The Dark Divide (58 page)

‘What the fuck is this?’ Logan asked, having no more luck than Pete at making sense of what he was reading.

‘Something you were never meant to see,
ma cherie
.’

They both spun around to find Delphine standing at the door of her office. She took in the files scattered on the floor with a glance, and then focussed her attention back on her sons.

If we
are
her sons
. The thought flashed unbidden through Pete’s mind and Logan’s too, he knew without a shadow of a doubt.

Delphine stepped into the room. She was wearing a fabulous blue and gold kimono, of all things, with a wide red sash. She walked toward them, her steps shortened by her outfit, her hands in her pockets, her expression reassuring.

‘Is this us?’ Logan demanded holding the file out to her, and then, as if he suddenly remembered why they were here, he added, ‘Where is Tiffany?’

‘Upstairs,’ Delphine told him. ‘Safe and well.’

‘She’s pregnant,’ Logan blurted out. ‘The kid is mine.’

Delphine smiled at him. ‘I know.’

‘Did you help her get rid of it?’

‘Did I …? Oh, for pity’s sake, Logan. I would never do anything of the kind. I have been living for this moment. Tiffany has done us both proud.’

‘So we flew all this way for nothing?’ Pete asked, glancing at Logan. ‘That’s okay. It’s not like I had anything fucking better to do.’

‘Tsk, tsk,’ Delphine scolded. ‘Language, Peter.’

‘It wasn’t for nothing,’ Logan said, holding up the file with their photos in it. ‘Turns out it’s been very informative.’

‘I was hoping you would never find out about that,’ she said with a regretful sigh.

‘So … what?’ Logan asked, obviously struggling to come to grips with what she was telling them. ‘We’re
adopted
?’

She shrugged. ‘In a manner of speaking. Your birth mother … disappointed me. I was required to step in and take charge of your care.’ She smiled fondly at them and held her arms wide. ‘I did well, no? Look at you both. Clever. Successful … and now you have given me grandchildren. I could ask for nothing more.’

‘What happened to our real mother?’ Pete asked, a little numb. This was all happening too fast, the ground shifting beneath his feet too quickly for him to know how to react.

‘She … moved on.’

Pete didn’t like the way she was avoiding a straight answer. ‘What happened to her?’

Delphine stepped a little closer and put her hands in her pockets again. ‘She betrayed the cause.’

‘What the fuck does that mean?’ he demanded angrily.

‘That’s no way to speak to your mother,
cherie
,’ Delphine said as she withdrew her hands from her pockets. With a short sharp breath, she blew a cloud of blue powder into their faces. The world went black so quickly Pete didn’t even realise he was unconscious until he came to, some time later, lying on the floor of a dark, cavernous chamber beside Logan, tied hand and foot, just in time to watch Delphine opening a rift into another reality.

CHAPTER 59

Chishihero waited alone at the stone circle for the rift to open as the sun sank below the trees and the gathering darkness brought the chill of the coming night with it. Trása thought it odd she hadn’t brought reinforcements. Then again, maybe it wasn’t so strange. She probably didn’t want others seeing what was on the other side of the rift.

Or perhaps Kiba, the mastiff, was all the protection she thought she needed.

Trása sat down. Chishihero absently stroked the top her head. She still hadn’t noticed her dog was now a bitch. That was the one drawback of shapeshifting. One could assume any form one was inclined to take, but one could not alter their gender. Kiba was a male dog. With the help of a few of the lesser
Youkai
and a healthy handful of
Brionglóid Gorm
, the mastiff was sleeping peacefully in his kennel back at the Tanabe compound. The almost identical mastiff now sitting obediently at Chishihero’s side, was Trása in canine form.

She had not tried being a dog before. Marcroy favoured a wolf shape, and it had always felt slightly disrespectful to emulate the same species as her uncle. The mastiff form was different to anything Trása had tried before. It was powerful, strong. Trása liked the feeling, although it was hard not to think
about food. She found herself having difficulty concentrating at times because it seemed dogs considered everything around them potentially edible. She constantly had to fight the urge to sniff everything in the vicinity to see if that was the case.

Lightning crackled across the stones not long after Chishihero arrived, tying her horse and two spare saddled mounts to a tree far enough back from the circle so as not to spook them when the rift opened. She patted the top of Trása’s head and muttered something soothing to her pet as the rift rent the air inside the stones, lighting the night with a radiance almost too bright to look upon. Trása had to resist the urge to flinch from her touch, as the opening rift left a jagged afterimage across her sight.

A few moment later, when Chishihero judged the rift stable, she stepped forward to greet the visitors from another reality. There were two women Trása could see, both of them dressed in kimonos, as if they knew they were coming to a world living under Japanese Imperial rule, and wished to blend in.

Neither woman looked Japanese. The taller of the two was very pretty, with fair hair piled on her head and a slender frame that seemed too long and gangly for the traditional Japanese outfit she was wearing. This was, Trása guessed, the replacement for Wakiko, who was no longer toeing the party line, and about to lose her daughters because of it. The attractive woman beside her was older, shorter and obviously the one who had opened the rift, although what she had opened it with, Trása was too far back to see.

The women stepped through, but rather than close the rift behind her, Delphine — at least that’s who Trása assumed the older woman was — beckoned Chishihero forward.

‘You came alone as I requested?’

‘Yes, my lady.’

‘Good, because I need your help, sister,’ the woman said.

Trása followed Chishihero to the edge of the stone circle as the Tanabe magician hurried forward, to see if she could recognise anything about the reality from which Delphine had emerged. But the world on the other side of the rift was, like this one, shrouded in darkness. It was impossible to make out anything other than a couple of prone shapes lying on the floor. The circle must be inside a building, she figured, because there was definitely a floor, rather than earth or stone beneath the bodies, and no hint of the world beyond the veil.

‘I can’t use magic to lift them until we get them onto your side of the rift,’ Delphine explained, ‘and my companion is with child. I don’t want her straining herself.’

Chishihero nodded and stepped through the rift to the other side. The blonde woman kept watch as Delphine bent over one of the prone bodies and grabbed him by the shoulders. Chishihero took his legs and the two of them, with some difficulty, huffed and puffed and managed to lift the unconscious man from where he was lying in the other reality, to lay him on the ground just inside this one. Trása itched to get closer, but she remembered what happened the last time she crossed a rift in animal form.

There was very little magic in the other realm, Trása guessed, because Delphine didn’t want to waste it lifting things. Once the first man was through, they went back to collect the other one, carrying him across the rift before dumping him, none too gently, beside the first.

A moment later, Delphine pulled a long thin rod that appeared to be made from crystal out of her sleeve and pointed it at the rift. Lightning sizzled for a moment and then the rift crackled shut, leaving the three women in darkness with two unconscious — maybe even dead — men, dressed in clothes that nearly shocked Trása back into her own form.

They were both wearing jeans. One of them was wearing running shoes with a Nike arrow on the side. Whoever they
were, these men came from Rónán’s reality, or one very much like it.

Trása’s hackles suddenly stood on end. Had she and Rónán made a terrible mistake? Instead of helping Wakiko with her complicated plan to save her daughters in return for a way through the rift, should they have just waited here and simply jumped through this rift when it opened?

She’d suggested as much to Rónán not long after they first arrived. And she remembered him lecturing her about the dangers of jumping into an unknown realm. In fairness, he hadn’t expected the rift to be opened with so little fanfare. But would Rónán have been so quick with his lecture if he’d known one could buy Levis and Nikes in the world on the other side of the rift and that all they had to do to get to the rift was run past three women, a dog and a couple of apparently dead bodies?

If Rónán was here now, could we have escaped?

And if these women came from a realm depleted of magic, similar to the one Rónán had grown up in, how had Delphine managed to open a rift on a depleted world?

That question opened up new possibilities for Trása, but she couldn’t act on them now. And certainly not while she was a dog.

One of the men was groaning softly as he regained consciousness. So they weren’t dead, then. She padded over to them, sniffing them curiously. Who were they? And why had Delphine brought them here?

Chishihero must have been wondering the same thing. ‘You brought guests?’ she asked Delphine.

Trása gently nudged at the man on the left with her muzzle, just as the one on the right began to groan, too. She turned to look at him and realised the men were twins. Identical twins.

‘A last-minute change of plans,’ Delphine said, sliding her crystal wand into her sleeve and straightening her kimono. ‘This
is Trephina,’ she added, pointing to the blonde. ‘She will be taking over from Ingrid.’

‘Not a moment too soon,’ Chishihero said to Delphine. Then she turned to Trephina. ‘Welcome to my realm, my lady. I trust you will be happy here.’

‘Just don’t point a camera at me,’ the young woman replied, although it was doubtful Chishihero knew what a camera was. She turned to Delphine and added, ‘If I never hear the words “work it, baby” ever again, it will be far too soon.’

Delphine smiled briefly at that but didn’t comment. She turned and glanced at the men she had brought through the rift and realising they were starting to wake, she pulled out her crystal wand again and waved it over them, binding the two men with magical ties that almost caught Trása as well.

‘Who are they?’ Chishihero asked, as Trása leaped back with a snarl of alarm at how close she had come to being trapped in the bonds that held the men rigid. It wouldn’t matter if they woke now. They would not be able to move.

‘A problem,’ Delphine said with a frown, putting her wand away. ‘They are the sons of another sister like Ingrid, who took it upon herself to alter the destiny of her children. I had to bring them to maturity myself.’

‘They are Undivided?’ Chishihero gasped in astonishment.

Trása was equally astonished, but all she could do was wag her tail. It was disturbing how hard it was to control the betraying body language of a dog. She had renewed admiration for Marcroy, being able to control himself in wolf form. Trása looked down at the two men with renewed interest. They weren’t just twins, she realised; if they were Undivided, that made them Rónán and Darragh’s
eileféin.

‘Not officially, but they are the right bloodstock.’ Delphine smiled at her younger companion. ‘Trephina here carries our next set of Emperors or Empresses from their line, with luck.’

‘What are you going to do with them?’ Chishihero asked, looking worried. ‘Kill them?’

Delphine paused but after a moment she shook her head. ‘I’d prefer not to, until we know for certain we have a set of Emperor twins from them. But I can’t risk leaving them here. They’ve been raised in a depleted realm, so they have no hint of what they might be capable of. There is far too much magic in this realm for me to leave an untrained pair of potential Undivideds here for very long, even if there are none left but the lesser
Youkai
to show them the way.’

‘Actually, my lady, there
are Youkai
here. They came through the rift several days ago.’

Well
, Trása thought, flopping down beside the captives.
That’s blown it.

‘From where? Which realm?’

‘I couldn’t say,’ Chishihero said. ‘But they are the reason you were forced to come here and not through the
rifuto
stones in
Nara
. No sooner had I reported the arrival of the
Youkai
to the
Konketsu
in
Nara
, Wakiko was making plans to come here to visit them.’

‘No doubt she hopes to enlist their aid in defying me,’ Delphine said, looking mightily displeased. ‘And the
Matrarchaí
. Have you taken care of them yet?’

Chishihero shook her head. ‘I’ve not had the opportunity, my lady, and the male, in particular, is far more powerful than I.’

‘Are you sure he is
Youkai
, and not just a magician from another realm?’

‘I have seen him wane, my lady. And create fire with a thought. He needs no tools or folding spells like the
ori mahou
to ply his craft.’

‘Then you did the right thing waiting for me. Faerie like that need to be handled correctly.’ Delphine frowned and then turned her attention to Trása. ‘Is the dog trained to stand guard?’

‘Of course, my lady.’

The older woman nodded. ‘Then we will leave them here,’ she said. ‘We should be back by morning. I only plan to be in this reality for a few hours, even with these unexpected
Youkai
to deal with. If you trust the dog to guard them, they’ll be safe enough here until I return at dawn. I assume everybody is waiting for us?’

Chishihero nodded. ‘They are,’ she said, and then she turned to her dog. ‘Kiba, stay!’ she commanded. ‘Stand guard.’