Gabriel came to me, the stranger he’d been gone now, aware and himself all over again. I clung to Max as I hugged my son to me with one arm, feeling empty and alone despite the boy who squeezed me tight and the powerful drach holding my hand.
The world finally settled again, the Stronghold’s shaking subsiding, dust filling the air, making me cough.
“Mom,” Gabriel whispered into my t-shirt. “I’m sorry.”
I shook my head and pushed him gently back, finally releasing Max. The ribbon on my wrist flexed and released its tight hold, sighing in such an accustomed way I almost stared at it. I knew that sigh, but from where? Didn’t matter now. I had the grief of my son to deal with.
“Never apologize for doing what has to be done.” I looked up at Max, shrugged in a bout of wonder. Three pieces in such a short period of time, after all this searching and guilt and anger. Two thirds of the way there in an eye blink. Seemed anti-climactic. “Now what?”
“I take it from your conversation with Gabriel Trill assisted in the return of the two pieces.” Max’s calm might have irritated me any other time. But right now it helped me level out, settle, find my own balance in the whirling emotions fighting for control over me. Even Gabriel seemed less hurt, more relaxed as I nodded.
I filled them in on what had happened, shivering a bit at the memory of my alter egos outside me.
Refreshing experience, my vampire sent and I had a flash of her true face, something I’d never had before. I wasn’t sure if it would change how I felt about her, now I knew what she looked like. Odd, right?
“You believe it’s up to Trill to decide when the pieces are returned.” That wasn’t a question. The giant drach lord was nodding slowly as if this made immense sense to him. Nice to know I wasn’t delusional or anything. “That means the three remaining pieces will find their way to us in due time.”
I hated not being in control of things. “She gave me that impression.” Maybe I should have been happier knowing events were unfolding as they were meant to. Mostly. “What worries me is Trill’s comment about Zoe. And how Fate tried to stop me from taking the pieces.” If Trill was working for Creator like Zoe was…
Who did I trust?
“This continuing reference to order concerns me.” Max stared up at the statue of Creator. “It smacks of a warning Dark Brother’s soldiers will make it through despite our best efforts.”
“Or has nothing to do with them,” Gabriel said. “Trill’s right about order, though.”
My head snapped down, eyes boring holes into my eldest. “Young man,” I said, “I think it’s time you came clean on what you know.”
My son flinched, looked away. “Mom,” he said, voice breaking. “I can’t. I’m sorry.” He tossed his hands, a gesture far older than his little body should have been familiar with. “We all have our jobs to do. And this is mine.” He glanced back at Creator. “Among other things.”
I almost didn’t catch that last, but instead of losing my crap as I was about to do, I stood still and held my tongue as Max spoke.
“Let us agree we are on the right path,” he said in his kind and stoic way. Grrr. Fine. “You agree, then, Gabriel, that the other side is, as Trill put it, cheating?”
My son’s concern showed clearly on his face. Yeah, like mother like kid. “I was supposed to have returned the foot and ear before now.” His lips clamped shut, face pale as if he’d given too much away.
Shaking my child was out of the question.
Keep telling yourself that, Syd.
“Sweets.” I knelt next to him, stroked my fingers over his cheek with more tenderness than I thought I had in me at the moment. “We need answers.”
He hugged me around the neck, pressing his little lips to my ear.
“There’s a reason I can feel the pieces,” he whispered. “That’s my job, Mom.”
“Because you’re the Gateway.” I knew that already.
He leaned back, misery on his face. And shook his head, but the gesture seemed ambiguous. Like there was more to it he wasn’t telling me. Not a denial, but not the rest of the story, either. Instead of speaking again or filling me in—because that would be the best way to diffuse me—he simply let me go.
Max’s next interruption saved my son from my building tirade yet again.
“Who, then, is influencing Fate if she works against us now?” His deep voice vibrated with concern. There was a time his true love, Bellanca, the Light Fate, was the distant eyes of Creator. Along with her brother, that was. It had to be hard for the drach leader to remember that was no longer the case. The two Fates were removed from that position, both with their physical vision returned to them along with their maji status. Gone forever their ability to see the future.
I wondered suddenly how they were faring. I’d left them in the care of Iepa, their fellow maji and the only one of that race I trusted. She’d been silent since. I really needed to check in and see if the second race was suffering like the rest of the Universe.
My son stood, mute and miserable, before us.
I had to do something. And since they were on my mind, I’d take the maji as the distraction I needed before I turned the Gateway over onto my knee and spanked him.
Like I’d ever raised an angry hand to my kids. But, as I tore with frustration at the veil, I grumbled to myself there was always a first time.
I landed, Max at my side, Gabriel reluctantly following, in the Fate’s chamber by the fountain where once Light Fate had resided. For a brief second I wondered if it was a bad idea bringing my son here. After all, the last time I’d let him come the maji leader, Zeon, had attacked him, showing him the race Gabriel tried to save had died horrible deaths on the new plane he’d relocated them to. Never mind their own plane was dying, them along with it. Gabriel had tried his best. But it had almost broken my son, the fact he’d caused their end instead of the good he’d tried to do.
Too late now. He was with me and no way was I sending him home alone. Besides, within another instant I realized it didn’t matter if he was with me or not.
Something was terribly wrong. The last time I’d been here, the maji were nowhere to be found, but their power at least remained linked to Center. This time? Nada, zilcho, bupkis.
The maji and all the power of the second race were gone.
I gaped into the quiet of the plane while Max’s power reached out, seeking what I knew was already missing. I turned in a slow circle, feeling the utter emptiness of Center even as I understood that wasn’t quite accurate.
Two souls remained. They appeared at the entry to the grotto, their matching blond hair and pale eyes as well known to me as the drach beside me. But these two who had been Fates of the Universe weren’t the people I used to know.
Bellanca’s burning bitterness had changed her from the kind, thoughtful young woman she’d appeared to be to a caricature of herself, lines formed around her eyes, her mouth. She’d aged in her resentment, body hunching slightly, still slim and attractive, but no longer pretty. Anger had darkened her and I knew she would never recover from the blame she felt toward Creator for taking away her lifelong task.
And how would I feel if, after millennia, I had such power stripped from me and handed to another with what felt like a casualness that bordered on indifference?
Her brother seemed less the worse for wear, though Thanos was equally altered by this new state of affairs. Also older in appearance, less a late teen and closer to my age, his lips had pulled into what seemed to be a permanent smirk, his own anger bubbling behind his eyes.
“Where are the maji?” I didn’t mean to just blurt out the question, but I was so shocked by the emptiness of Center I couldn’t think of anything else to say. Way to be all sensitive to the hurt of others, Syd.
Bellanca shrugged, bitterness coming through her magic, through the tightness of her jaw as it jumped in response. “Gone,” she said, as if that told me what I needed to know.
This was terrible. If the second race was already lost to the void… I couldn’t even comprehend what that meant. Was the Universe so far gone already?
“They are too strong for the void to have taken them this soon.” Max seemed confused, hurt by Bellanca’s attitude.
She frowned at him, tossed her head. “Small minded, as always, drach.” Where once I’d only ever heard love from her when she spoke to him, now there was pure contempt. “They departed of their own choosing.”
"Why?" I must have whispered that word. Though the fact the maji were unwilling, even now, to step up and do something to save the Universe really wasn’t that big of a shocker. In fact, the moment the question passed my lips I felt my own anger rise, burning away my shock when Bellanca spoke.
“The blood of the maji will be on your hands.” She jabbed one index finger in my direction, body quivering from the force of her gesture. “You call evil down on all of us, Doombringer. And I for one will not remain to see the end.” She snapped her fingers with a glare for Max and disappeared into a flare of fire.
Thanos remained behind, his gaze fixed on the spot where his sister had been a long moment before he looked up, the smirk falling from his face. I almost preferred his arrogance over the deep and abiding pain in his eyes.
“My sister,” he said, “has become cruel and impatient. And though I understand her hurt, I can only hope Creator knows what She is doing.”
I nodded, swallowed down a sharp retort. “Where did the maji go, Thanos?”
“We don’t know.” He shook his head, hands wringing at his sides. “Their dark brethren have also fled.” His people, the ones he’d lived with at Core for so many centuries. Had to hurt, that second betrayal. Going without him like that.
“You’re sure they didn’t fall into the void?” Max’s voice was quiet, but calm still. I knew he had to be in pain from the encounter with Bellanca, but he was as steady as always.
“This place remains,” Thanos said, gesturing around him. “As does Core. Their power is simply gone, away with them.”
Right. Every other time we placed a piece, planes had vanished right along with the people and power on them, hadn’t they? Except the vampires. And the Order. Neither seemed connected directly to the planes or their disappearance. Both races appeared inclined to just poof out of existence all on their own. Irked me I still didn’t know why that was.
“Will you help us?” It seemed a silly question. Especially since there really wasn’t much we could do right now. Thanos shook his head, looked away, smirk returned.
“Go, Doombringer,” he said. “Ruin everything. And save us all.”
With that, he vanished after his sister.
Not much we could do from there. Max led us back to the Stronghold, my son silent beside me. He’d not said a word in what felt like forever, remaining still and quiet through the entire exchange with the old Fates. But, the moment we passed through into the statue chamber, my son shook himself as if he’d just woken from a dream.
“Mom,” he said. “I have an idea. But you’re not going to like it.”
I clamped my lips together and nodded. Chances were if acting meant putting himself at risk, he was right. But who was I to tell the Gateway what he could and couldn’t do? His mother, damn it, that’s who.
Syd. Hush.
Gabriel glanced at Max then back to me, little shoulders squaring. “I want to send my soul back into the veil.”
Reaction #1: Oh, hell no.
Reaction #2: OVER MY DEAD BODY.
Reaction #3: Dear Creator, it might be the only way…
“Mom, just listen.” He continued to hold my gaze while my stomach turned over and I fought the need to throw up at the memory of his little body, lifeless but for the soft and infrequent da-dum that had been all that remained of his mortal existence. I felt that heartbeat, the recall of it, like a shudder through my body as he went on. “We need the other four pieces. And I can see so much when I’m in there.” His eyes took on a faraway expression that terrified me even more.
Da-dum.
Twitch.
“I can find them if I go in, I know it."
Da-dum.
“Just let me try.”
Da—
And then, I understood. Like a flash of pain, a hit to my solar plexus, a punch deep into the heart of my soul, I knew why it shook me so much, that sound.
That soft and pathetic da-dum.
Liam.
The last sound I ever heard from him was the final beat of his heart.
It took everything I had in me not to scream, to sob out loud, to grab my son and never, ever let go. Rigid with the need to keep myself from flying apart, I clenched my entire being into a rapidly stiffening plank of HELL TO THE NEVER and shook my head.
“I forbid you to go,” I said.
Fury flared in the child before me, rage like I’d only ever seen a few times before. Felt myself an instant or two along the way. But never, ever in my son.
Gabriel clenched both hands at his sides, power pulsing out beneath him, shaking the ground at my feet, before he snarled in response.
“We’ll see,” he snapped, creating a narrow Gateway and leaving without another word. It slammed shut behind him before I could cross into his bedroom in Wilding Springs, to follow him home. At least he went home. Still, he’d walked away from me during a fight.
Oh, no he did not.
Syd. Mom had perfect timing. If perfect meant the worst freaking choice of moments ever known to the Universe in all time and space.
WHAT. Yikes, Syd. Really?
Bless her, Mom knew better than to fight fire with nuclear armaments, though the singe of anger in her mental voice told me she was holding back by the skin of her teeth.
Sweetheart. She paused an instant as I pulled my crap together and didn’t lose it again on her.
Mother. Okay, that was better, more civil. Kinda.
I hate to interrupt, she sent, tight and precise. But we’ve been summoned.
Really. I caught myself in mid-grind, forced my teeth apart through sheer willpower. I was going to live forever. I’d be needing my molars a few centuries from now. By whom?
You’re going to love this. Her voice growled in my head. Tallah and Sashenka Hensley have brought a grievance against us to the World Paranormal Council. Our presence is requested to face charges.
They what? The lying, deceitful, arrogant—
I grinned tightly into the empty air. A fight. How perfect. And just what I needed.
I’m on my way.
***