CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
When Emma managed to get ahold of herself, wiping tears from her eyes, she managed to speak through the last few unhinged giggles.
“So let me get this straight. My options are to either die to save the world, or to stay alive and be tortured until my humanity is ripped from me.” Her voice hit a hysterical pitch which made Travis’s face flash through my mind. “All so I can keep the darkness from coming, whatever that means. Which, by the way, no one has ever said what it means.” By the end, she was shouting. Two tears rolled from her eyes and raced each other down her cheeks. Her arms hugged at either elbow as if she was afraid she would blow away into pieces at any moment.
Phillip’s eyes crinkled in wariness of her strange behavior. “Well, it certainly doesn’t point to anything good, does it?”
Emma’s voice had dropped, her words coming out hoarse now. “No, I suppose not. And you want Calan over here to become a murderer so he can get rid of your Order’s problems?”
Regina’s small hands balled into fists, blue veins along the tops of them protruding from her tight grip. “They have treated him abominably. The Luxis have turned him into a weapon against us.”
Emma snorted with derision at Regina, as if she were lower than pond scum. “You’re just pissed he wasn’t your weapon. Hell, you want to make me into a weapon. Let’s everybody be weapons,” She waved her hands around, then dropped them to her sides. “You don’t care about him as your son. You just want one more soldier for your ranks. You want to use him to make the Luxis suffer.”
I took a step back, the words slapped me in the face, disorienting me. When I came to my senses, Regina and Phillip looked at me pleadingly. They could see Emma’s words had affected me. They seemed to recognize it before I did, but following the shock, realization came like pile of bricks upon my head.
“No, no, son,” Phillip implored. “We need you, we have missed you. You just have to do this small task, then we can take you back into the fold.”
“To do what?” Emma growled at them, which was unnerving considering her slight frame. “To force him to continue to play spy against his old Order? How long before you send him back to kill another one of his Masters? How long before you send him into the Temple, only he knows so well, to steal things your Order needs? Your loyalty is entirely to your Order. It’s not to your son. He’s just an afterthought. Your Order is just as manipulative as the Luxis.” Her face screwed up in disgust. “It is actually almost worse that you are so openly honest about it.”
“Do not speak of the order of Veritas in such a way.” Phillip’s voice boomed through the small wooden house.
My heart sank into my stomach. Phillip looked at me, realizing his mistake. He showed where his one true devotion lie.
“She’s right,” I said, the words soft to my own ears. “I am just a tool to you. Just as I was to the Luxis. I’m something you can bring to your Order as an offering of service. Revenge for what was taken from you.”
Regina rushed up to me, and Emma stepped back allowing it. My mother reached up, clutching at my shoulders, forcing me to look down into her perfectly matching blue eyes. How I could have ignored the familial resemblance before seemed preposterous to me now. “You can come home. You’ll have a home. We can work together. We can be united in our hate for the Luxis. Don’t you want revenge?”
“No.” I gently removed her hands off me. “I know what I want now. I don’t want to fight anymore.” I looked up at Emma. She swallowed hard and set her chin, she knew my pain. She always seemed to know my pain.
Regina’s eyes darted back and forth between mine, looking for a shred of give, but when she did not find it, her expression hardened, bringing out all the lines in her face. “You may not have a choice.”
“She is wrong, my son,” Phillip said, not done trying yet. “We do care about you.” His voice was strained, and his eyes too hungry all of a sudden.
“Then what is his name?” Emma asked softly.
I turned to look at her, and saw she stared at my father with open disappointment.
“His name?” Phillip asked, perplexed.
“You haven’t even asked what his name is.”
“You want us to call him by the nametheygave him?” Regina spit the words.
I worked to clear my face of any emotion and pulled my shoulders back. “I named myself. They do not give damned, soulless children names, we are merely wards to the Masters. So we gave them to ourselves after our third mission in the world.” Before Regina could open her mouth again, I said, “I will not fight this war anymore. I don’t want any part in your squabbles. I just want Emma and me to be left in peace.” I nodded to her, to indicate we were leaving. Emma stepped in closer to me. “Don’t try to follow us, or I’ll be forced to show you the true nature of single-minded fanaticism.”
Regina’s face cooled like a lake freezing over, smoothing itself of any lines or emotion. Phillip squared his shoulders and came to stand next to Regina, only the crude table between us. “I’m sorry my son, but surely you realize we cannot let her leave. The Propheros must undergo the reckoning. It is our only hope.”
I saw his hand move to his belt toward his knife, while my mother reached into her pants pocket. Her fist was closed around something, but through the fingers I saw pale green, glowing light. She had a sacred object with her, just as I carried moonstones.
I looked down at Emma’s face. It was etched in defiance toward my parents and I could have kissed her right then just to feel how alive she was, and for courage, but I resisted. Instead, I flicked my eyes behind us toward the large window opening. Her lips tightened and I knew she understood.
“Well then,” I said slowly, turning to face my parents again while taking a few steps backward with Emma. They advanced in kind, but they were too late. “You better figure out a plan B,” I said, mimicking the informality in which Emma and Travis spoke. With that I grabbed Emma’s arm and yanked her along with me as I dove backward out the open window.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Iheard the sound of someone tripping over the table and watched as a green light zoomed just over my body as we fell away from the treehouse. It came so close, I felt a numbing tingle emanate from it. It was meant to paralyze me, but they were too late. I felt rather than heard Emma stifle a scream as we fell. I grasped her hand harder before letting go. I spun in the air until I was falling face down, then closed my eyes, and waited for the inevitable.
We hit the sticky net hard, but it was rigid enough that it dipped less than ten feet under our weight before springing us back up. By my estimate, there were still thirty feet between us and the ground. The web had only two corners, giving it the appearance of an oversized hammock. Having deliberately fallen toward one of the two taut corners of the web, the spring had been less giving and my body immediately bruised from the hard impact.
