When Copper Suns Fall (34 page)

“The Caduceans are overwhelmed, Hagan. Why
don’t you help them out?” Seth snatched Teulah into his grasp,
while Hagan attached a glowing green stone to his boomerang. Then
he swirled it in the air over his head, gaze focused on Desi.

Time sped the next few moments into a blur.
Ashli screamed and crumpled to the ground, sizzles hissing in the
air around her. Clear liquid covered her body. It was her turn to
be the plastic wrap girl. Shaking as she cursed, she wiped the
liquid from her body.

At once, the revenants stopped fighting and
stared in the directions they’d been facing as if someone had
removed their battery pack.

“The—the idiots binded me,” she said between
gasps.

“They did what?” Seth looked from Ashli to
Faris and then me.

“Are you deaf? They binded my power.” She
wiped the liquid from her eyes and smoothed her hair. “It’s a—it’s
some kind of binding potion with a nasty apple scent. Get me a
cloth.”

“Chiastolite,” Seth said, scanning the bushes
behind them.

Smelly, sweet potion, girl hidden in the
shadows of the bushes, they were all the signs of an aura
reader…Persephone.

Motionless revenants continued to fall by
Desi’s knives and Tobie’s arrows. Seth turned and dragged a
struggling Teulah toward the meta-shark pit. Ashli was still wiping
her eyes when, Seth shoved Teulah down the embankment’s slope and
straight toward the top of the cage. The Caduceans cried out at the
site of Teulah spiraling down to what I knew would be a gruesome
death. The scene pinged in my chest, reminding me of Muriel’s tiny
body ravaged by Ashli’s succubus magic.

“Your thumb sucker tricks won’t stop me. Do
you want to know why that is? Simply watch and learn from the
best.” Seth clasped his palms high above his head and said,
“Dominis Trathri Zaati Akuun.” The waves foaming at the mouth of
the waterfalls rose over and around us like a liquid umbrella,
giving the moonlight a blurred appearance. Desi and Tobie scrambled
to Faris’s side, bracing for impact. How long would my strength
last under those mega waves? “I’d give up my arms and legs over
thousands of lifetimes to freeze the looks on all your faces.”
Seth’s laughter echoed across the area.

“I’m coming, Lexa.” Jalen jumped through the
bushes beside Seth, lifted his saber, and slashed Hagan’s hand
holding the boomerang. Then he moved like a streak of lightning,
landing beside me on top of the cage. It didn’t even matter how he
managed to clear a large block of space with no wings. What
mattered most was the Bermuda Three were together.

“Could you possibly have taken any longer?” I
said. He shrugged and gave me his best innocent Jalen face as he
took one of the chains from my hands.

“Better take longer if it makes you
stronger.” He grinned. I smirked, glad to have Jalen and his
off-beat jokes with me.

Below us, Hagan abandoned his position beside
Seth on the dune, and took off to chase the person who attacked
him. He hadn’t figured out Jalen was beside me.

A strong pull inside my chest winded me. I
glanced back at Faris. He was doubled over, holding a hand over his
collarbone. I tried to speak to him. No luck.

I knew what was about to happen under the
silver moon, and the thought of it weighed me down as if an anchor
lay on my heart.

“What’s wrong, prince? Am I giving you
heartburn?” Seth said.

“Actually, I have a headache. It comes from
listening to you talk so much about what you’ll do. And you know
how I feel about that.” Faris nodded toward Ashli, silent and
shivering in her liquid prison. Then he hunched his shoulders,
repositioned his iron staff so the top was spinning, and leaned
into a charging position.

“I’ve waited a long time for this bonding
moment.” Seth removed his jacket and hurled it into the waters
behind him. Chest heaving under the brown tee, he arched his back
inward. His body jerked, and his fists trembled just before dark,
leathery wings sprung out behind him. Reaching behind his head, he
formed a sickle on a chain and flexed it. He locked his shadowed
gaze on Faris and surged forward like a train. But instead of
heading toward Faris, he turned and cleared a path into the woods
to the right side of the fort. Faris took off after him, flames
marking their path through the trees.

I was still holding one of the chains even
though Jalen had refastened the latches, and Dugan was moving the
crane’s arm back toward dry land. They’d defeated the revenants,
and Seth’s waves had fallen after he ran. Desi and Persephone
secured Ashli, abandoned by her group.

After Jalen finished tightening the chains on
the cage, he studied me with an amazed face. Of course, he would
stare. I was still using my wings. He reached behind me, stroking
them, and said, “You sure know how to impress a guy, Chela the
Fair.”

Happiness and relief tingled in me. It was as
if a stone wall of worry lifted away from my shoulders. My friends
knew my secret, now. “I know you need to go after him. I’ve got
Lex. Don’t worry.”

I climbed down the side, hanging on so I
could see the people in the cage. Lexa reached her bound hands
through the bars as we glided away from over the meta-shark tank
and closer to land.

“Be careful,” she said. I pressed my face
onto the cold bars between us. “Love the winged getup, by the way.
Remind me to ask for tips on how you made those, okay?” We shared a
nervous laugh, my best friend and me.

“I forgive you for smashing up Mother’s
store, too,” Lucia said from the cell next to Lexa’s. “If you could
sort of hurry up and get me out of here, I’d be even more
forgiving. I have a blind date tomorrow, and I think I’m going to
be grounded, now.”

I laughed and said, “You got it.”

With the support of my friends strengthening
me, I glided down to the ground and took off through the woods
behind Seth and Faris, ignoring the knife-like pain in my top wing
flapping behind me.

* * *

I found them in a clearing on a mountaintop
overlooking the river.

Faris and Seth jumped, collided in mid air,
and shook the entire land in a clash of ancient powers. Spiraling
to the ground, the two boys landed with an earth-shattering thud.
Clink. Clank. Clink. Clank. Faris’s iron staff blocked Seth’s steel
chain. They surged each other one last time. Bodies lifted and
fell, the dust cleared, and Seth was under Faris. The staff lodged
in his shoulder had pinned him to the ground. Somehow, he still
managed a grin. “Tell me. What drives your superiority issues?”
Seth said.

“The same fool’s juices making you think the
Tainted will succeed in their sicko control plan.” Faris leaned
forward on the staff.

Seth winced. His mouth twisted into a
grimace. “The Tainted will win. It’s a given. We’ve got a secret
weapon.”

“Another surprise like your revenant army
getting pulverized by my friends? Or your succubus girl paralyzed
by aura juice?” Faris said.

“It’s simpler than that. I’ll even tell
you.”

“I’m all eager ears.” Faris leaned on the
spikes, moving closer to his face.

“The mirrorlanders, their destructive ways,
the way they misuse the elements, will all be used in our plans. An
Epiclesium will be the one to lead us.” He coughed a laugh as his
leather wings flapped on the ground, twitching with a life of their
own under him.

“I think you need a better plan. Chela won’t
help you hurt her friends,” Faris said.

“Time always tells the truth. Kill me now,
exiled prince. If you don’t, then the Tainted will win with my
help…and Chela’s.” His grin spread.

I considered what he said as I stood off to
the side. Did I even want to know what he meant? Yes. I was tired
of everybody talking about my life as if I were a card to be played
when convenient. I trudged toward them, determined to confront Seth
about his true identity and his connection to Micah. And then Faris
made the mistake every sane person with the insane one pinned under
them should never do. It was the same thing he’d done when Seth
caught him at the mall.

He turned his head in my direction.

Seth slipped his hands around the spiked
staff, and whacked Faris’s head with the part that wasn’t lodged in
his shoulder. Faris hurled sideways. Heated energy surged through
me. I charged toward Seth. He made a weird hand gesture. I fell
backward, hitting the ground with a force that winded me.

“Don’t make me hurt you too, Chela,” Seth
said.

I cleared stars from my eyes just before Seth
pulled the staff out of his shoulder with a gush of blood that
splattered all over Faris’s face. I jumped up. The staff was now a
sword. He kicked Faris in the face, knocking him to the ground, and
drove the blade into his right shoulder. I hadn’t even seen Seth
change the weapon. Of course, he could change a schorl because he
was part Caducean. What I didn’t understand was why Faris chose to
take this abuse? He was strong, and the creature inside him was
legendary. Yet, this was the second time he’d been given a chance
to rough Seth up and didn’t do a thing to defend himself.

“Friends weaken you, brother,” Seth said.

“My brother died sometime around the day he
pledged his life to the Tainted.” Faris said.

“Like our father, mighty Zanas Indrail, did.
The man my mother sacrificed herself to save? But you didn’t save
old dad, did you? He’s stuck in hell, now. Kind of like our beloved
sister, Asa, trapped in a cave near Lake Tezrith. All of this
happened because you deny what we are,” Seth said.

“I’m not one of the lost fallen,” Faris said.
“I’d rather boil than serve Rabia like a dog.” Why was Seth calling
Faris his brother? And why did Faris respond as if there were truth
to it?

“I would be happy to work on the boiling part
for you.” Seth jerked his head toward me; but I was too shocked by
all I’d just heard to stand up. “Will you make the almighty
sacrifice? There she sits, the girl who can stop it all. But no,
that’s not the official name for her, is it? I forgot. She’s the
girl who will face the beast…and kill him. Have you told her what
it means? Why she has to be the one to kill it? And what will
happen if she succeeds?” Leaning forward, he eased the blade deeper
into Faris’s shoulder. Pain shot through my right side, too, ending
just below my wounded wing. “You didn’t say a word to her, did you?
Father always loved you best, no matter what, even though you were
the weak one. I was nothing but a mistake to him.”

He staked the sword to the ground, pinning
Faris, paralyzing me with waves of pain. Shaking off the throbs, I
stood and charged, crashing into Seth who rolled sideways. In one
swift motion, he yanked his sickle-chain from the ground, stood,
and swung it at me. The steel blade whizzed by the top of my head,
behind my bottom, in front of my stomach, under my feet when I
jumped. I bent forward and backward and sideways to avoid being
hit. About eight sickles flew around me. How did he make so many
chains?

“Very good, Chela. You must’ve had an
excellent Thoughtmaster to train you,” Seth said, studying me with
a wild face.

“I did. Only he wasn’t a Thoughtmaster. He
was a slippery Tainted who tricked me into thinking he could be a
decent person,” I said.

“Aww, how terrible. But I warned you. Now,
it’s time to say goodnight, Lotus. It has been fun.” He yanked the
chains up into the air, pulling all eight sickles back into a
single chain. It was as if the glossy black chains were the arms of
an octopus, moving with a life their own.

“Picking on girls? That’s rock bottom even
for a Tainted, Seth.” Faris tapped him on the shoulder.

The sickles dropped to the ground around
them. When Seth spun around, Faris grabbed his head. They locked
gazes and Faris spoke in Dcarsii. I knew what he was doing. It was
the same thing he’d done to me a few times before. He was taking
Seth’s most painful memory. At first, Seth fought him, closing his
eyes and cursing in a different language. But the tear fell, and he
snarled before dropping to his knees. The memory, whatever could be
so dreadful to someone as powerful as Seth, was gone. His body
limp, his defiant spirit broke. They sat on the ground and stared
at each other a few moments.

“Bind him, Faris,” I said, voice rising. “We
can’t let him get away.”

“Yes, bind me, brother,” Seth hissed. A
blurry figure passed me, zipped by Faris, and knocked him over.
Smoke spiraled around Seth, creating an odor that choked Faris and
me. When it cleared, Teulah was beside Seth, helping him to his
feet. Seth straightened up tall, stretching his wings as he rubbed
his eyes. I couldn’t tell what boiled my insides the most: Seth’s
stupid grin or Teulah blocking us with her smoke screen. How long
had they been working together?

Faris inched his way back to where I stood,
his shoulder oozing a steady trickle of blood, his face as pale as
the moon. “You told them where Chelby Rose was hidden. Why?” His
voice was laced with pain.

Teulah shrugged. “This is the most attention
you’ve given me in three years, Farisri Toulan. Don’t get all huffy
now just because I chose your brother. He believes in me.”

“If you betray the Caducean order, there’s no
going back home for you,” Faris said to Teulah. “You’ll go dark,
and turn into a creature you don’t want to be. Think about your
parents back in Bardonia. Knowing how you’ve betrayed their legacy
will kill them.” He was almost pleading.

Teulah’s face softened for a moment. But Seth
pulled her closer, turning her to face him. Under that magnetic
spell he knew how to weave, Teulah didn’t stand a chance. “Don’t
listen to him. He’s jealous of you and me,” Seth said. Teulah
lowered her head, eased her arm around his waist, and turned to
face us, her expression defiant. She’d made her choice.