Calm Before the Storm (22 page)

The warrior spoke one word, making Cassi
flinch. “Cassiopeia.”

“You
know
him?” asked Irina a catch
of fear in her voice.

“Could say that,” replied Cassi, her eyes
darting as if searching for the nearest escape.

“Get behind me,” growled Tyr planting his
massive frame in front of the two women. Cassi pulled at his arm. “It’s no
good, Tyr. We can’t beat them. Look behind.” Tyr pivoted to the sight of
another legion of shedu at their rear. Outflanked and outnumbered.

The dark warrior moved toward them, his
armor a matte blackness absorbing light as he moved with a fluidity that
contradicted the mass of his huge frame. He was as tall as Tyr but seemed twice
the size. “You are to come with me.” He gestured them to move forward, the
guards coming up from behind to grab their weapons.

Tyr dragged Irina into the crook of his
arm, a protective embrace. She was not to be touched. Cassi was right. There
were too many of them but he still had a couple of weapons concealed the shedu
hadn’t found. He was patient, would wait for the right moment.

He watched warily as the warrior advanced
toward him. The dark warrior stopped two feet away. “I’m sorry,” he said, his
deep voice sounding almost regretful as he drew his blade from its sheath.
Without pausing, the warrior drove the tip deep into Tyr’s chest using a fast,
fluid motion. He withdrew it just as quickly, watching impassively as Tyr fell
to his knees.

A sobbing choking sound broke from Irina
and she fell with him still holding on to his arm. He blinked once, too shocked
to speak. The pain was agonizing, but it wasn’t his pain he felt. Blue
tendrils, threads of electricity shot toward him binding his chest, reaching
out to stanch the wound. It was only Irina’s pain he registered, sharp
lacerations ripping through every cell even as her soul reached out for his,
holding him afloat and keeping the darkness back. “Tyr!” He heard her terrified
cry.

He stared up at Irina, watching paralyzed
as tears streamed in rivers down her cheeks. He felt her arms straining to hold
on to him as his body shuddered and he fought to stay awake. His lids were
heavy but he struggled to keep them open not wanting to lose sight of her
beautiful face. She was screaming at him as his body spiraled into freefall and
drifted into a bank of fog. “Tyr! Open your eyes. Don’t—” Her words echoed in
the distance. He exhaled a final breath and was carried away into darkness.

Cassi gasped in horror and utter confusion
at the sight of Irina lying over Tyr’s body, a sobbing, broken wreck. She
turned to the dark warrior, eyes drawn to the blood dripping from his blade
staining the floor a dark crimson. She searched the obsidian mask endeavoring
to find some reason behind his action but saw only a void in the black slit.
“You’re sorry!” she yelled. “You bastard!” The warrior stood motionless.
Immoveable. “Why the hell did you do that?”

“No one betrays Abrasax.”

“He needs Tyr alive, you idiot,” sneered
Cassi. “How are you going to get his essence if he’s dead?”

“He’s not dead yet.” The warrior motioned
to the shedu. “Take the women to the transport,” he ordered. “This one,” he
said, indicating Tyr, “goes to Abrasax.”

Abrasax Tower was deserted. The few
remaining shedu Discordants still in residence having been swiftly rounded up
by Borealis and his Eunomi warriors. It had taken some time to dismantle
paralysis traps left by Abrasax to slow them down but the wiccani were able to
scry for such devices quite easily. Even so, Merak couldn’t hide his concern.
Cassi, whom he had known for hundreds of years, was missing in action and Irina
had vanished along with Alcina who had dropped off the radar.

Things were getting out of control, a
pervading sense of chaos and disorder eating into the fabric of time, poised
over their heads like an axe waiting to fall. Realignment was so close and the
scales were tipping away from The Balance, heavily weighing in on the side of
discord.

The wiccani were urgently scrying for some
trace of Irina and Cassi as well as that bastard Tyr. Merak feared that Cassi’s
loyalty to Irina had led her to follow in Irina’s misguided footsteps and that
Alcina’s loyalty to Irina’s mother had driven her to help.

“They’re gone, Merak,” said Borealis,
breaking in on his thoughts. “The shedu we captured are hissing that they’ve
all gone to Ophiuchus, probably to Serpens City. They left for the nearest
starportal an hour ago.”

“If that’s the case they must be planning
the extraction ritual.”

“We will need a full force of Eunomi
warriors,” said Borealis shaking his head, “if we’re to go in and liberate
Irina. We can’t afford to let the Discordants have control of her essence, or
Tyr’s for that matter. If they gain control of War and Peace, the implications
for the universe will be disastrous.”

“How do we do this?” asked Merak. “I know
we’ve sent squads to Ophiuchus in the past, but it’s not easy and we don’t know
exactly where they are.”

“Ah!” Borealis smiled at him in
satisfaction. “Luckily for us the Ophiuchi are very mercenary. I have any
number of informants who will be willing to trade the information for the right
price and one in particular who should be easily able to tell us what we need
to know.”

“Can they be trusted?”

“No, but knowing that gives us the
advantage and we have to start somewhere.”

“Get in touch with your informants,
Borealis. I don’t need to remind you how important this mission will be. We’re
going to need the Concordia to sanction the use of full force against the
Discordants, with the possible need for execution of an identified Esseni.”

“You mean Tyr.”

“We can’t afford to take chances,” replied
Merak. “The Discordants now have both pendants and both Esseni. They can
control both essences by coercion. If Tyr is a willing ally of theirs, they
won’t need Irina, just her essence, and so they will kill her. Better we
execute Tyr and try to save her. I
need
to save her, Borealis. Irina has
been a daughter to me for nearly fifteen years. I can’t fail.”

Borealis clasped Merak’s shoulder in
sympathy, his warrior eyes intense, holding a vow. “We won’t fail, Merak, I
promise you that. Irina will be safe and if Tyr has to die, then so be it.”

“Tyr has to die?” Luc’s voice broke in on
their discussion. At six foot two, Luc was dwarfed by Borealis, who looked down
at him from his massive six-foot-eight frame, brows drawn together in
confusion. “Who is this?” he asked Merak, still concentrating his vision toward
Luc.

“Ah!” said Merak. “I forgot you haven’t
meet Lucius Whitaker yet, Borealis. He is also an Esseni, although as yet we
are not sure which essence he holds.”

“Its Luc, Merak, you know I hate being
called Lucius! And what were you saying about Tyr?”

Borealis turned to Luc again. “He’s
betrayed us, Lucius. Therefore he dies.” Luc’s blue eyes blinked with concern
as he ignored Borealis’ use of his full name. “What about Irina? Much as I hate
to say it, I think she really loves the guy.”

Merak sighed. “She might but he cannot be
allowed to lend his essence to the Discordant cause. What we really need to do
is find her. Tell us again what you saw earlier outside. Maybe Borealis can
figure out what was going on.”

Luc thought back to his lonely vigil. He
had been contacted by Merak when Irina went missing and then by Cassi who had
been extremely worried when she found out that Irina had not made contact with
him. Finally, hours later after still no word from Irina, Merak had asked him
to watch the comings and goings from Abrasax Tower and keep a note of who went
in and out.

He had stood watch for hours, waiting for
Merak and his warriors to arrive. Not much had happened at first but then his
attention was drawn to a number of black vans entering the underground car
park. Intrigued, he had managed to gain entry by using his usual charm with the
receptionist, flashing his baby blues and claiming forgetfulness for not having
his security pass. From a hidden vantage point in the car park, he had watched
as numerous black-clad security guards loaded the vans with boxes.

Just as he was losing interest, a side door
creaked open and an exotic blonde creature wearing green emerged with two
guards and two gray huddled figures. He had found himself mesmerised by the
blonde, her stunning, curvy form grabbing his attention, hips swaying with
feline grace as she barked out orders to the guards.

His eyes would have remained on her but for
the sudden radiation of energy he experienced surging out of his body, a
trailing ray of bright white that shot forward to meet a dark consuming shadow
that encompassed the gray disheveled figures shuffling behind the blonde woman.
He realized that these two forms were bound, chains around their ankles, which
accounted for the shuffling, and handcuffs on their wrists. His shock was
profound. The two girls were shackled as if slaves. They were dirty, in rags
and appeared so browbeaten that Luc cursed himself for not noticing their
plight sooner. He focused on the two girls. They both had long dark hair, their
faces obscured but the taller one suddenly went rigid, alert, her face pivoting
to stare in his direction.

As Luc pressed himself back into the
shadows to avoid detection, his whole body shuddered as a wave of pitch
darkness seeped into his bones almost enclosing him in an inky shroud. Only he
didn’t feel threatened. It was almost as if the shadows were calling to him,
offering protection but also seeking some brightness inside him. He tried to
discern the girl’s features but her hair covered most of her face.

The luminous energy inside him reached out,
striving to wrap around the tendrils of blackness, wanting to offer
illumination and warmth. Something about the girl resonated in his
consciousness. She was a lost soul. They were both lost souls and his body
pulsed with an urgency, a need to claim them back.

The blonde woman moved in front of her,
breaking the link forged by shadow and radiance. He could only watch, helpless
as the van doors slammed shut and the two girls were swallowed up into the
brilliant vivid sunshine of the street.

Even now, Luc found it hard to explain what
had happened. His body still vibrated with the residue of that energy and a
darkness inside that was a desolate hollow emptiness. It was as if he had lost
some piece of himself that was an essential part of his existence and he
couldn’t shake off the image of the girl, rigid in her chains, the picture now
seared into his brain. He told Merak and Borealis about the boxes, the girls
and the blonde but didn’t elaborate on the specifics.

Luc’s stomach churned with unusual anxiety.
He was the optimist, the joker. Nothing took him down. Only today was
different. Irina and Cassi, both like sisters to him, were in mortal danger,
the plight of the two girls in shackles was a heavy weight on his conscience
and it looked as though Tyr was a traitor. He only hoped the Eunomi had a plan.
It would need to be a good one.

* * * * *

Irina didn’t know if Tyr was dead or alive.
The horror of the moment the dark warrior’s blade plunged into his chest kept
replaying in her head, like a gory slow-motion scene in a horror movie. The
slicing agony pierced her own heart, grinding deeper and deeper each time she
saw it happen, until she knew that her own organ had disintegrated, her
arteries bleeding angry red tears.

Heartbreak and utter disbelief had cast
Irina into a shock so great that she barely registered the journey to
Ophiuchus. Her body nothing more than an automaton, senses numb to anything but
the one thought in her head. Tyr was dead. She had tried to hold him, had cast
out her energy through the magnetic connection that flowed between them,
striving to keep him afloat. It had worked for a while.

She had felt his pulse hammering through
the link into her veins synchronizing with the beat of her own heart. Then the
shedu had dragged her away, the connection severing with a sudden agonizing
wrench. The loss had left her bereft, without an anchor so that she was nothing
more than a fragile leaf tossed helplessly on the winds of a storm. She had no
memory of the last few hours. Days? She didn’t know how long it had even been
since they had dragged him away from her. Her devastation was total. If Tyr was
gone then she would cease to exist.

Irina could already feel herself fading
away, melting into a vacuum of nothingness. Cassi had tried to snap her out of
listlessness, goad her into anger and force her to fight. But all Irina wanted
was Tyr, the other half of her soul. Time meant nothing to her now. It was only
when Cassi finally lost patience and decided on drastic action that Irina had
no alternative but to face the present. “For god’s sake, Irina, snap out of
it!” shouted Cassi as she slapped Irina’s cheek.

“Ouch!” Irina felt the stinging blow as
physical pain recalled her to reality with a sharp jolt. “That hurt!”

“Well stop being so melodramatic and
wallowy, then.”

“Wallowy! What’s wallowy—is it even a
word?” groaned Irina rubbing her cheek with a frown.

“Who cares? It got you talking at last,”
said Cassi satisfaction in her voice. “We really need to get a grip on our
situation here. Don’t know if you realize it, but things are not going our way
at the moment.”

“Of course I realize it!” Irina cried
stunned at Cassi’s lack of sympathy. “Tyr’sdead! He was stabbed right in front of me by that bastard dark
warrior friend of yours!”

“He’s not my friend!” scoffed Cassi in an
irritated tone. “And anyway Tyr should have moved or something. Looked to me
like he let himself get stabbed.”

“How can you say that? He had no chance!”
Irina was irate now. “Your stupid enigmatic warrior person had no need to do
that—and I think you have a thing for him. You seemed pretty happy to see him
just before he stabbed Tyr.”

“No I did not!”

“Did so!”

“Take that back!”

“No, you take it back!”

“Well this is absolutely fascinating!” A
deep voice cut across their argument. “Are you going to start tearing each
other’s hair out? I do love a good cat fight.”

They both froze.

“Oh don’t stop. I was enjoying you both so
much. It’s making it difficult for me to choose which one of you to have
first.” The man speaking raised his hands up and down as if weighing up his
options. “Hmm, what am I in the mood for—blonde or brunette? It’s such a hard
choice!”

The interruption shocked Irina out of her
grief and she finally took stock of their surroundings. They were in a cage
about ten feet square in the middle of a large dark room, columns on each side,
lit by torches. A heavy wooden door now stood open at the far end through which
a group of about ten people had entered.

The person who spoke was a tall brown-haired
man. He had dark bronze skin and arresting pale blue eyes the color of
cornflowers. He wore his hair long, to his shoulders, the dark whiskers on his
chin cut into a thin goatee. Hanging from his ears were two gold hoops, and a
smaller hoop pierced his left eyebrow. The man wore a sharp black suit, black
shirt and a red tie. Irina was also surprised to see his feet adorned by black
boots made out of what looked like snakeskin.

Cassi didn’t flinch, turning her anger
toward him. “And you are? Or shall I just call you Mr. Nosey? We were having a
private conversation.” The man walked forward until he was inches from the bars
and Cassi’s face.

“I will ignore the name-calling as I’m
sensing you’ve had a bit of a rough time lately.” He smirked, his eyes leering
over the full length of her body as if he wanted to devour her. “And I would
guess that you are the celebrated Cassiopeia, famous Eunomi warrior, daughter
of Earth and Sky. I have heard a lot about you.”

“Yeah well, I’ve been around a while,”
Cassi replied coolly, and Irina could only stare in admiration at her friend’s
nonchalance under the scrutiny of his leering gaze.

“Let us hope your status doesn’t change too
soon then,” said the man with a sugary smile. “We will have to see what
entertainment you can provide me with. I do like to be entertained.”

Irina could feel the shivers running
through her as he spoke, the slither of his voice a creeping snake over her
flesh. He turned his attention to her. “Ah! The ever so lovely Peace. They
didn’t lie. You are beautiful. It does seem a shame.” He snapped his fingers
and a female figure peeled away from the group by the door and made her way to
the cage. “Bring her to the great hall,” he ordered, his tone more darkly
sinister. “Cassiopeia can stay here. I like her spunk.”

“Choronzon,” said Cassi in a more sober
tone. “You are Choronzon, aren’t you? Let Irina go. You don’t really need her.
You have Tyr. I’m sure he’s still alive somewhere and you can have me. I’ll
stay if you let her go.” Cassi’s tone was earnest, her fear for Irina obvious.

“Where would the fun in that be?” replied
Choronzon. “And besides, I already have you.” He motioned the female to the
cage door. She unlocked it. Cassi tried to run at her but suddenly stopped
short, paralyzed by some kind of force. Irina felt energy crackle through the
air and realized it was emanating from Choronzon. He raised an eyebrow. “I am
more powerful than you, little girl. Don’t try my patience and you might
survive a while longer.”