Jake kept pace with her. His hand hovered over the dagger at his belt.
“The weapon is exactly suited to the High Priestess. She is very sensitive to it,” Mac said soothingly.
“That’s right,” Adrial agreed. “Sanctuary wouldn’t have given me this branch if She didn’t know I’d need it against you, Laudae Sissy.” She waved the branch around wildly.
The scent of the raw sap filled every opening and crevice in Sissy. It ate away at her physical defenses and her mind.
Adrial, Mac, even Jake multiplied into three or four copies of themselves. The replicated views moved together and separately, here, there, and everywhere at the same time.
Her balance shifted with the images. Her head reeled.
She had to close her eyes to regain some sense of reality.
Afterimages burned into her eyelids told her precisely where everyone stood. She heard each one breathe in a different cadence, and smelled their emotions.
Adrial gave off the same pheromones as a wolf on the hunt, the scent of prey drawing her closer to Sissy.
“Adrial,” Mac whispered. “The Goddess didn’t provide you with weapons. You did. Sanctuary and Harmony would never order you to kill. You have killed innocent people, many innocent people simply because you no longer needed them. You have left a trail of dead bodies across the galaxy.”
“Why did you kill Mac’s brother?” Jake asked, edging in front of Sissy.
“Because he hurt Sissy! The Goddess loved all the people killed and injured by his negligence.”
“And now you want to kill Sissy. Is that because only you have the right to kill?” Mac asked. His brown skin paled, then suffused with blood. “Are you a God that you have the right to kill—to murder?”
“But the Messengers of the Gods commanded! I must . . . I must . . .”
“You must do what?” Sissy asked. “What did the Messengers in all their black-feathered glory command you?”
“Maril Warriors?” Jake mouthed to Sissy.
Sissy nodded.
“They . . . they told me I must seek the path to spiritual oneness with the universe. Only I could move through both the Maril and the Human worlds. Only I could read all the texts in both languages,” Adrial stated proudly.
“My mother said my father was an angel. I inherited the ability to find Spiritual Purity from him.”
Images clicked inside Sissy’s mind. The stone beds inside the cave, the smudge pots with the burning plants that induced visions.
“The Maril language is highly symbolic. Translations are not always exact,” Sissy said quietly. The array of glyphs dancing around the arched opening of the cave played before her mind’s eye in perfect order. Each one contained a multitude of meanings and interpretations. “Think carefully, Adrial. What did the Messengers of the Gods really command you to do? They were warriors, not priests. What did they have the authority to demand of you?”
“The path . . .”
“Dig deeper in your mind, Adrial,” Jake added. He had his dagger half out of its sheath.
“The path to the lost place of spiritual oneness,” Adrial ground out each word.
“The lost world of Sanctuary,” Sissy said. “The beginning place. The blessed cave where procreation became a sacred ritual.” Her embarrassment at any discussion of sex vanished. This was not her ritual. She did not have to partake. And yet it seemed so special. So right for the Gods to participate.
“Yes!” Adrial cried. “Those words exactly. I must find the lost world of Sanctuary.”
Jake nodded, comprehension widening his eyes. “All the holy people were set adrift to wander the stars without support or succor from their home world,” he said. “That was how your father came to Amity.”
“My father was an angel!” Adrial insisted.
“An angel who came before the Warriors. The Maril were afraid of us,” Sissy said. Her breathing sharpened, became shallower, more painful to draw in as she inched backward, away from the branch with its poisonous sap!
“But they don’t fear you any more,” Adrial continued on for her. “They know how to defeat you in battle, how to find the lost sanctuaries. But not the first one, the most beloved. They need Sanctuary again. The Gods have sent plagues against them because they have broken the path of Spiritual Purity. Only on Sanctuary can they find their Gods again and heal. Only the rituals of Sanctuary will allow them to breed true again. I must not let anyone stand in my way. And I must leave no trace of my presence, not even in the memories of those who help me.”
She smiled smugly, having recovered the memory.
Sissy knew she spoke truly. Her aura shone with comfortable glow.
“They kept me for days in isolation, repeating the same words over and over to make certain I would remember,” Adrial continued. “Beating the words into me. Cutting me so that my blood knew my mission as well as my mind.”
Sissy’s throat ached with unshed tears at the torture this lost soul had endured. No wonder she’d warped the command for her own self-preservation, trying desperately to hang on to something of herself above and beyond their commands.
“The mixed couple, a human male and a female Maril who died trying to come to First Contact Café, were following you, Adrial,” Jake said. His gaze went vague as he thought hard. “Their dying message was, ‘Tell the lost one that Sanctuary can be found.’ ”
“And you have found Sanctuary, Adrial,” Mac added. He had moved with incredible swiftness to stand beside her. A flutter within his clothing betrayed the extension of his secondary arms with their pincer claws.
“You have completed your mission, Adrial. You have found Sanctuary,” Sissy said. She had to keep Adrial’s attention focused on her, away from Mac.
“You don’t need to kill again,” Jake prompted. “You called the Maril and told them the coordinates of the planet and the CSS plans to build there.”
“I touched the cave message. Their priests linked to my mind. My visions of what happened within the caves came from them. They needed me to know so I would leave the place without further tainting,” Sissy concluded.
“But I have not found my own Spiritual Purity.” Adrial looked back and forth frantically. “My mission is not complete.”
“That was not your mission,” Sissy reminded her.
“It was. It is. It has to be, otherwise . . . otherwise what I did . . .” She looked about wildly, totally lost. “What will I do?”
Then her eyes narrowed to slits as she focused on Sissy. “You betrayed me. I came to you for help in my quest, and you failed me! You have to die.” She brandished the Thorn of God in Sissy’s face.
Sissy backed away from the toxic sap dripping from the ends of the thorns.
“Surely Harmony and Sanctuary are appalled at your actions, Adrial.” Jake rammed his dagger back into its sheath. “How will the Goddess deal with you when you murder her avatar? Murder Sissy and you murder the Gods themselves!”
“No!” Adrial screeched. “Stop talking. You are confusing me.” She covered her eyes with her free hand, still holding the branch out.
But she spread her fingers so she could peer through them.
“What the hell do you mean ordering me here, Jake?” Admiral Marella demanded from the doorway.
Everyone looked up, startled at the intrusion.
Air whooshed past Sissy. A sharp scrape to her arm through the cloth of her favorite purple dress.
Heart-stopping fear brought the room into sharp focus. A quick check showed some pulled threads in her sleeve, but the thorn had not broken her skin.
Mac grabbed the branch from Adrial’s hand with his claws.
Adrial’s long skirts disappeared through the doorway. Mac scuttled up to an open vent and squeezed through it. The two Marines who had stood guard outside the door blinked in confusion from the floor where they sprawled.
Sissy’s knees gave out.
Jake caught her and held her close. She clung to him, in relief, and gratitude, and
love.
“What would I do without you, Jake?”
“I love you, Sissy. I’ll be here for you always. You have to know that.”
“Yes, my love. I do know that.”
“As much as I want to stand here all day and hold you, I’ve got to catch Adrial.”
“Go. We’ll talk later.”
He set her into his oversized armchair.
“We’ll figure something out.” She clutched his hand in desperation. “Somehow. I won’t let a little thing like a caste mark keep us apart any longer.”
“I’ll hold you to that.” He kissed her quickly, then ran out in Adrial’s wake.
“I hope there’s more to this than the pretty pickle of you two finally admitting you’re in love,” Admiral Marella said, hands on hips, a scowl on her face.
“Oh, there is. Let me show you.” Sissy directed the spymaster to the Maril message.
“Holy shit!”
“That about covers it.” Sissy sank back in the chair and trembled with relief and new concerns.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
Adrial ran. No time to plan. No energy to think. She had to get out of this place. Now. Before . . .
Before the Messengers of the Gods found her and exacted vengeance for her failure.
All for naught. All of her pain, the anxiety, the meticulous learning, the running.
Compulsion, deeply imbedded, dispersed, no longer necessary. She’d found Sanctuary for the Maril.
But she’d failed miserably in her own quest.
The deaths. Every being who had died at her hands flashed before her mind. Innocents caught in the backlash of her obsession with secrecy. People who had helped her, shared in her quest for knowledge. Gone. All gone.
How many had she killed?
She’d lost count years ago.
Had any of them been necessary?
Yes! Her psyche screamed. “I had to survive.” She justified slaying the Law who hid his blue feathers to fool her, then tricked her into littering so he could arrest her. She’d had to kill him to get out of prison. He’d been the first.
But burning the entire library and all the people inside when a forgotten text had given her vital clues and she couldn’t risk anyone else finding it? She could have just destroyed the book, not the entire library. Or taken it with her.
And the Squid People. Their ship would have made the trip safely if Adrial hadn’t sabotaged the nav system. They could have found a haven at the First Contact Café. Five innocent Workers, including children, had died too.
There had been others. Too many others to remember each individually.
But their faces pressed against her memory, clearly defined, faces trapped in their final agony.
Deep pain ripped through her inner being.
She’d been so wrong. She didn’t deserve to live.
Frantically she searched the lift and tram spaces for something, anything that would end her pain.
No weapon or poison came to hand. She passed a maintenance tube on her way to a lower level of an empty wing. If only she could get outside, space would kill her. In space she’d finally become one with the universe.
The Goddess Harmony would accept her sacrifice in atonement for her sins.
She aimed her steps for the cargo bay between habitat levels.
Peace at last. A few more moments, a step into the icy vacuum, followed by one last burst of intense, glorious pain, and her quest would end. Only her death would atone for all the mistakes she’d made, all the lives she’d needlessly taken.
“No.” Mac dropped beside her, as she began keying in the manual override of the air lock.
“Get out of my way,” she cried, hot tears blurring her vision. Two more strings of code. Then she’d be free.
“Or what? Will you kill me, too?”
“No,” she gasped. “No. I can’t kill anymore.” Her hand paused over the air lock.
“You can’t kill yourself, either.”
“It’s the only way I can atone.” She calculated the number of steps she needed to reach the doors as they opened into the air lock, the heartbeats of time needed to punch in the last codes. Mac would survive in the dark vacuum of space. She need not worry about him.
“Will your death bring back any of those you’ve murdered?”
She stopped short, halfway into the lock.
“They have all joined their Gods. They are beyond me now.”
“Killing yourself will not make up for your mistakes. Only helping the living will begin to do that.”
“Help? How do I do that? Who would trust me after what I’ve done?” A slightly different angle gave her line of sight to the air lock. All she needed was two steps and a series of six numbers on the panel inside.
But the air lock took time to cycle. She couldn’t leave the bulkhead open behind her. The entire wing would lose atmosphere, killing even more people.
“Trust has to be earned. Helping others is not always obvious. You have to search as deeply for what they need as you searched for clues to the lost planet.”
“I can’t do it. It’s too hard.” Only one way to ease the ache in her heart that threatened to choke her. Let it break. Let every bone and organ inside her break.
It couldn’t hurt any worse.
One long leap past him. Her hands landed on the spinning lock. She dropped her full weight on it as she landed, trying desperately to close him out before the second lock fully opened to the vacuum of space.
Mac’s hand grabbed her waist, trying to drag her away as he locked his pincer claws around a handhold inside the lock.
Too late. Klaxons sounded. The bulkhead doors closed quickly. The cargo doors began their slow grind open.
Air rushed out the tiny opening, dragging them forward. The blackness beyond that beckoned to her. A star glimmered brightly in the vastness. Empathy, Harmony’s sun. It promised her release.
She went limp, letting the equalizing air and pressure carry her outward.
Mac’s grip on her arm tightened. Then his other primaries enfolded her.
“I can’t let you die. I love you too much, my Adrial. My wounded little bird,” he shouted over the noise of the alarms and increasing wind.
Love?
Hope blossomed deep in her belly, warmed and stretched.
The doors slid farther open. She could pass between them now.
“I have to atone,” she wailed, reaching a hand toward the end of the pain.
“Dying accomplishes nothing.”
“It is my justice.”
“Justice or running away yet again? Justice is finding ways to make up for your mistakes, helping others in their time of need. Becoming as beautiful inside as you are outside.”
“Let me go. I don’t know how to do . . . I can’t.”
So easy to just drift away and die.
“I’ll help you,” Mac mouthed.
The hope in her belly grew bigger. It slid tendrils of life through her veins, encapsulating her heart and easing the pain.
“We’ll travel the galaxy together, giving aid, or teaching, or just quiet moments of prayer where it’s needed. You and Sissy have taught me how much I value other beings. You have given me reason for existence beyond this station.”
The alarm died. The doors stood fully open. They whooshed outward with the last of the air.
“I . . .” Words failed her. She closed her eyes against the vacuum. She had nothing left except the vision of his broad face in front of her. “Air . . .” she choked out.
His mouth came down on hers, passing his air reserves, life, and a reason for living back into her.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
“Jake, what happened?” Sissy rose from her chair and grabbed Jake as he stumbled toward her.
Ashen pale, eyes darting wildly without focus, he leaned heavily on her.
She welcomed his weight though she strained to keep them both upright. Slowly she allowed herself to sink to her knees, pulling him with her. He looked
as if he needed a long session of prayer and meditation.
“They . . . I think they committed suicide together,” he gasped, his head lolling. “I couldn’t get to them before the bulkhead closed. My override wouldn’t open it in time.
Sissy gasped and held her heart in horror. Her teeth wanted to chatter. She clamped them closed because Jake needed her strong and sensible.
“Mac can survive vacuum,” she finally whispered harshly.
“But can she?”
“He saved her once before by giving her his extra air and protecting her body. We can only pray they made it to one of the ships in time.”
He nodded mutely. “He left the spectacles behind, on the lift. He knew he wasn’t coming back.”
A long silence stretched between them. Neither needed to break it with useless words. Their hands crept toward each other and clung. For those moments Sissy felt herself joined to this man, the man she loved above all others, completely, spiritually. They pressed their foreheads together in mutual understanding.
“We’ve one more chore to do. Then we can rest. Talk. Find a path to the future,” he whispered. His lips sought hers briefly.
Too briefly.
“What do you need me to do?”
“Sing the propulsion engines back into Harmony.” He quirked her a lopsided grin.
“I don’t know anything about engines,” she protested.
“You sang a whole planet back to Harmony to calm a quake,” he said, still grinning.
“But that was a living planet!”
“So, this shouldn’t be as hard. Not as big, anyway. All part of the universe. We are all bits and pieces of Harmony. You taught me that.”
“I . . . guess . . .” She thought about it. “I’ll need the girls. Mary and Martha at least.”
“All six of them. Maybe the dogs, too. This is going to take a bit of trial and error until we understand the nature of the beast.”
Still holding her hand, he rose and led her back toward her quarters. Sissy wasn’t surprised to find the six acolytes, two dogs, three cats, and a ferret awaiting them. Those girls knew everything that happened on the station.
Enigma Page 37