by Abby Blake
“Pretty much,” Ava said with a smile. “With the knowledge Kristen gave us, we can all access our full powers. I know where to look for information in my head now. No more sifting through gigabytes of irrelevant data to find what we need. It’s like I finally have an index.”
“Exactly,” Kali said softly as she glanced at Kristen still crying quietly in his embrace. “But I suppose none of that helps Angus at the moment.”
“He’ll understand,” West said with the confidence of a man who’d been through something similar. “Although, this time Jed might get more than a punch in the jaw for his troubles. I’ve only been on the receiving end of one ice blast, but I can assure you it’s not a pleasant experience. You might want to get the hot water bottles lined up for him, Lilly.” It was obvious that West was joking, but it helped to calm Kristen just a little.
Dyson pulled her closer, trying to get comfortable as they all settled down and waited for the paranormals who’d attacked them to disperse.
* * * *
Angus let the houses burn around him. It didn’t matter anymore. Nothing mattered without Kristen. When they’d first connected, he’d worried that she wouldn’t live long in comparison to his own life. He’d had no idea she’d be stolen from him so quickly.
He didn’t even hear Benjamin approach until he placed a hand on his shoulder.
“Do we know what happened?”
Angus shook his head. The last he’d known they’d already escaped the area. He had no idea why Dyson would bring her back, but his decision had cost both their lives. He glanced around the dead bodies and ached for the loss of such amazing and talented women. He almost envied their husbands. They had at least died trying to save their women. They wouldn’t have to spend the rest of their lives wondering if they could have done something differently, moved faster, thought more clearly, been better, figured things out sooner.
“We could use your help putting out the fires,” Benjamin said in a tone that suggested it was an order of sorts. Angus knew what he was doing. The CO of PUP Squad Alpha was trying to keep him moving, get him working on practical things, achieving things that were in his control to achieve. In other words, get him off his knees.
Angus nodded, keeping his eyes on the woman who’d shone so briefly in his life as he placed her limp body on the ground. “I’m sorry,” he whispered as he turned away.
But as he halfheartedly shot an icy blast from his fingertips, the building faded from sight. Confused, he turned back to the space where he’d left Kristen’s body and found nothing but bare dirt. All around him the ground had been disturbed by the impact of explosive rounds, but there were no flaming houses or debris in the area at all. In the distance, Angus noticed several trees alight and moved to put them out. The last thing they needed was the surrounding forest to burn as well.
When he turned back to where the tiny town of Sugarvale had once been, he watched in utter confusion as the ground opened up and literally unswallowed the buildings. But it was the woman who appeared in front of him in the blink of an eye that had him doubting his sanity.
“I’m so sorry,” she said as she wrapped her arms around his waist and rested her face against his chest. “I wanted to come and get you earlier, but with the warlocks and witches still watching it wasn’t possible.”
“How was any of it possible?” he asked as he looked up and realized Dyson was behind Kristen, except that now they were back in the meeting room of the PUP Squad Alpha headquarters.
“We’ll save the explanation for that for later,” Dyson said with a smile, “but it turns out our girl isn’t quite as ordinary as she led us to believe.”
“Is that so?” he asked, feeling the first genuine smile to cross his features that day. But then what they knew about Victoria being an Oracle and being able to trace everything he said and did hit him squarely between the eyes. “The Oracle knows. She can see everything Dyson and I see. You need to get away from us. All of you.”
“Actually,” the pixie queen said as she stepped into the room, “that’s no longer true.” Angus shook his head, not because he didn’t believe her, but because he wasn’t sure how much more information he could absorb. It had been one hell of a long day. “The Oracle’s receptacles have created a type of dampening field around you all. I can no longer sense the vampires or humans in your group.” She smiled at Ronan. “You’ve been invisible to me for years. It was only a matter of time before you passed that skill to the Oracle’s receptacles.” She turned back to Angus. “Were you able to identify Victoria?”
He shook his head. “The only thing I was able to discern is that Tory and Victoria are different women. Victoria has been impersonating Tory when it suited her. I suspect she’s the one who gave Jason his ‘assignment’ and the person who made sure Cassandra was the only applicant for the promotion.”
“So what happens now?” Eric asked. “According to the paranormal world, almost everyone inside this room is dead.”
“Not me,” Skye said with a wide grin. Benjamin and Samuel pulled the young vampire into an embrace between them and laughed.
“Me neither,” Emmallina said a little more seriously, “but I’d appreciate your hospitality at least until Dex is able to rescind the assassination order.”
“You will always be welcome in our home,” Jennifer said as she and her mates came into the room. “Technically, we’re not dead, either. The only bodies Jed and Darian projected onto the illusion were those of the Oracle’s receptacles and their partners. According to the rest of the paranormal community, the threat from the ‘human Oracles’ has been dealt with.”
“Will it stop all the fighting?” Kristen asked in a voice that spoke very loudly of her care for others. It didn’t matter to her that the very people she was concerned about were the same ones who’d been trying to kill her.
“We still don’t understand why Victoria set it all in motion in the first place, but things should settle down now that everyone thinks you’re dead.” Benjamin turned to Ava. “How do people outside of Sugarvale see this area at the moment?”
“Basically, they see death and destruction still. All of the buildings, the streets, and what we could protect of the rest of the town are heavily shielded, but it would take a powerful mage to see through the illusion.”
“As powerful as Jed?” Angus asked hopefully. Jed was the most powerful warlock he’d ever met.
“Actually,” Jed said with a wry smile. “Whatever the ladies have done since bringing the buildings back from underground is way out of my league. I doubt there is anyone currently alive who is capable of seeing through the illusion they’ve created.”
“So we’re safe here?” Jennifer asked with a broad smile.
“We are,” Ava said with a confident smile. “Although, we could always try plan B.”
“Plan B?” Ronan asked with a crooked smile.
“Plan B would be moving the buildings to the far border of Ronan’s land. About fifty miles south of here. That way we could eventually drop the illusion here and the forest will reclaim this area.”
Hannah nodded. “We’re not sure of the limit to our powers just yet, so it would be a better option.”
Ronan was already nodding when he asked, “You can really do that?”
“Yes,” Ava said as she smiled at the other Oracle’s receptacles. “In fact, it’s already done.”
Everyone in the room seemed lost for words.
“Angus,” Kristen said quietly as all of the Oracle’s receptacles turned to face him, “there’s one more thing we need you to do.”
Chapter Sixteen
His mission briefing was short and to the point.
Apprehend Victoria.
It wasn’t until he found himself standing in front of the woman—pushed there by blink travel—that he realized that the Oracle’s receptacles had not only known where to find the woman but had somehow stripped the witch of her powers.
“What the hell?” the woman screeched as sh
e tried and failed to use her magic to attack him.
“It’s over, Victoria.”
“What the fuck would you know?” she asked in an arrogant tone as she pulled a human weapon from behind her and fired several times directly at him. The demon-shot bullets fell to the ground when they hit his defensive ice blast.
She tried her magic again, growled when it didn’t work, and then stomped her foot like a recalcitrant child. She threw the empty gun at his head. He easily ducked the poorly aimed projectile.
“What have you done to me?” she whined like a sulky teenager.
He frowned. “You should probably be more concerned with what I’m about to do.”
Angus crossed the room quickly, placed a hand on the witch’s arm, and dragged her through his slip path. She fell to her knees, obviously nauseated, as they stepped into Cassandra’s office in the Ruling Body’s headquarters.
“What the hell?” Gordanna asked angrily as she slopped coffee over her hand. “Where the fuck did she come from?”
Tory stared at the woman as if she was seeing a ghost.
“Tory, meet Victoria, the witch who has been impersonating you.”
Everyone in the room had taken a defensive stance, so Angus lifted the woman off the ground and placed her in a chair. Her quiet sobs filled the room, but it wasn’t enough to make him feel sympathy. A lot of people had died because of her.
“Who are you?” Tory asked, the shell-shocked expression on her face probably mirroring his own. The woman was a perfect doppelganger.
Victoria laughed hysterically, the sound ugly and disturbing.
“I’m you.”
* * * *
Kristen glanced at the other women in the room and didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. For so long she’d wanted to be a somebody, not an invisible nobody, but when she’d finally come to terms with the nobody she actually was, somebody went and flipped her world on its head.
In her mind, she followed the confrontation between Victoria and Tory, very grateful for the skill that let her know Angus was okay. But as the tense confrontation fizzled out and the authorities took Victoria into custody, Kristen realized that she could also sense the emotions of everyone else—not just in this room but in every corner of the globe.
She actually “knew” what every single one of them was thinking—including the men she loved. Having lived her whole life keeping to herself and quite happily hiding her emotions from others, it felt very intrusive to have such a skill.
“You’ll get used to it,” Kali said, rubbing her head as if she had a headache. “I think.”
“I don’t know if we should,” Kristen said glancing over at Dyson and the other women’s husbands. “Knowing everything all the time is going to make it very difficult to have any sort of normal relationship with anyone.”
“I agree,” Lilly said with a sad smile. “I can see, hear, and feel everything my husbands have ever said and done. It doesn’t feel fair to have information I have no right to.”
The others all nodded in agreement.
“So what can we do about it?” Ava asked. “We were given this knowledge for a reason. Bethany gave up her life to be certain that we inherited this gift. We can’t just set it aside.”
“I doubt this is what she meant,” Kali said, still rubbing her head. “In fact, we know this isn’t what she meant.”
“We can’t function with this much knowledge. God, it’s why Victoria exists. Her mother…” Amber let her words trail away. It wasn’t necessary for them to speak out loud. They very literally possessed the knowledge of the universe—everything and everyone who’d come before them and everything that had ever been said and done, and was being done, by every species on the planet.
Bethany had been an extraordinary woman. Not only had she been born with the gift of foresight—something Kristen had believed impossible for a human up till now—but she’d found a way to merge that with the Oracle’s gifts Prianna had given her. She’d willingly passed these gifts to Kristen and her fellow Oracle’s receptacles because she’d seen them helping countless others in one possible future.
Their destinies were in no way set, but with the skills they now owned they had a chance to help others for many, many years to come. In fact, many more years than they would have had as ordinary humans. Bethany had trusted them to do the right thing. Kristen knew that none of them wanted to let the woman down.
She smiled as she felt Angus step into the room, his mission complete. She could feel his concern for her, his pride in her finding her abilities, and even his small, mostly unacknowledged doubt that he would ever be strong enough to protect her. It wasn’t right to know so much about the person she loved.
“A font?” Kali asked with a wide smile on her face.
“Perfect,” Hannah and Ava said at the same time.
“We need a fail-safe,” Amber warned. They all nodded.
Kristen smiled. The solution was perfect.
* * * *
“What is it?”
Dyson wasn’t the only confused person in the room. He was just the first to ask the Oracle’s receptacles to explain the sudden presence of a huge water fountain in the middle of it.
“It’s the font of all knowledge,” Kristen said with a smile.
“How is a water fountain a font of knowledge?”
“Every Oracle collects the history of a species. As the Oracle’s receptacles, we seemed to be collecting even more than that. Before we created the fountain we could sense the thoughts, motivations, and emotions for every person on the planet. It’s not really a skill that we need to help us accomplish what Bethany wanted.”
Everyone in the room seemed uncomfortable with that information.
“The good news,” Hannah said, glancing at her husbands, “is that all of the information is now being recorded on the water and we are no longer collecting it in our heads.”
Just about everyone in the room sighed with relief. It was very disconcerting to feel like his thoughts weren’t private. From what Dyson understood from the pixie queen, Oracles only collected knowledge of events and the people involved, not the motivations or emotions behind it. Theirs was simply an accurate recording of history. What the Oracle’s receptacles had just described was well beyond that.
“What is the liquid?” Skye asked as she walked around the large stone design.
“Plain-old ordinary water,” Kristen confirmed.
“How can you store information on water?” Dyson asked. He wasn’t really sure he wanted to know the answer.
“Ironically, we got the idea from the human brain. It’s mostly water, but has an incredible storage capacity.”
“So the history of the world is being recorded onto this fountain of knowledge?” Angus asked with a wide grin.
“Yup,” Lilly said with a bright smile.
“But how do you ‘read’ it?” Jennifer asked curiously as she joined her sister at the edge of the stone construction.
“We just have to dip a hand into the water.”
Dyson frowned at that explanation—it seemed like a huge security risk—but Ava explained before he could voice his concerns.
“Only the Oracle’s receptacles can read it. To anyone else it just seems like water.”
“But what about evaporation? Or if someone drinks from it?” Benjamin asked, obviously thinking along the same security lines as Dyson.
“The information is copied hundreds of times. If information is lost, the fountain will simply reproduce it.”
“It sounds like an automatic diagnostic system on a computer,” Jennifer said.
“In many ways, it is,” Kali confirmed. “The fountain is constantly checking information and recording new stuff just like the computers of the world’s banks. If it finds a problem, it self-corrects.”
“You mentioned a fail-safe,” Benjamin said, apparently not yet convinced.
“We’ve set up a type of diagnostic algorithm. Each of us will check the fountain once a day
. It will alert us to potential problems and help us identify when people need our help.”
“We can do what Bethany wanted us to do without going insane,” Kali said with a wide grin.
“What did she want you to do?” Dyson asked, worried that he already knew the answer.
“She wants us to save the world.”
“How?” he asked. Kristen might be an Oracle’s receptacle now, with skills he could barely imagine, but it didn’t stop him from worrying about her. She was in his heart and he couldn’t imagine going on with his life without her by his side.
“In lots of little ways,” Kristen said as she stepped into his arms. “We can help nudge things in the right direction.”
“The fountain contains all of Bethany’s knowledge, too,” Hannah said as she moved to cuddle up to West, who looked as concerned as Dyson felt. “She saw the future. She understood what caused the disaster, and she sent us the knowledge we will need to change it.”
“As history is written, we have a chance to alter certain events, and we have the opportunity to share our gifts with others,” Ava said quietly.
“When is this disaster supposed to happen?” Alex asked without the slightest hint of emotion. Dyson knew him well enough to know the guy was about to crack his back teeth from holding his jaw so tightly.
“In about three hundred years,” Amber said with a soft smile.
“So it’s a task you’ll pass on to our children?” Darian asked with a hint of anger. Dyson shared the emotion. It didn’t seem fair to burden their offspring with such a huge task.
“Actually,” Ava said rubbing a hand over her belly, “we’ve already changed the future just by existing. But, even if it hasn’t changed the future Bethany saw we should still be around. Part of the gift Bethany gave us increases our life expectancy considerably.”
Kali stepped into the embrace of her human husband, Ronan. She leaned up to kiss his jaw as his arms tightened around her.
“It also changed that in the people around us. Sorry, Ronan,” she said with a laugh, “but you don’t get away from me that easily.”
