by M. Street
Dev reached down, kissing my lips softly. I touched him back, starting something that we both knew couldn’t happen. Despite his minty rose scent, his firm, heated touch, and unquenchable desire, there were too many concerns consuming the fire.
“Let’s check in on Charlie,” I said, breaking away, voicing one of my many concerns. Dev brushed his stubbly cheek against mine before letting me go. His continuous passion bound our futures together with endless possibilities. He pulled out his crystal, checking for any messages. From his disappointment, I knew Valbeth was still silent. He tapped the crystal, causing it to blink. It didn’t take long before Sam answered. Holograms of him and Charlie materialized before us.
“My lady,” Sam greeted me first. “My lord,” he addressed Dev dutifully.
“Piper?” Charlie reached out to touch my lifelike image.
“Hey there. How are you doing?” I fashioned a positive face, talking to his illuminated dimensional projection.
“Ok. We are on the Italian coastline staying at an olive farm,” Charlie answered, looking at Sam for affirmation. I was grateful he was still distracted by new experiences.
“Yeah, buddy.” He rubbed his hand on Charlie’s head. “Yes, we are. We exited Rome without detection. However,” Sam scratched his head, interlocking bunches of bushy red hair, “I picked up on Valbeth near the outer limits of the city.”
Dev threw his ears back, sharpening the tips to white points. “Are you certain?” he asked.
“It was her. The trace was weak. She didn’t stay in the area for long. I would say the trace was close to five hours old,” Sam said seriously.
“Got it. Thank you.” Dev was relieved by the confirmation of her presence but rumpled by her continued silence.
“Did you find your friend?” Charlie asked.
“Yes, we did.” I acted enthusiastic.
“Cool, so when are you coming to get me?” Charlie’s question hit my core.
“Soon,” I said, telling him what he wanted to hear.
Another screen sprang from Dev’s crystal, showing a map of Italy along with Sam and Charlie’s longitude and latitude. They were just off the coast of the Ligurian Sea. I locked the coordinates into my mind.
“We are staying here for now,” Sam said. “I have a farmer under a spell in a remote area outside of Vernazza. Our location is secure with little traffic, and the ocean breezes are scrubbing our scents.”
“That should work, but stay vigilant,” Dev advised.
Slamming out of nowhere, my intuition began to spin so fast I fell silent on the inside. I put my hand on Dev for balance. A trigger had been pulled and a changing shot fired. I winced, keeping in an erupting scream.
“We’ll see you within twenty-four hours.” Dev cut the conversation, sensing the mounting foreboding in my touch.
“Piper?” Charlie asked an octave higher.
“Don’t worry. We’ll be there before you know it,” I forced out in a higher pitch, holding it together while my guts kinked.
“What is it?” Dev severed communication, evaporating Charlie and Sam within a blink.
“Not sure …” I swallowed the marine air, reaching for my mask. Overwhelmed, I dropped the pearls, emeralds, and ivory. They crashed against the stone floor like marbles on polished porcelain. Not being able to turn away from a colossal train wreck, I opened my light to the dark attraction cannibalizing my awareness. The forced, incoming vibrations sawed into my platinum band, erratically rushing my heart and respiration. I doubled over, disintegrating into the magnitude, mood, and muscle of the congealing plea. Even through the dense rock and anchoring spirit of the ocean, the call possessed me, weakening my light and knees.
“Safe!” I squeezed out from my constricted chest.
The barrel blast from my captured Guardian brother carried me under like a wall of icy water. It was impossible to break away from his agony, gouging my insides. The searing scrambling deep inside his skull was metaphysical. The force drilled through his resistive will, making him helplessly compliant. The multiple tortures inflicted on my trusted friend dropped me on my back.
A golden spell ripped through every nerve ending in Safe’s body, exploding his already damaged state in excruciating pain. A second spell—this one silver—spun from Junjari, mentally bathing his brain with painkillers, cutting his strength to fight.
“Piper, listen,” Dev said frantically. “Disengage!”
I turned my head toward Dev, forcing my eyes to stop spinning. I was unable to speak from dry heaving. The ugliness of what was happening to Safe made it impossible for me to detach. The shock of knowing who had cast against Safe suspended my acceptance of its Avian maker. Besides his brutalized state, Safe’s location etched into my heart with a rusty, dull nail. Safe was being fatally violated near the coast in Portugal. Just as I felt a third party queerly peer into my excruciating connection with Safe, Dev quickly grabbed my mask and pressed it firmly into my chest, severing our link.
Dev kept his hand firmly over my mask and pounding heart, keeping me cloaked.
“They are killing him!” I screamed out through my tears and dissipating madness. I reached down to my abdomen, caressing the twins. They were part of me now, feeling all that I did. Dev helped me up, securely clasping my mask.
“We have to go,” I sputtered, thinking about the twins first and the potential breach in location from linking with Safe.
“Can you leap?” Dev asked, supporting me with his flexing arms.
My shuffling thoughts kept me spinning in disbelief. I lifted my head upward in response to prickly sensations above us. “Too late. The Arbitri are here,” I said, picking up Guardians leaping into the area. “They are casting domes and nets.” I switched into motherly action.
Dev escalated into combat stance, fanging his teeth. “Let’s slip out underwater. Come on!” The urgency in Dev’s touch aligned my disheveled thoughts.
“Yes,” I said, shaken and stirred. Cracks started to form in my resolve. Everything was slipping into pandemonium. I had known Safe’s life was going to get played, but it actually happening way exceeded my threshold of pain. Only my love for Dev and our family kept the wheels from completely derailing. We were running low on options and bleeding precious hope. Being stabbed in the back from an Avian I had adamantly defended stung worse than any frontal assault.
I lifted us, slicing into the sea just as the earth began to shake. We flew through the water, hugging the descending ocean floor. Above I could see platinum domes and streaks, raising fears of being detected.
A sail of light pierced into the water directly in front of us. I stopped instantly, but both our hearts kicked in response.
“We have to make a run for it,” Dev said putting his hands on my shoulders. He clenched his teeth like he was preparing to make a risky jump. From the flight, fight, and fear responses loading inside him, I knew we were in trouble. Just as the plane of probing light started to pan toward us, something to my left drew my intuition and attention.
Without hesitating, I propelled us toward our only chance.
“Where are you going?” Dev asked, confused by my move until he saw our lifesaver. A giant blue whale torpedoed toward us, giving all she had into her speed. Just as the net of light crossed our position, the tanker-sized marine mammal shielded us from above with her refined, amazingly intelligent sunny aura. Dynamic fingers of tentacle light formed a lion-like mane around her head. Like a remora, I latched onto the underside of her long throat. She flung her tail up and down, thrusting us out to sea, completely sheltering us from the Arbitri probes.
We rode silently underneath the cover of the incredible creature. Astonished, Dev and I took turns opening our eyes wider at our most unusual and unexplainable rescue. Her caring for us popped the lid off any preconceived notions that we were the only intelligent species on the planet. The great whale was aware of our dire stakes. Her light permeated with understanding that only Mother Nature could miraculously bestow. We cleared t
he Arbitri, inching down from a nervous high.
I glided us around to the great blue whale’s amazingly human eye. The expression of success impressed on both of us.
“Thank you so much,” I said, placing my face against her enormous face, sending and receiving love through intimate touch. The brief joy suspended my unraveling world.
“Goodbye.” I broke away, rising to the surface. I lifted us clear into the air, gaining altitude in strides. The blue whale broke surface in the distance, releasing her long-held breath in a fountain of spray. There were so many wonders in this world. A thirst to open doors, eat from trees of knowledge, and experience it all firsthand ran in my blood and light. Not only for Dev and me, but for the lives that grew inside me.
“This region is not secured.” Dev kept his eyes narrowed and ears thrown back. “Leap us to ninety degrees latitude.” I was grateful he already planned our next move. The pain of who had cast the deadly golden spell on Safe started to hit, sinking my heart to the bottom.
I would have never suspected Ozwald to be a traitor.
I triangulated a zero-longitude position, burying my internal compass due north. “The North Pole?” I asked to make sure.
“Yes,” Dev replied confidently.
Speedily multitasking, I detached my necklace, holstered Dev, and slit a leap point. As we zipped upward into the fabric of time, I vowed to not let fear seep in and spoil the difficult acceptances waiting for us on the other side.
35
A Full Glass of Upset
I
ntense brightness and color of the leap portal opening into the third dimension against the brilliant whiteness of the fourth dimension made me second-guess my pinpoint senses telling me the ground was rapidly approaching. I closed my eyes merging back into time, going totally on feel. We hit the packed snow firmly, cracking the sheet of ice around us in a tectonic thud. The leap mists evaporated without my cause, revealing why Dev had chosen to flee to the North Pole.
Raging rivers of magnetic energy gushed overhead, curving into the North Pole in the distance. Like the Black Forest, the flux fields created another dead zone. Long-range sight was the only sense remaining in the boughs of brilliance protecting the earth in a massive magnetic shield. All auras were diluted to ghostly wisps in the concentrated flow. Only our thin shells protected us from the freezing temperatures. Despite the zero-degree high, I felt as though my body were lined with velvety layers of fire-warmed fleece. Auras were stripped clean, leaving illuminated outlines of everything tied together in a continuous scribble.
The darkened blue raining from my pearl vanished before generating a light-storm of epic proportion. With the babies rapidly dividing on their way to embryos, my hormones kept my insides in constant motion. I felt dangerous with my body and emotions not under control.
Even the neon, lemony yellow auras from the massive blue sheets of ice floating on fathoms of cold sea water were peeled pale. Rolling waves of electrical attraction blurred the skies and surroundings with changing kaleidoscopes of light, creating another natural wonder. Although we stood on eleven feet of solid ice, with blowing snow snaking between us, the magnetic storms made it look like we were on the surface of the sun.
Even though our home star hung low in the sky, my internal clock said it was late night in a place where time ticked without a zone. The reverent, seasonal moment of no night coupled with magnetic storms streaming into the poles should have elicited mountain-sized chills. However, with Safe’s life on the line, an Avian smoking gun, and dwindling chances for my fledgling family, the first-time high passed fleetingly and without the reverence it was due.
“We still need to mask.” Dev put his collar on, stepping closer so I could still feel him through a clover-green prominence swirling through us. The curved windless funnel crawled through our position, generating lightning on the edge of my close-shaved aura. I clasped my necklace, cutting my ability to call, but not my desire. We embraced, taking in each other’s hearts, living in the eye of the storm’s fleeting reprieve.
Dev’s fear for me and the babies bled through the hot protectiveness flowing in his tight touch. My masked heart silently screamed, confused by the truth my super-senses told me about the golden spell used on Safe. Feeling the expansive breadth of the hurt flying inside me, Dev dropped his animalistic stance.
“I’m sorry about Olo,” Dev said openly. He bled hurt for Safe behind his mask and battle face.
“I can’t stand it,” I said, fussing over how to tell him everything that I had felt. I didn’t want to believe what I knew.
“There is something more.” Dev held me close. His ability to be so far inside the chambers of my soul made me wonderfully transparent.
“Two spells were used against Olo to force him to call,” I said shivering, recalling the nasty frequencies. “Junjari cast a silver spell, pulling the plug on Olo’s mental will.”
Dev soured upon hearing her involvement.
I stopped, watching huge flares of magenta magnetism snake into the pole. “But there was an initial spell that physically broke Olo in one potent cast. An Avian spell slammed him like a giant sledgehammer, breaking every bone in his body.” The pain ran down my face, but I remained collected.
“Sabina,” Dev said intensely.
“No, Ozwald,” I sadly corrected him. Verbalizing the Avian prince’s name caused my head to shake and lower. “I absolutely know the touch of his spells,” I added, remembering the tones of the many potshots he had fired at me. “I don’t understand. It doesn’t make sense. The Avians procured the emeralds for my mask. Mom trusted them completely. She introduced Sabina and Ozwald to me first.”
“The emeralds alone did not make the mask complete,” Dev said with his conviction set long ago. “I didn’t always agree with Esther.” He aged, recalling heavy memories.
My heart raced trying to connect the lines forming over the breach.
“Raven! I left her with Ozwald in Oak Creek. He could be responsible for her disappearance. But why? Nothing makes sense.” My mind replayed healing Ozwald’s broken wing in the Avian nest before the attack. Shuddering, I remembered the rushing anger skimming beneath his composed, fair face. “If Ozwald is working with Eli, why didn’t he pull my plug in Oak Creek?” I sank, clawing at polished walls to slow my fall.
“What about the Canites?” I stopped abruptly. “I need to warn Jeremiah.” My toiling mind tangled my tongue.
“It’s too risky,” Dev replied, gearing up. “The Arbitri are scanning all frequencies for us. We need to lie low.”
“I won’t do that. Safe is my family,” I said solemnly. “I cannot sit still while everyone gets picked off.”
The hurt radiating from Dev’s hands forked straight to my heart. “I know I cannot stop you from doing what you will. Please consider us in your decisions.” He opened his heart, gutting mine. With so much racing on the inside, I became still and wonderfully numb as if my brain and spine were tapped with dry ice. I was loosely present in the intensity of plural opposing wills, mounting unknowns, and collapsing chances.
“I have to do something,” I said, stepping a story into the air to de-stress. Mom said to live simple, but simple didn’t exist anymore. I searched the endless dancing stars poking through the rays of sun. I missed her voice, embrace, and unshakable reassurances that everything was going to be ok. Those motherly feats of love were going to have to come from me now.
“I love you,” Dev said, reminding me of what was important.
I drifted down, laying my hands on his face. I bared my spirit for truth. “Believe me, I love you more, but I don’t have a choice.” Dev fused, feeling my impetus so clearly. “I need your help. We need your help.” I pressed my body and light against his.
Dev responded without words, lowering his resistance and kissing me passionately.
My laboring mind parted our lips. “They are holding Olo at the Palace of Pena in Portugal,” I said with pinpoint accuracy. “He is on an upper floor on th
e southern side of the castle.”
“Wait.” Geysers of heat shot out of every pore of his already racing body. “One step at a time. Let’s warn the Canites first. No telling what the Avians are up to,” Dev spat, discharging a rickety bias. His seemingly justified gripe still soured my soul. I didn’t want him to possess that kind of indiscriminate darkness toward an entire kind.
I picked us up, flying southbound toward Greenland. Our speed was governed by the pulses of magnetic currents, limiting my hypersenses sweeping for Arbitri.
“Ozwald casting against Olo doesn’t add up. Sabina said Ozwald was missing.” I mulled over my churning guts. My intuition was uncomfortably silent. I didn’t know if she was absent or I was too loud. Either way, the missing direction triggered flags on the facts.
“I don’t trust Sabina. The Avian agenda will always object to us. Do you think she would embrace a Vampacoti-infused Guardian monarchy?” Dev asked cynically. “The Avians in allegiance with Eli makes perfect sense.”
We went sonic, clearing the stripping waves cast by the magnetic pole. I stayed below the curved rays of the continuously low day. Dev leaned forward, straining to keep his senses sharp. The hype in his state reminded me of our narrowing chances. I struggled, keeping my caution from souring into fear.
“Over there.” Dev pointed to a crease in the rocky and rolling cliffs cutting into the restless shore. The plateau rested above the blue-gray waters and below the daffodil-yellow spirit of the frigid sea. I slowed deliberately, placing us down exactly where Dev wanted.
“I’ll be careful.” I undid the clasp on my necklace, trying to calm the rising nerves crackling inside Dev. With precise effort, I directed my aura downward, keeping undetectable. My glittering aura surrounded me in a fluid bell jar. Recognizing the changes, Dev and I were drawn to the growing lights inside me. He removed his collar from his wrist. For a second, he painted the most passionate pink before formulating into a sabertooth on high alert. I cemented the show of unrehearsed love into my vault of precious memories.