Nightborne (The Bexley Chronicles Book 2)

  Nightborne

  The Bexley Chronicles, Act 2

  By Brindi Quinn

  Copyright © 2018 Brindi Quinn.

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Print ISBN: 978-1-949222-22-7

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2018946064

  Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Names, characters, and places are products of the author’s imagination.

  Cover design by Victoria Cooper.

  Published by Never & Ever Publishing

  Minneapolis, Minnesota

  www.neverandeverpublishing.com

  For the damsels that don’t need saving. Rise up, badasses.

  Also by Brindi Quinn:

  Heart of Farellah (Book 1 of the Heart of Farellah Series)

  Moon of Farellah (Book 2 of the Heart of Farellah Series)

  Fate of Farellah (Book 3 of the Heart of Farellah Series)

  Atto’s Tale (Book 4 of the Heart of Farellah Series)

  EverDare (Book 1 of the Eternity Duet)

  NeverSleep (Book 2 of the Eternity Duet)

  Seconds: The Shared Soul Chronicles

  The World Remains

  Sil in a Dark World: A Paranormal Love-Hate Story

  The Death and Romancing of Marley Craw

  The Eternity Duet

  Farellah: The Complete Series

  Lightborne

  The Pursuit of Zillow Stone

  FIEND II

  I am enveloped in soft, familiar shadow. It slips through my teeth and down my lungs. Behind me, the prism separating the worlds quakes. If it shatters, it will all be over.

  Everything we’ve worked for will be complete.

  I am the Wilted.

  I am the fiend.

  I am the end.

  1

  Bexley’s Back, Betches

  I can’t stop looking at them. I should, but I can’t stop.

  They see.

  It’s awkward.

  We all look away.

  I wait a few seconds before looking at them again.

  I can’t help myself. The boys in the blue hoodies are like me, and it’s so very rare to see someone like me.

  And now we’re a whole mother-freakin’ clan!

  “Ugh,” Pidd the joykill says. “She’s doing it again. She’s getting all—” He wiggles his fingers— “Bubbly inside.”

  So sue me. There’s only room enough for one emotion in me right now, and if I don’t fill up with bubbles, something else will take its place.

  “Righty-o!” I pound my fist onto the pleather cushion patched with duct tape. “Let’s go over it again.”

  We three doomed creatures sit together in the back of an otherwise empty bus. The thick-necked driver isn’t concerned about driving performance, it seems; the vessel jolts over uneven pavement, making Pidd’s stomach churn and curl.

  “Article one—” I stick up a finger while Pidd holds his mouth in prevention of chunks. “The tree of light is dying, the only way to save said tree is to return it to the mortal world, AND—” I wait for the bus to finish rounding a particularly bumpy corner— “The only way to return the tree to the mortal world is for one of us to turn into the Wilted, defeat the Wielder, and…”

  But I haven’t told them that last part yet.

  “Oh is that all?” Pidd scoffs into his shoulder.

  “Yessum.”

  “Why the hell would you start with ‘article one’ if there weren’t any more articles coming?!”

  Ignore.

  I smoosh my face against the luggage bag cradled in my arms. We three doomed creatures are on our way to the skyscraper coterie, in search of Erron, my late waker’s waker. We didn’t dare pass through the twilit forest, with its perpetually falling leaves and its haunting song to get there. We didn’t dare remain in Yggdress. Not with the whereabouts of Ellie and her minions unknown.

  Not with the forest stained in warring colors and the painful remembrance of a certain shimmering-haired being lingering in the wood like a phantom.

  Aiden.

  I wince, but fight it the way I do best: “Ahh! You guys have no idea how good it feels to have my memory and wits about me again,” I croon.

  Kinley watches me from the side of his eye with his nose directed out the window, his knuckles curled under his chin; his sneaker perched on the edge of the seat. I pretend not to notice him watching. “It’s a little weird, Bex. You’re like some hybrid version of yourself,” he says.

  Yes, Bexley the First, Second and Third have fused into one mass of awesome.

  Drink it in, guys. Drink it in.

  I talk a big game. It’s all I can do. If I stop for even a microsecond, that feeling will creep in again, grab me around my squishy parts and wrench, and all of those darkest words will become applicable to my sorry state:

  Dread. Despair. Emptiness. Regret.

  I clutch the rough canvas of my luggage tighter, smelling of artificiality and newness. Even with my coterie debit card out of commission, it isn’t so hard to pop into department stores unnoticed when you shroud yourself in a blaze of blue. The mortal eye refuses to see what it can’t process, and so we three wretched beings have also become burglars. Out of necessity.

  Out of world-saving heroics.

  A few stolen hoodies is a mortal’s small price to pay to those of us destined to die for the sake of the worlds.

  Unless we can somehow locate and ward another turquoise lightborne. Maybe one even more asshole-ish than Pidd.

  Maybe we won’t mind sacrificing that one.

  But there’s a very good chance we won’t ever come across another turquoise in all our lives. We are, after all, a dying breed.

  “Fifth and second,” an automated voice chimes.

  “Already?” I pop up from my seat.

  Pidd is already partway down the aisle. He shakes his head arduously without turning back to look.

  Can it, nugget. Or I’ll find a sarcophagus to stuff you in.

  Meanwhile, Kinley waits patiently for me to collect my things. Was he always such a gentleman?

  No. He is now because he knows I’m in a fragile sort of state. Fragile, broken Bexley. Whole in memory, but fractured in soul. His hand on my back drives me forward. Would I be able to move without it?

  The towering skyscraper stands much the same as last time; only this time I see it in new light. A halo of amber circles its top, like a ring of clouds around a volcano—Erron’s mark of protection. The lower level is a reception area. Hello again… again. A woman who can only be described as handsome sits in a squishy waiting chair. She drums talon-like fingernails along the floral armrest.

  We move past the bowtie-clad receptionist that barely notices our presence, the same slouchy teenager as last time. Kinley places his fingers to the keycard reader at the side of the room, surging it blue with a click! Before moving on, though, he pauses, turning over his shoulder:

  “…Are we sure this is a good idea?”

  Pidd’s face drains the color of snow. “Are you freaking kidding me? You bring this up NOW?”

  The handsome woman stops her drumming. She scans the wall, nearly noticing us—until I save the moment with a flash of blue her mortal brain cannot register. The drumming resumes.

  “Life’s a lottery.” I shrug at Kinley, dusting my palms. “We can’t be sure of anything, really. Besides, what other choice do we have?”

  Together we press through the door, leaving Pidd in our dust protesting
: “LOTS. We have lots of other choices, Bexley!”

  We move through the hall of doors. Our goal is at the end, the bathroom door marked with a female superhero. How forward thinking of mortals to don the entrances of their bathrooms with caped women.

  We draw our boxes of light against the mirror, and then spread our fingers along the warm surface. The heat from the greenhouse on the other side radiates through into the mortal realm.

  I take a breath. I haven’t been back to Yggdress since…

  I bash my face against the mirror before those dark emotions can take hold, falling into the humid belly of the jungle-like greenhouse on the other side. Spewed with foliage and roughage, the place is somewhat fuller than last time. The duskshades are in bloom. A flowering bush nearby emits a scent like buttered rum. We start for the trail of tea-lights, lit today only in amber.

  If only it were rose or lavender or even accursed turquoise.

  Alas, it’s amber, and the glow is unavoidable.

  “What’s wrong, B?” Kinley notices that my feet have rooted like the crowd of greens around us. He bends his face to meet mine. I can’t vocalize what’s wrong. Can’t tell him that it pains me to see that particular color in this particular moment.

  Surprisingly, though, Pidd is the one that gets it. He steps ahead of me, casting a shadow to drive away a collection of the amber light.

  I hate it. Not the amber, but the fact that I’m too weak to disassociate something like ambiance lighting from my grief.

  We escape to the white room with three trees lined in the center: lavender, rose, and amber. Last time, I wondered where the turquoise one was. Now, it seems so obvious. We three are taboo, undeserving of representation—that damnable ‘other’ bloodline that makes our neighbors squeamish. We have the potential to turn sullen, and therefore, the potential to turn Wilted.

  We are a threat.

  The next room is lackluster. “This place is too deserted,” Pidd observes. “Don’t you think?”

  Better that way. We haven’t yet discerned how the other lightborne feel about us, nor how far word has traveled of what happened at our coterie.

  “Shhh, you’ll jinx us!” I swat him on the back of the head.

  I barely get the words out when the hall erupts in rose light.

  2

  The Accused

  First comes the light, second a barrage of violent footsteps. Before I can think or blink, Kinley is projectiling a series of turquoise waves, sweeping out from us into the light.

  “Knew it!” Pidd coughs, readying a puny-by-comparison handful of turquoise light—but before he can direct it at any one of the attackers, a spear of lavender cuts through the rose, searing the edge of Pidd’s thigh. Down he falls, sputtering a creative string of curse words.

  “Pidd!” I kneel at the nugget’s side but ready my fingertips to my right earlobe. Kinley’s got the right idea, so I’ll help him by mimicking the waves of turquoise.

  Take that, traitors!

  The turquoise disappears into the surrounding light—which is bright, obnoxiously pink. “LaMar, is that you!”

  LaMar or whoever it is doesn’t answer, but a few disgruntled cries from the bray mean our turquoise has made contact. I ready myself another dose. It’s futile, though. Another color, powerful as my waker’s, floods over the other colors, washing out rose and lavender, and snuffing the turquoise spell before it can leave my palm. Mighty amber swallows my wards, lightstream and all, until all that exists is sunset orange.

  It doesn’t hurt.

  Not in the physical sense.

  But it stings because it’s so much like his, in that commanding and dense sort of way.

  Equally commanding are the hands that cover my mouth and yank me away.

  If I’m not mistaken I have just been kidnapped.

  It isn’t for long, though. I’m yanked, kicking and biting, and foaming like a cappuccino—because I can’t think of any foaming animals at the moment—into a bedchamber. This bedchamber is the most orderly bedchamber I’ve ever been in, every inch of wall space taken by uniform shelves of color-coordinated books. The bed is military-neat. So much so that I am clutter.

  The amber from outside doesn’t reach this organized place, and once inside, my captor releases me. I swivel, fists balled in light, ready to pounce.

  …Onto a tunic-donned man with straight, parted hair.

  Oh. I lower my hands—“Erron?”—as he steadily moves to protect the door in a warding spell.

  “I see you’ve regained your wits,” he responds, voice thin.

  “Y-your coterie attacked us!” I back away from him. “Whatever happened to ‘we will continue to offer you our mother-freaking aid’!?”

  “Well.” He turns to set his brilliantly amber eyes on me disapprovingly. “That was before you killed Aiden.”

  “Hah!?” My voice cracks unattractively. “I didn’t kill him!”

  “Of course I know that,” Erron says, shuffling away to his books. “But what matters is they’re saying you did.”

  The unspecified THEY, always meddling. “Well, THEY can suck it!” I say.

  “Jobel, mainly,” says Erron, rummaging around his bookshelf, “backed by a faction of witnesses.”

  More like a gaggle. Sesha, LaMar, Nekt, Ellie, and a half-dozen other rose minions, I assume.

  “What about Kray and Cello? They know the truth, right?” I say.

  Erron smooths his hair. “Kray and Cello haven’t been seen since the day of Aiden’s death. There is speculation that you killed them too, or that they were your accomplices in the heinous act.”

  “Untrue!”

  “Yes, yes, I know all that. And while my coterie is more understanding than yours, many of them have personal ties to Kray, Cello and Aiden. The thought that you lot may have murdered three coterie leaders has turned a percentage of them rabid, clouding their judgment against even Kinley. The rest of us have been trying to reason with them to no avail. It’s something of a civil war within the skyscraper at the moment.” He frowns at the door. “Now, should you happen to locate Cello or Kray, the others might—”

  Outside the room is a battle, clamorous and bright and terrible, but for a moment, I don’t care. I have remembered something important. Something that slipped my mind somewhere between Bexley the Second and Third.

  “Kray?” For a one-syllabled word, it feels as long as any of those lovely, lengthy five-syllable words:

  Abominable.

  Lackadaisical.

  Syllabication.

  “Hm?” Erron doesn’t look away from his shuffling.

  “No, not Kray.” I shake my head. “Kray’s waker. He’s turquoise-turned-sullen, right? Which means that…” What did it mean, exactly? Digest, Bex.

  My mind races. What if I were to find the blade Aiden stabbed Kinley with—the one that turned him mortal—and use it against Kray’s waker? Then, Kray’s waker would be free for me to ward. And in warding him, I would pass on the ability to become the Wilted.

  Meaning a free pass for Kinley, Pidd and me.

  The world seems to pause. The air around us is still, but it’s an alive stillness—as if my lungs are showing me the possibility of freedom—an outcome where we don’t have to play martyr and pretend to be good.

  “Kray’s waker?” Erron says. “You’re referring to Jon?”

  Ugh. IT has a name. Which makes IT much harder to sacrifice.

  The lost time fast-forwards until I’m aware of every wasted moment.

  Now that I think about it, there’s no telling that we’d be able to locate Aiden’s blade in the first place. No telling that stabbing JON wouldn’t just kill him, either.

  From the other side of the door, I hear shouting. Namely, the shout of a Pidd-like creature in danger.

  Crud. It seems any hope of claiming sanctuary here has just been flushed down a rose-clouded toilet. “I’m assuming this has all gone too far for reasoning?” I huff. “Even if something like bubble tea were involved?”


  “There is too much unrest at the moment. This is not the place for you at this time. Though I cannot offer you shelter, I wish to aid you. The reason I pulled you aside was to give you this.” He hands me a bundle packaged in brown paper, the triumph of his last three minutes of shuffling. “A few things you might find useful, including a map. I’ve marked it appropriately.”

  “Appropriately? But you’re coming with us, aren’t you? We need all the help we can get if we’re going to move the tree!” Under my breath, I add: “Of course, I was hoping to recruit an entire coterie, but I suppose one ally is better than none…”

  “I cannot.”

  “But you have no idea what that bitch Ellie is capable of!” I lash. “She’s like an amped up power ranger of a lightborne! We were nearly mauled last time we saw her!”

  “And that power lies also within you, Bexley. I have faith at Aiden’s treasured one will become much more amped up and bitchier than even the Wielder.”

  “Uh, thanks?”

  “I will remain to deescalate the situation and attempt to locate Kray and Cello—both of whom may clear your allegations. Only then may our people see reason. Unfortunately, for now I must keep the favor of my coterie and play devil’s advocate.” Erron puts his hand to the latch. “Go out the way you came. You’ll encounter some resistance, I assure, but I will do my best to cause distraction.” With that, he flings the door open, releasing his earlier spell and inviting in a mix of his own light, compacted against rose, turquoise and lavender. He pushes me into the din, then—

  “HELP!” He begins shouting in the thickest voice I’ve heard from him yet. “SHE’S IN HERE!”

  I stumble backwards into a body.

  “Erron?!” it cries.

  “Pidd?” I answer.

  Two plushy mounds tell me I’m wrong.

  Yikes. I back away from the woman and hobble deeper into the light. While the rest of the footsteps shuffle to Erron’s faux distress, I concentrate on the turquoise chains on my wrist. Honing… honing…

  There!

  The pair of them are together, crouched around the corner. So it seems the residents of the skyscraper have been beating up on each other.