Bite Back 05 - Angel Stakes

by Mark Henwick

  Huang eyed the others, then turned to Skylur, his hands opened in question.

  “The truth, Diakon Huang,” Skylur said. “For all here to hear. We have no time left for anything else.”

  Huang nodded. “I will speak openly then, but I urge you all to restrict what you say about dragons to others.”

  Correia blinked. “That’s what you’ve been so distracted by? This rumor of dragons started by Altau?”

  “No rumor, House Correia.” Huang gestured with his hands. “A dragon spirit was present, and broke the lock on the Kumemnon. It has since disappeared. The question is, what has happened to it? We’ve searched this continent from end to end and found nothing.”

  “Why, Diakon?” Correia asked. “Why this effort?”

  “To preserve the dragon’s life, and the life of the host, prevent harm, and realize an immense benefit for the entire paranormal community.”

  Stanbrigge shook his head impatiently. “You say for the entire community. I take it you mean the Empire first?”

  “The dragon would, of necessity, reside with us,” Huang said. “Benefit would therefore start in our domains, but it would quickly spread to all paranormal communities who wished to engage. The dragon provides a focus of Adept and paranormal abilities that can be achieved no other way, and will provide a defense against those parts of humanity which would not accept us.”

  How?

  Truth or half-truths?

  Defense? Focus? Engage? What did he mean? We had to come under one rule and could then force humanity to do what we said?

  Huang wasn’t readable to me, but Tarez had talked to him on this before.

  “This isn’t getting us anywhere,” he said. “We’ve been through all this and your implication that the Empire would use the power to protect Emergence by force is concerning. The important facts tonight remain: you know where Forsythe’s auction is; we don’t know where the dragon is. There can be no link.”

  “But there is, House Tarez.” Huang closed his eyes for a moment, took a deep breath. When they opened again, they were full of regret and fastened on me.

  “The Emperor commands, and I must obey,” he muttered to himself.

  He indicated the group behind him. “My colleagues are the most skilled Adepts in the whole Empire, the most knowledgeable about dragons. Our hunt across the width and breadth of this continent has given us nothing. No uninjured, immature dragon and young host could hide themselves from our search. This leads us inescapably to the conclusion that they are injured, possibly seriously. We must therefore search backward in time to pick up the trail. The type and extent of the injury will inform us how to search, and possibly where to search.”

  What?

  “Be clear, Diakon,” Tarez said.

  “My request today, so ill-timed, was to examine the memories of the Kumemnon for some hint of the state of the dragon, some clue about injuries and intentions, at the moment the lock was destroyed and the dragon touched upon her mind.” He lowered his head. “Ill-timed, as I said, and again, I offer my sympathies and apologies, those of the Emperor and the entire Empire. The Athanate world has suffered an incalculable loss.”

  He paused and I stirred. I knew what was coming next.

  “Given the circumstances, I now request to access House Farrell’s memories,” he said. “She was part of this event, possibly even better placed to reveal what happened.”

  Anger beat at me, throbbing in my chest, nearly choking me, forcing the fog of grief out of my head.

  “You’re holding back the location of the auction to blackmail me into allowing you into my head?”

  Correia’s opinion was clear. If Huang was saying a dragon could force humanity to accept us, she was all for it.

  “What have you got to hide?” she said. “The Diakon has said this is in all our interests. It must be done. This is our obligation. Altau, command her.”

  “I will not order her to submit to this,” Skylur said. “But I free her to make her own decision.”

  But what did he mean? Do it or not? They’d warned me about being caught by Huang.

  If I allowed him to read my memories, what if something there did reveal where Tullah and Kaothos were? That was betrayal. But what if they were hurt, as Huang said, and needed help? Did Skylur really know how they were? Had Diana?

  What if Huang learned something of the Southern League? Did that mean I betrayed them too?

  What if Huang saw that I’d gone rogue? If this was anything like a therapy session, with him as xenagia, the guide, and the others as stirythes, all of them would see I’d gone rogue. Whatever Huang might decide, I knew Correia would demand my execution under Agiagraphos law. And the majority of the Athanate outside would support her.

  But at least Skylur would know where the auction was. Someone would rescue Dante and Tamanny.

  “There’s no time for this,” Tarez said to Huang. “If you delay any longer, there’s going to be no reason for House Farrell to give you anything. The auction will be over. One member of her House dead, the other sold, all thanks to you. And remember, Farrell is a sub-House of Altau. These young women are House Altau too.”

  Thank you, Tarez.

  And though Tamanny wasn’t formally my House, she might as well have been.

  “All this talk of benefit and advantage makes me sick,” Alex said to Huang. “You’re morally obliged to help.”

  “I would personally agree, kin-Farrell,” Huang said. “But I am bound by my duty to the Empire. Empires can make no judgements other than as Empires, and all our personal concerns count as nothing against the concerns of the Empire. You heard my words before the Assembly; to be Athanate is to shoulder a greater destiny, and with that destiny may come many burdens. I am bound upon the wheel of heaven; I must sacrifice my personal feelings for the greater good of the Empire as a whole.”

  He sighed, and turned to me again.

  “Nevertheless, within those constraints, what I can do, I will. Do this for me, House Farrell, I beg you. In return, I offer our two helicopters outside, sufficient to carry twenty Altau troops each, with the coordinates programmed in and pilots ready to fly immediately under your instruction. Once we are finished here, you can be at the auction site in minutes. As much as we know of the layout of that site has been uploaded to a tablet computer which will be waiting for you outside. The auction has some time to run yet. You would not be too late.”

  Skylur’s face was unreadable as he murmured something to Tarez, who stepped back to make a call.

  What do I do?

  If Huang found Kaothos because of what I did, and he took her away, Panethus would have lost a huge benefit or bargaining chip against the Empire. I might have betrayed Tullah and Kaothos. Or saved their lives.

  Was I right to assume Kaothos was a benefit and wouldn’t self-destruct without the Empire’s communities?

  And if I refused and Tamanny and Dante died because of that…

  Skylur and Tarez warned me to keep away from Huang.

  But Tarez had sent Victor to fetch me here. He knew Huang would put this pressure on me.

  What did Skylur and Tarez really want me to do? Their faces remained unreadable. Whatever their plan, it seemed they would not reveal it in front of Huang.

  I had no guides but myself.

  And I could make no judgements at the level of their empires and Altau’s secret plans. I could only decide based on what mattered to me, as a person and as House Farrell.

  Skylur had to know that. He knew what decision I would make freely, and he’d said I would be free to make it.

  “I’ll do it,” I said.

  Chapter 65

  “The opening of the lock,” Skylur said. “Not a moment more.”

  “I will not pry,” Huang said.

  “I know,” Skylur replied, stepping up behind me.

  His arms came around me, taking my weight, one hand reaching up and pulling my head back against his shoulder.

  My heart raced and I clu
tched at his arms.

  Wait! Too quick! What if it all went wrong? I needed to say something to Alex first…

  “Calm, Amber,” he whispered in my ear. “Trust me.”

  Huang stepped up and passed a hand over my face, closing my eyes. I found I couldn’t open them again.

  And there was nothing all around me. I was floating, alone.

  No.

  Standing. Standing on a firm surface.

  Aware of such power around me. Feeling the warmth of it rising up from the soles of my feet to the tip of my head.

  I was a child of ten. Standing on the Hoover dam. Scared. It all seemed so vast. Dad’s arms around me. Safe. Safe. Such power.

  Skylur, not Dad. LA, not the Hoover Dam. But safe.

  Huang’s hand was on my forehead. There was a gentle pressure. His telergy felt like neither Skylur nor Diana.

  In fact, it felt like...maybe the sun shining on my face. A feeling of softness seeped into my head. Unrelenting. Terrifying. But then…so far, no further. Beyond that, I sensed the absolute power and steel doors that tasted of Skylur, and divided my mind.

  Huang would get what he had bargained for and not one stray thought more.

  Behind Huang, every Athanate in the room was watching. I could feel the weight of their eyes. And I could feel Huang’s Adept companions as if every one of them were pushing and probing at me.

  Falling.

  For a second, I felt the panic returning. My hands twitched and my body tensed.

  And then it was cold and dark, and the night was full of screaming.

  The working created by the Taos Adepts, the lock that holds Diana, is a living, evil thing. It’s howling. The sound reaches into me and makes my bones ache.

  What must it feel like for Diana, at the center of that squirming mass of energy?

  Four Adepts stand around her, the main support for the working. All the Taos Adepts, even those scattered around the hillside, are feeding into it. And they harvest energy from the children. The children are dying. Diana is dying. The Adepts are dying. We’re all freaking dying.

  The lock itself is sapping the life from us.

  I struggle with the Adepts. I free one single strand of the working. I ground the energy through myself, and I scream. It’s like acid in my veins.

  Another strand. Another.

  Not enough.

  So much pain.

  More and more of the working is grounding through me, but it’s still not enough. It will kill me before I can break the lock.

  My screams reach out to Kaothos, and she comes. She manifests, blotting the stars out of the sky.

  And then Kaothos is grounding the energy through herself instead.

  Kaothos is screaming. The whole Taos community of Adepts scattered around the hillside, all of them, are screaming. All of us are bound into this one, hideous pain.

  Then there’s no lock. No Diana. No Adepts. Just a ball of flame in front of me, like a sun going nova.

  Floating. Falling. Everything falling into the sun. No screaming. No sound but a single note, a note so deep I cannot hear it, only feel it.

  And then silence. Abrupt. Final.

  No Adepts.

  Kaothos?

  Kaothos?

  KAOTHOS?

  Silence.

  Emptiness.

  And into that silence—

  Shock like a blade falling.

  But the Adepts were still screaming.

  Wait. The Empire’s Adepts, not the Taos Adepts. The noise was here, all around me—shrieks knifing through my brain.

  And the truth began to cut into me.

  Kaothos was dead. Breaking the lock had killed her. They’d felt her die.

  No!

  Not Kaothos, with her huge golden eyes and her laugh hissing like steam from a hot griddle.

  Kaothos. Diana. Tullah?

  Tears were streaming down my face, and a huge grief tore at my chest.

  “What happened?” Correia was shouting. “Do we need a healer?”

  I looked up.

  One of the Empire Adepts had curled into the fetal position. Huang knelt next to him.

  What the hell? Was this something I’d done? Or Skylur?

  “What did Farrell do?” Correia demanded.

  “Nothing, House Correia,” Skylur said.

  “Diakon?” The gently worded question of Ó Ruairc seemed to surprise Huang, who held up his hand and spoke with a sigh in Athanate.

  “Not for you to heal this, House Ó Ruairc,” Yelena translated.

  “The truth, Diakon Huang,” Skylur said in English, his voice hard and snapping like a whip.

  “He was the Chosen,” Huang replied wearily. “An Adept, trained from birth for one task, to host a dragon, on the possibility of one appearing in his lifetime.”

  “But Kaothos wasn’t his dragon,” I said. “She is…she was Tullah’s.”

  Kaothos. No!

  Tullah? Oh, my God. What must she be going through?

  “You misunderstand the nature of the dragon,” Huang said, oblivious to my churning grief. “They are attracted to power. An immature dragon would be unable to resist the lure of a powerful Adept. The dragon would have changed hosts.”

  What? They had planned to steal Kaothos from Tullah? Who did he think he was?

  Huang’s remaining Adepts recovered themselves and started to speak quickly to Huang in Chinese dialect.

  I was trembling with anger. Yelena’s voice in my ear seemed to come from a long way away: “Careful. We need him to honor his side of the bargain first. Focus, Mistress.”

  Skylur heard and looked over. The tail end of that awful power I’d sensed seemed to lash across the room. I didn’t think Huang had any option.

  Huang silenced his Adepts and held up his hands as if to ward us off. “Your friend would have died if she’d kept the dragon,” he said. “What we intended was for everyone’s benefit, truly. With the power of the dragon behind us, the path for Emergence was clear. Without the dragon, not so clear, not certain at all.”

  Correia forced herself in front of Skylur.

  “Another disaster of your making, Altau. Your presidency has become a litany of catastrophes. You disregard the Assembly and the Agiagraphos, you provoke mainstream Athanate with the appointment of an unstable hybrid as a House, you barely bother to conceal your endless ambition. Now the inept mishandling of the situation in New Mexico by that same hybrid has lost all of us the use of a dragon and the Kumemnon. Without the Kumemnon to restrain your ambition, the Hidden Path believe you are no longer fit to preside over the Assembly. I demand a vote of confidence and you must comply.”

  “This is not the Assembly,” Skylur said.

  “All the Athanate representatives who will comprise it are here. If we say this is an Assembly, who denies us?”

  Alex, standing at my shoulder, spoke. “This Assembly won’t function without Were support. We support Altau.”

  “Do all Were?” Correia snapped back.

  “The Midnight Empire also supports Altau.” House Stanbrigge of the Midnight Empire edged his way to the front. “We offer condolences for the loss of the Kumemnon, caused not by any action of Altau, but by the actions of Adepts in league with Basilikos and other traitors. The alternative for presidency would appear to be House Correia, and we find her and the Hidden Path tainted by their links to that same Basilikos. So, I will take this opportunity to inform my fellow representatives that the Midnight Empire has decided to join Panethus en bloc.”

  I had no doubt it’d been agreed a while back and been held so it could be revealed at just the right moment.

  Smooth move, Skylur!

  It looked as if Correia wouldn’t have enough support. And her move tonight had put her position as leader of the Hidden Path on the line.

  Who will take over next? Will they be better or worse than Correia?

  I was surprised by a tinge of regret at the thought. At least Correia engaged in dialogue. Who knew what crazy would take o
ver?

  Then came Ó Ruairc’s voice. “Ireland cedes from the Midnight Empire. We will not join Panethus, but neither will we join the Hidden Path. Yet, we are at the heart of the Athanate world. We tend your sick and traumatized, those beyond the help of your healers. That should continue, without regard for the creed from which they come. We will remain outside of politics, and we offer a permanent home for the Assembly. Ireland will become the one place in the world where every peaceful Athanate is welcome.” He bowed his head as if in prayer. “May that lead to every Athanate being peaceful.”

  That got a response from everyone. The site of the Assembly was one of the big unresolved issues that had dragged on. No one would be against the proposal to make it permanently in Ireland.

  Something good had come of this, and the removal of Ireland from the political balance wasn’t enough to swing it back in Correia’s favor.

  “What does the Empire of Heaven say about the presidency?” Correia said to Huang, and silenced the buzz of conversation.

  That’s a Hail Mary, and goodbye, Correia.

  Huang’s face was somber.

  However he’d positioned himself against Skylur, it was another matter to position himself for Correia. The Empire of Heaven was as aware as the rest of the Assembly that the Hidden Path had too many links with the old Basilikos. The vote would go against her and Correia was finished.

  “The Empire of Heaven cannot support the presidency of Altau in the new Assembly at this time,” Huang said.

  No!

  There was a stunned silence. Correia herself seemed shocked.

  She simply waited with everyone else, eyes fixed on Skylur.

  And he was looking at Huang, his eyes narrowed.

  “Very well,” he said finally. Then, as if nothing had happened, he indicated me. “Diakon Huang?”

  Huang nodded. “I gave my word. The helicopters are waiting. The flight will take no more than fifteen minutes. Strike, in memory of your Mentor, the Kumemnon. As she said, to the swift the race, to the brave the prize.”

  Skylur’s eyes narrowed at that, but he took my arm and urged me to the door. “Tarez has ordered forty Altau security in full assault gear to assemble outside and I put them entirely under your command. Take the helicopters and go.”