Calm Before the Storm (19 page)

His heart jolted from the electric shock
and the cataclysmic release. They collapsed in unison. Her body lay soft under
his, tremors wracking them both as their racing hearts hammered together. He
was warm inside her, a sanctuary. Tyr couldn’t bear to pull away. Her eyes were
closed, head tilted to one side. A tear slid down her cheek. He cupped her face
insisting she open her eyes, wiping the tear away with his thumb. Amber eyes
flickered wide, a hopeless dilation. Gentle fingers rose to brush his lips.

“Oh my god, Tyr!” she whispered. “I really
do!”

She blinded him. He worshipped her. He
couldn’t speak.

Tyr enfolded her in the circle of his arms,
bands of steel, cherishing her fragile softness. He didn’t know how to say what
was in his heart. It was too full. He tried to show her by lifting her chin and
claiming the raspberry sweetness of her lips in a crushing kiss of infinite
desire. He settled her head under the shelter of his neck, her ear resting
where she could listen to the pounding of his heart. A heart that beat only for
her. Hand on her hair, brushing through satiny strands, a soothing caress.
Together they lay silent until the phantom of sleep swept a wave crashing over
them dragging them down to the depths of a sweet oblivion.

Hours later, Irina stirred, blinking to
awareness, her whole body thrumming with the scent and taste of Tyr running a
riot through her veins. He was a fire in her blood she could not control.
Stretching out contentedly, she arched her back reaching for him, her flesh
still sensitive from their lovemaking. It was early morning, the twin Lyrani
suns filtering through the shutters casting patterns of warm yellow-green light
across the white stone tiles. Her hand met cold cotton. She was alone in the
bed, the empty space beside her a gaping black hole, his absence chilling her
blood. Irina’s heart so full just short hours ago now pounded in frantic
recrimination for the empty void. Where was Tyr?

She couldn’t believe he hadn’t stayed. Had
he gone back to his room? Maybe he’d gone for a run along the beach. It was a
habit he had formed over the last few days and a guilty pleasure she had
indulged in, while avoiding him, had been to watch him run, reveling in the
sleek grace of his predator’s body, exuding power and strength. An image in her
head of bronze smooth skin, muscles flexing in motion brought a small grin to
her lips. His beauty was intoxication in her blood and she was totally
inebriated. Irina leaned over to inhale the spicy musk aroma that still
lingered on the sheets. Inhaling and exhaling, rolling the scent into her lungs
to breathe him in, she swung around to drop her feet to the floor. Her hand
rested on the bedside table to pull herself up. As she did so, she registered
another void. And just like that her whole universe collapsed.

Later, as she sat with Cassi, dark circles
ringing her eyes, liquid gold turned to ice, she had to wonder again how she
could have been so stupid.
So gullible. So taken in
.

They had searched Vega extensively but
there was no sign of him. There were reports of a man fitting his description
traveling from the portal hall. How he could have accessed the starportal was
unknown. All she knew was that Tyr had gone…and taken her pendant.
And broken
my heart.

Cassi seemed equally devastated. She had
barely spoken in the last hour, comforting Irina, her arms wrapped around her
in consolation, continually biting her lips in evident distress. Cerri, Alcina
and Tani were also present, talking in whispers, concerned looks on their
faces. Alcina and Coronae both trying to make sure Irina kept up her strength
by eating. She couldn’t.

Tani, her expression grave, somber sympathy
in her amethyst eyes was possibly the one person Irina felt she wanted to talk
with. She had known of Tyr’s mother and could potentially be in this position
in the near future, a sacrificial victim to a man who might betray her.

“Now we know why you escaped so easily from
Abrasax,” commented Alcina. “Tyr was sent to infiltrate us and steal the
pendant for them.”

“How could he have accessed the
starportal?” asked Irina again for the umpteenth time.

“I’ve been thinking about that,” said Tani.
“Tyr’s mother Carita, as well as being a saevici must have also been a strong
portal traveler. I couldn’t understand how she ended up on Earth, but it makes
sense. If Tyr inherited that skill and if he has been watching the procedures
for access, he could easily have learned how to open the starportal vortex.”

Alcina made a guilty noise. “He was very
interested in the process,” she said as all eyes turned to look at her. “I gave
him a tour two days ago and he asked particular questions about portal travel.
I didn’t realize he couldn’t be trusted.”

“It’s not your fault, Alcina,” Cassi sighed.
“We all wanted to believe Abrasax hadn’t dug his claws in that deep. The bright
side is that they don’t have total control because they don’t have Irina. They
only have both the vessels, which are useless without her. The best they can
hope for is to continue, through Tyr, to cause conflict but we still have Irina
to counteract them.”

Merak and Borealis arrived just then with
news. They were gathering a squad of warriors together and would be launching
an attack on Abrasax imminently. It was now a priority to retrieve the pendant.
Irina would never be safe while it was in their hands. If they could somehow
retrieve hers
and
Tyr’s, that would be a bonus. “The icing on the cake
will be if we manage to capture or liquidate that son of a bitch,” said
Borealis. Irina sat up, eyes wide with fear. She knew he was taking Tyr’s
defection hard.

“Do you mean…
kill him?”

Borealis turned to her. “If we don’t, the
Discordants can cause a lot of damage. Not as much as if they had both essences
and you, but Tyr is now a threat to us. He has to be neutralized.”

Ice forming around her heart, Irina
swallowed.
This is not real. It’s just a dream
. How could last night
have meant so little to him?
He was just using you
. Impossible! His
touch, his caress, his kiss.
They couldn’t be fake!
But the truth was
irrefutable. He had deceived her to steal the pendant.

She had meant nothing to him after all. Tyr
was a bastard and a liar. She had been played for a fool.

Oh my god…she had told him she loved him!
How pathetic was she? But god help her, she didn’t want him dead!

As the evening drew on they continued to
discuss plans for the attack, but Irina could not bear to listen. She slipped
out into chilly night air, her feet on automatic pilot. Before she’d realized
her direction, they had taken her to the beach, to where Tyr had found her the
night before. Hot tears burned on her cheeks but she would be damned before she
succumbed to the same devastation as before, when she had overheard Tyr and
Abrasax, when she’d watched him with that tramp. Her fists clenched, her heart
fortified by steel, she would not let the others take control away from her.
This was her fight. He was her man. Her man? Sad but true. She still wanted
him, pathetic loser that she was.

She just needed to get to him, talk to him.
If she got into trouble she could use the power of the voice. Ziad had been
happy with her progress. He had shown her not only how to calm others but had
begun to teach her how to manipulate minds to her will by planting suggestions.
She thought she could do it well enough. Tani had also been giving her weapons
training, swords, knives and some basic self-defense. Irina knew she wasn’t
particularly good at it yet but at least she knew which bits of the male
anatomy to grab should someone attack her. The main problem was access to the
vortex through the starportal. Cassi wouldn’t help her; she would say it was
too dangerous. She had to find a way to get through. She could find Luc…

“Irina!” she jumped as a hand touched her
shoulder. “It’s me. I saw you leave. Are you okay?” It was Alcina, her mother’s
best friend. Irina nodded.

“I just needed to think, be by myself.”

Alcina gave her a sympathetic hug. “I
understand. It’s breaking my heart,” she said. “You are so like your mother.
Please, let me know if there is anything I can do for you.”

Irina shot her a thoughtful look.
“Well…there is one thing,” she said.

* * * * *

“I don’t believe this!” shouted Cassi to
Coronae, who was looking very sheepish. “First Tyr and now Irina! I asked you
to do one little thing, to keep an eye on her. How did she get out with guards
around the house? We knew to watch for this.” She turned to Merak who was
looking grim. “And how the hell did she access the starportal? She must have
paid someone.”

“She could have used the power of the
voice,” commented Ziad. “To say she’s good at it would be an understatement.”

“Or someone helped her,” said Tani. “But
why would they?” cried Cassi. “It’s too dangerous for her. She was safe here!”

“Maybe whoever helped her wasn’t concerned
for her safety,” mused Ziad. “First Tyr and now Irina, both pendants gone…it
all points to one thing.”

Cassi was stunned. “You mean a traitor!”
She looked around the room. “It would have to be someone who knew all our
plans.”

“Ziad can lead the investigation,” said
Merak. “I want to know everyone’s whereabouts over the last forty-eight hours.
In the meantime we need to get to Earth and find Irina before Abrasax does.”

* * * * *

Irina traveled via the vortex to Greenwich
observatory, the nearest starportal access point to her flat in Docklands.
Alcina had outfitted her with clothing suitable for fighting, black combats,
t-shirt and leather jacket. She had also provided her with two Lyrani blades,
which she had tucked into leather straps around her thigh and ankle. A small
handgun securely tucked into the waistband behind her back completed her
arsenal. She felt on edge but empowered, a whole universe away from little Miss
Pacifist! She wondered what Luc would say when he saw her.

It was dusk when she arrived, the skies
over Greenwich Park a familiar, warm orange-pink sunset, a complete contrast to
the greenish-yellow coolness of a Lyrani twilight.

Making her way quickly out of the park,
Irina could still taste the tension and unease of the current climate heavy in
the air and hadn’t forgotten that right now on Earth conflicts of all kinds
were escalating. Perhaps it was her heightened senses, developed from the
training with Ziad, but it wasn’t long after leaving the park that Irina
experienced a sharp jolt of anxiety zigzag down her spine. Her head whipped
from left to right but her eyes could see no obvious threat in the empty
street. She crossed the road heading toward the tube station, a bright
beckoning light in the distance. She almost made it.

Doors slid open and a dark shadow emerged
from a black van parked by the curbside. Rough hands grabbed her shoulders from
behind as another shadow shoved a rag over face, the first shadow grabbing her
feet; they both tossed her into the back of the van. Ragged material over her
head, dizziness, fog, she could feel herself sinking into darkness. The last
sounds she heard as she was dragged under, fragments of conversation, “The
informant said she’d be here… has weapons… call Abrasax… target acquired.”

The last thought she had was,
I can’t
believe this is happening again.

Irina awoke, her head splitting into
pieces, reforming and fracturing again. She eased herself up from the damp
floor rubbing her eyes to stir them into action.
No plush red boudoir this
time
. She lay in a dark, bare cell, one small light above the solid metal
door, two cold gray eyes staring at her from the shadows. “Where am I?” she
croaked, her throat hoarse from inhaling chloroform.

“Here.” The gray eyes narrowed.

Let’s try again
. “And where’s that?”

“Hell.”

“Oh.”
You think?

Irina sat up, fully trying to shake off the
black fractures in her brain and piece together her last memories.
Enlightenment slammed into her gut. They had known she was coming! They were
lying in wait, had mentioned an informant, and had known to search her for
weapons. It could only mean one thing. She had been betrayed. She also knew who
had betrayed her although she couldn’t quite believe it. She just didn’t know
why.

Finally able to see more clearly, she
focused on the gray-eyed figure and registered another small shape lying
listless in the corner, curled into a small tight ball. “Who are you?” she
asked the gray eyes. “Black. I am black,” was the reply.

Irina could see now that it was a girl. She
was dirty, ragged and broken. Her lank, dark hair was a tangled mess of knots,
her skin gray-blue, cracked and dry. The cracks, Irina suddenly realized were
red welts that crisscrossed her arms, crusted with dried blood. Hopelessness
visibly endless in gray eyes, now just sunken hollows on a face that was skin
and bone. Irina could tell from her bone structure and the slanted tilt of her
eyes that she had once been a very pretty girl. Now, no longer. It was almost
as if any bright spark of light or hope in the girl had been eradicated, absorbed
leaving a shadowy nothingness, a blank, dark hole where she had climbed inside
herself and disappeared.

“How long have you been here?”

“Forever.”

“Who’s that?” Irina asked pointing at the
other dismal form.

“Black. She is black.” Irina’s heart cried in
sympathy. These poor creatures were in hell, had obviously been tortured so
badly that this girl couldn’t even remember her name. The Discordants truly
were evil and Tyr was aligning with
them?

She grasped for a way to comfort the girl
and suddenly realized her power. The voice could calm and perhaps she could
encourage the girl to focus away from the pain, maybe even remember who she
was. Taking a deep breath as Ziad had taught her, Irina sat up straight,
cross-legged. Closing her eyes, she focused on warmth and security. She began
to speak, infusing the words with a resonance of tranquility, serenity and
hope.

“You are safe,” she whispered. “You will be
safe, remember who you are. Picture that girl in your head. She is a survivor.
Look for the light. You can see it shining, feel its warmth.”

Irina continued repeating all the phrases
Ziad had taught her, using the tones and melody of her voice to persuade,
cajole and coax, to guide the girl back out of the darkness. A surge of power
from within her core as her words took shape around them, weaving into the
fabric of the space, gave Irina the confidence to continue even as the girl
seemed unresponsive. She wasn’t sure if it was helping, but eventually gray
eyes gave a sigh and slid slowly toward Irina. She tentatively laid her head
down onto Irina’s lap, her hands clasped together, a soft featherlike weight.

Irina continued to build the words toward a
crescendo of light and hope as the girl relaxed and drifted off into a deep
sleep. Probably the first she’d had in days. Irina was left in the darkness,
struggling to contain her own fear and helplessness. What would the Discordants
do her?