Retribution (Book 3 of The Dominion Series)

by Lund, S. E.

  "I'll wait on the street somewhere close, just in case you run into any trouble. You can text me if you feel under threat since we can't connect."

  Julien closes the file on the Rhys family, moving on to a fisherman named Colville Black who moved to town the previous year from Maine. He's single and lives alone. The story is he’d passed through once on a road trip and liked the town so much, he came back when he’d lost his job in a downturn – which, of course, sounded suspiciously like our cover story. He’ll be first on the list for surveillance.

  The weekend passes without incident. Julien and I make do with our sessions of mutual masturbation, but it isn't satisfying and an ache is building in me. I need to feel him inside of me, lying on top of me, touching me. This is torture and our sessions just don't satisfy either of us the way contact sex does.

  But until we find out what Soren wants, it will have to do.

  Classes are pretty much ordinary all week. I work on Tuesday night, and again on Thursday night, but I have Friday night off because another busgirl wanted to switch shifts.

  After history on Friday, Sarah calls me over in the hallway.

  “Can you come over today, see our piano? We’re ordering in Chinese and you’re welcome to stay for supper. I’d love to hear you play.”

  I nod. “Sure, I haven’t really played for several weeks and would love to.”

  “Why haven't you played?” Sarah asks, her eyebrows raised.

  “Don't have a piano at the cottage.”

  “I’m sure my mom would be happy for you to come by any time and play.” Sarah smiles brightly, her green eyes crinkling at the corner. She really doesn't look at all like Dylan, but then again, the Rhys parents have very different coloring. I decide to look into their family a bit more closely and will ask the Council for any records they might have in their files. If there are none, I'll ask them to use Homeland Security and CIA to create a file to see where they’ve lived and what they’ve done for the past couple of decades.

  I call Julien at the end of the day and let him know I’ll be going over to the Rhys house after school to play the piano and stay for supper. He’ll find a safe place to park like we discussed. If I feel at all threatened, I'll text him and he'll come right away.

  I'm certain I have nothing to fear from them.

  Professor Rhys drives us to their house after loading Sarah’s wheelchair in their van. The house is a large bungalow on the side of a hill overlooking the ocean. They have a huge bank of solar cells on the roof.

  “You have solar power?”

  Professor Rhys nods. “We're completely off the grid just in case it goes down.” He pushes Sarah’s wheelchair up the ramp to the front door. “That’s Dylan’s thing – solar power. Sarah needs a source of power 24/7 and if the grid went down for any length of time, she’d be in danger.”

  “He means I’d die,” Sarah says. “Dylan insisted. He’s afraid there might be another Carrington Event during solar maximum and the grid might fail so we installed the panels. Now we feed the grid, instead of taking from it.”

  “Carrington Event?”

  “A huge solar storm that would disrupt power transmissions – maybe for months.”

  I make a face. "That's a scary thought. How likely is it?"

  Professor Rhys laughs. "Not likely, but Dylan is all about preparation for the worst."

  I frown. He is, is he? I wonder why… This just adds another tick mark beside the potential Blackstone cell member possibility.

  The house has a really beautiful view but the inside of the house is most interesting. Art covers every wall, modern art, posters from films and plays on Broadway, concerts at Carnegie Hall. This is the kind of house I would like to have lived in growing up. My foster parents are wonderful, but I didn't really felt at home with them and all my memories of them were lost. This house is big, warm, full of art and culture. The Rhys parents are smart and seem really kind.

  “Here it is,” Sarah says, wheeling into the conservatory. The piano stands in front of a wall-to-wall picture window overlooking the bay. Across from it is a huge bookcase with hundreds of books. A fireplace is off to the side and beside it two loveseats face each other.

  Sarah's mother goes to the piano and stands beside it.

  “Gould played it when he was a student in Toronto at the Royal Conservatory of Music," she says, touching it almost with affection. "We got it at auction in an estate sale.”

  There's nothing spectacular about the piano – an old Steinway grand. The only thing that makes it special is that Gould had played it when he was still unknown. It shows its age, but the mere fact Gould had played it makes my heart beat faster. I sit at the piano and run my fingers over the keys lightly, thinking of Gould himself touching them when he was even younger than me. Just to warm up, I play some scales and soon, I feel familiar enough with the instrument that I decide to play the Aria from the Goldberg Variations.

  Sarah lets out an “ohhh” when she recognizes the piece and I smile to myself. Another Bach freak.

  “I can almost hear him humming,” Sarah says as I play. I glance at her and see that Dylan has appeared and is standing behind her in the darkness of the doorway. I turn back to the keys, trying not to let Dylan’s appearance throw me off. I stumble a bit but keep on going until I finish the Aria. Then, I move into the first variation and play it till the end.

  “That’s it for the Goldberg Variations," I say and shrug. "I didn’t learn all of it.”

  “Play something else,” Sarah says.

  "What would you like to hear?”

  “Play more Bach,” Sarah says. “He’s my favorite.” She smiles so winningly, I can't resist.

  I play Bach’s Prelude in C Sharp Minor, a piece from The Well Tempered Clavier. It's one of my favorites. I like the darkness of the piece. It reminds me of Prague.

  While I play, Dylan comes over and stands beside the piano, watching me. I try to block out thinking of him and what he might be, focusing instead on the music, on the feel of the keys, trying to get my touch right for Bach. When I finish, they all clap and I bow as a joke, and then start to leave the piano, but Sarah's mother stops me.

  “Please,” she says and holds out a hand. “Keep playing. It’s so nice to hear someone with real talent and training. Most of my students are just putting in time.”

  I sit back down. “What would you like to hear?”

  “Debussy," Dylan says.

  I think for a moment and then start playing a piece from Pour le Piano – the Sarabande, which I like due to its chromatism. When I finish, Dylan leans against the piano.

  “Did you know,” he says, “that Debussy composed according to the golden ratio? You can find evidence of the Fibonacci Sequence in his compositions.”

  I frown, remembering something about that – Michel mentioned it as well.

  “The Fibonacci Sequence is a mathematical progression of numbers,” he adds, as if to explain.

  "Yes, I know," I say, trying not to sound defensive. "It seems the opposite to my sense of Debussy, which is so much passion and beauty that it goes beyond math."

  "Math is beautiful," Dylan says. "Numbers, patterns, built right into the universe."

  I frown again. Sounds like what Michel said to me on the beach when he showed me the shell.

  “That’s Dylan,” Mr. Rhys says, patting Dylan on the shoulder. “Always into the math of things. You play beautifully, Eve. Why aren't you studying music? You're in pre-med, according to your records.”

  I shake my head. “I haven’t taken lessons for years. My father was so involved in my training.” I stop, suddenly overwhelmed by emotion. “I don’t have the heart to study music any more since he was institutionalized.”

  "I'm sorry," Mrs. Rhys says. An awkward silence passes and Mr. Rhys clears his throat.

  “I love science now,” I say and force a smile, trying to counter the mood. “I’ll probably do my MD and then a PhD.” I stand and close the cover on the keyboard. I smile
at them, feeling very much the center of attention, which I really don't like.

  “You won’t play more?” Mrs. Rhys says, her head tilted to one side.

  “I’ve played enough for now.”

  We go into the kitchen, and the parents start to remove containers of food from the oven where they are warming. Sarah leads me to a table in the great room.

  “If you like marine biology, you should see my room later. I have a great collection of seashells.”

  “I’d like that,” I say.

  Once the food is on the table, we sit around it and after Mr. Rhys says grace, we eat, the talk about Dylan’s classes, Sarah’s project in our marine biology class, Thomas – the oldest brother – and his last year in Seminary, the upcoming drama production of the Chekov play, for which I will only be a lowly stage hand, and news of Davis Cove.

  It feels so amazing to be here, sitting around a table with them, the fireplace flickering in the corner, Brahms playing on the sound system. A family – a real family. Mother, father, son, daughter, talking and laughing and sharing their lives. I sit and watch them and a feeling of such loss fills me, I have to bite my lip to keep tears from my eyes.

  They seem so real, almost perfect – except that their daughter is a quadriplegic who will probably die before she reaches age thirty. I Googled her disorder – Kugelberg-Wellander Syndrome Type II-III variant. When I look at her, I can't help but feel my heart squeeze at the thought she'll endure a slow decline and then death. Dylan's an Adept who might be working for either Soren Lindgren's coven or Blackstone, out to destroy modern civilization and bring about Dominion.

  They’ll need that solar power if the grid does fail because of Blackstone. I wonder if Dylan knows something about that and this explains his insistence about the solar panels.

  After dessert and coffee, Sarah asks me to come to her room. I follow her down the long hallway to her bedroom and am amazed. She has a hospital bed in the room with a bank of electronic machines like I expect would be in an ICU. But other than that, the room is beautiful, with art all over the walls depicting seashells, the sea, sailing ships, lighthouses, everything nautical.

  “I’m sensing a theme,” I say and smile. “I love the sea.”

  She nods. “The oceans are so amazing. If I’d been healthy, I’d have become a marine biologist,” she says. “My mother and father took us to Florida when I was younger, before I was on a respirator, and I swam with the wild dolphins there. I’d want to study dolphin and whale communication or the deep ocean, down where it’s dark and the creatures communicate with bioluminescence.”

  I sit on a chair in her room and look around. On the top of her dresser are huge conch shells and a tray of seashells of different colors. Starfish, corals – everywhere you look there's something from the oceans.

  “Do you like my seashells?” she says and moves her head to the side. “I’ve gone a bit overboard, but Dylan collects them for me and brings me something new and different each week.”

  I walk around and touch them, picking up the conch and listening.

  “They say you can hear the sea when you put these up to your ear,” I say and hear a roaring sound when I hold the conch up to listen.

  “That's a myth," Dylan says from the doorway, where he stands, leaning against the doorjamb, hands in his pockets. "It’s just the result of ambient sound echoing inside the shell due to its structure.”

  I put the shell down carefully, my cheeks a bit hot. I feel like telling him I already knew that, but I shut up instead.

  “Party-pooper,” Sarah says. “It’s much more fun to believe you’re really hearing the ocean.”

  “The truth is always better than a myth,” Dylan says and looks at me. “Isn’t that right, Eve? What's the saying – better a cruel truth than a comfortable delusion?”

  I freeze. He's quoting something back to me that I said to Michel… Was he able to read my mind from that brief moment when he tried to connect to me at the pub crawl?

  “I guess some people need delusions,” I say. “Gets them through the day.”

  “Not me,” he says. “I prefer the cold, hard truth.” He leaves the room.

  “Don’t mind Dylan,” Sarah says quietly. “Sometimes, he’s far too serious for his own good.” She grins at me.

  I follow her back to the conservatory and the piano that Gould once played. What a strange turn of events – here I am, in the house of a suspect, playing piano for him.

  I don't feel like I'm in danger, so I don't text Julien. I'll tell him later.

  I play the Bach Fugue in C sharp minor that accompanies the Prelude I played earlier. It's very slow and somber. I could play something lighter, but I love it so much, I have to play it while I'm able to do so on such a famous piano. Gould recorded the C sharp minor – he recorded the entire Well-Tempered Clavier. I think of him as I play – he was such a strange creature. Other-worldly with his Asperger’s reclusiveness and social awkwardness. But such genius. I try to put as much into the piece as I can, as much precision as I can muster.

  When I'm done, my audience is silent for a moment as if not yet ready to have it end. Finally, Mr. Rhys seems to come out of a trance.

  “That was lovely, Eve. Please,” he says and clears his throat. “Feel free to come over any time you feel like playing.”

  I stand and catch sight of Dylan standing off to the side, his long bangs hanging in his very hazel eyes.

  What is he? Who is he with?

  Julien picks me up and is impatient to hear how my evening with the mysterious Rhys family went. I give a very sketchy account, telling him about how normal they all seem, with the exception of Sarah’s disease. How I didn’t think any of them are involved in anything nefarious – except for Dylan. It's all the truth – but I'm lying by omission by not telling him my suspicions about Dylan and what he said to me, quoting me back.

  "I don't think the family is involved in Blackstone or with Soren," I say. "But Dylan might be."

  He nods in agreement. “I'll check him out but I’m liking Mr. Colville Black for this. While you were in class today, I did a bit more sleuthing. Seems he’s been in a few locations where there’ve been other suspicious deaths. I’ll be paying him a visit tomorrow to see what’s up. We may have our case solved a lot sooner than I thought. Wonder if we could get a refund on the rent…”

  I glance at him to see if he's serious, for I had my heart set on staying in Davis Cove for a semester.

  "Just kidding," he says and laughs. "I'm not going to ambush him. We need to find his contacts, check them out. If there's a Blackstone cell here, that's the way to find them. Then, we have to find a way in."

  After Julien goes to the Cove for his late bartending shift, I go out to the patio and sit in the darkness so I can watch the stars as they appear, one by one as darkness falls over the ocean.

  I'm torn in a way I never thought was possible. Part of me hopes Dylan is just another Adept who's living here, and is completely unconnected to the murders. I really like Sarah and don't want her to lose her beloved older brother. Even as I think that, guilt fills me. I'm letting my personal feelings affect my work and that's dangerous. If Dylan is involved in these killings, either working for Soren or Blackstone, he's a threat.

  I don’t know what Julien has planned, but I can't imagine it involves letting whoever is guilty go free. Not for long, anyway.

  My heart breaks for Sarah already.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  "Sometimes the heart sees what is invisible to the eye."

  H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

  The next day, on my way home from town where I've gone to pick up something for dinner, I catch sight of Dylan walking along the road towards his parent's house. He takes a shortcut through the park and I almost call out to him, but hold back when a group of men from town follow him inside the cover of trees.

  I don't know them personally, but I remember them from the bar in the Cove Bistro one night when I was working. Some good old boys who w
ork on the wharf on the fishing boats. Something about the way they follow him puts my nerves on edge, so I trail them, hiding behind trees so they won't know I'm there. They laugh amongst themselves and one of them pushes the larger guy forward as if egging him on. The guy calls out to Dylan.

  "Hey, you – freak!"

  Dylan seems to ignore them.

  "I said, hey you freak!" the guy repeats. He runs up to Dylan and pushes him on the shoulder. My muscles all tense when I see the violence, my body ready by instinct, and I crouch, ready to run to him if he needs my help. I could beat all four of them in a pinch as long as they're not Adepts.

  Dylan turns to face them, and then I see he had his earphones on. He speaks, but his voice is too low to hear. He waits as the others stand in a semi-circle in front of him.

  "Oh, yeah? Do you think so? Who's gonna make us?" the big guy with a beard says, his voice mocking. He pushes Dylan on the shoulder again as if to pick a fight but Dylan turns and walks away. The guy grabs him, pulling him around by his jacket, throwing him to the ground. When he lunges at Dylan, I'm just about to step out in the open, ready to take them on. Then, Dylan sweeps his right arm in an arc. Some kind of shock wave emerges from his hand and the young men are thrown back several feet, falling to the ground. They lie silent and unmoving on the grass. I stay where I am, hidden behind a tree, my heart racing.

  Dylan rises and brushes the dirt off his clothes, then he lays his hand on their necks for a brief moment, one after the other. He walks away, leaving them on the ground. When he's out of sight, they wake up, sitting up slowly, rubbing their heads.

  "What the fuckin' hell?" the one who challenged Dylan says, rubbing his head. They all seem stunned, rising slowly, glancing around as if they're confused. "What the hell are we doing here?"

  I slip away through the trees and walk home, my pulse racing, hands shaking. I'm determined to speak to Dylan about what happened the next time I see him.

  He's no ordinary Adept. He's no vampire, either. I don't know what the hell he is, but whatever it is, he has powers I've never heard of.