Lead Heart (Seraph Black Book 3) (43 page)

“How do they get them in there?” I asked.

“These are a magical phenomenon in our world.” He hovered his hand over the glass, a note of subtle reverence in his voice. “It is one of the only remaining examples of coordinated power. The original materialist and the original reader linked their powers to create material with
emotion
. These boxes can see inside us.” He moved his hand closer, his fingers brushing the glass. I watched in open-mouthed fascination as the glass rippled and bent inward, becoming something almost like water as it separated around his fingers, allowing him entry. “It senses the blood on my hands,” Silas muttered, pulling his hand back. “The magic is more complicated than simply admitting a person who has killed, though.”

He moved suddenly, grabbing me and setting me before him, his hands heavy on my shoulders. He watched my face as he pressed me backwards, and I barely even realised that the glass was solid at my back instead of warping around me as it had Silas.

“It even differentiates those who have killed in self-defence.” Silas dropped his hands from my shoulders, his touch skimming over my wrists until he was turning my hands, forcing my palms flat against the glass. “It’s a judge, a sentence, and a prison… all wrapped up into one. It doesn’t want you, angel.”

“So then how do people get out?” The words sounded breathy, and I knew that Silas could feel the sudden pounding of my heart, because his fiery eyes briefly dropped to where the organ was pressing insistently against the barrier of my chest.

“Creation is never foolproof. The originals knew that better than anybody, so they built a failsafe into the box. All you have to do is stand outside the box and declare, ‘this person must be freed’.”

“Isn’t that a little too easy? Couldn’t anybody be freed then?”

“If the person making the declaration isn’t of pure intent, the box will kill whoever is inside
and
whoever attempted to free the prisoner.”

I tensed up, pushing against Silas in an attempt to get away from the box. “Wow. Ok. So how did Danny and Gerald escape?”

He stepped away, allowing me space. “My guess? Takeo threatened Alice with something substantial—something that would transform her statement into a sacrifice. Maybe he told her that if she didn’t open the box, he would kill somebody that she loves, or something worse. By that logic, her freeing the prisoner is a selfless act to save a person’s life. She is of pure intent.”

“Damn.”

He stopped before the next box, his head tilted to the side. “They left you a note.”

I locked up my reaction and approached with only a surface layer of curiosity instead of the full-body panic that I was becoming prone to. Silas was right, there was a rhyme scribbled on the glass in black marker—a welcome deviation from Danny’s usual, sloping red handwriting. In fact… it didn’t look as though Danny had written the rhyme at all.

“Humpty dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall?” Silas read the words out like a question, and I knew that he was thinking the same thing as me.

“Maybe we’re supposed to go and find them?” I glanced around the room once more, though I trusted Silas enough that I didn’t really expect to see anyone. “Maybe that’s supposed to be a clue?”

“Only one way to find out.” Silas shrugged and started walking back toward the doorway. “Let’s go up to the roof. It’s one of the only parts of the original structure that hasn’t been altered. From inside, this place is some kind of elaborate mansion, but from up there… it’s just an old castle. With a wall that’s easy to fall off.”

We left the prison room with the glass boxes and started to ascend to more familiar parts of the house. Silas avoided the elevator, using staircases that had been tucked away and forgotten, first at one end of the house and then at another end altogether. We walked in silence and for a long time, but I didn’t mind. It gave me time to ready myself, at least mentally. By the time we broke through a door at the top of a particularly steep and dusty staircase, I was halfway to convinced that I could face Danny and walk away
alive
.

“Ah!” a voice boomed out, just as a wild gust of wind whipped my hair into my face. “Our guests have arrived! How nice of you to join us! Didn’t I tell you that you wouldn’t be able to help yourself, Seraph? But… only two of you? Shame, girl. You were supposed to make this easy for me.”

I pushed the hair out of my face and squinted through the shadows of the rapidly-darkening sky to where two men were silhouetted against the backdrop of an old castle parapet. It was made with large, crumbling blocks of stone, and I wished for a frantic, selfish moment that the slightly smaller man—who was sitting atop one of the blocks of stone—would suffer the fate of a gust of wind and tumble backwards. I had no idea what was on the other side, if anything, but it was better than me having to deal with him.

“Hello Weston,” I said coolly. “Hello Danny.”

“He doesn’t want to talk to you right now,” Weston replied, reaching over to pat Danny’s shoulder. “He’s upset with you.”

“Why are you both still here?” I ignored Danny entirely, since it was easier to focus on Weston. “Why haven’t you escaped yet? Why are you waiting?”

“Well, you see, I set up a little test for you when you came to stay here, Seraph.” Weston kicked away from the wall and walked toward me, his hands hidden inside his pockets.

Silas stepped in front of me immediately, his tense arms slightly outstretched.

“You failed,” Weston continued. “You failed the test, and now I’m not sure if I can redeem you.”

I peered around Silas, noting that Weston had stopped walking. He met my eyes, but then he turned his attention to Silas.

I curled my hands into tight fists. “You use your power on him one more time, Weston, and I’ll use my valcrick to fry you from the inside out.”

“Is that a threat?” Weston tittered, his tone patronizing. “You really don’t want to make me angry right now. Not after what I’ve discovered about you two. About the
five
of you.”

“It’s not true,” I immediately stepped out from behind Silas. “I know what they told you. It’s not the first time people have tried to spread these rumours. It isn’t true. You’ve tested it yourself.”

“Evidently not
enough.
” Weston was almost sneering now.

An eerie laugh broke through the tension that had the three of us gripped, and we all turned back to the wall—to where Danny sat.

“Do you want the truth?” Danny goaded, holding out his hand, showcasing a phone. “I have all the proof you need.”

Weston walked back to Danny, grabbing the phone out of his hand. He didn’t speak as he turned the screen on, but I knew that whatever was on the screen of Danny’s phone had sealed my fate. I could see it in the whitening of Weston’s knuckles, in the bobbing of his throat, in the hardening of his eyes.

He wasn’t simply a man lost to anger. He was a monster
consumed
by it.

He closed his eyes, his grip on the phone tightening until his arm began to shake, and then he was turning, an enraged sound escaping his throat as he grabbed Danny by the throat, the phone falling forgotten to the ground as his fingers found purchase in flesh, digging inward.

“You don’t want to watch this,” Silas cautioned. “I’ve seen him do it before. It isn’t pretty.”

“What is he doing?”

“Killing him. Overcrowding his brain. Danny will experience the equivalent of an extended epileptic seizure.”

I remembered the feeling of all of my thoughts being rushed to the surface of my brain when Jayden had briefly attacked me, and wondered if what Weston was doing was somehow similar.

“Why isn’t he fighting back?” I muttered, my eyes narrowing on Danny.

There was a foamy substance dribbling from the corner of his mouth and his eyes had rolled backwards. Weston’s hands seemed to be the only thing holding him upright, because his legs were twitching too much to be of any use. Silas didn’t answer me, so I supposed that he didn’t have an answer.

“You’re going to kill him!” I finally shouted, my heart conflicted as I took a step toward Weston.

I
wanted
Danny to be stopped. I wanted him to pay for his crimes. I just… I didn’t want to stand off to the side while a person was killed. It didn’t matter that the person was evil incarnate—and it didn’t matter that the person used to be my brother. I realised, in that moment, that death would not be the solution. It couldn’t be.

There had been too much death already.

“Weston, you need to s—” It was too late.

Weston released Danny’s inert body, and we all watched as he crumpled to the stone, blood seeping from his nose and ears. I stood there, taking him in. I was too transfixed by the smear of blood trickling down the side of his familiar face that I didn’t even realise that Weston had advanced on me until Silas was in front of me again, pushing me back.

“I’m not going to hurt her yet,” Weston growled, his nostrils flaring. “Get the hell out of my way before I change my mind and decide to kill you all for keeping this from me. The same way I killed
him
.” Weston jerked an uncaring finger over his shoulder.

Silas stepped aside, his body vibrating with violent tension. Clearly, Weston had disregarded my threat and used his power on Silas again.

“I’m going to give you a choice, Seraph.” Weston straightened out the lapels of his jacket and brought his head up, though his face was still tinged red with rage. “You can consider it your second test—and keep in mind how miserably you failed the first one. I couldn’t have handed you a
simpler
hostage situation to solve if I had tried, short of sending in
actual
children to threaten the college. You had a very manageable task… but perhaps my mistake was in not providing you direction. I would have, of course, if I hadn’t been trapped inside of a glass box.”

He straightened out his jacket again, dusting off imaginary speckles of dirt, and I took a brief moment to properly inspect him. If he had been trapped inside of the glass box this whole time, then he had taken a moment to change his clothes. That was odd.

“I’ll do anything you want,” I lied quickly.

“Oh no…” He laughed deeply, his shark’s grin flashing over his angry face, making me stumble back a step. “You won’t give me pretty statements. You’ll give me a promise. And I’ll be able to tell whether you’re lying.”

He sprang forwards in a blur of sudden movement, capturing my hand and ripping me away from Silas, who was already beginning to react, his hand inches from the front of my shirt as Weston spun me around. The sudden press of steel against my collarbone had me calling out to ward him off.

“Stay back!”

His eyes flashed to my neck immediately, and I flinched, because we had been in this situation before and it hadn’t ended well the first time. Behind me, Weston was rumbling out another laugh.

“Good girl… now stay still, and nobody has to die. I’m just going to take a little trip inside your head. And you’re going to let me this time, or I might just decide that you aren’t worth all the effort and slit your throat right now.”

Without warning, he dove into my thoughts, his presence heavy and painful, clawing along the walls of my brain and shattering my meagre barriers. It seemed that I couldn’t have stopped him even if I had tried, and I wondered if Silas had felt this amount of pain on all of the previous occasions that Weston had tried diving into my head. I had thought it was a shield of my own making, but Silas had claimed that it was him.

Would I ever stop causing him pain
?

“I’m going to give you a choice, little creation,” Weston rumbled from behind me, his voice echoing inside my head. I cried out from the pain of it, but his presence only swelled, pressing against the constraints of my mind as though he could devour everything inside my head without the slightest bit of effort and move casually onto the next person. “You can choose to do exactly as I want, exactly as I say… to be my little puppet. You can choose to be the champion of my people, as I always intended you to be. You can choose to never see my sons again, to allow Miro his birthright as Voda and to never again pursue a relationship that might upset his position. You can choose to keep your remaining,
fake
brother from the fate of your real brother. You can choose to keep your little list of friends safe, and for much longer than eight months. You can choose all of these things, or you can choose to die.”

It wasn’t implied that I had to choose my fate in that very moment, but the bite of a knife at my neck and then despair in Silas’s fiery eyes as he watched on helplessly was enough to hint at it. Silas couldn’t interfere in this. He couldn’t risk it, because Weston was more likely to kill him than he was to kill me, it seemed… and both deaths would lead to the same thing. By that logic, the safest place for me was at the tip of Weston’s knife, because at least it kept his attention away from Silas.

“A-all of them?” I rasped.

Weston grunted, annoyed at my request. “Is that all? Again? Disappointing… but yes. All of them.”

“E-even… Silas?”

The knife pressed closer and I bit my lip to keep from whimpering in pain.

“No,” Weston growled. “Not him.”

“I need him. I’m bonded to him. I c-can’t do anything for you if I’m dead.”

The knife dug into me with a renewed purpose. The sudden flash of pain was enough to convince me that Weston had done it. He had slit my throat… but he was still waiting, breathing heavily against the back of my head and trembling with a rage so great that it shook right through to me, sending my body into intermittent hot and cold spasms.

“I’ll consider it.
Choose, Seraph,
before I change my mind.”

It should have been simple. The way Weston put it, it almost was simple.

I could save myself and my friends. I could save Silas from any more pain. I could save the people that I cared about.

It was the alternative that had me pausing. The reality of my
other
choice.

I could save the Zevghéri people from what Weston was determined to put them through, just to prove that we were stronger than the humans.