C.E. Murphy - Truthseeker

“I have no talent for healing others,” he said. It sounded absurd in the aftermath of the fight, Lara thought; absurd in the face of his elfin form. Anything that looked like that should command magic as easily as breathing; he should be able to heal a wounded man. And he knelt, as though he’d try.

“You can’t.” Lara barely knew her own strained voice. “I’m so sorry, but you can’t. I did it, Dafydd. I broke the world.”

“Broke?” Dafydd looked up, expression drained by incomprehension.

Lara put her hand against the pillar for support. “The worldwalking spell, it’s bad for the Barrow-lands. I could feel it, and when I closed it … ‘changes that will break the world,’” she reminded him. “I think I closed it for good. You saw what happened to the nightwings, how they went gray when the door closed. They were cut off from the magic, and so are you. And you said they’re creations,” she whispered. “They don’t have magic, energy, of their own. I think that’s why they went into Cooper, so they had sustenance. I’m sorry, Dafydd. I think you’re stuck here, and all the power you’ve got left is what’s inside you.”

Kelly crawled to Washington and put her hand against his chest, then whispered, “He’s still breathing.” She glanced at Dafydd, flinched, and looked away. Injury flashed across his face and sympathy surged through Lara. He had saved them all with his magic, and it was neither fair nor surprising that Kelly should look away.

Especially given that Lara’s blurred vision had disappeared. “The glamour, Dafydd. It’s gone.”

His hands were always long-fingered, elegant, but his gaze snapped to them, and then he lifted his hands to his ears, tracing their elfin shape with clear shock. Lara shook her head. “It fell away as soon as the fight started. And I don’t think you’re going to be able to put it back now.”

“I had to get rid of the earrings to call the lightning. But the glamour should have stayed—”

“Dafydd, you’re not strong, you know that. Being in jail did something to you, you haven’t looked right—”

“This is all very touching,” Kelly said through her teeth, “but we have to go. We have to go right now, Lara. We have to leave Reg.” She got to her feet, face tight with determination as she pulled keys from her pocket.

Lara, gaping, turned her attention to Kelly, and Dafydd staggered as though only her gaze had kept him in place. Kelly, despite her earlier flinch, caught Dafydd with an arm around his waist. “There were gunshots. There’ll be cops here inside another thirty seconds. We have to go right now.”

“Kelly, are you nuts?” Dickon sounded thunderstruck.

Kelly propelled Dafydd away from Washington, driving him toward the gated doors even as she answered Dickon. “Do you see any choice? How are you going to explain what happened to Reg? How are you going to explain what David looks like? We have to go. Cops’ll take care of Reg, but we cannot be here.”

“It’s too late,” Lara whispered. “I hear them.”

Fear so potent it became fury filled Kelly’s eyes. She pushed Dafydd off her and caught his shirt in both fists. “Lara told me everything about you. You’ve been here a hundred years. What do you think happens if the cops find you, Dafydd ap Caerwyn? What do you think happens?”

“I die,” he said in a remarkably clear voice. “If I’m lucky, I die quickly.”

Lara let go a low cry of dismay, but Kelly snapped a nod, then pointed toward voices and lights that were now coming close. “You have about fifteen seconds, and that glamour trick you do is going to have to hide all of us. Do it. Do it now.”

“He can’t! Kelly, he’ll—”

“Die?” Kelly shouted. “Maybe, but if he doesn’t try we’re all going to jail and he’s going to be the most exciting lab rat anybody’s ever seen! Lara, you know I’m right, we can’t be found here!”

Dafydd whispered, “She’s right,” and wrapped them all in magic.

The world went wrong.

The double vision of Dafydd’s glamour, worked on himself, had nothing on the way the parking garage folded in on itself as magic swept over them. The air turned red and twisted around, smearing the garage’s contents into a shattering landscape. The usual unending song of truth became knife stabs of piercing noise, short and sharp. Even Dickon and Kelly were horrible to look at, bleeding pieces of themselves into the concrete.

Dafydd, though, was worse. If she saw any truth at all with his magic surrounding them, it was his truth, and that was a story of agony. Power sheeted off him, weakening him with every heartbeat: in very little time, he would be unable to recover, but he would die, if necessary, to get them to safety.

“Quick,” Lara grated, and the sound made her stomach turn, distorted by the veil of falsehood Dafydd held around them. She caught his arm, supporting him as they ran for Kelly’s car.

He arched in agony as Kelly yanked the Nissan’s front door open and propelled him inside. Silent agony: whether he had the presence of mind to stay quiet, or simply hurt too much to give it voice, Lara didn’t know. She ran to the driver’s side, climbing into the backseat beside a whey-faced Dickon, and Kelly took them out of the garage under cover of magic before snapping, “You can let it go.”

Dafydd jerked violently, then collapsed, and the ear-bleeding madness of the world faded. Lara whimpered, then bit her knuckles to calm herself, and reached forward to tug Dafydd’s seat belt around him. It would be foolish to let a detail so small give the police an opportunity to stop them.

“Straighten him up, too,” Kelly said in the same short tone. “Can you reach the glove compartment? There are sunglasses in there. I don’t know what to do about his ears, I don’t have a baseball cap with me.”

“Some people’s ears point,” Lara whispered. Kelly gave her a sharp look in the rearview mirror, then nodded, allowing Lara her illusion. It was true: some people’s ears did point, but not usually with the fine-tipped delicacy Dafydd’s did. She got the sunglasses out and fitted them over Dafydd’s face.

Kelly made a satisfied sound. “All right. I’m stopping at my bank to withdraw as much cash as I can before they put a lock on any of our accounts or a trace on the cards. Dickon, we’re going to have to abandon our cell phones, and thank God you thought the ten-year-old Nissan was a good bet at that car lot, Lar, because that means it hasn’t got GPS installed.”

Lara’s voice cracked. “Get rid of the cell ph—Kelly, when did you turn into an undercover sleuth? This is insane.”

Kelly scowled at her in the mirror. “We just ran away from a crime scene, Lara. One where, if we’re really, really lucky, there’s a police detective who’s only dying instead of dead. The cops are going to come together to find us, and being incredibly easy to track is a price tag of modern society. I’d get rid of the car if I knew another one I could get to, one that wasn’t associated with any of us.”

“I have one.” Dafydd sounded as though someone had taken razors to his throat, cutting his speech to a rough whisper. “Up north, in Peabody. If we can get out of Boston …”

“You’re sure?” Kelly asked sharply. “It’s not registered in your name?”

Dafydd chuckled, low raw sound. “I’ve been doing this for a hundred years, Miss Richards. I’m sure.”

“This is fucked up,” Dickon said abruptly. “Kelly, I can’t do this. Stop the car.”

“Dickon …” Lara spoke at the same time Kelly did, then bit her lip. She barely knew Kelly’s fiancé, and was all too aware of how little he’d been told over the past weeks.