Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
GABE
Ilie in the grass outside my cabin and stare up at the blue sky. We started inside, but with so many of us—me and Connor, the boys, the team from the Collective, Marc, and then Tom when he finished filling in for Kieran—it got crowded and claustrophobic, and I needed air.
Not that the air is helping to solve this problem.
Listening with half an ear to Connor and Jill bickering over something stupid and mostly irrelevant, I wonder whether it would have been better if Marc had never come to us.
We were so desperate to know Cato’s plans, but now that we do, we’re not any better off. We’ll probably die knowing we failed.
Fingers delve lightly into my hair, stroking my scalp, and I adjust my gaze to look at Tom. He’s watching Connor, his face intent, but that just makes the casual touch more special to me. He’s not trying to get my attention—he just likes to touch me.
As his fingers massage gently, I think it might also be that he knows I’m stressed and is trying to give comfort.
The argument trails off into growls of frustration, and I brace myself to step in… again.
“This might be a stupid question,” Tom says, and I let myself relax back into the grass.
Though if anyone calls him stupid, I’m calling Skye’s dads and we can all throw down for him.
“If the problem is that Gabe doesn’t have enough power to build the barrier, can’t we get another gatekeeper or twenty to help him?
Like have them all building it together? ”
I let my eyes drift closed as Jill answers, “No, it doesn’t work that way.
This isn’t my area, but the Collective tried in the past to team up gatekeepers with lower levels of power.
The idea was that two of them working together would be able to guard a bigger gateway.
But the guards wouldn’t take—they didn’t mesh together or something. I don’t know why.”
“The final conclusion was personality,” I murmur.
The initial experiment took place centuries ago, but every once in a while, the Collective will give it another shot, just in case.
I’ve read the reports, and they’re all disappointing.
“Every gatekeeper is individual, and our brains work differently. Something about that prevents us from being able to work together. There’s a theory that cloning a gatekeeper would let it work, and for a while the Collective was seriously considering investing heavily in human cloning, but then someone pointed out that for a clone’s brain to think exactly the same way as their donor’s, they would need to have the exact same experiences, which wouldn’t be possible.
And while you could raise a group of clones from the same donor in a controlled environment, that raised questions about slavery and imprisonment, and whether clones are human and deserve the same rights and freedoms. It got complicated very fast, and they decided to leave it alone. ”
There’s a little silence, but I don’t bother to open my eyes. We’ve gotten off track, but the track wasn’t leading anywhere. Maybe a detour will do us good.
“I didn’t know any of that,” Matt says. “Why don’t they teach us that?”
Randy scoffs. “Probably because you have enough to learn memorizing the different types of demons and how to fight them? As interesting as a moral debate about cloning would be, it’s not going to be much use to you as a hunter.”
“Okay,” Tom says calmly. “So gatekeepers can’t work in tandem to build the barrier.
What about… uh…” I try not to smile as he casts around for an idea.
Knowing him and my brother as I do, I’d bet that Matt’s on the verge of making a smart-ass comment and Tom’s trying to keep the peace.
“What about sharing power? If the barrier or gateway or whatever can only be built by one person, can others lend that person their power?”
“No,” Connor says, even as Marc says, “Yes.”
My eyes snap open, and I sit up so fast my spine cracks. “What?”
Every eye is on the demon. He’s sitting on one of the porch chairs, because apparently sitting on the grass is beneath him. He looks around at our incredulous faces. “What?”
“We can share power?” I demand. “Since when? How?”
He shrugs. “I’ve never seen it done. Demons can, but we don’t. Not voluntarily, anyway.”
“Demons can, but can we?” Jill is leaning slightly forward, her face intent.
“One of my associates saw the information in the Collective’s archives. He mentioned it to me because he wanted to know if I’d seen it done. It seemed foolish to him that you’d have this power and yet not use it.”
My chest is tight, and I’m breathing fast. Partly with horror as I think of all the times hunters have been ripped to pieces by demons but could have been saved if someone shared power with them, but also with excitement. This could be the answer. This could—
“It’s irrelevant, anyway. You’d need a massive number of people, and as soon as you begin trying to recruit them, word will inevitably get back to Cato.
He’ll revert to his backup plan, and we’ll be back to not knowing what’s going to happen,” Marc points out, bursting my bubble.
“That’s why I didn’t mention it even though I thought you knew. ”
“The backup plan we know nothing about, even whether it exists,” Connor snipes. “Weren’t your people supposed to be working on that?”
“Yes. And they’ve had just as much success as your people have had on your part of the deal.”
Ugh. I hate that he’s right.
“Just for argument’s sake,” Ian says casually, and his tone catches my attention.
I know that tone. That’s the tone he and Matt use when they’ve done something they shouldn’t have.
Connor and I exchange glances, but we don’t interrupt.
“Let’s say there was a way to get the number of people we need without any risk of Cato finding out. How—”
“Impossible,” Randy interrupts. I’ve always liked him, but right now, I want to strangle him. “There’s no way to keep that kind of thing secret. It would get out somehow.”
“Sure, yeah,” Matt agrees, confirming my suspicion that he’s in on this, whatever it is. “Definitely. But we’re talking hypothetically here.”
“Hypothetically,” Ian repeats. “How would the power sharing work?”
“I’m not human, baby hunter, and I didn’t see the document. Did none of you know? Truly?”
“No,” I admit. Dammit. What the fuck is going on in the Collective? “I think we should talk to Norval.”
Connor holds up his phone. “I already texted Kieran to send him down. Apparently we’ve been told to wait. He’s in the middle of a strategy meeting.”
I don’t even want to know. “It’s not urgent.
Like Marc said, even if we knew how, we couldn’t use it.
” I bite my lip. “I know we can’t strike at the traitors now, but maybe we should concentrate our efforts on trying to find out when and where they’re planning to instigate the scheme.
We can have people in place to stop them from opening those initial gateways to let the demons through.
” Even as I say it, my gut curdles with the knowledge it won’t work.
We’d have to be damn lucky to find out that information, and even if we did, there are nearly two dozen names on Dad’s list, and only five of us who are trained to take them down.
If we count Tom and the boys, it’s eight.
Even if we were to count everyone here at Mannix and Marc—who I’m not sure would be interested in ruining his manicure—that still only brings us up to fourteen.
Plus, Dad’s list is twenty years old. Who knows how many more people they’ve recruited since then.
Almost every adult member of the Collective is under suspicion.
Nobody replies to my half-baked suggestion. We all know it’s a stab in the dark.
“Okay, so,” Matt says, breaking the silence, “what would the other hurdles be? If we hypothetically had the power to do this.”
I sneak another glance at Connor even as my hand reaches out to take Tom’s. Our brothers seem very stuck on this. We’re definitely going to have to get the truth out of them later.
“Time,” Jill says prosaically. “Right, Gabe? It would take too long to get the barrier up.”
“Time,” I agree. “We’d be looking at years before the barrier was done… if it even got that far.” It’s more likely that I’d burn through every ounce of strength I have—plus that of the donors, if it turns out to be possible—and die before finishing the job.
“I was thinking about something you said, Gabe,” Tom starts slowly, then pauses. “When you tested the theory about how to build the barrier.”
I nod. “Sure. I couldn’t really test it, because the threads of energy anchor to the gateway.”
“Do they?” Jill asks. “I didn’t know that. Why?”
“That’s what they’re supposed to do. It’s how we build guards—there’s no point in building a screen that won’t attach. It could just…” I trail off as what I’ve just said sinks in. “That’s what they do,” I repeat, mostly to myself. “They always anchor to the gateway.”
Tom squeezes my hand, and I meet his gaze. “Why do they do that?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know. Marc?”
The demon’s expression is pensive. “We don’t close gateways,” he begins. “I’ve never thought about it. But…” A tiny gateway, no bigger than the palm of my hand, opens in front of him. “Someone close that.”
I don’t love being ordered around by a demon, but if it helps us find the answers we need… I close the gateway. It’s so small and neat that any of the hunters could have done it—not like most of the demon-made gateways we come across.
“Hm.” He’s studying the space where the gateway was. “That didn’t need much effort from you, did it?”
“The small ones are always easy,” I agree, then wish I hadn’t when he rips open another. This one’s as tall as I am and slightly jagged at the edges. Energy from the otherworld pours through, making me shiver. Someone lets out a little moan. I can’t blame them. It feels amazing.
“What the fuck?” Connor exclaims. “You’re going to draw attention to us!”
“Better close it fast, then.”
I’m already working on it, drawing from the etheric energy around us and tugging lightly at the edges of the gateway. It’s fresh enough and clean enough that it should be able to close completely. I’ll be seriously mad if it doesn’t.
“Hmm,” Marc murmurs, watching the gateway closely as it gradually closes. “That’s interesting.”
My hand involuntarily squeezes Tom’s, probably because it wants to make a fist to deck Marc with. He squeezes back, then grips more firmly, reading my mind, then demands, “What’s interesting?”