Call of the Goddess: A Bona Dea Novel (Stormflies Book 1) (30 page)

Which is how Axandra felt right now, blissfully cheerful. Her head buzzed from the three glasses of wine she'd already consumed, thanks to Quinn's attention to her glass. Her muscles felt loose, and her mind felt free from any worry. While they waited, she kept hold of his hand and kept him close. Wrapping one strong arm around her waist, he drew her closer still, signaling that he didn't mind.

“Wasn't that a wonderful performance!” Axandra praised, thinking her voice a bit too loud in the cozy room. Picking at the display of fruit, she popped a red berry into her mouth.

“Superb!” Quinn agreed, taking another glass of wine for each of them. “I usually find works about the Journey quite fascinating, even if they are about fictional characters. We can only imagine what it must be like to leave one's home and never have the opportunity to go back.”

The actors began to arrive, stripped down to dressing robes and makeup still on. First to arrive was Willa, the star, who was clearly much older than the character she portrayed. Excitedly, she cheered Quinn's presence and embraced him in a quick hug. Then, reminding herself of the Protectress, she bowed and spit out titles and gracious thanks.

“You are so lucky to have Quinn,” Willa blurted, winking at her old friend. “Ever the gentlemen and the most honest person I've ever met, despite his previous reputation in this city.”

“It's a good thing she already knows the stories,” Quinn sighed, his cheeks blushing for Willa to hint at his secrets. “You might have scared her away.”

“Nonsense!” Willa scoffed playfully. “She knows she's got a good thing. My dear, your cheeks sure are rosy!” Willa's boisterous voice overpowered every other person in the room, since the place now steadily filled with actors and other invited guests, all milling around to give respects. “You are much prettier than your posters.”

Axandra smiled in thanks and watched Quinn interact with the gathering crowd. She remembered how shy and how awkward he had been when they first met and how much he tried to please her and gain her attention. Now that they spent some time together, he loosened up. He still wanted to please her and he still worried there might be something about him she wouldn't like. He guarded his embraces with the others, not wanting to seem overly intimate with any of them.

Axandra wished she could be so free with strangers. She had always experienced difficulty opening up to anyone unfamiliar. She chalked it up to her secret identity—her no-longer-secret identity—which she kept safely hidden away for so many years. Like any old habit, her closed personality proved difficult to shed.

Her observations were cut short by the ground jerking beneath her feet and the resultant outbreak of screams and shouts from the green room occupants. The movement came suddenly and with enough force to upset Axandra's balance. She grabbed hold of Quinn's upper arm for support.

“An earthquake?” Willa exclaimed and questioned at the same time. “Not in three hundred years—”

The ground continued to oscillate beneath their feet, rattling glass inside wooden frames, toppling glasses and loosening artwork from the wall mounts. People fled from the building into the avenue, scrambling in all directions, completely panicked.

The Elite moved in, taking immediate custody of their charge. “We must move you to a safer location.”

“Safer?” Quinn barked. “It's a bloody earthquake! Where do we go?”

Encircled by the gray clad bodies of her guard, Axandra had little choice but to follow their lead through the nearest exit onto the paved courtyard south of the Theatre. The tremors subsided momentarily as the group proceeded to the car. Though she had walked down, Ty insisted the vehicle be at the ready, and now she approved of what formerly seemed a pointless waste of resources. This geographic area was not prone to noticeable quakes.

The interior of the car muted the cacophony of the crowd running away from the theatre. Unfamiliar with such sensations, the townspeople earned every right to be frightened. Hopefully, the relatively mild shaking failed to impart any serious damage. If the people would slow down to assess the situation, they would realize their panic was unwarranted.

Quinn slid into the seat next to her. “People need to slow down. If that was the bulk of it, they've nothing to worry about. I've been through worse.”

“So have I,” Axandra agreed. Nevertheless, she linked her fingers with his and grasped his hand tightly for comfort. “Mr. Narone, any sign of the Safety Watch? We need to control this crowd. These people are extremely panicked.”

“Yes, Madam. The uniformed volunteers have just arrived,” Ty reported from just outside the open car door. The Commander pulled the door closed as he joined them in the compartment. Through the slot, Ty instructed the driver to head for the open fields east of the city as a temporary safety zone. They would be away from buildings and people. A moment later, the vehicle inched forward, parting the mob centim by centim. Several minutes passed before the car increased speed and reached an open street.

“What would cause an earthquake here?” Axandra questioned.

“Soporus, most likely,” Quinn replied. “I imagine the gravitational pull of the passing planet is increasing pressure on the seismic plates.”

“Even here? We're not on a fault line, are we?”

“Not directly. But the mountain range sits upon a seismic zone. Those mountains are young and still rising. They move so smoothly and steadily, we just don't experience notable tremors,” Quinn answered studiously.

“It's dark out here,” Ty commented, clearly unhappy. “Pull over here. Stay in the car. We'll idle here until we can ascertain if the quakes are over.”

“I think that was it,” Quinn said, attempting to display relief so that the emotion would spread. Even through his meager empathic tendrils, the concern from the guards felt stifling. At least the distance from the city's population freed him of any additional discomfort.

For a time, they sat in the car and waited with barely a word.

The driver spoke on the radio to the station within the city proper. Ty eyed the driver and listened in on the conversation. Two other guards scanned the darkness around them diligently. Hands still clasped, Axandra and Quinn said nothing aloud. He thought of the pleasant solitude of the Residence and how shortly they would go there and end this episode. She echoed his unspoken sentiment.

“Do you hear that sound?” she questioned aloud to everyone. “What is that? It sounds like thunder.”

Narone's face brightened with recognition. “Hooves. Move! Move!”

From the darkness came the fastest of the animal herd, crossing the road in front of the forebeams. Antelope, bustles, and bison stampeded the open land, no doubt fleeing the upsetting quake. However, it was too late to avoid the impact of bison horns into the right side of the metal casing, tearing easily through and sending the car sliding a meter left. Dents appeared as hooved antelope leapt onto the roof and over. Another strike lifted the tires and the following impact flipped the car twice over. Resting on its side, the car became an undesirable obstacle and more of the animals steered clear on either side.

Axandra found herself at the bottom of a pile of bodies in an even darker night. Shoving, she struggled to free herself from the crushing weight. Bodies moved, some on their own, others with assistance. Finally, the last weight lifted aside. Quinn knelt in the debris next to her, guiding her into a sitting position. Without the compartment lights, she could barely make out his shape.

With blinding brightness, a torch came on, casting distended shadows wherever directed. Enough light spilled over to aid Axandra in finding Quinn in fair condition.

“Dammit,” Narone cursed. He surveyed an immobile body. Axandra knew already what he would announce.

“Diane is dead.”

The confirmation sparked tears in her eyes, though she barely knew the woman. For one of the guards to lose their life in duty brought her great sadness and a strong sense of Honor. Diane was the first. This woman would be remembered for her sacrifice.

“Injuries?” Ty requested of his charge, shining the beam directly at her.

“Nothing readily apparent,” Axandra replied. “But my entire body hurts at this point.”

The Commander assessed Quinn next. The Protectress' companion sustained a shallow gouge in his upper arm where one of the horns impaled the car into his flesh. He felt lucky he did not sustain a deeper wound.

The driver, appearing to cradle a fractured arm, operated the radio to call for assistance. A quick response assured that mere moments would pass before aid arrived.

“I need to get out of here,” Axandra insisted, tugging at Quinn's arm as she rose to her wobbly feet. “Is it safe?”

“Safer to stay inside, Madam,” Ty reported.

With her chest tightened and breathing constricted, her heart raced faster than those fleeing animals. Axandra did not accept that option. Attempting to maintain some composure, she hissed barely above a whisper, “I very much need to get out of here.”

“I think she's right,” Quinn advocated. Her pulse thrummed against his fingertips. “For her health.”

A moment of quiet contemplation passed before Ty acquiesced to the request. “Very well. I will hoist you out. Stay near the car.”

“Of course. Please.”

Ty leapt up and with muscular hands and arms, raised the entire weight of his body high enough to secure a foothold and climb completely onto the topside of the overturned vehicle. He lay on the mangled door hanging his arms down, and with ease, he hoisted the petite Protectress up and out. A soft thud could be heard as she slid down the roof to the ground.

“Mr. Elgar,” Ty prompted. Quinn brushed his hands on his pants to rid them of moisture and dirt. Knowing he weighed a bit more—well, a good amount more than the Matriarch, Quinn felt uncertain of the outcome of allowing Ty to hoist him through an opening just wider than his shoulders.

“Coming up.” Raising his arms to meet Ty's, Quinn locked hand to wrist. He tried not to kick his feet as he was lifted from the ground.

The night was extremely dark. Neither moon rose at night this time of the month and Soporus dominated the sky only after midnight. Starlight cast the faintest glow over the landscape, silhouetting geographic obstacles in black relief.

Darkness certainly did not mean loneliness out here. The human abilities to read each other's emotions also allowed them awareness of the living world. At this moment Quinn recognized the instinctive nature of a few grazers trailing after the stampede. The different animal species separated back into homogenous herds. Predators lurked nearby as well, having followed the stampede in order to catch an injured animal. The predators were eating their fill for now and lacked interest in the human morsels.

One mind he expected to find was missing.

Spinning a complete circle immediately, he burst “Where is Axandra? She's gone!”

Quinn noticed that Ty and the driver both appeared dazed and wobbly. Neither comprehended his declaration immediately.

A knuckle to his eye corner to fight off the wooziness, Narone examined his surroundings.

“Curses! What the hell happened?”

“Someone was here,” Quinn realized. It wasn't a definite statement, more of a deduction. The Protectress had just been abducted into the darkness. The only people Quinn knew to have such stealthy skills were Prophets. Between this knowledge and Axandra's aforementioned fear that the Prophets worked secret plans allowed him to derive the answer.

“They've taken her to the Haven. They were here, they took her right out of our hands. Those bastards.”

“Sir, I don't understand. She has to be here, nearby. They can't have gone far.”

“You don't understand. It's been at least an hour. They blanked us.”

“Then where is the rescue party? They should have arrived already,” Ty argued, completely denying such a possibility.

“They were blanked too. You have no idea what these people are capable of. We've got to hurry.” Quinn oriented himself toward the pale lights of Undun City. They were a few miles out, a least an hour's walk back. “If they've already made it to the gateway, we'll lose them. They're the only ones capable of getting into the storm.”

“Sir, we don't have any way back.”

“We've got legs.”

“We have no hope of reaching the mountains on foot.”

“We've got to do something!” Quinn shouted, feeling his face blaze with anger at the absolute resistance. “We can't wait here! Do you want the Protectress lost?”

For what Quinn suspected would be a rarely witnessed event, Ty Narone lost his temper. Flying at Quinn with rage to match a cornered packhound, Narone jabbed him in the chest with the blunt end of his stunner. “What do you expect me to do? You are telling me that I have to contend with people who possess mystical powers of persuasion and invisibility who live in a highly protected fortress beneath an impenetrable storm. I have a broken car, a dead guard and no way to track the invisible culprits. Tell me, sir, how in bloody hell you expect me to mount a rescue!”

Quinn Elgar had faced the tempers of other men and women before. Despite the cultured philosophy to avoid conflict, humans were still animals by nature and were unable to completely suppress the need to take a swing at each other to blow off steam. One particularly frightening contender was his own mother, whose temper flared on a regular basis like a pulsating star. Usually, Quinn backed away to diffuse the situation, gave a little space to avoid getting a lot of knuckles in his mouth.

Tonight, Quinn leaned into the assaulting weapon. “I expect, sir, that you will get on that radio, reinitiate the rescue party and send someone after the bloody culprits to track them down until we can catch up with them. What you do not want is for those Prophets to cross into the Storm and close the gateway without us. I will start walking now and meet the rescue on the way. Move!”

Taken aback, Narone stumbled back a step, his stunner dropping away in a trained motion to avoid accidental discharge. “Yes, Mr. Elgar. Take this with you,” he acknowledged, handing Quinn the stunner before he moved in the direction of the car to use the radio.