Daniel saw the smile on Tucker's face and didn't need a great deal of deliberation at its source.
Lyle's fragment packed up their gear and heaved it on their horses. It was a scant forty minutes before they were ready to depart.
Tucker waited until they were black dots on the horizon then turned to Daniel. “It's time.”
Daniel nodded and as he walked away he looked at where he had laid the girl down on the grass and she began to stir. Her eyes opened in her bloodied face, the blue deeply contrasting with all the red.
“Daniel,” she whispered.
Mindful of Tucker watching him he walked over as if she didn't matter. “What?”
Doubt crowded her eyes and he saw her rethinking his position and was sorry. But it couldn't be helped. After all, Tucker would see any weakness as something to be exploited at the worse possible time. He flicked his eyes in Tucker's direction and he saw understanding in hers.
She was a smart girl, she knew something was up.
Evelyn looked at Daniel. The only male of this fragment, for the other one that had beaten her was no longer about and remembered that Clara had said he was kind inside. At first, when he acted like her welfare mattered not, she had felt hopeless. But then his eyes had shifted to the awful Tucker and she realized it was a signal. Very much like the ones Jonathan would give her when the adults were around and he had a secret. She decided to pretend that he was as Tucker.
“I thought I recognized you from before.”
“So? It means nothing unless you tell us where the princess is?”
“You mean Queen Clara?”
Tucker and Daniel looked at each other.
Tucker walked over to where she lay and she scooted backward. “I thought that she was princess?”
Evelyn was not sure why this was important but felt like she had made a grave error by admitting her stature.
“Prince Frederic did not tell us that she was queen,” Daniel said.
“She didn't either,” Tucker said thoughtfully.
“What does it mean?” Daniel asked but thought he knew.
“It means we have a traitor in our midst.”
Evelyn frowned and the movement caused her face to flinch over the worst of the wounds and she made a pain sound.
Tucker liked the sound she made.
She saw his reaction to her and had to hold herself still as her body wished to flee. She knew that Lyle would have beat her again had he caught her. But he had not. Daniel had.
“Let's go.”
Tucker nodded reluctantly, thinking how fun the sport would be with all the unsuspecting females of the sphere.
Daniel gave a hand to Evelyn and helped her up. She looked up at him gratefully and he gave the smallest smile.
It was enough.
She followed him by the hand to wherever Tucker was going.
*
Evelyn saw the anomaly even from where she stood. A shimmering oval that stood in the middle of the glade. It was a strange wave in the middle of the air, it undulated as the breeze moved through it.
Daniel looked at the ripple, so benign.
So deadly.
Tucker knew where it was located and the time line that ruled it. They were here not by accident but for a purpose.
It was time to travel the Pathway.
The twenty members of the fragment that had escaped the siege by the Band had assembled in front of the ripple, their eyes wary. The group was superstitious to be sure. They knew that the travel sickness was real. There was only a certain number of times the human body could travel the Pathway without irreparable harm.
Daniel squeezed Evelyn's hand then let it fall. It wouldn't do for Tucker to think him soft. He needed to appear as he always was; ready.
“Move into the slit. We don't have a lot of time. Maybe another twenty minutes,” Tucker said, herding the soldiers of the fragment toward the iridescent mouth that opened obscenely to welcome them into the Pathway.
One male broke away and began to run. Tucker took off after him and pausing briefly, he gripped his dirk at the handle and threw it after the fleeing figure. It buried in the back of his skull and he crumpled to the ground. The five remaining of the fragment hurried inside the waiting hole. When the last one was ready to enter, he put out his arm tentatively, pushing it into the gaping mouth. The arm disappeared but his body remained inside.
Tucker crouched beside the fallen fragment and using both hands, he gripped the blade and yanked it backward, the skull cracking open wider as he did.
Evelyn covered her mouth and whimpered. The gray matter of the brain covered the blade. Tucker wiped it on the back of the fragment and stood. His eyes met hers and he smiled.
She backed away.
He looked over as the last soldier pressed his arm through and said, “Do you need encouragement from the dirk? As your comrade did a minute ago?”
The soldier's wide eyes took in the man that lay dead with a hole in his head and slipped in the rest of the way. His body visible for a moment, then eerily disappearing from sight.
Tucker looked at Daniel and Evelyn, re-sheathing his dirk at his waist. Daniel heard something and looked at Tucker. Tucker looked a question back to him but did not sense what Daniel did.
Riders.
He walked the distance to the ripple with Tucker and Evelyn.
“Riders approach,” he said.
Tucker looked at him. “I don't hear anything.”
“It sounds of the Band,” Daniel said and Evelyn tensed to flee. Daniel felt her weight shift and held her against him.
“Don't,” he said. Evelyn's heart sank. She was traveling to Clara's sphere with the fragment. The mode of travel was something that frightened even the males.
They would pillage the sphere. Then her life would be one with the fragment. Degradation. Abuse. Pain. Death.
Evelyn was without hope.
*
Bracus and Maddoc scented the fragment's trail.
Maddoc could barely make out Evelyn's scent for it was covered by another.
Blood.
He knew from the change to her scent she had been hurt.
His fury sped him onward.
They broke into the clearing at the same moment.
*
Evelyn's head snapped up as the Band entered the glade. Hope slammed back into her body, adrenaline surging to her extremities.
Her eyes met Maddoc's and she screamed for him, “Maddoc!”
Maddoc was already moving forward, his heels buried against his mount. The horse surged forward and he leaned into the wind to give her the speed she needed to reach Evelyn.
Bracus galloped slightly behind him and watched as a large male of the fragment held her tightly against him and the leader slightly behind. Bracus recognized him immediately, the damage on his face evidence of Matthew's fists, his features distorted.
Too late Bracus recognized the vehicle of their departure. But it was Maddoc that screamed for him, “No!” he bellowed just as Evelyn was jerked backward into the slit, her battered face disappearing from view.
The ripple hovered for a moment in the sunlight, glimmering and moving as a supple serpent suspended in the air. Then it winked out of existence with a sizzle.
Maddoc and Bracus stood paralyzed. No amount of nearness would make it reappear.
Evelyn had disappeared with the fragment.
*
Evelyn saw Maddoc coming for her and hope welled up inside her. She had believed that he was acting out of duty.
She felt her body still as she was sucked back by Daniel. She was encased in a horrible coldness, the icy coating leeching into her body.
Her eyes met his over the head of his horse and it was then that she knew it was more than duty.
Determination rode his eyes.
And love.
The vision of his face galloping toward her narrowed until it became a pinpoint then disappeared.
Evelyn felt a crushing weight descend upon
her, she could no longer feel Daniel holding her. She was flying through space without end.
She folded into unconsciousness in a cocoon of ice and fire, speeding into absolute darkness.
CHAPTER 28
Clara and Rowenna looked up as Maddoc and Bracus burst through the doors which led to Rowenna's chamber.
Empty-handed.
Clara's face fell. They would not have returned without her unless something horrible was afoot. Her stomach clenched as she prepared herself for news of Evelyn.
Maddoc looked at Rowenna. “They have used the Pathway.”
At first Rowenna seemed stunned. Then, coming to herself she asked, “Whom?”
Bracus answered, “The fragment.”
“But...that would mean...” Rowenna began in dawning horror.
Clara looked at Bracus and saw an uncommon emotion on his face.
Fear.
Not for himself but for her.
Clara felt the world narrow and consciousness slipping away and bit the inside of her cheek until blood welled and her mind righted itself.
“They travel to my sphere? That is where that 'ripple' leads, true?” Clara asked in a panic.
Rowenna nodded sadly. “They will be ill when they arrive, that is the only weakness. But when they become themselves once again, they will pour through your tunnel and kill every male in sight.”
Clara evacuated the room and bent over in the hallway, throwing up on the floor. The horrors of the fragment laid bare before her. They would murder her people, savage the women, take all that was precious.
She straightened, wiping a shaky hand over her mouth. She felt Rowenna's hand on her back and Maddoc handed her a flask.
“We will go after them,” Clara said.
“You cannot, Clara. The sickness...”
Clara turned on Rowenna. “Fear not, I care not if I die when trying to save what Father held dear. I cannot leave them there unprotected.”
“Do you not have some Royal Guard present?” Bracus asked, immediately gauging the defense of the interior of the sphere.
Clara shook her head. “Nary seven. No more. The others accompanied us here and were killed earlier.”
It seemed so hopeless to Clara. She rummaged about in her brain for a plan. She would leave but with whom?
“Bracus.”
“Yes, my queen.”
Clara smiled at the title, even in the midst of everything Bracus was ready and responding as a true ally. “Assemble everyone. Call to the nearby Band of Massachusetts. And,” she held up a finger and directed the next question to her mother, “Rowenna, do you have a homing dove?”
Rowenna nodded. “We have a small flock. They were bred to move between your sphere and here.”
Clara thought. Mayhap that would not be enough. There was a fifteen mile span between the Clan of Ohio and her sphere. Could the Band there receive a message? Could President Bowen be alerted in time to forge a battle?
“My father?” Clara asked.
Rowenna nodded. “He thought if there were ever need in an emergent situation...” she shrugged.
Clara thought that she could not admire her father further. Yet she could.
She did.
“I follow what you say, Clara. You think one of the Band may scout and come upon the bird?”
She nodded.
“It is bred to return to the perimeter of where the tunnel intersects with the main body of the sphere,” Rowenna explained.
“How would you know this, Rowenna?” Clara asked and Rowenna explained, “Raymond drew a sketch of sorts of the sphere and I have kept it these past years. I can show you... ” she lifted a brow.
Clara could not believe she had not been made aware of this earlier. Rowenna saw her expression and laughed. “I am sorry, I had not remembered to mention it.”
Clara drank more water and spit it out into a basin, trying to get the horrid taste from her mouth. She followed Rowenna back into her chamber as she crouched down beside a solid wood trunk and using a key which lay between her breasts on a twine of leather, unlocking it.
She pulled a scroll on parchment paper, tinged at the edge in yellow and unrolled it, laying it flat upon a small table.
Clara saw her home and her heart squeezed painfully with homesickness then on top of that...fear.
Her sphere was in peril.
She had a sudden stab of hate for the Travelers. They had allowed this to happen with their meddling.
Clara returned to the task at hand, noting the mark that Father had made that clearly showed a bird at the point that a sentry would be. She had not remembered anything there and said so.
“Do you remember how 'thick' the sphere is at the junction of its connection with the main body?” Rowenna asked.
Clara nodded. For the most part, the sphere was opaque to clear. But at the seams where the sphere intersected with the trading tunnels, it was so thick one could not see through to Outside.
“It is there that your father placed a pen for the dove's return.”
Bracus palmed his chin. “The Band will scout this area and surely the homing pigeon will make its presence known.”
Clara puzzled at the different label for the bird but said nothing, noting yet another subtle difference between clans, spheres and regions.
Rowenna nodded. “It will.”
“Let us make haste with an alert,” Bracus said, taking command.
Rowenna had to but look at Maddoc and he sprinted out the door.
*
Clara stood in the glade that housed the ripple, the homing dove long sent. Four of the Band of Massachusetts, her home Band and Maddoc and Rowenna at her side.
Clarence and Charles were arguing with her. “You know not what the outcome will be. And forgive me,” he gave Rowenna a long look, “you do not yet know her with enough intimacy to gauge the accuracy of this venture.”
Clara huffed and glared at Charles. “Am I queen or am I not? It is our people that lay like sheep before the slaughter. I cannot rule the dead. She had told me this is how Father made his way to her. That the Traveler’s intended their union to produce me. I exist for a purpose.”
“He died for them, Queen Clara,” Clarence intoned quietly.
“I am aware,” Clara said. “But he traveled many times. It is my fervent hope that this singular attempt will not sicken and shorten my life.” She looked straight in his eyes, then her gaze shifted to Charles. “But if it were, it is a risk I am willing to navigate. Nothing you say can dissuade me. A message has been sent by dove to President Bowen....”
“One that may or may not reach him,” Charles said.
Clara nodded. “ 'Tis true, but I cannot fail because my help will arrive or no.”
“It is a safeguard. My scout will travel every other day and the message moves even now,” Bracus said, shrugging.
Charles could see that he was unperturbed by the huge odds against them. The other of the Band would not arrive in time. He told them this.
“Mayhap, but we have been up against greater obstacles,” Edwin said.
The Band murmured their assent to that and Clarence interrupted them, “But did you have females to defend in your midst?”
The Band grew quiet.
“Enough!” Clara said, holding up her palm. “We leave. Time is passing and each moment they recover and move forward with their scheme. I am certain that I was to be held hostage to coerce the people into compliance. But since that has failed, they will use force to subdue my people. It cannot be discussed any longer. We leave. Now.”
Clara looked from Charles to Clarence. “You do not need to attend me. You need not risk yourselves. You are not rulers. I alone can decide my own fate, not yours.”
Charles' eyes softened. “You know I would not let you go alone, Clara.”
“Nor I, Queen Clara,” Clarence agreed.
“That may be. But it will be informed consent. Know this,” she looked at all that had gathered, “my father, King Raymond, was
murdered for conceiving me. It did not happen immediately. But year by year he sickened and died before his time. All because of his travel through the Pathway. Do not come if you fear this end.”
The Band stepped forward, their fists on their hearts.
Bracus stepped forward. “The Band serves you, Queen Clara.”
“Aye, we do as well,” Clarence said, Charles joining him by his side with a nod.
Rowenna came forward and took Clara's hand in hers. “Where you go, I do as well, Daughter.”
Tears of gratitude fell down her face in a hot trail.
She looked at the faces that surrounded her, love and loyalty bound in their expressions in a beautiful mix. She held out her arms and they gathered around her, a circle of friendship and protection. Her fear a bitter ash on her tongue.
They walked toward the ripple.
CHAPTER 29
The fragment lay in the tunnel, their bodies tingling, their insides heaving up. Tucker thought that his entrails would evacuate his body. His throat burned and fine needles pricked every inch of his body. The cold left his fingertips numb.
Slowly, he became aware of his surroundings. The Outside could be seen through the milky interior wall of the sphere. He looked and it was Daniel that stood, shaky but not nearly as affected as he.
Curious.
Beside him the girl lay at his feet. Her eyes, or the one that was not swollen shut, caught his and she sat up too quickly and swayed. Daniel was quick to steady her.
He thought he was so clever, that Tucker did not notice his softness for the females. He did. He noted everything that was unusual.
Like his resistance to the effects of the Pathway.
Tucker made his way with grueling slowness to the spigot that lay in an alcove shaped like a half-moon, making the tunnel widen on one side. A large sliding door stood to open to Outside. It locked at both the top and bottom. It would not open easily. There was no sentry but Tucker knew that there was one which guarded the entrance to the Sphere of Ohio.
The Savage Blood (Savage Series, Book 2) Page 21