Siphon (Siphon Chronicles, Book One) (12 page)

The first words to your son should not be, “Is she worth it?”  Maybe a “hello” or “good to have you home” would be nice.  To repay the sentiment, I didn’t reply.

“Did you take from her?”

Disgusting man.  “Ample enough amount to know what she is not.  Our kind will act first before they know her true abilities are not what we thought knowing hype will win out regardless.  She wasn't killing off anyone in Dallas, just misinformed like the rest.”

His face rarely changed so even now I could see no visible reaction to downplaying Lark being the nexus.  He was afraid of her.  I could see it in his eyes.  I’d heard how he talked about the nexus to others when he thought I wasn’t listening.  He was afraid of what she could do.

“How many has she killed?” he asked Jared behind him.  The old man was her first kill, as my father termed it.  She didn’t
kill
anyone.

"And she uses duel abilities not unlike yourself?"

"Yes."   That wouldn’t help my case, but didn’t think she’d hide any unknown powers well.  Trying to not seem agitated by her presence so close to the council, I nodded to Marion Bartlett, the council counselor, to speak to Lark.  It was purely a distraction on the part of sparing her from my father’s one-on-one scrutiny.

“She doesn’t need protection, son,” my father argued.  “If you’re meaning she can’t hack it, then she isn’t any good to us Dane.  If she’s on our side, we need a soldier, not a female body to take up space.  If she is the nexus, I want her contained quickly and then she is yours to keep for whatever appeals you warrant.  If she is staying with you, make sure she is guarded.  She either is or she isn't, but I want proof.  Others will test her allegiance to you.”

If she is the nexus,
he said showing he wasn't convinced.  A glance back told me she might have missed that part.  She was staring at Jared, father's second.  He was the only one here who could control father in the smallest way.

I looked down like a good son and allowed him to best me.  I didn’t say if she was one way or another, but I prayed she could be a soldier in my father’s wake.  I just don’t want her hurt or spoiled by the group in the next room.   The Siphon Council would toss her away like yesterday’s casserole.

My father eyed her carefully getting an extra gleam in his eye that didn’t send the signals I cared for.  I stepped ahead of her blocking his view.  The fact that he would say things like this in front of all who preceded her always bothered me.  But today it caused me pain.

I wasn't sure how he intended to take her "singing" ability away other than death, but I would cross that bridge at a later date.  He didn't exactly make it known who I was going after until I reported in the day after meeting her.

“Are you offering your protection?”  Lark suddenly appeared beside me.  I didn’t hear her conversation with Miss Bartlett and definitely didn’t hear her come near me.

She was ballsy publicizing my father in a conversation.  Lark was feeding a shark that would eat her alive if he found out our scheme.  "Because I don't need it."

If I answered this in the wrong way it could go bad for both of us.  Lark could be sentenced or sent away just by my overindulgence to her attention on me.  I could be virtually imprisoned or forced to watch her walk out of my life permanently.  Any way you measured it, my father didn’t intend for her to remain near me unless it was for immoral reasons.  I had only one option available and it was sending her into a nest of dancing pythons on steroids that only wanted her powers for their own, nexus or not.  If she survived, she’d have all the power she needed to tell those cannibalized council members where they could stick their political heads.

“I am offering her as a challenge under the standing of she belongs to me and me alone.”

Her head snapped to mine.  She hadn’t seen this coming and I couldn’t tell her until we were alone.  My father saw our lies as truth the second she stepped into the room dressed like she was.  His spies had seen otherwise.  I’d called her a vixen in my mind before, but now she looked it.  She’d dressed in all tight black everything and it was driving me crazy not to cover it all up.  Every male body watched her enter the council building and descend the stairs to this room.  My father even reacted to her.  She was like a siren in our siphon world where most girls were pretty, she was downright beautiful.  Inside and out.  And I wouldn’t let a single siphon soul know it till the time came.

She would fight, earn the status I have, and fight alongside me till the time was right to take over.  I just should have let her in on that scenario.

"Either way, any siphoning will give her away.  Taking from our warriors will single her out."

"She will not take anymore from them that they take themselves.  And if she did, it would only show that she takes from either, not anything beyond."

Daniel wasn’t serious, was he?  Did he just bleeping say he’d sacrifice me to the wolves he’d spent so much time telling me to avoid?

There was a burning fury buried down deep inside my belly that coiled and was inching to get out.  I wanted to tear his tongue out for lying to me.  Was Daniel a traitor?

He turned his back on his father to bestow me a look that was far from a Daniel Crawford norm. His eyes pleaded something indecipherable, as if asking for trust.  As if!

The second those eyes turned back to his father though, they were bored, glazed over, and without emotion. 

“She will be ready.” 

That’s the last thing he said before he walked me through the door with a tight hand on the top of my arm like a prisoner headed into her cell.  The walls around us were tall and claustrophobic, filled with the same dull gray as the entrance. When we first arrived, we went straight to what Daniel called the council room.  My hesitation at the door of a downtown martial arts studio that appeared to be locked up and closed was worry enough.  When we took over twenty steps further down into a underground tunnel-like dungeon, I really freaked.  He calmed me with his hand, but continued to descend cold concrete stairs to what I worried some might term as entering hell.  With words like, “you’re safe with me” and “stay by my side”, what girl would not at least follow for a while?  Well, maybe they can’t say because to most worlds like this don’t really exist. 
But they do!

Like cattle heading into the butcher, I followed him.  It was only because the second the metal door slammed shut his fingers pressed deep into the curve of my back and his soft whisper sailed into my left ear, “It will be okay.  I will tell you everything else about this place and more just as soon as we are safe to talk.”

With that, I was calmed.  I hated it too.  What if he really was the butcher?  Was my trust in the wrong person?

I didn’t think so, but what other choice did I have.

He’d told me before about the council and how ruthless they’d become.  Not all the members were bad, but felt obligated to follow the current leader or lose their lives and families.  Fear will lead a people as well as loyalty and honor.  My stepfather says that all the time about the current president of our country.  He said loyalty and honor have long since left the leaders of our world leaving only liars and thieves.  Blink wrong and they may strike, then start your boots to shaking. 

“Is it like an alpha and omega thing?”  We were in a small offshoot of the hall that opened to an extended entrance with a sign above that read, CAFETERIA.

“Something like that?” Daniel stood near a desk that was missing the typical rolling office chair.  A little tan stool sat before it looking out of place like I felt.  He had yet to tell where we were headed.

“Then how is it?”

“Do you remember the one that was standing up when we arrived in the council room?”  He waited till I nodded, but not before he glanced at my shoes hitting the floor with a tapping noise for the second time.  I didn’t want to stand, so I made myself comfortable by leaning on the opposite wall.  “That was the last to vote, so to speak.  Like under the omega.  The man he was talking to was my father, as you know now.  The alpha.  If he had his way, Jared, the omega, would be ousted on his rear.  He sees him as weak, but he’s the only one in there that will stand up for the rest of us.”

“Which one was Jared again?” she asked.

“Brown hair, small build.  Always wears a white t-shirt.”

“Why are they so adamant on being control freaks?  Why don’t they try to help instead or support?” I whispered because he did first.  Daniel pushed off the wall and stopped right in front of me like the day he first kissed me.  My feet were trembling  and my arms were stretched out across my front.  This made me significantly unable to look him in the eye.  His hand, either on purpose or not, brushed against my elbow.

After a long second of staring only at my knees, he shrank away and visibly altered his stance so that we weren’t touching.  He held his hand out to continue down the hallway.  His muffled answer was none other than an exit to a room labeled CRAWFORD.  He didn't answer my question or enter the room.

  I thought back to the faces of the many who just judged me to be unfit for a siphon and expected me to prove myself.  I knew he was only acting this way because of them. The council.  As afraid as I might have been walking in, they didn't look so scary. They looked afraid of me. 

Except Daniel's father.  I didn’t know what he was thinking, but it wasn’t good.

I was thankful for the leather pants now.  I looked like I mean business in that wanna-be biker chick kind of way even if my mind was clucking and puking on the inside.  I silently thanked my stepmom for all the wayward, form fitting clothes she liked to add to my closet.

Several nodded and saluted to Daniel in the hall as he took me on a tour of the “facilities” as he called it.  Dozens of people called him Dane, more often female than male.  Many were unusually short, though most were tall and bulky like Daniel.  They weren’t midget sized by any means, more like they stopped growing after their teen years.  I wondered it was a siphon genetic thing going on and vowed to ask Daniel later.

He talked like we were soldiers or something, a perception of a different man than I knew him as. His voice changed since leaving the room.  I know he warned me about the front he would put up, but it was still a little unsettling to hear and see.  “You’ll battle other siphons in the ring.  They will be relentless and cruel, but you’ll survive.  If you take from them each time they are near, it will incapacitate them long enough to take them down.  Just remember it to your advantage. It will give you pain, but you have a weapon they don’t.”

“And that is?” I asked without expression.  Daniel said there were cameras, but no sound.  He kept a solid two feet distance away from me so I couldn’t exactly whisper.  It was like he wanted to share the information but wanted to secure how others heard him give it to me.  He warned me they all knew of my “greenness” to the siphon world whether I was the prophecy girl or not.  It was ridiculous they thought it in the first place.

“I saw Foster, and the old man.  Neither one thought anything about it.  They didn't know what you were doing, nor did they care.  The second you take a year, a song takes shape in your head.  The one you take from freezes in their steps and simply gives their very soul over to you.  Like their tranced."

I hate that I agreed with the last part.  It seemed like just that.

“How do you know for sure…that I do?  Or that I should in front of your father.” I wanted to look at him closely, analyze his answers.  He didn't know I overheard him in the car.  Just then Jason joined us.  He’d been absent till now, making himself cozy with the females who surrounded him the second we arrived.  He nodded to both of us, eyed our closeness, and then started to walk away. 

“Are you my enemy now?”  I yelled to him.  It was sudden and aggressive, but he just ignored me.

“Don’t do this, Lark,” he half turned.

“What the bleeping—Are you crazy?” I stepped up to my long time friend.  We were too loud, but I didn’t care.

“You can keep your tactful “bleeping” curses to yourself Lark.  I back you one hundred bleeping percent like I always have.  I was the only one bleeping there for you.  Crazy doesn’t term it correctly though I readily ask myself the same question at times.  So take you’re bleeping—oh, forget it.  Whatever the hell you do is up to you.  Call me when you need me again.”

Jason pushed my hand away hard enough Daniel intervened.  A hand wrapped around my shoulders.  Jason looked both of us over carefully noting the closeness. 
              “It obviously isn’t me you need.”  His stiffened stride said it all. 

Daniel whipped his arm off me like I was diseased.

I guess we were not far enough apart like he planned, but hero mode wasn't off limits.

Not much was said except to ask if he was always like this and how I managed to want to stay friends with him.  I told him he was never like this before which seemed to cause laughter.  Giving him an incredulous look, he shook his head and only laughed again.  Instead, Daniel ignored it altogether and continued on with the previous conversation like it never happened.

“Because a prophecy was written and hanging in the hidden depths of the safe room said you could.”  He answered the question left in the air before Jason made an entrance.  Daniel waited till Jason was far enough away, and then squeezed my hand.  I couldn’t figure men out for the life of me.  “But we figure out how to do it secretly or not at all.”

Which left me defenseless.

“Are there any others like me?” I asked tense with both subjects dueling in my head. I still refused to believe I was that unique.

“I told you, you are one of a kind.”

“Yeah, but was that a line to butter me up or the  real truth?  There have to be other girls like me who aren’t just regular siphons?”

"No, I have determined just that.  You
are
more than just a siphon."

Just then, a male model of a guy swaggered up to us and stopped way too close to my personal space.  “Drop this stiff and I’ll make it worth your while?  Dane’s a chop to my steak.”  The honey in his voice was disguised with the way he licked his lips.  He did all this in front of Daniel.  What the heck?

“She is spoken for.  Move on!” Daniel’s protective arm moved across the front of me. 

The lip licker shrugged and walked away but not without mumbling something about not letting me be alone.  Black combat pants were standard here it seemed, but this guy walked like he was on a runway.  Men shouldn’t walk that elegant.

“What was that about?” I blushed wanting to hide away.

“My point proven.  There isn’t another creature on this planet like you.”

Uh!  “Now I am a creature?”

Daniel rolled his eyes.  “The only siren/siphon I’ve ever seen.”
              “Siren?  Like the mermaids in Homer?  I’m not a siren.”  I pointed down my front, “Look at me.  I’m plain.”

He LOOKED at me.  All of me.  “”Then you are your own fool.  Your beauty could not be outdone by even the gods you mentioned.”

I think that was a compliment. “Still.  Siren/siphon sounds kind of devilish.”

“Not the word I’d have picked, but if the need be, we will use it to save your life.  For now, no singing unless I give the say so.  We will not last one minute in here if they find out what you are. Hold your breath if you have to fake it."

"You mean this siren/siphon thing?"

"Mostly," he flipped my hair behind my neck. 

He was hiding something again.  I wondered if he knew he touched my hair each time he thwarted the truth.

“What happens if they know you’re helping me?” I dared to ask what I probably knew the answer too.

His eyes left nothing to the imagine, “Let’s not think about what can’t happen.”