A Land of Perfects Read online

  “This isn’t just about Mom and Dad and the others anymore. It’s about finding a way to stop Ta’Zan from unleashing this horror into the In-Between. I don’t know how we can do that, at this point, to be honest. But I don’t want us to lose hope, either. Since our comms don’t work, I’ve spoken to Kale and taped a lock of my hair inside the phone case. She said Lumi can use it to send us another interplanetary spell with more magic resources. We could talk like this until we figure out why the comms are down. They burned our shuttles and the resort, too. So we’re kind of on the run. As soon as you send us a reply, we’ll prepare another video report. Hopefully, we’ll have made more progress by then. Check the notes, too. I love you, Caleb. I love you all. Just… don’t come here. Don’t come here until we know exactly what we’re dealing with.”

  With that, her message ended, and guilt started eating away at me.

  We’d been quite reactive when we assembled the fleet. Had we waited a few more hours, we would’ve gotten this message, and we wouldn’t have sent hundreds of GASP allies to a painful defeat. The realization hit me so hard, I had to sit down.

  “You couldn’t have known,” Blaze said quietly, a muscle ticking in his jaw. “I would’ve done the same if I were you. If I saw my people getting attacked through that telescope, I would’ve sent an army of dragons, daemons, and whatnot, and I would’ve raised hell.”

  My eyes were burning, tears making it difficult for me to see clearly. The guilt was becoming too much to bear.

  “I’m sure they would’ve sent that message sooner if they could,” Lumi replied. “It came pretty fast, actually, considering that only a few hours ago they were attacked in the colosseum.” She smirked as she realized something. “Kailani figured out the blood boost.”

  “The what now?” Phoenix asked.

  “There’s a way to speed up an interplanetary spell,” Lumi explained. “It requires a considerable amount of fae blood, though, so it’s not something you just do willy-nilly. Given their circumstances and what beasts are tailing them, they took quite a risk to deliver this message as fast as they could. So, yeah, Caleb, don’t beat yourself up.”

  “You heard Rose,” Draven chimed in. I must’ve been looking terrible if they were all trying to make me feel better. “At the time of that message, they didn’t even know how many of those… Perfects had been made.”

  “Yeah. But we should’ve waited,” I managed, feeling the knot in my throat get bigger and more uncomfortable.

  Hazel came to me and crouched, so she could be on the same eye level as me, resting her palms on my knees. “Dad, please, you can’t think like this,” she said softly. “You couldn’t have known. There were too many twists, too many surprises. We were all swept off our feet with this. We had every reason to believe we were doing the right thing—”

  “But we weren’t. And now six hundred creatures are prisoner to that monster! Not to mention those who died!” I shot back, no longer able to control my anger

  Blaze checked all the notes that Rose had added into Sofia’s phone, and scoffed. “Hey, Caleb, check this out,” he said. “It turns out the Perfects and the Faulties are hybrids made of known creatures. Fae, Druids, Maras, and most likely witches, too, on top of the Draenir. That’s just an assessment made based on the hostiles’ appearance and abilities. According to Rose, the Faulties were crossed with Stravian animals, too. The Perfects, however, came after Ta’Zan abducted Derek, Rose, and the others.”

  Harper gasped. “He’s got vampires to work with, now.”

  “There might be something in our genes that helped him make them… perfect, I guess.” I pinched the bridge of my nose. “We need to get those notes to Arwen and the others, to cross-reference with the autopsy results,” I added, forcing myself back into command mode.

  Lumi clicked her teeth, crossing her arms as she stared at the telescope feed.

  “One thing’s for sure,” she said. “A military response is no longer a viable option. We’ll have to find another way to get them out, like Hazel said. Most importantly, we have to stop them from spilling out into the In-Between. They sound like a disease.”

  According to Rose’s notes, there was some powerful mixture of science and magic at work here—something unlike anything we’d ever seen before. This was a new and terrifying enemy, but if my wife, the love of my life, my soulmate wasn’t ready to call it quits yet, I sure as hell wasn’t going to do that, either. Too many innocent souls relied on us this time.

  We’d lost enough already.

  We couldn’t lose an entire universe.

  Harper

  My soul was aching, and so was Caspian’s. After everything we’d seen, it had become difficult to support each other, emotionally. We were both broken up about it. Worst of all, four of our closest friends, one of whom was blood of my blood, were missing, or worse, dead. I shook the thought away quickly, choosing to focus on the possibility that Jovi, Anjani, Jax, and Hansa were still alive.

  Otherwise, I would’ve lost it.

  Looking at Blaze, I had a feeling he was going through the same mental process. His red aura made me cry on the inside, but, like Lumi had said, we had to put all this aside. We had to focus on getting the survivors back. All of them.

  “Well, at least we have a way of communicating with Rose’s team,” Lumi concluded.

  “Can you make the interplanetary spell reach them fast, like Kale did with theirs?” I asked.

  She nodded. “I’ll need a lot of fae blood, though,” she said. “One liter for every hour we want to cut from the journey time.”

  “I’ll put the word out for volunteers,” Draven replied. “I’m sure we won’t lack support for this endeavor.”

  “I’ve got a lock of Rose’s hair, now,” Lumi added, as Caleb dismantled Sofia’s phone and gave her the lock of hair. “A single strand will do to help me tweak the interplanetary spell. I’ll make sure it reaches her and no one else by blending in a tracking spell.”

  I nodded slowly. “We’ll have to prepare a response, along with whatever ingredients they might need,” I said. “What should we send them?”

  Draven cleared his throat. “Invisibility paste ingredients, for a start,” he replied. “They’re dealing with serious hostiles there. They’ll need to keep a low profile.”

  Lumi smirked. “I’ve modified the invisibility spell, by the way,” she said. “I’ve found a way to turn it on and off while wearing it. With local ingredients, it’s resistant to water, too. I’ll make a note and add it to the box of ingredients.”

  “That’s fantastic,” I breathed. “Wish we had that back on Neraka.”

  “Hey, you got me out of there, so you have it now,” Lumi replied. “I’ll pack some healing potions, too. They’ll need more, not only for their wounds but to replenish their fae’s blood. They only have Vesta and Ben to work with, unlike us, and they’ll need them in tip-top shape, fast. If they’re going to give five to six liters of blood whenever they send a fast message, they’ll need something to recuperate quickly.”

  “We need to tell them about who was on the fleet,” I said. My heart sank. “We need to tell Lenny that her brother was up there…”

  Bijarki pointed at the telescope feed on the screen. “They’ve just passed the lighthouse island,” he said. “They’re moving again.”

  “They can’t stop for too long, not with Perfects after them,” Caleb replied. “They have no time to wallow, and neither do we.”

  “We’ll have to organize the funerals, though,” Hazel said, struggling not to cry.

  “Pardon me, but I don’t think that’s wise,” Lumi interjected. “Not yet, anyway. We don’t know who’s dead and who’s missing at this point, and I think we should focus our resources on finding another way to Strava. Serena and the others are dealing with notifying the friends and families, but that’s about as much as we can do, right now.”

  Caleb nodded. “I agree. Preparing for funerals means burying hundreds of empty caskets. And I sure as
hell am not ready to do that.”

  “My father isn’t dead,” Blaze grunted. “I can feel it in my bones. He’s not.”

  Caia rested a hand on his shoulder, then sighed and looked at me. “Lumi and Caleb are right,” she murmured. “We need a new plan here.”

  “Bijarki and I will go see Sherus and Nuriya,” Draven said. “They’ll help us find Bogdana. I’m sure she’ll tell us everything she knows about the Draenir. The more we learn about their species and culture, the better we might understand not only how Ta’Zan came to be, but also how we can infiltrate Strava.”

  “I wonder if the Draenir were also capable of building enormous diamond structures overnight,” Bijarki said, crossing his arms as he stared at the second telescope feed.

  “It depends. I mean, Strava is definitely rich in diamond deposits, but if Ta’Zan is as brilliant as they say, he could’ve just as well found a way to make it himself, directly from carbon. He’s mass-producing living beings. It wouldn’t strike me as odd if he mass-produced diamond, too,” I replied.

  We could see them clearly now—hundreds of colosseums occupying the island clusters in the eastern hemisphere. Rose and her team were right on the edge there, treading carefully on enemy territory as they searched for Ridan. I ignored the painful pang in my heart as I briefly thought of what might’ve happened to him. It had become a mental exercise of sorts, pushing the grief to the bottom of my consciousness, and keeping my focus on what lay ahead.

  If Rose’s assumptions were correct, and the Perfects were poised to multiply further and start conquering the In-Between, Eritopia was in immediate danger, as it was the closest inhabited galaxy. It was going to be their first stop, and I feared that not even the Daughters, with their full powers, could stop them.

  Based solely on what the Perfects had done to our fleet, we could tell they were horrifyingly destructive. They moved like a supersonic swarm and burned everything in their path. However, there was one thought that gave me hope.

  We saw Perfects die outside Strava’s atmosphere. We’d yet to explain why they’d been foolish enough to come after us in the first place. But it was a sign of weakness. Throwing thousands of them off the planet at once sounded like an impossible feat—surely, there was something else we could do, though.

  The vacuum of space couldn’t be the only thing that could kill them.

  There had to be another way.

  Elonora

  (Daughter of Ash and Ruby)

  We’d seen it all.

  And we couldn’t have done anything to stop the attack.

  We had no choice but to keep moving, sneaking from one island to another. We’d left the boats behind and opted for stealthier travel. Where she could, Vesta used the underwater pockets, so we could stay out of sight. We spent plenty of time hidden in the island jungles, watching the Perfects flashing across the sky with dozens of escape pods and injured dragons.

  My heart broke, over and over, and my throat burned with rage. Perhaps what made me suffer the most was the momentary feeling of helplessness, the inability to help the hundreds of supernaturals that had come to help us. Deep down, I found a drop of comfort in knowing that most had survived. On top of that, my brother had already been assigned to Neraka. Then again, I knew nothing about my parents, and whether they’d been up there when the Perfects struck.

  “I’d hoped our message would reach them before they sent the fleet over,” Rose murmured as we made our way toward the beach.

  “We did the best we could,” Ben replied, trying to comfort her.

  I didn’t need an ability to read Rose to understand how much this hurt her. We all shared the pain and the frustration. But we couldn’t sit back and wallow in misery, either. We had to keep moving and find a way to fight this.

  Most importantly, we had to get to Ridan.

  “Over there,” Kailani said, pointing ahead. “That’s the lighthouse.”

  As we stepped out of the woods and set foot on the white sand, we could all see it. Five hundred yards across the water from our tiny patch of dry land was the lighthouse with its empty pier—the place where we’d first encountered the Perfects. Where we’d nearly gotten ourselves killed the first time around.

  The black smoke had almost scattered farther and higher away, where the GASP starships had once flown. Debris had come down in thousands of burning pieces, all over the area. From what I’d seen, there was a radius of approximately two hundred miles, all sprinkled with pieces from the ships’ wreckage. And most likely a lot of bodies, too.

  I swallowed back another round of tears and focused on what was in front of us. I looked up, using my True Sight, to make sure the coast was clear for us to proceed across the water with Nevis’s help. We didn’t want to put too much strain on Vesta and Ben, who were still recovering from losing the blood they’d given for the interplanetary spell.

  “If we run, we can make it to the woods near the lighthouse before Perfects reach the area,” I said. “They’re still carrying escape pods back to the colosseum, from what I can tell.”

  “They’ll be scanning the waters for more survivors, too,” Ben said. “We’d better move fast and find Ridan before the Perfects do.”

  We all nodded, and Nevis stepped forward and extended a straight and narrow layer of frost across the turquoise water. We dashed toward the island, light on our feet but with excruciating weight in our hearts.

  Once our boots sank into the white sand, Nevis snapped his fingers and made the frost path melt away. We ran into the woods for cover, and that was where I finally came undone. I stopped in front of a thick tree and started punching it. Its bark was rock hard and merciless in its resistance, and I barely made its surface crack and chip away.

  My knuckles bled, but I kept going. I’d gathered so much anger inside, and I had to let it out before it became toxic. Everybody else stilled, watching me as I unleashed it all on that one tree. I kept punching and panting until I finally heard the wood break.

  I rammed my fist into it, one last time. The trunk gave out and split open. The tree groaned as it came down with all its weight, its crown loaded with fruit clusters.

  I stood there, breathing heavily and blankly staring at what I’d just done. My mind was quiet. My only thought was wondering whether that had done something to soothe the rage that had been silently consuming me on the inside for the past half hour.

  My vision got hazy.

  “Feel any better?” I heard Kailani ask me, her voice barely a whisper. She wasn’t doing too well, either. She’d already been going through some emotional spikes since her swamp witch apprenticeship had begun, but this had to take the cake for her—and yet, she was holding it together slightly better than me.

  I, on the other hand, couldn’t take it anymore. I dropped to my knees and broke down crying. I heard Rose sobbing somewhere close to me, but I couldn’t see anything, as hot tears streamed down my cheeks. No one said anything for a while, but, at some point, I felt a pair of arms slowly come around me and hold me tight. I didn’t care who it was. It just felt good.

  I let it all out, every single tear, until I had nothing but dry sobs. I blinked several times, noticing the meranium chest plate with its intricate decorative designs and diamond inlays. I recognized the ivory-colored silk sleeves and the rich locks of long white hair brushing against my face. I looked up and saw Nevis. He’d taken it upon himself to be the one to hold me, and, despite our friction, I didn’t mind it one bit.

  On the contrary, it seemed to have a soothing effect on my frayed nerves, as I gradually relaxed in his embrace. Kailani had sat in front of us, watching me with concern. Her eyes were still puffy and red—she’d cried, too. We’d all shed tears for the many lives that had been snuffed out by those Perfects. But Ben was right. We’d done our best. GASP had been bound to come in and try to help us. It wasn’t our fault.

  “I didn’t know there were so many Perfects out there already,” I managed.

  “Ta’Zan is mass-producing them
somehow,” Nevis replied, his voice low.

  It made my heart hum gently in its ribcage.

  Rose, Ben, Dmitri, Vesta, Zeriel and Hunter all sat down around Kailani, Nevis and me, letting deep breaths out. We were still looking for Ridan, but I understood right there and then that we had to take a moment—we had to process everything that had just happened. We couldn’t go on until we wrapped our heads around it all.

  We’d suffered quite the loss, and we had a lot more people to save now. But I wasn’t ready to call it quits. None of us were.

  “Who do you think was on those ships?” Vesta asked.

  Rose shrugged. “I don’t know, but I pray it wasn’t anyone in our immediate family,” she said. “I know it’s a selfish and maybe awful thing to say, but my parents are already missing and, obviously, in serious danger. I don’t know how I’d cope if Hazel or Tejus, or Benedict or Yelena… Harper… Phoenix… Serena… No, I… I don’t know what I would do.”

  Ben put his arm around her, then dropped a soft kiss on her temple. “Rose, it’s okay,” he said. “I think we’re all thinking the same thing. None of us wants to feel that kind of grief of losing your own flesh and blood. I, too, am hoping Grace wasn’t on one of those ships. Or Caia or Blaze. I know, trust me.”

  Dmitri sighed. “There’s this dull pain in my stomach,” he said. “I know Aida wouldn’t have come, since she’s just had Voss, but Field… Anjani and Jovi, Jax and Hansa, Draven and the others… They would’ve come along. Ugh, not to mention Mom and Dad,” he added, then rubbed his face with trembling hands.