Demon Storm: Belador book 5 (30 page)

Storm listened, no expression of concern.

Evalle continued, “Then, if he teleports us to Treoir, Macha is an unpredictable force. She would not allow the druids to bring in anyone with dark arts to remove the Noirre threads on Brina’s hologram. I can only imagine her reaction if she realizes you’re a demon.”

“You’re the master. I go where you go.”

“If that’s the case, I’ll take you to my underground apartment and leave you there while I go to Treoir.”

Storm became very still, working through his answer. “If you show up empty-handed, Macha will hold you responsible.”

A very real possibility. Evalle lifted her shoulders. “You’re a demon. That shouldn’t matter to you.”

His lips flattened into a line. “It doesn’t. All the word games in the world won’t change the fact that I’m dead inside. I’m only assessing a threat to you, because that’s what my job is. I would have had to do the same for Nadina.”

She snapped, “Don’t ever put me in the same category as her.”

“I didn’t. You did when you took possession of me. But to get back to the point, the answer is yes. I’ll go to Treoir with you.”

His easy agreement should have thrilled her, not raised warning flags. It wasn’t that he’d agreed so readily, but he’d sounded as if he
wanted
to go.

She hated not knowing this Storm and why he would or would not do something, but she couldn’t waste any more minutes figuring it out right now.

“Just as long as you’re doing it of your own free will.” She grimaced at another wave of pain through her middle. She clutched her stomach with her hand.

That drew his eyes to her abdomen. His mouth twisted with a bitter thought. “You got what you wanted. I
choose
to do this. If we’re going then let’s get moving.”

One tiny concession, but she’d take that over none at all. “What about these warlocks?”

Storm glanced around. “Tell Sen two of his Medb buddies cornered a demon over here and they need his help.”

Had that been a touch of Storm’s wry humor?

“Workers will show up as soon as daylight hits.”

Storm huffed out a sigh, his gaze taking in the building. “I don’t have time to ward this place but I can put a spell on it that will make a worker not recognize it as the building he’s looking for. That’ll last about fifteen minutes.” 

“That should do it.” She was only a one-minute walk from Woodruff Park. Once they were back on the sidewalk and Storm had put a spell on the ground floor concrete, she used Storm’s cellphone to call Trey. He confirmed that he was still able to reach Sen by telepathy.

Before she hung up, Evalle added, “Would you ask Sen to bring my Gixxer back with him?”

“I’ll ask, but do you really expect Sen to do anything for you?”

“Good point. Tell him Tzader wants my Gixxer returned. I’m sure I can get that backed up.”

Trey chuckled. “I like the way you’re thinking.”  Then his voice turned gruff. “Good luck with Brina. We’re all pulling for you and Storm.”

She glanced over at Storm and hoped she wasn’t putting Storm and all the Beladors at risk. In the end, she just said, “Thanks.” 

Trey said he’d send Sen to meet her in five minutes and he’d try to find Quinn, who had been in the area earlier.

By the time she reached the park, her stomach felt as if scorpions were chewing their way out. Sweat ran down the sides of her face. Storm kept glancing over, but offered no more help, which told her he had used whatever Navajo healing powers he could call up.

She squinted against the brightness. She hadn’t needed eye protection on the drive over or the last time she was in the sun, but even humans needed sunglasses. She’d get another pair to wear when she came back from Treoir.

Tiny rays of sunlight were stabbing the park and sidewalk. She’d covered this same area on foot so many times close to daybreak that she knew exactly where sunlight would strike all throughout the year. She could dodge the pattern between here and the next intersection of Five Points with the agility of a jewel thief weaving through security lasers.

Like that spot just ahead of her on the sidewalk where two cracks intersected that she’d reach in ten more steps. The sun would make a laser thin strike any moment now.

Right on time, a bright finger of light touched the sidewalk.

No different than people walking past a “wet paint” sign who felt the need to test it, Evalle just had to swipe a finger through the sunbeam and prove the dark no longer owned her.

Burning pain ripped across her finger.

She shrieked and snatched her hand protectively to her stomach. Tears stung her eyes.

Storm spun around, searching for a threat. “What’s wrong?”

Evalle uncurled her hand to find the skin burned to the bone on her finger. She shivered. “I thought ...” She looked up at him. “I ... the sun burned me.”

“You said that wasn’t a problem any more.”

“It shouldn’t be. It wasn’t when ...”  She caught herself. The last time she’d been in sunlight was right before Adrianna had sent Evalle in astral projection to find Storm.

Adrianna had warned her that the trip would come at a price.

Evalle had offered anything from her as she stood there, thinking she might lose her powers. They’d taken her ability to walk in the sun. The freedom to live like anyone else.

“What happened?” Storm asked.

“Nothing. I was wrong.”

“That’s a lie. What. Happened?”

She jerked at his cold tone, in too much pain to guard her words. “You want the truth? I had to make a sacrifice to travel to Mitnal the first time to find you. Looks like the spirits who played tour guide to the underworld finally figured out what they wanted in payment.”

“Evalle, I–” “Don’t care,” she finished for him. “So let’s just drop it.”

“But–” 

His words were cut off by energy sweeping briskly around them, stirring leaves and loose sand.

Sen had arrived.

The six-foot-seven bane of her existence. His hair that sometimes grew several feet overnight was now a half-inch long. All that did was accentuate the square jaw and blue eyes that didn’t belong in his Asian-influenced face.

He ruled VIPER headquarters located in a mountain in North Georgia, where no sign of it was obvious from the outside, because Sen could literally move a mountain if he chose. One day she would find out where he came from, or more importantly, who held the hammer over Sen’s head to make him play liaison between VIPER agents and Tribunals.

Evalle had to calm down or she’d never reach Treoir. One wrong word to Sen and he’d find a reason to drag her to a Tribunal court.

If the goddess was still at a Tribunal meeting, Evalle getting dragged in during the middle of it would only make things worse.

Before Evalle turned to Sen, she shoved her hand into her pocket, biting her lip against the pain of anything touching her ravaged finger. She was in no mood to get into a verbal throwdown with Sen or to give him time to figure out that Storm had changed into a demon.

She managed to sound calm. “We’re ready to go to Treoir.”

Sen gave her a look reserved for small, ugly insects. “I didn’t ask.”

Storm made a slight move toward him and even though Evalle appreciated the show of protection it was nothing more than Storm defending his master, which she didn’t need or want right now.

Two dead warlocks had to be dealt with and Evalle had more to worry about than Sen being his usual jockstrap self. “By the way, I left two of your Medb friends in the building being constructed a block that way.”  She pointed behind her.

“I don’t have friends.”

“True, but you have a mess those warlocks created on the second floor. They specifically said they were performing duties sanctioned by you.”

Sen’s face tightened with threat. “I’ve been cleaning up Belador crap all day. What the hell did you do now?”

“Me? The way I see it, I did you a favor by keeping that little issue away from the public,” she quipped then looked around for her motorcycle. “By the way, where’s my Gixxer?”

Sen lifted a thumb he pointed over his shoulder. “Up there.”

She took in the area behind him and the roof of a two-story building that sat on a triangle piece of property right at the intersection of five roads. Thus the reason for the area named Five Points. A huge Coca-Cola sign with scrolling neon and flashing lights rose fifty feet above the roof.

She could just see the tops of her motorcycle handlebars. Her Gixxer had been deposited inside the parapet wall of the roof.

You jerk
. “Did you have to put it on top of a building?”

“The way I see it, you’re lucky I brought it at all.”  He wasn’t smiling.

Just toss in the shovel and stop giving Sen more opportunities to screw with me
. “I’d love to stay and chat, but we’re getting later by the minute and I’d hate to tell Macha that you held us up.”

Sen flipped his hand at her and Storm, spinning her world with gut-twisting speed. Her stomach was already miserable from the burning pain and now she held her charred finger tucked close to her body.  

She closed her eyes against the sudden vertigo.

Her stomach lurched at realizing she hadn’t specified where to send her and Storm on Treoir.

M
aeve materialized in the queen’s chamber of TÅμr Medb and waited for Cathbad to arrive next to her before she noted, “It appears we can teleport in and out of the tower any time we choose.”

Devilment sparkled in Cathbad’s brown eyes. “Oh, aye. That was a productive trip for our first time back in the mortal world.”

“Absolutely.”  She rubbed her hands together. “I haven’t enjoyed myself this much in, oh, a couple of thousand years.” She laughed at her personal joke, and the way she was assimilating the modern use of language, then swung around to take in the chamber. “I really hate what Flaevynn, or maybe her predecessors, did with this room.”

“Don’t tell me you’ll be spending your time redecorating.”

She smiled. “All in good time. First, I have to break the warding on that scrying wall.”  With a blink, she crossed the room to float in front of the wall built of rare gems. “From what I heard today, Flaevynn wasn’t stupid, but neither was she an intellectual giant. This can’t be that difficult to figure out.”

Cathbad joined her, but remained on the ground. “Come down here, Maeve.”

She dropped slowly until she stood beside him. “Did you find something?”

“Not exactly.” He turned his head to one side and back to the other. “I do believe this might have been warded by one of
my
descendants instead of Flaevynn.”

Maeve had hesitated once to join forces with this druid, but he’d proven his ability to be shrewd and powerful when dealing with entities. Just as he had today. “Do you think you can break it?”

“No, I would not do that.”

“Why?”

“Because that might destroy the wall.” He leaned forward, placing a hand over one specific stone, and runic inscriptions appeared, etched into a ruby the size of a loaf of bread. “If we damage the wall, we have no way to find out what happened before we arrived in this tower.”

Yet again, he earned his place with her.

She held the power of an entire pantheon, but every ruler needed a right-hand man. She asked, “Can you take control?”

“I’m doin’ it as we speak.”

The wall of stones came alive. Scenes were drifting in and out. Maeve caught a flash of mountains that rose from a mist, then a battle being waged with gryphons.

Her
gryphons.

Just as the Alterants were hers. There had to be more Alterants to change into gryphons and she would find those as well.

Cathbad waved his hands quickly above several stones. Each time his palms passed over a stone, the runic inscriptions would glow.

He slowed his hands, staring up at the virtual screen as the images emerged one at a time, following the speed of his hand movement.

A woman and a man came into view. Maeve said, “There! Stop on that scene.”

“Just a moment,” Cathbad murmured, maneuvering the images with the skill of a captain piloting a ship in calm seas. “That one?”

Maeve studied the scene where a man held a young woman in his arms. He was crying. And he was clearly a Belador based on the aura surrounding him.

She looked closer and said, “That woman ... would that be Kizira? I saw her father for a moment just before you returned to take his place, and this young woman favors him.”

Cathbad gave it a long review. “I do believe it is her.” He leaned in, squinting at Kizira dying next to a Belador. “Strange pair, those two. Why would a Belador be holdin’ her as if she were precious to him?”

Good question. Maeve said, “Go back to see if you can find the gryphon attack that happened just before Flaevynn died.”

He did. They watched what Flaevynn must have seen once she released her gryphons to attack Treoir. First there had been a squadron of ten gryphons flying toward an opening in the Belador defenses on the island. That had to be the work of the Belador traitor she’d been informed of, who’d died that day. The woman riding one of the gryphons was the same one that had been dying in the arms of a Belador.  

Cathbad scrunched up his face in a frown. “Why did Kizira die? A priestess can heal herself.”

“True, but the bigger question is, why did Kizira throw herself in front of a gryphon attacking a Belador and protect him?”  Maeve pondered that and asked, “Can you give us sounds?”

“Not yet, but soon.”  The images were flying faster again then stopped abruptly. “That’s as far as Flaevynn’s scrying went. Probably stopped at her death.”

That had been enough to show Maeve that some of the gryphons had continued to fight until they were ordered to stand down. Who had that power once Kizira had died? She had clearly controlled her attack team until then.

The last scene included that Belador carrying Kizira’s body toward the castle.

Maeve had never been one to wait for an opportunity to come to her. She believed in grasping it by the balls any chance she could. “We need sound for those scrying images, but in the meantime I want that Belador warrior found.”  She started toward her throne and turned back. “In fact, where is Kizira’s body?”