Although Skye still retained part of his defensive attitude that had alienated so many years before, his face was more open, more welcoming. His eyes were shadowed by a lifetime of hardships, but there was no bitterness there. Only remnants of pain and maybe a tiny bit of regret.
She frowned hard, trying to conjure up Drake's eyes. It was difficult to remember him as he had looked during the battle with Lord Angelo, and also remember him as she had seen him that day in Cosmea. Drake was different now, and the light in his eyes had altered his appearance nearly as much as age had changed Skye's.
"Drake!" Appalled that she had nearly forgotten, she bolted upright and turned to Skye. "Is he okay? Vargo didn't know- he said that the healers were with him but that he'd lost a lot of blood- you would know, and he's okay, right? I mean, you were with him, you wouldn't have left him alone if you thought he wasn't okay. Right?"
Skye rested his hand across his knee again. "Right."
Ashlyn waited for him to continue. When he said nothing else, she flicked her fingers, palm-up, as if to say, Well?
"He heals fast," Skye admitted. He gave her a grudgingly admiring glance. "He told me what happened. You tried to stop the sword."
"Yeah, and I lost my hammered steel shuriken doing it," Ashlyn said, not at all distressed about that fact now that she knew Drake was all right. She crawled over to sit next to Skye. "Did he say anything else?"
"About what?"
She really had no idea. "About…anything."
The blank look that the swordsman gave her made her words sound lame, even to her own ears. What had she expected Drake to tell Skye? That her crazy attempt to save his life had proved to him without a doubt that she was the woman he'd been looking for all his unlife? That he was abandoning Trace to throw himself at Ashlyn's feet and worship her for all eternity?
Freaking hormones! All this time to think must have seriously done a number on her common sense!
Ashlyn tried to think of all the things she didn't like about Drake. Musty coffin. Icky old cape. Red eyes.
Really sexy red eyes.
"GODS!" she yelled, smacking herself on the forehead. "Give it a break, will you?"
Skye jumped, gazing incredulously at her like she'd just sprouted three heads. "What the hell?"
"Never mind," she said grumpily, finger-combing her tangled hair and trying to secure it back into a messy knot. "I just hope I can see my dad soon. Nothing like coming back from the dead to make you appreciate your family again."
There was a grinding sound as the door slid open, and illumination flooded the room behind them, light glaring around the edges of the screens that bisected the room. Ashlyn blinked at the interruption, and turned to see Kou- Devlyn- outlined in front of her. Tag stood at his side.
"We don't have much time," Kou said, looking at Ashlyn- and, she felt, looking over her- probably finding her unkempt appearance somewhat lacking, but if he did, he didn't say anything about it- before he motioned towards the basement steps and told them, "If you want to know the truth, there's only one place to begin."
Ashlyn stood, brushing off her hands. "The one place to begin is my basement?" she said skeptically. "Do you know how long it's probably been since anyone's been in there? There could be man-eating spiders down there. They could be huge. They could be the size of Hydra Wraiths, as long as they've had to set up house."
"There are no spiders in your basement," Kou said. His expression did not change.
"How do you know? They could be ten feet tall. They could be as big as this house. They could have hairy legs and fangs as long as my arm-" Ashlyn stopped, feeling a little queasy at the thought of ginormous incisors and creepy spider eyes.
Tag and Kou shared a frustrated look, and if Ashlyn had been in any less of a mood then she probably would have smiled. Obviously the great and noble Li heir wasn't making such a great and noble impression.
She wasn't intimidated- which really could have had something to do with Skye's presence behind her. As nice as these guys had been so far (which in all honesty was pretty darn nice- not many guys would still be on speaking terms with Ashlyn after suffering vomit-splattered shoes), it was still comforting to boast a sidekick who had tromped Lord Angelo with one seriously lethal hissy fit.
"Kou- Devlyn- lived in this house for months before…the war," Tag said. "It's only been sitting for a short time. There are no spiders."
Yeah, it didn't take a genius to hear the hesitation in his voice.
Before the war, huh?
Ashlyn glowered. It was difficult for her to decide whether to be angry with them for using her house without her permission, or relieved that they had kept it spider-free in her absence. She chose not to say anything on the subject. "Lead the way, then," she told Kou, jerking her chin towards the basement with all the dignity that a crusty-eyed, snarl-haired Li could muster. "But if I follow you down there, I better get some answers."
He turned without another word and started down the steps. Ashlyn had the uneasy feeling that he wasn't very happy with her, but she wasn't exactly in the best mood herself, so it seemed fair enough.
She glanced over her shoulder, making sure that Skye was right behind her before she made her way down the steps after Kou. "Hey," she said, skipping two steps at a time to catch up with the Toryn man, "when can I see my dad?"
Kou opened the door and walked inside, then turned to hold it open for her. "He's not here," he said.
"Not here?" Ashlyn stumbled forward a little bit as Skye brushed past her to inspect the room. "What do you mean, not here? Not in this house? Not in Toryn? Not on the island?"
"Not in Toryn." Kou motioned for her to take a seat on the circle of mats arranged in the corner, and Ashlyn flopped down gracelessly, too irritated to care about manners and etiquette.
"Okay. I'm getting seriously pissed off here. I have questions, and you're the only man that seems to know the answers, Devlyn," she said, putting emphasis on the name that he had kept hidden from her for the past week. "So here's how it works. I ask, you respond. Once I'm satisfied, then we can get down to whatever it is you want from me. Not before. Got it?"
He sat in front of her, his face emotionless. "I understand."
Ashlyn was about to spit out the angry retort that was on the edge of her tongue, before she realized that he hadn't even tried to argue with her. Glancing at Skye, who was staring up at the heavy cage suspended in the center of the room, she wondered why he wasn't jumping right into the conversation. He was probably remembering the time that cage had dropped on him during one of their…um…disagreements. That was a memory that she'd rather forget, really.
"Fine," she said, trying not to show how confused she was by this entire scenario. "What should I call you? Devlyn?"
"My friends call me Kou," he said.
"Your friends, huh. What's your name? Your real name."
"Koudai Devlyn Lunai, of the clan Lunai," he answered promptly.
"That's a mouthful," Skye muttered.
"Not for a Toryn," Ashlyn told him. "I have eight names."
The look the swordsman gave her said he really didn't care. Ashlyn rolled her eyes.
"What did you mean earlier when you said I wasn't exposed?" she asked Kou.
There was a pause.
"Uh," Kou said eloquently.
"We've recently discovered that specific Toryn bloodlines are immune to the effects of certain stanes," Tag said, leaning back against the door as he folded his arms across his chest. "However, it appears that some bloodlines are not."
"Stanes?" Ashlyn repeated. "Bloodlines? Wait- my dad- is he okay?"
"Yes," Tag said.
"No," Kou said at the same time.
"He is exposed," Tag said firmly, glaring at Kou. "But be assured that he is in good health- the exposure isn't fatal."
"In good health? What the heck is that supposed to mean?" Ashlyn snapped. "If my father is ill, I want to know about it."
"It's not what you think, Ash. Tag and I bear
this exposure also," Kou said. "And as you can see, we're perfectly fine. But we won't be that way forever."
"This is an exposure- more of an addiction- for which there is no cure," Tag said. "We've brought you here because we hope you can help us find one."
Ashlyn narrowed her eyes. "Look, I'm not into cryptic crap. Just tell me what the hell you're talking about."
"I can show you," Tag said, pushing away from the door. He suddenly looked eager, excited. "Here, stand back against the wall. Kou?"
Tag moved to stand in the center of the room, directly below the cage. As Ashlyn and Skye watched, Kou lowered the cage so that Tag was trapped inside.
"Okay, this is a little creepy," Ashlyn said, laughing nervously. "What are you guys doing?"
"Apparently Tag thinks it might be better for you to see this before you ask any more questions," Kou said. He walked around the cage and stood beside Skye, his mouth set in a grim line.
Tag folded back the sleeve on his right arm, exposing a silver armband bearing a single green stane. He braced his feet about shoulder-width apart and held out his hands, taking a stance that Ashlyn guessed was meant for spell-casting.
"Stand back," he said, grinning at her. In the flickering artificial light it looked more like a sneer than a smile.
Suddenly a bolt of light split the room vertically, centering right on Tag. He screamed and stumbled to the edge of the cage, falling to his knees as his cries grew shrill.
"Is he okay?" Ashlyn demanded, taking a step forward. Kou reached over and blocked her way with one arm, shaking his head at her and motioning for her to move back again. She complied, giving him a confused look.
Tag screamed and collapsed to the floor, spasms racking his body. The stane in his armband glowed a blinding green, brighter than Skye's eyes, brighter even than Lord Angelo's had been. Tag's skin began to ripple, changing in texture. As Ashlyn looked on in shock, his thick mane of hair began to expand, spreading to engulf his entire head as he twisted and writhed on the stone floor. His clothes strained against expanding muscle, finally tearing at the seams as the pressure proved too much.
"What the hell?" Skye said from beside her. "What the hell is going on?" The bulging muscles beneath Tag's clothes were also covered in a wiry mat of hair. It was dark and coarse, like an animal's.
Tag rolled over and over, banging into one side of the cage and then the other, and Ashlyn could see now that his body wasn't the only thing changing. His mouth, his chin was stretching out into a semblance of a…muzzle?
As she stared, her jaw slack, Tag opened his eyes and looked at her. His eyes, so mellow and dark before, were now the same burning color as the stane that gleamed in his too-tight armband. The animal roared and lunged straight at her, smashing into the bars of the cage with such an unbelievable force that the entire room shuddered around them. Ashlyn started, feeling behind her for the solidity of the wall, and swallowed hard. Now the beast was flinging itself up against the bars, throwing its body mercilessly into the unyielding metal again and again until she could see blood gleaming on its dark fur.
"Stop it!" she yelled, stepping forward. "Tag, stop it! You're hurting yourself!" She put her hand out to reassure him that she wasn't going to hurt him, but all he did was snarl and lunge at her again, jaws snapping.
He was insane. He had no idea who she was.
What she was seeing wasn't plausible Ashlyn recoiled, appalled at the unbelievable horror she was witnessing. Tag was completely unrecognizable now, the fur covering his broad back rippling with muscles that just didn't exist in the human anatomy, his slightly elongated mouth-muzzle curling its lips back in a growl to reveal jagged white teeth.
"Oh gods, oh gods, oh gods," Ashlyn babbled, her feet moving of their own accord away from the terrible beast. She'd seen transformation before- Lord Angelo had become a monster right before her eyes in his final battle, and Drake’s fangs elongated when he was in hunting mode- but there were logical, valid reasons for those. Rare, explainable reasons like science and vampirism.
Never before had Ashlyn seen the magic of a stane do what she was seeing now. Never had she thought it possible.
She turned to look at Skye, wanting some sort of comfort from this awful thing. His face was white as a sheet. Ashlyn clutched numbly for his hand, not even caring that mere minutes before she had sworn never to touch him again. Apparently he felt the same, because his fingers laced through hers, holding so tightly that his knuckles cracked. Ashlyn wished that the pressure could be comforting, but all it did was increase the gravity of the situation. She wished that Skye would swallow his fear, reassure her- pretend that watching this earnest Toryn man shape-shift into a bear was not the scariest thing he'd ever seen.
The Tag-creature focused on the both of them standing there, green eyes fierce. The awful sounds he was making were so loud that Ashlyn could barely hear her own thoughts. As much as she wanted to, as shocked and terrified as she was, she couldn't rip her gaze away from his. Those blazing eyes seemed to tear right through her.
As often as Ashlyn found herself in unbelievable predicaments, this had to be the worst she'd ever encountered. A man she knew- a man she had only just met, to be sure, but still a man she knew- had transformed into a monster right before her eyes. Worse, his animal self seemed to have none of his human alter-ego's thoughts and ideas.
She swallowed hard. "Enough," she said, and her voice sounded pitiful even to her own ears, "I've seen enough."
Kou was leaning against the door, hands braced behind him on the heavy oak. He was staring at his feet, as if he were just as affected by the sight of Tag's transformation as Ashlyn and Skye and didn't even want to watch. At her words, he looked up and nodded. "Go," he said, and moved away from the door, holding it open for her.
Ashlyn brushed past him and ran up the stairs. She wanted to get as far away from that snarling as she could. There were no footsteps behind her, but she couldn't find the courage to look back and see if Skye was following. As she entered her bedroom, Tag's cries faded some, but not entirely, and suddenly it wasn't enough to be upstairs. Ashlyn turned to leave the house- and bumped into Skye.
"Hey," he said, steadying her with his hand on her shoulder. "Calm down. There's a reason why he showed this to us-"
"What-" Ashlyn choked on the word, and swallowed again, trying to ignore how dry the inside of her mouth was. "What possible reason could he have for making me watch something so terrible?" she cried, voice rasping. "He didn't have to make me- gods, he could have just told me-"
"I'm sorry," Kou said from behind Skye. He was standing at the head of the stairs, although she hadn't seen him ascend. "I should have warned you. I think Tag thought it might be better for you to see it now, so you wouldn't be so shocked if you encountered it…later."
Ashlyn took a deep breath and stepped around Skye, ever-conscious of the weight of his hand remaining on her shoulder as he turned with her. "Later?" she repeated. "I don't ever want anyone to use that kind of magic again. You think it's dangerous? Come on, that's the most potent dark magic I've seen in my life, and I'm taking it to the North Triangle at the first opportunity. I'm going to bury that stupid thing so freaking deep in the planet that no one will ever find it again."
"That won't help you," Kou answered. "Do you honestly think that’s the only one?"
She remained still for a long moment, trying to get a solid grip on the panic that was ricocheting around in her mind. "What are you saying?"
Kou's expression was bleak, impossible to draw any hope from. "This stane is not the only one imbued with that kind of magic."
Silence.
"What you're saying," Ashlyn said slowly, careful not to raise her voice, "is that there's another one of those out there. A shape-shifting stane."
"Who has it?" Skye asked, suddenly all business. Ashlyn's tears had taken him out of his element, but tracking a potential enemy was right up his alley. "Just give me a name, the direction they went- anything. I'll find it and destroy it.
"
Kou shook his head. "The man who wields it is too powerful to be challenged by a single soldier."
"Then it's a man," Skye said. "Someone from Toryn?" He frowned, staring at the floor and narrowing his eyes, as if he were making a mental catalogue of attributes to file away for later use.
"Yes. But I cannot you tell you anything more about this man until you have heard the story from the beginning," said Kou. "You must understand how grave our situation has become."
"I understand that this magic could be dangerous if it has fallen into the wrong hands," Skye answered.
He moved away from Ashlyn and leaned against one of the support beams running vertically up the wall. The pose he struck was a familiar one to Ashlyn, deceiving in its feigned nonchalance. She'd seen it more than once during their long, difficult battle with Lord Angelo.
"It's powerful, even for its weakest users, and appears to render the spell-caster incapable of human thought or memory. If someone managed to get their hands on this magic- someone who didn't care who they hurt or what they sacrificed- it could be lethal. But if there's only one other stane with this kind of magic, then we can certainly capture the man who has it and prevent it from ever reaching someone who might misuse its power."
"That's not the half of it," Kou said. He seemed uncomfortable now, taken aback at Skye's casual stance in the midst of this dramatic exposition. Ashlyn figured that was probably Skye's intention. It had certainly worked in the past.
Kou glanced around and finally took a seat on one of the mats scattered across the floor, probably wanting to appear just as indifferent as the blond swordsman. "You're correct in your assumption that the magic removes all humanity from the spell-caster. The creatures created with shift retain animalistic instincts and almost nothing else. No logic, and limited memories. All that’s left is rage…and inescapable bloodlust." He paused and drew in a deep breath. "Perhaps you would prefer to sit down for this, Ashlyn."
She really didn't want to, but figured there was probably no harm in it. She sat, abruptly and ungracefully, not bothering to smooth her kimono over her legs so that her knees didn't show. "All right, I'm sitting. Spill."
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