Black Orchid (Svatura)

by Abigail Owen

  “We both serve under Maddox. You don’t come out much though. Your name is Talia. We used to date. Briefly.”

  She nodded.

  “Well?” he heard Maddox demand, but Nate was only aware of it as muted background noise.

  “I’ve severed the link that had him thinking we were te’sorthene,” Talia said. “The only thing he’ll feel for me now is that I’m a girl he once went out with and hasn’t talked to in a while.”

  “With no residual effect?”

  “Working on it.”

  She turned back to Nate then, and he focused in on her words as if they were a revelation. “All of your loyalty and devotion is focused on Maddox. On serving him and his needs. The Vyusher, and their Svatura allies, are our enemies.”

  “Enemies,” Nate parroted.

  “Especially Adelaide Jenner. She is particularly dangerous because she has too many powers,” Talia said. “She and all her sisters.”

  Nate felt hatred fester and boil up inside him. But then an image suddenly flashed in his mind. That of Adelaide crying. His dream.

  He heard Talia gasp, and her fingers dug into his arms. The small sting of pain snapped his attention back to her. “Nate. Adelaide is your enemy. Do you understand?”

  He felt waves of animosity roll through him, all focused on the truth in his head. Adelaide was evil and a deceiver. She’d ripped away years of his life, falsely leading him to believe in their relationship. Not only that, but she was incredibly dangerous. Someone with her abilities could take over the world and not in a good way. It was critical that she be eliminated.

  “Who is your enemy?” Talia asked.

  “Adelaide Jenner,” he almost growled.

  Talia glanced up over his shoulder. Nate continued to keep his focus on her, waiting for… something.

  “He won’t regress?” Maddox asked.

  “He shouldn’t.”

  “You’re sure? Because I’m sending him to her.”

  “He can handle it.” Nate vaguely wondered why she sounded so irritated.

  “Good.” Maddox sounded pleased. “Is he ready for his orders?”

  “Yes.” Talia removed her hands from Nate’s arms. Nate blinked a couple of times and felt as if he were pushing through a haze. Everything was a little fuzzy and colorless. He glanced to his left to see his leader, Maddox, standing there, watching him closely.

  Oh jeez, did I zone out in the middle of a meeting?

  “Nate, what are your thoughts on Adelaide Jenner?”

  Nate’s jaw hardened. “We have enemies, sir, and she’s one of the worst. What she did to me…” He shook his head, as a raw fury rose like bile in his throat.

  Maddox’s lips curled in a rare smile. “Good man.” He paused for a moment, serious once more. “Son, you have been one of my greatest disappointments. We lost Karin before you could be changed into a wolf metamorph. With your strength and speed, you could’ve been one of my greatest fighters.”

  “I still can be, sir,” Nate insisted eagerly. He stood to face his commander, his fists clenched at his side.

  Maddox clasped his hands behind his back and shook his head. “No. Without the link to the pack’s hive mind, you’re useless to me in that capacity.”

  Nate felt the disappointment like a rock in his stomach. All he wanted was to serve his leader. But a pack of wolf metamorphs had a unique semi-telepathic connection. A non-wolf would never fit in or work out. Especially in a fight.

  “But,” Maddox continued, “I have an important assignment for you. We’ve received some potentially key information about Adelaide, and I think you’re just the person we need.”

  “An assignment, sir?”

  Maddox nodded.

  Finally! Nate had been waiting for this moment. Now he could be an asset to his people. Anything he could do to help bring down Adelaide Jenner or her sisters would make him a hero in Maddox’s forces. But more than that, he was owed a certain amount of personal revenge against the girl who’d stolen his life.

  He pulled his shoulders back to stand proudly at attention. “Tell me what you need me to do, sir.”

  “I need you to do to her what she did to you.”

  Chapter 7

  Adelaide sat down on the couch in her room and mentally prepared herself for the next round of lessons that had become her daily torment these last few weeks. Alex sat on the couch beside her and pulled out a rectangular gadget with a glass screen. When he pushed something, it lit up. “So this is a cell phone.”

  Adelaide raised her hand to her head. “It looks like a little version of… what’s that thing called that Ellie showed me last week, the thing you can get information from?”

  Alex smiled. “A computer?”

  “That.” Adelaide noticed the small tremor in her hands and clenched them shut. In her mind, she was still stuck in 1929.

  It had only been a few weeks - a blink in the span of her elongated life – since Adelaide had woken from a nightmare to discover that she was lying in a courtyard in the middle of a castle. A castle for heaven’s sake! And as if that hadn’t been enough, a group of strangers, including a wolf, surrounded her.

  That day, as she’d tried to make sense of everything, Adelaide had asked Lila for explanations, but nothing her sister said had made any sense.

  “What do you feel?” Lila had asked.

  Adelaide shook her head. “Feel? Terrified… Confused… What’s happening?”

  Lila had glanced back at the others surrounding them. “Her emotions are back on.”

  Adelaide had gasped, looking around frantically. The voice had been Lila’s, but she hadn’t opened her mouth.

  Lila had turned back to face her. “Don’t be afraid. What’s your most recent memory?”

  Adelaide had focused on the question and searched through blackness in her mind until she’d latched onto a thought.

  “Ummm… We left Chicago because of all the issues with gangsters and the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. We moved to Louisiana instead. Dad was worried about the stock market crash.”

  Lila had looked both sad and a little relieved. She’d held out a hand and stepped closer but stopped when Adelaide jerked back. “I don’t know how to break this gently, so I’m just going to tell you…. A lot of time has passed since then. Eight-four years actually. We’ve had to put some blocks up in your memory.”

  Lila’d gotten really vague after that. Apparently something had happened. Something so awful that they’d feared Adelaide wouldn’t survive it, and so they’d wiped her mind clean.

  On that first day after they took away her memories, Adelaide had been grateful when they’d eventually taken her to a room – her own apparently – and her parents were there waiting. Something familiar. She’d clung to her mother and had, just for a moment, felt normal. But normal hadn’t lasted long.

  Very quickly, they’d started the process of what Adelaide labelled her “reeducation time.”

  A hell of a lot had changed in eighty-four years. So many aspects of her life were unrecognizable and completely foreign to her now. As a Svatura, because of her lengthened lifespan, she was used to adjusting with the changes of the world. But that was gradual. Losing such a huge amount of time, especially when so much had changed, was disorienting. Terrifying in her worst moments. Every time they showed her some new technology, some new invention, she felt her connection to reality slipping further and further away.

  And then the shaking deep inside would start, the dragon inside responding to her distress... wanting out.

  “So what does this cell thingy do?” Adelaide asked now.

  Alex, who’d been watching her closely, nodded at her signal to continue. “Its most basic function is to make a telephone call from wherever you want.”

  Adelaide blinked. She knew what a telephone was – finally, something she’d heard of. But none of the ones she remembered looked like that. “You don’t have to… um… attach it to something?”

  “No. You just dial the numbe
r and that’s it.” He proceeded to demonstrate. “Push this button here to turn it on. Dial the number on this pad. And click this button.”

  “Button?” It looked like he was just touching the glass.

  “The thing that looks like a green phone.”

  “Oh.” The shaking was getting worse, and now a headache was coming on.

  “Do you want to try it?”

  Adelaide choked on a laugh. “Not really.”

  Alex grimaced. “I know this is a lot, sweetie. But this one, at least, is important to learn. It helps you stay in touch with us.”

  Adelaide raised her eyebrows. “It’s not as if I have many places to go. And wouldn’t telepathy be easier?”

  Alex said nothing. He didn’t have to. Her control over her telepathy was pathetic.

  “Right. I can’t control my mind enough, I guess.” Adelaide sighed. “Give it to me, then.”

  But the moment her hands touched such a foreign, insane little object, the enormity of just how much time she’d lost struck her for the thousandth time. She felt as though she’d been slapped in the face with it so often lately, she was surprised she wasn’t black and blue.

  Adelaide gasped and dropped the cell phone as she tumbled to the floor. Her body started to jerk in an attack so sudden she couldn’t breathe or speak.

  “Lila! Ellie!” Alex yelled.

  Immediately hands were upon her. Adelaide felt Lila’s calming influence, which most often worked to stop the transformation. But right now it wasn’t doing a damn thing. Nothing could penetrate the fear and anger pumping through her system. Even with Ellie helping Lila, they weren’t making a dent.

  “She’s starting to shimmer,” Ellie muttered.

  “Get Selene in here,” Lila said.

  Tears trickled down Adelaide’s cheeks as she tried to pull some oxygen into her starving lungs. Her hands seized into claws as her body tensed with the violence of the attack. She knew the dragon inside her was trying to get out. They’d told her about the monster she could become, and she was fighting it with everything she had.

  Everything she had was not enough.

  “What do you need me to do?” Selene’s voice vaguely registered in Adelaide’s panicked mind.

  By now, Adelaide’s teeth were clenched so hard she was surprised she didn’t crack one. She managed to unclench long enough to force out a few words, “Don’t take it away.” She’d heard that Selene could permanently turn off any power she chose.

  “Help us,” Ellie said.

  Selene was also able to enhance powers, although she didn’t seem to have much conscious control of it. Suddenly, it felt as though a surreal calm washed through Adelaide. At the same time, the beast inside her backed off, growling in defeat as it slunk away. Finally, after what seemed like ages, Adelaide was able to uncurl from her fetal position and sit up. With a weary hand, she brushed sweat-soaked hair away from her face, and then she wiped the streaks of tears from her cheeks.

  “Thank you,” she muttered, unable to look directly at anyone. She was so embarrassed that she couldn’t keep a lid on her own powers, her own body.

  “Why—?” Selene started, but broke off.

  “Why didn’t I want you to take the dragon away?” Adelaide asked. Glancing up, she caught Selene’s silent nod.

  Adelaide hunched a shoulder. The question was one she wasn’t entirely sure she knew the answer to. “I’ve already lost most of who I am. And the dragon connects me to you guys in an odd way I can’t explain. I just… I don’t want to lose any more. But—” She sighed and shook her head.

  “But?” Ellie prompted.

  “This isn’t working.” Adelaide finally looked up to find that not only were Alex and the three girls in the room, but so were the other two guys. At some point during her struggle to reign in her inner demon, Ramsey and Griffin had joined them. “This… all of this,” she flung her arm wide, “is too much for me to take in. Maybe I could eventually get past that. But not with this dragon thing on top of everything else. I’m dangerous like this. I think…”

  She looked down at her clasped hands in her lap and voiced a thought she’d been having almost since the moment she had woken up without memories. “I think I need to go away. By myself. Send me with books – nice, old-fashioned books – and newspapers or magazines or something to read and catch up on things on my own. Preferably nowhere near people I could hurt.”

  “You want us to essentially exile you?” Lila gasped.

  Adelaide pushed herself to her knees and reached out to grip both Lila’s hands in hers. “It’ll be safer for everybody that way.”

  Chapter 8

  “I don’t like it,” Selene insisted, as she got up and brushed dirt off her hands. “I can’t guarantee your protection away from the castle.”

  “You can’t guarantee anyone’s protection, let alone mine, with me here,” Adelaide pointed out.

  At this, everyone started talking at the same time, each debating their own points.

  “If she stays, she could lose her mind completely.”

  Adelaide just barely controlled her reaction to the sound of Griffin’s grim thoughts inside her own head. Ellie had been practicing telepathy with her so that she’d be able to control it better, rather than catching random thoughts. She hadn’t improved too much, though.

  Concentrating the way Ellie had taught her, she sent him her own message. “You’re not far off.”

  Griffin’s ears twitched her way. Then he looked over and gave her a little wolfy half- smile. “Good job!”

  His form was another thing that Adelaide decided to just not think about too deeply. He’d allowed himself to be changed into a wolf metamorph by Karin, a Svatura who had the power to force that ability on others. He’d risked his life to become a wolf shifter for Selene.

  The Vyusher were first and foremost a wolf pack. Because of their unique hive-like mind, they wouldn’t accept a non-wolf as her King. But now he couldn’t shift out of it. Adelaide felt sorry for him more than anything. He’d sacrificed a great deal to be with his te’sorthene. And now he seemed… well, stuck.

  Adelaide tipped her head at his praise. “You sound surprised.”

  Griffin sat and curled his tail around his feet. “The first time telepathy kicked in for you, you could hear every voice in a loud room. It really freaked you out. So it’s good to see you have better control this time around.”

  “It’s probably because she once knew how to use it and never quite lost it,” Ellie joined in.

  “You mean my mind may not remember, but my body does?” Adelaide asked.

  “Something like that.”

  “You should let her go,” Ellie said aloud. Griffin added his agreement, making sure everyone in the room heard him.

  Selene eyed the siblings. “I just don’t think it’s worth the risk. Everything we’ve done for Adelaide to this point has seemed only to make things worse.”

  Adelaide frowned as she took in the guilty-looking faces around her. Confused, she moved to sit back down on the couch. Other than the mental blocks, what else had been done to her? And why? She trusted her family, but they were holding so much back. Too much.

  “I can’t, in good conscience, place her in even more danger. What if Maddox goes after her?” Selene continued.

  “We can take turns watching over her,” Alex said, speaking for the first time.

  She didn’t remember him from before, but his easy way with her now meant that they’d fallen into a comfortable relationship already.

  Adelaide sent him a small, grateful smile for the support but also shook her head. “I don’t want anyone watching over me for the same reason I want to be alone. I don’t think I could handle it if I inadvertently hurt someone. And, honestly, I doubt I’d be the one needing protection. I’m so on the verge of morphing, an attack would most likely bring it on in full. Anyone trying to hurt me would regret it.”

  Selene shook her head and sat down at a nearby desk. For a long moment, she loo
ked at her clasped hands.

  Adelaide rose. “Please,” she pleaded quietly. She laid a shaking hand on Selene’s shoulder.

  “I don’t belong here. Not anymore.”

  *****

  Adelaide sat in the window seat that’d become her preferred spot in her new home and looked out over the bright, sunlit landscape.

  Selene had finally caved in about Adelaide’s wish to exile herself, and, now, here she was in her self-imposed solitude. They’d dropped her somewhere in the middle of the Australian Outback, which was about as remote as one could get without going to the polar ends of the Earth. They hadn’t told her where in Australia exactly, and she hadn’t asked. Hadn’t really cared so long as she was alone. She’d been here for a few weeks now.

  “Hey.”

  She looked over her shoulder at the soft call. Charlotte stood in the doorway. She was supposed to be a friend. But to Adelaide, Charlotte was just the teleporter who checked in and brought her provisions periodically. Nothing more.

  “Have you seen anything to be worried about out there?” Charlotte didn’t come closer but glanced out the window from where she stood.

  Adelaide shook her head. “No big meanies to come haul me away anywhere in sight.”

  Charlotte’s lips thinned. “Not taking our enemies seriously would be a huge mistake. Don’t make me ask your parents and Selene to bring you back to the castle.”

  Adelaide sighed and turned back to her view. “I’m not a child. And I’m not helpless. I’ll be fine.”

  Silence greeted the statement, and Adelaide inwardly cringed. She’d hurt Charlotte’s feelings.

  “Okay,” Charlotte finally said. “I’m headed out, honey. I put away all the food I brought.”

  Adelaide looked over her shoulder gave her a small smile. “Thanks. See you later.”

  “You sure you’re okay? You must be lonely out here all by yourself. Maybe a little company?”

  Adelaide turned back to her view. “I’m fine.”

  After a small moment of silence, Adelaide assumed she’d left. As Adelaide remained in her seat, she tried hard to pull up a single memory with Charlotte in it. She tried until her head started to hurt, just as she’d been doing for the last few weeks.