The Golden Bell (12 page)

“Really? I hadn’t known you were into musical
instruments.”

She smiled like a wolf. “It also plays
music.” Almost daring him, she reached up and stroked the Bell
pendant at her neck. His eyes followed it, glued themselves to the
golden sphere.

Almost strangled, he said, “What a lovely
piece of jewelry, my dear. Did you make it?”

She just smiled, that cold, hard smile that
said,
I’ve got you, you murdering bastard
. She could feel
that subtle change in her eyes, the one that meant they were
glinting gold. For once, she didn’t care. She wanted Azion to know
she hated him.

Fallon stepped into the silence, taking her
arm. “My wife has many talents. If you’ll excuse us, Elder,
ladies.” He steered Rain out of the room at a slow, deliberate
pace.

“That was stupid, Rain. Azion is a powerful
man,” he said once they were alone in the hall. Though his voice
was quiet, the anger carried clearly.

“He murdered my father,” she hissed, though
softly. “It’s no accident he’s ‘retired’ now. That bastard followed
me to the Dark Lands, and he wants to finish what he started.
Keeping my mouth shut won’t make me safe.”

“You don’t know for certain it’s not Rite.
Just because someone is nice to you, doesn’t make him
innocent.”

“Don’t I know it. But tell me, how many
Elders who could have been involved just coincidently arrive here
within days of me?”

He was silent for a moment. “We’re going to
raise the security around you. It’s going to be close and
visible.”

“Telling him you know there’s danger? I say
we let him try to come after me and pick him off. I’ve outwitted
him before.”

“No.”

“Reconsider. This is a good opportunity.”

He looked at her, and this time his eyes were
gleaming gold. “I said no.” Slow, deliberate, his words held the
weight of finality.

A muscle ticked in her jaw. She was going to
have to get creative.

CHAPTER 7

Fallon wasn’t going to give her the chance to
do something stupid. The minute they entered his rooms, he summoned
Rykarr. Rain listened with interest as Fallon brought his captain
up to speed.

Rykarr heard Fallon out and started issuing
orders over his com unit.

Rain slouched in her chair and walked a coin
through her fingers.

Fallon felt a burst of anger as he watched
her. She was willing to put herself at risk for the sake of
revenge. Justice, she called it. Maybe it was, and overdue at that,
but she didn’t need to get herself killed to obtain it. They had
plenty of time, and he was patient. They could see this thing
resolved easily enough.

“Who’s the head honcho around here, Fallon?
The guy in charge of justice?”

Surprised out of his plans, Fallon focused on
her. “Jayems, Lord of the Haunt.”

She considered. “You have an in with him?
Seeing as how you were an ambassador for him?”

“He’s my cousin,” he said cautiously,
wondering where she was going with this.

“I’d like to talk to him.” She sat up, closed
her fingers around the coin. She looked at him expectantly.

The men looked back at her.

“Okay, but why?”

“I want to tell him what’s going on…and a few
more details you don’t know about all this.”

Fallon frowned, feeling an unwelcome twinge
of jealousy. “You can’t tell me first?”

She shrugged. “Two birds, one stone, you
know? Introduce me to him and I’ll let you in.”

Let him in. Interesting phrasing. “Rykarr
should be there, too.”

“Okay.”

Fallon looked at her a moment more. “All
right. I’ll see if he’s available.”

Rain was a lot more nervous than she let on.
Fallon didn’t say much as they walked toward Lord Jayems’s suite,
an escort of Haunt before and behind. Unfortunately, the
combination was making her eyes water with the urge to sneeze. The
medicine must be wearing off. The only good thing about it was that
it was hard to be fearful in the middle of a sneezing attack.

Fallon looked at her as they approached a set
of double doors guarded by still more Haunt. “You didn’t take your
last dose of medicine, did you?”

She held her finger on her upper lip, trying
to fight off another sneeze. Just as the doors opened, she sneezed
powerfully, then three more times in succession.

Rykarr chuckled and moved slightly left, out
of the line of fire.

Muttering something, Fallon led her to a
chair and sat her down. Sniffing, determined not to lose it again,
Rain looked up…and sneezed again.

“Excuse me,” she said to the dark haired man
standing in front of her. “I’m allergic to dog fur.”

His stern mouth twitched. “I see. How
uncomfortable for you.”

“You’ve no idea,” she muttered.

Fallon sighed and introduced them. “Rain,
this is my cousin, Lord Jayems, though you’ll call him Jayems. All
in the family, you know. You probably saw him at the ceremony,
though I didn’t get a chance to introduce you.”

“My apologies,” Jayems said gravely. “I was
only there a brief time. Our daughter is ill, and I wanted to check
on her and my wife.”

“Nothing serious, I hope,” Rain said
politely.

“Just the usual childhood malaise, but she is
very uncomfortable,” Jayems said. He waved Fallon and Rykarr to
seats and took the one behind the massive carved desk. “I was told
you had something of interest to tell me?”

Rain took a deep breath. Whatever the man
said, his little girl was sick enough to make him cut short his
appearance at an important ceremony. He wouldn’t like to spend much
time dallying with her. “I think Elder Azion killed my father.” She
gave him the cliff notes version of her life before the murder and
after. “During the murder I saw a gray Haunt. Fallon tells me
that’s rare.”

Fallon cut a look her way. “You hadn’t told
me you’d actually seen the gray Haunt!”

She met his eyes. “We’ve got a lot of
unresolved issues. Listen and you’ll hear what else I didn’t say.”
Beyond him, she saw Rykarr wince.

Fallon straightened and his nostrils widened,
but he kept his peace.

She looked at Jayems, who regarded her with a
curious gleam in his eye, and quoted her conversations with Rite
and Azion as closely as possible. “Azion murdered my father,” she
finished simply.

Jayems regarded her without expression.
“You’ve mentioned that a couple of times. What I don’t know is why?
What was his motive?”

She drew a deep breath and removed her
necklace, slipping the Bell from its clasp. “Meet the Bell.” Out of
the corner of her eye, she saw Fallon staring at the thing as she
passed it over to Jayems. He had to be burning up about now, either
with frustration or curiosity.

Jayems examined it. “What does it do?”

She smiled. “I’d heard rumors that you wanted
to try to close the gate when all the immigrants crossed over. I’ll
tell you now, I doubt all of them will. I wouldn’t have, if I
hadn’t been…pushed.” Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a muscle
jump in Fallon’s face. “There’s also the problem of how to close
the gate. Your site is remote, unmarked, but accidents happen.”

“The volti take care of ‘accidents’,” Jayems
said coolly, referring to the wolf-things that prowled the woods
around the gate.

She shook her head. “You need a better way.
The Bell can lock the gate for you. As a matter of fact, it’s a
gate in itself.” She let the silence build.

Finally Fallon ground out, “Are you saying
you could have left at any time?”

“Two problems with that. No money, for one,
which slowed me up the first time. I need time and peace to build
that up, and I’ve yet to get either.”

“I gave you money this morning!” Fallon
sounded as if he were chewing gravel.

“Prismatic silver is not an easy currency to
convert, let alone explain,” she said tersely.

“Just as well, as you were going to use it to
leave me!” Fallon’s eyes were glowing gold.

“Ah…you said there was a second reason?”
Jayems said, interrupting a doozy of a brewing quarrel.

A little abashed, she looked at him. “I
haven’t tested it yet.”

“Ah.” He set the Bell carefully on his
desk.

Fallon picked it up and looked at it. “So
this is what I spent so much frustration trying to figure out.”

Rain shrugged. “If it makes you feel better,
it frustrated Azion for years.”

The look he sent her throbbed with so much
fury that she finally shut up. Taunting him was beginning to seem
hazardous to her health.

“So,” Jayems said, drawing out the word to
get their attention. “This Bell could be used for escape,
theft…even murder.”

“An assassin’s dream,” Rykarr said, speaking
up for the first time.

“That’s not why I made it,” Rain said with a
frown.

“It’s how it’ll be used,” Rykarr answered.
“I’d say it’s best left locked up in Lord Jayems’s safe.”

She smiled without humor. “Nice thought, but
it doesn’t eliminate the central problem. Azion knows I can make
another one any time I want. Hundreds, if I liked.”

Her words met with deafening silence.

It was almost funny, sharing the irony of her
existence with three men who looked as stumped by the problem as
she did.

For a moment, anyway.

“Azion will have to die,” Fallon said coldly.
“I won’t tolerate his continued threat to my family.”

Surprised by that, she shot a look at
him.

Jayems held up a hand. “Peace. We haven’t
proved beyond doubt it was him.”

“I can’t afford to wait,” Fallon
answered.

Rain let them debate, following her own lines
of thought. When she’d traced them somewhere interesting, she
voiced them. “What makes an object valuable? It’s rarity. In the
case of technology, it’s good only until it becomes obsolete or
common. One day a spy is killing for it, the next every guy in
America is using it from the comfort of his couch.”

“You can’t put a Bell in every house,” Fallon
argued, looking alarmed at the possibilities.

“No, not as it stands. I can modify the
technology, though. Think about it,” she said, getting excited.
“What have you got for transportation here? Shoe leather and pack
animals, some boats. Okay, what if I made Bells for emergency or
official transport, limiting their use to on world, secure sites?
The Bells could be programmed as single use units, or better,
single destination.”

Fallon said slowly, “Azion would still know
they could function as off-world destination devices.”

She shook her head. “Not if I published the
disappointing results of my off-world attempt, made it very public,
stressed the local applications as if I’m trying to save face. Half
the appeal of the technology is its secrecy. Once it goes public…”
She let them work it out for themselves.

“All of this still leaves you lacking
justice,” Jayems pointed out. “While your sighting of a gray Haunt
is incriminating for Azion, I’m told you have no scent memory.
Without it, your testimony is still your word against his.”

She drooped a little, thinking of that. The
world sucked sometimes. “Well, Fallon was against plan A. I
compromised by solving his problems instead.”

When he spoke again, Jayems’s voice had
gentled. “You still aren’t certain it works.”

“It’ll work,” she said gloomily. “I always
make these things work.”

Jayems looked at Fallon, who still held the
Bell. “Well? Do you want to keep charge of it?”

Fallon looked at Rain. “Do you need it?”

She swallowed. She hadn’t used the Bell in
days, was afraid of what the withdrawal would be like. On the other
hand, maybe Fallon’s…attentions…would mitigate any lingering
problems. Making love to him did seem to give the same sort of
pleasure, only deeper and fuller.

She blushed just thinking about it. “No.
Better keep it here, just in case.”

Fallon studied her color and handed the Bell
back to his cousin. “Very well. Are you ready to go, Rain?”

Rykarr stayed behind at Jayems’s request as
Fallon escorted Rain back to their suite.

She hesitated at her own door. “Would you
mind? I’d like some time to myself for a while.” She was feeling
depressed. She hadn’t meant to sacrifice her interests like that,
and the backlash of emotion wasn’t pleasant.

Fallon looked at her for a long moment. The
dynamics had shifted between them in the last twenty minutes. Her
sacrifice had done much to allay his anger. “You’re certain?”

“Yeah,” she said on a sigh. “I want to hang
out in my cave for a bit.”

A grave smile curved his mouth, but didn’t
last. He kissed her. “For a little while.”

She shut the door to her room, alone at last.
She’d meant to work on a plan B while she had the time, but found
she really was too disheartened to bother. She’d been stressed for
so long, it had been hard to really mourn her father. So much
adrenaline and fear was bound up within the last year it was
painful to look back, to examine the feelings.

All this time she thought she’d gotten past
the worst, and now she discovered she’d yet to really grieve. She
was afraid.

Maybe it helped to feel sorry for herself.
Maybe it was a kind of letting go, giving up her dream of justice,
but something about tonight’s mix of emotions let the tears begin
to roll. No one was chasing her. She didn’t have to muffle her
sobs, choke them off. For once the grief didn’t hit her on a
crowded bus or subway.

Once the tears began, they came in a flood.
All the pent up pain came out from a full year of hiding in the
dark, fearing what she was, fearing what hunted her in the night.
In a way, she had Fallon to thank for that.

She’d hurt him tonight; wanted to hurt him.
Part of her was angry with him for making her come here, for
railroading her into a relationship she wasn’t ready for. They were
both going to cross some rough roads to get to a place where this
marriage he’d started could work. He’d taken advantage of her, but
she was to blame, too.