Crystal Tomb (Starfire Angels: Dark Angel Chronicles Book 3) (9 page)

"Where did you—" Elis stiffened and
turned to the commander. "You're the thieves."

The commander's camouflage faltered
with his anger. "You are the thieves, Inari. We seek only to
reclaim what is ours. You will tell me what it says."

"Why?"

Not good. Raea leaned closer and
bumped him in the arm. ["Don't test him. They have
guns."]

Too little too late. The commander
pulled his weapon from the holster at his side. "You will tell me
because I order it, and because if you don't, one of you
dies."

Shadows played on Elis's cheeks with
the clenching of his jaw. Although their hands were shackled, Raea
reached her hands towards him to clasp his in hers. His fingers
tightened around hers, but his eyes fixed on the commander. "All
right," Elis calmly said.

The commander lowered the weapon.
"Read, Inari."

With a hint of caution in his
movements, Elis shifted his eyes from the Risaal to the monolith
and led Raea towards it. Standing before it, he released her hand
to reach up toward the stone and trace the script. "This will take
time."

"Time means nothing to me,"
Surik said. "You will stay here until you tell me the secrets of
the
D'Nuvar
."

What did the monolith have to do with
the Starfire?

Elis said nothing but studied the
script. Each symbol was no bigger than two inches with the
innermost tracks around the red stone being half the size. Now that
she saw it all closer, Raea realized the stone showed signs of
erosion, but some of the etched letters went deep, revealing the
smooth gleam of metal in the deepest grooves.

Raea reached to the inner tracks, the
segment the Starfire had highlighted in her vision. They had
recognized something special about it, but she couldn't let these
creatures know. ["I saw this in a vision. I think the Starfire
understands something."] She spoke in a low voice but in the
silence of the chamber, she could have been shouting. The Risaal
made no sound or movement to threaten them.

Starting at the gap separating two
symbols, Elis traced each one. ["This doesn't make sense. This
character means 'in darkness' while this indicates the mind or
head. And this…this talks about a fire and burning cold."] He
frowned and continued around the tracks. "Translating is one thing,
but the meaning is something else entirely."

"Figure it out." The commander
motioned to the others. A shadowy shape looked up, and Raea saw
why—a glass window overlooked the room. They would be
watched.

The door scraped open and the aliens
departed, leaving her and Elis alone.

In that moment, Raea pressed against
him, her cuffed hands at his chest. Relief poured in when he
dropped his arms around her, his warm breath blowing along her
head. ["Don't ever challenge him again. Promise me."]

Stupid cuffs. She wanted to hold him
more than ever but she could only press close to him, his steady
breath and heartbeat loud in her ear against his chest.

["Who are they?"]

["They call themselves Risaal, and
they're definitely not human."]

The warmth of his breath
disappeared.

Raea looked up; he focused on the
window above and the face of the commander staring coldly from
behind it.

["Have you heard of them?"]

["No."] Elis lifted his arms from her,
his attention returning to the monolith.

After a long silence from
him, she stepped away and around the stone. The back bore only a
few roughly etched characters.
"Kita youal
vishorun etzi."
That couldn't be right.
Those ideas made no sense together.

"Swallowed by darkness."

Raea peered around and met Elis's
eyes. "But what does that mean?"

"I don't know."

She returned to his side and studied
the script on the front. ["Is it the same darkness mentioned
here?"] Her fingers traced the character near the center red stone
about the width of both her hands together. In fact, if she put her
hands on it…

The resonance burned through her and
the entities shrieked in her head.

"Raea!"

The Starfire entities drowned out
Elis's voice, until she found herself lying on the floor with Elis
looking over her.

"Raea."

Someone make the room stop
spinning.
She was going to hurl. Oh, God.
Spots mottled in her vision until they blotted out Elis's face.
Everything vanished.

Conspiracies

Crystal fire. What was wrong with
Raea? He couldn't even hold her because of the cuffs on his hands.
He'd barely caught her before she collapsed.

Elis pressed his fingertips to her
wrist, the only easy place to find a pulse on their kind. She
wasn't dead. Some relief, but she was still unconscious. What had
happened? What had the stone done, or was it the cuffs?

He might be able to burn the cuffs off
with the Starfire energy if he found the time, but they watched his
every move. Given their hatred, they would probably shoot before he
had a chance. Better to not reveal anything until the right chance
came.

But he had to do something to help
Raea.

Elis set his hands on hers
and found the resonance. It warmed through him and tickled down his
arms into his hands, flowing into Raea from the exposed Starburst
marks on the undersides of his fingers through her hands. Through
the connection, voices whispered to him, indistinct like someone
talking on the other side of a door.
Who
are you?
The question echoed through the
void.
Raea?

The voices spoke faster and
grew more jumbled.
What do you
want?

From somewhere in the
melee, a familiar voice called his name:
Elis?

Raea!

The voices rose into a tumult,
drowning out their connection in a scornful tone.

Please. I need to know if
she's all right.

Silence fell.

Raea? Raea!

Nothing. He could trace no connection.
The entities cut him off. Elis let the resonance fade and noticed
her still breathing. She was alive, small comfort it
was.

Why had the Starfire cut him off this
time? He and Raea had shared a connection on several occasions to
push them to share their memories with Raea. They had occasionally
objected, but had never come between them.

If they wanted her, he could do
nothing until they released her from whatever they had done. What
did they want? What happened with the red stone?

He looked up at the innocuous stone in
the center of the monolith. He had touched it briefly without any
problem, so maybe it hadn't been the stone. Maybe the Starfire
entities had simply chosen that moment to react.

If only they would speak with
him!

Crystal fire. He wanted to know what
happened to her.

The monolith blurred in the tears
burning his eyes. Why Raea? Why? What was this all about? There had
to be a reason.

There was—the Risaal. They did
this.

He wiped his eyes and looked up at the
observation glass and the doppelganger human faces behind it, his
emotions burning in his chest. This was their fault. He and Raea
would have found the Eye if the Risaal hadn't interfered. He and
Raea could have lived their lives, worrying only about the Shirukan
and a future together.

If they wanted the translation so
badly, the Risaal could do it themselves.

He laid down next to Raea, the only
thing that mattered in his life. Whether they stayed on Earth or
returned to the homeworld didn't matter, as long as they were
together. He would do all he could to protect her; he had since the
first time he saw her walking home along the quiet streets of
McClarron and felt his breath halted in awe.

The door clicked and scraped.
Footsteps padded softly in the perfect quiet of the chamber and
stopped.

"Get up," a voice growled.

Elis clamped his jaw and shifted to
hold Raea's hands, despite the awkwardness of the cuffs. The warmth
of her hand filled him with strength.

Something pressed against his head,
the answer obvious. Despite the fear pounding in his heart, he
refused to leave her. "Kill me. You won't get your
translation."

After a few heart-pounding seconds,
the weapon withdrew, but a sharp jab to his back stole his
breath.

"Get up!"

Elis gasped, unable to speak, much
less move. Curse them all for this! He wouldn't help.

The woman in the body suit knelt over
Raea, a device of some kind in her hand. "She's alive, but her life
signs are weak." Her voice was anything but feminine, a big clue
they weren't what they seemed.

"What happened to your mate, Inari?"
The voice came from the figure standing over him.

Elis inhaled sharply, until the pain
where they had kicked him dulled and he let out his breath. "I
don't know." He rushed the words out to struggle for another
breath.

After a few seconds, the
man standing over him said, "We can't lose her yet. We need the
secrets of the
D'Nuvar
. Treat her and feed them. They'll stay here until they give
us what we want."

"Yes, sir." The woman with the odd
voice rose from Raea's side and knelt near him as his breathing
steadied. She passed her scanner over him, her expression neutral
in the few seconds it took to finish. Something must have satisfied
her, since she followed the other man out without a
word.

Elis stayed by Raea, breathing deeply.
["We'll find a way out of this. I promise."] His lips pressed
against a warm cheek, reassuring him she lived. What did they mean
by weak life signs?

Raea couldn't die. He'd do everything
in his power to keep her alive, even if that meant sacrificing
himself.

* * *

Upon the exit of his commander from
the room, Kalas stepped from the control room window where he had
watched. The girl's hands might have glowed briefly before she
collapsed, but that might also have been an effect of the lights on
her strange markings.

He stepped out of the room
in time to meet
Kan Rikku
Nakor Surik with Dar Lorel in the
corridor.

His commander halted. {"Ronur
Kalas."}

The extra hiss in that voice sent a
shiver of anticipation through Kalas. His commander sounded
pleased, not what he had expected.

{"
Kan Rikku
."}

{"You did well capturing
these two. Tell me more about the
D'Nuvar
shard worn by the
female."}

{"Its power seems to be a part of
both."}

Lorel glanced at the scanner. {"I
wondered about these readings."}

Surik turned to the
xenobiologist in the human female form. {"You're certain the
D'Nuvar
is blended with
their cells?"}

{"Yes, sir."}

{"Is this why they can touch the
crystal and we cannot?"} Surik gazed behind them at the door now
closed to the chamber where the pair laid.

{"Unknown,"} she answered. {"I would
have to study it further."}

The crystal had injured several Risaal
since the beginning of the war among the clans and the emergence of
the Nakor as the dominant clan. They had encased it to prevent the
power from harming any others and tapped into it to threaten the
other clans into submission, and now the Inari wore it like any
other jewel, unaffected by its dangerous power.

Rik had still not recovered from
touching it and lay in a health pod connected to life support
systems. They should have scanned the pendant sooner, but they
hadn't suspected it was a piece of the crystal they sought. Surik
had sworn to take the life of all Inari they encountered if his
clan-mate died.

{"How is this possible?"}
Surik looked to each of them for an answer but Kalas could not
explain. The triple pupil of the commander's dark eyes opened into
a triangle in the dim lighting, but the human expression hardened.
{"These questions I leave up to you,
Rikku
Ronur Kalas."}

{"Yes,
Kan Rikku
."} Kalas bowed slightly as
the commander stepped past him into the control room of that small
complex. Kalas had worked harder than any of the Nakor to earn his
position, where Nakor Surik had been handed his position by virtue
of birth, whether he deserved it or not. And the young commander
most certainly did not.

On Earth, though, they were a universe
away from their homeworld and the clan wars, but Kalas had to tread
carefully if he would gain power among the thirty-two survivors who
had awakened on Earth. The Nakor among them numbered less than
half, a disadvantage that could be exploited if he could gain the
loyalty of a few more of the minority clan members.