CRYSTALLUM (The Primordial Principles Book 1) (26 page)

"Sorry?"

"Your longing stare after Jake's car?" Giselle lifted a brow, and Lindsey smirked, both of them eyeing her.

"I was not."

"Better figure out what you want, Kadence, because I can promise you Jake knows what he wants." Giselle took another pull from her straw.

Kade stared at the ceiling, not responding. It was easier if Giselle
believed Kade liked Jake. It wasn't puppy dog eyes she'd had.
Something was wrong. She could feel it.

***

The evening consisted of Kade trying her dress on with the silver heels, which she'd also bought, walking around her bedroom, up and down the stairs, while gripping the handrail, without falling on her face. If she could just work out the dancing thing, she'd be good. Giselle had only rolled her eyes five times trying to teach her. Kade figured that was a good percentage rate for the first hour.

"It's not that hard. You move your feet and sway." Giselle demonstrated.

The swaying part Kade could do, it was moving her feet with heels on and swaying at the same time that threw her off. Her ankles didn't want to stay still. "It's late, and I'm tired," Kade complained.

"It's six-thirty. Six-thirty isn't late. Thank god Jake knows how to dance," Giselle mumbled. "Otherwise you'd be dead in the water."

"He does?" Kade's brow cocked up. "And it's not like I can't
dance, G. I danced at Crystalline. It's the slow part I haven't done before." She wasn't dead in the water.

"Kay, fine, you danced at a club. Yay. And yes, Jake knows how to slow dance. I danced with him our sophomore year."

"Why?"

Giselle shrugged. "We dated for like two weeks."

Kade's jaw hit the floor. "Sorry?"

"Oh, stop. We were fifteen, and we never even liked each other. It was over before it started." She waved a hand. "Now, try again."

"I can't go to the dance with someone you used to date—someone you still think is hot."

"Seriously? It was forever ago. No one cares. Just stop. I
shouldn't have even said anything. And Jake's hot. So? There are a lot of hot guys at school. Doesn't mean I like any of them. Cole's hot, but I'm not interested in him, either."

Kade wanted to ask who Giselle was interested in, but she kept her mouth shut.

"I didn't
like
like him." Giselle's eyes widened. "Don't read more into it than there is."

"It's fine. Whatever." She held her arms out. "Make me twirl around or whatever it is you want me to do."

Giselle took Kade's hands in hers again like they were about to waltz across the living room. "You know what this confirms, though, right?" She slid her feet back and forth, and Kade tried to mimic the movement, staring at the ground.

"What?"

"That you do like him."

Kade raised her head.

Giselle grinned. "You like them both."

Kade looked back down at her feet.

***

The Sheol gate opened onto pitch darkness. Cole slumped on hands and knees, falling on his side in disabling pain. His right arm had
gone completely numb and hung limp at his side. Shrieks and
screams echoed around him. Even through his inability to move, he knew
where he was. He remembered the feel of it, the resonance of the
screams. He'd been trapped here before. When he was eight years old.

The Infernal Plane.

"Get up," a rough voice said. Cole's weight shifted and he was lifted to his feet, but his balance wavered and he fell back down, his head smacking the ground. "Not the strongest now, are you? No Warden to save you, either." Meaty hands grasped his shoulders and hurled him against the wall. Dark, sunken eyes swam before Cole's face. "And I thought a red corona couldn't be defeated."

"Kyle." Cole's breath was labored, all of his weight leaning against a roughly hewn wall. His hands ran across it at his back, and he reached for the inside of his sleeves.

"Don't bother. Your telums aren't on you."

Cole blinked, again and again. The Infernal Plane was a series of caves, made of a substance similar to hardened volcanic ash. Shiny black walls as hard as concrete. Too smooth to scale, he remembered from trying to climb out as a boy. “Once a person enters the Infernal Plane,” his father had told him, “the only way out, is up.”

"You said I wouldn't be able to track you." Kyle grinned, a wide,
ruthless smile. "So, I lured you instead. I'm not as stupid as you think."

"You're not?" Cole's voice strained. Kyle reared back and struck him across the face. Blood spewed from Cole's mouth and he crashed to the ground.

"Smart ass. As bad as Kadence. She deserved to be slapped, too."

Cole pushed onto hands and knees, spitting blood. Even on his knees, he had a hard time staying upright. The shock he'd received
when he entered the Sheol gate bit painfully, as though he was at the wrong end of a live electric wire. But he'd felt worse. Much, much worse.

"So this is your way of getting even? Rerouting a Leygate?" Cole rested against the wall, managing to sit down. "You went to an awful lot of trouble just for me." He heaved a breath.

Kyle mumbled and lumbered away. A dim light hung from the ceiling, and a small underground room came into view.

"You're going to have to speak in coherent, complete sentences if
you expect me to understand what you're saying." Cole rested his arms on his knees with another deep exhale, unable to catch his
breath.

"You might want to keep that attitude in check, smart boy,
before I knock all your teeth loose.” Kyle sat down at a square table, and Cole noticed his telums resting on top of it.

“Praemonitus pramunitus.”
Forewarned is forearmed.
It took every ounce of control Cole had to stay calm.

“Whatever, smart boy.”

Cole’s jaw tightened, but he didn't rise to the bait. "So, is this where the interrogation part of you capturing me starts?" He grinned at Kyle's formal posture in the plastic chair. "Because I have certain rights. I'm sure you've seen how it works on T.V. The cop, that would be you in this scenario, questions the criminal, me." He flexed his tingling hands. "And they get into some sort of yelling match about guilty versus not guilty. We'll get to that part, I'm sure." Kyle's eyebrows crinkled between his wide set eyes, and Cole went on. "Not that it matters, really, because everyone knows the guy is guilty anyway so why argue it?"

"I think the electric shock went straight to your head. Just sit there and don't move. Not like you'll be able to go anywhere with as many volts as I tagged you with." Kyle leaned back in his chair,
lifting the front legs off the floor. "It could take a while for Dracon to track Kade down. I think she was going dress shopping." He smirked.

Cole couldn't stop the growl that hit the back of his throat. "Dracon?"

"Thought that might shut your smart mouth up."

"Or loosen it. It all depends. I didn't realize you'd joined up with the enemy." Cole tried to stay calm, extending his legs across the floor. "But, hey, let's be honest, anyone could have pegged you for a traitor."

Kyle stood, the quick action knocking his chair back. "I'm no traitor."

"Difference of opinion. We can agree to disagree." He flexed his
hands again, the feeling in his right arm returning. "Did you ever hear the story of how I learned to shut down blacked gates?"

Kyle tilted his head to the side. "There's something wrong with you."

"It's kind of legendary, really. The story," Cole continued. "All the newcomers in the Brotherhood ask me about it." He crossed his ankles. "See, when I was little, my dad taught me how to shut down the negative energy in blacked gates by making me reroute lightning strikes every time a storm passed over our house."

Kyle's brow crunched like he was confused—and possibly
alarmed. He was probably wondering if Cole really was
off.

"It took forever for my tolerance to strengthen so I could wield that kind of power, but I got good at it eventually. I don't know if you know this or not, but a lightning strike is five times hotter than the surface of the sun, and even though Primordials are hard wired to harness electromagnetic energy, we can still go into overload and be killed by electrocution." Cole leaned forward, sitting without support. "But you probably do know that or you wouldn't have tried to electrocute me." He flexed his right hand. "Now, though, because of my training, it takes
a lot
of voltage to keep me immobilized for very long. You never heard that story?"

Kyle stared like Cole was certifiably insane. "Everyone says your dad was crazy, so…” He grabbed the chair off the floor and sat back down.

"Yeah." Cole's eyes darkened. "They do say that." He rolled his neck, pulling his knees to chest. "What was it you were saying about Kade again?"

"Nothing you need to worry about. She's not one of your own."

Cole's teeth ground audibly.

Kyle laughed.
"I knew there was something going on between you two. Jake doesn't want to believe it, but I knew."

"Jake's not so bright. It isn't his fault." Cole shrugged. "It's in the genes."

"So, you admit it? And you called me a traitor?" He rolled his eyes.

"I'm not the one aiding and abetting the Devil's Children."

"I can't aid and abet something that
I am.
"

Cole was the one scrunching his brow that time. "Something that you
are
?"

"You Primordial aren't as smart as you think.
The Patriarchae has found the Araneum. So, while all you lemmings are running around trying to block up gates and save the planet from natural disasters, I'll be safe and sound within the heart of the web."

"Damn, Kyle, I never knew you were as delusional as you are stupid." Cole flexed his hands again. "Hanging with Nefarius, too? I think I remember those exact same words spilling from the mouth of the one I killed in the alley outside Crystalline."

"You are all already dead," Kyle said with eerie calm. "The new girl you cherish, too." Kyle's eyes closed, and a Shadow sat in the chair in front of Cole. It grinned, silver teeth shining, milky eyes, narrowed.
"Like I said, I can't aid and abet something that I am.
And I'm like a chameleon when I choose to be."

Cole was on his feet so fast, Kyle would never have been able to track his movement
. Red light struck Kyle’s Shadow form, but he'd already broken himself apart, spreading across the ceiling in wisps before regrouping to solid form on the other side of the room. Cole ran for the table, grabbed one of his telums, threw it, and missed. The Shadow laughed and split itself in two, shooting toward the Sheol gate opening with a whistling sound.
"Your strength has already been compromised. Good to know.”

"You're
running
?” Cole shouted. “You sorry—" Cole reached for his second weapon, threw it, and missed again. Another shot of red light blasted toward the Shadow and ricocheted off the walls. "Fight, dammit! You dragged me down here, coward, fight!”

The last shreds of the Shadow flitted overhead and disappeared
with a faint shimmer through the ceiling. With a curse, Cole
mustered all the energy he had left, and transformed into the falcon. A piercing cry of pain spilled from his lips and he sped toward the gate.

Screams from the dead resonated around him, wind howling against his ears. Electric volts clipped the ends of his feathers as he cleared the gate, spasms racking his entire body. He rolled across the floor of the coal mine, twitching, and crashed into the wall in his
human form.

"What the hell happened?" Danny yelled, standing over him in a
blur.

Cole writhed. His skin was stretched too tight over his bones. The falcon's cry escaped his throat again.

“Cole!"

"Find Kade." Pain radiated through his body like he'd been stabbed repeatedly with a branding iron. "Now. Right now, Dan."

"I...what? I need to get you out of here."

"Kyle. He's a Nefarius," he breathed, vision slipping in and out, as tremors pulsed through him. "He's...working with Dracon."

"What?"

"Find Kadence." He choked down another stab of pain. "Alert the Brotherhood ... and the Ward. Kyle defected." Sweat beaded up over his brow, tremors shaking his body from the inside out. "Don't let anything happen to her, Danny.”

"Cole—"

He grabbed the neckline of Dan's shirt and stared him in the eye. "Promise me."

“Okay. Okay, Cole. I promise. But there is no way in hell I'm leaving you here.” Danny scooped Cole off the floor, supporting his sagging weight.

Cole swayed, knees giving out, and everything went black.

THE SECOND HIS FEET TOUCHED DIRT
in the ghost town
above the mine, Danny's first instinct had been to run. To blaze a trail straight back to Boulder. Running was the fastest mode of transportation for all Primordial, but it was also the riskiest. Too
easy to be seen. Even though they could move at close to the speed of light, a corona always marked their wake, and fluttering ribbons of color floating through midair wasn't normal. There was also the question of trying to carry Cole and run at the same time.

Danny's second thought was to fly. Not nearly as fast, but faster than driving. But unlike Cole, who regularly shifted between his human skin and the falcon, Danny preferred his human guise over his form as the hawk, and Cole was in no shape to transform anyway, so the Jeep was the only option he had left. He just hoped it was fast enough.

Cole wasn't responding, and besides the blood smearing his
mouth and neck, his skin had gone utterly pale. Red lines sprawled over his wrist and open hand, and Danny could swear they were moving.

By the time they made it back to Boulder, the sun was setting, and Danny was torn between jumping into a Leygate and taking Cole to the Ward, going to the Brotherhood, or trying to find Kade.