Shadow Revealed (The Enlightened Species Book Two) (2 page)

Master Zakel’s withdrawal symptoms slammed into her mind like a locomotive. As he drank from her, his crazed images bombarded her. It was difficult to distinguish between which were real and which were delusional manifestations. Through his foggy view Zakel’s recent hunt came to her. He’d been perched in a tree branch overlooking a grassy meadow full of colorful wildflowers. At first Umbrae was so captivated by the splendor of nature’s beauty that she failed to notice Zakel’s targets playing amongst the blossoms. Dread filled her when the dark heads of the Tellus children shifted from small brown-bear cub forms and came into view.

They were giggling, challenging each other, and enjoying their carefree existence, unaware that Zakel was visualizing his dentes sinking into their throats. The sensation was so real to him Umbrae felt the wetness of the Tellus blood splash against the roof of her mouth. Zakel had been desperate to use the vein/blood connection to tap into the youths’ psychic energy, stealing it away along with their lives. He envisioned the rush of the high he would get from the children, the euphoric satisfaction the energy would give him, and the boost of his psychic ability at the expense of their lives.

Her breath caught in her chest when he extended his wings, launching toward the children, his chin wet from the saliva flooding his mouth as his dentes erupted. Thank the Fates, the children vanished beneath the soil at the last possible moment. Zakel held a fistful of one child’s hair in his otherwise empty hands. Umbrae let out a sigh of relief as she heard Zakel’s roar of frustration echo over the beautiful meadow.

The pursuit of victims was the only thing that would get the lazy bastard to show any initiative at all, the never-ending quest for the psychic high of a kill.
Please let his need be strong enough for him to kill me,
she silently prayed.

Nope, he took a few ounces before tearing away from her wrist, breaking the connection and shattering the vision. He stood up, leaving her blood to flow freely into the dirt. “You disgust me, Kurva. Seal that up.” He tossed the lead hood from his back pocket at her feet. What he called her didn’t really matter. Today it was Kurva=Whore. Sometimes it was Topa=cunt, sometimes puta, or garbage. Dehydration made Umbrae’s mouth dry as sandpaper, and she sealed the tears in her wrist with the small amount of saliva she had as best she could before pulling the hood over her head.

With her hood in place, Master Zakel unlocked her chains and yanked her behind him, trudging through the trees. He cursed when she stumbled, dragged her behind him when she fell in exhaustion, refusing to slow his pace or allow her to get her footing back. He stopped when they reached the edge of a mountain lake. The gentle lapping of the water rousted her slightly, and her cells cried out for fluid. Streams, lakes, and ponds were Umbrae’s favorite bodies of water because they seemed gentle and welcoming, unlike the oceans that sounded noisy and violent.

“You have five minutes, Kurva.” Master Zakel told her and locked her chain onto a nearby boulder. “Remove the hood.”

She tugged it off, and he reached for it using two fingers as if it were covered in excrement … maybe she would do that later. Turning, he tucked the offending thing into his back pocket and stomped off with a
cachink
.

Umbrae knelt at the bank, her thirst more painful then the tiny sharp shells cutting into her knees. Cupping her hands, she drank scoop after scoop of water, her depleted cells demanded more and more. Quenched, her eyes focused on the body of a dead fish that bobbed further down the shoreline. Stretching to the end of her chain, she strained with her foot, barely able to touch the fish with the tip of her toe. Even with the chain choking off her airway, she was unable to reach far enough to capture the slippery corpse.

A quick glance showed nothing nearby that would help her acquire the fish. No driftwood. No sticks. Lifting a rock, she tossed it into the water behind the fish, then reached with her foot again, hoping the heavier wave generated by the stone would lap the fish closer to her. Nope. She tried it again; still no luck. With her third rock in hand, she targeted the water behind the body carefully.

Smack
. She spun to where the sound had originated. A fish flipped and flopped next to her in an effort to return to the lake.
Where did that come from?
Looking over the water, she caught the ripple of a fin disappearing beneath the surface. Umbrae snatched the fish and sunk her teeth straight into its flesh, eating quickly, the urgency to get rid of the evidence of the Aquatie’s gift paramount in her mind. The Aquatie had no idea of the nightmare that knocked should Master Zakel get an inkling of its presence.

She ate every part of the fish before tucking the sharp little bones into the matted, nappy knots on her head. She’d never had a brush or comb, nor want of one.

Cachink, cachink
. She scooted, like a backward crab, up against the rock he had chained her to, fearful of angering him; if he hit her in the stomach, there was a chance she could vomit before digesting the evidence of the fish. The Aquatie would be in danger.

“I see you didn’t bother to clean yourself.” Master Zakel dropped her hood next to her feet and leaned over to undo the lock. Umbrae glanced up at the water in time to see another ripple of the Aquatie.
Oh please, Fates, no. Run! Hide!
She silently pleaded, giving a discrete sharp shake of her head in warning before she hastily pulled the hood over her head.

“Figures. Don’t know what good your shadowing gift is when you can be found by scent alone within twenty miles.” Master Zakel yanked the chain and she stood quickly, thankful to be stumbling behind him and putting distance between them and the kindness of the Aquatie. The last time a young Tellus adolescence had tried to offer her aide, it had not ended so well. The memory of witnessing the child butchered haunted her. Master Zakel had been giddy and high for days after. With a relieved exhale she counted this as a good day. She’d had water. She’d had food. No one died, that she knew of anyway. All in all, a very good day.

****

“Did you see her, daddy?” Tabby swam away from the surface beside him. “Why did she have a chain on her, like a pet?”

When Tabby had come to him saying she gave a starving dirty girl a fish, his first thought was that he was going to have to see if there were any Elven around to remove the memory of his overzealous daughter from the mind of a human. He’d never expected to see what he’d just witnessed.

“She’s not a pet, she’s a slave,” Dorn distractedly answered his daughter.

“A slave? I didn’t know humans had slaves anymore.” Her youthful, innocent, naive curiosity was misplaced. She should be cautious, suspicious, and, hell, afraid would be preferable. Much as he hated to shatter that innocence, it was necessary for her safety. Dorn made the decision that Tabby would hear the uncensored truth in this. If her mother castrated him later for it, then that was a chance he was willing to take.

He needed to reach the Symbiosis of Species Council. That male had matched the description of a Morsdente they had been searching for longer than the SOSC had been formed. Dorn was also pretty sure that it was the same Morsdente that had been on the Aquaties wanted and warning lists for multiple attacks against his people. How close had Tabby come to calling herself to the attention of such a prolific killer?

Dorn was not a warrior. He was a healer. He wouldn’t stand a chance against an Elven Morsdente on the hunt. He needed to warn the school of Aquaties that called this lake their home that there was a Morsdente in their territory. After that he’d alert the SOSC, then get his daughter back downstream to the ocean, where she would be safe.

“They were not human, Tabby,” he began. “They were Volaticus, Elven, at least the male was. The female was half human and half Elven, a Hulven, I think. Either way they were both Volaticus.” He sped toward the underwater caves along the mountain at the opposite side of the lake.

“But Volaticus are enlightened, daddy. Civilized … like us. The female was trying to wrap her foot around a rotten fish … to eat. She was
starving.
Enlightened folks don’t starve. Are you sure they weren’t humans?” She was shaking her head, eyes wide.

“Tabby, why would you throw a human a fish, anyways? Rule number one: Don’t expose your existence to humanity,” Dorn barked at her. She still didn’t realize the danger she had placed herself in, placed them all in.

“She didn’t see me. I was fast,” Tabby whined, defending herself as only a child’s logic can.

“She saw you; she even shook her head to warn you. Maybe she saw you because she is Volaticus; maybe a human wouldn’t have seen you, but that’s beside the point here. Do you think a human is so stupid that they would fail to realize that fish normally
do not
leap out of the water at them?” He was scolding his only daughter harsher than he ever had.

Her shoulder sagged slightly as she tried to swim behind him in shame, and Dorn had to slow his pace not to get ahead of her. “You’re right daddy, I didn’t think of that.”

Dorn didn’t soften his tone. “That Elven male was far more dangerous than any human you could ever have come across.” Much as he wanted to sooth her and reassure her, he needed to scare her further. “Evil is found in all species. Humans have not yet enlightened; they still use a very small portion of their mental capabilities, so they might seem uncivilized to us. We see them exploiting themselves, each other, and the planet. The truth is there was a time long, long ago when the Aquaties were much the same way, if not worse. We hunted each other, cannibalized and subjugated our brothers and sisters. Just because we enlightened and breached into the part of our minds that enables us to use our psychic energy and abilities doesn’t make us civilized. There are those amongst the Aquaties who, though enlightened … remain evil, uncivilized. Those who still seek to hunt, cannibalize, and subjugate. There are those kinds of people peppered throughout
every
species.” It broke his heart looking into to her wide, horror-filled eyes. “Do you understand?”

Her shattered image of a perfect world hung on his conscious. Her chin quivered when she answered his question. “So you mean that no matter how powerful and psychically enlightened a species becomes, there will always be some that are mean?”

Nodding, Dorn continued with a softer tone. “Humans will arrive at their enlightenment at some point. Even when they do, there will be those amongst them who will be evil, who will kill and exploit. That Elven male holding the slave was a Morsdente. He represents the most evil type of killer within the Volaticus species. You see, Tabby, Elven require the iron found in blood to survive, and historically, the highest iron could be found in human blood. They don’t need to kill to obtain enough blood to sustain them, though evil ones still kill when feeding on humans. Some kill because they like to kill; often they are the ones that eventually become Morsdente. It has always been against their laws to feed from their own kind. Why try to get iron from your brethren who are just as iron deficient as you are … unless it is to kill them. One of the side benefits to the Volaticus enlightenment is, if they drink from another psychically enlightened species, they get a psychic boost of their own abilities. The boost only lasts while they drink from the vein of the enlightened person. Somewhere down the line, an evil, uncivilized member of the species killed a psychically enlightened species by draining
all
of their blood. Once they do that, the psychic boost they get becomes an addiction to them. They turn into a Morsdente, the Latin word for ‘death teeth.’”

Tabby’s eyes were huge, but she was nodding in understanding. Dorn breathed a sigh of relief. She was a tough little cookie, and he hoped she would use this knowledge to protect herself in the future. With that assurance, he continued explaining with a lighter spirit; this was important. “The Morsdente can get the psychic high they are addicted to from ANY enlightened species … including Aquaties.”

Her gasp broke his heart. “The slave shook her head to warn me to stay away … didn’t she?”

Dorn nodded his agreement at her deduction. “She was afraid you would reveal yourself to the Morsdente. Had he an inkling you were there, he would have stopped at nothing in hunting you.”

Tabby swam beside him, silently absorbing the grown up information Dorn had just leveled on her. “If the female is Volaticus too, how come he doesn’t kill her? And how come she doesn’t try to get away?”

Dorn stopped and took a long look at his daughter, truly pleased with her resiliency and with her intelligent observation and question. He could still see her compassion for the poor creature that she had wanted so badly to help glistening in her eyes.

“She may have been Hulven. Some of the half-human/half-Elven offspring end up being high in iron rather than deficient. When that happens, the Elven can obtain their blood needs from one source anytime needed. That is the only reason the female is still alive in the presence of that level of evil. As for why she doesn’t escape, I am sure the chains he keeps her in will not allow her to be free.” Turning, they swam the few remaining feet to the resident school of the Aquatie people. “Come, we will let the leaders know what we saw, and then we will return home. I suddenly have a need to hug your brothers.”

Nodding, Tabby followed her father into the cave.

Chapter Two

“Umbrae girl—”
The sweet voice of her friend floated into her mind through the blood bond established by the violent feedings of the Morsdente killer. The cognitive spirit of Etana’s energy had lingered within him since before Zakel had purchased Umbrae on that wharf. Sometimes when Master Zakel had failed to satisfy his addiction, leaving him weakened by need and cravings, Etana would communicate with her. The moments spent with Etana represented the only kindness Umbrae had ever known.

“Etana, you remain within.”
Though sad that her spirit friend remained trapped in the psyche of the killer, Umbrae was happy to speak to her again. She had never taken Master Zakel’s blood, so the bond was one-sided. If the Morsdente, or in this case the Morsdente’s victim, reached out to her and maintained the contact, she could telepathically speak back to them without communicating on an open type frequency, though Etana was the only one Umbrae had ever responded to.