We slip into the shadows before we enter the clearing. A tang of anxiety follows me from where we’ve left Jonah braced in the van.
Even though I’ve released my physical body, my own nerves feel as if they’re jittering. I will a sense of calm through my shadowy form as Raze, Mirage, Hail, and I slink through the patches of darkness amid the vegetation.
The trap door may be shut, but that doesn’t pose any real problem to us. A thin shadow seeps between its edge and the frame that holds it, hidden by tufts of grass.
Raze’s voice sounds slightly muffled in our current state, but I can still make out a hint of a growl. “I’m going in first. If we need to take him down, I should be ready.”
Another quiver of fear passes through me, but I don’t argue with him. It’s not as if I’d be all that much help if it comes to a fight.
Mirage’s buoyant presence sidles closer to me. “Are you all right, Rainbow? Not too many prickly feelings welling up?”
Despite the fact that I’m about to come as close to my former captor as I have since I fled his basement, I feel strangely hollow. Maybe because this time I know what I’m dealing with. I’m making the choice to approach him rather than being taken by surprise.
“I think I’m going to be okay,” I say. “But if I start feeling overwhelmed, I’ll get away from all of you before I have an outburst.”
Hail lets out a cool chuckle. “Or you could just aim it all at him. He’d deserve it.”
I guess he would. Still, the thought of purposefully battering him with the full force of my powers when he isn’t attacking us at all makes me a little queasy.
I did it before because I had to aim all that energy somewhere, and I had to protect my friends. But I’ve hurt so many people in the past because of this man. I want to be something different than the weapon he turned me into.
I helped get us here, figure out where he’s operating from. That means I contributed to the mission without needing to cause anyone pain, doesn’t it?
Raze darts into the tiny gap. The rest of us follow side by side.
We emerge into a garishly lit room that has me cringing in the sliver of darkness along the trap door. The artificial illumination blazes from the walls on one side of the space, where searing lamps are pointed at dozens of barred cages that emit even more light from their floors and ceilings.
Within all that glare, knots of filmy darkness wriggle. Shadowkind who’ve been captured and are now restrained, kept far away from any shadows they might leap into if the sorcerer’s control fades.
My entire being cringes. I jerk my attention away from that area to take in the rest of the room.
The other end appears to be David Blaser’s main workspace. Three different corkboards are mounted on the walls there, one pinned with photographs and newspaper clippings, another with sketches and handwritten notes, and the third with a large map. On the floor between them stands a cot and a desk. A storage cabinet and a table holding a camp stove are set up in the middle.
In the corner of the room near the desk, there’s another trap door, larger than the one we came through. It’s propped open, showing mostly darkness below.
“The basement has a basement,” Mirage says in a singsong tone.
“What’s he got stuck all over the walls?” Raze mutters.
I peer at the shapes of the room. There’s a shadow cast by the ladder on the wall by the outer door and more by the furnishings on the side away from the cages. “Let’s go down and get a closer look.”
I flit through the narrow bands of darkness and into the larger splotches offered by the table and desk. Tucking myself in a shadow next to a pencil holder on the desktop, I study the corkboards up close.
The photographs and articles seem to be clustered into groups, each around a specific person. Some have accusing words scrawled on them in marker, like BRAINWASHING MENACE and RIGHTS GOUGER, whatever that’s supposed to mean.
I sense my companions presence gather around me in the shadows. “I think maybe those are the people he’s targeting. He didn’t use to say—or write—stuff like that, though.”
Hail’s tone is disdainful. “It looks like some kind of conspiracy theory craziness. Humans make up all kinds of insanity of their own even though they can’t handle the actual strangeness in the world well at all.”
My former captor must have been a little unhinged to begin with. Has he spiraled even farther into vengeful delusion since I escaped?
I hope Gracie got away from him all right.
I shift my attention to the next board. The drawings there remind me of some of the creatures we’ve stumbled on from the strange rift—mismatched features, arrows that maybe show them shifting from one awkward form to another. The erratic notes are difficult to read even from here, but the bits I can make out seem to be recording the writer’s observations of the creatures’ characteristics and behavior.
Some of them are dated. Raze grunts. “He’s been keeping track of them for almost a year now.”
“And keeping track of the rift too, I think,” Mirage pipes up, adjusting his position to peer toward the map.
As I study it alongside him, I decide he’s right. The map looks a lot like the image I’ve seen on Jonah’s phone when he stops to navigate, showing the area we’ve been driving around in. It’s marked with at least twenty red push-pins—different locations where the rift has traveled to, maybe.
I frown. “There doesn’t seem to be any pattern to how it moves around. Maybe Rollick would be able to see one.”
Hail’s presence twitches. “If we can get it to him.”
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He’s barely finished speaking when the stout, pasty man I remember climbs out of the lower cellar into the room.
Even though I knew my former captor had to be down here, my being clenches up at the sight of him so nearby. His skin has gone blotchy, his hair patchy, as if he isn’t eating all that well. How much of a meal can he even prepare for himself in this remote place? How much time is he spending down here out of the sunlight?
His movements look a bit stiff as he walks over to the corkboard with the pictures that might be his current targets. He stares at it for a few minutes, tapping his lips. Disgust and anger roll off him in a noxiously bitter soup.
“He definitely doesn’t like those people,” I murmur, as if there’s any chance of the sorcerer overhearing me.
Finally, David Blaser shuffles to the other side of the room with the cages. He picks up a thin metal rod I hadn’t noticed before and slides it back and forth across his palm as he paces in front of the cages, peering into them in turn.
After a few rounds, he stops by one and raises the rod. He says something in the sorcerous language and turns a control down on that cage to dim its lights.
A beast about the size of a racoon and similarly shaped materializes out of its cringing mass of shadow. It stares through the bars at him, jagged scales lifting and ruffling across its back.
The sorcerer thrusts the rod into the cage. With a flare of sparks, the creature jerks and spasms as if it’s being electrocuted. A thin shriek pierces the air.
I flinch, my emotions lurching in my chest. Raze lets out a snarl, his presence bunching where he’s crouched next to me. Hail makes a sound like a hiss of revulsion, and Mirage simply whimpers.
I don’t know which of our reactions my former captor picks up on. Maybe it’s all of us at once. My only warning is a spurt of startled panic like a splash of tabasco sauce before he whirls around, already shouting out sorcerous commands.
This time, he doesn’t take any chances being tentative. This time, he hurls his magic at us with a punch of force that cracks the hold of Jonah’s command in my head.
I hurl myself away toward the wall, as if I can flee his impulse just by moving away. My mind shudders, grappling with the instruction to show myself. It clashes with Jonah’s insistence that I refuse all other orders, but the hold of that earlier command is crumbling.
Mirage and Hail waver into physical form, their faces twisted with anguish. Horror flashes across the sorcerer’s face as he shouts more commands at them. One of his yells must hit Raze too, because the basilisk shifter jerks into the physical world with a rough heave of breath. Every muscle in his sinewy body strains against his skin as if he’s fighting to escape his very body.
The sorcerer’s commands must be stopping him—stopping all of them—from using their powers. But whether because I’ve fought against his power before or because my presence was the smallest and least noticeable of the bunch, I’m still holding on to some small shred of control, staying hidden in the dark.
That control is disintegrating. Even if my former capture doesn’t hurl any more sorcery at me, in a matter of seconds I’ll be popping into view and he’ll know I’m here too.
Frustration and terror blare through my being. The caustic flavor of those emotions surges through my being.
No. This isn’t how I wanted this to go.
What if it’s not even enough? What if he catches deeper hold of me too quickly?
I just want everyone to be happy.
But even as that thought passes through my head, a more potent realization hits me, all the way down to the center of whatever soul I have.
I can’t always make everyone happy. Sometimes I can’t make anyone happy at all, and that’s just the way it is, because there’s already too much awfulness being spread around.
So maybe the best I can do in those moments is to stop the villain who’s stealing everyone else’s joy. Bring back the possibility of happiness, whatever it takes.
I can do that. I can break through the horrors this awful man has committed and give all the beings who deserve it a chance.
With that conviction, I propel the churning energy inside me toward the other side of the room with all the force it can.
The dark wave roars over my companions and my former captor, but that’s not where I was aiming the main brunt of the impact. The sharpest force smacks straight into all those burning lights inside and around the cages.
In an instant, every bit of illumination except the single lamp poised over the corkboards blinks out.
The imprisoned creatures spring through the bars in a whirl of energy. The sorcerer was already stumbling, skin scalded by my sudden flare. The onslaught of shadowkind hurtles into him, knocking him right off his feet.
There’s a moment when I think he might manage to escape. He grasps the bottom rungs of the ladder and starts to haul himself upright.
No. No. No. I’m not going to let this man deal out even more pain.
Another spurt of caustic energy flares in my chest, and I throw it at his hands.
His fingers spasm apart, and the wave of shadowkind flings him onward. With flashes of fangs and glints of spikes and spines, the deluge of hissing, screeching beasts in their muddle of ephemeral and physical form shoves him hard. He topples right over the edge of the cellar door.
David Blaser tumbles through the opening headfirst. The crack that reverberates up from belong sends a jolt through my nerves even though a trickle of relief courses alongside it.
As the jumbled creatures whirl on around the room as if unsure of where to go next, I pull myself out of the shadows at the edge of the trap door. Peering down into the opening, I make out my former captor’s crumpled body in the now dim light from the single lamp.
His neck is twisted at an unnatural angle. A puddle of blood expands beneath his head.
A breath rushes out of me. Three figures draw up around me, Raze setting his hand on my back.
“He’s gone,” the basilisk shifter says gruffly.
The sorcerer’s commands will have died with him.
I grasp Raze’s arm and lean into the embrace he offers. Mirage spins around in a giddy circle. “And now everything he’s found is ours! We’ll make much better use of it. Thanks to our Periwinkle.”
The fox shifter beams at me and dips his head to give me a quick peck.
When Mirage pulls away, Hail is watching the three of us with a bemused expression. “Thank you, Cream Puff,” he says in a mild voice that makes the phrase sound more like a fond nickname than an insult. “Come on. Let’s tell our sorcerer how you saved the day.”
