A Division of Souls - A Novel of the Mendaihu Universe (35 page)

“Am…” Caren shook her head, now more
flustered than angry. She turned to the others again. “Okay. Who
the hell is Ampryss, and why is she talking to me?”

The two Mendaihu agents paled at the same
time.

“Well?” she demanded.

“She’s the Watcher of Trisanda,” Ashan said,
visibly humbled by the name. It was the first time she’d ever seen
him nearly at a loss for words. “The watcher of the Mendaihu. I
think you can rest easy now.”

Caren found Ashan and Kai’s reaction to the
name both comforting and disturbing at the same time. She
unclenched her fists, drooped her shoulders, and let out a long,
slow breath of fear.

My sister,
she thought, bewildered.
My sister is a goddess.

*

We’re all here for you, Karinna,
he
said from within.
All of us.

Poe stood away from Caren and the two
Mendaihu, staring up at the overcast sky and trying to calm his own
nerves. His head throbbed and his eyes ached, like he hadn’t slept
in days. He felt his entire being, body and soul, being stretched
into something he was not familiar with. His mind raced between
thoughts of Caren and Denni, and of the controlled anger that
welled up within him…and of the repressed anger of everyone around
him. It was all he could do to keep himself centered, to keep
himself from reacting to the emotional and spiritual overload. As
always, he focused on his partner to keep himself anchored down.
She didn’t always notice it, but he silently thanked her every
time.

He dropped his eyes to her. “You okay, kid?”
he asked.

She walked up to him and laid a hand on his
arm. “Better. You?”

He let out a long breath. “Truthfully? I
don’t know.”

She hummed in agreement and smiled awkwardly
at him. “I, uh…I heard you calling.”

He flushed and looked away. “Huh…didn’t
expect that to work.” All at once, the anger ebbed, and he felt the
tension in his back loosen. He rubbed at his eyes with the heels of
his palms to mask his frown. The anger had vanished, dropped and
forgotten. Only empty frustration remained. He’d wanted to say
more, to tell her what had happened and where he’d gone with Kai,
but he couldn’t find words. There
were
no words for what
he’d experienced.

He looked over at Ashan and Kai, half hoping
for some sort of explanation. Normal human logic told him that the
stress of the case was getting to him. His emotions, however, told
him he was going through something so complex and rare that even
Kai couldn’t completely explain it while in that elsewhere. The
best she could do was to show him the chaotic energy of the city,
and the unconditional love of a Mendaihu. They looked at him now,
she with that love, and Ashan with protection. He gave them a
reassuring nod; they took it as a sign to leave the two of them
alone for a bit to gather themselves. Kai must have seen the
exhaustion in his face, for she gave him a quick smile and tugged
her brother away a good distance.

Caren squeezed his arm. “Alec,” she said.
“I’m sorry I freaked on you back there.”

“Don’t apologize,” he said. “I would have
acted the same.”

She held a hand to her face to hide a blush.
She wanted to embrace him, but shied away instead. He didn’t mind,
he understood their bond. “Thank you,” she said, touching his
arm.

“Don’t mention it.”

“We have to find Denni,” she said, not
missing a beat.

“Denni’s fine,” he countered.

“You don’t know that.”

“True,” he said. “But think of it this way:
if she
were
in trouble, she would have contacted you by
now.”

She let herself mull that over. “I suppose
you’re right,” she said. “Can’t blame me for worrying, though.”

“No, I see your point,” he said. “If Denni
truly is the One, I’d want to have her close until I had the
situation under control.” He gestured at Kai and Ashan, who were
waiting politely farther down the block, leaning up against a
concrete storefront and carrying on a separate conversation. “If
you want, we can all head over to Ormand Park School and pick her
up.”

She took his arm, relieved by the
suggestion. “That sounds like a wonderful idea,” she said, and
leaned her head against his shoulder. “Come on. Let’s not keep them
waiting.”

--
chk chk chk-chk—

“Ah hell.” Poe fished his comm out of his
jacket pocket, only to find it wasn’t his that had gone off.

“Guess I’m the famous one around here,” she
said mockingly and winked at him. She turned away and answered her
own comm, covering her right ear to cut off the street noise. Her
expression darkened quickly as soon as she heard the voice on the
other end. Distractedly she waved Poe over. “You’ve certainly gone
one hell of a grand sense of timing, edha. Right. I’ve got my
partner right here. What?” She frowned at him, shaking her head and
shrugging. “Hang on, let me connect him.” She covered her comm and
leaned in. “It’s Kindeiya Shalei,” she said. “He wants to speak to
the both of us.”

Poe fished out his comm again and pressed
the appropriate code to slip into conference mode. “Okay,
Kindeiya,” Caren continued. “You have our attention.”

“Excellent,” he said. His immaculately
smooth voice was still there, but all the joy had gone out of it
some time ago, replaced by exhaustion. “Edha Poe, emha Johnson, I
commend the both of you on your patience, as well as embracing your
enlightenment as well as you have. You have no doubt just realized
why I could not speak to you until now. And I call you at this time
because there is precious little of it left. You
must
go to
the Moulding Warehouse by four this afternoon, as it is the safest
place for all of you at this time. It is six hours away, but after
yesterday we can all imagine what can happen within those six
hours. Thus, it is imperative that you listen to what I have to
say.

“I am sure you’ve come to the conclusion
that I am a Prophet of the One. It is not a title I want to go
around flaunting, for obvious reasons. The reason, emha Johnson,
that I did not tell you I knew who you were, was because we had to
know for sure that your sister Denni was who we expected her to be.
Seeing the future is both a matter of fate and of perspective, my
dear child. If we really wanted her to be the One of All Sacred, by
all means she could have embodied the One but not been the One. But
that, of course, did not happen, and because of this, your presence
at the Waterfront is imperative.”

Her free hand balled into a fist again. “Why
do you say that?”

“Because Denni will already be there by the
time you arrive,” he said. “Edha Poe: to you, I wish Love, Peace
and Light. I understand your confusion…torn between light and
shadow. But if choose your path wisely, that won’t matter at
all.”

Poe opened his mouth to say something, but
thought better of it.

Kindeiya continued without missing a beat.
“I say this now: Denni
will
be at the warehouse in six
hours, whether it is from your doing or not. All I ask is that the
both of you are there as well, to continue to protect her.”

“Like hell I’m going to bring her there!”
Caren growled at him. “If you think I’m going to put her in any
kind of danger…”

“Remember five years ago, edha Johnson.”

Poe winced as the color drained from Caren’s
face. She winced and shut her eyes. “What about five years ago,
Kindeiya?” she said in a barely contained monotone.

“You were working with emha Kennedy at the
time, yes? She could tell you, I’m sure she remembers that day. You
were at headquarters in Branden Hill at the time, pushing paper at
the exact moment that your sister Denni was in school in Pullock
Street Heights.

“And at that exact moment, Karinna…”

“Kindeiya, damn you —”

“…at that moment, a man stood in the center
of an abandoned apartment on Grieves Street. This man was
attempting to Lightwalk, to search for the One of All Sacred. It
had been approximately twenty years since the Eighth embodiment,
and this man was anxious to meet the next.”

Caren let out a whimper. “Please…don’t do
this.”

“He was nuhm’ndah, Karinna. One of the best
soulsensers of the time, and born a pure Shenaihu. The division of
the Shenaihu and the Mendaihu are not the same as clan divisions,
my sehnadha; the soul sees the self, but not the name we give it.
He was one of the nuhm’ndah. They were…and still are, to some
extent…an extremist Shenaihu sect. The Shenaihu themselves do not
recognize them politically, although they can’t help but
acknowledge them as brethren in spirit.”

She trembled. “Please…don’t —”

“You
must
hear this to understand,
Karinna,” he pleaded. “This is what I could not tell you earlier.
The nuhm’ndah are extremists. Their plan is to annihilate any and
all Mendaihu. Other Mendaihu and Shenaihu know this…yet the
Shenaihu have brought them back, time and again. And for this
nuhm’ndah to have the ability to find the One without any help…

“On that day, at that moment, the man had
just entered Light, to find the sleeping spirit of the One of All
Sacred…”

“Damn you, that’s enough!” she cried. Poe
felt a ripple of pain surge from Caren’s direction.

“…somewhere up in the Pullock Street Heights
sector, waiting to awaken.”

“Kindeiya…please…” she sobbed.

Ashan placed a hand on Caren’s shoulder. She
made a movement as if to jerk his hand away, then belatedly
accepted it. She desperately needed his soulhealing touch just
then. After a second, Ashan moved closer until he was embracing
her, his arms over hers, his head resting against the back of hers.
So engrossed was Poe in watching this healing process that he
almost hadn’t noticed Kai enshrouding him as well.

“…and he had found her,” Meade said.

“…Denni,” she said, her voice raw.

“Yes, my dearest child. This man had found
Denysia, and had begun planning his next moves. As Shenaihu, he was
bound, at that time, to destroy the One. At that time, they had
planned to keep the One from returning in each generation. I can
only guess what would have happened to her, had he succeeded.” He
stopped momentarily, and the silence was overwhelming. “But now…?
Now they plan to corrupt her.”

“How…” Poe began, startled by his own voice
in the eerie quiet of the phone line. “How did Caren’s parents
know? How
could
they know?”

“By their bond, edha,” he answered. “The
bond of parent to child, of Mendaihu to Mendaihu. Of Mendaihu to
the One of All Sacred. They sensed something, my friend. It could
have been his dark spirit…it could have been the probability of her
death…we may never know. The bond surpassed anything they had known
before, and it scared them. But within moments they had surrounded
and attacked him.”

Caren’s sobs carried quietly over the line.
Poe felt another stab of pain with each whimper he heard. He tried
blocking out Kindeiya’s voice, blocking out everything around him
by squeezing his eyes shut, which only made him sense it all that
much more. He let in a short breath, exhaled it, and opened them
again. Kai still held him in her arms, cradling him, touching him,
loving him.

“Aram and Celine Johnson saved your lives,”
Kindeiya said soothingly. “Their previously untapped Mendaihu
abilities had been pushed to the limit in order to protect their
daughters.”

I remember.
Caren’s inner voice
carried through all four of them. Poe clutched at his jacket, his
heart surging with pure emotion.

Denni…
Caren called out.
I remember
now…!

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Shenaihu - Mendaihu

Janoss Miradesi.

Natianos Lehanna’s low voice thundered
within his head and caught him off guard. He tripped and fell
sideways into the wall of his office, catching himself just before
he hit the floor, and stifled a curse. He’d expected to hear from
Natianos at some point today, but he’d expected it to be by common
means like a vid call or in person, not with a pain-inducing inner
voice. It meant that his message was not just important but
imperative
, and he’d damn well better answer in the next few
seconds or he’d call again, louder and more penetrating. He limped
towards his desk and eased himself into the chair, forcing himself
to smile. Any feelings of disorientation would fade away quickly.
He’d forgive him that.

Ye
s,
Dahné
, he called.
I am here.

snap

“Awaken, eichi,” the voice said. “Come with
me.”

Janoss twitched, startled
by the sudden and unexpected appearance of his superior and the
form he had taken.
Dahné Natianos Lehanna had stepped out of
Light in his true Shenaihuza spirit in the shape of a muscular
bipedal winged dragonlike creature, an aspect of kiralla. He
towered over his desk, his body filling nearly every available inch
of the floor in front of him. His body was covered with dusky brown
scales that shimmered under the office lights. His long snout hung
low, dark and piercing eyes fixed on him, studying him intently but
not revealing why. The Dahné held his paws crossed in front of his
body, the fingers flexing anxiously every few seconds, revealing
long pearly claws that clicked softly against each other. His tail
reached over to the corner of the room and curled slightly, but
never touched wall or floor. His presence inspired fear deep into
Janoss’ soul.

“Come with me, my sehnadha,” he said in a
low, rumbling voice, and lifted a hand. “I wish to show you
something.”

“Yes, Dahné,” Janoss said. He let out a slow
breath and closed his eyes, preparing for his own metamorphosis.
He’d done this before, long before his near-change down in that
abandoned hallway, and it took him less than a few seconds to
complete. He felt himself changing form, from human to Shenaihuza,
the realities blurring for a moment in his mind as his True form
emerged from its sheltered soul. In his own kiralla aspect, much
more compact than Natianos’ yet similar in every other fashion, he
arched and stretched every muscle and nerve, the body happy to be
free of its spiritual cage.