Vespertine

Quinn felt a horrible realization seeping in. “You were waiting for us,” Quinn said, dully. “That’s what Scarlett meant. You planned this.”

He smiled.

“But why?” Caiden asked, sounding wildly confused. “And how did you know we were coming here?”

Astor snorted. “Well, that was Scarlett’s job. Up until she got cold feet. But it doesn’t matter. You’re here now.”

Quinn asked the only question she could think to ask. “Why me? Why us?”

He raised an eyebrow at her. “Don’t you know what you are?” The way he asked the question painted Quinn as a creature, rather than a person.

Then he looked at Caiden. “Well, at least you know what you are.”

“What am I?” Quinn demanded.

“A Vespertine,” Astor responded. “A powerhouse. Go on, Caiden, tell her.”

Quinn rounded on him, her eyes desperately seeking answers.

“You can store and expel massive amounts of energy,” Caiden explained, and then frowned. “But I don’t see why it’s relevant.”

“It’s relevant because of what her body does to the energy,” Astor replied. “If you or I tried to hold that much power, we’d burn up. But her body, it consolidates it, makes it manageable. Even she has no idea how much power she really has.”

“If I’m so powerful,” Quinn said dangerously. “What’s stopping me from blowing the field up, right now?”

Astor snorted. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but you’re untrained. You can’t tap into your power that way, and even if you could, you wouldn’t know what to aim for. You’d kill everyone in this building, including Caiden there.” He nodded in Caiden’s direction.

“I still don’t understand. What’s your point? What do you want with me?”

Instead of answering, Astor gazed lovingly at the tube in the middle of the room. “How do you think it’s possible that the field is still active in this room?”

“That thing, clearly,” Caiden said, indicating the cylinder. “It could blow up, it’s got so much magic inside.”

“And how do you think it got to be that way?”

Quinn frowned. “The field?” Then, “Oh. The field. It’s feeding on it.”

Astor nodded. “It has been for years.”

“No one would have even noticed,” Quinn said, slowly. “Nobody would question the weakest point getting weaker, not in Aski. But it hasn’t been, naturally. It’s been you. You’re stealing from the field.”

Astor shrugged, as if trying to appear modest. “Clever, isn’t it?”

“But…but what are you going to do with it?” Caiden asked. “It’s in a tube, for god’s sake. You can’t use it.” And then his eyes widened. “No.”

“What?” Quinn asked.

Astor looked delighted that Caiden seemed to have figured it out.

“He wants you to take it,” Caiden whispered.

Quinn looked shocked. “Me?”

“You,” Astor responded. “You, Quinn Vespertine, are a perfect little vessel for all that power.”

“I’m sorry,” she said icily. “But I’m not sure what you’d expect me to do with all that magic. I’d never work for you.”

He laughed. “Who said anything about working for me? You’re nothing but a tool, Quinn. A means to an end.”

“What end?”

Astor cocked his head. “Being the most powerful sorcerer alive. Imagine all the havoc I could wreak with that magic. How powerful I’d be. I wouldn’t be confined to a single little power. I’d have them all. And then who would dare stop me from doing anything I liked?”

“So…world domination?”

He grinned.

Quinn frowned. “People still try to do that?” She asked dubiously.

“Apparently,” Caiden confirmed.

“Wow,” Quinn muttered. “I thought that was out of fashion.”

Astor’s eye twitched, obviously annoyed.

“There’s still a lot of flaws in your plan, Astor,” Caiden pointed out. “Why make Quinn take it? How would Quinn being really powerful benefit you at all? And why do you need me?”

“And what makes you think we’d ever help you?” Quinn added. For clarification, she said, “Because, as you know both our families are dead. There isn’t a lot you can threaten us with. And personally, I’d rather die than see you take over the world.”

That was when Astor smiled in a way that indicated he knew something they didn’t. “That’s the beauty of it, isn’t it? Separately, all you two are are sorcerers, even if you are powerful ones. Even if I brought you guys together with this plan, and it is a brilliant little plan, if I do say so myself, what’s in it for me? But together, together we become so much more.”

“You’re bordering on creepy territory,” Quinn warned. Astor ignored her.

“I’m the unifying factor, kids. Caiden, tell me, did you ever figure out what my power was?”

“No,” Caiden replied, uncertainly. “I get the feeling you’re about to tell us, though.”

Astor uncrossed his arms and stood up straight, casually twirling the sword in his hand. And then his eyes glowed red.

Caiden frowned. “A Hellhound?”

Astor laughed. “Oh, Caiden. Don’t be so narrow. Use your imagination!”

He remained at a loss, glancing at Quinn. Quinn shook her head.

“Fine, I guess I’ll have to tell you. I don’t have one.”

“Um…”

“And I don’t have multiple at once, either. But this one, I acquired recently. From our dear friend Scarlett.”

“Ah…?”

And then it clicked.

“Shit,” Caiden said, scrambling backwards. “You can take other people’s powers.”

“Mimic,” Astor corrected. “The other sorcerer doesn’t lose their abilities when I adopt them. But yes, essentially.”

“So,” Quinn said, touching her right hand with her left, gingerly, “you want me to take the energy in the cylinder, so you can take it from me.”

“That seems roundabout,” Caiden said, weakly. “Why not just take on Quinn’s ability and then drain the cylinder yourself? You’d be able to consolidate it the way she would.”

“Because if I am injured in the process,” Astor said simply, “you won’t save me.”

Then he looked at Quinn and smiled. “But you’ll save her. Keep her from dying long enough to compact the power.”

“What makes you say that?” Caiden challenged.

He scoffed. “You think it was a coincidence, getting out of this compound alive? Not once, but twice? You think I just randomly assigned you to kidnap her as your first mission? You think I’ve never noticed how soft and cowardly you are, Caiden? You know what your weakness is? Compassion. Empathy. Love. And now it’s going to bite you in the ass, isn’t it? Because if you heal her, you help me. And if you don’t, then she’ll probably die. And you won’t let that happen.”

Caiden wanted to argue, but found that he could not form a coherent sentence to reply to that.

“Not a chance,” Quinn snarled. “I think you’re forgetting something important. There’s no way in hell I’d agree to drain the cylinder.”

He barked out a short laugh that whispered foolish! and strode forward, sword swinging.

“You don’t have a choice, Quinn. Once I flip that little switch, the energy will flow out, and you’re the most obvious vessel. You’re taking it, whether you like it or not.”

Caiden asked, “So, basically, all you have to do is flip this switch, and everything will fall into place?”

Astor nodded, a small, victorious smile playing at the edge of his lips.

“So all we really have to do,” Caiden said, slowly, “is stop you from flipping the switch.”

He swung the sword in a wide arc, his red eyes especially evident under the light in the room. “I’d certainly like to see you try.”

Quinn unholstered her gun, but before she could fire, he was there, impossibly fast, in front of her, and the gun was wrenched out of her hand as she pulled the trigger, the bullet blasting into the wall uselessly before the gun was sliding across the floor, out of reach.

Caiden jabbed with his baton, but cried out as Astor twisted it out of his grasp and simultaneously drew blood with his blade, creating a shallow but long wound across Caiden’s stomach. Caiden dropped to his knees and clutched his torso as Quinn did everything she could to fend off Astor and stand in front of the switch on the side of the cylinder.

Then Astor kneed her, right in the ribs, and she cried out, pain shooting towards her, momentarily slowed. That one moment was enough for him to disarm her and send her careening towards the ground, all sorts of colors swimming in her vision.

Distantly, she saw him approach the switch.

A fight to save the world, and it was over in a devastatingly fast minute. As he flipped the switch, she realized just how much Scarlett had always been holding back; or perhaps Astor was just that much more skilled than she was? Or maybe it was everything she had just learned, the certainty with which Astor had explained his plan, the horrible feeling that no, no, everything is going the way he wanted to, and why? Why had Salvatore sent her on this futile mission, had he lied to her, did he know? Did he know what Astor was planning? Did he send her into a trap, or was it a genuine, unfortunate coincidence, that his plan and Astor’s contradicted, put her in this position?

Her thoughts ran on and on as magic flooded her body, and it was too much, too much, she felt the sensation in every finger, toe, no, every hair, every single fiber of her being, and it was hot, like the armor had been hot, but a million times worse, she was overheating and with a certainty that was the coldest thing she could feel, she realized she was dying.

Her vision became nothing but an endless sea of white, all the colors fading and merging to make one, and she was burning up so rapidly she could feel herself losing all sense of who she was, she was becoming a slave to the magic, nothing but a tool, a tool, a place for the field to rest, something for the flux to play with, to toss around, it was so hungry, so voracious, there was a roar in her ears, was she levitating? She felt certain that she was no longer anchored to the ground, she was so insanely hot that she couldn’t make sense of her own body anymore, and all her thoughts turned to feelings turned to one, just this, just fire. Too much fire.

A cool hand clasped hers.

She wanted to turn her head, to look at the owner of the hand, even though she wasn’t quite certain her eyes even worked anymore. But she didn’t have to, because she knew who it was. Because she could feel the heat lessening, bit by bit, settling into her bones, warming her interior in a more human way, becoming hers, rather than the other way around. She consumed it and it no longer consumed her.

She could feel her tongue again. “Don’t,” she said, very quietly, to Caiden, who she could see now, his hazel eyes and apocalyptically messy blonde mane bent over her.

He smiled a smile that was at once sad and grateful and guilty and unashamed. “Too late.”

The heat was leaving her in a different way. It was a detachment, a flowing away, a migration of the magic she had just worked so hard to keep. It was a leaving that said, you are my master no longer, and I am being called to, and there is nothing you can do to keep me from going.

Quinn sat up slowly as the last of it left her. She winced and Caiden grasped her waist gently, helping her up.

“So this is how the world ends,” she murmured. She looked at Caiden. “Dumbass,” she said, but there was nothing behind the word that suggested she meant it. It sounded like thank you.

Caiden heard it, too. He offered nothing but an apologetic tilt of the head.

Then they looked at Astor, who had dropped the sword and was dancing crazily around the room, reeling in either agony or ecstasy, Quinn couldn’t tell. He backed up to the door and stopped his flailing and glanced upwards, his whole body glowing the slightest bit. A slick sheen of sweat covered his neck, but he looked as happy as Quinn had ever seen anybody look.

“It’s beautiful,” he whispered, and then pushed himself off the door, and glanced down at his hands, examining them with awe, noting the pulse of magic that radiated from him. He was the thing keeping the field alive, and they could all feel it, the unimaginable power that sat within him.

And now he was positively brimming with glee. “I am the most powerful man alive!” He roared. “Oh, god. Oh, it’s glorious. This power. This pure energy. I could do anything I want.” He laughed, and it bordered on maniacal. “I could kill anything and everything I wanted to. I could destroy an army singlehandedly, I could conquer capitals! With just one flick of my hand, I could—“

He was abruptly cut off by the small bullet hole that had appeared in the base of his neck.

His face, a dead man’s face now, didn’t seem to register what had just happened. For that matter, Quinn wasn’t registering it much, either. When had the door opened? Had that really just happened? A second ago, he was unimaginably powerful, and now—

Astor crumpled to the floor, all that power shuddering and flickering and sinking into the ground, to somewhere beneath the dirt, to the lines that lay hidden on the planet’s surface, and he was dead, so very dead, but all Quinn could look at was the wielder of the weapon.

“You know,” said Salvatore Vespertine, twirling his gun in that cocky way of his, “the really funny thing about being dead is that nobody ever expects you to shoot them.”