Blood Rebellion (Blood Destiny #7) (33 page)

* * *

"Mom, we're exhausted." Justin and Mack flopped down at the kitchen island three months after Lissa disappeared. Kifirin hadn't been seen, either. Grace had gone into labor shortly after Lissa began her search for the source of the Ra'Ak-enhanced and Kevis Halivar, Karzac's son, came into the world, voicing his opinion loudly upon arrival.

Griffin's son had been born six weeks later and Griffin and Amara named him Wyatt. Wylend approved of the name and immediately proclaimed Wyatt his heir. Amara was glowing and the child couldn't have asked for more loving or solicitous parents.

"Eat first, then get some rest," Kiarra placed food in front of her son, Justin, and her adopted werewolf son, Mack. "I know you're worn out, but we have to send you out again as soon as you get some sleep."

"The new guys are working out, at least," Justin mumbled around a mouthful of ham sandwich.

"Yeah. Belen picked some good ones. Two werewolves and three vampires. They're all death on those bastards." Mack bit into his sandwich.

"We needed more wolves." Martin folded in and sat wearily beside his son. Kiarra offered him a sandwich, too. Things were so tight that even Merrill, Adam and Devin were out tracking and killing spawn. Normally they didn't go out—they were Enforcers, but the problem had become so severe and widespread there wasn't a choice.

"I hope it's enough and I hope Lissa is able to do something," Kiarra sat between Mack and Justin. Justin nodded mutely and continued eating.

* * *

"Decide now," Kifirin demanded. Gabron looked up at him. There was no other conclusion to draw—Kifirin wasn't joking. He could and would do what he said. This was the one powerful enough to create the Dark Realm on his own. Gabron often forgot that. Kifirin would always do what he thought best for Lissa. Unlike Gabron, who'd put his own concerns and interests first.

"So, either I come back to Le-Ath Veronis as someone else and then do as you ask, or have the memories of her taken away?"

"Your choice, vampire. If you choose to have the memories removed, I will remove them from her as well. Despite how you choose, I will remove all the damaging lies and recordings from all the worlds where they exist—you deserve the ridicule but she does not. This is a gift for my mate."

"She'll recognize me if she sees me again."

"No. I will remake you—you will be different, vampire. I have that power. Choose, vampire—either the brothels or a new name and a new life."

* * *

I'd found the void. It was larger than anybody thought. I also considered closing the Ra'Ak-created gate first, but that would tip my hand and alert any Ra'Ak to my presence. I had to be careful not to raise any alarm. I'd been energy for weeks now—hadn't changed and hadn't slept. While I was energy, I discovered I didn't need sleep in that state. My physical body did, however, and in its finite shape, it only drained energy away. It did not replenish itself as it could in this form.

Now I was looking for what didn't belong in the void—a planet, galaxy or a space station. Whatever it was, it had taken a great deal of power to move it here. And cold? There wasn't a freezing cold such as this anywhere else. The Ra'Ak had chosen this spot wisely, probably with help from the Khos'Mirai. All I had to do was find a single grain of sand (their relocated planet or whatever they'd chosen to use) inside a very, very large ocean of nothing. I went looking for less cold amid very, very cold, to find where the Ra'Ak had established their base.

It was a large, lifeless planetoid. Nothing grew anywhere on it and it had never supported life. Until the Ra'Ak found it. A lifeless hunk of dusty rock; that's what it appeared to be. And the closer I got, the more it pulsed with the wrong energy. It should never have been brought here. It upset the balance, although it truly was similar to a single grain of sand in all of Earth's oceans.

There wasn't anything on the surface—how could there be? This meant that whatever resided there had to be inside it. I filtered through layers of rock and dust until I found the core. An artificial environment had been created there and two Ra'Ak had been assigned to maintain that environment, otherwise the thousands of enhanced humanoids that slept in row upon row of coffin-sized cubicles would have frozen to death long ago.

More Ra'Ak in humanoid shape, all dressed in lab coats, were checking and injecting this sleeping subject or that. It looked like a frightening science-fiction movie, but those are generally removed from reality. This was reality. While I floated around as energy, more Ra'Ak came in with more captives. Some wore clothing that hadn't been seen or worn in centuries. The Ra'Ak really were tracking up and down the timeline to bring them in. I needed to take care of this, but I had one other thing to do first. I had to find the Khos'Mirai.

* * *

"No, the Raona is away on business. I will have her contact you when she returns." Grant was weary of all the communications, written, oral and otherwise. Someone wanted to sign her to a recording contract. A visiting guest, who'd scheduled his wedding in Casino City, wanted her to sing at his wedding. Talk-show magazines were begging to have her on. Fan mail was pouring in once more and Lissa was receiving all sorts of messages. People asked her to bite them. People wanted her to bless their children. People informed her that they'd named the dog, the cat, or the baby after her. Grant was losing his mind. Flavio and Reemagar had taken pity on him and were searching for two more assistants. Grant needed them and quickly.

"Grant, I think we have someone." Flavio stood in the doorway with Davan and Heathe. Griffin had agreed to the suggestions, actually. Davan had been an accountant and he knew how to keep records. Kyler had worked with him for a while but he was bored. She mentioned it to Flavio, who spoke with Griffin and they'd come to the same conclusion—Davan needed a new job.

Heathe wanted out of the brothel business. He'd only worked there for a few months and was sick of it already. He'd placed his name in the job pool; Flavio interviewed him. Flavio liked him immediately, so he was hired. Grant, who was trying to keep an eye on Toff, chased the child around his desk and picked up the load of fan mail that had been knocked off as a result. Grant breathed a huge sigh of relief when Flavio brought in the new assistants and put Davan and Heathe to work immediately.

* * *

More Ra'Ak in humanoid form were at the very core of the planetoid, where there were round tunnels carved out of the rock, each large enough for a sixty-foot Ra'Ak to slither through. I passed several Ra'Ak that were forty feet in length as I made my way downward. They were guarding something. It wasn't hard to guess what that something might be. Two more Ra'Ak snarled and lunged at each other as I passed them by—none of them had a clue I was there. Part of that untraceable ability I had, I suppose.

What I searched for I found at the center of the planetoid. A circular prison held him captive, with bars all around and solid rock over his head and beneath his feet. He was chained, too. Dark haired, quite young looking and perhaps a half-inch taller than I. I circled his cage in silent regard, studying him. If I'd been solid, I would have shook my head at what the scents were telling me. It was shocking, what I learned through scent.

Gathering more energy around me, I wove a shield around the Khos'Mirai's cage. To the Ra'Ak outside, it would appear that he slept—he was lying on the bare rock of his cell. Once the shield was in place, I turned first to mist and then to myself inside the cage.

"I wondered when you would get here," he sighed, sitting up and blinking at me. "They can't see or hear us, can they?"

"No. We're completely shielded. The image they see is of you sleeping."

"I don't mean to do wrong—most of the time."

"I can see that," I said, watching as he nervously twisted his fingers together. "But there is total chaos going on out there in the real world and you're sort of at the bottom of it."

"I know. I remember doing and saying some of those things, though I sometimes regret them later." He was now rubbing his arms—as if he were cold. I watched him carefully. The Ra'Ak kept everybody else warm but didn't worry so much about this one. Mentally shaking myself, I shoved that thought aside.

"I knew what was going to happen to the others—the Elemaiya. That made me happy. Both Bright and Dark, wiped out with a single blow." I could understand how he might feel that way—he'd been sold to the Ra'Ak twice. The other things he'd done, though—I didn't understand that at all. But he wasn't sane—one look into those hazel eyes and anyone could tell. I moved backward as he stood, rattling his chains with the slow and deliberate effort.

"So, you saw that, huh?" I asked, keeping an eye on his movements.

"Saw it?" he laughed. It was nasty, that laugh. "I planned it. I knew you would come. Friesianna and Baltis just couldn't help themselves. They didn't forbid their subjects from breeding indiscriminately with any other race, but they never hesitated to kick out the undesirables, did they?" The Khos'Mirai leaned against the bars of his cage. His dark hair was shaggy but not unnaturally so, and he was clean and dressed in something similar to a healer's scrubs. Bare feet stood on the rock floor of his prison and I focused on his toenails for a moment before going back to his face.

"They weren't particularly kind to their quarter-blood children," I agreed. "They are paying for their abuse now."

"Hmmph. You should have killed them, but no matter," he tossed up a hand. "They'll all die, eventually. You should have made them suffer more. I wanted to see that."

"I don't do suffering," I said.

"Such a shame," he dipped his chin and shook his head in confusion before lifting his eyes to mine again. "I lost sight of you for three hundred years. Why is that?"

"I can't really explain that," I hedged. Something wasn't right, but I couldn't put my finger on it. Still, he hadn't moved toward me and didn't appear threatening in any way. I hadn't seen anything from him that might be truly threatening.
Yet
.

"But you don't see," he laughed as his eyes filmed over in a strange glow. "I know I'm going to die. But I'm going to live." The grin he offered was unholy in its glee. Well, he was insane. Still, there was a touch of truth in his words. That frightened me.

"See me now?" His chains dropped away and he changed. Ra'Ak were frightening when they turned, but this—he was a terrible experiment gone awry. Half humanoid, half Ra'Ak, with a Ra'Ak's scaled body, he grew and elongated on the opposite side of his cage. The scales covering his snake-like body were flesh-colored and poisonous. A flattened, humanoid head sat atop a thirty-foot body when the change was complete. His arms and legs, shrunken and stick-like, were still attached to the reptilian torso.

Ra'Ak have a terrible, gleaming beauty about them when they transform. There was nothing redeemable in this monster. "I knew you'd find me repulsive," he laughed. "I asked them to do this—to experiment to make a hybrid. I'm almost as poisonous as they are, if you touch me." Eyes that were larger and rounder than they'd been in his humanoid shape still glowed, although they were slitted, now.

"You know I killed bigger and stronger than you on Kifirin," I pointed out, watching him warily.

"Oh, but you didn't kill smarter," he snapped and rows of long, sharp teeth clicked as he bit off his words. I'd hit a nerve, looked like. "You can kill me—I've already said that. But you can't kill all of me."

"Look, stop talking in riddles and just tell me what the hell you mean," I snapped. Yeah, I was getting a little testy, too.

"Do you think," he hissed, his lengthy body uncoiling and beginning to move toward me, "that they'd be satisfied in creating just one of me? That's so limiting," he growled a laugh. "There are hundreds. Thousands. Who knows how many of me there are? And the best part?" His eyes glowed brighter as he glared at me.

"I'm sure you're going to tell me," I muttered, shocked and angered at his words. There were thousands, just like him? Could all of them do what the Khos'Mirai could do? Create havoc and destroy?

"Oh, yes. All of who I am—what I am, can do everything I can do." He'd pulled the thoughts straight from my mind—I hadn't shielded them as I should. "I am the collective me. You can kill me, but you can't kill ME."

"But what about the Ra'Ak?" I asked, stalling for time while I searched desperately for an answer to this new and horrible reality. "Aren't they pulling your strings? You're in their prison, after all."

"You take things so literally," he pointed out. "They've done exactly as I wanted them to do—for a very long time. Once I saw they wouldn't let me go, I began to work on this from another angle. They ask, I answer. You see they're still around after you thought you'd destroyed all of them. Not a problem if you can manipulate time, you see."

I almost said it before thinking better of it. Yes, the Ra'Ak could manipulate time. And this one admitted that he knew I was coming. But the Khos'Mirai had also admitted that he'd lost track of me for three hundred years. Somebody had covered up evidence of my existence except to a select few during that time. I desperately needed more time to think and I didn't have it. Not here, facing down what may or may not be the original Khos'Mirai.

You're not thinking big enough. Or small enough
, the voice filtered into my brain. Well, he was right. I wasn't. It had taken me months just to locate this Khos'Mirai. How much longer might it take if I used my usual, humanoid way of measuring space? How long would it take me to hunt down thousands of these monsters, when each of them might see me coming? Squaring my shoulders, I focused on the job at hand.