by Cara Lake
Chapter Twenty-Four
Hours later, Irina stirred, blinking to awareness, her whole body thrumming with the scent and taste of Tyr running a riot through her veins. He was a fire in her blood she could not control. Stretching out contentedly, she arched her back reaching for him, her flesh still sensitive from their lovemaking. It was early morning, the twin Lyrani suns filtering through the shutters casting patterns of warm yellow-green light across the white stone tiles. Her hand met cold cotton. She was alone in the bed, the empty space beside her a gaping black hole, his absence chilling her blood. Irina’s heart so full just short hours ago now pounded in frantic recrimination for the empty void. Where was Tyr?
She couldn’t believe he hadn’t stayed. Had he gone back to his room? Maybe he’d gone for a run along the beach. It was a habit he had formed over the last few days and a guilty pleasure she had indulged in, while avoiding him, had been to watch him run, reveling in the sleek grace of his predator’s body, exuding power and strength. An image in her head of bronze smooth skin, muscles flexing in motion brought a small grin to her lips. His beauty was intoxication in her blood and she was totally inebriated. Irina leaned over to inhale the spicy musk aroma that still lingered on the sheets. Inhaling and exhaling, rolling the scent into her lungs to breathe him in, she swung around to drop her feet to the floor. Her hand rested on the bedside table to pull herself up. As she did so, she registered another void. And just like that her whole universe collapsed.
Later, as she sat with Cassi, dark circles ringing her eyes, liquid gold turned to ice, she had to wonder again how she could have been so stupid. So gullible. So taken in.
They had searched Vega extensively but there was no sign of him. There were reports of a man fitting his description traveling from the portal hall. How he could have accessed the starportal was unknown. All she knew was that Tyr had gone…and taken her pendant. And broken my heart.
Cassi seemed equally devastated. She had barely spoken in the last hour, comforting Irina, her arms wrapped around her in consolation, continually biting her lips in evident distress. Cerri, Alcina and Tani were also present, talking in whispers, concerned looks on their faces. Alcina and Coronae both trying to make sure Irina kept up her strength by eating. She couldn’t.
Tani, her expression grave, somber sympathy in her amethyst eyes was possibly the one person Irina felt she wanted to talk with. She had known of Tyr’s mother and could potentially be in this position in the near future, a sacrificial victim to a man who might betray her.
“Now we know why you escaped so easily from Abrasax,” commented Alcina. “Tyr was sent to infiltrate us and steal the pendant for them.”
“How could he have accessed the starportal?” asked Irina again for the umpteenth time.
“I’ve been thinking about that,” said Tani. “Tyr’s mother Carita, as well as being a saevici must have also been a strong portal traveler. I couldn’t understand how she ended up on Earth, but it makes sense. If Tyr inherited that skill and if he has been watching the procedures for access, he could easily have learned how to open the starportal vortex.”
Alcina made a guilty noise. “He was very interested in the process,” she said as all eyes turned to look at her. “I gave him a tour two days ago and he asked particular questions about portal travel. I didn’t realize he couldn’t be trusted.”
“It’s not your fault, Alcina,” Cassi sighed. “We all wanted to believe Abrasax hadn’t dug his claws in that deep. The bright side is that they don’t have total control because they don’t have Irina. They only have both the vessels, which are useless without her. The best they can hope for is to continue, through Tyr, to cause conflict but we still have Irina to counteract them.”
Merak and Borealis arrived just then with news. They were gathering a squad of warriors together and would be launching an attack on Abrasax imminently. It was now a priority to retrieve the pendant. Irina would never be safe while it was in their hands. If they could somehow retrieve hers and Tyr’s, that would be a bonus. “The icing on the cake will be if we manage to capture or liquidate that son of a bitch,” said Borealis. Irina sat up, eyes wide with fear. She knew he was taking Tyr’s defection hard.
“Do you mean…kill him?”
Borealis turned to her. “If we don’t, the Discordants can cause a lot of damage. Not as much as if they had both essences and you, but Tyr is now a threat to us. He has to be neutralized.”
Ice forming around her heart, Irina swallowed. This is not real. It’s just a dream. How could last night have meant so little to him? He was just using you. Impossible! His touch, his caress, his kiss. They couldn’t be fake! But the truth was irrefutable. He had deceived her to steal the pendant.
She had meant nothing to him after all. Tyr was a bastard and a liar. She had been played for a fool.
Oh my god…she had told him she loved him! How pathetic was she? But god help her, she didn’t want him dead!
As the evening drew on they continued to discuss plans for the attack, but Irina could not bear to listen. She slipped out into chilly night air, her feet on automatic pilot. Before she’d realized her direction, they had taken her to the beach, to where Tyr had found her the night before. Hot tears burned on her cheeks but she would be damned before she succumbed to the same devastation as before, when she had overheard Tyr and Abrasax, when she’d watched him with that tramp. Her fists clenched, her heart fortified by steel, she would not let the others take control away from her. This was her fight. He was her man. Her man? Sad but true. She still wanted him, pathetic loser that she was.
She just needed to get to him, talk to him. If she got into trouble she could use the power of the voice. Ziad had been happy with her progress. He had shown her not only how to calm others but had begun to teach her how to manipulate minds to her will by planting suggestions. She thought she could do it well enough. Tani had also been giving her weapons training, swords, knives and some basic self-defense. Irina knew she wasn’t particularly good at it yet but at least she knew which bits of the male anatomy to grab should someone attack her. The main problem was access to the vortex through the starportal. Cassi wouldn’t help her; she would say it was too dangerous. She had to find a way to get through. She could find Luc…
“Irina!” she jumped as a hand touched her shoulder. “It’s me. I saw you leave. Are you okay?” It was Alcina, her mother’s best friend. Irina nodded.
“I just needed to think, be by myself.”
Alcina gave her a sympathetic hug. “I understand. It’s breaking my heart,” she said. “You are so like your mother. Please, let me know if there is anything I can do for you.”
Irina shot her a thoughtful look. “Well…there is one thing,” she said.
* * * * *
“I don’t believe this!” shouted Cassi to Coronae, who was looking very sheepish. “First Tyr and now Irina! I asked you to do one little thing, to keep an eye on her. How did she get out with guards around the house? We knew to watch for this.” She turned to Merak who was looking grim. “And how the hell did she access the starportal? She must have paid someone.”
“She could have used the power of the voice,” commented Ziad. “To say she’s good at it would be an understatement.”
“Or someone helped her,” said Tani. “But why would they?” cried Cassi. “It’s too dangerous for her. She was safe here!”
“Maybe whoever helped her wasn’t concerned for her safety,” mused Ziad. “First Tyr and now Irina, both pendants gone…it all points to one thing.”
Cassi was stunned. “You mean a traitor!” She looked around the room. “It would have to be someone who knew all our plans.”
“Ziad can lead the investigation,” said Merak. “I want to know everyone’s whereabouts over the last forty-eight hours. In the meantime we need to get to Earth and find Irina before Abrasax does.”
* * * * *
Irina traveled via the vortex to Greenwich observatory, the nearest starportal acces
s point to her flat in Docklands. Alcina had outfitted her with clothing suitable for fighting, black combats, t-shirt and leather jacket. She had also provided her with two Lyrani blades, which she had tucked into leather straps around her thigh and ankle. A small handgun securely tucked into the waistband behind her back completed her arsenal. She felt on edge but empowered, a whole universe away from little Miss Pacifist! She wondered what Luc would say when he saw her.
It was dusk when she arrived, the skies over Greenwich Park a familiar, warm orange-pink sunset, a complete contrast to the greenish-yellow coolness of a Lyrani twilight.
Making her way quickly out of the park, Irina could still taste the tension and unease of the current climate heavy in the air and hadn’t forgotten that right now on Earth conflicts of all kinds were escalating. Perhaps it was her heightened senses, developed from the training with Ziad, but it wasn’t long after leaving the park that Irina experienced a sharp jolt of anxiety zigzag down her spine. Her head whipped from left to right but her eyes could see no obvious threat in the empty street. She crossed the road heading toward the tube station, a bright beckoning light in the distance. She almost made it.
Doors slid open and a dark shadow emerged from a black van parked by the curbside. Rough hands grabbed her shoulders from behind as another shadow shoved a rag over face, the first shadow grabbing her feet; they both tossed her into the back of the van. Ragged material over her head, dizziness, fog, she could feel herself sinking into darkness. The last sounds she heard as she was dragged under, fragments of conversation, “The informant said she’d be here… has weapons… call Abrasax… target acquired.”
The last thought she had was, I can’t believe this is happening again.
Irina awoke, her head splitting into pieces, reforming and fracturing again. She eased herself up from the damp floor rubbing her eyes to stir them into action. No plush red boudoir this time. She lay in a dark, bare cell, one small light above the solid metal door, two cold gray eyes staring at her from the shadows. “Where am I?” she croaked, her throat hoarse from inhaling chloroform.
“Here.” The gray eyes narrowed.
Let’s try again. “And where’s that?”
“Hell.”
“Oh.” You think?
Irina sat up, fully trying to shake off the black fractures in her brain and piece together her last memories. Enlightenment slammed into her gut. They had known she was coming! They were lying in wait, had mentioned an informant, and had known to search her for weapons. It could only mean one thing. She had been betrayed. She also knew who had betrayed her although she couldn’t quite believe it. She just didn’t know why.
Finally able to see more clearly, she focused on the gray-eyed figure and registered another small shape lying listless in the corner, curled into a small tight ball. “Who are you?” she asked the gray eyes. “Black. I am black,” was the reply.
Irina could see now that it was a girl. She was dirty, ragged and broken. Her lank, dark hair was a tangled mess of knots, her skin gray-blue, cracked and dry. The cracks, Irina suddenly realized were red welts that crisscrossed her arms, crusted with dried blood. Hopelessness visibly endless in gray eyes, now just sunken hollows on a face that was skin and bone. Irina could tell from her bone structure and the slanted tilt of her eyes that she had once been a very pretty girl. Now, no longer. It was almost as if any bright spark of light or hope in the girl had been eradicated, absorbed leaving a shadowy nothingness, a blank, dark hole where she had climbed inside herself and disappeared.
“How long have you been here?”
“Forever.”
“Who’s that?” Irina asked pointing at the other dismal form.
“Black. She is black.” Irina’s heart cried in sympathy. These poor creatures were in hell, had obviously been tortured so badly that this girl couldn’t even remember her name. The Discordants truly were evil and Tyr was aligning with them?
She grasped for a way to comfort the girl and suddenly realized her power. The voice could calm and perhaps she could encourage the girl to focus away from the pain, maybe even remember who she was. Taking a deep breath as Ziad had taught her, Irina sat up straight, cross-legged. Closing her eyes, she focused on warmth and security. She began to speak, infusing the words with a resonance of tranquility, serenity and hope.
“You are safe,” she whispered. “You will be safe, remember who you are. Picture that girl in your head. She is a survivor. Look for the light. You can see it shining, feel its warmth.”
Irina continued repeating all the phrases Ziad had taught her, using the tones and melody of her voice to persuade, cajole and coax, to guide the girl back out of the darkness. A surge of power from within her core as her words took shape around them, weaving into the fabric of the space, gave Irina the confidence to continue even as the girl seemed unresponsive. She wasn’t sure if it was helping, but eventually gray eyes gave a sigh and slid slowly toward Irina. She tentatively laid her head down onto Irina’s lap, her hands clasped together, a soft featherlike weight.
Irina continued to build the words toward a crescendo of light and hope as the girl relaxed and drifted off into a deep sleep. Probably the first she’d had in days. Irina was left in the darkness, struggling to contain her own fear and helplessness. What would the Discordants do her?
What would Tyr do to her?
Chapter Twenty-Five
Tyr felt sick. His stomach churned as he watched Abrasax torturing a man. Granted the man was a criminal and murderer, one of Abrasax’s own men who had thought to cheat him, but it was the psychotic enjoyment evident in Abrasax’s eyes that turned Tyr’s stomach. Every time the whip tore another gaping slash across the guy’s back Abrasax’s eyes lit up with sadistic glee. He was a sadist of epic proportions. The crim wasn’t going to last much longer and Abrasax was so turned on by it that Tyr fully expected him to spontaneously orgasm where he stood.
They were in the lower levels of Abrasax tower. Abrasax had built an extensive suite of torture chambers down here, each room with its own special brand of horror in store for his unwitting victims. Tyr knew there were corridors below where prisoners were held and he suspected Melanie and Delora were somewhere in the vicinity. So far his plans were on course. He just needed some time to track them down.
He had regretted, no, hated leaving Irina the way he had, but if he had stayed, he knew he would not have been able to go at all. Ever. And that would have meant losing the chance to find Melanie and Delora. He had seen the pendant by her bed and knew he had to take it and go. Abrasax had charged him with its retrieval, and to help the girls he had to go through with his mission even though it killed him to hurt Irina.
The sight of her lying lost in sleep, chocolate curls a decadent halo around her elfin face, dark lashes fluttering against creamy smooth cheeks had sent his heart hammering, battering his rib cage with an SOS message, insisting that he was in danger of sinking. She’d told him she loved him!
He hadn’t said it back because she had rendered him speechless. Vowing he would make it up to her, he hoped she would realize why he had gone and that she understood the message he had left for her with Alcina. He was grateful to Alcina for her help in accessing the portal. As a friend to Irina’s mother, she had been sympathetic and understood that he wanted to keep Irina safe but also that he had to help the daughters of his own friend. He couldn’t let Sal down. Tyr focused his gaze away from the victim trying to block out his screams.
Next to Abrasax, Rusalka lay stretched lazily across an empty torture rack. She was licking her lips and gazing constantly in Tyr’s direction. She began running her hands over her breasts in a blatant attempt to arouse his interest. Well he was interested, but not for the reasons she wanted. Since his return, Tyr had spent time trying to glean as much information as he could from Abrasax’s men, not just for himself but also for the Eunomi. He had heard from Dagon and Moloch that Rusalka enjoyed “playing” and currently had two sweet girls in her “playroom”. He needed
to find out if they were Sal’s girls.
“Tyr!” He realized Abrasax was calling him. “Have some fun,” he was saying. “Finish him off for me.”
“Oh yes!” gasped Rusalka. “Let war break out! No holds barred, baby.”
Tyr’s eyes roamed around the room. There was no getting out of this. His eyes alighted on Moloch and Dagon who seemed to be permanently glued to Abrasax as bodyguards. Rodach had also made a return to the tower and was keeping a suspicious eye on him. He took hold of the whip, turning to the quivering mass of flesh, his screams still piercing the air around them. The guy deserves it, he told himself and to rescue the girls and keep Irina safe, he would do anything. He raised his hand. The whip thwacked with a loud crack glancing off flesh and bone. The screams flew higher, taking a piece of his soul with them, but he was War and sometimes to win a war, you have to concede a battle.
* * * * *
Cassi’s spidey senses were tingling as she made her way stealthily down an empty corridor on one of the lower floors of Abrasax Tower. She knew that sensation of old. The Eunomi and Discordants were forever crossing paths and Cassi had skirmished with many in her two thousand five hundred years of existence. That warrior was here. Every cell in her body vibrated with the buzz of his unique energy. She called him the dark warrior.
He was huge, at least six foot eight, and wore distinctive black armor that bore the sigil of a wheel with eight spokes. Cassi had encountered him many times, fought in battles where he was present, but never seen his face. The black metal mask he wore kept his darkness hidden. Lord of Thunder was the name given to him by his Discordant subordinates although they rarely uttered his name with anything other than fear in their tone. His reputation was such among the Eunomi that any mention of him was a whisper. They called him the dark one. Rampage.