Chapter 35 Kaian
Kaian
Consciousness comes back in a rush, just as it always does when Kaian has been forced under.
He does not know for sure why, but he thinks that whatever he does when he sees the threads of a person’s Fate in every timeline—in every possible direction—is simply too much for his human brain to grasp, so that it overloads the circuits like forcing the entire power consumption of New York through a single Christmas tree bulb.
The shutdown is a protection, even if it leaves him vulnerable for a few minutes.
But this is way worse.
The morning comes rushing back—the flight from the pack’s safe house, Jewel’s betrayal, Vincenzo’s goons.
His mind veers away from Jewel on the floor behind the desk and fixes instead on his last look at Quinn.
Furious as he had been, with impotent rage made into something almost tangible, his love had still crept through it all.
Barely containing the whine of loss, Kaian wraps the feeling up and folds it into the box in his mind, where he keeps memories of his parents, of Connall, Isaac, Elias, and Soren.
He remembers that icy hand on his arm and the way The Plain had exploded past his boundaries, as it always does, forcing him to occupy everywhere the man had been or would be all at once.
The all-encompassing blackness that came before Kaian passed out meant the big man’s future was tied to Kaian’s and, therefore, invisible to him.
Kaian can’t be sure how long he was out, but he’s not in Jewel’s office anymore.
He’s on his side in the back of an SUV, with a powerful engine vibrating under his shoulder and a shaft of sun turning his vision red behind his lids.
When he stretches his fingers to see if they’re bound, a bump in the road slides his still-free hands across the carpet in front of him.
Taking stock of any physical aches and pains, he finds only a bump on his head.
It’s then that he feels it. Like the residue of an oil spill, there’s a lurking presence at the base of his skull.
Whoever it is has drawn a black boundary around the faint pulse of power they can reach, as if that low shimmer near the surface is all he is.
The mistake makes a certain kind of sense.
Kaian’s shields around The Plain are so deeply rooted that they do not drop with sleep or unconsciousness.
Built from years of fear and self-defense, they hold whether he wills them to or not, almost as if The Plain has a mind of its own.
Most magic users cannot truly perceive another person’s relationship to The Plain, and the one inside his mind is clearly no exception.
They have found the part of him that hums closest to the surface and mistaken it for the whole.
In truth, his own suppression is doing most of the work for them.
He lets a few gentle glimmers spill over, like a cup too full, and the foreign magic doesn’t even shift to counter the shimmering light.
It would make him smile if he weren’t sure there were eyes on him.
“Are we flying out to Tarasp tonight?” The voice is accented and familiar. The image of the big guy’s crocodilian henchman comes to mind. “Better to get him away before his pack comes looking, right?”
“They’re chasing their tails right now.” The woman’s voice mocks Kaian’s pack, and he can’t help but grind his teeth.
“Fucking right,” the man—Gregor—cackles.
“Enough. We’ll be on a flight tonight. Father and the Academy have been waiting long enough. The plane is en route now. All we need to do is wait. Denise, how is our prize? Still unconscious?”
The oily presence sends tendrils skirting over Kaian’s mind like an octopus roiling over the ocean floor. It skims over parts of his soul, but it doesn’t stop. It skirts over parts of his soul, but they don’t stop, and his boundaries hold, keeping the vast stores of magic under wraps.
“Still out, thank fuck. For being the Obscura’s Messiah, he’s not giving us any trouble. It’s disappointing.”
Denise squeaks, and the scent of cooked meat is strong. Kaian risks cracking his eyelids open, and he can see the top of her head arched over the back of the seat.
The vehicle swerves, and Gregor giggles. “Serves you right. You know better.”
“Indeed,” Niall murmurs. “Just make sure he stays out until we’re on Academy land. It would not do to have him awake at thirty thousand feet.”
Denise sucks in a wheezing breath. “I said, he’s out.”
“Still think you should have let me tie him up,” Gregor mutters.
“It is not his physicality which poses the largest threat, Gregor. Your ties would do nothing. Until Father can test his strengths entirely under safe conditions, we need to make sure he’s unable to access The Plain. It’s why Denise was chosen, after all.”
“I’m the strongest Mind Manipulation Affinity in the World,” Denise brags.
It’s a ridiculous statement. Mind Manipulation Affinities and Talents are strictly regulated if schools or authorities come upon a newly discovered magic user who can wield the power.
Most hide their power because, besides being policed, they are shunned and distrusted, and many turn to lives of crime.
Kaian has always wondered if it was a matter of which came first: the chicken or the egg.
Kaian has run into a few Mind Manipulation users in his travels.
Usually, they’re low-level cons with Talents, and once there was a guy in Singapore who liked to get people to jump off skyscrapers.
But that’s a whole other story. It doesn’t take much experience to know there is no way to use that kind of magic without it turning you bad.
Denise is a perfect case in point.
Gregor brakes hard enough to pull the engine down into a rough idle, and Kaian feels the pause of a stoplight more than he sees it.
When the SUV surges forward again, the taller buildings of downtown Nashville slide past in broken glimpses through the tinted glass.
Two sirens cut by in quick succession. Fire trucks, if the flickering shadows are anything to go by.
Someone is having almost as bad a day as Kaian.
It can’t be too long since they left The Hole, and Kaian clings to the hope that the Vincenzos have Quinn somewhere safe.
Connall won’t stop until he gets their mate back.
All that leaves for Kaian is choosing his moment carefully, one that won’t put bystanders at risk.
His soul shies away from the thought creeping up behind the rest: that maybe it is time to take himself off the playing field.
“You’d better hope he stays under. I have had it with this country and this fucking job. I need to hit Berlin sooner rather than later.” Gregor chuckles under his breath. “Not enough fun here for me, if you know what I mean.”
Niall coughs. “You’ve had more than enough fun here, Gregor.”
“Oh, come on. You can’t mean those two idiots. They were hardly a challenge, and you got to do the actual killing.”
“I did so. But I meant the fire.”
“That was a work of art, that’s true. Brilliant plan, framing the Takashiros, too.”
Kaian can just picture it: Niall’s big chest, probably puffing up with pride. “I thought so. They were quite rude, and the old man was surprisingly immune to Denise’s best efforts. The vengeance war in Nashville should keep O’Daire occupied until we have him safely home with Father.”
“I hate Weres. Have I mentioned that?” Denise mutters bitterly. “Animals, the lot of them. Once O’Daire finds what’s left of that dancer’s body, he’ll be so broken there’s no way he’ll be able to drag his ass to Switzerland to cause any trouble.”
Body?
Quinn is dead?
The knowledge hits him with such force that for a second, his body refuses to understand it.
His breath catches hard in his lungs, and when it finally breaks, an anguished whine tears out of him before he can stop it.
Losing Quinn tears through Kaian so completely that thought becomes almost impossible under the weight of it.
Not for the first time, he wishes he were Were.
He would have taken the pain if it meant he had been Quinn’s.
Denise’s fragile hold on his mind does not stand a chance against that kind of agony.
The walls Kaian keeps around The Plain do not so much break as collapse beneath it.
Grief rises through him too fast and too vast, a wave overflowing every barrier he has built inside himself, and when it hits Denise’s lazy hooks in his mind, it rips them free and flings them backward with the violent snap of a whip.
Her scream tears through the vehicle, and Gregor jerks the wheel in the same instant.
The vehicle swerves, lifts, and tips them all into chaos.
Time slows, though Kaian knows even through the agony that this is not The Plain and not his doing. Perhaps this is what terror does to ordinary people.
He feels his shoulder slam into the roof of the SUV, feels the violent crush of impact again when it rolls, and then again as the vehicle turns over and over across the asphalt.
Instinct drives his magic before he can actively reach for it.
He throws out a cushion of air, and when his body comes down hard against the interior, it catches him just enough to keep his bones from shattering.
The SUV hits the ground one last time and skids to a brutal stop on the roof.
Every window has blown out. Whether from the repeated impacts or from the force of The Plain tearing through him, he cannot tell.
Even after the motion stops, the agony of grief does not.
It roars through him in fresh waves, and a broken, wounded sound tears itself out of his throat before he can swallow it back.
For a moment, he can do nothing but breathe around it. He can’t even force his power back behind the walls, as if The Plain is working to shield his mind, body, and soul from the worst of Quinn’s loss.