Chapter 28
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Kit
Set yourself on fire.
The command pierced my mind like a needle driving into my brainstem. The compulsion felt as natural as the need to breathe and just as imperative.
Start with your hands. Ignite them. Let the flames take over.
Heat warmed my palms, and I tightened my fingers into fists.
How lovely. Why wouldn’t Kade navigate his newly expanded psychic abilities straight into the mind-control arena his father had excelled at?
I, on the other hand, had steered clear of mentalism.
Though now that I had Kade’s self-immolation command digging deeper and deeper into my synapses, I wondered if my ethical position was na?ve.
“Did you tell your mom about Vietnam?” I managed to get the question out smoothly as I fought Kade’s command.
Marsha straightened, her interest piqued. “You were in Vietnam? When?”
“That information is classified, Kit,” Kade said mildly, the pressure of his mentalism increasing.
“Really? I didn’t get that memo.” I turned to Marsha. “We were on the same mission. I was on the ground team and Benji was coming by air.”
I aimed a warp at Kade’s brain: the vision of a dark airstrip with a steel-gray airplane, a brightly lit hangar, and an army of mages.
Muggy warmth saturated the air, relieved by the faintest breeze as the earth cooled, the land swathed in darkness.
The scent of damp earth and burnt rubber from the runway mingled.
As I submerged Kade in the full sensory experience, his mental attack faltered.
Thanks to his over-preparedness with anti-Psychica artifacts, he’d never before experienced the full scope of my warping ability—and just how difficult it was to focus on anything else while I was monopolizing his neurons.
What the hell are you doing, Morris? he demanded, vitriolic hatred coating his telepathic voice.
“It was all going down at a private airstrip,” I continued, lowering my voice into a dramatic register. “We needed to intercept this super-dangerous black-market arms dealer.”
I added Visser and her entourage to the scene I was creating for Kade’s brain, then inserted Kade himself as I’d seen him, his bald head shining in the hangar lights.
“You shouldn’t be talking about this, Kit,” Kade said aloud, a slight strain in his voice.
What’s the problem, Kade? I dropped the telepathic question into the middle of the warp, my tone all innocence. You have to admit, this adventure was quite cinematic. Should I show it to your mom too?
Don’t you fucking—
Marsha looked between Kade and me. “I don’t want either of you to get into trouble.”
“What Benji’s boss doesn’t know can’t hurt us.” I propped my chin on my palm as I studied Kade, my warping and telepathy both focused on his mind. “Was Griva running that op? He must be a real stickler for secrecy.”
“The SI wasn’t involved.”
“I thought the SI was involved in everything.” I quirked an eyebrow. “And you’ve worked with Griva before.”
Should I tell your mom about some of the other missions you’ve done for Griva and the Consilium? I asked telepathically.
His eyes burned with fury. “We should talk about something else.”
“Don’t be silly.” I gave Marsha a smile. “Our objective was to retrieve an ancient artifact from the arms dealer.”
I amended the warp I was hammering into Kade’s mind to include the black case that Visser had carried. Where’s the astrolabe, Kade?
My telepathy was locked on his brain, tuned into even the faintest thoughts, but he didn’t betray a single hint.
Burn, Morris, he projected, slamming another onslaught of mentalism into me—but I was ready this time, and the needle-like command bounced off my brain.
“What happened?” Marsha prompted.
“It was supposed to be a stealth mission,” I told her. “But the whole place was crawling with these gnarly mage soldiers, and their leader—the arms dealer—spotted my partner and me.”
I fast-forwarded the warp into the chaos of the battle that had erupted, piling on the sensory detail to the point of overwhelm.
A muscle ticked in Kade’s jaw, but he kept his voice pleasant. “Where is your partner, Kit? I’d love to see her. It’s been too long.”
“She’s busy saving the world.” I leaned back in my chair. “Back to Vietnam—”
Over his shoulder, through the window above the sink, a beam of light flashed once, twice, three times, then went dark.
I steadied my thoughts, not letting anything leak out—but my moment of distraction had given Kade an opening.
Where is she?
He smashed the question into my gray matter, but I locked my mind down.
How did you find out about this place?
Another thunderous question.
Tell me.
Those two words weren’t telepathy. They were a fresh mentalism assault, and the command hooked its claws into my cerebrum and wrenched with excruciating force.
A memory surfaced—the face of the Consilium acolyte Lienna and I had captured in Morocco.
A minion of Director Griva. His babbling reveal, under the influence of my empath magic and a Creature Feature warp, about gathering information on Druthers and Kade, the hideaway house in Greece he’d discovered, where Kade regularly visited his—
I slammed a mental door shut on the memories and dumped a new warp on Kade: the vision of Griva standing on the gallery in the secret arena in Barcelona where Kade had stolen my archmythic abilities.
“How was your trip to Barcelona?” I asked, as I hit him with a telepathic question at the same time: Did you know Griva was watching your little plot play out?
I filled the arena with spraying blood and the collapsing bodies of the Consilium leaders, but I kept the focus on Griva and his cool observation of the bloodbath.
“Barcelona?” Marsha repeated slowly, her brow furrowing with unease instead of curiosity. “When was this?”
She might not be able to see through Kade’s “loving son” act, but she wasn’t so complacent as to miss the detail of Kade visiting Barcelona and his dad dying on a plane departing from the same city, as per the official story.
Kade’s eyes burned with hatred. Don’t fucking answer that—
“Last week,” I said aloud to Marsha, then silently to Kade, Was Griva in on it?
Marsha looked between us, her confusion deepening into unease. “Benji, is that true? You were in Barcelona last week?”
“Yeah, he was,” I said.
Shut up, Morris!
“For his big promotion.”
Shut the fuck up!
I swapped the warp to a different moment in time and shifted the perspective. Instead of the butchering of the Consilium leaders, I showed Kade my view of the array from within the holding spell, his father standing across from me, Kade behind him.
I replayed the memory in perfect, intense detail: Kade pulling his father’s head back, the glint of light across the blade, the flesh of his throat parting, the spurt of crimson blood, and each emotion that had painted itself across Peter Druthers’s face in his dying moments.
“Why didn’t you tell me this, Benji?” Marsha asked. “Did you see your father before the accident?”
“I—” The word rasped in Kade’s throat, his gentle demeanor cracking, viciousness peeking out at the edges of his twisted lips. “Kit is mistaken.”
In his head, Kade’s steel-trap mind was cracking too. His fragmented thoughts roiled with near incoherence. Get him out of here. Get him away from her before he says anything else. Kill him.
“You can tell your mom the truth, Benji.” I spun the perspective on Druthers’s death again, replaying it, showing Griva watching. What about Griva?
Marsha looked at her son, concern flooding her face. “Benji?”
In the warp, I morphed Griva’s expression into a sly, triumphant sneer. Whose side is he on, Kade? I don’t think it’s yours.
“Shut up,” Kade snarled, forgetting to use telepathy.
He was spying on you, I pressed. Are you really working with him?
Marsha stiffened, her gaze flashing between us. “Benji, what’s wrong?”
He’s been spying on your mother, I added, not relenting.
Kade slammed his palms down on the table and stood, his chair falling over backward. “Get out, Morris!”
I enveloped all his senses in the warp so he could no longer see the table, me, or his mother. Then I replayed the warp, but this time, it wasn’t Kade murdering his father.
It was Griva slitting his mother’s throat.
I showed it to him in the same horrifically exquisite detail as Druthers’s death, as though it were happening in front of Kade’s eyes—not only the sight, but the sound of blood hitting the floor, the wet gurgling, the metallic odor.
Marsha’s gentle face contorted with terror, convulsing and turning gray as her life drained out of her.
Kade’s mental defenses broke.
What are you planning with Griva? I slammed the question into him. It wasn’t mentalism, but it was the most forceful telepathy I could utilize. Thoughts spilled from Kade’s mind in a rush of answers—then pain speared my skull as he shoved me out, blocking my telepathy and shattering the warp.
With a wordless roar, he threw himself across the table, powerful hands reaching for my throat. Either he was so senseless with rage that he’d forgotten about magic, or he wanted to kill me the old-fashioned way. I threw him backward with telekinesis and pulled the artifact from my pocket.
Marsha screamed as Kade flew over his fallen chair, catching himself with levitation in the middle of the kitchen.
Leaping to my feet, I pointed Lienna’s lethal spell at him. “Ori notatus morti!”
A red band spun itself around Kade’s neck, the rope of light still connected to the wand. I had him. I just had to finish it. “Moriatur—”
Marsha slammed her mug down on my outstretched hand. The mug broke, and so did my hand, at least one of my metacarpal bones snapping. The wand fell from my grip and rolled under the table, the line of light connecting it to Kade’s throat blinking out.
A staticky buzz blossomed, subjugating my senses, and the ground spun under my feet—no, not the ground.
Something else, something intangible, was spiraling toward a single point.
Kade stood in the middle of the kitchen, hands half raised, tendons taut in his neck.
The overwhelming white noise spiraled into him.
Kade was powering up his archmythic magic.
The technique that had made Bodil and the Sha’ir as powerful as gods, the skill I couldn’t figure out—Kade had already learned it.
His sweet, seventy-two-year-old mother stood frozen beside the table, still holding the broken handle of her mug, staring at her son. Seeing her son. Seeing the murder on his face, the twisted, bloodcurdling hatred, the crags of rage, the damp spit wetting his contorted lips. Seeing the monster.
And that was it for Kade.
With an earsplitting clamor of cracks, bangs, and snaps, the wall moved. The entire kitchen wall. Had Kade intended to telekinetically grab the knife block, or the pots and pans, or the toaster? He couldn’t have meant to seize everything.
Or maybe he had.
The cupboards tore free, the stove lifted, and the fridge lurched. As ceiling beams split and water pipes burst, it all became airborne. It took a single, horrifying second for the solid kitchen to transform into a swarm of debris and shrapnel—then it was all hurtling straight for me.
I telekinetically shoved Marsha away. At the same time, I tipped the table over and ducked behind it, bracing my forearms against the flimsy shield an instant before the appliance onslaught hit me like a speeding truck.