“So that part was your idea?” I grunted.
“It was,” Balidor conceded. “You don’t approve? We can push it out the door over the city, if you’d rather, Esteemed Bridge.”
Thinking, I frowned, turning over the idea, trying to decide how I really felt.
I could see the logic in keeping a clone of Menlim. I could even see the logic in keeping the multiple clones of Revik. At the same time, I found it difficult to believe we’d get anything close to real intelligence off any of them.
Balidor sighed through the line.
“Agreed,” he said, his voice a touch heavier. “But I figured we weren’t in a position to turn down any possible advantages we came across. Also,” he admitted. “I think your husband’s right. Deifilius was telling the truth. They’re coming for us, which means we need all the firepower we can get. That includes telekinetic clones.”
I nodded, again seeing the logic in their thinking.
“What about Atwar?” I said. “Where’s he? I haven’t had a chance to talk to him yet. We were in too big of a hurry to get out of there.”
“He’s riding with us,” Balidor said. “We haven’t had much chance to talk yet either, but he told us they got picked up on the streets not long after we left them. It definitely wasn’t them we saw in those caves… they’ve been collared and in that cell under the Coliseum since they regained consciousness.”
His voice turned grim.
“It appears the Mythers do that kind of thing a lot,” he added. “While we were in that lab under the Vatican, we saw fake feed broadcasts that showed you and your husband murdering Atwar, his mate, and Kalashi in cold blood. It’s likely those feeds were meant to be shared with the people of Dubrovnik. They probably hoped their deaths would galvanize support for sending infiltrators after us in the Americas. Atwar’s city and kingdom may be small, but his seers are well-trained, and they have alliances all over Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean.”
Clenching my jaw, I nodded, but didn’t speak.
It made sense. It was also a relief to know our instincts hadn’t been wrong when it came to Atwar and his motives.
I could see the Dreng logic behind the whole thing, too. The Dreng always liked screwing with people’s minds, and their perceptions. They particularly liked making us feel as though we couldn’t trust anyone, that we had no where to turn for help.
“Does he need to be let off in Dubrovnik?” I said through the transmitter.
Balidor smiled through the line. “Not exactly. But yes, we will go there first. It turns out, they have a number of planes. He intends on joining us in the Americas. With as many of his people as he can persuade into coming with us.”
My eyebrows shot up. I glanced at Revik, who smiled, tilting his hand and head in a gesture that told me it was news to him, too.
It definitely wasn’t unwelcome news––for either of us.
“That’s great, ‘Dori,” I said, exhaling. “Tell him thank you. His help is very much appreciated. Can he transport all of us, does he think?”
“He seems quite confident on that point, yes. And I will tell him.”
There was another silence.
I didn’t realize they were all waiting on me until Revik laid a warm hand on my thigh.
You ready, baby? he sent, soft.
Looking up at him, seeing the concern in his light eyes, I smiled, in spite of myself. Leaning my head back on the headrest, I sighed, clicking softly.
I’m ready. Let’s blow this popsicle stand.
Revik grinned, then turned back to his headset, sending the impulse to Balidor that it was time to go. Within seconds, I heard the whine in the helicopter engines change. The helicopter in front of us was already rising slowly off the pad.
I kept looking at Revik though, studying his eyes, the angles of his face.
You did good, I told him. Did I mention that? Or did I forget again?
His smile grew, twisting his mouth sideways. Must have forgot.
I nodded once.
Well, you did. Good, that is.
He grinned, kissing my fingers before he released my hand, buckling himself into the jump seat next to me with canvas straps and dead-metal buckles.
So you’re on shields? he sent, casual. And light? For this next part.
I let out a low laugh.
Leaning back in my own seat, I adjusted my body then copied his movements, strapping myself in next to him. Testing my telekinetic structures briefly, then my headset, then my shields, and finally my sidearm, in case the clone did something crazy and I had to shoot him––I turned back to Revik and nodded, once, giving him a sideways smile.
Yeah, husband, I sent. I’m on shields. And light. Don’t worry. Just do your thing.
Turning, he gave me another of those irresistible smiles.
By then, our helicopter was rising too.
Turning my head, I looked out the window, watching my view of the Vatican widen as we left the ground, smoke billowing around us once we were out of the protected enclave of the helipad. I only let myself look at those burning structures in the time it took us to ascend.
In that brief silence, I saw the dome of St. Peter’s collapse inward. Flames shot upward as it did, black smoke belching out of the newly-formed hole.
I looked away.
As I did, my mind clicked back into those higher levels of light, readying to work.
40
SACRED LAND
CHANDRE LIMPED WARILY around the fire, using a cane one of the humans had given her, placing her feet carefully in the dark.
As she made her way around the circle of logs and bodies, she noted where the other seers and humans sat.
She saw the human President of the United States, Moira Brooks, sandwiched between two local humans on a log that looked like it had been smoothed by many butts and legs. Brooks spoke to her companions in a low voice, gesturing with her hands, and the two locals, a male and a female, nodded, listening.
The woman sitting beside Brooks was one of the medicine people of her tribe, and the same one who had given Chandre the cane. Now she leaned forward as she listened, her long black hair falling down like a curtain, her tanned forearms resting on jean-clad thighs.
If she were a seer, Chandre would have sworn she was scanning Brooks.
As it was, she suspected some of these humans felt and noticed more than most.
Just feeling the quality of light in this valley told Chandre they had some knowledge of manipulating light. As strange as it was, a construct lived here, and not just any construct. It was a very old and well-established one, managed and maintained painstakingly over time––centuries of time, perhaps, handed down from generation to generation.
While the seers living here now likely helped with that, strengthening it perhaps, refining it in various ways, the construct was human-made, and definitely predated them. Luriaal herself told Chandre that, saying it was part of what drew her and her people to this valley in the first place.
Still, Chandre got the sense Luriaal had taken it upon herself to cultivate that awareness in the time since, even to train them how to use it more effectively.
Either way, the construct was probably why so few humans had come to this area, despite its relative safety from the human virus. The construct made the valley appear unremarkable to most humans, desolate even, possibly even dangerous. It acted as a repellant to all who didn’t resonate with those higher, clearer frequencies of light.
Chandre felt the wall when she first passed through it, somewhere north of where they abandoned the car off the highway.
She’d wondered about it at the time, but she’d been too desperate to get away from the seers tracking her to let herself think about it for long.
Now that she knew that hunting party had been Declan, Torek, and the others, she found herself even more grateful they’d met up with the local human and seer tribe first. Being killed by Shadow’s people would have been bad.
Being killed by
her own people would have been significantly worse.
At the thought of Declan, her eyes scanned warily around the ring of logs around the fire. Still using the cane to maneuver her body around the perimeter, she found him easily despite the collar she wore, in part because he’d already noticed her.
The big male seer perched on a different log than Brooks, his jaw set, his dark eyes following her as she leaned heavily on the cane.
Jax sat next to Declan on the same log, but unlike the older seer, he seemed oblivious to her presence, and to the presence of every other seer and human around the fire. His pale violet eyes focused blankly on the flames, his light strangely empty.
Chandre saw an older human watching him from just outside the firelight’s circle, a faint frown on his face. She recognized him, too.
She’d heard someone call him “Bear,” like the animal.
A few feet down on the same log, Torek sat with Luriaal, the silver-haired and silver-eyed seer who led the seers in the tribe. Chandre watched Torek speak, a smile on his face as he clicked and purred to her in Prexci, punctuating audible words with hand gestures and likely words sent through the Barrier. From his light and eyes, he was thoroughly infatuated with the female seer with the odd coloring who’d invited them into their camp.
Chandre still knew very little about Luriaal, although she’d found her friendly enough, particularly under the circumstances.
She knew the seers and humans here did not trust her.
Luriaal told Chandre she owed the humans here a blood and life debt, so was bound to protect them, including from her. She hadn’t volunteered the story behind that debt, and Chandre hadn’t asked, but clearly, the silver-eyed seer took it seriously. She also took her responsibility to the human moral code here seriously––more seriously than most seers took the Seer Codes these days, especially with Vash gone.
Chandre had been questioned both by humans here, and by Luriaal herself.
The questions had been fair, but specific. They wanted to know exactly what she remembered about the massacre in Langley––before, during, and after. They pinned her down on times, specific memories, any other blackouts she may have experienced, her emotional reactions to what she’d done, her feelings prior to the attack and after. They questioned her and cross-questioned her, checking for accuracy, for consistency, for details she may have left out.
Declan listened to all of it, without speaking a word.
So did Torek.
So did Kalgi and Oli.
In the end, Luriaal determined it was in all of their best interests to collar her. She said it was up to the Bridge and the Sword to render final judgment as to Chandre’s fate, but that she would share her findings with the two intermediaries when they arrived. In the meantime, she explained to Chandre, it was within her rights to keep her people safe.
As it was a more than reasonable request, Chandre submitted to the collar without protest.
They still seemed to view her as being possessed in some way.
Chandre had seen more than one human making protective gestures against her, against what they viewed as some kind of demon who held sway over her light.
Chandre was still gazing in Luriaal’s direction, when she felt eyes on her––eyes other than Declan’s––and turned. When she did, she found the old man watching her, the same one who’d been frowning at Jax only a few seconds earlier.
When she met his gaze, he motioned to her, first with his hand, then his head.
He wanted her to go to him.
Frowning faintly, Chandre only hesitated for a few beats of her heart.
Then, looking away from him, she used the cane to slide down to a seated position, her legs outstretched. Wincing at the pain in her still-wounded leg, she clasped it briefly over the bandage, closing her eyes. She didn’t want to force any of the seers or humans to feel the need to move, so she sat directly on the dirt, outside the ring of firelight.
She didn’t want company.
Really, she just wanted warmth––that, and for a few minutes to be outside the cabin where she spent most of her time. Even being surrounded by seers who hated her and wished her dead was better than not being around any of her brothers and sisters at all.
Closing her eyes, she leaned back on her hands and palms and tried to relax, to enjoy the fire, to feel the outside air, the light of the construct around her.
The night before, she’d been woken in the middle of the night by a pack of coyotes.
It frightened her at first, then fascinated her. They’d sounded so mournful, yet so companionable with one another, too, like a family.
She liked it out here.
“Here,” a voice said, right before a thick arm jostled hers.
Chandre’s eyes flipped open, even as she stiffened, turning her head.
The old man smiled, handing her a tin pot filled with something that smelled rich and spicy, with meat and what smelled like beans.
“Here,” he said again in accented English.
Clearly, he meant for her to take the bowl.
After the faintest pause, she reached out and took it from him gingerly.
She hoped once she did, he would leave.
Instead he sat next to her, plopping down right on the dirt. That was in spite of his age, which had to be in the seventy or eighty year range, since he was human, and despite the fact that he wore jeans and cowboy boots, not the least restrictive clothing in the world.
Pulling his long gray braid over his shoulder and out of the way, he set a second tin bowl in his lap and promptly began to eat, scooping up the black bean and meat concoction with flatbread and eating it right out of the pot.
He didn’t say anything more to her, and after a pause, Chandre sighed, giving in.
Setting her cane down beside her opposite thigh, she raised the pot she’d been handed to her nose and sniffed the contents warily. She was about to stir it with a finger, when the man bumped her again with his arm. When she looked over, he reached into a pouch that sat on the ground next to him, and pulled out two more pieces of flatbread. He handed them to her.
“Hot.” He motioned with his fingers and the bread to tell her how to eat it, as if she were an infant and hadn’t just seen him doing it. “Hot. Eat.”
Sighing internally, Chandre fought not to roll her eyes, then picked up the first piece of bread. Frowning as she watched him roll his up, using it as a kind of scoop, she copied how he did it––certain he would only yell at her again if she didn’t do it as he did––and scooped up some of the beans in the bread.
Taking an experimental bite, she chewed slowly.
It was good.
It was very, very good––especially for human food.
The old man cackled from next to her.
When Chandre turned her head, he was all smiles. He motioned towards her mouth and face, almost like a form of sign language. When she only frowned at him, shaking her head to let him know she didn’t understand, he tapped his temple with one finger.
Realizing what he was saying, she flinched, startled.
Then she frowned. Fingering the sight-restraint collar she wore, she tugged it away from her neck, showing it to him.
Grunting in understanding, he nodded. Setting aside his pot of chili, and the pieces of flatbread, he shifted towards her in the dirt, motioning with his fingers for her to turn her head. When she only frowned at him, unmoving, he motioned again, more adamantly that time.
Sighing, she did as she was told.
Turning her back to him, she continued to frown as he leaned towards her. When he grunted, motioning at her again with his hands, she sighed in more exasperation, then did as he indicated, pulling her thick braids out of the way of the collar.
She turned her back to him a second time.
He leaned closer.
She assumed he just wanted to inspect it. Perhaps he didn’t know how sight-restraint collars worked. There was no reason why he would, living out here.
I
nstead, she heard a faint hum in her ear, one she recognized as belonging to the retinal scanner. Frowning deeper, she was about to turn, to ask him what he was doing, when she heard an audible click.
The collar fell open.
She gasped, in shock as much as anything, feeling the strands unwind from around her spine. The old man was pulling the collar apart then, pulling it off her.
Turning, she stared at him, then at Luriaal, who sat across the fire. Luriaal was watching the two of them, her silver eyes narrower than usual, but reflecting no alarm. She didn’t seem bothered at all to see Chandre’s sight-restraint collar in the old man’s hands.
Chandre turned back to the old man.
“No,” she said, making a negative sign with her hands. “No. Put it back.”
She reached for the collar, but he held it away from her, chuckling.
He tapped his temple again, motioning towards her head.
She stared at him for a moment, frustrated.
Finally, realizing she had no choice, she opened her light to him.
Immediately, his thoughts rose in her mind.
It’s all right, náshdóítsoh. I was given permission to take it off you for tonight.
You shouldn’t have, she sent at once. You shouldn’t have taken it off––
The old man waved away her words, motioning towards her chili.
“Eat,” he said in English. Relax, red eye. I won’t hurt you.
She stared at him, then at the collar he still held away from her. She had the absurd thought to wrestle it away from him, to put it back on herself. Realizing she couldn’t lock it on without help, even if she wanted, she let out an annoyed exhale, sitting back on the dirt.
She picked up her pot of chili, putting it in her lap.
Setting her organic collar down on the dirt on his other side, he did the same.
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