by Petra Landon
“Who represents the Clan on the Council?” he asked. The Vampires had devised a complicated mechanism to serve their interests at the Council of Chosen. To divvy up power and responsibility, the Masters from the Pure Blood Families rotated as the CoC representative for the Vampires.
“Someone very much in your thoughts currently, Raoul.”
“Monseigneur” he murmured, wondering why the leech had balked at punishing the Guardian.
Faoladh seemed to read his mind. “I’m not sure about his motivations. But the Blutsauger mind is not my specialty. Perhaps, he was unnerved at the precedent set by such a CoC sentence.”
Or perhaps, it felt like a shot across the bow to a Chosen setting himself up to challenge the natural order, Raoul speculated. The verdict might even force Monseigneur to be more circumspect in his dealings. He wasn’t sure how he felt about this. Raoul wanted both Monseigneur and his ally to get bolder and make mistakes. That would drag the influential Ancients into the fight and allow them to put a stop to the nefarious designs.
“TorElnor has made the decision to send Monseigneur a formal notice for Belize” he said, his way of letting the Alpha Wyr know that he appreciated Faoladh’s efforts on this.
“I heard, Raoul. It’s good news.”
“There is another piece of good news, Faoladh. I met with the Guardians at the local Collegium yesterday.”
“They’re backing away from the demand to hold a new election for First Wizard” Faoladh remarked hopefully. That would be one less item on his plate to sort out.
“No, the Guardians want our help to convince their own not to vote for a tainted candidate who’s thrown her hat in the ring.”
Raoul had expected Faoladh to be pleased by the news, but the eery silence on the line set him thinking.
“Lady Bethesda outing herself thus would be to our advantage” he prompted Faoladh, wanting to make sure his announcement had not been misinterpreted.
“It’s a double-edged sword” Faoladh said heavily.
A furrow sprang between Raoul’s brows, but he held his tongue.
“Once she ventures into the open, we will have to hustle” Faoladh proclaimed. “Because if she becomes First Wizard, we cannot touch her.”
Raoul’s brows drew together. “I don’t understand, Faoladh?”
“All CoC representatives are protected from prosecution, criminal or otherwise, while they sit on the Council. This was agreed to while drawing up the charter of the Council because of the strong opposition for the body from many powerful quarters. It was to ensure that representatives do not become victim to political maneuvering, while they represent their brethren on the CoC.”
“This is her backup plan” Raoul murmured, as the import of Faoladh’s words sank in. It struck him what a brilliant move their opponent had played. They’d been wondering how she might mitigate her past crimes, perhaps by manipulating Faoladh in some way. But her election to the Council would, in one fell swoop, clear the deck and leave her adversaries impotent to adjudicate the past. Even if the Ancients joined them in opposing her, they’d be powerless to move against her as long as she sat on the CoC.
Faoladh sighed. “She’s been hinting all along that she expects me to be on her side and support her. This is a sign that she’s impatient with my intransigence. But we cannot allow her to whitewash the past, Raoul. She must be called out on it — her actions today are an extension of what she unleashed on the Chosen before.”
Raoul chewed on Faoladh’s words. A drastic change of strategy was the need of the hour. “The GCW is afraid that she might win the election, given the Guardian fury against Lady Esmeralda. We could use their fear against the Guardians” he suggested.
Faoladh grasped the point and ran with it. “Sentiments against the Guardians are running very high at the moment, Raoul. That the GCW and the First Wizard were at odds about forcing Anderson to face justice for his actions came out during the trial” he declared. “I’ll remind the GCW that this might not be the best time to change their First Wizard. And drop a hint to my First Ones friends to pass along a similar message to the Guardians. It should buy us a little time to get our ducks in a row.”
Raoul wondered if there was another way to dissuade the Guardians from holding an election. After all, that they’d come to him for help pointed to their desperation. LaRue must be told about this development, before he took off for San Diego. Their resident Guardian might know of a way to push back the election.
“This is unsettling news, Raoul. And it’s not just the election that concerns me” Faoladh confessed heavily. “There’s something else you should know. During the election for First Wizard, when Scot intimated that Esmeralda would need an ally on the Council, he also dropped another bombshell about the future.”
Raoul frowned.
“Esmeralda is not the only one from his family fated to sit at the high table. I quote him here for precision — when that comes to pass, she will need your support and backing, even more than Esmeralda. Scot hoped that despite the ideological differences, I would support her to ensure Chosen cohesion and justice.”
“I’ve been hoping that I had misunderstood him in some way” Faoladh admitted, as Raoul remained silent. “But this is not a good sign.”
As Faoladh’s voice died away, Raoul stared blindly at his phone. He’d suspected for a while that the Oracle had disclosed more of the future than Faoladh had admitted to him. Yet, it seemed that the hints dropped to Faoladh, though heavy-handed, were as cryptic as the Seer’s recorded interpretation. In many ways, these insights from the Seer gave Faoladh an edge against Lady Bethesda’s machinations. But such predictions, especially when open to interpretation, could also be a double-edged sword. This might explain why Faoladh was conflicted about Lady Bethesda’s role in her husband’s portent of the future.
She paused at a resplendent glen bathed in moonlight. Above her, the skies were clear with twinkling stars and a luminescent moon. In the distance, the silhouette of a mighty mountain guarded the glen. She had been running for over an hour, venturing farther every day. Despite the distance covered, she was raring to go. She looked up at the night sky and breathed in deep. The physical depredations from the imprisonment were on the mend. Though some days, the memories crowded her mind to deny her any peace. But tonight, she was confident that nothing could touch her. Her beotan was finally under control, her stamina unflagging and the vast moonlit valley beckoned her.
The merest hint of footsteps interrupted the silence of the glen. As the months passed and the horrific memories receded, her confidence grew from strength to strength. The Shifter from before the barn, the grieving teenager who’d walked mindlessly into danger, no longer felt alien to her, but someone a little more familiar. No longer did she jump and startle, readying for a fight to the finish at the first hint of an interloper in her domain. Expecting her guardian angel, she turned to glance at the intruder. But it was not the black bear that confronted her. Instead, what she observed set her heart racing. A man watched her, his face in the shadows. She knew who it was — the solidly-built figure was no stranger to her.
Her heart thumped violently, threatening to explode from her ribcage. She took off, sprinting like the devil himself pursued her. At first, it was blind instinct that drove her. But as her feet ate up the miles, it was the watering hole that beckoned her. On such a clear moonlit night, it would serve her purpose. Lost in reveling in the moon’s bounty, she’d almost forgotten what preoccupied her mind. Reminded anew, she knew what she must do for her own sanity.
The watering hole was familiar territory. It’s where she had spent a fair bit of time in the first dark days of being freed from the battered shed of her nightmares. The first glimpse of the water brought her some solace. As she’d suspected, the reflective stillness of the pond’s surface would work well for what she had in mind. She slowed down on approach, not wanting to create any ripples in the water — that would defeat her purpose. For just a moment, she balked at the w
ater’s edge, unwilling to gaze at her own reflection. But her heart refused to slow down, its beat cacophonous in her ears.
Taking a deep breath, she ventured forth, her eyes on the glistening water. She wasn’t sure whether it was her vision at fault, but at first, the reflected image swam before her eyes until the edges sharpened gradually. Slowly, the reflection came into focus. A face stared back at her, one hauntingly familiar. She’d gazed upon it but once in her life — under the full moon in a clearing of a faraway rainforest.
Tasia came awake, gasping for breath. The familiar room swirled around her, while she struggled for air. The nightmare pulled at her, trying to suck her back, to the reflection on the watering hole in the wilderness. Tasia fought the insidious pull, struggling to separate dream from reality; the only sound in the room her raspy labored breaths. It took a while but eventually, her darkened room in the Lair stopped spinning around her. A shaken Tasia sat up in the bed. The final images from the dream were indelibly imprinted in her mind. There was no other way to interpret it — all her doubts had been erased. No longer was it a fantastic supposition she must work hard to exorcise. Rather, her crazy, absurd, wild hunch was true. The dreams had not been conjured up by an overactive imagination. Instead, against all the odds, they reflected real events. One question clamored for primacy through the tumult in her, eclipsing all the others.
How?
Tasia stumbled off the bed to stagger to the window, shaken to her core. Her chest hurt, as if a great weight pressed down upon it. Her legs trembled when she attempted to use them. And a swirling blackness threatened to overpower her. Ignoring the night chill, she swung the shutters open to gulp in deep breaths of the crisp air. For once, the frigid night air was a welcome respite. Though it cleared no cobwebs from her mind, the oblivion threatening to engulf her seemed to recede.
“I wasn’t part of a Pack in Wyoming.”
“I’ve developed some resistance to silver. Don’t worry, I can handle a few seconds of it.”
The clues had been right before her eyes, begging to be strung together. But she had not connected the dots because this was impossible. She, who knew the significance of this, found her world turned upside down. Shock, consternation, confusion and panic assailed her, jostling with the questions that crowded her mind. But Tasia was in no state yet to dwell on the consequences of the earth-shattering discovery. The larger questions would have to wait while she attempted to sort out how the bond had been sealed.
“Faoladh wasn’t aware of my rogue status. We lived in the wilderness, keeping our distance from both Packs and humans.”
“I was exposed to silver in the past and survived to tell the tale.”
She must make sense of this — it was impossible. Now that she fathomed why they read each other with such remarkable accuracy, Tasia instinctively opened her mind to him, without conscious thought. A picture of him rose in her mind’s eye, in startling detail. She had seen him thus, once before. It had baffled and disturbed her, but in the end, she’d dismissed it despite her reservations. He was here, at the Lair, working in the Alpha’s Room. Tasia gulped in mouthfuls of frosty air, before venturing a cautious step. Her legs felt like rubber but they’d support her. Like a sleepwalker moving in a daze, she made for the door. She must talk to him.
Flashes from the past — words, images and events — came fast at her now, as the floodgates opened.
“I wasn’t pure blood enough for her. She wanted to torture the Wyr out of me.”
Burning fire bubbling through her veins, an agony unlike anything she’d ever experienced before, while the Alpha struggled to stay on his feet, poisoned by the silver knife a vindictive enemy had plunged into his arm at Wizard Headquarters in San Diego. She’d written off the strange and extraordinary episode by convincing herself that the significant quantities of magic surging in the air that day had overwhelmed her unique sixth sense.
Hearing the beat of the Alpha’s heart and sensing the surge of blood in his veins at the Embarcadero, the night she’d fallen apart to confess to him that she was afraid of losing her grip on reality. It was a Wyr’s faculties that had come through their bond, to leave her terrified. He’d brought her down from the edge of the cliff that night, but there had been no explanation for the anomaly since. And because the scenario had not been repeated, she’d tried to forget the episode.
“I feel the magic surging around me. This must be how you see power with your sixth sense.”
Her magic spearing the air, in a spectacular display, to cocoon them in the forest in Belize, while she attempted to show the Alpha how to tap into the Wizard magic in his blood. He’d sensed her magic around him, to her astonishment and shock, and it had seemed to trigger him to successfully call forth his own Spell Caster powers.
So many strange incidents that had puzzled Tasia, even frightened her, could now be put in context.
Her limbs felt like deadweight as she tread the stairs. It took her longer than usual, even as all the cues, she’d neglected before, played a cacophonous orchestra in her head. The Pack Room lay in darkness, its door ajar. But light seeped into it. Tasia made for the open archway into the Alpha’s Room. He sat in the big chair, relaxed, his attention on the document he was perusing. For once, the usually pristine desk was littered with stacks of correspondence. Tasia paused just inside the doorway. The sight of him relieved her immensely. With the dam finally breached, a kaleidoscope of recollections assaulted her, as all the unsettling and baffling episodes and mysteries that had flustered, stumped and unnerved her started to fall into place. It was hard to think through the white noise in her head, but Tasia told herself that it would be alright. Together, they’d figure out the frightening conundrum and find a way to mitigate the ramifications. This was the fearless man that nothing fazed — the Alpha was never rattled, even when confronted with momentous challenges. On Russian Hill, the agony and debilitation of silver had merely slowed him down, not brought him to his knees. He could untangle this, extricate them and help her put it to bed.
Raoul glanced up. One glimpse of his visitor had him surging to his feet. She looked ashen, her eyes huge pools that reflected the inner confusion and turbulence. But it was the sheer terror in their depths that held him.
“What is it?” he asked urgently.
Tasia opened her mouth. Her lips quivered, but the words remained locked in.
After the first confusion, Raoul recognized that she was in shock. Striding around the massive desk, he made for her. “What happened?”
Tasia took a step, to collapse against the wall. Having carried her up the stairs, her legs now threatened to buckle under her. Raoul made haste to close the door, ensuring that any confidences would not go beyond the room. When he turned back to her, Tasia was slumped against the wall, looking as if she might topple over without the support.
“Tell me, witchling” he urged her, propping himself against his desk, perturbed by the terror he’d glimpsed in the depths of the gray eyes.
It took her a few minutes to compose herself. Eventually, Tasia met his eyes. “It was you.”
Her voice trembled but the words out of her mouth were lucid. To her, it was not an insignificant triumph.
Puzzled by the declaration, he cocked his head to study her.
Tasia hurried into speech. This time, her words tumbled over each other in the frenetic effort to make him comprehend the exigency of the situation. Tasia dredged up every detail she could, hoping he’d grasp what she was trying to tell him.
“From the nightmares” she disclosed in a rush. “In the broken-down barn, surrounded by wilderness. Shackled with silver and the beast demanding to be let out. While a witch with blue eyes works dark magic to instigate your beotan.”
It took the Alpha a few seconds to unscramble her words. But it was the reference to the blue-eyed witch that caught him completely unawares. The effect on Raoul was like a sucker-punch to the gut. He took an unwary step towards her, only to stagger on his feet, stumbling and ne
arly going down, before he grasped the desk’s edge behind him to right himself.
The past roared back to punch through his elaborate defenses; a hungry beast with an unquenchable appetite for blood and vengeance. The darkness, Raoul had spent his adult life guarding against, swept over him like a tidal wave to drench him in its wake. And he found himself back in a derelict barn fighting to hold on — in an epic battle for survival that staked his sanity, his soul, his beotan and his life.
Stricken gold eyes flashed to her, his face deathly pale. “What did you say?” His voice came out as a hoarse whisper.
Jolted out of her reverie by his reaction, Tasia stilled. The Alpha was legendary for his impeccable self-possession — the obsessive, almost pathological, need for control that defined him, along with the carefully reined in violence and aggression. To see him lose his composure, even for a moment, shook Tasia; her second blow of the night. He looked like she felt — as if his world had come crashing down. Abruptly, like a switch flicking off, the flashes from the past that had images crowding her head blinked away, to leave her mind uncluttered. Tasia stirred, awakening from slumber, her senses no longer dulled or distracted. For the first time, it seemed to sink in that he might not have the answers either.
Her eyes drifted to the thunderstruck gold-colored orbs rivetted on her. In their depths, flickered the dark recollections that simmered in him. Terrible memories that ate at him, an ever-present reminder of the unspeakable torture inflicted on a gullible young Shifter. Most beings would struggle with such an onus. Having experienced a tiny sliver of his ordeal through the bond, Tasia recognized that it was an albatross around his neck, difficult to shake off, even by a man as tough, tenacious and confident as the Alpha. The seminal realization served to snap her out of the stupor the last dream had thrust her into. Her mind unshackled from its own preoccupations and absorptions, Tasia could focus on the dumbfounded man before her.
