by T. G. Ayer
“That reminds me . . . do we have anything on Langcourt’s whereabouts?” Allegra said, giving Max an arch look. He’d been too quiet.
Athena shook her head. “No sign of him. He’s disappeared without a trace. I suspect he’s left the country by now.”
Allegra gritted her teeth at the news, a wave of anger and helplessness running over her. Langcourt had slipped from their grasp again. The man had a nasty way of disappearing on her. Still, she knew more about the man now than she ever wanted to know.
Max got to his feet to show Athena out and Allegra dozed on the sofa until he returned. She wasn’t surprised to see he had Les with him.
Allegra was tired, in body and soul. Too tired to even be angry with the woman. Although from the looks of it Max looked angry enough for the both of them.
“Why did you do it?” Max asked, going straight in for the kill.
Les’s spine stiffened. “You don’t understand.”
“What don’t I understand? That you’ve lied to us, that you’d betrayed us and put Allegra in danger?”
Les shifted her gaze to Allegra her expression apologetic for the briefest moment. Then her eyes hardened. “I wish I could have done otherwise, but believe me when I say I had no choice. And I’d do it again.”
Allegra tilted her head and studied Celestra. There was a passion behind her words, a deep sense of purpose even when she sounded conflicted. As if she’d fight to the death for what she protected.
The way a mother would.
The image of a mangled pink teddy bear shimmered in Allegra’s vision and her heart stilled.
“I don’t care what you say, endangering Allegra is not acceptable.” Max had raised his voice, his fury palpable in the room.
“Max?” He glanced over at her, the vein at his temple pulsating.
She didn’t respond to his questioning look. Instead she said to Les, “How long have they been holding your child ransom?”
Max’s jaw dropped and Les began to cry as she sank onto the sofa.
“How did you know?” she whispered through her tears.
“The teddy bears in the vision.”
Les nodded and began to cry again. Then she cleared her throat. “They’ve been keeping him for a year now.
Chapter 46
Two hours later, Max was on the phone with the extraction team. He’d given them Les’s address, having come to the conclusion that since the apartment had been the location of Les’s death in Allegra’s last vision, that was likely where her little boy was being hidden.
Little Carlo Avesta was two years old and had been taken just under a year ago, and held in order to ensure Les’s loyalty. When she’d admitted she hadn’t seen or spoken to her boy in all that time, Allegra’s stomach had tightened.
But she’d pushed away her fears and waited at Les’s side while Max coordinated the rescue mission.
Sitting there in silent horror Allegra had listened as Max relayed the team’s progress, as they penetrated the apartment and took down the single guard.
And as they discovered the body of the little boy in the freezer.
Allegra had sat with her arms around Les and the mother grieved for her son. There were no words that could ease her pain. The fact that the captors had killed the child so long ago was clear enough to Les, who was now a shadow of her former self.
Max sent her to bed after she’d calmed down, giving her a low dose tranquilizer while Allegra waited for him to return. There were things they needed to discuss and despite the tragedy, what she had to say couldn’t wait.
Max shut the door to the inner room and sighed as he walked over to sit beside Allegra. She felt horrible as she shifted to look at him, knowing she wasn’t going to give him any time to de-stress.
“I’ll send her to Mara to recuperate.”
Allegra nodded. “That’s a good idea.”
Max tilted his head and studied Allegra’s face. “Something you want to talk to me about?”
“Am I that transparent?”
He smiled. “Only because I know you so well.”
When Allegra finished her story, bringing Max up to speed on the vision she’d had when she’d touched Langcourt, he sat there for a long moment in total silence.
Then he turned to her and said, “Well . . . that was certainly not what I expected.”
Allegra smiled. “Me either.”
Chapter 47
Her vision had faded to nothing and then within the blink of an eye images began to slide across her mind.
Images of a rather stern-looking man, hooded eyes, high cheekbones yet a little soft in the belly. His aristocratic bearing was softened by his enlarged stomach.
More than his physique, his face arrested Allegra’s attention. She’d seen that face not so long ago in Londinium. And she’d seen him too in a vision of the past.
At the time, she’d chalked it up to an imagined similarity, but now that she stared at the moving images in the vision, Allegra knew there was more to it than a doppelgänger.
She saw him through time, in places and periods that at first didn’t make sense. She’d assumed she was looking at his ancestors, but soon she began to doubt her eyes.
Allegra glared at the man in the vision and as she shifted the image blurred. Then focused on something more familiar.
High Priest of the Order of Hermes. Lord Severus Langcourt.
Allegra watched him now, a memory of Delphi, she watched again as he murdered Cathenna while she felt the very agony of the Pythia’s death.
She’d thought Langcourt’s bloodline must simply contain a strong gene for physical similarity, but the vision, his memories, pointed to something so much more sinister.
Another set of images showed a small group of four men, all positioning themselves around the body of a dead elephant. They posed, standing around the creature, rifles set on on their shoulders, heads held high with pride for their kill.
A thought flitted across her mind, almost as if a memory had filtered through to her. Lord Alderman Langcourt and sons 1912.
Allegra took a shuddering breath. The high priest stood beside the tusk of the elephant, his hand wrapped around the single tusk that remained attached to the poor creature. The other tusk lay on the ground, and another Langcourt stood beside it, one foot set on top of the ivory.
She was caught in the vision, watching image after image fly in front of her, images of Severus Langcourt going back centuries, images or memories of the rest of the family.
Tracking through the memories she focused briefly on one at the time of the French Revolution, images of one other Langcourt had stopped. A member of this—almost immortal—family had likely been killed around that time.
Allegra’s heart thudded so hard in her chest that she was a little afraid she would undo whatever healing had taken place since she’d been shot.
She raised a hand and traced the wound, now bare of bandages. Who had it been who’d tried to kill her? Could it have been Langcourt himself?
It was now clear the Langcourts and the Pythian line went back all the way to Delphi before the turn of the century.
But who were these men, this entire family who seemed to possess the gift of immortality? And why did they systematically murder the Pythias through the years.
While they had lived and prospered, the Pythias had been assassinated one after the other.
Langcourt’s memories showed so much death among the Pythian line that Allegra was surprised she’d even come to be born at all. This family seemed to have been on an extermination bent that had taken on a resonance of mass murder.
She couldn’t believe it; couldn’t understand the depth of hatred they must have to have killed so many of her maternal line over two millennia.
Epilogue
Max stared at the paperwork spread all across Allegra’s bed. He’d known Aurelia had left a trunk for the next Pythia but he’d never been made aware of how important it was.
“Do you think this is why
Aurelia left the public eye? To keep herself safe here?” Allegra asked softly as she studied a drawing made by a Pythia in the tenth century. The Oracle had used charcoals and colored pollen to create a self-portrait, an act some would say was the height of vanity.
The notes she made were clear enough. She’d wanted her descendants to know what she looked like because she knew that seeing something with one’s own eyes cemented that object in a person’s consciousness.
“She knew what she was talking about,” said Allegra as she stared at the drawing.
“Who is she?”
“Pythia Mirella O’Leary, 1209 to 1247.”
“She was so young,” Max murmured as he took the drawing.
Allegra sighed. “They killed so many of us,” she whispered. A long moment passed in which Max studied the portrait and read the accompanying journal.
“She describes being followed, stalked.”
Nodding, Allegra said, “The day before she died she wrote that she was certain something was wrong. She’d been to a social event and she’d felt ill afterward. She wrote that if anything should happen to her it would mean she’d been murdered.”
Max shook his head. “This is unbelievable. That a family could decimate an entire lineage. And so systematically.”
Allegra frowned, glaring at Max. “Does it not bother you that the current theory is these men are immortal?”
She pointed at the stack of papers, her voice breaking when it went a little too high.
Max smiled. “I know what it sounds like. But there must be some explanation. And if there isn’t, then perhaps these men are demigods like Athena Nostrus. If gods are immortal then it stands to reason their progeny would be too.”
“You’re suddenly very accepting of the existence of the gods.”
“I never said I wasn’t.” Max smiled. “But even if I was, Pienius and Xales are two very good reasons to adjust my perspective.”
“So demigods?” Allegra got to her feet and began to pace. She knew she’d be better off sitting and resting but she felt restless as if she wanted to run out of the room and race across the city, to disappear into the jungle and run until her body gave out.
Max grunted. “Perhaps.” After a moment of silence, he said, “Have you ever heard of the Elixir of Immortality?”
Allegra’s mouth widened into a grin, and she was about to say it was a myth, and couldn’t possibly have any truth to it, but then she closed her mouth.
“Tell me more,” was all she said. Who was she to question anything any longer? Her reality had changed when her first vision had hit her. And ever since then it had been changing constantly.
“The Ancient Greeks and the people of Kemet talked about the existence of magical waters that possessed not only healing properties but the ability to bring the dead back to life as well as to render the user immortal. Only a violent death could kill them. But they would need access to these waters as the power wasn’t permanent.”
“What about the reanimated people and the diseased? Do their symptoms return eventually too,” Allegra asked smiling.
Max pursed his lips as he shook his head. “According to the legend, the waters are healing, so they help the body regenerate what has been diseased, so it healed leprosy and brought the dead back to life. But immortality was a different spectrum. For those who want to live forever they must partake of the waters every few hundred years. There also were tales of the elixir being carried within the blood of a specific line of people, but that was never corroborated.”
“So where exactly was this Elixir to be found? Was it something an alchemist mixed up, or is it waters of the earth” Allegra asked, then scrunched up her face. “Apart from the elixir that runs in some people’s veins, that is.”
“It was rumored to have come from the source of the River Kemet somewhere in the middle of Lower Kemet.”
Allegra sighed. “Unless we go looking for it ourselves, we’re unlikely to find it. And besides, what we need to find out is what these men are doing to maintain their longevity. They would be the key, I think. Find out what’s keeping them alive and cut off their access to that source.”
Max’s head shot up and as Allegra stared at the shocked look on his face, the image of a little boy’s face shimmer before her, superimposed on Max.
The little boy Langcourt had sacrificed while Allegra had watched, memories Max knew haunted her dreams for long nights afterward.
“Could the child sacrifices have had something to do with Langcourt’s desire for extended longevity?”
Allegra nodded. “He was adamant about drinking the blood while it was still warm. In fact, now that I think about it, he was quite agitated toward the end. You think he was using the Cult to help gather the children and then drink their blood fresh from the sacrifice?”
Max’s lip curled in a snarl. “When I get my hands on that son of a bitch-”
“You won’t be able to do anything to him.”
Max huffed and got to his feet. He went to the window and stared out at the view. “This is way too much stress for you. You’re supposed to be here to recuperate.”
Allegra sighed. “I wish I could recuperate, but there is something else you need to know.”
Max’s heart jittered as he waited.
She didn’t speak. She merely handed him a piece of paper with a name printed on it.
Allegra Jocasta Damaskos.
Which was all fine until he saw the birth date.
A hundred years in the future.
Thank you for reading. The DARK SIGHT Series continues with SHADOW SIGHT.
Dark Sight
Cursed Sight
Shadow Sight
Dark Prophecy
Cursed Prophecy
Shadow Prophecy
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Skin Deep - A SkinWalker Novel #1 Sample Chapters
Skin Deep Ch1
There was a razor-fine line between protector and vigilante, and right now I knew I was skating it blind.
Funny thing was, I didn’t much care.
Tangled nerves sparked liquid fire within my veins. Muscles tightened, knees locked in a solid crouch. The fevered rush was a familiar beast. Moisture filmed my palms, heat simmered in the whorls of my ears. On occasion, even my heart missed a beat or two. Slick palms and a dubious pulse were understandable. Hot ears? Not so much. Grandma Ivy had a theory — hot ears meant somewhere, someone spoke your name.
Not in a good way either.
If Grams was right — something I did not doubt — and my ears were some sort of psychic thought-detector; then I'd bet my twisted Panther DNA it meant some mean-assed Wraith was groaning for my head on a bloody spike. A fair number of those Shades lost in the Ether would have me to thank for their current address. But, as yet, none had dropped by to voice their dissatisfaction.
The rooftop view of Chicago's night sky was glorious. Faint strains of a string quartet wafted from the restaurant below. My mark had not yet arrived. I supported the steel crossbow with strong, steady hands. While its weight was solid, it was also a comfort. So strange when its purpose was to end a life. I crouched on the edge of the rooftop, a mere shadow, invisible in my dark turtleneck and black leather pants. The high-necked sweater was camouflage, hiding the stark truth beneath.