Iron Inheritance (31 page)

Then the air went dark, and fire fell from the sky. Everything was burning. Her hand slipped out of his.

I came up for air, unable to hold my breath any longer, still floating above Nate. He looked up like he could see me.

I smiled. “That was such a nice memory until the end.”

I floated up higher without trying and dove through the brown stream of light that floated up like a fog from the earth below.

Four rivers with a fountain at the center. Thousands of green plants rose above me like a jungle that never seemed dense. Someone waived.

I giggled and continued to float upward on a breeze. It was so peaceful. I could stay here.

A stream of metallic gray light glided up from the gnarled oak with the hole in the center. I dove toward it. “So sparkly.”

I stood in the middle of a red valley with a metal scepter in my hand. The world was desolate—no plants, no buildings, and no people. Winds of ruin wracked the damp, sticky grass, and everything was silent.

I inhaled sharply and shook my head. “I don’t like that. I don’t like it
.
” I pursed my lips sourly and looked behind me. The thin gray stream tried to follow, but I went higher, and it couldn’t reach me.

“What’s that one?” I giggled again, easily forgetting what had just happened.

A slippery piece of black licorice slithered toward me through the sky. It didn’t look nice, just like the other one, so I turned around and started back to Nate. He had my body in his arms.

I turned around to see if it was still following me, and the black light stabbed through my chest.

A dark, rundown ranch outside the city. Three stars were painted on the dilapidated archway over the entrance—about a half mile from the house. Paint peeled off window shutters that clattered against the glass as I entered and slipped into a dark room. Green ivy surrounded the beams. A bald man in a suit sat in the corner on a bed with a woman lying down next to him. She had my hair. He smiled, his teeth so white. He reached around the woman’s neck, took something, and threw it at my feet—a small silver wing with a jagged blue stone cracked in half.

The black stream let go, and I swam as fast as I could back into my body. I had to get there before I forgot, before it all seeped away like a dream, like water in my hands.

I dove through my chest and felt a white-hot sear of pain. My mouth opened in a silent scream, and my whole body convulsed. Nate held on, unfazed.

“Eve? Eve,” Ria whispered when I stopped shaking and opened my eyes. “What happened?”

“She almost fell through a hell mouth, that’s what happened.” Cheryl’s shrill voice cut through the concerned stares of everyone else.

I brought my hand up to my necklace like I was relearning to use my limbs. My fingers fumbled for the blue stone, worn smooth from years of use. “I found the other half.”

I wriggled out of Nate’s arms and landed on my hands and knees. He’d carried me down to the bottom of the hill near the fallen tree in front of his Jeep. I stretched my neck and rotated my shoulders as if I were too big for my body now. The skin on my fingertips and toes was tight, and a steady pressure pulsated behind my eyes.

Ria propped me up as Freddy made intricate hand motions over my head.

“Do you know how blessed you are?” Nate’s wide eyes stared at me with amazement, his voice shaking with relief and fury.

“You should be—” Cheryl stopped herself. “How?”

I looked up and tried to hold on to the images I’d seen even as doubts crept in. Had all that really happened?

I closed my eyes. There was something about Nate. A tree…Why was this so hard?

I held my breath, and the last image stayed. A house. An arch. Three stars. Kovac’s grin. The other half of my necklace. I squeezed each thought until my mind believed it.

“Eve?” Ria clutched my hand. “Is it happening again? What’s going on?”

“Grandpa said the necklace broke before I was born. That the other half was lost.” I opened my eyes and turned to Nate. “Is that true?”

Nate shook his head. “I don’t know.”

I looked down at the ground, my eyes wide. Kovac had to have broken it when he took her. He’d kidnapped my mom. He’d kept her in that house, on that bed…

My blood simmered on low as I swallowed that truth and found solace in two more: I would save her soon, and he wouldn’t live much longer.

“Kovac has the other half of her necklace, and he’s hiding out in some old house over that direction.” I pointed back over my shoulder without looking. “My mom’s with him.”

Freddy stopped waving his hands over me, and the rest of them went silent. Only Ria looked me in the eye. “Evey, why do you think that?”

I hesitated. “There were rivers of light floating up there. I could fly.” I latched on to the image of the house, of my mom again before it faded. I just had to keep repeating it so it didn’t seep out. “I went out of my body and saw a stream of black light. It came straight at me, and I saw Kovac and my mom. He has her at some old house outside the city.” I placed each word carefully in front of the other, afraid they’d topple over and the image of my mom would disappear, that I wouldn’t be as close to finding her as I thought.

Nate swallowed hard, his gaze scanning over my limbs as he took a step forward to scoop me into his arms again. “We need to get her to Wright. Her essence is—”

I stood on shaky legs and glared at him, my whole body tensed to resist. There was no way I was going back there now, not when I was this close.

“You projected.” Duke’s clean, crisp voice shook me out of my defensive posture. His eyes were wide, his mouth opened in happy disbelief.

“I, what?”

“That’s impossible,” Cheryl snapped at Duke like he’d just told her I looked prettier in pink.

“You projected your spirit outside of your body.” Duke stepped forward, gray eyes bright. “How far did you go?”

“That’s enough.” Nate stepped between us and looked me in the eye. “I need to take you to the infirmary.”

I clenched my jaw and curled my fingers into my palm. I knew he meant well, but there was only so much I could take. I didn’t need protecting right now—my mom did.

“I got to the top of the mountain. I saw Kovac—I know where he is. He had the other half of my mom’s necklace, and I saw her lying down next to him. She has the same hair as me.” I breathed heavily like it was taking an effort to keep standing.

“You shouldn’t be able to do that.” Nate shook his head like he hadn’t heard a word I said.

“What? Do what?”

“Project.” Nate took a step back toward his Jeep. “What you saw was probably…Only Prophets can project, Eve. You only have enough angelic essence for one talent, no more. You’re a Warrior. You can’t be a Prophet too,” he said, real despair etched in the lines around his eyes.

“Who cares?” I yelled, frustrated and tired. “I know where my mom is. We can save her!”

“Eve,” Nate pleaded. “Whatever’s happening, I’ve never seen it before. Don’t you understand that? This could be anything, and it’s pulling you places you shouldn’t go, making you see things you shouldn’t be able to see.”

Before I could retort, the quick successive rumbles of an old VW engine putted along the narrow edge of the road. A swirl of dust kicked into the air as it skidded to a stop behind Duke’s white BMW. Farther down, a narrow, burgundy coup cut its engine but left the high beams on.

The VW’s door creaked open, and Josh got out. His black shirt loomed through the brown dust cloud. He crunched toward us through the gravel and stopped in a shadow that concealed everything but his face.

I stepped to the right to try and catch his gaze, but he wouldn’t meet my eyes. It’d been a week, and he couldn’t even look at me anymore.

Denisov stepped in front of him and scrutinized each of us like we were easy prey. Her eyes lingered on me, a flicker of curiosity flashing through them. “I assume you found something?”

Duke stepped forward and explained everything—the meteor and Meg’s vision, the hell mouth, my vision of my mom—with the fewest words possible, his back as rigid as Nate’s and Josh’s but with much more confidence, like nothing could hurt him.

Denisov snapped her gaze back to me when Duke finished. “You truly believe Kovac has your mother?”

I set my jaw. “It doesn’t matter if I believe it or not. If there’s a chance, I have to take it.”

“Belief always matters,” she said with a fervor I’d never seen before. “The three stars over the driveway arch in your…
vision
, most likely refers to the Rigel house. It showed up on an audit of Kovac’s holdings, but we found nothing when we searched it weeks ago.”

My mouth went dry as my voice tried to speak words of protest.

“Rest assured.” She raised her hand to calm the flurry of words that were about to be unleashed. “I’ll send the Tercets there tonight.” She paused again. “And I’m very interested to know how you, of all people, managed to project.” She raised an eyebrow.

“I’m sorry to interrupt, but there is another issue,” said Duke before I could tell Denisov where she could shove her eyebrows. “The meteor led us here and revealed a hell mouth.”

Denisov nodded, so deep in thought that the mention of a hell mouth had little effect on her. “Spaulding’s ex-Babylonian’s vision.”

Duke nodded excitedly. “The first two lines—bridging the divide and the darkness inside seem to refer to the power of hell.”

“Not to mention that Eve nearly fell down there,” Nate growled.

Denisov looked unperturbed, her eyes gliding over every inch of me again. “It’s no wonder your essence looks so frayed.” She stayed deep in thought. “What about the last two lines of the vision?”

Nate interrupted before Duke could say anything. “Visions like this have done nothing but distract from the larger issue in almost every single instance for the past millennia. You humans, why do you do this to yourselves? It means nothing until you give it the power to.” He breathed heavily, his green eyes fiery.

“Is anyone ever going to explain what the heck a hell mouth is?” said Ria.

“It’s exactly what it sounds like,” Nate said, his short stature unrepresentative of the glares he shot at Duke and Denisov. “A path straight to hell.”

Josh’s deep voice rumbled for the first time since he’d arrived. “Imagine an esophagus of fish hooks leading down into a pit of seething, dark flame.” He peered over my head to the mountaintop, his blue eyes revealed to me for the first time in the moonlight—void of emotion. “That’s why Evelyn’s essence is frayed.”

I wanted to scream at him and embrace him at the same time. Why couldn’t he look at me?

“It’s a natural drain on light essence and a proverbial well of darkness—quite a lure for demons of all kinds,” Denisov added.

“Except that once they’re drawn to it, they get sucked back down to the place they just escaped,” said Josh, his jaw tightening.

A large, orange, garbage truck pulled up behind Denisov’s car. Two middle-aged men and one woman, all in orange vests, jumped out. As they approached, I saw a thick layer of mud caked on their boots and smeared on their arms.

“The hell mouth is another sign that the evil in this area is escalating, and that it is by design,” Denisov said as the three individuals came to her side.

“Long Beach is clear,” said the tallest man, a gruff black beard obscuring most of his face. Thick, muscular arms and shoulders meant for Atlas himself strained against his orange reflective vest.

“Thank you, Brody.” Denisov nodded and turned to me. “Meet the Tercets.”

I looked up at the dirty trio and tried to reconcile them with the amazing heroes Josh looked up to, that the whole school talked about with reverence.

They glanced at me, bored. There was a roughness to them, a salty air to their stares like they had seen things that would make others shiver. But most of all, they looked tired.

Denisov spoke to the woman of the group. “Looks like young Brooks has done your job for you. Somehow—” She paused. “She knows where Kovac is hiding and keeping her mother.”

The woman didn’t react at all, but waited, exchanging a glance with the other two that communicated much more than words.

“Investigate and report back on the Rigel property. It’s likely a trap. Do not engage the enemy, Jody,” she added.

Jody, a lean, muscular woman with a pixie haircut, rubbed some dried dirt off her arm. “If we get a chance to actually fight instead of run around every forsaken place on the planet, we’re taking it.”

“As long as I get to ride with her, I’m fine with this plan,” I said.

Denisov continued as if neither comment was uttered. “One of you will stay with Brooks. Kovac is still after her. She is an asset we cannot afford to lose.”

I shook my head. “There’s no way I’m staying here while they—”

“If your mother is, in fact, alive, the Tercets will find her.”

My mouth opened and closed like an angry, stuttering fish.

“Duke and Cheryl, you two stay here and secure the hell mouth. We’re going to need to get your father involved in this one,” she said pointedly to Duke.

His posture stiffened.

“There’s no way around it. Our resources are stretched too thin. The rest of you back to HQ. Punishment for deviation will be severe,” she added, her upper lip curling. “I leave it to you, Spaulding.” She turned to Josh briefly and walked back to her car.

Jody and the second man of the Tercets—a wild man with disheveled hair and sculpted biceps—rolled their eyes in perfect unison and turned to the service truck. The tall, imposing Brody, beard and all, cast his shadow over me.

“They’re the best, Eve,” said Nate when I refused to move. “The Tercets are the equivalent of Colonels in The Defense, and were big supporters of Sol. They want to find Kovac as much as we do.”

“I’d wager more than anyone but her,” Brody said gruffly, his black eyes looking straight down at the top of my head.

Duke and Cheryl started up the mountain, Cheryl whispering in Duke’s ear as the rumble of the orange diesel truck and Denisov’s coup came to life and backed down the narrow access road. Everyone but Josh, Brody, and me put their heads down and closed their eyes as the cloud of dust swept past us.