Gathering Storm (40 page)

Glen got pulverized twice
because of glancing at the sidelines to see if Rosie was watching.
Rosie jumped up and down and cheered like a, well, like a
cheerleader. She didn’t question why Glen was included in the game
when no other trainees were playing, probably assuming it had
something to do with acting as temporary Sovereign.

He was delaying telling
her that he was being inducted into active hunter duty, that he was
a new member of Z Team, and that he would probably be assigned
elsewhere. He just had a feeling none of that was going to go over
well. There was no question in his mind that his chemistry with
Rosie was the once-in-a-lifetime kind. He just wasn’t ready to
settle in one place and take a job that didn’t include hazard pay.
Someday, sure. Just not yet. He had some more living to do
first.

Storm could have been a professional
athlete. Litha knew he was a beautiful male at the peak of physical
perfection, but she didn’t know he could move with the grace of a
dancer and the fluidity of water. Though he’d never been that
interested in sports, it looked like there was some pleasure for
him in “letting the horses out”.

On the last play, he went
down with a muscle strain, and had to be helped off the field by
Ram and Kay. Still, his face was a vacillating conflict, grimacing
because of the pain and grinning because of the victory. Somebody
took a snapshot of the three of them coming off the field together
that would be treasured by the respective families for generations
thereafter.

Litha gave Elora a hug
being careful to avoid both shoulder and face. It didn’t need to be
said out loud. The rugby game turned out to be just what was needed
to restore a sense of optimism and life. The boys were banged up,
but feeling great and there was a sense of buoyancy in the
air.

“It doesn’t mean our original objections
weren’t legitimate,” Elora said.

“No,” Litha agreed. “It
just means things change.”

Elora looked into Litha’s eyes with warmth
and affection. “Some things don’t.”

Litha smiled and shook her head. “No. Some
things don’t change. They’re forever.”

“By the way, gorgeous necklace. Looks
incredible with your eyes.”

Litha automatically reached up to touch the
jade stones and beamed. “Thank you. It’s a gift from Storm.
Souvenir.”

Rosie came bouncing over,
breathless. “What’s going on here? Group hug?”

The women brought her in to form a circle.
They were still basking in the essence of familial sorority when
Glen came up.

“Hey,” he said, looking at Rosie like the
sun didn’t rise before she got up.

“Ew.” She scrunched up her nose and jumped
away from him. “Talk to me after you’ve had a shower.”

Glen looked down at his
mud-streaked body, smelled his armpit, and then looked up at Rosie,
grinning wickedly. “Come on. Give us a kiss.”

She squealed and darted away while he gave a
mock chase. While her mother and auntie watched, Litha said, “She
could do worse.”

“No doubt. I take it Storm agrees with
you?”

“Um, well, we haven’t
really had time to…” Litha’s eyes scanned the crowd and came to
rest on Storm who was watching the chase with dark interest. And
intensity. And something else less definable. “Uh oh. I guess we
should have
made
time to tell him.”

EPILOGUE_I

The twenty Ralengclan sent
to assassinate the former Briton princess never returned. The
entire team had been wiped out. Gone. Vanished. No
survivors.

It was a bright sunny
morning when Rothesay barged into Archer’s lab to say that the
project was pronounced a failure. Officially. That wasn’t the only
news he brought. The rest of it was that Archer was to go back to
square one and start again.

He turned toward Rothesay
with a blank look, then told his assistants to take a break before
he stepped a few paces away to open a cabinet door. He withdrew a
very old bottle of whiskey and began to pour into two glasses. As
he watched the amber liquid transfer from one container to another,
a hundred thoughts coalesced in his brain, which was, of course,
faster and more complex than any artificial intelligence in the
foreseeable future. The whirl of words and images was distilled
down to a single word.

Rothesay.

Archer knew he had been
complicit in a campaign of insanity that could only have been
fueled by passion so misguided that it had either originated as
psychosis or wandered there from pressure. It was a given that
Rothesay hated Laiwynn. Every single Ralengclan had stories to tell
and reasons to hate the former oppressors. But the result of
Rothesay’s obsession had brought the total of dead Ralengclan to
forty. So far. With nothing to show for it. And, apparently, the
Council was going to continue to go along with missions conceived
by a madman, no challenge being strong enough to dissuade them from
pursuing a path of lunacy.

Nodding at Rothesay, he said, “Let’s drink
to success.”

Rothesay smiled, but it
did nothing to warm his expression. “Sure.”

They clinked glasses and drank.

Four minutes later,
Rothesay was crumpled on the composition floor with lifeless,
vacant eyes staring at nothing. And everything. Archer had slipped
a couple of drops of his priceless potion into the drink. It was a
masterpiece if he did say so himself. Untraceable. No residue.
Flawless mimicry of a heart attack.

Archer threw the rest of
his untainted shot back and savored the slow burn all the way down
his esophagus. As he looked at his victim, he thought about his
crimes and knew that Rothesay’s execution went on the shorter list
of good things he had done in his lifetime.

In another minute his
assistants would return and he would have his speech ready.
Poor fellow. It was quick and severe. Shame. Not
a thing Archer could have done.

POSTSCRIPT

"Do no' be thinkin’ the
irony is lost on me." Elora looked at Ram with a blank expression
full of innocence. "I know you’re dyin' to say it."

"Okay. If it'll make you
feel less guilty, I'll say it. We came here so that we'd be safe
from Stagsnare assassins. Guess what? We’re not."

"Yeah. So look outside in the hallway."

Elora opened the apartment
door and stepped into the hall. There was an entire set of vintage
Louis Vuitton trunks stacked one on top of the other. She turned
back to Ram and grinned.

"We're going home."

“Does that smile mean I’ll
be gettin’ lucky tonight?”

“You’re lucky every night, elf.”

He laughed. “And that
would be the truth of it.”

AFTERWORD

As
t
o Kellan Chorzak, some things,
especially things with vast potential to embarrass, take on a life
of their own and sometimes that life seems to be eternal. One day
Chorzak’s grandson would be recruited by Black Swan and be
initiated into the knighthood where stories of legendary exploits
are told and retold. And, in his old age, sometimes, when Sir
Chorzak was alone with that grandson, the young knight would refer
to him as Spazmodoc, The Voice of the Fray.

EPILOGUE_II
Excerpt
from
Solomon’s Sieve,
Order of the Black Swan

COMING SPRING OF 2014

CHAPTER 1

Regrets? Well, sure. Nobody dies without
regrets.

The only way to avoid that would be to sleep
even less than I did and be rearranging your priorities every
minute. Of course, if you rearranged your priorities every minute,
then there’d be no time for anything else and, at the end of your
life, you’d regret that you’d wasted your time working so hard at
trying to reach the finish line without regrets that you never got
anything done.

What’s my biggest regret? The first thing
that comes to mind isn’t exactly a regret, but more a
disappointment. I wish I’d had more time to spend with
Farnsworth.

I never expected to find
love so late in life. Neither did she. I asked her once why she’d
never married. She said she was waiting for the right crusty old
bastard to come along. I liked that answer. Honestly, I liked just
about everything about Farnsworth. I wish I had told her that. Just
like that.

All those years I would
stop off at the Hub and grab one of those rank strong coffees with
a cheese and ham and egg thing they nuked while I waited, which was
never long because the way I stared at them made them so fidgety
they could hardly wait to give me my order and get me the hell out
of their space.

Makes me smile just thinking about it.

Every morning I was just
steps away from where Farnsworth was working in Operations, really
running the whole show at Jefferson Unit while I was taking credit
for it. Fuck me. She’s one of a kind.

It’s funny to think that
all those years she was right there. I must have seen her from time
to time, but we just never made
that
connection. I guess it’s not
exactly funny.

Now that I have one foot
on the other side, the pieces all fit together better and it’s
easier to see things clearly. Got to stop and laugh at my own
jokes, because who else is going to?

Oh. Well, I guess to get
the joke you’d have to be aware that, at the moment, I only have
one foot. Looks like the godsdamn dune buggy cut off one of my
legs. And my life. I’m bleeding out. The worst part is that, while
I’m doing it, I’m listening to the weeping of the only woman I ever
loved. Criminently. That’s the hardest part.

The only reason I can joke
about this is because it’s temporary. If I thought it was permanent
there’d be nothing funny about it at all. But I can’t stay gone.
There’s too much going on right now.

I was planning to wait
until I got back from the first vacation I ever took in my life to
inform the interested parties, that would be almost everyone I
know, that the great bright promise of curing vampirism with a
vaccine… well, it’s not working. And, unfortunately, the conclusion
is that it’s not going to work. Ever.

It’s starting to look like
it would be easier to rid the world of cockroaches and we all know
how that’s going. No one doubts that, in the end, cockroaches will
be the last life form left on Earth. Maybe in the
universe.

So I don’t have any plans for crossing to
the other side and dancing in the sunshine or singing “Kum Ba Yah”
with people who don’t have anything better to do. I’m going to lie
here and wait until this body gives up the ghost, while this
magnificent woman beside me cries her heart out. Then I’m going to
raise hell until they find a way to bring me back.

Coming December
2013