NOVEL NEXT Chapter 110: A Grain of Truth
It took Kess several minutes of running before she realized that she still clenched Northmont's locket tightly in her hand. Swearing, she skidded to a halt and pulled out her knife to shatter it. It would do no good to win it, only to lose it again. Mariel said any of us should be able to destroy it, so…
She raised the dagger over the locket, placed it against the wall, then paused, hand shaking. Shadows. Rain and wind. That sick, sinking feeling. Kess swallowed, her skin crawling as she remembered losing her sense of self. She shuddered. Only Rowan's Fulminancy had kept that at bay, and she had next to none of that left. Her own Fulminancy mixed with the previous locket's blast of power churned within, hot and unwieldy beneath her skin, and even the fight with Rowan's father had done little to take the edge off.
Destroying the locket might bring them one step closer to stopping the storm, but it might also bring Kess one step closer to losing control entirely. Her own locket hummed quietly against her neck, as if unaware of its fate. Kess stood there a second longer, debating.
She pocketed the locket and kept running. She would deal with it after Oliver—provided she could find him at all.
Oliver, it turned out, did not want to deal with her.
His rooms were empty, and the mess made Kess certain they were his rooms. Unorganized, cluttered, and covered in books, Kess spent a few moments picking through the disaster, hoping he'd left the locket unattended. Finally, she realized he wouldn't have been that foolish, nor would she have been that lucky.
It was worth a try anyway, she thought, sighing.
She looked out the window and watched the black storm clouds ripping up the city wall in chunks, hurling those massive pieces of stone into the air to land on houses, shops, and city streets. Her already damp palms tightened around her staff, which she'd snapped into two pieces for the sake of speed.
She racked her brain for some idea of Oliver's whereabouts. The palace was a big place, and she was tempted to charge straight underground with the throngs of people. Oliver was a coward; he'd bowed to the Council's wishes for this long, after all. It didn't seem likely that he would want to take his chances with the storm and the Council.
But he was also arrogant. Arrogant enough to take powers that didn't belong to him. Arrogant enough to assume that he and the Council could stop a storm of that magnitude without help or knowledge.
This was a man who'd purposefully murdered his closest kin, then agreed to spy on his only living relative with the intention of later delivering her right into the hands of her tormentors. Kess didn't know her brother. And yet, she'd spent several years with him before everything fell apart—happy years, strangely.
As she stared out at the storm tearing up city streets by the block, Kess remembered a quiet afternoon with her brother spent on a rooftop, pointing out clouds. Later, as he'd spent more and more time Uphill, Oliver had a tendency to choose high balconies which overlooked the mountainside. He was enamored with the view, and even surly Kess had found herself smiling at his enthusiasm.
Her heart ached as she remembered that time. I never really knew him, she thought. He was right.
And yet, while Kess hadn't grown to know her brother as well as she should have, something still seemed wrong about him now. It was hard to believe that he would condone anything the Council approved of, given that they'd indirectly slaughtered his own family. Why wouldn't he see reason?
Perhaps because there's a grain of truth in what they're doing, she realized. While Kess had spent her life hating and fearing these men, perhaps the Council had some reason for their actions—something that justified the abuse. What had Niall said? There are some things that are better left in the past. And her brother had spoken of an exchange—these men believed they were doing the right thing, misguided though they were.
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That rooftop flashed again in Kess's mind. Kess, making an absurd joke. Oliver's laughter. Her brother wasn't an evil man. He couldn't be. Not after everything Kess had sacrificed to find him again. She would reason with him, and if all else failed, she would do what had to be done.
Kess stowed her staff and charged up a nearby staircase.
Claire wasn't a fighter. Why break what you'd have to put back together again? She had never regretted that mindset—after all, it kept her safe enough to fix other, braver people—until now, that is. The Shadow grew rapidly in the courtyard, its body a collection of smaller shadows, their tiny eyes absorbed into the creature's dark flesh, racing up its body like veins towards a beating heart.
Its body dwarfed the palace wall, easily reaching three stories in height. When the creatures piling onto it, the thing paused, as if confused. It tilted its head, regarding their small group standing thirty or forty feet back. Everyone else had fled—Witchblades and citizens alike—and only Arlette, Claire, Eamon, and Rae remained.
"Did Kess mention a way to kill these things?" Arlette asked, sword in hand. Claire just shook her head, snuffing out an errant snap of her Fulminancy as it crawled down her arm.
"To the lass's credit, I'm not sure any of them were this size," Eamon said, his own larger sword held high, for all the good it would do. Rae stood quietly, knives in hand, but not at the ready. She, apparently, knew they were windblown.
"We should run," Claire finally said.
"And what, lead it back to all the people in the palace?" Arlette snapped. "No, we fight."
"You can't fight that thing," Claire said, gesturing at it. "It's not even real." As if to prove her point, Rae threw a dagger through the Shadow. It didn't even flinch. Rae's knife clattered off the palace wall, a damning clang.
"They're real enough if you're Fulminant," Rae said, pulling another knife from her belt. "Maybe you should run."
Too late, Claire realized that she was the only Fulminancer in their little group. She'd never quite put herself into the same category as Kess, Rae, or even Rowan, with her powers more suited to mending, but a creature that feasted on Fulminancy wouldn't care. It took slow, lumbering steps towards her. The ground shook, and Claire nearly lost her footing. She counted her heartbeats, but eventually gave up—they were too fast.
Claire backed up with the others, half running, half stumbling, but the creature leapt. Claire closed her eyes, expecting impact, preparing for the pain of crushed bones and organs.
The ground trembled. Claire flinched. Something thumped nearby—bodies? Or…
Claire opened her eyes. The ground shook from behind, and the creature slammed its foot into the plaza there before lumbering forward. The leap knocked Rae from her feet and sent Claire flying into Eamon. She felt a sharp rock tear through her skin, and warmth crept down her cheek.
"Where is it going?" Arlette asked, sheathing her sword as the creature shambled away. Claire watched it, eyes narrowed. Then she knew.
"The Fulminant school," she whispered.
"Why wouldn't they have evacuated already?" Rae asked, frowning. Claire just shook her head, already moving.
"Because there's a bunker underneath the school. We never used it for anything but drills for exceptionally bad Drystorms. I never knew why they had it at all, but now—"
She began to run, but Arlette snatched her by the back of her shirt.
"That's suicide, Claire." She spun around, glaring at the woman.
"I don't give a damn what it is. I'm going."
"You don't—"
"They're children, Arlette. Say what you will about the garrisons we've killed, the men and women we've murdered in the line of duty. When this is all over, maybe those were worth it—maybe war is just that messy. But I'm not leaving children to die to that thing as it sucks them dry of every drop of Fulminancy they have." She pointed at it as it lumbered down the street, maybe a block away from the school.
"What are you going to do with it?" Rae asked, her face curious. Claire smiled, her thoughts whirling. She'd spent months buried in anatomy texts before crafting a solution for the Blockers and Rowan's wound, but long before that, Claire had become an expert in the way Fulminancy pulsed through a body—whether Dud or not. It was part of the secret behind some of her more successful surgeries after Kess's disaster at the garrison.
Fulminancy pulsed through the creature in the same way, strong and visible, a network of nerves, muscles, and tendons not unlike a human body.
She held out a hand to Rae.
"Let me borrow one of those, and you'll find out."
Far below, on the outer edges of the city, the city wall collapsed with a rumbling that groaned throughout the ground, a violent wave that dwarfed even the Shadow. Rae handed her a knife wordlessly, her eyes on the ominous cracks that appeared in the plaza.
Claire ran.