Max didn’t say anything. He simply continued to observe me like you would an item in the store you were considering purchasing. “Why do I want you? I would have thought that was obvious, my seer. Just as I would have thought you could use your powers to spy into the future and realize it won’t be all that bad, not with me by your side. For we’ll finally be able to do what I have sought to do my entire life – bring justice to this world. Bring peace. Bring the great destiny we’ve always desired.” As he spoke, his voice wound up like it was some kind of motor or propeller getting ready to spring into flight. And the look in his eye – god, it became all the more crazy until I swore his pupils would actually burst into flame.
I shook my head, the move tight, my neck like a twisted spring. “There is no goddamn way I’m going to help you,” I said, voice stuttering.
“You have no option,” he said in a light, quiet whisper.
“I’ll find a way,” I replied through clenched teeth. “I know what you’re doing – know what you’re planning. And there’s no way I’m ever going to use my powers and let you in.”
This elicited a loud, echoing chuckle. The kind of chuckle that made you seriously question the sanity of the person giving it. But I didn’t need any more evidence to question McCain’s sanity. It wasn’t just the look in his eyes or everything I’d seen him do in the past. It was his mere presence. It rippled off him – his dark desire to control, to bring so-called justice to the world by tying it up so it could never make a mistake again.
He’d taken several steps away from the desk, and he continued to assess me with that awful tilted-head move that made him look like a snake questioning whether it should strike its prey now or later. He didn’t, however, take another step toward me. That would come later. For now, he had me right where he wanted me.
I kept my teeth gritted so hard I could have chewed through the enamel and slashed into my gums. “I’ll never submit to my power. And even if I did, there are too many other magical practitioners in Bane City – they’ll stop you. You have no chance, McCain. Go back to the past. Give up. Give me Max back,” I said. I’d been able to keep my voice even up until that point, but then it broke as another burst of emotion rattled through me. It was emotion I shouldn’t have shown, because once more it lit up McCain’s face and made that fire burn all the brighter in his eyes.
“As I said before,” he gestured wide with his hands. “I am Max. He is nothing more than a broken shard of my soul. One that was mistakenly saved,” he said through gritted teeth that looked as if they could never be moved again, “by your forebear, Mary.” On the word Mary, McCain’s eyes became dark. That was no emphasis. I didn’t mean they narrowed to the point where it was hard to pick up the pupils. No, I mean actual darkness seemed to well through them and spread through the irises until they were indistinguishable from lumps of coal.
It sent an awful, cold sensation billowing through my gut, and I had to cram a hand onto my stomach as if to hold myself together.
He noticed, and it sent another smile cracking over his lips. “But you see, there was nothing for that fool Mary to save.” McCain slammed a hand on his chest.
The move echoed so loudly, I couldn’t help but yelp with surprise.
“Be not afraid. I won’t hurt you, my seer. Just the opposite – I’ll give you the purpose you’ve always searched for. For I watched you, Chi McLane, even before your grandmother betrayed me. I knew of you back then. I guessed what you are capable of. But I had to wait, wait until that old woman’s protection ran out. But now,” again, he spread his arms wide, “I don’t have to wait any longer. I’m here. The future is finally ours.”
“Ours?” I said through a croak that barely made it out of my throat. “There’s no way on earth I would ever help you. And there’s no way on earth you’re getting out of this room,” I said, voice dropping.
He tilted his head to the other side, eyes narrowing. “What exactly do you plan to do?” he questioned as he took another pointed step toward me, his heavy body shaking through the floor and up into my stomach. “You are trapped. There is nothing you can do without your powers,” he added. His eyes blazed with that unmistakable fire that threatened not just to burn me but to burn through the rest of the world while it was there. “You cannot fight me on your own. You require your powers.”
“You think I need to use my powers to fight you, you bastard? All I need is common sense. Oh, and a well-placed lie here and there.” As I said the word lie, I looked into his eyes. Though I still felt the fear rumbling in the pit of my stomach, I fought past it as I shot him the hardest look I could muster. “Or have you forgotten, dear McCain, that you can’t tell the difference between a lie and the truth?” It was a move deliberately designed to bait him.
For a second, it didn’t work. But then I watched his lips stiffen, watched that smile falter and crack as if it were glass that had been thrown off a cliff. The anger washed through him with such exquisite obviousness he was like a Shakespearean actor
