Crystal Tomb (Starfire Angels: Dark Angel Chronicles Book 3) (22 page)

The name would not stay, however. Once
he found a mate, his offspring would be identified by the mother's
family. That tradition would not likely change.

The ground trembled beneath her, this
time loosening rocks to rain down around her. With her wings tucked
close to her back and her hands over her head, she ducked into the
vault. Curse those engineers for not listening to her. Their city
wasn't even ready for testing. These tremors would destroy all
their hard work before the new city was ready and destroy their
ground city. They would be exposed to the cold season if their
homes collapsed, and lands in the warm regions were prone to far
worse environmental issues.

The walls of the vault cracked around
her.

["Ahben depths!"] This was worse than
she imagined. Chips of stone rang off the glass around the crystal.
At this rate, the whole vault would collapse.

Isn't that what she hoped would
happen—to destroy the crystal?

No. They could use it. She wanted to
seal it up but keep it accessible in case it proved useful later.
She didn't want it destroyed.

Amid the cracking walls and rumble of
rock around her, Atia snatched the glass globe from its perch and
rushed up the steps.

Behind her, the cavern collapsed in a
thunderous boom. Boulders rained down on her and the dust of the
collapse rose into a cloud, obscuring her vision.

She spread her wings to fly free of
the debris and dust but a boulder knocked her left wing aside,
bruising it and throwing her to her knees.

Pain stung her wing and her back as
more rocks struck. The glass slipped from her fingers amid the
thunder of the avalanche.

["No! Where is it?"] On her hands and
knees, she felt for the pieces.

Something sharp pricked her finger and
she snapped her hand back, sticking her finger in her mouth and
tasting blood. The crystal lay amid the shards of its protective
casing. Atia reached for it and coughed from the dust. While the
avalanche lessened, she lifted the crystal cluster.

A second later, pain pinched her legs
and sent her crashing to the ground.

Light flashed through her
mind.

The tumult of voices drowned her amid
their discord.

[SHE'S HERE. SHE'S
HERE…]
The feeling of confirmation echoed
around her amid shimmering colors bearing a feeling of lightness,
which passed through her in an instant.

This was a dream. It had to
be.

[Wake up
.
]
She tried
to open her eyes but couldn't. She felt nothing.

But she noticed something.

She stared at her own face.

The Fall of Atlantis

[I must be
dreaming
.
]
It had to be. Why else would she be staring at her
own face?

The avalanche slowed to a trickle of
pebbles. Atia felt no pain. In fact, she felt nothing.

[Someone help me!]
The scream went nowhere, but voices whispered all
around her.

[Who are you?]

Nothing.

[Speak up. I can't hear
you.]

[WE ARE HERE.]
The certainty of the thought trembled through her
with the clarity of a single musical note.

[Who are you?]

[WE ARE…]

What? Ahben depths. Where was she? Was
she dead, dreaming…What?!

Through the dust, a winged shadow
landed nearby. Dark wings disappeared behind the straight, slender
figure of a man.

["Lady Atia!"]

[Darus!]
His voice sang a sweet note to her, but she could
not call back to him.

Through the cloud, he appeared and
knelt over her body.

[Darus! Darus, I'm
here.]

["Atia. Of all the sky above…Lady
Atia."] He smoothed the hair from the closed eyes with the gentle
touch she had always longed to feel on her skin but had never
allowed herself to indulge. To do so, especially in the uproar over
his appointment, would have sabotaged her plans for Lantis. She had
sacrificed her happiness for her son and her people.

His eyes fixed on her legs and widened
in shock. A second later, he hurried to the stone and grunted and
heaved to move it.

After an effort by him, it finally
crunched onto the rocks beside her feet. Darus gasped, his wings
lifting slightly.

Without a word, he unclipped his belt
and unfastened the middle piece of his waistcoat from the back of
his neck to remove it.

How bad was it? If only she could
speak to him, but she wasn't even in her body.

[YOU ARE HERE.]

[Where?]

[WITH US.]

[Who are you?]
Damn the voices. What was going on?

[ENERGY. CRYSTAL.
UNITY.]

The crystal? No. That couldn't be
true.

[YES. WE LIVE…]

Alive!

A ringing confirmation flowed through
her and around her. It was her. The crystal was alive. How was that
possible? She'd never heard of such a thing.

Darus finished wrapping her legs and
slid his hand under her head. He withdrew it a second later, his
fingers smeared with blood.

["Lady Atia!"] In a new sense of
urgency, he scooped up her body in his arms and spread his
wings.

[Wait! Don't leave
me!]
But he flew off with her body, her
brown and gold wings trailing beneath. No. Her Darus. The man she
should have taken as a lover when she had the chance. He'd left
her.

Anger seethed through her conscious,
an emotion dulled by the energy around and through her. She hated
the entities that had taken her from her body.

[SAVED YOU.]

Saved her?
Saved
her? They did
nothing. She should have remained in her body. How had they saved
her?

[DYING. LIFE FAILING. YOU
SAVED US. WE ACCEPTED YOU.]

She didn't care about them, whoever
they were. She wanted her life back, the life in the body she knew.
She was Inari.

Now she was nothing but a rock with a
consciousness.

[LISTEN. LEARN.
DISCOVER.]

She didn't want to discover, but there
was something whispering through her, a part of her in them. All at
once, she was a part of the universe. It opened to her in all its
breath-taking splendor and belittling vastness. She'd never
realized the enormity. Her problems seemed small by comparison, a
mere speck in the capacity of eternity.

Raea gasped and struggled for a breath
in the flood of information.

"Dear God. What's going on?
Raea! Raea, can you hear me? Wake up!"
The
familiar voice broke through the vision, shattering it.
"Debbie. We have to do something."

"I don't know…She's
catatonic."

"Call Nare. She'll
know."

A pause, then the second
voice said,
"And we'll have to tell her
about Elis."

Elis? Memories flashed past of faces
and voices and focused on one in the crowd of students in class. In
dark clothes and black fingerless gloves, he sat in his desk a few
rows over. Wild black strands of hair covered his face, nearly
hiding the deep purple eyes when he looked up.

Scenes blurred and refocused on that
same quiet demeanor standing tall with black wings rising behind
him. Scenes rushed past again to her pressed close to someone in
the dark, a faint outdoorsy scent hinting of a light musk making
her pulse race. A moment later, it all crumbled into chaos as she
knelt beside him in the grass, stunned by the hole in his chest and
crying.

No. Not again. She didn't want to
remember that terrible moment.

To her relief, it faded away, replaced
by the face of Lantis peering directly at her. The scene shifted,
apparently as he lifted the crystal before him. ["All this
trouble…"] he muttered.

[Lantis! It's me. I'm
here!]
Atia's cries rang through her
consciousness.

["My mother rescued you even when she
wanted to bury you. Why?"] He closed his eyes and a tear shimmered
down his cheek. ["It's not fair."] He ground the words through
trembling lips and clenched teeth, his eyes glazed with tears.
["You took her away!"]

[No, Lantis. It's me. I'm
alive, my love.]
Why couldn't he hear her?
Her thoughts shrieked through her core.

But it wasn't her. She had
merged with the entities of the crystal, a
living
crystal.

Her son. Her beloved son, the only
remnant of a man she had loved deeply against the rules of their
society. He had to hear her.

["Damn them! Supervisor Sorakin will
pay for this."] He spread his wings and, with the crystal in his
hand, flew over the city.

Copper spires tarnishing into green
over marble columns marked the different structures.
Glass-segmented domes glared a brilliant reflection of light from
five points around the perimeter of the city. The tallest building
rose from the center of the star, balconies and platforms spiraling
around the central column rising into the sky. Several guards and
workers took off or landed from different heights.

Not Lantis. He circled down to the
west wing of the administration complex and landed on a familiar
balcony. The door slid open to a simple but elegant room. Lantis
tucked his wings to his back and stepped through to where Darus
stood at the foot of the sleeping mat on which her body
lay.

A medic knelt over the body, a scanner
in her hand.

["She won't wake up,"] Darus
whispered, his soft brown eyes glistening with moisture. ["Her
brain functions are at minimum, and her lower legs are
broken."]

["She'll be all right, though?"]
Lantis stared at her body. ["Right? Tell me she'll
recover."]

[I'm here. I could
return…maybe
.]

Ideas swept through her—some certain
she could return to her body and others not so sure. The turbulence
distracted her until she saw only her body with bandages wrapping
most of her extremities. The medic stood by the two men.

["I don't know if Lady Atia will
recover."]

Lantis's lips curled into a vicious
snarl, his yellow wings lifting with his agitation as if to take
flight. She had never seen him so livid. ["They will answer for
this. I swear it! They were told not to test the engines."] His
lips quivered and he hiccupped on a sob. ["I shouldn't have left
her."]

["Why did you?"]

["She sent me to order them to stop. I
don't know why she stayed, except for this."] He held up the
crystal. ["This is the reason for everything. The Risaal were after
this. Mother forbade me from speaking of it."]

Darus took the crystal in his hands,
staring at it.

[I'm here! I'm right
here.]
Ahben depths! This wasn't working.
How could she communicate with them?

Touch. Somehow by her touch, the
entities had transferred her consciousness into that crystal with
them.

But if she tried or they tried, Darus
or Lantis might fall of the same fate. She couldn't let that
happen.

There had to be another
way.

["It's beautiful. Why is it
glowing?"]

Lantis sniffed and wiped his eyes. ["I
don't know. It does that sometimes. All I know is that it was a
gift to our envoy to Ch'tor and then the Risaal came and accused us
of stealing it. Lady Akarin told me to take it with us in our
escape, to be sure they never got it. She said it was a powerful
tool they could use to destroy us. But it's done that without the
Risaal."] He swallowed and sniffed again. ["She had the chamber
hewn from the mountain to hide it until she decided we were ready
to study it…I wish she would have let the rubble bury
it!"]

Darus said nothing but turned to the
boy and drew him into his arms. ["I'm sorry about your mother…very
sorry."]

Lantis broke down in sobs. If she had
her body, she would have embraced him and soaked up his tears
herself. If she had her body, they wouldn't be crying. She could
wake up and assure them she would be all right. She wanted to hold
her son more than anything, to feel his soft hair against her cheek
and console him.

No longer. She had no body. She was
trapped.

[SORROW.
REGRET…INTERESTING…]

[Leave me…or put me
back.]

[CANNOT.]

[Why? Because you don't
know how or because you need to touch my body?]

[YES…BLENDED, A PART OF
US.]

A part of them? Blended? In other
words, she could never separate? No. She refused to believe it.
There had to be a way.

[Like Keepers.]
Whose thought was that? Where had it come
from?