Destiny

by A D Starrling

  A fresh wave of agony danced through Olivia at his question.

  It was gone seven in the morning. Over an hour had passed since she and Ethan had woken everyone in the mansion and called their cousins and friends to relate the psychic dream she’d had. The fact that nobody had been able to make contact with Balthazar Island meant that what she had seen had already come to pass.

  Though she knew it didn’t make sense, Olivia couldn’t help but blame herself for not having had the vision earlier. If she’d sensed what was going to happen sooner, she could have acted faster.

  ‘You did everything you could,’ Asgard told her, repeating the words he’d said earlier that morning when she’d admitted to her feeling of guilt. ‘If you hadn’t had that dream, we might not have found out that something had happened for days.’

  Olivia bit her lip. She turned toward the monitor displaying Conrad’s call and finally gave voice to the troubling phenomenon she’d encountered, one that puzzled her as much as it transfixed her.

  ‘I already did. Something is—blocking me from remote-viewing the island. I don’t know what it is. I’ve never felt anything like it before.’

  Conrad stared at her, his eyes dark with worry.

  They all knew the devastating extent of her abilities from the incident at Yuma. That she was struggling to use her psionic powers to see their cousins’ home seemed to unsettle the Healer as much as it had everyone else.

  ‘Images coming up now,’ Victor said. ‘I’m sharing the screen with all of you.’

  ‘Gotcha.’ Howard clicked on a second window and expanded it.

  An orange dot appeared in the middle of the dark monitor. The image zoomed in and focused in jerky transitions until the island took shape in the center of the screen. The orange spot became two, then five distinct areas, the largest in the middle.

  Olivia’s stomach twisted. She raised her hands to her mouth, the horror resonating through her reflected on everyone’s faces.

  Lucas and Anna’s house was on fire, as was their yacht. Flame-lit debris littered the area around the property.

  ‘Son of a—’ Reid swallowed the curse and struck the wall of the fuselage next to him with his fist.

  A call came through on the main computer. Howard tapped the keyboard and opened another window.

  Dimitri Reznak appeared on the screen. ‘Sorry, I just made it back to the castle. You got any news yet?’

  ‘I’m transmitting the images to you right now,’ Victor told the Crovir noble in clipped tones. ‘It looks like there might have been several explosions on the island.’

  ‘Victor, can your satellites switch to high-res, thermal imaging?’ Conrad said sharply. ‘We need to be able to see them if they’re down there.’

  ‘They can.’

  Seconds later, the screen flicked to dark purple with traces of blue at the edges. The fires transformed into rippling, gold clouds streaked with red and orange.

  They watched the eerie images for breathless seconds, searching for signs of movement. They saw none around the house.

  ‘Try the lab,’ Asgard said bleakly.

  The screen slowly panned to the north of the island.

  ‘There!’ Alexa leaned closer to the monitor on the jet. ‘Top right-hand corner. Zoom in on it.’

  A shadowy rectangle with a faint thermal signal appeared through a thick canopy of trees. Four heat signatures were visible inside it.

  ‘It’s them!’ Relief colored Conrad’s words. ‘They’re safe.’

  ‘One of them isn’t moving,’ Alexa said quietly.

  ‘And two of them are too small to be the children.’ Howard glanced uneasily at Olivia.

  Her heart sank. She hesitated before voicing what she’d suspected all along. ‘Tomas and Lily are not on the island.’

  Lucas sat up with a gasp. Fire shot through his body. He grunted and pressed a hand to the dressing on his abdomen.

  Anna rose from the chair beside him and took his fingers in her own. ‘Easy, now.’

  Lucas looked around. He was on the workbench in the middle of Anna’s lab.

  The memory of what had happened washed over him. A different kind of agony seared his chest.

  After the men who’d attacked them had left the island, they’d made their way to the beach to the north. Anna had supported Lucas’s weight while he stumbled across the dirt and sand, the piece of wood that had pierced him front to back still wedged in his body. Blood had drenched his pajama bottoms and stained her nightdress by the time they reached the dark building.

  Their relief at finding the lab intact had been short-lived. After Anna had relocated his right shoulder, Lucas had attempted to call Asgard and Victor Dvorsky, even while Anna was examining his wound. It didn’t take long to discover that their enemy had destroyed the satellite dish they used to communicate with the outside world at some stage during the assault.

  ‘I’m going to have to perform surgery to get this out of you,’ Anna had announced in a bleak voice as she studied the chunk of wood impaling his left flank through to his back. ‘The rate at which you’re losing blood tells me you probably have a ruptured spleen.’

  Lucas had clenched his jaw and nodded. ‘Do what you need to do.’

  Anna had more than enough medical equipment in the lab to perform the emergency procedure, including several bags of O neg blood. Since they lived in the middle of nowhere with their kids, they had all sorts of contingency plans in case they ever suffered an unfortunate accident, even though their Immortal abilities and the children’s powers meant they were unlikely to need them.

  Anna had kissed him before administering a strong sedative into the IV she’d hooked up to his arm.

  ‘You’d better get through this.’ She had pressed her forehead against his where he lay propped on his right side, her green eyes glinting with a hard light. ‘We need to find the bastards who took our children.’

  Lucas had swallowed the lump in his throat and nodded. ‘If the Red Death didn’t kill me, then I doubt this will. Besides, the others are probably on their way to the island right now.’

  He’d told Anna about Olivia’s call on the way to the lab. Though he hadn’t made out his cousin’s words, the panic in her voice had told him she’d had a psychic dream about the impending attack and had rung to warn them.

  He’d drifted off at some point during the operation, the sedative and the anesthesia she’d injected in his spine numbing his mind and body while she undertook the grim task of removing the wooden shaft.

  ‘You lost a lot of blood,’ Anna said presently.

  She filled a glass at the sink and brought it to him.

  ‘Thanks.’ Lucas gulped the water down before eyeing the two figures watching him keenly from the floor.

  Anna followed his gaze. ‘They turned up a while ago.’ A wry smile curved her lips. ‘Looks like Cornelius gave Bob one of his lives.’

  The cat blinked at his name and proceeded to lick the golden retriever’s singed fur. Bob huffed, tail thumping the floor.

  They came in sight of the island just over an hour after dawn broke over the North Pacific.

  ‘Don’t wait for us,’ Alexa had told Asgard before he, Ethan, Olivia, and Madeleine had left the mansion to take their jet at LAX. ‘We’ll follow you after we refuel.’

  ‘We should reach the West Coast in about nine hours,’ Conrad had said. ‘Keep us informed.’

  ‘There’ll be an Airbus H225 at the airport in Kauai when you land there,’ Victor had added.

  Asgard had nodded gratefully at his friend and former rival. The H225 was the fastest commercial helicopter currently available on the market. It would get them to Balthazar Island faster than a speedboat.

  ‘I have Bastian Hunters on their way to Hawaii but I suspect you guys will get there first given the speed at which you’ll be piloting that Gulfstream,’ Victor had said drily.

  Asgard had smiled faintly at his words. Once he’d awoken from the icy prison where he’d been trapped for
nearly four centuries, and having gone on to escape Jonah Krondike’s clutches a decade later with Ethan’s help, he’d developed a fascination for flying. He now held private pilot licenses for several countries and was even certified to fly military aircraft.

  It had taken him just under five hours to get them from LA to the northernmost of the eight major Hawaiian islands. They’d transferred their weapons’ bags and medical kits to the helicopter waiting on the tarmac and taken off almost immediately under a lightening sky.

  Smoke appeared on the horizon before the island took shape against the dazzling, blue backdrop of the ocean. Relief swamped Asgard despite the tension coursing through him.

  He was within reach of his nephew and niece.

  They were ten miles from the beach when the helicopter juddered violently in the air.

  Asgard cursed. He gripped the controls and worked the pedals as the aircraft pitched backwards before yawing from side to side.

  ‘What the hell was that?’ Madeleine shouted from the co-pilot seat.

  Asgard scowled. ‘I don’t know.’

  He leveled the Airbus into a hover before moving the aircraft forward again.

  The helicopter shook wildly as it struck an invisible wall.

  Olivia clasped Ethan’s hand back in the cabin, alarm spiking her pulse.

  She could sense something in front of them. Something faint yet eerily familiar.

  A gasp left her lips when the aircraft started spinning uncontrollably. The ocean whirled into view through the window to her left.

  No!

  A ghostly ripple danced through her consciousness at her involuntary psychic cry. Olivia’s eyes widened.

  Lily?

  Just as suddenly as they had started, the vibrations rocking the helicopter vanished and Asgard regained control of the aircraft.

  Ethan rose and staggered to the cockpit, Olivia behind him.

  ‘What just happened?’ he snapped.

  ‘I have no idea,’ Asgard said grimly.

  Olivia stared through the cockpit windscreen at the island.

  ‘It was them,’ she murmured shakily.

  Ethan blinked when he sensed her thoughts. ‘You mean that was the kids?!’

  Olivia nodded, still struggling to come to terms with what they had just experienced.

  ‘Remember what we did at Yuma? When we created that psychokinetic bubble to stop the fire? I think it was something like that.’

  Madeleine paled. ‘But you said they weren’t on the island.’

  ‘They aren’t.’ Olivia swallowed. ‘That was just the remnant of Lily and Tomas’s powers. I’m pretty sure it’s what was blocking me from remote-viewing the place.’

  The beach grew ahead of them, the black remains of the yacht and the smoking ruins of the house evidence of the devastating assault that had taken place some seven hours past.

  Two figures climbed to their feet a short distance from the scorched rubble, a dog and a cat at their side.

  Chapter Six

  Lily stirred and opened her eyes. A naked light bulb hung from a concrete ceiling some five feet above her. She gasped and sat up.

  A wave of dizziness swept over her, sending the world tilting and spinning alarmingly. She closed her eyes and fought down the nausea threatening to empty her stomach.

  The drugs the men who had kidnapped her and Tomas had injected them with still lingered in her bloodstream. Lily concentrated, searching for the foreign substances inside her. It took a few seconds to isolate their strange chemical signals. She took a shallow breath and used her healing abilities to destroy them.

  Her shoulders sagged when she regained full control of her body. She opened her eyes again and looked around slowly.

  She was in her pajamas, on a cot inside a chamber measuring some fifteen by twenty feet. The walls were white and bare, giving a cold, clinical feel to the space. A metal door with sliding panels at the top and bottom stood to her right. A toilet and sink jutted out of the concrete in the corner ahead and to her left. A narrow air vent sat high up on the wall above the washroom area.

  Next to it was a camera.

  The device had been positioned to give a degree of privacy to the occupant of the room when they were using the washing facilities while still covering most of the cell, including the camp bed.

  Lily knew instinctively that she was being watched. She reached out with her mind.

  Tomas?

  I’m here.

  She swallowed a sigh of relief at the sound of her twin’s faint voice.

  Are you alright?

  Yes. Just a bit groggy from the drugs they gave us. You?

  I’m okay. Lily frowned. Want me to get rid of them?

  Almost done.

  She sensed their mental connection grow stronger a few seconds later as he destroyed the remnant of the chemicals inside his bloodstream.

  Do you know where we are?

  No. I was out of it for most of the way here. I don’t even know what time it is.

  She got out of the cot, walked to the wall opposite, and placed a hand against the concrete. She ignored the whir of the camera as it tracked her and closed her eyes. Tendrils of energy snaked out of her fingertips and palm.

  Lily concentrated, her power mapping out the area around her through concrete and metal, seeking her brother’s consciousness. It flashed in her mind a moment later, a golden stream tinged with brilliant white, a consciousness as familiar to her as her own.

  I think you’re about eighty feet away.

  Images flickered across her inner vision as Tomas projected his view of the room he was in. It was identical to hers.

  Lily?

  Yes?

  Don’t touch the door. It’s electrified.

  Lily blinked. Are you hurt?

  No. I sensed the current just as I was about to grab the handle.

  Lily bit her lip and glanced at the steel door to her right. Can we still get through if we need to?

  I think so. Uncle Ethan showed me how to manipulate matter without having to touch it. I can teach you.

  Lily turned and slid down the wall until she sat on the floor, a wave of exhaustion suddenly sweeping over her. She brought her legs up to her chest, folded her arms around them, and dropped her forehead on her knees.

  Lily?

  Yes?

  I couldn’t get into those men’s heads before they injected those drugs into us. Did you?

  Lily didn’t reply.

  The attack on their home had been sudden and brutal. The only forewarning she’d had was the psychic dream she’d experienced moments before the first explosion. Seconds later, she was being yanked into the air and carried to a helicopter hovering above their house, her father’s stunned face fading rapidly beneath her.

  Her memories of what had followed were a chaotic maelstrom of images and emotions.

  Shock at what was happening. Horror when she heard Tomas’s cry inside her head. Pain as the masked men who had captured her tried to subdue her while she screamed and fought them. The terrible noise from the machine guns and the grenade launchers. The flashes of light and flames as bullets and explosions ripped through their home. The fear and rage she sensed from her parents as they clashed with their unknown enemy.

  And, finally, the mind numbing terror that gripped her and echoed across her connection with Tomas when they realized what was about to happen to their mother and father.

  Their reactions had been born of pure instinct.

  Seconds before the first bomb left the helicopter, they had fused their minds and powers to create a barrier of pure elemental and psychokinetic energy around their parents where they lay wounded on the ground.

  It had protected them from all three grenades.

  As their assailants had watched in astonishment, Tomas and Lily had turned their attention on them, their distress turning to anger and their powers sending the helicopters into a wild spin.

  Lily had barely registered the first dart that had penetrated her
skin. It had taken three more before the drugs had seeped into her bloodstream and sapped at her consciousness.

  Moments before the world had gone dark around them, she and Tomas had expanded the bubble shielding their mother and father all the way around the island. They had known it would hold out against further enemy attacks for some time and give their parents the protection they needed to recover from their injuries.

  Lily?

  She startled.

  Are you scared?

  Lily swallowed. Yes.

  Their mental connection glowed as Tomas tried to reassure her.

  Mom and dad will find us. The others will help them.

  Lily blinked back tears at the determination in her twin’s voice.

  Did you feel it?

  Lily nodded unconsciously at Tomas’s question. Yes. Aunt Olivia went through the barrier.

  They had created the wall of energy around their home so it would last until their family and friends reached the island. Now that their aunt’s consciousness had touched it, the bubble had dissipated.

  Tomas?

  Yes?

  I tried to get in those men’s minds.

  Tomas grew quiet when he registered her unease. It was a while before he spoke. What did you see?

  They are different. Immortal but different. There’s something strange about their consciousness. I’ve never sensed anything like it before.

  Lily registered Tomas’s surprise.

  Do you think you could learn to manipulate their minds?

  Lily hesitated. Given time, yes, probably.

  Silence descended between them.

  Tomas?

  Yes?

  There’s something else. Something here. Can you feel it?

  Tomas wavered for a moment. There’s this weird feeling at the back of my head. Like an itch I can’t scratch. Why? What can you see?

  Lily inhaled shakily. Darkness. There’s darkness here with us.

  Alexa squatted next to the burnt remains of the two corpses. Though their faces and clothes had been charred beyond recognition, she could still discern the wounds marking one of the men’s necks and both their chests. Her gaze lingered on the cuts for a moment before she resumed her examination.