The Second Coming (33 page)

Brahm knelt to
grab Lya, feeling for the back of her head. She was relieved to
find it undamaged.

“
Imp, I should have known it was you. The beard does not suit
you.”

He took a
clumsy bow. “It's been a long time, my lady.”

White Feather
looked at Brahm and then back to the tall man at the door, a look
of disbelief on his face.

The captain
marched forward, staring down at her.

“
Brahm. Not a joyous reunion, is it?” He looked at Lya. “Well,
I see you have our runaway. God has smiled upon me this
day.”

Diarmuid and
White Feather held knife and dagger. Brahm's mouth was agape. In
all her years, she never thought she would be faced with this.

Mason
.

“
Brahm,” Diarmuid said with a slow, cautious tone. “Is this
who I think it is?”

She gulped
down a knot in her throat. “Yes. It's my brother.”

Brahm came to,
her head pounding. The sounds of rushing water inundated her ears,
as did the steady creaking of wood. Above her, beams crisscrossed
the ceiling, and she traced their path to the smooth curved walls
of the ship in which she found herself imprisoned. Her head
throbbed as she sat up, but it was no more painful than her
rope-bound wrists and ankles. They itched and burned.

She rolled to
her side. Both White Feather and Diarmuid lay close to the wall,
unconscious. Lya was not in the room with them. Brahm listened to
the groaning of the ship, and her mind sailed through the memories
of what had happened.

Her brother
had become much better with a sword than she had ever thought
possible. After a short skirmish, he disarmed Diarmuid. And White
Feather had been no match for nine Confederation Guards. She closed
her eyes as the memory of it stung. She had been useless, barely
able to stand, let alone fight. And in that fucking dress, without
weapons, she might as well have knelt at her brother's feet. She
still felt the pain from the blow he had dealt to her at the back
of the head. She remembered the look in his eyes when he had struck
her. It hurt him to capture her, but the pain that lingered in his
eyes was from the wound she had inflicted when she left his side so
long ago.

She looked at
White Feather. As she stared at his long frame huddled on the floor
she wanted to reach over and touch him.

He shuffled
and rolled towards her.

“
Are you all right?” she asked.

He groaned,
and nodded. “You?”

“
I've seen better days.”

His eyes
hinted at anger. “He's your brother?”

“
Yes.”

“
Your brother is Captain of the Confederation
Guard?”

She sighed.
This is where it would get painful. “Yes,” she said, “but he wasn't
always. He used to be second in command to me.” She braced herself
for a torrent of anger.

His eyes
seethed for a moment before he spoke in a low hiss. “So the rumors
were true. You used to be one of them.”

She swallowed
the knot in her throat. “Yes.”

“
And to think I … to think … did Gray Wolf know?”

Brahm nodded.
“She took that secret to her grave.”

“
Is it also true you killed her and Two Moon's
family?”

Brahm shook
her head and her eyes welled up. “No. I could never have harmed
her. She died trying to save Two Moon's family. I begged her not to
go with them that day, but they left before I woke. I tracked them
to find the wolfen over Gray Wolf. They fled as I approached. Two
Moon came out of the woods later to find me kneeling over her dead
body and those of his slain parents.”

“
How do I know you're not lying?” He turned his head away.
“Does anyone else know?”

“
Diarmuid, Gregor, your mother, and now the
Hoyaneh.”

His face
reddened. “Were you planning on telling me?” His voice was low,
disappointed.

The tears ran.
“I thought the Hoyaneh would tell you before we left.” She paused,
trying to find his eyes, but he averted his gaze. “I’m sorry. I
should have told you long ago.”

He sat in
silent disapproval for a time, and Diarmuid stirred. His face was
cut and bruised. Mason had shown him little mercy.

The
pepper-haired man groaned. “Ugh. I feel like hell. Are you two
okay?”

Brahm nodded
and dried the tears on the shreds of her dress.

White Feather
remained silent.

“
Where’s Lya?”

The sound of
footsteps approaching set them all to silence. Keys rattled outside
the door. It groaned as Mason opened it. A young man followed him
with a small pail and rag in hand.

Mason looked them over
.
”Clean him up,” he ordered, and the youth ran to
wash the dried blood that was caked to Diarmuid's face. His eye was
swollen and angry. When the young man finished, Mason ordered him
out.

He walked the
perimeter of the hold, his polished knee-high boots clacking on the
wooden floor. “Traitors are tried before the High Court and hanged
if found guilty. Brahm, your former service to the Confederation
may gain you some sympathy, but treason is punishable by death. I
am sorry I found you. I hoped we would never meet again. I have no
desire to see you hang, but justice must be served.” He struggled
to keep his face without expression, but sorrow lingered in his
eyes. He adjusted his jacket and flicked something off his
shoulder.

She remembered
being like that once. It was her whole life, everything she stood
for. She was so principled and so regimented then.

Until the
night she met Sephirah.

“
Where’s Lya?” she asked.

Mason
continued stalking the perimeter. “She will bear witness to your
trial so she can remember the price of rebelling against the
Confederation, then we will make her one of our own. I've heard
interesting things about her abilities. She'll make a good addition
to our ranks. We hoped to take that brother of hers as well, but it
was not him waiting in the bushes like Breland had hoped. He made a
grave error in letting you out with those Hunters, but his actions
have been redeemed.”

Brahm was
stunned. “You let her go as bait?”

Diarmuid's
eyes raged. He fiddled with the bandage on his arm. “Paine would be
of little use to you.”

“
It does not matter. The Senator has ordered him to be taken
alive. His usefulness will be determined later.” He paused for a
moment. “What is interesting is how once you took their mother, I
now have the daughter.”

Brahm's brave
look slipped into one of disappointment.

“
Did you think I wouldn’t know?” His eyes were unreadable.
“You haven't told her, have you? You haven't told her how you
killed her mother? How you led an ambush against a band of
half-breed rebels and Haudenosaunee, and killed them for conspiring
against the Confederation?”

Brahm hung her
head as White Feather's eyes bored through her. The ship's creaking
grew louder.

“
Brahm, you shame me. I thought you had at least maintained
your integrity. Did you lie your way into Haven?”

“
No,” she said. “Haven knows.”

“
And they still took you in —the Wendigo? And your
Haudenosaunee friends; it would seem they didn't know.”

White Feather
turned his gaze from her.

“
They know,” she muttered.

“
And what about the girl?”

Brahm’s shame
was a weight around her neck. “I have not told her.”

Again the ship
groaned and tilted to the left. Brahm adjusted her position to keep
from sliding.

“
You killed fifty of our people.” White Feather's voice was
coated in rage. “You killed them all. Our people. And the children
you stole in the night.”

Brahm nodded
her head, her stomach reeling. She felt nauseous.

Mason rose. “I
must leave you now.”

Brahm left her
head hanging on her chest as the sound of Mason's boots stepped out
the door. She never felt so alone as she did in that moment. She
hated herself for who she had been, for what she had done, and for
those she had killed. And all the children she had taken who now
had become the Hunters that terrorized them.

Diarmuid slid
over to her. “Tell him everything.”

How many times
would she have to relive this? When would it be over?

She sighed.
“When Mason and I were young, our parents owned a vineyard outside
New Memphis. We were sent off to a Confederation school at a young
age. We were taught how witchcraft destroyed us in the Witch Wars
and how we should turn in all those that wielded it. They were a
menace to be destroyed.

“
In time, both Mason and I showed great physical prowess and
one of the instructors decided we should be taken for training. Our
parents were thrilled. So, most of our time was spent learning to
become the best of the Confederation Guard. What we didn't realize
was we were continually being fed Confederation propaganda. I can
see it now, but couldn't see it to save my life back then. I
suspect Mason still doesn't see it.

“
Eventually I became head of the Guard, and Mason was my
second in command. Our network of spies told us of a secret meeting
that was to take place between Haven, the Haudenosaunee and the
Lastborn. We suspected for some time they were planning on waging a
war against the Confederation. It was rumored they brought with
them a weapon of incredible power, but we never found it after they
were vanquished. We came upon them in the night and killed many in
their sleep before they had a chance to raise an alarm. I stood as
their judge and executioner.”

White Feather
hung his head, his eyes moist with pain and anger.

“
Among those present was a woman who stood to face me. She had
Lya’s eyes and dark hair — her mother. I drove my sword through her
before she could summon anything to aid her.” Brahm kept the rest
to herself, remembering the feeling that seeped into her as the
woman gripped her with hands of iron, smearing her own blood on
Brahm's fingers and face. She could still taste her blood and the
words she had whispered still haunted her.

My soul to
your soul. We are one, Soul Runner.

If the woman was capable of forcing her own soul into
Brahm’s, what else was she capable of?
Could she eventually take over her body?

“
I cannot tell you how sorry I am,” she said, pushing the
thought from her mind. “I was another person then.”

She looked to
White Feather. “Gray Wolf forgave me and my past. Though I do not
deserve it, I ask the same of you.”

White Feather
continued in his silent rebuke.

The ship
groaned and Brahm's head sagged. Her shoulders heaved and guilt
streamed down her face in tears that dripped into the dark violet
of her torn dress. Strangely her second soul was not screaming.
Instead Sephirah’s soul held Brahm’s in her own and they wept
together.

Cherry clouds
streaked the late evening sky, and a Confederation ship set sail
from the docks. A Firstborn Lord, or what was left of him, watched
as the seed of his love drifted south along the currents of the
Mississippi. The wooden ship slipped through the waters, like his
sanity through his fingers.

Seventeen.
Seventeen.
Seventeen.

He shook his
head, and pulled his hood over his black, matted locks. In some
dark recess of his mind, he remembered his former life. Dïor, heir
to the throne of Valbain. He thought of the woman he had loved, of
the woman he had sacrificed everything for. His throne, his power,
his life. His heart was tainted with her loss.

He thought of
the child she bore him, and he watched as the babe he once held in
his arms sailed downriver.

I will find her trail again
.

He had tracked
them since he was freed of the Westwood’s grasp; his daughter and
the dark-skinned woman.

The same woman that butchered my Sephirah
.

He thought
back to Sephirah’s death, and how he had failed to save her, how he
had been powerless to stop it. His bitter heart twisted with
agony.

Seventeen.
Seventeen.
Seventeen.

He shook his
head again, and watched as the ship sailed on. He recalled his
ill-fated journey through the Westwood after Sephirah’s death, no
longer fearing what the half-breeds and mutants of Lindhome might
do to one of the Overlords of Valbain; no longer afraid for his
life. For what was life without Sephirah? And in that despair, the
Westwood had taken him, knowing him for who he was, and had probed
him for endless years.

Seventeen.
Seventeen.
Seventeen.

Seventeen
years the Westwood tormented him, reaching with its sinister claws
into the depths of his soul. It had sifted little from him. He had
refused to let Sephirah’s death be in vain. He held out, with a
resolve he never thought he had. And it was while trapped by the
Westwood, lost in the agony of time that he had sensed his
daughter’s blood spilling on the ground, rekindling something
within him. He recognized her power and for the first time in
seventeen years hope dangled before him. Yet the Westwood had
sensed that hope and mocked him. It would have her, it would take
her, it would make her its own.

He also felt
the boy, Lya’s half-twin. And he perceived the Westwood’s loathing
and insatiable desire for him as well. Dïor shuddered. That was
just before the Westwood devoured Lindhome. It had been his chance
to escape and he took it, using the Westwood’s own power to slip
through its grasp. For days afterwards he wandered and when he had
stitched up what was left of his unraveling sanity, the trail of
his daughter was more than a week old.