From deep inside the Palace, an explosion rocked the building. The besiegers outside had switched to missile fire. Pooling his energy, Wyren turned his back halfway to the Consortium soldier as he grounded himself in preparation to launch another attack. Valmont strengthened his mental shields in anticipation. Except as Wyren discharged his power, he psychically reached through the Consortium man’s shields, grabbed the third cervical vertebrae of his neck, and snapped it up through the ceiling. The man would probably have seen the obvious misdirection earlier in the fight. Surely it was fatigue that had brought about his doom.
Still in the shimmer of a mechanical shield, Valmont released his own power at the stone-like figure of his father before the man’s lifeless body fell to the floor.
“I had to eliminate the Consortium gentile first,” came his father’s voice from behind him, to his right. Startled by the clarity of the sound, Valmont turned. No one was there, and his father’s dark form had not seemed to move.
“I speak to you directly through your thoughts,” his father’s voice continued, now coming from Valmont’s left. This time Valmont did not turn. “Like in the dream I sent you, when you were in the woods beyond the Temple Complex.”
“Then I can block you, Father,” Valmont said, recutting a connection he thought was cut.
“You can never rid yourself of the seed we planted in your awareness, Courell.” Wyren’s body rose from the ground with his robes alight, like a summoned wraith. Valmont also noticed certain sharp and heavy objects around the room rise with him, including lasguns.
“You can temporarily sever it,” said his father as he slowly drew near, “but doing so only makes it undetectable. That is, until it regrows again.” The levitating objects all spun in the air to point at Valmont.
“Thanks for the tip, Father,” Valmont said as he backed away, augmenting the power of his forward shields. “But all psychic implants can be removed.”
“Yes,” the NDB Bishop conceded, switching to a mental projection. “Doing so however costs more for some than for others.”
“So what now?” Valmont asked warily, circling away from his father as he moved parallel with the wall to his back. “Shall we make up and embrace? You know I will never let you get that close again, not after what you did the last time.”
“You already have, Courell,” came a voice next to his ear as the objects in the room fell to the floor and projected image of his father before him disappeared.
- - -
Jordan returned to his portascreen with a quickness to his step. Lowering the Palace’s upper shields had been easier than he thought. He even made it look like Chamberlain Hansodian gave the order, in case anything went wrong. Looking at the darkened screen, he noted that the device was already deactivated by its internal timing protocol. Now all he had to do was find Agnetha.
Glancing over to where he last saw her, he noticed some debris on the floor by one of the containers. Looking closer at the clearly opened container, he could not tell what had been inside, but it did not really matter. The little minx had stolen something that caught her fancy. Somehow, he found that endearing.
Finding her at last on a bed he had ordered brought down, not knowing how long the attacks on the Palace would last, Jordan crept up beside her and crouched over her sleeping form. “Are you asleep, Dearest?” he asked, stroking her hair.
Agnetha stirred, opening her eyes drowsily. “I was just napping,” she said before looking behind him. “Lord Chamberlain?”
With an exasperated sigh, Jordan turned, seeing no one as he felt cold steel run through his back and out his body. Going rigid, he turned back to Agnetha before looking down at the pointed blade protruding from his chest.
“Bastard,” Agnetha breathed, rising from the bed. “This is for my brother.”
Jordan shook his head, more in disbelief than denial. He stood and backed away from her, desperately using his psychic ability to control the flow of blood.
Agnetha rushed him, her fists flying as she backed him into a wall. His eyes staring at her, Jordan brought his hands to her throat and squeezed, still fighting to close his wounds around the sword his beloved had stolen. Agnetha tried to break his hold, but her strength was no match for his. In mere moments, her windpipe was crushed and, with a quick sideways turn, her neck broken.
Jordan fell to his knees, holding Agnetha close so that she did not fall backward. The Lord Chamberlain had heard the commotion.
“My Lord!” the man cried as he rushed forward.
With blood spilling over his lower lip, Jordan gently laid Agnetha on the ground. “Get me a medical kit,” he wheezed as he straightened unsteadily. “And someone with the Training who can heal me.” Jordan swayed and fell back against a crate on the floor, lightheaded, with tears flowing from his eyes. “Hurry,” he whispered. “I cannot fix this one on my own.”
- - -
In a large four-post bed in a room behind his office, Tenatte watched as the latest girl left. From that part not covered by bed sheets, one could see that the scarred skin of his body matched his face. The girls had seen it before, of course. And while it pleased him to let people think he was some mechanized monster, it also pleased him to show the girls he was still a man. He even found it useful to let his surgical reconstruction test the girls’ commitment and professionalism.
“And what’s your name?” Tenatte asked as the next girl came in. Sometimes it was a chore having to audition the girls for “Featured Performer.” This was not one of those times.
“Sea Witch,” the woman replied.
“Oh? And how’s that name working for you?”
“Business has been slow.”
Tenatte nodded. “You might need a new one. Ok, show me.”
The woman walked to a control console and changed the room’s music to a selection with heavy drums, underlying an array of simple wooden instruments. She began to dance, moving in closer. As she reached to grab hold of him beneath the sheet, Tenatte stopped her.
“Hey Darlin’, you’re supposed to be showing me your routine.”
“Screw being `Featured Performer,’” the woman growled before switching to a purr. “All I want right now is you.” Plunging her head beneath the sheet before Tenatte could stop her, she worked him as she shed the rest of her clothes.
Pulling Tenatte’s sheet back, the woman got up on the bed to straddle him. His pleasure however was short-lived, pain overriding his senses.
Tenatte cried out, but the woman held him fast, her strength surprising. Looking down, he saw blood pooling where their bodies met, with small black multi-legged creatures moving up her flesh and out over his. The flat-shelled creatures grew as they fed, giving birth to more of them that repeated the process.
His agony now partly dulled by shock, Tenatte stared at the woman’s face, drawn to the green glow of her eyes from which sprang flailing misty tendrils.
The creatures having separated his and the woman’s legs from the rest of their bodies, they continued to consume her as they did him. Still the woman held him fast. Not even his own augmented strength was enough to break her hold, though all that pinned him below was her abdomen over his. Tenatte screamed for help.
“Lilth Morays offers this as repayment for her son,” the woman intoned, “to the man who brought about his death.”
“That Vis-cunting-countess!” Tenatte roared as his men forced the door, lasguns at the ready. Stricken by the sight, they vaporized what was left of the woman with their fire as the creatures made their way up Tenatte’s throat and erupted out from his mouth. Not pausing to even think, the horrified Consortium soldiers continued vaporizing the rest of the creatures, along with Anios Tenatte.
- - -
Sensing the presence of another poorly trained Palace Guard on her way to join her Dark Sisters, Lilth looked at the ceiling behind her. The man was trying to escape. Spreading her power out along the confines of the room, to anchor herself against the recoil physics would demand, Lilth
psychically blasted through the ceiling, and then through the opposite wall of the room above her. The explosion behind them brought Curreck and one of Derrick’s two guards to the floor of the servants’ passage, as Derrick and his second guard were knocked through the wall and into the next room.
Instinctively knowing who had found them, Curreck sank further back into the shadows as she tried to hold back the man next to her, so she could determine what to do next. As Lilth Morays levitated up through the floor and passed the broken wall to the room where Derrick had landed however, the guard rushed through the wall opening and made for Derrick. From Curreck’s vantage point, she could tell that the guard behind Derrick had been killed instantly, impaled by a long piece of debris. Derrick’s condition she could not see.
The guard coming to defend Derrick did not even raise his weapon before an unseen force lifted him in the air, pinned his arms to his sides, and broke him in half. Curreck was about to get help when another siege attack shook the room, causing a deep fissure in the floor. Her footing unstable from another explosion, the former HOPIS agent fell through a separated wall, down to the floor-level below and into darkness.
Dropping the Palace Guard from her psychic grip, Lilth closed in on Derrick. All she had time to do was see that he was still alive before a voice called out to her from a nearby doorway.
“Get away from my grandson, you Goddamned bitch!”
- - -
XXX
“Oh, Patér,” Lilth chided, hovering closer. “What a thing to say. I was only checking on Derrick’s condition. It is not as if I tried to harm him. Surely your truthsense can confirm that.”
Ashincor was too far away to see if Derrick was alive, and he knew the Viscountess would deflect any probe he might send. Still, her manner would be different if Derrick were already dead. He had to trust in that for now. “Yet my grandson lies on the floor below you,” he replied, feeling Ansel ready himself for battle. Knowing Lilth was kept herself aloft without a suspensor field, Ashincor looked with his enhanced awareness to her four otherwise invisible psychically projected supports, both grounding her and moving her with well-practiced grace.
“I did not know Derrick was there,” she explained, before pointing at the man she had snapped in half. “And you must have seen this crazed Palace Guard try to attack me. The poor man clearly did not know what he was doing.”
“You have a gift for dissembling, Viscountess,” said Ashincor. “But how do you explain this?” he asked, revealing the dagger from Crucidel.
“An artifact worthy of my collection,” she replied, still moving closer. Ashincor strengthened his shields as his anger intensified. Ansel did the same.
“I know you were there, Viscountess—” Ashincor’s words fell away as Lilth charged him and Ansel with electrical fire blazing from her fingers.
-
Chancellor Sukain was done waiting. “So, Madam Curreck knew where Lord Derrick was?” she asked a seamstress hiding with her in the servants’ quarters.
“She had an idea,” the stooped, older woman replied. “You get a knack for reading people’s movement through our room monitors.”
“You can see into the Palace’s rooms?” Sukain asked hopefully.
“Security took that away,” the woman said bitterly. “But they can’t do it either. At least not in the private, non-guest rooms. We just know if a room is occupied, so we can clean it without intruding.”
“And you can monitor the whole Palace?”
“We only use it for areas housing the Noble Family. And big-wigged officials,” the woman added, seeming to forget with whom she spoke. “Once the Palace was only for royalty. Giving it over to so many government offices was a mistake, if you don’t mind me saying.”
“Where is the information from these monitors displayed?”
“Well, everyone has their own area. The section heads oversee their—”
“But Curreck must oversee everything,” Sukain again interrupted.
“Yes,” the woman nodded, annoyed, but suddenly seeming to remember Sukain’s station. “But as I said, m’Lady, there’s a knack to reading them. Without a working knowledge of the Palace layout, it’s easy to get confused about where people are exactly, or where they’re going.”
“Show me Curreck’s display system,” Sukain commanded, rising from her chair. “I’ll take my chances with getting confused.”
-
Their duel momentarily suspended, Lilth floated over Derrick and gathered her strength. Ashincor and Ansel took advantage of the respite as well. But as the Patér reopened his awareness to his enemy, he saw that the Viscountess was also grounding herself in a strange pattern.
A new explosion shook the building, with debris flying down the corridor behind him as fresh currents of outside air found passage through a new opening. Here they fought, Ashincor thought, as the Palace was destroyed around them.
Lilth came forward, enveloping Derrick in her newly spun net of shields and grounding supports, ones reaching to the sub-level floors below them, and up along the walls and ceiling.
“Master,” Ansel breathed, his psychic awareness also registering the pattern the Viscountess was creating. “It is like a spider web.”
Ashincor nodded. Lilth grounded herself at several points beyond her original four pillars of support, interlocking them and building a circular structure where she overlaid multiple shields. The Patér had never seen such a complex configuration. Moving his awareness up the chain of dimensions, he saw that her psychic fortification extended even there. Lilth Morays was more powerful than he thought. “Stay behind me, Ansel,” Ashincor said, psychically reaching down to the Palace foundations for his own deeper grounding.
By that time, Lilth had the psychic leverage to tear away parts of the building.
“But Lord Derrick—” Ansel began.
“Is mine,” Lilth declared, bringing down a crushing psychic force that broke through floor and cleaved a dark chasm between them. The portion of Ashincor’s shield bearing the brunt of the attack flared as the blow connected, but it held.
In response, Ashincor discharged bolts of electrical fire from both his hands. Lilth’s shields shimmered as he felt her psychic defenses tremble, but Ansel’s voice stopped him from pushing home.
“Lord Derrick, Master! Her shield configuration!”
Ashincor glared at the scorched floor around his grandson before turning to Lilth’s smiling face. Her inter-faceted shield layers had diverted some of his fire. By simply adjusting the angles of her shields, she could make his next blast reduce Derrick to cinders.
Lilth psychically hammered Ashincor again, this time from the side, and caught him by surprise. Shielded but not well-grounded, Ansel was blown through the wall and out another room before Ashincor could psychically grab him to prevent his falling from the heights of the Palace to the valley below. Beyond determining that the unconscious Ansel’s internal mental shields were still intact however, Ashincor did not have the chance to check on him further before Lilth battered the Patér again with her electrical fire.
Leaving Ansel in another room of the Palace in the hope that he would be safe, Ashincor refortified his shields before answering Lilth’s fire with his own, carefully altering the angle of every blast so as not to let her shifting shields threaten Derrick with incineration.
Another explosion detonated over the Palace, this one ripping open the roof and exposing them to the clouded, darkening sky above.
-
“As glad as I am at our success around the planet,” Steuben interrupted over his com-link, “I’m more interested in what’s going on here at the Palace.”
“Patér Orqué reports that, given our losses, reinforcements will be needed to completely retake the Palace,” the com-officer replied. “And, while the witches and rogue Palace Guards are retreating from several positions, they appear to be concentrating in a new area of the Palace.”
“They are locking in on Lord Legan,” Steuben sighed.
“Maybe, Sir, but the area being focused on is empty. Strangely, we have had reports of people appearing and disappearing in and out of rooms though.”
“Shit. The witches can teleport too?”
“Maybe not, Sir. There have also been odd sightings of the Palace staff.”
“The servant passages,” Steuben said, remembering Derrick’s secret room.
“You mean the Palace ‘mouse holes,’ Sir?”
“Pablen’s ‘mice’ may have bigger bite than you know,” Steuben remarked, thinking of the housekeeper who took down a rebel who had infiltrated the Palace.
“We have found a few dead witches lying about, Sir,” the officer admitted.
Steuben grunted. “And how’s the fighting outside the Palace?”
“The besiegers are nearly contained, Sir, and we are now blocking most of their missile fire. We should be able to get reinforcements through their lines and into the Palace shortly.”
“All right. I’m nearing the possible location of Lord Legan. Tell Air Command to stand ready for an emergency evac.”
-
Reaching the room where two dozen or so of their spiritual sisters lay dead, along with only one black robed member of the Miran Church’s Orders, the new group of witches looked about and opened their collective awareness, seeking answers with their psychic vision.
Another incoming missile detonated, opening a crack along a long wall.
“Shield the area from those fools firing at the Palace, and watch both sets of doors,” the lead witch commanded. The other witches obeyed. “I will find what killed our sisters.”
Along the side of an unused fireplace, Sukain and one of the Palace cooks peered out from the slivered opening of a secret door, cloaking their presence from the group of witches. Derrick did not seem to be there. Opening her own awareness, Sukain sensed the shield canopy the witches created to defend against the intermittent missile attacks, noting the thick psychically projected supports that grounded the structure in place.
Blood of Jackals (Lords of Legan Book 2) Page 47