by Dean Murray
"If this isn't handled just right the lamias are going to have the Coun'hij down here searching for them. Is Set really ready to have dozens of werewolves crawling all over the swamp? The lamias need to stay a secret or they don't stand a chance."
"Don't you mean that they need to stay a secret until you're ready to use them?"
She stumbled, but she didn't answer me, not when Set was now in sight.
"Set, wait. Don't go out there. You can't beat the shape shifters you're going to run into out there. You need to keep your people hidden, keep the portal closed if you can."
Set turned and gave her a look that would have frozen water. "This is not your business, queen."
Apparently she hadn't made enough of an effort to make small talk with him, that or he was still unhappy about her having nearly lost control her first day here. She'd started shaking, but I grabbed her arm and hauled her back a couple of steps.
"Set, she doesn't mean to cross any lines, she's just worried about you and your men. She's had dealings with the…queen who most likely commands the shape shifters, the sun people, we're about to go confront. Their leader is indeed very powerful. Celeste has seen people paralyzed with pain from a distance of dozens of yards. Would it be possible to avoid them, to hide as she has suggested until the sun people have moved on?"
Set puffed up as though he was about to tell me to get lost too, but in the end he just shook his head. "No, Isaac Nazir. Under other circumstances maybe, but not today. The sun people are too many and too powerful. We are already shrinking the enclave as quickly as we are able and still it will not be enough. They will illuminate the enclave for the Consumed. He will pick us out of the void and appear without warning."
I felt like I was being torn in three different directions at once, but there was only one remaining option that had any chance of keeping everyone out of trouble.
"Then let us leave. If we were gone it would allow you to hide regardless of how many shape shifters were running around in the swamp. It's the best solution."
"No, Isaac!"
I turned to Celeste and stopped her before she could say anything else. "It doesn't have to be this way. We'll get Ash and Kristin and we'll leave. I've got a plan that has a good chance of finding Dream Stealer, so that takes care of the reason that Ash wanted to be here, and as soon as we're back in Louisiana I'll call Alec and beg him to come down here. He can neutralize Onyx and the entire rest of the pack if he needs to. We can free your people and nobody other than Onyx and his guys needs to get hurt."
"At what price? So we can all become Alec's lap dogs?"
"Yeah, if it comes to that. I don't think it will, but even if it did, would that really be so bad? Even at his worst Alec has never been even a tenth as bad as Onyx. Is swearing fealty really too big a price to pay for the safety of your people?"
It was one of those moments when you know someone has to decide whether or not they were going to put up or shut up. Celeste had already done some terrible things in the name of protecting her people. This was nothing in comparison. All it required was that she let go of her pride and trust someone she had been taught since she was a child was evil.
"All right, Isaac. If that is what you want, if you really think that's the best way forward, then I'll go along. We can leave right now as long as Set can put us down somewhere far enough away from Onyx's men that we have a chance of surviving."
Set was already shaking his head. "To do this thing you are proposing would dishonor our entire enclave. I will not do it."
"Unless you are going to attack us, and violate your duty as host, there isn't any way to stop us. Isaac and I can go get Ash and Kristin and then just walk back out of here the same way we came. The portal might not put us back in the exact same place, but it will be close enough that we'll eventually be able to make it back to civilization."
"That may be true, but it won't stop me from leading my people out to deal with the sun people in the swamp."
Celeste looked like she was going to explode. "What kind of passive-aggressive crap is this? Are you trying to guilt us into doing what you want us to do?"
"I have no choice. Honor compels me to provide for the safety of the enclave's guests."
There was something about the set of his expression that told me he wasn't giving us the full story.
"What aren't you telling us, Set?"
"Over time, your being out of the enclave will make it easier to conceal ourselves, but the sun energies dissipate only slowly. Even if you leave I will still be forced to go disperse the sun people or we will be found."
Celeste looked back and forth between us. "Do you believe him, Isaac?"
"Yes. Set hasn't ever lied to me."
"Then I suppose we'd better go help them attack Onyx's guys."
I shook my head. "No, you need to stay here. Onyx is coming to get you and Ash, which means that you two need to stay here safely out of reach."
She wanted to argue with me, I could see it in her eyes. She wasn't some pampered princess, unwilling to stand up and defend herself, but she knew I was right.
"Fine, but you all need to be careful. Onyx is incredibly dangerous."
**
Less than an hour later I followed Set and more than a dozen of his men through the crack in the wall that led back to the outside world. Most of the lamias accepted my presence without any sign of unhappiness, but one of them, a huge consort, bared his fangs at me when I walked up to their group.
My beast let out a pulse of power in return that made me feel like I was in the eye of a hurricane, and for a second I thought we were about to come to blows, but Set hissed something indecipherable at the other lamia. The hostile consort eventually turned away from me and stalked further down the tunnel, but I got the impression that it hadn't been a foregone conclusion that he was going to obey.
"What just happened, Set?"
Set looked around and then said something else in his own language to the other two consorts with us. They sped up their pace and were soon out of hearing range.
"All is not well at the enclave, Isaac Nazir. It is unusual for a visiting queen to stay for such a long time. The fact that you are all sun people makes things difficult and Pal questions my judgment in allowing you to stay."
Kristin wasn't actually a shape shifter, but I wasn't going to interrupt him.
"Because we are making it harder to hide from the Consumed?"
"Yes. Also some worry that your presence will corrupt us, make us unsuitable to return to our home when the time comes."
"What do you think, Set?"
"I think that their concerns are not without validity, but they risk completely abandoning honor. I trust in the judgment of my queen. She would not let us go that far astray. I will not become as dust and abandon honor despite what others may do. As long as I continue as the first consort they will not succeed in their plans."
There was something in his tone that told me that he wasn't entirely sure he would be able to maintain his position, which was especially ominous given what he'd just finished telling me.
"What would have to happen for someone else to become the first consort?"
"Honor would require that they defeat me in single combat and receive the blessing of the queen, but…there have been instances in the past where under-consorts have abandoned honor. Under trying circumstances they have been known to forgo single combat and instead attack the first consort en masse. They did not receive their queen's blessing and chaos ensued."
"What happened after that?"
I didn't want to pry, but I also felt like I needed to have an idea of just how much trouble we were likely to be in if things started going downhill.
"The workers have very little of what you would call free will. They will follow whatever orders they are given, whether by queen or consorts. In both cases the consorts denied their queen food in an attempt make her concede to their will. In one instance a neighboring enclave was able to send a force to free the
queen."
"What about the second queen?"
"She ultimately died. The enclave is a shadow of what it once was, a few surviving consorts and less than a dozen workers. It was a terrible loss, one that caused severe disruptions to the plan."
"The plan?"
"The plan to return us to our home. The shadow enclave is lost to us forever. Its queen will never work for the good of our race through the plan again. The queen who was rescued and the enclave that rescued her were unable to continue their work for a long time. We can only relocate our enclaves very infrequently. The work has suffered. The queen is less than she once was."
"The one who was starved?"
Set shook his head. "All the queen. You would say all of the queens, but they are all one, reflections of a larger whole."
We were getting into territory that was almost religious, but there was one more pressing question that I needed answered. I'd never adequately understood the degree to which the consorts had free will. I'd thought their honor constrained them, but it was apparent to me now that they could choose to abandon it as easily as any human or shape shifter.
"Set, why didn't the queens who were overthrown act to stop it from happening? Your queens can see the future, can't they?"
"You would say they can."
"But if your queens can see the future, why would anyone disobey them?"
Set stopped at the mouth of the cave and let the workers pass us by. For several long seconds he refused to meet my eyes.
"This business of seeing the time stream is not a solution to all problems, it is merely a different kind of complication. The queens see much, but they do not see all anymore than you see everything around you."
"But I do see everything around me."
Set pointed at a huge tree that dominated the western vista. "What is behind the tree, Isaac Nazir?"
I was silent for nearly a minute as I absorbed his ingenious object lesson.
"I understand—a little at least. So some of the consorts rebel because they don't trust the queens' judgment."
"Yes, but that is only part of it. The goal of the queens is to return our people as a whole to our home, but there will be individuals lost along the way. The goal of the people is survival, but the goal of the individual is also survival. Many will not sacrifice individual survival in exchange for the survival of the species. It is not an easy choice even for my people."
"So the consorts worried that the queens were going to sacrifice them for a larger goal. Is there precedent for that?"
Set hesitated before nodding again. "Yes. Long ago entire enclaves were sacrificed in the pursuit of the work. We were once a much more numerous people than we are now, Isaac Nazir. With each queen lost the queens become less than they once were. Each one lost limits the vision of the others and creates additional doubt in the minds of some consorts."
He was painting a chilling picture, one that I was having a hard time wrapping my mind around. Their entire race had dedicated itself to one mission, a mission that had spanned thousands of years, a mission that they might never realize because of the sacrifices they'd made along the way.
"Set, if the queens become less with each loss and can't see as clearly as they once could, how do you know that it's even possible to achieve your great work still and return home?"
"You ask the same questions as many of my fellows, Isaac. I do not answer them because I've been sworn to secrecy and because knowing the answer for them would just raise more questions, but if you will promise to keep this secret then I will tell you the answer."
"Of course. I will not tell anyone else."
"If we placed a mountain behind that tree would you be able to see it still?"
"Yes."
"There is your answer. My queen tells me that some things are so momentous that they can be seen even from a great distance away, even when other things are hidden. Our return is not guaranteed, but in all of the paths that lead to it, there is no mistaking the fact that it is there."
It was a strange kind of answer, the kind that didn't prove anything, but that was a world that I wasn't completely unfamiliar with. I'd drifted away from that kind of blind trust over the last few months, but it was a place I was still surprisingly comfortable with.
"Faith. You know because of faith in a higher power, in this case faith in your queen."
"Indeed, Isaac Nazir. Possibly that is why she has instructed me to tell you many of these things that have remained hidden from most of your people and mine for so many years."
Set waited to confirm that he'd answered my question sufficiently, and then headed out after the rest of his men. I shifted forms and followed him.
Less than twenty minutes later our group slowed to a stop, alerted by something I couldn't sense that we were nearly to Onyx's men. The lamias all had their eyes closed and they were all facing the same direction, but they didn't seem to be smelling the air.
I slowly fidgeted, shifting my weight from one foot to the other as I resisted the urge to ask Set what was going on. Just when I wasn't sure that I could keep my mouth closed any longer, he opened his eyes and turned towards me.
"They come from that direction. They'll be here in another fifteen of your minutes, maybe a little less. What should we know about them before we engage?"
If the other consorts hadn't been around I probably would have told him that it was stupid to have left this briefing until the last second like this. I'd somehow been assuming that we still had hours of travel time before we would run into Onyx's men.
Finding out that we had less than fifteen minutes to come up with a workable plan against someone who could strike us down from yards away was the kind of shock that I could do without, but I didn't want to undercut his authority with the other consorts. We would just have to do the best we could.
"Most of them will just be other hybrids like me. Dangerous, but not as dangerous as a werewolf. You should be able to make short work of them with your venom. Some of them will be less skilled in combat than I am, others will be more skilled, but there is one who is very dangerous.
"Celeste, my queen, said that she has seen him strike down several men at once, overpowering them with an incredible pain that if left unchecked can cause death. I'm afraid I don't have much advice for beating him other than trying to take him by surprise. If we strike from behind before he realizes that we were there, then we might be able to kill him before he can bring us all down."
"Your pardon, Isaac Nazir, but there are not many of them like you in the group. Like your queen, yes, but not like you. There is only one based on the sun from that direction. It is good, I think."
I wasn't sure what to make of that. Was he trying to say that Onyx had brought an army of female hybrids to hunt us down? I hadn't asked Celeste about Onyx's people other than to confirm that he was the only one with an ability, but I'd just assumed that most women wouldn't be willing to work with someone like Onyx.
Set nodded, apparently pleased with his conclusion. "The prevailing wind is good, is it not?"
I set my questions aside for a moment and took a deep breath. Just in the time that we'd been talking Onyx's men had gotten closer. I couldn't exactly smell them, but there were hints on the wind that something had changed.
"Yeah, actually, the wind is just about perfect. We need to move quickly if we're going to set this up though."
Set patted me on the shoulder, a feat anyone other than a seven-foot-tall lamia would have found difficult given that I was in my hybrid form. "Don't fear, Isaac Nazir. Our queen provides. We will ambush them right here."
"Is it a good idea to do that so close to the portal? If we are defeated, there won't be anything to stop them from continuing on to the enclave."
If Set's actions earlier hadn't convinced me that at least some of the other consorts understood English, what happened next would have done the trick. One of the consorts let out a soft hissing laugh. I was pretty sure that it was Pal, the one who had been giving m
e the evil eye earlier.
My beast tried to cut loose with a titanic flare of power on an attempt to put the other consort on notice that we weren't amused, but I suppressed the energy, bleeding it out slowly to keep from sending up a signal flare to Onyx and his people.
Set hissed something menacing at the consort and then gently turned me so that I could look back the way that we'd come from and register the fact that our surroundings had changed.
"The portal has closed already, Isaac Nazir. Come, let us set this ambush."
I got the feeling that the lamias had done this kind of thing before. Set had indicated that they'd been located in Egypt before this, but apparently they hadn't let any grass grow underneath them over the last few centuries when it came to learning about their new, wetter environment.
Set dispersed his people with a rapid series of gestures and verbal instructions, and thirty seconds later all of the lamias other than Set had disappeared underneath the dark, green water. They'd formed a large circle in the center of the channel before submerging themselves.
One of the consorts, I was pretty sure it was Pal again, didn't seem happy to be putting himself in a position where he couldn't see or hear what was going on outside of the water, but in the end he dropped out of sight just like all of the rest.
"Try to lure the sun people into that circle, Isaac Nazir. We have about twenty of your minutes' worth of air before we'll have to surface."
Set pointed at the empty space that was in the middle of a dozen sets of rapidly expanding ripples, as if to remind me of the appropriate spot, and then he too disappeared into the water. I sat there, watching the ripples fade away to nothing, and had to suppress a shiver of discomfort at the idea of getting into water deeper than my head knowing that there were giant snakes, sharks and alligators swimming around with me.
The trap was set, so there wasn't any reason to continue to maintain a low profile. I could smell them now, the scent of gasoline and engine lubricant, mixed with people. The timing was about right if I was the kind to panic, so I reached deep down inside and coaxed my beast up to the surface with a roar of power that was shockingly strong.
