 
Cross Council

by

Brendan Carroll, Trish Lamoree and Maureen Miller

SMASHWORDS EDITION

~~~~~

PUBLISHED BY:

Trish Lamoree on Smashwords

A Dark Council and A Dark Matter

Copyright 2010 by Brendan Carroll

Once Upon a November

Copyright 2010 by Trish Lamoree

Beyond

Copyright 2010 by Maureen Miller

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

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## Table of Contents

A Dark Council by Brendan Carroll

Once Upon a November by Trish Lamoree

Beyond by Maureen Miller

A Dark Matter by Brendan Carroll

Bonus Materials

First Chapter of The Red Cross of Gold XXIII "Thoth, the Atlantean" by Brendan Carroll

First Chapter of Painting the Roses Red by Trish Lamoree

Preview of Love's First Kiss by Trish Lamoree.

First Chapter of Widow's Tale by Maureen Miller

# A Dark Council

By Brendan Carroll

Copyright 2010 Brendan Carroll

"Well met then, my friend!" Hugh de Champagne, the Knight of the Wisdom of Solomon, clasped his friend and Brother's forearm, pulling him close enough to kiss him on the lips in the fashion practiced by the Templar Brothers as a sign of recognition.

"Oui! And good it is to see you, Brother," James Argonne, Knight of the Throne, clasped the larger Knight by the shoulder as his racing heart began to slow its pace somewhat.

All around the two bloodied and dirty Knights lay dead bodies, glassy-eyed and pasty-faced scattered haphazardly in the cobbled street. All of them dressed in the King's livery and all dead with the exception of one who was attempting to crawl away on his stomach, dragging his useless legs behind him in a bright red trail of blood. Argonne wrenched his blade free of the last man he had skewered and went after the survivor. A wooden shutter banged open on the second floor above them and a young woman stuck her head out. James bellowed up at her like an enraged bull and she screamed before withdrawing inside. The window slammed shut and silence returned to the narrow alley. Only the labored breathing of the French soldier broke the unnatural silence in the normally noisy residential area of Paris where a group of ragtag children had been playing only a few short minutes earlier.

Argonne bellowed again as he plunged his sword into the nape of the man's neck. The soldier gurgled, attempted to reach the blade with one hand and then lay still as more blood spilled onto the stones.

Hugh rushed past James and caught his arm, dragging him along, keeping to the shadows under the overhanging upper floors of the houses lining the narrow street. There were bound to be other soldiers in the area. James had led these six into an alley where he knew Champagne had disappeared only a few moments prior to their arrival. There the two Templars had cut down King Philip's men like so many reeds on the river bank, pushing them back into the street. If they had any hope of surviving the day, they had to get to the Commanderie. Something was dreadfully wrong! Why would the King's men be chasing them through the streets so early in the morning screaming obscene curses at them?

Both Knights removed their mantels and surcoats as they walked along, tucking the bloody white clothes into their helmets. Two more narrow alleys crisscrossed with clotheslines provided them with damp tunics and ragged mantels of brown and blue. At least they would not attract so much attention if no one looked too closely at them. Argonne led the way through the maze of narrow streets with Hugh close on his heels. They kept their heads low and pulled the mantels close about their shoulders, attempting to cover the chain mail they wore under the tattered tunics. Paris was Argonne's home. He had roamed these streets since the time he first remembered. Hugh, on the other hand, was a country bumpkin, bigger and slower in both brain and body than his short, stocky companion.

They dodged and ducked in and out of alleys, streets and narrow spaces between buildings, some that could not even remotely be classified as a crawl space until they broke into the open near a towering fountain with clear running water. Hugh slowed to a less conspicuous pace in the more populous area around the fountain. Hawkers called to them as they passed; trying to sell them everything from loaves of crusty brown bread to bridles for their imaginary horses and feathers for their caps. They rounded the corner, passed in front of a leather shop and then stopped quickly, pretending to admire a number of copper pots stacked on a rough table as a small contingency of the king's soldiers trotted past them.

Moving on quickly, they came to an iron gate set in a stone wall, partially overgrown with trailing ivy and wild grape vines. James pushed the vines aside and shoved Hugh through a narrow hole between the gate and the wall where several of the stones had fallen away over time.

"Well, bless my soul!" Hugh exclaimed as he gazed up at the imposing facade of the Templar Commanderie. People were running to and fro in the rear courtyard, carrying all manner of household commodities, clearly in a state of panic. Hugh grabbed one of the lay brothers when he passed near them.

"What goes here, Brother?" He asked.

The man looked at him with wide, terrified eyes, opened his mouth, but nothing came out. Argonne grabbed the man, spun him around and asked him the same question. When the young man failed to answer, he shoved him to the ground viciously and then looked around for someone who might be more able to tell them something useful. He saw the Mystic Healer's apprentice running down the wide steps, carrying a heavy bag slung over one shoulder.

"Benoit!" Hugh called to the young fellow.

The apprentice looked up and saw Hugh standing near the wall. He dropped the bag, grabbed his robe in both hands, exposing his bare legs under the rough woolen sheath as he ran toward them.

"Masters! Masters!"

"What is going on here in the name of St. John?!" Hugh caught the boy in his arms and then held him out, looking closely at him.

"Master, they have arrested the Grand Master!"

"What?!" James asked, grabbing the boy from Hugh. "Where is your Master?"

"He is dead!" The boy cried and began to sob openly. "We are leaving. They are arresting everyone! We will all be killed!"

James and Hugh looked at each other in shock. They had only just returned to the city from a sojourn in the Languedoc. They had both missed the last Council meeting.

"The king!" Benoit continued. "He has issued the order to arrest all the Brothers."

"What are the charges?" James asked him.

"Blasphemy. Heresy... I don't know. Something else." The boy turned his eyes nervously toward the open gates that led into the crowded Paris street in front of the Commanderie.

"How did death find your Master? Where is Ramsay?"

"He was with Sir Ramsay when they killed him, Master. I only just had word of it this minute from Sir Ramsay's man. He told me to pack a bag and wait for him, but I must flee, Messrs. Please!" Benoit pulled away from James. "You must flee for your lives!!"

Argonne let go of him and watched in silence as the boy ran back to retrieve his bag and then disappeared into the street, blending instantly into the crowds.

They both headed for the gate as well, but stopped when someone called Hugh by name. They turned and saw Louis Champlain, the Knight of the Golden Key, limping toward them. His surcoat was missing and his undershirt was stained with fresh blood. The big Frankish Knight's blond hair was as wild as his eyes as he hurried toward them. He carried no weapon and wore no armor.

"Brothers!" He caught them both in a hug and pushed them toward the gates. "We must hurry. The Master has been taken and his second as well. They have only just raided the Temple and arrested Simon. Master deMolay has given orders not to resist, but I will not go without a fight. Brother Ramsay and the Healer tried to save Father Simon, but Girard was killed in the Temple! Sacrilege!" He told them as they hurried along. "Brother Edgard has sent instructions to meet at the wharves after nightfall."

"What of Girard? Is Ramsay dead?" James asked as they moved along rapidly keeping near the walls and open doors of the shops lining the streets. If more soldiers appeared, they would be less likely to present clear targets and could escape inside one of the taverns or retail establishments. His stomach knotted at the thought of Ramsay being taken or killed. If they lost their Knight of Death, what would become of them? The Chevalier du Morte was the only thing that stood between the Knights of the Council and eternal damnation. He was the only one who could release their souls from their bodies if anything should befall them.

"Ramsay and Girard killed seven of the soldiers," Louis hissed. "I was waiting outside for them. I saw twelve go in and then I saw five come out again with Simon of Grenoble. They left Ramsay for dead and Girard as well. I had to carry them both out."

~~~~~

James glanced at him with an unspoken question in his eyes.

"Girard's neck was cut to the bone, Brother," Louis lowered his voice. "I am sorry. I know he was your friend. Sir Ramsay released his soul and has gone in search of his apprentice."

"This way!" James took the lead again. He led them down an alley and stopped in front of door that had once been painted bright green. The wood was pitted and scarred. Very little paint remained. He rapped loudly on the door and it opened a few moments later just enough to allow one eye to be seen in the crack.

"Juliette," James actually smiled and Louis frowned, looking to Hugh for explanation, but the Knight of the Wisdom of Solomon only shrugged. "Let us in, mon cher."

The door opened wider and a rather busty young girl allowed them inside the shabby, but cozy room where a fire burned in a small fireplace and the smell of onions was thick in the air.

"We can stay here until dark, my friends," James told them and wrapped one arm around the young woman's shoulders. "This is my wife, Juliette."

"Wife?!!" Both Champlain and Champagne said in unison. Wives, girlfriends and unnecessary contact with women in general were strictly forbidden by the Primitive Rule of Order as laid down by Saint Bernard.

"A man needs sustenance and comfort," James told them as he turned to kiss the girl on her nose.

The three Templars lounged on hay and sacks of lamb's wool by the hearth all night listening to the clattering armor of the king's patrols coming and going in the streets outside. Julie sat at her spinning wheel, working silently in between supplying them with what little food and drink she could spare. She was afraid and the fear was evident in her large eyes. It was also evident that James treated her none too well and if the king's men found them here, they would arrest her as well and a horrible fate would await her in the Inquisitor's dungeons for harboring heretics. Their lives hung in the balance and the night before them promised to be long and bleak.

Across town in the cellar of an inn well known for its fine ale and hearty fare, four men sat staring at each other across the top of an upturned wine cask. A single candle stump flickered on the keg between them, casting the craggy lines of their faces into shadowy caricatures of fear and trepidation.

"I say we go now!" The German plopped one gloved fist on the cask. "If we tarry overlong, we'll find our feet in the fire!"

"We cannot leave our Brother behind!" The oldest member of the group rasped and then finished off the ale in his tankard. He blinked his watery blue eyes in anger.

"He is NOT our Brother, Master," the German said again. "He is but a foundling... a lay brother. He will be released as soon as his status is learned. He knows nothing."

"What do you know of his status, Sir?!" The big, red-faced Frenchman rose up slightly and leaned toward the leaner fellow. "You would do well to mind your place!"

The darker Knight fell silent and leaned back in the ramshackle chair, stretching his long legs out in front of the in the soot-blackened hearth where a small fire flickered atop a burned out pile of coal.

"Please, Brothers," the quieter personality of the four spoke up. Philip Cambrique, Knight of the Orient and Seneschal to the Grand Master did not like strife, especially amongst the Brothers of the Council. Calamity had befallen the Order of the poor Knights of the Temple and they were lucky to have escaped King Philipe's soldiers. It was truly a miracle and a sign that assured him of God's approval of them. "We must not fight among ourselves. We have much to consider." He turned his large, liquid eyes on Konrad von Hetz, Knight of the Apocalypse who sees. "Brother Konrad, I ask you to restrain yourself. There is much you do not know... should not know for your own sake as well as the sakes of others. If Master d'Brouchart says we must bring Father Simon with us, then that is what we must do. I am sure that he has his reasons."

The Master lowered himself onto the small stool on which he perched causing it to squeak ominously under his weight.

"I will make arrangements for his release," the fourth man spoke up. He was dressed in black from head to toe as opposed to the white mantels and surcoats worn by his companions. "We must give them time to sort out the prisoners. I will make contact with my... associates and meet with the jailer. He has expensive tastes." By his accent, he was clearly from the northern ranges of Britain, Scotland, no doubt. "The ships are safely away by now and they will think us escaped. I suggest you find more suitable rags. Beggars will not be suspect and Father Simon will most likely be beggarly when I bring him out."

"Are you sure you can trust this... jailer, Brother Ramsay?" D'Brouchart turned his eyes on his only Scottish Knight.

Sir Ramsay, better known to them simply as du Morte, taken from his official title and office as the Chevalier du Morte or Knight of Death in the English, laughed and startled all three of them. He was not overly given to mirth and the situation hardly warranted laughter.

"He is as trustworthy as any corrupt official might be, Edgard," Ramsay answered after a moment. The question was absurd. "The heavier the purse, the more trustworthy he becomes." The Knight dropped a sizable leather purse into the light on the cask. The unmistakable sound of gold clinking together met their ears and the German smiled crookedly, nodding his head in approval. Ramsay was the alchemist as well. It was his God-given talent to provide the gold necessary to run their little Order within the Order.

"Let us hope you will not come too late," the Master said quietly and held out his tankard to Philip for a refill.

~~~~~

In a cold, damp cell in the lower reaches of the King's dungeons, Father Simon Peter d'Ornan lay upon a rough stone block, shivering with cold, terrified out of his wits and utterly alone. He wore nothing but the single cord signifying his vow of chastity around his waist after having been relieved of his robes by his captors. His hands and feet were secured tightly, preventing even the slightest hope of relief from the uncomfortable position on the gritty stone. He could hear rats skittering in the darkness around him and the occasional drip of water. Now and again, he heard distant screams and the closer sounds of moans or groans. His hopes of rescue were nonexistent. Two of the Master's best Knights had come for him and they had been easily brushed aside by the king's men. Brother Girard, the Healer, had fallen in the church and as far as he knew, Sir Ramsay was dead or imprisoned as well. He'd heard snatches of conversation during his tumultuous flight. The Grand Master was arrested. The charges were heresy and things more heinous and blasphemous than he could bear to remember. All false! All lies!!

Keys jangled in the corridor outside the cell and then he heard the door grate open. Several men entered the room carrying torches that cast a ruddy glow in the sad little cell. Simon felt his cheeks burn as the hooded men gazed upon his nakedness with open contempt.

"You have something to confess, my son?" One of them asked. "Surely, one as young as yourself would wish to live a long and prosperous life in God's service."

Simon said nothing. It was a loaded question. He was Cistercian; these men were Benedictines working for the Holy Inquisition. He had seen them before in the market and once just outside the Commanderie talking to some of the lay brothers.

"Come, come, now. Surely you wish to tell us how you came to be in the company of known heretics and blasphemers. If you would be so kind, Father Simon, a written testimony, duly signed by one as respected as yourself would go a long way in procuring your immediate release." The man slipped one finger under the cord at his waist and twisted it, causing it to cut into his skin. "You were one of their confessors. Surely God wants you to cleanse your conscience..."

Again, Simon had no answer for the man.

"Perhaps a little persuasion is in order," the man said and then untied the cord deftly, pulling it from under him roughly. "This sign of your chastity would be best placed in more... how shall we say... more suitable place? No?"

Simon cringed as the man wrapped the cord around what he considered a more suitable piece of his anatomy and tied it viciously tight.

"We will leave you to meditate for a space and then we will see what your decision is," the man crossed himself and led the others out of the cell, leaving the priest known as Simon of Grenoble to some, alone with his thoughts and his suffering.

~~~~~

"This way," the jailer mumbled and Ramsay cringed as the numerous odors assaulted his nose again. Onions, rotted meat, wine, urine, sweat, blood. The various stains on the man's tunic and overlay were indescribably foul and portended worse yet to come. The twists and turns in the dark recesses of the jail soon made the Knight's head spin. He clutched the hilt of his sword in a death grip, wary at every turn for some unknown assailant to leap on him. The purse had been heavy, but treachery was not out of the question and he would not rest easy until he was far from this foul pit.

They came at last to a cell with a solid door which served to separate the more dangerous criminals from the unwashed bodies of the wretched prisoners crammed into the larger accommodations for those 'convicted' of less serious charges. These pitiful souls would eventually be released... if they survived. The portion of the jail where Simon of Grenoble and the other Templar prisoners were confined did not give up their occupants so easily. Eerie wails and occasional snatches of murmured prayers reached his ears from deeper in the maze of dark, damp passages and each set his teeth on edge and made his stomach knot.

The iron keys clinked together as the man found the correct one for the door and opened the door. The iron-bound wooden planks swung inward on rusty hinges, creaks echoing loudly in the corridors. Ramsay looked around nervously and then stepped into the room.

"I'll wait, but be quick about it!" The jailer snapped.

Mark Andrew walked forward to the raised stone slab where the cell's sole occupant lay shivering in chains. He stopped suddenly and pressed his hand over his mouth when he saw what they had done to the young priest. He was too late. The jailer had assured him that the Inquisitor in charge had received his share of the booty and made arrangements to have Simon's name erased from the roster, but there had been no mention of torture or injuries. A red flare erupted in Ramsay's brain and he turned on the jailer, drawing his broadsword. Blood glistened darkly on the stone from a hideous wound, the nature of which was quite loosely concealed beneath a bloody bandage.

"Wot th' fock?!" He shouted, pushing back his nausea with anger. "I paid thee fur a livin' soul, not a dead mon!"

"He's not dead!" The jailer objected and his eyes widened at the sight of the blade gleaming in the torchlight. "The physician assured me that he would live. Now take him and go before I sound the alarm!"

Ramsay took a step forward, hesitated and then ripped his mantel from his shoulders. He turned quickly and covered the naked priest, tucking the cloth tightly about his body. The priest knew nothing of his surroundings; he shivered and shook violently from cold and shock, thankfully unconscious. The Knight could not help but think the poor fellow would be dead before he could get him back to the rendezvous point.

The streets were fairly empty and the ride out of town uneventful. Simon moaned and groaned only occasionally, but never regained his senses.

Three days later, he was still unconscious. His head rolled slightly with the motion of the ship as the Master wiped the cold sweat from his pale face. The blood loss had been stemmed and their own physician had done all that could be done for him, but the fever raged intermittently and his condition was worsening with every hour that passed. He would soon be gone from them and there would be no ransoming him again.

Mark drew a deep breath and looked out the square porthole at the gray expanse of sea. A strong northwesterly wind blew the tops off the whitecaps and sent sprays of seawater into the air to join the pouring rain and shivering chills up his spine. The porthole remained open at the behest of the doctor who insisted that Simon needed fresh air to heal. The priest lay under a number of woolen blankets and yet, when the fever took him, he threw them off and shouted obscenities that made them all blush.

"I'm sorry, Edgard," Mark said after a moment more. "I wish things could have been different."

"They can and they will be different, du Morte," d'Brouchart said and turned his weeping blue eyes on the Scot. The big man tucked his fur collar under his chin and then swiveled on the small stool, causing it to squeak ominously.

"What you say is true. Things will always be different. Nothing is sure, but change," Ramsay agreed.

"No, I mean to use the Tree of Life on him," Edgard whispered.

"Wot?!" Mark pushed himself off the barrel on which he had been leaning. "Ye canna do thot, Edgard! Twas not in th' covenant and ye know it!"

"I am the Master!" The larger man growled. "I can do whatever the hell I wish to do. Besides we need a new Healer now that Girard is no longer with us."

"Wot aboot 'is apprentice? Bernardo 'as trained with him fur years!" Ramsay objected, his distinctive brogue overriding his normally calm exterior as he reverted the language of his childhood.

"I'll not argue with you, du Morte," Edgard said and eyed him coldly. "I have decided."

"I canna let ye do thot, Edgard," Mark lowered his voice and drew his sword, pointing the wickedly sharp tip at the Master's neck. "Give me th' box!"

Edgard's mouth fell open slightly and then he reached inside his mantel, beneath his tunic where a leather bag hung from his belt. He pulled off the bag and then held it out to the Scot.

"You would let him die?" The Master asked him in disbelief.

"He is not a member of the Council, nor is he an apprentice!" Ramsay said with more control.

"He is my son!"

Mark blinked at him in astonishment. This could not be possible. Sons were not permitted. Women were not permitted. Families were not permitted to Knights of the Council. The Master was in error. The Master was lying! Mark allowed the tip of the blade to touch the floor. A mistake. The Chevalier du Morte suddenly straightened in shock and disbelief as the tip of a bloody blade appeared just below his sternum, staining his light gray tunic a deep red as his blood poured from a grievous wound. Someone had run him through from behind. He grabbed the blade in his left hand as his own sword fell to the deck. Slowly, he turned to face his cowardly attacker, but he never saw the man's face before death overtook him and he slumped forward into his murderer's arms.

James Argonne caught the Chevalier du Morte and lowered him onto an empty bunk, face down, before removing his sword from him none too gently.

"You didn't have to kill him, Brother," Edgard said harshly.

"What difference will it make, Master?" Argonne's emotionally devoid eyes stared at him blankly. "He will be up and about soon enough."

"Help me with this!" Edgard barked at the French Knight as he threw the blankets off the priest and dragged him from the bed.

"What do you mean to do, my Prince?" Argonne asked in surprise as the priest was shoved into his arms.

"Hold him up!"

Argonne held the semi-conscious priest in a kneeling position in front of the Grand Master while he received the rank of Knight in service of the Order of the Red Cross of Gold and the Gift of immortality from a cup of tepid wine. James had to clamp his hand over the priest's mouth and noise to make him swallow the miraculous drink. The priest sputtered weakly as they laid him back under his covers.

Bernardo would never be Knight of the Council, this hapless young priest would usurp Bernardo's right to the title of Knight of the Serpent and take the late Healer's place at the Council table. When Mark Ramsay awoke from his healing coma in three days time, he would have no choice but to transfer the Mystery of the Mystic Healer to Simon of Grenoble.

"Will you make a formal charge against the Assassin, Your Grace?" Argonne ventured the question once they had the priest back in bed and resting comfortably. Already the mystical tree of life powder was working its magick. Simon's pale features had regained a bit of color, he had ceased his shivering and his breathing had taken on a more regular pace. Edgard leaned over him and whispered something in his ear before standing up again. He straightened his mantel and looked over at his Knight of Death where he still lay face down on the cot. The storm had lessoned and the ship's rocking had leveled off somewhat. In the light of the lantern, he could see that the Scot was breathing again. Three days, he would lie in the healing trance and then he would awaken mad as a March hare. No harm done. No charges would be pressed. Ramsay had every right to challenge him, but they had other problems to worry with at the moment and petty grievances could not stand in their way now.

The Scots were at war with England and their only hope of surviving intact as an Order lay in joining forces with Robert the Bruce in Scotland. In return for their help, Robert would allow them to live free of oppression if he were to win the throne. They could not fail in this mission.

"Call the physician for Ramsay," he told Argonne before starting up the ladder to the deck. "Have him cleaned up and bandaged and I warn you, James, let no one know of your part in this lest you find your head resting at your feet."

"Understood, Your Grace," Argonne said quietly and bowed his head. Argonne snorted when the hatch closed above him and he turned on Ramsay, leaning over his ear. "You are lucky, my friend, that I do not behead you as you lay. Someday, when the time is right, I shall have that sword and that mystery and you will feed the worms."

~~~~~

Four days later, eight Knights of the Council of Twelve sat around a rough wooden table in the Captain's cabin. An impromptu meeting of the Council minus the four members that had sailed on ahead of them to Scotland had been convened at the Master's request. Ramsay sat at the foot of the table, brooding over a tankard of ale, a dark look on his face. At his left hand was a much healthier, if somewhat confused, Simon of Grenoble. The youngest member of the Council was very pale, his large blue eyes were a bit sunken and his blond hair hung limply around his face. The tree of life gift had saved his life and granted him immortality, but had simply suspended him in a state of permanent illness. He would never improve, but neither would he succumb to his hideous wounds.

"We will be arriving in Scotland within three days," the Master told them. "His Lordship, Robert the Bruce has graciously accepted our offer and agreed to our terms. He will send an envoy to meet with us near Bannockburn in order to make arrangements for the disposal of the fleet. In the meantime, I suggest that you all pray diligently for our success and victory for Robert the Bruce."

The Grand Master nodded to his Seneschal and then sat down, having covered the main items of interest.

"Will we be fighting alongside the Scots then, Master d'Brouchart?" Simon ventured the question in a weak voice.

"That is the long the short of it, Brother Simon," the Master answered. "I know that you have no training in the art of warfare and the bearing of arms, but you will need to familiarize yourself with the proper use of weaponry and armor. Once we are reunited with our Brothers, Sir Barry will see to it that you have your training and Sir Ramsay here will be able to make your weapons for you as soon as he might avail himself of a smithy."

Ramsay looked up at the Master briefly and then returned his attention to the cup in front of him.

"Does any one of you have anything you might wish to say before we close the meeting and proceed with the bestowing of the mystery?" Sir Cambrique asked in general.

"Aye!" Ramsay spoke up for the first time.

"Speak, Brother Ramsay."

Ramsay swayed to his feet and leaned both hands on the table, locking his deep blue eyes with the Master's.

"I am at home with my kinsmen, Your Grace, and I do not oppose fighting at Robert's side. I am not averse to offering my life in defense of the Order and in defense of my homeland. I am averse, however to bestowing Knighthood on an untrained boy and I am averse to using the mysteries for purposes other than that which they were designed. These things have been done and cannot be undone and I register my formal objection at this time. But foremost above and beyond all this, I am averse to the use of cowardly practices by my own Brothers." The Knight turned his head slowly, making eye contact briefly with Hugh de Champagne, James Argonne, Louis Champlain, Konrad von Hetz and Philip Cambrique. "There is one among you with whom I have a bone to pick and pick it I shall until naught remains but dust. I swear here and now, I shall know who killed me and I will have my day with him when we shall meet face to face." Shock flickered momentarily across six of the seven faces in the room excluding the Master's. The Master had not murdered him, nor had Simon of Grenoble, but the rest were suspect. Some more so than others. Only James Argonne's face remained emotionless at the threat. Ramsay raised his chin slightly and smiled almost imperceptibly.

"Of what do you speak, Brother?" Louis Champlain asked.

"He speaks of nothing! Sit down, du Morte!" The Grand Master was on his feet again, his face red with anger.

Ramsay stood three seconds too long and then sat down heavily, spilling his cup on the table.

"I have not pressed charges or brought complaint against you because I need you," the Master continued. "I will hear no more of this sort of talk from the members of this Council. If I do hear of such again, Brother Ramsay, I will clap you in irons and stow you below decks. When we reach landfall, I will convene a hearing and charge you with treason. Is that understood?"

"Aye, sair!" Ramsay muttered and drew a deep breath. He knew that his point had been taken. Someday he would have his revenge and it would not go well for the man who had attacked him in Simon's sick room.

"Now!" The Master said and flung his mantel over his shoulder. "We will get on with the transfer of the mystery. That is, if my Assassin is not too drunk to perform his own Mystery?"

Again, Ramsay's temper flared, but he fought it down with a curt nod. The Chevalier du Morte stood up again and tossed his own mantel over his right shoulder, exposing the hilt of the Golden Sword of the Cherubim. The twisted and flattened blade gleamed in the lamplight with an unnatural brilliance sending chills up more than one spine. The legendary sword of the Cherubim crafted by angels and handed down through the ages until its golden hilt rested in the hand of this unruly Scot put the fear of God, hellfire and damnation into all of them every time they had the unfortunate occasion to gaze upon its perfection. The blade never needed honing, nor did it bend, break or chip and the Assassin did not hesitate to wield it deftly whenever the need arose.

Everyone at the table stood up with him. When Simon attempted to rise from his seat, the Knight pushed him back into his seat and used the tip of the sword to raise the priest's face until they looked into each other's eyes.

"Be still!" Mark Andrew told him. "This will take but a moment. Prepare yourself."

Simon's sad eyes widened with fear as he looked up into the Scot's face and then he drew a deep breath and held it. Ramsay leaned forward quickly and placed his right hand upon the priest's forehead before kissing him on the mouth in the Templar fashion.

~~~~~

Simon stiffened as the Divine Mystery of the Mystic Healer entered his head in a blinding flash. He heard angelic choirs singing, he saw doves winging through brilliant blue skies, he heard the prayers of a million voices and he saw men falling in battle, he felt fire searing his flesh and arrows tearing at his body, he felt the edge a blade on his throat and the crushing weight of a boulder on his chest. He felt himself torn apart by wild animals and battered up rocky shores. He wanted to cry out and scream in pain but he could utter not a sound. He saw brilliants spheres of every color floating in the darkness of space entwined with suns, moons, stars, planets. He saw blood and more blood and hideous burned faces and mutilated corpses. The pain he felt was insufferable, the ecstasy he experienced was intolerable and the light that enveloped him was incredible. Blackness came as a welcomed respite just as he thought his head would explode and he slumped onto the table into oblivion.

Sir Ramsay let go of him, turned abruptly on his heel and left them without another word.

James Argonne's upper lip curled and a snarl escaped with the breath he had been holding. Ramsay had to be destroyed and he would see it done if it was the last thing he ever did.

# Once Upon a November...

By Trish Lamoree

Copyright 2010 Trish Lamoree

## Chapter 1

Audrey hefted her small overnight bag up the steep steps of the bus and set it carefully into the seat next to her. The bus wasn't crowded, but she wanted to discourage anyone from sitting too close. She wasn't feeling sociable. All she wanted to do was bury her nose in a book for the trip to Las Vegas.

Las Vegas brought back bad memories that she'd rather have forgotten altogether. Still, Audrey's daughter, Tiara, had moved there, fallen in love, and truly settled down. It was time to renew their relationship. There were things that Tiara should be able to talk to her mother about at this stage of her life, and Audrey was going to make sure she didn't shirk her duty.

The bus lumbered out of the Bakersfield terminal with a rocking hum. Audrey rummaged in her bag for the little cozy mystery that she hoped would keep her mind off of her destination. Instead Audrey found herself thinking of Jordan and Tiara.

Audrey had accepted Jordan's plane ticket to Las Vegas when Tiara and Jordan had been married in that little chapel on the Strip, but Tiara had been so aflutter with wedding jitters that Audrey hadn't had a chance to talk of anything but idle chatter. Two weeks before the wedding, Tiara had stopped by her mother's house out of the blue. Audrey had been caught so off guard that she'd let Tiara's abnormal behavior slip under her radar. Tiara had only stayed overnight, ostensibly to go to her high school reunion.

Audrey had had a chance to think a lot since then. Tiara had been acting strangely but more importantly, she'd felt different somehow. It was a type of different that set off all of Audrey's motherly alarms. Tiara had promised that she would tell her mother everything once she got settled. Audrey had waited for the call. When it hadn't come, Audrey had put on her "concerned mother" face and invited herself to Thanksgiving.

Audrey worried her lower lip and stared out the window. Tiara had had plenty of time to settle down to married life. It was a family holiday, and Audrey felt justified. She'd waited almost two months. Audrey had tried to let her daughter live her own life, but Audrey wasn't comfortable with Tiara living in Las Vegas, and it was time she told Tiara why. If Tiara wouldn't be reasonable, then maybe Jordan would.

Audrey had only met Jordan briefly and he'd been on his best behavior. Audrey was pretty sure that she could like the man. He seemed levelheaded and successful. Audrey only hoped that she wouldn't sound crazy if she had to reveal the truth about her own past. Audrey's past was why Tiara had to move away from Las Vegas. Audrey only hoped that Jordan could see reason without resorting to uncovering Audrey's true past.

Audrey sighed and scowled at her little book. She hadn't read a word. There was snow on the Tehachapi Mountains. It felt like Christmas, and she wanted it to distract her from the memories that swam in her mind. Audrey had left Las Vegas behind, hoping to never return. She wanted to turn the bus around and return to the safety of Bakersfield and an anonymous existence among people who didn't know the girl she'd been in Las Vegas.

Tiara needed her. Audrey held to that thought. Tiara didn't even know that she needed her mother, but she did. Tiara also hadn't known that she shouldn't run off to live in Las Vegas. Audrey was afraid that Tiara would end up in the same strip club that Audrey had run from. No matter how many times Tiara swore that she wasn't a stripper, Audrey couldn't help worrying.

Tiara had lived in Las Vegas for years, and Audrey had stayed out of the way. It wasn't until Tiara had come home that Audrey had sensed a change in her. Tiara might not be a stripper, but she was involved in something bigger than she was letting on. Tiara had never been able to lie to Audrey, and Tiara had been worried about secrets both when she'd visited and later at the wedding.

The bus stopped briefly in Barstow, and Audrey got out to stretch her legs. She browsed the kitschy gift shops and treated herself to an ice cream sandwich and a can of soda. On one hand, it took too long for the bus to get going again because, now that Audrey had made the decision to go, she wanted to get it over with. On the other hand, the bus couldn't go slow enough because the last place Audrey ever wanted to go again was Las Vegas.

The bus whizzed past Baker and through another set of snow dappled mountains before it began it's descent toward the Nevada state line. Audrey was surprised that she'd moped her way through the two useless hours. State line had changed. They had a large roller coaster and a huge shopping mall there now. If she'd been driving, she'd have stopped at Whiskey Pete's for a prime rib dinner; but if she'd been driving, she'd have turned around twice by now.

Forty-five minutes later Audrey goggled at how much Las Vegas had changed in thirty years. The Strip casinos started much sooner than she'd expected. The mirrored towers dwarfed the casinos she remembered as being the height of luxury when she'd been there last. Caesar's Palace had been the best. It now looked like Greek ruins in comparison to the golden towers next to it. By the time she could pull her chin up off the floor, they were pulling into the bus station.

Audrey stuffed her unread book back into her bag and shuffled off the bus as quickly as she could. The bus station, regrettably, was the only thing that looked exactly the same. Oh, there were new chairs instead of the old benches. There were loud televisions instead of the brassy radio, and there were video games and fancy vending machines. But the people looked the same, the floor had to be the same one from thirty years ago, and the smell was exactly like it had been burned into her memory. More than anything, it all felt the same; and Audrey had to fight to keep from feeling like that same lost child who had left this place so long ago.

Audrey had meant to call Tiara from State Line to give her enough time to meet her at the station, but that thought had been lost in her wandering mind. Audrey berated herself as she held down the speed dial for her daughter. Now she would have to endure the bus station or take a cab, both of which sounded horrible.

"Hi sweetheart," Audrey forced herself to sound bright and cheerful. "Surprise! I'm at the bus station."

## Chapter 2

"Bus station?" Tiara gulped into the phone, waving frantically to Jordan to listen in. "Why are you at the bus station? I thought we agreed that you'd take Jordan's gift of plane tickets again."

"And wait until next week?" Tiara's mother's laugh sounded tight but that might just be the connection. "I called the bus station on a whim and found out that I could be here in a few hours. I could have driven, but I didn't want to waste the entire ticket that Jordan bought. I can still use the return ticket."

Tiara fought for breath and fought even harder to hide her panic from her mother. Jordan and Marcus descended on her. Jordan with a calming effect and Marcus to drain away some of Tiara's emotional energy. Tiara losing control of her emotions was more dangerous than a normal person doing so. When Tiara lost control of her emotions, the walls of the Lair bled.

The Lair was the secret hide-out of the PSI Consulting team. It was a large underground home where Jordan, Marcus, Tiara and now Rianna, Marcus's fiancé, lived. It was also now the headquarters of their little band, and almost everyone from the team had moved in. Jordan was the boss. Marcus, Jordan's best friend since childhood, was Jordan's partner. Together they'd founded the company and built this underground home with their own hands. It didn't look like a cave, though. It looked like a mansion out of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.

"The Las Vegas bus station?" Rianna's voice hitched with disbelief. Rianna was usually the one to have dramatic emotional outbursts. Rianna was Tiara's best friend, and they were good foils for each other. Tiara was normally the calm one, and Rianna was the dramatic one.

Tiara nodded quickly. The walls flickered briefly with the now-familiar bleeding effect that warned the team of danger. PSI Consulting wasn't just a business. Jordan had designed his company to gather budding psychics. He'd fed the casinos the pretense that he was saving them from psychic cheaters, but what Jordan had really wanted was a family of psychics. PSI Consulting was just the excuse to do it.

"Um, yeah," Tiara stalled into her cell phone. "We'll be right down there to get you..."

"Of course," Jordan wasn't as calm as he would have liked.

Thanksgiving was still three days away. He'd thought he had more time to organize the whole Thanksgiving with his mother-in-law thing. He glanced around the Lair's main room and started motioning to Marcus on what they'd need to clean up. Unlike a normal house, they didn't need to clean up stray laundry but rather the two immense white boards that detailed their growing list of talents.

Damian jumped to help Marcus roll the first of the white boards down a long hallway that led to the storeroom. Damian was the reason that their list of talents had grown beyond what this world generally considered already powerful talents. Damian was literally from another world. In his parallel world, magic was the norm and psychic abilities were commonplace. Because Damian couldn't get back to his world, he had joined PSI Consulting and agreed to teach them all he knew of magic. Magic went beyond telepathy and telekinesis, which they already knew to varying degrees. Damian was teaching them much more, and they were eagerly soaking it up, except for Marcus who had the unique talent to drown out all magic and psychic powers alike; but he didn't really want to admit that magic existed.

Marcus was looking forward to Tiara's mother's visit for two reasons. The main reason was that it would mean that they'd be holding off on any of this crazy magic training that gave him the willies. The second reason was that Marcus loved to cook in his chef's dream of a kitchen, and Thanksgiving was his favorite holiday for cooking. Marcus resembled a line backer and cooked like someone's Martha-Stewart trained grandmother. His main worry was how he'd thaw the turkey early for the feast.

Zack and Pete grabbed the ends of the other white board and gave matching resigned sighs as they followed Marcus and Damian in putting it away. Zack and Pete were more than ready for more training. Zack was bright-eyed with youthful enthusiasm for psychic training. Pete was steadfastly resolved to it. Zack loved that he could be something special. Pete was determined not to be caught out without it again. Both men held to PSI Consulting as a family because neither of them had ever fit in anywhere else.

"I'll go get her," Greg offered. Greg was the quietest member on their team and the scariest which was saying a lot considering the current company he kept. Greg and Pete had a lot in common in how they carried themselves. Pete had been a cop, and Greg had trained with the military. They were also the oldest members of the group; at least they were since they'd lost Tammy.

"Hang on, Mom," Tiara covered the mouthpiece and turned to Greg. "Are you sure?"

"I could take a cab," her mother offered.

"I'm sure," Greg lifted the keys to Jordan's SUV off the key hooks between the kitchen and the door to the home office.

"No really, Mom," Tiara broke away to tell her mother. "Greg and I will be down there in a jiffy."

"Greg?" her mother became confused. "I thought his name was Jordan."

"You caught us a little off guard," Tiara admitted, wanting to bite her tongue as soon as she said it because it sounded like a reprimand. "We have company over, but Greg and I would be happy to come get you."

"I don't want to intrude," her mother uttered the politeness, but Tiara knew it was untrue. Her mother didn't mean to intrude, but how could Tiara tell her that their company lived here?

"You could take her to my old place," Zack said in a stage whisper. "It's a little more normal."

"Mom, we're on our way now," Tiara gave Jordan a pleading look as she jogged after Greg toward the underground garage.

I'll figure something out by the time you get there, Jordan told Tiara telepathically.

Thanks, Tiara sent back to him. Let me know where we're taking her.

Tiara, I know that it'll be a bit of a shock, but I think we should at least show your mother our home. Jordan was proud of his home. We'll already be keeping a lot of secrets without adding another lie on top of it.

I trust your judgment, she sent back her loving support, but you'll need to do a lot of the explaining. My mother is very...

Normal? Jordan chuckled.

Yes, Tiara sighed, resting her worry on his shoulders. And we're all so...

Not normal, Jordan sent her his affection and turned away his attention to give the room a sound appraisal. It looked as normal as an underground mansion could look.

## Chapter 3

"I thought you said that Jordan was well-off, dear." Audrey looked over the neighborhood of rundown trailers. She was wondering how Jordan could afford the plane ticket he'd sent. Maybe they'd been upset about her unused plane ticket and the waste of money. If Tiara and Jordan lived in this neighborhood, it certainly explained why they'd had such a simple wedding. Audrey could have helped if they'd only told her.

"Jordan's place doesn't look like much from the outside, Ms. Marshal, but the inside makes up for it," Greg said, turning the SUV into a driveway that did little to reassure her.

"Call me Audrey, please," she told him. Tiara was so tense that Audrey almost wished she'd just stayed home, but Audrey could also sense the oddness that had alerted her before.

Audrey was about to say more when Greg reached up and hit a remote control for the garage opener. She heard the whirring and gasped. The door did not open on a garage, but rather a sloped tunnel. An awning over the opening kept it from being seen from the street. Audrey automatically ducked as they descended into the tunnel, her eyes wide. The underground garage held four other cars, though there was room for six. Audrey glanced behind her in time to see the garage door close behind them.

"Jordan's going to be sorry he missed that expression," Greg laughed in such a nice way that Audrey didn't find offense in his teasing.

"I think it might be stuck this way for a while," Audrey admitted, "so I doubt he'll miss a thing."

As they pulled into the spot, Jordan emerged from a door at the end the garage. He was grinning like a fool, so he had not missed her face. He was a bit of a trickster, and it warmed Audrey to know that her daughter had secured her love with a light-hearted soul. Tiara's smile for her husband was both fond and nervous.

As soon as she emerged from the SUV, Jordan slipped her bag onto his shoulder and Tiara's hand into his. "Welcome to our home."

"They have a word for tricksters like you," Audrey shook a teasing finger at him, but was glad to see that her teasing tone relaxed Tiara a little.

"Eccentric? Handsome? Charming?" Jordan leaned forward and gave Audrey a small hug, careful not to impose too much familiarity into the gesture. They were all so unsure of her. Audrey needed to change that.

"Why yes," she laughed and hugged him back with enthusiasm. "I believe those are all the words I was looking for."

"Greg, pop the trunk and I'll help you with the rest of her luggage," Jordan called out to Greg who stood at the door to the house.

"That's all she brought," Greg shrugged and pointed to the bag Jordan already carried.

"I'm a simple woman with simple needs," Audrey smiled with a small wink.

"Simple," Tiara remarked with a nervous little laugh. "That's one thing we don't have a lot of around here, Mom."

"That's quite all right, dear," Audrey took Tiara's other hand and squeezed it reassuringly. "I'm also adaptable."

"That's a really good thing here," Jordan chirped brightly.

"So show me this house," Audrey waved at the door that Greg was holding open for them. "If the garage is this wonderful, the rest must be amazing."

They showed her everything from the gym to the guest wing rooms, most of which were occupied at the moment. There was one open that they tucked her bag into, but then they dragged her out to the main room. Audrey met Zack, who seemed to be a delightful young man.

"And you live here too?" Audrey asked him.

"Yes," Zack shot a look to Jordan that Audrey didn't miss. "I renovate houses as a hobby, and they sell quicker if you move out. I was going to shack up at an apartment, but Jordan offered me a room here until I get my next house. Besides, this way I got to keep a puppy. Apartments frown on them."

The puppies were a pleasant surprise, and Audrey enjoyed playing with them. Pete was another roommate, and he seemed to take care of the dogs and puppies in general. That was a good thing since there were a lot of the rambunctious little things. Pete was a quiet kind with haunted eyes that reminded Audrey of her dead husband. He was remodeling a nearby trailer.

"Where's Marcus?" Audrey asked as she settled down on a stool at the kitchen breakfast bar. "I met him at the wedding, and he mentioned that he lives here too."

"Marcus has his own wing," Tiara pointed down the same hallway that had the gym. "Jordan and I live down that hallway." She pointed to the other long hallways in turn. "The guest rooms are there, and the garage and storage rooms are down that way."

"He's just gotten engaged, so Rianna has moved in too," Jordan nodded.

"Rianna," Audrey mused over the girl she'd met at the wedding. "Rianna and Marcus? Rianna's the spitfire who spiked the punchbowl at the wedding, right?"

Audrey had trouble imagining the massive Marcus and the tiny Rianna together. Not only were they opposites in size, but in temperament as well. Marcus was so calm, and Rianna was so very outspoken.

"Yes, they had a whirlwind romance this last month, and he proposed just this last week," Tiara smiled easily, relaxing with her mother's easy acceptance.

"Marcus, Rianna and Damian have gone off to the store," Jordan explained. "Marcus insists on a huge spread for Thanksgiving and has probably cleaned out half the grocery store by now. They should be back soon."

"Damian?" Audrey asked. "That's someone else I haven't met yet, right?"

Everyone avoided her eyes for a tense moment, setting off Audrey's internal alerts, but the moment passed and Audrey tried to visibly ignore the buzz that she could almost hear going on in their minds. She might visibly ignore it, but Audrey was keeping tabs. There was some serious silent communication going on, and the whole place sizzled with an energy that Audrey couldn't ignore.

"Damian is complicated," Tiara temporized, shooting Jordan a stern look.

"He's living here too," Jordan admitted. "He's even more eccentric than I am."

"But he's charming and wonderful to have around," Tiara stepped in eagerly.

Greg and Zack exchanged looks too. Pete just fingered his cigarette pack. He'd just come in from taking the canines outside, and he'd left them topside to reduce the confusion. Audrey looked from one person to another in the room. There was the buzzing again; and when she realized what the buzzing was, her face lost a bit of color.

## Chapter 4

Y _ou can all stop whispering,_ Audrey sent her thought to everyone in the room.

"Mom?" Tiara's wide eyes locked onto her mother's.

"Yes, I can do it too," Audrey's eyes became stern and shuttered. "Where did you think you got your talent from?"

"How much did you hear?" Tiara asked, panic back in her eyes.

"It's been so long since I've had to listen at all that I only just realized what you were all doing," Audrey admitted. "So what were you all whispering about that you didn't think I should hear?"

_A lot_ , Jordan admitted quietly before he realized that he'd just broadcast it to the room and Audrey.

Audrey sighed. "I was afraid of this, but I was really hoping it hadn't gone this far."

"Afraid of what, Mom," Tiara asked carefully, keeping her mind as quiet as she knew how.

"You're all wishing that Damian had taught you more about shields right now," Audrey answered. "I'm now more worried about this Damian fellow than anything else. Such as where did you meet him and what else has he taught you?"

Damian! Audrey heard Jordan send loudly and there was a pop. Audrey wanted to believe that her ears were still popping from the trip over the mountains, but when she felt another presence in the room, she knew better. Audrey reached for shields and power that was rusty from disuse.

"You can ask me yourself," Damian drawled from the hallway near his room.

Audrey shielded hard and turned to face Damian. As soon as she turned, she had the satisfaction of seeing him pale drastically. As she scanned his mind, she felt like the floor was slipping out from under him. The problem with his satisfyingly shocked expression was that she hadn't done anything to him yet.

"You can explain what you've done to my daughter," Audrey hissed at Damian, fighting to keep her anger against the pain she saw in his eyes. She just couldn't grasp what she'd done to cause it. Audrey wasn't sure that he didn't deserve the pain; and she was a little afraid that if he got his feet back under him, she wouldn't be able to control him with her rusty powers.

"Wait, Mom," Tiara stepped forward and between Audrey and Damian. Tiara's face was as confused as Damian's, but that was something Audrey had expected. "Damian didn't do anything to me. What are you talking about?"

"Mom?" Damian croaked out, one hand on his head and the other clutching his stomach.

Audrey could have kicked herself. She'd had twenty-five years to explain all this to Tiara; and now that she needed it, there wasn't enough time to tell her all she needed to know. Audrey probed Tiara deeply, something she hadn't allowed herself to do before. It was rude to look too deep, but Audrey needed to know.

Tiara winced with the intrusion, and the walls began to bleed red. Now it was Audrey's turn to pale. The insanity in Tiara's mind was stark and evident. There was only one way that Audrey knew of to create that kind of breach, and it would have taken someone like Damian to do it.

Audrey struck out at Damian swiftly while he was still reeling from whatever shock she'd already delivered. Audrey wasn't a cruel person, no matter what had happened to her. She just didn't have it in her to burn Damian out completely, no matter what he might have done to her daughter. Though, if Audrey was going to do something dire, it would be to protect Tiara.

Damian went down to one knee and then crumpled to the ground. It only took a stunned breath for the PSI Consulting team to rush to his side. Zack knelt beside Damian, while Greg and Pete stood between Audrey and his fallen form. They didn't know what else to do.

Get home Now! Jordan called to Marcus and Rianna.

We're ten minutes away, Rianna's mental voice came back. We left the store when you called Damian.

Damian's down, Jordan let the whip of his anger sound in the room as well as to Rianna. I need Marcus here to shut things down, and you here to heal Damian.

"And you!" Jordan took Audrey's arm and turned her away from Damian and Tiara. "Shut it down before Tiara turns the Lair into a fireball. You have No idea what you've just done."

"Someone needs to start explaining then," Audrey felt her voice shake a little.

"How about we start with you," Tiara turned fierce eyes on her mother, and Audrey gasped at the madness there. Tiara's physical voice was soft, but her mental voice roared in Audrey's mind.

## Chapter 5

With Jordan angry and Marcus not there to jettison off the extra emotional output, Tiara had slipped into the bloody nightmare that always lurked in the back of her mind. The only other hope they had to hold Tiara's madness at bay was crumpled in a heap in the hallway. Greg, Zack and Pete scrambled to shield from the backlash, but they all saw the walls begin the pulse. Tiara knew all this with one part of her mind, but it wasn't the part that was in charge right now.

"You will explain exactly what you did to Damian," Tiara demanded of her mother as if their familial roles were reversed. "Then you will undo it."

"It's not possible," her mother's terrorized eyes teared up.

"It's very possible to explain yourself," Jordan tried to interject some sanity.

"That's not what I mean," tears glistened in Audrey's eyes. Audrey kept staring at the bloody walls. "No one here could have done that to her."

"What are you talking about?" Tiara's eyes started to edge back from the insanity's hold, but only slightly.

"Who broke your mind?!" Audrey begged her daughter to answer the question.

"Not Damian!" Tiara raged, the blood starting to pool at their feet.

The PSI Consulting team knew that the blood wasn't real. The fact that the walls were impersonating a horror movie was all a projection of Tiara's madness. They got slightly weirded out by the pulsing goop that dripped and sagged, but that wasn't what worried them. What worried the team who knew her was what the bloody walls signified. Tiara could literally roast them all if she didn't get a hold on the temper.

"Who?!" Audrey screamed.

"He's dead," Greg told Audrey.

"Damian?" Tiara turned bleak eyes to Damian's body, misunderstanding Greg's answer to her mother.

"The man who did this to Tiara is dead," Greg explained, waving his hands at the walls.

"Damian's still breathing," Zack reassured them, "but I can't wake him."

Tiara began to slump a little and then a lot. "Jordan?" she reached out to him.

"What are you doing?" Jordan caught Tiara in his arms while his eyes blazed accusation at Audrey.

"It's not me this time," Audrey shook her hands in front of her, feeling the draining sensation as well.

Tiara had collapsed fully into Jordan's arms when he recognized Marcus's blanketing effect. Marcus must have turned it on full blast from over a block away. Slowly the magic and psychic powers drained out of the room.

It was a quiet five minutes that felt more like an hour. The only reason the PSI Consulting team stayed still was that they knew they now had the situation fully under control. They didn't descend on Audrey because she wasn't going anywhere and posed little threat now. Audrey didn't move because she wasn't leaving Tiara alone in what she considered a den of wolves. The silent standoff lasted until Marcus slammed the door open and raged into the room like a bull.

"What the hell are you people doing?" Marcus shouted down the hallway.

"Oh, quit bellowing, Marcus," Rianna dashed past him into the main living area. "Where's Damian?"

"Here," Zack called to her.

"Marcus, shut it down so I can heal him," Rianna ordered, all business.

"Wait!" Jordan countermanded. "You can't turn it off. We don't know what she'll do."

Audrey winced at Jordan's derisive tone, but she wasn't going to back down until she had some answers. "You say that he didn't do this to her, but how do I know you're telling the truth?"

"He helped us kill the guy who did do it," Greg swore, his eyes flat and emotionless.

"Without Damian, that guy would have killed us all," Zack nodded, his eyes open and sincere.

"Oh, stop this!" Rianna stormed. "You!" Rianna pointed to Audrey. "Give me five minutes to revive him, and you can ask him yourself. But this time you'd better ask nicely, or we'll all fry your ass, Tiara's mother or not."

## Chapter 6

If it were happening on television or to someone else, Audrey might have laughed. Audrey should have told Tiara about her powers when she'd come to visit. She never should have waited. Audrey had met only a handful of people who had even the smallest psychic abilities since she'd left Las Vegas thirty years ago. Now she was in a room of people sizzling with it, and Tiara was in the middle. With her powers so rusty, she wouldn't stand a chance against them if they turned on her, but Damian was the one she worried about most. She knew that scent that still lingered on his psyche.

Without her powers, they could easily overwhelm her, but they hadn't. Still Audrey knew that they were only holding back because they respected and cared for Tiara. Audrey's status as Tiara's mother had earned her that much respect, but it wouldn't last if she fought them harder. Audrey reluctantly nodded to Rianna.

Marcus dropped the dampening effect, and Audrey felt the weight of normality lift. She didn't reach for her powers, but she knew that they had returned. Rianna reached her healing talent into Damian. Audrey pressed her lips together nervously. If Damian was the threat she thought he was, maybe she could convince the rest of them to fight him once he showed his true colors.

Damian sat up with a groan, and Audrey pulled power to her quietly. Marcus eyed Audrey with a keen suspicion that kept her honest, but if Damian so much as twitched out of line, Audrey was going to go down fighting. Rianna smiled down into Damian's face, and Audrey wondered how far he'd gotten his talons into their hearts.

It took a groggy few minutes for Damian to recall where he was and what had happened, but as soon as he did, his eyes snapped to Audrey. She watched, coiled to strike at his first pull of power, but he respectfully wasn't pulling anything she could see. His eyes narrowed.

"Are you okay?" Rianna asked Damian, petting his shoulder.

"I'm fine," he answered without taking his intense attention off of Audrey.

Damian levered himself to his feet and took a cautious step toward her. His eyes swept her hair, and he searched her face and eyes without a hint of power against her. Audrey kept her eyes haughty and indignant. She also kept her shields hard against any intrusion, not that he probed.

They all waited with their breath caught in their throats. They waited for Audrey to break her word, and Audrey waited for Damian to strike her. Damian took another few steps closer, slowly, but he was still more than fifteen feet away when his eyes cleared with recognition.

"Aureynia?" he asked, his tone polite and respectful.

Audrey turned her eyes away and lifted her chin as she searched for a way to hide her feelings. Anger and confusion warred with a need to strike out against the truth or whatever fiction he might spin out of it. All eyes stared at her now, but Greg was the first to nod.

"She does look an awful lot like the memory of your mother," Greg noted for them all.

Zack gasped as he made the connection, and the implications smacked him in the face.

"They were identical triplets?" Jordan asked.

Damian's mother had been one of a set of triplets, but the third triplet, the most powerful of the three was supposed to have died. Then again, Damian was supposed to have died. It all wouldn't have been nearly as surprising though if Damian, his mother and Aureynia, his mother's sister, hadn't been from a parallel world.

"Yes," Damian told them all, then he dropped to one knee before her. "Please excuse my lack of manners. I am Abbidal's oldest son."

"But that would mean that she's from your world," Rianna blurted out the obvious, just as Tiara started to come around.

"Who's from Damian's world?" Tiara asked still trying to gather why she was sitting on the floor in Jordan's lap.

"Your mother..." Rianna sputtered, her eyes wide as saucers. "You, for that matter!"

Marcus and Jordan rolled their eyes together, but it was Marcus who strode over to Rianna and clapped a hand over her mouth. "The queen of tact, appearing right here in our living room," Marcus's sarcastic joke fell a little flat for Tiara.

"What are you talking about?" Tired of sitting on the floor and looking up at everyone, Tiara pushed to her feet and faced the room of her friends. All their eyes flitted back and forth between Damian, Audrey and herself.

"She's the lost triplet," Zack pointed to Tiara's mother, and Tiara tried to look past her mother to see who he could be pointing to. When it dawned on Tiara that Zack was pointing at her mother, Tiara's first reaction was to laugh at the joke.

"Okay, who's been watching too much daytime television?" Tiara chuckled at Zack, but everyone looked so serious, and Damian was only now rising from his knee.

Damian turned with a small smirk and held a hand out to Tiara. "It would seem that we are cousins."

"Huh?" Tiara could have kicked herself for the stupid response, but the joke was wearing thin.

"Hold on," Jordan broke in. "Give Tiara a chance to adjust to it. It'll hit her in a minute."

"Adjust to what?" Tiara remained stubbornly obtuse.

"Adjust to the fact that my real name is Aureynia, and Damian and I are from the same world," Audrey finally admitted out loud.

"Thank you," Damian gave Audrey a nod.

"But if you all know about Damian's world, then do you also know that he has been marked as an Assassin?" Audrey sneered at Damian. "Whether he is my sister's son or not, he has been taught to lie, betray and kill. You cannot believe anything he says."

"Marked?" Damian's eyes snapped.

"All Assassins are marked, so that Weavers know them on sight and can track the rogues," Audrey gloated, eager to expose him and whatever lies he'd told them all.

"Of course," Damian snapped his fingers. "That explains why they could track me so easily. It must have been the tavern owner in Weaverton."

"No, no, no," Tiara interrupted. "My mother is not from Damian's world, much less the lost triplet. That's absurd. Damian and I are the same age and his mother had him when she was sixteen. My mother was married to my father at twenty-one and didn't have me until she was twenty-two.

"How could you be a party to this kind of joke, Mom?" Tiara fretted. "It isn't funny, guys. How are you doing this?"

"Besides, Tiara's mother is retired," Rianna protested weakly.

Audrey debated with herself for a moment and then settled on the truth. "I was cast through the portal when I was twelve. A twelve-year-old on the streets of Las Vegas thirty some-odd years ago was unheard of, and I did what I had to do to survive. I lied. After being lied to, I learned fast that lies were common and the only currency I had to use at the time. I used a few glamours and pushes to convince people I was eighteen. After a few false starts, I got a legitimate job stripping in a seedy little club off under the freeway.

"It took me a year to get together enough money and street smarts to get out of Las Vegas and another two years to adapt to a respectable life in Bakersfield and find your father," Audrey wouldn't meet their eyes. She didn't want to see their disbelief.

"You found your mate here?" Damian asked.

"I won't answer your questions just so that you may use them to enhance your lies, Assassin," Audrey snapped at Damian.

"Fine, then I'm asking," Tiara snagged her mother's eyes with her own and held them.

Audrey squared her shoulders. "My mate was on the other world. I loved your father but he wasn't my mate.

"I'm surprised that you would tell them so much," Audrey snarled at Damian.

"I'm not an Assassin," Damian tried to explain, knowing his protestations were in vain. "I refused their training, but they branded me anyway. Eventually, they managed to exile me to here."

Audrey probed Damian for the lie she expected to see somewhere in his eyes and mind. He didn't shield against it even when she became rough with her probe. He winced slightly but gave no other outward indication that she'd gone against her word and hurt him.

Maybe her powers were too rusty to pick up the taint of the lie. Maybe he really was better at telling lies than she was at detecting them. He'd have to be more powerful to lie to her. She had no doubt that he had to be stronger than she was. She hadn't touched her powers in years. She hadn't needed to.

"But you're retired," Rianna protested weakly this time. "You can't retire until you're sixty-five or something right?"

"I worked in the school district as a high school teacher," Audrey let her gaze drift to Rianna, but her mind was on Damian still. "Once Tiara's father got sick, I took a sabbatical and when he died, I saw no reason to go back. I had other means of income that were easier; and without Tiara or her father looking over my shoulder at finances, I could pretend to retire early."

"Why strip for money when you could make it yourself?" Marcus interjected.

"I didn't know any better," Audrey shrugged. "I thought they had a way to tell, and I was so strictly taught honesty that it literally took a year of the seedy side of this world's life to teach me otherwise."

Tiara sat down hard on the back of the couch. Her emotions were numb with shock, so much so that the walls didn't even threaten to bleed. Jordan walked over to the bar, poured Tiara a drink and returned to plant it in her hand. Tiara stared at the drink dumbly for a moment before she recognized it for what it was. Tiara tilted the drink to her lips and then threw her head back and downed the whole thing.

"I could use one of those," Audrey gestured to the empty glass and looked at Jordan hopefully.

"I'm not an Assassin," Damian told Audrey again.

"How many people have your Weavers thrown into our world anyway?" Marcus interrupted the tension between Audrey and Damian.

"You might want to ask yourself what kind of people they've been sending here?" Pete pointed out.

That thought was so sobering that they all headed to the bar where Jordan made them drinks to order.

"They've been sending the criminals and killers of their society here for thirty years?" Greg whistled through his teeth.

"A lot longer than that," Audrey admitted. "I'm here because I wouldn't keep that secret. They've been sending the outcasts of their society here for more than three centuries."

"But why?" Rianna asked.

"That I don't know," Audrey took a healthy swig of the fine scotch. "When they realized that I wouldn't keep their secret no matter the reason, they clammed up. The next day, they banished me to the worst streets of Las Vegas."

## Chapter 7

"Does that mean that Audrey's moving in too?" Zack asked innocently.

Jordan took a deep drink of his brandy, letting it burn the bad taste that thought left in his mouth.

"She qualifies," Greg shrugged.

Jordan refilled his glass and took another long drink. He looked sideways at Tiara who was also taking in large quantities of whatever he'd poured for her. Things were getting blurry enough that he didn't remember what he'd poured for her. That was okay since she was refilling her own glass now.

"It's an awfully long drive to go get her clothes and such," Marcus argued, enjoying Jordan's discomfort but also feeling sorry for him.

"I have plenty of clothes in my bag," Audrey drank red wine. "It's bigger than it looks."

They all mulled over their drinks for a few silent minutes, imagining how they would coax that spell out of her.

"I would take a look at Zack's little house that he said he's renovated, except that I really hate Las Vegas," Audrey slurred.

"I'd buy you that house if you'd remove the Assassin's mark," Damian tipped his glass toward Audrey.

"You're just another dumb schmuck that got banished for being smart, aren't you?" Audrey slurred her words just a bit.

"I wouldn't have said dumb, but schmuck is about what I feel like," Damian admitted reluctantly.

"See?" Rianna snapped brightly. "They didn't just send us their killers. They sent us their scrupulous schmucks too." Rianna raised her glass. "To scrupulous schmucks!"

No one could pronounce scrupulous schmucks at this point, but they all tried and ended up sprawled on the couches from laughing at all their attempts. It was a wonder that they didn't burn down the Lair as inebriated as they were throughout the week of Thanksgiving. They'd rolled with the punches through a serial killer, kidnapping murderers, and nightmares of insane blood, but the mother-in-law who was out of this world was one straw too many. They emptied Jordan's bar that week...twice.

# Beyond

By Maureen A. Miller

Copyright 2010 Maureen A. Miller

## Prologue

Corey Burnfield's letterman's jacket eclipsed her view.

Aimee couldn't move. She was blocked in on one side by Christine Whitaker with her singing entourage straight from the set of Glee. Corey cut off the other side by placing his hand on the wall behind her. He leaned in to prevent any avenue of escape. If there was someone she didn't really want to escape from, Corey might be near the top of the list, but only in her dreams.

"Emma Patterson, right?" Corey's breath smelled like the cinnamon gum he popped in his mouth

"Aimee," she mumbled, searching past the ultra hot senior quarterback to try to find the glimpse of freedom in her third period classroom across the hall.

"I've been looking for you." He smiled like a Scope commercial. It was a smile that could elicit a grin from just about anyone. Aimee, a seventeen year old that had never been on a real date, was as susceptible as anyone else.

"You have?" she asked, resisting the urge to fidget.

Aimee's command of the English dialect floundered. She had two questions. One, why would the star quarterback who had eyes the color of blue topaz talk to a clarinet player? And two, why would the star quarterback want to talk to her? They were both the same question. She knew that, but she was having trouble getting her mind to work right with him looming over her.

"Isn't your Dad a mechanic?" Corey asked.

Well, if you consider the Engineering Director of the local automotive plant a mechanic, then maybe, she thought.

"Not exactly," Aimee admitted. She wasn't good at lies, especially ones that were under pressure like this. "He works behind a desk."

Corey looked over his shoulder at the pack of football players making their way down the corridor with the same bullish grace they used on the field. It was like watching a stampede of cattle. His shoulders shifted to shield her from their view. Aimee wasn't quite naïve enough to believe that it was for her benefit.

"Whatever." His gum snapped and his eyes got shifty, but that smile stayed camera-ready. "Look, my Dad bought me a used Lamborghini for my birthday. None of the shops in this hick town know how to work on it. I was wondering if I could stop by after school and show it to him." He tried to flash his smile again, but it was looking rushed now that the football team approached. "Then maybe you and I can hang out or something."

Was she supposed to faint? Get red in the cheeks? Go oh my God, oh my God, oh my God? Aimee just wanted to get to her third period class and not be a pawn in Corey's obviously grand plan.

"I'll ask him about it," she offered quietly, taking advantage of Corey's next glance over his shoulder to push under his arm and slip across the hall to class.

"I'll catch you later, Emma," he said out of the side of his mouth as he turned away.

Aimee, she thought to herself with a roll of her eyes.

~~~~~

"Dad, do you know anything about Lamborghinis?" Aimee asked later at dinner.

"Aim, it's a General Motors plant." Jennifer Patterson injected before her husband could swallow his chicken and speak. "You're talking some fancy piece of Italian metal that gets over 600 horsepower and almost 8000 RPMs."

Aimee smiled. Her Mom seemed to know more about cars than her father with his fancy job ever would.

Thomas Patterson set his fork down. "No, Aim, I don't know anything about Lamborghinis other than they are extravagant, unnecessary and cost more than this house." He sliced a look at his wife and she just dumped more potatoes on his plate. "So I hope you're not asking because you want one."

"No." Aimee set her fork down as well, shocked that he would think she was that materialistic. She wasn't hungry anymore. She wasn't even sure why she'd brought it up, but now that she had, she'd had to explain. "Corey Burnfield's Dad got him one for his birthday and he wanted to know if you knew how to fix it."

Jennifer Patterson choked on her chicken as she reached for a glass of water. Thomas spoke before she could, cutting his wife an odd look.

"Oh really?" he asked with a sniff, his eyebrows going up. "Sure wish I could help out there, but the Burnfields have a little more money than us. I'm sure they can afford to find a foreign specialist."

"Corey Burnfield, the quarterback?" Jennifer coughed on the last word. "You were talking to the quarterback? Are you guys friends?" Her mom leaned forward and grinned eagerly. Aimee was glad she didn't have food in her mouth or she might have gagged on it. "Or more?"

Aimee shoved back from the table. This was not a conversation that she wanted to have with her mother. She picked up her plate and took it to the sink. If her mother was waiting for her to suddenly grow popular and bring home a gaggle of friends, she was dreaming. Aimee could just see her mother salivating at the dream of having Aimee hook up with the quarterback and skyrocket into a social life. Her mom watched too many movies.

"No, Mom," Aimee answered as he mother followed her into the kitchen.

Jennifer continued as if she hadn't spoken. "Well, I think you should invite Corey and his Lamborghini over here. If your Dad won't look at it, I will."

"Jen, you wouldn't know what to do with a car like that." Thomas crumpled his napkin onto his plate. He leaned into Jennifer, but Aimee could hear his sardonic whisper, "And Aimee can't handle a boy like that."

Aimee shook her head and sighed. Jen's eyes were heating and Aimee just wanted to duck the heated discussion to come. Her parents didn't fight. They had intense discussions.

"I'm taking Zig out." Aimee didn't think they even heard her. "I'll be back."

"I bet I could take that car up to 100 in five seconds." Jennifer continued until Aimee closed the back screen door and could no longer hear them.

Dusk in North Carolina was laced with the sweet scent of Honeysuckle. Aimee passed through poplars so dense and tall they created a stockade that severed any connection to her family's property. Down the bottom of a hill sat a pond, and to the unknowing it might look like a romantic mist hugging the stagnant water, but Aimee knew it was a swarm of gnats. She let her Cocker Spaniel, Ziggy distract the mob of insects as she tip-toed to its edge, careful not to slide in the mud. Had the surface not been so murky with the olive tint of algae, she might have been able to see her reflection. It would have revealed an ordinary seventeen year old with brown hair and blue eyes that sometimes had trouble focusing.

Aimee loved this pond. It was her sanctuary, and the gnats were her royal corps of knights. She closed her eyes and tilted her head back, trying to imagine the roar of horses approaching with a lone battle horn sounding their imminent plans to storm the castle. A lone knight would break away and steal her from the castle courtyard, tearing off into the woods and into adventure.

Aimee's head dropped back down. It wasn't the sound of majestic knights approaching that she heard, it was Ziggy's incessant barking and a symphony of Carolina locusts announcing the onset of night. The dog really knew how to kill a fantasy.

"Zig, shut it," she yelled through the fog of gnats.

Ziggy ignored her and took off, charging around the pond and howling his threat at whatever dog demon lurked on the other side.

"Ziggy, get over here," Aimee tried again.

He was out of sight. Aimee groaned. He'd gone into the trees.

With a huff and a sigh, she started off after him. One thing they never did was to venture into the woods on the far side of the pond. She honestly had no idea how deep the forest penetrated. She'd once estimated that it spanned several miles, but she wasn't about to do a physical calculation on foot.

The forest on the far side of the pond looked like any childhood lair of terror spun by the brothers Grimm. Sunlight never pierced the trees, and in that cocoon, nocturnal damnation prevailed. She had once walked along its shadowed edges and felt the silence reach for her with long black fingers. She imagined black squirrels, huge spiders and talking trees lurking just past the treeline a la Tolkien. No birds chirped in there. No creatures scurried in the underbrush. A vacuum existed in that dark warren—a vacuum that sucked the life from the forest on the far side of the pond.

And that is where Ziggy had disappeared.

Great, Aimee thought. Just great.

~~~~~

"Zigzig?" Aimee whispered as she stepped into the shadows.

Waning sunlight cast a violet glow on the outskirts of the woods, so that the thick tree trunks looked like columns from an ancient Greek temple.

"Zig?" She wasn't sure why she was whispering but the woods just spooked her imagination into overdrive.

Aimee cleared her throat. "Ziggy, dammit, come here!"

She heard a muffled bark and sure enough it came from the gloomiest shadows in the forest. Aimee steeled herself, and with one last look back at the pond, she started after him. With a sigh of premature relief, she found Ziggy only a hundred yards in, but what struck her as odd was that he stood immobile, his long ears, which usually brushed the ground, now hovered a few inches in the air. His head and snout were held high and he held one front paw as if poised to take a step in the classic pointing pose. Aimee automatically found herself following Ziggy's gaze up into the treetops.

"What is it, Zig?" she whispered as her eyes struggled to focus on something, anything that would take some of the scary out of the situation.

At first she saw nothing. The darkness was a void barely penetrated by the waning sunlight at her back. Yet, there was something. A light. A reflection. Something. A hum. Definitely a hum. Not the wind. Not a motor. It sounded like the oscillating fan in her bedroom window.

Aimee squinted. She swore for a moment that they weren't even trees overhead and that it was instead, the massive underbelly of a giant, dark gray vessel. A spaceship parked atop the forest, obliterating any sunlight that might have ventured there to dispel her fears. She rolled her eyes at herself for the notion. Space ships meant aliens. The notion was too far out there, even for her imagination.

"Come on, Zig." she muttered, kicking herself mentally. "Neither of us belongs here. We're just spooked." She forced a small laugh that sounded more like a choked gurgle than anything else.

Ziggy cocked his head and emitted a low growl, baring his teeth. For a moment Aimee wasn't sure whether Ziggy was going to go running deeper into the woods or just stand there barking like mad, but he surprised her. Ziggy, the traitor, took off back towards the pond like the neighbor's Rottweilers were chasing him.

"Coward!" she yelled and grasped at a small dead branch to steady herself. She turned to follow her fearless friend. "You could at least wait for me."

At least she'd meant to turn. She'd meant to follow, but Aimee couldn't move. If she'd done what she'd meant to do, she'd be walking nice and easy back around the pond, but she wasn't.

She thought for a moment that her muscles were locked in spasm from the two laps around the track during gym today, but her hands and arms were paralyzed as well and she couldn't even turn her head. She tried to clench her fingers into a fist and could feel perspiration bead on her forehead from the effort. But she was motionless with the exception of her eyes which were darting back in forth in wild panic.

What the hell?! she tried to say.

Even her lips were frozen, unable to speak those three words.

Light fell down around her as if someone had switched on a spotlight from above. She tried to squint against the brightness, but even her eyelids were frozen in place now, unable to close or even blink. Instead, all Aimee could do was watch as the light grew brighter, bright enough that she could see through the hand wrapped around the twig in front of her. That freaked her out. Her hand was completely transparent and she could see right through it to the mottled leaves on the ground below.

The hum intensified and she began to feel lightheaded.

One lurch of her stomach and a prolonged silent scream later, she felt nothing at all.

## Chapter 1

Aimee woke to the sound of muted voices. She was in bed, but not her own. If it was her own bed, she would have heard the fan and she would have heard Ziggy snoring. She also would have smelled the honeysuckle and felt her quilt scrunched down by her feet.

This was not her bed. And she didn't know these voices. Normally voices in her dreams were inside her head, not outside. The heated discussion reminded her of her parents, but it didn't sound like them. Still, when someone was arguing, it was always safer to stay out of the way. Aimee feigned slumber as she listened to the hushed argument.

"This is your mistake."

"We can't do anything now. We have to leave."

"We can't take her."

"We can't stay. We have to leave now."

Another voice entered the room.

"They are coming, Vodu."

For a moment Aimee felt eyes upon her. She tried to keep her breathing steady.

Vodu, the man with the elderly voice spoke. "We go."

There was a slight swooshing sound and then only two voices remained.

"You have placed me in an awkward position," the one that must have been Vodu said. "You had better hope we have the opportunity to return and bring this child home."

"One child will not be missed, Grandfather."

"Perhaps if that child was you, Salvan, it might be true."

Aimee heard Vodu's voice move away from the bed. "You had better prep her for the journey, and then get to your chamber."

The swooshing sounded came again, and Aimee knew she was now alone with the young voice, Salvan.

Still groggy from sleep, she floated in that ethereal land where dreams continue to reign as the light of clarity slowly grows brighter. As her senses returned, fear settled in. Her hands trembled but at least they seemed to be free. She was not bound in anyway.

"Why did you chase that animal away? It was all I wanted. Now you've gotten me in trouble."

Aimee cringed when she felt a hand trace up her arm.

"But you are much more fascinating than the animal," Salvan whispered.

Aimee knew she had been kidnapped. From the conversation, it sounded like this Salvan guy had been after Ziggy, but only God knew why. He wasn't a show dog or anything. He had more knots than fur.

Whoever these strangers were, they appeared to be stuck with her and were going to take her along to their destination. Their destination! Where were they taking her?!

With a quick resolve, Aimee decided that she was not going to let it be that easy for them.

Aimee grabbed the sheet and lunged off the bed before Salvan could react. She charged towards where she thought she had heard the door swishing open and closed, but there were four impenetrable white walls around her. Oh, why hadn't she sneaked a peek for just a second, long enough to look at her surroundings, she thought as she almost crashed into a solid wall.

She whirled around and saw her captor for the first time. He was young, maybe a few years older than her, with blond hair and blue eyes, and dressed in some sort of odd grey uniform. No. Silver. It was made of a strange material that glistened like the paint job on her old bike. Her captor cocked his head and watched her in a motion that reminded her of Ziggy.

"Intriguing," he said as if she was a bug under a microscope.

"Let me out of here!" Aimee's shout surprised even herself and she felt her breath coming in gasps as it did every time panicked. "This is all just some big mistake on your part, so just let me go home."

Salvan grinned. "I'm afraid we've started on our journey so that's not possible at the moment."

Breathe, just breathe, she told herself.

Aimee shoved her shaky hands in the back pockets of her jeans to keep them from shaking and tried to calm down. "Look, you don't have to take me back. Just let me off on the side of the road somewhere. I'll find a way to get home. I won't report any of this. Just let me go."

Salvan looked past her shoulder, jerking his chin up slightly. "Drop you off on the side of the road?"

Aimee turned to follow his glance. A strangled sound launched from deep in her throat. She just couldn't breathe past it. What was it that her guidance counselor had told her? Aimee sucked in a breath through her nose. It was enough. It was just enough to let loose one massive scream.

~~~~~

If it was possible to pass out on your feet and still manage to stand erect, that was the state Aimee was in. She held her hands out, seeking something to hold on to. She saw the bed she had just fled. It was elevated and covered with a plush silver spread, similar to the material Salvan wore. On either side were two bowl-shaped chairs, silver in color as well. There were no lamps, but light emanated in a soft glow from the ceiling. Another source of illumination was the far wall, which was comprised of a bank of windows. It was to this wall that Aimee moved on numbed feet. A scream bubbled up in her throat again, but she choked it back as she reached the glass and stared out.

The hard steady glare of the stars unnerved her. Stars do not twinkle in space, she remembered her geosciences teacher telling them. On the nights that she would sit out by the pond and memorize constellations, they were nothing more than distant pinpoints of twinkling light spaced in random patterns. Out this window though, they simply stared back at her and took on an alien structure and there were literally billions of them as if a hole in the atmospheric layers had opened up to offer this unique vista.

But it wasn't the stars that fascinated her so much. The stars were easy to look at compared to the giant bright orb she saw through the other half of the wall of windows. She recognized the sight from text books and documentaries. Blue. The deepest blue ever imaginable, with swirling white clouds like the pattern inside a cotton candy machine. It was so close she couldn't even see its full circumference. She struggled to breathe as she took in the familiar land patterns, recognizing the forms beneath a foamy layer of clouds as the distinctive outline of Africa.

The sphere that was illuminating the room was a planet.

It was Earth.

Aimee passed out.

~~~~~

Carrie Brenneman played the trumpet. She also played a mean game of softball. She was Aimee's best friend despite the fact that Aimee had not a single coordinated bone in her body. Time and time again, Carrie tried to recruit Aimee for some sport league or another, but the results usually ended up with a black eye or a sprained wrist. So instead, marching band was the only place where these two outcasts fit together.

On one memorably scary occasion, Carrie and Aimee had missed the band bus to the game. As they had stood dejected and desperate on the curb contemplating their options, a senior they did not know had rolled up in front of them in a souped-up Civic. His car smelled like cigarettes and a tattoo of a dragon branded the arm hanging out the window. He asked if they had missed the bus to the game, and if they wanted a ride. Aimee and Carrie had taken that ride only because they were desperate to catch up to the band, and too naïve to think about the consequences. Ironically, the boy ended up being sincere and had talked to them genially on the seven minute ride about football and insufficient parking at the stadium.

After they arrived safely, the shock of what they had done settled in and a pact was made to never accept a ride from a stranger again. Just because they'd been lucky the first time, didn't mean that they were stupid enough to try it again. Aimee was sure that she wouldn't have done something that stupid again on purpose. She hadn't stepped into a beam of light on purpose. Maybe this was all a dream. At least, these were the thoughts and logic that awakened her some time later.

"She's coming out of it." A woman's voice intruded on Aimee's bad dream. At least she hoped it was a bad dream. Her eyelids fluttered. Maybe she'd hit her head and this was the voice of some nice nurse in the emergency room. Wouldn't Carrie laugh at that dream?

Aimee's eyes opened. All she wanted right now was to tell Carrie about the bad dream. All she had to do was wake up.

A woman with long, black hair and wide, violet eyes was watching her. She looked exotic and beautiful, dressed in the same silver uniform Aimee had seen before, but this woman's figure did the costume justice. Her expression was tender and sympathetic. She smiled down at her and touched her cheek lightly, confirming with that gentle brush that this was no dream. Aimee felt her eyes well up.

"I want to go home," she choked out.

The woman made a tsking sound and touched her arm this time.

"I know you do. A terrible mistake that has placed you here with us, but we can't go back to your home just yet."

Aimee sat straight up, startling the woman. She was back on the bed, and knowing the windows were behind her, she fought the urge to turn around. If she didn't look, then perhaps this was still all a mistake somehow. But she could no more ignore the windows than she could ignore the fact that the woman by her side had a computer monitor suspended in mid air, hovering in the empty space by her side, just out of reach.

She had to be dreaming still!

A dream. A bad dream was all this was. She was no longer scared to look out the windows, because quite honestly, none of it could be real. Aimee settled that thought awkwardly in her mind and held onto it for dear life.

Instead of panicking again, Aimee gave the dream woman and her ridiculous floating monitor a big smile as she hefted off the bed and started towards the transparent wall. Her steps faltered, even in slumber when she no longer beheld Earth's glowing surface. Even though she recognized that this had to be a dream, she ran up to the window and leaned her forehead against a surface that had no temperature. Stars now held proximity to her. Some were closer than others so that they became massive glowing orbs with three dimensional forms.

"It's gone." Aimee whispered, twisting her head in search of the familiar planet.

Don't panic. You'll wake up soon, she told herself sternly.

"Yes." The woman joined her at the window.

Aimee cast a quick sideward glance at her and noticed that the suspended computer had been left behind. Her dreams weren't normally this imaginative. Didn't her mother berate her enough for her lack of creativity?

"We had to make a hasty departure," the woman said, her tone brisk but kind. "We didn't want to draw any unnecessary attention from your military."

Aimee decided to play along with the hallucination. "Who are you?"

"I am Charalan," she answered. "You are in shock. We have given you something to ease your sorrow and confusion. I should be able to answer any of your questions now if you desire."

The impulse to laugh was there again and Aimee felt lightheaded. They'd drugged her. That was good. She couldn't imagine how freaked out she would be if they hadn't drugged her. Wait, drugs were bad. Her sluggish mind had trouble keeping up with what the woman was saying.

She leaned against the glass pane, or some clear substance that resembled glass. Whatever this transparent barrier was, it was the only thing separating her from the black void of deep space. She felt as if she could simply float away if she leaned far enough.

Was that another planet?

In a haze caused by the multitude of stars and perhaps the dream serum this dream woman gave her, Aimee saw a jade sphere off in the distance. Its circumference was bound by a golden ring, a crooked halo. She tried squinting to get a better look, but here eyes lost focus and it faded into the milky stratosphere.

To hell with it. She was going to ask the dream woman her most pressing question.

"Where am I?" Aimee ventured, though she almost didn't want to know. For all the bravado that was put into that question, Aimee heard her voice crack.

Charalan arched a perfectly shaped eyebrow. "You are on the Guardian ship Horus."

"Guardian ship," Aimee repeated, her mind grabbing at denial. "Is it like a space shuttle? Are you an astronaut? How did I get here?"

The dream woman sighed, but her smile conveyed such serenity that Aimee began to feel the panic ebb. Those must have been some very good drugs.

"What name do you go by?" Charalan asked.

"Name?" Aimee stumbled to answer the nice easy question. "Aimee. Aimee Patterson."

"Aimee Patterson." Charalan titled her head and enunciated the words as if she was learning a foreign language by actually savoring the taste of the sounds with her tongue. "Why don't I take you to our commander, and perhaps he can answer your questions."

Answers. For a moment the cobwebs in Aimee's head receded. She felt remarkably lucid and ready to take on her captors. Maybe she could talk some sense into this commander. He could just turn this whole thing, whatever it was, around and take her home.

~~~~~

Charalan passed the floating computer and stopped before the bare wall. She waved her hand at it, and with a gust of air the barrier evaporated to reveal a cylindrical hallway. Hesitant, Aimee followed Charalan into the corridor and felt a swoosh of air against her neck. She spun about to discover that the room behind her had disappeared. Curious, she reached up to touch the cylindrical wall, and went so far as to wave her hand in front of it, imitating Charalan—but nothing happened.

A dream.

"Aimee Patterson?" the woman prodded her gently with her tone.

"Aimee," she mumbled.

"Follow me, Aimee."

Aimee liked the way Charalan said her name. As if she used too many long e's. Eeem-eeee.

A whisper of wind tickled the hair against Aimee's neck as Charalan waved her hand to expose a chamber lined with illuminated tubes, somewhat like a grand pipe organ. Charalan stepped inside and dusted her fingers across a keyboard, the grid pulsing beneath her touch, each key awaiting her command. Aimee stepped in and managed a discreet glance at the dream-woman by her side. Black hair glistened as if infused with crushed diamonds. Her silver uniform reflected off the lights in this smaller chamber and molded to her like a layer of skin. The material looked like it should crinkle with every movement but it was silent. Charalan was tall, but some of her height might have been attributed to the boots she wore. Her complexion was flawless, making any conjecture on her age rough, but Aimee guessed her to be close to her Mom's age. She just felt like a Mom; not Aimee's mom, but a Mom. Aimee felt a stab of longing for her real mom.

"Ready?" Charalan asked with a smile.

And Charalan's eyes. They were what put Aimee at ease in a dream so bizarre and lengthy. Before, she had deemed them violet, but in this small chamber, at this close range, they looked green...emerald green. Whatever color they were, they were really beautiful.

"Ready for what?" Aimee tried to shaker herself into paying attention.

Charalan's fingers flexed and Aimee felt her body jerk. The chamber, which she now guessed to be an elevator, was not moving up or down, but traveling at what gave the impression of high velocity—in a horizontal direction. For one brief second, Aimee nearly smiled because it felt like the Scrambler, one of her favorite amusement park rides, but she clamped down on that enthusiasm and stared at Charalan, amazed that the woman stood with her arms crossed, seemingly unaffected by their transport. It would probably be very bad form to shout "Wheeeee!"

As quickly as it started, the chamber drew to a halt. Charalan reached for the jigsaw panel, but slanted a glance at Aimee. The pause was odd, but it was almost as if Charalan was giving Aimee a moment to collect herself for the next shock and that didn't bode well.

"Welcome to the heart of Horus," Charalan announced with a smile. One flick of her wrist and the wall evaporated.

Aimee had once taken a cruise to the Caribbean with her parents. She was old enough at the time to explore the ship without them. In the middle of her adventure, the cruise director noticed her and offered a tour of the captain's deck. It was breathtaking. Perched atop the ship, the deck offered a 360 degree view of the ocean and was flanked with panels of controls and monitors detailing radar, speed and their route. The bridge view had so impressed Aimee that for two years thereafter she was determined to captain a ship someday, but as college loomed, her aspirations turned to something more practical, like computer science.

"Oh my," was all she could manage.

The bridge had to be more than ten times the size of that cruise ship's deck. Aimee had to strain to focus on the people hard at work in the far recesses. The size of a football field, this deck offered a panoramic view, but not of any terrestrial sea. A vista of cosmic wonders shimmered with blazing stars and auroral blue-green nebulas made Aimee gasp. She walked towards the closest window to observe a light show as what looked like shooting stars playfully chased each other across a black canvas.

A woman dressed in the conventional silver uniform turned from her console to watch her with as much unabashed curiosity as Aimee was eying the rest of them. Aimee felt uncomfortable under the scrutiny and returned to Charalan's side, trying to keep her slack jaw from making her look like a country bumpkin. It wasn't working.

"Okay," Aimee addressed her, "I'm ready to wake up now."

## Chapter 2

"It's not a dream," Charalan said softly and then looked up as someone approached.

"Vodu," Charalan bowed her head in deference.

Vodu. Aimee remembered that name. The kind, elderly voice when she first woke. She could see him now, with his white hair and deep-set blue eyes and skin that seemed tan when everyone else seemed very pale by comparison. He was tall, but his shoulders hunched slightly with age, and his uniform was different than the others. It was silver, but the styling was markedly different. His tunic was longer and not nearly as tight as what Charalan or that Salvan-guy had worn. Every nuance of this man indicated he held an exalted role.

Aimee searched the deck to see if there were other uniforms similar to Vodu's, but everyone else looked the same. There were disparities as far as physical traits, of course. Blonds, brunettes, blue eyes, brown eyes. The consistent factor that she noticed was that there didn't seem to be an unattractive person in the crowd. Even Vodu, with his wrinkles and tan skin appeared very regal.

"How is our guest doing?" Vodu asked Charalan, while looking directly at Aimee.

"Her name is Aimee Patterson, Vodu," Charalan told him. "I believe she is experiencing some displacement shock. She thinks she is dreaming."

Vodu shook his head in sympathy and narrowed his eyes as he turned to glare at the young man standing nearby. Aimee recognized Salvan, the blonde who had supposedly plucked her from her peaceful stroll along the pond in error. He stood now with his hip against a console, his arms crossed and a smug expression on his alabaster face. His light blond hair was a little long and curled up beneath his ears, and the familiar silver apparel revealed a lean body. He was probably close to perfection, along the vein of Corey Burnfield, but he made Aimee uneasy, dissecting her with his eyes as if she was a specimen in a jar.

"We apologize, Aimee Patterson, for bringing you here, but I assure you that you are not dreaming," Vodu said. "Soon the shock will wear off and there will be people here to help you acclimate to your new surroundings."

"Just Aimee," Aimee said, automatically and then felt dumb.

Vodu's words settled in and Aimee felt a nagging sense of doubt that she was truly going to wake from all this. She'd landed in the land of perfect people from the stars and she felt dowdy and dumb in their presence. Maybe it wasn't so different from high school, but at least she had learned what to expect at school. This was something she might never get used to.

"Where exactly am I?" Aimee gathered her pride enough to ask. It took some real effort to find her spine, but she felt the need to assert herself somehow. "And don't say the Guardian ship, Hoorah or whatever."

Vodu looked perplexed. He glanced over her at Charalan for insight, but the woman shrugged her shoulders.

"You are on the Guardian Ship Horus. We have just completed our Triad, a journey where we visit planets from three galaxies to collect samples." Vodu shot Salvan a disappointed glance. "Not human samples. Plant and animal life. It was wildlife that young Salvan here was aiming for not you. We do not disturb sentient creatures."

"Zigg is not wildlife," she protested.

Vodu gave her an indulgent look that made her want to argue more, but Aimee was too distracted to put up much of an argument. Silver uniforms flooded the bustling deck, but in her peripheral vision, she caught a glimpse of someone dressed in black. When she turned to look, there was no one there. This had been the answer that she'd screwed up her courage to get and now she found it hard to concentrate.

"Whatever the case, it was an accident that you were taken from your home, Aimee Patterson." Vodu explained patiently. "But it is an accident we cannot correct just now."

"Aimee, just Aimee," she whispered, still searching the expansive room with its industrious, shiny staff.

Then she saw it again. A black uniform. It was like the others, tight enough to detail the tall, powerful frame. Its fabric shimmered with gold flecks that made it glisten, but not as obnoxiously bright as the others. Aimee was so busy admiring how striking the fabric was on the obviously masculine body, she didn't yet manage to raise her glance. Once she did, even from this distance she found her gaze arrested by eyes of such intense amber, they made her breath hitch. They were like looking into the sun. She knew she wasn't supposed to do it, that it might hurt her—but his eyes, like the sun,were so beautiful she just couldn't help it.

This new distraction was a young man standing off the melee of the busy deck, his shoulder hitched against the window with the black void of space as his backdrop. No wonder she hadn't been able to locate him on her second pass. His uniform looked just like the panorama behind him—black, with subliminal bursts of light that flashed as he moved.

"I know you are in shock and denial," Vodu continued, either unaware or uncaring of her roving gaze. "We understand these traits. We've seen them before with other species we've picked up along our travels."

"I thought you only picked up plant life," Aimee mentioned absently, her eyes still locked with the young man in the shadows. Just because she was distracted didn't mean that she wasn't listening. It was a survival trait in her household.

He had dark hair, shorter than the styles that seemed common with everyone else. She guessed him to be a few years older than her, although something in his countenance hinted at a maturity far beyond his physical years. He simply stared at her, his mouth set in a straight line. Not congenial, not disapproving. Not even curious. He just watched her, almost as if she were his prey.

"Sometimes, such as in your case, our life-tracker locks on one thing and something else jumps into the field before we can terminate the beam."

"So is that what this ship is? A bunch of others like me that you accidentally picked up?" Aimee broke from the amber gaze to search the deck again. "Is that what you all are? Who are all these people? If not accidental victims, then what—NASA? Everyone speaks English so I guess you're from NASA, not the Russian space program or anything."

"Space program?" Vodu rubbed at his jaw. To his right, Salvan snickered. And against the backdrop of the cosmos, the man in black still watched her.

"You must believe, Aimee Patterson. We are not part of your space program," Vodu answered with a condescending tone, "or the Russians. We speak your language because it is what you communicate in. We speak many dialects. If you were to speak in Russian, we would accommodate."

"Madre de Dios!" Aimee blurted a line that her friend Carrie always used when she was mad.

"Si, hablamos Espanol, tambien," the old man responded with a perfect Spanish inflection.

Aimee was about to drop another test when a siren like none she had ever heard pierced the deck. It was so invasive and unexpected she nearly cowered on her knees, shocked and on the verge of throwing up.

Vodu moved nimbly for an old man. He jogged to the highest platform, a console filled with silver figures whose fingers glided across luminous keypads like master musicians or spin jockeys. A computer floated by in mid air and someone snatched it up.

"What is that noise?!" Aimee asked excitedly of Charalan, whose serene countenance now harbored tiny wrinkles of fear around her eyes.

"We are being tracked!" Charalan answered, as if that explained everything. These people, or whatever they were, alternately treated her as if she was one of them and as if she was some monkey in a lab that had suddenly begun talking in perfect English.

~~~~~

"Tracked?" Aimee squeaked the question as a new fear entered her mind. If these people had floating computers, space ships and laser beams then what would worry them?

"Charalan!" The woman holding the floating computer cast a strained look their way. "We need you!"

The siren sounded like a high-pitched fire alarm of nuclear proportions and Aimee lifted her hands over her ears, but Charalan was speaking to her. She followed the movements of her lips. Yep, they were worried. Aimee didn't even begin to think that some special forces from earth were coming to save her, but surely this whole thing couldn't get worse. Yesterday the worst thing she could have imagined had been being humiliated by a Lamborghini-driving jock.

"Stay here," Charalan ordered. "I will be right back."

Aimee opened her mouth to respond, but the deck shook as she was jolted several feet across the floor. Barely managing to keep her balance, Aimee looked up at the transom and to her horror saw a hulking vessel that looked something like the Manhattan skyline. Any forays of the television remote to the Sci-fi channel never revealed a spacecraft that looked like New York City. As if that wasn't odd enough, the vessel came with what she perceived as two large feet. It was from these feet that a beam was emitted, and the Horus trembled as that shaft made contact with the hull.

A fleeting thought went through her head that if this foreign craft was this large...what the heck was the size of the Horus? That roller coaster ride had only lasted a few seconds. How far had that horizontal elevator taken them?

Aimee wanted to scream at the absurdity of her plight. This simply could not be happening to her. But the Horus shook again and this time she was knocked to her knees. Strong hands grabbed her arms and hauled her up against a body that felt powerful and secure. She looked up into amber eyes that were so intense they exposed her vulnerability all the more.

"You can't stay here," his voice was soft and husky, but she could hear it over the cacophony of sound because he was so close.

"Do you know where the health ward is?" he prodded her.

"Health ward?" Aimee mouthed as her fingers curled around his arms.

"Zak!" Vodu called. His tanned face look strained, his lips thinned with determination. "We need you out there!"

Molten eyes looked away from her towards the elderly man. "I'm on my way!"

"Get her out of here. She—"

A blast hit the Horus and Aimee would have fallen were it not for Zak's strong hold. He looked back at her and must have read the frantic look on her face. He did not break eye contact, but spoke to Vodu.

"I'll drop her off in the health ward."

"Good." Vodu clutched the panel for balance. "Zak. Be careful out there."

"Always."

Aimee felt herself pulled from the deck, and though she did not know this young man in the strange black uniform, she felt safe in his presence. He exuded a take-charge charisma and everyone they passed tipped their head towards him as if in a silent bid for good luck or maybe just a military salute. The hand that was not secured around her arm flicked impatiently at the door to the horizontal elevator.

Inside, Zak surprised her when he touched a panel and the door collapsed into the floor, yielding to a huge transparent plate. Blazing along at horizontal hyper speed, Aimee was able to witness first-hand the destruction being imposed by the enemy craft. Sapphire beams blazed from the ship's feet in myriad directions like a Disney laser show—only these were not innocent strobes, and they had one destination: The Horus.

"What is happening?" Aimee asked in a hoarse voice as the Horus shook again.

"I am not certain, but I think they are from Koron. Their ship has the markings of the structures on that planet." Zak seemed think about it before answering. "I've only been there once, but I'm sure that this is them. They must be as surprised to see us as we are to see them." Zak shook his head. "I guess their society dictates hostility as an initial reception."

"Planet?" Aimee felt the blood drain from her face. "They are from another planet? Somebody better tell me where the hell I am!"

Zak let go of her and a fishhook mark developed between his eyebrows as he frowned and crossed his arms. "There is no time to explain in the depth that you want to hear and are obviously unwilling to listen to. You were taken from your planet by accident. You are on the Guardianship Horus. We just finished our Triad around the three spectral galaxies, and taking you on board was—" he seemed to hunt for a word, "an accident. We are not hostile like the Korons you see there, so don't look so devastated. What is it they say in your language? Shape up or ship out! And in this instance 'out' would be very cold. We start the Triad over again soon. You will be back on your planet in no time."

Thank God! Maybe she would be back in time to tell her classmates it had just been a family emergency. Heck, her parents were probably so busy talking over each other that they hadn't even noticed she was missing yet.

A blast radiant enough to mimic lightning was followed by a tremor with the vibrato of thunder. That shudder was powerful enough to hurl Aimee against the clear wall. When her cheek smacked the panel she squealed, prepared for the pane to shatter and eject her into space. Powerful hands seized her shoulders and drew her from her imagined threat of oblivion. The fear of instant death faded. She became aware of a heart other than her own beating against her chest as she inhaled the fabric of the onyx uniform, thinking that the material looked remarkably like space itself. Celestial camouflage.

Another sharp quake of the Horus threatened to topple Aimee, but she was pinned against that bizarre uniform, trapped within inflexible arms. Panic brimmed as she started to struggle. She didn't know this Zak at all, and here she was, splayed against him like peanut butter on toast. And yet, the embrace was something to lock onto in a world full of chaos. Everything around her was surreal, but the heart that beat against hers was something tangible. The warmth of another body and the comfort of the embrace, as unintended as it may be, represented the first sense of stability she had experienced since this whole nightmare started.

"Hang on," Zak's voice was as steady as his body. "You'll be safe in the health ward. I have to go."

"Where are you going?" She hated the desperation in that question.

"I have to go out there." He nodded towards the firework display. "Don't worry. Our fighters will get this under control."

Another shudder shook the Horus and in the glow of a nearby explosion she saw the focus on Zak's face. He was a young warrior prepared to go to battle to protect his own. In his golden eyes she saw the flares of lasers and the starburst of ensuing flames, and she also saw worlds she could never imagine. In those eyes she saw determination. At that moment he looked as she expected Hercules or Alexander the Great would have looked before embarking on a battle.

"You said I could go back to Ea—home soon, right?"

His nod was perfunctory. "We'll be back there as soon as the next Triad is complete...that is, as long as the Korons don't succeed here."

Now released from his arms, Aimee felt dizzy and splayed her palms flat on the glass panel, taking in the chaos around her. The hulking silhouette of the Kronos ship was barely discernible, obscured by a host of small crafts that darted about like lasers themselves. Disc-shaped vehicles with green glowing tails burst into brilliant light in front of her eyes just before they whizzed by at unthinkable speed. She tried to trace them, but they transformed into hyper-blurs, barely differentiated from the rays firing upon the Horus. Every now and then one of the silver discs would zoom by close enough that she could distinguish a solitary figure at the helm. A figure dressed in black. A pilot? A warrior? She turned to look at Zak. He would soon be out there!

Aimee swallowed hard. "How long does a Triad take?"

Zak waved his hand and halted the horizontal motion, disabling her equilibrium as she collided into him. He set her back from him and considered the question. "Not long. I think in your terms it's only about six revolutions of your planet."

Six years.

Aimee closed her eyes.

And she prayed.

# A Dark Matter

By Brendan Carroll

Copyright 2010 Brendan Carroll

This was indeed a dark matter as were most assignments that the Chevalier du Morte received from the Grand Master of the Red Cross of Gold, Edgard d'Brouchart. As one of the surviving members of the semi-immortal Council of Twelve, Mark Andrew Ramsay had received uncounted requests from his Master aside from his usual duties as assassin and alchemist for the poor Knights of Solomon's Temple, but this one was surprising indeed.

Mark turned the paper over, half expecting the other shoe to drop, but there was nothing written on the back. Just a simple question front and center of the expensive parchment stationery written in d'Brouchart's almost illegible, archaic script:

What is the nature of this dark matter that has the scientific world in such a dither, du Morte?

The brooding Scot's brow creased and then he smiled. The mention of the word 'dark' was probably the initiating factor in the Grand Master's mind. He often called his Knight of Death a 'dark bastard' among other things. Certainly he had sent the Scot on enough foreboding missions over the years. Mark had found himself in Eastern Europe searching for revenants and vampires, in Germany seeking out Nazi holdouts, in Russia stalking serial killers and even in America spying on the activities of a number of spurious secret societies. Of course, his normal occupation as assassin for the Order took him even deeper into the darker shadow realms of the human psyche. Then there was his title: Chevalier du Morte, Knight of Death, which had nothing to do with his work as an assassin, but rather dealt with his Divine Mystery that involved the ability to literally cut his Brothers' souls loose from their earthbound bodies should the need arise with a single blow of the Golden Sword of the Cherubim. This distasteful task had fallen to him a number of times over the centuries whenever one of them had fallen in battle or succumbed to some accident that left their material bodies unsuitable vessels for soul repositories on earth. These were his most distasteful missions, killing his own Brothers.

But this particular assignment seemed almost jovial in comparison, like being asked to eat a smoked salmon or being asked to paint the barn door red. It seemed strange that the Master had not given the assignment to another of the Council Members. Perhaps the Historian or the Knight of the Golden Eagle? But it made no matter; he would do his best to answer the question. It should be simple enough.

A few days later, found the Chevalier du Morte sitting in his favorite chair in his library with two or three dozen scientific journals, textbooks and periodicals scattered about on the floor around him, a small decorative pillow from the settee was in his lap serving as a writing desk. He folded back the leather cover of a worn journal with lined leaves and smoothed out the yellowed page. The journal was just one of a number of notebooks he used to record his alchemical notes in his basement laboratory. In his hand, he held his favorite refillable fountain pen, a smooth gold antique of some considerable value dating from the 1930's.

He had soaked in everything available on the subject of Dark Matter, the latest fad, fashion and topic of enormous debate in the fields of astrophysics, cosmology and nuclear physics. It seemed that everyone of any note in the scientific community had an opinion of the nature of Dark Matter, its purpose, its existence and its relevance to basic understanding of the Universe, its size, its construction and its future. Currently, the race to capture a 'picture' of it was underway with a possible Nobel Prize in the offing for the winner.

Mark now sat in a deep state of meditative contemplation with the library doors closed and bolted, the wolfhounds safely off in the meadow chasing rabbits and the household servants under strict orders not to disturb him. A half empty tumbler of Glendronach Scotch sat on the table at his right elbow in front of the half full bottle of the same. His eyes were open, but his mind wandered the heavens between the stars, beyond the planets and the farthest reaches of known space where the Hounds of the Barrier could be heard barking furiously in the distant caverns of time. After an indeterminate sojourn that could have been hours or mere seconds depending on the point of view, he blinked.

He carefully removed the cap on the pen and checked the ink level in the barrel before putting the tip to the paper.

His thoughts ran ahead of his writing and he found his brain waiting impatiently for his pen to catch up.

Dark Matter. Physicists are searching for it with every technically advanced piece of equipment in the world, spending enormous sums of money on research and basically beating their heads against the proverbial wall, trying to get a glimpse of it, trying to understand its nature. So far, they have managed to prove its existence and have even managed to map its location or density dispersal throughout the universe by the mathematical extrapolation of observable data. The scientists say that without Dark Matter, the Universe would fly apart. All very fascinating, but not much by way of description. They know what it is not. It carries no mass, no electrical charge and does not react with matter. In light of those three mysterious facts, the very thought of proving its existence has been very difficult and is, indeed, not proven at all by positive means, but rather by negative inference, i.e. by what could not exist without it, namely the Universe. Describing something that seems to defy Newton's laws at every turn appears to be impossible. At least, it seems materially impossible, but perhaps not virtually impossible.

The real questions might rather be: How can something without mass, without weight, without some sort of nuclear charge, so profoundly affect the entire Universe, permeate it, surround it, even fill the space between the individual sub-atomic particles and affect it so completely? And how could this ephemeral substance possibly exert enough gravitational influence to keep the trillions of galaxies in the Universe swirling about at such high rates of speed without flying apart?

Mark stopped writing and shivered slightly as the thought of what the Universe might be if the Dark Matter were to carry a charge and become reactive with matter. If the dispersal rates were accurate, then the very air would be clogged with Dark Matter. Eyes, ears, noses, tactile senses... all useless. What a very different Universe that would be! People, if they existed at all, would be deaf, dumb and blind and about as cognizant of life as the one-celled animals living under the rocks in a stagnant pond.

Rising stiffly from the chair, he laid aside the journal and pen before stoking the fire in the hearth. The fire popped and crackled comfortably, sending up a curtain of embers into the flue. The smell of the fire and its warmth on his face dispelled the chill that had crept into his soul during his silent musings and he suddenly understood why Master d'Brouchart had sent the question to him. He picked up the glass, drained the Scotch and poured another glass from the bottle. The wind rattled the panes in the windows on either side of the fireplace as he sat down and picked up the journal once more.

He drummed his fingers on the paper and took another burning sip of the liquor before continuing to write.

The scientists are digging in the wrong place with the wrong tool.

The Scotch called to him once more and he put aside his pen and paper and picked up the glass. A half hour later, his chin touched his chest, his long, black hair fell around his face as his eyes closed and sleep took him where no scientific journal could.

He stood below the mouth of dark cavern in the side of a sheer rock face some ten to twelve feet above his head. A hot breeze blew his hair in his face and sweat trickled down his face and his back under the weight of his chain mail. Looking about in astonishment, he saw a pale destrier, saddled and covered with the trappings of battle armaments tied to the blasted stump of a gnarled tree a few yards away. The horse rolled his eyes and snorted, raising first one and then the other front hoof nervously, sensing some danger nearby. Mark raised his eyes to the cave and was startled to see the head, shoulders and front feet of a tremendous black beast protruding from the opening. The legs were crossed and the clawed feet hung over the ledge almost casually.

The Knight stumbled back a few feet and gasped for breath as his heart rate kicked into high gear. He clutched the hilt of his golden sword in his gloved right hand. Such an instrument would be useless against such a beast of power. The horse was too far away to reach before the thing could fall on him and rip him to shreds.

The dragon snorted and snuffled the air above his head before lowering its neck and head down far enough to peruse him closely. Its eyes were deep emerald green and its head was covered with elegantly sculpted horns and iridescent scales. A wondrous beauty to behold, mesmerizing and deadly.

"Ah, methinks you have returned with some question burned into your head so sweet. Of your hale and hearty beast, I could make a lovely feast and together we might eat." The dragon turned its gaze on the warhorse tied nearby causing it to whinny in fright.

Though the voice was loud, it was not harsh, but rather shockingly pleasant to Mark's ear. His legs shook in his boots and his stomach fluttered, but he knew that showing fear at this point would most likely prove fatal.

"Hale and hearty?" He laughed and lowered the point of his sword to the ground, placing both hands on the hilt to steady himself. "He is naught but stringy tough and I daresay not enough for such a Lord as thee."

"Well said, well said, my beautiful one," the dragon seemed pleased with Mark's summation. "There are tastier things under the sun. Then tell me true, what can I do for the likes of you? Might I sing, for that lovely ring? Take you far from here for a sturdy keg of beer? Ask your question and then we'll barter for the answer, for I take you to be naught but a mighty Necromancer of whom I may ask a favor and information is what you savor."

Mark wondered how the beast knew that he had a question, but realized that he had little to barter with. The horse was out of the question. The sword? Never! But the ring? He looked down at the rings he wore on a chain around his neck whilst in full battle armor. A smooth gold ring bearing a white stone with a blood red cross patee inlaid in the center, the ring of the Templar and a smaller silver ring engraved with the letters 'IAAT', the sign of the alchemist. He could make new rings, but if she... he wondered if the beast was female and why he assumed so... demanded more, he might have a problem.

"That sounds amenable," he said carefully.

"Then speak." The beast drew its head back and up, taking on the appearance of a stone sculpture in gleaming black.

"I am curious about Dark Matter."

"Dark Matter," the dragon repeated and it seemed her facial expression changed. "This Dark Matter I presume is not the dark side of the moon, nor is it what lies behind the eyelids in an evil mind, nor could it be what we do not see when deep within the earth we be."

"That is very astute, my terrible friend," said Mark. "You have named what it is not and this is no more than men have done. I'm afraid that I must be moving on for light is burning and I must be about my Master's business."

"Ahhhhh," the dragon snorted again and suddenly slid out of the cave into the space between the Knight and the horse.

Mark drew in a sharp breath and thought that the end had surely come as he raised the twisted golden blade instinctively between them.

"Put away that puny blade," the dragon said, blinking at him slowly. There was definite amusement in her great eyes. "Though by the angels it is made, for I shall not fight with thee, if thou might have discourse with me. Away we'll soar into the blue until eternal black envelops you and there will be the answer clear. You have nothing more to fear."

With that, the enormous claws closed around his waist and he was lifted, breathlessly, but gently into the air, her enormous wings beating up a whirlwind of dust below them. Daring a glance down, he saw his horse and the barren, rocky landscape receding at an alarming rate. He held tight to his sword with one hand and pressed on his helmet with the other as they rose through the clouds into the coldness of space. When nothing remained to fill his lungs, he ceased to breathe and his head felt light and though he knew it was impossible for speech in the relative vacuum of space, he could hear the dragon speaking in his head. The language she spoke was of a primitive time long before man had come of age, yet he could understand it. As she spoke he felt something envelope him and he could no longer see, no longer feel, no longer smell, taste or even think. Only darkness pressed around him and all the Universe was his.

~~~~~

A loud snap from the fireplace indicated the end of some beetle or bug inhabiting the logs burning there and brought the Knight from his slumber with a start. He opened his eyes, drew a deep breath and looked around quickly, finding nothing amiss in the library. The sun had gone and the windows were dark. A chilling moan shook the old house, the window panes rattled in the casement and the distant sound of thunder heralded the approach of a gathering storm.

He picked up the paper and began to write again.

Dark Matter.

Facts:

1.) Dark Matter does not interact with mundane matter.

2.) Dark Matter is odorless, tasteless, invisible and intangible.

3.) Dark Matter fills the entire Universe, permeating every atom.

4.) Dark Matter completely contains the entire Universe within it.

5.) Dark Matter is affected by nothing in human experience.

6.) Dark Matter affects everything in the Universe.

7.) Dark Matter makes the Universe possible.

There are seven known facts about Dark Matter. Seven is the Holy Number of God.

Conclusion: Dark Matter is God. Simple.

The Chevalier du Morte got up, tossed the notebook on the footstool, recapped the fountain pen and rubbed his hands together. He finished off the bottle of Glendronach, drinking from the bottle and walked across the room to the window left of the fireplace where he pulled aside the heavy drapes and gazed out toward the meadow unable to see anything under the thick cloud cover. A brilliant flash of purplish lightning lit the rolling landscape momentarily and he thought he saw the dark shape of a winged creature swooping low over the ground. He squinted into the window pane and waited. When the next flash came, he saw only rain-soaked grassland.

Chuckling softly at his own imagination he turned from the window and then jumped as the matched pair of wolfhounds set to howling in the foyer outside the library doors. Crossing the room, he laid his left hand on the doorknob and then stopped.

The golden Templar ring was missing from his left ring finger...

Finis.

# Bonus Materials

## The Red Cross of Gold XXIII

## "Thoth, the Atlantean"

## Assassin Chronicles

By

Brendan Carroll

Copyright 2011

Chapter One of Twenty

That which hath been is named already, and it is known that it is man

Vannistephetti edged closer to the strange creature hunkered over the soft earth under the weeping willows near the stream bed. He had never seen such a creature in all his adventures in the underworld. The young elf crawled silently on his stomach beneath the towering green ferns thickly lining the little stream of sparkling water. Il Dolce Mio had told him never to come here, but here he had come, of course. In fact, this was one of his favorite places to practice playing his drum, but today he was not practicing. He had played for a while and then fallen asleep in the roots of one of the great old trees. When he had awakened some time later, he had discovered that he was no longer alone in his favorite place. This odd fellow with long, tendrils of grayish brown hair hanging down his thick back and over his broad shoulders, was crawling about in the dark earth, picking out small pebbles and assorted rocks from the soil with his meaty black fingers. His legs and thighs were huge muscular affairs and his large feet splayed and dirty, but he moved with surprising agility in the seemingly cramped position in which he worked. A circular patch of ground about him had been smoothed and was completely devoid of grass or leaves.

Vanni froze as the creature moved again, bringing himself around so that its face showed in the dappled shadows for the first time. The elf's wide dark eyes grew round with fear as he saw the ugly face. The jaw was very heavy and two long tusks emerged from the underbite, ending in sharp points on either side of its flat nose. The nose, itself, was lined with horizontal creases. The brow bone was greatly pronounced, shading its eyes under bushy brows. Numerous sprigs of grass and small twigs were entwined in the twisted cords of hair springing from its head and its large pointed ears poked through the ropy twine that passed for its hair. It was clothed in gray, rough brown and black fabric, ragged and tattered and tied here and there with leather straps and twine. The immense muscles on its arms were decorated with many dark tattoos on his leathery skin and there were numerous ornate silver bracelets at its wrists and intricate fretworks of copper and bronze on its biceps. Its muscles rippled as it reached for the tiny bits of colored rocks it was collecting in a small pile in front of its large feet. The creature seemed totally oblivious to the presence of the elf. He held up the tiny prizes in front of his face and perused them most carefully before either tossing them away or adding them to the pile. Around him, a complex design was growing in the earth. A brown jug of water sat nearby and he would occasionally add a bit of water to the dark soil to make it pliable.

The elf watched in fascination as the creature worked to create a beautiful circle filled with strange symbols and markings made up of the sparkling colors of the rainbow. The creature moved silently and slowly about the design, carefully avoiding the clever art work with his feet. Time wore on, but the unnatural movements and the mesmerizing design threw out all consciousness of the passing hours.

Vanni had crawled nearer and nearer in order to get a better view of the work of art. He moved slightly and edged forward a bit more when the creature turned his back again and then froze as a twig snapped under his knee.

"Come out, boy!" he heard the creature call to him. "I know you are there." His voice did not fit his appearance, it was almost as smooth as Bart's or Paddy's, only a bit deeper.

Vanni turned to make his escape and found one of the long tendrils of coiled hair wrapped about his ankle. He shrieked and tried to disentangle his foot, but another cord snaked forward and wrapped itself about his wrist. He reached for his dagger at his belt and yet another cord of the coarse gray-brown hair quickly entwined his other wrist. He was caught for sure. He would never have the pleasure of hearing the King admonish him again. Surely the creature would eat him for lunch. There was no doubt in his mind that the thing was a hobgoblin of some sort. He kicked and squealed in fright as the long strands dragged him from the cover of the ferns and across the soft black earth, stopping only inches from the edge of the circle.

"Be still," the creature said, but did not turn about. It continued to pick through the dirt for more colorful pebbles and bits of crystal.

Vanni complied with the instruction immediately and the cords released him.

"Do not move," the thing commanded him as it began to turn about, lifting first one great foot and then the other.

The mischievous elf cowered on the ground under the deep gaze of the thing's eyes. He raised his own eyes slowly and discovered that for all its ugliness, it had the most beautiful crystal blue eyes he had ever seen.

"Why are you spying on me, little one?" the creature asked him. Its lips were shiny and black. Its mouth was full of sharp teeth and it swayed slightly on its haunches.

"I was not spying on you, sir," Vanni told him desperately. "I was merely curious. It is my job to be curious. I am only a child."

"A child?" The creature threw back his head and laughed. "You are no child. You are a long way from home."

"Yes and I should be getting back. The others will miss me!" Vanni told him hopefully. "You won't eat me, will you? I meant no harm. I was simply admiring your beautiful work."

"What is that you have there?" The thing nodded its big head toward the drum that Vanni had abandoned in the fern.

"A drum!" Vanni told him. "I play the drum."

"Oh? And does your father play this drum?"

"No. My father does not play the drum. My father is a great warrior."

"Ahhh. A warrior." The thing smiled and Vanni cringed. "Would you not also be a great warrior like your father?"

"I will someday, but there is no war at this moment."

"Play for me!" The creature tossed its head and the long tendrils swished over its back.

Vanni crawled away to fetch the drum and began to tap out a rhythm on its soft leather head.

"Ahhhh." The goblin closed its eyes and the quality of his voice contained a pleasant vibrato.

The creature went back to his treasure hunt.

Vanni tucked the drum under his arm, emboldened by the fact that the creature did not appear ready to put him on a spit, and began to walk slowly around the circle as he played.

"What is this you are making?" he asked after a few moments.

The big creature grunted and placed a number of blue stones around the simple outline of a woman on the ground, finishing it off.

"I am building a tribute to my mother." The thing looked up at him and frowned slightly. "Where is your mother, little one?"

"I do not know my mother," Vanni told him and shrugged. "I have no mother."

"Everyone has a mother. My mother is the virgin." The creature went back to his work.

"Hmmm." Vanni frowned. Virgin. Virgin. He would have to ask the King what Virgin was. "My father is an eagle."

"Oh?" The creature moved to the edge of the circle and reached one long finger outside the design. He drew two fishes in the soft earth, each swimming in the opposite direction. "Your father is the fish. Pisces."

"My father is no fish." Vanni laughed and picked up the beat of his drumming a bit.

"Yes. He was born under the sign of the fish. Pisces." The creature moved back to the center of the circle. "My mother is also the dove."

"You see?" Vanni smiled. "Your mother is also a bird. Birds are much better than fish."

The creature laughed softly and sat down on the ground.

"And what are you?" Vanni asked him. "I am an anomaly."

"Anomaly? I thought you were an elf! I am called Nanna by some. Others call me Sin."

"Sin?" Vanni frowned. He had heard this word. Sin. He did not like it. "I will call you... Nanna. You may call me Vanni. But that is your name. What are you? Are you a goblin?"

"I am no goblin or else I would have had you as a tasty snack." The great creature leaned back on his elbows and crossed one muscular leg over the other. "I am an Anu, maker of Kings, progenitor of the land."

"Maker of Kings?" Vannistephetti did not understand this at all. He had never heard of an Anu before and he had seen many, many faery creatures.

Nanna laughed again at the confused expression of the elf.

"Vanni!" The sound of someone calling to him drifted to them from under the trees. "Vannistephetti! Where are you?!"

"Oh!" Vanni's eyes widened. "They are looking for me, sir. I must be going!"

"Get thee gone then, little prince." Nanna pushed himself up. "Come again and play for me when you see the full moon."

Vanni leaped lightly into the ferns and dashed away in the opposite direction of the voices calling to him. It would never do for them to find him near the stream. He made it about two hundred yards into a birch grove before he was tackled and brought to the ground. The young elf shrieked and rolled about in the leaves with his assailant, beating him over the head with his drum.

"Stop it!! Stop! Ow! OUCH!!" The attacker scrambled up and away from the frantic boy.

Vanni sat up on the ground, spitting dirt and twigs from his mouth. His curly hair fell in his face and he tossed it back over his shoulders. His drum lay in several pieces on the ground about him. He looked up into the face of the furious King.

"Your Highness!!" Vanni leaped to his feet. "A thousand apologies, Your Grace! I didn't know it..."

"Hush!! Be quiet!" Il Dolce Mio stood pressing both hands to his bloody nose.

Vanni dropped his head and stood waiting to be killed as several of the King's warriors emerged from the trees behind him. The King sniffed and then held out one hand toward him. He shook his head, slinging copper-colored blood in all directions. The silver bells in his long hair tinkled and several yellow flower petals drifted to the ground around him. "What are you doing out here?" he demanded when he had caught his breath.

"I was practicing my... drum," Vanni said sadly. He had really done it this time. He had actually hurt the King. He was much bigger than the elven King now. At least a head taller and much stouter. "I'm sorry, sir. I really, truly am. I didn't know it was you. I thought it was the Anu."

"The what?" The King jerked his head at the nearest archer and the archer whistled for the ponies.

"The Anu! The creature with the tusks," Vanni said and then slapped his hand over his mouth. He had not meant to tell the King about the creature.

"There is no such thing as an Anu!" The King shook his head again and wiped at his nose.

The ponies arrived and the elves mounted up. Il Dolce Mio climbed onto his pony and held out his hand to his unruly charge.

"Climb up."

Vanni swung nimbly onto the small animal behind the King. So they would not kill him just yet.

"Now tell me what you were doing near the stream, Vanni," the King demanded as they started back toward the castle.

"I was practicing my drum and I saw this strange creature," Vanni told him. "I went to investigate him." Vanni went on to tell him about the big, dark-skinned one with the wrinkled nose and long, coiled hair. He did not tell him about the conversation about fathers and mothers, nor did he tell him about the strange circle and symbols on the ground.

"I forbid you to come back here," the King told him angrily. "I have never heard of such a creature. It must have been from the Abyss! You will be boiled in oil, eaten or lost or... I am sick to death of chasing you about, Vannistephetti. I am going to find your father and bring him here. He must take you away and teach you to be a man. I cannot be responsible for you anymore!"

"But... a man?" Vanni sat straight up on the pony and looked about at the warriors. They rode along on either side of the King with their crossbows ready in front of them. "My father will teach me to be a man? Why? I like it here, my King! I don't want to be a man! They are... they would be... it would be..."

"You will go with him," Il Dolce Mio told him flatly. "You will learn how men do it, just as I did."

"But you are an elf!" Vanni objected. He had heard stories of his father. His father was described as an eagle and a serpent and a great warrior, but he'd never been told that he was a man. "Are you saying that my father... is a m-m-man?"

"Yes. Yes. Yes." Il Dolce Mio nodded. "A man! Your father is a man! Just like my father was a man."

"But your father is not a man. Your father is Adar, the Mighty Hunter! He is..."

"Hush! Your father was also my father for a time," the King told him and waved one hand in dismissal. "He is a man! And he will come and take you. It is time."

"No!" Vanni tried to get off the horse and one of the warriors turned his crossbow on him. He stopped and relaxed a bit. This was highly irregular. "Please. I don't want to be a man. I will be good. I promise!"

"It is too late," Il Dolce Mio told him. "As soon as I can find him, I will bring him to you."

They rode on toward the castle in silence. Vanni knew that he had done wrong and now he would be banished. A terrible day! A terrible day indeed.

(((((((((((((<O>)))))))))))))

Luke Andrew nodded off again and then jerked his head up. He had been studying the archives for days. Something was just not clicking here. There was something terribly wrong with the Red Cross of Gold. His father was not telling him everything and he was not sure if his father even realized that anything was amiss. How could Adar, the Mighty Hunter, recognize this purely human anomaly that was going on? Mark Andrew Ramsay was many things and knew a great deal, but he didn't know everything and things that were quite normal to him, were completely abstract and impossible to most people. Luke Andrew on the other hand, was half human. He had a better grasp on humanity than his father. De Lyons condition baffled everyone, but there was something that they were missing. Something very ominous. De Lyons was completely human... completely human. His father had been an executive at a bank in Lyons. His mother had been an architect in a very successful drafting firm. They had died together while on vacation in the Alps. Guy de Lyons, like most of the human apprentices taken in by Edgard d' Brouchart, had been an orphan. Well-heeled, but an orphan. Luke yawned and rubbed his eyes as he stared into the computer screen. De Lyons was completely human.

De Lyons was lying in the infirmary in Italy, staring at the ceiling. He had been lying in the infirmary for three weeks. He had collapsed during a workout with the boys at the Academy. They had been practicing with some of Sir Barry's ancient morning stars and he had simply collapsed. He had not been injured. The boys had testified that he had been in the middle of telling them how to hold the stars properly and then... pow! Gone! And no one could say why or how or where he had gone. Luke looked down at the notes scribbled on the paper in front of him.

Armand de Bleu, gone to the underworld. An elf. Age: 80+

Corrigan, Alexander, gone to the underworld. An elf or whatever. Age: 700+

Lavon de Bleu. Hafling+ Unaffected. Father: John Paul Sinclair-Ramsay—immortal who should not have died! Hafling? Father: Mark Andrew Ramsay or Luke? Or what? Mother: immortal non-human

Konrad von Hetz: Hafling. Unaffected. Age: 30+60 years in underworld = 90+ Father: human Mother: immortal non-human

Louis Champlain: Human, approximate age: 800+. Is he special? Unaffected. Father/Mother: unknown

Edgard d'Brouchart: Definitely not 100% human. Unaffected. Age unknown.

Lucio Dambretti: Human or not? Son of a witch? Son of a king? Reincarnation of Nebucchadnezzar? Unaffected. Age: 800+

Luke Matthew Ramsay: shared womb with Mark Andrew—affected by brother? Completely human, supposedly. Unaffected. Age: 800+

Omar and Lemarik: Not human. Djinni race. Ages unknown.

Christopher Stewart: pulled from second time-line. Former member of strange group associated with Aristoni's Order. Not old enough. Not yet.

Simon of Grenoble: Double entity. Over 700 years old. Definitely something screwy there. His sons? Simeon holding at 30, hasn't seemed to age much since. The rest? Too young to tell.

Barry of Sussex: 800+, should have been affected before de Lyons, if theory is correct. Parents of poor, peasant stock.

Barry, Louis... maybe Dambretti. Should have been affected by now. De Lyons too young. Argonne, nuts. Champagne, nuts. Montague, nuts. Beaujold, nuts. De Lyons, kaput. And there were many other examples in the archives. Several of the Knights had died under mysterious circumstances which had been ruled accidental. Some were destroyed in the various wars in which they had participated. These had been dispatched by the Knight of Death. A couple of them had found ways to commit suicide which may have been the results of psychoses of some type. And in the case of all the deceased Knights, their parentage where documented had been merely human.

Jozsef Daniel: where was he? What happened to him? Furthermore, where was Meredith Sinclair-Ramsay? John Paul Sinclair-Ramsay? They couldn't be dead. Something was very odd here.

Luke wadded up the paper and threw it across the room at his trashcan. What was it? The Order had filled up with people not quite human, it seemed. And where in the world had Nicole Ramsay gotten off to? No one had heard from her in months. That was scary. And the Andrea thing. How had his father pulled that one off? Who had conspired with him to make her appear at the meeting just in time to confuse everyone? Who in the hell was Andrea Larmenius?! Where had she come from? Where had she gone? Had he been entirely wrong about her? Had he assumed that she was actually Mark Andrew when she had been something or someone altogether different? Luke had not dared bring up the subject with his father again. They had talked about telling Lucio the truth about Andrea. Perhaps they had been speaking of two different truths. Was it indeed possible that Andrea had been yet another of his father's illegitimate offspring? If so, where had she gone?

Edgard had summoned Luke's father to Italy to confer with him about de Lyons. They were trying to decide what to do about the Knight of the Sword. They had barely been back from Romania a month when this had happened. They would have to decide whether to take de Lyons' mystery and transfer it to Philip d'Ornan, his apprentice. De Lyons was not dead, but he was not quite alive either.

The phone chirped on the desk and he jumped.

"Hello?" He punched the button without thinking or looking to see who might be calling at two in the morning.

"Luke!" the voice sounded excited.

"Papa?"

"No. Omar."

"Oh." Luke sat straight up. "My God! Where are you? Everyone is looking for you! Where is Ruth?!"

"She's in Port-au-Prince," Omar sounded elated. "Luke! Great news!"

"You found Bari?"

"No. I found Jozsef Daniel!"

"Really?" Luke glanced about. "Is he... dead?"

"Not yet," Omar's voice subsided a bit. "What about... Budapest?"

"Oh, that. Nothing." Luke slumped. Another thing that bothered him. His father had sworn him to secrecy.

"He got away? Is that true?" Omar asked.

Luke frowned. Omar must have talked to d'Brouchart. He remembered how upset Omar had been the last time he'd heard from him.

"So you are still in Haiti?" Luke did not answer his question.

"Yes. Anna has a plan."

"Anna?"

"Yes. I can't talk about it right now. I just wanted you to know that we are all right. Also, I wanted to know about the other... Budapest."

"Well. He was pretty slick," Luke hedged. His father had let Aristoni make it. Why, he had no idea. They were supposed to kill him. That had been their mission. But something had happened. "We'll have to try again, I suppose."

"No doubt!" Omar agreed. "We'll worry about that when I get back to New Babylon. By the way, if things work out, I'll be back in fine form." He exaggerated these last two words.

"Omar?" Luke's frown deepened. His eyes felt full of grit. "You're not planning to confront him personally, are you?"

"It is the only way."

"He'll kill you!"

"I won't take any chances. Where is my great-uncle?"

"Asleep, probably! It's two AM."

"Oh. I forgot. I'm going to stop by on my way home."

"When?"

"Soon."

"Omar. I have something to discuss with you," Luke told him impulsively.

"Oh?"

"De Lyons has collapsed. They don't know what is wrong with him."

"Collapsed? What do you mean?"

"Just fell out. Three weeks ago. They can't wake him up. He's gone."

"Dead?"

"Not dead. It's a long story. We need to talk."

"All right. I'll be there as soon as possible. Pray for me, Uncle."

"I will. Go with God!"

"And you."

The line went dead and Luke stood up, stretching his arms over his head. The big house was very quiet. It was times like these that he felt the house was haunted. Not that he could hear things, but that he could not hear things. He looked up at the portrait of his mother and father hanging above his desk. His mother smiled at him. She had truly been very beautiful. And she should not be dead! No one had released her soul. Even if she fell from the bell tower and broke her neck, she should still be alive, waiting for the Knight of Death. And they did not know for sure if she had broken her neck. All they knew was that someone on a horse had come and taken her away. It was all screwy.

If John Paul had come from wherever he was and taken his mother away, she was, theoretically, still alive. For that matter, John Paul was still alive. Michael had told him that John Paul had come to Merry and him when they were freezing in the mountain palace after the yellow Ifrit had abandoned them there to die. The boy had said that a Knight on white horse had come and pushed them out a trap door into a lake of mercury. Merry Ramsay had confirmed this story, but Merry had thought it was Luke Matthew. John Paul looked almost exactly like Luke Matthew. But the archives he had been studying indicated that this white Knight had appeared in many visions to many of the Council members even when John Paul had been very much alive and very young. And had, in fact, appeared with John Paul and had been seen with the boy. Either this white Knight was not John Paul at all, or John Paul had not been human at all. And if Michael Ian was a reincarnation of John Paul, then this white Knight was definitely not John Paul and they knew he was not Luke Matthew. Luke Matthew was very much alive and well and living in Lothian, Scotland. And furthermore, Luke Matthew had denied ever entering the snowy castle in the Himalayas in the flesh or otherwise.

The magick protecting the palace had been too strong. Luke rubbed his temples wearily. It was too much. If he kept this up, he was going to collapse like de Lyons.

Flicking off the computer, he made his way downstairs to the kitchen. He needed a snack. He'd forgotten to eat supper. He'd been asleep again for several days prior to waking up on a tear to learn what was going on.

The refrigerator was full of leftovers. The new cook had no doubt gone to bed very angry. There were all sorts of goodies in the shelves and no one had been there to eat except Planxty and Stephano. He pulled out a bowl of some sort of soup and turned around.

"Great Scot!" He almost dropped the bowl on the floor. "Joel! What are you doing here?"

The young man stood in front of him, watching him blandly from dark brown eyes.

"I was hungry," the boy told him.

"So you came all the way over here for a midnight snack?" Luke frowned at him.

The enigmatic boy lived with Luke Matthew and Merry across the meadow and through the woods at the old McShan place. They had brought him back from America, much to everyone's surprise.

"You have better leftovers." Joel smiled at him. "What is that?"

"Soup."

Luke took the bowl to the microwave and slipped it inside. "There seems to be enough for two."

Joel sat down at the table and watched him as he took down two smaller bowls and rummaged for a couple of spoons.

"You know that Luke is going to kill you if he finds you sneaking out at night," Luke admonished him. "You shouldn't just go wandering about like that. Especially at night."

"It's all right. They are asleep."

Luke sighed. The boy was weird. He didn't understand why Luke had brought him here. And he had caught him skulking about everywhere. Well, maybe skulking was not really the right word. Joel just popped up everywhere when least expected. He did not seem harmful or anything, just scary.

"Who called?" Joel asked him as he set the bowl of soup in front of him.

Luke was aggravated by the question. His first impulse was to say 'none of your business, you little snoop', but instead, he said "Wrong number."

"You certainly talked a long time to a wrong number." Joel stirred the soup.

"And you certainly are nosy." Luke scowled at him.

Joel sipped the soup. "Not nosy, just curious."

Luke nodded. Luke Matthew had told him that the boy did not talk much, but he never was at a loss for words whenever he met up with him.

"I like that... whatever it is you wear," Joel told him and put down his spoon. It was quite obvious that he was not hungry.

"Me kilt?" Luke narrowed his eyes at the boy. "Would you like to try one? Are you Scottish, perhaps?"

"I might be. I'm an orphan. How would I know?"

"You look Italian or Greek, perhaps. No, you look like the Gypsies we saw in Budapest."

"Really? Gypsies? What are Gypsies?"

"I really don't know. Just Gypsies. That's what they call them."

"Who?"

"The Gypsies!"

"I mean, who calls them that?"

"Everybody."

"How do you know when you see a Gypsy?"

"You don't." Luke almost laughed at the absurdity of the question.

"Then how could everybody call them that if they don't know when they're looking at one?"

"Look. It's just one of those things."

Luke got up and picked up his bowl. They would have to start locking the doors. If he couldn't get in, then maybe he would stay home at night. "Come on up to my room and I'll see if you fit in one of my kilts. You know where my room is. You were just eavesdropping on me earlier."

"Right. Well you were talking loud enough, but really?" Joel got up. His dark eyes danced with amusement.

"Sure and if Luke Matthew kills you, we'll have something nice to bury you in."

"He's killed a lot of people, hasn't he?" Joel asked as he followed him toward the stairs.

Luke was glad the boy was behind him so he could not see the look on his face.

"Why do you ask that, Joel?" he asked as they climbed the stairs.

"I don't know. He just seems like a killer to me."

"You think Luke Matthew is a murderer?" Luke was astounded.

"Not a murderer. I just think he's killed a lot of people."

"Why would you think that?"

"Kind of like Gypsies. You just know." Joel ran one hand along the railing.

"And what about me? Have I killed a lot of people?" Luke asked him.

"Not as many as Uncle Luke," Joel told him. "And he hasn't killed nearly as many as your father."

The ease with which the boy spoke of this unlikely subject, made Luke's hair stand on end. They made it to the top floor and Luke held the door for him. The boy stepped into the rather austere room and looked about. His eyes fell on the portrait of Mark Andrew and Meredith.

"They made a nice couple," he commented and stepped closer to the picture. "You look more like your father, of course."

"Of course." Luke set the soup on his desk and went to the closet. "Which do you like, red or blue?"

"Blue."

Luke yanked one of the blue kilts from the hanger and tossed it on the bed. It had been one of Galen's. Galen had asked him to keep it for him, but Galen had outgrown it.

Joel picked up the tartan and held it up in the light.

"Nice." He draped the sash over his shoulder.

"Just take it home with you and try it out. You can ask Luke Matthew for help with it, if you need to."

"When is she coming home?" Joel asked him as he gathered up the kilt and the accessories that had spilled from a plastic bag attached to the hangar.

"Who?" Luke frowned at him.

"Your mother. When is she coming home?" Joel raised up and looked at him innocently.

"She's dead," Luke told him flatly.

"How do you know?"

"Look, Joel. It's really late. You'd best get home now." Luke went to open the door for him.

Joel took the bundle with him and disappeared down the stairs. He waited a bit and then hurried down the stairs to make sure that the boy had left the house. The two wolfhounds lay on the hearth when he passed the library.

"Damn it, Astro!" he stopped to admonish the big dogs. "Scooby! Why didn't you let me know we had company?"

Astro sat up and whined. Scooby climbed stiffly from the stones and then sat back on his haunches and let loose a blood-chilling howl.

"Oll roighty then!" Luke backed away and hurried back up stairs as if the devil, himself, were chasing him.

## Book 1 of the PSI Consulting Series is a Hot Paranormal Romance

Tiara has lost her memory and wakes all alone to strange psychic powers and bloody visions. As she seeks to find herself, she is taunted by a phantom seducer in her mind. It would seem that he is leading her on a merry adventure to find her identity, but is he the lover whose touch she craves or a madman intent on destroying her mind? He sends her pristine white roses, but their purity is tainted with the dripping of bright red blood upon their petals.

## Sample Chapter from Painting the Roses Red

Tiara blinked and the world shifted, blurred, and became a nightmare of blood. She let the knife fall from fingers numb with shock. It made a sickening splat in the pool of blood at her feet. The hysteria of the moment built in her chest as she watched a single drop of blood slide from her hand onto the one clean spot that had been left on the knife's handle. The handle of the long butcher knife had been clean where her hand had gripped it. Her hand was covered in blood and the pristine steel of the blade had also been dripping with it, but the handle of the knife held only fingerprints.

Her mind shuddered. That clean place on the handle of the knife was where her own hand had clutched it so tightly that the rest of the dribbling blood on her hands and the blade hadn't penetrated. She didn't want to look up, so she watched the knife at her feet. There was more blood all over the room, but she stared at her feet trying to get a grip on herself.

With a shudder, she clamped down on her panic. There was no escape from the blood by looking at her feet. Her sneakers had been a pretty white with blue stripes, and she reasoned that she wouldn't be wearing them to the gym anymore. With a start, she realized that she had remembered something but when her mind reached for the memory of working out at a gym, it seemed to stumble like a stalling car engine. She reached for the memory, grasping desperately for it as she realized that it was the only one she had of anything before the blood. It slipped away, laughing at her as if she was falling down a great hole in the earth. The memory laughed as she tumbled by it on the way down into hell. She shook off the image before it pulled her into an insane spiral.

Some part of her knew that it wasn't her blood, but as she searched her mind for an explanation she felt as if she was reaching up from the bottom of that hole. The top and reality seemed so very far away. The blood wasn't her own. She hadn't hurt anyone. She knew these things as if they were the core of her.

The more she reached for the past, the more she vividly knew nothing before the blood. There was an eerie calm in her mind at that emptiness, and even as she rebelled and mentally tried to climb out, her eyes slid to the rest of the room. She didn't have time to deal with the holes in her mind if she was going to survive the crisis in front of her.

The holes in her mind were less real than the room she stood in and time seemed to be ticking away in her panic. It was time that she couldn't afford to waste. Somehow her moments of mental searching left her feeling that she was late. Late for what she didn't know, but somehow she needed to be running toward something, and the room in front of her was the only tangible thing she had to deal with.

It was a very cheap hotel room. In the middle of one wall was a large bed, its lime green bedspread, like the worn carpet, darkened with the blood. One scarred nightstand held a phone that she briefly considered picking up to call the authorities. At the thought of having to explain anything in this room with or without the memories behind the wall in her mind, she shifted her attention elsewhere.

The dresser matched the nightstand in that it was scarred, and it matched the bed and carpet in that it was drenched in blood. Its drawers were thrown open and empty. Even the television hadn't been spared the splattering of blood, nor the walls, nor the artwork on the walls, such as it was. The blood splayed across the walls in arcs of droplets that drooled down the wallpaper connecting daisies like childish dots.

She shut her eyes, trying to shut the blood-stained room out long enough to regain control of herself. She was trying to hold onto the tilting world but reality was slippery. It was just so hard to believe she stood here in this nightmare. She begged her mind to concentrate. She had to stay here in the present and deal with this situation before time ran out and the situation dealt with her. She couldn't explain anything in this room and if anyone found her here, she would have to come up with answers her mind just wouldn't deliver.

She wanted to sit in a corner and cry. Any sane person would, she justified to herself. Reality shifted as she grabbed hold of her emotions and rebuilt her spine out of sheer will. She would not quiver in a corner – not for anything.

She brought a hand up to her forehead to brush the hair out of her eyes before she remembered that her hand was sticky with drying blood. She opened her eyes to stare at that bloody hand and tried to focus on the fact that it was somehow her own hand. A little niggling of paranoia shouted at the edge of her mind that she was a killer. She had killed someone and splattered their blood all over this room in a fit of raging insanity.

Perhaps she had another personality that had committed this heinous act. Maybe that was the pit in her mind. Maybe there was another personality in that portion of her mind that had done something unspeakable and left this side of her to deal with it. The steel control she clamped on her emotions firmed into a cold detachment, analytically attempting to examine herself.

Or maybe she had done this to herself. Maybe she was dead and standing here as a ghost of herself. Maybe someone had killed her and her body was somewhere in this room. And perhaps she would be forced to haunt this room until someone found her killer. Maybe the room was saturated in her blood, and she was dead at her own hand or someone else's.

But then what was she to have earned such a gruesome death in this tawdry hotel room. She wanted it to be a dream and hoped that she would wake up in that cold sweat that bad dreams leave on your body. She wouldn't even mind the interrupted sleep this time if she could just wake up.

She stood facing the mirror over the dresser, but she'd avoided looking in that mirror most of all. She hadn't wanted to look in that mirror and see a ghost of herself staring back, or worse nothing staring at her at all. She didn't want to look in that mirror and see a killer in her own eyes.

A shudder rippled through her shoulders. She was not a killer, she told herself, gritting her teeth. That eerie calm reasserted itself. And neither was she asleep. She clenched her hand into a fist and brushed away the terror. Her shoulders squared up, her chin lifted, and she took a deep breath of coppery blood and stuffy hotel room. She would not look into the mirror until she had regained her inner strength.

She shut out all her senses and touched the core of herself. She may not have remembered who or what she was at that moment, but she knew her own soul and it would stand and walk through this pit. The room seemed to quiver with her energy.

She locked her fears and emotions into a cage in her heart and looked up into the mirror. The familiarity of her angular face, her crystalline blue eyes, her stubborn jaw that refused to quiver and her full lips that refused to shake all calmed her heart. These were not a killer's eyes, though the strength in them could stare a killer down or see into someone's soul. Another deep breath of relief calmed her further.

She looked into her own eyes and sunk into the depths of her own personality as if she'd done it a hundred times and she had. It was as natural as breathing to know the soul behind the eyes. She recognized her talents as easily as she'd recognized her own face. It was a comfort to know some detail of her life. She was gifted and she saw things. She was a force to be reckoned with no matter the situation. She was strong and generous. And she was sane, she told herself sternly.

For a life-saving moment, the blood disappeared and she stood and gazed just at herself. She was, at that moment, as she had always been. Her heart opened to her inner self, secure in the fact that she was not a killer. She was not dead. She was not dreaming. And while it was not her blood, it was someone's blood and she could feel them call to her. She could also feel a surge of urgency emanating from the blood.

She couldn't remain here. Her eyes scanned her blood-covered body. She wasn't stupid enough to leave this motel room looking this way either. Nor was she stupid enough to call the police. The blood was human, but she had no proof that the person or people the blood came from weren't dead by her hands.

Yes, her mind assured her, that felt right. She needed to get cleaned up and get out of here. She needed to go somewhere. She didn't know where but there was somewhere she needed to go. And when it came down to it, that's all she really had left. That wall blocking off the memories in her mind left her with only her gut instincts and what felt right. No one had found her so far. There were no sirens of authorities coming to get her yet, but there might be. She could think while she moved.

Her mind switched into problem-solving mode. There was no way she could clean this room, but she could get herself cleaned up. It was a typical cheap motel room under all the blood, and she could see the doorway to the little bathroom. She fought down squeamishness as her shoes squished across the wet carpet. She slipped her shoes off outside the bathroom, and piled the rest of her bloody clothes on the other side of the doorway near the sink.

She'd start with a shower. She wasn't sure what she would wear but she knew that she had to start with a clean body. She showered, using two of the three little bars of paper-wrapped soap. Rinsing her long brown hair without shampoo and conditioner was a pain, but at least its dark color would hide what she couldn't rinse out.

Going through the motions of such a simple thing as a shower reminded her of little things, and she focused on them only enough to glean what she could from them. Her long legs were limber and muscled because she liked to run, but she only liked to run because she loved to eat fast food and running helped her keep all that fat from going straight to her hips.

She didn't have the stick-like figure of today's models, but Humphrey Bogart would have found her full breasts and hips hot and, seeing as she went for the black and white movies type over the Tom Cruise type, that suited her just fine. Her heart quivered a bit at the thought of someone special in her life. Did she miss someone or was she just lonely? There was an empty place in her heart. It was harder to shut that out of her mind, but she forced herself to keep moving.

She hummed big band and blues, country and rock and roll while she showered. When she tried to remember a particular song that she liked, she hit that wall, but when she let herself not think about it, she was eclectic in what she knew. She studied herself casually, as if it was something she did often. It was natural to probe and study people. She worked with people. She helped them cope with things. If she could help others cope with things, she could certainly help herself through this.

She dried herself with one of the puny towels and reached for a second to dry her hair. The door to the bathroom swung a little as she tugged the little towel off the rack and she was rocked with a frantic feeling of relief at the backpack that hung on the back of the door. Her fingers shook as she wrapped the towel around her hair before grabbing the backpack and searching it, desperate for information. The calm that she demanded of herself was shallow, but it would hold.

Her fingers dug for a wallet, a driver's license, a credit card, something that would tell her who she was and what she was doing there. She found a clean set of clothes, including underwear, black socks, black jeans, a plain black t-shirt, a thin navy sweater, black sneakers, and a light jeans jacket. There were also the basic necessities like a toothbrush, toothpaste, shampoo, conditioner, a hair brush, deodorant, and such. There was even a set of keys that gave her a little hope, but no wallet or anything that could remotely identify her.

She clamped down on the panic that rose when she realized she didn't know her own name. There had been enough panic today. There would be no more. There would be no more panic and no more shaking, she told herself sternly.

Thinking that maybe her wallet was in a car parked just outside the hotel room, she hurriedly dried off. She forced herself to calmly brush her teeth and hair and get herself dressed presentably before she tried to rush to whatever car might be outside, and whatever answers might lay in that car.

She cleaned the hair out of the drain in the bathtub, wrapped her bloodied clothes and shoes in a plastic laundry bag, and tucked the last bar of soap into her backpack with the clothes. If she'd really done something wrong, there would be enough forensic evidence here to hang her if they looked closely enough, but she didn't need to make it easy. She wiped down surfaces in the bathroom with a washcloth and returned to the main room to get the knife.

She froze. Either she hadn't seen them before or they hadn't been there. She felt reality shudder in her mind again. She closed her eyes and took another breath. The theme from Phantom of the Opera rose in the back of her mind. Blood still drenched the room but on the dresser stood a large vase filled with a dozen huge white roses.

Her heart yearned to touch the soft petals but crossing the room would walk her back through the blood on the floor. She could smell them from where she stood and felt calmed. Some part of her mind registered the sinister nature of white roses dripping with the red blood, but her heart just wanted to touch them, hold them, and be held by their scent and softness.

It wasn't rational to go to the roses. She was running out of time. She needed to get to whatever vehicle matched the keys in her backpack. She needed to find out who she was in a safe place away from here. She heard a voice whisper in her mind, "I love you." Irrationally, she ripped the bedspread and sheets from the bed to cover the floor from the bathroom to the dresser. It wasn't much help since the bedspread had been drenched too, but at least the blood wouldn't be splashing at her feet. In the end, she just didn't care. She took the two small steps to the dresser as carefully as she could and took a single rose.

She glanced up into the mirror over the dresser and the moment froze itself into her mind. The half of the rose that faced the mirror was red with fresh blood. Her eyes were caught by those in the mask over her shoulder. Those eyes smiled at her and her heart melted. His eyes held hers as he lowered his lips to the back of her neck and whispered a kiss that had her leaning back into the man who wasn't there.

The scent of blood and roses snapped her eyes back open and he was gone. For a moment her heart had been complete, but then he was gone again. Her eyes hardened as she looked at herself in the mirror. Wasn't that just typical of a man and the sappy sentiment of true love?

## Book 2 of the PSI Consulting Series is a Light-Hearted Mystery

Do You Feel Lucky?

Rianna was having the luckiest day of her life. Oh, it started out as good luck. She opened a portal. She got a great guy. She made the earth move and the heavens open with rain. It was a pretty good day, but just as she gets her miracle guy home, she's got trouble.

Dead Body Trouble!

Who'd want to put a dead body on her couch?

And why'd they have to pick today?

## Book 3 of the PSI Consulting Series is a Dramatic Thriller

The drums woke Tiara into the world of blood again. This time she has the entire crew of PSI Consulting behind her. But is PSI Consulting ready to track down their first psychic killer?

Jordan's lost his touch. Damian and Rianna are fighting. Marcus hasn't popped the question. They're not a team. They'd better get it together before Tiara's nightmares bleed over into the real world.

## Book 4 of the PSI Consulting Series is Pure PSI-Fi

Damian seemed to walk straight out of a fairytale, but he didn't come from Rianna's imagination. No, Damian came from a world parallel to our own where intrigue and corruption threaten to tear apart all that Damian has ever known and loved.

## Preview Chapter from Love's First Kiss, Book 5 and the Next PSI Consulting Adventure

Chapter 2

"I never thought I'd see the day when you actually walked down the aisle, my friend," Jordan clapped Marcus on the shoulder affectionately.

Damian gave a silent sigh from the back of the limousine. It was the fourth or fifth time that Jordan had said the same words this evening, but Marcus wasn't going to begrudge his old friend's slurring taunts. It was Marcus's bachelor party and Jordan had gone all out, so Marcus was inclined to let his best friend's jibes slide. In any case, Marcus was just this side of slurring drunk himself.

The limousine was stocked with a full bar. The first clubs they went to all had specialty drinks. At this point they'd settled down into beer and shooters. It all added up to a lot of alcohol and Damian was having to work hard to metabolize it quickly enough to keep his head from spinning off his neck. On his native world, he'd had to imbibe generously at the parties and he'd learned how to use quiet moments to keep up with even the heaviest drinkers.

"He's going to be stumbling down the aisle if we keep this up." Zack let his head drop back on a cushion of the limo seat like a dog with floppy ears.

"Non-sense," Jordan proclaimed, poking a finger dramatically through the open sunroof. "We still have three more strip clubs to hit before we call it a night, right Marcus?"

"You've already outdone the five clubs I took you to," Marcus grumbled, referring to the bachelor party he'd thrown for Jordan a few months back. Damian had heard the horror stories from Greg. At least Marcus had spread the clubs over a week.

"Double or nothing, my friend," Jordan declared, his eyes wicked with the challenge. "Nothing less will do for my best friend! Seven down and three to go!"

"I'm not going to make it," Zack protested with a sloppy grin.

"You can't leave yet," Jordan wheedled. "You're the last one left!"

"I'm still here," Damian groaned out softly.

Greg and Pete had bailed three clubs ago. Damian thought they'd had the right idea, but a prince did not go home until the party was over. It was something that coming of age on the Procession had ingrained too deeply in Damian. The Procession on his native world was a travelling campaign trail for the princes and it brought festivals and holidays to every town it visited. Always an overachiever, Damian wasn't about to lower his standards just because he was on another plane of existence.

"We thought you'd passed out already, old man," Jordan called out as if Damian were blocks away instead of mere feet. Damian wasn't physically older than Jordan or Marcus, but Jordan considered the term "old man" a term of respect for Damian's knowledge and power. He had a reputation to uphold.

"I'm conserving my strength," Damian cracked one eye open to glare at them. "These rituals of yours are for testing one's manhood and I refuse to let the two of you best me at them. I'll quit when you quit and not a moment before then."

Zack chuckled at Damian, brushing a sandy hank of hair out of his eyes. "I feel like I'm rushing a fraternity."

"Nah," Jordan joked. "You're already a full-fledged member of PSI Consulting."

"I'd hate to see the initiation now," Marcus muttered. Their little company had gone from being minor psychics to throwing fireballs in the living room. For two months they'd all been practicing "magic" and Marcus had been practicing ducking.

"Hmm," Jordan pretended to muse seriously on the idea. "Rush week would include tests on calling lightning, mind reading, and dimension hopping. Weak of spirit need not apply."

"It's worse than the summer you talked me into playing that game with twenty-sided dice," Marcus groaned. A year ago the world had been a normal place for Marcus. Sure, he and Jordan had been chasing psychic cheaters in the casinos and putting the finishing touches on an underground home worthy of masked crime fighters, but Damian knew that Marcus had never imagined that it would turn into this. Damian wondered how much longer Marcus's loyalty to Jordan would override his distaste for magic. Probably forever, Damian admitted to himself.

"Isn't a fraternity for men only?" Damian protested.

"Yeah," Zack agreed. "Rianna would chew us all out if we started calling PSI Consulting a frat."

"Just one more club," Jordan slipped an arm around Zack's shoulders and squeezed. "You don't really want to miss Cheaters, do you?"

"Ah, let the boy go, Jordan," Damian drawled lazily in a voice muffled by his arm over his face.

"I'm not a boy," Zack responded predictably.

Marcus hid a smile and shook his head at Damian. Damian noticed. His arm covered his face and eyes, but Damian noticed Marcus shake his head. They had a deal for the night. No magic. But it didn't take magic for Damian to manipulate the inebriated Zack or see Marcus shake his head.

"I'll do Cheaters but that's the end for me. After Cheaters, you guys can drop me off at the Lair on your way to whatever you're hitting next."

If this had been a dangerous situation, Jordan would have been the first to try to send their youngest team member home. He was protective of the kid, though he technically wasn't a kid. They'd almost lost him in the last fight. Damian had been working hard with them so that they wouldn't be caught off guard like that again.

"What are the girls doing tonight?" Damian asked, wondering if he should have tried the female version of this ritual instead.

"Audrey took Tiara and Rianna to a spa for the full treatment," Marcus answered. "Their plan was to hit the spa today and end up with a slumber party back at Rianna's old apartment."

"Too tame," Jordan complained, but his eyes darkened. It wasn't often that Jordan left his new wife's side, but Audrey was watching over them.

Damian wondered how much of Jordan's purposeful immersion into this inebriated ritual was Jordan forcing himself to trust Audrey with his wife. Before Audrey had come to Vegas, Jordan and Marcus had struggled to contain Tiara's madness. Damian had at least managed to put a name to what was happening to her, but even his magic couldn't teach her to control it. Only Audrey could manage to hold Tiara in on her own.

"No contacting them!" Marcus grumped. "I have one night of normal. No telepathic check-ins, remember?"

"They're fine," Damian assured Jordan.

"You either!" Marcus insisted.

"I can feel them without telepathy and they seem happy," Damian asserted. "I'm not adept at ignoring my magic. It's just not in my nature."

"I can shut it off for you," Marcus warned. He wanted one night. Just one night without all the fireballs, lightning and mental whispering of the PSI Consulting crew. Marcus could and did shut them down when it got too loud or rowdy. It was Marcus's one true psychic talent.

Damian had been toying with the idea that he could shut Marcus's powers down with sheer brute strength. Tiara had done it once, but no one talked about that. Marcus needed to know that he could enforce reality. So Damian left Marcus his illusions. He just wished that Marcus would consent to train those powers with them.

"We got it," Jordan said, raising his hands in submission. "No magic until after the wedding."

"Which is fourteen hours from now," Damian said, checking his watch.

The limousine pulled up to the curb in front of Cheaters. The whole building was painted black with red scrawls that suggested the lewd activities inside without disobeying city ordinances that prohibited blatant sexual displays in public. A great set of neon signs flashed full lips that pulsed red and the proud purple name that just said "Cheaters." The parking lot couldn't have held the long limousine, much less parked it, so the driver gave them a pager number to use when they wanted him to return. The four unlikely friends staggered, glided, and caroused their way into the front door of the noisy strip club.

They didn't have this type of establishment on the Weaver's world. Sexual activities were performed behind closed doors. Damian felt out of his element but he was too well-trained to show it.

Cheaters thrummed with music that threatened to knock the four men back out the door. Damian laid a hand on Marcus's shoulder and winked as he slid past him to find a table near the action. Damian glided so sensuously into the room that even the jaded strippers took note of his entrance. Marcus lumbered behind Damian, looking more like the bodyguard than the guest of honor. The four of them settled into a table near the center stage.

Jordan rounded with a booming voice to point at Marcus. "It's his last night of freedom ladies, and I'm buying, so show him a good time." Jordan slipped the waitress a wad of bills to start a tab, and waved more cash at the half-naked women on the stage. "I'll give a hundred bucks to the first woman to make him as red as I just did." Then Jordan laughed and Marcus groaned.

It was exactly what Jordan had done in each of the strip joints they'd visited but Marcus still wasn't drunk enough to keep back the flush of embarrassment at being the center of attention. Zack laughed, fishing his ID out of his pocket as the waitress got the drink orders. Damian leaned back on two legs of his chair and grinned the lazy smile of a jungle cat.

Unlike the other clubs, long legs in a short skirt sauntered from the bar to where Marcus had just sat down. It was obvious that she only had eyes for Marcus with only the barest glance at the hundred dollar bill in Jordan's hand. Marcus tensed and twisted on his chair to face her. Damian knew that Marcus wasn't interested in cheating on Rianna. Long legs weren't going to tempt Marcus into blushing much less cheating.

"This ought to be good," Zack whispered into Damian's ear, pulling his attention away from the long-legged woman.

Marcus and Rianna were mated, and while that didn't mean as much on this world as it did on the Weaver's world, they were devoted to one another without the ceremony that would be performed tomorrow. Damian didn't resent the union, even though he and Rianna had come close to having a fling of their own. Damian envied the bond. It was a bond he yearned for and was seriously worried that he would never find.

"My money's on Marcus," Zack said, elbowing Damian.

"I wouldn't bet against him," Damian agreed, sending a playful jab back at Zack.

The woman from the bar paused beside Marcus until she was sure she had his attention. She leaned down and Marcus found himself eye to eye with some impressive cleavage. Damian wasn't watching closely. He just didn't care. The woman leaned in, whispered something in Marcus's ear, nuzzled his neck and plucked the hundred dollar bill from Jordan's hand as she strode back to the bar without a backward glance. Damian never even saw her face.

"Score one for the electrified hot chick," Zack declared, jostling Damian. Damian and Zack goggled playfully at each other, as much to rib Marcus as true surprise.

Marcus turned four shades of red. The crowd that was normally the lurking, late night sulkers roared with approval as she sauntered back to the bar tucking that hundred dollar bill into that ample cleavage. If there hadn't been mostly naked women writhing on the stages, the scene could have come straight out of a late night at a festival on Damian's old world. The nostalgia had him thinking of that world in a way he hadn't for months.

"See?" Jordan crowed with laughter. "I told you that you didn't want to miss Cheaters!"

Marcus glared at Jordan, grinding his teeth to keep from laughing with them as the heat rose all the way up to the dark roots of his buzz cut hair. The waitress delivered their four bottles of beer with chasers and the laughter was still burbling. Marcus downed his chaser first. Then he threw back Jordan and Zack's chasers too. Damian handed him the last chaser, but he took a swig from his own beer instead. Marcus was watching Jordan's laughter suspiciously.

"You know her," Marcus accused as the club settled back toward its normal seedy nature. Marcus knew Jordan so well that he knew a setup when he saw one. Damian and Zack both turned to Jordan expectantly.

"Okay, yeah, by proxy," Jordan admitted, taking a long pull of beer to stall having to tell the rest. When Marcus continued to glare, Jordan relented. "She's the newest manager of the club. Her name's Cyn. I knew her predecessor, Maggie. The gal I knew has moved on to another job, but when I called, Cyn said she'd honor an old favor for Maggie. I warned her we'd be coming and she said she'd keep an eye out for us. I didn't know she'd do that though. What did she say?"

Marcus gave Jordan a mean smile as his only response. The whole table laughed as Jordan shot glances back and forth between Marcus and the bar where Cyn was gloating. Damian and Zack ducked their heads and snickered with each other earning a snarl from Jordan. Damian didn't usually goggle or snicker but his alcohol levels were high enough that he played along with the mood and ignored the morose tension that was building in him.

"That's cold man," Jordan mocked Marcus.

"Actually, not the way she said it," Marcus shot back.

Marcus broke into a good-natured smile behind his beer. Damian noticed and turned away to keep his own expression from giving it away. Jordan turned his attention to the stage with a lazy shrug. There was a relaxed set to Jordan's shoulders that Damian rarely got to see.

The stripper on their side of the stage was ruffling Zack's hair and trying casually to get closer to what she considered the men with the money. Jordan handed a roll of small bills to Zack. The stripper's eyes followed the money and she gave Zack her full attention. The exchange of goods for sexual stimulation was unheard of in the Weaver's world. Scanning the strippers' surface minds casually, Damian understood why.

Damian turned back to the table to find Marcus's eyes on him. Marcus was brooding. Kidding aside, Marcus didn't like Damian. Marcus didn't understand how Rianna had turned away from Damian's charms and into Marcus's arms. Even when Damian had showed Marcus the power of mating bonds, Marcus was unconvinced that Damian would not spirit Rianna away at the first opportunity.

Damian turned to smile at a stripper that was on another stage, trying to diffuse Marcus's brooding. The stages were set up so that three prongs of the stage reached out like fingers into the scattered chairs and tables. Each of the casual tables was next to a stage with a row of semi-private booths along the walls and a bar set against the back wall. They sat at a table at the end of the middle stage. The stripper Damian was eyeing rubbed herself against a pole on the right stage. It amazed him that her eyes could be so glazed with boredom while her body writhed in a mockery of sensual pleasure. If Damian had taken a woman like that to bed, he'd have done it merely for the challenge of knocking the glaze off those dead eyes.

Damian could feel Marcus's eyes on him. Damian didn't normally show an interest in the women of this world. For one, there wasn't time with all the training they'd been doing. For another, the women here didn't understand flings like Damian did. It would be hurtful to them when he casually moved on.

"Interested?" Marcus prodded Damian bluntly, tipping his beer in the direction of the stripper on the right stage.

"Maybe for a night or two," Damian smiled knowingly.

"She's not it?" Marcus asked.

"No," Damian sniffed a brief chuckle.

Damian eyed Marcus for a brief moment then took another drink of his beer and relaxed into the buzz. "I've told all of you my darkest secret." Damian considered how to phrase his next statement and chose to allow Marcus to see the bitterness in his eyes. "My mate didn't exist, they told me."

Marcus snorted a bit of disbelief and Damian internally rolled his eyes at the man's obtuseness.

"I've been looking in some of your books lately for a way to explain the magic of my world and I have found your science very revealing," Damian warmed to the subject. "On this world, it would be called natural selection. Genetically, certain people are more prone to mate successfully. When you find a person who is a genetically complimentary person, you are compelled instinctually to bond with that person.

"I believe it validates your feelings with scientific facts. You and Rianna are well matched genetically for procreation. This doesn't sadden your love for one another, but rather validates it as more than mere whim."

"But not for you," Marcus's brow creased.

"No," Damian admitted. Damian rolled his bottle between his palms. "My reading was flawed."

A wealth of pain was written in the single word flawed. Damian had been considered flawed on his old world. He'd gone from being a Prince to being branded as a traitor. Audrey had removed the magical tags on Damian but she couldn't heal the brand on his heart.

"I was young and inexperienced in detecting lies," Damian shrugged. "You saw Chianti's reading when I took you back into my memories. She went through the motions, but the magic didn't engage or reach out. I was suspicious at first, but after another dozen readings, I realized that I was such a misfit in my own world that nature itself didn't bother to set a mate for me. In the world of science here, I would be considered a bad candidate for marriage. Oprah would say that I have commitment issues."

In that memory sphere, Marcus had seen into Damian's world and his life on the Weaver's world. Damian had many children. He just didn't have a mate. Marcus knew these things but he wouldn't let it sink in.

Marcus and Damian let the bawdy music fill the silence between them for three or four sips of beer. Damian searched for a way to make it more clear. Marcus had seen the woman's torture and death first-hand in a memory sphere. He should understand, but he didn't.

Damian didn't get drunk often and they weren't exactly drinking buddies. Damian was too busy teaching and too driven to take much time off. Damian knew that alcohol blurred his magic, put fuzzy edges on it so that he couldn't grasp the precision necessary for some of the more complicated spells.

Marcus wasn't a happy drunk. He took after his father. Damian had peeked. He shouldn't have, but he'd glanced into Marcus's memory of his father when Greg had outed Jordan and Marcus's deep dark secrets. Marcus's father had been a mean, abusive drunk. Marcus struggled to keep his drunkenness just mean.

"Others of my old world," Damian glanced over Marcus's shoulder as if he could see his old world there, "they know something of their beloved. When they are ready to settle down, they simply seek out their other half. Eyes meet, the bond is set at that moment and sealed with what equates to a kiss on this world."

Damian's bitter laugh said that he didn't believe he would find his mate here or anywhere. Marcus had believed that Damian hadn't pursued Rianna because Damian hadn't felt the bond between them, but that wasn't the truth. The only reason that Damian hadn't played the field with Rianna was an honor that was rare in any world. Some part of Marcus knew that, but Marcus was drunk enough to forget.

"Well then, how do you know that the stripper over there isn't her?" Marcus's words were wrapped in a nasty growl. They both knew that Marcus wasn't asking about the stripper, but rather how Damian knew that Rianna wasn't his mate. It wasn't the first time Marcus had asked the question. It probably wouldn't be the last.

Damian leaned forward, setting his elbows on his knees and gazing sincerely into Marcus's eyes so there could be no mistaking his sincerity. "When mates meet, their eyes lock onto one another and a bond is formed. That bond is unmistakable and has physical feelings to it that are something that a man and woman respond to instinctually. That bond completely wipes the desire for others, even casually, from the mates' minds. That pain begins to build. The pain escalates until the bond is consummated."

"You what, you meet a woman and have to have sex with her as soon as you can?" Marcus persisted.

"Consummating is both simple and complicated. A kiss, a brush of the hand, a common submission to Fate within each other's eyes, and ultimately, yes, sex," Damian leaned back and drank, trying to wash away the bitterness that talking of his old world left on him. "I showed you the one woman I knew who tried to deny the bond. She refused to consummate."

Marcus blew a breath out over the rim of his beer bottle making it hoot eerily. Marcus set his beer down nervously. Seeing it in some dream or memory didn't make it true to him. He'd convinced himself that Damian had exaggerated.

Damian paused, at a loss for words. "Imagine how you would feel if you were forced to walk away from Rianna," Damian challenged Marcus.

Marcus huffed defiantly. Jordan and Zack were both pretending not to be listening, but Damian knew better. Damian grasped at a memory from Jordan's mind to explain more explicitly.

"Imagine that the worlds parted irreparably and she was on the other side of a chasm too large to cross," Damian's hypnotic voice washed the feeling over Marcus. "Now imagine that she is in danger and you cannot save her. Harry stands beside her with a knife to her throat..."

Marcus growled and pushed back from Damian and his sick words. Marcus saw red. Damian wanted him to. Damian pushed. Perhaps he was picking up on Marcus's mean drunk. Generally Damian was a happy drunk, but Marcus's poking and prodding was pushing him too far. To Marcus, it wasn't comfortable and it wasn't real so he didn't have to think about it. Damian made him think about it for a moment more before tuning it down.

"That feeling you have right now is a form of pain," Damian explained with a casual flick of his hand, releasing Marcus from the hypnotic trance. "It isn't much right now, but it wears into you. Adrenaline is pumping so you don't feel the brunt of it, but over time the adrenaline recedes and all that is left is pain. It is an emotional pain that escalates into physical pain. Those are your instincts that produce chemical reactions in your body."

Marcus shook off the feeling with difficulty.

Damian looked up at Marcus and shook his head. "On my old world, this type of instinct is magnified. Walking away from a mate breaks your heart. That is a symbolic and mostly emotional reaction here, but on my old world the feeling is much more physical and irresistible."

It was easy for them to forget that Damian's normally easy-going manner hid a ruthless heart of steel forged in the harsh rules of his old world. Damian normally smiled and bantered, his good humor unflappable. Damian did not brood. Marcus was the brooder.

"I only tell you these things so that you may understand the seriousness of the bonds from my old world," Damian hooked one elbow lazily over the back of his chair, smiling again as if he hadn't just relived the worst nightmare of his life. "What you generally have the choice to ignore in this world is much more demanding in the Weaver's world. Scientifically, one could say that my old world, having honed magic and intuition, is more slaved to instinct than this world is."

Jordan caught Damian's eye and tried to sympathize. Jordan raised an eyebrow and Damian nodded. Damian had showed them the woman he had killed on his old world. They might all understand, but Damian had never forgiven himself for failing her.

"Rianna is yours as long as the two of you choose. This is a foreign thing for me. Perhaps I will get to choose my mate as you and Jordan have done. Perhaps in this new world I am free from the bonds of my old one. Maybe that is why they did not or could not find a mate for me at my matchmaking ceremony."

Damian knew that Marcus and Jordan had a few stories almost as morbid in their own shaded past. He could see the wheels turning in Marcus's mind. The brooding was broken slightly by the intrusion of the waitress who set down a new round of drinks. Marcus and Damian each took up a shot, clinked glasses and downed it together. Jordan tapped his shot on the table, looked Damian in the eyes and downed his own glass too. Once more Marcus had put off his distrust, but it would likely return in the fog of morning. Damian wondered if Marcus would ever trust him.

Damian glanced over to find Zack quickly turn back to ogling the stripper who cheerfully took his handful of money one bill at a time. They all treaded softly around the man they thought had the power to destroy them. Damian knew that he might have the power, but he didn't have the black heart. The Weavers stripped away his home, his social standing, his family and friends, but they hadn't taken his honor. He hadn't become an Assassin.

"In honor of our bachelor tonight, we have a special performance by none other than the golden lamb herself," the manager's voice announced over the sound system.

The world did not stop for these moments, Damian mused to himself trying to buck up out of the negative mindset he'd allowed to cloak him. The world continued around them as if nothing could change the inevitable normality of this world's humanity. For one moment Damian had the image of a cage of lambs sitting with a lion or two in their midst and yet continuing to gnaw on the grass of normality while the lions yawned. He shook it off. Omens were the last thing he needed now.

"Please welcome Gilda to the stage," the manager's silky voice continued with a dramatic flourish.

"I'll be right back. It's been so long since I've been inebriated that I fear the buzzing of this world's alcohol is interfering with my magic." Damian excused himself to the restroom as the newest stripper moved onto the stage.

"You okay old man?" Jordan stopped Damian with a serious look only slightly fuzzy from the huge amount of alcohol they'd all consumed by this point.

"Just a buzzing in my ears," Damian said, waving off Jordan's concern with a casual smile that he knew didn't reach his eyes. "Nothing a splash of cold water on the face won't fix."

Marcus deliberately watched the newest stripper as if doing so could turn back the conversation. Gilda was dressed as a nun in a full habit that had the audience booing. She had her hands piously folded in front of her and pretended distress at the booing crowd's lewd catcalls. Her feigned piety turned to annoyance and anger as she pulled a ruler from some hidden pocket and threatened those nearest to her. This brought laughter and spurred more crass catcalls as she shuffled up and down the right stage.

Now that Damian had left, Marcus tried harder to shrug off the mean drunk. The jealously wouldn't shake loose when the man was around. Marcus hoped that two weeks alone with Rianna would begin to shake it loose. She was marrying him, not the sex god. He shouldn't continue to hold it over Damian's head. Marcus focused on the entertainment. All this self-analysis didn't sit well with him.

When Gilda got back to the main stage, she threw her head back as if one of the catcalls had shocked her silly. The headpiece of the nun outfit fell off her head revealing a long mass of thick golden hair. Now that she'd lost the headdress, she shook her hair out, dropped the ruler and clutched her hair in a way that fluffed it. Her hands went from her hair to her face and down to the collar of the habit. The habit tore off in one large dump of fabric just before she started down the left side of the stage.

Marcus found himself caught up in her playful routine, letting it and the beer relax him again. Now she was a schoolmarm complete with thick glasses and a long, straight gray skirt. The thin ruffled white blouse was tight against her bulging breasts but demurely covered her as well as the habit had. Halfway down the left stage, she pretended to stumble on the skirt in such a way that it tore from her to reveal a very short schoolgirl's skirt that matched perfectly with the white blouse, even as it also exuded an entirely different image from the strict schoolmarm. She grinned and scrunched her nose at the men who were practically drooling at her now.

She scurried back up the left side to return to the puddled habit as if she were looking for lost homework. Marcus laughed with her as she now pretended that she'd lost something in the mass of folds of the nun costume. She bent over and wiggled her bottom, showing off modest white panties under the short plaid skirt to each side of the room as she rummaged around for the ruler or something she'd left there before. Marcus didn't think anyone cared about what she'd actually been looking for by the time she was done.

When she couldn't find what she was looking for in the nun's costume, she got down on hands and knees and began foraging behind the main curtain. All the eyes in the place were glued to that artfully wiggling bottom. Finally she turned around with what looked like a bouquet of balloons in her arms. She struggled clumsily to get on her feet and ended up kicking off her saddle shoes and tugging off the pristine white bobby socks around the balloons that remained clutched to her chest.

When she made her way down the middle stage for her finale, she was the shy schoolgirl, carrying the balloons like school books. Again she feigned that clumsy attitude and fell flat on her bottom, legs spread in front of her. As she fell, she must have done something that managed to pop all the balloons at once, because they burst their water all over the thin white shirt. From that point, she very practically removed all her wet clothes while she writhed down the center stage pretending to slip and slide on the water from the balloons. For all that she was pretending clumsiness, she was more alluring than all the sinuous movements of the other dancers.

By the time she'd slithered to their table, she was down to a g-string and lacy bra. Sitting casually in front of Marcus, she unhooked the bra and shyly handed the end of the strap to him. As if she was the shy virgin and he the star of the football team in their parent's basement, her big deep green eyes stared into his and the rest of the world seemed to drop away.

"It seems I've gotten all wet," she cooed at him, emerald eyes blinking innocently. "My bra is clinging to me like a second skin. Will you help me take it off?"

Marcus took the strap she handed to him between two fingers. Feigning innocent dismay, Gilda glided away from him, the bra peeling off with a sticky slurp. Two perfect mounds with beggingly attentive nipples jiggled out to obscure all else from Marcus's vision. For one breathless instant, Marcus felt himself harden, captivated despite his love of Rianna. The moment was over as soon as she turned her attention to Jordan. Marcus found himself in possession of a dripping lacy blue bra and shook his head a little to clear it. He closed his slack jaw and tried to shake the awe from his booze-addled brain.

"Um, I gotta--" Zack broke the moment as he turned a sickly green and rushed to the bathroom.

Jordan laughed at Zack's retreating back and at Marcus's stricken face. He laughed until the stripper named Gilda made it back to the main stage. Then the light of laughter on Jordan's face traded itself for one of surprise. The realization came slower due to their alcohol laden heads, but they were drunk, not dead or stupid. The ping of recognition flared. Marcus rolled his eyes at Jordan and the two exchanged knowing looks.

"A little too real?" Jordan asked.

"A little too vivid," Marcus nodded.

"One of us?" Marcus asked.

"Probably," Jordan nodded.

"Tonight?" Marcus moaned with as close to a whine as his low timbered voice could achieve.

"I think so," Jordan nodded. "We don't want to chance waiting until you get back from your honeymoon. She's just started the business but it's a tough one. Two weeks of an empath projecting sex to a crowd of horny guys?" That thought had Marcus wincing. Gilda was like a walking date-rape drug. "We can't leave her here."

"You could bring Damian in tomorrow," Marcus suggested weakly, knowing they wouldn't.

"He doesn't know the drill, yet," Jordan replied, reaching for his beer automatically and then pushing it away consciously before he took a drink. It was a little late to be thinking of going into this sober, but he didn't need to make it worse. "Besides, if she throws a fit like Rianna did, he can't shut her down like you can, buddy."

"Now?" Marcus whined again. "We're not exactly dressed to impress a new recruit."

It was true. They'd dressed for comfort over fashion. It was something you could do in most places in Vegas since the overall dress code rarely got stricter than the no shirt, no shoes, no service rule. They were all in sneakers, jeans and casual shirts. Jordan's casual was a navy blue polo shirt. Damian wore a long-sleeved dress shirt hanging open over a black t-shirt. Marcus wore a tight, sleeveless t-shirt. He had another casual shirt he'd worn over it, but he'd left it in the limo. Zack was his own guy in a plaid flannel work shirt.

"Zack is quite ready to go home now, having lost half the alcohol he's consumed into the toilet," Damian interrupted their silent communication as he sat back down at the table. "I came to suggest that we swing by the Lair on our way to the next club."

"Here," Jordan handed the pager for the limo to Damian. "Call the limousine back for him and it can come back here when it's through dropping Zack off. We'll be staying for a bit."

Damian blinked, only now sensing that the situation had changed. He'd been so wrapped up in his own memories that his read of them had been slow. Damian had to admit that he was more drunk than he'd let on. He normally didn't miss things. That buzzing in his head hadn't diminished either. Jordan and Damian were watching him closely.

"What did I miss?" Damian keyed in the number for the limo as he asked the question. One thing that Damian had picked up on quickly in this world was cell phones and everything like them. Not much need for them on a world that included telepaths, but Damian liked the mechanical precision that didn't include any practice or thought to manipulate.

"We'll fill you in when Zack is safely in the limo," Jordan said, all business now that the need had arisen. "You and Marcus can get him to the limo and I'll go talk to Cyn about Gilda."

They might sway. They might wobble. But they were a team and they didn't get to pick when they would need to be on the job. They'd do the job, drunk or not. Damian hadn't understood teamwork two months ago, but he was getting it. He fell into step with Jordan's orders. Jordan headed to where Cyn still sat at the bar and Damian and Marcus went to fetch Zack.

"Who's Gilda?" Damian asked Marcus as they headed for the bathroom. "The stripper they were announcing when I left?"

"Yeah," Marcus nodded. "Let's get Zack out of here then we can get this over with. Maybe this'll convince Jordan to call it quits for the night."

"Get what over with?" Damian prodded Marcus now that Jordan was out of earshot.

"The stripper, Gilda, was a psychic," Marcus answered gruffly, as if that answered it all.

"And it can't wait until you're home from your honeymoon?" Damian pulled on Marcus's shoulder to stop him before they went into the restroom. "More than that, are we in any condition to face a new psychic? I'm not the only one buzzing."

"You think she'll still be sane in two weeks when we get around to coming back?" Marcus asked, shrugging off Damian's hand.

They were set on this course. Damian recognized the closing of ranks between the two. Once they made a decision, they barreled into it shoulder to shoulder. Damian knew that he was expected to line up and take lessons on how they did things, but something felt wrong about this. Still, Jordan had been forced to take lessons from Damian. It wouldn't do to baulk orders now that Jordan had the baton. At least that's what Damian's alcohol laden mind convinced himself.

The bathrooms were in the back down a dark hallway behind the bar. Marcus shouldered his way through one scarred door with a bare grunt. Drunk or not, they were doing this thing tonight.

"The gal that was on stage last," Marcus explained to Damian. "Gilda or whatever her name was. She was projecting. She probably doesn't even know she's doing it."

"The stripper?" Zack croaked, staggering out of one of the bathroom stalls. "Yeah, that explains it. I always feel a little sick to my stomach when someone projects toward me."

"Oh, yeah," Marcus teased, trying to get more cheerful and less resentful. "It couldn't have been the barrel's worth of alcohol you've guzzled tonight. It must have been the stripper pulling some psychic voodoo on you."

"It's not voodoo, and she had a name," Zack struggled for dignity as he stumbled to the sink to splash cold water on his face. "What was that name again?"

"Gilda," Damian supplied, rubbing the back of his neck with a frown. "We've called the limousine for you."

"Yeah, not that it's her real name," Marcus tore off a strip of paper towels and held them out for Zack. "Go ahead and take the limo back to the Lair. Party's over anyway. Jordan and I are going to show Damian how we bring in someone new."

"I could help," Zack managed to stand up straight as he took the paper towels and dried his face and hands.

"No need, really," Marcus forced a smile though a sigh. "We've got it covered."

Damian watched Marcus frown at the idea. There was some merit in it. Damian wasn't about to intervene. He considered himself lucky that he was being allowed to stay and play with the big dogs, though if they'd "sent him home," Damian would have stayed in the shadows and watched over them. They might be big dogs in this world, especially with all the training Damian had given them, but there were still exiles like Harry out there.

"Jordan and I could do it with Damian as backup," Zack suggested unaware that he was swaying where he stood. "That way you could go home and get some rest for tomorrow. Big day."

"I'm good," Marcus almost laughed, but obviously thought better of it at the last minute. Zack looked and acted young but he could now manipulate fire better than the mythical dragons. Training had honed a natural talent.

"Go home, Zack," Damian filled in with diplomacy. "Let the old man keep these boys out of trouble. In any case, if something terrible happens, I don't want to be the one to face the ladies tomorrow."

Marcus winced and Damian wondered if Marcus was starting to feel the foreboding that Damian was. Marcus had one other minor psychic gift. He had what was generally called a cop's instincts. Something could be knocking on Marcus's instincts but if so, he was too drunk to pin it down.

"We're all too drunk for this," Damian dared to suppose out loud what they all had to be thinking.

"Jordan's not going to leave a budding psychic out there to those wolves," Marcus protested, shaking his head.

"She looked like she was handling them just fine," Zack pointed out. Damian hadn't seen her so he didn't know.

"You two don't know him like I do." Marcus wet his hands at the sink and splashed a bit of water on his face. "This is his dream. It's what he does. He gathers psychics."

"Then we can do it tomorrow," Zack argued. "Damian, Jordan and I can do it without you."

"He won't back down," Marcus said, drying his hands and face with a paper towel. "He's seen her. He can feel her in his bones. He won't let go until she's either one of us or turned him down a dozen times."

"She's important enough to let it crash your bachelor party?" Zack asked.

"Better that than the honeymoon," Damian jibed, trying to lighten the mood. If Jordan was going to be obsessed, then it really was better to get it over with tonight.

"We've got to get back out there and check on Jordan," Marcus put in with a self-depreciating smile.

They found Jordan at the end of the bar chatting innocently with the bartender. Cyn was nowhere to be seen. Whatever Jordan had said to the woman, Jordan looked pleased with the outcome.

"The limo is out front waiting for you," Jordan told Zack.

Zack looked about to protest again, but Jordan gave him a boss look. They may be off duty. They may be drunk and half-stupid. But when the boss 'suggested' something, Zack wasn't going to argue. Zack took the pager from Damian and headed out.

"Have him come back in about an hour," Jordan called after Zack. "We might not impress her with our drunkenness but the limo could tip the scales."

"Sure," Zack sulked out.

Marcus turned to Jordan with a question on his face that didn't need words. Damian scanned the club nervously. The splash of water hadn't eased that buzzing in his head. Something was off about the place. He just couldn't pin down what it was and every time he tried, his magic slid off the source.

"I called in a favor," Jordan explained. "Cyn said to wait ten minutes and then go back to the third door on the left. I had to promise her that we weren't up to something naughty. I also had to tell her that Gilda might be an old friend."

"Why not just pay the extra for a private lap dance?" Marcus asked. It wasn't supposed to happen but it did. Strip clubs had back rooms where a client could ask for a private lap dance. What happened behind closed doors was illegal, but expected by all.

"Cyn didn't like our numbers," Jordan admitted. "One at a time would have been okay with her but she wouldn't go for all of us at once."

"And now she will?" Damian asked, not understanding what they were really talking about.

"I tip really well," was all Jordan would say, his lips pressed together tightly. "Call it a finder's fee."

Marcus glared at Jordan, again an undertone of communication that didn't need words or telepathy apparent on both their faces.

"Okay," Jordan relented with a sheepish look. "I pushed a bit at her. She was a tough nut, but the Jordan charm finally won out."

"Aided a bit by the Damian-taught magic?" Marcus growled.

"A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do," Jordan smirked. "I also got her to tell me what she told you and in case you were wondering, yes, that is anatomically possible."

Marcus blushed again.

The back room held a long couch and a single chair. Gilda sat on the chair waiting for them, her head tilted down. Her thick blond waves of hair fell forward over her face and teasingly touched shoulders that were bare except for the thin spaghetti strap of her lacy camisole. If she hadn't been wearing sexy lingerie she might have looked demure. As it was, Jordan was surprised to find that she reminded him of a bride on her wedding night. His bride. He struggled to remember Tiara. Only thoughts of Tiara kept the glamour of Gilda from overwhelming him.

Marcus pushed into the room and felt the same pull to the woman. It was eerie and uncomfortable. Marcus halted in the doorway, leaving Damian outside the room. Her presence was strong and Marcus wanted to drain the magic from the room, but Jordan's calm request stopped him.

"You can turn it off," Jordan said casually, leaning against the near wall. "We aren't here for anything sordid."

"Then what are you here for?" Gilda asked, not raising her eyes. She ignored his suggestion as if he hadn't said it.

"You're a psychic," Jordan stated plainly, hoping to jolt her. "So are we. We don't run into many like us, and I thought we should talk."

Gilda raised her eyes, flashing, sparkling and mesmerizing. Jordan jerked with the sexual aura she put off. Marcus grumbled low in his throat, but Jordan cut him off. Marcus would wait for Jordan to give him a sign. Damian waited in the wings, just in case.

"Still want to talk, handsome?" Gilda purred.

"Marcus here can shut you down in a second, but I'd rather we were civilized," Jordan shrugged casually, as if he wasn't fighting off powerful suggestions.

"Shut me down?" she sounded amused, but the sexual glow of the room eased a fraction.

"Maybe we could sit together and talk?" Jordan waved a hand at the couch. "Just talk."

The stripper waved a hand at the couch invitingly, her smile predatory. "Come on in," she drawled, her words dripping with innuendos and insinuations. "I'm not worried about the three of you. I told Cyn I could handle it. Let's just get to the meat of it, shall we?"

Jordan moved toward the couch but Marcus got a touch stubborn. "Turn off that psychic come-on or I will," he growled at her.

Gilda swung her gaze to Marcus, challenge spurring a shower of stars in her laughing eyes. Marcus crossed his arms over his massive chest and stared her down. A slight glint of worry flitted as she looked deeply into the void of his eyes, but it didn't show in her demeanor at all.

"I would have thought that you boys would like that kind of thing," she mused, the sexual thrall dimming slowly to something so subtle that even Marcus had to admit that it might be her natural beauty.

Marcus gave her a nod and followed Jordan to the couch. Gilda watched him thoughtfully. Damian stepped into the room and closed the door behind him with a quiet snick that shook the room like a gunshot.

Gilda had obviously forgotten about their third member in her assessing of Marcus. With a jerk, she slung her eyes back to Damian. Glittering green eyes collided with gleaming blue and the world paused. Damian blinked once.

In one instant, there was panic and a surge of energy. Recognition ignited just as she squeezed her eyes shut and popped a small bubble between her fingers. "NO!" she screamed, either or both to stop the spell ball's effects and to stop what a single glance had done to her well-ordered life.

In the same tick of time, Damian breathed her real name, "Lexi."

The world pulsed around them. Marcus reached for his null effect. Jordan reached for sanity. Damian reached for Lexi, confusion and doubt plain on his face. Whatever she did, the stripper, Gilda, Lexi, or whoever she was, it collided with Marcus's null effect smashing on.

Lexi's magic was quicker. Marcus's magic exploded on the tail end of it. The world went sideways and then it went black.

## First Chapter of Widow's Tale by Maureen Miller

## WIDOW'S TALE

Maureen A. Miller

All rights reserved.

Copyright @ 2009 by Maureen A. Miller

ISBN 1448617936

EAN-13 9781448617937

## 

## PROLOGUE

Serena Murphy squinted into the wind, searching cliffs lashed by angry surf. Maine's autumn freeze wrapped her in its clutch and whipped her hair over her face.

Serena was looking for a body.

The maelstrom assaulting the deck of O'Flanagans Tavern did not deter her. She leaned forward and gripped the rail.

A month had passed already, and each day before the dinnertime rush, Serena came out to search the cliffs for any trace of her husband, Alan, who'd been pronounced lost at sea.

Alan was dead. She was sure of that. Even the sea spoke to her, weaving a tale of his demise in the fishing boat she had urged him to repair. She was certain he was dead because he haunted her. Not as a physical ghost, but there were signs—small, intimate signals that could only be executed by Alan's malevolent spirit.

"Serena! Get in here before you catch your death of cold!"

Tempted to ignore the intrusion, Serena caught a glimpse of her part-time waitress, Rebecca, with her head stuck out the back door.

What an image she must portray to the young woman. Every night Serena stood out here, perched atop these cliffs, searching for a body. Searching for ghosts.

But that's not what her waitress saw. She saw a distraught widow anguished over the loss of her husband. She did not see her. She did not see the woman who feared Alan even after death.

It took effort, but Serena called across the wind, "I'll be right there."

Alone with the waves that crashed against the rocks below, Serena waited for pain to envelop her. She waited for heart-wrenching sobs or any raw emotion that might signal despair over the loss of her husband.

Only the bleak whistle of the wind and the somber ring of a buoy answered.

CHAPTER I

O'Flanagans was as much a tradition in the small Maine coastal village of Victory Cove as were the lobster boats and sailors that kept the establishment thriving over fifty years, and through three generations. This colonial institution was the home of Serena's childhood. It was also her legacy now that her parents had retired and moved to Florida.

Serena talked the O'Flanagans out of flying north after Alan's disappearance. Instead, she was grateful to have the pub to keep her busy. Its patrons were family in their own right, protective and loyal to the last O'Flanagan.

The heavy oak door drew shut behind Serena, locking out the bad weather with a finality that almost made her feel safe. She leaned back against it and eyed the overhead wooden beams—timber rafters permeated with the aroma of beer and lobster bisque. The scent stabilized Serena. She drew in another deep breath and held it until the trembling in her limbs subsided.

"Yo, Rena, are you going to keep a thirsty man waiting, just hanging around here like a long-haired dog on a hot summer day?"

In this place, there was no time for emotion. Alan was dead. He would not hurt her anymore.

But finding his body would have made it seem real.

One last breath and Serena hoisted forward. "Thirsty my ass, Coop." She chastised Cooper Littlefield with genuine affection as she ducked under the service panel to emerge behind the oak bar.

Serena eyed the empty mug with an arched brow. "Seems to me I just filled this about five minutes ago."

"Fast and plentiful, honey."

"Yeah, yeah," she fit the glass beneath the lager tap, "Just like your women."

Serena's smile prompted Cooper's worn old face to crack a grin, revealing a prominent gold-capped tooth. White hair was buried beneath a knitted black cap and gray stubble framed a congenial face. Eyes set in a permanent squint studied her.

"Well, that woman out there," he flung a gnarled hand towards a window overlooking the Atlantic, "was a bitch today." Coop's hand snapped back and wound over his mouth.

Serena shook her head.

"You can't be afraid of everything you say around here. I'm okay, and you're right, she's a bitch every day. I know."

"Any news?"

"No," she clenched her trembling fingers. "No news."

Serena turned and caught a glimpse of her reflection in the mirror behind the bar. Haunted eyes stared back at her. She shook her head against the image, and before twisting back, dredged up a smile for Coop to ease his worry.

The old sailor lifted the beer to his chapped lips as she could swear that he murmured, "You're a lot better off."

Every day, Serena prayed for news. But nothing had changed since yesterday, or the day before that, or last week. The police made their judgment based on Alan Murphy's boat washing up on shore, soon followed by other personal effects found scattered along Victory Cove's rugged coast.

There was one hell of a storm the afternoon Alan set out to sea. Most questioned why he went out at all. But the folk of Victory Cove had never taken to Alan Murphy. His slick, educated, condescending mannerisms were unwelcome in this small blue-collar town. Still, they kept their aversion to themselves because they loved Serena. She belonged to them.

Serena reached across the bar to swipe under Coop's mug, throwing a fresh napkin down beneath it.

"Rena, honey, can you get me anothah?" Harriet Morgan's voice boomed from the far end of the L-shaped bar.

Harriet exhaled into her clenched fist, wriggling her fingers to entice circulation. As she approached, the woman nodded at Cooper and then unwound her scarf to reveal a hefty secondary chin. "You didn't pick up those extra traps, Coop."

"So you closed your tackle shop," he muttered, "and came down to O'Flanagans to bring 'em to me?" Coop's narrowed eye caught the twenty-ounce mug sitting before the robust woman. "And the thought never occurred to you that you might tip back a few while waiting here."

"I don't need your sorry ass as an excuse. You know damn well I got me a keg undah the counter at the shop." Harriet's cheeks were unnaturally rosy, and in just the right light, her gray hair appeared blond.

"Weathah's hell out there today," Harriet rambled on. "I ain't got no business, so why not come down and drink in good company." She tipped her head at Serena.

Coop snorted as some of the white froth caught on his mustache. "Well, I'm flattered, Harriet, I really am, but the missus has been good to me." A quick grin flashed a golden tooth. "I'll die a loyal man."

"I ain't talking about you, Bittyfield, so shut that mouth before I come over there and shut if for you."

Serena laughed. It felt good to watch Cooper and Harriet in their verbal volley.

The door to the tavern opened. Wind penetrated the bar, propelling napkins off the polished surface to spiral in erratic bundles on the floor. For a suspended moment a shadowy stranger stood eclipsed by the harsh sky outside. The door slammed shut and left the brooding figure to glare at the proprietor of O'Flanagans.

"Well, if it isn't the grieving widow."

Serena's chuckle died on her lips. She stared at the tall visitor with his windswept dark hair and eyes the color of a turbulent gale. It was as if the Atlantic had come to life in the form of a man and then surged into her tavern to rain its force upon her. Her breath caught when he stepped forward.

"Hello, Sis,"

The stranger slanted a glimpse at Coop's scowl and Harriet's combative pose, but the intense gray eyes swiftly returned to their target. The force of that stare made Serena swallow and clutch the counter.

"Brett?" Her voice was a hoarse whisper.

"You remember me?"

Was there amusement to Brett's tone? His slight grin beguiled Serena with memories.

"Is there something we can do for you, sir?" Coop bristled, his chest puffing up on a wheeze.

Brett Murphy acknowledged the question with a flicker of his glance and then approached the oak bar, splaying his hands on it.

"I'm looking for my brother."

"Alan—he's..."

"He's what, Mrs. Murphy? Are you going to tell me that he's dead?"

Serena recoiled, and were it not for the shelf behind her she would have stumbled backwards to flee the judgmental gaze. Instead, her Irish temper surfaced.

"That's what they tell me."

All the pain of the month-long search for Alan's body, all the despair by the lack of effort on behalf of the police, all the nights of phantom sounds whispering to her, each shadow holding the promise or threat that he might reappear, poured into her retort.

An unnamed emotion flickered through Brett's eyes. Was it regret? God help her, was it still desire? The storm settled again as black eyebrows sank into a frown.

"Can I get a beer?"

Serena hesitated and drew from the spout Brett indicated with a pitch of his head.

Undaunted by the stranger, Harriet rounded the corner and approached him with hands on hips.

"So you're Alan Murphy's brothah." Harriet's gaze scoured up and down his frame and finally narrowed into a scowl. "You don't much look like him."

Serena silently concurred. Alan had dark hair also, and eyes that were black. But his build had been lankier; not revealing the raw strength that stood before her now.

Brett tipped back his mug for a hearty swallow and then set it down with an embittered smirk.

"Why do I feel like this pack is going to drag me out back and lynch me?"

"They don't take kindly to strangers." Serena challenged.

If her brother in-law had an issue to take up with her that was fine, but if he decided to drag in those closest to her, he had a hell of a battle on his hands.

Brett must have heard the aggression in her voice. He nearly smiled, or was it a trick of the light against those silver eyes?

"Do you have a moment to talk in private?" he asked. "I just met with the police. I feel like I'm getting the run-around," his eyebrow inched up, "or maybe they just don't want to talk to a city boy."

The spoonful of cereal Serena had for lunch churned in her stomach. She settled a hand over it and wished she could flee out the back door to her apartment upstairs.

Instead, Serena attempted a reassuring nod at Coop and then sent a wary glance at Harriet.

"It's okay," she soothed them both.

But by no means did Serena feel confident that everything would be okay.

Aware of Brett's eyes on her back, Serena had trouble breathing. She managed courteous smiles and nods to her patrons as she moved through the dining room, but as soon as she reached a secluded booth in the back corner and watched Brett's long body tuck in across from her, a gasp dusted her lips.

"I'm sorry, Brett," she rushed out.

The sincerity of that statement ripped through her. But what was it that she was sorry for? Having to talk to Brett about his brother's death? Having to face Alan's death herself? Or was she sorry that in her deepest subconscious, she felt safer now that Alan was gone?

"Sorry?" Brett's voice was husky.

"When Alan—when Alan—" Even now, Serena struggled with the word that followed. It all seemed so surreal.

"When it happened, I couldn't find any of you. Your parents are in Europe somewhere," her eyes locked with his, "and you," she wavered, "well I haven't seen you since the wedding."

Ten years ago.

Brett hadn't changed much. He must be what, thirty-six now? His hair was still a rich, dark shade and his olive complexion made those gray eyes appear striking. Exotic. Her gaze dropped to the sharp slash of his jaw, framing a mouth that frowned more often than it smiled.

"The wedding was a long time ago, Serena." Brett's voice hadn't changed either—nor its affect on her. "You haven't tried to find me," he hesitated, "you haven't once tried to talk to me."

Was Brett referring to her attempts to reach him about his brother, or about the past decade in general?

"You are not an easy man to trace." Serena sought composure. "I called some of the major broker houses in Boston, but—are you still a broker?"

In the absence of his response, Serena's fingers began to tremble. What didn't help was Brett's long look, an encompassing stare. Time had done nothing to diminish the impact of Brett Murphy.

Serena withdrew her fingers beneath the table and onto her lap, and then she scrambled for something more to add.

"I worked in London for awhile," he spared her. "Paid my dues there." An amused twitch tugged on Brett's lip. "You know, they don't call us stock brokers anymore. We're FC's. Financial consultants." The twitch was gone.

"I came back to New York last year." Brett continued. "About two months ago, Alan's calls just suddenly stopped. That might not seem odd to you, but he used to phone me constantly. Always woke me up with the damn time change." A muscle in Brett's jaw tensed. "So, the fact that they just stopped—it wasn't like him."

A glass fell over on a nearby table and Serena's body jerked in response.

"Two months ago—" how could she even guess what Alan had been up to? "He—he was busy—"

"Two months ago, Alan was alive." Brett injected.

The detached words hit Serena in the stomach.

"Brett, I—I still don't want to believe it happened," she whispered. "I still look for him, even though the police say it's over, I still look."

Because until she found Alan's body, he would continue to haunt her.

"Well, now you're not looking alone, Serena."

If the statement was meant to comfort her, the steely set of Brett's eyes didn't express it.

"Look," he began. "It's been ten years. You seem awkward around me. There's nothing to feel awkward about. Nothing happened. It was just—"

The inability to finish that sentence proved Brett wrong, because it was indeed awkward.

Brett hastened on. "I'm here for one reason, and once I find out what happened to Alan, I'll be gone."

Caught off guard by the warmth that momentarily infused his words, Serena swallowed, "Brett, I wish I knew more. You have no idea how much I wish I knew more. He was so young, he was—"

"I know what Alan was. I won't portray him as a saint, but character flaws aren't excuses for him to be dead. I'm not going anywhere, Serena." Brett's tone was resolved. "Not until I find out what happened to Alan. I don't know what you've done so far. I don't know what efforts the police have put out, but Serena, I won't let it go. I can't."

Brett reached across the table, and had her hands been resting there, Serena wondered if he would have splayed his atop them.

"I have to know what happened to my brother."

It was well past midnight when Serena sat alone at the bar, frowning at her reflection in the mirror. Pictures of friends and patrons were taped along its frame just below the row of freshly cleaned glasses hung upside down. Some still dripped water onto the antique cash register, its brass face tarnished from years of such abuse.

Brett had not stayed long, but it was long enough to contemplate the grim resolve in his eyes. Had he convicted her as his brother's murderer?

Serena cupped her forehead in her palms and wondered if Brett had grown that cynical. From Alan she had come to expect that look of aversion. But Brett, even though it had been ten years, she could still feel the heated glance he'd given her just five minutes before she married his brother. Such was the intensity in his eyes; she'd nearly tossed her fate to whim, nearly given it all up, just for the chance that he might touch her.

Nearly.

Fearful of the night, Serena hastened up the external staircase. Lately she had taken to leaving the living room light on so as not to come home to complete darkness.

The brass lamp cast a soft glow over the mantle of a stone fireplace, its innards charred from years of use. A patchwork throw rug covered the wood floor in front of twin loveseats positioned L-shaped before the fireplace. Reluctant to enter the shadows of the kitchen, Serena was drawn towards the lamp. She settled down on the loveseat and focused on the blushing shade.

Serena drifted into a restless sleep, and as was the case every night for the past month, she woke to the sound of footsteps treading across the floorboards.

Fingernails digging into the sofa, she sprang up and stared into the shadows.

"Who's there?"

The steps resumed, heavy and deliberate, seeming to resonate from directly behind her, yet when she spun about, nothing was there but a wedge of moonlight from the window.

Talking to the entity had done little to dissuade it in the past. Serena drew herself up into the corner of the loveseat and grabbed a throw pillow against her chest to muffle her wild heartbeat.

The next assault on her senses came as it did every night. It was the anxious sound of a child crying. The nocturnal ghost who paced around her bore little impact compared to this agonizing peal.

No. Please, no.

Serena pressed her face into the pillow and listened to the infant's wails. Mournful and persistent, they echoed around her in a cyclone of despair, spinning her till she lost her balance and felt reality mercifully slip away.

