"Inigo," I hissed.
"I know," he answered, carefully circling out of the way of the deadly knife.
Then Alister did something really freaky. As he twirled the blade in an intricate pattern, he began to chant. I only recognized the language because I'd heard Kabita use it during her spellcasting. Alister had finally embraced his Witch blood, but what he was doing was far beyond a normal cast. This was something dark and ugly and…evil. I could see the darkness building in his black aura. If he finished the spell…
I pulled the Fire that simmered just beneath the surface of my skin. Where Alister was dark, I would be light.
Flame danced along my skin, pooling in my hands. Alister stared at the fireball blazing between my palms with something like fascination. His eyes were wells of black, so evil they made me cold to my very core.
As he opened his mouth for the next line of the spell, I threw the fireball straight at him. It hit him full in the chest and knocked him back a couple feet. The sidhe blade stopped its dizzying pattern.
"Hit him again," Inigo shouted.
So I did. But this time the fireball bounced harmlessly off the aura shimmering around Alister. It never even touched him. Instead it hit the ground and sent sprays of sparks into the underbrush. I prayed the greenery wouldn't catch fire.
I threw another fireball, and another, but they were useless. Each one bounced off and rolled away to fizzle on the grass. Icicles went the same way.
"It's not working," I shouted to Inigo.
"Fight fire with fire, Morgan."
"But the fire didn't work."
He gave me a withering look. I could have slapped myself in the head. I pulled hard on the Darkness and the Earth. Earth was sidhe magic. Darkness was clearly Alister's.
The two powers roared out of me, the Earth shooting in green tendrils around my arms and legs, burrowing itself into the ground. Mt. Tabor began to shake.
From the center of my being, the Darkness surged, deeper and stronger than ever before. Air joined the fray. The ground shook below me and the air boiled around me in a swirling vortex of dark energy. Then it shot outward, encompassing Alister in the maelstrom. He staggered under the onslaught as the wind ripped at his clothing and the Darkness stole his vision. Beneath him the ground collapsed, and with a scream, he plummeted into the depths of the earth, leaving a single, shining blade lying on the grass.
Chapter Twenty-five
I pulled back the Earth, hauling it inside me using the Wind to whip it along. The two of them sank into me slow and easy, joining the Fire and the Water. Now there was just the Darkness to contend with. With its compatriots gone, and the danger past, it seemed to think it had nothing much to do. With a final triumphant laugh, it joined its brethren. With all my powers back where they belonged, I slid the metaphorical hatch shut and dropped a few bricks on it for good measure, then I sank to the ground, exhausted. With my powers locked away, I could no longer see. I tried not to panic.
"How is he?" I was almost afraid to ask. Alister might be evil as hell, but I didn't relish the thought of telling Kabita I'd killed her father.
I heard Inigo stride up to the edge of the newly formed pit. "He's fine. Mad as hell, and I think he's got a broken leg, but he'll recover."
There was a shout not far off, and I heard rustling in the underbrush. I tensed, waiting for the next onslaught.
"Are you all right, Morgan?" It was Jack, and he sounded concerned. I guessed he had a right to be.
"Yeah, I'll be fine." At least I hoped so. I was so exhausted, I couldn't stand. "It's just, um, I can't see."
"Can't see?" Eddie's voice this time.
"Yeah. I think it might be power burn. I'm fine. Really."
"You don't sound fine to me," Jack said, sounding outraged.
"Calm down, Jack. I'm going to be alright. How is my house?"
"For having been hit simultaneously by fires, floods, and gods know what else, it looks okay. You're going to need to let it dry out, and probably give it a good cleaning and a new paint job, but I think the damage was pretty much limited to the kitchen."
I breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn't like I hadn't had to start over before, but this was my life. This was my home. And I'd really rather not start over if I didn't have to.
I had a sudden thought. "The neighbors." I bet they'd gotten an eyeful tonight.
"No worries. They got to the party late and now there's nothing to see, they're wandering off."
"So, they didn't see me, ah, do anything?"
"No. Wasn't much to see unless you're a supernatural. Kabita told them it rained and put the fire out. Guess they bought it. She's taken charge of the fire department, too."
I bet she had. "Alister," I said.
"He got away, but we'll find him," Jack assured me. I almost smiled at that.
"No, he didn't," Inigo called from the edge of the pit. "Have a look."
I heard footsteps as Jack and Eddie joined him beside Alister's temporary cage.
"Well, I'll be," Eddie murmured.
"Time to call in the big guns," Jack said. I heard the tones of buttons on a phone being pushed, followed by a murmured conversation. Finally Jack hung up and said, "Your brother has people on the way. They'll take care of Alister. Now," he strode back to my side. "We need to get your eyes looked at. They may have been damaged by the fire."
I shook my head. "I don't think it was the fire. Not the physical one anyway."
"Morgan…"
"Why don't I take a look at them?" Eddie suggested.
I turned my head in the direction of the voice. "It's okay, Eddie. It's no big deal."
"Of course not, my dear," he said as he sat down next to me. I felt his hands on my face, turning my head this way and that. "You've got a little power burn, that's all. Just as you surmised. Easily remedied."
Jack made a sound that was something like a snort. Eddie and I ignored him.
"Power burn?" Inigo this time.
"Well, Darkness seems to be Morgan's primary power," Eddie said, patting my hands. "My guess is, when she over-extended her abilities, she suffered a little…side effect. Nothing major."
"Nothing major!" Jack practically shouted. He lowered his voice, probably for the sake of any neighbors that might decide to call the police. "She's blind."
"Only temporarily," Eddie said. He patted my hand again as if to reassure me. "It's the Darkness, you see. It must leave some sort of residual effects. Like an afterimage when a flash bulb goes off."
"But you can fix it, right?" I asked.
"Oh, yes," Eddie assured me. "Just take a deep breath and…."
He touched his fingers to my temple. The lightest touch. Like a butterfly. Screaming pain shot through my skull. I must've screamed along with it, because the next thing I knew, I was lying on my back on the grass with my throat feeling like raw hamburger. Above me, stretched across the vast blackness of the night sky, were a trillion sparkling stars.
# # #
It had taken some doing for Kabita to convince the Portland Fire Department that a) the fire had been a kitchen accident, and b) I'd run off to find my boyfriend because I was scared. Playing faint-hearted female irked me no end, but the last thing we needed were a bunch of awkward questions. Eventually, with nothing to do after checking for hot spots and making sure the house was safe for us to enter, they loaded up and took off for the next crisis. I really should bake them a cake to say thank you, but I'd probably end up poisoning them by accident. Despite my love of cupcakes, baking was not my strong suit.
By the time Trevor's men showed up in the park, the Atlantean grimoire had disappeared into Eddie's lime-green waistcoat, and the amulet was back around my neck. With Alister finally in custody and on his way to Area 51, the only thing we had left to wrap up was the soul vamp technology. That still hadn't been found, and Alister wasn't telling. Technically, I guess there were two things. There was that pesky matter of the hit on my life.
It didn't take long for Inigo to exercise his Internet savvy skills and remove the ad Alister had put up. With him in custody, there was no one left to reinstate the ad once it was taken down. I could finally breathe a sigh of relief. No more vampires jumping out of the bushes to kill me. Well, no more than usual anyway.
Inigo was also able to poke around in Alister's phone and track where he'd been over the past few days. By retracing his steps, we were able to find the soul vamp technology tucked away in a locker in one of those places where you store stuff. The craziest thing of all was that the storage units were right here in Portland. Kabita and I hit the locker on our own, making Inigo promise not to tell anyone. Not Jack or Eddie, and especially not Trevor.
"I'm thinking we shouldn't inform the SRA about this," I said as Kabita and I surveyed the storage unit filled to the brim with random bits of computers and other machinery.
"No kidding. Can you imagine the mess they'd make playing with this stuff?" She kicked at one of the pieces of equipment and it teetered over, hitting the floor with an ear-shattering crash. A tiny smile quirked her lips.
"Oh my gods," I said. "You totally want to reenact that scene from Office Space, don't you?" I was referring to the one where the three main characters take an annoying printer out into the countryside and essentially beat it to death. I'd always thought such an activity would be incredibly satisfying. Especially when my laptop was acting up.
"You better believe it," she said with a grin. "I only wish I had a baseball bat."
I laughed. "Well, let's get to it then. No time like the present."
We may not have had a baseball bat, but the tire iron from the car certainly came in handy. We spent the next twenty or thirty minutes bashing the hell out of the stolen machines. I had no idea what any of them were or what they did, only what the end results had been. And there was no way I was letting anyone do that to another human being. Trapping a human soul inside an undead vampire had to be quite possibly the worst thing one human could do to another. This ended tonight.
Exhausted and dripping with sweat, the two of us finally slumped to the floor amidst the scattered parts. I didn't think even Inigo could put the machines back together again so thoroughly had we damage them.
"Well," Kabita said leaning her head against the wall. "That felt good."
"Almost as good as chopping a vamp's head off," I agreed.
She gave me a look. "Sometimes I worry about you."
"Sometimes I worry about myself." Not about vampires, of course. Killing them was what I did. But there was enough going on with me to cause me plenty of stress. Like all those damn freaking powers. What the hell was going on? What was I? I could only hope I'd find out before something really went wrong.
Kabita heaved a sigh. "I guess we should probably clean this stuff up."
"And do what with it? It's not like we can just send it to the dump. If somebody got their hands on this…"
She pondered that thought for a moment. "I have an idea."
I didn't like her tone. "Uh-huh."
"We sweep it at all up, take it out somewhere nobody can see us, and then you use your Fire on it. Melt it down to nothing. No one will ever be able to use it again."
It wasn't a bad idea except for the whole thing where my powers decided to do whatever the hell they wanted, whenever they wanted. I didn't want to be in the middle of nowhere and have another one of those power burns.
"I have a better idea," I said. "Why don't we do this like normal people for once? Dump a can of gasoline on it and light it on fire."
"Sounds good to me." Kabita got to her feet, dusting off the seat of her pants. "You happen to have a broom handy?"
"Oh, sure. I keep one in my back pocket at all times," I said dryly.
Kabita snorted. "Smartass. You stay here and guard this stuff. I'll go get a broom."
Chapter Twenty-six
"Morgan, we need to talk."
For a split second, everything froze. I was sure I wasn't the only one who likened those three little words 'we need to talk' to the onset of the Apocalypse. I glanced at Inigo out of the corner of my eye as I took a sip of coffee. We were seated across from each other at my kitchen table with all the awkwardness of two people on their first date.
It had been a little over a week since we'd captured Alister, destroyed the soul vamp technology, and very nearly burned my house down. Alister was in a temporary holding cell somewhere outside Los Angeles while they got his permanent residence at Area 51 set up. I guessed he was a "special case" and needed a sturdier cage than most. The tech for making soul vamps was in a melted puddle of plastic and metal not far from Tommy's place. And Kabita, Eddie, Inigo, and I had worked around the clock putting my house to rights. You couldn't even tell there'd been a fire. I wished Inigo's and my relationship was as easy to put back together.
I set my coffee cup down very gently. "Okay," I said, bracing for what was to come. "Go ahead. Talk."
He didn't look at me. He stared down at the coffee mug in his hands as though it held the mysteries of the universe. "I know things haven't been the same," he said finally. "Between us, I mean."
"No. They haven't." What else was there to say?
"I know I've been an ass to you. And I'm sorry." He glanced up then, quickly, and then back down at his mug. "It's not right, me treating you this way. It's not your fault what happened. I know that, but I can't seem to get my head on straight."
I cleared my throat. "Tanith says it will just take time." It sounded lame even to my ears.
"Yeah. She told me that too. She didn't tell me how much time." He shook his head. "I'd hoped coming home would move the process along, but it hasn't. I just feel…I don't know. Out of place? Sort of…distant. Like nothing's quite real. I'm not sure how to explain it."
"It's okay, Inigo. I get it." And I did. Trust me, dying at the hands of a vampire was enough to send anyone into a feeling of displacement. It had taken a long time for me to come around. To recover the person I'd once been. Scratch that. I'd never recovered the person I'd once been. That innocence was gone forever, but at least I'd gained back some of her joy, her strength, her wonder. Maybe, in time, Inigo would get back his.