A Portrait of Pain Read online

  “And that’s an official order,” Miro’s voice had lowered to a whisper, though the influence of his words seemed to amplify, brushing against my skin like velvet. “But Danny is still your top priority—”

  “He’s sedated.” Andre reached around and knocked his fist against the cab of the vehicle behind him. The sound was only a muted thud, as though he had knocked against a brick wall instead of a van. “We tied him up, gloved his hands, and injected him with enough crap that I’d be surprised if he wakes up at all.”

  “But he will,” Miro promised. “You need to keep him isolated. Take him to the old Komnata—it’s the only place safe from the humans right now.”

  Andre jerked his head in a nod and his eyes slid over Miro’s shoulder, looking at me again.

  “She’s not a threat,” Silas growled.

  Andre only stared, but after a moment he nodded again. “And the victims?” He indicated the small group of college students gathered a few feet away. I could see more than just Charles and the two girls that had been hiding with him. I could see at least seven other people.

  “Is that everyone? Have you checked the whole campus?” Miro questioned.

  “We’ve subdued all of the hostiles and handed them over to the agency—let the humans feel like they did something useful. These were the only kids who we could get out. The others are all trapped in rooms we can’t touch. Every entry and exit point is rigged to set off an explosion. We have the bomb squads working on a solution, but as soon as the media get a hold of this, all hell is going to break loose.”

  “Get these guys to the Komnata.” Miro glanced over at Poison and Charles for a moment. “Make sure they’re guarded carefully, make sure they’re far away from Danny and make sure they don’t know that Danny is there—we don’t need any of them getting any stupid, heroic ideas.”

  “And their families? We have half a damn city backed up down the bottom of the mountain, demanding to know where their kids are.”

  “Get the message out there quietly that the victims have been taken to the Komnata. It’ll put everyone at ease.”

  “And you five?” Andre added, crossing his arms over his chest. For a moment, I thought that he was actually questioning Miro—challenging him in some way, but then I realised that his stance was protective.

  He didn’t like the idea that he was being tasked with protecting everyone but the Voda.

  “Seraph is obviously being targeted,” Miro replied. “This show is for her. She’s the only one who can stop it, and more lives are at stake than what you can see here. Make sure the other agents realise that, because the next person who shoots her is going to have some time out with my twin.”

  “Which reminds me,” Silas interrupted, before Andre could answer, “I owe you this.” His body flashed, a blur of movement, and Andre shot back against the van, rolling sideways to reveal a small dent in the side of the vehicle. I wasn’t surprised. Andre was a big guy and Silas could pack a punch.

  Andre pulled himself straight as two men came running, half drawing their weapons. He waved them back with a small movement, his hand cupping his jaw, his sharp eyes growing a degree colder.

  “I didn’t know she was your Atmá,” he grumbled. “I’ve seen her kill—”

  “You’ve seen what Danny wanted you to see,” Noah interrupted, his voice as quiet as Miro’s. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “One more thing.” Miro reached back, grabbing a hold of my wrist. Noah had started to pull me back, so he was forcing us both to halt. He had known instinctively to reach out to me instead of Noah. “We need a car.”

  “Take mine.” Andre dug into his pockets, pulling out a set of keys and handing them over to Miro. “I’ll radio down and tell them to let you through.”

  Miro pressed a button on the key set, and the dark grey Mercedes parked ahead of the armoured van blinked its lights at us. It looked just like Jayden’s.

  “If your seats get slashed, it wasn’t me,” I muttered to Andre as Miro released me and we all moved toward the car.

  I didn’t wait for a response, quickly climbing into the back of the car. I stared back through the window, catching Poison’s eyes. She wasn’t hanging onto Charles anymore, but watching me. She looked grim. I mouthed stay safe to her, and she crossed her arms over her chest, the grim look melting into an outright scowl. She didn’t think that I would beat Danny—even though he was sedated and locked up. She thought that he would outsmart me, the way he had every other time.

  Maybe she was right.

  Noah and Silas slid in on either side of me, Silas needing to nudge me into the middle seat. Cabe claimed the front passenger seat and Miro started the engine, navigating down the hill at a speed that made me want to close my eyes against the threatening wall of trees that I was sure we were going to skid and collide with.

  Silas had his phone out of his pocket and by the time we reached the bottom of the hill, his research had turned up the location of Amber’s gravesite.

  “She didn’t have a funeral,” he said. “Or at least it wasn’t announced. She’s at an old cemetery up on Beacon Hill, Seattle.”

  “That’s almost two hours away.” Miro was gripping the steering wheel too tight, his jaw flexing as we pushed through the road block set up at the base of the mountain.

  The authorities were waving us through, holding back a huge crowd of solemn-faced people, all huddled into coats and shifting around with unease. News vans clogged up the space, making it difficult to keep up speed.

  Dread dropped into my stomach, knotting everything up and making my head swim with sudden light-headedness.

  “We’ve already wasted half an hour.” I glanced at my Star Wars watch—it was still broken. “If it takes us two hours to get there … we still have to dig him out, and probably stop him from killing me … and then we have …”

  “Exactly two hours to get back and stop the explosion,” Cabe concluded. “If we can get him out of the ground in half an hour.”

  I thought back to Poison’s grim-faced expression, and tried to hold myself together. “We need help,” I finally seethed.

  Silas punched a number into his phone, lifting it to his ear. “This is Miro Quillan,” he announced, changing his tone a little. Making it softer, somehow managing to mask the menace that always edged his natural voice. His accent was also dialled back, sounding less Slavic and more American. I stared at him, shock turning me immobile. From the front seat, Miro snorted.

  “I need every unmonitored agent available to go to the address I’m about to send through. I’m also going to send you a name. I want you to find her grave and start digging. Jayden Crassus has been buried alive.” He paused, listening for a moment, and then spoke again. “And when you bring Crassus out, put him in restraints.”

  He hung up the call, slipped the phone back into his pocket, and just … sat there silently.

  “You do that often?” I asked, unable to stop the grin from spreading over my face.

  “Why?” he glanced down at me, a faint expression of wry amusement on his face. On anyone else, it would have been almost comforting, but on Silas’s dark, scar-marked face, it was just plain intimidating. “You feel like you’ve been missing out on the twin experience?”

  I didn’t have a witty comeback, because my mind seemed to have caught up to his hidden meaning, and my face was too busy flaming red.

  “Don’t put ideas in her head,” Miro mumbled. “When she’s in my bed, she’s mine. Cabe and Noah can fulfil her damn twin fantasy.”

  “I don’t have a twin fantasy,” I felt I needed to point out. They didn’t seem to be listening.

  “We’re not twins,” Cabe argued. “You’re going to have to man up and do it yourself.”

  “Is this going to be a pattern?” Noah asked, his hand landing on my leg. “Us fulfilling all of her fantasies while you two pretend not to be related?”

  “Um …” I attempted to speak up again, tapping Noah’s hand. “Can we focus on staying a
live before we tackle all the kinky stuff?”

  “Kinky stuff?” Cabe questioned, turning around in his seat and fixing me with amused, honey-brown eyes. “Seriously?”

  “I’m ending this conversation,” I stated.

  Noah shook his head, but he released me. I slumped back against my seat, my head rolling onto his shoulder, my eyes seeking the window. The highway ahead was smooth and straight, the traffic travelling in the other direction.

  It almost seemed like a mirage: showing me how easy my journey would be from here onwards. In reality, I was having the worst day of my life. Every ghost in my past seemed to be dragging itself to the surface. Jayden and Eva were buried. I had almost lost Poison, and Danny wasn’t bluffing anymore. He was in a fight to the death, and he was going to force my hand, because when all of this was over, one of us would be dead.

  If I failed, it would be me, and my pairs would die alongside me. The Zevghéri people would be without a leader in a time of pure crisis, and my brother and friends would be without protection.

  Or … Danny might be the one to die, but I would have to be the one to kill him.

  I wasn’t paying attention to Miro’s driving, but it was clear that he had been ignoring the speed limits, because it was only an hour and a half later when we pulled up to the cemetery on Beacon Hill. At least ten other vehicles were parked in the lot outside what seemed to be an old ranch house—presumably the office or caretaker’s residence. Some of the vehicles were vans, and I glanced at a mess of machinery through the open back doors as we ran past. The cemetery was teeming with Zevs—some dressed in the standard uniform of black cargo pants and dark-toned shirts, while some were dressed more professionally, looking more like they belonged in offices. They were all jogging toward us.

  One of the graves had been dug up, but there was no sign of Jayden.

  “Miro.” One of the men reached us first, grabbing Miro’s arm. “You all need to clear out of here now. The bomb squad did the best they could, but we didn’t have enough time.”

  “Bomb squad?” Cabe and I both questioned at the same time.

  I didn’t wait for an answer. I pushed past the guy and ran toward the grave. I expected to be stopped—or shot at—but the people only parted to allow me through as I ran past them. I halted at the edge of the grave and stared down, bile rushing to the back of my throat. The coffin was surrounded by small, cylindrical containers.

  There was a timer sitting on top of the coffin, counting down.

  We had thirty seconds left.

  “No!” The word slipped out on a scream of frustration. I pulled my head back, my hand covering my mouth, frustrated tears gathering in my eyes.

  Danny had a backup plan, which meant that he had some kind of remote device on his person that would set off the timer to start counting down—something that he must have done as soon as we left the library. He would have given us two hours—just enough time to drive here.

  It was almost genius: he had assumed that I would get a vision of the outcome changing, and it would have forced me to choose between Jayden and Poison. He hadn’t counted on the fact that my forecasting sometimes withheld visions from me, and he hadn’t counted on us having help.

  Not that it mattered.

  Even with help, we were facing impossible odds.

  “Wonderkid!” A call sounded from below. Jayden’s voice was almost muted, but I could still hear the pain behind the word. It wasn’t a plea for help. “Get the hell away from the coffin!”

  He was so close. He could hear us. He would have heard the Zevs discussing the fact that he couldn’t be saved.

  I wanted to throw up, but my pairs were suddenly beside me. They were drawing me up, attempting to drag me away, but I wouldn’t go.

  I wouldn’t let this happen.

  I released all of my horrible, sickening emotion into one massive burst of valcrick, watching in mingling dismay and triumph as my pairs flew away from me. They collided with the crowd of Zevs fleeing the cemetery, causing half a dozen of them to crash to the ground. I dove back toward the grave, my arms hanging over the edge, my fingers clawing in the soil.

  Valcrick poured from me, flooding the grave in a wash of light, covering each dirt wall in a sheet of interconnected webs. The webs skirted around the coffin, ignoring it, attracted to the only threat that I recognised. They converged over the cylinders just as the numbers on the timer flicked to zero.

  I closed my eyes, bracing myself for the worst. I had no idea what I was doing, but I trusted that the powers would save me—save us both, if only I forced them to. I didn’t know how to use the Dead Man’s power, only knew that I could somehow channel it through the valcrick, so it was the valcrick that I reached for.

  The ground beneath me vibrated, the soil tumbling from between my fingers. It felt like my head was exploding as the sound of a dozen or so detonations echoed too close to my ears. Heat rushed across my face and a hoarse sob tore through my throat, quickly followed by a pained scream. I could tell when my pairs returned to me, because the pain lessened a little, and a hand touched my back. I opened my eyes again, staring down in horror at the scene below me. The valcrick had formed another shield—similar to the dome that had protected me back on campus, but this time it was wrapped around twelve or more contained explosions. I could see the fire and metal moving within. Swelling, testing the boundary, attempting to combust outward. My arms began to tremble, and my mouth tasted like blood.

  “G-get him out,” I forced out through my teeth, feeling as though my jaw was about to crack.

  They didn’t need to be told twice. I watched as Noah jumped onto the coffin, landing lightly, barely sparing a glance for the contained explosions around him. Fear leapt into my chest, urgent and heavy. He reached up, catching the hammer that someone handed him.

  “I need to smash through the lid!” he yelled. I realised that the air was full of something heavy and loud—something that barely had a sound, but seemed to make it hard to hear anyway. It was pressure. Like angry wind or roaring fire. “I can’t get to the sides of the coffin without blowing my fingers off!”

  I thought he was talking to me, but when he swung at the very edge of the coffin, only an inch or so away from the valcrick shield, I realised that he had been talking to Jayden. I watched as he hammered through the lid and I winced with each new crack and splinter of wood. I could feel the others hovering over me, their hands on me, their bodies almost bent over me as though they could protect me from myself.

  The bomb squad should have done this, I thought, but maybe I just wanted someone convenient to blame. In reality, they had probably done the best they could. They had probably uncovered the cylinders with barely enough time to surmise that they had no hope of disabling the explosives before they started vacating the grave site.

  A sharp sound started up inside my skull, a kind of high-pitched whistle that made me wonder if my ears were about to explode. When Jayden pushed aside a section of the coffin lid and Noah helped to drag him out, I began to sob in earnest, my whole body shaking against the ground, my arms cramping in agonising spasms as the valcrick shield widened, the explosions growing in size.

  The weight across my body lifted, and the others pulled out Noah and Jayden.

  “Go,” I pleaded. “I can’t heal all of us.”

  I was asking the impossible of them, but they knew that the only option for my survival was for them all to leave me. If I blew up myself, the valcrick might just put me back together. The Dead Man’s power might just cheat death for me one more time.

  But if they all stayed … I wouldn’t stand a chance.

  “I hate you for this,” a voice whispered into my stinging ear. “And I fucking love you.”

  The words reached into my soul and I hugged them there, wrapping myself in them as I felt my pairs draw away from me. The further they went, the more pain I felt.

  Finally, it was too much, and I felt my strength waver, darkness flashing before my eyes.

&nbs
p; “I love you too,” I sobbed into the ground, as the world exploded.

  I stood in a field of fire, my eyes itching from the smoke, my mouth dry with the arid taste of the things that burnt in the air. Half of the cemetery had been torn up, gravestones cracked and tossed against each other, soil turned and blown across the parking lot. Trees had been uprooted, and one had exploded completely.

  It was morbid.

  There was no way a girl could have survived it, but Seraph wasn’t just a girl.

  My boots made prints in the turned soil, tracking an ash-lined path toward where Jayden and Eva had had been buried. There was now a massive crater there, flames still licking at broken branches and pieces of shrapnel. There was a pale, silvery form lying in the bottom of the crater, red streaked across her skin. I stumbled down, the dirt slipping out from beneath my boots until I came to an uneasy stop beside her. The valcrick was still hovering, whispering tentatively over her skin, almost as though it wanted her to wake up, but had been trying for too long. Now it slivered visibly beneath the surface of her skin, brushing against the scars that covered her body, nudging her in a sorrowful way.

  Fury and grief seemed to detonate inside my chest, but I didn’t let any of it show. I ripped off my jacket and wrapped her up, cradling her in my arms. The others had to help me out of the crater because the dirt was too loose, but I refused to hand her off to anyone to free up my hands. I knew how badly the others needed to touch her, but if I let go of her … I had no idea what would happen.

  “We need to get back to campus,” Jayden was saying. He was trying not to look at her. They all were.

  She made them feel like the cowards they were. She had tried where they had all failed.

  Jayden had threatened to kill her, but she had still ruined herself to save him. I wanted to tear his throat out, but this wasn’t really his fault. This was Danny’s fault.

  “Shut the hell up,” Noah growled at Jayden, his voice raw. “Don’t make me regret pulling you out of that coffin.”

  Jayden would never understand, because even though he was an Atmá, he had never had a pair. He had never been a part of a bond. We piled into the car again, leaving Jayden and the other Zevs to do whatever the hell they wanted to do. Miro wasn’t giving them any direction. He was stony-faced, his hands shaking. He was acting on autopilot as he put the car into gear and pulled out onto the road again.