“Bingo.”
“Guys,” Kirin began, “if the Ancient Ra came here once, they could come here again. Right?”
“I think it’s pretty obvious now; the Ancients didn’t want any more of the Ra coming here and partaking of their ‘Tree of Knowledge’.” Rowan agreed.
“Oh, this is getting ugly.” Gage buried his face into his hands. “People as powerful as the ancient Masters were running from someone?”
“Sure. Then you find a nice quiet hideout and you setup a perimeter of booby-traps to keep out anyone who might wander in nosin’ around. Done that myself a time or two.”
“Over two-hundred thousand years ago,” Gage mused. “That’s a long time to be on the lam only to have whoever you’re running from suddenly show up.”
“I don’t understand why Brenda would be trying to keep all of this a secret?” Kirin asked.
“You don’t know Brenda.” Rowan got up from his stool. “That Sheila’s got secrets God doesn’t even remember.” He set his empty dishes on the creator and watched them vanish.
“Does she know were the tomb is?” Gage asked.
“Oh, she knows. Damn straight she knows. But she’s not going to give away those secrets to the likes of us.”
“Why doesn’t she just go there?”
“Good question. Maybe she can’t get in—at least not without a key. Just like I can’t come inside the sanctuary without one.” Rowan leaned back against the kitchen’s countertop.
“So not only do we not know where this place is, we don’t even have a key to get in to it.” Kirin frowned.
“So, she knows where it is. So how do we find it?” Gage mused.
“Without getting blown into pieces in the process,” Kirin added.
“I have a hunch, gentlemen, that Brenda’s not the only one who knows about these outsiders or the tomb. Maybe we need to ask them.”
“Who would know?” Kirin asked.
“The tomb of the Ancients is supposedly where the Masters buried their dead. Only they never really died. They just left. There’s one Master left.”
Gage and Kirin looked at each other. “Rion.”
54
S now fell heavily outside the a-framed log home on the shore of an almost frozen lake high in the Cascades. A huge fire burned fitfully in the three-story-tall river rock hearth as Rion moved his attention between the fire, the snow falling outside, and a new paperback novel that was just beginning to get good.
He felt her presence outside. She entered through the front door, kicking the snow off her boots and then hung her coat on a peg in the foyer of the great room.
“You know you could just teleport into the house instead of outside?” Rion closed the book, setting it on the side table next to him. Francesca was dressed for the winter weather in a snug white turtleneck and black dressy warm up pants. It was about as casual as Francesca ever dressed.
“I would never be so rude.” She smiled moving closer to the fire. “Besides, I love the snow.” She extended her feelings throughout the home. “Where is Sevrin?”
“Designing.”
“The new vessel, I presume?”
“You know Sev. He likes to insert himself into anything new. I haven’t seen him this excited since I brought Serena here for the first time. He’s already declared it the first Sixth Era vessel.”
“And how is your Serena?”
“She’s not mine. I don’t own her.”
“That is debatable.”
“Are we back to discussing my love life again?”
“You are, how do you say, stringing her along? You canceled her coronation. Again.”
“I didn’t cancel it. We postponed it.”
“You, postponed it.” She corrected.
“I don’t have time for a relationship right now. There’s too much happening and I can’t stay focused whenever she’s around.”
“You have more time than any of us, Mr. I Am Immortal.”
“Can we talk about something else?”
“Of course.” She moved elegantly to another chair in the large furniture grouping of the great room and sat down. “Kira has disappeared. Again.”
“Great.” Rion frowned. “That’s not good news.”
“Tanner Levi is also now missing.”
“What?! He was supposed to be looking out for her. How could he be missing? He’s—”
“—no longer in the continuum.”
“He wasn’t wearing his key?”
“You do not, always. Nor Kent, his cousin. Nor does your wife, for that matter.”
“She’s not my wife. She’s a partner. We’re not married.”
“She is still Human. Wife.” Francesca reasserted.
“Whatever.” Rion wasn’t going to get into an argument with a lawyer.
“There is more. Jerrod sensed that Amethyst was in the area the day both Kira and Tanner disappeared.”
“Now Amy’s involved? Ahh,” he groaned. “These Kir kids are going to be the undoing of us all.”
“Others have made similar observations—about you.”
Rion glared at her. At just over a hundred he wasn’t exactly a kid, but he wasn’t anywhere near as old as the Dark Clan or even Francesca.
“We are watching all of the Kir sites for any activity.” Francesca lifted herself elegantly and moved to the fireplace to feel its warmth again.
“They probably know that. I don’t think they’ll put Kira anywhere near any of the sanctuary sites.”
“Agreed. You look confused,” Francesca observed.
“Why is Tanner missing? What would Any want with him?”
Rion stood up from his chair. He poured himself some blue from Sevrin’s bar and then stood looking out the great windows at the falling snow and the frozen lake beyond the deck. “Something here doesn’t smell right.” Rion sipped the blue from his glass.
“Define ‘smell right’.” She approached the window to stand next to him.
“Events are accelerating somehow. First the prophecies are off course and now the last waypoint executes and completes way ahead of schedule.”
“Perhaps the Fates do not approve of your timetables?”
“It’s not wise to mess with the Endymion algorithms, Francesca. It’s dangerous. The Fates know better.”
“How so?”
“Even small changes can have devastating repercussions.”
“Such as?”
“You don’t want to know.”
55
T anner and Kira both felt people coming up the mountain road long before they saw them. Each watched through the windows of the rustic home as six people exited an off-road Mercedes SUV and began making their way toward the large log cabin. Not one of the people now walking toward the cabin were anyone Kira or Tanner felt like meeting. Especially the lavender-eyed blonde.
They stood in the cabin’s main room as the six others entered. Four were bigger men while the fifth man was less burly, but he seemed to exude an air of confidence and authority. All of them were wearing black mock turtlenecks with cropped sleeves and a very thin red outset seam that ran down their left sleeves. Each wore an open side arm that Tanner was pretty sure didn’t shoot bullets. The shirt collar of the one man standing next to Amethyst had four small silver bars along the left side while the others only had one or two. The blonde’s collar had no buttons. The tiny but visible bars looked very much like insignia to Kira.
“Here you are, Captain.” Amethyst smiled looking at Kira and Tanner now and speaking in the tongue of the Ra. “Your cargo, safe and sound. Apparently they’re also quite attracted.” She added.
“Excellent. Amy, you have done a masterful job.” The man smiled approvingly. He also spoke in the tongue of the Ra, but his dialect was odd. Kira had never heard it before. Tanner had only recently learned the ancient language himself.
The four other men fanned out into the home as if checking it for other people.
“Kira, Tanner,” Amethyst began now in
English, “I’d like for you to meet our host, Captain Zaer.”
“A captain?” Kira asked. “What are you the captain of, exactly?”
Zaer smiled plastically, but didn’t answer.
“There’s no one else in the home, Captain.” One of the big men returned to the main room, re-attaching a device to his belt that reminded Kira of a larger smartphone.
The captain gave him a nod and then dismissed all of them to their posts.
“To answer your question, Kira,” Zaer began in English, “I am captain of a vessel of the Ra Imperium.”
“Oh?” Kira walked elegantly over to a chair and sat down while continuing the conversation. She wasn’t normally so haughty, but she knew how most of her own people behaved. She poured it on thickly. “I was unaware the Ra had an imperial government.”
Captain Zaer raised his eyebrow. The adolescent young woman was certainly pushing her luck in treating him with such insolence. Still, she moved like royalty. He’d been told she was part of a very powerful family. He didn’t exactly know what that meant at the moment, but it would be better to err on the side of caution. Besides, he was much more interested in the psionic whelp than he was in the female empath right now.
“To be Ra is to owe one’s allegiance to the Imperium that bore all of us, Kira.”
“The Universe bore all of us, Captain.” She corrected politely.
“Indeed.” He wasn’t going to get into an argument over semantics with a separatist who didn’t even know her place.
Zaer turned his attention to the teen young man. He was a comely youth to be sure, but he hardly looked like anyone that might be even remotely dangerous. Still, Amethyst had warned him, without her protection, none of them would stand for a moment against the youth.
Although the ancient psionic warriors were long dead, their ageless legends lived on, and still raised an almost genetic fear within the culture of the Ra. He wasn’t going to tempt fate. He was playing with fire and he knew it.
“Has your stay been comfortable, Tanner Levi?” Captain Zaer asked.
Tanner nodded but said nothing.
“Good. We have another guest who will be arriving soon. In three days this world’s moon will be safely out of the way; then all of us will be taking a short little journey.”
“What kind of journey?” Kira asked.
“A little tour, actually. I want to introduce you—get you reacquainted with—your long lost family.”
56
K ira buried herself tightly into Tanner’s arms. There was real fear within each of them, but having their emotions entwined helped to dispel the uneasiness each felt.
“How are we going to warn the Sentinels?” Tanner asked her empathically.
“I don’t know that we’ll be able to. Besides, there’s a really good chance they already know about these outsiders.”
“Where did they come from?”
“I don’t know, Tanner. It’s as if they think the Ra here are some kind of splinter colony.”
“Captain Zaer sure doesn’t like us. It feels like he’s afraid of us.”
“Zaer is afraid of you, Tanner. No me. But he seems to know about the Kir. As long as he knows I’m Kir, I’ll probably be safe. It’s you I’m worried about.”
“He kept giving me those creepy looks.”
“It’s strange. He’s just as afraid of Amethyst.”
“We’re both newbloods.”
“I think that’s what he’s actually afraid of. The newbloods are powerful, Tanner. Maybe you don’t know your own abilities yet. I’ve watched Savanna and Gage in action. They can be a little scary.”
“Who are Savannah and Gage?”
“Reborn. Like you. They’re also part of the Kir.”
“Honestly, Kira, until I met you I’d never even heard of these Kir. All I knew was that I had a cousin who was a god. I’ve never even met him. They say he’s really powerful.”
“He is really powerful, and so is his wife. I wish she were here right now. This whole thing would be over and done with if Lisa knew where we were right now.”
“So, you know them?”
“I’ve met them. I wouldn’t say I actually know them.”
Tanner pulled her close and smiled his feelings within her. “I’m glad I met you.”
“I’m glad I met you too.”
He wrapped his feelings into hers.
“You always feel really warm to me,” she breathed.
“That’s how you always feel to me.”
It didn’t take long before both of them were wrapped in a sweet makeout that steamed warmer as the minutes passed.
“I can’t believe how you make me feel inside,” Kira kissed.
“I like being inside you, Kira; in more ways that just my feelings.” She felt Tanner smile while sliding his feelings alluringly through hers as the lengthy-long hard rise beneath his briefs moved lightly, teasingly over the front of her underwear.
“Ohhh.” She breathed, feeling her emotions catch fire. “Tanner, I don’t know how you do this to me.” She complained, slipping off her panties.
“Do what?” He slid his briefs down around his thighs.
“Make me want you—” Kira drew in a soft rippling breath as she felt Tanner sink deeply between her thighs “—so desperately.”
“Kira,” Tanner breathed her name again and again as both kissed and moved intimately with each other beneath the sheets of their dimly starlit room.
* * * * *
“Let me go! You don’t know who the hell you’re messing with!” The early twenty-something could have passed for a young James Dean look-alike, complete with light blue jeans, white t-shirt, a black leather jacket slung over his shoulder and shades. He was evidently traveling light with just a black leather backpack.
“Easy there, buck-o; we just want to talk,” Dark calmed. But the newblood was a lot stronger than he looked and easily pulled out of the admiral’s demigod grip.
“I’m not talking to a fucking half-breed pinhead.”
“That’s a new one,” the taller more muscular Kent looked at Dark. “Have you ever been called a pinhead before?”
“It’s been a while,” Dark didn’t take his eyes off the kid.
The young man suddenly heard a quick sound of rushing air and noticed that his surroundings had quickly changed from an airport restroom into something that looked a lot like a smoothly stone walled modern interrogation room. He looked around with wide eyes. “WHAT the fuck! Where the hell am I?!”
“Jericho,” Kent deadpanned.
“Y—You’re joking. You’re fucking joking?!”
“Do I look like I’m joking?” Kent glared.
Suddenly the muscular youth lunged, telekinetically blasting himself at Kent leaving large and small fissures in the smooth stone wall and floor behind him and sailing at Kent in an instant of time. It was too fast for even Dark to see all of. But the next thing Dark did see was the young man sailing back through the air as if stunned and striking the wall he’d just bolted away from with a sickening, bone-cracking thud that painted the now cracked blonde stone in small splotchy streaks of blood as the young man slipped painfully to the floor.
“Two out of three?” Kent asked, watching the kid recover.
The young man sat prone on the floor with more than a couple of broken bones and a cracked skull. Still a little dazed he lifted the arm that wasn’t broken with his palm outstretched in surrender.
“Ow—god.” He complained. Slowly, as his body quickly healed, he pulled himself up off the floor, then he with his newly bloodied t-shirt crawled up into a nearby chair.
“Feel like talking now?” Dark asked.
“Fine. Just keep your fucking Frankenstein away from me.” He cranked his broken neck back into place with an ugly popping sound.
“You were flying into Almaty, Kazakhstan, why?” Dark questioned.
“That’s my business.”
Kent telekinetically took hold of front of his t-shirt l
ifting him off the chair sending some very unpleasant new pain into his still healing back.
“OAHHH! JESUS! ALRIGHT!” he screamed.
Kent dropped him back onto his chair with an agonizing thud.
“What,” Dark began slowly again, “were you going to be doing in Almaty?”
“I’m meeting Amy, alright?!”
“Amy?” Dark continued, his gaze narrowing. “What for?”
“It’s our honeymoon,” the kid glared.
Kent drew back, his fist suddenly igniting with white hot plasmatic fire.”
The young man quickly scrambled from his chair back to the blood-stained wall holding up his hands. He’d seen Kent’s restaurant video more than a few times. “NO! NO—NO! Jesus! Off-world! Off-world! Okay!? We’re heading off-world!!”
“Off world?” Dark exchanged glances with Kent.
The hot plasma around Kent’s fist dissipated out of existence leaving the room not quite so brightly lit.
“Did she happen to mention where off world?”
“Orion. That’s all I know. Swear to God!” His eyes were wide with fear looking at Kent.
Dark quickly un-holstered his weapon, targeted the youth, and discharged a hefty blast into him, stunning the newblood god but good, and slumping him onto the floor.
“Don’t go anywhere,” Dark told the now very unconscious youth while re-holstering the weapon.
“Off world? I guess that confirms our suspicions then,” Kent offered. “The Seven did recover some vessels from the Amazon.”
“I was pretty sure they had as well. The only question is, why head for Orion?”
“Beat me?”
“I have a sinking feeling about this, Kent. We need to inform Interra. We have a problem—a really big problem.”
57
R ion and Serena waited with Dark, Kent and Francesca in the snow-covered a-framed lodge as the others began appearing, one by one in the great room. Sevrin, along with Daniel, Cheyenne, Adam, Perry, and Thomas readied quick refreshments in the adjacent open kitchen and began offering them to each of the gods as they appeared. Kari moved close to Dark. Minutes later Carson and Julia arrived. Beau, Ian and Aramis appeared at once. As usual the last to arrive was the reclusive Jerrod. Lisa was conspicuously absent. Considering the rumors that were now circulating about who Lisa really was, no one really wanted to ask Kent if the ‘enchantress’ would be joining them or not.
Paradisus (Awakened Book 6) Page 21