Shadowstorm (Sorcery and Science Book 6) (27 page)

“What the hell was that?” Everett gasped, gaping at her.

“That was my plan.” Terra turned to smile at Jason. “And it worked.”
 

“Indeed.”

“What did you do?” asked Marin.

“I used my borrowed abilities to plant a memory in the bounty hunters’ minds, a memory crafted to make them frightened of me. The fake memory is so overpowering, so built into their primal nature, that the hunters could do nothing but run. They will never dare come after me again.”

“While that is a clever application of the Prior and Phantom abilities, it does not solve your larger problem,” Jason said. “Those were but fifteen men. There are
hundreds
of bounty hunters in the world. Are you going to track down all of them and implant fake memories in their heads?”

“Of course not. That would be impractical. Naturally, there is a second level to my plan.” She bounced on her toes, hardly able to keep from blabbering it out. But this was far too good to rush. “I made the memory contagious. It will spread to any other bounty hunters they meet, until anyone who means to capture me for profit will be terrified of me.”

“Ingenious. It’s like a magically-engineered virus,” Marin said. “How did you make it contagious only to that select group? Did you think of narrowing the criteria for targets? Or expanding them?”

“I wanted to make the memory contagious to anyone who meant me harm, including Selpe soldiers, but that’s too complicated. I have neither the power nor the practice necessary to accomplish it. So I just linked the memory to a select thought—to those after me for the money.”

“How do you know it worked?” Marin asked.

“Because I only infected one of the men with the memory. It spread instantly to the others.” Terra shifted to face Jason, then tilted her head to the side. “Well? Admit it. It was a good plan.”

He inclined his chin. The movement was so subtle that she nearly missed it. “It was. Where did you get the idea?”

“From talking to Silver. He always has all kinds of weird ideas. One of these ideas was concocting a serum to accentuate my Prior and Phantom abilities. He wanted to explore the possibilities of multi-ability combination attacks.”

“Interesting.” Jason walked off to reclaim his knives. “Although,” he said, looking up at her as he bent over one of the bodies. “Triad serum or not, you’re still not as good as I am. You wouldn’t have won our fight.”

Agitation flared up in her at the challenge. “Care for a rematch, so we can find out?”

The words were strong and confident, but she could feel the fire dying out in her eyes. Between fighting Jason and sorting out those bounty hunters, she’d expended too much energy. Her borrowed powers had all but drained from her body, leaving her exhausted. She needed a nap, not another fight.

“No, none of that,” Everett protested. “You two take your lovers’ spat elsewhere. Last time around, you nearly squished the sandwiches I’d just made.”

Terra and Jason made faces at each other—well, actually, it was just Terra. Right now, Jason’s face was betraying about as much emotion as a robot.

“Do you still want to come with me?” he asked her.

“Of course I do,” she replied, then remembered that she’d never actually agreed to go with him in the first place. He was a sneaky one.

He’s an assassin,
her tired mind pointed out.
They’re supposed to be sneaky.

That was true enough.

“It’s settled then,” said Everett. “Ariella, Leonidas, and Marin come with me to get the artifact.”

Ariella nudged Terra with her elbow. “And Terra goes with Jason.”

“I still want to come,” Cameron said.

When Terra saw the blood on his shirt, she ran to him. Something had punctured the lower half of his shirt, staining it with blood. It looked as though one of Cameron’s ribs had broken out of his ribcage, cutting the shirt in the process. She leaned down and peered through the tear. There was blood slathered across his torso, but no sign of a wound. Whatever it was, it had already healed.

“What happened?” she asked him.

“I caught the tail end of one of those mind blasts.” He was trying to keep a straight face, but a suppressed cringe sat around his eyes. The mind blast would have had to hit him really hard to break a rib. The thought of it nearly made her cringe too.

Jason moved past Terra to get his own look at Cameron’s injuries. “You’re going back to Eclipse.”

“But I—”

“Your shoulder bone is still broken.”

Terra took a closer look—and saw that Cameron’s right arm was indeed hanging from his shoulder at an awkward angle. “Jason is right, Cameron.”

Whether from pain or the power of their collective stares, Cameron conceded. The stubborn tilt of his chin loosened and lowered. “Fine. I’ll go.”

Broken bones or not, it was still weird that he didn’t put up more of a fight. Maybe he realized just how in over his head he was.

Then again, so were they all.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

~
The Island of No Return ~

527AX January 18, Woods Outside Lear

LORD VAREN’S DOMAIN was a large island off the coast of the Learan Peninsula. For the past five hundred years, the Selpe and Avan empires had repeatedly tried—and failed—to annex the island. Their efforts of late had been less persistent, but Ariella knew they hadn’t yet given up entirely. The Varenese’s ability to withstand whatever the empires had thrown at them vexed them both to no end.

As little as was known about the mysterious island, even less was known about their leader. There had been a Lord Varen since the expulsion of the Xenens. As far as she knew, no one from the outside world had ever seen him. Some people claimed that the very same Lord Varen had ruled the island for five centuries, but that was impossible. Humans didn’t live that long, and Elitions rarely did either. Lord Varen was just a title, no different than Emperor Selpe was to the Selpes.

“Any ideas on how to get onto the island?” Everett asked once Terra, Jason, and Cameron had left the camp.

“Getting onto the island is not the problem,” replied Leonidas. “It’s getting off again that I’m worried about. Do you know where the Xenen artifact is being kept?”

“According to Cameron, it’s inside a laboratory,” Everett said. “The good news is that the lab is right on the coast.”

“I take it there is bad news too?” Ariella asked.

“It’s heavily protected.” He paused before he added, “By an elaborate security system.”

“Lasers?”

“Lasers, alarms, electric fences. Probably guns and weird gases too.”

Ariella tucked her hands behind her back, feeling them clench tighter with each additional mechanical menace he piled onto the list.

“Are there guards as well?” Marin asked.

Everett nodded. “Yes. This is their research facility. To stave off the Selpes and Avans for so long, they must be developing some pretty sophisticated technology there. Besides Lord Varen’s castle, it’s likely the best guarded building on the entire island.”

“Fantastic,” muttered Leonidas.

Marin gave his hand a squeeze, then looked at Everett. “I’ll handle the security system. You three handle the guards.”

“And by handle, you mean…”

“She means blow to smithereens,” Leonidas said.

Everett didn’t look like he relished the idea of the laboratory blowing up all around him as he scurried from room to room in search of the Xenen artifact.

“Marin doesn’t always blow things up,” Ariella assured him. “She just as often shuts the machines off.”

“Thank you, Ariella.”

“You’re welcome, Marin.”

While Everett didn’t look calm, he did look calmer. “You said you know a way onto the island?” he asked Leonidas.

“A few ways actually. I was stationed in Lear long enough to hear things. Every few months, a group of treasure hunters on a mission to get drunk stopped by the Red Leaf. They usually got so drunk that before the night was up, they were shouting to the whole club, boasting they’d be the ones to get rich raiding Lord Varen’s treasure vault.”

Lord Varen was supposed to be rich—really, really rich. Rumor had it that the contents of his vault were worth more than the combined wealth of the Selpe and Avan treasuries. Ariella wasn’t sure she believed it, though. That was a whole lot of money. Exaggerated or not, the stories of Lord Varen’s immense fortune attracted all kinds of suicidal souls.

“If I remember correctly, the laboratory is on the island’s southeastern peninsula,” Leonidas said. “There’s a waterway tunnel on that side. It’s some sort of parking area for the island’s boats.”

The corner of Everett’s lower lip tucked inside his mouth. “So, let me get this straight. Your knowledge of the island is restricted to what groups of deranged, intoxicated treasure hunters told you right before heading off to their deaths?”

Leonidas shrugged. “I’ve also taken a peek at some overhead imagery of the island.”

“This is hardly a promising beginning.”

“We’ll just have to wing it.”

“That’s what Selpe spies do?”

“Former Selpe spy,” Leonidas said. “But yes.”

Everett’s head dropped to his hands. “We are all going to die.”

Ariella tended to agree with him, but she was choosing to stay positive. After all, if she were really about to die, then she’d have foreseen it. Right?

“You can’t imagine how many times I’ve faced the possibility of my own demise over the last half year,” she said. “And yet here I am. Partly because of those two.”

“Ariella is right. We’re awesome.” Leonidas picked up one of the sandwiches stacked atop a towel on the ground. He gave it a cursory sniff, then took a bite. After chewing it for a few seconds, he tossed another sandwich to Marin. “And Marin especially is awesome.”

She grinned at him. “How many near-death experiences did it take before you finally decided to admit that, Leo?”

“Too many.”

* * *

527AX January 18, Woods Outside Lear

Leonidas ran off through the woods, returning an hour later inside a rowboat. From her lookout point beside the shore, Ariella was the first to spot the boat. It wasn’t large. The four of them barely squeezed inside. Even then, the rippled sole of Everett’s boot was lodged against her thigh, the barrel of Leonidas’s Boar Hunter was poking her in the stomach, and the end of Marin’s ponytail was tickling her cheek.

“You couldn’t find a bigger boat?” she complained.

As Leonidas turned, his gun scraped across her ribcage. “I couldn’t exactly stroll into Lear and steal a boat from the main docks. Those docks are watched, and I’m a wanted man now. I found this boat beside an old dilapidated cabin.”

“You mean, you found this dilapidated boat beside an old dilapidated cabin,” grumbled Everett between rows.

Ariella had the other oar, but she could hardly move it—at least not if she didn’t want to thump someone upside the head with it. If Marin hadn’t been so small, there was no way all four of them would have fit inside that boat.

It took them several hours to row to the southeastern peninsula of Lord Varen’s island. They’d stuck close to the Learan Peninsula for most of the way, and Ariella was surprised when she got her first glimpse of the island beyond the fog. She’d expected a high wall along the entire shoreline and tall lookout towers pulsing with artificial lights at least every kilometer.

Instead, the shore looked as ordinary as any she’d ever seen, and while the occasional lighthouse sat atop seaside cliffs, the only lights on them were the slowly rotating beacons common to all lighthouses. Whatever had earned Lord Varen’s domain the reputation ‘the island of no return’ was not immediately obvious from the outside.

Leonidas steered the boat toward a slim opening in a sheer cliff overgrown with roots and soggy vegetation. As they came closer, she realized the opening was actually large enough to comfortably fit a barge; it was just veiled by a curtain of green vines. The vines dangled down like a rainbow of fat and slimy wet noodles, slicking and slopping over Ariella’s skin as the boat slid under the rock archway and into the cave.

Thousands of lights lit up the inside of the cave. They were embedded into the ground, across the walls, and all over the ceiling, where they shone like stars in the night sky. Thankfully, there was no one in the cave—neither person nor machine. There were a whole lot of boats, though. Bobbing gently atop the water, they were tied to the docks in neat, even lines.

“Those are some generous parking spots there,” Everett commented to Leonidas.

“Yeah. You could park two boats in each space.”

Leonidas steered their grungy old boat in next to one with a fresh coat of sleek green paint. Once the boat was secure, they hopped out and made their way down the wooden dock, the hollow thump of boots echoing off the rocky walls as they walked. The dock ended in a narrow path that hugged the wall. It was just wide enough for them to walk two-by-two, and they did just that. Everett and Leonidas took the lead, while Ariella and Marin walked behind them.

“Watch where you put that gun,” said Everett. “You nearly knocked me into the water with it.”

“This isn’t just any gun,” said Leonidas. “It’s a Boar Hunter.”

Ariella had thought she’d seen weird red light bouncing off the walls.

“I know what it is,” Everett replied. “That laser sight is hard to miss.”

“What do you carry?”

Everett drew his gun. “A Dragon.”

Leonidas let out a long, low whistle. “Fantastic. Do you mind if I have a look?”

“It looks like Leo has found a new friend,” Marin commented as the two men fondled each other’s guns.

Ariella gave her a wide smile. “I’m sure Everett could never replace you.”

“Of course not. No one could ever bicker with him as well as I can. We’ve had years of practice.”

“You two don’t seem to be bickering much lately.”

“No, we don’t.” Frowning, Marin slowed her steps and lowered her voice. “Ever since we escaped from Blizzard’s Point, he’s been different. More reserved, as though he’s trying to bottle up everything that he feels. Being labeled as a traitor really hit him hard, whether he wants to admit it or not. Leo was always such a steadfast patriot.”