Authors: Kaylie Austen
I’d only attempted to take memories by entering
someone’s brain, but never from within, never with my entire body, but I didn’t
have a choice now. I mentally fought against the muses as they attempted to
devour my thoughts.
With my eyes clenched and my hands balled into white
fists, I battled to the death, it seemed. It felt like minutes, hours until I
was sweating and heaving. I had yet to feel that strange sensation when my
memories left me, were replicated and put back into my brain.
There was a gush that crashed against my insides, a
searing pain that racked my mind. My eyes opened and a ton of images appeared
to me with sound and emotion. They surrounded me, flowed around me, and made me
drop to my knees.
My breathing escalated again, this time out of pain. I
fought viciously against the muses, and now I fought for my life. If the Council
accessed my thoughts of doubt, flickering emotions of rebellion and betrayal,
and seriously close to a track that wanted to redeem Demetrius, they would whip
my butt into oblivion. Worse off, if they realized what I did now, they might
destroy me. I was right. The cerebral chamber was not tamper proof.
A piercing cry escaped my lips, letting out like a
banshee’s shriek. It was so loud and intense that I had to cover my own ears in
order to prevent my eardrums from rupturing. I doubted that anyone could hear a
thing beyond the soundproof, airtight doors.
My essence fled from my body. The dark red and black
swirls mixed with the surrounding fog of the cerebral chamber. It appeared as
if the two entities were in battle, but eventually they blended into one
homogenous gas. One drop of blood would darken the entire vile of clear liquid,
contaminating it, and my essence did this to the fog.
The muses vanished and appeared again, covered in my
darkness, and bellowed. They writhed and moved as if trying to separate
themselves from the entity.
I stumbled to my feet, staggered to the door, and
brought myself to face the room. My essence overpowered the fog and returned to
my body, bringing some of the cerebral chamber into me. I gasped. So many
individuals, so many memories, thoughts, emotions crowded my mind. I wanted to
claw through my head and release them back into the room.
The fog dissipated into nothingness, and the doors
behind me opened. I stumbled back and fell. Zander immediately came to assist
me as the broad doors clapped shut. The cerebral chamber regurgitated me.
With one hand pressed against my throbbing temple, I
pushed myself up with the other. Zander helped me. After giving me a moment to
catch my breath, he pulled away and gawked at me.
“Are you all right?”
“Sure,” I rasped.
He shook his head in an I-told-you-so way. “Now I
can’t let anyone else in. I didn’t know that the chambers were in that bad a
shape.”
“Yeah,” was the only word that I could muster up.
“You should report this to the Council.”
“Right.”
I started walking away, reaching out to find the walls
to help me navigate upright. Everything appeared blurry. Random images appeared
in a haze of what others had seen walking down this corridor before. This was a
high, inebriated feeling that I didn’t care for. People and objects that were
actually in front of me blurred, paused, and returned like broken film.
I moved past the sub sentries who spoke to me, though
their voices sounded distant and mushy. They reached out, but I flinched away,
and eventually staggered into the elevator. The door closed. I swallowed, blinked,
and then opened my eyes as my vision cleared.
I pressed the button for my floor, made it to my
quarters while managing to avoid any questioning eyes, and locked my apartment
door behind me. I didn’t make it to the bed. I crashed on the couch and was
dead to the world.
Nightmares plagued me with an onslaught of sweat. They
were memories of so many minds, filled with infinite thoughts and emotions that
whirled in an endless tidal wave. From tedious, monotonous everyday things like
cooking and work, to intimate thoughts and personal hopes.
I was used to absorbing many memories from one mind,
and that bombarded me to the point where I had to rest for a day or so before
going through the memories in silence like a flipbook. However, receiving all
these memories from so many people nearly crushed me into a stupor. I
understood better why we had the cerebral chamber, but the muses could keep it.
They had job security because no sane person could remain sound with that type
of work, with knowing all those thoughts.
I understood why it was imperative to implement the cerebral
chamber to preserve our culture and knowledge, and even to weed out problems
before they gave birth to crimes. The Council as a whole could communicate
through all the members of our clan at one time to relay an important message.
As a loyal clan member, I supported the cerebral chamber. As an Elder, I would
live by it. But as a growing rebel, I didn’t care for it.
Although, now knowing what it truly was, I couldn’t
bring myself to destroy it, either. My father lived on through the muses, as did
my ancestors, and I couldn’t obliterate their last miniscule drops of existence.
Chapter Seventeen
I received random recollections, images in my mind, which
drove me insane for several days. I realized I was still tapped into the cerebral
chamber. I wondered if the Council knew this. Was this bad for my health? Could
the Council read my thoughts and know what I was doing right now? I was sure
that they would gather what happened once they tapped into the cerebral chamber
as a whole.
Another mystery fell into my equation. How could the
Elders tap into the memories of the cerebral chamber without entering? Was
Danther the sole key to this? Taking him out yielded another advantage.
I remained submersed in a daze for days before finally
leaving my apartment. I was sure some people wondered why I was still in the
domicile, while others thought I’d already left.
I knocked on my mother’s door, which she opened within
a minute. She wasn’t made up just yet, was still in a bathrobe, her wet hair up
in a towel, but she was still lovely.
“Come in, child.”
That was her way of greeting me. I closed the door
behind us, and she excused herself to finish getting ready. Half an hour later,
she emerged with hair dried and pulled to the side in a loose bun, and fully
dressed in a pretty, cream-colored dress.
I was about half-asleep on the chair when she walked
in while slipping on bracelets. My posture immediately straightened when she
entered the room. Mother offered coffee when I grasped the fact that it was
very early in the morning. How many days had passed?
“No, thank you,” I replied.
“That’s right, not a big caffeine drinker.”
She poured herself a cup, laced with sugar and cream,
and came to sit across from me on the sofa.
“You look good, Mother.”
“Thank you.” She took a sip. “Have you found him?”
“No.” I almost scoffed, but remembered my manners just
in time. “I’m still on the hunt.”
“Did you find anything that could help you here?”
“I believe so.” I scrunched my face, and Mother
mimicked me, her way of expressing that she didn’t like my look. “At least some
things were thrown into a black and white picture that should come in handy
later.”
“Good. I hope that we can get this behind us.”
“How are you doing?”
“Better, but it’ll take time to heal.”
“So no rushing into marriage with Claudius?” I
couldn’t help myself.
She frowned. “Not an appropriate question.”
“Right. Have you heard anything about the cerebral
chamber?”
“I know that it isn’t working like normal.”
“Wish I would’ve believed that earlier.”
Mother spoke in a gush of words to cut me off from
further explanation. “If something happened in there, don’t tell me. That way,
if something occurred, no one could fish it out of my memories.”
“But I thought the Elders no longer entered the
chamber.”
“We have to eventually, but not as often as other
members.” She lifted her lips in a weak smile. “I don’t want my thoughts to
incriminate you with anything.”
“How do the Elders read memories without stepping into
the cerebral chamber?”
“That’s classified information.”
I returned the awkward smile, stood, and walked to
her. Leaning down, I kissed her on the cheek and straightened up. She wouldn’t
tell me anything.
“They can be tampered with, you know?”
“Who can?”
“The muses.”
She didn’t move. “So you will destroy it?”
“Perhaps, but the point is memories from witnesses
can’t be the only source of evidence.”
Claudius caught me in his eyesight when I entered the
lobby downstairs. I headed out and intended to downplay whatever conversation
he wanted to ignite. He approached me casually in the grand foyer.
“Selene, are you leaving so soon?” His demeanor
returned to normal, robotic.
I narrowed my eyes. “You told me to keep hunting.”
“Have you had the pleasure of entering the cerebral
chamber during your stay?”
What little pleasure there was to be had. I was
beleaguered, forced without a hand to enter the chamber below.
I appeased the Elder. “I was told it wasn’t working
properly, too bad, perhaps another time?”
“Another time then,” he muttered.
“And when would your turn be?”
“In due time, my child, in due time.”
“Hmm. See you then, Claudius.”
“Hopefully the next time you walk through these doors,
you will bring the tracker with you,” he said in an ominous warning.
I gritted my teeth and clenched my fist. My patience
eroded at a staggering pace. I had to keep my eyes locked on the door sentries.
Otherwise, I would turn around and attack Claudius. I hated that Nathanial
died, but I was glad Claudius would never be my father-in-law, always
attempting to probe deeper into my life and decisions than he possessed a right
to.
“Later, Selene,” a door sentry opened the door for me.
I paused in my step, looked at him, and then left. I
didn’t care that he smiled at me and had always been nice because I was in no
mood today. Sometimes I wanted to crush Claudius like an infinitesimal insect,
or rip his throat out with my bare fangs. Alas, that could never be. Unless the
spotless Elder succumbed to a darker side and betrayed us all, I would never
hurt him and live to tell the tale.
I must’ve been stomping across the woods instead of
silently floating over the debris and god-awful layers of ground crawlers and
broken trunks, because I actually noticed how cluttered the forest floor was.
Couldn’t our kind at least make the area cleaner?
Okay, so I was obviously fuming, over-reacting because
I knew I wasn’t getting the job done. Where in the world was Ashton? He was
sent to help me, and he had yet to do anything. Besides, I needed to ask him
some questions.
To make matters worse, it rained. I hated the rain. It
messed up my hair, made my clothes wet and uncomfortable, and trampling through
the woods would get my boots and pants muddy.
I wiped annoying streams of water from my face.
“You all right, Selene?” a voice growled from the
thicket to my left.
I froze and gaped at the half-naked man who emerged.
Angel was barefoot, wearing nothing more than a pair of jeans, which quickly
dampened in the impending shower. His bare torso glistened with rain. His dark
hair pressed against his forehead beneath the weight of water.
Angel was undeniably a shape-shifter. He was broad,
muscular, and aggressive. He was also an obvious Mythian, evident by his good
looks.
“Sorry.” He cleared his throat. “Just shifted. What’s
up with you?”
“Just stressed.”
“Need something to help relieve it?” The
shape-shifting sentry grinned.
Good lord, every single, of age, testosterone-driven
male in my clan was sniffing around me like dogs in heat. Once it was
flattering, even cute, now it was dreadful and tedious. Well, Angel was a
shape-shifter, so comparing him to an animal during the prime of mating season
was not far off.
“I’m good,” I snapped, and kept walking.
Angel shuffled behind me. He was in my ear when he
spoke, “What drew you to the tracker in the first place, Selene?”
I was not, nor would I ever be, in the mood to discuss
the desires that caused my downfall.
“Was it the darkness, the aggression, the rebellion?”
I halted and scowled.
Angel held his hands up in a gesture of peace. “I just
wanted to know what attracted you to him.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t see why we couldn’t mate.”