Feeling her jaw harden, Alexis nodded towards him.
“You had never seen them before?”
He shook his head. “No. Nor do I know anyone who has.”
Holding up his hand when she was about to ask, he added,
“I know what they are from seeing them through the minds and eyes of the Ancients. I have Travelers under me who claim they have encountered them, as well… but as far as I know, they did not see them. They sensed their presence, or heard their voices in their minds, or saw the effects they wrought. Some of my people travel very far, and very wide. We encounter things that no other race does. Even so, assuming we are right and that is what attacked you at the portal, that is the first visual of the Others I have ever heard of.”
Something about the way he said that made her wonder if it was true.
Had he seen them before? Personally?
If so, why wouldn’t he tell her?
He dipped his head at her, smiling faintly.
“You must know there is a reason for the name we are given.”
She nodded, barely acknowledging his humor as she thought about his words.
Shoving aside her lingering questions about the Traveler himself, she turned over his description of these beings, “The Others.”
Having a name for them didn’t really help her much.
She needed to know what they were, what they wanted… not just vague theories, but something real, concrete. Most of all, she needed to know how to fight them.
Frowning faintly, she met the Traveler King’s gaze.
“Tell me more about them,” she said. “Tell me everything. Every single thing you know from your people, the Ancients… anyone. Even theories. Rumors.”
He sighed.
Looking up towards her fire-lit ceiling, he slapped his hand lightly and rhythmically on his thigh in thought. Then he bent down, leaving his arm mostly on the back of the couch as he picked up his martini glass.
“I really don’t know much,” he confessed, glancing at her sideways as he leaned back into the dyed leather. “But there are a few things I suppose I could share. It is not even known if these beings, The Others, are bad or good, exactly, Alexis. There are some who call them architects.”
Alexis gave him a wary look.
“They just killed all the Lightbringers. You called them parasites… colonizers. But you’re unsure whose team they bat for?”
“It is thought by some they killed the Lightbringers. We do not know this.”
“How long have you known about them? The Others?”
He exhaled, tilting his gaze back up to her open-beamed ceiling with a frown.
“Time is difficult, you know, Alexis. I think in Earth years, it would be over a hundred years ago now, that we first encountered them.”
Looking down, he gave her a wan smile.
“…But time is difficult in terms of accuracy, you see, when we are talking about other dimensions. Suffice it to say, for my people, and for the Ancients, this is a new species. A very new species. And yet… it is now increasingly likely it is a very old species. It is new to us only in the sense that we are now aware of it. But it has been around for a very long time.”
Alexis frowned. “An old species? A new one? What does that mean?”
“Well, we thought it was something new. But it now turns out, it is likely something very old. Primordial, really. Ancient. Perhaps even older than the Ancients themselves.”
There was a silence.
In it, Alexis stared at him, again fighting to think through his words.
She was trying to decide if this was important enough to pursue, or more background on something that she needed practical solutions for.
In the end, she decided she would know everything she could about them, and sort out what might be useful later.
“How did you find out they were an old species?” she said after that pause. “Did they tell you that? Has anyone communicated with them? Directly?”
“We must assume they have, yes,” the Traveler said cryptically.
She quirked an eyebrow at him.
He smiled, his voice turning more diplomatic.
“Perhaps not in the way you mean,” he said. “Obviously, if they were behind the killing of Lightbringers, this required a certain amount of planning, to pull it off. These attacks were simultaneous. They were also committed by physical beings, so not The Others themselves. It is likely they conveyed orders to their followers in the manifest worlds.”
“The beings you killed––” she began warily.
“They were physical as well,” he said. “They were alive.”
“Well, yes,” she said. “Obviously. But what were they? You never said.”
“I said I did not know what they were,” he replied easily. “That is still true.”
“Were they humanoid? Or––”
“Yes,” he said, matter of fact. “I suspect they were hybrids of some kind. Perhaps demon-human. Perhaps something less well known. Perhaps demon-seer.”
She frowned.
Opening her mouth, she was about to ask, but he went on.
“…But I am thinking it was perhaps not a direct thing. This speaking with The Others,” he added. “Meaning, it is possible someone… perhaps several someones… perhaps many someones… spoke to The Others more in the way you communicated with them tonight.”
Alexis frowned.
What he said felt true.
She felt a lot more there, however, things she didn’t understand.
She honestly couldn’t decide if he was withholding information from her purposefully or not, but again, she found herself thinking he knew more about these “Others” than he was saying. She wondered if he even knew he was holding back.
After a pause, her hands clasped tighter in her lap.
“You are surprised,” she said, watching him. “Why is that?”
The Traveler only looked at her for a beat.
Then he sighed.
“I am surprised.”
“By what?” she said. “Something at the Old Zoo?”
After a bare pause, he nodded.
“Yes,” he said frankly. “You are the first person I have seen encounter them who appears to be unaffected by it.” He paused, gauging her eyes. “I see no difference in you at all from that contact. You seem entirely the same.”
Her frown deepened. “What kind of differences do you normally see?”
He hesitated for another beat, drinking from the martini glass.
She clearly got the impression he was stalling.
After he’d swallowed the last mouthfuls of the martini, and ate two of the four olives, he met her gaze, his eyes now a shocking blue.
“I admit, I expected you to be under their influence when you opened your eyes,” he admitted next. “The Others, from what we have observed, appear to work almost like a drug on most sentient beings. They are consummate manipulators… possibly even possessors, able to take over the consciousness of other beings entirely. Whatever the extent of it, they manipulate minds, even brainwash them, you could say. This is often done on the level of the being’s energy… on the soul level, more than the body.”
Alexis frowned.
She was about to speak, but again, the Traveler went on.
“It is how they mold worlds,” he said, holding up a hand only to let it drop back to the leather sofa back. “They create these fields… what I suppose could be termed fields of influence. They pull beings into those fields and then use them as weapons against the others of that world. It really is a form of mind control. And yet, clearly…”
He motioned up and down towards her with a smile.
“…It does not work on everyone.”
Her mouth pursed.
The Traveler added shrewdly,
“I suppose this should reassure us. And yet, not every being who follows them must be manipulated so crassly, or with such blunt machinery. We have reason to believe The Others are quite good at
gaining knowing followers among the living, as well. Those who do their bidding with eyes open… whether willing or unwilling.”
“Unwilling?”
“Presumably they coerce them,” the Traveler said, shrugging. “They do not fall easily into the camp of ‘True Believer,’ perhaps, but have a more practical motive for doing what they do. Either they use The Others to reach their own goals… or they feel they have no choice.”
Again, Alexis frowned.
She heard something behind those words, too.
She opened her mouth, but the Traveler again spoke before she could.
“They posit their motives as good,” he added. “Even religious, in a way. Not unlike the cults some humans fall into, and grow utterly devoted to on this world. As I said, it is not yet determined exactly how to categorize their intentions… but their methods are certainly not ideal, from the perspective of most of us. The Ancients claim to be assessing The Others, in terms of their overall impacts on the historical timelines of the various dimensions, and whether those impacts aid the evolution of the manifest worlds… or thwart or stymie it.”
Alexis frowned.
Again, she didn’t need the Ancients to tell her whose side these “Others” were on.
It definitely wasn’t the side of the Light.
It definitely wasn’t her side.
She considered telling the Traveler as much, then decided not to.
The Ancients and their semantic questions about “good” and “bad” weren’t really her problem. It certainly wasn’t an area where she felt compelled to weigh in, much less argue about.
To her, anything that turned people into slaves was bad.
Anything that removed free will was bad.
Bad was bad.
That part didn’t require a lot of internal debate.
“So how do you know they are an old species?” she said. “You never answered that part.”
He hesitated, looking at her.
She wondered fleetingly why this was a sticking point for her, even as she wondered why he seemed to be dodging that particular question.
“We learned this from other species,” he said after that pause. “In dimensions that have encountered them before. One dimension, in particular. A dimension we’ve had little interaction with until recently… in part because it was believed that a great evil lived there.”
“The Others,” she murmured, frowning as she turned to meet his gaze.
He made a more or less gesture with one hand.
“Possibly.”
Pursing her lips, Alexis pulled the plate off her lap, setting it on the glass table.
Picking up the bottle of red wine she’d forgotten about, she poured herself a second glass, and recorked the bottle.
Seconds later, she slid sideways on the couch so that she faced him, holding the wine glass more or less in her lap.
“Tell me more about them,” she said, taking a sip of the wine. “You obviously think they are behind this… and that they represent evil, whatever the Ancients think. You obviously don’t like them any more than I do, despite your attempts to sound neutral.”
Pausing to take a sip of the wine, she settled deeper into the sofa, gauging his eyes.
“So tell me,” she said. “Tell me everything you know, Cal.”
That time, despite her soft tone, it was her voice that sounded like a command.
He returned her stare, possibly for that very reason.
Then, slowly, a small smile once more toyed at his lips.
“All right,” he said, rising easily to his feet. “I will. But I’m going to need another of these delicious martinis, first.”
She watched him walk back over to her bar, plucking out the most expensive bottle of gin she had on the glass shelf.
It didn’t bother her.
Truthfully, she felt herself finally beginning to relax.
13
In The Darkness
She didn’t know what woke her, not precisely.
She didn’t know if it was a feeling, a dream…
It felt like neither of those things.
It felt like something had brushed past her.
It felt like being in a crowd of strangers, and having a known body press into hers on its way past, somehow searing itself into her before it went on its way.
All she knew for certain is, her eyes opened, and she was shaking.
She was shaking, and the pain in her chest had intensified to the point of blinding her.
She was alone.
She was the last.
Of course, she knew that couldn’t possibly be true. There were young Lightbringers, like she had once been. There were the old Lightbringers, the ones who had retired from their posts. Her race couldn’t be gone… not entirely. Her peers might be dead, but her people would live on. They would be replaced. They would return.
So why had the Traveler told her she was the last?
She lay there in the dark, paralyzed with the thought.
A whisper of that familiar presence lingered.
But which of them had it been?
Darynda? Jain? Nadiana?
Had it been Luchian? Luchian with his broad smile, his large hands, his full mouth, his booming laugh?
Had it been Sarli? Vorlan?
She remembered their faces.
She remembered their eyes, their facial expressions, the power of them.
She remembered every one of them.
She’d only ever spoken to them through the gates, but they’d been her only connection to her own kind… to the role she performed… apart from Lana Poole, the old Lightbringer who raised her, who Alexis thought to be human until her eighteenth birthday.
She stared out through the bay window of her room.
She fought to slow her breathing, to slow the hammering of her heart.
She wasn’t crying. She still didn’t feel capable of that, even now that she was alone. She felt herself slowly suffocating instead, every breath a stabbing pain in her chest and throat, as if fighting to power a scream that wouldn’t come.
She still lay there when, somehow…
She realized she was no longer alone.
She hadn’t heard him come in.
She hadn’t heard the door.
She hadn’t felt his weight shift the bed.
Now he was close to her, however. He’d brought himself right into her personal space, just like he had when he first brushed past her in her club, when his lips practically touched her ear, his breath leaving a warm pulse on her neck.
She turned sharply over to her back.
Unlike in the club… here, in her own bedroom, she was unable to hide her startle.
Then he was over her, looking down, his face lit from the city lights shining through the sliding glass door between her bedroom and the wooden deck outside.
For a few seconds, they only looked at one another.
“I gave you a bed,” she told him, her voice forced, still short of breath.
“I know.”
“You said you were fine.” Her words came out cold, a near accusation. “You said you were good in there. Comfortable. You thanked me.”
“I did.”
“So what are you doing in here, Cal?”
“I felt you.”
She fell silent at that, staring up at his pale irises.
They were a peacock green now, highlighted with flecks of violet.
He studied her, tilting his head, those light-filled eyes intent. Something about the mannerism struck her as distinctly alien, as distinctly not-human, as distinctly not-her-Earth… and yet, it was so familiar it caught her breath, bringing that harder pain back to her chest.
It reminded her of her people.
She shoved the thought far away.
“I don’t need comfort, Traveler,” she said, her voice harsh.
“Of course.”
His eyes didn’t move.
She couldn’t tear her own eyes from his.
She didn’t understand it.
She couldn’t decide if she welcomed it or not.
Even so, some reflex in her frowned.
“I don’t even know you,” she told him. “Whatever you think… whatever interdimensional stalking you might have amused yourself with… you don’t know me, either, Traveler.”
He smiled, but didn’t appear offended.
“That is likely true.”
He paused, the heat of that stare still intent on her face.
“Does it matter?” he asked.
Her frown deepened.
“Of course it matters. Perhaps not to you––”
She let out a low gasp, cutting off her own words when his hand appeared between her thighs. His long fingers moved aside the silk boxers, then her underwear, gliding sensually inside her. He began stroking her, exploring her, lightly at first… then with more intent.
When she opened her legs wider, giving him more access, he let out a low, rumbling sound, like the purr of a great cat.
He slid closer, pressing his hip to hers, watching her face.
“I am going to enjoy this.”
“It appears you already are,” she retorted.
“You’re right about that.”
His expression remained calm, deceptively still.
She struggled to breathe.
It hadn’t occurred to her how long it had been until he moved closer, sliding another finger inside her, letting out another of those rumbling purrs.
“This is nice,” he informed her.
He angled his fingers deeper, purring again when her back arched, when she let out an involuntary gasp.
“Wet and very very soft… very nice.”
Pausing, he studied her face.
“Can I kiss you there?” he said. “Or would you rather I use my cock first? I admit, I’m a bit torn. I think you would like being kissed… but I can feel you wanting my cock more… it has been a long time, yes?”
She felt her jaw tighten.
Her face grew hot, but she didn’t lower her gaze.
“What do you want?” she said through clenched teeth.
He smiled. “I thought my interests here were fairly self-evident.”
Lightbringer: An Enemies to Lovers Urban Fantasy with Demons, Portals, Witches, Renegade Gods, & Other Assorted Beasties (Light & Shadow Book 1) Page 10