Chapter 56
fifty-six
Gentry
Excerpt from Gentry’s personal journal:
I thought I was crazy for so long. They told me I was cursed when I set off the magical detectors at a mall Mom took me to after Dad dumped me.
It had just been a normal Saturday — I’d been reeling from Dad’s abandonment, but resigned to live with Mom and Beckett.
I’d just decided to make amends for years of fucking off, to get to know them again.
I was finally ready to give up a life of conning.
But then the government mages had carted me off from the mall to the Curse Ward and then nothing’s been the same since.
They claim they don’t know what’s wrong with me, yet the tests don’t seem particularly comprehensive. I feel fine. Normal. Except my blood doesn’t clot when they take blood. But so what? Give me some medicine and my life back.
The mages here seem to pay special attention to me. To what I’m eating. Saying. Doing. It creeps me out. Something isn’t right.
The only thing that feels cursed is around the time Dad dumped me off at Mom’s. The memory… doesn’t feel right. Yet the mages haven’t done a damn thing to fix it.
Today, I accidentally tripped and sprained my foot during mandatory exercise. You would’ve thought it was an emergency from how they reacted. Tense faces. The kind Dad taught me to target when looking for marks. They’re the sign of a courier, of someone carrying something valuable for someone else.
What the hell is going on?
The only way to find out is to hurt myself again.
Fuck this journal, I’m investigating.
It took a few hours of Wren studying her soul to figure out how to put all the pieces back together.
“Good thing I didn’t cut you two apart all the way,” the necromancer babbled, “or else her soul would’ve floated away and this wouldn’t be possible.” She then began stitching.
The soul stitching tickled pleasantly, not at all like the agony of the failed excision. Gentry hadn’t expected that. The biggest inconvenience was the coolness of touching Wren’s skin too long, but that was the least of her concerns because she had a bit of an audience.
They’d settled in Adrienne’s lab, which was a state-of-the-art facility within the inner complex of the Weavers’ many properties.
The set of rooms had Bunsen burners, Tesla coils, and all sorts of things that Gentry wouldn’t associate with magic — not that there weren’t also the usual horrifying potion ingredients of dead monster parts or herbs.
The lab was also fully staffed and was nerds galore.
Witches in lab coats milled all about the place.
That was, until Wren had started stitching Gentry’s soul back to the Netherton’s. Then they’d stared, murmuring amongst each other and taking notes.
“Get back to work,” Adrienne growled from her workstation and her subordinates all listened, scurrying back to their varying projects of horror.
She then put down her stirring rod. “Potion is done. I’ve weakened its potency so it shouldn’t give you a fever.
Not often I brew for someone who’s not a witch. ”
Gentry accepted a glass from her and tipped it back. Instantly, the aches and pains she’d felt from Adrienne restraining her during the failed excision disappeared. “Thank you,” she said, still feeling the tiniest bit awkward because there was still one audience member who’d yet to depart.
As soon as he’d heard of her plan, Luke had joined their little group, his eyebrows drawn together in a look of intense concentration.
Busy with his new role as leader of the enforcers, he often left to take calls, but he always returned.
Gentry still felt a little bit intimidated by the quiet man but chose to doggedly ignore him.
Impatience brewed in her blood as she waited for Wren to finish up her stitching. If this didn’t work, then they would still have no clues as to where Freya had taken Kit and Amelia. This had to work.
She still hadn’t told Kit how she felt about him, told him that she loved him back.
Over her dead body was she going to let Freya turn him into her undead slave for all eternity.
“All done.” Wren sat back and lifted her hands from Gentry’s. “I can’t say with certainty that the bond will be as strong as it was, but it should be there.”
Gentry wasted no time closing her eyes and letting her mind drift. The thoughts came, followed by the pictures. Freya was outside by a fire, a few rural houses within sight. None were enough information to identify the location. But then she caught a stray thought that changed everything.
“I don’t know where they are, but I know where they’ll be.”
Luke was already out of his chair. “Where?”
“She’s going to move them to the Underground tonight. That way she can Make Kit into a vampyre and keep him down there, and then”—Gentry shuddered at what she was about to say—“Freya plans to feed Drayer’s body to the vampyres after she transfers her soul into Amelia.”
“We‘ll have to intercept them before they get down there,” Luke said. “If she transfers her soul into the girl’s body, then we’ll likely have to take her in custody and prove that she's Freya. And even after that, her punishment would likely be lightened from execution to life imprisonment because of the optics.”
“Hey”—Wren glared at Luke—“you can’t kill Freya anyway, or else Gentry might die too.”
Gentry’s stomach churned. She had a different concern. “What about Amelia?”
Wren spoke up, her voice soft, “Body snatching is the process of removing someone’s soul from their body and replacing it with your own. If Freya does that to Amelia, then her soul would likely cross over.”
So that little girl would be dead. It was a horrific thing to do to someone. Gentry had never thought about what had happened to the real Drayer Netherton, but if what Wren said was true, then Freya had snuffed out that teenage boy’s life to improve her own miserable existence as a vampyre.
Luke didn’t waver once from his goal. “Feed me the exact location when you have it, Gentry. We’ll save them.”
Gentry noted he’d made no such promises about not killing Freya, and thus sparing her, but she didn’t care about that.
All she could think about was deadly spells flying every which way with Kit and Amelia in the center.
“She has hostages. Can you really guarantee their safety? Even Clea says that Freya is a strong witch.”
The big Weaver looked at her for a long moment, as if deciding what the best approach would be with her.
Then he said, “I can’t guarantee anything.
Even if we were facing an unskilled witch, two hostages would make it difficult.
Historically, we’ve never done well in the Underground. If she gets away…”
“Then that will be it,” Gentry finished. “If she’s as skilled a soul seamstress as her sister, then all she has to do is get away with her life and find another body to steal.”
“So let me summarize,” Adrienne said, “if you kill Freya, then Gentry could die. But even if we ignore that little detail, the bitch has two hostages. Oh, and we have to do something because she’s about to horrifically mangle the souls of the said two hostages tonight.”
Wren leaned into her girlfriend. “That pretty much sums it up,” she said glumly, “and we can’t sever Gentry’s bond with Freya because it gives us information and me hacking off about 95% of it last night didn’t even faze the woman. I don’t think that she can die.”
All four of them lapsed into silence, the bustle of witch scientists and alchemists doing little to brighten the mood.
The odd fluorescent lighting reminded Gentry of the Underground and all the days she’d wasted in her father’s apartment trying to save herself.
Perhaps it was time to accept that she was doomed.
She jumped as an idea hit. The situation was doomed if they tried to save everybody…
“Let me meet Freya in the Underground,” she said, and all three witches stared at her like she was insane, but she continued anyway, “I’m serious.
Kit and Amelia are just bodies to her. She can get them anywhere.
But me? She wants to kill me to break the bond and truly disappear.
So let me negotiate and get Kit and Amelia away from her.
My life is in danger whether I’m there or not.
If it doesn’t work, then the enforcers can sweep in. ”
The responses were immediate, and exactly what she expected:
“That’s… stupid.”
“Gentry, you can’t!”
“What do you need for this plan to work?”
Gentry only responded to Luke’s question, “Get me to my father’s apartment, and we’ll be set.”
The Underground varied in infrastructure and population every bit as much as the surface could.
Freya had chosen her next location to be in Skadra’s abandoned subway system rather than the mirrored Underground beneath the magical shops and homes that stretched across Skadra.
In different spots, the two did connect, but the subway system was used almost exclusively for vampyres gone feral and who were so out of control that their own kind shunned them.
Gentry had sensed the difference as soon as she’d descended into the subway system, a flashlight her only source of light.
Unlike the other Underground, this place had no torches or niceties such as shops or houses.
No, this place was all concrete and abandonment, its uniqueness being that she didn’t see a single homeless person or anyone taking a walk; the people who lived in this Underground didn’t want to be seen.
An enforcer walked silently beside her, but only for the purpose of making sure the vamps didn’t eat her.
Gentry readjusted her backpack as they jumped from the subway platform down into the tunnels.
She’d already seen the route in Freya’s head, knew exactly which holes to turn down.
Then the enforcer would leave her on her own and wait with the reinforcements.
The small panic button Luke had given burned a hole in her pocket. Press it when it’s time, he’d told her, and we should respond within thirty seconds.
She hadn’t bothered telling him that thirty seconds alone with a powerful witch might as well have been an eternity, because Luke surely knew that. So she’d pocketed the device and laughed because it operated on batteries.
The distant echoes of snarls and inner vamp fighting were the only signs they weren’t alone, but Gentry felt a little comforted by the fact that none approached. It’d be a little ironic if she was eaten by a vamp before she met a much more dangerous monster.
They arrived at Freya’s intended location after about a mile of walking.
For this part of the Underground, it had certain…
features. It was where a tunnel had collapsed and some of the pieces of concrete conveniently resembled furniture if one squinted.
A large tall piece for a chair, a smaller one for an ottoman.
A long flat shelf that could serve as a table for food.
Or for killing a wonderful man and turning him into a vampyre. Gentry knew exactly why Freya had chosen this place.
“Okay,” she told the enforcer, her voice shaking a bit, “I’m all good. You can leave now.”
Unperturbed, the expressionless witch left.
Gentry sat on the concrete chair and closed her eyes, internally watching each step that brought Freya closer to her.