An hour later she emerged from the well-appointed bathroom, every inch of her skin and hair clean for the first time in a year. While water was available in Hell, soap and deodorant never seemed to make it into the quarterly supply drops. Her skin tingled, her scalp itched and her tongue felt singed by the amount of toothpaste and mouthwash she’d used to remove months of grime. It would take more than one round with the clippers to repair the damage to her nails however. Classical guitar was out of the question.
Again she bypassed her violin, pausing to stroke the neck before continuing to the bureau drawers. She located underwear, none familiar, and chose something to wear. Though the clothes were similar to those she’d left behind, they were of unfamiliar designs and labels. Duh, Darkstone. You grew a few inches, remember? Madeleine probably replaced everything. The disconcerting visage of almost looking eye to eye with Anders dripped ice down her spine, and she hastily pulled on a pair of colorful board shorts. Her newly polished boots sat neatly beside another door, and she opened it to find a walk-in closet. There she chose a tank top and a Hula shirt, slipping on a pair of sandals. One of the games that always made the rounds in Hell was “Where’s the first place you’ll go?” Joram planned to spend the whole day at the beach, basking in the sun and surf until the shadows grew long and the sun singed the skin from her shoulders.
She pocketed her lighter and left the room. Silence met her in the unfamiliar hallway. There were two more doors off the corridor, and she poked her head into each. One held a standard bathroom. It was the other that gave her pause as she stared. The room was larger than her bedroom but it didn’t come furnished with the traditional bed and dressers. Instead a glass wall bisected it and a state-of-the-art sound board filled this end. Beyond the partition was a double bass drum set and assorted instruments. Unable to help herself, she entered the room, thoughts of the beach dissipating in the wake of philharmonic lust. She paced the length of the sound board console, drawing the pads of her fingers over the cool surface. Returning to the center, she bent down to peer at the controls, noting the current settings and scribbles of marker on white electrical tape labeling each channel. Here was the drum kit, completely miked. There was the bass guitar, three vocal microphones and two lead-ins from the electronic keyboard. Rhythm and lead guitars, synthesizers, everything a recording band could want or need. Her gaze greedily took in the board, hearing in her head what the settings would produce if she played one instrument or another. Expanding her view, she noted two computer screens mounted on folding arms that were no doubt hooked into the system, giving the technician ultimate control over the final product.
“Does it meet with your approval?”
With a gasp, she shot up, spinning to see Anders standing in the doorway. Her heart pounded, and she reminded herself she was furious at him for the debacle downstairs, not scared. Rather than answer, she cloaked herself with her arrogance and sprawled in one of the available chairs.
Faint humor softened his usual hard glare, but only for an instant. “Answer me.”
She debated intractability for a moment. Though she’d faced down many of her more overbearing peers in the last year, her skills were decidedly not superior enough to counter her mentor. Not yet. “I’d be stupid if it didn’t.”
He stared at her, bushy eyebrows shading his eyes. “And if there’s one thing I can count on, miting, is that you’re not stupid.” The strained sensation in the room eased, and he came fully inside. He held out his hand.
Joram eyed the appendage but knew better than to refuse him. Even now after all that had happened, all that she’d done and witnessed, he was still a dangerous viper, and she his prey. She took his hand, feeling the half-remembered psychic slime envelop her. He tugged and she stood up. Again she felt an oddness as she looked him in the eye. Despite her growth, he didn’t seem any smaller or more harmless. She bristled under the oily sensation creeping across her skin.
Finally, he released her. “I knew you’d do well with Them. You should know that you surpassed my hopes. Congratulations.”
Her adolescence flooded forward and she shuffled her feet before clamping down on her insecurities. Before she could lose her nerve, she said, “Why do you do this?”
Anders cocked his head. “You’ll have to be a bit more specific. Do what?”
Joram pulled together a year’s worth of anger, letting it warm her as she prepared for battle. “Them. Why did you create Them? What’s the purpose of abandoning every thirteen-year-old child of your followers to that pit?”
A grin quirked his lips. He crossed his arms over his chest, one hand idly playing with his goatee. “It started out as a social experiment a long, long time ago and took on a life of its own. As I told you last year, the experience is quite educational, not only for myself but for the children as well. They have a short, intense span of time where they can learn so much about themselves.” He smiled wider. “Take yourself for example: did you have any idea a year ago that you would be capable of murder?”
She felt the blood drain from her face at his words, a dichotomy of tingling and numbness as her righteous anger stumbled over her sense of guilt. During her “sabbatical” she’d often wondered what would happen to her when she was released. Was Anders going to have her arrested for homicide? Would he allow her to use the video and audio she was positive he had in his possession for her defense?
He lifted an eyebrow at her. “By your lack of response, miting, I’d have to say the answer is no. I must admit that you took quite a bit of abuse before you finally took matters into your own hands. I doubt I’d have waited as long to react to the problem.”
Joram felt her eyes narrow, morbid curiosity taking over her mouth. “What would you have done?”
“Oh, no doubt the same thing,” he assured her. “Miss Yahiro’s entire ego was wrapped up in her leadership of that pack of children. She’d spent far too much time overreaching herself in an effort to retain control. That led to an inevitable spiral of more grandiose and vicious actions to maintain.” He dropped his arms. “She would have killed you before the year was out. It was eat or be eaten, wasn’t it?”
Bile rose in her stomach. “You approve?”
He shrugged, stepping around her to lean back against the sound board, hands perched on the edge behind him. “Not necessarily. While I don’t sanction the killing, I know that it was a necessity. She wasn’t the first child to succumb and she won’t be the last. Accidents and illnesses occur.” He paused, piercing Joram with his dark gaze. “I’m pleased that you stepped up to the task, however, not just at the time it happened, but by continuing on with your goals. My goodness, miting! You single-handedly took over the entire level in less than a year, put a pseudo-government into effect and still had time to build that wonderful revolutionary spirit. That’s something of which to be proud.”
Joram’s mouth dropped open at his ringing endorsement. “You’re kidding, right?”
He bent forward, leaning close to invade her space. “No, Joram, I’m not. Even I, at your age, did not possess the golden tongue, the surefooted mind or the rabid conviction that you do. I still don’t. You’re an extraordinary find.”
Her delight battled with the angry hatred that had been with her every waking moment for the last year. All those times she’d thought she was on the verge of being abandoned only to now realize that Anders actually held her in high esteem created a storm of ambiguous feelings. That doesn’t mean he still won’t drop you if you’re no longer useful to him. Sobered by the thought, she struggled with the opposing emotions. “So, what now? Am I going to be charged with anything?”
“Charged?” His blank stare lasted seconds before he leaned back, roaring with laughter. She glared at him until his chuckles died down and he wiped his eyes. “Ah! No, you have no need of concern, dear miting. There will be no legal repercussions for an obvious matter of self-defense. Miss Yahiro’s parents have long since said their goodbyes to their daughter. They requested and received a t
ransfer to another facility, as well.”
Joram couldn’t remember if she’d ever met Christina’s parents. Sadness stole over her, deflating her cultivated haughtiness. “Do they…do they know…?”
“That you stabbed their dear child to death? No. They were informed there had been an accident, nothing more.”
The blunt words hit Joram in the gut, sharp blows that took her breath away. She swallowed hard against the lump in her throat, forcing her mind not to dwell on the memory.
“Now that we’re finished with that unfortunate business, we can move on.”
Joram focused her attention on him, not caring for his tone of voice. His dismissal of Christina’s death, of Joram’s involvement in it was abhorrent. Despite her guilt, she felt a renewed spark of anger at his methods of glossing over the crime. “Where’s Madeleine?”
“You have quite a future in front of you, my dear, and it’s time you got started. You have no more need of a nursemaid. Tomorrow you’ll be expected right here in rehearsal. No doubt you have quite a lot of music stored up in that dark little heart of yours that must burst forth into the light of day! That is your primary function at this time.” He waved his hands in the air to punctuate his words. “Write! Rhyme! Fiddle with your strings and winds and percussion. Create!”
It scarcely seemed a hardship to spend her days with music after so long without. “And what’s my future?”
“I told you last year—your voice, your musical genius and your strength of will are all the tools you’ll need to open the doors that have been sealed for millennia. I meant those words then and I mean them now.” He pushed away from the sound board and walked away. At the door, he turned to look at her, hands on the doorjamb on either side of his head. “You must only Choose.” With a smug grin, he left.
Another test. Joram stood alone in the home studio, her gaze drifting away from the door and back to the equipment filling the room. Before this year she’d always made the choices he’d given her on the basis of fear, fear of the unknown, fear of the dark and scary streets from which he’d taken her. Without the weight of that terror on her shoulders, her thoughts were clear and focused. If this year had taught her one thing, it was that she was tough enough to handle anything—even becoming homeless again. She touched the sound board, turning away from the empty doorway.
He had given her the one thing she couldn’t turn down.
Shutting away her anger, her fearfulness, she opened the glass door leading into the soundproofed room beyond.
Chapter Eight
Flame. Soothing, calm, dancing flame. Naomi drifted in the other world, mind and body and heart focused on the candle before her, breathing easy, her pulse slowed. No sensations, no emotions, simply being. She heard laughter and felt her lips twitch in sympathetic response despite herself. The Caribbean girl flitted through Naomi’s contemplative existence, singing a nursery rhyme to distract her, and it was working.
Naomi had heard the girl every day since her arrival at the monastery a year ago. Sometimes at night they would whisper and giggle in her room like schoolgirls at a slumber party. She’d tease and flirt, celebrate Naomi’s successes and commiserate with her failures as the rigors of Nathan’s training took effect. On rare occasions she acted aloof or tired, giving Naomi the impression that it took great effort for her to visit. And always her words were riddles, nonsensical statements hinting at strange futures and distant pasts of which Naomi had no recollection.
Far too old for an invisible playmate, Naomi nevertheless shielded the Caribbean girl’s existence from her mentor. Was it loneliness? She wasn’t certain if she remained silent because she didn’t want Nathan to destroy this tenuous connection to a friend, regardless of reality, or because she couldn’t bring herself to confess to being crazy. Mad. Bats in the belfry.
She’d never seen the Caribbean girl, having only heard her voice. At first, Naomi had thought Nathan had lied, so positive was she that the girl lived in the monastery with them. It eventually became apparent that he spoke the truth. She’d never seen evidence to the contrary in all the long months—no extra plates in the sink, no rumpled bedding, no wet towels in the shower room. The girl had laughed at Naomi’s fumbling attempts to catch her, confessing that she lived far away near a private beach.
Over the months, Naomi had learned that the veil between her world and Nathan’s was thin. He’d told her in the beginning that he lived here to retain that tenuous connection with the world of his birth. Though his lessons were primarily martial in nature, he’d encouraged her meditations, helping her gain a tighter focus using various elven techniques. The Caribbean girl seemed closer when Naomi was in her deepest trances. Whoever or whatever this was, her presence had never been a physical one. As time went on, Naomi surmised that the girl lived near another of these spiritual enclaves. That eased her mind about forging a friendship with a person who didn’t exist. The girl was alive and well in Jamaica, perhaps in a holy place or something, and the two of them connected through the thin barriers.
Or Naomi’s sanity had begun slipping on her perilous climb to the monastery last year and had never recovered.
Naomi shook off the thoughts, letting them flow away from her as she concentrated on the flame. The Caribbean girl continued to sing just behind Naomi’s shoulder, though Naomi knew she wasn’t there. As Naomi slipped deeper into her trance, the girl quieted, her song changing into an unfamiliar one. Her croon was soft and melodious, a counterpoint to the flickering candle. Naomi experienced a sense of safety, seeing nothing but dancing flame, feeling nothing but lightness and being, hearing nothing but her friend’s musical voice.
The song changed. Discordance.
Without thought, Naomi dived to her left. She heard a heavy thunk of metal on stone, felt the vibration of its impact as she rolled across the flagstone floor. Springing to her feet, she crouched into a fighting stance.
Nathan didn’t pause his attack, hefting the hand ax up as he kicked through the feathers left by the ruined pillow upon which Naomi had been seated. A faint smell of burning down filled the acrid air as the candle toppled over, igniting the feathers. His expression was stern and angular, an avenging god sent to punish those who transgressed against him, terrifying in his beauty as he came at her.
Naomi backed away, bare feet finding purchase on rough stone, toes digging into the surface in preparation. There was no time for fear, no time for thought. Only the sharp edge of adrenaline and the training ingrained into her heart and soul rushed to the fore. Heart pounding, she ignored the ax, keeping her attention on his shoulders and eyes. His center of balance changed as he swung again, and she dropped to her belly, the blade whistling through the air where her abdomen had been. She counted on him needing a few precious seconds to counteract the weapon’s weight and trajectory. Spinning on the ground, she attempted to sweep his feet out from under him.
Nathan expected the maneuver and jumped, turning in midair as he followed the trajectory of his ax, landing to face her once again. Naomi had used her momentum to jump to her feet and stare at him. After a year of instruction, she knew better than to play defense. Such a tactic only worked with an opponent who would tire and weaken over time. Her otherworldly opponent appeared unaffected as he surged forward, her human physique unable to keep up with his elven one for long. Sweat made her scalp itch and she panted as if she’d run several miles, her adrenaline pumping her heart with its life-giving elixir. She ignored her discomfort, wholly focused on the flashing ax coming toward her.
She stepped inside the weapon’s arc, slamming into Nathan’s chest with her shoulder. Before he could counteract, she jabbed her hand—knuckles rigidly extended—into his gut just below his sternum. She brought her knee upward, following it up by ramming her forehead into his face. The ax dropped with a clang as Nathan explosively exhaled. His nose burst, blood as pale as his skin gushing over his mouth and chin.
The battle had yet to be won. Nathan’s style of instruction was no-holds-barred
. Unless one or the other of them conceded, they would continue to spar. Naomi gave him a vicious push. He wobbled backward, keeping his feet despite the damage she’d done to his testicles. Whipping around, she scooped up the ax and rounded on him, eyes narrowed. She held it low next to her right hip, the head pointing at Nathan in a manner that suggested she planned to skewer him with it rather than swing it like a bat. That was exactly what she began to do, leaping forward to put her opponent down.
A distant part of her mind screamed in protest, already envisioning the result of her assault. Nathan wasn’t ready, still struggling to catch his breath, balance nonexistent as he hunkered slightly forward with his hips turning away from her approach. She would drive the remaining air from his lung, dropping him further into a crouch. With her free hand, she’d grab his long, silver hair and pull down and to the left, baring the back of his neck for the blade. There was a warlike rightness to it, totally at odds with the inner terror that wrapped around her heart.
“Yield,” he croaked.
Naomi blinked, coming out of her battle fugue. She turned the weapon away at the last moment, bumping into her unstable mentor before she could stop her forward motion. He stumbled backward two or three paces and fell on his butt.
He smiled at her, the blood from his nose making his sharp teeth glisten even more dangerously. “Quick and dirty, just like I like it.” He chuckled.
It took a few moments before she realized that she had remained in an offensive pose, ax held to one side, muscles tensed to slash across his torso if he offered any threat. She swallowed and stepped back, running a hand across her face. With the absence of her trance, dismay rushed to the fore. “I could have killed you!”
Nathan nodded, an amused smirk on his face. Using his shirt, he wiped at the blood on his face. “Exactly.”
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