Night Rises: The Awakened Magic Saga (Soul Forge Book 2) Read online

  It stole my will. It stole everything that made me who I was. All I needed was one breath of air. Just one. I pulled at the water with flailing arms. Nothing happened.

  The water stung my eyes. I could barely see. Still, I forced my eyes to stay open. To keep myself among the living. If I gave up, I’d drown.

  I understood all too well. I knew that river intimately. I’d seen it in my nightmares all week.

  I knew how to twist the fear Faith felt. How to ratchet up the fear so high, it would stop her heart.

  I grabbed hold of the river inside of her. Of the impossible, overwhelming pressure in her chest. Her body’s instinct to breathe in, knowing that if she did, killing water would fill her lungs. She couldn’t stop it. She couldn’t save herself. She’d been brought there to the river to see whether she’d survive. She’d failed. She’d been brought there to die.

  God wasn’t coming to help her. No one would come. No one would save her.

  She opened her mouth. Only a second—maybe two—before she drew in the killing breath.

  I wrapped my magic around her like a vise. A grip that could not be broken. A deadly weight that could not be lifted. I squeezed.

  Her thoughts rained on me, hard as bullets.

  God isn’t coming. No one coming. Not even the Rose.

  The Rose of Death. That had been what my mentor in the Order called me—what everyone there had called me. Rose.

  The operative masquerading as my daughter was remembering me. As if I’d been there the night she’d nearly died. In the river, being tested. An icy, rainy, windy hell, clouds soaring across the starry face of the night. The sadness inside her overwhelmed her fear of dying.

  I stopped squeezing. I didn’t let her go, but I didn’t kill her.

  Sunday’s breath came fast and hard. “Is it Faith? It’s not her. It can’t be.”

  Nothing in the operative’s memory reflected the slightest trace of my girl. The fact that they looked just like Faith, down to the finest detail, rocked me to the marrow.

  I shook my head. “No, it’s not my kid.”

  She glanced past the operative and me, toward Red. “You hurt?”

  “No,” he said. “What the hell’s going on?”

  “This is a chameleon,” Sunday said. “Look, Red.”

  Red stepped toward us. “Holy Hell.”

  “It’s more than that,” I said. “I recognize him.”

  “Him?” Red asked.

  At that moment, the body that looked like my daughter’s began to shift. The face grew razor stubble and a square jaw. The chameleon grew taller—to around six-two. His arms thickened. His chest became wider, stronger. His black hair stretched several more inches, weaving itself together until it hung in a long braid to his waist. His halo had a peculiar purple cast to it, like a nasty bruise. Or a slick of oil, its sheen shifting and changing.

  The clothes he’d worn—clothes that looked like Faith’s—were so tight now, they cut off his circulation.

  I moved toward Sunday and the chameleon, hunkering down beside them. I wanted to take the final step with the chameleon more than anything. Squeeze the life out of him. Leave him nothing but a sack of bones.

  But there was something else going on here. Something that scared me almost as much.

  How did chameleons copy other people’s flesh and blood? How did they impersonate them so successfully? Did they have to touch their targets to do it? Did they have to kill them?

  I spoke inside his mind. Did you hurt Faith?

  The question hung suspended between us for a long moment. I held my breath.

  No, he said.

  It wasn’t possible for him to lie to me while I had his mind in my grasp. At least, no one had ever been able to do so before.

  Where is she? I asked.

  With her friends, he said. Safe and sound. I didn’t touch a hair on her head.

  Inch by careful inch, I slipped from the depths of the chameleon’s memory, keeping my hold on him secure as I began to split my attention between the chameleon’s mind and my own. I didn’t dare take my eyes off of him or loosen my grip, but I could sense Sunday well enough beside me—all of her now, not just her voice and breath.

  Heat rose from her body, from the fight and from her magic, bridling beneath the surface and coiled to strike, her halo a spiral of crimson and gold. I felt Red in the far corner of the room, near the door to my bedroom. I could smell the grass and earth of his magic, the perfume of the wild world after a rain.

  Sunday was talking. I honed in on her words.

  “No surprise you recognize him,” she said. “He’s one of us. What’s it matter?”

  “I mean I know him,” I said. “Or knew him. He’s supposed to be dead.”

  Sunday fisted her hand around his braid and hauled his head up a couple of inches. He turned his face away from hers.

  “Not going to blind you unless you ask for it,” she said.

  He mulled that over for a minute, then decided to take her at her word. He looked at her, deep brown eyes measuring carefully.

  He had the cheekbones I remembered, and the same mouth. No smile lines—no frown lines, either. He’d rarely smiled when we’d known him. He’d saved those for when he felt safe.

  When had we ever felt safe?

  Sunday narrowed her eyes, studying the lines of his face. “Can’t be.”

  Across the room, Red cleared his throat. “You want to tell me what’s going on?”

  The operative sighed. His voice was a sweet tenor, deeper than I remember, but then it would be. He was a man now.

  “Hey,” he said.

  Impersonate my daughter, infiltrate my house, try to kill me—and all he had to offer was Hey? Jesus.

  “Miguel,” I said.

  “Miguel?” Red asked. “Miguel from the nightmare this morning?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  I’d mourned him all those years ago, after the mentors had picked up Sunday and me from the dock at the riverside, soaked and shivering and half-drowned.

  The ride back to the base in the van with no windows had been somber. Sunday, wrapped in a dark green Army surplus blanket, had drawn her knees to her chest and put her head down. She’d been a world unto herself. I’d stared, stone-faced, at the floor of the van, fixated on a slew of pebbles that rolled on the matted dark gray carpet with every bump and turn. I’d shrugged off the blanket the mentors had given me. If I’d been cold, I hadn’t felt it at all. I hadn’t felt anything except the vibration from the engine and the roll of the tires on pavement.

  After we returned, the mentors put each of us in separate, sterile rooms with walls so white, they practically glowed in the dark. The full-sized bed swallowed me. The weight of the white cotton sheets and the single white wool blanket were too stifling. I couldn’t stand the feel of them. It took some time before the cold that remained inside of me surfaced on my skin and the fine hairs on my arms rose like antennae, and some time after that before I pulled up the covers. It took even longer for the first tear to well in my eye.

  I had so few people I liked. So few people I could count on. Now I had one less. And whatever Miguel had hoped would happen to him—whatever dreams he’d had—they’d slipped to the bottom of the river along with him.

  Sunday sneaked out of her room and into mine, heaven only knew how—rules didn’t apply to her. She’d crawled into bed with me and wrapped me in her arms while I shook, the heat of her magic rising from her body then the way it did now. She’d held me until sleep overtook me. She was still holding me when I woke.

  I blinked away the memory. I looked hard at the man on my floor, superimposing the face and body of the Miguel I’d known. He’d had super-strength back then, with a halo like steel. He was still damn strong, but his strength didn’t seem as daunting to me as it had before, and now his halo shone purple, a shimmer blurring its edges.

  I didn’t understand.

  People’s halos didn’t change. People were born with a certain quali
ty of life force—particular talents, skills, and abilities that reflected the core of who they were—and no matter what else changed about them, the character of their life force, of their halos, never did.

  “You sure he’s not faking?” Sunday asked. “This isn’t some kind of chameleon trick?”

  I shook my head.

  “His memories?” she asked.

  I wasn’t infallible. It was possible I was wrong, but I didn’t think so. I’d stake my life on it—that was what we were talking about here, to be clear. My life, and everyone else’s. “They’re real.”

  I met Miguel’s gaze. “Where’s the Order been hiding you all these years?”

  He hesitated.

  Sunday pulled his head back a little more. He winced. She grinned.

  “You know hurting me won’t get you anywhere,” he said.

  “I know,” she said. “I’m just enjoying myself.”

  Miguel’s mouth curved in a half-smile. His eyes lit with it exactly the way I remembered. “You haven’t changed at all.”

  “You have,” I said. “The life force you carry has been altered.”

  His smile faded. “Caught that, did you?”

  “Your super-strength,” I said. “Where’s it gone?”

  “Away,” he said. “They took most of it and used it to make me into something else.”

  I didn’t think that could be done either, but I was staring at the evidence.

  “Why am I still alive?” he asked.

  “Because of who you used to be,” I said.

  “Because of who I used to be to you, you mean.”

  I held his gaze.

  “Kill me and get it over with,” he said.

  I looked at Sunday. Her eyes and the set of her mouth hardened. She pulled Miguel’s head back a little further, then slammed it down again into the remains of the table.

  He blacked out.

  Red took a cautious step toward us. “What now?”

  “Now we take him to my place and tie him up,” Sunday said. “See what we can get out of him.”

  “We should get him outta here now,” Red said. “That was a lot of ruckus for early on a Sunday morning. Chances are, y’all woke at least one of the neighbors.”

  The good news was that someone would knock before they’d call the cops. The bad news was that someone would knock.

  Not a second later, my phone chimed from its spot on the nightstand. Incoming text. I could guess who’d sent it—the only one of the neighbors with my number. She’d exchanged contact info with me the day after Faith and I had moved in, saying we women needed to watch out for each other. She’d keep an eye on my place if I kept an eye on hers.

  Red ran to grab the phone without being asked. He replied to the text on his way back into the front room. “Telling her a friend’s visiting. Fell and broke the coffee table. Seems fine, but we’ll be leaving in a minute to get them checked out anyway. Sorry for the noise, blah blah.”

  “Nice work,” I said.

  “You want to carry Miguel out the door, you got cover,” Red said.

  I stuck out my hand. “Phone.”

  He passed it to me. I put the phone on speaker and dialed at light speed.

  Faith picked up just before the call went to voice mail. She sounded groggy, as if I’d woken her. “Night? What’s up?”

  I exhaled a shuddering breath, pressing a hand to my heart. “Where are you?”

  “The usual,” she said. “Ben’s.”

  Ben’s house was hangout central. They could talk about magic there. Practice all they wanted. Get themselves into trouble. All without the prying eyes of parents, given that Ben’s dad traveled all the time. Ben’s place was also a couple of blocks from Red’s gym, where Red had planned to head after breakfast. One class on the schedule today.

  I didn’t want Faith to come home. The Order would send a follow-up crew, and the apartment would be the first stop. That made the gym the closest safe space.

  Red closed the distance between us. “Stay there. I’ll pick you up on the way to the gym.”

  The sleep vanished from her voice. “What’s wrong?”

  “The Order,” I said.

  Her voice shook. “You’re okay?”

  “We’re fine. We’re taking care of it. The operative they sent is a chameleon, Faith.”

  I’d told her about chameleons, just like every other type of operative we could run into. Forewarned, forearmed.

  “Is?” she asked.

  Sunday set her hands on her hips. “He’s not dead yet, kiddo. Have a little faith.”

  Faith usually laughed at that, but not this time. “I’ll tell the others.”

  I hoped the other kids were ready. I hoped Faith was. “Just be careful, all right?”

  “I love you, too, Night.” Faith hung up.

  “Thank God,” Red said.

  “I’ll do my thanking when I lay eyes on her,” I said.

  Sunday stood up and fished her keys out of her front pocket. “Red, can you go get my car and bring it up to the back lot? It’s two blocks west on the left side of the street. White Mustang.”

  He looked from her to me and back again. It was plain on his face that he felt we weren’t telling him something. He was right.

  “It’s okay,” I said.

  He raised a brow that told me he expected to hear whatever it was later, come hell or high water. Only after I nodded did he shove his feet into the pair of dark blue sneakers he kept by the front door and shrug on his coat.

  Sunday waited a long minute after the door closed behind him before she rubbed her forehead with the heels of her hands, smoothing her blond curls away from her face. “If Miguel had really wanted to hit you, he’d have waited until I left, or until you were alone. Anyone else here, even if it’s Red, and his odds get worse. So why bother with this half-assed shit? Calling me in? Not to mention bringing one knife. What gives?”

  The last time the Order had sent an operative after us, we’d discovered one very important change that had been made since we’d been gone. The Order had begun magically programming its operatives to obey instead of threatening them into it. That had to have been done to Miguel. He’d have to make an attempt to fulfill his mission. He’d have no choice.

  But he’d also have known who the Order sent him to take out. We’d been friends, real friends, a lifetime ago. How did he feel about that? Did he feel anything? If it was me, I would have. So maybe he’d made this half-assed try, to use Sunday’s word, and he’d failed. The Order would have to know by now.

  I sucked in a breath. The Order was in Miguel’s mind. I’d been in his mind. It had been second nature, survival instinct. They’d have expected that, used it.

  “Sunday, we’ve got a problem.”

  “Just one?” she asked.

  “Maybe the mission wasn’t to kill us after all. Maybe the mission was to get a peek inside my head.”

  She stared at me. “Shit, Night.”

  “It wouldn’t take much time to get a read on me. To get a glimpse into my thoughts, my strategy, my hopes and fears.”

  “If they didn’t know about the Angel of Death trapped in your head before, they’d know about it now.”

  I pushed up from a crouch and perched on the edge of the sofa, resting my elbows on my knees. I felt a little sick, going from an easy morning in bed with my lover to a battle in my own living room with a man I’d believed to be dead. And now, this.

  “We’re going to have company sooner or later,” she said.

  “I’d hoped for later.”

  Sunday shrugged. It was all the same to her. Then she cocked her head. “You told him his life force had been altered.”

  I nodded. “He has the purple halo and the shimmer around the edges. And he’s still stupid strong, but not as strong as I’d expect someone like him to be by now.”

  “The Order kept him hidden from us all these years. They wanted the rest of us to think he was dead. What were they doing with him—to him—du
ring that time?” she asked.

  Exactly. To take someone off the grid by removing them from the world, training them to become an operative who lived a secret life, in the shadows, was a thing. To remake an Order operative completely? That was some next-level shit.

  “How does someone become a chameleon?” I asked.

  “All this time, I’ve been thinking they were born that way, like I said before,” Sunday said. “What if my information is wrong, though? What if they’re not born? What if they’re created?”

  I looked at Miguel, so peaceful in his unconsciousness. If a person’s magic could be altered from its original design, if it could be spliced or transformed into something else, what would that do to a person? How long would it take?

  Not days or weeks. Not even months. If it could be done at all, that kind of thing would take years. A lot of years.

  “Damn,” I said.

  “Normally, I’d be all about your doing what you need to do and catching up with me later, but maybe in this case you and Red should close the gym for the day.”

  I checked the time on my phone. “Not everyone will get the message in time. People will show up.”

  She shrugged.

  “If the Order is watching the gym—”

  “The Order won’t care about a bunch of gym rats,” she said.

  She was right. “They were after me, and there’s no point in advertising their presence in front of a bunch of normals just to get my attention.”

  The door opened as she sighed. “My point exactly.”

  I glanced behind her to see Red on his way back in. “Everything okay out there?”

  “Yeah,” Red said. “You’re going with Sunday and the chameleon, aren’t you?”

  I nodded. “Let me get ready. I’ll be out in a sec.”

  I headed for the bedroom. As soon as I crossed the threshold, out of sight of the others, a tremor started in my legs. It was slight—nothing bothersome or obvious—just adrenaline processing through now that the immediate threat had passed. The light that had warmed the bed as Red and I woke had faded. The room felt cold and empty, the rumpled sheets and comforter a reminder that the peace of the morning had been shattered, and might not return.

  Eventually, my inner voice said. Eventually it would.