The Reckoning (31 page)

“This thing in my head,” I said. “What is it?”

Delia’s dark eyes glittered with an emotion I couldn’t define. She stepped close to me, bringing up her hand to my cheek, but stopped just short of touching my skin. Even so, I almost felt her physical caress. “Ah, Erin,” she said softly, “this would have been so much simpler if you had been willing to work with me. But don’t worry. The gift I gave you is only something to help you become more powerful.” Her grin sent fingers of icy dread through my stomach. “And we all know that power is everything.”

Edgel was coming back now, and to my surprise, he was pushing a luggage cart with a white-covered mound that looked all too familiar. Delia strode over, her sheer duster flowing like a bridal veil. She threw off the sheet, revealing the cask we’d stolen last night—or one very like it.

“You have more?” Fury pulsed through me.

“Oh, no.” Delia glided back to me. “This is the same cask you stole from me last night. We had no idea Habid was signaling you or that you knew how to track us to that house.” She didn’t look toward the closet where the man still lay dying, and it was all I could do not to look in that direction myself. “But one of your friends was kind enough to return it.”

My head whipped toward Jeane. “No,” she said. “Like I’d want her to have a nuclear weapon. She’s crazy. Besides, I’ve been with you.”

Delia laughed. “No, it wasn’t our dear Jeane.” Her voice implied that it should have been.

In horror, I followed Delia’s gaze to the doorway behind us where the guard who’d left with Edgel had reappeared with Shadrach Azima. Ritter’s face became a mass of fury. Cort’s expression was pained, and Keene shook his head in disgust.

Shadrach avoided us all, having eyes only for Delia. “You said you had my son. That you would give him to me if I returned this.”

“Shadrach! What are you doing?” This from Cort. “You can’t trust her.”

The healer’s gaze didn’t waver. “My son. Please.”

“Eight million lives,” Cort said. “That’s just the beginning.”

“She took my grandmother,” I told Shadrach. “Don’t you think I’d do anything to get her back? How is Habid going to feel knowing he was responsible for the end of the world?” With a sick feeling, I remembered that Jace had been watching the plutonium. Had Shadrach done something to my brother?

“My son,” Shadrach repeated, his eyes not leaving Delia’s face.

Motioning Shadrach into the room, Delia looked at Lew, who hurried over to the cask, a device in his hands. Opening the cask with a code, he checked it with his machine. “Intact.”

Delia waved a thin hand toward the closet. “He’s in there.”

With a hoarse sob, Shadrach stumbled across the room like a drunken man intent on his fix. I was angry with him beyond speech, yet I was glad his son would get help because I knew what it felt to lose someone you cared so much about. Shadrach might be able to save Habid’s life. Perhaps. That didn’t excuse what Shadrach had done. He would be the catalyst for the eventual collapse of the world and enslavement of the mortal population.

This confrontation might become the last lost battle.

Shadrach ripped open the door. As he did, a sword that was fastened to the door by a metal bar also moved forward, severing Habid’s head as he sat tied to a chair. The head clunked to the ground.

“Noooooo!” His father screamed in horror, collapsing near his son, grabbing the bleeding head, trying to reattach it.

Too late. There was no longer a hint of even a faint life force in Habid’s body. Several seconds later, Shadrach came to the same conclusion. With a roar of anguish, he launched himself in Delia’s direction. A whoosh from Edgel’s silenced gun took him in the head, spattering his brain over the wall. He dropped to the carpet. Not permanently dead like his mortal son, but I looked away, sickened.

I thought of my grandmother, and I knew for sure she was dead.

Keene stepped forward, holding out an open hand toward the plutonium cask. “Stop. I won’t let you have this. I’ll blow it up here.”

“I don’t think—” Delia’s retort was cut off as the internal monitors on the cask burst into frantic beeping.

“Keene!” Cort said, as the beeping became a wailing siren. “You can’t control it! You don’t know how far to go!”

“How far?” Keene’s voice was so tight it hurt my ears. “As far as I need to. If I take out the building—the city, even—it won’t be as big as Israel. Three million instead of eight. And no war. Not even Delia Vesey could come back from this. No focus points will remain attached. It’s an acceptable exchange.”

“Or you might just blow up the entire continent!” Cort stepped toward his brother, practically yelling to be heard over the screeching alarm.

“Shoot him,” Delia ordered.

Cort raised his arms in front of Keene. “No! He has to stop the reaction or it’s going to blow!”

Understanding dawned on Delia as she realized that Keene hadn’t just Changed but had an ability that could take it all away from her: the trillions of dollars, the political control, her eternal life.

“Erin,” Keene said. “Leave.”

He meant for me to shift and take Mari away, wherever she was. Ritter’s eyes met mine with a sharp nod. I shook my head. “I’m not leaving.”

Sorrow flashed so fast across Keene’s face that I wasn’t sure I’d seen correctly. “Then we all die.”

But it wasn’t the only way. I had to reach Delia—now. Inside my mind, I went toward the nearest stream of blue light. Immediately, it sucked at me, pulling me in. For a brief, blinding moment of agony, there was a rip in my consciousness. In the next second I was in Delia’s mind, past her shield, seeing through her eyes. I looked for her thought stream. Surely if I pushed hard enough, I could control her. I could make her do what I wanted. Or I could channel her own ability, becoming even more powerful. I would win this thing yet.

“Wait!” Delia held up her hand before I could do anything. “Stand down everyone! You can leave. All of you! Safe passage. You can even take the cask.”

Keene frowned, his eyes disbelieving. I felt exactly the same way.

“I mean it!” Delia’s voice was practically a shriek.

“What about that thing inside Erin?” Ritter shoved past the two guards targeting him. “What about her?”

I tried to speak from my own body, but nothing came out of my mouth. That was when I realized the blue lights had become a two-way street. Not only was the energy seeping from my body on one path, but now, once it arrived in Delia’s mind, it was being returned to me on the second path, laden with energy that flowed directly from her thought stream. Two blue lights. Two paths for different purposes.

What is that all about?
Mentally, I stepped closer and shoved my hands into the energy stream that was returning to my mind, gasping as Delia’s memories poured through me. Days, months, years. People she had known. Plans she had enacted. Men she had loved and betrayed. Women she had used and thrown away. Women like Jeane, who I saw had been forced to kill her ex-president lover. Like my grandmother who had refused to be used as a bargaining chip and had been killed while attempting a daring escape from her Emporium guards. All things Delia were speeding along the light, transferring at an astonishing velocity. An entire download of seventeen hundred years of knowledge and experience.

No wonder Delia’s snake—no, her thought construction—had grown so big in my mind. It wasn’t just feeding off me, it was transferring everything Delia would need to keep her who she was while becoming me. She would have it all—my youth and memories combined with her vast experience. And when she had finished with me, she would breed herself another body to use when mine aged. Immoral immortality.

Usually, when in someone’s head, I could still see through my eyes and use my body. This time was different. Delia had blocked me completely, severing me from the portion of myself that remained behind. Desperately, I clawed my way through the thoughts, trying to follow the light as it left Delia’s mind, fighting to get back to myself.

I saw it now. Everything had played into Delia’s plan. She hadn’t been able to predict that Keene would act as he had, or that his doing so would force me to confront her in the only way I knew how, but she had jumped at the opportunity.

Come and fight me!
I screamed.

But Delia Vesey was no longer in residence. I would be left here, a shadow version of myself. With only the immediate knowledge and memories I’d brought with me. The rest of my mind, myself, the person I was, would stay in my body to be overrun or stamped out by Delia.

I tried to dive into the energy stream that ran between us so I could return with it to my own body, but it kept ejecting me, so I backtracked to the thinner stream of blue light where it entered her brain and began to inch along, struggling to get out of Delia’s head, my progress painfully slow.

“I think she means it,” someone said. “Let’s go.” My voice, but not really me. I couldn’t even see my body through Delia’s eyes because my effort to return was taking all my concentration.

“What about that thing?” Ritter insisted.

“I think I’ve figured it out,” Delia said, imbuing my voice with confidence.

The wailing in the room lessened to beeping as Keene altered his meddling with the plutonium.

No!
I shouted, still blind and mute.
She’s not me. No!

“Okay,” Cort said. “I say we leave. Grab that thing, Keene.”

Ritter!
I anguished. With a frantic push, I mentally reached the edge of my own body. As I fought to enter, I could see that the larger box containing the snake had burst, filling the space I usually occupied until it was all Delia. The barrier she’d created prevented me from reentering my mind. She was me now. She was in control.

I couldn’t give up.

I was still me—at least part of me. Maybe from Delia’s body I could channel someone else and get them to stop her.

But who? I could only channel one person at a time. If I chose Ritter, I could turn Delia’s aged body into a fighting machine and retract her order to let everyone go. But then we’d still be at a standoff, and every moment I could feel Delia strengthening the shield around my mind to keep me out permanently, no matter how strong I might become in her body. Though I doubted she would allow me to live at all. She had a plan for everything.

If I chose Keene, I could blow up the place. Or just as likely cause my own body to fall apart—which brought us right back to where I’d begun. Jeane, of course, was useless since I couldn’t channel her.

Cort.
That might be it. Not only could he see the patterns in atoms, including energy, but he could understand how they worked. Maybe using his ability, I could study what Delia had created and mentally target her weakness.

I reached out to him, feeling my consciousness sucked back into Delia’s body.
Cort.
His shield was tight, but I could get through it, right? What was it I normally used to help me? I felt as if I’d left some vital piece of information back in my body, a memory I was accustomed to leaving behind and retrieving when needed. Well, there was nothing to do but use every bit of energy I could access in Delia’s mind to carve a tiny hole in Cort’s shield.

There, somehow I did it. I felt Delia’s knees buckle. Or my knees, since I was every bit as much her as she was me.

“Delia!” I was vaguely aware of the shout coming from Edgel. I felt hands supporting me.

Cort, it’s me. I—

Pain sliced through my shoulder, and I blinked open Delia’s eyes to see Jeane standing over me with a knife she’d gotten from somewhere. “Stop,” I made Delia’s voice say. “It’s me. Don’t—”

Edgel thrust her away, pushing her toward Lew. “Watch her.” Funny how he would save me now.
If only he knew.

“Let’s go! She said we could go.” My voice again, but Delia didn’t quite sound like me anymore.

I was weakening fast. I had to focus and stop wasting energy trying to communicate with Cort and get to work. Holding onto his ability, I began looking at the streams still stretching between me and Delia. The flow was ebbing now. I didn’t have much time. I’d channeled Cort’s ability before, and while it was miraculous, science had never really been an interest for me. Now my life depended on him.

Maybe I should have chosen Ritter or Keene.

Reaching for my eroding confidence, I forced my way back along the blue light, holding onto my connection with Cort. But everywhere I looked with his ability, I saw no weakness I could pry or push at. Nothing to use against her. The one good thing about the ebbing flow and being cut off from myself was that Delia could no longer feed on me, and the energy I gathered from her body now was mine. I made it back along the path, but I couldn’t enter my own head. There was too much Delia, and the barrier she’d created, though mostly transparent to me, appeared impenetrable. I might already be too late.

Then I saw it lying among the coils and layers of Delia’s presence. My small thought construct, the box that held my fear of heights. That was the answer—an answer that had come from within me, not from Cort. All I had to do was to release it. If I could get to it.

I reached for it, straining, but the barrier was too strong. No way to get in, but maybe I didn’t need to, not completely. I only needed to dissolve the box. I shoved as hard as I could against Delia’s thought barrier, trying to push it over slightly. Trying to pull the box closer. Nothing.

Delia!
I screamed.

I could feel her mental laughter. I saw the image she flashed to me: her hand in Ritter’s. She would kill him and the others at the first opportunity. I had no doubt.

No!

At that moment, I saw what Cort’s ability permitted me to notice—a tiny weakness. A flaw in Delia’s newly created shield that would allow me to reach my box. I slammed at it with all my might. Once, and then again, and a third time until my entire being vibrated with the force. There, just enough of a crack to pull the box toward me. My thought construct, my creation. It would obey my command. All I had to do was to touch it. It slammed up against the shield and my consciousness grazed the surface.