“That’s fantastic!” Lumi replied. “What do you need? We’ll get it for you.”
Amane blinked several times. “My sister.”
“Ah, the phenomenal Faulty twins,” Kallisto muttered, rolling her eyes. “She needs Amal to be closer. Amal and Amane are infinitely more intelligent than Ta’Zan himself when put together.”
“Together they’re unstoppable,” Raphael chimed in with a lazy grin. “They could even stop the planet from spinning, if they wanted to.”
Amane offered a meek smile in return, her tanned cheeks turning dark pink. It offered a strong contrast against her long, snow-white hair and her bright orange eyes—an exotic gem that made me wonder what she and Amal would look like together. Perfect doubles with the cumulative mind of a genius.
“I wouldn’t go that far,” she murmured. “But I am positive I’d be able to devise a mass reset technology to permanently disable the Perfects.”
“Disable?” Araquiel asked, both eyebrows raised.
“Make them like you,” Amane replied. “Clear head, no memories of the life before. A fresh start, without any of Ta’Zan’s poison seeping through. A chance to make up their own minds about this world, the universe, and their place in it.”
Araquiel nodded slowly. “I think they all deserve that shot. I, for one, feel fortunate.”
“Up until a day ago, you were a monstrous pain in our—” Dmitri retorted, but Rose cut him off.
“That’s a good mindset to have, Araquiel. Frankly, I’d prefer it if we all got along. We have absolutely no intention of conquering Strava or taking anyone’s liberties away,” Rose said.
“We thought the place was deserted when we built that resort on Noagh,” I added. “Had we known there were creatures still living here, we would’ve looked for another planet. We’ve made it our core purpose to help others protect their lands; we sure as hell wouldn’t become oppressors in any way.”
“I understand. I don’t know any of you as well as I maybe should, but my instincts tell me you will not harm me,” Araquiel said. “I suppose instincts are more important than anything else.”
“They are. So, back to business,” Taeral interjected, still on edge from his five-hundred-Perfect chase. He hadn’t experienced anything similar before. He hadn’t been around them as much as us. I understood why he’d been left in that tense state. “How do we get Amane close to Amal?”
“We also need to keep reaching out to the Hermessi,” Kailani said. “They’ve done something incredible for us, more than once. Clearly, they’re open to conversation. We can’t let this slip to the bottom of the pile. They could very well be the force we need to subdue the Perfects, whether or not we manage to wipe their minds.”
“A dialogue must take place. And another infiltration mission is necessary,” Rose replied. “We’re down to a three-pronged approach, again, because we also need to find another place to set up our base camp. It’s far too cold and inhospitable here.”
“I agree,” Lumi said. “I’d help make it more comfortable, but this island isn’t close enough to where we need to be. While I appreciate the hostile weather keeping the enemy away, I doubt it’ll help us in the long run.”
Bogdana listened to each of us carefully but said nothing. She avoided looking us in the eyes, and her aura burned with shame. She felt terrible for having kept her Ta’Zan secret from us. Part of her was probably annoyed we’d found her out, but she really shouldn’t have underestimated us like this. With Heron, we had ten Maras in our crew—ten creatures powerful and skilled enough to get anyone to say anything. She should’ve seen this coming.
Avril, Heron, Serena, Draven, and Bijarki were quite seasoned in this kind of covert warfare. They’d snuck around and blown stuff up before. They’d slit throats and stolen things just to survive. There was an air of confidence about them, on which I, too, fed. Some of us were still new to this kind of action—the Draenir included. They looked pretty shaken but didn’t let that get in the way of business. They followed us closely and complied with our demands, acknowledging Rose, Ben, and Lumi’s experience.
The wards were silent, their jade eyes measuring each of us from head to toe, as if studying our body language and learning everything they could about us, simply from the way we moved and spoke to each other. They seemed especially interested in the Faulties, led by Herakles, who wasn’t at all intimidated. He kept his chin high, unwilling to compromise and ready to rip anyone to shreds to ensure the survival of his people. These were the kind of fighters we wanted on our side.
“A three-pronged approach,” I murmured, frowning. “Okay. How do we do it, then?”
“Three teams,” Rose replied with a smile. “Elonora, Nevis, and Raphael, you three worked well together before. Take Kallisto, Varga, Ridan, Amane, and Dmitri with you, and handle the colosseum again. There are several tasks on your to-do list, and a small, invisible crew like yours will cut it. First, find out where Ta’Zan is keeping devil-vipers. That pulverizer mist he’s using is almost, if not the same, as ours from how Derek described it—and it’s made with their venom. We need some for ourselves, and the sanctuary he once kept was destroyed.”
“We harvest the venom without killing the vipers, right?” I asked. I wasn’t comfortable with killing animals to make weapons. I understood feeding and nourishment, where essential, but animals dying so we could wage war wasn’t acceptable to me.
“Yes. They produce a lot of venom in their glands,” Kallisto said. “We could milk them once an hour.”
“So, what, a handful of devil-vipers would ensure enough venom to make… how much pulverizer?” Raphael asked, pursing his lips as he tried to do the math in his head and miserably failed.
Rakkhan cleared his throat. “Ten milliliters will generate fifty pulverizer capsules. We can obtain about thirty milliliters every hour.”
“Okay, so… task one, devil-vipers. Got it. What else?” I replied, looking at Rose.
She smiled. “Task two, get Douma. She’s one of us, whether she still remembers it now or not. Do whatever you can without exposing yourselves inside the colosseum. You may be invisible in there, but it’s not enough with the Perfects if they catch your scent, and you know it,” she said, and I gave her a brief nod. “Task three, get Amane close to Amal. That is, in fact, the prime objective. The pulverizers would serve as deterrents, but they shouldn’t be our first choice when engaging the Perfects. Therefore, Amane’s plan to reset their memories en masse is a key objective here.”
“That makes sense,” Ridan replied. “We’ll plan accordingly to tick all three off the list. We’ll have to be careful with Amal, though. The sisters sense one another. It’ll have to be a blitz attack to get her.”
“Good thinking,” Rose said, then looked at Kailani. “You’re right about the Hermessi. We need to start a dialogue and spell out what we need from them. Then, we need to get them to help us. To me, those are two different things, given the little we know about the Hermessi. I mean, sure, they’ve helped us before, but we can’t simply expect them to keep doing it.”
“Most of the time, a price must be paid, too.” Lumi sighed. “At least, that is what I’ve come across, throughout my millennia in this world. Most of you are but a mere flicker, compared to my experience.”
“Well, then there’s Bogdana,” Taeral replied with a grin.
“Bogdana still has a lot to think about, for the remainder of this mission,” Lumi said, a muscle twitching angrily in her jaw. “Specifically, about the things she’s held back from us.”
“How long will you punish me for that?!” Bogdana groaned.
Lumi stilled, narrowing her bluish-white eyes at the old fae. “You haven’t seen punishment yet.”
“Enough,” Rose cut in, then shifted her focus back to Kailani. “Kale, take Lumi, Hunter, Vesta, Zeriel, Ben, Taeral, Bogdana, Bijarki, Draven, and Serena. Your team will seek out the Hermessi and initiate a conversation.”
Kailani nodded briefly, then exchanged quick
glances with Hunter before letting a deep sigh roll out of her chest. She didn’t seem too happy with Rose’s nominations but, hey, tough luck. Hunter had the best intentions in mind, and he loved her. If anyone could watch her back and stop her from hurting others or herself, it was him, whether she liked it or not. Well, she did, but she was still mad at him… at least for now.
Rose did something very smart when she asked Kailani to take this team and reach out to the Hermessi, instead of assigning the leadership role to Ben. It gave Kailani a sense of purpose, a feeling that she wasn’t a liability at all. It was an opportunity for her to focus and to deliver, to put the Word incident behind her and get to the Hermessi, instead.
“The water and the earth Hermessi were the most responsive,” Ben said. “So, we should seek out a virgin island where they could be most present.”
“We’ll check the maps,” Draven replied. “I think our best shot might be on the southern border of Ta’Zan’s archipelagos. There were no Draenir settlements ever erected there. With two witches and three and a half fae on our side, we’re more than likely to start a conversation with these entities.”
Bijarki chuckled, then gave Taeral a playful elbow nudge in the ribs. “Halfling.”
“I will stuff an apple in your mouth and roast you,” Taeral retorted, making Bijarki laugh even harder.
“We want the Hermessi to materialize into some kind of anthropomorphic figures in order for them to communicate with us,” Rose said, drawing our attention back to the mission. “We want them to manifest properly, like they did with Harper, not just as arms made of water and earth-splitting tremors.”
Draven nodded. “We’ll get them to talk to us, one way or another, don’t worry. They’ve been surprisingly responsive so far. The only way from here is up.”
“What about us?” Heron asked. “What do we do?”
Rose sighed. “The rest of us will find a new location for a proper base camp. It has to be close enough to Ta’Zan’s colosseum for us to move in and out as easily as possible. The last thing we need right now is hours or days of traveling. That’s when Perfects stumble upon us and attack us. At the same time, it should be secluded enough for them not to spot us. We’ll have to analyze the maps for this.”
“And get Phoenix to give up some updates on the populated areas,” Dmitri replied. “If the Perfects are spreading, we should make sure we don’t bump into them. Previously unpopulated islands could now be… well, busy.”
Rakkhan raised a hand, politely demanding our attention. “We’ll require a certain temperature, in the double digits, in order for us to manufacture more pulverizer pellets. If Elonora’s team comes back with devil-vipers, precise environmental conditions must be met. First, the snakes themselves are sensitive and require heat and humidity to thrive, thus producing the venom we require. Second, the pulverizer production process also requires higher temperatures.”
“So, tropical or subtropical heat,” Dmitri muttered, frowning as he borrowed my tablet and started marking specific regions on the screen. “I’ve got a few suggestions for you, then, but we still need to double check with Phoenix. They’ve got the telescope imagery on Calliope. They’ll be able to tell us how far the diamond colosseums have spread.”
“I’ll be able to send a message out to the other rogue Faulties still struggling in the woods by themselves,” Herakles chimed in. “Once we settle somewhere, I’ll summon the others. I know there are more who want to join my ranks, but they don’t know I’ve joined forces with you outsiders.”
“Bet you their jaws will drop when they see us all together,” Kallisto said, grinning.
“Some might not like it, but their other options are crappy,” Herakles said. “It’s either this, or loneliness out in the wild, or being a punching bag for Perfects. Say what you will, but I’ll take my chances with this group. At least you people stand for something.”
Pride filled my chest. Herakles wasn’t wrong, and it was nice to see someone like him acknowledge us in such a manner. It felt as though we weren’t at all crazy for doing this. He understood the method to our madness, and it meant the world to me, because a confident ally was much more valuable than one who could run out on us or, worse, turn against us at the first sign of trouble.
Like Cassiel.
Oh, Cassiel could sure get my blood boiling. He’d let me down the worst. I’d actually believed him when he’d said that our way was the righteous way. I’d even dared hope that he might help us take down Ta’Zan. Having someone like him on the inside would’ve been an absolute gamechanger, since Cassiel was cunning enough to pull off pretty much anything.
But no, he decided to bail, then came after us with five hundred Perfects to hunt us down like animals. That kind of treachery could never be forgotten, nor forgiven. I comforted myself with the thought that the tables would soon turn. That I, too, would get to see a look of despair and disappointment on his face, as a direct result of my duplicity. Paying someone in kind had become my specialty since I’d set foot on Strava, and there wasn’t anyone who deserved it more than Cassiel. We’d lost Douma because of him, along with several Draenir and Faulty fighters. There was blood on his hands.
“The goals are to set up a functional base in a relatively safe area, to rally more rogue Faulties, and to start reaching out to the ones inside the colosseum. Some have learned to infiltrate, to sneak in and out of the colosseum, so we can get them to pass messages around and form an inside rebellion,” Herakles added.
“Agreed. We could easily stir up some trouble inside the colosseum,” Leah said.
Samael nodded. “I know at least a dozen Faulties who’d be more than happy to help us in there.”
“We need to focus on Isda,” Varga said. “She’s the heart of this quiet rebellion. She’s managed to stay alive after our first attempt to escape from the colosseum. Granted, we’re pretty sure that Amal helped her, even though she betrayed us, but we’re not sure why.”
“That’s cool. I’ll ask her myself when we get her,” Amane said. “She and I have a lot of catching up to do.”
Our tasks were more than clear. With two field teams tackling two different angles of our ridiculously complicated problem, we certainly had our work cut out for us. Nevis and I exchanged glances, and my heart sang when he smiled.
It was as if there was a part of him whispering in my ear, telling me that everything was going to be okay. That he was right there, with me, ready and eager for us to face everything together.
“After we complete this next part of the mission, we’ll move on to the… grand finale,” Rose reminded us. “A diversion attack with one crew, during which time a second team can do some more damage by destroying Ta’Zan’s labs and releasing the prisoners. Once we get our people out of there, Ta’Zan will lack the resources he needs to build more Perfects.”
“Good grief, you’re coming at him from every possible angle!” Raphael gasped, his eyes wide with sheer awe.
“We kind of have to. You’ve met Ta’Zan, right?” I asked, rhetorically.
“No, no, no, don’t get me wrong! I’m genuinely impressed and all for it!” Raphael said. “I look forward to burning it all down to the ground for him. He’s done too much damage already.”
“Besides, we’re doing this multiple-angle approach in case one of our avenues turns into a dead end,” Ben said. “For example, assuming that Amane will get Amal to work with her, they may not succeed in devising the technology needed to do a mass memory wipe on the Perfects. And so on. You get my point, I’m sure.”
Raphael chuckled. “Yes, it’s called covering your asses. Yours are elegant and downright righteous methods, but effective, nonetheless.”
“Well, they do have the finest allies on their side, don’t they?” Herakles said, beaming with pride and excitement. “Man, I can’t wait to piss Father off to the point of a stroke. I’d love to see a vein pop on that self-absorbed temple of his,” he added with a grumble.
“Oh, wow, talk about
daddy issues,” I murmured.
Herakles shrugged. “What can I say, Lenny? A father who doesn’t think I’m good enough to be a part of his future is no father at all. The Draenir had more decent family structures. Ta’Zan never should’ve taught us about them.”
“Anthropologically speaking, your Draenir instincts were preserved in the genes he used to make you. Which is why you retained this need for affection and tight social circles, strong family bonds and so on,” Lumi explained. “Ta’Zan may be a brilliant genetic engineer, but he cannot simply erase eons of collective history. It’s perfectly normal for the Faulties and even the Perfects to long for family ties and friendship.”
“Which brings us back to the Perfects’ nature, full circle,” Rose replied. “No matter what Ta’Zan tries to teach them, their instincts won’t function properly with skewed information and half-truths. Once we show the Perfects their true nature, untarnished by Ta’Zan’s dogma, we’ll all see the difference.”
With our teams and tasks established, we proceeded to gear up and prepare for the journeys ahead. My brother and I syphoned from those willing to give us some of their energy—Raphael had plenty, as did Ridan and Amane. Theirs was enough to load our sentry “batteries” for at least a couple of days. Of course, once Rose’s group found the perfect campsite, all we had to do was use our tracking spells to find her. Hopefully, there wasn’t going to be another instance of Cassiel showing up with a throng of Perfects and ruining everything.
I’d had enough of that. We needed a good, solid win, and we needed it fast.
Harper
Nathaniel, Uriel, Angelica, and Deena were incredible to watch as they learned about our worlds. They went through thousands of terabytes of information over the course of a few hours—history books, mission reports, video footage, sound files. Everything they could get their hands on. Their cognitive abilities were inconceivable.
A Shade of Vampire 66: An Edge of Malice Page 3