The room closed in on me as Clancy and I stood there staring at each other.
“I know what you are, too, Arrazi,” I spat. A flicker of amused astonishment showed in his face. “I have sense enough to know you’re nothing but a parasite. That people like you take and kill just to make yourselves feel good!”
“Oh, pet.” Clancy laughed. “It’s not for pleasure. Though I admit, it’s good all right, and Scintilla are especially intoxicating. If the world knew what I possessed…” His eyes narrowed. He placed his thick hands on the bed and leaned toward me. “It’s a bit more serious than pleasure. We must feed off auras. To survive.”
“As in, you’ll die if you don’t?”
He waved his hand in the air like my question bored him. “Yes. Arrazi require the energy of others to live. All of a regular human’s life energy. A human soul is a spark from the divine fire and it feeds us. There are givers and there are takers. This is true in all of nature, Cora. The sunlight gives, the trees take, they in turn give us oxygen—”
“Thanks for the biology lesson, but what do you give?”
“Ah, see, the Arrazi are at the top of the human food chain. And you,” he said, pointing at me, “you are our sun.”
I’m sure I looked as shocked as I felt. If this was the trail of truth my mother had been following, she was right. Giovanni was right. There were different breeds of human. Mankind always had its share of predators and prey, but this was literal. This leech stood there telling me that his kind, the Arrazi, lived off other people. “You kill people! You’re nothing but murderers!”
Clancy worked his way slowly around the bed as I backed into the corner. His voice was a low, menacing rumble. “Do you fault the lion for killing the gazelle?”
I didn’t want to play his game. We were humans. We were equals. He had no right to kill another. And yet I knew he would if it meant his survival. “Then why haven’t you killed me yet? Why am I here? Why is that poor woman here?”
“The Arrazi weren’t always murderers, but our source of life has been all but depleted. Every time I take from you, you save a multitude of people I’d otherwise have to kill. The energy of a Scintilla is the most powerful on earth. My choice to enslave one saves many.”
“How completely benevolent of you.” I trembled with rage and pure fear. Both emotions gusted like the same hot wind rattling my bones.
Clancy moved closer, irritation glinting in his beady dark eyes. “If I didn’t do this, I’d have to employ tacky techniques like my sister and her husband, working knee-deep around death so they can benefit from it.”
Doctors. That’s how they did it without being caught. No wonder they were so insistent on Finn becoming one. And I’d first met him in the hospital. Where I’d also seen Griffin for the first time. The bitter trace of tea rose up in my throat. My God, it was true, they’d been after me all along.
“Sortilege! Powers! Tell her! His soul’s on a chain, it is. That is also why they covet the Scintilla,” Gráinne shouted from her doorway. Now I saw her aura. The gleaming, sparkling silver of it.
He had two of us.
“Out, woman!” Clancy shouted. Gráinne jumped and shut her door. He straightened his wool sweater over his generous belly and smoothed back his hair. “She forgets herself.” He took another step toward me. Then another. “She is correct, though. Another undeniable allure of a Scintilla,” he said, drawing the word out in a hiss, “is that your energy awakens and fuels our powers, our sortilege. We all have latent abilities that are waiting for the spark to ignite them. Extrasensory abilities are our birthright. Through the years it’s been diluted and bastardized so that some regular humans possess our gifts. But it’s very real. Scintilla give us the only thing humans truly lust after. Real power. Real magic. Naturally, the Arrazi who controls you, controls the power.”
I swallowed hard. “Biology lesson for you,” I whispered. “If you stopped killing us, there’d be more of us.”
“The Arrazi are not the only ones killing Scintilla, lass. You have great enemies in places you can’t even imagine.” He smiled. “Enemies who will do anything to keep the truth a secret.”
“So they’re your enemies, too,” I ventured.
“Not quite.” He looked into his palm. I saw a quick flash of a gold ring with the emblem worn on the underside of his finger rather than on top. He closed his hand around it. “I have something of an arrangement with them. You’re a fighter. I like it,” Clancy said. “I can’t wait to taste your strength when your energy mixes with mine.” His dark eyes roiled with hunger. His aura pushed against mine in the space between us. Insistent. Voracious.
“Please don’t kill me,” I whispered.
“I have no intention of killing you right now. There are far too few of you left. It’s a crisis, really. I fear there may be a war for possession of the remaining Scintilla. Hell, the price for you on the black market is astounding. Having two of you makes me a very powerful man. And your friend, I’ll find him, too. Three Scintilla would be the ultimate prize. I’ll be unstoppable then.”
Three.
Giovanni. I hoped desperately that he was far away and safe.
Clancy cornered me. I was surrounded by the bed, the wall, and the rough edge of the bedside table that dug into my thighs. His eyes bore into mine. I flinched, waiting to feel the agonizing tug on my chest. The pain of my body flying apart.
“Think of it this way. You need me to keep you safe from those who would have you dead for what you know and for what you are. And I need you.” His whisper was hot on my face. “It’s the only reason you’re still alive.”
Every hair on my body stood on end. My energy swirled and built in the middle of my chest. My fingers and feet grew numb. It was starting. “No, no, please don’t,” I pleaded, pushing ineffectively against Clancy Mulcarr’s barrel chest. Already, my solar plexus burned where his energy concentrated. I was sliced open. “I can’t handle it.”
He touched my face, and the corona of his light burned brighter. I turned my head away and focused on the grain of the wood paneling on the wall. My fingers fumbled on the table next to me for anything to use against him. “Embrace your nature, Cora. This is what you were meant for. You weren’t strong enough when I brought you here last night. Finn and Griffin nearly finished you off.”
My hand closed around one of the small silver serving pieces from the tea set. I grasped it firmly and swung with every ounce of energy he hadn’t yet taken. Sugar cubes went flying in all directions, bouncing off us. Clancy’s head swung to the side, and when he looked back at me with a crescent of blood at his temple and bloodlust in his eyes, I knew I’d made it worse on myself. But there was no way I was going down without a fight.
He continued to drain me unrelentingly. I flinched when he pressed his body against mine, but I was trapped and already feeling so feathery I thought I’d lose my ability to stand at any moment. I closed my eyes as he whispered in my ear. “I have much more finesse than they do, pet, and I need you now. Though after that stunt, I’m not inclined toward finesse.”
Forty-Four
I blinked against the onslaught of a new day, not knowing how I wound up in bed. The last thing I remembered was having my aura raped by Clancy Mulcarr. There was a protesting grumble from my belly. I’d never been so hungry in my entire life. Yet despite my intense hunger, I didn’t want to eat. I wanted to curl up and go to sleep forever. The needs of my body overruled the slaughter of my soul. I’d eat. Then maybe I could curl around myself and keep the world out.