Empire Island, Exile the First

Chapter 20

"Tell me again everything you saw," Calla said. She was intense with her focus and I almost saw her mind working with gears turning and pages and sticky notes filled with information pinned up everywhere. "From start to finish."

And I did, again. This time she asked more questions though, and I felt more focused as I responded.

I told her everything I could think of that might mean something for our attempts to rescue Phoenix, and I even threw in things that might not mean anything.

Once we hashed it out, we had a plan. We thought it would work, but we only had a day to get her out of there alive.

"What they're doing is a binding spell to lock the girls in the bottom of the well. They're merging their bodies to the well itself, but the source of magic has been untethered. In its stead, they've attached the power you saw bubbling up. The darkness from the gods of chaos. In this case, the ancient deity demon called Uruk'Zu."

"How is she still alive down there?" I asked.

"They'll keep them in a stasis for some time before the physical form gives way and they need to find another. I suspect they've been doing this all along for over two years now, which is why they've gone through so many girls."

"Why do they need me, then? I have a meat suit just like the rest of them," I replied.

"You will be able to completely break the well free, which will allow the chaos darkness to have a constant portal to our world," she said and sighed. She blinked and her eyes drooped when she lifted her lids again. She was tired. "We aren't going to be able to do anything tonight. Why don't we get some sleep and head back first thing in the morning? We can swing by and get Day, she can help us break up the group and cause a little chaos of our own."

I saw my once fearsome aunt sag in her powers. It was one more surreal moment in a wild week of changes and revelations, that she wasn't the horrible cheater I'd once thought she was. And that she wasn't all mighty or powerful, as I'd once assumed.

Growing older sometimes meant learning that your heroes and your enemies are merely human in the end. And like most humans, they are just trying to do their best with the circumstances that were thrown at them. In Calla's case, I believed everything she said now that years had passed and the rage and grief of my youth had subsided. Nothing was black and white anymore, and what I'd known about her and my father now existed somewhere in the gray area between the two.

Even Mara and Mike, in their deviance, were most likely being driven by their human emotions. In this case, it seemed more like greed and a lust for power, but I was certain there could be shades of twilight, even in those two.

Not that I'd ever accept anything but confession and punishment for either of them. They'd done too much to my island, my family and my body to get anything but that at this point. The rest of the little cult seemed like useful idiots, the tools of the conman. People who needed somebody to tell them how to think and how to behave.

"Do you have anything I could change into? Or maybe I could have a shower first and then some fresh clothes?" I asked, standing up from the couch. I was still wearing the black cloak and my jeans and shirt from the day I'd been captured. I was filthy, and I probably smelled horrible, not to mention the fact that I hadn't brushed my teeth.

"Yes, of course," she said, standing quickly. "I think I was so nervous seeing you again that I forgot my manners."

"You? Nervous of me?" I asked. "Why?"

She crossed the room to a tall dresser and began to dig around in the bottom drawer. "I hated how we ended things when you left," she said as she held up a brown tee shirt with the logo for a restaurant in Wildwood that had closed years earlier. Mom used to take us there when we were kids, and seeing the shirt brought back memories. For once they didn't fill me with pain, I felt like I reconciled everything that had gone on in my head for years. The turmoil was quieting.