by Petra Landon
Tasia gauged the Shifters’ astonishment at the First One’s respectful address of Roman Durovic. In a way, it was to Roman’s credit that the Shifters on the team occasionally forgot that he was heir to one of the most powerful Setik in the world.
Raoul pounced on what had been left unsaid. “The girl is not off limits?”
Kovács shook his head in his laconic manner and it was the Wyr investigator who expounded. “They were not reluctant to talk about the girl, but little is known about her. She’s guarded zealously by Monseigneur’s inner circle and the others are unfamiliar with her. Rather curiously, her status is part of the puzzle, Alpha. She’s important and yet, with little influence over the Nest in any way.”
“Anyone protected by his inner circle is someone Monseigneur values highly” Faoladh mused aloud. “But in that case, I’d expect her to have some clout in the Nest.” The Lombardis were an influential Family, one of seven led by a Pure Blood Master. All those with access to the Lombardi inner sanctum would be exceedingly powerful in the Clan.
“He values her for personal reasons, Faoladh” Mosconi explained.
Nandini leaned forward. “Because of her ties to a valued ally?”
The Wyr shook his head. “She is to be Monseigneur’s bride.”
Sienna gasped, more agitated for her sister than ever. Monseigneur would not give up easily on a bride. The sibling remained in great danger, despite her escape from the Vampires. Nandini, not one to show her emotions, held on to her composure better.
As the room exploded with exclamations and questions, Faoladh turned puzzled eyes to Raoul. The powerful Vampire Master’s notorious reputation spoke of ambition, deviousness, calculation and brutality. But never the softer emotions. Raoul, as astonished by the news as the others, kept his own counsel. He knew this was not the first bride Monseigneur had coveted. The first had been the witchling’s mother.
“How old is the girl?” asked Atsá.
“By our calculation, no older than twenty” Mosconi responded.
Hawk looked incredulous. “What does Monseigneur want with a twenty year old?”
As immortals, Chosen looked at age with different eyes than the Si’ffa. Yet, Hawk was aghast. Monseigneur was a Pure Blood Master, made a Vampire by one of the original Blutsaugers. That made him very old, even for Chosen. And no kind of groom for a twenty year old.
“It’s not a marriage, Hawk” Atsá said quietly, reading the repugnance in his grandson. “It’s an alliance to strengthen his ties to her mother.”
Hawk’s eyes flashed to his grandfather. What he saw in Atsá’s eyes had the young Shifter piping down.
“We know she promised one daughter to Bianchi” Maartje reminded Hawk. “She’s using them to bolster her army.”
“That might be true for Bethesda, Maartje. But Monseigneur is not just any Vampire” Faoladh observed. “He’s a Pure Blood Master. If he agrees to take a bride, there’s something in it for him. He doesn’t need her to strengthen an alliance.”
Tasia, recalled to the past by the proclamation, felt her heart skip a beat when Jason drawled. “This is the second mate Monseigneur has lost. It would seem that his luck with brides has not improved.”
The Shifter investigator glanced at his older colleague. Younger than his First One partner, Mosconi’s knowledge about the Clan was not as vast as Kovács’.
“Is it true, Sándor?” Faoladh asked the Ancient, confident that the investigator would know about it.
Kovács confirmed it. “There were whispers of a previous bride. But it never came to pass.”
Tasia lowered her eyes to her lap and regulated her breathing. It would not do to raise Faoladh’s suspicions. She was less anxious about the other Shifters in the room. They would put any change in her down to shock, much like Sienna and Nandini. But Faoladh was a different beast altogether. Having aroused his suspicions once, she was leery of drawing his attention again. The Alpha would push the conversation to other channels, if it skirted any subject likely to threaten her cover. Yet, she could not but reflect on the irony of the circumstances. The only reason Jason was aware of Monseigneur’s marital aspirations was because the Alpha had asked him to dig into Gabriel Azevedo — the unintended consequences of keeping her parentage a secret from the Alpha. Not for the first time, Tasia regretted not being candid with him before. Don’t repeat the same mistakes again, she told herself fiercely.
Duncan and Hawk stayed mute. But Elisabetta allowed her curiosity free rein.
“Who was the first mate?” she questioned Sándor Kovács, hoping that Monseigneur’s previous bride might provide a hint about his second. Like the others, Elisabetta understood that unearthing the third daughter was crucial to defeating Lady Bethesda, almost as critical as raising an army to stop the one she had amassed over the years.
“Little is known about her or what became of her.” Kovács glanced at Faoladh. “I can dig into her” he offered.
Faoladh turned to the Chosen in charge of the investigation. “What say, Raoul?”
The Alpha turned to Jason. “Tell them what you told me, LaRue.”
“She was a Lombardi captive” Jason explained. “Monseigneur had an ex-Guardian, Gabriel Azevedo, working with him. They fell out over the prisoner and Azevedo helped her to escape the Vampires.”
“What happened to her?” Luis asked.
“The Clan caught up to them and both Azevedo and she perished in the ensuing clash.”
Atsá frowned. Azevedo had come up before in the investigation. But the second player was more mysterious. “What do we know about her, Jason?” he asked.
“That’s all I have” the Guardian admitted. “Merceau asked me to look into Azevedo because, like Lady Bethesda, he defected from the GCW to work for the Lombardis. That is when I unearthed Monseigneur’s runaway bride.”
Faoladh was reminded that Azevedo had been brought to the First Wizard’s attention during her visit to San Francisco. “Anything to tie Bethesda to the other Guardian, Raoul?”
The Alpha shook his head. “Nothing, except the Lombardi connection. By all accounts, Azevedo soured over the Undead very soon, while nothing suggests any disenchantment on Lady Bethesda’s part.”
Raoul suspected that the likelihood of the witchling ever being traced back to her mother was low. It was her connection to Azevedo that posed the real threat.
“LaRue did a thorough job of investigating Azevedo and any ties to Lady Bethesda” he directed at the investigators. “However, it might be worthwhile to look into the prisoner he aided, given what we know now.”
Faoladh agreed. “Any parallels between the women would help us understand Monseigneur’s motivations. Might even shed some light on how his alliance with Bethesda benefits him.”
“I’d imagine the alliance is a way for Monseigneur to consolidate more power” Simeonov remarked.
“The alliance also carries significant risks for him, Stefan” Duncan offered a counter-argument. “Monseigneur would not readily associate with someone he knows will draw the opprobrium of other Chosen.”
Faoladh concurred with the English Shifter’s assessment. “For her, it carries little risk. But for Monseigneur, it is a perilous gamble. There is more to this alliance between them than meets the eye.”
He glanced at the Alpha. Something in the Shifter’s blanked expression had him asking perspicaciously. “What are you thinking, Raoul?”
“If Monseigneur is gambling with his closeness to Lady Bethesda, I doubt the other Pure Blood Masters are happy to see him jeopardize the Clan for his own ambitions.”
Faoladh’s eyes narrowed, as the likely explanation hit him. “They don’t know what he is about” he muttered. “Or at the very least, not the extent of the threat his affiliation, with her, poses to the Clan.”
Raoul’s eyes entangled with his Alpha’s. “Perhaps, it is time to explain to the leeches the jeopardy they risk if Monseigneur continues down his current path” he advocated.
Since the witchling
’s comment about Monseigneur’s past collaborations with Ancients, Raoul had chewed on it. It was clear that the leech had nursed his ambitions much before Lady Bethesda. As they uncovered more of the Pure Blood Master’s activities, it struck him that Monseigneur might be more of a threat than Lady Bethesda. If so, it would be a mistake to be distracted with torpedoing the Wizard’s ambitions, while the real power behind the evil ran roughshod over the Chosen. But finally, he had an excuse to stop the Lombardi Master in his tracks.
“Divide and conquer” Faoladh murmured approvingly. “I like it. You want me to initiate this?”
Raoul shook his head. “Let me sow the seeds first, Faoladh. You’re the ace in the hole to be brought out for the finish.”
That evening, as they gathered for a final confab with Faoladh, Sienna addressed the Wyr.
“You knew Da the best amongst us, Faoladh” she stated quietly.
Following their previous conference, Faoladh had stepped out to have a private word with the investigators from Venice. And Raoul had seized the opportunity, to brief the team with a concise retelling of his conversation with Faoladh about the past. The Shifters, true to their nature, had taken Faoladh’s disclosures in stride, not once questioning why the Wyr’s intuitions and insider knowledge, about the Oracle or Lady Bethesda, had not been shared with them before. The others had reacted differently — Roman Durovic, astonished by the eminent Seer’s outsized role in steering Faoladh in his quest and Jason LaRue, intrigued by this glimpse behind the curtain regarding Guardian machinations about the Council of Chosen. But for Sienna, Faoladh’s divulgence, of a relationship with her father, had brought immense relief. The pressure on her to come up with the answers seemed to recede. But more importantly, for the first time in her life, she was presented with an opportunity to understand a period in the past that continued to bedevil her. The Alpha Wyr offered her the chance to get answers about her Da, even as questions about her mother persisted.
Faoladh gentled his tone. “Not the best.”
Sienna met his eyes. “I was a child. To me, he was just Da — not a Guardian and not the Oracle.”
The Alpha Wyr’s shrewd eyes wandered her face as the others watched them silently.
“We understood each other, Sienna” he acknowledged gravely. “In many ways, he was a kindred spirit.”
Sienna did not beat about the bush. “What do you think? Was his last prophecy unfinished, or is there another reason why Da doesn’t tell us outright who the custodian and the champion are?”
Faoladh was equally candid. “I can think of three reasons to explain his brevity, Sienna. Either the prophecy was incomplete, or he could not identify some of the crucial Chosen in his visions.”
“You mentioned three possibilities, Faoladh” Elisabetta prompted him.
The Wyr paused for a moment, before answering her. “It is possible he left behind crumbs to mark the trail, while taking care to not point to where the path leads. For some reason, he wanted to mask the identities of the Chosen who play a part in our future.”
Faoladh ignored the others to address Sienna. She looked gobsmacked and he added a warning. “Keep in mind that this is pure conjecture on my part. I was hoping he’d left me a clue in the Seer’s documentation. Without one, I’m just guessing, like everyone else in here.”
As the others digested Faoladh’s words, Sienna reflected on a weighty matter. It took her a moment or two to gather herself. “Speaking of clues in the documentation …” Her voice trailed off as the attention of the room flashed to her.
Faoladh asked the question. “He left you something?”
She did not deny it. “But I don’t know what it means.”
Before the others could react, Hawk interjected impetuously. “What clue, Sienna?”
“There’s a scribble in the column — a doodle shaped like an untidy spiral. When I was a kid, I’d draw that spiral everywhere. Da would ask me if I was building a staircase to escape him. It was a running joke between us.”
Her eyes swept from Hawk to the Alpha. “I didn’t say anything before because I don’t understand what message he’s sending me” she said helplessly, an undertone of apology in her voice.
Raoul didn’t hold this against her. Sienna’s emotions were under assault — not only by the actions of her mother, but also by revelations about the man central to this prophecy they chased. Under those circumstances, he was willing to cut her some slack.
Jason was the first to break the silence. “Perhaps, it is his way of communicating to you that you have a role in his prophecy, Sienna” he offered. “Especially, since he doesn’t put your name officially down as one of the sisters.”
Sienna, incredibly relieved by the Alpha’s reaction, was unconvinced by Jason’s suggestion.
Duncan stepped into the breach. “Like the other clues the Oracle left behind, it is open for interpretation, Sienna. I wouldn’t worry about it.”
Nandini added her voice to the English Shifter’s. “There is so much up in the air, Sienna. Your doodle is merely one more mystery, to add to the basket of them. We’ll figure this out together, along with the other pieces of the puzzle.”
Their reassurances helped soothe Sienna. The familiar scribble was one of the reasons news about Faoladh’s relationship with Da had assuaged the agitation and urgency of trying to make sense of his confusing clues. There was another hint for her in the Seer’s interpretation, one even more astounding, that Sienna was trying to process before she revealed it to the others. She glanced at the Alpha, wondering whether she should apologize some more for not speaking up earlier.
As her eyes met his in apology, Raoul did not hold back. “Every little bit, no matter how obscure, helps us understand the puzzle, Sienna” he said easily. “Information is paramount. Your doodle, as well as Faoladh’s reminiscences about the past, will help us determine what is to come. They are all fragments that make up the larger picture. We cannot stop something that we do not understand.”
“I wonder if Scot foresaw the investigation too” Faoladh remarked pensively. “Maybe, it is his way of signaling that he knew his daughter would be a member of this team.”
“If so, to what purpose?” Roman was puzzled. “Why is Sienna’s presence in the investigation significant?
“I don’t know” Faoladh admitted.
He glanced around the room, making sure to drive his point home. “We might wonder why he’s so enigmatic and ambiguous. But irrespective of what he left unsaid, every word the Oracle placed on official record holds meaning. Of that, you can be sure.”
“In other words, instead of speculating about the identity of the players, we are better off focusing on what the Seer does tell us” Atsá summed up Faoladh’s advice.
Nandini’s voice rang out. “I have a question, Faoladh.”
“Of course” he responded courteously.
“You’ve read the interpretation. Given your knowledge of the Oracle, do you believe that Lady Bethesda is the chetariki of The Prophecy?” Nandini asked bluntly. She knew that neither Sienna nor Jason would ever ask Faoladh this question — neither was ready to hear the answer. But Nandini desired Faoladh’s opinion on this, not only for its significance to the investigation, but also because it affected the half-sister she’d come to love.
The Wyr hesitated, an uncharacteristic reaction that had the Shifters in the room come to attention as Jason’s eyes narrowed.
Faoladh believes that Lady Bethesda is the rainmaker.
The realization hit a silent Tasia like a ton of bricks. The Oracle’s explanation might be hazy about many things, but it did not mince words when it came to the role the rainmaker would play in The Prophecy. The custodian was the key to the entire prophecy and if Faoladh believed it was Lady Bethesda, they were in a world of trouble.
“You do” Sienna murmured, unable to hide her angst at the blow.
“No, Sienna” Faoladh contradicted her firmly. “The truth is I don’t know what to believe about the custodian.
But I will tell you what I am confident of. I don’t believe things end badly. It might get hairy in the short term for us all, but in the end, the Chosen will emerge stronger.”
“Because the Seer hints that the custodian will do the right thing in the end?” Sienna suggested, not persuaded by the argument.
“No, because of what your Da shared with me about his incomplete prophecy of the CoC. I’m convinced that his last foretelling continues the one about the Council. Primarily because, if Scot suspected he was on borrowed time, he would not abandon the unfinished prophecy. He believed that this prediction would be his most important contribution as a Seer. Scot always said that it foretold of a very different future for us Chosen, one with more inherent justice and the promise of greater prosperity for everyone.”
As the room ruminated on his assertion, the Alpha, with a pregnant glance at Duncan, diverted the conversation to a different matter. Not to say that Raoul was unaffected by what Faoladh’s response hinted at. The person who knew the Oracle the best was saying, in so many words, that Lady Bethesda might very well be the custodian The Prophecy revolved around. But there was little to be gained by speculating about that which they did not know. Their efforts would be put to greater use by focusing on what they could influence.
“We shared the evidence against Lady Bethesda with DiZeyla and David Hamilton” he disclosed to Faoladh. “DiZeyla does not believe that what we have is compelling enough to persuade the Ancients to take her on.”
Faoladh looked resigned by the news. “DiZeyla is right, Raoul. I know, from experience, how hard it is to persuade the First Ones to involve themselves in a cause that they believe does not pertain to them directly.”
“I’ll work on TorElnor, Merceau” Roman adjured, with grim conviction. “It might take time but I will convince him of the threat she poses to the Chosen.”
“And I will engage SivoTar” Nandini said determinedly. “He’ll grant me an audience, I know.”
“Let’s hold off on that for now” Raoul directed.
Roman arched an eyebrow, surprised by the comment. “What’s the plan of action, Merceau?”
