by Gloria Craw
My stomach turned. The psycho had enjoyed killing his father.
Holding the book up, he continued, “I stole this journal before Dear Dad could burn it. There are enough of his notes in here to replicate the titration of neural cells you need to create others like me. I’m offering it to you…for a price. My messenger will arrive shortly to tell you what it is.”
He took a sip of tea, and then as if only just remembering, he added, “If you have doubts that I’m a hybrid, ask the Laurel. She knows what I am.”
The screen went black.
In the profound silence that followed, Phoebe asked, “Is it true, Alison? Is he a hybrid?”
All the eyes in the room focused on me. Telling them he wasn’t would have bought me time, but Sebastian would prove it somehow, and when he did, my credibility would be destroyed. Telling the truth was my best option. “Yes,” I replied. “He’s a hybrid.”
“How do you know?” Phoebe pushed.
I let out a long breath. “Because I’m the one who fought him nine months ago. I’m the one who almost killed him.”
The looks of blank astonishment on the faces of the chiefs around me seemed perversely humorous. Fatigue and stress were taking their toll. Realizing I was verging on a hysterical fit of laughter, I squeezed my eyes closed and made myself focus.
“He wanted me to use thoughtmaking to influence government leaders,” I explained. “With me doing his bidding, he could control any country in the world. When I refused, he attacked me. I realized he was partially human when I joined his mind to try to confuse him. His thoughts didn’t run smooth and uninterrupted like the rest of ours. They were messy, unorganized, and jumpy like human thoughts.”
After a moment, a Bethex chief asked, “Why didn’t you tell anyone?”
My eyes flitted to Katherine and Spencer.
Ivan Illuminant pointed to the them. “The two of you knew,” he accused.
“We planned to tell everyone when the time was right,” Spencer insisted.
“Why do I get the feeling that isn’t remotely true?” one of the Ormolu chiefs remarked.
“What’s important to know,” I interjected, “is the process of creating hybrids destroys the good in both the human and dewing elements of them. Sebastian is greedy, vindictive, and ruthless. He doesn’t bat an eye at murdering humans or his own kind. No one can create hybrids without also creating monsters like him.”
Eleanora Illuminant pinned me with her dark eyes. “We hardly know you,” she said. “Why should we believe anything you say?”
“What reason do I have to lie to you?” I asked.
“You’ve spent your life with humans,” she replied. “You probably value their interests above ours.”
I choked out a laugh. “One of the first things Spencer told me about the dewing was our unwritten law to respect human life. That’s our law…not theirs.”
“We are facing a dire situation,” she replied with a shake of her head. “If what Sebastian says is true, it could save us.”
“But that would mean killing children,” Katherine interjected with horror.
“Perhaps the information he’s offering could be used as groundwork for more research,” a Bethex chief said. “Maybe we can refine the process so no one dies.”
“It would start us down a slippery slope,” Spencer countered. “If it proved impossible to improve the method, the option of doing it Sebastian’s way would always be in the back of our minds.”
“Taking a life to make a life isn’t right,” Luke remarked.
“Define ‘right,’” Helen Vasitass retorted. “Is it right to let our people go extinct? None of us like this, but we all pledged ourselves to the greater good. Saving our species is the greater good.”
“But killing, no matter the reason, makes us no better than Tenebroses,” I refuted. “Our ancestors blew up their island to put an end to him. We’d be dishonoring them.”
“We can hardly expect you to understand,” she replied. “You haven’t been here decade after decade discussing ways to change our bleak future. If there had been another way…we would have found it by now.”
“Just because it hasn’t presented itself yet doesn’t mean it won’t,” I pressed. “If you do this, there’s no coming back. All the things that have made us good will be swallowed up by it.”
Glaring at me, Eleanora Illuminant stood up. “You were included at the roundtable out of respect for your ancestors,” she said, “but your association with humans makes you unfit for a place at this table. Furthermore, the Laurels no longer exist. We don’t need the opinion of an insignificant clan chief here.”
Shaking with fury, I stood up to face her. “You’re wrong,” I said. “My association with humans is exactly why I should be here. Our fate is tied to theirs. You need me to save you from yourselves.”
“Um…sorry to interrupt,” someone at the top of the ramp said, “but the door was open.”
Fuming, I turned to see who’d spoken. Without the lights, I could only see shadows.
“Whoever you are,” Spencer growled. “You shouldn’t be here. Leave or you’ll get thrown out.”
“I believe you’re expecting me,” he replied. “My name is David. My father, Sebastian Truss, sent me.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Angry eyes fixed on the figure in the shadows. The chiefs disagreed about creating hybrids, but none of them wanted an interloper at the roundtable.
“I’m here to explain what Sebastian wants in return for my grandfather’s journal,” David said.
“You can tell your father, if that’s who he really is, that we aren’t ready to discuss his price,” Spencer replied. “This matter requires deliberation. I don’t expect we’ll have a formal vote on it until the next roundtable, six months from now.”
David took a step forward, but he was still too hidden in the shadows to make out any details of his appearance. “It isn’t going to work that way,” David replied. “This is a one-time offer. It won’t be available tomorrow, next week, or six months from now. You take it tonight…or you leave it forever.”
Spencer’s face reddened with frustration.
“Then we have no choice,” Valentine remarked with a slow and deliberate look at the others around the table. “We have to hear him out.”
David started down the ramp. Candlelight showed him to be an unremarkable-looking guy in his mid-twenties. He was pulling someone along behind him. “My father’s price,” he said, “is to choose the first human you harvest neural cells from,” He swung the person he’d been pulling into the light. “This is his choice.”
My blood turned to ice in my veins. It was my lanky, redheaded, freckle-faced teenage brother, Alex.
A little gasp escaped me as his bloodshot eyes roamed the room without focus. Fearing he’d been pumped full of some deadly drug, I started to run toward him.
“Stop,” David called out.
I pulled up short, but not because he’d ordered me to. I stopped because of the knife he was holding to Alex’s throat.
“If you take one more step, I’ll slit his throat clean through,” David said. “Don’t doubt it for a second.”
Fear for my brother quickly turned to fury. Vowing I’d make him pay for what he was doing, I formed the thought Drop the knife and tried to put it in his mind…but he pushed me out.
A slow smile curved his lips, making him look hauntingly like his father. “Thoughtmakers can feel it when another of our kind tries to join our mind,” he said. “Keep trying if you’d like. I’ll push you out every time.”
I started to feel the first inklings of panic. David was a thoughtmaker, too, and would guard his mind against me. Without my joining, I didn’t know how to help Alex.
“Let the boy go,” Spencer ordered. “We can talk about this in a civilized way.”
“I don’t think you understand how this works,” David replied with a condescending tone. “I don’t take orders from you or anyone else in this room. I t
old you what my father wants in exchange for the journal. Do we have a deal or not?”
“The matter has to be discussed and voted on,” Spencer almost growled at him.
Unperturbed, David responded, “You have ten minutes to make up your minds. Then the offer is off the table.”
I looked at the faces of the clan chiefs and did the math. From their expressions, I guessed the Vasitass, Illuminant, Ormolu, and Falco chiefs would vote to accept the offer. The Gallem, Klamant, Elysis, and Hezida chiefs were leaning heavily toward it. The Calyx and Bethex where on the fence. Only the Dawnings, Thanes, Phoebe, and Luke were strong holdouts. An immediate vote would be close.
Out the corner of my eye, I saw David yank the back of Alex’s shirt to keep him from falling forward in a stupor. There was something in that small movement of David’s that made his game plan clear. Sebastian wanted me to witness my brother’s death. If the chiefs didn’t agree to use his brain to create a hybrid, David would slit his throat in the Pradnium before leaving.
My mind shifted into overdrive as I tried to decide the best way of getting between Alex and David’s knife. Realizing I needed to distract David, I formed the thought the Pradnium in on fire and felt deep into one of the Ormolu chiefs’ mind for the strand of shared consciousness that would let me spread the thought to the other dewing in the room.
I’d just found it when one of the chiefs hit me in the back with a wave of their energy. I hissed in pain and stumbled forward.
Standing up, Katherine glared at Eleanora. “Stop it, Eleanora,” she said.
“The Laurel was trying to use thoughtmaking,” Eleanora explained to the others. “Probably to stop us from voting. If she does it again, I’ll really hurt her.”
“You’ll have to go through me first,” Katherine warned.
“Me, too,” Phoebe said.
“And me,” Luke added.
“There will be no brawling in the Pradnium,” the old Bethex chief remarked. “Everyone sit down so we can have a discussion and vote.”
With a gulp, I turned to go back to my seat, but the chiefs all started talking at once. David watched them with an amused smile on his lips. Taking advantage of the fact that no one was watching me, I dove for Alex.
Grabbing my brother around the middle, I pulled him to the floor.
While David was off balance, I rammed him, driving him a good distance. My next move was to kick him in the shin, but something sharp pressed into my flesh, and I suddenly couldn’t breathe. Looking down, I saw David’s knife sticking out of my chest. A red stain was growing around it. I made a gurgling noise as I registered the pain of being stabbed. David wiped his nose with the back of his hand and yanked the knife out of me.
That’s when everything seemed to switch into slow motion. I fell to the floor, and the chiefs turned to see what happened. David adjusted his hold on the bloody knife. I closed my eyes when he took a step toward Alex. I figured I knew what would happen next.
Like a whisper in my ear, my mother’s voice said, Open a portal.
I was in too much pain to wonder why. I just did what she told me. Gathering all my energy into my core, I held it tight. The compression made it heat and boil until I thought I’d burst into flames. At the moment when I felt I’d certainly combust, the energy exploded outward.
When I opened my eyes, I was inside a swirling bubble of white-hot energy.
David was screaming. He’d been caught in the explosion of energy, and his hands and face were red and blistered with burns. Only conduits could exist unharmed in a portal.
The chiefs were moving to the back of the room in an attempt to get away from the heat. Their expressions were a mixture of shock, fear, and disbelief as they looked at me.
Scanning the room for Alex, I saw him lying on the floor just beyond the swirling energy. “Spencer!” I yelled. “Get him away from the heat!”
I had the impression no one outside the bubble could hear me, but I pointed and motioned until he realized what I wanted. Rushing to Alex, he grabbed his arms and pulled him to the back of the room.
It was about that time when I realized I wasn’t in pain anymore. The blood had dried to a brown crust over my dress. Nervously, I felt under the cut in the fabric for the entrance wound the knife would have made. My flesh was tender, but there was no opening. Thinking the energy of the portal had given an extra punch to the healing process, I got my feet under me and stood up.
There was a swirl of energy inside the bubble, and my mother took shape. Jillian, she said.
My first instinct was to throw myself into her arms and weep, but she was in energy form and glowed white from head to toe. Hugging her would feel like hugging a hot branding iron.
“You…came,” I stammered.
She gave me a smile so full of love I let out a sob. But her smile turned sad as her eyes took in the freaked-out clan chiefs huddled in the back of the room, David burned and moaning in the corner, and my brother on the floor being tended to by Spencer.
“I’m so sorry we always meet under such awful circumstances, Jillian,” she said.
The energy swirled again and Brandy appeared. She glowed with the same energy as my mother. “Jillian?” she asked, looking me over. “Oh, that’s right,” she continued as though just remembering. “Your original name was Jillian. You’ll always be Alison to me.”
“Hi,” I said, rubbing my streaming eyes.
“Forgive me for saying so,” she remarked, “but you look terrible. What did you spill on your dress?”
“It’s blood,” I explained. “I just got…stabbed.”
Her happy expression morphed into one of wary concern. “Oh dear,” she whispered.
Ian and Theron came charging down the ramp into the Pradnium. Theron bounded straight into the circle of energy. Ian tried to follow, but the heat was too much for him. He backed away, shielding his face with his hands.
“Hello again, Theron,” my mother said fondly.
My cousin gave her a polite nod and then asked impolitely, “Why have you come back from the dead this time?”
“As straightforward as always,” she remarked. “Jillian…I mean Alison should explain a few things before I get into that.”
“Explain away,” Theron said, turning his eyes on me.
“Sebastian is behind the offer to make hybrids,” I told him. “He sent his son here with Alex. He wants the chiefs to use Alex’s brain for the first trial. I have to get him someplace safe where no one can find him.”
I took a step toward the edge of the bubble, but my mother’s voice stopped me from going farther. “This is when you decide how much you’re willing to sacrifice for the greater good,” she said.
With an impatient shake of my head, I responded, “I can’t solve riddles right now. Alex needs me.”
I turned to go, but Theron grabbed my arm. “Alex is okay for the moment,” he assured me. “Spencer and Katherine are taking care of him. I think you should listened to what the dead people in the room have come to tell you.”
He was right. Katherine and Spencer were kneeling beside Alex. Spencer’s eyes were closed, and I could tell from the way his forehead was wrinkled in concentration that he was working through the drug haze in my brother’s brain to put things right again.
“Okay,” I said. “Explain the riddle.”
“I told you once that destiny hadn’t decided everything,” my mother said. “There are moments in time when destiny can go one of two ways. The last time there was such a moment, William Truss decided the direction it would take.”
I remembered the name William Truss. Maxwell had called him his mentor. “You mean Sebastian’s father…or creator?” I asked.
“Yes,” she responded. “William’s scientific efforts were noble in the beginning. He wanted to build the dewing population to sustainable numbers without hurting anyone. Over time, that changed. He became obsessed with his work. He lost a part of himself…his conscience. When he killed a human child to make Sebastian, h
e sent the descendants of Atlantis down a path that would lead to our destruction.”
“Unless something changes,” Brandy said, “the chiefs will argue until the roundtable disbands, the clans will wage quiet civil war against one another, more humans with die as dewing scientists try to replicate William Truss’s work, and when they do, bands of hybrids will unleash chaos on the world. Humans will come to fear us, and they’ll hunt us down to the last.”
I took a deep breath and wiped a hand over my forehead. She’d confirmed my worst fears about hybrids. The future would be bloody and bleak.
“You said unless something changes,” I remarked. “What does that mean?”
“You were losing a lot of blood when you opened this portal,” my mother said. “You could have died, and because of that, the portal goes both ways. You can enter our world, the same way we entered yours.”
Theron and I exchanged a look. It was all eerily similar to the story in the creepy children’s book we’d found. “Let me guess,” I muttered. “You want me to talk to an ugly, dewing couple about turning fate.”
Brandy nodded. “They’re called the keepers of destiny,” she confirmed. “They sometimes grant wishes to the living.”
“So, that book we found isn’t just a really bad story for kids?” Theron asked.
My mother shook her head. “It’s a true story,” she replied. “Before our people settled on the island of Atlantis, we lived in what is now Spain. Like human civilizations at the time, we were ruled by kings and queens. Seeing the wealth of our cities, a human king decided to send forces to invade our settlements. Our people were ruled by a queen named Rea. She supervised our armies as they fought off the human forces.”
“Our people drove them back with ease,” Brandy remarked, “but Rea wanted to teach the king a lesson. She ordered her army to follow the humans back into their lands and slaughter them. Her order turned people who had been fighting to protect themselves and their families into killers.”
