Blood Legacy Origin of Species (26 page)

The holographic picture was of a deserted area, flat, dusty terrain with a backdrop of jagged mountain peaks some distance away. It could have been any number of places on the continent, but Ala and Marilyn recognized it immediately: it was the ground above the chambers of the Grand Council. One of the blue-tinged, brutal-faced soldiers appeared on the screen.

“We have located the entrance and have sent in the first wave. They have met no opposition thus far, and we believe the target is sequestered in the very lowest levels.”

“Good,” the silver-haired man said, “make certain you go with sufficient numbers. Our reports indicate this particular individual is deceptively strong.” He tried to make his tone serious, but his manner was gleeful.

The soldier could not disguise his sneer. “We’ll take her down. Especially if we can get to the child first.”

The picture shifted, and the transmission was now coming from the first wave within the chambers. Soldiers, bristling with weapons, were slinking through the hallways and into the great room the council had so recently occupied. Marilyn sighed. She had enjoyed many an hour in the council chambers. The lead group was getting close to the level of the private residences, slowly but surely descending.

The woman glanced at her two captors, noting that neither one appeared particularly disturbed by what they were seeing. She cleared her throat, a tinge of disgust in her tone.

“I would withdraw them if I were you.”

The silver-haired man turned to her. “What? But we are closing in on her position. All our reports indicate she is cornered here.”

The holographic picture flickered, went dark, then resumed, now above ground once more. The man turned back to his commander in the holograph.

“What is happening?” he demanded.

The commander appeared unperturbed. “We seem to have lost contact on the very lowest level. There may be some interference from certain elements in the rock. We’ll re-establish communication in a—”

The commander stopped, an uncertain look passing over his features as he looked down at the ground. “There seems to be some sort of seismic activity here…”

Marilyn was quite impressed with the technology because even though the ground began violently shaking, the picture was crystal clear. Just behind the commander, a huge sink-hole appeared exactly above the previous location of the Grand Council Chambers. The sink-hole grew and grew as ten stories collapsed downward on themselves. The huge crater grew at such an accelerated rate it sucked in everything within sight, including the commander who was pulled into the hole then buried alive by an avalanche of rubble. For a moment, the holograph was nothing more than a dust storm, the particles swirling quite beautifully in the air in the imaginary rectangle.

The silver-haired man stared at the holograph as the dust settled, stunned. Nothing remained other than the gigantic crater, which made it look as if the Grand Council Chambers had been struck by a meteorite.

The blonde woman also stared at the holograph, but her demeanor was in stark contrast to the man’s. She seemed completely unsurprised at the failure of the troops, and glanced to her prisoners.

Ala wanted to burst out laughing but did her best to maintain a neutral expression and avoid eye contact. Marilyn examined the crater, then turned to her captor.

“She likes to blow things up,” she said simply.

“I see that,” the woman replied, then turned on her heel, leaving the silver-haired man staring at the gigantic virtual hole.

Ryan watched the destruction from a distance, highly entertained by the disaster. It seemed the one weapon she could continually wield against these idiots was their own overconfidence, their own arrogance. They repeatedly underestimated her Kind, and she repeatedly made them pay for it.

She sobered abruptly, wary of falling into the same trap. She also knew that these creatures were willing to sacrifice legions simply to test an opponent’s strategy, get a feel for how they would react, then move in brutally for a killing blow. They would throw wave after wave of low-level soldiers into a battle simply to find an exploitable weakness. She could not afford to underestimate them, or make any mistakes.

She motioned for Susan and Edward to join her. They had a long journey ahead, and she was never certain how long her current “normal” phase would last.

The three sat on the wooded hillside overlooking the small airport. It was dozens of miles from the gigantic hole Ryan had left in the ground, and they had covered the distance quickly on foot. She surveyed the tarmac and adjacent buildings. Although she could see nothing unusual, she was hesitant to move out into the open.

“Something’s wrong,” she muttered to herself. “Edward, do you sense anything?”

“No, my lord. But I trust your senses much more than mine.”

“Susan?”

Susan was surprised that Ryan would ask her, given her youth and relative lack of abilities. “No,” she replied, “I don’t see anything, either.”

“Maybe I’m just being overcautious…” Ryan said, then let her sentence die. A shadowy figure peered around one of the buildings, seemed to shimmer, then disappear. A chill went down her spine, the sensation spreading then settling like a chunk of ice in her stomach. Instinctively she pressed backward into the shadows of the trees surrounding them.

“That’s something new,” Ryan said, and the edge in her voice put both Edward and Susan on alert. “We can’t go down there.”

Edward’s tone dropped to a whisper, mirroring Ryan’s instinctive reaction. “If they found the council chambers, as well as this airport, it’s likely they’ve mapped out all your properties. And probably your potential escape routes as well.”

Her thoughts raced furiously. With the technology these creatures had at their disposal, there was a multitude of ways they could be tracking them.

“Destroy your phones,” Ryan ordered.

Edward removed his cellular phone from his pocket and crushed it in his hand. Susan was looking about on the ground for a rock to smash her device. After observing Edward’s actions, she hesitantly fingered the casing, then experimentally put pressure on the shell. The phone exploded into pieces, a result that brought a look of guilty pleasure to her face.

Ryan was expending a great deal of energy shielding their presence and was having difficulty concentrating. Edward was running possibilities through his head and did not like the conclusions he was reaching.

“I have failed you, my lord,” he said at last.

“Well, I doubt that,” Ryan said sardonically, “but what’s brought about this dire pronouncement?”

“We…” Edward paused delicately, “we don’t have any money.”

Ryan gave him a sharp glance, finding this blackly funny. “Did you go on a shopping spree or something?”

“Let me rephrase that,” Edward said, “we don’t have any money that we can get to.”

“They’ll be tracing the accounts,” Ryan said, understanding. She looked down toward the tarmac where the ephemeral creature had disappeared. “Even the hidden ones. That type of expertise is child’s play to them.”

“I have some money,” Susan said quietly, but neither Edward nor Ryan appeared to hear her.

“I have cash stored at numerous locations,” Edward continued, “but I neglected to retrieve any from the council chambers, and I don’t believe there is another reserve near here.”

“And how much did I blow up back there?” Ryan asked absently.

“I believe it was several hundred million dollars.”

“Hmm,” Ryan said just as absently.

“I have some money,” Susan said, slightly more forcefully but with the same lack of result.

“Under normal circumstances, I would suggest we just hide in the wilderness,” Ryan said. “That tactic is almost fool-proof and we need very little.”

Edward finished the thought. “But with your phase changes, that could be very dangerous.”

“Yes,” Ryan agreed, “you two would have a hard time corralling me if I shifted into a savage phase. And the amnesiac and weak phases leave me incredibly vulnerable. I think our original destination is still our safest bet.” Ryan was still having difficulty concentrating. “We could steal a car.”

“I’m afraid any type of ground transportation would be too slow. Again, there is the risk of an unexpected phase shift.”

“Then we could steal a plane,” Ryan said.

Edward continued to play devil’s advocate. “Just yesterday there was a news bulletin regarding ‘potential terrorist activity’ involving the theft of aircraft.” His brow furrowed. “Which I no longer believe to be a coincidence.”

“We could steal a—,”

“I have some money!” Susan fairly shouted.

This exclamation caused Edward to start and Ryan to glance back down at the tarmac, certain that the shimmering creature would reappear. No such thing occurred, and both turned their attention to the red-headed woman.

“How much money?” Ryan asked.

“A couple hundred dollars,” Susan said, embarrassed at her outburst, “it’s not much, but it can get us away from here.”

“And how is it going to do that?” Ryan asked.

“Well,” Edward said, regarding Susan thoughtfully, “we could travel in a way that no one would ever expect.”

“Flight 409 for Dallas departing out of gate 36 is ready for pre-boarding.”

The announcement over the loudspeaker crackled at a stupendous volume, causing Ryan to wince at the noise.

“I was really hoping you were going to say hot air balloon, or something like that,” she commented, trying not to sound as surly as she felt. The line they were standing in snaked through a series of cordoned aisles, barely moving. It was like being in a jam-packed maze.

“And can you explain to me again how this is a good idea?”

Edward tried to suppress his own misgivings. He was taking quite a gamble that commercial air travel was so out-of-the-question it would not be strictly monitored. He did not know how many of the creatures were present on the planet, but it did not seem they were so numerous they could be everywhere. Although he, Ryan, and Susan all had false identification cards, a practice utterly common for their Kind, he wondered if their pursuers possessed facial recognition technology that would identify them immediately as they passed the gauntlet of surveillance cameras.

“My hope is in speed,” Edward responded. “The flight is four hours, and if we can get there without incident, we may remain undiscovered.”

“Or,” Ryan said, “I may phase shift at 40,000 feet and send the plane hurtling into the side of a mountain.”

Edward was unfazed. “Then to prevent that, when your eyes turn maroon, I’ll lock you in the bathroom with Dr. Ryerson and you can join the mile high club.”

Susan was feeling slightly edgy and irritable herself. “I’m quite sure she’s already a member.”

Ryan looked from one to the other. “I don’t have the slightest idea what the two of you are talking about.” She settled into her own irritable silence.

They were approaching some sort of bottleneck in their maze. Susan leaned forward to whisper to Ryan and Edward.

“This is the security screening. You’ll have to remove your shoes and any metallic objects from your pockets, then pass through that machine over there.”

Edward looked at her in disbelief, and Ryan put voice to his expression.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Susan shook her head and Ryan continued. “I can’t believe people travel this way.”

As if to emphasize the ridiculousness of the process, the line stopped, giving Ryan the opportunity to read an adjacent sign. The travel alert declared that “snow globes” were forbidden for transport due to the danger they posed.

“Ah,” Ryan murmured, “I have always felt that snow globes would bring about the fall of western civilization.”

It was now their turn and Susan removed her shoes and a few items from her pockets, placing them in a tray on the x-ray belt. Edward followed suit, then Ryan dutifully did the same. Susan was motioned through the detector and passed without incident. Edward was next and also passed without incident.

“Wait.”

A short, black lady approached, her uniform bearing the insignia of the security supervisor. “In here,” she waved, motioning to the full body scanner.

Ryan glanced over at Susan, who nodded cautiously. It was likely this was a random assignment, brought about by Ryan’s position in line rather than anything particular to her person. Still, Susan felt uneasy as Ryan obediently entered the machine and raised her arms above her head. Susan was not certain how detailed the scan would be and was a little concerned since Ryan’s anatomy was so radically different from a human’s.

Susan’s concern grew as there was a long pause from the operator behind the machine. He slowly leaned around the drapery that concealed the image. He took a long look at Ryan, then turned back to the screen. The supervisor walked over to join him, also disappearing beneath the curtain. A brief moment later, they both leaned out around the curtain to again look at Ryan.

“Damn,” the operator said, unable to help himself. The supervisor was trying to maintain some professionalism, but she, too, was having difficulty hiding her appreciation.