Chapter 17 #2
“I didn’t have a choice,” the dean whispers, her eyes filling with grief. “The Conclave had started a hunt for AUAs. Someone in the administration here passed her name on and that was that.”
“That was that?” I spit. “You do realize they want Theo to experiment on? Fill her with that dark shit and turn her into a human battery?”
The crumples. “Yes, I know. But if I’d refused to bring her here, I would have disappeared just like Dean Dartmouth.
They’d appoint a loyalist in my place and the school would be in even more danger.
All I could do was try and make Annabelle’s daughter stronger.
Get her flame going. Why do you think I put her in all those advanced classes?
And gave her to you as your charge, Alexis? ”
Have I said holy shit yet?
If so, it’s worth repeating.
Ho ho ho, lee, shit.
“Are you in the Conclave?” Lexi asks. “You must be, to have this level of knowledge.”
Crankshawe shakes her head. “No. No I'm not. I’ve downplayed my power and sat on the sidelines. I can do more good on the edge of that society, rather than in the center.”
Right. I can’t stop myself from sneering. “That seems like a chicken-shit answer. You’re complicit by your in-action.”
A hand rests on my arm. “Settle, Max.”
I shake my head and look out the dark window. “What’s that Einstein quote, Lex? The world will burn not because of evil people, but because of the ones who don’t try to stop them?”
Of course he can’t handle my paraphrasing and has to correct me. "The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.”
I hear a click of the tongue and turn back to see Crankshawe looking mega-frustrated.
“Before you decide I’m being willingly blind, take a moment to consider my situation.
If my brother suspected my sympathies, he’d have me bound under his sigil in a flash; then I’d be useless.
It’s impossible to free yourself from an Elite binding. ”
Alexis looks down at his knuckles, and flexes them.
“But I have not been apathetic,” Crankshawe continues, showing us some indignation. “For years, I’ve kept Thomas under a Cord of Compulsion spell.”
I raise an eyebrow at my cousin.
“Consanguineous Compulsion,” he tells me, not that it clears anything up. “A subtle spell that works best between siblings. The recipient always has the urge to share personal secrets with their brother or sister.”
The dean grimaces, as she grips the edge of her desk. “It has been…a trial, but it’s worth it to keep an eye on the Conclave’s progress. I’ve stayed one step ahead while keeping in the shadows.”
She looks at Alexis. “But the spell broke. A few weeks ago, I sat across from him and asked about something Conclave-related and he didn't answer. Just looked at me, and for a second, it almost seemed as though his pupils turned into swirling pits of that oily black smoke."
Alexis shifts uncomfortably in his chair. “Because he ‘ascended’ as the Conclave call it.”
She shudders. “Now he’s filled with rot and he’s immune to my magic.”
Fucker. “You realize a child had to be tortured, maybe killed for him to have that power?” I lean back on the chair and think about all the ways I can kill Thomas Crankshawe.
Her voice cracks. “I know. He’s always been a bad person, but now he’s irredeemable. And I’ve lost my advantage.” She moves her gaze from me to my cousin. “It’s the reason I decided to expose myself to you, Alexis. I trust you, and, I guess, reluctantly, Maximus.”
Aww, she trusts me!
“Don’t worry, Larissa,” I say, trying out her first name to see how that lands. “You’ve got Team Sparkles at your back now.”
“Max!” Alexis hisses.
Oh yeah, probably keep that under wraps.
I touch a throbbing finger to my forehead in a salute. “So, lay it out for us. We need to know everything.”
It turns out, for all her big words, she doesn’t have much more information than we’ve already gathered. I tick off what she says on my fingers.
“Secret bunker under the building site, check.”
“Using child-witches as batteries to store the whack energy, like a whole Matrix thing, check.”
“They want AUA’s because the Harts think they’ll be the ace-in-the-hole conduit, check.”
“Conclave wants to take over the whole world…er, kind of check?”
I look at Alexis.
“It’s an obvious progression of where they are headed,” he says.
Fine. “Check, then.”
But there is the one new piece of the puzzle that the dean lays on us. The kind of information that gets Lexi all squirmy and excited.
Like, how and when the dark energy enters the Earth realm.
“They call it the Dunamis Pulse,” Larissa says. “Every forty-six days, a portal deep underneath the building site expels this dark, otherworldly energy into our atmosphere.”
I shudder.
“For years the Conclave have been aware of several small fissures around the world that leak small amounts of energy. It’s been a constant goal to try and harness it. The portal below our school only came to light last year, during the construction of foundations for the new sports hall.”
“Interesting,” Alexis says. “Dunamis means inherent force, so that tracks. But the forty-six day cycle is odd. No celestial correlation at all. And they can only harness the energy during the pulse. I imagine that’s when the barrier between the Earth and Avalon reaches its maximum tension.”
Larissa Crankshawe starts coughing and choking. Eventually, I get up and whack her on the back. “Did you say Avalon?” she croaks, eyes and nose both watering. “This energy is from Avalon? How do you know?”
Lexi flicks his eyes in my direction, looking a little shame-faced. I just smile back, showing him how to be magnanimous when someone fucks up.
“Tell me about it, please. Tell me about Avalon.” Larissa looks like she’s about to discover Santa is real.
Alexis says nothing. I follow suit.
Her shoulders slump. “It’s alright, I understand your reticence, I wouldn’t trust me either if I were in your shoes.” She looks up. “But maybe one day? When this is all over?”
When this is all over.
Gods.
That has to happen soon. The countdown to the next Dunamis splurge, or whatever, is less than five weeks away. We’ll never let them take Sparkles, but what about all the other innocents who’ll be on the chopping block?
Fuck. NO!
I push myself up from the chair and slam my fist on the table. “You knew all this and you haven’t done anything to help the children? How can you live with yourself?”
“Steady, Max.” Alexis rests a hand on my back. “It seems she’s been doing a lot, and doing it alone.” He looks at her. “Alone? Or do you have allies?”
“I’ve not wanted to put anyone else in danger, so I’ve been holding this to myself and just trying to steer anyone I can away from trouble.
” She looks bleak. “Though, sometimes I have the sense that there are a couple of faculty members who hate the Conclave as much as I do, and would rise up if only they could.” Crankshawe gives Alexis a mega-intense look.
“And then there’s you. I’ve been watching you carefully, and I may have…
been aware of your nightly searches. Were you looking for the Conclave bunker? ”
“No.” He doesn’t elaborate.
I jam my hands into my pockets and immediately regret it. “Fuck.” I blow on my broken knuckles. “So what now?”
“Now, you head to the healers, Mr. Larsen. I’ll give you a pass in case a guard tries to bust you for breaking curfew.”
“No thanks, Lissy. The healers are out of my budget, it’s all good. Anyway, what I’m more interested in is how do we destroy the Conclave and save all the babies?”
“One thing at a time,” Alexis sighs. “But, Larissa…”
Ooh, Lexi is going on a first named basis too. Bold.
“I have a priority, which is the safety of Theodora Wilson. Anything, or anyone,” he hisses, “that gets in the way of it, will be obliterated. And that includes you.”
The dean pales as her shocked Pikachu face is activated.
“What he said, and on that note, we’re going to split,” I tell her.
It’s been a long day and my knuckles fucking hurt.
Some of Cosmo’s stupidly expensive whiskey will cure the pain.
But not the ache I have.
Only a certain Sparkle Princess will ever satisfy that feeling.