Forest Moon Rising (37 page)

“We can’t allow the Nörglein to get near it. I won’t let the little bastard live to rape another woman.”

“I’ll reserve judgment to see if they are redeemable. Are you sure they can’t fish the crystal ball out of the river?”

No
.

“Then move it again. Keep it moving so no one with the talent to sense it can hone in on it. What about the freeze-dried garbage dump of the Universe?”

“I wish I knew someone I could entrust it to.”

“I said, someone I trust!”

Someone I trust.

I slapped my forehead then pounded it into the desktop. I’m an idiot. And then some.

As Sean so aptly pointed out, part of my depression and self-destructive tendencies stemmed from my isolation. I’d grown too used to having to work on my own, without any guidance from the source of my status as a Warrior of the Celestial Blade.

I needed to reconnect with the Citadel. Deep in a lost ravine between here and there, part of the twilight world that forms a barrier between light and dark, good and evil, I’d stumbled on the place in a fever delirium.

Sister Serena, the physician, had cut the otherworldly infection from my body, leaving sickle shaped scars from my right temple to jaw, beneath each breast, and across my belly. Because the infection originated outside current reality, the scars remained partially outside normal sight as well. Only another Warrior could see them. Or Gollum—I still hadn’t figured out how he could. All Warriors bore at least some of those scars.

I needed to reconnect with my origins.

With Scrap perched on the windowsill watching for danger, I propped myself up against the headboard with extra pillows and relaxed.

Meditation requires stillness within.

Not an easy task for one as restless as me. If I’m uncomfortable in an exotic yoga pose I might as well forget even trying.

I went through a ritual of progressive muscle clenches and releases, working from brows to toes, letting the energy flow more readily. Once my body felt as if it melted into the quilted coverlet, I visualized a bright tornado of tension spiraling down from my mind to my feet and out into the world.

My subconscious took over, relaxing me to almost sleep, and brought new energy into me. I visualized it creating a bubble around me. A bubble that would transport my thoughts on a direct line north by northeast to the home of my Sisterhood.

Past midnight. The Sisters slept the sleep of the just. Their routine demanded long hours keeping the Citadel mostly self-sufficient along with harsh training in the military arts. During my year there, I had collapsed in my bed every night, too exhausted to dream.

But someone was always on watch. The Citadel sat atop a portal to a demon world. We could not allow our enemies to breach it while we slept.

“Who?” a weary mind answered my gentle probe.

I flashed an image of myself to the woman on guard. Telepathy isn’t so much an actual conversation as a series of images and impressions, it’s just easier to transcribe in words.

“Oh, Tess. Greetings.”

“Tess, where are you?” Gayla, the senior Sister interrupted. I’d been the one to admit Gayla to an overcrowded Citadel when she burned with the imp flu. I had cut the infection from her.

She had defied the previous leadership to send me backup when I faced an entire horde of rampaging Sasquatch.

We’d been close ever since.

“Home. Why?”

“Ginkgo said that Scrap said we needed to talk. I called just a bit ago. Your line was busy.”

“Huh? Scrap, who’s on the phone?” I searched my tentative connection to the girls. Both slept soundly in their room.

Line’s clear now.
Scrap sat a little further forward, alert.

Previously, I’d have defaulted to calling Gayla, since she was obviously awake.

Having sunk deep into meditative mode, I decided to stay there. Less chance of eavesdroppers.

“I have an artifact of power that needs to disappear for a while, but still be accessible to me,” I said as I showed an image of the crystal ball as I’d last seen it, resting in my hand, inviting me to gaze deeply into the swirls of milky minerals, losing myself in the power and the other worlds it tapped.

“Wow! You aren’t kidding, that’s an artifact of power. I’d give up my claim on the Goddess Brooch for that.”

“I claim both as gifts of fate!”

Me, territorial? Just look at how long it took me to come to the practical solution of giving up my office.

“Acknowledged,” Gayla said formally. “Where should I put it?”

“At the bottom of the midden. I don’t care, just so long as it doesn’t get near the portal. It might totally dissolve the barriers.”

“Agreed. Have Scrap drop it off to me and me only. There are a few malcontents—overachievers actually—we’ve recruited recently. They want to storm the portal and slay anything they can find on the other side.”

“Are they candidates to go rogue?” Technically, I was rogue since I fought the forces of evil on the outside. We used to be rare. With shifting portals, changing power dynamics, and Donovan’s half-breeds agitating for a home world, we needed more people on the outside than in the past six centuries.

I wondered if the crystal ball had something to do with these changing times.

It needed to go to someone powerful enough to control it. Not yet.

“Not yet,” Gayla echoed my thoughts. “I don’t trust these new Warriors on their own. They’d go looking for trouble without backup.”

“Been there, done that.” We both chuckled.

“You, I trust to have common sense eventually. These gals, I don’t. So what have you been up to?”

“Too much.” I uploaded the rescue of my daughters from their abusive father in a series of tableaus, carefully editing the aftermath of Lady Lucia’s spell.

I hadn’t come to terms with my demon ancestry enough to entrust that knowledge to even a dear friend.

Gayla whistled through her teeth. “I’d offer to train the girls and keep them isolated but they’d meet opposition right, left, and sideways.”

“Which is why I didn’t ask.”

“Ginkgo just dumped the crystal ball in my lap. I’d better do something with it quick, while the boys are off for some quick cuddling.”

We signed off with proper telepathic protocols, an image of a good-bye wave, then a gray wall that faded to black. I slowly withdrew from the meditation.

When I opened my eyes, both Phonetia and E.T. stood in my doorway staring at me with eyes wide in awe.

“We thought only Father could communicate that deeply,” Phonetia whispered. “Did Lady Lucia’s spell give you that power?”

“I’ve always been able to contact my Sisterhood this way.” But never so easily or completely.

I didn’t want to think about how or why.

“Practice. It just takes practice.”

“We can’t do it and we’ve practiced,” Phonetia insisted. “Same with our brothers. We just have this general awareness of where you are and what your mood is. Like we used to have with Father and the boys.”

“Why are your eyes glowing red?” E.T. asked.

My heart sank.

“P
HONETIA, WHAT DID I TELL YOU about wandering around the house naked?” I demanded the next morning.

“Ah, Mom,” she whined. No excuses or explanations.

“You don’t live in a cave in the woods anymore. There are rules of civilization. Wearing clothes is one of them.”

“Clothes are dumb.” She tried walking past me from her bedroom to the bath.

“You didn’t think so when you and E.T. spent an entire afternoon trying on the new outfits Lady Lucia’s money bought you.”

“E.T. snores. Why can’t I move into the big room and
you
share with her?”

“Because then I wouldn’t sleep either. You really don’t want to deal with me when I’m sleep deprived.” Like today. After last night’s easy communication with Gayla and E.T. proclaiming that my eyes glowed demon red, I hadn’t slept much. When I did, my dreams were filled with strange aches in my joints and a need to fly.

No way in hell would I transform into a bat.

I couldn’t suppress my atavistic shiver of fear. Bats! Anything but a bat.

Phonetia rolled her eyes like any teenager with the weight of the world on her shoulders. Hey, it’s part of the job of being a teenager.

“Get your shower and put on some clothes. Breakfast will be ready in twenty minutes.”

“If you say so.”

“I don’t snore. You do! I don’t want to share with you either,” E.T. yelled from deep within the tangle of a typical teen’s room. All those beautiful, expensive, new clothes and they couldn’t figure out how to hang them in the closet or pick up dirty underwear. They’d shared that room only a few days and already it looked like ground zero of a force ten hurricane.

“Scrap tells me that I’m the one who snores, so you’re both wrong,” I proclaimed. “We’ve got a full day of lessons and cleaning your room today so get moving while I fix waffles.”

“With strawberries?” E.T. asked. She stuck her head out the door. She at least held her nightgown in front of her, protecting my modesty if not hers.

“Strawberries are out of season and I don’t like frozen. How about blueberries? They survive the freezer better. And I’ve got whipped cream.” Girls who loved the same food I did, what more could a mom ask?

“Waffles aren’t any good without bacon,” Phonetia sniffed superiorly.

“Bacon I can do. Better hurry or your sister and I will eat it all.”

Finally she made tracks for the bathroom, presenting her long slender back to me.

I gasped at the snaking scars showing white against her youthful skin.

“Did your father do that to you?” I stopped her with a gentle hand on her shoulder. I remembered the agony of the blackberry whip hitting me repeatedly as my blood worked to share the lives of my girls during Lady Lucia’s spell. I’d barely endured. How had this child survived such abuse?

“Yeah, what of it. He said I deserved it.”

“No child deserves that kind of punishment no matter what their problem.”

“If you say so.” She shrugged out from under my touch.

“I say so.” My words got lost in the slamming of the bathroom door.

“Mom,” E.T. asked hesitantly, still hiding behind her nightgown.

“What, sweetie?” I rearranged my face from stern disapproval to careful concern.

“She called Oak last night, after midnight. We thought you were already asleep. Maybe you’d just gone quiet in your meditation.”

That explained the busy phone line.

Everything inside me stilled. “Why would Phonetia call your brother?”

“She’s worried. The spell, the one Lady Lucia performed . . . it severed our link to our brothers as well as our father. We can’t tell if he’s taking out his anger on the boys.”

“Is he?”

“We don’t know. Oak didn’t answer the pay phone on Second and Ankeny at the prearranged time.”

I should have known. These kids were close. They roamed the city, knew the bus routes, spied for their father. Of course they’d have communications backup.

“Get ready for breakfast. If your lessons go well, we’ll walk the river path after lunch.” I squeezed her shoulder reassuringly.

“Can we go south this time? We haven’t been that way and need to pick up litter.”

“I think that can be arranged.”

The doorbell rang as I forked the last piece of bacon from the frying pan onto paper towels to drain.