Dark Haven Illusion (The Children Of The Gods Paranormal Romance Book 47)

by I. T. Lucas

  Still, several known cults had been involved in trafficking, so it was an angle that Kian wanted to investigate. If they were rescuing one woman, they might as well rescue others who, just like Anastasia, had been brainwashed into joining the Safe Haven community after completing the two-week retreat.

  Besides, something that Eleanor had brought up had made him curious. She’d speculated that cult leaders used more than innate charisma and authority to control their followers, and that they might be using compulsion without even realizing it. Being a compeller herself, Eleanor should be able to ascertain whether Safe Haven’s founder and spiritual leader had such an ability.

  Kian hoped that she was wrong, and that only charisma and charm were at work. The supposition that some cult leaders might have the paranormal ability to compel also suggested that they might be potential Dormants, and that made Kian very uncomfortable.

  It would mean that some of the worst despots in human history might have been the descendants of gods.

  Which gods, though?

  The despots could also have been Doomers, or rather ex-Doomers, which made it a little less disturbing. For the most part the Brotherhood was evil, so finding more skeletons in its proverbial closet wouldn’t be too surprising.

  Navuh wouldn’t have allowed any of his people to amass such power if he could help it, but during the thousands of years since the Brotherhood’s formation, it was possible that some of his disciples had managed to escape his control. Especially if they had compulsion ability, which would have made them impervious to Navuh’s.

  The only problem with that hypothesis was that compulsion was an extremely rare ability.

  So far, the only known compellers were Annani, who had inherited the ability from Ahn; Navuh, who’d gotten his from Mortdh; and Navuh’s two blooded sons, who’d gotten it from him. No one knew who Eleanor and her nephew Parker had inherited their abilities from.

  If there had been others in Navuh’s organization who possessed the rare talent, who could they have gotten it from? And where had Eleanor and Parker gotten theirs?

  Mortdh had been a powerful compeller. What if Navuh hadn’t been his only child?

  According to Annani, the god had had numerous human lovers. Some of them could have conceived without his knowledge. Perhaps the mothers hadn’t even known that their children had been fathered by him?

  After all, he’d availed himself of the services of temple priestesses who hadn’t been exclusive to him.

  But that didn’t make sense either.

  As direct descendants of a pure-blood god, those children would have been born immortal. Unless the other male gods used the fertility temples’ services as well, the mothers should have known that Mortdh had been the father.

  Navuh having half-siblings was farfetched but not entirely impossible.

  After the gods had been annihilated, Mortdh’s other immortal descendants might have fled the area and gone into hiding.

  It was a chilling thought, and Kian sincerely hoped that Navuh was Mortdh’s only child.

  The world couldn’t handle more than one.

  3

  Leon

  “I’ll tell you one thing.” Peter pulled the door to the office building open and held it for Leon. “I’m glad to be done with West Virginia. In the two months we’ve been there, I’ve exhausted the entire single female population.”

  In typical Peter style that was a gross exaggeration, but the truth was that it had been damn dreary out there. And to make things even more miserable, the mission had been one of the most boring Leon had ever been on, and that was saying something. He’d had his share of uneventful stakeouts.

  Roberts had been behaving himself, Kalugal’s men were doing their job and not crossing any boundaries, and no new trainees had joined the government paranormal program since it had lost Eleanor, who had been its best recruiter.

  Not that she would have bothered bringing in any of the paltry talents that the Echelon system had flagged as potential candidates. He and Peter had checked out a sample of those, confirming what Kalugal’s men had reported.

  There had been no Dormants among them.

  On the upside, the original group was about to graduate, which would make it easier to snatch them up and bring them to the clan for testing. On the downside, there were only four potential female Dormants in the group, and one of them was too old to transition.

  It seemed that the government paranormal program was not going to provide the answer to the clan’s gender imbalance. Kalugal’s men were going to mate with clan females, and the clan males would have to wait for the Fates to provide them with mates.

  Leon wasn’t a big believer, but so far it appeared that all of the clan’s efforts to find Dormants had been wasted. Sheer luck or the Fates had more to do with those who had been found than anything that Amanda or William had done.

  Could the woman they had been sent to retrieve be such a lucky find?

  Turner had told Peter and him that Anastasia Gaboviv heard voices in her head. If what she heard was real, and not a manifestation of a mental disorder, then she was a potential Dormant.

  It was unlikely, but still, a guy could hope. Otherwise, this mission was going to be just as miserable as the previous one.

  Oregon in the winter wasn’t any better than West Virginia in the fall.

  He groaned. “You are celebrating prematurely. We are going to be freezing our butts off on that ranch, and I don’t even want to think about the New Age crap we will have to listen to.”

  Peter started up the stairs. “Look on the bright side. It’s a spiritual retreat that promotes free love. Talk about fertile hunting grounds. We don’t even have to go anywhere to get some action.”

  “It’s a mission, not a vacation. Seducing the other acolytes is not what we should be doing.”

  The guy shrugged. “We have to pretend to belong and blend in. When in Rome and all that.”

  That was true. If everyone around them was having sex, they couldn’t stay celibate without attracting attention.

  “If free love means orgies, I’m out.”

  Leon wasn’t overly adventurous, and he wasn’t into exhibitionism, not even if his fangs and glowing eyes weren’t an issue.

  “Kinky.” Peter knocked on Kian’s door. “I’ve never taken part in one.”

  “Come in,” Kian called from the other side.

  Leon rolled his eyes. “And you never will. What are you going to do when your eyes start glowing, and your fangs punch out? Thrall everyone there? You are not that gifted.”

  “Regrettably, I can only thrall two humans at a time.” Peter opened the door. “But hey, a threesome might not be an orgy, but I’ve never tried that either.”

  “Good afternoon, gentlemen.” Kian motioned for them to take a seat at the conference table.

  “What were you talking about?” Kri asked. “I heard Peter mention threesomes.”

  Leon pulled out a chair and sat down. “He’s fantasizing about the free love the retreat is promoting and what it might entail.”

  Curious, Leon cast a quick glance at the woman sitting on Kri’s other side.

  That must be the infamous Eleanor.

  She wasn’t pretty, but she had a rocking body, and there was an intensity about her that he found intriguing. But he was too late. Rumor had it that she’d already hooked up with one of Kalugal’s men and that they were serious about each other.

  That was a pity. Leon would have liked to find out what made her tick.

  Eleanor winced. “I don’t intend to have sex with anyone there. So if that’s a requirement, I’m out.”

  Evidently the rumor was right.

  Turner chuckled. “Did you forget about your compulsion ability? You don’t have to do anything that you are not comfortable with. If having sex with a fellow attendee is expected, you can just compel one of them to think that you had it with him, or rather her. You claimed to be in a relationship with a woman.”

  “I put down
that I was bisexual. But that’s beside the point. Compulsion doesn’t work like thralling. I can compel a person to tell everyone that he or she had sex with me, but I can’t make him or her believe it.”

  Turner shrugged. “That will do just as well. Besides, you have the perfect excuse to refuse. They think that you are in a committed relationship with Kri.”

  Eleanor let out a relieved breath. “At least that story was good for something.” She turned to Leon. “What story did you give them?”

  “I claimed to suffer from PTSD. I’m an ex-special ops commando who has seen some shit that I’m not allowed to talk about, not even with my therapist.”

  “Do you?”

  He shrugged. “I’ve been a Guardian for a very long time. I’ve seen stuff that I wish I could forget.”

  She shifted her gaze to Peter. “What about you?”

  “I didn’t want to write down the same story as Leon, so I claimed a traumatic childhood. My father abandoned my mother and me.”

  She chuckled. “The poor sod didn’t even know that you existed.”

  “True. But I can honestly claim that I grew up without a father.”

  “Maybe my story wasn’t soppy enough for them,” Kri said. “I claimed that my family was not accepting my girlfriend, and that they wanted me to find a nice guy to settle down with.”

  “You might be onto something.” Turner pulled a stack of photos out of his briefcase. “They make good money from the retreat, but they make even more from those they convince to join their community, and you didn’t appear despondent enough to want to escape the outside world.”

  If that was the case, Leon wondered what story Eleanor had supplied. He was about to ask her when Turner started handing out their target’s photos.

  “That’s Anastasia,” he said.

  “Pretty,” Leon murmured. He’d read the file Turner had compiled on her, but it hadn’t included a picture. “With that face, I doubt that she has trouble fitting in.” If he were a fellow student in that law school Anastasia attended, he would have been all over her.

  “Looks aren’t everything.” Eleanor flipped through the photos. “She’s not smiling in any of them, and men don’t want to hang out with depressed women. Besides, she’s pretty, but not beautiful. She’s quite average.”

  Leon disagreed. Anastasia might not be a classical beauty, but she had intelligent eyes and sexy as sin lips. “I don’t think that she looks depressed.” He searched for a photo showcasing her figure, but they were all portraits that seemed to have been taken by a professional photographer.

  Maybe the rest of her wasn’t as attractive as her face? She could have a huge butt, or crooked legs, but even that wouldn’t have deterred him. She looked interesting, like she was hiding a secret, which he knew that she was.

  Anastasia’s father had dissuaded her from seeking psychiatric help for the voices in her head, or even talking about them.

  As Leon knew from experience, hiding a secret was a huge obstacle to forming relationships. No wonder she felt like she didn’t fit in.

  Eleanor put the photos down on the table and looked at Turner. “What happens if we find her on the first day, and I manage to compel her to leave right away? Do we still have to stay for the entire two weeks?”

  He nodded. “You and Anastasia can leave, but Leon and Peter need to stay longer. Their job is to snoop around and find out whether the cult is involved in illegal activities, and for that, they need to get invited to join the community after they finish the program.”

  Eleanor cast them a pitying glance. “I guess you’ll be stuck there for a while.”

  “We might need your help.” Peter leaned forward. “As you’ve said before, your compulsion ability is different than our thralling, and there are things that you can do and we cannot. Having you there with us could be helpful.”

  Dragging in a breath, Eleanor nodded. “If you absolutely cannot do it without me, I’ll stay. But I really don’t want to. Greggory just moved into the village, and he’s not happy about me leaving on a mission. I told him that it would take only a few days.”

  “Having second thoughts, Eleanor?” Kian asked. “You can still decline the offer.”

  “Not happening, Kian.” One side of her mouth kicked up in a smile. “I’m definitely going. But you can rest assured that I’m coming back.”

  4

  Lokan

  As Lokan stared at his computer screen, a ripple of anxiety rushed down his spine. He was being summoned for an audience with his father next Tuesday at ten in the morning, two weeks ahead of their regular monthly meeting.

  It had to be connected to the detective agency that had been hired to watch him. But what could they possibly have discovered that warranted an unscheduled summons to the island?

  The work he’d done for the Brotherhood had been top-notch, with several big accomplishments that should have earned him praise from his father, not a punishment.

  Kian, on the other hand, would have been disappointed if he knew about Lokan’s involvement in those shady dealings, but since it had nothing to do with the clan, it was none of his business.

  Lokan had his own agenda, and a big part of it was staying in his father’s good graces until he figured out a way to get rid of him and take over the island.

  The only things that could interfere with those plans were Carol and his connections to the clan.

  Still, there was no way the detective agency had found out about either.

  Carol’s immortality was nearly impossible to detect even by other immortals, so even if the detectives had reported that he had a woman living with him, the worst his father would do would be to reprimand him for keeping a human lover.

  Besides, she wasn’t with him now, and Lokan had never been happier about his decision to send her off to the village.

  His only connection to the clan was their special issue phone, but no one could tap into it. The clan’s network was probably the most secure in the world. His apartment couldn’t be bugged either, thanks to some contraption that William had installed, which rendered listening devices and hidden cameras useless.

  To make a cellular phone call, Lokan had to go out on the balcony, and the only way someone could overhear him out there would be to break into one of his neighbors' apartments and use theirs.

  Perhaps he was being summoned to get praised? Or promoted?

  Not likely.

  His father expected results. He didn’t reward anyone for doing just what was expected of them.

  It was imperative that Lokan find out who’d hired the detective agency to watch him. Kian had been supposed to send Guardians over to their offices to investigate, and he might have the answers by now.

  Grabbing his coat and the clan-issue phone, Lokan opened the balcony doors and stepped out. It was freezing, and the cold, wet wind assaulted his face as he leaned over the railing and checked the other balconies.

  As he’d expected, no one was insane enough to be out there.

  Huddling inside the coat, he pulled the phone out of his pocket and dialed his cousin’s number.

  “Hello, Lokan,” Kian’s gruff voice rumbled through the connection. “I’m glad you called. Turner is here, and we have information about your tail, or rather lack thereof.”

  The disappointment washing over Lokan added another layer of chill to the cold. “Go on.”

  “The detective agency was hired anonymously, and the directive was to follow you and find out who you were meeting with. Whoever did the hiring wanted pictures, names, the places you were meeting with them, and the duration of the meetings.”

  Lokan let out a puff of air and watched it coalesce in front of his face. “That’s bad, but not as bad as I thought. It’s actually a relief. Looks like someone is investigating the connection between me and some of the shady politicians I deal with. They either want to blackmail them or me.”

  “It could also be the Feds,” Kian suggested.

  “If it’s them, they want the
same thing. Dirt they can use as leverage on politicians. I’m not worried about that. What worries me is the summons I got for a meeting with my father next Tuesday. It’s two weeks ahead of schedule, and I wasn’t given an explanation. I was afraid that it had something to do with the tail and what they had found.”

  “It could still be that,” Turner said. “But it’s not likely. Hiring a human detective agency doesn’t follow the pattern of how your father operates. A five-thousand-year-old immortal does not change his tactics all of a sudden.”

  “Could it be someone who holds a grudge against you?” Kian asked. “You might have stepped on one too many toes.”

  “The only one I can think of is the Russian. He might not have bought your story about recording my phone conversation with him as part of an investigation. He probably thinks that I sold him out and ruined his submarine deal, which is what actually happened. That’s a good reason to hold a major grudge.”

  Kian snorted. “If Gorchenco suspected that, he would have sent assassins, not detectives.”

  “He wouldn’t do that and jeopardize his relationship with one of his biggest clients. My father buys a shitload of weapons from him.”

  “There is another possibility,” Turner offered. “What if he connected the dots between you and Ella? I keep tabs on Gorchenco, and until recently, he was still recuperating from his stroke. His reappearance in public coincides with the hiring of the detective agency. I don’t believe in coincidence. If he still suspects that Ella is alive, he will try to find her. I should have killed him when I had the chance.”

  “I was sure Putin would take care of that,” Kian said. “The submarine fiasco cost him a tremendous loss. I’m surprised that he didn’t retaliate against Gorchenco.”