Crystal Tomb (Starfire Angels: Dark Angel Chronicles Book 3) (6 page)

["Yes! Yes, I hope it chooses me."] He
reached up and covered her hand with his, the fabric of his black
gloves giving way to skin at the ends of his fingers. Desperation
contorted his face in the darkness. ["I can't help thinking if I'd
had a shard two weeks ago, I could have come after you myself. If
the Shirukan come again, I'm stuck here…I won't let them take you
away, Raea."] His voice softened in the end, touching her heart
with the sincerity and pleading in his tone. ["Never
again."]

Her insides fluttered to hear him tell
her how much he loved her, but he neglected one important argument
against it. ["If you have a shard, you'll be a target
too."]

In the quiet of the night, the sound
of him swallowing told her he understood the consequences. ["We'll
be together."] His fingers tightened around hers while his other
hand settled on her back and held her close. Her wings lifted with
the rush of pleasure his touch inspired.

Yes, they would be. There was that.
["Thank you…for being honest."] He had never lied to her, but he
was a master of withholding information. ["That's all I wanted to
hear."]

Elis leaned close and she welcomed his
tender kiss in the chill of the night. For a few seconds, the rest
of the world disappeared.

When they parted, he pressed his
forehead to hers. ["Help me retrieve the Eye."]

Doubts crept up her spine with the
chill of the air. ["What if it rejects you?"] And knocked him out
or, worse, killed him? The Starfire entities could be very
selective about their Keeper. ["I won't lose you."]

["I'll be all right."]

["I don't know, Elis…"] Losing him
would be like cutting out her heart. He took too many risks for her
liking. She couldn't let him do this, but she couldn't let anyone
else get their hands on the Starfire.

["Trust me."]

She wished she could this time. He'd
been right before, but this was different. The Starfire entities
had shown her what they would do to protect themselves from the
wrong hands, and that included death. She couldn't imagine them
rejecting someone as good at heart as Elis, but she didn't want to
risk it.

A thought initiated a touch of the
resonance warming her and made the marks on her hands resting on
his chest glow so she could see his face. Damn that pleading look.
He knew she couldn't resist. She wanted to deny him but could see
no other choice.

["All right. We'll go tomorrow evening
and get it. You'll have your shard and be a Crystal Keeper."] If it
accepted him. Now she understood why his father had never allowed
him to try his shard—Naolis didn't want to lose his son. She didn't
want to lose the man she loved. The risk of rejection was more
dangerous than the Shirukan; at least with the Shirukan, they could
fight.

He kissed her again but she hesitated
to return it, afraid of what she'd just agreed to.

Afterwards, he whispered, ["I love
you."]

She loved him too much, if that was
possible. The next twenty-two hours would be torture on her, but he
was right—they had to try. She hated him always being right when
they faced risks, but he didn't understand this risk the way she
did.

She had twenty-two hours until evening
tomorrow, and maybe, just maybe, another answer would come to
relieve the burden of her worry.

For now, all she could do was worry
about the outcome.

Elis stepped back from her and
stretched his wings.

The fingerless black gloves hid his
Starburst marks, but the light of them outlined his hand from
exposed trails on the undersides of his index and middle fingers
and his wrists. Black wings shrank behind him.

Time to head home. Raea found the
resonance and focused the power on her back, clenching her teeth to
keep from screaming in agony at the rapid condensing of muscle,
bones, and tissues.

Afterwards, she let out her breath,
which she'd sucked in and held through the transformation. "I wish
that got easier. How do you do it—make it look easy?" He never
showed any signs of pain from the transformation. Then again,
neither had Nare when she visited. Was there a secret they hadn't
told her?

Elis took her hand in his, his fingers
twining through hers, and shrugged. "I've been through
worse."

Yeah. That might make a difference.
He'd suffered enough in the last few years—losing his family to the
Shirukan and being beaten by Pallin and nearly killed. While it
didn't explain Nare's apparent lack of pain, Raea could understand
his perspective.

She squeezed her fingers around his
and started towards the lights of the town ahead. Someday she'd
figure it out or gain a higher pain tolerance, but not that
day.

In the quiet prairie night, their
steps crunched on the gravel road leading to the highway into town.
They were only a mile or two out, based on the section line grids
she'd made out while in the air, and she'd grown familiar with the
landscape over the course of the last two months and their frequent
flying.

In a nearby pond filled with fresh
runoff from the spring rains, frogs croaked their lonely song,
while in the eastern sky, the moon rose as a pale
crescent.

What a lovely night. She adored this—a
beautiful, quiet night on the prairie. Better yet, she shared it
with Elis.

The crunching of gravel in the calm of
the evening alerted her to a vehicle approaching. Funny that she
hadn't seen any headlights. Caution tightened in her chest. No one
drove without headlights, except someone causing trouble. Had
someone been watching them? Had they seen the
transformation?

Angel watchers!
The crunching stopped and a couple doors opened
and slammed shut.

Elis halted next to her, his fingers
tightening on hers.

A shadowy figure moved through the
pasture to her right, and her heart stopped. Someone had been close
enough to see them, but she hadn't noticed anything unusual. This
was so not good.

"Hello?" Raea called out to them and
squinted through the dusk to make out the shadows of the face
there. It appeared to be a man in dark clothes, but he didn't move
casually. Rather, his every movement hinted of a litheness and
control unusual for anyone she knew.

Her heart stopped when he lifted his
hands. In the weak moonlight, the shape of a gun pointed from his
outstretched arms.

At the sudden forcing down by Elis,
she gasped. A fraction of a second after the click of a trigger,
something pinged off the gravel.

"Elis!" Her mind raced, but this
wasn't a Shirukan weapon—they used energy weapons, not projectiles
like this.

"Run!"

The sound of car doors and voices came
from behind, while Elis led her away at a run from both
threats.

Shouts rose from behind with the
tromping of multiple pairs of feet.

A couple seconds later, Elis stumbled
and fell.

Oh, God. No. This couldn't be
happening.

She halted next to him and grabbed his
arms to help him up. "Elis. Come on." He put one leg under him, his
every movement sluggish. "Hurry up," she grunted with the strain of
his weight.

A second later, he fell back to his
hands and knees. What was wrong with him?

Something poked her in the shoulder.
Instinctively, Raea reached to scratch it, but her fingers stopped
at the fuzzy end of a small dart. She pulled it out as Elis
collapsed at her feet and a wave of dizziness swept through her.
She dropped to her hands and knees amid the spinning of everything
around her, including the multiple feet surrounding her.

Strange voices spoke in a language she
couldn't understand and faded into nothing.

A New Threat

{"Get them in the van."}

Kalas stood at the open side door of
the van and watched as Silur in his natural form moved like a
shadow assisting Rik to lift the male. Both Inari lay unconscious
on the road but would soon be on the way to their base, which
they'd moved to a remote area of North Dakota to be closer to their
target. How convenient that most of the area was remote. Even
better that the two had left the town for the countryside. It made
his job almost too easy.

The darts proved the two were Inari,
although the wings had confirmed it. Inari physiology was sensitive
to certain substances common on many worlds, including Earth. The
alcohol would knock them out for several hours, sufficient for
their purposes, and it had been readily available. Humans consumed
the substance in large quantities with little effect, quite the
contrast to the Inari sensitivity.

The two Risaal rolled the male over in
the van and returned to retrieve the female. After his underlings
dumped her inside with the male, Kalas stepped in with the others
and closed the back doors.

He sat down near the female's body
while the others took their positions within the vehicle. {"Take
off."}

Silur buckled into the driver seat and
drove off into the night.

Amid the mild bouncing, Kalas looked
down through the dim light of the van's storage area. Interesting
that these two had been able to shrink their wings. It explained
how they hid among the humans. Did all Inari have that ability? Was
that why they couldn't find them? How many more could there be on
that world?

And what of the marks on the female's
hands?

Under the glow of the interior light
of the van, Kalas bent over the girl and lifted one of her hands
while Rik secured the male's hands in thick binders.

Odd. The aquamarine marks looked like
something had exploded in her palms through the back. They tapered
into winding rays ending at her fingertips and just past her
wrists. Had all Inari developed this or was it some tattoo or
individual mark of this one?

The male wore gloves, but gloves could
be removed. Kalas had to satisfy his curiosity.

After Rik finished shackling the
male's wrists, they switched places in the tight confines of the
van's cargo area. Kalas pulled the gloves down from the wrists. The
cool of a moment of shock breaking his human camouflage passed with
regained control. The male had the marks too.

Rik paused before fastening the
shackles on the female. {"What is it?"}

{"I don't know."} Kalas grabbed the
female's hand and compared it to the male's where he pulled the
glove back. Not identical but very similar. What did it
mean?

{"Get her secure."} Kalas let go of
the hand so the young officer could finish his task.

After securing her hands, Rik's eyes
went to the female's face, or something near it. {"What's
this?"}

He reached a human-looking hand
towards the pendant.

The moment his fingers touched it, it
shone with an intense glow and Rik shrieked, his human camouflage
failing to his natural Risaal form.

{"What are you doing?"} Silur peered
back over his shoulder.

The van swerved, throwing Rik against
the door, where he lay unconscious. Thrown by the sudden swerve,
Kalas fell over the couple.

Tires screeched to a halt and Silur
unbuckled from the driver seat. Standing hunched over between the
driver and passenger seats at the front, he searched the scene
until his eyes fixed on Rik. He stepped over the Inari couple's
feet and checked for life signs in his colleague.

{"He's alive."} He turned to study the
couple. {"What happened?"}

Good question. Kalas regained his
balance next to the couple and clicked the shackle into place
around the female's wrists to secure her. They wouldn't be escaping
any time soon. How had they attacked Rik? All he did was touch the
crystal.

He touched the crystal, and the
crystal reacted.

Impossible. That kind of power had
only been observed in one crystal and this…this was far too small
to be the same. But he had to know, preferably without risking his
life. {"Scanner."}

Silur looked about and reached down
for the metal box, which had landed partly under Rik. He pulled it
out and handed it to Kalas.

Careful not to touch the
crystal, Kalas held the device close to it and adjusted the
detectors. The readings matched those of the
D'Nuvar
they'd been searching for.
This was it.

But it wasn't all of it.
The
D'Nuvar
was
said to be a cluster about the size of a fist and dangerous to the
touch. This was one point half the size of the girl's smallest
finger and she wore it like jewelry. What had happened to the
crystal and the Inari?

He moved the scanner. While the
readings descended from their levels of the crystal itself, the
radiation signature was still there.

{"Strange."}

Silur leaned closer.
{"What?"}

{"Drive. Let me worry about this. Get
us back to base."} Their xenobiologist could analyze this more
closely, but he suspected what she would say.