by T. G. Ayer
Maya's heart thudded and she glanced at Babaji Mohandas’s, hatred simmering within her.
"Maya." Nik's voice was a comfort and she grabbed hold of it as if it was a life raft.
Taking a deep breath, she said, "I'm okay. I'm fine." And then she wondered who she was trying to convince.
She reached for the hem of her blood-soaked coat, and tore the silk lining from it. She handed the piece of fabric to Nik who gave her an enquiring glance.
"I need to know where this is. There are people there who are in danger." Again she glared venomously at the old priest.
Nik seemed to understand as he folded the fabric into his pocket. "I'll take care of them. He can't do anything to them now."
"How do you know his guards there don't have the same orders?" Maya stiffened in horror. "Oh God. Mom and Joss. He-"
"Maya, it's okay. Your mom was onto them. She called it in from Raro, which is what got everyone suspicious.
"And Dad?" she asked. She'd trusted he was fine. Hadn't dared to worry about him because she'd promised herself he was okay.
"Suran brought him straight home and reported your abduction. But Maya, listen to me okay?" Nik shook her lightly. "He's in a coma. The blow to his head was pretty hard."
"What?" panic filled Maya, blurring her thoughts.
Tears filled her eyes and she brushed them away with shaking fingers, concentrating hard as Nik spoke.
"The doctors have said he'll be fine. He has some swelling on the brain so they'd induced a coma until it subsides. It's just precautionary, okay. He's going to be fine."
Maya forced herself to breathe slowly as she watched Mohandas over Nik's shoulder.
Her fight with him was over, but it also wasn’t.
There was still Claudia to deal with.
Her actions had had consequences beyond her expectations. Maya swallowed a sob at the thought of her dad almost dying because of Claudia’s ill-spent grief and anger.
And as much as Maya wished she could just sweep it under the rug, she owed it to her family to make this right.
Chapter 48
The machines in the hospital room beeped and complained.
Nobody said a word, the silence thick and pained in the aftermath of Maya’s revelation.
Leela blinked away tears. “I want to say it’s not possible . . . but Claudia was always ruled by her emotions.”
“What are we going to do?” asked Maya, her fingers tracing the back of her dad’s hand.
He’d opened his eyes this morning, allowing everyone to heave a sigh of relief. Despite the doctors assuring them all that the coma was nothing to be concerned with, they’d been concerned until he came to.
Maya had waited to tell everyone the truth together. Both Joss and Nik stood at the foot of the bed, as horrified as Leela.
Dev sighed slowly, wincing a little as he shifted against his pillow. “What do you want to do, Maya?”
Maya slumped forward. “A part of me wants to throw the book at her.”
“But?”
“But another part of me understands why she went off the rails.”
“Everything one does has consequences, Maya. Are you saying you want to keep this a secret from KALIMA? That you want to shield Claudia from the punishment she deserves?”
Maya opened her mouth to respond but another voice said the words she’d intended on speaking. “Nobody can shield me from the punishment I deserve.”
The family turned to face Claudia.
She sat in her wheelchair, her back to the doorway, her face lined with worry, eyes swollen. There were dark smudges beneath her eyes and Maya could see it had all taken its toll on her.
Nobody said a word as Claudia rolled the wheelchair forward. “Every action has its consequences and how we deal with it is what’s most important. I dealt with my problems in the worst way possible. Vengeance and anger are the worst ways to heal.”
She stopped in front of the bed and reached for Dev’s hand. But before she could touch him she dropped her hand to her lap. As if she wasn’t sure she deserved to touch him.
“I’m so very sorry. This is all my fault.” She took a deep breath, then exhaled, the sound cutting into the dense blanket of silence. “I will take responsibility. I’m going to speak to the board now. Tell them everything. I owe it to you all. Especially to Maya.”
She glanced up at Maya, her eyes glistening.
Maya opened her mouth to tell Claude she didn’t blame her, but Dev cut her off.
What is it with people cutting me off today?
“No.”
“No?” Leela and Claudia asked in unison.
Leela’s eyes were filled with pain, but Maya couldn’t be sure what the nature of that pain was. Not yet.
“No,” Dev said, clearing the huskiness from his voice. “You won’t tell the board anything. This is a family problem and we will keep it within our family.”
Leela began to cry. And from the shaking of Claude’s shoulders, she too could no longer hold in her emotion.
Only Joss and Nik stood together, both expressions hard. She’d expected them to be angrier on their behalf. Which was nothing less than normal. But they had to understand the three friends went back decades.
They had their own past, their own secrets. And now they added one more to the cache.
Maya was still filled with anger, resentment, disappointment. She wasn’t as forgiving as her parents, but she did know they were right. What good would come of turning Claudia in? It wouldn’t help her heal, but it would give her forgiveness.
Things would never be the same again.
With a soft sigh, Maya reached for her aunt’s hand, holding tightly onto it.
Nothing was ever the same when a person breaks your heart. But life offered new paths all the time. New ways to build the future you want.
When Maya glanced up at Nik, she blinked back more tears. He was watching her, tenderness and understanding in his eyes.
She felt a brush of air against her cheek, as if he’d placed a kiss on her cheek. Her imagination?
With a demigod boo, who could say?
~ TO BE CONTINUED ~
Thank you for reading. The Hand of Kali Series continues with Spirit & Soul.
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FURY & VIRTUE
A HAND OF KALI NOVEL BOOK 4
Copyright © 2016 by T.G. Ayer
All rights reserved.
Cover art by T.G. Ayer
Cover art © T.G. Ayer. All rights reserved.
Edited by J.C. Hart
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This is a work of fiction. Names, places, businesses, characters and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, actual events or locales is purely coincidental.
Hand of Kali 5 - Spirit & Soul
Chapter 1
Forgiveness was far harder than Maya had ever expected it to be.
Maya took a slow breath through the stinging at her mouth, then ran her tongue over the skin of her lower lip to remove the beads of blood welling up along the cut.
Not that she was bothered at all by the injury. Wounds obtained during practice sessions were par for the course and normally she’d take them as a badge of honor. But today, both her busted lip—and the steady throbbing in her knee—were inflicted only as a result of her own lack of concentration.
Now Maya sidestepped the pointy end of her sparring part
ner’s madu, allowing her fire to simmer against her skin and flow along her hand to form a warm armor of shimmering flame.
She felt a ripple of triumph as the deadly end of the weapon skimmed her protective barrier from her outer elbow to her wrist, its cool point deflected as though a magnetic field existed around her arm.
Then, stark white pain exploded at the base of Maya’s skull, the shock of the blow eliciting a raw gasp and instantly rendering her protective field null and void.
And, unfortunately for Maya, her armor of flame flickered out too soon. Her opponent’s blade had failed to penetrate the barrier along most of the length of her arm, but her distraction canceled the protection before she was safe from the full arc of the strike.
The sharp blade slid along the top of her wrist, slicing her skin open as it went, leaving her with a cut all the way to the knuckle of her middle finger. Maya hissed, more annoyed with being distracted than at the injury to her hand—or the throbbing from the blow to her head.
She shucked her hand out then just as blood rose to fill the thin cut, she slapped her palm onto the wound. Best to hide the extent of her injury as quick as possible.
“Where’s your head at, Maya?” her sparring partner asked in a voice rough with impatience. Her opponent’s tone was also filled with concern and a fair amount of regret. Still, she didn’t mention Maya’s wound either.
Pushing back the blindfold from her eyes, Maya rested the strip of dark fabric on the top of her damp hair. She blinked as the bright lights from the fluorescents above seared her retinas, though even as her vision adjusted, her palm hand remained fixed to her wrist as she sent steady pulses of healing heat into the damaged skin.
Sabala still sat near the door, a gleaming obsidian fur-covered, four-eyed hellhound guard, not even blinking when her blood was spilled. The beast was a gift from Lord Yama, the god of the underworld, and Maya had found she wasn’t able to go many places without him trotting at her heel.
Now, Maya shook her head in reply to her opponent’s question. Though Maya’s admission sat ready and waiting at the tip of her tongue--her natural instinct toward honesty threatening to reveal the issues occupying her mind--she bit her tongue. The subject of her own worries would only create more heartache for the woman she sparred with.
Maya forced her lips to curve into a smile and prayed her expression didn’t look as fake as it felt. “Not sure. Maybe I’m tired.” Her sweat-soaked gym shorts and racerback crop top stuck to her like a second skin, her arms, abs and thighs gleamed and sodden locks of hair were escaping her ponytail. The floor-to-ceiling mirror on the far wall confirmed her sparring partner looked no better.
Releasing her now-healed wrist, Maya rolled her shoulders and clapped her hands, the sharp sound filling the silent room, absorbed quickly by the wall-to-wall mats. Curling her fingers in a ‘gimme’ motion, Maya grinned and said, “Hit me with it.” The cut had healed as swiftly as she’d expected and only a narrow smudge of blood remained to indicate anything had happened at all.
“I know when you’re lying, Maya. Comes with the territory.”
Maya pursed her lips and half-rolled her eyes. “Yeah, Mom. I know. No point in reminding me,” she muttered, supremely glad Leela Rao couldn’t really read her mind.
Hang on, Maya thought. Do avatars of powerful earth goddesses have mind-reading powers?
Maya thrust the thought away. Thinking along those lines was only tempting fate. A mind-reading mother was the last thing she needed.
Leela smiled gently though her gaze flicked briefly toward Maya’s wrist--and the telltale smudge. “You’re usually focused, honey. Perhaps a visit to the Meditation Centre would help? Refresh your clarity-of-mind techniques?” she suggested as she swirled the curved horn of her madu in her right hand. Her left fist was empty, fingers tightly clenched and ready. White wrappings protected her knuckles, its stark purity marred by flecks of Maya’s blood.
Her mom had been her substitute sparring-partner whenever Maya’s sexy demigod boyfriend was busy with stuff the son-of-the-god-of-the-underworld had to do.
She and her mom had been practicing for nearly forty minutes now, and Maya was all too aware that she needed to focus on using her fire as a weapon rather than as a reactionary defense mechanism.
So many new abilities had come to the fore, more so because she’d begun to learn how to manipulate her fire with more skill. Had it not been for her distracted thoughts, Maya would have had real fun with her fiery staffs and batons.
She shook her head. “I’m fine, Mom. But thanks for the reminder. Can we go again?” she asked, her expression neutral now as she tried to clear her mind.
Leela’s eyes narrowed for a moment but then she relaxed. She’d begun to nod in agreement but was interrupted by a voice on the intercom which filled the small room. “Leela Rao, you’re needed in WTP3 for a short tech-spec revision briefing.”
Leela sighed and shook her head, staring up at the little square box as though she wanted to aim an arrow at it and let loose. “Okay, I’m going to head up to see what these guys need. You keep warming up and I’ll be back in a bit,” she said as she stalked toward the door.
“Mom?” Maya called, her tone dry as she lifted an eyebrow.
Leela paused on the threshold to look over her shoulder at her daughter, a question in her eyes.
Maya pointed at her mom’s sweat-drenched chest, abs and arms, all exposed by her sodden gym-clothes. “You may want to cover up. Wouldn’t want the boys and girls in Weapons Tech to get distracted with all that gleaming cleavage,” she said with a smirk.
Leela’s eyes narrowed as she shook her head, her expression one of forced patience. Still, she strode over to the bench where she and Maya had left their sweatshirts, then drew it over her head without a word.
As she left, Maya heard her muttering, “Thought it was my job to tell my kid to put on more clothes.”
Maya chuckled, enjoying the irony. Even Sabala chuffed as though laughing at Leela’s expense. Still, her mom had also been distracted, and Maya suspected she knew exactly why—the very same reason her own mind wasn’t on track.
Aunt Claudia.
A little more than a month had passed since they’d returned from the mission to India where they’d discovered who had betrayed Maya. Claudia’s decisions, born out of anger and self-pity, had ramifications she’d never expected.
The woman who’d been Leela’s best friend, who’d been Maya’s confidante and surrogate aunt through her entire life, had sold Maya out for revenge, and to regain the ability to walk.
Maya had spent weeks wracked with guilt at Claudia’s paralysis after their mission to Prague, but she’d come to terms with the fact that it hadn’t been her fault things had gone wrong. Back then, even Claudia hadn’t blamed Maya. But they had eventually discovered the truth.
Claude’s injury had fed her self-pity, which had in turn resulted in her blaming Maya. And fueled by her anger, Claudia had made a deal with the devil.
Not literally, but close enough.
A deal resulting in Maya’s dad in a coma, Maya injured and her powers almost taken from her, and with an admission by Claudia capable of ripping the family apart.
But they’d kept that secret from the agency. They’d promised to work through things with Claudia. She was family after all. And Maya had tried to keep her word. She’d watched her parents work things through with her aunt, but she’d also sensed the tensions still simmering between the trio of friends.
Was their friendship truly capable of withstanding such a betrayal? Only time would tell.
Though she’d seen Claudia’s argument with the priest, her demands for Maya not be injured and even her insistence that the deal was over, Maya still struggled with forgiveness. Perhaps she wasn’t as good a person as she’d believed herself to be. But, the truth of it was simple enough.
Maya needed more time.
Chapter 2
Maya’s mom had failed to return which meant the briefing
had been more than a quick requirement of her opinion. It wasn’t at all unusual and Maya would have continued with her practicing on her own--or called in one of the other agents to throw deadly weapons at her--but she too received a page over the intercom.
The voice on the comms set her on edge as it directed her to Medical Testing immediately. But, despite her irritation at having to hurry over to the testing lab at such short notice, she didn’t reveal her mood to the doctors.
Sabala had kept her company though, the clacking of his nails on the tiles as he trotted at her side managed to offer her some comfort as she made her way through the warren of stark white-painted, white-tiled hallways and up three floors to Medical Research.
Today there were two doctors in attendance, the flame-haired head of the medical unit, Dr. Pheadra Woden, who remained behind the glass of a screened-off cubicle staring down at a collection of monitors, and a thin grey-haired man named Harish whose gentle, grandfatherly demeanor had long since proven misleading.
Maya had found the man terse whenever he spoke to her, either giving cold instructions or sharp remonstrations if she did something not to his liking. They called these sessions ‘Stress Testing and Neural Analysis,’ though Maya was beginning to feel more like a specimen in a lab than an agent who needed to be at peak physical condition for ultimate performance in the field.
Now, she removed her sweatshirt as she sank onto the small cot near the door, while Sabala settled on his haunches halfway between Maya and the small cubicle at the other end of the room. He always sat in the same position, as though ready to move in case any of the doctors proved a threat. Thankfully, he never revealed himself other than when in the presence of her family who were already well acquainted with the hellhound.