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“Try Megan,” Blu suggested.
Vivian nodded. Her pretty features scrunched in frustration. After a second, she huffed and banged her fist on her crossed legs. “Nothing. Nothing—it’s like—”
“We lost them?” Michael asked. His heart twisted at the thought of his son gone, but Vivian shook her head.
“Not gone, exactly, but... unreachable. I can’t freaking touch them!”
No one but Vivian sat; they all paced Blu’s living area. Every so often, the sound of a loud pedestrian or startling noise caught someone’s attention, and wide eyes shot to the corners of the flat. That the Shévet ha Dam had tracked down Blu’s D.C. family and had killed nearly everyone in it left them jumpy and paranoid. Michael knew everyone longed to leave, but until Vivian or Harmony had a fix on a location, travel was moot. There was no point in hurrying off for the sake of travel. Poor Crystal, brave as she tried to act, was wearing out with every trek.
“Should I try?” Blu said. “Maybe he’s trying to avoid you for some reason.”
“Please,” Vivian said.
“Take a break,” Blu said, tapping her on the knee and sitting next to her place on the couch. “There are drinks in the fridge. Grab a cool one and try to relax.”
Vivian nodded and headed to the kitchen. Michael followed while Crystal and Harmony continued pacing next to the coffee table.
In Blu’s kitchen, Vivian helped herself to a can of soda and pressed it to her wrists, her forehead. She leaned against the yellow countertop heavily.
Michael leaned against the opposite counter, crossed his legs at the ankles, and said, “I don’t know why you accommodate me the way you do.”
Vivian blinked and took her eyes from the spot on the wall where she’d been staring. The framed print of an artistically rendered, icy pitcher of lemonade had not been what she was paying attention to.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, out of all of us—me, you, Lukas, Harmony, Crystal, Megan, Blu—I’m the one with the least to offer. Luke and Megan came straight from Cartephilus through Gina. There’s no telling what all they’ll be able to do once they put their minds to it. Crystal’s been damn useful from the second we met her. Harmony told us about the ‘other’ Blu, and hell, she’s like having another powerhouse traveling with us. Blu is over five hundred years old. He can fly. He can withstand the sun way better than I can. I’m barely twenty undead years, and am generations away from anyone useful.”
“Most of our family hasn’t had much reason to use their supernatural power.”
“Until now.” The thought that Lukas harbored potential power that neared that of Charles Dunning—before his possession of the Maleficence—had been what kept Michael hopeful that his son had a chance at surviving. As the hours ticked by without a word, his optimism dwindled. “You and Blu, Crystal and Harmony, you’re useful in this fight. You have gifts. You’re like a superwoman, Vivian, and you have an enormous strength of spirit because you can tap into the Source. I’m—I’m pretty much useless.”
Vivian chewed her lip thoughtfully. “I’m not sure how to tell you this, Michael—”
“Just say it, then.”
“I’m not trying to change the subject or take away from what you’ve said. We can get back to that. But I’m afraid there’s another reason I’m having trouble reaching Lukas. He didn’t have what I had when he inherited Joseph’s blood. The Source didn’t protect him. Gina, either, and that’s why Jude could corrupt her. Lukas wasn’t an immediate heir, and that he didn’t die when exposed to the Source is a good sign, but I think he may have inherited a touch of the Maleficence as well.”
The words hit him like an arrow in the chest. “No! No way.”
“Michael, it’s true. Listen to me. There’s a part of him I can’t touch. When I contact you or Blu or Megan, it was like putting my hand in a stream; I could flow through you. Lukas has a spot, a small spot, that’s like a rock. I can’t penetrate it. I don’t know if he’s aware of it, but it worries me.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
“Because I don’t know for sure what it is!”
“And the Source can’t break through?”
Vivian shook her head. “I’ve worked with him on it a couple of times. Nothing deep. I asked him if I could heal any lasting psychological damage from his experience with Jude. Being Lukas, he laughed and said sure. After the second time, though, I couldn’t come up with another excuse to try. He’s over the incident as much as anyone can be and still be healthy. I didn’t want to worry him, and I didn’t see any reason to worry or make him second-guess himself. He’s never displayed outward signs of any evil. He’s still Lukas. Have you noticed any change?”
Michael had to admit he didn’t.
“Still,” Crystal said, emerging from the living room, “if the Source can’t reach it, can’t get through it, it’s got to be the Male—Mali—the Darkness, doesn’t it?”
Michael put his hand to his face. What might be too hard for the Source to break through? A memory, maybe? The memory of his mother’s death? He was only two.
Vivian slammed a palm onto the counter. Her ears perked up as if listening, her face happier than he’d seen it since saving the lives of those in Savannah.
“What the—?” Crystal exclaimed, and then cut herself short as if afraid to interrupt whatever epiphany Vivian was having.
“Sorry,” Vivian said, bursting into the living room. “Blu, you can stop now.”
“Thank the goddess,” Blu said. He caught Vivian’s fevered, beaming face. “If you weren’t you, I’d tell you you look crazy.”
“If I weren’t me, you’d still be struggling.”
“Whatever.” He grinned at her. “What’d you see, hon?”
Instead of answering, Vivian marched to Crystal and set her hands on top of the smaller girl’s head. Crystal gasped, puffed herself up as if bracing for a race, and drew a powerful, shimmering line. Vivian widened it, and they all stepped through.
They emerged at the side of a freeway in a triangle of highway ramps and the highway itself.
“Look around!” Vivian cried over the noise of traffic. “Lukas is nearby!”
After long moments of looking and several passes up and down the ramp, a patch of what might have been blond hair caught Michael’s eye. “What’s that?” he asked, pointing.
The group waded through thigh-high weeds to a spot in the center. Amid the wildflowers sat Lukas, hunched and weeping. Elbows on his thick knees, hair tousled, his eyes swollen and red, head bowed, he epitomized anguish. The back of his shirt was torn from shoulder blade to hem, the tears placed as if two wings had sprouted from his back. Why not? If he has grown wings, should that surprise me?
“Lukas?” Michael murmured.
His son looked up. Bloodshot blue eyes in a face reduced to childlike helplessness pleaded with his father to make the wrong right again. Michael’s heart broke. With Lukas’s adulthood, his ability to ease pain with a simple kiss or kind word had vanished.
Blu’s said, “Where’s M—?”
Out of the corner of his eye, Michael saw Vivian minutely shaking her head. Gone was the joy she’d exhibited when she’d pinpointed Lukas; tears now shone in her eyes as well. Blu gasped just as Michael understood what had caused his son so much suffering.
Megan too? When will this stop? Must I lose everyone I love?
Now crying as well, Michael leaned down and put his arm under Lukas’s and strained to lift him. Blu dropped to the opposite side and lifted as well. Together, they carried his son to the wide berth at the edge of the road where they’d emerged into this world of Lukas’s pain.
Lukas never stopped sobbing.
