Oracles' Light [PUP Squad Alpha 8] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (17 page)

“Angus is on the surface. He can see the projection Darian and Jed are creating. He thinks he’s holding Kristen’s lifeless body.”

Dyson nodded, pulled Kristen closer, and honestly tried not cry with her. He couldn’t imagine a more horrific scenario than finding the lifeless body of the woman he loved.

“We need to wait until the warlocks disperse before we can raise the building back to ground level,” Ava said as she also came over to comfort Kristen. Considering that Kristen had believed she didn’t belong here, it seemed she’d been easily accepted.

“I don’t understand where Kristen’s powers came from,” Eric said as he stepped closer to his wife. “Until a few hours ago, she was an ordinary human.”

“There was never anything ordinary about Kristen,” Hannah said in a voice that would have soothed even the most frightened child when she’d worked as a pediatric nurse.

“She was the decoder,” Ava said with a soft smile.

“The decoder?” Dyson asked in disbelief. “The ‘decoder’ as in the code breaker? The figurative key that opens the figurative lock?”

“Pretty much,” Ava said with a smile. “With the knowledge Kristen gave us, we can all access our full powers. I know where to look for information in my head now. No more sifting through gigabytes of irrelevant data to find what we need. It’s like I finally have an index.”

“Exactly,” Kali said softly as she glanced at Kristen still crying quietly in his embrace. “But I suppose none of that helps Angus at the moment.”

“He’ll understand,” West said with the confidence of a man who’d been through something similar. “Although, this time Jed might get more than a punch in the jaw for his troubles. I’ve only been on the receiving end of one ice blast, but I can assure you it’s not a pleasant experience. You might want to get the hot water bottles lined up for him, Lilly.” It was obvious that West was joking, but it helped to calm Kristen just a little.

Dyson pulled her closer, trying to get comfortable as they all settled down and waited for the paranormals who’d attacked them to disperse.

* * * *

Angus let the houses burn around him. It didn’t matter anymore. Nothing mattered without Kristen. When they’d first connected, he’d worried that she wouldn’t live long in comparison to his own life. He’d had no idea she’d be stolen from him so quickly.

He didn’t even hear Benjamin approach until he placed a hand on his shoulder.

“Do we know what happened?”

Angus shook his head. The last he’d known they’d already escaped the area. He had no idea why Dyson would bring her back, but his decision had cost both their lives. He glanced around the dead bodies and ached for the loss of such amazing and talented women. He almost envied their husbands. They had at least died trying to save their women. They wouldn’t have to spend the rest of their lives wondering if they could have done something differently, moved faster, thought more clearly, been better, figured things out sooner.

“We could use your help putting out the fires,” Benjamin said in a tone that suggested it was an order of sorts. Angus knew what he was doing. The CO of PUP Squad Alpha was trying to keep him moving, get him working on practical things, achieving things that were in his control to achieve. In other words, get him off his knees.

Angus nodded, keeping his eyes on the woman who’d shone so briefly in his life as he placed her limp body on the ground. “I’m sorry,” he whispered as he turned away.

But as he halfheartedly shot an icy blast from his fingertips, the building faded from sight. Confused, he turned back to the space where he’d left Kristen’s body and found nothing but bare dirt. All around him the ground had been disturbed by the impact of explosive rounds, but there were no flaming houses or debris in the area at all. In the distance, Angus noticed several trees alight and moved to put them out. The last thing they needed was the surrounding forest to burn as well.

When he turned back to where the tiny town of Sugarvale had once been, he watched in utter confusion as the ground opened up and literally
unswallowed
the buildings. But it was the woman who appeared in front of him in the blink of an eye that had him doubting his sanity.

“I’m so sorry,” she said as she wrapped her arms around his waist and rested her face against his chest. “I wanted to come and get you earlier, but with the warlocks and witches still watching it wasn’t possible.”

“How was any of it possible?” he asked as he looked up and realized Dyson was behind Kristen, except that now they were back in the meeting room of the PUP Squad Alpha headquarters.

“We’ll save the explanation for that for later,” Dyson said with a smile, “but it turns out our girl isn’t quite as ordinary as she led us to believe.”

“Is that so?” he asked, feeling the first genuine smile to cross his features that day. But then what they knew about Victoria being an Oracle and being able to trace everything he said and did hit him squarely between the eyes. “The Oracle knows. She can see everything Dyson and I see. You need to get away from us. All of you.”

“Actually,” the pixie queen said as she stepped into the room, “that’s no longer true.” Angus shook his head, not because he didn’t believe her, but because he wasn’t sure how much more information he could absorb. It had been one hell of a long day. “The Oracle’s receptacles have created a type of dampening field around you all. I can no longer sense the vampires or humans in your group.” She smiled at Ronan. “You’ve been invisible to me for years. It was only a matter of time before you passed that skill to the Oracle’s receptacles.” She turned back to Angus. “Were you able to identify Victoria?”

He shook his head. “The only thing I was able to discern is that Tory and Victoria are different women. Victoria has been impersonating Tory when it suited her. I suspect she’s the one who gave Jason his ‘assignment’ and the person who made sure Cassandra was the only applicant for the promotion.”

“So what happens now?” Eric asked. “According to the paranormal world, almost everyone inside this room is dead.”

“Not me,” Skye said with a wide grin. Benjamin and Samuel pulled the young vampire into an embrace between them and laughed.

“Me neither,” Emmallina said a little more seriously, “but I’d appreciate your hospitality at least until Dex is able to rescind the assassination order.”

“You will always be welcome in our home,” Jennifer said as she and her mates came into the room. “Technically, we’re not dead, either. The only bodies Jed and Darian projected onto the illusion were those of the Oracle’s receptacles and their partners. According to the rest of the paranormal community, the threat from the ‘human Oracles’ has been dealt with.”

“Will it stop all the fighting?” Kristen asked in a voice that spoke very loudly of her care for others. It didn’t matter to her that the very people she was concerned about were the same ones who’d been trying to kill her.

“We still don’t understand why Victoria set it all in motion in the first place, but things should settle down now that everyone thinks you’re dead.” Benjamin turned to Ava. “How do people outside of Sugarvale see this area at the moment?”

“Basically, they see death and destruction still. All of the buildings, the streets, and what we could protect of the rest of the town are heavily shielded, but it would take a powerful mage to see through the illusion.”

“As powerful as Jed?” Angus asked hopefully. Jed was the most powerful warlock he’d ever met.

“Actually,” Jed said with a wry smile. “Whatever the ladies have done since bringing the buildings back from underground is way out of my league. I doubt there is anyone currently alive who is capable of seeing through the illusion they’ve created.”

“So we’re safe here?” Jennifer asked with a broad smile.

“We are,” Ava said with a confident smile. “Although, we could always try plan B.”

“Plan B?” Ronan asked with a crooked smile.

“Plan B would be moving the buildings to the far border of Ronan’s land. About fifty miles south of here. That way we could eventually drop the illusion here and the forest will reclaim this area.”

Hannah nodded. “We’re not sure of the limit to our powers just yet, so it would be a better option.”

Ronan was already nodding when he asked, “You can really do that?”

“Yes,” Ava said as she smiled at the other Oracle’s receptacles. “In fact, it’s already done.”

Everyone in the room seemed lost for words.

“Angus,” Kristen said quietly as all of the Oracle’s receptacles turned to face him, “there’s one more thing we need you to do.”

His mission briefing was short and to the point.

Apprehend Victoria.

It wasn’t until he found himself standing in front of the woman—pushed there by blink travel—that he realized that the Oracle’s receptacles had not only known where to find the woman but had somehow stripped the witch of her powers.

“What the hell?” the woman screeched as she tried and failed to use her magic to attack him.

“It’s over, Victoria.”

“What the fuck would you know?” she asked in an arrogant tone as she pulled a human weapon from behind her and fired several times directly at him. The demon-shot bullets fell to the ground when they hit his defensive ice blast.

She tried her magic again, growled when it didn’t work, and then stomped her foot like a recalcitrant child. She threw the empty gun at his head. He easily ducked the poorly aimed projectile.

“What have you done to me?” she whined like a sulky teenager.

He frowned. “You should probably be more concerned with what I’m about to do.”

Angus crossed the room quickly, placed a hand on the witch’s arm, and dragged her through his slip path. She fell to her knees, obviously nauseated, as they stepped into Cassandra’s office in the Ruling Body’s headquarters.

“What the hell?” Gordanna asked angrily as she slopped coffee over her hand. “Where the fuck did she come from?”

Tory stared at the woman as if she was seeing a ghost.

“Tory, meet Victoria, the witch who has been impersonating you.”

Everyone in the room had taken a defensive stance, so Angus lifted the woman off the ground and placed her in a chair. Her quiet sobs filled the room, but it wasn’t enough to make him feel sympathy. A lot of people had died because of her.

“Who are you?” Tory asked, the shell-shocked expression on her face probably mirroring his own. The woman was a perfect doppelganger.

Victoria laughed hysterically, the sound ugly and disturbing.

“I’m you.”

* * * *

Kristen glanced at the other women in the room and didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. For so long she’d wanted to be a somebody, not an invisible nobody, but when she’d finally come to terms with the nobody she actually was, somebody went and flipped her world on its head.

In her mind, she followed the confrontation between Victoria and Tory, very grateful for the skill that let her know Angus was okay. But as the tense confrontation fizzled out and the authorities took Victoria into custody, Kristen realized that she could also sense the emotions of everyone else—not just in this room but in every corner of the globe.

She actually “knew” what every single one of them was thinking—including the men she loved. Having lived her whole life keeping to herself and quite happily hiding her emotions from others, it felt very intrusive to have such a skill.

“You’ll get used to it,” Kali said, rubbing her head as if she had a headache. “I think.”

“I don’t know if we should,” Kristen said glancing over at Dyson and the other women’s husbands. “Knowing everything all the time is going to make it very difficult to have any sort of normal relationship with anyone.”

“I agree,” Lilly said with a sad smile. “I can see, hear, and feel everything my husbands have ever said and done. It doesn’t feel fair to have information I have no right to.”

The others all nodded in agreement.

“So what can we do about it?” Ava asked. “We were given this knowledge for a reason. Bethany gave up her life to be certain that we inherited this gift. We can’t just set it aside.”

“I doubt this is what she meant,” Kali said, still rubbing her head. “In fact, we
know
this isn’t what she meant.”

“We can’t function with this much knowledge. God, it’s why Victoria exists. Her mother…” Amber let her words trail away. It wasn’t necessary for them to speak out loud. They very literally possessed the knowledge of the universe—everything and everyone who’d come before them and everything that had ever been said and done, and was being done, by every species on the planet.

Bethany had been an extraordinary woman. Not only had she been born with the gift of foresight—something Kristen had believed impossible for a human up till now—but she’d found a way to merge that with the Oracle’s gifts Prianna had given her. She’d willingly passed these gifts to Kristen and her fellow Oracle’s receptacles because she’d seen them helping countless others in one possible future.

Their destinies were in no way set, but with the skills they now owned they had a chance to help others for many, many years to come. In fact, many more years than they would have had as ordinary humans. Bethany had trusted them to do the right thing. Kristen knew that none of them wanted to let the woman down.