“She saw the van at a rest stop down here. They’re headed west on I-40.”
“Well, good. They’re Little Rock’s problem by now, then.”
“It’s still my case, Mark.”
“That’s my little agent, always on the job.” He chuckled, but there was a nasty edge to his teasing that made her teeth clench.
“It’s been a long day.” She yawned. “I’m going to bed.”
“All right, honey. Just make sure you get there by yourself.”
Her temper flared hot enough to fry him over the 200 miles that separated them. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“Means you damn well better not have that fucking Mexican with you there in Memphis—for more than one reason.”
Blind with rage, she fought to control the tremor in her voice. “First, he’s Cuban-American, not Mexican. Second, whether he’s with me or not is my business, not yours. Third, don’t threaten me. Ever. I don’t belong to you, Mark. I never did. And now we’re done.”
Lana thumbed the phone off and just kept herself from hurling it across the room. She jumped up from the bed and began to pace the length of the motel room, curses falling from her mouth in an unending stream. She could only wish she’d used some of them on Mark directly. It was too late now. She didn’t plan to speak to him except in a professional capacity ever again. The asshole.
And, of course, if he ratted her out to Ballard about Gabriel, there was a good chance that professional capacity would be threatened, too.
CHAPTER TEN
Trin, Center for Adminstrative Control, Consortium of Minertsa, Sector 10
The Minister of Labor’s right hand sat at her desk and stared at the data crystal, a thing that held the fate of worlds in a latticework of mineral no bigger than the tip of her finger. The significant facts for each of the adult subjects of the Del Origa project—slaves retaken from planets all over the galaxy and now in place according to the original master plan—were there in the heart of the crystal. The data was what Sennik had been waiting for. Director Second Ardis could delay giving it to him no longer.
Ardis had tried by all the many means at her disposal to root out the purpose behind the project. She had sought some reference to it in all the databanks to which her inventive and intelligent mind could secure access, and that was almost all of the Consortium’s vast storehouse of knowledge. If there was any record of the project in computer storage, it was secured beyond retrieval by her considerable skills. Ardis suspected there was no official record. Del Origa had been Sennik’s personal project, protected under his own special protocols.
Ardis had ended as she had begun, with no coherent picture of what Sennik had in mind for his specially-programmed slaves, now that he had stationed them on the many planets of the Minertsan Consortium. From what she knew of him, only two things seemed certain: Sennik himself was the only one who knew the final plan. And disruption on an epic scale would be its inevitable outcome.
Ardis stood, the crystal in her hand. She adjusted her emotional composition, jettisoning all fear, all doubt, all hesitation. She had worked long and hard to be in place when the time came. Still, nothing could have prepared her for this moment now that it was here. The humans spoke of selling one’s soul to the devil. And though her people believed in neither soul nor devil, Ardis thought she understood the despair the phrase evoked. She felt lost, perhaps for all eternity.
She enhanced the colors of her aura with confidence and sexuality and pressed her hand on the sensor requesting entrance to the Director Prime’s office. His answer came at once, and she entered, closing the door with care behind her.
--You have news for me, Second? His aura was darker than usual, the silver shot through with ominous black.
She allowed her lavender to lighten with pleasure. The data you have been waiting for, Director Prime. All of the adult subjects of Del Origa have been reprogrammed and reassigned. All are in place, awaiting your orders. These are the preliminary reports from each of the placements.
Sennik stood and came around his desk to her. His aura lit up from within until it shone with golden highlights.
--At last! We were able to recover all of them?
--Yes, Director Prime. All fifty-six.
The golden streaks in his silver aura swirled and danced. Excellent. You have done your job well, Ardis. What of the young ones?
Ardis held on to her emotions, refusing to allow any reaction. The mrill-cursed pirates have protected them well, sir. We have recovered thirteen of them. Four remain at large in various sectors of the galaxy. Three are dead.
--What of the coordinator? Has he been found?
--The boy is as yet unrecovered, but Captain Dar reports he has found the beginnings of a trail.
Sennik brightened. Indeed. If Dar says so, we should have him shortly, then. All is well.
Ardis lifted her color and subtly altered her hue.
The male noticed at once. He stepped closer, the silver of his aura tinged with a bright blue. Ardis, perhaps you would join me in a celebratory drink? I think we both deserve it, don’t you?
She ducked her head submissively and sent a flush of purple through her aura. I would be honored, Director Prime.
Sennik waved her toward the heated rest platform at the opposite end of his well-appointed office. She curled up on one end of it while he poured the mrikis from an antique decanter into two delicate flutes. She watched him, suppressing a tiny tremor of revulsion. He could not be allowed to detect the slightest hesitation in her mind.
By the time he handed her one of the glasses and sat down very close to her on the platform, his aura was stained dark blue with arousal.
Just this once, my dear, I believe it would be acceptable for you to call me by my egg name. Ren.
She took a drink from the flute—it was very good mrikis—and because she knew it was inevitable and necessary, she let herself feel the beginnings of arousal. Her head grew lighter, her breath became short, her heart rate rose. She began to hunger. Her aura deepened like twilight.
--Ren. I have practiced that name on my tongue.
--Have you, my dear? His fingertips stroked her temple. Tell me your egg name.
--Ilia.
--It seems as though I have noticed your interest in me before, Ilia. Have you thought of me and let yourself become aroused?
Yes. She felt him in her mind, watching her reactions as his hand slid lower to her neck, her throat. Flames followed the touch of his fingers.
His aura burned blue as he removed her clothing and his, exposing their skin, their bodies to each other. His mind reached deeper, heightening her pleasure at the sight of his nakedness. His hands stroked lower, touching, inflaming. His mind circled her pleasure center, teasing.
Have you held me in your mind, Ilia, as you pleasured yourself? Like this, perhaps?
Yes, she answered, yes, yes, pressing his hand against her pulsing core as she shuddered with need. Her aura flowed with the dark purple and midnight blue of intense stimulation. He was deep in her mind now, spearing into her pleasure center with brutal intimacy.
Yes, I feel it. Sennik moaned, his other hand stroking his own engorged sex, out of its sheath now and demanding attention. Give me more, my love. Give me everything.
And because he asked it, because she could refuse him nothing, she showed him her naked need, coming for him in a raging storm of blind desire, his name on her lips.
She felt Sennik’s triumph as he found his own release, his seed spilling through his fingers onto her belly. But in his mind, open for a few brief, unguarded seconds, she also found the clues she needed. And in the deepest, most heavily shadowed recess of her mind, behind every shield and barricade, behind even the self-loathing she would save to endure later, Ardis smiled.
Outside Memphis, Tennessee, Earth, Sector Three
Gabriel greeted the dawn naked on his knees on the floor of his motel room. If he’d had more time he would have sought out a more appropri
ate place for this task—a high point overlooking a valley, a quiet spot near water. Even a cave would have been better than this cramped, unnatural monument to humanity’s lack of energetic sensitivity. But he didn’t have time. He needed to know now what he was up against.
In the posture required by the Disciplines for the deepest levels of mind work, he settled into the breathing pattern. Long years of training, reinforced by painful punishment, had shown him the path. Maturity, habit and the reinforcement of need had carved the path into a broad roadway, easy to follow even in the dark of physical stress or the storms of emotional upheaval. He tracked it down through his conscious mind, past his subconscious, into his unconscious, seeking out the traps and barriers he’d erected against his sibling’s incursions the day before.
There, in a remote corner of his mind, he saw a golden net stretched like a spider’s web between two marble columns. The black threads of his brother’s attack writhed within the sparkling strands of Gabriel’s trap, struggling to be free in his mind. Entangled there, they saw and heard only what Gabriel wanted them to see and hear. Satisfied that his snare held, he went on to seek out the separate trail that led back to Trevyn.
There! He saw Trevyn’s energy like a gateway leading out onto a long narrow bridge. He followed it, oblivious to the long fall into nothingness on either side, his attention on the stone at his feet, drawn by the warmth and light of an unseen sun in the air around him.
And then he saw him. Tall. Fair, where he and Kinnian were dark. His face holding a smile, tentative and sad, as though he expected nothing.
“Trevyn.”
His brother inclined his head. “Gabriel. I didn’t know if you’d come.”
“Where is Kinnian?”
“Close, as always.” He looked over his shoulder. Behind him was a garden, overgrown with dense vegetation. A high wall stood in the thick of it. In the distance, Gabriel could hear a thunderous roaring.
“We don’t have much time,” Trevyn said.
“Why did you lead me here?”
“To warn you. To help you as much as I can.”
Gabriel laughed. “You’ve never helped me before. You didn’t help me the night our father butchered my sister’s husband.”
“I was a boy, Gabriel. You can thank your God that butcher never claimed you as his son.”
“Claim me? From the moment he knew I existed, Kylan Dar wanted only to kill me. Do you know how many children he killed at the Academy looking for me?” Rodyn had given his life that night to save Gabriel’s—and set him on the road he travelled now.
“Because he feared you. As Kinnian does.”
Bitterness rose in Gabriel’s throat. “I was a reminder to Kylan of a youthful mistake, a moment of vulnerability, nothing more.”
Trevyn shook his head. “You don’t see it even now. What you could become.”
“I rejected my Thrane inheritance a long time ago.”
“You’re still a threat to Kinnian. You have no idea how strong he is, how powerful.” He straightened and lifted his head to meet Gabriel’s gaze. “That’s why I called you. He knows you’re here. If he breaks through your defenses—”
“I’m aware of his attacks.”
Gabriel started to turn back toward the bridge, but Trevyn grabbed his arm. “No, my brother. You don’t understand. Come with me.”
He pulled out of Trevyn’s grasp and looked around, suspecting a trap. “The longer I stay here, the more dangerous it is, brother.”
“If Kinnian had known you were here, you would be his by now.” He turned away. “Come.”
Trevyn led the way into the tangled undergrowth, a narrow path opening before him. Wary and reluctant, Gabriel followed him, his mind alert to traps in the clinging vines and grasping bushes all around him. They pulled up when they reached the towering stone wall.
The noise on the other side of the wall was now a steady roll of howling and shrieking, of growling and baying and ear-splitting roars. And underneath it all, there was a sound like drums pounding and the earth beneath their feet shook.
“What the hell is that?” Gabriel had to shout to be heard.
Trevyn pointed to a tiny chink in the stone. Gabriel bent to put his eye to the hole and looked.
On the other side was a creature two stories high and as broad as a starship, with toothy jaws as wide as an asteroid miner and a tail that could flatten a building with a single sweep. It paced on four legs, but seemed capable of standing on two of them. All four appendages ended in deadly-looking claws.
Gabriel backed away from the wall, his heart in his throat, but before he could say anything, he found himself back on the other side of the garden with Trevyn.
“My God!”
“Do you remember the creature from your training?”
He swallowed. “The VRadkrystion. Symbol of the power of the Blood Legion.”
“It has paced and grown behind that wall since the time of our father’s death.”
“Do you mean to say that Kylan’s murder was the price of Kinnian’s induction in the Legion?”
Trevyn lifted a shoulder. “If that’s so, the galaxy was done a service. It’s not usually the Legion’s way, though they may have had their own reasons for wanting Kylan dead. Kinnian, for all his power, is not nearly as intelligent as the old man was.”
“Or as unpredictable.” Gabriel’s lips curled in a wry smile. “And yet here you sit, under that creature’s very nose. Watching. And waiting. For what, Trevyn? Are you too weak to put an end to it—or too afraid?”
Fury flashed in Trevyn’s eyes and every muscle went taut as if he would launch himself at Gabriel’s throat. But he held himself still, and in time the steel melted from him.
“I have endured the hell that is my life in order to save who and what I could from the savagery of our blood. I’ve been forced to watch because I’ve been waiting for you. Since the age of 12, when I saw my friends die that night at the Academy, I’ve been waiting for you. Yes. I’ll admit I’m too weak to stop this on my own. I need your help.”
Behind him the roar of the VRadkrystion pealed like distant thunder. Gabriel studied his brother’s face, saw the pain in it. But in the end, he shook his head.
“It may be too late for that now. With the Blood Legion behind him, Kinnian may be too much for both of us.”
Trevyn nodded, as if he’d expected Gabriel’s answer. “Then at least you can end this for me, Gabriel. I’m so damn tired.”
The trill of her cell phone woke Lana out of a restless sleep. She slapped at the table beside the bed in the dark motel room until she found the beeping device and hit “talk”.
“Matheson.”
“Sorry to wake you, ma’am. It’s Rick Mason.”
She sat up, clearing the cobwebs from her head. The overlarge dial on the motel clock told her it was crazy early by most standards: 4:30 a.m.
“S’okay, Rick. I was just getting up.” God knows why she told that lie. “What’s the news?”
“Two reports came in overnight. I waited as long as I could before I called.”
Lana bit back the urge to cuss the rookie thoroughly for waiting any time at all. Let’s see if the reports are worth anything first.
“Tell me.”
“Arkansas State Trooper encountered a van matching our description yesterday around eleven a.m., 120 miles west of the Tennessee state line on I-40.”
“Shit! How long did it take Arkansas to wake up and figure out they’d seen our guys?”
“Twelve hours.”
“Jesus. Okay, what else?”
“Citizen called in from a gas station off I-40 past Russellville, Arkansas, at about three p.m. with a similar description. Said they’d been there an hour before.”
“And when did we get that one?”
“About midnight.”
“Holy fucking shit! Why the hell do we even bother with these alerts if the state assholes dick around for hours before they pass them on! And why the fuck didn’t you
call me?”
“Agent Jamisky was on duty. He said he’d take care of it, ma’am.”
“Oh, he did, did he?” Lana shook with righteous anger. “Fine. Connect me with SSA Ballard.”
“Now?”
“Yes, now, Agent Mason.” She held on to the phone as if she was afraid it might fly out of her hands and shatter against the nearest wall.
“But, Agent Matheson, there was something else—”
“What?”
“The TBI lab called with preliminary results of the blood work from Roberts’ clothing. Identified a former SEAL who was listed as medically discharged in 2006, Tyler Mahone.”
The information threw cold water on her building tantrum. The evidence she needed was starting to drift in and was settling out in the pattern Gabriel had predicted.
“That was fast—and just what I needed. Thanks, Rick. Okay. So, now you can wake Ballard up. I promise not to chew his ear off.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Lana used the few minutes it took to transfer the call to switch on the light and clear the last of the fog from her brain. She would need all her wits to get what she wanted from Supervisory Special Agent Frank Ballard.
Her boss’s voice was thick with sleep and gritty with unhappiness. “Matheson? What the hell?”
“Sorry, boss, I know it’s early. This couldn’t wait.”
“This about the Roberts case?”
“Yeah. We’ve had a few breaks overnight.”
“So good of you to join us, Agent. Jamisky brought me up to date hours ago. Where the hell have you been? Wasn’t this supposed to be your case?”
“I’ve been—”
“—Yeah, I know, interviewing a witness in person down in Memphis. What the hell for? You need to get your ass back in Nashville and get something on Roberts or we won’t have a chance in hell of catching these guys.”
“With all due respect, sir, I don’t think Roberts is involved.” It was too soon to lay that out, all her instincts said so, but she had to say something to justify her line of investigation. “We got the blood work back on one of the perps—a former SEAL named Mahone. I need to run him down.”
Trouble In Mind (Interstellar Rescue Series Book 2) Page 13
