Authors: Judy Teel
I pushed away my plate. Hating my parents was all I'd ever known. It was clear and uncomplicated, the one thing that never changed. But now... "I spent my childhood planning how I was going to find my parents and make them pay for what they'd done. And hoping my mother would come to get me and take me somewhere safe."
I looked away, unable to face the tears tracking down his cheeks. "There are only a few people in my life that I care about," I said, my voice catching on the words. "I can't let one of them be you."
"Seeing Julia in you," he said, quietly, "it's more than I ever hoped to have. You're our daughter, Addison. You survived. It's enough."
Clenching my teeth, I made myself look at him. How many people in my life were glad just because I was alive, and not because of what I could do for them? Was Cooper? Falcon? Was I really so ready to throw away an opportunity that I'd searched and waited for my whole life because I wanted to pout over being abandoned?
I hadn't avoided facing reality since I was twelve. It was time to let go of a child's hurt feelings and create a new story for myself before it was too late.
I relaxed my jaw and swallowed, my mouth suddenly dry. "What was she like?"
Mehk scrubbed the back of his hand across his eyes. "Spirited, like you," he said pulling a breath in on his words and then releasing it. "Smarter than any woman I'd ever known. Stubborn. If she had a problem to solve, she never gave up until she'd beaten it. She scared off a man three times her size once, by pretending to hex him after she caught him mistreating his dog."
"I get that," I said, some of my tension easing away.
"She was one of the most talented practitioners I've never seen," Mehk continued. "The guy had no way of knowing that she despised dark magic and would never have used it. He handed her the leash and took off running."
"I have a cat," I said, scraping up the last of the baked apples with my fork. "I named her Wizard."
His eyebrows arched upward. "She named the dog Merlin."
I stopped chewing, stunned. Comfort and loss tangled up in my chest and a person I could know suddenly came into focus in that deep, silent place inside me that had never been filled.
I had a mother. Not a child's fantasy pieced together before my world fell apart, when I still thought boys were gross and rock stars were hot. I...had a mother.
"How..." I swallowed, braced myself. "How did she die?"
"I never found out." He looked down at his hands. "I was at our rendezvous point for two days, when..." Lifting his head, his eyes met mine. "When her magic broke. Then I was trapped back in the village."
Nodding, I got up and collected our plates. I took them to the trashcan by the backdoor and scraped off the food, taking my time. I shouldn't feel the loss of someone I'd never known. But I did. All over again.
At the table, Mehk stared into space, his expression bleak, and I realized that he felt it too. We had more in common than I wanted to believe. Loving people did that to you.
As I dropped our plates into the bucket, the backdoor opened and Cooper was there, the afternoon light hitting his brindled hair in the way that made the threads of silver glisten like new dimes. My heart skipped a beat and I turned to go. His fingers brushing across my hand stopped me.
"The practitioners want to see you in my suite," he said, the timber of his voice skating over my skin and heightening my awareness of him until my soul ached.
"Has Rosalind ripped you a new one, yet?" I asked without turning around.
"No. I got there before her."
I held my breath, willing the hurt to stop, then pulled away from him. "I don't have regrets."
As I stepped out onto the porch that ran along the front of the dining hall, I paused, my gaze tracking up the tiers of the cliff and their massive columns to the top. I wondered if Cooper had smelled the lie on me.
*
*
*
As I approached Cooper's suite, Erika came out with a large basket over her arm. When she saw me, her eyes widened. She stuttered to a stop, and the guard that must have been waiting for her nearly ran into her.
For a minute, I thought that the curvy blonde was going to jump behind him and hide. Instead, she surprised me by lifting her chin and giving me a quick, shy smile. "We've finished the formula," she said, her voice clear and soothing like wind chimes in a light breeze. "We were even able to find enough whiskey."
"Is that why I've been summoned?" I asked, passing her and stopping in front of the elaborate Alpha door.
Her smooth brow dipped down. "Nana Rae wants another go at you, I'm afraid. But at least Luke is in there to help if it comes to blows."
With that, she traipsed off down the hall, her beefy, armed escort in tow. I watched her in amazement. Had Mistress Raevinne's quiet, unassuming granddaughter just teased me? Just what I needed. Another member of the Miller family with a dry sense of humor.
As Erika predicted, Miller and Mistress Raevinne were waiting for me inside the suite, the older practitioner's expression grave, even for her. As I settled down at the kitchen table with them, my gaze swept over the vials of the duplicated Were formula lined up neatly in a dozen rows, twenty vials deep.
"Plans have changed," Mistress Raevinne informed me imperiously.
"What we're proposing is completely experimental," Miller said, frowning at the vials.
"It always was. How is that a change?"
They exchanged a glance between them and I was beginning to think that practitioners were as secretive as vamps. Not a comforting thought.
"With the barrier up, there's no more danger to those that aren't infected," Mistress Raevinne said. "It is those that are sick that we must concern ourselves with."
"If Mehk is right, and the
Suir aosar
will be pulled back into the fourth dimension with the Tor'nysoos, then what they need is time. We think we can give them that."
I stared at the glittering amber liquid and the image of Travis screaming in agony flashed across my mind. "If you inoculate the sick, it could kill them."
"Dr. Barrett ran several experiments on blood samples," Miller said. "At full strength, your formula suppresses the Were DNA as it delivers a low dose of poison, causing the victim to lose consciousness. We've adjusted the amounts so that instead of suppressing the extra thread of DNA, the formula temporarily taints it. We think that will slow the feeding rate of the
Suir aosar.
"
"You've created an inter-D flea repellant?"
Miller winced. Deep lines pleated around Mistress Raevinne's mouth as the corners pinched down. "Should we survive this, my mission will be to teach you some manners, young lady."
"The difficulty is that the effect is temporary," Miller interjected before I could get in a good comeback. "About twelve to fifteen minutes."
Same as my darts. "Fast metabolisms," I said instead, my mind racing over the possibilities their new formula presented. "The timing of re-inoculation has to be perfect. Too fast, and the suppression might cause the inter-Ds to freak and kill their host. Too little, and anyone in the last stages could die and infect more people."
"Dr. Barrett has coordinated with Danny. They'll be treating the quarantined Weres on a precise schedule," Miller answered.
"But does it work?" I asked. "Blood samples are great, but how does it perform in the field?"
Mistress Raevinne poured tea into her cup from the pot in front of her. "He is running trials this morning."
I wondered why he wasn't here. "This is good," I said, feeling my first glimmer of hope in a long time. Mehk had explained to me that dimension hopping used the barrier itself as a channel to travel through. The inter-Ds couldn't survive there, but neither could Were DNA when it was in 3-D form. When he pulled Jesse through, the sick Were's wolf aspect was more dominant than his human. When his Were DNA was stripped away, that's what was left.
"If this works," I continued, "I might be able to stop the infected Weres from dying. Though I can't guarantee that they won't be like Jesse after I do." Or if I'd even survive to try dimension hopping with them in the first place.
"You mean permanently make them wolf?" Miller asked.
"Or possibly human," I offered.
"No. We will continue to work on this problem," Mistress Raevinne said. "We will not abandon the Weres to this terrible annihilation. Or to a mundane existence."
"What do you know about the Tor'nysoos?" I asked her, deciding a change in subject to something more pertinent considering our current odds of success.
Her mouth pinched into a hard line. "A creature of legend and myth like all of us."
A non-answer if I'd ever heard one. I claimed an empty teacup and poured tea into it. Taking an experimental sip to test the temperature, I quirked a brow at her. "I can wait until you feel like talking."
A smile twitched at the corner of her mouth before she gave a long and dramatic sigh to express the imposition I was putting on her. "It is said that once the Earth belonged only to the gods and goddesses. But being immortal grew tedious and lonely, so after a time they decided to create companions for themselves." She relaxed against the pillows at her back and her voice took on a mesmerizing cadence that made me think of ancient tribes and campfires and the oral historians that were so crucial in that time.
"The god, Pan, molded a race from the Earth itself coupled with the nebulous world of colors and light from which the gods came. The goddess Diana created a people from her love of animals and of the hunt, also linking them to the world from which she came. Perceiving what his siblings in their joy and exuberance had not, Aedodra called into being a race to bring balance, a people spawned from death and power. And the gods loved them all."
A shiver snaked down my back as I remembered the discoveries I'd made over the last few months. In particular, a certain conversation in Charlotte with two people that I suspected weren't people at all.
"The three races lived and ruled in peace and cooperation," Mistress Raevinne continued. "But without a way to infuse new energy into their family lines, after a time their numbers dwindled. Practitioners and Weres coexisted peaceably, but law demanded they not procreate. The vampires did not require such, but they needed acolytes to train, to feed on, and to convert in order to increase their numbers."
"So humans were created," I guessed, taking another sip of the fragrant green tea to cover the tremble in my hand.
The older woman nodded. "As the most compatible species to both Weres and vampires, practitioners were chosen as the pattern from which to build. In return for Pan's compliance, vampires and Weres swore to cooperate with the practitioners to protect this weaker race."
"But the human race prospered," Miller interjected. "So well that they began to dominate the world."
"Like cockroaches?" I chimed in, remembering something that Rosalind had once said.
Mistress Raevinne narrowed her eyes at me. "Worse, they turned from those to whom they owed allegiance and became their predators." Warming up again to the story, her expression cleared. "Outraged, the vampires complained to their creator. 'Are we not the superior race? Were humans not created for our purpose, to increase and sustain our numbers?'"
"So their master decided to wipe out the other two races," I said, setting my cup down and trying not to wince at the nervous clatter it made against the saucer. "He ended the agreement between him and his siblings and cut loose his vamps to do what they wanted with the humans."
"Not as pleasantly narrated, but exactly so," the older woman said with a sniff. "It was war. Determined to win, Aedodra created the Tor'nysoos." She frowned. "But you do not deserve to hear how his plans almost succeeded."
I pushed to my feet. "Thanks," I said, giving a slight bow of my head to her, knowing how much that kind of thing meant to the older paranormals. "You answered a lot of questions for me." I started for the door, but paused halfway and turned around. "Except you didn't mention the Demon-Weres. How did they come in?"
"The Tor'nysoos was unstoppable," she said, handing my cup to Miller, who dutifully took it to the sink to wash. "We needed champions that were up to the task. A new species born of practitioners, Weres, and the gods." Almost the same words as I'd read in the book Dr. Barrett had given me.
I did my best to keep my expression neutral, even though I felt like I was about to jump off a cliff. "Why are these champions a threat to all four races, now? Why was I told that I'd be killed on sight if I ever revealed myself?"
"We are now living that answer," she replied and her beady-eyed gaze seemed to bore into me like a drill. "Though the Tor'nysoos was formed to destroy practitioners and Weres, the energy of a Demon-Were, the embodiment of
all
its maker's enemies, draws it even more strongly. The gods are nothing if not clever."
"When this is over, are you still planning to kill us?" Not that she'd tell me, but I wanted her to know that the possibility was on my mind.
"The ones that caused this unpleasantness are also all that stand between us and annihilation, so..." She lifted her shoulders, a singularly Gaelic movement that insulted, implied stupidity, and absolved her of everything in one eloquent roll.
Using the kitchen table for leverage, she carefully got up from her chair. "I must rest," she stated, and Miller rushed forward from the kitchen to help her. I watched her fragile progression toward a hall off the main room which probably led to the bedrooms, not fooled for a minute. She was one of the toughest people I'd ever met.
Sure enough, she paused a few feet down the hall. "Sixteen hours have passed since you and the old one delivered your first strike to the creature," she said, her back still to me. "Do what you must to prepare. We will see to the sick."