Crystal Tomb (Starfire Angels: Dark Angel Chronicles Book 3) (32 page)

A dream. Only a dream. Wishful dreams
of Elis flying to her. She closed her eyes and flew with the pull
of gravity into the portal.

Crystal Keepers

"What do you think you were
doing?"

Raea cringed at Anita's verbal slap,
which could have been Debbie scolding her. They'd returned to the
house to find Anita wearing a smoldering glare. She stood at the
doorway between the foyer and sitting room in a long black coat
over a business suit, the sharp lines of her face cutting in their
cruelty.

"It took a lot of talking to convince
the Egyptian government not to send jets to investigate." Cold eyes
pierced her with accusation.

Yeah. And?
So what. Sure, it explained the lack of military
action, but Raea refused to give Anita the satisfaction of a thank
you, even if she was grateful.

"You're lucky I was aware of your last
portal's location, and only because we have satellite images. I was
notified as soon as this one formed."

Okay, not good. They were being
watched at every turn. The world shrank with each word the woman
spoke. Raea so wanted to return to Inar'Ahben.

Nare's hands planted on her hips.
"Keeper business, Miss Cross. You have no right
interfering."

"You're alive because I did. If you
stay on this world, you obey our rules."

"You can't control us!"

"Oh, yes, I—"

"Stop it! Both of you." The arguing
gave Raea a headache. This had to end. Why couldn't Anita
understand? "What we do is for the protection of both worlds." The
woman could quit looking at her like she could tell Raea to do
anything she wanted, and Nare could quit acting so
arrogant.

"And what would that be?"

"Nothing." Nare pulled the door open
and stepped back. "I think it's time you leave."

"Anything involving that Starfire
involves us."

Despite her words, Anita glided past
Nare and stopped at the door, her eyes narrowing on Nare, who
displayed a hint of smugness. The two could butt heads all they
wanted; it saved Raea the trouble.

The harshness of Anita's expression
lost some edge when she turned to Raea. "I mean it, Raea. You and
the others only live on this world because we allow it." She fixed
Nare with a smug grin reflected back. "That's right. We're aware of
all of you."

Nare's cheek muscles bulged but she
said nothing. Anita didn't have to say anything more; the unspoken
threat lingered in the implications.

"Good day."

The second Anita stepped out, Nare
slammed the door and crossed her arms.

"I wish she'd never told me about her
and her organization," Raea muttered. Being aware of them had
stolen the sense of freedom she had taken for granted, as she had
taken Elis's presence for granted.

"I wish they didn't know anything…I
wonder if they know about Davrel's arrangements," Nare
muttered.

A sickening feeling churned in Raea's
stomach. If Anita wanted, she could probably force the Inari on
Earth to give them the secrets of their technology, rather than let
Davrel sell his "inventions" to the highest corporate bidder. He'd
set up a trust to disperse the income to all the Keepers on Earth.
She hadn't been included, since they hadn't known about her until
recently, but they had helped Elis since he arrived on
Earth.

If only she could forget all this and
go back to when life was simple and her crystal was only a
pendant.

Too late for that.

"Let's get this over with." Nare
pulled the Eye from her jacket pocket.

"You're sure?" Doubts crept into
Raea's mind. The woman would do her no good unconscious.

A faint blue eyebrow lifted. "You
doubt me?"

"Frankly…yes." To say the least. Nare
was obnoxious and self-centered and critical of others. All right,
maybe only critical of Elis, but she acted like she was better than
everyone, except Raea and that was only because of the Starfire
shard. None of those were good traits for someone given access to
the power of the Starfire. What was she thinking? She should never
have suggested it to Nare.

Too late now.

"That makes two of us." Nare's lips
twisted into a grimace. She heaved a sigh and rubbed the clear
protective shield around the shard with her thumb. "But we don't
have much choice. Those Risaal could be back any time."

Raea's chest ached like Nare had
twisted a knife in her heart, but she followed Nare to the bedroom
at the top of the stairs and closed the door.

One question bothered her—how did one
free the crystal suspended in the clear case?

Nare touched the golden ring of the
amulet in a few places, and half a dozen pieces popped up from the
ring and glowed. The clear solid disintegrated.

Okay, so not a problem. "How'd you do
that?"

"I 'saw' the mechanism in my mind.
Something showed me what to do."

The Starfire. It had to be. Then maybe
they understood the stakes and had already accepted Nare. She said
she had heard voices when she touched it.

Nare stared at the exposed shard, her
lips pursed.

"I think they've already accepted
you."

"How can you be sure?" Nare turned the
amulet around, letting the light catch the crystal at different
angles. No matter how she turned it, the colors writhed and twined
within the crystal, alive with their own energy and ready for a
Keeper to access it.

"It's their way."

Icy blue eyes looked up at her in an
expression Raea had seen only once before, when she had first met
the Inari woman. Nare had shown her the respect due any Crystal
Keeper. Now those eyes hinted of a deep admiration.

Raea warmed at the attention. "You'll
understand soon."

["It has been an honor, Crystal Keeper
Raea."]

Okay, now that was going too far. Nare
wasn't going to face the rejection of the entities; they had
already accepted her.

["May I be considered as worthy as
you."] Nare sucked in a deep breath and reached for the shard with
her free hand.

The crystal shard glowed for a couple
of seconds and subsided before Raea let out her breath.

Nare was still conscious, and she held
the shard between her thumb and forefinger.

But she looked stunned.

Raea felt the smirk creep up. "Kinda
does that to a person."

"It's…not what I expected."

"It never is." The disbelief on Nare's
face would have made a great picture, if only to remind her
someday. At least the worst was over. Or not—they had one more
crystal to free. "Are you ready to use it?"

"I…Yeah. I'm ready." Nare clenched her
fingers around the shard, the stunned look tightening into stern
determination. "This is for Elis."

"For Elis," Raea repeated
quietly.
And everyone else who has suffered
at the hands of the Risaal.
A new lump
formed in her throat. She nodded and put her hand over the shard
hanging on her chest with the feather Elis had given her three
weeks ago.

"Let's go." She choked out the words
and stepped from the room before breaking down again. They had a
mission to finish. Then she could grieve all she wanted.

In Memoriam

Elis glanced to his right—two armed
guards, at least two that he could see. To his left stood two more.
Crystal fire. He didn't have a chance. They were ready for the
slightest glow of the Starburst marks on his hands.

His only way out was to give them
something from the translation.

His back muscles tightened, pulling
his wings close to him, as much for warmth as from frustration.
They hadn't offered him a new shirt after removing his other to
treat his wounds, leaving him to shiver in the chill of the central
chamber with the monolith.

His chest didn't bother him as much
when he was still, but shifting positions stung like a knife
cutting through his breast bone.

Dar Lorel had told him the order to
recapture Raea hadn't yet been given, although she admitted to not
being apprised of everything. That wouldn't last long. The Risaal
wanted her shard.

He had to stop them, but he needed a
new plan, another option than killing them all as Dar Lorel had
proposed.

In the window above, the human face of
the leader frowned down on him. They watched Elis's every move. No
easy way out this time.

All right. But they wouldn't like what
the translation said, which was nothing about a crystal. The small,
inner two tracks had been carved with precision, but they made
little sense, unlike the rest of the larger figures, which spiraled
from the outside in to give the story of what must have been the
Risaal attacking Inar'Ahben and the escape of the colonists with
the help of the Miru, who brought them to the new world. There,
they established farms around the world and harvested a variety of
crops with the service of the primitive sentient species, a word he
was unfamiliar with but which resembled the Inari character for
humans. While they gave agriculture to the primitives, they also
showed them how to keep livestock for easy hunting.

Through the efforts of the Inari, both
species prospered on that world, and the Inari began construction
of a new city to claim the skies. But an accident caused the death
of Lady Atia. Her son, Lantis, inherited her rule and the right to
name the new city. His council agreed on the name Atlantis in honor
of his mother, whose strength had helped them rebuild on a new
world, and him, the first male to govern.

The memorial stone was to be a beacon
and marker of the geostationary position of the new city, once it
took its place in the sky, pointing the way to the first city of
their new home.

There it ended with the words, ["In
memoriam, Lady Mikael Atia."] No reports had surfaced of the city.
He had no idea where it had vanished.

The inner tracks were a jumble of
technical words, almost like directions for the operation of a
device, now that he thought about it. It was a device, though, a
land-based marker for the city's location. In the present, Inari
used more complex systems to position their cities, but this had
also been a memorial to Lady Mikael Atia.

It proved the Inari had come to Earth
at the time Dar Lorel and the others had pursued them from the
homeworld. It said nothing about a crystal or rock or any
description, except the mention of a darkness which took Atia. What
was the warning on the back about?

What were the marks of metal in the
deeper grooves of the stone? Obviously, there was a device beneath,
but what?

How could he get to it?

Elis stared at the round stone, more
questions rising than answers. He needed a break.

He needed Raea, but she was gone and
hopefully safe. What had happened to her when she touched the
center stone?

He had nothing to lose for trying.
Here went nothing.

Cold and smooth and rounded like a
glass ball, the red stone did nothing to him.

Odd.

He shifted his hands. Still
nothing.

Wait. Someone whispered to him, but he
couldn't make out the words.

"What did you say?"

None of the Risaal answered or moved,
nor did the shadows he suspected to be others in
camouflage.

Voices whispered in a language he felt
he should know but muffled as if over a great distance.

Familiar but odd. Familiar…

Yes. That was it!
Impossible.

Elis removed his hands from the red
stone.

The voices vanished.

No…No. No. No. This couldn't be
right.

What if it was?

Elis took a breath to slow his racing
heart and put his hands on the stone again. The voices returned,
this time more insistent as if shouting over a great
distance.

It sounded like Starfire entities. How
was that possible?

It's not possible. It
can't be. There must be another reason for this…but
what?

Black wings lifted involuntarily
behind him but he pulled them tight again at the shift of weapons.
The Risaal were too trigger happy since his and Raea's escape
attempt.

He had other things to worry about
now. As long as his hands rested on the red stone, the voices
whispered to him.

He must have been wrong. He'd only
heard the Starfire entities a couple of times, one of them when
he'd healed Raea and they'd spoken through his connection with
her.

There must have been another reason
for it.

A sense of anxiety passed from the
stone through the voices, warming him with the Starfire energy so
the marks on his hands glowed.

Risaal guards shifted.

Elis yanked his hands away and the
resonance faded, leaving him cool and startled.