A Discovery of Secrets and Fate (Chronicles of the Stone Veil 2)

I have no clue how he followed us. I thought I looked over my shoulder frequently as we made our way to our car. It would have to have been an incredible stroke of luck for him to have a car nearby to be able to follow us. I guess he could have taken a cab, but still… it just doesn’t make sense.

Bottom line, though, I didn’t think he was a threat once we left the bar. I underestimated his power and determination. I was careless, and it got Adira killed.

I may as well have killed her myself.

I look out the door I’d left open, straight into the backyard. My whip lies within the illumination of the floodlights, having fallen to the ground when Wade’s body disappeared. It must have happened as I walked from his dead body toward the garage to check on Adira. I can imagine how it happened as I’d seen it once before when Carrick killed the succubus in that alley. Wade’s body would have started to turn black. Then wisps of smoke and ash would rise from his carcass, filtering his remains upward into the air until he completely dissipated.

There’s a tiny bit of burn inside of me that wishes Wade were still here, and I could kill him all over again.

For Adira.

The tears start welling in my eyes again, and it’s abhorrent to me how much I’ve cried since all of this started a little more than a week ago.

One moment, I’m looking at my whip lying on the ground through the open doorway—somewhat hazy from the film of tears in my eyes—and the next, Carrick stands there staring down at me inscrutably, causing me to rein my emotions in.

His eyes move briefly to Adira’s face, then to my hand holding hers, and back to my own face. When he enters, I see Zaid right behind him, his normally grumpy expression gone. To my surprise, there is a bit of empathy as he shakes his head while staring at Adira.

Carrick moves to me, towering far above. I don’t bother tipping my head back, instead tightening my grip on Adira’s hand and gazing at her face, so beautiful even in death.

“Come on, Finley,” Carrick says gruffly, extending a hand down to me. “Time to let her go.”

I don’t act immediately, rather spending a bit more time grieving for the loss of my friend. I know I’ll spend more time doing so in the future, but other things need to be done right now.

Slipping my hand from Adira’s, I press two of my fingers to my lips and then transfer the goodbye kiss to Adira’s. I then put my palm in Carrick’s and let him pull me up from the floor, groaning at the aches emanating from all over my body from my fight with Wade.

Carrick leads me outside of Adira’s garage room, and I look back to see Zaid squatting beside her a moment, murmuring something. When we’re a few feet from the door, Carrick turns to face me, dropping my hand. “What happened?”

Before I can answer, Zaid walks out to join us, and I get distracted. “What were you saying in there?”

“A journey prayer,” Zaid replies, and I’m a bit shocked Zaid even cares enough about anything to utter a prayer. That opens a whole slew of new questions such as who does Zaid even pray to and are there churches that daemons go to?

But I shake my head. Not important, so I turn to answer Carrick’s question. I give both men a short rundown of what happened at the bar, how there were two of them, and how we both were put under the incubuses sexual compulsion.

“It made me want to do things I most certainly didn’t want to do,” I say with a grimace, repressing a full-body shudder. Carrick’s eyes glint with fury, but he remains quiet as I lay out the story in as much detail as possible, including how I somehow managed to repel the sexual compulsion from the feather on my leg. Carrick stopped my story, making me recount the tiniest of details. I tell him about coiling the energy, the feather burning, then releasing it outward.

“And what happened when you released it?” Carrick asks in wonderment.

“I became completely clear-headed. It broke his compulsion, but I also think it broke some of the hold on Adira, too.”

“Fascinating,” Zaid murmurs.

“Clearly that feather is some type of mark of the powers you’re just discovering,” Carrick ponders out loud. “Sort of like the way Titus’ tattoo is imbued with Semper Terra’s magic.”

I had considered this obviously, but I have no clue how I did what I did. It was fear and desperation that brought the abilities out.

“Then what happened?” Carrick asks.

I explain how we left the bar, and I had thought we got away safely, how I found Wade in Adira’s room, how she fell to the floor from just a kiss. I recounted the fight up my stairs, the battle in my small room, and how I managed to get my whip and run to more open ground to use it.