New Sight (26 page)

Another place. Lys recognized it as the smoldering ruins of Los Angeles. Below her sat a little girl, all alone in the middle of the street. She knew this dream. Only now she understood. This wasn’t a dream. It was real. The little girl looked up, revealing her oily, black eyes.

Touch users. So many broke at once that the world broke, too, leaving nothing but pain and terror behind. Military and governments no longer had power. Now the touch users had control. They fought one another. Some of them tried to help others, but most just wanted more power, more magic. They used until they killed their perceived enemies, then they died. One man was everywhere, his sapphire blue eyes swirling. His influence was that of a god, and he used it to send the world into further chaos. She saw his face and screamed.

The sound jerked Lys back
into her own awareness.

“Keep the circle closed,” Mr. Mason’s voice said. “Ayden, this one is yours.”

Lys didn’t want to open her eyes, afraid that she would find the world destroyed.

“Is she going to be okay?” Ayden asked.

“She’s fine,” Mr. Mason said. “We need to finish this.”

Finish it? Lys forced her eyes open and found herself on her knees, still holding onto Ayden’s and the young girl’s hands. It took a moment for the wall of perspectives to resolve into a half dozen or so. Lys was still at the arch. They hadn’t finished the ritual.

They could stop it. They could stop the future that she’d just witnessed.

“Don’t,” she said, the words coming out as a raspy whisper. She looked up at Ayden. “Please, don’t do this.”

A golden glow already surrounded Ayden, but he looked down at her. “What?”

Tears poured from her eyes. “If we finish this, it will destroy the world.”

Ayden narrowed his eyes. Lys could see the elation there from the magic, but somehow he had more control than she did. “What do you mean?” he asked.

Mr. Mason stepped over Lys and Ayden’s arms, going inside the circle. “She’s crashing,” he said. “We have to finish this now.” He moved between Ayden and the plug. “Do it, now.”

Rage cut through her fog. “I know what I saw.” She clenched her teeth together. “If we do this, the world ends.”

“The world will not end.” Mr. Mason’s eyes went from their brilliant blue to a swirling pool of sapphires. “You will all finish this, now.”

Those eyes! She’d seen those eyes in her vision. Mr. Mason was the man controlling the world.

“It’s you.” Lys said, leaning back. “You’re the one who—”

“Finish it,” Mr. Mason interrupted. The words obliterated Lys’s conviction.

When Lys heard Kamau influence the gas station clerk with his voice, Kamau had been smooth and evocative. Leading, guiding, and suggesting rather than forcing. Lys never considered the possibility that he could impose his will on anyone. Maybe he couldn’t do it with sound.

Apparently Mr. Mason could. Obligation overran Lys’s emotions. More memories of her family and friends surfaced—smells from her house, school, and growing up coming through her nose—but so did the irrational fear that they would all die. She didn’t want to do this, but her emotions had control, and Mason must have control of them, because Lys couldn’t find the courage or energy to resist.

Beside her, Ayden stiffened. He nodded, and Lys felt the power in him gathering. Mr. Mason put a hand on each of Ayden’s shoulders. The power spiked, light spilled out of Ayden’s mouth, but instead of going to the plug and the runes—which cracked but did not break—most of it went into Mr. Mason.

Lys didn’t know what the others could sense, but with sight magic Lys could see the golden power fill Mason. Only he didn’t let it go. Instead, once the transfer was complete, he stumbled back, now glowing like Ayden had been.

The hold Mason had on her mind stuttered, and Lys used every bit of will power she had left to wrench her hand free of Ayden’s.

The young girl next to her jerked her hand out of Lys’s. As she did so, her hijab fell away, revealing who could only be Kamau’s sister underneath. Mason had had her all along.

Ayden fell to his knees, watching Mr. Mason. “What have you done?” Ayden asked, fear in his eyes. “We’re supposed to be freeing the magic.”

Mr. Mason laughed. “That’s right, son. Soon I will have more magic than anyone else has ever had.”

Lys looked between the two men. Son?

More perspectives blossomed in her head, revealing the black-clad figures of the New, a moment before they attacked.

Chapter 33

A dozen
of the New along with Mark, Inez, Brady, Peter, Kamau, and a handful of other magic users appeared. Lys could see everything at once. The New, in their black body armor, trying to net the magic users. Mark appeared behind the touch user in the circle. Blue light flashed, and the man fell to the ground. Brady faced off with two of Mason’s users. He started throwing rocks that Peter gave him. Lys could see Inez’s magic—red and jagged—leaving her hands as she pointed at other users. Two of them went immediately to their knees. The others got caught by Brady’s rocks right before he flung them off the cliff using his towel trick. Kamau ran to his sister as Ayden reached out to his father, who now stood in the middle of the cracked runes, bathing in the power.

Faster than Lys could make out, one of the touch users snatched Mason from the bowl and spirited him away.

“Where is he going?” one of the New asked Lys.

“The path,” she said, pointing.

Six users joined Mason. Lys could just make them out through the blinding light coming from the outlet. Mason and the others ran toward the entrance to the path. They were going to get away.

Five members of the New, along with Brady, Peter, and Inez, advanced on them. Mason’s sound user opened his mouth, and two of the touch users held their hands out in front of them. A wave of pain hit Lys like a truck, causing her to double over.

Mason. The man from the end of the world. They couldn’t let him get away.

She scrambled to her hands and knees. To her horror, she saw Mason being tossed into the air like a rag doll. He arched far along the path only to be caught by a touch user. A moment later they were all gone. Several of the magic users, and four of the New, went after them.

Chaos erupted around Lys. The people with the New yelled back and forth, trying to figure out if they could re-plug the outlet. Kamau held his crying sister in his arms. Inez and Peter tried to help a struggling Brady to his feet, but the magic, which had started to latch onto people like clinging rose vines, had him so entwined that he could hardly move. Lys tried to stand but couldn’t. So instead she scooted along the ground until she reached Ayden. He hadn’t moved since Mason had been swept away.

“Ayden?” she asked. He sat staring after the retreating form of his father. “Ayden, we have to plug this back up.”

He slowly shook his head. “We don’t have the right people.” He turned to look at her. “And even if we did, I’m not sure we could do it. Can you do that again?” Pain filled his swirling, golden eyes.

Lys turned to the seal. “We have to try.”

“I can’t even move,” Ayden said.

“That magic is going crazy,” she said. Bits of stone kept breaking off and rising to the top of the arch in the fountain of power.

The crash hit her without warning. She gasped, and the magic pulled her down, hitting the ground with a hollow thump. The abyss within her opened up, dark and inviting. It whispered for her to become one with it. The world was going to end anyway; she didn’t want to be around for that.

Fear dissipated, only to be replaced by defeat. What could she do to help? She only wanted one thing—to be erased from the universe. Maybe if she had never existed, she would be able to stop feeling pain and loss. The darkness began to intertwine with the magic. Part of her burned from heat and the other from cold. Her mouth went dry, and she could taste death. At some point she must have closed her eyes because black engulfed her. Not even overlapping images or the sight of a destroyed world came into her mind. The darkness called to her, enticed her and promised that it would be more kind than the world she would leave behind. She believed it.

“Lysandra.”

The voice came from the darkness. No, it came through the darkness.

“Lysandra, don’t leave us.”

She didn’t recognize the voice; it belonged to a young woman.

But I want to go,
Lys said in her mind.
I just want to rest.

“We need you,”
the voice insisted. “
Kamau needs you.”

Kamau? The name hardly meant anything to her. Nothing did.

“I think he likes you,”
the voice said.
“He’ll be sad if you leave us.”

Likes me? Lys tried to concentrate, no easy task with the darkness blocking out the light. Kamau. A pair of dark eyes appeared, then a smile. She could see him, but he betrayed her.

“Lys,” a deeper voice prompted. “Stay with us.”

The sound brought her back. It cut through the dark like lightning, leaving Lys an escape route. She mentally propelled herself toward the opening, reaching for what lay beyond.

Gasping, Lys opened her eyes. She lay on the hard stone, her head in Kamau’s lap with his sister holding her hand. Cold still filled her, and Lys started to shake.

I told you we could get her back.
The words came from Kamau’s sister, only Lys heard them in her mind.

Kamau smiled in relief. “Are you alright?”

Lys sat up, shaking and dizzy. The magic in the rocks beneath her began again to twine up her arms and legs. Before it grabbed her, Lys rose shakily to her feet. The runes, were they gone?

Please don’t let them be gone,
Lys thought.

“Lys!” Kamau said, following her. “What are you doing?”

She didn’t answer. She lurched over to the plug, and stopped. More than half of the rune pattern had been blown away. The magic leaked out through the missing chunks.

“Lys,” Kamau said again, coming up next to her. “We need to get out of here.” His hand brushed her arm. She wanted to bury her face in his shoulder, but instead she turned away. She couldn’t think about him—about them—now. Her eyes found his sister. Maybe she would understand.

“We can’t leave it like this,” Lys said. “It will destroy everything.”

The girl nodded.

“We don’t have the right people to stop it,” Kamau argued. “And the New can’t do it.” He waved a hand, and Lys saw that the New had retreated, back beyond the arch.

“Kamau.” Lys looked into his eyes. She didn’t know what she felt for him, or which side he worked for, but he was a decent person, and surely he didn’t want the world destroyed. “We have to try.” A tear trickled down her cheek. “Everyone will die if we don’t. I saw the future. If this thing blows, all of the touch users in the world will break at once.”

Kamau frowned down at her.

She’s right.
Kamau’s sister’s voice came in her mind again.

“But we don’t have a taste or a touch user.” This was Ayden, who walked over to them.

“I’m a touch user.” They all turned to see Peter and Inez dragging Brady toward them. The magic had Brady encased like a second layer of clothes. “And Inez here is a taste user.”

“But you’re not neutrals,” Ayden insisted.

Brady shrugged. “We could try, or we could leave.” He looked at Lys. “But if what she just said is true, if she saw the future, and all of the touch users break at once, leaving is pointless.”

“You really saw the future?” Inez asked.

Lys nodded.

“Will you help us?” Brady asked Inez. He held her hand.

Inez looked first at the leaking magic—Lys wondered if Inez could even see it—and then at Brady. “Why?”

“Why?” Brady raised his eyebrows. “Because even though this world can be terrible, that doesn’t mean it should end. Not like this.”

Inez gazed at him for a moment before her eyes turned to Peter. A tiny smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. Then she looked over at Lys. “You’re going to try?”

Lys nodded. “Yes.”

“And you?” She directed this question to Ayden. “Why would you help us? Aren’t you still with your daddy?”

Ayden shook his head. “It wasn’t supposed to happen like this,” he said softly. “My brother was a smell user, just like Mason and me. When he broke—he was just seven years old—he never came out of it.” He stopped, taking a deep breath. “We had to kill him. No one else was supposed to have to go through it like that. That’s why we . . . at least that’s why I thought we were doing all of this.” He glanced around at each of them. “I guess I was wrong.”

Mark appeared in the circle. “Why don’t you let me do it?” he asked, looking at Brady.

In her mind’s eye, Lys could see the book from Mason’s library. The five magic users. The fighting. The one that was saved.

“Brady has to do it,” Lys said. Everyone looked at her. “Be-because we need a healer.”

“A healer?” Mark asked. “How do you know?” His gaze bore into Lys.

“I saw it,” she said, “in Mason’s book. In the scene I saw the touch user heal one of the others.”

Ayden and Mark exchanged an eyebrow-raised glance.

“You didn’t see it?” Lys asked, a lump rising in her throat.

Brady bent down and placed his fingertips on the pulsing stone. He closed his eyes. “I can feel it,” he said. His eyebrows furrowed together. “I can feel the cracks like Mark’s leg.” Eyes opening, Brady looked at Lys. “I think I can fix it.”

A burst of magic forced them all to flinch away. Lys saw another chunk of the runes disappear.

“If we’re going to try, we need to do it now,” she said. “The plug is almost gone.”

“I will do it,” Kamau said, looking at his sister. She shook her head. Neither spoke, but after a moment Kamau nodded. “Please, be careful.”

The girl stepped forward and took Lys’s hand. She held out her other hand for Inez. Inez accepted and Brady gave her a quick peck on the cheek. Lys saw the other girl smile. Why was it that in the midst of saving the world that she would be so happy for those two? Lys felt Kamau’s fingers squeeze her shoulder as she took Ayden’s hand.

Mark and Peter stepped back, and the moment the others got into position and linked, Lys felt an even more overwhelming force assault her than before. The magic felt more demanding this time. Like the Need and the frog—a primal instinct, and something she wasn’t sure she could control.

Inez gasped and Brady stood stunned for a few seconds.

“Try to balance the magic,” Lys said.

“Balance?” Inez asked, her voice strained. “You want me to balance this?”

Whereas before the magic had been beautiful, now it was flaring and pulsing. The vine-like tendrils jerked back and forth, writhing like snakes. Even the golden light changed, turning more brown.

Ayden spoke. “Brady has a lot of extra power. Try to dial it back a bit kid, and the rest of us will have to let it loose.”

Let it loose?

You can control it.
The words came in Lys’s mind—Kamau’s sister again.

Lys wondered how the girl spoke directly into her thoughts, but didn’t ask. She didn’t believe the words anyway. She couldn’t resist the pull. If she had to go in again, Lys knew she wouldn’t come back out. She wished she could tell her parents she loved them one last time.

Before she could change her mind, Lys obliterated the wall holding her magic back. Power rushed through her body like a song. Every nerve ending tingled, and her senses exploded. She felt like she was glowing brighter than the sun.

“This first one is mine,” Ayden said. His voice came as a surprise. Lys had almost forgotten their purpose.

Lys watched Ayden’s face as magic that had been shot through the top of the arch got pulled back and into him. The glow returned, now angry brown instead of golden. Ayden’s features contorted in pain and anguish. His hand clamped down around Lys’s, and sweat trickled down from his hair.

“What did they look like?” he asked in a raspy voice. “The runes,” he said, looking at Lys.

Lys found that she could recall the symbols with exactly clarity. She fixed them in her mind and did her best to infuse them into the stream of magic. It must have worked because he closed his eyes and shot the magic from his body back into the plug.

In an almost reversal of what had happened a few minutes before, the chunks of stone dropped from the magical fountain, back onto the plug. The stones glowed red hot for a moment, looking like cooling lava, before the runes resealed and the symbol of a nose settled in place.

Ayden went to his knees, but his hands did not let go.

“You’re next,” he said, looking up at Lys.

In her whole life, she never imagined that she would be called upon to bear a burden such as this. She remembered all too clearly the way the magic made her feel as she pulled the plug, and Lys was certain that she would not be able to go through it again. Not and be sane afterward.

As she closed her eyes, she silently said goodbye to her life, her family and all that she held dear. The magic would consume her, leaving nothing behind but want and need. But if the rest of the world could go on, she would do it.

Lys called the magic back to her. The flow from the arch slowed, and as she continued to pull, it reversed directions. Power started to fill her, and it took only a few seconds before she once again felt like a balloon about to pop.

The thought of letting it go hurt more than Kamau’s betrayal had. Her stomach wrenched inside of her body, and tears poured down her cheeks.

“Do it,” Ayden said.

Lys let the power linger for a split second, before she shoved it back at the plug, putting the image of what the symbols looked like with the magic.

A stream of magic shot from her and hit the plug like a fist against a board. The runes reappeared, as did the stone, and a moment later, her part was done.

As soon as the last of the power left her, Lys knew why people killed themselves. Not one scrap of happiness, light, or hope remained in her.

“Just let me die,” she said in a whisper as she too went to her knees.

“Sound is next,” Ayden said, his voice hollow. Lys wondered how he could keep going if he felt anything like she did.

“I am ready,” Kamau’s sister said.

Lys knelt on the ground. Her head weighed a ton, and her eyeballs would barely swivel to look at Kamau’s sister’s feet.

“You have to hold on,” Kamau’s voice said in Lys’s ear. “You must help them finish.”

Lys didn’t even have the energy to shake her head, or tell him to leave her alone. He didn’t understand. How could he? He’d never really been affected by the crashes.