Forty-Three

“L

ook, lady,” I said, right up in her face, close enough to maybe break through her cobwebs. “I’m not staying here. I have no intention of hanging around and letting these guys feed off me.”

The woman laughed. In. My. Face. A fit of giggles I feared might shake loose what little glue held her sanity together.

“Where are we?”

The woman reached for a strand of her long hair, holding it between two fingers like a cigarette. She slid her fingers down to the ends, where she began plucking furiously at the tips, which were already a frayed mess. “We’re in the cave of the dragon,” she sang.

This woman was going to be of zero help.

“More tea,” she commanded with sudden urgency, shoving the cup into my face.

I knocked it to the ground, where it splintered into pieces. “I don’t want the damn tea!”

She flew frantically to a cupboard, got out another cup, and poured it full. “Drink the tea. Drink. Drink it until you can see me.”

“Until I can see you?” I suddenly realized the absence of aura. I couldn’t see her colors, which caused a surge of panic in me.

She nodded emphatically. “Tea and sleep. Sleep and tea. It’s the only way to come back to life.”

I eyed her warily but took the cup and ventured a sip. The tea was no longer hot, just tepid and bitter. I was so thirsty I slammed the liquid down too fast, bursting into a sputtery cough. Nothing special happened after I drank it, though. I watched the woman as she scuttled from place to place, picking up the broken glass, arranging the pieces in a pattern in the corner of the wood floor in an adjacent room. She ran to the wood-burning stove, scooped up some cold charcoal, and rushed back to her little art project. There had to be a way out of this. “What’s your name?” I called to her over the clink and scrape of glass against the floor.

“Gráinne,” she answered. It sounded like grawn-ya. After more soft clattering of glass, she came out of the other room and looked at me expectantly, wringing her bloody hands in front of her. I winced.

“What is your name, child?”

“Cora.”

“Cora.” She said my name slowly, tasting it in her mouth like it was a foreign flavor. Then she nodded and turned back to her project. I took a couple of shaky steps after her, but stopped when I saw her huddled on the floor, rocking back and forth, bloody hands around the knees of her white skirt.

I felt so sorry for her. She was a fragile stalk, blowing in an invisible wind.

“I’m going to try to get us out of here,” I said. “I won’t stay in here and wait to die.”

She looked up at me sadly through a curtain of dark, grimy hair. “I’ve died a thousand deaths in here. You will, too.”

I backed away, leaving her to her rocking and her ghosts. The bed was the only refuge I had. I still wasn’t myself. I could tell by the heft of my limbs, by the sweat on my upper lip from moving around the room. I needed to sleep. I needed to eat something, if only to get strong enough to escape.

A hand caressed my cheek. Softly. Appreciatively. I leaned into it. “Finn,” I moaned. I would open my eyes and be in my lavender room atop the lighthouse. Finn would be there to chase away my bad dreams. He’d call me his heart again.

“I’m sure you’ll see him soon,” a deep, melodic voice answered. My eyes flew open. “When he needs more of what you have to offer.” Clancy Mulcarr stood over me. His hand grazed the outer curve of my breast. “I’m quite proud of him for luring you here.”

I slapped his filthy hand away. “Don’t touch me!” I screamed, scrambling off the other side of the bed. His aura wasn’t white, had never been white since we had met. I didn’t understand it. It looked normal. Peaceful, actually. Only a monster could radiate peace after what he’d done.

“Don’t be thick, girl. I can take what I want without touching you. You know that.”

My heart beat ebony with the poison of betrayal. My breaths came in short, strained bursts. There was not enough air in the room. Not enough space in the universe to get away from what Clancy had said. “You said Finn lured me here?” I asked, too aware of the weakness that made my voice quiver.

“Not everything went as planned in America, I must admit. Your coming to Ireland was brilliantly cooperative. Bloody unexpected, but cooperative. We’d been watching you for so long. I feel quite vindicated to know I was right about what you are. And how could Finn not lure you? It’s astonishing how little you know about yourself. About Finn, for that matter. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, if you had any sense at all, you’d never have let him near you.”

The room closed in on me as Clancy and I stood there staring at each other.

“I know what you are, too, Arrazi,” I spat. A flicker of amused astonishment showed in his face. “I have sense enough to know you’re nothing but a parasite. That people like you take and kill just to make yourselves feel good!”

“Oh, pet.” Clancy laughed. “It’s not for pleasure. Though I admit, it’s good all right, and Scintilla are especially intoxicating. If the world knew what I possessed…” His eyes narrowed. He placed his thick hands on the bed and leaned toward me. “It’s a bit more serious than pleasure. We must feed off auras. To survive.”

“As in, you’ll die if you don’t?”

He waved his hand in the air like my question bored him. “Yes. Arrazi require the energy of others to live. All of a regular human’s life energy. A human soul is a spark from the divine fire and it feeds us. There are givers and there are takers. This is true in all of nature, Cora. The sunlight gives, the trees take, they in turn give us oxygen—”

“Thanks for the biology lesson, but what do you give?”

“Ah, see, the Arrazi are at the top of the human food chain. And you,” he said, pointing at me, “you are our sun.”

I’m sure I looked as shocked as I felt. If this was the trail of truth my mother had been following, she was right. Giovanni was right. There were different breeds of human. Mankind always had its share of predators and prey, but this was literal. This leech stood there telling me that his kind, the Arrazi, lived off other people. “You kill people! You’re nothing but murderers!”

Clancy worked his way slowly around the bed as I backed into the corner. His voice was a low, menacing rumble. “Do you fault the lion for killing the gazelle?”

I didn’t want to play his game. We were humans. We were equals. He had no right to kill another. And yet I knew he would if it meant his survival. “Then why haven’t you killed me yet? Why am I here? Why is that poor woman here?”

“The Arrazi weren’t always murderers, but our source of life has been all but depleted. Every time I take from you, you save a multitude of people I’d otherwise have to kill. The energy of a Scintilla is the most powerful on earth. My choice to enslave one saves many.”

“How completely benevolent of you.” I trembled with rage and pure fear. Both emotions gusted like the same hot wind rattling my bones.

Clancy moved closer, irritation glinting in his beady dark eyes. “If I didn’t do this, I’d have to employ tacky techniques like my sister and her husband, working knee-deep around death so they can benefit from it.”

Doctors. That’s how they did it without being caught. No wonder they were so insistent on Finn becoming one. And I’d first met him in the hospital. Where I’d also seen Griffin for the first time. The bitter trace of tea rose up in my throat. My God, it was true, they’d been after me all along.

“Sortilege! Powers! Tell her! His soul’s on a chain, it is. That is also why they covet the Scintilla,” Gráinne shouted from her doorway. Now I saw her aura. The gleaming, sparkling silver of it.

He had two of us.

“Out, woman!” Clancy shouted. Gráinne jumped and shut her door. He straightened his wool sweater over his generous belly and smoothed back his hair. “She forgets herself.” He took another step toward me. Then another. “She is correct, though. Another undeniable allure of a Scintilla,” he said, drawing the word out in a hiss, “is that your energy awakens and fuels our powers, our sortilege. We all have latent abilities that are waiting for the spark to ignite them. Extrasensory abilities are our birthright. Through the years it’s been diluted and bastardized so that some regular humans possess our gifts. But it’s very real. Scintilla give us the only thing humans truly lust after. Real power. Real magic. Naturally, the Arrazi who controls you, controls the power.”

I swallowed hard. “Biology lesson for you,” I whispered. “If you stopped killing us, there’d be more of us.”

“The Arrazi are not the only ones killing Scintilla, lass. You have great enemies in places you can’t even imagine.” He smiled. “Enemies who will do anything to keep the truth a secret.”

“So they’re your enemies, too,” I ventured.

“Not quite.” He looked into his palm. I saw a quick flash of a gold ring with the emblem worn on the underside of his finger rather than on top. He closed his hand around it. “I have something of an arrangement with them. You’re a fighter. I like it,” Clancy said. “I can’t wait to taste your strength when your energy mixes with mine.” His dark eyes roiled with hunger. His aura pushed against mine in the space between us. Insistent. Voracious.

“Please don’t kill me,” I whispered.

“I have no intention of killing you right now. There are far too few of you left. It’s a crisis, really. I fear there may be a war for possession of the remaining Scintilla. Hell, the price for you on the black market is astounding. Having two of you makes me a very powerful man. And your friend, I’ll find him, too. Three Scintilla would be the ultimate prize. I’ll be unstoppable then.”

Three.

Giovanni. I hoped desperately that he was far away and safe.

Clancy cornered me. I was surrounded by the bed, the wall, and the rough edge of the bedside table that dug into my thighs. His eyes bore into mine. I flinched, waiting to feel the agonizing tug on my chest. The pain of my body flying apart.

“Think of it this way. You need me to keep you safe from those who would have you dead for what you know and for what you are. And I need you.” His whisper was hot on my face. “It’s the only reason you’re still alive.”

Every hair on my body stood on end. My energy swirled and built in the middle of my chest. My fingers and feet grew numb. It was starting. “No, no, please don’t,” I pleaded, pushing ineffectively against Clancy Mulcarr’s barrel chest. Already, my solar plexus burned where his energy concentrated. I was sliced open. “I can’t handle it.”

He touched my face, and the corona of his light burned brighter. I turned my head away and focused on the grain of the wood paneling on the wall. My fingers fumbled on the table next to me for anything to use against him. “Embrace your nature, Cora. This is what you were meant for. You weren’t strong enough when I brought you here last night. Finn and Griffin nearly finished you off.”

My hand closed around one of the small silver serving pieces from the tea set. I grasped it firmly and swung with every ounce of energy he hadn’t yet taken. Sugar cubes went flying in all directions, bouncing off us. Clancy’s head swung to the side, and when he looked back at me with a crescent of blood at his temple and bloodlust in his eyes, I knew I’d made it worse on myself. But there was no way I was going down without a fight.

He continued to drain me unrelentingly. I flinched when he pressed his body against mine, but I was trapped and already feeling so feathery I thought I’d lose my ability to stand at any moment. I closed my eyes as he whispered in my ear. “I have much more finesse than they do, pet, and I need you now. Though after that stunt, I’m not inclined toward finesse.”