Being of the Field (36 page)

I’ll ensure the body of your female self is secured.
Sammael parted from his brothers.

I’ll see if I can rouse the botanist.
Armaros vanished, leaving Azazèl to stay his course.

And I shall protect my charge from being engulfed by the evil of a million women scorned.

Lucian had given up hope of ever being released. They hadn’t heard a word from anyone since they’d been locked up, and the girls had fallen asleep—one on either of his shoulders. He was starting to doze himself, so when he heard the door open, he felt sure he was dreaming it.

‘Getting cosy with my girls, hey?’

‘Starman!’ Both Aurora and Kalayna sprang to their feet to hug Zeven and cover him in kisses.

‘Time to get you out of here,’ he stated. The girls backed off a little.

‘How did you accomplish this?’ Kalayna was cautious; this was not one of his magic man rescues. It seemed that the triple-S were allowing them to walk free.

‘I made a deal with Anselm—’ he began.

‘What!’ all three of his crewmates echoed. ‘You’re going to trust Anselm?’ Lucian finished on everyone’s behalf.

‘They’ve brainwashed him!’ Kalayna threw her hands in the air, one of which Zeven grabbed to get her attention.

‘He didn’t brainwash me,’ Zeven assured her. ‘And it’s my risk to take,’ he said as Anselm’s agents filed into the room. ‘AMIE has lifted off and is in orbit. You are being given a shuttle transport, and you…’ He looked at Kalayna. ‘…will fly our captain and Aurora back to AMIE, so that no triple-S agent enters our craft. Are you cool with that?’

Kalayna was wide-eyed—honoured, shocked, excited and scared—but nodded to confirm she could do as he asked.

‘I’m a pilot,’ Lucian pointed out, but seeing how deflated Kalayna appeared, he confessed, ‘although I am a little rusty.’

Aurora directed Zeven to look her way. ‘What about you?’

‘I’ll join you there soon.’ He kissed her to stop the questions and then moved to leave.

The captain waylaid him. ‘What about Taren?’

‘I’m taking care of it,’ he insisted, knowing the captain would want to be involved. ‘There’s nothing you can do here, but the crew need you.’

Lucian had other concerns about leaving. ‘Swithin is in a Phemorian detention centre—’

‘He’s no longer there,’ Zeven informed him and Lucian was speechless. ‘He’s being questioned by Anselm’s people in regard to the disappearance of Maladaan and is not in any immediate danger.’

Zeven had always been so paranoid about his Power, that Lucian couldn’t fathom what Anselm could possibly have said to lead him to expose his talent and use it in Sermetica’s service. ‘Why do you trust Anselm?’

‘Because the alternative is looking pretty fucking bad,’ Zeven said bluntly, needing to move on. ‘You’ll just have to trust my gut instinct this time.’

Lucian sucked back his pride and concern. ‘Your gut instinct has always proved fairly on the mark.’

‘When you get on board AMIE, you should head straight for Sermetica. Taren and I will join you as soon as superhumanly possible.’ Zeven tried to make a joke of it, but Lucian wasn’t appreciating the humour so, on that low note, Zeven departed.

‘This way to our launch bay,’ their escort instructed, and directed them down the corridor.

Seconds after Taren had oriented herself, she felt the foreboding energy of the place to which Queen Qusay-Sabah Clarona had led her and knew instantly that this meeting was a bad idea. Even in the darkness of the pre-dawn shadows, Taren could perceive the wilting vegetation of the forest around her. ‘This is where the Phemoray choose to base themselves?’

‘You obviously feel the ill-will here,’ the queen said, sounding proud. ‘This site is sacred to the Phemoray…it was once known as
the Abyss of the Obstinate. In the times before the revolution, many women were unjustly put to death here and flung into a deep hole to rot. It is from the combined force of those anguished souls that the Phemoray draw their power.’ The queen made it sound like a beautiful undertaking.

It was little wonder that everything in the vicinity was dying; the place was steeped in negativity. ‘How does one transmute such a negative frequency into a beneficial intention without harm to the self?’ Taren asked. According to her research, a negative intention could never produce a positive result, nor benefit the sender.

You shall be proven wrong about that, little scientist.

Taren heard the voices of several women in her mind, speaking in unison.

‘Greetings, great mothers of the Phemoray.’ The queen immediately bowed low to the ground.

But Taren did not, as she was curious to see those who addressed her.

Five veiled women, floating in formation, just as they had on Frujia, came out of the dead forest and into the barren clearing where the fading moonlight made their forms apparent.

Even more intriguing was the great undulating mass of energy that hovered over them in full technicolour. Taren had not seen or sensed this mass at their last meeting, but she had not been viewing the Phemoray through her third-eye vision at the time either. She had never perceived anything like this anomaly on the Earth plane—the seething body of energy was clearly charged with violent emotions and thoughts and these ancient impressions played out upon the moving fluidic surface of the mass. The horrific scenes of women being raped, tortured and butchered by their men made it very hard to focus on the women who hovered beneath the heavy cloud of sadness and terror.

Your experiments are incomplete,
claimed the Phemoray.
Over a vast distance an intent to harm is far stronger than an intent to heal, but healing is best done when in close contact…hence the saying, keep your friends close and your enemies
—

‘Closer,’ Taren concluded, intrigued by the premise. She could hardly wait to get into a lab and test the theory.

And a medium can use either force at no personal detriment, provided they believe with every fibre of their being that they are doing the right thing.

This information was not quite as exciting, as Taren had always held the somewhat romantic belief that love was a more powerful force than hatred. But if what the Phemoray claimed was true, it seemed to shatter that ideal. However, Taren had not come here to debate cosmic law; she had but one purpose for seeking the Phemoray and came straight to the point. ‘Do you know what has become of Maladaan?’

We concern ourselves with the affairs of Phemoria and so should you. That planet disappearing was the catalyst that brought you back to our fold.

‘So you know nothing,’ Taren assumed, greatly disappointed. ‘Then I thank you for seeing me. I shall not take up any more of your time.’ Taren had no idea how to escape this forest and return to her physical form, but she knew she had to leave.

The queen stood up. ‘That part of your life is over now,’ she announced, in a not-too-friendly fashion.

‘Look, I’m sorry,’ Taren turned back to confront the monarch, ‘but I could never rule Phemoria the way you wish me to. You draw your power from hating men and
I don’t
,’ she said honestly. ‘I
love
the men in my life and I would not relinquish their company for
all
the ancient doctrine in Phemoria.’

‘When you are enlightened to the horrors of the past, you will hate men just as much as we do,’ the queen said with finality, and Taren felt the trap they’d set for her snap closed.

Time to educate our future queen,
the Phemoray advised, whereby Queen Qusay-Sabah backed away.

Taren suspected she knew where that education was to come from and she turned her sights to the horrific mass of malignant memory as it launched itself in her direction. ‘No!’ She crouched down and willed with all her might to deflect the psychic attack.

Zeven had no intention of returning Taren to Anselm’s fold; he had every intention of returning her to AMIE.

After watching the launch of the craft containing AMIE’s captain and crew, Zeven accompanied Anselm to the secure room from where he could vanish without exposing his Power to anybody except Anselm.

‘So…now we get down to the serious side of our business.’ Anselm removed his hood once they were behind a locked door and addressed Zeven directly. ‘There is an explosive device on board that craft—’

‘What!’ Zeven was immediately on the offensive. ‘Why did I trust you?’

‘You don’t trust me,’ Anselm rebutted, ‘and I don’t trust you. I can plainly see you are of fine character and as such you will be loyal to your captain. So what choice did I have but to give you an incentive to comply with our arrangement?’

Zeven was exasperated—the man had just betrayed him and yet he still liked and admired the guy. Anselm was smart, like Taren. ‘You’re just like her!’ Zeven turned to pace out his frustration.

Anselm was privately delighted by Zeven’s words.

‘How do I know you will not use that bomb to dispose of us all, once I deliver Taren to you?’

‘Because if you do not return Taren to me
before
that vessel reaches AMIE, I shall detonate anyway, and your captain and girlfriends will die.’

‘What!’ That didn’t give Zeven very much time. ‘You son of a—’

‘I won’t risk any harm to AMIE, as that vessel is my link to whatever has become of Maladaan, which is where Taren’s original memory data is stored. It was never my intenton for her to forget me altogether! I mean you no harm, Mr Gudrun. I just want my daughter back.’

‘She doesn’t remember you. If I must bring her back to you, then I am not leaving her side before she is comfortable with that arrangement.’

‘I am her protector,’ Anselm stressed, as Zeven didn’t seem to understand. ‘I have been all her life!’

‘Not
all
her life,’ Zeven added, ‘not lately.’

‘Don’t you have enough on your hands with the two women you’ve got?’

‘Never enough!’ Zeven was curt and stepped away as Anselm became angry.

‘If you’ve laid a hand on my dau—’ Anselm took a swing at Zeven who clasped a hand around the man’s forearm to stop the strike.

‘If you harm my friends…’ Zeven warned, raising both brows in challenge.

‘Go and retrieve Taren before those bloody witches get hold of her!’

A burning, buzzing sensation swept over Zeven like a wave from behind, drowning out reality as he was ripped away from the conversation and catapulted through time and space to elsewhere.

A great rush of light swept over Taren and, much to her confusion, it filled her with warmth and joy. Was this part of the enchantment of the Phemoray?

Taren?

‘Lucian?’ Taren raised her head at the sound of his voice, to behold the most stunning natural formation she had ever seen.

It was a cathedral of trees, the trunks of which formed rows of pillars, their branches entwined to create arched windows and doorways in between. To her right, light was pouring through the structure, like a sunrise, but then the light source moved into Taren’s line of sight. It had a human form at its core, but the surrounding glow was so bright that Taren couldn’t see much more than a vague shadow.

Don’t be afraid,
he said, again in Lucian’s voice.

‘I’m not.’ Taren suppressed an urge to laugh, as all the ill-will around her had been dispersed by a loving energy that felt very familiar. ‘It is you, Lucian, isn’t it?’ She neared the being cautiously. Her eyes adjusted to the light and came to focus on, not Lucian, but someone who looked very much like him.

There is a part of me that was Lucian Gervaise, a long time ago, just as I will one day be a small part of the condensed memory of Azazèl-mindos-coomra-dorchi. But as I am now, I am known simply as Azazèl of the grigori.

Taren was mesmerised by his words, his beauty. ‘The grigori?’

We are threshold dwellers…between the cause of the spirit world and the effect in the physical world. Minor devas in the cosmic scheme.

Taren gasped as she realised what all this meant. ‘I really made contact with Azazèl-mindos-coomra-dorchi?’

Azazèl nodded to confirm this.
Your planet is alive and well and existing in an entirely different universal scheme.

He answered before she’d even formulated the question and Taren was again gasping for joy. ‘Maladaan survived!’

Yes.
He empathised with her relief for a moment.

‘But it went through a black hole! Has it not been crushed into a singularity and damned for all eternity?’ Taren asked.

Azazèl laughed.
A black hole in this universe forms a white hole in another, making it more of a cosmic gusher for matter. Your friend teleports himself and others from place to place, and every time he does so, every particle of his being reduces to its singular state to move and then reconstitute.

‘Which is pretty much how the inter-system gateways work,’ Taren conceded.

It is the same with matter through a black hole, or, as with Maladaan, an inter-universal leak. So what we have in the Maladaan system is more of a wound than a hole.

‘Do you mean to say the tear in space is mending?’ Taren’s mind boggled.

This unnatural phenomenon is more unstable and of an indefinite duration.

‘How will we ever find Maladaan if the fabric of space repairs itself and closes over?’

There are problems with Maladaan remaining where it has relocated…it shares the orbit of another planet that plays host to a human civilisation far more spiritually advanced than Maladaan’s scientific populace will feel comfortable with.

‘Can something be done?’ Taren was concerned and feeling partly responsible. She wanted to be involved in the rescue, although she couldn’t imagine what use she could be to beings like the grigori.

The beautiful being smiled at her fondly, as if knowing her mind and heart and where this conversation was going.
We cannot take action on a physical level, only you humans can do that. There is a role for you in the restoration of Maladaan, but first we must get you away from this hostile thought-form, which you are ill-prepared to deal with just yet.

‘Is it true that I am the daughter of this hate-filled queen and that my father is her worst enemy?’