Grave Chance Read online

  Percy was looking at us now, standing over two middle-aged people who she’d seated together, slumped over the conference table. “Took longer than I expected, frankly.”

  I clenched and unclenched my hands. “Being in a coma slows things down a bit, I guess.” I took a step towards her. “I opened my eyes, and you didn’t come to make sure I was okay.”

  “I knew you’d be fine. You were where you needed to be for Aethon to get the candle back.” Her voice was hollow, empty of emotion as she continued. “I knew you wouldn’t die.”

  “No? But you were okay if I got stuck outside reality for eternity? Because Aethon didn’t let me out. We got me out ourselves, no thanks to you.”

  “What happened, Persephona?” Cole approached her, his hands out in surrender. “Did Aethon attack your mind from outside the bar? How did he bring you here?”

  “Attack my mind?” The cruel blankness in her face faltered for a moment. “He knew you would only fully trust me if you saw me as another victim. He came to me, told me he’d spare me if I helped him. Then he destroyed my home, so I had nowhere else to go, nowhere to hide…” she stiffened and blinked fast. “He showed me that he’s right, Vexa. The world will find a new balance, and you’ll be safe, we all will be. Just let this go.”

  Cole’s father stirred, and he turned his head slightly, showing us the blood crusted to his face and temple.

  “Free from death, but not from pain, right Percy?” It was Ethan who spoke up, and my heart flinched at the understanding of what a painful life without death meant for him. Endless torture, diseases that just keep attacking you and attacking you, but you never have the relief of painless death. Poverty, starvation, now they won’t kill you, you just suffer endlessly as those who already have it all, enjoy it for eternity.”

  “Until we fight to take it back, and war breaks out,” I chimed in. “Endless war, because now the soldiers don’t die. They simply lose limbs and get thrown back out there to limp or crawl their way back into the fray.”

  The men had joined me, one by one, until we stood shoulder to shoulder with the table and Cole’s parents between us and aunt Percy. One wrong move and she’d kill them before we could reach them.

  I scanned the room for exits and anything we could use to distract Percy from Cole’s parents, even for just a few seconds. She had taught me how to control and use my own magic, I doubted I could surprise her.

  But Cole had access to magic neither of us used, as did Gwydion. I tried to access Cole’s thoughts through the connection that remained, but his mind was a jumble of pain, fear, and rage that his parents were in danger.

  He jerked away from me, which just happened to move him closer to the Percy. In a flash, the twelve-foot table flipped on us, and we scattered to get out of the way. When I jumped up, the door at the rear exit from the room was swinging shut, and Percy and Cole's parents were gone.

  "Shit!" I cursed and ran to the door. "Okay, so we know that somehow she's controlling your parents and that she's…just so fucking volatile right now. But she let us get close. We just need a better plan, since talking to her isn't going to do it."

  Ethan growled and punched the wall. “Did you hear her? She was never on our side, Vexa. When Aethon said you opened the door to him, he literally meant we walked his plan right into the bar.”

  “We couldn’t have known he got to her. How would we have known?”

  He growled again. “We’re supposed to be the good guys. Good guys are supposed to get a leg up on the bad guys, right? Intuition, or a psychic sense of what was around the next corner.

  Instead, we couldn’t even see the bad guy when she was hugging me and tearing up about her lost home. The home she’d sacrificed to further Aethon’s goal by casting herself as yet another victim of his insanity. The worst part was that meant she knew it was insane before she agreed to it.

  “He must have threatened her with something worse. I can’t imagine she’d put us in danger on purpose.”

  Cole spat out a curse. "Yeah, he told her that he'd kill you unless she helped him make killing you impossible. But not my parents, nope, they're totally expendable." He paused and looked over his shoulder at the back door. "They're still here, waiting for us to give up. She can't afford to have us chasing her." He jumped the desk and headed out the way Persephona had taken her hostages.

  "Well, we can't let him go it alone." Ethan sighed and lightly leaped over the desk, turning to hold out a hand to me. "Shall we, my lady?" His look of gentlemanly nonchalance belied his pale face and the slight tremor in his outstretched fingers.

  "You're a dork, but I'm glad you're my dork." I took his hand and let him help me over the table. I could have jumped with ease.

  “Me too. How about we go get your other dork before he gets himself maimed?”

  I nodded and took the lead, only glancing back when Ethan and I were through the door to see if Gwyd was coming.

  He was still in the middle of the room, wearing a pout. I jerked my head, and his eyes narrowed like a child about to throw a tantrum.

  "C' mon Gwyd. You know we can't do this without you, so why are you standing there like we don't want you?"

  “I’m beginning to think I should’ve taken more from you in the alcove. You aren’t acting like you recognize you could be seriously hurt or die.” He strode around the end of the table, too good to follow suit with the rest of us. “Which means you need me even more than you know.”

  His moment of uncertainty tugged on my heart a little, but we didn't have time for the men to play ‘who's Vexa's favorite.'

  “Pout later, act now.” I grabbed his hand and kissed his knuckles. “You don’t have to play games, you know.” A scream pierced the air, cutting me off. “Shit. He really didn’t wait, did he?”

  Ethan ran ahead of us, skidding to a stop at an intersecting hallway. “Fuck. I don’t want to hear another scream like that, but I really need to hear something to know which way to go.”

  Gwyd stepped up and muttered something under his breath. “Well, Cole went that way. I think it’s safe to assume we should too.”

  I watched as footprints on the floor began to glow. “You’ll have to tell me how you did that one.”

  “Fae secret, not for sharing. Let’s go. There is no time to dawdle, come along.”

  Ethan fell into step with me as Gwyd followed whatever magic he had that let him tag Cole. “Neat trick, that.”

  I huffed. “Yeah, we probably could’ve used that once or twice before now.”

  “I think we did, he just didn’t tell us, or let us see,” he muttered, flashing Gwyd a wan smile when he glanced back at us.

  Slowly, but surely, the Fae was opening up to me, and to the guys too. But I suspected that we’d be waiting a long time for him to be easy to read, or to be with.

  Cole was waiting for us at the end of the hall, just around another corner. “She’s in there, and so is the candle.”

  He let me go in first, and part of me wished he hadn’t.

  Percy looked haggard, as though in three minutes, she’d aged fifty years. But I felt her power, far greater than I’d ever seen from her. It was as though the magic she’d gained from our ancestor was cannibalizing her, even as it enhanced her magic.

  “He says he wants to stop death, but it’s killing you, Percy. I know you can feel it. why are you helping him?”

  "You were meant to survive, you know it, but not everyone can. Not until the candle is in its proper place." She dragged her fingers through her hair, and a chunk of it stayed in her hand, falling unheeded to the floor. It wasn't the first, as she turned to pace erratically back to her hostages, hair cascaded down her back to the floor in another kind of trail.

  I glanced between Cole and Gwydion’s horrified faces. This was not the woman we all knew. Cole took a careful step, then another, but on the third Percy spun around and clenched her hand into a fist at the level of his throat, and he began to choke.

  “Your survival is of no importa
nce. Choose wisely, or my niece will be forced to grieve for you instead of celebrating her eternal life.”

  Cole closed his eyes and took a deep breath, flexing his shoulders as if he was shrugging an arm off. “Not even close.” He turned his back to me and faced Percy head on. I couldn’t see his mouth or his hands, but I felt his magic through the remnant of our connection.

  She dropped to one knee, gasping for air, clawing at her chest and throat.

  "Perhaps we should expedite the journey to victory? I mean, this is all incredibly entertaining, but we have two mundane humans whose vital signs are on the wrong end of normal." Gwydion still hadn't lifted a finger to assist, but his words seemed to have the needed effect on Cole, who released his stranglehold on my aunt.

  “Holy shit, Aunt Percy. Look at you. You’re so toxic your hair is falling out. Your skin is hanging off you. Let go of the candle and Aethon’s empty promises of power. I will kill him for you. We’ll keep you safe. You were safe in the bar. Why the fuck would you do this?”

  Cole grabbed my arm. "Don't bother, Vex. Whatever we're looking at now, it isn't your aunt, Percy. I've seen my fair share of the inhuman wearing people's faces. She's just not home anymore."

  "How do we bring her back?" I turned, so my back was never to her or Cole's parents as I glanced between her and the guys.

  Ethan’s eyes were huge, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he kept an eye on Cole’s parents. I trusted him to grab them at first sign of an opening.

  Gwydion stood off to one side, either looking for an opening of his own or simply watching us implode from his lofty perch above us mere mortals.

  Cole's mind was working, and I knew if he had to choose, there'd be no hesitation before he'd put Percy down, no matter what his parents thought of his magic or him.

  “Percy, how do I heal you?”

  She looked at me in confusion. "You don't need to heal me, Vexa-dear. All he needs is to know you're letting go. Stop chasing the candle, it was never meant for you, not like this." She chided me gently like she had when I was younger, and she'd taught me how to control my magic.

  "Let them go, Persephona," Cole demanded, all the sarcasm and wit gone from his voice, his effect flat and cold. "Let them go, and I let you live."

  But even as he said it, I knew it wasn’t true. Even if she handed over the candle without any more trouble, she’d already killed to bring it to Aethon, accepted the power boost he gave her to fight us. We could take her back to the bar and try to make her right again, but I’d never let her walk free again, and she had to know that.

  Her only response to him was to jerk her hand, and on the end of the invisible tether that bound her hostages to her, Cole’s father jerked forward and landed on his face, unable to use his hands to protect himself.

  “Goddamn it, Percy,” I muttered as I rushed her.

  But Cole beat me to her and hit her hard, his fist smashing into her face. He didn’t even reach for his magic, just began to throw punches. She stopped him with raw magic, and he changed tactics, casting a distortion around her to confuse her.

  In response, she struck out at him, raking her nails across his chest and neck as he ducked away from her, then cast again, the power of his spell sending her sliding across the wood floor.

  “Is anyone else having trouble not staring at the middle-aged lady fighting like a magical MMA fighter?” Ethan wisecracked.

  I shrugged at him but said nothing. Just compartmentalize and have a good freak out when we’re all safe and the candle is back in the bar with us. I was at a loss to figure out how to get my hands on the candle without Cole’s parents getting caught in the crossfire.

  Thinking the distraction was his goal, I used the magical fistfight as my cover to sneak around them to Cole’s mother and help her to her feet. The moment I let go of her, she sank back to the floor, her face an emotionless mask.

  “Cole, punching her in the face isn’t going to break the binding with your parents.”

  He grunted an acknowledgment and blocked another hit from her, then sent her flying across the room. There was silence as she struggled to her feet, and for a moment, I thought my coma was still affecting my brain. I blinked fast and watched as my aunt blurred, just for a split second, as though her body came apart and reformed right in front of us.

  “Uh, guys? Tell me you all saw that.” Ethan gulped and exhaled hard. “Shit.” He tried to step in and help Cole, but Gwydion held him back.

  “He needs this. Do not interfere.”

  “Don’t interfere? Helping is not interference. She just blurred out. Do we even know what makes that happen? I’m getting in there.”

  “He’s trying to avoid using magic that could affect his parents through the binding. We don’t know how closely she tied them to her.” Physical casting that blocks or pushes her is all he’s got right now…or his fists.”

  But I could find out what bound them if they bought me a minute. "Right. You guys go ahead and cheer him on, I'll figure out what kind of binding she did, and how to undo it." I glanced back at them. "It might help if you draw her attention. The more she has to focus on, the weaker the binding could get."

  Cole and Percy were oblivious to us at that point, but I could see Percy was already beginning to flail, even with Aethon’s additional magic to aid her. Cole pushed her back, glanced at me over her shoulder, and started to move her away from his parents and me toward the door we’d come in.

  “Quite right, Vexa. Ethan, you flank her on Cole’s right. Do not push the attack, and absolutely do not exert yourself. Let Cole lead her where he wants her, and we will stretch her so thin she snaps.”

  “Just make sure that when she does, it isn’t all over us,” I quipped softly, creeping back around the chairs to Cole’s mom. “Hey, it’s okay, we’re going to get you out of here.” The eyes that turned on me were blank, the pupils swallowing all but a thin sliver of blue around the outer edge. “Gwyd, she’s still in there, but she’s been buried, almost like my coma. They’re bound by Aethon’s magic to the candle. I reached into that part of me and felt for the connection I still had to the candle itself.

  Aethon had done his best to separate me from it, but the magic was still there, even though I felt like I had to reach behind a curtain to touch it. The moment I touched that spark, Percy reacted, spinning on me so fast I felt her eyes snap to the back of my head with laser point intensity.

  “Do a better job, boys.” I refused to pay attention to her, carefully examining the physical threads around his mom’s throat that created the binding to Persephona. I scanned my aunt, looking for the necklace’s twin, and found two bracelets of braided embroidery thread around her left wrist. “Gotcha.”

  I started to slowly unwind the braid, careful not to snap or knot any of the individual threads. I wasn’t about to be the one to accidentally cause the death of Cole’s parents when he was so close to getting them free.

  Percy let out a screech as I reached the core of the twisted, marled binding. The magic glowed darkly at my touch, the final thread that ran through it like a vein of living obsidian.

  "I found you, you son of a bitch." Death magic tied Cole's parents to Percy because of course, a necromancer would use what they know best. I drew the magic out of the choker steadily, ignoring the sounds of struggle behind me.

  “Don’t, don’t you touch that!” Percy was screaming at me, and I risked a glance over my shoulder at Ethan and Cole holding her back physically, while Gwydion did something mysteriously Fae, but I suspected was trying to reclaim the candle from her.

  With a gasp, Cole’s mother was released from the trance that held her, and with her release, the magic that bound them all broke, releasing his father as well.

  Ethan let go of Percy’s arm and started for us, to help me get Cole’s parents out of the line of fire. Cole yelled out a warning as Percy broke free of the hold he had on her and Ethan threw himself over us as though warding off a physical blow.

  “Get them out of here.�
� I grabbed their arms, but they were as fuzzy and disoriented coming out of their trance state as I’d been, coming out of my coma. Cole grabbed his dad and practically dragged him out, his father’s arms slung over him like a drunk buddy after last call.

  Ethan hefted Cole’s mother over his shoulder in a fireman carry and ran out ahead of me. Gwyd turned his back to us and ushered me out behind him, facing Percy as he tried to cover for us.

  She didn’t run like I thought she would. Instead, she cast using the candle, and just like I had when I’d tapped into the power without reservation or protection, she was engulfed in blue flame/

  Chapter 3

  If there were words to properly describe the thing that was Persephona, I didn’t have them. As the flames dissipated, disappeared like they’d been sucked into a vacuum, Percy was growing, her limbs lengthening, face distorting.

  It was like watching Ethan as he’d changed into a monster in the Dwarven Undercity. She didn't stop changing until she was double her original size, both in height and girth. Even taller, and wider her longer, rod-thin limbs were still too long for her torso, with skin a shiny blue-black like a beetle's carapace, stiff hairs jutting out from her joints. The overall effect of her change was almost insectile, making her some kind of bipedal spider.

  That was when Gwydion and I finally turned tail…and ran. To be fair, we only ran to the other end of the hall near the stairs. Cole and Ethan had set his parents down in a corner, hidden behind the long conference table and chairs and Cole was trying to bring them all the way back to reality.

  Ethan paced in front of the door, his own control beginning to fray at the edges. “What the fresh fuck was that thing?”

  I swallowed the bile that rose in my throat. "That's what could've happened to me when I reached out to the candle without control." I snagged his arm and put my hands on his face. "Right now, control is the key word, Ethan. Mine, yours…"

  “And mine.” Cole stuck his head out the door and jerked it back in as the monster that was my aunt bellowed its rage somewhere down the corridor. The sounds kept getting closer, it was only a matter of time before the creature found us. “Get them to safety, and I mean get them out of the hotel. I know what to do. I know what I’ve got to do,” he said softly to himself. He knelt in front of his dazed parents and said something to them I couldn’t hear.