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After Elliot leaves the mess hall, I jump off the chair and sit down, feeling dizzy. The din of cutlery and conversation returns by degrees. I rest my elbows on the table and hold my head, thoughts still jumping, shifting away from the shadows that still loom over my mind.
Damn you, Azrael!
I almost killed Elliot. I shake my head, thinking how easy it would be to be rid of him if I could fully control my powers, how quickly I could end this war if I systematically killed every Eklyptor leader. If only I could practice meditation every day, but I haven’t seen Aydan in weeks, haven’t had his help, and I’m still too scared to do it alone.
Could someone else help me? Lyra, maybe? She must be a master at meditation. She’s morphed herself into Cheetara, after all. Could I trust her?
I bite my bottom lip, considering the other side of this coin, the morality of having the power to kill someone with a mere thought. The idea sends a chill straight into my bone marrow. No one should have that kind of power, especially not a sixteen-year-old with a temper.
The chill deepens when I think of all the people I might have killed during my lifetime if that skill had manifested early on. God, I almost did the same thing to Aydan right after Xave died—rage and my desire to push him away nearly turned me into . . . what? A murderer? Or something far worse I can’t even name?
Elliot deserves to die. He’s a monster, and I’ve promised myself to make him pay. But what about others just like him? Eklyptors and humans alike. What would stop me from killing them? What would give me the right, make me the judge?
Would anyone feel comfortable around a person who could do little more than blink to render you inert? Hell, I wouldn’t want someone like that near me.
I drive stiff thumbs into my temples as a headache throbs to life. This philosophical debate combined with keeping the reawakened shadows at bay is giving me a migraine.
Shakily, I stand and take my tray to the conveyor belt, food cold and stiff on the plate. I leave the mess hall, turning my back on the black-uniformed Eklyptors, trying not to think what it would be like to snap my fingers, then turn to find every single one of them lying on the floor, clutching their chests.
Some part of me thinks it would be wonderfully easy to end this war that way, while another part feels almost certain I’d be unable to live with that kind of god-like power and the guilt of being able to impart instantaneous death—no matter how well-deserved.
When I make it to the barracks, I crash on my bed and put a pillow over my head. The large room is blessedly quiet since everyone’s still at the mess hall. I want sleep to take me away, to erase my twisted thoughts and give me fluid dreams the shadows can’t chase. But sleep runs in the opposite direction, totally mocking me.
“Azrael,” a voice says right next to me.
I sit up with a start and send the pillow flying to the floor.
Lyra, in all her black-furred glory, is standing between her bed and mine, looking down at me with her round, green eyes. They are intense, angry even.
“Shit! You need a bell around your neck. What the hell?!” I stand, pick up the pillow and throw it back on top of the gray covers.
She ignores my little quip and drops the satchel she’s carrying on the floor. “What happened in the mess hall?”
I frown. “Huh?”
Is this about Elliot? No, it can’t be. She doesn’t know about my powers. I’ve never mentioned them to her. And even if I had, making the leap from knowing someone can move objects with their mind to suspecting they can crush someone’s heart is pretty extreme. Maybe she’s asking something different. Maybe something else happened after I left.
“What are you talking about?” I ask, deepening my frown.
Lyra narrows her eyes, which doesn’t quite have the mean effect she’s probably going for. The gesture just makes her look like a friendly, content kitten.
“I’m talking about Elliot, and his . . . episode,” she says.
“Episode?”
“Don’t play stupide.”
“Are you talking about him coughing in the middle of his speech? Maybe he has walking pneumonia.”
She snarls deep in her throat.
“You’re acting weird,” I say with a dismissive flick of my hand.
Nope. No chance in hell I’d let her help me with meditation. She might be IgNiTe, but I don’t fully trust her. One, I met her as an enemy and first impressions are hard to erase. Two, she openly threatened me, said that if I’m part of Hailstone’s grand plan to get rid of the need for human hosts, she would be against me—a nice way to say she’d put a bullet in my brain. Three, I’m not sure I want to make anyone aware of my monstrous potential. This feels private, like a reason to slick my hair back, don horned-rim glasses, change my name and pretend to be harmless and adorably clueless.
“I’m acting weird?” she asks. “This from someone who channels a creature like Azrael and sneaks through the ventilation system doing who knows what.”
“Someone who channels Azrael?! That’s not fair. I do what I have to do.”
I rub circles into my temples and sit on the desk chair, wondering how she knows about the ventilation system. I haven’t even used it since I planted a bug in Elliot’s PC, the day I discovered I could switch off my buzz-o-meter in both directions when he almost caught me spying. Why is she bringing that up anyway?
“The ventilation system is a thing of the past,” I say, figuring there’s no point in denying it. “I can go in and out as I please, now.” I pat the access card that hangs from my belt loop.
“So you didn’t put poison in Elliot’s food or through the vents in his office?”
I laugh. I can’t help it. This is what she thinks I did? It’s kind of sordid. My kind of idea, really, but so far off the mark. “I don’t know the first thing about poisoning. Though, maybe I should set my mind to learning the task.”
Lyra’s beautiful emerald eyes regard me for a moment longer. Finally, she seems to believe me and sits on her bed, looking puzzled. She scratches her head with a sharp feline claw, then preens her fully-grown whiskers. “He says he’s in top health. There should be nothing wrong avec son cœur.”
His what?
“His heart,” Lyra says when she sees my confused frown.
“I’m all for learning French, Lyra, but it’s at the bottom of my priorities at the moment. Surviving sort of puts a cramp in my personal improvement goals. Capisce?”
She rolls her eyes. “Americans.”
“Hey, you’d better watch it. You’re starting to sound like Elliot.”
Lyra shudders as if I just compared her to a street dog.
“I don’t get it.” I sit on my own bed across from her. “The old fart might be, um, sick, and you’re upset? Wouldn’t that be a good thing if he croaks?”
“It’d be a good thing if they all croaked.” She makes air quotes. “But if he dies, someone else will take his spot, someone less sophistiqué et more hungry for carnage.”
“Hungrier,” I correct.
She gives me the finger.
“Hey, just trying to help.” I put my palms up, recline on my pillow and look at the false ceiling. “I guess you’re right. James says the same thing.”
“Elliot cares about keeping the status quo and infrastructure. He doesn’t want to inherit a world in tatters.”
“Well, you’re his first in command, now.” I prop myself on one elbow and face her. “Wouldn’t you take his place if he’s gone?” I’ve many times asked myself why Lyra, who, early on, infiltrated the faction and managed to earn trust, didn’t just kill him at the first opportunity, but instead, continues to work alongside him.
She scoffs and gives me a contemptuous look that lets me know how naïve, stupid—or both—she thinks I am. “Haven’t you been paying attention? No one is happy Elliot is leaving Lamia and me in charge. Do you doubt challengers would present themselves if Elliot dies? It would most likely cleave the faction into smaller groups.”
“Well, that should make it easier to bring them down, right?”
“It is hard to predict exactly what would happen, but I fear—and my superiors and yours agree—smaller factions would be much harder to control. We would have guerrilla warfare on our hands. Eklyptors going into hiding never to be rooted out. Non, we can’t allow that. Our focus is elsewhere—on a cure.” She adds the last words in a hushed tone, even though there’s no one in the room with us. “Capisce?”
“Yeah. I get it.” It seems to me Lyra’s more worried about getting to Hailstone than the cure, but whatever.
We lie quietly for a moment, both lost in our own thoughts, staring at the ceiling as if a magical solution will flutter down on us. Finally, Lyra sits, picks up her satchel from the floor, and tosses it onto my lap.
I startle, instinctively, curling my body away from the bag. “What’s this?”
“Some things that might be useful. We got a new shipment of weapons today. Surveillance equipment came with it. Spy stuff. Trackers, tiny cameras, microphones. That sort of thing.”
“Oh, yeah?” I start to open the bag.
Lyra shakes her head. “Better not be too obvious with those. Remember, everyone still thinks tu es folle.” She winds a finger around her temple. “And I wouldn’t give a crazy person those kinds of things.”
A heavy sigh pushes past my lips. I’m so sick of this place, of hiding and pretending to be someone I’m not.
With my desire for revenge against Elliot stifled at every turn, my presence here feels more useless every day. Add to that the fact that most communications have gone low-tech, making my hacking skills about as useful as roller skates at a nursing home.
Grumbling, I stash the satchel under my bed and lie back down. As soon as my head hits the pillow, my mind races away from this place, a common occurrence, lately.
As is most often the case, my thoughts drift to a small neighborhood north of here. There, I find a two-bedroom/one-bathroom house with a small porch and green siding. Across the street, a one-story rambler sits quiet and empty. A boy with red, fireman boots used to live there years ago. I don’t know why I revisit these places so often. There’s nothing left there for me, just old things and fraying memories. Yet, so much more than what I find here every day.
I long to go back.