Marked By Magic by Christa Wick

Chapter Twenty-One

PassingCade and Iris on their way up from the cellar, Denver delayed the couple with a few questions about the transfusion.

"I heard from Michelle and Philia that the…uh…"

"Abby," Iris said when Denver couldn't bring himself to use the name that Esme called the creature or any of the unflattering epithets his own mind readily supplied.

"Right," he continued. "I'm hearing the latents are picking up a lot of…well, a lot of background noise."

Cade shrugged like he hadn't experienced anything. Iris dropped her gaze, her face flushing red. She drew a deep breath, then slowly released it.

"My rookie year in Syracuse, I had to answer a call with my training officer. A neighbor had complained about music playing at full blast for days. We were short staffed and the guy had called in a couple of times without any units responding. His last call, he said something had started to stink."

She stopped, took another breath, this one sounding like a fan with a missing blade when it left her. Cade immediately wrapped his arm around her shoulder, his wolf bracing hers as she continued.

"My training officer recognized the smell as a dead body. He didn't want to enter the premises, just call it in for dispatch to notify detectives and the medical examiner's office. We still had a stack of live calls coming through. But I could hear more than the music. I couldn't tell what, had never heard anything like it."

Her head lifted, but her eyes remained closed.

"I disobeyed my TO and kicked down the door. A cloud of flies swarmed us. I stumbled through them, yanked the cord on the radio. And then I heard what had been screaming out that entire time, voice hoarse with dehydration, little body covered in her own feces…"

Trailing off, she buried her face against Cade's chest for a few seconds until her trembling came under control. Looking up at Denver, she finished the story.

"She was eighteen months old, flies all over her, her junkie mom dead in a pool of vomit—and that sweet baby's screaming still wasn't worse than what I could hear coming from Abby during the transfusion."

Denver paled, his gaze locked on Iris. Cade tightened his grip around her.

"You heard that during the infusion," he asked?

She nodded, her hand shaking as it lifted to wipe away a few tears she couldn't contain any longer.

"And that's what Esme's been hearing since we got here?" Denver asked.

"I don't think so," she answered. "I think whatever I heard and felt—it's worse for Esme. She's hearing her own voice screaming like that twenty-four seven. It's full blast in her head. It's there in her throat and her chest. It's there in the little blinks of sleep she gets. And I don't know what happens when Abby finally goes quiet."

Denver managed a nod, then continued down the stairs. Standing outside Esme's chamber, he waited, his wolf reaching out to discover whether he could hear the screams if he concentrated hard enough.

The doorknob twisted and the door swung inward. He lifted his gaze, expecting to see that Esme had opened it. She had, of course, but she wasn't standing in front of him. She had sensed him, felt him lingering outside her chamber, and taken action.

He should have known before, seeing that she did it with her mind. The creature—Abby—didn't like Esme getting near the door. Abby would have started screaming in a way he and the other wolves could hear. She would have screamed with those weird, debilitating vibrations.

"How are you feeling?" He delivered his question from the hallway, his cheeks starting to heat at his reluctance to enter the room and at the underlying reason.

He'd proved useless so far in freeing Esme from this prison. He was failing his mate.

And now he was making her gaze shimmer with tears.

"Better," she mumbled, her mouth held in a weird position. "Coming in?"

Curiosity lifted him over the threshold and into the room.

"What is in your mouth?"

Her lips parted, her tongue uncurling to reveal a black pearl on it.

"That's Silantra's pearl?"

Esme shook her head then carefully removed the pearl from her mouth and placed it in a ring box.

"It is the All-Mothers' pearl."

"Riya's?"

Esme nodded. "And Meralyn's. Zara's and Kazima's. Belaine…"

With each name given, she took a long blink as if she could see their faces or some snippet of their memories.

"A pearl grows over time, little bits of sand year over year, the oyster wrapping the irritating grains in its own secretions. From the very first The Nakari, All-Mother after All-Mother has held this pearl within her, added to it."

Reaching out, she touched the cylinder. "It's like this, the artifact can only be unlocked by someone with enough magic. The pearl is only of use to The Nakari. It is the last thing she gives her successor and her mind is the only thing strong enough to hold the minds of all those who came before her."

Denver's brain hurt with the effort of processing what his mate was telling him.

"Silantra wasn't an All-Mother."

"I don't think Silantra even knew it was in her," Esme said. "Riya meant to give it to me for safekeeping, I believe. She had ordered my mother to bring me back for the next full moon and ordered me to rest up until then, to not expend any of my magic. Somehow, she sealed it so its presence wouldn't drive Silantra insane."

"The All-Mother died before your return," Denver said, the simple statement dripping with old losses. First Riya had died and then he had turned away from Esme, believing that, as a wolf, he could never give the witch a child and knowing how much she wanted children.

Lots and lots of children…

Feeling old and useless, he rubbed his hands over his face.

Esme toed the chair across from her, tilting her head in its direction when he finally looked up.

"No," he said, choosing to drag the big chair and its ottoman away from the altar and over to where Esme's wobbly, makeshift desk stood in the corner.

Extending his arms, he offered his hands for her to hold as she stood. Then he guided her toward the chair, sitting down before he folded her into his lap.

"How long can we sustain her?" he asked, his finger flicking in the creature's direction.

"Until the cub," she answered. "Unless I can figure out a way to sustain them both."

"You don't know how Quentin and Camille did it?"

"Oh, I know." Her head bobbed, the words jagged and sharp. "They always sacrificed a life. Sometimes a latent, sometimes a lone wolf. When they wanted to plant the crystals in the boys, it was the cub inside her they sacrificed."

Esme exhaled a long, shaky breath. When she spoke again, each word had to choke its way through her throat.

"I–I am t-the product of m-monsters."

Denver held her tighter, pressed his cheek against the side of her head, his wolf surging to comfort her.

"That doesn't make you one, love."

"Exactly," she bit out. "That cub will be born and no other child, wolf, or latent will be sacrificed."

Denver knew what she was saying, heard the part she was leaving out. Esme had estimated a few weeks upon their arrival for how long remained before the cub would be born. They had already passed one of those weeks in the hellish mansion.

"Isn't there a way to buy more time?" he asked. "I remember the last child born before Riya's death. She wanted to come too early. The witches—"

"No," Esme gently interrupted, twisting in his arms until she could cup the side of his jaw while meeting his gaze. "The infusions are a stopgap. It's not the same as Camille and Quentin feeding her together. The ritual was in their heads, not on paper. Or it was on paper, but I have found the diary entry for when they burned the instructions after committing them to memory. More than that, they created her. That was part of the magic, the ingredient needed. As strong a dose of magic and life as Abby received from today's infusions, it's not the same. It's not as sustaining. It's like expecting a baby to survive on water instead of breast milk. As soon as the cub is viable, he needs to be extracted because Abby is turning to poison hour by hour. The screams—"

Her choked sob ended the conversation. Pressing her face against Denver's chest, she unleashed the tears she had been holding in since the moment of their arrival at the mansion.

When she spoke, it was the same two words over and over, each reiteration as jagged as a foot that has walked across a field of broken glass.

The screams…