by Shéa MacLeod
"Dammit, Jack, answer me."
He didn't. Shit. He must have been far enough ahead of me to get caught in the cave-in. The pile of rubble was so enormous, it would take days for me to dig through it. I had no idea how deep in he was or even in which direction. If I dug in the wrong place...
Panic threatened to overwhelm me, but I told myself not to be a ninny. Jack had a habit of dying and coming back to life, thanks to his connection to me and the Atlantis amulet.
The amulet.
I pulled it out from under my shirt. For once, I was glad I'd listened to Jack and started wearing it. Maybe it would help me find him under the mess. It was a long shot, but I had to try.
I cradled the Heart of Atlantis in my palm. The smooth metal was warm from my skin, the center stone dark and lifeless. I could just make out the faint etchings of Atlantean hieroglyphs circling the edge of the disc. Focusing on the stone, I brought Jack's image to the forefront of my mind's eye. I had no idea if it would work, but I followed my instincts.
I'm not sure what I expected, but nothing happened. At least not at first. Then the stone began to glow, bathing the tunnel in soft blue light. Holy crap. It only did that when Sidhe magic was near.
"Morgana?" I whispered. Any help she gave would have strings attached, but I'd do it for Jack. For anyone I loved, really, but Jack had sacrificed himself for me more than once; I owed him.
Unfortunately, there was no answer. Instead the stone dimmed.
"Dammit." I focused again and once more the stone began to glow. "Okay, now what?" As if it would answer me.
I moved closer to the pile of rubble, and the glow intensified. Now we were getting somewhere. Shifting to the right, I noticed the light from the stone dimmed. To the left, it got brighter. That had to be where Jack was. Apparently the amulet wanted me to play a game of Hide the Thimble, only Jack was the thimble and the brighter the light, the closer I was.
Tucking the Heart back in my shirt, I decided I'd worry about the how of it later. I reached out and grabbed the nearest chunk of rock. Even with my extra-human strength and an assist from the Darkness, heaving the rock off the rubble pile took some doing. A few more rocks and my back was aching, the muscles in my arms trembling, and sweat had soaked through my clothes.
The Darkness couldn't hide my headache any longer, either. My head throbbed with pain until I felt sick and dizzy.
I sank down to the tunnel floor. This was going to take forever. Maybe channeling one of my other powers would help. I shook my head at my own foolishness. Fire would eat up the oxygen and that was about it. It was less than useless. Ditto with Air. I so did not need a whirlwind kicking up a bunch of dust.
And then I nearly smacked myself upside the head. I was an idiot. What had Tommy been working on with me for an entire week? And the reason my amulet had been glowing like there were Sidhe lurking in the corners? Thanks to Morgana dragging me to the other world, I had a brand new shiny superpower: Earth.
I had no idea how to use my power exactly. I doubted causing an earthquake or growing weeds was going to be helpful, but there had to be something I could do.
I reached out and laid my palm against the pile of dirt and stone. Closing my eyes, I focused on that place inside me where my powers lurked. Waiting. Waiting.
Underneath the dainty ribbons of Air and Fire, and the undulating bands of Darkness, I found that shimmering green ribbon. I beckoned to it, asking it to come out and play. It rose in loops and waves, unfurling like a cat from a long nap. Or maybe like a sentient vine.
Unlike the Air and Fire, which always seemed to shoot out of me like laser beams, the Earth slowly unfurled, rising through me like mist. It seeped through my pores, covering my skin in a layer of sparkly green visible only to me and anyone else with magic in their veins.
I showed the Earth power an image of Jack trapped under the debris. Then I showed it an image of Jack being freed from the debris. I felt kind of dumb, but it was the best I had.
I dug my fingers into the pile of rubble and willed something to happen. At first, nothing did. Then the dirt under my fingers began to sift away like the parting of the Red Sea. Stone, dirt, and wood peeled back until they finally revealed what I was looking for.
Jack lay curled in a fetal position, covered from head to toe in dirt and something else. From the copper tang in the air, I knew it was blood.
I crawled into the gap next to Jack and laid my fingers against his throat to check for a pulse. Not that a pulse or lack thereof meant much where Jack was concerned. As I touched his bare skin, green light shot from my hand into him, bathing him in the same green sparkles that covered my body. I had no idea what they were doing, but it felt right.
So, I sat there and waited.
* * *
"What happened?"
A pair of eyes the color of a tropical ocean stared at me from a dirty face. Relief overwhelmed me. Tears pricked the corners of my eyes, and I felt the sudden urge to hug Jack tight and plant a huge kiss on those dirty lips. Instead, I backed off slightly, rubbing my suddenly damp palms on my jeans.
"Vamp set off some kind of booby trap. Buried you under half the ceiling." I backed out of the narrow gap in the rubble before standing and offering him my hand. Ignoring me, he staggered to his feet. Arrogant bastard. "Good thing you're immortal or you'd be a pancake right about now."
He snorted. "The vamp?"
"Got away."
"You didn't go after him?"
His accusatory tone made me want to punch him in the face. Or somewhere more delicate. "Excuse me, but I was busy saving your sorry ass. Besides, he cut me off pretty effectively." I waved at the enormous pile of crap blocking the tunnel.
"There are a lot of ways out of the tunnels."
"Right. And with no idea where he ended up, not to mention being entirely unfamiliar with the tunnels, all of those exits would be damn useless. Don't be an asshat, Jack."
"Sorry."
He didn't sound particularly sorry. He sounded like he wanted to argue some more, but I ignored him. I wasn't worried about the vampire getting away. I could always hunt him down later. It was what I did. I changed the subject. "I think we should go back and check out that room. The one with all the medical stuff. There might be something there, something that whoever smashed the place up missed."
"You mean that the vamp smashed up," Jack said.
His correction made me grind my teeth in irritation. "We don't know that," I said, heading back down the tunnel. "Maybe he did, or maybe it was Mickleson, earlier." Though I doubted that. There hadn't been enough time for Mickleson to smash all that stuff. My bet was he'd come here to warn someone. "Or maybe it was somebody else."
The room was exactly as we'd left it: dark and littered with junk. Tables were overturned, a chair lay on its side in the corner, and there were several computers that looked like they'd been on the wrong end of a sledgehammer. I've felt like taking a hammer to my computer on more than one occasion, but I doubted these were smashed because somebody got pissed off at Microsoft.
I found my flashlight in the corner still intact. With a sigh of relief I switched it on and began exploring the remains of the makeshift lab.
Something crunched under my boot. Squatting to check it out, I held up a bit of glass to my flashlight. "Hard to tell, but it looks like test tubes. Maybe microscope slides or petri dishes."
"Yeah. This definitely looks like something off CSI." Jack held up the remains of a badly dented centrifuge.
I stood and scanned the room with my flashlight. "What the hell were they doing down here? Were they studying something? Creating something?"
"Not to mention, who are 'they?'"
Something in the corner caught my eye. I strode over and picked up a fragment of paper that had been ground almost completely into the dirt floor. Turning it over in my hands, I smiled.
"I think I might have the answer to that."
"What do you mean?"
Holding the paper up, I shined the li
ght behind it, illuminating what was left of the watermark. "Look at that symbol there."
Jack frowned. "Yeah. It's a watermark. So?"
"It's not just any watermark. That's the family crest of Alister Jones."
Chapter 21
"Vampires have souls now, thanks to Alister? You've got to be kidding me." I noticed Kabita didn't say "my father" as she paced the confines of her office. Angry energy rolled off her in waves, and I winced as my powers reacted to it. They liked anger. It made them stronger.
I sighed as I sank into the buttery-soft visitor's chair, ignoring the pull inside me. "I wish I was."
"And what? He's kidnapping old people and turning them into vamps?"
"Jack and I don't think so. As far as we can tell, he's transferring the souls of the dying elderly into the bodies of existing vampires." At least that's what we'd put together based on what Tommy had told me of the technology, and our own observations. It really was the only thing that made sense. Even turning vampire wouldn't make an elderly person young again.
Kabita sat on the edge of her desk, jiggling one black jean-clad leg. Her cinnamon skin looked a little paler than usual. "That's sick. Why on earth would they do that?"
"We know a vampire can't be made without losing its soul, and it seems a soul can't be captured until the moment it leaves the body. Our best guess is that capturing dying souls and inserting them into existing vamps is the only way to imbue a vampire with a soul." It sounded totally insane even to me.
Kabita started pacing again, her black biker boots thumping slightly on the thick beige carpet. She'd been on a demon hunt and hadn't bothered to change. "And again I ask, why?"
"We assume to make the vampires easier to control. Beyond that? No idea." I shook my head. "We're working on it."
"Fantastic," Kabita snarled. She glared at the wastebasket next to her desk like she wanted to do it bodily harm. She didn't. She had far more restraint than I did. Points to Kabita. "What else can go wrong?"
Besides me dreaming of the Fairy Queen torturing Jade, Inigo being in a weird dragon coma, Brent Darroch escaping from an inescapable prison, and Cordelia giving me cryptic messages from beyond? "Uh, have I mentioned someone has a hit out on me?"
Kabita smacked her forehead. "For goddess's sake, Morgan." Her tone had a very "why me" quality to it. Couldn't say I blamed her.
"Sorry. Just thought I could figure it out on my own. No sense worrying anybody else." I'd yet to make any headway in that department; I'd been a little busy with other things.
She kicked out her desk chair and threw herself into it, which was about as close to a temper tantrum as Kabita ever came. "You seriously couldn't have mentioned this earlier? Like, oh, say, before you got nearly ripped to shreds by some vampire chick who fancied herself a bounty hunter?"
I opened my mouth, but I didn't have time to get anything out before Kabita barreled on. "Why is it that you insist on going off half-cocked, marching into danger with your eyes closed?"
"Hey, that's not true." Well, not entirely. I had been going off the rails a little lately. But I was working on it. Honest.
Kabita just glared at me. Then her dark eyes widened. "Oh, goddess, it's Alister, isn't it?"
"Uh, what is?" Color me clueless.
"The hit. Alister ordered the hit on you." She said it with such conviction, she almost had me believing.
"It's possible," I admitted. "But we really don't know. Inigo... " My heart gave a painful lurch at the thought of him. I cleared my throat. "Inigo couldn't trace the IP and none of the vamps I've had the pleasure of dusting have bothered to share any insight with me. So, we don't really know anything for sure. Could be him. Could be somebody else. I've pissed off a few people over the years." Understatement of the century.
"Bullshit. It's Alister. Has to be."
Things were serious if Kabita was cussing. I had a bad feeling she was right. There were a handful of people who would be happy to see me dead. Alister Jones was top of the list.
Kabita's phone jangled. She pulled it out of her pocket and frowned at the caller ID before answering. "Yeah? Uh huh? Where? Sure. Yeah, I can do that."
I raised my eyebrows as she hung up. "That was all kinds of mysterious."
"It was Jack. He wants me to talk to the SRA."
"What does Jack want with the SRA?" Jack preferred staying far under their radar for obvious reasons. The SRA did not have a good track record where Atlantean descendants were concerned, and Jack was more than your average Atlantean. Why hadn't he mentioned anything to me before? Like maybe while we were wandering around a bunch of underground tunnels?
"Apparently," Kabita said, sinking into her chair, "he has the sudden urge to travel."
I blinked. "What?"
"He asked me to secure him a private jet."
* * *
"Jack, you got some 'splaining to do." I might have channeled a tiny bit of Desi Arnaz. Might as well keep a bit of humor about the situation. I could do full-on confrontation if I had to, but more flies with honey, and all that.
"What are you talking about?" Jack's voice on the other end of the line had all the overtones of innocence, but underneath was something else. He had definitely been hiding something from me.
I headed down the front stairs of our office building and across the parking lot to my car. "A private plane? Really? What on earth do you need a private plane for?" I asked as I slid into my Mustang.
"Do you not understand the meaning of the word 'private'?"
I ignored his royal snippiness. "Does this have anything to do with what we found in the tunnels? With Alister?"
"No."
I didn't say anything. I snapped my seatbelt, turned on the ignition, and waited.
"Okay, fine. Maybe," he sighed. I could visualize him running his hands through his hair in frustration. He did that around me a lot. Couldn't imagine why.
"And you planned to tell me when?" I asked.
"This side of never," he mumbled.
"Excuse me?"
"When I knew for sure." Back to innocence.
"Yeah, okay. Whatever. Do I need a passport?" I was pissed as hell at him for leaving me out of the loop after dragging me into this mess in the first place, but damned if I was going to let him know it.
A pause. "What?"
"I'm going with you." If he thought I was staying behind while he jaunted off to solve the mystery of the soul vampires, he had another think coming.
Another pause. "Morgan."
"You know I'm not taking no for an answer, Jack, and if you refuse to tell me, I'll just figure it out and follow you."
"Fine." He let out another exasperated sigh. "Yes. You'll need a passport."
"Cool. Where are we going?"
"France."
* * *
"So," I said, settling back against the plush leather seats of the private plane Kabita had arranged. When she and I traveled, we usually went first class, but this was so far beyond that, it was ridiculous. "Why France?"
Jack took a sip of his whiskey on the rocks and stared out the little oval window as if the tarmac were the most interesting thing in the universe. "It's where I'm from."
I rolled my eyes and opened my mouth to retort, but I was interrupted by the flight attendant. She handed me an icy glass of fizzy golden liquid from her silver tray before disappearing through a wood-paneled door at the back of the plane. I took a cautious sip. Pear cider. The good stuff. Delicious. How on earth had she known it was my favorite? I took a few more sips before returning to the conversation.
"Yes, I know that's where you're from," I said, setting my glass cautiously on a little side table. "Most Templar Knights were from France. I get that." I knew Jack had been another person, had another life, but that was nine-hundred-years ago, give or take a few decades. He'd spent the last several centuries as an American, and the centuries before that in Scotland. "But what's so important you need to take off right this minute for France?"
He took another s
ip of whiskey. He still hadn't looked at me. Not since I'd embarked on the plane with an overnight duffel and my turquoise rolly bag stuffed with weaponry.
"You know about the night the Templars were destroyed?" he said finally.
"Friday the Thirteenth, 1307." Some said that was when the whole bad luck superstition thing came from. "The King of France slaughtered nearly all the Templars. The rest, he arrested and publicly executed after forcing them to confess to everything from hanky panky with each other to consorting with the devil." King Phillip had been a power hungry rat bastard. He'd couched the slaughter in religious terms, of course, but it had really been all about two things: money and power. The Templars had both, and the king wanted them.
"More or less." Jack nodded. "There were some who got away."
"Including you."
He shrugged. "Actually, I left several months before that. I guess the leaders of the order could sense change in the wind."
"Right. You hid out near the coast, and then went to Scotland. You told me all this before."
"Before that, though, I stopped in a tiny French village where people were sympathetic to our cause. I hid something there. Something I'd been entrusted with." He took another sip of whiskey.
I frowned. I'd known about the amulet. Hell, I was wearing it around my neck. I fingered its chain. "There's more than this?"
"Oh, yes," he said, his eyes darkening to the stormy blue gray of the Pacific Ocean in winter. "Much more."
"And we're going to France to get it?"
His expression was grim. "No. We're going to France because someone stole it. We're going to find out who took it and get it back."
Chapter 22
Soft lips pressed against my throat, skimming gently up to the sensitive spot behind my ear. Heat unfurled as a palm cupped my breast, kneading gently. Aroused, I pressed up against the solid body of the man holding me in his arms.
"Ah, love, I've missed you." His voice was hoarse, as if he hadn't used it in awhile.