Perhaps it's for the best
, I berated myself. I was never destined to have friends. Or lovers. I was only a thing to be used and tossed aside on a whim. Teeg's compulsion was likely the reason I hadn't heard from Kooper—he wasn't aware of my existence, just like Stellan. Steeling my resolve, I realized I'd have to go hunting Erithia Cordan and her obsessed contingent myself.
* * *
Kay's Journal
"Kay, what happened? You can tell us," Frank coaxed. I sat in the middle of Frank's bed, between Frank and Shane. Trace lounged on a chair nearby, watching us.
"I don't want to," I whispered. The younger, more frightened side of me was about to crumble. The older, more reasonable side cursed myself and what I'd done. I'd handed information to the Vice-Director of the Alliance Security Detail during a brief visit, and he was certain to come sniffing after more. At least I'd gained employment at NorthStar using my official name, Kalia Sollo. I'd likely have been jailed already if I'd used my alias, Kay Zahn.
They'd seen my scars after all—that was evident, and that had resulted in a visit from Lendill Schaff. Iversti always drew sun wheels on his victims' flesh with a long, thin dagger. Iversti also had connections to the bigger and badder. Cull's name, too, would hit a dead end when it was researched—that name had been created from the ether, just as my records had been.
"Come on, sissy, let's see that middle of yours. We're healers, remember?"
"Frank, you can't fix this," I muttered and attempted to climb over Shane to get away.
"No, stay here with us. We'll wait until you feel better," Frank sighed. "Put your head on my shoulder, baby girl."
"But why?" My voice was muffled against Frank's shoulder.
"Shhh," Frank soothed. Shane reached over and touched my forehead with his fingers. I was unconscious immediately.
* * *
"You know this will be difficult for me," Kevis murmured, examining the scars on Kalia's body.
"Kev, you're the best at this," Frank begged. "Somebody tortured her. We have to get to the bottom of this. She practically runs away if a straight man approaches her."
"Come on, this is the most beautiful woman you've ever seen. Admit it. Doesn't she deserve your help?" Shane wheedled.
"She deserves help," Kevis ran fingers through light-brown hair, his hazel eyes troubled, a frown marring his features. "I'll talk to Dad. Maybe we can get started on this soon. Have you contacted the Larentii to see if the scars can be removed?"
"I haven't gotten that far. I'll have Mom ask Pheligar if he can do it or if Lenigar or one of the others might be willing, as soon as she and Dad get back from assignment. This had to happen over several years, Kevis. I can't even begin to comprehend what she went through while somebody was carving this stuff into her skin," Franklin shook his head.
"Some of those cuts are deeper than that—I'm surprised she lived over it," Kevis muttered. "Dad is away, too, or I'd ask him to come now."
* * *
"Any new visions?" Ashe asked, holding back a sigh. Rabis sat on a bench outside his modest home, peeling potatoes for his evening meal of stew.
"No." Rabis didn't hold back his sigh. "I get brief, blurring images. As if things keep changing from one moment to the next."
"Is she still close, though?"
"Yes. All the indications are there. Have you ever told the others what she looks like—so they might help?"
"No. I'm almost afraid to tell them." Ashe rubbed the back of his neck uncomfortably.
"Perhaps if you described her to them," Rabis' voice trailed off.
"Grandfather, I worry for her. Ever since you said she would be damaged and would mistrust another woman, I've worried. I've warned the others—the women—to stay away from the main house, too. Things are so unsettled, now, and everything is worse since I've detected evidence of a mind cloud."
"A mind cloud?" Rabis jerked his head up in alarm.
"Grandfather, you and the others inside my shield should be safe, but I can't guarantee that safety if you travel beyond the boundary of SouthStar."
"Something else to protect us from, besides aging?" Rabis lifted an eyebrow. "How long do you expect us to stay here, before boredom or something else comes to lure us away?"
"I don't know." Ashe raked fingers through slightly curly, light-brown hair. "I hope to keep all of you safe for as long as it takes. The Ir'Indicti is supposed to save the race, not allow it to die."
"But that requires remaining here forever, if the time isn't right. You say yourself that only someone with a great deal of power can place two different time periods on either side of a gate and hold it long enough for several to walk through. And you say that your love was standing there with the shining woman, and that she sent mindspeech to you. The half-Elemaiyan children are here already—they merely appeared one day, but your love hasn't come. That means that two separate times were joined together at once, and one of those times hasn't happened, yet."
"I know that, Grandfather. What if the mind cloud is attempting to eliminate that second timeline, so the ones who are here now will disappear into nothing? If that time and the one who manipulated it is destroyed, what will that mean for the rest of us? There will be dire consequence if they fail to accomplish the task within the designated time."
"Surely that can't be," Rabis mumbled, dropping his paring knife into a bowl filled with potatoes.
"I hope that's not the case, but there's nothing else I can do for now. With a possible mind cloud floating around, nobody is safe."
"Child, you are the Mighty Hand. Surely you should be able to do something about that." Rabis gave Ashe a worried glance before lifting his knife and turning his attention back to the potatoes.
"That's just it, Grandfather. What I detected, well, I couldn't find the source, and it was too elusive for me to attempt a cure."
"What about the other two? Might you come together and defeat it?"
"What if that's what it's waiting for? Hoping for? Maybe it was placed to lure us into the open, so we can be destroyed."
"What a frightening thought," Rabis muttered.
* * *
Breanne's Journal
I watched Trevor walk past, with one of his assistant deputies. I knew the deputy had only worked for Trevor three of Le-Ath Veronis' weeks, and had once been comesula. Now he was vampire, just as Trevor's other deputies were.
Did I want to call out to Trevor? Yes. I did. Instead, I pulled back into the shadows between two casinos. I was hunting Erithia Cordan and the obsessed man who'd trailed at her heels like a puppy when I'd seen them at Niff's.
A Council meeting had taken up most of my day, and after filching a bottle of blood substitute from the kitchen—I'd gotten quite adept at misting into the pantry, after all—I'd put off sleep in order to go sleuthing after a woman who held more than a few in her thrall.
My biggest problem, however, seemed to be that the specific obsession she'd placed couldn't be read in others, even employing the best of my curse to do it. I could read her, up to a point, anyway, and knew she'd placed the obsession, but couldn't read what the obsession was.
Obsession
. That was the word I'd read when I'd seen her briefly, and she'd been planning to place more but I'd dropped my eyes before I could read the names of those she intended to obsess.
I wondered, too, how and why such a race as hers had been created in the beginning and what had happened—nobody seemed to know of it now.
Sirenali
. That was the race in question, and in all my research and gleanings on comp-vid for information, I'd not found a single word about them.
* * *
"Willem, tell me what you see. What are the Winds predicting?" Ildevar's gaze was troubled as he asked his elvish seer to consider the future.
"Kaldill asked me that yesterday. It grieves me to give you the same answer," Willem mumbled, lowering his head.
"What answer is that?" Ildevar was even more worried if Kaldill Schaff was consulting Willem. The Elf King had his own ways of seeing things.
"The Winds are unstable, Founder. Images become clear, only to become blurry, like a static-riddled vid image. Then, when the images become clear again, they are different."
"That is more than frightening," Ildevar sighed.
"As frightened as you are, there is reason to be frightened beyond that," Willem whispered.
* * *
Lissa's Journal
"All dead. Even the ones Reah saved are gone," Kiarra shook her head over the skeleton of a gryphon, its bones picked clean by a murder of crows we'd frightened away. "There's no illness to detect, no signs of trauma, nothing. They're just dead."
I watched Adam as Kiarra examined the skeleton,
Looking
with the enhanced ability she had to detect any reason for the gryphon's death. None were left alive on the planet, when Reah had placed nearly two thousand after the battle she, Edward and the Saa Thalarr had waged against rogue Ra'Ak and a multitude of dark creatures they'd gathered throughout time.
"You may be the last," I shrugged at Adam. He was the Black Gryphon, and had fought rogue Ra'Ak in that form for centuries.
"You're forgetting your father," he said gently. "He was the first to take that shape."
"My father." I said it flatly. Yes, he'd saved us, but at the direction of another. I'd learned that from him, so there was no doubt that he might have left me, Rigo, Ry, Nissa, Tory, Trik and Toff to die. I'd been pregnant with Gavril at the time, so that death might be counted as well, had someone not intervened on my behalf.
Griffin had shown up off and on through the years, most notably at the birth of Drake and Drew's sons, Travis and Trent. He'd left gifts for them—two blades each, forged by Grey House. Drake and Drew hadn't allowed their use until the boys were sixteen and knew how to properly treat and handle two blades each. I'd attempted to get Nissa to tell me how much Griffin had paid for those blades, but she'd been curiously silent on the matter.
"Lissa, I understand your feelings in this matter," Merrill sighed. He hadn't spoken since we'd come across the skeleton. Until now, anyway. "I have reasons to be angry, too. Someday, perhaps we'll call a truce with your father."
"Someday," I nodded. I just had no idea how far off that someday might be. "Have you seen Amara?" Amara was still avoiding Griffin, and he continued to search for her. At least she'd given up the idea of having Belen separate her particles. She'd found several children's causes to contribute her time and efforts to, and she stayed in touch with Merrill, Adam and Kiarra. I had the feeling that Merrill and Kiarra had a great deal to do with her decision to keep her life.
"A month ago," Merrill nodded. "She asked if I had any information on child disappearances on Ooblerik. I got the idea that she was working with a charity group there."
"Reah's father, Edan, works with a charity group there," I pointed out.
"It's the same one," Kiarra sighed. "Amara and Edan work together, now."
"Does Reah know?"
"She probably does," Kiarra nodded. "We've got nothing, here. Let's look for another, fresher body if we can find it."
* * *
"Rabis says she'll need love and care, so if we find her, we'll have to provide as much peace and quiet as we can," Ashe sighed as he sat down for dinner at the kitchen island.
"What's wrong with her?" Trajan asked.
"He doesn't know—he just says she'll be damaged and need help."
"Boss, that doesn't sound good."
"I know, and it's got me spooked."
* * *
Breanne's Journal
Three nights I shorted myself on sleep and combed through Casino City, without a single trace of Erithia Cordan. Casino City was enormous, with more than five million in residence and more than that in other cities scattered nearby. Gamblers and tourists on any given day easily swelled that initial number to ten million.
Casinos, condos and other housing also crowded the city, which meant Erithia Cordan could be anywhere. I attempted the trick of
Looking—
I'd learned it from Graegar, and while I could locate other things (I always knew where Trevor was) I couldn't get a lock on Erithia. Something about her or her race prevented it. Not only that, but her obsessed follower was somehow included inside her shield.
All this went through my mind as I lay on the Queen's bed on off-day—I allowed myself the luxury of not going to my office to work for an extra hour before rising.
"Get up, you have a visitor," Gavin almost blew the door down as he rushed inside the suite.
"What?" I stared—who would come for a visit in the first place, and why would Gavin allow it in the second place? I didn't ask questions—impatience marred Gavin's features so I rose, cleaned up and dressed in a matter of minutes. Following my angry sire down the hallway leading from the family wing of the palace, we made our way into a sitting room.
I stared—I know I did. One of the tallest men I'd ever met stood as I walked in the room. He wasn't Larentii-tall, but that didn't matter. Dark hair. Darker eyes. A handsome face. Jeans, boots and a polo met my gaze. My hand covered my mouth. I felt as if I'd waited a long time to see this man, and had only realized it.