The Breaker's Promise (YA Urban Fantasy) (Fixed Points Book 2) (8 page)

“Is it too much?” Flora asked. “Should we get out of here?”

“No!” I said too loudly. Yes, there was a lot of energy to bat about in this room, but we had come this far, and I wasn’t about to give up without even really trying. “I’ve got it. Don’t worry.”

Dahlia’s office was neater than Echo’s. There were no boxes lined up against the wall. The trashcans weren’t filled to capacity, and the desk was free of strewn paper and folders. This was the space of a woman who had everything in order, everything under control.  There was something about the neatness here that worried me; like even the smallest change- say, bumping into a table, would have been instantly noticeable to Dahlia. I pushed back against the shade as we made our way to Dahlia’s file cabinets. Flora’s hands were overly sweaty and her arm seemed to be shaking nervously.

“We’re gonna be fine,” I told her. “In and out, I promise.” She didn’t respond. Well, maybe she nodded or something but, since I couldn’t see her, I had no way of knowing.  We pulled at the file cabinets with our free hands, ripping into Dahlia’s marked folders.

“This would be easier if we knew what we were looking for,” Flora said.

I was pushing back a particularly large wave of shade, so I tried not to grunt as I answered. “Well, in the dram, Wendy called him ‘Mother’s man’, so maybe it has to do with Dahlia’s own family.”

Flora jerked me toward the left end of the file cabinets. “Here family name is Adamas. They’re an old name. Not as old as mine, but there should be plenty to look through.”

She wasn’t wrong. It turned out three entire shelves were filled with Adamas family dossiers. Flora and I went through them as fast as we could, scanning for pictures and buzzwords, but found nothing.

“We don’t have time to look much longer. Dahlia will be back soon,” Flora said. Instinctively, I looked toward the clock. We had been in this office for almost twenty five minutes, and if anything, I was more confused than ever.

The shade kept pushing at us. It wanted to touch us, to record our activity so that it deliver it to Dahlia like a faithful dog giving its master his slippers. But I kept pushing, keeping it at bay. Still, I knew I wouldn’t be able to do that for much longer. The constant pushback was wearing on me. “We have to keep looking,” I said. My teeth were gritted.

“Looking where?” Flora asked. “We have nothing to go on. It would take us days to search through all of these records. “

I turned, hoping to see something in the open files that might spark an idea. What I saw was much more telling than that. The shade in Dahlia’s office moved in circles. It both radiated from, and protected, every inch of this space-every inch but one. I noticed that there was absolutely no shade radiating from the portrait hanging behind Dahlia’s desk, behind the file cabinets. It was a messy, almost abstract, rendition of a ship that had set sail onto stormy seas. The captain was on dock, pressing forward. His men were behind him, quivering cold and scared.

“Help me move this painting,” I said, and pulled Flora toward it.

“We don’t have time for this,” she warned.

“Just help me, okay,” I said. Pulling at either end, we set the picture on the floor, revealing a safe behind it.

“Fine, but how are we going to get into it?” Flora asked. But I already knew. The numbers had already started speaking to me, yielding their secret combination. I followed their instructions and the safe popped open with ease. Inside it sat a stack of letters. As I took them in my hands, I saw that they were handwritten, and obviously more personal in nature than anything in her filing cabinet. Sandwiched between them was an old photograph. A young girl; Dahlia without the coldness or hardened edges that life had brought her, was standing on a hill in a flowing green dress. She had a smile on her face and standing beside her, similarly smiling, similarly young, was the man with the gray eyes.

“This is him. This is the man from my dream,” I said. Flipping it over, I read the faded scribbled inscription on the back.

Dahlia + Renner . Before the Coupling.

So he had a name. Mother’s man was Ezra. I shuffled through the rest of the letters quickly, hoping to find another picture, or something that would tell me just why it was that I needed to find Renner so badly.

The shade began to move though. I started to rumble and shiver against myself. It funneled back to its original position and sat there; it’s fingers of energy waving toward the door. It was as though it was preparing for something, like it expected someone to come through the door, like it could feel-

“Oh God, Dahlia’s coming!” I realized. I was about to stuff the letters into my pockets and make a break for the door, but the envelope I found myself holding was inscribed with something that took my breath away. My lips quivered as I took in the name across the front.

POE

I hadn’t told anyone about Poe, not even Owen. I had nothing to tell. All I knew was that, when my mother’s locket finally opened a picture of me and this Poe person as babies came falling out of it. I was curious for a long time about who this person was, about what he might have to do with me. But there was so much going on, and I had no way of finding any answers. The idea that those answers might sit in an envelope in my hands was too much to pass up, even if Dahlia was on her way.

“Come on!” Flora pulled at me. “We have to get out of here.”

“I need the letters,” I said, still staring at the ink black name in my hands.

“I can’t keep me, you, and the letters invisible all at the same time, Cresta. It’s too hard. We know where they are. We’ll come back for them.”

“What about just one?” I asked, holding Poe’s name out toward her.

“Fine. Whatever,” Flora said, and just like that, the letter vanished within my hand. I slammed the safe door, leaving the other letters inside. Flora and I put the painting back in its proper position, closed the file cabinets, and headed for the door. But we were too late. I could feel the shade lurch forward happily as the door swung open and Dahlia walked in. My heart froze solid. Could she see us? Could she sense we were here? I had done my best to keep the shade from touching us, but what if my best wasn’t good enough.

She stood right in front of us, her parka drenched from the rain, her dahlia pin clasped at her throat. She’d have us expelled for sure if she found out about this; expelled or worse. The shade encompassed her, like hungry moths to a flame. She took it all in, letting it feed her. It was so strange watching Dahlia’s abilities at work; strange, but also sort of beautiful.

She looked around, and I couldn’t tell from the look on her face whether she realized something was wrong or not. She started walking, checking things out, and I started to feel the same jackhammer pressure in my head that I felt when she came up against me at the 7-11. I almost crumpled; probably would have if Flora hadn’t kept me standing. She pulled me toward the still open door. We moved to it slowly, cautiously. Dahlia was pacing the room, the shade giving her all the information it had. Though, judging from the fact that she hadn’t turned toward us and went ballistic; it hadn’t given her any information about us yet.

We were in the doorway when her head snapped toward me. I could have sworn she was looking me square in the eyes. I was just about to break down and start apologizing when she turned back away, and Flora pulled me into the hall.

We ran-literally ran down the hall and through the common area, toward our room. We had made it out without getting caught, and I actually had something to show for it; even if I had no idea what that something meant. Flora and I both went visible as I opened the door to our room. I was about to collapse onto my bed and open the letter in my pocket, but then I saw Owen.

He was pacing the floor, red rings around his eyes, his face a mask of white horror. When I looked beside him, I saw why. Merrin sat tied to a chair beside my bed. Her mouth was gagged and her eyes were blindfolded. My gaze went wide and I thought the words would stick in my throat as I asked, “Owen, wh-what happened?”

He looked at me and, with shaking hands, said, “Something bad.”

“Owen, tell me I’m seeing things,” I said. I was afraid to move, afraid to do much of anything. Merrin, the girl whose eyes had been turned into slideshows for the Council of Masons, was tied to a chair, bound, and gagged beside my bed.  “Tell me this isn’t real. This is shade or something, right?”

“She figured it out,” Owen said, pacing beside his onetime perfect, now captive. “I don’t know how, but she did. We were just sitting there, talking about stupid stuff. Then she leaned in. I thought she was going to kiss me, but her eyes got huge and I knew she knew.”

“Fate’s hand!” Flora muttered. “Do you realize what this means?”

Of course I realized what it meant. It meant that Merrin and, by proxy, the entire Council of Masons now knew that I was, in fact, the Bloodmoon. They knew that the prophecies that they had worked for hundreds of years to avoid were undeniably about me. And their laws would be clear about what to do from here. They would kill me, cut my head off and mount it to a spike probably. And Owen would certainly be punished for his role in all of it; Flora probably too now.

“We have to leave! We have to get out of here now!” I said, rushing to my dresser. I started yanking clothes out of the drawers in a hurry and stuffing them into the suitcase my mother gave me the day she sent me to Weathersby.  “Hurry! The Council’s probably on their way right now,” I yelled, looking at Flora and Owen. It wasn’t fair to do this to them, to pull them into my drama, but they were already in. And it didn’t look like an exit ramp was going to present itself in the foreseeable future.

“Her daily extraction doesn’t happen for another hour,” Owen said, staring at Merrin, bound in front of him. For her part, Merrin wasn’t making a sound. No moans, no cries for help; she just sat there like a good little soldier. “Which means the Council won’t know what we’ve done; they won’t know that you’re…you for a little while. It gives us a chance to decide what we want to do.”

“There’s nothing to decide. We have to leave,” I said as matter of factly as if he had just asked me if water was wet. “She knows my secret; the secret that we both agreed would prove fatal if anyone found out. She’s proxy to the Council of Masons, and she knows Owen; not to mention the fact that you assaulted her like drag queen at a tractor pull. What other options do we have?”

“I didn’t assault her,” Owen said. His voice was low, and he sounded wounded by the accusation. “I told her I was going to subdue her and tie her up, and that’s what I did. I would never hit her.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to imply that you would. I just don’t know what we can do besides run,” I answered. I heard a spitting sound and watched as a waft of white cloth went flying across the room and landed at Owen’s feet.

“I suppose asking me is out of the question.” Merrin’s voice was terse but calm. I looked over to find that, while her hands and feet were still bound, she had managed to free herself from the binds around her mouth and eyes; which was pretty damn impressive if you ask me.

“You have to promise me you’ll be quiet, or else I’ll have to put the gag back in,” Owen said, almost apologetically.

“What would screaming gain me, Owen? This is over now anyway? Nothing you can do can stop the intel in my head from reaching the Council. Even killing me would only serve to send the information faster. “

“You know we wouldn’t kill you,” I said.

Merrin cut her long eyes at me and set her jaw. “I know he wouldn’t kill me. You, on the other hand, are a killer. Your past says so. And your future says you’re much worse than that.” Before I could resond, she narrowed her eyes at me and asked, “Do you remember what I told you that day at the rest area, before Allister Leeman’s men took us?”

Images of that day, of the conversation Merrin and I had, flashed through my mind. “You said that, if you had to, you wouldn’t have a problem killing me.”

“Don’t forget it,” she said.

“Stop it!” Owen yelled. “No one is killing anyone. We’re going to find a way out of this.”

“And what if you do?” Merrin asked through gritted teeth. “Then what happens? Have you forgotten who you are, who she is? Fate doesn’t lie, Owen. You’re on different sides of the future. She causes the horror. You end it.” She looked over at me and, with as much hate as I had ever seen in another person’s eyes, added, “In fact, the only thing that might stop me from killing her is knowing that, one day, you’ll do it for me.”

I blanched. Heat and bile rose in my throat. I wanted to hit her, to take her chair up to the top of Wendy’s tower and throw her off. But that would only prove I was what she thought I was, and I wasn’t about to give her the satisfaction.

“Don’t make me put the gag back, Merrin,” Owen warned.

“Stop lying to yourself,” she answered. “You can’t win this. It’s in the stars. It’s a-“

“If you say it’s a fixed point, I’m going to cement your mouth shut,” Owen said.

“What are you trying to do?” She asked; her voice lower, warmer.

“Just live, and maybe be happy,” he said, his eyes flickering over toward me.

“You had happiness,” Merrin answered, her face scrunching sourly. “But you gave it away, and for what Owen? We could still be happy. Let me out of this chair. Help me bring Cresta in. I’m sure the Council will understand why you did what you did. They’ll pardon you, Owen. I know they will, and we can live the life we were meant to.” There was pleading in her voice and desperation in her eyes that I bet would have been there even if she wasn’t tied to the chair. This was Merrin’s big push.

“And what if it’s not the life I want anymore?” He asked, pools filling his electric blue eyes.

“What does ‘want’ have to do with anything?” Merrin asked. “I’m yours. You’re mine. We belong to each other and to the calling that we were born to. Fate says so. Destiny says so. Science says so. There’s no room in lives like ours for personal aspirations. You learned that a long time ago, and deep down, you know it. I know you do.”

I wanted to speak up, to smack Merrin and to tell her that, of course, what Owen wanted mattered. To me, it was almost the only thing that mattered. But I decided to hold my tongue. Owen needed to answer these questions himself, and I was more than a little curious as to how he was going to do it.

“I love her, Merrin,” he said, blinking hard. It took me aback. Though I had always felt that Merrin suspected something was going on between Owen and me, he had never come out and confirmed it; not until now.

I expected her to start crying or something, but all she did was roll her eyes. “Yes, I know,” she said in a tone you’d expect to hear from a frustrated parent whose child had just told her that she loved ice cream. “I think you’ll agree that that’s hardly relevant.”

“Hardly what?!” I couldn’t keep myself silent anymore. “Of course it’s relevant. Love is how normal people choose their life partners, you know?”

“Well we aren’t normal, Bloodmoon. And unlike you, we were raised to believe that we were,” she sneered at me.

“Don’t call me that,” I warned through clenched teeth.

“Why not?” She asked, her tied hands clenching into fists. “That’s who you are, isn’t it; the Bloodmoon, the destroyer of the world? What’s more, you’re selfish, and a liar, and a coward. And very soon, everyone will know it.”

Before I realized what was happening, I was moving forward. I guess my emotions had gotten to best of me, because my hand, now balled into a fist, had reared back. I was about to punch her, to really punch her. But then I felt Owen’s hand on my arm, his breath against the back of my neck.

“Calm down,” he whispered and, to my surprise, I did. The hurt and anger melted away and I collapsed into Owen’s arms. “Not wanting to die doesn’t make a person selfish,” I heard Owen say.

“It does when living means that so many others won’t get to,” Merrin said from behind me. I couldn’t see her face. My head was still buried in Owen’s chest, but her voice didn’t sound mean or even harsh. It was matter-of-fact, like she was reciting a recipe or something.

“We don’t know that she’s the Bloodmoon,” he answered.

“We do,” Merrin replied. “And what’s more, you do. I saw inside your head, Owen. I know that there’s no doubt in your mind about who Cresta is, just as there’s no doubt in your mind as to who you are. What I can’t figure out is, knowing this, you still insist on trying to save her. It makes no sense.”

“Yes it does,” he said. “And like you said, you saw inside my head.” He kissed my forehead. “So you know exactly what kind of sense it makes.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I answered, pulling my face away from Owen’s chest. “What you think, what she thinks, even what I think; none of it matters. The Council is about to find out about me Owen, and there’s nothing we can do to stop it.”

“Excuse me, but that may not be technically true.” I wasn’t sure if Flora had faded into invisibility or if I had just been so engaged in my conversation with Merrin and Owen that I stopped seeing her, but when she spoke, it sort of startled me.

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

She pulled at her fingers and said, “Perhaps there is still a way to keep the truth of your situation away from the Council.”

“Who is this?” Merrin asked with raised eyebrows.

“Merrin meet Flora,” I said.

“Flora Atrum?” Merrin asked, looking her up and down. “You come from good stock. I’d hate for you to disappoint them by tossing your lot in with the wrong crowd.”

Flora bounced forward, still pulling at her fingers. “Well, in order to be disappointed, one must first be informed. I have a plan to stop you from being able to inform anyone. So I’m afraid you’ll find your threats of shaming me less than effective.” She nodded. “It was a good try though.”

“There’s no way to stop this,” Merrin sighed. “Even if you killed me, all the information in my brain would be automatically sent to the Council. It’s a failsafe.”

“Yes,” Flora pulled at her index finger sharply. “But what if the information was no longer in your head? What it had been extracted?” She turned to Owen. “When I found out about you and Cresta, you said there was a way to strip memories from someone’s head, to make them forget certain things.”

Owen folded his arms in front of him. “And did you forget the part where I said how dangerous doing that to a Breaker would be?”

“More dangerous than what the Council will do to Cresta once they get their hands on her?” Flora retorted. “They’ll kill her Owen. She doesn’t deserve to die.”

“She’s the Bloodmoon for fate’s sake,” Merrin said. “She’s not some martyr. She’s responsible for the deaths of millions and the suffering of millions more.”

“She’s not anything yet,” Flora said. “And she hasn’t done anything to merit being executed. That won’t stop the Council from doing it anyway though, and we all know it.” She turned back to me, her lip quivering. “You could never run far enough Cresta. The Council has eyes everywhere. One day, they’d find you. Our only shot is to stop them from figuring it out in the first place.”

“He’s not going to do that!” Merrin sneered from her seat. “Forcible memory removal from any Breaker, let alone a conduit of the Council, is a corporal offense. It’s comparable to treason.”

“I’ve already been convicted of treason,” Owen muttered. His eyes were on the floor. His face was a pale, featureless mask.

“You were acquitted of those charges, and that’s hardly the point,” Merrin said, her eyes narrowing. His lips receded stone like against her teeth. “You’re not really considering this?”

Owen didn’t answer. He didn’t move at all. His eyes sat stalwart on the floor.

“Owen! Tell me you’re not actually considering this! You could kill me! You could leave me a vegetable.” He didn’t respond. “Owen! Look at me!” Slowly, his eyes turned up to meet her. “Forget the rest of it if you’d like; all the laws you’d be breaking, all the laws you’re
already
breaking. But remember that I am your perfect. You have a divine responsibility to keep me safe. To forgo that responsibility is to venture into the territory of the unforgivable.”

He looked at me, and then back to Merrin. “The thing is, I’m not sure I care about those laws anymore.”

Merrin sighed, like she realized she had lost, not only this argument, but maybe Owen altogether. “Then care about me,” she said. “You can pretend that you’re this person all you’d like. But I know the real you. I grew up with him, and I know that you’re not the type of person who would hurt someone intentionally; especially someone you care about. And as much as you’d like to pretend you don’t, I know that you care about me Owen. I know that you can’t do this to me.”

She was right. Owen would never risk hurting Merrin. Care or not, he felt a responsibility toward her. She was his genetic match and, whether he chose to believe in that sort of thing or not, it didn’t change the fact that she did, and that her life was irreversibly tied to his.  We’d have to find another way. We’d have to leave; to run and find a place where the Council couldn’t follow- if a place like that even existed.

Owen walked forward and leaned in front of Merrin, so that they were face to face. His eyes were soft and forgiving. “Of course I care about you,” he whispered. “You’re part of me and, no matter what happens, you always will be. I couldn’t change that if I wanted to.” With his thumb and forefinger, he brushed her dark bangs out of her eyes. She shuddered, as though she had been yearning for that touch for a long time now. He leaned closer. “But I can’t live without her, Merrin. I’ve tried, and I just can’t do it. And you’re not giving me much of a choice.”