Chapter 30
Thirty
It was the strange tingling sensation on the back of Eve’s neck that snapped her out of her reverie. She was walking to the tube station in the thrum of people heading home. Alone, but in a crowd. She’d never felt in danger travelling at this time of day before, but something was off.
She paused at a bakery and pretended to browse the window, while really using its reflection to scan the surrounding crowd.
The street was busy with commuters, their heads down, bodies hunched against the cold misting rain. It was a mass of faces and bodies that made it difficult to pick out the anomaly, but she knew it was there. She could feel it.
Eve closed her eyes and took in a long, slow breath. There was something out of the ordinary here, something strong. She hadn’t tried to channel the quintessence again since Tiffany, and the experience with the little clay bowl had made her warier still. She touched the pendant and focused on her core.
Show me just a little more , she asked of it.
Heat bloomed in her chest and she swayed on the spot, grappling internally to keep the expanding power contained. It was like opening a bottle of champagne and then trying to jam the cork back in. She screwed up her eyes in concentration. The very smallest ribbon of energy she could release unfurled from her core to wind its way through flesh and consciousness. Tentatively, she looked around.
The street looked very different. The grey stream of people, their auras pale and dampened by the rain, now glowed with vivid color. A rainbow selection of light twisted through the crowd, but this new bright version of the scene was scarcely an improvement on its monochrome predecessor – it brought nothing but confusion. Until she saw him. A single pale figure, his energy candescent white, was stationary across the street while others flowed and blurred as they hurried by.
White. That was a new one. Eve had never seen a white aura before. That, in itself, felt worrying. She turned to look directly at them, but the surging crowd blocked her view.
Time to get out of here, Eve.
She joined the river of people to hide in the bustle of bodies that flowed toward the tube station.
Fear pulled at the quintessence and urged her to release it. She fought to keep it down, scared of losing control. It burned in her chest and threatened to escape, like a volcano on the verge of eruption. The dark entrance of Russell Square tube station lay open ahead like the great maw of a beast to swallow the human snake of commuters down into the underground. She swept along with the flow inside to where a queue formed for the lift. There was no way the energy trying to burst from her body would allow her to stand still. Instead, she bypassed the patient masses and made for the stairs to break into a run.
Color and light confused the way ahead, but the quintessence magnified her other senses too, smell and sound quite as overpowering as sight. The stench of urine and rusted metal assaulted her, but she pounded down the spiral staircase, trying not to breathe it in, too scared to look back. Her footsteps peeled like a bell on the iron steps, their echoes bouncing away to be replaced by the approaching screech of metal wheels on rails.
She burst out onto the platform, heart pounding in her ears. Her fellow commuters glowed like neon tubes, their auras mingling the with dusty air to envelop them in clouds of light. Her senses reeled, overwhelmed by it all. She couldn’t quell the power now, nor find a way to turn the sensations down. She leaned against the cold tiled wall and tried to get a hold of herself. At least the cold was amplified too. It seeped in through her skin like a balm.
Overreaction, Eve. You’re seriously overreacting. You saw something new, so what? Just get home. You’ll be fine.
She swallowed down the fear and squinted at the overhead board. A train was due at any moment.
She sucked in a deep breath to steady herself, but the air was loaded with the stench of wet coats and the electrical tang of greasy rails. Her stomach rolled, and she staggered to the platform edge, fighting the urge to be sick. She needed space. She needed air.
The darkness of the tunnel to her right took on a solidity. Deep rasping she’d never heard before echoed from its depths.
Jesus, what now?
She turned to focus on it—a distraction from everything else, at least.
When she was younger, she’d imagined nightmarish monsters living in the underground that no-one knew about, crawling through forgotten passageways, living off rats and the discarded food of passengers. Right now, that didn’t seem like such a leap.
A man came to stand beside her, too close to be normal.
“Eve,” he whispered, “I need to speak to you.”
She spun to face him, and he caught her arm as she wobbled. He was cold as ice.
Eve squinted up at him through the white light of his aura and into a face that she now recognized. It was the police detective, Michaels, and he wore a grim expression.
“Jesus, you scared the crap out of me.” She yanked her arm from his grip. “Are you following me?” She looked him up and down, trying to make sense of his bizarre aura.
The train pulled in with a shrill blast of brakes and a torrent of hot, gritty air. Michaels raised his voice to compete. “You’re in danger,” he said close to her ear. “Lucien Knight is not what you think. You need to get away from him.”
The doors slid open and everyone on the platform got in. She didn’t owe Michaels an explanation. Following her around was virtually harassment and right now, she didn’t have the bandwidth to cope with warnings, no matter how well meant. She stumbled onto the carriage to stand gripping a handrail and briefly closed her eyes to shut out the world. Michaels got on too and forced his way through the other passengers to stand by her side.
He was tall, over six feet, and towered over her. His jacket was open and she could smell the combination of cologne and soap and something else undefinable. Another set of smells to set her senses reeling. The train pulled out of the station and he bent down to speak, his cool breath brushing against her neck. Goosebumps ran down her spine.
“He’s dangerous.”
She stared back incredulously. “Right now, you look like the dangerous one. Isn’t this harassment?” Her head swam from so much unfamiliar input. So many sensations fought for dominance. Light, smells, and motion. The roar of the train pummeled her ear drums.
“Leave me alone,” she growled through gritted teeth. “It’s none of your business.”
His blue eyes burned with intensity. “I’m trying to save you.”
“Save me?” It came out in an irregular laugh. He had no fucking idea what she could do, what she could see. “I don’t need saving.”
The bald man standing beside them shifted and frowned. Heavily built with tattoos on his neck, he looked Michaels up and down, sizing him up. “Is this guy bothering you, luv?” he asked in a strong east-London accent. His aura fluctuated from purple to blue: a have-a-go hero whose real motivation was the opportunity to vent his pent-up aggression. He curled his lip at Michaels.
“I’m police,” said Michaels. “It is no concern of yours.” He kept his eyes on Eve.
The man seemed less than convinced, adjusting his stance and flexing his back. Other passengers on the train sensed trouble and sidled away.
“I’m pretty sure she’d like you to fuck off,” the man insisted. He moved closer, looking to get in between them.
Michaels sighed and turned just his head to look down his nose at the man. Michaels’ white luminescence grew brighter still, dazzling Eve and expanding to fill the entire carriage. Eve screwed up her eyes. It swamped every other aura around them, including the dim mauve of the man.
“There is nothing to concern you here,” Michaels said calmly.
The train pulled into the next station and, as one, everyone else in the carriage got off.
“This is your stop, isn’t it?” Michaels added.
The man looked lost, then blinked confusedly. “Yeah, right,” he said, “thanks.”
He stepped off the train, and the doors slid shut.
Eve followed his progress along the platform aghast, then, as the train moved, let her eyes slide back to Michaels.
She wanted to say, ‘ What the fuck just happened?’ but she knew exactly what he’d done. He’d expanded his aura to touch not just one person, like she had in Tiffany, but to connect with every single person in the carriage. Fifty people, maybe more, and every one of them had done what he’d wanted.
DI Michaels was channeling quintessence too and was worryingly good at it. She backed away. “Holy shit, who the actual fuck are you?”
Michaels glared back at her, and she felt him pressing on her mind.
Panic expanded in Eve’s chest and pushed the quintessence out into her wider body. It sped through her veins, into her limbs and arced in crackles of blue between fingertips.
Golden ribbons of energy unfurled around Michaels to hang in the air like weed caught in the current of a river. Eve felt the pressure of the energy coursing from him to counter her own. Beyond her control, the quintessence surged to push it away.
Michaels looked shocked. “I am a Sentinel of the Celestial Council. Protector of the Meek and Just—Warden of the Damned.”
Eve started laughing. “You’ve got to be shitting me.” This was all madness.
He looked her up and down and she wondered for the first time what her own aura looked like. His expression displayed a flash of recognition, then took on a greater degree of concern.
“What do you know, Eve?” He shifted his stance and Eve intuitively knew the threat he posed. She knew he wanted to come between her and Lucien. He was from the other side .
Anger, the bitterness of injustice, confusion of how she came to be in this situation and the mind-bending overwhelming sum of her senses rolled through her body. Her ability to control the quintessence stretched and then finally failed. Jagged arcs of power burst from her fingertips and slicked to the sides of the carriage. It climbed the walls to the ceiling and swept the floor beneath their feet.
Michaels scowled at her. “Don’t do this,” he growled.
“I have to admit, I’ve been having trouble believing it all, but there’s no denying the power, is there?” She flicked a wave of blue sparks toward him and Michaels turned to one side to let it pass by.
“Warden of the Damned, is that what you said? You’re one of them.” Anger welled in the depths of Eve’s stomach. “Warden on Elham, does that mean? Is it you that keeps us apart?” Righteous fury filled her chest. “Why be so cruel?”
Michaels took a step forward.
“No. Stay away from me.” She let out a scream of frustration and pushed him away with her mind. He buckled in the middle and flew backward, down the carriage, to slam into the door at the end of the train.
He found his feet. “Eve.” He kept his voice low and stepped slowly toward her again. Eyes initially trained on the ground, when he looked up to find hers, they were a fierce blue that pierced what was left of the protection she wore. It broke through the madness of the moment and took his voice inside her head. “ Lucien wants to use you. I can help you.”
A hot, musty wind blew in from the cracked, open window behind Eve’s back to push her hair around her face. The air’s passage over her skin was soothing, like the soft caress of a lover, rippling goose-bumps across her skin. “No. We are meant to be together. He’s trying to find the way to fix things.”
“To fix things?” Michaels’ expression was benign, but to Eve, the derision was clear.
“Centuries of hurt. Lifetimes of denial.” She grasped at the moving air with her mind, the first sensation of relief she'd felt, and swirled it around herself, magnifying the effect and drawing it in like a blanket. Then, realizing she could control it, she pushed it at Michaels with a laugh.
It buffeted him sideways, then swirled around him at increasing speed. He pulled himself up to stand taller, closed his eyes and pressed the palms of his hands together as if in prayer.
Eve laughed again, giddy at this new ability to control the elements, to give the air a life that, without her, it would not possess. She spun it around and around Michaels and, with it, lifted him from his feet to hang unsupported mid-air.
“We are meant to be together. Lucien’s explained it all. The same souls in new bodies, finding each other again and again, but denied by you.”
He’s lying to you, Eve, Michael’s voice said in her head, Tell me about those past lives if it’s true. Surely you can remember your past?
Eve floundered. “It doesn’t work like that.”
It doesn’t work like that because it isn’t true. You must let me help you.
In the eye of the cyclone, the golden ribbons of Michaels’ energy swept to his back and coalesced, standing out from his body like the long petals of a flower. A parting formed above his head and suddenly Eve released he was undergoing some kind of transformation. Whatever he was trying to achieve, she could not allow him to complete it.
Electricity from the rails hummed beneath her feet and she knew she could harness it, just like she had the air. It was another element she could bend to her will. She threw her head back and pulled the energy up through the floor.
Bolts popped from their holes in the fabric of the train and static held dirt and the detritus of humanity an inch from the surfaces of the seats and floor.
Michaels muttered undiscernible Latin from the eye of the cyclone and Eve gathered all the electricity within the carriage toward her, then discharged it with the greatest force she could marshal. It hit Michaels squarely in the chest and pushed him down the carriage to slam into the final door. This time, it burst open, and he was expelled into the darkness of the tunnel.
Hot air tore through the carriage at an even greater rate now that the rear door had been blasted open. Sparks of static lit the tunnel from beneath the carriage as it juddered on the rails, and Eve saw Michaels roll over and over on the tracks as the train left him behind. The train leaned into a curve and he was lost from view.
Eve plummeted into darkness. Left panting and alone, every hair on her body stood out on end.
Holy fucking shit!
She wobbled on her feet and collapsed onto a seat. The litter of the carriage pitter-pattered to the floor. The intense energy of a few moments before had dissipated and the overload of her senses stopped at last. The pain inside her head subsided. The pressure of the quintessence had been released and without it, she deflated like a punctured balloon. Her consciousness wavered and glitched.
The train slowed, approaching the next station, and when it finally drew to a halt, the doors of her carriage did not open, even though she heard the mechanical slide of others. She looked around. Now that there was light coming in from the platform, it was clear this carriage was a wreck. Handrails were distorted and seats had been twisted into weird positions. She dragged herself to her feet and fumbled to open the doors that connected her carriage with the next and stumbled through.
An announcement was apologizing for the delay in departure and sighting a possible electrical fault. No shit . She stumbled out onto the platform and headed for a different line.