Ensnared (Sorcery and Science Book 5) (5 page)

Jason threw open the front doors of the temple and marched down the main hall. Elitions young and old scrambled to the side to clear a path for him. They ogled at his menacing black-clad form, strapped down with slick throwing knives and jagged daggers. His eyes smoldered with unfaltering determination, daring someone to stand in his way. Unsurprisingly, anyone who caught the receiving end of that stare hastily made plans to be elsewhere.

Everett and Cameron walked side-by-side behind him, dressed in black especially for the occasion. Everett had loaned Cameron a dagger for their menacing entrance. The kid held the weapon before him and made his eyes glow an eerie shade of icy blue, a trick he’d mastered by practicing day and night in front of a mirror for the past several days. Cameron was doing an admirable job of looking tough, and Everett hoped he didn’t dampen his victory by pricking his finger with his blade.

They marched right on through the door at the end of the hallway and came into a cavernous amphitheater. Golden light filtered through a tinted glass skylight, pushing back the gloom to usher warmth into the temple of Precipice. Rows of wooden shelves lined the walls, holding more books than Everett had ever seen before in his life. He scanned the shelves of multi-colored spines. This library contained thousands of books
—
no, tens of thousands. He hoped Jason’s plan to find the Book of Prophecy didn’t necessitate going through every row one by one. They would be holed up in there for months.

But Jason continued without pause through the library, leading them into a small back room. The room contained no more than a few sparsely populated bookshelves and a wooden desk. As Jason began poking around, an Elition woman pushed away from the desk. Her shimmering copper hair was drawn up into a high twist of cascading curls. She brushed down her indigo pencil skirt with indignation. Her ribbon-trimmed bell sleeves screamed Elition priestess, and the prim slender skirt and high-heeled pumps said librarian. The librarian priestess of Precipice.

“What are you doing?” she demanded.

Jason ignored her and continued flipping through the books.

“Those are rare books you’re so casually tossing around.” She caught a falling book and set it neatly back into place. “Some of them are well over a thousand years old.”

The sentiment didn’t seem to impress Jason. He moved on to the stacks at the back.

She positioned herself as a shield between the books and the assassin. “You leave my books alone,” she growled and drew a slender silver dagger with a sapphire-studded hilt.

Jason stared at her until smoke began steaming from the dagger. The librarian gritted her teeth and held to her weapon for a few seconds longer. When she finally released it, her hand was red with blistered burns. The blade clanged against the stone floor, and Jason kicked it under a bookshelf.

“I know who you are,” the librarian told Jason, rubbing her hand gingerly. The burns faded back to unblemished skin before Everett’s eyes. “And I know what you seek,” she finished.

Jason paused midway through the shelf he was assaulting and looked at her. “Where is it?”

She pressed her arms against her chest and tilted up her chin. She didn’t withdraw under the weight of Jason’s stare, but Everett could tell she wanted to.

Not taking his eyes off the librarian, Jason slowly interlocked his fingers. Behind him, the books on the shelves began to vibrate. The librarian bit her lip. Three books shot out like bullets, thumping hard as they collided with the opposite wall. She clenched her fists and growled under her breath. The bookshelf spat out another five books. Two collided with each other and fell open upon the floor. One of them looked old
—
really old. Its yellowed pages were embellished with calligraphy ink swirls of brown, blue, and red.

As the book’s paper pages began to smoke, the librarian threw up her hands and screamed, “Stop!”

The smoke vanished, and Jason waited.

“You are a cruel man.”

“The book.”

“Do you have any idea which book you nearly torched?”

“The Sibyl Prophecies.”

“It is one of only two extant copies,” she said with great indignation.

He looked down at the book pointedly.

The librarian sighed. “The Book of Prophecy is not here.”

She spoke as though she’d suffered a great loss. Someone really loved her books.

“It was moved to another temple last week.”
 

“Which one?”

“They didn’t tell me.”

He studied her closely. Everett had noticed that Jason’s expressionless face only displayed that particular shade of expressionlessness when he was using his truth-seeking voodoo.

“How did you know I seek the Book of Prophecy?”

“I didn’t,” she replied. “They told me when they came to move the book.”

“They?”

“Some priests I didn’t know. They said there is a procedure in place to move around all the books should any of the three be compromised. After you stole the Book of Memory, the priests rushed here.”

Jason turned to Everett and Cameron, acknowledging their presence for the first time in minutes. “The Selpes had held the Book of Memory for who knows how long. It was already compromised. But it was not until I stole it from them that these priests came here for the Book of Prophecy.”

“Are you asking for our thoughts?” Everett asked him.

“Yes.”

Well, that was a first. “The priests didn’t know the Book of Memory was gone until then.”

“I assume the keepers of the other Elition libraries are as aware as you of the rare books under their care?” he asked the librarian.

She shifted her weight to stand taller. “I most certainly hope so.”

Everett looked at Jason and shrugged. “Apparently not, though.”

“Or it was an inside job,” suggested Cameron.

“A troubling thought. I’ve already rescued the Book of Vision from an Avan-infested temple.”

“Avan-infested temple?” The librarian paled. “Which one is that?”

Jason said nothing, and she did not ask again.

“So, how are we going to find the Book of Prophecy now?” Everett asked.

“I’ll think of something,” Jason assured him.

Everett knew better than to doubt the determination of an obsessed man. Particularly, if that man happened to be an assassin who could set him on fire without blinking an eye.

Jason looked at him. “Is there any particular reason you’re imagining yourself on fire?”

Everett shared his thought.

Jason’s eyebrow twitched ever so slightly, as though he were almost amused. Huh. Everett had thought only Isis capable of invoking an emotional response from the stone slate that passed as Jason’s face.

“Setting people on fire with Phantom magic doesn’t work especially well. There’s too much water in the body.”

Everett didn’t ask how Jason knew this. He really, really didn’t want to know.

CHAPTER FIVE

~
The Recovery Scrolls ~

526AX August 18, Precipice

JASON LEFT THE copper-haired Prior alone with her books and retraced his steps back down the main hallway. He could hear her sigh of relief from the temple’s front door. Priors loved their books
—
all except for Cameron, who preferred experiencing danger firsthand to sorting and analyzing memories of the past from a safe distance. And that made Jason’s job of protecting him all the more difficult.

“Do you always strive to make such a sinister first impression?” Everett asked him as they stepped outside.

“Yes.”
What answer was he expecting?

Cameron snorted.

Everett kept his eyes on Jason. “Why?”

“It makes it easier to get people to do as I wish.”

“Well, you know what they say: ‘You attract more bees with honey than with vinegar’,” Everett told him.

“I do not wish to attract any bees.”

“It’s an expression.”

A silly expression.

“A metaphor?”

And?

Everett threw up his hands. “Oh, come on. Surely, assassins learn things beyond how to kill people?”

What an odd question. Assassins learn what they need to know to kill a target. In many different ways.

“Throwing knives is a far more useful skill than throwing metaphors in my line of work, Everett Black. And in yours too.”

“Be that as it may, you scared that poor librarian senseless.”

“She was more concerned for the safety of her books than for her own. And I would certainly not damage priceless Elition texts.”

“But the flying books. The smoke,” Everett protested. “What about that?”

“Merely a show. She treasures those books above all else. In order to get her to talk, she had to believe I was crazy enough to damage or even destroy them. That is where my ‘sinister’ reputation comes in handy,” he explained.

“There is just one problem with your argument,” said Everett. “You actually are crazy enough to do that and more.”

He and Cameron burst into gleeful laughter. Jason glared at them. They should have stopped, but instead they continued right on laughing.

Could it be that he was losing his touch? Jason made his eyes go black, and they nearly choked on their chuckles. No, it still worked. Good.

“So.” Everett coughed, then cleared his throat. “What’s the plan?”

“We have two options,” said Jason. “We can try to figure out which temple now holds the Book of Prophecy. Or we can first look for the Stones of Resonance.”

“The Stones of Resonance?” Everett asked, perplexed.

“Together the three Books of Memory, Vision, and Prophecy make up the Recovery Scrolls, which can be used to find any Elition alive. But
in order to unlock the texts, we need something called the Stones of Resonance.”

“And where are these stones?” asked Everett.

“The Avans have them,” Cameron said, then looked down.

Jason turned his stare on him. “Explain.”

“When I was still at school in Black Moss,
I read in the library that the Stones of Resonance were rumored to be buried nearby on the continent, so I thought I’d see if I could find them.” He looked at Everett. “That was right before we met.”

“When I saved you from those Avans?”

Cameron nodded.

“They mentioned that you’d stolen treasure from them.”

“Stolen?” Cameron hissed. “
I
found the stones! Then they demanded I give them up.”

Jason was unsurprised. Cameron always had possessed a knack for finding things, even more so than other Priors. And the Avans were thugs and thieves. Getting the stones back from the Avans could prove problematic, particularly if Nemesis was involved. He had only defeated—no not defeated, weakened—the Siennan Triad last time with deception and Isis’s help. And Isis had been on a strong Phantom Accentuating Serum at the time. Whether they could pull off the same stunt again was highly questionable.

“Was it Nemesis?” he asked Cameron.

“The ones I saw all looked human,” Everett offered.

“Those five Avans were soldiers. Thanks to Everett, they didn’t get the stones from me that day. A few days later, you joined us, Jason, and the Avan Spirit Reapers attacked. The one who carried me off would have gotten the stones then if not for Isis.”

Jason remembered. Isis had charged at a Spirit Reaper with nothing but a pocket knife to back her up. At the time, he’d thought her foolish, but he’d since learned she was Elition—and he’d seen her fight. It was doubtful she’d ever been in any real danger, even from an elite Avan soldier.

“Nemesis took the stones from me when she captured me a few weeks later outside the Dell inn,” Cameron continued. He kicked loose a plate of dried mud from the trail. “And the Delineation Scroll I had too.”

He must have stolen the
Delineation Scroll, a magical map,
from Black Moss. Jason tried not to dwell on the fact that in the past few months Cameron had lost two priceless Elition relics to the Avans. He swallowed and set his hand on the boy’s shoulder.

“It’s of no matter.”

Lana would have approved, but Cameron looked perplexed at the gesture. Maybe Jason should have stuck to his usual frosty facade.

“Of no matter?” Everett cut in. “But you said that without the stones, the books are worthless.”

Jason thought back to the Temple of the Veil. “I have a sinking feeling the Avans are also after the Recovery Scrolls. They’ll be unable to use the stones without all three books, and I already have two. So it’s inevitable that our paths will cross, and we will reclaim the stones from their thieving hands when that time comes.”

Jason caught the scent of Phantom, and goosebumps rippled over his arms. Spice, leather, and metal—lots of metal—burned his nostrils. He turned to see Wrest march up the hill toward Precipice. Ambrose Selpe’s former bodyguard loved his knives. He wore so many that it was a wonder Jason could smell anything but metal from the man.

A silver-blonde head crested the hill, partially obscured by Wrest’s massive figure. Isis’s friend, Destiny. Jason’s fingertips buzzed with a hum of erratic energy, the resonance of Prophet. But there was more. He had the odd sense that Destiny was somehow connected to his quest for Terra. He had to speak with her.

As Jason stepped forward, Wrest’s hand slipped over a massive Everlast Ripper knife strapped to his chest. The ancient Phantom Extractor never did anything halfway—and that included picking out weapons.

“Wait. I mean you no harm,” Jason said, raising his hands.

Destiny’s violet eyes studied him for a moment, then she set a hand on Wrest’s emerging blade. He sheathed it but pressed his crossed arms to his chest, causing them to bulge under the pressure. Jason looked up at him. He really was a gigantic mountain of muscle. Not that it mattered. Jason knew he could take him in a fight.

“Any time, junior,” Wrest said with a wide grin.

Jason rechecked his mental barriers. Still there. He reenforced them anyway. His drive to find Terra had put cracks in his armor, cracks that an Extractor like Wrest could exploit to lift images from his mind.