The Dragon Circle (51 page)

Loki leaped from slippery rock to jagged boulder across the ford without care for his own bare feet.

He landed on the opposite muddy creek bank clumsily, sliding to his knees. Irythros had been digging here and left a mess. Desperate to find his brother, he regained his footing with only two backward slides toward the water. Behind him he heard the groans of recovering IMPs. Ahead of him, only silence.

“Konner!” he yelled again.

Was that a soft whimper ahead and to his right?

“Konner, get your sorry ass out of whatever hole you crawled into.”

“Do we have to?” The voice was weak. No, soft. Like an intimate whisper.

“Where are you?” Loki began peering under bushes and around the massive root ball of a fallen forest giant.

“Ow.” Konner's protest was followed by a soft, feminine giggle. “Get off my foot, Loki.”

Loki looked closer at the mound of leaf litter and plant debris filling the triangle between the root ball and the place where the tree trunk met the ground. He found a foot. Big and callused. Konner. Then a second foot, smaller and booted. Dalleena.

“Do I need to leave you two alone? If so, then make it quick. We've got a clearing full of IMPs and our sister on the way in a lander.”

“Coming,” Konner said. He sighed heavily. “Dalleena and I have the rest of our lives to be together.”

“Well, I'm glad that's settled.” Loki's sigh sounded relieved, as if he'd been waiting a long time for Konner to find a life mate.

“How did you manage?” Loki asked. He spoke louder than normal and mouthed his words carefully.

Konner pulled the wads of moss out of his ears. Dalleena did the same. “I'll have to analyze this more thoroughly. It does more than fill chinks in the cabins and insulate against the cold.”

“It lines baby diapers, too. Quite absorbent,” Dalleena added with a glint of mischief in her eyes.

Konner kissed her again, needing to linger. Other matters pressed upon his conscience.

“I have to activate the confusion field before Kat arrives.” Konner crawled out from his hidey-hole, followed closely by Dalleena. He kissed her palm the moment she stood upright, then captured her hand in both of his. He did not want to break the contact, as if their skin had bonded as well as their hearts and minds.

“We need to get across the creek first.” Loki moved toward the water, keeping his back to his brother, giving the couple a moment more of privacy. “I want to be well inside the field when you close it. Who knows what happens to someone caught in the boundary when it snaps into place.”

Konner lingered only a moment longer. He grabbed another quick kiss from Dalleena and followed his brother quickly.

The moment they dropped from the last boulder of the ford onto the ground, Konner pulled a handheld from his pocket. He peered closely at the screen a moment and logged in a few more codes.

“Are we ready for this?”

Loki and Kim nodded.

Konner tapped the screen three times.

“I don't see anything different,” Loki said. He turned in a full circle, examining everything.

“My sense of anything beyond the circle is dulled.” Dalleena scanned the entire area with her hand extended in tracking mode.

“That's the beauty of this cloaking,” Konner chortled. “No one sees the field. But if anyone without O'Hara DNA tries to penetrate from either direction, they get pushed back, misdirected, deluded into believing they move forward instead of in a circle around our private enclave.”

“How do we open it?” Kim asked. He monitored the pulse of one of the IMPs who remained still long after his fellows twitched and squirmed for release.

“Harmonics.” Konner grinned. “All we have to do is hum Mum's favorite lullaby and we will match the resonance of the crystals.”

A lander moved up the hillside. It looked perfectly clear to Konner, but the roar of its engines seemed slightly removed, more distant than it should. He doubted it was a lingering aftereffect from the sonics.

“Loki, Konner, and Kim O'Hara, where are you,” Kat called to them from the lander's exterior speakers. She circled the area, never quite steering directly above them.

Konner walked back to the shuttle and opened a frequency to his sister. “Lose something, Kat?”

Loki and Kim stayed close upon his heels. Dalleena squeezed in as well. Konner pulled her into his lap at his customary terminal.

“Yes, I lost you three. Open the field and let me land.”

“Sorry, little sister. We can't trust you,” Konner said.

“I'll find you eventually. You know that. The dragon showed me how to use my latent psi powers. I'll penetrate the field one way or another.”

“Probably too late to save
Jupiter
, Kat,” Konner said.

“We'll see about that. You have to come out of the clearing soon to go rescue your son, Konner. I'll be waiting.”

“It's too late for that, Kat. I can't reach Aurora in time to gain legal custody.”

“Since when has legality stopped you?”

A slow smile spread across Konner's face. “I think I have a plan.”

“Y
OU SEE, MARTIN? Konner O'Hara did not arrive at the custody hearing. He is dead. You are well rid of him,” Melinda Fortesque said brightly. She paused long enough to pat Martin on the shoulder. “Now that there is no question of where you belong, I have authorized an increase in your allowance as well as a lump sum as a birthday present. You may purchase that jet pedcycle you have lusted after for so long.” Then she marched down the palace corridor. Clearly the custody hearing had taken too much time away from her busy schedule.

“Even if Dad lives, he can't get me now,” Martin muttered. He hung his head and scuffed his feet, reluctant to retreat into the privacy of his own suite. He did not care if the servants, toadies, petitioners, and corporate employees saw him cry. He did not care that his mother knew of his intense disappointment.

A question niggled at his brain. “If my dad is dead, then why bother with the formality of a custody hearing?” He scooted into his room and activated Super Snooper.

“Status on the distress beacon?” he demanded before the icon figure fully formed.

“The signal has ceased,” Super Snooper replied.

“What about agent Sam Eyeam?”

“He has not responded to your mother's hails.”

“What about tracing his movements? Scaramouch, display star map hologram with Sam Eyeam's last known movements.”

The map came up. A scattered series of purple lights flashed. The last one faded and disappeared at the edge of the vacant anomaly.

Martin's heart skipped a beat.

“Show area suspected to contain the beacon.”

The entire anomaly lit up in a violet haze.

“I think I'll have to find the jump point into the hole in space by myself.” Martin made a brief detour into his bank account. Sure enough, Melinda had deposited a huge amount of money; more than enough to buy two jet pedcycles, with all the accessories.

“Super Snooper, find out which ships in port are available for charter, and a pilot who can be bribed into silence. Make a conference call to Bruce and Jane Q, they'll want to be a part of this. Then open a new account in the commodities market. We have to make a bit more money for this project.”