Cabal

by David Delaney

  The moment we were seated Lucy asked again, "Where's Cynthia?"

  "Cynthia's been taken, by Marcus."

  Holy crap.

  "What?" Lucy said, stunned. "When?"

  "Right before the building went up. The explosion was cover for his escape," Ellen said.

  "Marcus nuked a building to grab one person?" Morgan asked.

  "Yes. Now, can you please explain how you knew Marcus was alive?"

  "It's kind of a long story," I said.

  "I have no other plans."

  "Then it might be easier if we show you."

  "I don't understand," said Ellen. "Show me what?"

  I triggered my comm tattoo and Ellen's eyes narrowed at my use of a spell.

  Surprise.

  "Elyse, bring your mom over."

  Now Ellen looked very befuddled. "Katherine Kelly is dead. Who is Elyse bringing?"

  The door opened and Elyse and Mrs. Kelly stopped in the entryway. Ellen rose from her seat. I was impressed—she was keeping super-cool even though a supposed dead woman had just showed up.

  "Hello, Ellen. I would say it's good to see you, but the circumstances are a bit strange," said Mrs. Kelly.

  "Katherine? How?" Ellen's cool was starting to crack.

  "They can tell it better than I can," said Mrs. Kelly. "I'll leave you to it."

  Elyse winked at me as she and her mom left us. Ellen sat back down, staring at the now empty doorway. I checked her out in the magic spectrum. Her aura was roiling. Mrs. Kelly's appearance had her rattled.

  "Tell me everything," Ellen asked.

  Lucy and I explained how, when we got sucked out of the memory construct, we somehow pulled Mrs. Kelly and Marcus with us.

  "That's extraordinary and I never would have believed it, if I hadn't seen Katherine with my own eyes."

  "There's a really big but," I said.

  "Excuse me?" said Ellen.

  I smiled. "The Marcus from the construct did appear in the forest with us, but he was dead. Lucy had stabbed him right before we all got dumped out. We can show you his body. It's here at the compound. The other Marcus, the one who started slinging spells around, we aren't quite sure where he came from. At one point there was a working theory that he was an evil magic clone."

  "I can shed some light on where he came from, and he's definitely not a clone," said Ellen.

  "So he didn't die all those years ago?" said Lucy. "How could you guys lie to me all this time?"

  Ellen looked pained. "Dear Lucy, I also believed he was dead. Everyone at the Society believed he was dead. It was Cynthia who saved his life that night and lied to the rest of us for all these years."

  I rocked back in my chair. "I didn’t see that coming."

  "Cynthia?" said Lucy. "But why?"

  "They had been engaged to be married many, many years before, when Marcus was still a member of the Society in good standing."

  My ears picked up Wyatt somewhere off in the trees when he shouted, "No freaking way!" Elyse must have been relating what we were saying to the non-super hearing.

  Ellen smiled, obviously hearing him too. My head was spinning and I could only imagine how Lucy felt. Morgan was way ahead of me. He placed a reassuring hand on her thigh. The dude had moves.

  "I don't understand," said Lucy. "If Cynthia let him go, where's he been all this time?"

  "I apologize, I should have been more precise," said Ellen. "Cynthia didn't let him go, we think she imprisoned him."

  "For over thirty years?" I said. "What was she doing with him?"

  "We think she was trying to save him, rehabilitate him."

  "You can't rehabilitate a blood-mage," said Lucy. "Once they cross over, commit their first murder, they're lost."

  "Yes," Ellen said. "Obviously, Cynthia was not thinking clearly."

  "For thirty years!" I was beside myself. "You can't chalk that up to not thinking clearly, that's top-shelf crazy."

  Ellen looked down at her hands folded neatly in her lap. I had to remind myself that Ellen and Cynthia had been friends for . . . actually, I had no idea how long. It could be well over a century or longer. The betrayal she was feeling must have been enormous.

  I needed to change the subject. "So, when the magic went haywire in Lucy's construct, we what? Somehow pulled Marcus from whatever personal Azkaban that Cynthia had him locked up in?"

  "It would seem so, yes," said Cynthia.

  "It's our fault," said Lucy.

  "What? No way," I said to Lucy. "Cynthia kept that dingleberry alive and Jimmy shot you in the head, so those two are the only ones that deserve blame." I asked Ellen, "Do you have any leads on where Marcus may be hiding out?"

  "No, I was hoping you might have found something in Mexico."

  Morgan couldn't have scripted a better segue. "We found something alright, it just wasn't Marcus." Morgan used his foot to drag his duffel bag out from under the desk. He unzipped it and with a small flourish he pulled the arm from the bag. "You ever see anything like this?"

  I watched Ellen's aura for any sign of lying or deception. I wasn't disappointed. Her aura flared, but not with deceit—she was afraid.

  Ellen slumped in her chair. "It's worse than I feared," she said, taking the arm from Morgan. "They are far more advanced than we imagined."

  "Who are they?" asked Morgan.

  "The group you stumbled upon two years ago,” she said. "The ones we've been trying to hunt down and stop ever since."

  "So, not the Cabal," said Lucy.

  "Oh my, most definitely not," said Ellen.

  "You're that sure?" I said.

  Ellen looked at each of us in turn, studying our faces with those eerie silver eyes. "I'm sorry, I thought you had figured it out, and that's why you were refusing to come in. Why we were meeting here at the compound.”

  "Figured what out?" said Lucy.

  Ellen set the arm down and sat up straight in her chair. "I am the leader of the Cabal and I need your help to stop Marcus, rescue Cynthia, and save the Paragon Society from utter destruction."

  "Oh," said Lucy.

  Seriously, what else was there to say?

  Blood-Mage

  A Paragon Society Novel

  **Coming Soon**

  ____________________________

  I’d like to offer a huge thank you for continuing to follow Orson and his friends’ journey through the crazy world of the Paragon Society. I hope you enjoyed reading Cabal as much as I enjoyed writing it.

  You will have noticed the series has newly redesigned covers and updated formatting throughout. I hope these changes make the reading experience more enjoyable.

  If you’re enjoying the story, you can make a big difference…

  Obviously, the Paragon Society series is not classical literature, but that’s okay because I did not set out to write classical literature. My only goal is to tell a fun, exciting and engaging story and hopefully, you agree that I’m continuing to succeed in that endeavor.

  Hands down, reviews are one of the most powerful tools in an author’s arsenal. I would be tremendously grateful if you could spend a few minutes leaving an honest review. It can be as long or as short as you like. Reviews help me gain visibility, and they can bring my books to the attention of other readers who may enjoy them. Thank you, in advance for your help!

  Leave your review here

  Paragon Society News

  First, I want to give a shout-out to my advance readers, once again you’ve proven how invaluable you are as the final group of eyeballs that give my manuscripts the once over, and in the process discover missed typos and even some structural issues. You guys rock!

  I love getting to know my readers because without you I’d be mumbling to myself in the dark somewhere. Many of you have already reached out, and I do my best to respond to everyone, but if I missed you, I apologize, please know that I appreciate the time it took for you to send the email and I’m very thankful.

  I occasionally (very occasionally - no spam ever!) send o
ut newsletter updates with details on new releases, excerpts from upcoming books, sneak-peeks at cover art and more importantly free or discounted Paragon Society swag.

  From time to time I also invite readers to join my (already awesome) advance reader team, which gets them copies of upcoming books before they are officially released - for free.

  If this sounds like something you may be interested in, please drop me an email at:

  david@davidadelaney.com

  All my best, David

  Turn the page for the bonus novella: Singularity Barbecue

  Singularity BBQ

  A quick note

  About two years ago I wrote and published my first novella—Singularity Barbecue. It was a fun little supernatural romp about a bunch of shape-shifters and magic users who belonged to a group called the Paragon Society. The world and characters I’d created were well received by readers and so I decided to embark on a crazy journey that involved publishing a series of full length novels. But this would require me to take the story back in time, to create a well rounded origin for Orson and the gang.

  Cabal, which you just finished reading, is book 4 in the series. And we have now reached the point in the tale where the events of Singularity Barbecue take place. So I decided to include it here for you, so that when book 5 is published, there will (hopefully) be no confusion about certain plot points and characters.

  Enjoy!

  David

  Copyright © 2017 David Delaney

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic or mechanically, including photocopying and recording, taping or by any information retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of a brief quotation embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For Buffy, Willow, Xander, Giles

  And of course Shelly

  Chapter One

  There was one thing she knew for certain—if they caught her, they would eat her. That knowledge should have elicited feelings of revulsion and outrage or, at the least, disbelief. But instead, she accepted it as easily as she accepted the knowledge that lions prey on and eat weaker animals. Survival of the fittest . . . it was the governing principle of billions of years of evolution. Intellectually, she got that, but instinctually, all she wanted to do was survive.

  So she ran.

  She ran the way a baby gazelle tries to outrun a pride of faster, stronger lions—erratic twists and turns punctuated with bursts of speed. Her power was limited compared to her pursuers’, but it was enough to make her faster than the average person. If she could risk stopping for a moment, she may have been able to pull enough energy to create some kind of defense.

  But stopping was not an option.

  While she was moving, while she was not caught, there was always hope. Of course, where she was running to, she had no idea. She couldn’t think of anywhere that would be safe from them. Not even the police could protect her. No. She would have to disappear completely . . . another city . . . maybe even a different country.

  There was also the other thing—the thing she understood better than anyone.

  No.

  Stop it.

  Don't even think about that, she scolded herself. Just concentrate on getting away . . . getting to safety. But what was the point of getting away if . . .?

  Stop it!

  It wasn’t constructive to waste energy on something she couldn’t control or fix. Once she was safe, once she was able to rest for a bit, then she could focus on that other thing. Yes, that was right. She would concentrate all of her energy on solving the . . . the issue . . . and she had no doubt that she could solve it. Then why hadn’t she solved it already? She had been given the necessary time and resources, and yet a solution had remained elusive. It was the pressure. The others had pressured her too much. If they had just left her alone, she would have figured it out; she was sure of that.

  Someone laughed behind her. She slid to a stop and spun on her heels. Her curly hair whipped around into her dark eyes. She reached up with a shaky hand and brushed the hair back from her face.

  She held her breath, listening.

  The street behind her was deserted. Even in the industrial area she was running through, an empty street was an amazing thing in a city of ten million people. She could hear the traffic on Santa Monica Boulevard, which was just a few blocks away. If she could just make it there, she would have a much better chance of getting away. She began to move backward slowly, if she wasn’t caught, there was always hope.

  She strained to see into the shadows of the buildings where the moonlight didn’t quite reach. She jumped as another quick laugh came from her left from across the street. She turned in that direction but still couldn’t see anybody. Then the laughter started again, and this time, it didn’t stop. It came from multiple directions. She spun in circles, scanning the darkness around her, seeking the faces of her predators. As she became more frantic, the laughter got louder. She covered her ears, trying to block it out, willing it, in vain, to stop.

  “Please. Please don’t. I promised I won’t tell," she shouted into the dark.

  The laughter stopped.

  Her breath caught in her throat. While you weren’t caught, there was always hope, she thought again.

  Then they stepped out of the shadows into the moonlight where she could see their faces . . . the faces of her friends, and she knew she was caught and that all hope was lost.

  Chapter Two

  Covering the special interest beat for a free Los Angeles magazine—a magazine that could be found in trendy Hollywood coffee houses and tattoo parlors—was not the career Sebastian Stevens had envisioned for himself. He had followed the prescribed path of studying hard in high school with the requisite transcript-boosting extracurricular activities, including editing the school paper and being a star member of the track team. He had even won a couple of district awards for his writing and had taken second and third place in the 400 meter at state finals in his junior and senior years, respectively. All of his hard work had done exactly what it had been intended to do—get him into UCLA with a scholarship.

  While at UCLA, he continued to focus at excelling in his studies and in track and field. He kept the partying to a minimum and even picked a fraternity with a similar philosophy to his—beer and girls were balanced against studying and class assignments, with beer and girls usually coming in a distant second.

  Sebastian didn’t want to lead just a successful life but an exceptionally successful life. Take his first name, for instance. He had not been born Sebastian Stevens. His parents had given him the bland name Todd, which was way too vanilla for the life he had planned for himself. So the summer before his freshman year at college, Todd had legally become Sebastian. The name Sebastian Stevens sounded successful and strong. He also enjoyed the alliteration. He had retained the T from Todd so that his bylines would read T. Sebastian Stevens. Who wouldn’t trust and want to read a story written by someone with such a cool a name?

  Sebastian had his sights set on a writing career. His plan was to start out in journalism, covering politics. He accepted that he would probably have to start out covering the local news—fires, floods, and traffic jams—but Washington DC was his ultimate goal. Sebastian wanted to be a beltway player—the kind of reporter who covered the politics of the nation and the men and women who made those politics happen. Then, after a few years in the trenches rubbing elbows with Washington power brokers and maybe a president or two, he would settle down to write books. He knew he had at least a Pulitzer in him . . . heck, maybe even a Nobel.

  Sebastian held himself in very high esteem. It was hard not to, he was that good . . . or so he thought.

 
; Sebastian had sacrificed everything upon the altar of ambition, and what had been his reward? Working as a beat reporter for a free magazine that covered the local art and music scene.

  Sebastian had been lied to, and he felt cheated. The gods of ambition and the sacrifices they required turned out to be the lies of a false religion. By the time Sebastian had graduated—with honors, of course—the newspaper and magazine business was on life support. Print journalism had been killed by the microchip. The giant black hole called the Internet had gobbled up entire publications and their staff, leaving nothing in its wake.

  The simple fact was that there were no local reporting jobs—well, no jobs up to his demanding standards—to be had. For a short moment, Sebastian considered joining the stampede of teenagers, stay-at-home moms, and pseudo-intellectuals who had started blogging. But the thought of becoming one of the faceless thousands—maybe tens of thousands—infesting the Internet with no way to assure the online masses would find him and his unique voice made him nauseous.

  No thank you.

  That is how T. Sebastian Stevens, honor student, track star, wordsmith extraordinaire, found himself standing in a downtown Los Angeles parking lot in the afternoon heat of a Southern California summer, waiting for five food trucks to set up shop. He should have thought to put on sunscreen. His British ancestry—pale skin, wispy blonde hair—did not lend him a ton of protection from the Sun's harsh rays. With proper preparation he may have been able to pull off a fresh glow, but instead he was probably just going to turn pink and blotchy.