Linda Welch - A conspiracy of Demons (32 page)

I
sat on the bed with my
face
averted
. “Do you remember w
hen we first got together
, how I
hated
you rushing
off on
mysterious
assignments
?
I didn’t
know
, back then, you were doing it for the High House.
And when I did, when you told
me, I still resented it
.
Pretty shallow of me, huh, but I can’t help it.” I
twisted on th
e bed to find him watching me and
looked
in
his shadowed copper eyes. “I wanted to believe I’m the most important thing in your life, but I knew, deep down, Bel-Athaer always comes first
.”

We were close, only inches
separated us
, h
is face so stern and serious
as he gazed back at me
.

His voice hushed, deep with passion.
“
I did not know you felt that way.”
H
e gently caressed the side of my face. “
Nothing is more important than you, Sweetheart.”

My eyes stung as
Royal’s arms
en
folded me.
I slid my arms around his chest
as we lay down
, determined n
ot to let go the night through.

I tried to stay awake, but fell asleep in
his
warm embrace
.

“I will see you in a couple of days.”

Did Royal realize I clung to him a little tighter before he walked to his truck? I didn’
t want to
release
him
.

I dreaded learning of some horrific event.

Jack and Mel did not appreciate me taking over the television. I flipped between news stations for the half-hour they broadcasted. Nothing I saw, either national or international, made me think Dark Cousins had a hand in it.

Heartburn firmly settled in my gut and my morning coffee didn’t cause it. Did Gia manipulate me again? Perhaps she wanted Royal kept out of Bel-Athaer so he couldn’t interfere in some diabolical plan. My imagination went into high gear. Lawrence murdered. The High House blown to smithereens.

I couldn’t be still.

“For mercy’s sake, Tiff, sit down,” Jack said.

Twisting my fingers in knots,
I
walk
ed
around the kitchen
.

I jumped up when t
he front door banged open
.
Royal stood
inches from
me before I could blink. Livid red rose through the copper of his skin, his eyes sparked angry fire.
He grabbed my
upper arms
so hard his fingers dug in my flesh.

“
Did she tell you?
” he
snarled
.

I had never been the victim of Royal’s rage. It scared me so much I stuttered as I
replied. “W
hat
. . . what
are
you’re talking about?
”

He seemed to realize how he held me and let go suddenly. I stumbled back.

Arms stiff,
hands
clenched at his sides, he asked.
“Did
Gia
tell you what they meant to do?”

A frisson rippled down my spine. “What happened?”

“The Gates are closed. I felt a thousand souls keening, denied their homeland! Only the Mothers can seal the Ga
tes.”

T
he
unspoken accusation
floored me
, I could only stare, wide-eyed, lips parted
.

He pinned me with his eyes. “There are people here cut off from their families. They s
hould have been given a choice.
”

“
Last night . . . you think
I deliberately
. . . .”
At a moment when I should be sympathetic to his emotional turmoil
, indignation made my adrenaline spike. “
She left a
note
, goddamit!
D
id it
say anything about Gates closing
?
”

“I could have - ”

“
Y
ou
couldn’t
warn them
about something neither of us knew about, let alone had any control over.
And if you’d rushed off to the High House, where
would you be now, Royal? In Bel-Athaer,
maybe for the rest of our lives
.
”

I tried to bank down the simmer with an intake of breath.
He was too distraught to think clearly. I should
no
t have yelled at him.

Only the Mothers can seal the Gates.
“You knew the Mothers can close the Gates?”

“Yes.
As they can manipulate the Ways.
”
Emotion made his voice deep and rough
. “But they have dedicated ye
ars to regaining Bel-Athaer, that they would use the ability this way never crossed our minds.
”

He stared at me
furiously
, then spun away and
hung
motionless
over the stove
, every muscle
in his back
bunched and visible through his shirt.
A smidgen more stress would pull t
he material apart at the seams.

My gaze tracked him, but my body refused to move.

He
whirled
i
n a motion
so fast it took my bre
ath away,
my cast—
iron skillet in his hand
,
and launched it across the room with a roar. It shattered the new glass pane in the backdoor window and sailed out into the yard.

He stood there with head hanging but shoulders hard as granite. Released from a frozen state, I crossed the space between us. His eyes rose to meet mine.
His hands reached for me
, fell away
and closed on air. Eyes
shut
, teeth and fists
clenched
,
he
inhaled through his nose.

Opening his eyes, he pierced me with his
dark copper
gaze
before he
stalked toward the hall
.

I wanted to call him back and
say, “
d
on’t you
walk out on me, Royal Mortensen.
”
I said nothing, and watched him leave with pain in my heart
from which
I might
never recover
.

He paused
. “
I love you more than life itself, Tiff, but . .
.
.
”

Rubbing
my arms
, I followed him and stood at the open door as he walked to his truck, head and shoulders bowed as if they carried the weight of the world.

The word
repeatedly
hummed in my head.

But. But. But.

Dire
circumstances require drastic measures. When their spies told them an army was still coming, the Mothers closed the Gates.

They need not hide in some deep, dark place now, but
I thought
they would keep a very low profile. It would be the smart thing to do. Plenty of Gelpha lived here; they were not warriors, but would rally and fight if their families and way of life were threatened.

And when the Cousins emerged with a new scheme to return to Bel-Athaer
- because they damn sure would -
the Gelpha would be ready. The Mothers could not reproduce, but the Gelpha did. The Gelpha population would continue to grow, but the Mothers’ would not, they would always be vastly outnumbered and the threat they posed to the security of this world would not be forgotten, the old and new tales kept alive, passed from generation to generation as they were in Bel-Athaer.

The Mothers closed the Gates, but they hadn’t given up. It stood to reason if they could close the Gates, they could open them again. “
We can wait. We have something you do not - time. You and your lover will be long gone when we return, and in Bel-Athaer we will be little more than a myth
.”

So why couldn’t they open the Gates to the other dimension? Did something deliberately close them, and keep them sealed? Did the Mothers
know
their exile wasn’t indefinite, or only hope so?

T
he Gelpha knew all along the Mothers could
seal the Gates.
Still, I suppose
d
they couldn’t
take preventative measures;
the Gates
and Ways
didn’t operate manually or mechanically.
And as Royal said,
that
the Mothers would shut themselves
out of
Bel-Athaer when they’d put such effort into getting back in
was inconceivable.

A thought blew through my mind. Had my parents not died and I’d grown up in Bel-Athaer, I’d know all this stuff, not wait to be told
after
something exploded out of the blue.

But then I’d be Hecate Bon Moragh, a Gelpha Seer, not Tiff Banks.

Each time I learned something new about the Mothers, it led to more questions designed to irritate my brain. But they
were irrelevant; I doubted the answers would help when the Mothers made another bid for Bel-Athaer. I firmly resolved to push it all
away
.

The Mothers were a blight on the world, yet
I
couldn’t stifle a deep sense of gratitude to
one particular Mother.

Why did Gia warn me? I could only speculate. I saved Rio’s life, and I sought her hel
p when Royal was missing
. She asked why she should and I said,
Because you love him. Do you remember how you felt when you couldn’t find him?
And I willed her to remember the despair as it built, day by day, hour by hour, then minute by minute until she thought of nothing other than how life would be if she never saw him again
.

We had a bond, tenuous but there nonetheless. If she came to me tomorrow and said Rio was in trouble and she needed my help, I would help her.

And I experienced a fleeting compassion for a race which slowly
slid
toward extinction. They were fighting for the survival of their species.

If only they were not going about it the wrong way.

The
television
anchor relayed
the stunning news that with only days until the
P
residential election, fifteen state representatives and two senators had resigned and were retiring from politics. Were
all of them
Gelpha?

Cupped in both hands to warm them, I took my coffee mug out to
the
porch.
Rain fell last nig
ht;
snow powdered the mountain peaks
and high ridges
.

What now? What now for me and Royal?

I thought about
the night before last
and what I said to Royal, and
had to ask myself, was it
spontaneous
,
emotional outpour
ing
, the relea
se of yet another insecurity I
buried inside, or did inner Tiff know exactly what she was doing?

I could have told him,
“Yes, go, run back to Bel-Athaer,”
but instead I persuaded him to stay. I all but took the choice away from him.

Royal is selfless; I am not. As I once told him, I’m not always a nice person.

But today was a new day, and as the sun rose above the mountains to send dazzling golden trails across my mountain valley, I
didn’t care what had motivated me
.
He
was
where he belonged,
here in the land of his birth, his world and mine, not some alien dimension.
Only that mattered.

Loss is universal, we all experience it. Some of us
cling
to the comfort our friends and family offer, others need solitude to handle it in
their
own way. We don’t know how we will deal with it till it happens. Royal was hurt and angry and wanted time by himself to sort out his feelings, and I would give him the space he needed. We’d been through so much and worked it out. We would this time.

We had to.

“Hey, Tiff,” Jack said from behind me.

I twisted on the edge of the porch. Teetering, arms pin-wheeling, I tried to keep my balance and managed to get one foot down on the grass. Then I landed on my rump. Coffee splashed my chest and my mug flew into the rose bush.

Jack’s shoulders shook. Mel held her
belly
as if it hurt. They were laughing at me.

I gawped. “Okay, I
know
I’m dreaming.”

“You’re not, you’re not!” Jack jigged up and down like an excited child
.

“But, how?”

“Carrie kind of taught us,” Jack admitted reluctantly.

“She nagged us, really,” Mel said.

“She can see auras, but we can’t.
We sense
something around people
, like the air is a teensy bit heavier,
but we paid it no notice after a while.”

“We didn’t know what it was
till Carrie told us.”

“Or how we can use it.” Jack’s feet twitched as if he wanted to dance.

“And as we can’t see it, we had to learn to use it by touch,” said Mel.

“Yes. Imagine you put your hand in someone’s long hair.” Jack clawed at air. “Then you run your fingers through it and grasp the very ends. Except you can’t see it, and can barely feel it.”

“It took practice,” Mel said as she copied Jack’s grasping motions.

That’s why I kept finding them close to me. “But she’s been all over the place and talked to
other
shades, or tried to talk to them. How come she told you
,
but no one else?”

“When she saw nobody else moved like she can, she thought she was one of a kind. She didn’t stick around long enough to discuss it. They were angry and jealous and wanted her gone,” said Mel
.

I lifted one eyebrow. “Like someone else I know.”

“Um.” Mel made a dismissive gesture. “So she ran away.”

Jack added, “Then she came here, and because she wanted to spend some time with you, refused to be chased away. We talked about her moving and she told us about auras.”

“She was surprised we don’t see them.”

“And she became convinced the problem isn’t that others
can’t
travel, it’s that they don’t know they have the ability.”

“They have no reason to try to grab onto something they can’t see.”

“Anyway, we promised we’d try to connect with you.”

They fell silent. I sat in the wet grass staring up at them, trying to make my eyes believe what I saw.

Incredible. But the proof stood before
me
.
Laughing,
I collapsed and lay on my back. I laughed until tea
rs squeezed from my eyes.

My laughter died to a chort
le and m
y breathing returned to normal, but I didn’t move. Arms and legs relaxed, spread-eagled, I
watched
a fast moving bank of cloud come over the mountain peaks and obliterate
the sun.
A
snowflake spiral
ed
down. It landed on my cheek, melted on my flushed skin and ran down my face like a tear
drop
.

The snow kept coming, catching in my lashes
and
powdering my hair. I decided to get up
before I got soaked
.

Mel and Jack were looking past me, shoulders jerking, hands over their mouths as
if they tried to smother laughter
. I
rotated
in time to get a spitwad between the eyes
.

Royal stood five feet away, a fat red straw in his hand. “Gotcha,” he said softly.

His h
eartbeat pulsed in his throat and h
is smile made me ache with longing. When he looked at me like that, his copper eyes sucked me in and breathing became difficult. I saw love and hope and promises in their depths.

Gotcha
. I hoped my eyes were as expressive. “Yes, you have,” I said.