Chapter 3 #2
Her own power was too scant to inspire fear, but she agreed with his overall point. He simply hadn’t taken that point to its inevitable conclusion yet.
She’d help him get there. “Even if the blame got rightfully pinned on the fae, there would be bloodshed. Maybe outright civil war.”
As he considered her words, she distracted herself from her worry by studying the sofa’s upholstery. She’d assumed the pattern was abstract, but nope. It was ravens. Wearing crowns. Each with a single wing tip tucked inside its waistcoat à la Napoléon.
Clearly he’d installed the entire My Family Is the Greatest accessory line at Rich People Lowe’s. It was fortunate that he hadn’t gotten into, say, clowns instead. She could only imagine the horrifying frescoes that would have resulted.
“So Max and Edie didn’t want word of the breach to leave the Zone,” Hugh said.
Gwen nodded and raised her gaze to his. “They gathered up a few Zone residents, including me, to help fight the zombies. We hoped to stop the creatures before the fae conspirators opened up Wall Four and let them out into the wider world, if that was the intended endgame, and before SERC and the government finally came to check on us and discovered the breach.”
“A very dangerous plan.” His jaw worked. “But it evidently worked, from what you said earlier. All zombies have now been killed?”
“Yes.”
He accepted her answer without evident distrust. “This happened…when?”
“We battled the zombies last night.” Sighing, she waved a dismissive hand. “Well, I didn’t do much. They did it. Max, Edie, two trolls, a couple of other Enhanced humans, and a troop of half-fae Girl Explorers.”
As they’d prepared to confront the zombies, misery at her utter uselessness had left her near tears. She couldn’t fight worth a damn. Even worse: With the continued existence of humanity at stake, her most helpful prophetic guidance had involved wayward craft supplies.
She’d wished—pleaded with the gods and goddesses—for enough power to truly help.
Then her wish had come true, and if she’d felt terrible before? Terrible was nothing compared to how she felt now.
Hugh exhaled slowly. “No wonder you’re exhausted.”
“Yes.” And the current state of her oven—bunned—had only added to the fatigue of an intensely frightening and sleepless night. “Now, let me circle back to why we excluded demons as the breach’s perpetrators.”
He nodded, listening attentively.
“Before the battle, our group had decided that once the zombies were gone, we needed to contact a trustworthy representative of the common human government.”
“Because a SERC official might be part of the ostensible fae conspiracy.”
“Yes.” She’d let that ostensible slide. For now. “But there was a problem with our plan.”
His fingertips scritched absently through his beard. “You don’t have sufficient knowledge of common human governmental officials, so you couldn’t figure out whom best to contact?”
“No.” She paused. “Well, yes. But not just that.”
Here it was. The most unbelievable part of her entire story, even after all her wild-eyed talk of zombie escapes and pitched battles for humanity in the dead of night.
“Toward the very end of the battle, I apparently cried out and fell to the ground unconscious.” The mere memory chilled her anew. “My nose bled profusely. I twitched. No amount of noise roused me.”
In her final breath before unconsciousness, channeling so much power had felt like dying.
Like her body was too fragile a vessel to survive the onslaught and she would crack into a million jagged, unrecoverable pieces, an oracular Humpty-Dumpty who’d finally reached the top of her personal wall and barely lived long enough to regret it.
She had no idea why she’d experienced such a massive vision after a lifetime of piddling predictions.
Didn’t know if it might happen again or if she could actually believe what the Power had told her.
Couldn’t even say whether such physically and mentally traumatic visions might harm her unborn baby.
But there had been no time to see a SERC-trained doctor. When it came to saving the world, she had one job and one job only: getting Councilor Hugh Blacke on their side. She was damn well going to do that job, come what may.
At her latest revelation, he’d jerked ramrod straight in his chair, and his sharp eyes scanned her from top to toe.
Searching for physical evidence to confirm her tale, no doubt.
Unfortunately, he wouldn’t find any. Sabby had done too good a job healing Gwen, and Gwen had done a too-thorough job of cleaning herself.
Apart from the visible exhaustion he’d already noted, he wouldn’t spot any signs of last night’s trauma.
“For the first time in my life, I didn’t have to perform a ritual or hear the petitioner’s supplication before having a vision.
I didn’t have to reach for power. It came to me—forced itself on me—like it or not.
” And she hadn’t liked it. She fervently hoped nothing similar ever happened to her again, in fact.
“I remained unconscious for almost an hour. And when I woke up, I recalled what I’d seen. It was…apocalyptic.”
There had been other visions too, teeming at the edges of her beleaguered brain, waiting for her attention. But this prophecy had been the most pressing and important by far, and so it alone had spooled through her mind as she’d twitched and bled.
At the memory of everything she’d witnessed, everything she’d experienced, she faltered, unable to translate the horror into calm, rational words.
“Gwen.” Hugh had leapt to his feet, all the elegant angles of his face stark and jutting by lamplight. “If you require medical attention, tell me. Now.”
It wasn’t a polite request. It was a demand.
“I…” What? Why wasn’t he focused on the issue of actual importance here? “No. I’m fine. Just tired, like I said.”
“But—” he began.
“In my vision, I saw open warfare sparked by the zombie breach. A massive battle fought across our entire continent. An alliance of fae and common humans in uniform using military weaponry to slaughter all other Supernaturals and Enhanced humans. Demons fought on our side, not with the fae.”
Slowly, his mouth closed.
“Even with their help, we’ll lose that battle,” she added, and tried not to think of the burning pyres of bodies. “Badly.”
“Based on your vision, then…” After a minute of thought, he spoke carefully, his face paler than the wall behind him.
“You and your compatriots believe there may be a conspiracy between a splinter faction of the fae and at least some members of the common human government, and those conspirators planned and executed the breach with the intention of touching off a wider war.”
“Yes.” Good. His agile mind had jumped to the correct conclusions without her needing to lead him there. “And we don’t know enough to eliminate any human officials from suspicion. If we went to the wrong person for help, the information would go nowhere, and—”
“Your life would be forfeit.” A vein pulsed faintly at his temple. “All our lives, theoretically.”
She chose to ignore his damning choice of adverb, barreling onward regardless.
“We realized that we needed the assistance of a SERC official instead. Someone not beholden to either the fae or the common human government. Someone powerful enough to take decisive action but discreet enough to avoid alerting the conspirators to our suspicions. Also…”
She didn’t want to say it. The elephant in this luxurious, ridiculous room was trumpeting loudly enough to deafen them both, though, so—
“Also someone who might believe you when you explained your apocalyptic vision,” he said for her. “Which makes your decision to come here tonight…interesting.”
She laid out her reasoning unapologetically.
“Because of our personal history, I knew you’d be disinclined to trust my story.
Back then, though, you said to let you know if anything changed in regard to my prophetic abilities, and something most certainly has.
You might have rejected my plea for a second verification test—”
A faint, fleeting wince creased his features.
“—but you were scrupulously fair in your verdict.” He hadn’t been actively unkind either, in contrast with most of the other panelists.
If the rules had allowed him to give her another chance, she honestly believed he’d have done so.
“Unlike everyone else I could think of, I figured you might be willing to hear me out. To keep your word to me, if for no other reason.”
Maybe because of those scant minutes they’d spent together before the test too.
Even after two decades, a demon with his reputation for faultless honesty and moral rectitude might still harbor guilt over his deception that day.
Or if the connection she’d experienced in the waiting room hadn’t been entirely one-sided, she hoped the lingering warmth of that encounter might sway him toward her side, however infinitesimally.
His nostrils flared in a heavy exhalation. “What, specifically, are you asking me to do?”
He hadn’t said whether or not he believed what she’d told him, but she forged ahead regardless, because she had no backup plan. No real hope that didn’t reside in this apartment.
“We’d like you to use your SERC ties and authority to quietly investigate the breach, uncover the identities of the conspirators, and inform SERC and the common human government of your findings.
Whichever officials you consider trustworthy and least likely to overreact, make rash decisions, or leak information. ”
“Hmmm.” He waited a moment before speaking again. “Why are you here, though? Why not send someone with a less…blemished reputation, or at least someone who doesn’t look half dead already? Why aren’t you at home, resting?”
Ouch. “Max is busy nursing Edie, who got terribly injured by a zombie. The others weren’t good options either, for various reasons.”