The Theron Residency (Brides of Theron Book 4) (36 page)

              He nodded, apparently caught up in the emotion of their reconciliation. “I wasn’t allowed to save everyone. Only the seed colony was recovered to the mothership. I am so sorry about your mother. I tried to save her and your sisters and brother. I can’t say the same for your father though.”

              Ceran, now feeling anger from his abandoning his parents and siblings to die on Theron when he had the capability to save them all, looked at him with daggers in his eyes. Zion noticed his anger and said,
“Hear him out. He has an explanation for everything. We need you to come with us.”

              “I have work to do. I am not leaving here until I finish what I was assigned to do.” Ceran said. His fingers began to fly on the surface of his workstation as he entered the next section of parameters for his search.

              “You are not going to find him, son. He’s weak and on the run. It is possible that we may not run into him until he regains his power on the next planet he plans to target and destroy.”

              “Don’t call me son! Besides, we can’t just give up on his host. Carel has been instrumental in helping us find our people and helping us free many others. For that alone, we need to continue searching.” Ceran turned his focus once again to his task.

              “They are not your people.” Ceran felt as if something cold was moving down his spine. “Come with me and I will explain everything,” his grandfather said. “You have some Theron blood, but you are descended from something ancient. A line of forefathers that have traveled the galaxies to seed planets with life for tens of millions of years. Come with me and I will explain it all to you.”

              “I am not going without Laura,” Ceran said firmly.

              “Alright, go get your woman and meet us on my ship. I will be waiting for you there.” Iain Moor and Zion walked out of the command center together.



              Zane looked on with avid interest. This procedure was one that he had never seen before. Other races recycled people and parts of people without scruples. It was their way of life, but he had never seen anything like this before on one of his own. Roran had been called over to assist with the electronportation portion of the procedure.

              “I have isolated Mattie’s bone marrow tissue from her femur as we discussed, and I am going to transfer it to the dish now.” The yellow and gray, brown diseased tissue lay in two perfect lines along the rectangular tray. “I am isolating Brylon’s bone marrow now. Transferring Brylon’s bone marrow into the empty space in Mattie’s bones.” It was a simple transfer and completed in minutes. “I must ask to be excused now. I have a lot of work to do.”

              Brylon rubbed the muscles of his upper thighs as if to make sure that his bones were still there. “Thanks, Roran. I’ll also be working on the problem as soon as I am finished here.”

              “What will happen to Brylon now that his bones are empty?” Zane asked.

              “His body will replace the bone marrow over three to six weeks. Then if it’s needed, we can repeat the procedure then.” Laura reached over and put a hand over Mattie’s heart and the other over her forehead as she closed her eyes. It started out as a shimmer, like the edges of her body moved so rapidly that the lines of her body began to blur. A soft golden light was emitted from her bare skin, and her hands were surrounded by a bright indigo cloud of color that entered Mattie’s body. As she worked, she glowed brighter and brighter until the light in the room was blinding. This must have been what Garrett was talking about when Rog was brought aboard. Several of the men on the scene were disturbed by what they saw and told Zane everything.

              After a minute or two, the light in the room started to dim and Laura opened her eyes. He wondered what she was doing and how this healing ability worked. “She is already much stronger than she was a moment ago.” She touched the shrinking growths on Mattie’s face while looking tenderly in her eyes. “I have taken away the cancer’s will to live within you. Now, you must focus on what you want to live for. The love inside of you will help you to banish it from your body forever. You must remain positive and fill yourself with light and love.”

              Laura was saying her goodbyes as Zane came up to her and asked, “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

              “Sure,” surely she couldn’t think that she was in trouble. The look on her face was telling him otherwise. They walked down the hall into his office and he closed the door. “Am I in trouble for something?”

              “No, I am just trying to understand what happened in there. I understand the bone marrow transplant just fine, but what happened next has me perplexed. What did you do in there?”

              “I don’t know if I can explain it. I know that you see the energy like I do to some degree, right?”

              “Yes, I do.”

              “Well, I can see the energy that surrounds the part of a person that is sick or has a problem. After I have isolated the disruption in the flow, I can manipulate it to heal the problem by surrounding it with an energy that is closely associated with happiness and love. I can also utilize the energy around me and focus the light in those areas to heal dark energies. If only I had the tools to show you how it works for me.”

              “I can tell you what I saw. I saw your skin glow a golden light and this vivid blue cloud surround your hands. The blue went into Mattie’s body and didn’t come out. Shortly after it entered, I could see the sickness move and leave her body, not all of it mind you, but most of it. At one point, the room was so bright that it was hard to see.” He looked down at his hands, “Maybe, I am just wondering if it would be possible for me to learn to heal people like you do?”

              She sat there taking in what he said and after a few moments of going over it in her head, “I really don’t know if you can do it. I just know that I have been doing this for many lifetimes. It was a gift I was born with that resides inside my soul that originates from a time way before I came to Earth. I still have a lot of research to do, because I don’t fully understand this gift myself. I need to figure out where I got this power from.”

              “You seemed to shimmer now from time to time,” he said.

              “That is because I was drawing from my higher-dimensional self. It is here where I find my true power. That’s how I got to Ceran when he was with Rog. I felt him call for me and I closed my eyes and I was by his side in the palace courtyard.”

              “You can travel this way as well?”

              “I don’t understand it fully, but that is how I came back to the Pyxis from Agartha. I traveled here with my mind.” They were interrupted by a knock on the door. Any more questions would have to wait until later.

              “Come in,” Zane said. The door slid aside and Ceran walked into the room. “Hello, good to see you neighbor. How can I help you?”

              “I need to take Laura with me to a ship called the Valhalla,” Ceran said reaching for her hand. “We will need to go back and get some of our things. I don’t know how long we will be away.” Laura let him pull her up from the chair and nodded with a questioning look in her eye.

              “If you don’t mind me asking, why? I have never heard of a ship called Valhalla in the intergalactic fleet.” Zane stood behind his desk.

              “My grandfather is on that ship. I assume they travel with the Interdimensional Federation of Free Worlds. I need to know the answers to some of the questions that only he can answer. These last few days we have both been bombarded with information. I think that is it best for both Laura and me to go at this time. There that are so many more questions that we need the answers to, and not enough people who know the answers to them among us. My grandfather might be able to help us both.”

              “I see. Then, by all means, go and find your answers, and when you are done, you know where to find us.” As Laura turned to the door he felt the need to tell her one more thing, “Laura, as far as I am concerned, your residency is over. You are a full-fledged doctor in our fleet. I must say, we are the ones that are lucky to have you with us.”

She smiled at him, “Thanks! I am honored to have had you and Jeeka for mentors. Now, if you will excuse us.” He nodded and they left him alone to contemplate everything that had happened since her arrival. Maybe, in the near future, he would be the student and she would be the teacher.



              “What’s going on? I thought your family was dead.” Laura asked as they walked to the electronportation room.

              “I thought so, too. My grandfather showed up on the Bridge telling me that I wasn’t true decendant of the Theron race and that I was actually descended from some ancient line of star travelers that seeded planets with life. I guess, I’m intrigued.”

              “I can’t say that I blame you. Do you think that they might know about me?”

              He had thought about that also. “He might. Let’s pack some of our things and go because I have no idea how long we will be gone.”

              He had just left a meeting with Zirlo and Zeb to tell them about Iain Moor. He requested to take a leave of absence from the fleet until he could get all of this sorted out. They seemed to understand enough to allow his request. They knew that he and Laura were valuable assets to the fleet and would be hard to replace. The decision to let them leave was not made lightly. Gatton was still on the loose. Ceran would have to come to terms with the idea that the Intergalactic Council and their allies would be the ones to continue to hunt the bastard down without him. It was time to focus on Laura and himself for the time being.

Jenaya had been in a groggy state of dreams and nightmares. She dreamed of Carel trapped in a cage. She tried over and over again to reach out to him, but he was slipping further and further away from her. The further he went, the darker it got and the more pain she felt in her chest. It was as if every second her heart would splinter and another piece would fall to the ground and shatter on the floor beneath her.

“She is starting to regain consciousness, Doctor. Should I give her another dose?” The sound of a stranger was oddly echoing in her head.
“Don’t sedate me! I need to wake up from these nightmares! I need to find him! I need to be with Carel,”
she screamed, but they couldn’t hear her. The doctor in her was reasoning that she would be trapped here until they thought she would be stable enough to recover from the shock of lost blood and the violence she endured. But they didn’t understand that it was the fear and darkness that creeped and hid in the corners of her mind that would keep her from finding peace.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,”
The man propped over her said with his vomit smelling breath. He felt real there in the vast space of her mind. She felt the waves of the nausea crash in her stomach and she was sure she was retching. “Keep her sedated until she has calmed down. She is still in shock,” a man using her father’s voice. She felt the sense of his tender touch pushing the hair away from her forehead and wiping her brow with a cool cloth, just like he did when he bathed her as a young a child. It couldn’t be him. She was in her own personal prison in the deepest pits of hell where the walls whispered things. Things that that had the potential to cut her flesh away from her little by little. Minute by minute, she was losing herself in the darkness.

She walked along the dirt path into the cavern. The soil was fine as powder under her feet. She touched the walls embedded with lines of golden metal. This path continued for some time until she entered the deepest reaches of the cave. It was darker here, as she ducked under the beams holding the walls to keep the tunnel from collapsing. When she looked several feet in front of her she saw him balled up on the ground. His eyes were black as coals and dark as night. “Jenaya!” he yelled to her with Carel’s voice and reached out. “I love you, Jenaya!” With every step she took toward him, he moved twice as far away. Away into the darkness until she couldn’t see him there anymore.
“Why, why, why?”
she screamed. How could this be happening? She loved him, too.

Carel was on the ground now in the throne room, writhing on the floor and screaming his name, and she could hear the bird man say,
“I have seen this before. The demon has picked his host.
You can’t kill him. He will just move onto someone else. Only those with protective amulets and those that are mated will not be taken by his evil.”
If she had given herself to him that night in the cave as they watched the bones foam and knit together in the corner, he might have escaped this fate. Did she know then that she loved him enough to be mated to him? Did he feel the same as she did at that moment? If only she had let him have her that night. If she had, would he still be here? Would he have stayed here with her?
“Why, why, why?”
she screamed.



             
Arden didn’t know what to do for Jenaya. She was not the same loving, kind, brave, and adventurous girl he knew when she left to explore the unknown. She was broken hearted, and scared of the mere feel of his touch on her brow. She recoiled at the contact from him and others. When they took her aboard his wife helped unpack her wounds and set to stitching the tears in her vaginal walls. He just wanted to get his hands on the men that were responsible. Thankfully, she was not pregnant. His people did not believe in the selective termination of pregnancy. If one was with child, it was because the Gods deemed it to be so. Rapists were dealt with harshly and spent the rest of their days in the lowest pits of the Caverns. But, the babies that resulted were innocent.

              “How is she?” Zane said as he entered her room.

              “She keeps calling for someone named Carel.” Arden took a deep breath and when he breathed out several tears escaped from his eyes and rolled down his cheek. Zane put his arm over his father’s back and squeezed. “How could they do this to my little girl? How could they?” Arden sought solace in his son’s eyes.

              “Zeb spoke with Kurtz. Danuwee, one of his men, assured that two of the men are dead and the other probably wishes he was. Carel beat his face in so bad that if he lives, he will never live a normal life again. Zeb has told me that he has men searching for this guy and will bring him to justice. If it is true what the Pernmock says, Zeb is fine with letting him suffer the rest of his life as a eunuch.”

              “Carel,” Jenaya softly whispered.

              “Where is this man she keeps calling for, Carel?” Arden asked.

              “Carel was possessed by Gatton. The only way we can save him is if we find Gatton and keep him prisoner in Carel’s body until we can figure out a way to trap his soul. Zion has mentioned that he knows of a planet that has experience with this sort of possession. However, right now with the ongoing effort to seek and find all the remaining unknown camps and liberating the ones we know about, saving Carel is on the back burner. I have a feeling that he may be lost to her forever. There is no telling what will happen while he is on the run. Gatton may find it easier to find a more suitable host. From what I heard, Carel was fighting as best he could before they disappeared. They even said his eyes shifted several times and that he called out for Jenaya.”

              “If my daughter cares this much about the man, I will help search the ends of the universe to find him. It may be the only way to give her some peace after everything that has happened to her.” Arden reached out and brushed the hair from her face with a finger. She jerked away from his touch and returned to her nightmares. Her eyes were moving rapidly under the lids.

              “I wish we could find something to help her escape her dreams.”

              “I do too, son. I do too.”



              “Who among you will sacrifice your life for your Lord?” Uphir said to the handful of men on the deck. Carel was looking out to the crowd. In his mind, he heard the whiny sound of Gatton’s voice,
“They will kill you. I may not be able to kill you right now, but they will.”
Carel covered his ears to stop from hearing the voice of the man he despised. It hadn’t stopped since he felt the evil presence move into his body. “SHUT UP!”

              Carel looked surveyed the ship they were on to try to find a way to escape from it, from them. It was a Theron Imperial craft that was typically used to carry dignitaries and other high-ranking officials to and from the mother ship. It was large enough to accommodate a crew of 150 men. The ship also had enough offensive equipment in the way of shields and pulsar guns to keep them safe in battle. The cloaking device, he knew from accessing Gatton’s thoughts, would be enough to get them off the planet without anyone so much as picking up a trace. It had to be working because there was no one following them or firing upon them.

              The men stood and looked at each other, as if waiting for anyone but themselves to step forward. “Well?” Uphir yelled.

              The largest man in the group shook his head in disapproval and stepped forward, “I will, sir.” Carel barred his teeth and focused on what he would do. He would get back to Jenaya one day and that meant he had to stay alive. He would not let them kill him so that Gatton would be free to take another host. He would keep Gatton imprisoned inside his body until such time that he could be found and be relieved of this dirty parasite.

              “Good! Now kill him,” Uphir said as he stepped back from where he stood.

              The large man approached him in the corner. He may have been the largest man among the small group, but Carel knew this guy was no match for his skills. He had trained with the best fighters in the Pernmock special elite forces. Carel snarled and drew his body into a fighting stance. His white teeth bared to show that he had no intention of being killed easily. As the man drew his gun, Carel approached with speed and agility and took the gun from his grip. He turned it on the men in the room as the large man fell to the floor and scooted as far as he could away from Carel. Uphir would not harm him, Gatton was sure of it so that would be enough for him. The muscles in his arms tensed up as they worked against him. Sweat began to drip from his brow as the gun was being forced from his hand. Gatton was fighting for control of his body again and it was getting harder to maintain control. The gun flew and hit the wall behind him.

             
“Maybe you might be a formidable host yet, Carel. They do like pretty, strong, fighting men like yourself when one goes to conquer a planet.”
He tried to yell out and tell Gatton that he would do no such thing. He would not be an accomplice to Gatton’s evil ways. He tried and tried but could not gain access to use his vocal cords. Instead, he heard the words coming from behind his own lips. “Uphir, let’s not be too hasty. I may win this battle yet. Come here to me brother.”

              Uphir approached him guardedly. Carel could see that the man was afraid. He felt his arm rise and fall on Uphir’s shoulder and listened as Gatton whispered to him, “You must focus on getting us out of here. Take as many worm holes and get us across the Universe as fast as possible. That will make it harder for them to find us. But, before you do that. Lock me up, brother. I will make him bow down to me. I will win control.”

Never!!!
Carel screamed,
I will never bow down to you.

“You don’t know it yet, but you already are,”
Gatton said.
“With each movement that I override, I gain more control. Soon, you will be nothing but a buzz in my head. No more harmful to me than a tiny little insect.”