Chapter 23
Rosabel La Rouge
Three hours to Baltimore.
“I want to sit with them,” I said to Taland when we put on our warded leathers and prepared to ride to the city together with a small army of people, and a thirty-man army of cursed Laetus.
Talk about unbelievable.
“Of course,” said Taland, just when I expected him to want to argue about it, to tell me that I was better off in a car with him and some of the others. After all, it had been a hassle to figure out transportation from Pittsburgh to Baltimore for all the people who’d joined our cause. Most had their own cars, but plenty didn’t. Aurelia and Zach had made deals with a transportation company and a rental, and from what I understood, it had cost them a shitload just to get everything in place so we could leave at the crack of dawn.
Surreal. We were leaving for Baltimore—to fight. The Council, the IDD— to fight . We were all going to a battle we weren’t sure we would win. In fact, most didn’t think they’d ever make it back. You could feel it in the air, see it in their eyes, the way all of them wanted to say something to someone, anyone, but then chose not to at the last second. Chose to hope because wasn’t that all that we had right now? Hope and the desire to change the world we lived in—in the time that was ours. Hope for a better life for those who came next.
Taland and I would ride in this old school bus with eighteen soldiers. They were already inside, but I stayed by the doors and waited for him while he went to clear things with Radock and the others.
While I waited, I watched the people walking and running to and from the cars and vans and all buses that had blocked the road in front of the warehouse completely. The sun had already turned the sky grey, but it was dotted with darker clouds. Angry clouds, like Goddess was angry that this day had come.
Truth be told, at that point, I wasn’t really a believer. If I allowed myself to be, I feared I’d lose my grit and will to fucking destroy the Council and everyone who worked for them, not just for what they had done to Cassie, and to me, and to Taland, but for what they’d done to everyone. How they’d twisted the world, what they’d made it into for us, for Taylor and everyone like her.
No, I wasn’t going to have mercy, not today. I couldn’t afford to, and that was fine by me.
“Scared?”
I looked toward the truck behind us where the rest of the soldiers were waiting to be transported, to find Aurelia holding onto the side mirror, one foot on the stair of the truck cabin. She wore navy blue leathers that looked almost black from here, and her hair was done on a thick braid that went down her back, and her halo shone brightly over her head—her protection spell activated. Their father had created special ones just for her and Zach with his blood when they were just children. Just like Taland’s mom had made her sons those charms.
It made me wonder what more I’d missed, not only when I lost my parents, but when I was left with a grandmother the likes of Madeline, too.
“Can’t you see my knees shaking?” I deadpanned, and Aurelia threw her head back, laughing. She looked so petite holding onto that mirror like that, her body leaning back, and she almost looked like she was going to fall any second. She was stronger than most people I knew, though. She’d survived the Devil—and probably a lot more fights than I knew about, and I actually respected her. Zachary, too.
“I’m shaking, too—with laughter. It’s going to be a good day today, kid,” she said with a wink.
I shook my head. “You’re barely ten years older than me,” I reminded her, just because I didn’t really want to dwell on the fact that today was not going to be a good day at all.
Even if we won, how many people would lose their lives?
“Twelve, actually, but who’s counting?” Aurelia said with a grin that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “You okay?”
The question took me off guard. I looked around at the people rushing to get to their transportation vehicle while Kaid and Radock and Zach screamed orders from somewhere close by. It was like I’d been thrown back in time to preparations before a mission at Headquarters, to be honest, and…
“I am,” I said, surprised. “I’m okay.” It wasn’t a lie at all.
I’d done this before—and for the same people I was fighting against now. Except back then I hadn’t known why I was doing it, even if I thought I did. Back then I’d been running from everything, from change, and now I was running toward it.
I was okay.
“Good,” Aurelia said.
Even though she was far enough away that I couldn’t really see all the shades of blue in her eyes, I saw enough to know that she wanted to say something else. In the last second, though, she changed her mind—or maybe I was just seeing things.
“Let’s kick some ass, shall we?” she said and basically threw herself inside the passenger seat of the truck, a big grin on her face as she waved at me through the windshield.
I waved back, laughing at myself. She was someone I’d want to hang out with in the future, if we survived this thing.
“I do love the sight of that.”
I turned to the other side, to Taland slowly coming to me, a small smile on his face, his white eyes focused on me. He wore black leathers, almost identical to mine, and he’d cut his hair shorter again. I already missed it longer, but he could grow it within weeks—just as long as we survived.
Funny how everything had taken a pause, how everything had moved to when this was over.
And what if we never saw the other side?
“The sight of what?” I asked, breathless by the time he was in front of me.
“This.” He tapped his finger to my lips. “The sight of you smiling.”
There I went, smiling all the way that very second. He was magic.
“Smiling as if we aren’t going into battle,” I muttered, resting my forehead on his chest.
“I think that was more smiling as if we were, ” Taland said, kissing the top of my head.
“Why would I be going to battle smiling?” I asked, wrapping my arms around his waist.
“Because you know we’re going to win.” He said it so simply—like it was an undeniable truth.
I looked up at his wide white eyes. “What did they say about us riding in the bus with the soldiers?”
“I don’t know—I didn’t wait around to hear it,” Taland said. “Do me a favor, sweetness?” He pushed my hair behind my back, smoothed it behind my ears.
“Anything,” I said.
“Stop worrying.”
Laughter burst out of me. “Anything except that.”
He leaned down, brought his lips to mine. “Stop thinking about losing.”
Well, damn… “I can try.”
A siren sounded somewhere ahead near the beginning of the road, and most of the engines came to life. It was already time to go.
“I’ll take it,” Taland said and kissed me. “You realize that you will be safe no matter what.”
“It’s not me I’m worried about.” Him first, and then everyone else later. Me I could handle.
“Remember what you promised me, baby.”
“Promise me something, too, then,” I said when he opened the passenger door of the old bus for me to get in—and it was already awfully familiar, this feeling, this situation. Exactly like before we went to that valley looking for Hill.
“Anything,” he said with a grin.
“Don’t die.” That was still the most important thing of all.
“Deal.”
So many cars on the road, trucks and busses and SUVs. We didn’t move as fast as I’d have liked, but we were moving. Taland drove in silence, and he seemed perfectly at ease any time I looked at him. It would be a while until Baltimore, but nothing was going to stand in our way, at least. No—the people we would be fighting were waiting for us at the end of this journey that could very well be our last.
The human police and military were not getting involved in this—a deal they made with the Council, apparently, though I was pretty sure they didn’t have a choice. Still, I was thankful for it. The last thing we needed was their blood on our hands, too.
Eventually, I slipped between the front seats and moved to the back. I leaned against the window right behind the passenger seats, and I stayed there for a while, watching the soldiers. They didn’t exactly look uncomfortable, though they barely fit the seats with those armors and those huge swords I had yet to see drawn. I tried to figure out who was who, if theirs was a story Taland had told me, if I knew how they’d come to be here—always trying. The idea of being trapped like this had never even occurred to me, and I couldn’t begin to imagine what it was like to be them. Just like with a lot of things lately, this, too, made me wonder what more happened in the world that was so absurd I could never even imagine it before I saw it happening.
Shivers washed down my back and my eyes were full of tears, which I only realized when I blinked and they moved down my cheeks.
“I’m sorry,” I said to the soldiers, but they probably didn’t hear me because of the old bus’s noise, and I barely let out any voice. I knew it meant nothing to them, that they were being forced to be here once more, just when they thought they were going to be set free. A sorry wasn’t going to make a difference.
“Are they…angry?” I asked Taland when I went back to the passenger seat.
“No. They are calm. Preparing. They enjoy fighting, I think,” Taland said.
I was glad for it. It was better than forcing them to fight, I figured, but what the hell did I know?
I didn’t dare look back at them again all the way to Baltimore.
I’d forgotten.
The sight of soldiers and guards dressed in the IDD uniforms, carrying guns and anchors. The smell of the magic of the wards about them in the air. The sound of shouts and orders, of footfalls while men and women rushed to stand in formation, preparing for a fight. The weight of weapons on me—how I’d forgotten. The tightness of a holster around my torso, the weight of guns and knives strapped all over my body. The rush of my blood, the echo in my ears, the pounding of my heart—I’d forgotten in such a short time.
It wouldn’t be long, though. I’d been taught by the best IDD trainers for six months and regardless of how I felt when I first got to any mission site, when the fighting began, I would be calm. My instincts would take over and they would be in charge of my body. That’s how I’d always survived.
Even so, right now, I felt like I might suffocate on thin air.
Everything had become so real in the past minute. We’d arrived at the Council’s chambers, a building I had seen before, I thought, but I was sure it had looked different then, and I’d heard it was the private property of a very rich guy, or something like that. It was a house as big as Madeline’s mansion, with a grey facade, lighter in some places, darker in others. It had a much more gothic feel, though, with gargoyle statues on every corner, snakes carved around the window frames, and a dark red rooftop that looked like the whole building had been just slightly dipped in blood. Looking at it now, I realized they must have spelled the place because there was no way that I’d have seen this house and not stopped to analyze it before. No way wouldn’t I have known it in detail—it was absolutely breathtaking in a very dark kind of way.
Or at least it used to be—before there were lines and lines of soldiers standing in front of its wide, glossy doors. Doors that were open.
“They’re here,” Taland said, and every inch of my body was covered in goose bumps as I rose on my tiptoes to see better. I still couldn’t see them, though, but when I tried to move forward, toward the lines of people coming together at the front of the road, Taland stopped me.
We, the truck behind us and only a few other cars had come so close to the building, had stopped right on the sidewalk, while the rest of the people who’d come to fight here had left their vehicles a little farther away, basically in the middle of the city. By now, I had no doubt that any civilian who lived nearby had been evacuated, or at least they’d have run away themselves when they saw what was about to happen here.
“I can’t see them,” I whispered because the crowd of people that had gathered around us, and the IDD soldiers that were standing in the front yard of that house that was the Council’s chambers made it impossible to see the doors.
“It’s going to start raining soon,” someone said from behind us—Aurelia, walking toward us with Zach. They’d left their truck right behind our bus, and the crowd was pouring all around us to get closer to the house.
She was right—the sky was grey, the clouds angry, and I still couldn’t shake the feeling that they were angry at us. All of us for ending up here because of our greed for power.
But before Taland could say anything, the crowd in front of us parted. A moment later, Radock came through with Kaid behind him. Seth was nowhere to be seen.
“They’ve been waiting,” Radock said, his black leathers melting on his frame, and he looked so different without a suit. So much younger with a clean-shaven face and chopped hair. His eyes were brighter, too. More alert.
He was ready to fight, I realized. All of them were.
“Good,” Taland said. “It won’t make a difference.”
“What about Cassie? Can we see her?” I asked.
“Already tried to do a foresight and a search spell. I got nothing—the place is too well guarded,” Aurelia said. “She’s in there, though. We’ll find her as soon as we kill these people.”
“Taland, we will need you safe at all times,” Radock said. “You will not engage in the fight personally.”
“Noted,” Taland said. “There are more people.”
More?
“The word has spread,” said Radock, looking around the crowd. “I think we’re close to five hundred right now, but more could be on their way.”
“People have grown tired of cowering back,” Zachary said with a proud grin. “More will definitely join when they see us here.”
“We won’t wait, though,” Kaid said. “I don’t think we could if we wanted to. They will attack. They’re ready.”
“So are we,” said Aurelia, and she, too, sounded confident.
Meanwhile, I couldn’t keep my hands from shaking. Maybe because I’d already fought with these people— on their side? Maybe because I could guess how many lives would be lost here today?
“They want a word with us. We will go to them. Me and Zach and Aurelia,” Radock said to Taland. “And your soldiers.”
As soon as he said the words, all the soldiers who’d been sitting in the bus, and the ones in the truck Zach parked behind us suddenly moved in unison and came outside, stopping all around us, pushing the crowd farther back.
The people looked. The people whispered. The people pulled out their phones and started recording.
“Lead the way,” Taland said to Radock, completely unbothered.
I thought we were going to go with. I thought that, when Radock, grinning like all his dreams had suddenly come true, turned around and went through the crowd again, we were going to follow.
Kaid did. Aurelia and Zachary did. Fifteen Laetus soldiers who forced the crowd back as they moved did.
But we didn’t.
“Taland?” I said in question, and I even took a step forward to tell him to keep moving, but with my hand in his, he stopped me.
“No, sweetness. We only watch.”
He must have lost his damned mind. “I want to hear what they are saying!” If the Council wanted to speak to Radock and the others, fucking hell, I wanted to hear it!
But Taland said, “Then you will.”
“What are you?—”
I stopped speaking when Taland pulled me toward the front of the bus, then began to climb to the roof of it, urging me to follow. I could hardly believe it, but the need to see, to know where the Council was, where everybody was stationed, didn’t let me argue. If I tried to run to them now, I wouldn’t make it—and I also didn’t want to be away from Taland. So, I followed, climbed on the hood of the bus, grabbed Taland’s waiting hand and he pulled me to stand with him on the rooftop.
Then, I saw.
My breath caught in my throat.
At first, I thought maybe I was imagining things, or I was seeing wrong, but I wasn’t. All these people… and not just the soldiers in front of the chambers, and others standing by behind the monstrous house we could barely see the sides of. Not just them—but our side as well.
Radock hadn’t been kidding. More had joined us, and even more were coming—I could just see the endless lines of cars parked in the streets and sidewalks behind us as more and more civilians came toward the crowd, some with weapons in their hands, some with only their anchors. All of them ready to fight.
Right there, in the middle of the city.
Buildings were much farther away than I’d realized. This place had definitely been spelled with illusions before, because there was an open space, possibly over a mile, in front of the chambers, with a fountain in the middle that was barely noticeable now in the sea of bodies. Thank Goddess, the houses, the shops, everything was far enough away that I could hope the damage wouldn’t be too severe by the end of this.
Meanwhile, what looked like an open field behind that house was brimming with more soldiers, I had no doubt about it. We saw a few of those who were standing to the sides with machine guns in their hands, watching, but there would be more. A lot more.
“How many—” I started, my voice breathless, but Taland answered before I could finish the question.
“Three hundred in the front. I don’t have eyes on the back yet,” he said, those white eyes of his scanning the area like he was a damn robot instead of a man.
I stepped closer to him, took his hand in both of mine, and he squeezed my fingers. “Breathe, sweetness. We will be okay.”
“I can’t breathe ,” I said. “Taland, all these people. They don’t compare to the IDD. Those are trained soldiers against unarmed civilians.” The death toll was going to reach numbers higher than I was prepared for.
But Taland said, “Look.” And he turned to look behind us again, toward the city.
There, four of his soldiers were pushing civilians back, separating the majority of those who were coming closer from the group that had already settled in front of the chambers.
And that was a good thing, but it wasn’t enough.
“Do you want to hear?”
I whipped my head to the other side again, to the house, to find that Radock and the others had already stopped in the narrow space between two groups of a hundred and fifty IDD soldiers, standing in ten perfect rows on either side of the front yard.
The Laetus that Taland had sent with them were at their front and back, keeping them safe, and the Council members had come all the way outside, too. They stood in a triangle with Helen Paine at the head, shoulders back and chins raised.
The blood in my veins turned cold.
“Yes,” I whispered, and then Taland’s voice transformed completely.
“ We’re glad you could join us. We’ve been waiting for you for days now.”
For a moment, I was confused, and I almost asked him what he was saying, but he continued.
“It’s our pleasure. We had some logistics issues to figure out, but here we are. ” Before the last word left Taland’s lips, I saw Radock waving his hands to the sides, and realized he had said that.
And the first to speak had been Helen Paine.
Taland was repeating everything they were saying because he could hear it through the ears of the fifteen soldiers who were down there with the others.
“ And you’ve brought friends, ” said Helen, and Taland repeated the words for me. We were too far for me to read her lips from here, but I could have sworn that she was smiling .
“ They insisted on coming to meet you, since you ran away last time,” said Radock, and if I’d been there, I’d have been itching to slap him on the back of his head.
Because right now we didn’t want the Council angry. We didn’t want them to be more pissed off than they already were. A fight was inevitable, but what if we could make it end very quickly?
Wishful thinking, though. All the Council members were here. At the sight of Nicholas standing behind Helen, my stomach turned.
Had they somehow made him Laetus, too? Had they charged him with another source of energy? Could he use the bracelet now like we could?
I really didn’t want to find out.
“ You’re far too kind to bring them to us, ” said Taland—but the words were Helen’s. She brought her hand to her chest, too. White leathers covered her from head to toe, and it was obvious that she was here to fight. “ Exactly where they belong. ”
Taland didn’t even take in a breath before he continued, “ I believe we agree on that. This is where they belong. Where we belong. In charge of this country you’ve so thoroughly screwed over—starting with us. ”
This from Zachary, I thought, because the others had turned their heads toward him. Their backs were to me, so I couldn’t see their faces.
“ I’m afraid you’ve got your priorities twisted. We were, are and always will be in charge of this country and its people,” Taland said while Helen spoke, and maybe the people heard her, too, because I could have sworn that the whispers and the voices of the crowd around the bus, waiting for the fight to break out, turned louder.
“ You are nothing but leeches feeding off the people you should serve.” Definitely Aurelia, and she even took a step closer. My heart skipped a beat. Zach immediately put his hand over her shoulder, but she continued. “ We fought together, and we ? —”
“ And you won—congratulations! ” Helen actually clapped her hands. Goddess, how I hated that woman. “ We never said we’d be allies once the fight was over. We were well within our rights to order your execution—you’ve committed more crimes than I care to remember. You are nothing but ordinary criminals. ”
I squeezed Taland’s hand so tightly it was a miracle he didn’t move away. He just continued to repeat every word they were saying for me, and he even tried to imitate the tone of their voices.
“ Yet we still won against you, too,” someone said—possibly Radock. “ That must have bruised your ego a little bit, and I’d have enjoyed the thought had I not had bigger issues to deal with right then. But things are as they are, I’m afraid. We fought together. You betrayed us in the end, which didn’t come as a surprise to any of us, really. Today, your betrayal to this country finally comes to an end. ”
If Radock sounded half as sure as Taland did right now, I didn’t see how Helen and the others wouldn’t believe him.
Then she raised her head. “ Enough with the chitchat—you are all delusional, I’m afraid. Hand over the bracelet and what is left of the Delaetus Army, and we will let you live.” Every drop of blood in my veins turned to stone. “ There does not need to be a battle here today, Tivoux. These people don’t need to die. Call your brother down here, and let us set things in order once and for all. ”
Taland looked at me then, and I found he was smiling. “Hear that?” He told me. “They just want the bracelet and the soldiers—that’s all.”
I shook my head, envious once more of his easy nature. “I don’t suppose they’ll like it when you tell them no .”
“Let’s see—my brother and Aurelia are still laughing.” He nodded his head forward, and indeed Radock and Aurelia had their heads thrown back. Laughing, while Helen and the other members watched with their hands folded in front of them.
“You certainly have the right to ask, Paine. ” This must have come from Radock.
“ I am not asking, ” said Taland, and this he said in almost a hiss.
“ However, the answer is no, ” Radock continued right away, as if she hadn’t even spoken. It was so strange to be looking at them from this distance while Taland repeated everything they said to me in real time, and while the people grew louder and louder. Taland must have heard it, too, because the fifteen soldiers he’d stationed around the bus began to slowly push them farther back.
“ We will not be giving you anything anymore. You’ve taken enough, ” Taland continued—and whether it was Radock or Aurelia or Zach who spoke didn’t really matter. “ Now, it’s our turn, and if you don’t surrender, we will not stop until we’ve taken over. ”
I expected to see Helen laughing now, but she didn’t. Instead, she took a single step forward, her eyes on Radock—must have been him who spoke.
“ Do you have any idea who you’re dealing with, you pests?”
Pests , she said, just like David Hill. Goddess, she was no better than him. In fact, she just might be worse.
“We will destroy you, then take our bracelet and our soldiers, ” Taland continued, and my heart was thundering in my chest at the idea of the likes of her commanding the soldiers of the Delaetus Army. The world would come to an end for real.
“ This is your last warning. Back away—or die. ”
Taland and I looked at each other. I reached out a hand for his cheek and tried to smile, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Despite everything, despite how much he’d suffered, my Goddess, I was so glad that he’d brought the army back. That he’d been the one to use Hill’s spells, that they were tied to him now—nobody else.
Because if Taland hadn’t done what he did, the Council would have done it themselves. There was no doubt in my mind about it, and they wouldn’t have cared about the injustice done to these soldiers. They wouldn’t have hesitated to silence their voices—would never even consider setting them free. They’d have used them as their weapons to take over the world completely, exactly like David Hill had tried to do, and Titus before him. By now all of us would have been dead.
So, yes, despite his pain, I was glad these soldiers were Taland’s now. And if I’d had any kind of hope left that we could leave here without a fight today, it was gone now. Disappeared completely.
“May Iris stand with those who deserve this victory,” Taland said, and I had no idea whose words they were, but I agreed wholeheartedly.
Then, it began.