Black Moon Rising (DarkLife Saga) (11 page)

“Val, hey
.  Why’d you leave me?  I thought we were going to talk.”  Valerian inched closer and closer until he was sitting next to me.  “We really got to stop meeting like this, Valeria.”

My quiet laugh was part sob.  “It’s too much, Vedo.  I can't take it.”  My voice was barely a whisper.  I was scared to talk any louder for fear that my voice would turn into an endless stream of moans.

“You don't have to, Val.  Let me take some of it.”  I shook my head no and inched away from him.

“I can't do that to you.  Don't want you to feel the hurt, Vedo.”  Valerian pulled himself to his knees and let his forehead fall against my own.

“Seeing you like this hurts me, Val.  You're my twin.  How do you think I feel?  Your aura is beating at my shields looking for an out.  I can give you that.  I promise you; I can handle it.”

It sounded nice, but I couldn’t do it.  “NO!”

“He won't have to handle it alone, Valeria,” Constantine dropped to his knees beside me.  “I’m so sorry I’ve gotten you hurt, wooly booger.  I’ll help Vedo.  He can funnel some of the emotions into me.”  He rubbed the side of my leg and smiled.  “I can do this.”

I heard the soft thud of two more bodies hitting the ground.  When I looked around me, I was surrounded by the men in my family.  All of their eyes had bled to black in anticipation.  Valerian tilted my head and pushed his aura against my own.  “Let go,” he urged, before giving one final shove.

It felt like a damn had been blown open inside my heart.  All the added emotions went rushing out of my and into my brother.  Valerian fell forward onto his palms, his back bowed, as he shook under the emotional onslaught.  His gasp was filled with awe and pain.  “I had no idea,” he moaned.

His faces shifted as he fought for the control he needed to channel the emotions away from him.  Soon both Tamerlane and Constantine fell forward under the weight of emotions that hit them.  Both of their faces shifted as their teeth gnashed together under the strain.

The last person to catch the fallout was our father.  When the last of the wave hit him, his chest bowed out as he fought to hold his shift.  His eyes flew open, and he looked at me as if he were seeing me for the first time.  “This is just a portion of what you were holding inside you.”

It wasn’t a question, but a statement full of awe.  Daddy clamped his mouth shut, his
hand balling into a fist, as he processed the wave.  True to form, Hadrian Trumaine refused to lose control.  His fangs dropped, but he held his shift.  He was the only one who managed to stay upright.

Chapter 12

T
he dancing blue lights began to fade, and I exhaled.  I let my head fall forward onto my knees, and was promptly knocked backward by a body barreling into me.  Said body was David, hurling himself into my arms.  “Don’t ever do that again,” he said through clenched teeth.

In the excitement I’d forgotten all about him and his friends, in their quiet little corner.  If we'd been at home, Irulan would have sent him to the crawl space under my bed.  Here, there was nowhere for him to run to, so he witnessed everything.  “I’m sorry you had to see me like that,” I didn’t know what else to say.  The thought of David being scared of me brought tears to my eyes.

David pulled away from me and swiped his hand across my face.  “You’re sorry for what, Ma?  That was, so kick ass what you just did.”  He jerked his finger toward my father and brothers who were just picking themselves up off the floor.  “Look at them.  Not a single one stayed upright.  Like I said, so kick ass.”

The strong voice he was trying to project cracked and he hugged me again.  “Just don't do it again, seeing it one time was enough.”

I nodded and let my head fall into the crook of his neck, “Whatever you say, David.”

A hand gripped my arm and hauled me to my feet.  David, hanging onto my neck, came along for the ride.  “She’s fine, David, go see to your friends.”  Although David acknowledged my father with a bow of his head, he didn’t move until I told him, it was
okay

Daddy brushed my hair out of my face and tucked it behind my ears.  “Are you alright, Valeria?"  His voice was controlled and measured, choking down the last of the emotions that he'd taken on.

“I’m good, Daddy.”  He rubbed his thumb across my forehead and pressed a soft kiss there.

“We’ve got work to do, sweetheart.”  That was the Hadrian I knew.

“Yes, Daddy,” I sighed.

Irulan pulled me away from him and into her arms.

“You don't have to go if you're not up to it,” she whispered in my ear.

“No baby, I’m fine, really.”  She kissed me in the same spot my father had and together we joined Tamerlane and the others.

Thade squeezed my shoulder and poked me in the side with a finger.  “Go ‘head, Xena, with your bad ass.”

Tam looked up from the glowing section of the table he was looking at, “You good?”

“Yep.”

“You ready?”

“Always.”

He pointed a finger at the building plans that were illuminated by the table and traced his finger along a path.  “Marcus is outside and ready.  His Sentinels are going to start searching the lower levels, and we're going to start on this floor and work our way down.  Any guards we find, we'll assimilate into the search.”

He slapped his palm against Thade’s bare chest.  “Since the only way Valeria has been able to catch any sign of this thing is through scent, Thade will run point in wolf form.  I’ve advised Marcus to have a few of his shifters do the same.  It's open season on anything that doesn’t smell like a were, vamp, or shifter.”

He looked at Irulan and frowned.  “Sorry, Ire, the thing that we're hunting is Fae.  Most of these
guys have never scented a true fae before so they might not be able to tell you from whatever is stalking our halls.”

Irulan smiled, letting a touch of power creep into her eyes.  “I can take care of myself, Tam. Don't worry about me.  I’m not sitting out.”  She kicked off her pumps and the tingle of magic enveloped the room.  Her grey business suit darkened and began to change.

The pressed cotton melted into leather until she stood in a black suit similar to our own.  Valerian had a lopsided grin on his face.  “That was so cool.”

I looked down at her bare feet and frowned.  “Um, I was kidding about running around in bare feet, Ire.  Why didn’t you transform the shoes into something more appropriate?”

She looked at me like I’d slapped her.  “I’d never.  Those shoes are my favorite.”  She called Rowan over.

“Yes, Mrs. Trumaine.”  I almost corrected her, but Irulan shook her head, no.  She slid her foot next to Rowan's and smiled.

“Mind if I borrow your shoes, dear.  I promise you'll get them back.”

Rowan kicked off the dainty slides, and Irulan stepped into them.  Magic slid down her body and transformed them into a pair of sturdy, black, thick-soled sneakers.

Rowan was visibly surprised, but it wasn’t in the way I thought.  She tapped Irulan on the shoulder and pointed down.  “Um, Mrs. Trumaine, those were my Steve Madden's.”

Irulan held up a heel and admired her handiwork.  “Oh…he'll do, but he's no Manolo.  No worries, I’ll get you a pair of real shoes when this is all over.”  Irulan shooed the shocked child back to David and Dante.

“Are we all good?”  Tamerlane asked.  Everyone nodded, and we divided into groups.  I was leading Irulan and Gridlock.  Thade had Tam and Ballistic.  The plan was to work our way out in either direction, searching each office as we went.

Constantine and Valerian both coughed.  “What about us, Tam?” Valerian asked.

Tamerlane looked past him and winked at David.  “What about you?  You're a lawyer, and he's an anthropologist.  What are you going to do?  Throw a briefcase and a textbook at our perp?”

Valerian looked hurt, and Constantine looked pissed.  Tamerlane shrugged his shoulders.  “What?  I didn’t stutter.  Don't look so shocked.  What did you expect me to say?  Pick up a gun and join us.”

“Listen; I know you can fight, especially you, Constantine, but warfare is different now.  We aren't dealing with swords and catapults, and you don't have the training that we do.  The best way you can help us, is to stay here and protect them,” he said, pointing at the teenagers.

“We don't need protecting!”  They called out in unison.

“The fact that you think so proves my point.”

Tamerlane went to the console near the door and began the override sequence that would unlock the door.  While he procured our exit, Thade stripped
down to his tidy whities and began shifting.  Once he was done, the almost pony-sized, grey wolf padded over to my side and sniffed my pants leg.

He looked up at me with his wide, intelligent gold-eyes and whined.  I looked down and jumped inside his head.  “
Is that what we’re looking for
?” He asked.

“
Yeah, that’s the scent that I caught outside my home and in the Baker house
.”

Thade snorted and trotted over to Tam, eager to get going.  Tam touched a finger to his lips, and we got quiet.  Irulan and I raised our power levels, and Gridlock lifted his mini-assault cannon.  We moved into the hallway, waited for the door to lock, and got down to business.

Irulan and Gridlock formed a triangle formation behind me as I moved to the first office.  I scented both the doors on either side of the hall before I let them go anywhere near them.  Gridlock moved to the adjacent door, and we began the override sequences so we could get inside to look for employees.

Irulan and I went together, quickly searching under the desk and inside two small closets.  Everything was clear.  One room down.  When we met Gridlock in the hall, there were two, scared-out-of-their-
minds; looking women huddled on either side of him.

“
What do you want me to do with them
?”  He thought as he looked down at the near-hysterical women as if they were carriers of a new age, bubonic plague.  Men are such wusses when it comes to a crying female.

“
Take them back to Daddy and the boys, and then catch up
.”  And so it went.  We searched the rooms, taking any employees back to the conference room with the others.   We moved as fast as we could, but it still took us thirty minutes to search ten rooms.  There were thirty two on the floor.

At the rate we were going, it would take hours to search the entire building, and that was only if everyone was moving at the same pace we were.  It w
as already close to dawn.  Any deadborns that Marcus had on his teams were going to fall victim the day sleep soon.  We got to the second conference room on the floor and decided to go in together.  I scented the entrance as best as I could and Gridlock released the door.

I felt a cache of fear and knew we’d found a large group.  As soon as we were spotted, they rushed us.  Some pleaded for us to get them out of the building.  Others asked us what they could do.  They were all loud, when I needed them quiet.  I pressed a finger to my lips and screamed '
silent
' as loud as I could, jabbing it into their minds.

I counted heads and sighed.  There were twelve of them.  Too many for Gridlock to lead back and keep quiet at the same time.  I looked at Irulan.  “
I need you to help Gridlock get them down the hall as quietly as possible
.”

She nodded and together we herded them to the door.  Gridlock took point, and Irulan brought up the rear.  We paired the four men with a female each and Irulan grabbed the hand of the woman that was the most shaken.

As they went back down the hall, I pushed on.  I searched one room...completely empty, on to the next.  As I moved closer to the last room on the hall, I felt the unmistakable rush of something 'Other'.  I gathered a ball of black energy in the palm of my hand and inched my way to the door.

The foreign scent was all over the place.  I moved to the override panel and began locking in numbers, but looked down at the door I saw that my efforts weren't needed.  The stainless steel door was cracked.  I raised my energy level another notch and pushed the door open with my toe.  At first I saw nothing, but as the door slowly swung open, I saw someone sitting at a computer with their back to me.

I brought my hand up, poised to throw the ball of energy if needed, and stepped into the room.  “My name is Valeria Trumaine.  I’m a member of the security detail.  I need you to slowly back away from the computer with both hands in the air."

The intruder laughed. It was a high pitch tingle that could only belong to a female.  As she slid away from the desk, her silver hair swirled around her as she gathered magic.  Fae Magic.

“You really do not want to do that,” I called out as I fed more power into my orb.

“I know exactly what I want to do.”  Her voice sounded like a song, a malevolent symphony that tried to wrap itself around my mind and make me give myself to her.

I shook off the suggestion, and my world began moving in slow motion.  She stood to face me at the same time Irulan called my name.  When she lifted her head, I looked into her eyes, or her lack of eyes.  Where her eyes should be there was nothing but blank sockets; hollow pools of nothing that seemed to go on forever.

I hurled the ball before those eyes pulled me into them, because I was scared if they did; I’d never be able to find myself again.  The woman, if you could call her that, sidestepped the volley and laughed. 
Her laugh taunted me.  'You’re too slow', it said, 'you’ll never be able to hit me'.

Irulan yelled again, her voice
getting closer as she came flying down the hallway toward me.  I gathered another ball of black energy and hurled it.  That was a mistake.

The Fae opened her mouth and began to scream.  Wait-no.  To say she screamed was a far cry from what actually happened.  The wave of sound that came from her mouth was as different from a scream as I was to leeches.  Whatever it was, it was enough to redirect my energy ball and send it flying toward my head.

Unluckily for me, I was now a moving target and my attention was divided between watching my opponent and trying to anticipate what she was going to do next; while I dodged my own attack.  Which, it turns out, wasn't a problem. While the force of her wave sent my orb flying back at me, it also lifted me off my feet, knocking me backward through the air.

I slammed into a door behind me; it caved around my body, wrapping me in a steel shell.  The Fae sneered as she took a step in my direction.  Another blast had the potential to do serious damage, and she knew it.  What she didn’t know was, I could funnel the power behind her blast and let the worst of it pass right over me.

As she inhaled and prepared to let loose another volley; I fought to open the funnel inside.  The blast came before I was ready, but amazingly enough it never hit me.  Irulan slid into place beside me, gliding across the slick surface on her knees, with both of her hands in front of her.  Thank God for her shields.  Thade’s furry body hunkered down in front of me, protecting me just in case anything got by Irulan.