The Light Within (Shadow and Light Duology #2)

26. Julien

twenty-six

Julien

B ehind him, Darcy gave a shriek of shock which she quickly muffled.

Elliot nervously chuckled, as if preparing to hear that this was all a strange joke.

Cinn mumbled curses under his breath.

All Julien could do was stare at Eleanor, waiting for the puzzle pieces to click into place.

They didn’t.

“Explain,” Julien said, his eyes unable to leave the woman’s face. “Explain what is going on before I lose my mind.”

Eleanor adjusted her thick-rimmed glasses. “Take a seat.”

A stack of metal chairs sat in a corner. Malik leapt into action, placing them in a semicircle in front of Eleanor.

Julien couldn’t bring himself to move. Nothing made sense. His world had been knocked off its axis, sent zooming off into the stratosphere. “Since when are you a part of AP?”

“Child, I am AP. Now, sit down.”

Julien’s heart was pounding in his chest, an off-rhythm thump that sent blood rushing through his ears. Cinn pulled on Julien’s coat sleeve until he gave in, perching on the edge of a cool metal chair. Silence spread between the lot of them. Julien clenched and unclenched his jaw, waiting for Eleanor to begin talking. By Christ she had a fuck-tonne of explaining to do.

“Where do you want me to start?” Eleanor said at last .

Everyone turned their eyes on Julien—gazes weighted with a mixture of expectation and caution. He felt their stares like a pressure against his skin. Cinn stopped tugging on Julien’s coat, his fingers still hooked on his sleeve as though ready to pull again if needed.

Why? How? How long? Why had Eleanor summoned them all here? Why now?

“Béatrice.”

Julien’s sister’s beautiful broad smile unfurled itself from the shadows of his mind.

Why her? Why couldn’t it have been me? Why did she have to leave me?

It was where all this started. They were the only answers that really mattered to him, in the end.

“I want you to know that I never sought her out for this, Julien. She found her way to AP of her own accord.”

“You reassured me her death was a random accident!” Julien cried, not bothering to mask the tidal wave of emotion pouring out of him. “You told me to stop looking for answers!”

“Yes!” Eleanor bit back, running her hand over her tight grey ponytail. “Because Béatrice was dead, and it seemed rather insulting to Isabelle’s memory to get both of her children killed!”

Julien considered Eleanor’s expression, seeking small cracks of remorse in the face of his mother’s close friend.

“Father Gérard rang shortly after you left his church.” Eleanor composed herself, smoothing down invisible creases on her trousers. “Did you know, Julien, that your mother only told two people about your extraordinary abilities? Myself, and Father Gérard. Not your father, your own flesh and blood.”

“My father doesn’t care about flesh and blood,” Julien spat. He couldn’t wait any longer. He had to say it. Had to know for sure. “He killed Béatrice, didn’t he?”

Out of the corner of his vision, Elliot and Darcy exchanged devastated looks. A hand found its way into his own, Cinn’s fingers interlocking to squeeze tightly.

“Yes,” Eleanor said softly. “I believe he did.”

Now, Julien could bombard her with cries of outrage, demanding to know why his father was still walking around a free man. But he wasn’t stupid. That wasn’t how the world worked, not when you were as rich and powerful as Lucien Montaigne. Not with his connections, with half the consortium in his pocket.

“With her locket.”

“Yes.”

“Because she…” Julien trailed off.

Eleanor sighed. “Do you remember meeting L, that day you found us at the crevice, after the earthquake? Well, Béatrice was working closely with them.”

A sudden recollection dropped into Julien’s lap. “Hey! That L person told me that you’d murdered Béatrice!”

Eleanor’s eyebrows knitted together lightning fast. “What? You’re mistaken.”

“ Non , I…” Thinking back to it, that wasn’t exactly what L said. “They said your name!”

“Yes, because L and I have had several heated arguments about involving Montaignes in AP business! They were likely trying to force my hand, dragging you into it against my will.”

“So, it’s L’s fault that Béatrice got involved in AP?”

Eleanor sighed. “Julien, the sooner you stop trying to assign blame for everything, the sooner you can start to move forward. But yes. L recruited her, specifically because they couldn’t resist the direct link to your father that Béatrice offered.” Her lip curled up in disgust. “Béatrice hinted to L that she’d made significant progress in their line of enquiry. Then, she was summoned to the Philippines on her aid mission, and died before she could meet with L again.”

“Line of enquiry…” Elliot repeated. “What was L getting her to do? Béatrice barely spoke to Lucien, especially in the last year before she died. She could hardly suddenly cosy up to him for information.”

“Which was why she made herself so suspicious, and ended up paying the price.”

Nausea rose inside Julien, mixing with the simmering rage that had embedded itself within him since the church. His father would get his just desserts for Béatrice if it was the last thing Julien did.

Cinn cleared his throat. “The priest told us about the machine. He called it ‘the dark machine.’”

“Yes,” Eleanor said, on a sigh. “That’s the one. Machina Tenebris . Béatrice was supporting us by sourcing information about it.”

“Father Gérard couldn’t even promise me it was real,” snapped Julien. “Béatrice might have died for nothing.”

“I can assure you, it’s definitely real. Surely the fact that Lucien had her removed suggests she discovered something. Regardless, we have substantive evidence the machine exists.”

Eleanor wheeled her desk chair to the side, presenting them with a wall of computer monitors, all blue background and white text. She stood up, rolling her shoulders back in a long stretch. Malik stepped forward, but she waved him away.

A keyboard terminal with a dozen wires flying around it sat on a desk. Eleanor pressed a few buttons, and the largest display unit changed into a line graph.

“The obscure rumours about this mysterious machine started almost twelve years ago now, but we believe it was fully operational the day before your mother’s death.”

“What does it do, please?” asked Darcy, ever the epitome of polite .

More tapping of buttons on the keyboard, more displays showing wiggly graphs that Julien would need his glasses to read. Then Eleanor reached into her pocket and removed a small metal bar, identical to the one Malik used to unlock the door. “In the last ten years, motecells have wormed their way into everything.” She held up the bar. It was seamless—there was no need to replace a motecell, usually. They were designed to recharge themselves by drawing ambient motes from the air, ensuring a near-endless supply of power.

“The invention of motecells shortly predates the rise in climatic activity, both of which shortly follow the Machina Tenebris project being completed. AP believes the machine draws power from the shadowrealm to fuel the production of them.”

Julien rubbed a hand over his bleary eyes. Being nearly two a.m. in this dingy secret laboratory was hardly ideal for making sense of Eleanor’s squiggly graphs that all followed the same curve.

“Okay. This… machine. The motecells. The natural disasters. Keep talking.”

“Lucien registered his patent for an early prototype of the motecell in winter, nineteen eighty-five.” Eleanor moved to the next graph on another display. “Production begins the following year, coinciding with the Kamchatka Peninsula eruptions and the Horn of Africa experiencing their worst drought on record. We finish up eighty-five with back-to-back tsunamis across Southeast Asia, and then, in eighty-six…”

Eleanor sounded like she’d made this entire speech many, many times. She walked them through another couple of years, constantly referring to her motecell growth graph until Julien’s eyes hurt.

“Okay, point proven,” said Julien. “Your data makes a great argument, I’m sure. So where is this machine? I’ll take great joy in taking a sledgehammer to it myself.”

“I’ve already explained to you that we don’t know.” Eleanor pursed her lips as if Julien was wasting her time, even though she was the one who had dragged them there.

Julien moved on to another thought. “Hold on. These motecells are used in motetech all over the world. Every single production company has access to them, somehow.”

“HorizonTech produces and distributes every single one from its Paris site. But your father owns almost every company in the world, Julien, as you know.” Eleanor sounded more irritable by the minute.

“How come you think this machine thing draws power from the shadowrealm?” Cinn stared at the array of glowing displays.

“Noir thinks—”

Cinn cut her off with a splutter. “Noir’s in on this too?!”

“What do you mean in on this ? This isn’t a joke. We’re a team, working from facts. And Noir presents a solid case that the umbraphage emergence is in direct response to this.” Eleanor gestured wildly to the room at large, appearing for a moment like a crazed old lady.

Cocking his head at Julien, Cinn became lost in thought. “Huh. That kind of tracks, right?”

“So, what now?” Julien asked Eleanor, who’d finally sat down again.

“What?”

“You obviously brought us here for a reason. What do you want us to do?”

Eleanor stared at him like he was an alien. “Lie low and stay out of trouble!”

A groan sounded from beside him—Elliot shared Julien’s feelings.

“And I only brought you here because Malik did such a poor job observing you, he made matters worse.”

Malik shuffled on one foot, a sheepish grin crossing his lips .

“Are you aware my father tried to snatch Cinn from our hotel room in Paris? And then sent a car to run us off the road? All after he wanted Cinn’s ‘help’ with something.”

Eleanor leaned back in her chair. It took a fair few seconds before she replied, “No. That’s interesting.”

“It’s not interesting !” Julien raised his voice to her. It was one of the few times he’d ever done that.

“No, no, sorry. You’ve misunderstood me. I meant that Noir would be very interested to hear that. I’ll see what I can do about getting someone stationed near your house.”

Cinn’s metal chair shot forward with a loud scrape. “I’m not having a bodyguard.”

“That’s good, because I can’t give you one.”

A sudden, piercing beep interrupted Cinn’s next words, erupting from one of the machines with an urgent, grating rhythm. The sound was sharp and relentless, echoing through the room with an intensity that commanded immediate attention.

Malik shot across the room like his life depended on it. His hands flew over a console, tapping and swiping with a speed and precision that was almost impossible to follow. Symbols and numbers flashed on the screen, an incomprehensible blur. Diagrams and charts followed, with Malik’s face a picture of fierce focus.

“What’s going on?” Elliot jumped up to stand behind him.

Eleanor rose to her feet with the energy of someone who’d just climbed a mountain, and was about to climb another one. For a moment, she and Malik consulted the screens, murmuring about fluctuating pressure systems and much more Julien couldn’t quite catch.

“I think it’s alerted them to rising levels of climatic activity,” Darcy informed them, once it became clear Eleanor wasn’t going to turn around.

“This is bad,” Eleanor said, pressing her fingers against the screen.

“How long, ma’am?” murmured Malik .

“A couple of days? Three at most? Sound the alarm at dawn. We’ll need to prepare teams. Maybe we’ll finally get something this time, with events of this magnitude all happening at once.”

Julien jerked his head towards the ladder. Whatever Eleanor and Malik were discussing, he doubted Eleanor wanted to explain it to them.

“We’ll be off then.”

“I’ll be in contact,” Eleanor threw over her shoulder.

Elliot looked like he was going to reach for Malik’s arm until he caught Julien watching him, Julien’s eyebrows raised in a daring sort of way. Elliot’s expression darkened into a glower, his arm dropping before he marched to the ladder.

The climb back to ground level was a quiet one. Everyone was either stunned into silence or as tired as Julien. His eyes drooped by the time they reached the heavy metal door and spilled out onto the pavement. Julien glanced at the corner shop exterior. The revelation of finding Eleanor in some sort of secret AP basement had aged him about twenty years.

Still, at least many things made more sense now. Yet there was one question still left unanswered, looming large in Julien’s picture of events: why hadn’t Béatrice talked to him when she started getting wrapped up in it all?

Had L bullied her into silence? Did she think Julien wouldn’t approve of her involvement?

“I think she was trying to protect you,” said Cinn into his ear, making him jump.

“What?”

Cinn laughed. “I can see what you’re thinking about. It’s written all over your face.” He nudged his hip against Julien’s. “Plus, me and her have our bond. So I know her now. You were always protecting her. From your dad and stuff. So she wanted to protect you for once. ”

Julien swallowed around a thick lump that prevented any attempt to reply. He blinked rapidly, pushing back the sudden sting of emotion. He took a shaky breath, his chest heavy with a strange mix of intense gratitude towards Cinn and the aching regret that he’d never quite know the whole truth about Béatrice’s decisions.

But as he caught Cinn shyly smiling at him, looking pleased with himself, Julien understood he could grow to be okay with that.

Cinn and his beanie hat disappeared into the Clio’s rear seats.

There were much more important things to be worrying about.