like your brother, Chela. It will feel invigorating
to help your own kind regain our freedom, our dignity, our
respect.”

“What did you people do to my brother?” I
said, voice rising.

“Cooperate, and you’ll get your answers.
You’ll walk right out of here, smiling, without even a scratch on
any of those poor souls in the box,” Camden said.

“My mother would never have sided with you.
You didn’t know her,” I said, doubt coiling around my heart.

Camden narrowed his eyes, and smiled in a way
that reminded me of his deformed bird’s beak. “Oh, I knew her quite
well. You see, Helena came to me a long time ago. She was confused
about where she needed to be. Serving the silver light didn’t make
her happy the way it did the other Epiclesium. She was a wild soul,
dangerous to those in her group. They made her feel like a prisoner
in her own land. I helped her escape…but with certain…conditions,”
Camden said.

“Stop talking about my mother. She wouldn’t
have made any deals with a snake,” I said, my heart racing.

“Oh, stop being dramatic. Your human side has
ruined your emotional strength,” Camden said. “Long ago, Helena
made a deal with the President. Even your father, the gullible
puppet, doesn’t know about his wife’s secret ventures. Your mother
agreed to let the Tribunal take her son, her firstborn.”

“Not true,” I said.

“Yes, very much true. A firstborn Epiclesium
boy is never a good thing. Helena knew this,” Camden said.

My chest was a bowl of strength spilling over
onto the Tainted’s ugly steel floor. Although Camden threw fears
about my mother’s past into my face, I challenged him with a glare.
I couldn’t take any more surprises or betrayals or anything that
required me to be strong.

“The glorious ale-medicines—the Tribunal’s
greatest invention, they believe. But we consider them to be the
Tainted’s road to immortality. This ale will enhance your seraphim
blood. The same way it has done for my revenant army. Maybe it can
save your brother, too.”

The realization of what he meant winded me.
“This is how you make them, the revenants. It was through our
ale-meds the whole time,” I said.

“Not everyone reacts the same way to the pull
of a fallen angel’s blood. That’s why we need the Grace. To
complete the mix, to stabilize it,” Camden said, lifting the vial
up before his face. “Mirrorlanders will do anything for the
opportunity to feel important. The doctors working to deliver the
blood for us are paid well, yes. Vesselism has to be the greatest
invention since the philosopher’s stone. What do you say?” He held
the vial closer to my lips.

“No thanks. I gave up drinking ale-meds a
while back. There’s a nasty rumor saying that it could be damaging
to your health,” I said.

“Is there, now? I’ll have to speak with Van
Meter about his loose-lipped personnel.” He squeezed the ale vial
in his hand until his knuckles turned white, and strolled toward
the window. I was right. Dr. Van Meter was involved with the
Tainteds. He was beyond the ambition of savior. He wanted to play
like a god.

“You should’ve taken it,” Seth whispered in
my ear.

“Yeah? Like I would do anything you
suggested.”

“Suit yourself. But your friends’ fates are
on you.” Seth gripped my shoulders. Was he restraining or
comforting me? I couldn’t tell. Ashli strolled back into the room.
A gray box gleamed in her hand. Hagan was now the one who stood on
the sand dune beside the grate covering the meta-sharks. The top
sprung to life, sliding back with a screech that sliced to my
core.

“What will you do?” I asked.

“I intend to encourage your re-education on
the value of good ale,” Camden said, nodding his head toward Seth
who forced me to straighten up.

“Not ready just yet? Hit it, Ashli,” Camden
said without looking away from me.

She pushed the red button on the box, and a
section of the cage’s floor dropped open. Emiliana sailed toward
the waters below, her arms moving as if grasping for an invisible
rope. Diranna’s screams were the only ones I heard over the click
and clank of the meta-sharks’ metal teeth snapping below us. My
lips trembled, and nausea rocked me. I didn’t want to see anybody
else get hurt. Another thunk, another wail as the boy contender I’d
checked in weeks ago sailed into the water. I locked my gaze on
Camden, challenging him, even though every scream from outside the
room nipped at my heart. Next time, the victim could be Lucia or
Lexa.

“All right, okay. I’m ready, just please
stop.”

“I knew you’d appreciate my hospitality.”
Camden held a hand up to stop the insane Ashli who didn’t hit the
button to close the hatches under the cage.

“Tell Bell Girl to chill before I get amnesia
again.”

“Ashli!” Camden shouted. She turned, glared
at me, and hit the button. The kids in the crate cried out. Seth
released my arms and moved to Camden’s side, so they both faced me,
now. Camden took a step closer. His eager face annoyed me beyond
words.

“Drink the ale-med,” a boy’s voice said in my
head.

“Faris, where are you?” I said, trying not to
look obvious as his voice faded in and out.

“Trust me, Chela. Drink it.” Rubbing his
hands together, Camden grinned as he watched me drink the strange
ale. What would the fallen’s blood do once it mixed with the seraph
blood in me?

Seth stepped away from us. The look on his
face made me think of a wild-eyed child. Did he know what was going
to happen? He gave me a knowing, sideways look, as if he’d just
heard Faris speaking to me. Impossible.

“Have you forgotten she has a Caducean
Protector? Even with the truth ale we can’t break that bond,” Ashli
said to Camden.

“Why not? It’s easy enough. Another son of
Gabriel can destroy it,” Camden said.

"Right. I’m sure the Caduceans are positively
dying to help your squad of kill-the-good-guy assassins,” Ashli
said. Camden turned his crooked smile to a blasé Seth who never
seemed surprised or hurt or fazed by anything. “Have you lost it?
Seth can’t unbind anything. He’s not a Caducean. He’s more Tainted
than the creator himself. He’s—” Ashli stopped mid sentence,
covering her mouth.

The shock was a whirlwind spinning me in a
vicious wave of surprises. And when it was over, I’d be lucky if
any part of me were left standing.

Why didn’t I suspect it earlier, when I saw
the scroll patterns covering Muriel’s body last night at the mall?
It was the same designs that Faris gave me when we bonded. Seth had
told me not to believe everything I see.

Did he somehow save Muriel from Ashli’s
spell?

“Ah, she knows. Now stuff a rat in that
mouth, so we can concentrate,” Camden said to Ashli. She stuck her
middle finger up behind his back. “Yes, it seems our Seth is both
Caducean and Tainted—a descendant of the archangel Gabriel and a
son of the great Bernael. What do you think? It’s an intriguing
combination, right?” he said to me.

Thinking felt like an impossible burden. I
shook my head without moving my eyes away from Seth. Camden eased
to his side.

“Now get to it,” Camden said to Seth who
stared at me and hesitated. “No time for patty games, boy. Or maybe
you don’t mind if the Sphinx meets your mother earlier than
planned.”

Seth held his left hand in the claw position
at my throat. I lifted my head, giving him full access to my neck.
Why? A part of me hoped my hunch about his true intentions wasn’t
as off as I’d originally thought.

The bird Camden called Felzar squawked and
flew back to its perch as I glanced into Seth’s blank stare.

“You’re part Caducean?” I said in my mind
because I knew he could hear me.

“That’s only one of many things in me,
Lotus.”

“Don’t do this. Let me help you,” I said.

“The girl who can’t call up her powers wants
to help a murderer? Isn’t that what you called me?” Seth said.

“He took your mother and hurt my brother.
Let’s unite against him. You said you wanted to be free. That was
you, right?” For a brief moment, his expression softened under a
series of blinks, and then turned in on itself, replaced by that
blank face of unreadable emotion only Seth pulled off so well.

“Now give us the memory of the Grace,” Camden
hissed.

Seth and I locked gazes. The room swirled,
distorting around us. My arms tingled, but no lines or patterns
appeared on them. My head filled with numbness as I waited for the
black blobs to appear, but they didn’t. Seth was doing the same
thing Faris had done to me that day in the cave. Something was
different, though.

“Don’t do this,” I said to Seth.