by Mikayla Lane
“I’m here, I’m here! I know you missed me!” an eager voice said from the hallway.
“Oh shut up! I don’t know how you can stand yourself,” came the gruff reply.
The Dranovians groaned while Chris looked accusingly at his father and mouthed, “What the fuck?”
Grai grinned and ignored the horror evident on the faces of his three sons.
“Ranger! Dog’ee! Thank you for coming,” Grai greeted the two Sibiox as they came into the room. “I need you to start searching the house for anything that may belong to Quinn or the dark prime and any tunnels, passages, or escape routes we may have missed.”
“I’ll start upstairs,” Ranger said as he started to stalk from the room, his tail flicking sharply in the air. “Keep chatty catty away from me.”
Dog’ee’s bright green eyes filled with huge tears before the cat shook itself and beamed up at Grai.
“Where you want me to search?” the eager cat asked as it bounced, unable to sit still.
Grai smiled patiently down at the cat and kneeled down in front of it.
“Don’t let him get to you, Dog’ee. He’s always like that. How about you start outside?”
Dog’ee jumped up and down a few times before rubbing up against Grai’s leg.
“I will search every blade of grass and under every pebble! No grain of sand will escape my watchful eyes!” Dog’ee said excitedly before bolting from the room.
“Please tell me the cat isn’t going to look for a heavily pregnant woman under a damn pebble!” Chris muttered.
“I’ll go with Dog’ee for a little while and make sure the cat stays on track before I speak to the local animal population about reconnaissance for us,” Sam said before he smiled, nodded at the Dranovians, and left.
Mikal looked over at Blade, who was still wearing his sunglasses, his eyes hidden and unreadable, and Mikal wondered why he was there. Grai answered the question before he could ask it.
“Blade, head down to the portal and see if you can remote view anything. Just don’t touch it,” Grai warned.
Blade nodded, bowed to the Dranovians, and headed down the stairs to the portal.
“You really think he can remote view where it leads?” Chris asked, his voice dripping with doubt.
“You really want to take a chance that he can and you didn’t try?” Grai countered.
Any further snarky comments Chris had planned regarding Dog’ee and Ranger were completely silenced. He ran a hand over his face and looked over at his dad.
“I’m sorry. I’m really glad to have any help,” Chris admitted as he sunk to the chair and covered his face with his hands.
Chris felt his father’s hand on his shoulder and the love and determination in his energy. It was the same stable, dependable, and loving energy that Grai had given him his whole life. Grai was the kind of father Chris wanted to be for his own son.
Grai nodded at his other sons and the room cleared as Grai took a seat beside Chris and pulled him into a hug.
“Son, you need to clear your thoughts. Find your center so you can find your son,” Grai suggested, expecting Chris’s anger. His son didn’t disappoint him.
Chris jerked from Grai’s arms and stood, pacing the room.
“You’re one to talk! Don’t lecture me on finding my center when you’re the one we had to help out of a dark place not more than a few weeks ago over Koda!” Chris retorted.
Grai laughed, irritating Chris even more.
“You’re right. The difference is that I don’t hold the power that you do. The only person who does is my missing grandson. The anger and fear consuming you is blinding you to what needs to be done, and if you were thinking instead of reacting, you’d be finding a way to use that power to find what belongs to you. I will be nearby if you need me,” Grai said with a grin before he walked out of the room.
Chris grabbed a plate from the counter and threw it at the wall, watching it explode on impact with the help of some angry energy. It didn’t make him feel better at all.
“Well, now that you’re over that, let’s get busy,” Mikal said as he sat back down at the table.
Chris threw his hands up, allowing his anger to subside while Siggy and Declan came in.
“OK, I just showed this to Drago, and he confirmed that is the girl he saw in the bake shop,” Siggy said as he flicked another image on the wall.
Chris nodded when he saw the image of the girl. She appeared to be sneaking down the hallways to the older section of the house where Quinn had been kept.
“That’s who I saw in the car. But where did she . . . holy hell! Did you see that?” Chris asked as he watched the video of the girl.
“Is that a glitch from the power surge to the cameras?” Declan asked as he sat forward in his chair to get a closer look at the video.
“No,” Siggy said with a shake of his head. “That was no glitch.”
“Where did she go?” Declan asked.
“She doesn’t show up on any other footage we’ve been able to recover,” Siggy admitted as he replayed the short clip he had on the young girl.
“What the hell is she?” Chris wondered aloud as he looked at Mikal.
“Don’t look at me,” Mikal said when he saw the curious looks of his siblings. “She’s not one of mine.”
“Do we even know a hybrid that can do that?” Declan asked next.
The brothers looked at one another and shook their heads.
“You’re sure the footage isn’t damaged?” Chris repeated, staring at where the girl disappeared from the middle of the hallway on the footage.
“Have you checked the hallway for secret passages?” Mikal suggested.
“I had the team on the floor search it with Ranger,” Siggy said. “They found nothing.”
Mikal called Lara through the shengari’, and everyone turned when she came up the stairs. Without a word, Siggy played the video of the girl for Lara.
“Whoa! Can you play that again?” Lara asked as she moved to stand closer to the wall where Siggy was projecting the images.
“Do you know what her gift is?” Chris asked, wondering if it could help them find the girl and maybe Quinn.
Lara stared at the wall while Siggy played the video on a loop.
“I need to see more than this to figure out what she can do,” Lara admitted, while doubts and thoughts swirled in her mind.
“You can’t get anything from her residual energy here?” Mikal prompted, wondering what kind of hybrid could confuse a prime.
“There is so much energy here it’s like trying to piece together a puzzle. Between the dark energy coming from the portal and hundreds of years of energy remaining in the ground alone, it would be hard to single out one particular signature without more to go on,” Lara explained.
“You have to have some idea. There can’t be many around that can just disappear. Is she a laustio?” Chris prompted.
The brothers could tell that Lara wasn’t telling them something, and Chris wasn’t in the mood for her to be evasive. Not when his family was at stake.
Lara sighed heavily and sat down at the table.
“I’m not sure what she is yet. There are traces of many things here,” Lara said, not telling them anything they didn’t already know.
“Give us something to go on,” Mikal urged.
“Whatever she is, she’s very powerful, and her abilities are well developed. She knows her power and can use it very easily, and as you have felt, her beast is heavily damaged,” Lara said, exposing the thing they’d all been avoiding out loud.
“Damn,” Declan muttered in anger.
“Fuck!” Chris roared as he paced the kitchen.
Mikal and Siggy shook their heads as the news traveled the shengari’, and each of the brothers expressed their outrage.
“We’re not killing a kid who’s barely old enough to wipe her own snot!” Chris argued, more to himself than his brothers who resoundingly agreed with him.
“I have no idea what we’re facin
g with her,” Lara added, trying to ease the tension in the room. “But I can tell you that she’s powerful enough to do some serious damage, and you can’t allow her age to overshadow what you have to do.”
“She’s little more than a child,” Chris argued back as he leaned on the table and stared Lara down.
Nonplussed, Lara stood and stared back at Chris.
“That child has an astounding amount of power at her fingertips, and she may well have Quinn and your son. I will do what is necessary to save the child that hasn’t been damaged,” she said simply before she turned and went back down the stairs to the portal.
Chris stomped around as he tried to control his anger and emotions.
“Chris, let’s just find Quinn, and we’ll figure out the kid when we get there,” Mikal suggested, trying to refocus his brother.
Chris was more than happy to avoid the conversation about the child.
“Where are we on finding Satalis?” Chris asked Siggy.
“Nowhere. That bastard is hiding so well I’d swear he isn’t on the planet,” Siggy admitted, voicing aloud his thoughts on why they hadn’t found the dark prime yet.
“You’d think that raids on his baby farms would have brought him out,” Chris mused.
“He’s got to know what’s happened because we didn’t find anyone at any of the locations. He had to have gotten them out before any of the teams arrived, but how did he know we were coming?” Declan wondered.
Chris narrowed his eyes as he wondered where the pregnant females were and why this had been so easy.
“What if we walked into a trap, and we’re exactly where he wants us?” Chris asked.
“He’d be an idiot to come here. We’re covered on all sides with air and ground support—not to mention Satalis didn’t fair too well the last time he went up against us,” Siggy argued, not convinced the dark prime was setting them up.
“We’re missing something,” Mikal added with a nod, agreeing with Chris that something didn’t feel right.
“I want no one working alone here. Everyone is to stay in teams of at least two, and I want 15 minute checks with team leaders,” Chris ordered through the shengari’. “That includes, Blade, Sam, and Dad.”
The brothers snorted at the last, thinking they’d have better luck of catching a leprechaun than they would keeping tabs on their father.
“What is Koda and Scaden scanning for?” Declan asked.
“In the area?” Siggy replied, needing something more specific.
“Yeah, like are they looking for smaller energy spikes that could denote a hybrid versus . . . the dark prime,” Declan said.
“If we could do that we would have found him by now,” Siggy said with a snort. “Everything has an energy signature, a life to it. Even the rocks have energy, so finding a difference like that would be impossible with scanners. The ships are scanning for heat signatures and doing a secondary sweep for energy anomalies in any locations where human heat signatures are detected.”
“How long is that going to take?” Chris asked incredulously.
The portal range was estimated to be 100 miles, and even as he began to do the math, Chris realized how improbable it was that they’d find anything within a week.
“It’s a long shot, but it’s better than not trying it at all,” Mikal argued before Siggy could respond.
Chris nodded, remembering what his dad had said about not taking any chances and covering all bases.
“Have the ships scan the air space too. If Satalis comes, it will be with air support. I don’t think he’d come through the portal when he’d be coming in blind. Make sure the teams are armed with our heaviest rounds and prepared for hybrid and human combat,” Chris ordered, feeling the rightness of the words as he spoke.
Mikal nodded at Chris, believing his brother was making the right call. He felt like something was wrong and remained on edge and ready to battle. He warned Chance and Indrid through the shengari’ to be on their guard for humans that may be armed with the drugs that could knock them out of the air.
“OK, share with the rest of the class,” Declan demanded as he looked between Chris and Mikal.
“What? What am I missing?” Siggy asked, looking around at his brothers.
Mikal nodded at Chris to explain it.
“Something is seriously wrong here. None of this feels right. This isn’t the elaborate and dramatic kind of thing we had with Satalis the last time, this seems . . . I don’t know,” Chris said, looking at Mikal to help him explain something he didn’t understand himself.
“He should have struck by now,” Mikal added. “Somewhere. But he’s still not been seen. Every other location has been evacuated by our teams and is being monitored to see if anyone comes, but no one has.”
“No one was at the locations though,” Siggy said, still confused. “So where’s the trap if we’re still sitting here. He got the females before we did, so it’s no loss for him. I’d think he went further underground when he knew we were coming.”
“Unless he doesn’t know,” Declan muttered, then saw everyone staring and sat up in the chair to defend himself. “Don’t you think we would have seen a lot more action than we did at least at one of the locations? There was barely any resistance, and that is some sloppy shit I don’t think Satalis would allow. It was too easy.”
“It was too easy,” Siggy agreed.
“All the more reason to keep everyone on alert. If he doesn’t know, when he finds out we could be in for a major assault,” Chris said.
“I don’t understand how he couldn’t know what’s going on,” Siggy replied. “There couldn’t have been video problems at all of the locations, so how did someone not see what was going on when they were raided? And if they didn’t know we were coming, then why weren’t the females there?”
“Why would they keep her?” Chris blurted out the thoughts that had been bothering him the most. “Think about it. The baby was picking them off one by one, yet they still kept her and didn’t kill her.”
“If they knew she carried a Dranovian, Satalis may have sacrificed them all to try and gain control of that kind of power,” Mikal suggested, beginning to understand what Chris meant.
“But they fed her and took care of her by all accounts. There was an empty tray of food in the hallway and snacks in a drawer,” Siggy added. “They even gave her decent amenities, albeit basic ones. Maybe a con? Try to gain her trust?”
“Why? Do you really think they planned on keeping Quinn alive once she gave birth?” Chris asked.
“Maybe they realized the baby wouldn’t allow them to hurt her?” Declan threw out the suggestion. “Looked to me like the kid was killing anything that threatened or harmed her.”
“Sounds like he’s going to take after his father. Congratulations,” Blade said as he came into the kitchen with a grin. “I didn’t get much, but she’s in a home. A small, two-story with a basement. There’s sheep grazing not far away, but I don’t think they belong to the place where she’s at. The home is pretty rundown on the outside, but someone has taken really good care of it on the inside. It’s like a time capsule from 50 years ago in there.”
Grai came into the room as Blade finished speaking. He’d already heard the information from Blade privately through the shengari’ and wanted to see what Chris would do with it.
“Do you know how far away she is?” Chris asked, impressed but doubtful of the man’s ability to remote view.
“That’s trickier to determine, but she’s not here. I mean in this country. I’d look in Scotland,” Blade said the last to clarify when Chris had started looked angry over the lack of specifics.
“Are you sure?” Chris asked, unwilling to move all their resources to one area and take a chance of losing Quinn again.
“If it was my family out there, I’d find some spare people to look over the border in Scotland. I’ll even volunteer,” Blade said, making sure Chris understood how serious he was about what he’d seen in his mind.
> “I’ll call Ivint and get the Draconia to scan the area,” Grai offered. “Blade and I will take a small shuttle and go over the area as well. Get us if you find out anything. We’ll do the same,” Grai said and squeezed Chris’s shoulder before he headed out of the room.
“It’s been a pleasure,” Blade added as he waved and followed Grai from the room.
“Why would he keep her so close by?” Chris wondered. “There is no tactical advantage to it when he could just as easily take her to where he’s been hiding.”
“I agree,” Declan said. “I think something is really wrong here, and we need to keep our shit together.”
Mikal nodded as he spoke to Grai through the shengari’.
“Dad, we’re thinking this may be a trap so watch your back and be careful,” Mikal said.
Chapter Twelve
Quinn watched Ainsley and Fiona carefully as she made her way to the door. She had no idea how she was going to find her way back to the estate, but she had to warn Chris. She couldn’t sit idly by and do nothing while her son’s father was murdered. No matter how upset she was at him, she loved him, and her son needed his father.
“There’s nowhere to go and no way to get there,” Fiona warned as she rinsed out the tea pot in the sink.
Quinn ignored her, and once she was clear of the door, she hurried around the house looking for anything that would get her to someone who could get her back to the estate.
Her thoughts finally hit her, and Quinn leaned against the wall of the house as the tears slipped down her cheeks. Even if she could find a vehicle or someone to help her, she had no idea where the estate was other than England, and that was a big place to search.
If she tried to find help, there would be questions about how she’d gotten into the country without a passport. She couldn’t answer questions without possibly endangering Chris or her son further.
Unable to do nothing, Quinn wiped her tears and continued looking for a vehicle. She was heading towards an outbuilding when she saw little sparkling flashes of light in the air ahead of her.
Quinn blinked her eyes a few times, thinking exhaustion was making her see things, but the flickering lights moved towards the outbuilding at the same pace that she was.