Chapter 35 #2
As if they sense my despair, my wings curl around me and take over. Transforming into flaming knives, they slash at fake Roscoe’s body from his ankle to his forehead. Blood gushes from the cuts. It sizzles and boils as it encounters my fire.
Roscoe’s face, now singed and sliced to ribbons, wobbles and warps, revealing an oddly smooth surface beneath his skin. A shell? A mask? Polished bone? I can’t tell, and it doesn’t matter. There are only two acceptable outcomes: knock him out or force him to tap.
I can’t kill him in front of a crowd, not while he’s wearing the face of someone who would still be alive if it weren’t for me. Even if I could make it out to be an accident, word would get back to the enclave, and we’d all be fucked.
Tensing my abs, I kip up to press my advantage and slam my fist into his nose. He stumbles; I hit him again. His head rocks to the right. I throw another punch, this time to his temple; he staggers and drops to his knees.
Winding up for the knockout blow, I charge, forgetting for one agonizing second about my bad foot. It buckles, and suddenly we’re eye to eye.
His pupils are mere pinpricks. Finish him.
I brace to deliver the final blow, and his face warps into Alistair’s, black hair framing piercing blue eyes. So familiar, they see right through me. He holds his shaking hands up, begging me not to hit him.
Trembling with unease, I slam my fist into his forehead.
Alistair would never beg.
Second Coming falls to the cage floor, his body becoming leaner as he slumps onto his side. His face . . . gods, it’s not a face at all. Smooth, indistinguishable, and without features—he’s faceless. The harder I stare, the more wrong it feels.
I hear the emcee call my name and climb to my feet unsteadily, doing my best to hide the excruciating pain I’m in as I wave to the crowd. Tough it out; you’ve had worse.
Resker’s hired muscle—the stubby one and the one with the boring, forgettable everything—enter through the right tunnel. They gather Second Coming between them and drag him out, taking the answers to all my questions with them.
More than exhausted, I duck into my tunnel and limp toward the locker room. The pain in my heel is blinding. I may have to break down and ask Alistair for a healing potion. I already know I won’t be able to stay off my feet long enough for it to heal on its own.
A shadow blocks the light at the end of the tunnel, and I stiffen until I recognize his shape. Luca rushes to me, wrapping his arm around my waist to support my weight. “We’ve got to go, baby. Malach is getting the car.”
His voice vibrates with tension.
I grind to a halt, my wings scraping the edges of the tunnel.
“You’re afraid,” I say, dread creeping along my spine. I’ve never heard his voice like this. Not when he was ambushed by Malach’s guys or when we were attacked at my apartment. If Luca is scared . . .
I gasp. “Did something happen to Alistair or Ciprian?”
Luca cocks his head, his eyes glowing yellow and metallic in the gloomy tunnel. I see my own wide eyes reflected in his. “Ali is fine, I think. I haven’t heard from him, but”—he sucks in a raspy breath—“you just fought a fucking veydra.”
“I don’t know what that is,” I say. “Is that why he looked like Roscoe?”
Luca groans. “The veydran are bad news. Mimics, mirrors—whatever you want to call them—they’re death in disguise. When they lock on a target, they don’t rest until they’re dead.”
“And I’m his target?” I demand. “Why? How do you know this?”
“They’re the boogeymen of my home realm,” he whispers, urging me to keep moving.
We step out of the tunnel into the deserted locker room. I sag against him, relieved that the other fighters have gone home.
“What can they do?” I whisper, replaying all the crazy things that happened during the fight. They didn’t seem real, but living on the Fringes has taught me that the universe is crowded and nothing is impossible.
“They’re shifters, but they don’t have an animal or monster form, only what they can copy from others. Thankfully, there aren’t many of them left.” Luca runs his fingers through his hair, making it stand on end. “But that’s not important right now! You’ve got to come with me!”
With the noise of the crowd muffled by the heavy metal door, I slide my hands to both of his cheeks. “Breathe, Luca,” I say. “I beat him; he’s not all-powerful.”
“But he could be anyone. Hiding behind any face you recognize.”
I stiffen, studying the familiar lines of Luca’s face. His lip ring is exactly right, but he’s not chewing on it . . . The itch consumes my entire body.
“How many times do you knock?” I whisper.
“What?” He blinks at me. “Celine, we’ve got to go!”
I drop my hands from his cheeks like I’ve been burned. “When you come see me, how many times do you knock?”
The confusion on his face is exactly right, from the crinkling of the skin around his eyes to the number of lines that pop up on his forehead. But he doesn’t answer.
“It’s not a hard question, Luca . . . or should I say Second Coming?”
He drops the confused act and grins, the expression wholly unfamiliar and horrifying on Luca’s face. “Good girl,” he purrs, breathing deeply through his nose. “So beautiful, so challenging.”
Someone pounds on the metal door. “Baby!”
I shove fake Luca. He barely moves. “What the fuck do you want?”
“To deliver a message,” he says.
From the corner of my eye, I watch the door dent from the force of Luca’s beating. Did Resker lock me in here with this asshole? Keeping my focus on the threat in front of me, I lift my chin defiantly. “You’re wasting my time.”
He cracks his neck. Seeing the strange mannerism on my boyfriend’s body sends a shiver of revulsion through me, but I hold my ground.
“You’re brutal—just as he said you would be,” he murmurs. “I didn’t believe him. After all, most parents have a way of not seeing their children clearly.”
I retreat two steps involuntarily. If my father sent him . . .
My enemy studies my retreat with unveiled interest, and I curse myself for letting the instinctual reaction slip past my guard. His face ripples, silver lines ticking across his skin until Luca’s face is wiped away and replaced by my worst nightmare.
Cruel brown eyes. A hard stare. The copy is perfect, but it lacks the true menace my father oozes. Calm . . . until he isn’t. I remind myself this isn’t him. If it were, I would tear his head from his body and mount it on a cactus for the vultures to devour.
I force my lips to curl into an amused smirk.
“Damn, he’s getting old.” The taunt is barely true enough to get away with. There are new streaks of silver in my father’s hair. Otherwise, he’s unchanged.
“You fear him,” the stranger wearing my father’s face says. It’s not a question.
I shake my head and laugh, letting bitterness coat the sound. “I loathe him.”
“Yet, the resemblance . . .” He points to himself, then me.
“Don’t even think about finishing that sentence,” I warn him. “Deliver your message and get lost.”
If I could kill this veydra, I would, but I’m wounded, exhausted, and dealing with too many unknowns—like how he recovered so quickly from the beating I gave him.
“S’lach wants you to enjoy your freedom.”
“Done,” I snap. “Anything else?”
“He says to tell you he’ll see you soon.”
“Cryptic message received,” I snarl, advancing on him as fury overcomes my fear and my bladed wings begin to smoke. “If I ever catch sight of him again, I’ll force my sword down his throat and make him pay for his evil deeds in blood. You can tell him I won’t be silenced; not now and not ever.”
Nodding, the messenger smiles and backs into the tunnel in even, measured steps, revealing a flicker of strange facial bands before he’s swallowed by the darkness. “Until we meet again,” he whispers.
His ghostly words echo, and I shiver violently as the door to the locker room is blown from its hinges.