Black Orchid (4 page)

Nate
stood in front of the fridge and stared blankly at its contents. With a
distracted sigh, he ran a hand through his sandy brown hair. Coming down to the
kitchen had really just been an excuse to do something… anything. He’d been
having a disturbing dream lately. One from which he woke feeling both
frustrated and guilty. And tonight had been no exception.

Always
the dream involved Adelaide Jenner. He’d been delusional about her, duped into
thinking that she was his
te’sorthene
at one time. Man, what a fool!

Talia,
his true
te’sorthene
, had shown him just how wrong he’d been. She’d
shown him how Adelaide, with her ability to see and manipulate relationships,
had forced him to believe in something that didn’t really exist. And Adelaide’s
sister, Lila, had screwed with his emotions to add to their deception.

Adelaide
was, in a word, evil.

They
all were – her and her entire family. They were like snakes, slithering on
their bellies and into his life. Taking over his entire being. At least now he
knew that none of it had been real. These days, his life with the Jenners and
the Pierces seemed like a blurry version of an old movie he had once watched.
All grey and washed out.

But
this damn dream still left him shaken. In it, Adelaide stood facing him, tears
spilling from her eyes and streaming down her cheeks. There was so much
devastation in her expression that he wanted to look away. But he couldn’t. She
didn’t say anything, just reached out to him. Finally, he would summon the strength
to turn from her. And then he’d hear her sobbing. That’s when he’d wake up.

He
would lie in bed, his heart dull with pain and guilt. And then he’d turn his
head and look at Talia sleeping beside him, looking so frail and sweet, and a
different guilt would swamp him. How the hell could he dream about Adelaide
when his true
te’sorthene
slept at his side?

A
low rumble of murmured voices just outside in the hallway pulled him out his
thoughts. He softly shut the fridge and moved closer to the kitchen doorway.
Nate recognized his leader’s deep tones as he neared.

Maddox.
Enigmatic and powerful. They all followed him with a blind loyalty that Nate
sometimes thought bordered on fanaticism, though nothing had shown him yet that
the sentiment was not deserved.

“Of
course. I’m almost finished.”

Nate
froze as he recognized Talia’s voice. What was she doing talking to Maddox?
Talia rarely came out of their room because her power restricted her too much.
She could feel every emotion of the people around her, only amplified. In fact,
if she got around too many people, it became downright debilitating. And he’d
never seen Maddox go anywhere near her.

Probably
just bumped into him in the hallway,
Nate thought. At a guess, she must’ve woken
up to find Nate gone and come looking for him.

“How
deep in is he?” Maddox asked.

“Completely,”
Talia replied.

“But
could he handle prolonged exposure?”

“I
believe so. We’d just need to set the stage properly.”

“Excellent.
There’s been a development. I think we may have an opportunity to use your
little mistake to our advantage," Maddox said.

"So
what we discussed earlier?"

“Yes.”

“That’s
good because I’ve just about drained him,” Talia said.

“Well,
if you’d attached to Ellie like you were supposed to—”

Nate
frowned.
Attached?
Drained?

“Don’t
go into all that again,” Talia said, with a venom in her voice that Nate had
never heard her use before. “You knew when you sent me that I don’t have
complete control over that. It was a risk you accepted.”

“Hmmm….
Well, perhaps we can salvage something out of this.”

“Shall
I bring him to you tomorrow?” Talia asked.

There
was only one “him” to whom she could possibly be referring.

That’s
it
.

Unable
to let this go, he stepped out into the hallway.

Talia’s
blinked in surprise at his sudden appearance. She glanced nervously at Maddox.
But the older man just gave Nate a bland look. Maddox was a great leader partly
because he was so strategic. But Nate often felt that made him cold, remote. He
shared none of his plans – even with his lieutenants from what Nate heard. And
everything in their underground compound was closely monitored and segregated.
You only knew your part of the puzzle and nothing else. But there was no
denying his methods, because he was always at least one step ahead of their
enemies.

Nate
didn’t even bother to apologize for eavesdropping. “Would either of you like to
explain what’s going on?”

“Of
course,” Maddox said smoothly. “But it appears the hallway is not the best
place for discussions. Let’s go somewhere more private.”

Nate
shrugged and then silently followed Maddox and Talia through a series of narrow
corridors. Finally they stopped at a doorway that Nate recognized.

Command
central…
interesting.

Nate
was rarely asked to visit this area. The room looked exactly like those in
military movies where all the high-powered leaders gathered to assess and
strategize. He glanced around at the long conference table and the currently
dark monitors and screens all along the walls.

Nate
turned around with raised eyebrows. “So what’s going on?” He glanced to his
right. “Tal?”

She
moved across the room to stand in front of him. “It’s nothing really,” she said.

Reaching
out, she grasped his forearms with her hands. Nate’s vision seemed to blank out
on him. He couldn’t look away and couldn’t move, and, moreover, he didn’t want
to. He just stared deeply into her mesmerizing eyes. After a moment she nodded,
satisfied.

“Sit,”
she said.

He
obeyed. She hooked a chair with her foot to sit directly in front of him, never
taking her hands off him.

“Is
he under?” Nate heard Maddox ask. But he never removed his gaze from Talia’s.
Whatever Maddox was talking about was unimportant.

“Yes,”
Talia said.

“Good.
You’re sure that he can handle it?”

 “Yes.
I’ve almost drained all his positive emotions and memories associated with
them, replacing those feelings with a new truth. His family is his enemy to him
now. I’ve also slowly been breaking the ties binding him to me. Although
necessary at the beginning, he can’t function the way you need him to when we
send him back if that’s there. There’s not much linking us anymore. I can
finish severing our bond tonight.”

“You
said
almost
all the positive emotions? Will that be a problem?” Maddox
asked.

“No.”

Nate,
still focused solely on Talia, heard the discussion, but it meant little to
him.

Then
Talia spoke directly to him, and Nate felt her words like a physical impact.
“No matter what I say, you will feel contentment and calm. Nod if you
understand.”

Nate
felt himself nodding but couldn’t think why.

“Nate,
what is our relationship?” she asked.

“
Te’sorthene
,”
he answered robotically. He felt that bond with Talia, even through his mental
haze.

Talia
stared at him and he stayed locked in on her for what was probably a long
while, but Nate didn’t mind. Then, without feeling as if anything had changed
or altered in any way, the girl sitting in front of him was just a girl.
Nothing special.

A
look of satisfaction passed over her face. “Nate, what is our relationship?”

“We
both serve under Maddox. You don’t come out much though. Your name is Talia. We
used to date. Briefly.”

She
nodded.

“Well?”
he heard Maddox demand, but Nate was only aware of it as muted background
noise.

“I’ve
severed the link that had him thinking we were
te’sorthene
,” Talia said.
“The only thing he’ll feel for me now is that I’m a girl he once went out with
and hasn’t talked to in a while.”

“With
no residual effect?”

“Working
on it.”

She
turned back to Nate then, and he focused in on her words as if they were a revelation.
“All of your loyalty and devotion is focused on Maddox. On serving him and his
needs. The Vyusher, and their Svatura allies, are our enemies.”

“Enemies,”
Nate parroted.

“Especially
Adelaide Jenner. She is particularly dangerous because she has too many
powers,” Talia said. “She and all her sisters.”

Nate
felt hatred fester and boil up inside him. But then an image suddenly flashed
in his mind. That of Adelaide crying. His dream.

He
heard Talia gasp, and her fingers dug into his arms. The small sting of pain
snapped his attention back to her. “Nate. Adelaide is your
enemy
. Do you
understand?”

He
felt waves of animosity roll through him, all focused on the truth in his head.
Adelaide was evil and a deceiver. She’d ripped away years of his life, falsely
leading him to believe in their relationship. Not only that, but she was
incredibly dangerous. Someone with her abilities could take over the world and
not in a good way. It was critical that she be eliminated.

“Who
is your enemy?” Talia asked.

“Adelaide
Jenner,” he almost growled.

Talia
glanced up over his shoulder. Nate continued to keep his focus on her, waiting
for… something.

“He
won’t regress?” Maddox asked.

“He
shouldn’t.”

“You’re
sure? Because I’m sending him to
her
.”

“He
can handle it.” Nate vaguely wondered why she sounded so irritated.

“Good.”
Maddox sounded pleased. “Is he ready for his orders?”

“Yes.”
Talia removed her hands from Nate’s arms. Nate blinked a couple of times and felt
as if he were pushing through a haze. Everything was a little fuzzy and
colorless. He glanced to his left to see his leader, Maddox, standing there,
watching him closely.

Oh
jeez, did I zone out in the middle of a meeting?

“Nate,
what are your thoughts on Adelaide Jenner?”

Nate’s
jaw hardened. “We have enemies, sir, and she’s one of the worst. What she did
to me…” He shook his head, as a raw fury rose like bile in his throat.

 Maddox’s
lips curled in a rare smile. “Good man.” He paused for a moment, serious once
more. “Son, you have been one of my greatest disappointments. We lost Karin
before you could be changed into a wolf metamorph. With your strength and speed,
you could’ve been one of my greatest fighters.”

“I
still can be, sir,” Nate insisted eagerly. He stood to face his commander, his
fists clenched at his side.

Maddox
clasped his hands behind his back and shook his head. “No. Without the link to
the pack’s hive mind, you’re useless to me in that capacity.”

Nate
felt the disappointment like a rock in his stomach. All he wanted was to serve
his leader. But a pack of wolf metamorphs had a unique semi-telepathic
connection. A non-wolf would
never
fit in or work out. Especially in a
fight.

“But,”
Maddox continued, “I have an important assignment for you. We’ve received some potentially
key information about Adelaide, and I think you’re just the person we need.”

“An
assignment, sir?”

Maddox
nodded.

Finally!
Nate
had been waiting for this moment. Now he could be an asset to his people. Anything
he could do to help bring down Adelaide Jenner or her sisters would make him a
hero in Maddox’s forces. But more than that, he was owed a certain amount of personal
revenge against the girl who’d stolen his life.

He
pulled his shoulders back to stand proudly at attention. “Tell me what you need
me to do, sir.”

“I
need you to do to her what she did to you.”

Adelaide
sat down on the couch in her room and mentally prepared herself for the next
round of lessons that had become her daily torment these last few weeks. Alex
sat on the couch beside her and pulled out a rectangular gadget with a glass
screen. When he pushed something, it lit up. “So this is a cell phone.”

Adelaide
raised her hand to her head. “It looks like a little version of… what’s that
thing called that Ellie showed me last week, the thing you can get information from?”

Alex
smiled. “A computer?”

“That.”
Adelaide noticed the small tremor in her hands and clenched them shut. In her
mind, she was still stuck in 1929.

It
had only been a few weeks - a blink in the span of her elongated life – since
Adelaide had woken from a nightmare to discover that she was lying in a
courtyard in the middle of a castle. A
castle
for heaven’s sake! And as
if that hadn’t been enough, a group of strangers, including a wolf, surrounded
her.

That
day, as she’d tried to make sense of everything, Adelaide had asked Lila for
explanations, but nothing her sister said had made any sense.

“What
do you feel?” Lila had asked.

Adelaide
shook her head. “
Feel
? Terrified… Confused… What’s happening?”

Lila
had glanced back at the others surrounding them. “
Her emotions are back on.”

Adelaide
had gasped, looking around frantically. The voice had been Lila’s, but she
hadn’t opened her mouth.

Lila
had turned back to face her. “Don’t be afraid. What’s your most recent memory?”

Adelaide
had focused on the question and searched through blackness in her mind until
she’d latched onto a thought.

“Ummm…
We left Chicago because of all the issues with gangsters and the St.
Valentine’s Day Massacre. We moved to Louisiana instead. Dad was worried about
the stock market crash.”

Lila
had looked both sad and a little relieved. She’d held out a hand and stepped
closer but stopped when Adelaide jerked back. “I don’t know how to break this
gently, so I’m just going to tell you…. A lot of time has passed since then.
Eight-four years actually. We’ve had to put some blocks up in your memory.”

Lila’d
gotten really vague after that. Apparently something had happened. Something so
awful that they’d feared Adelaide wouldn’t survive it, and so they’d wiped her
mind clean.

On
that first day after they took away her memories, Adelaide had been grateful
when they’d eventually taken her to a room – her own apparently – and her
parents were there waiting. Something familiar. She’d clung to her mother and
had, just for a moment, felt normal. But normal hadn’t lasted long.

Very
quickly, they’d started the process of what Adelaide labelled her “reeducation
time.”

A
hell of a lot had changed in eighty-four years. So many aspects of her life
were unrecognizable and completely foreign to her now. As a Svatura, because of
her lengthened lifespan, she was used to adjusting with the changes of the
world. But that was gradual. Losing such a huge amount of time, especially when
so much had changed, was disorienting. Terrifying in her worst moments. Every time
they showed her some new technology, some new invention, she felt her
connection to reality slipping further and further away.

And
then the shaking deep inside would start, the dragon inside responding to her
distress... wanting out.

“So
what does this cell thingy do?” Adelaide asked now.

Alex,
who’d been watching her closely, nodded at her signal to continue. “Its most
basic function is to make a telephone call from wherever you want.”

Adelaide
blinked. She knew what a telephone was – finally, something she’d heard of. But
none of the ones she remembered looked like that. “You don’t have to… um… attach
it to something?”

“No.
You just dial the number and that’s it.” He proceeded to demonstrate. “Push
this button here to turn it on. Dial the number on this pad. And click this
button.”

“Button?”
It looked like he was just touching the glass.

“The
thing that looks like a green phone.”

“Oh.”
The shaking was getting worse, and now a headache was coming on.

“Do
you want to try it?”

Adelaide
choked on a laugh. “Not really.”

Alex
grimaced. “I know this is a lot, sweetie. But this one, at least, is important
to learn. It helps you stay in touch with us.”

Adelaide
raised her eyebrows. “It’s not as if I have many places to go. And wouldn’t
telepathy be easier?”

Alex
said nothing. He didn’t have to. Her control over her telepathy was pathetic.

“Right.
I can’t control my mind enough, I guess.” Adelaide sighed. “Give it to me,
then.”

But
the moment her hands touched such a foreign, insane little object, the enormity
of just how much time she’d lost struck her for the thousandth time. She felt
as though she’d been slapped in the face with it so often lately, she was
surprised she wasn’t black and blue.

Adelaide
gasped and dropped the cell phone as she tumbled to the floor. Her body started
to jerk in an attack so sudden she couldn’t breathe or speak.

“Lila!
Ellie!” Alex yelled.

Immediately
hands were upon her. Adelaide felt Lila’s calming influence, which most often
worked to stop the transformation. But right now it wasn’t doing a damn thing. Nothing
could penetrate the fear and anger pumping through her system. Even with Ellie
helping Lila, they weren’t making a dent.

“She’s
starting to shimmer,” Ellie muttered.

“Get
Selene in here,” Lila said.

Tears
trickled down Adelaide’s cheeks as she tried to pull some oxygen into her
starving lungs. Her hands seized into claws as her body tensed with the
violence of the attack. She knew the dragon inside her was trying to get out.
They’d told her about the monster she could become, and she was fighting it
with everything she had.

Everything
she had was not enough.

“What
do you need me to do?” Selene’s voice vaguely registered in Adelaide’s panicked
mind.

By
now, Adelaide’s teeth were clenched so hard she was surprised she didn’t crack
one. She managed to unclench long enough to force out a few words, “Don’t take
it away.” She’d heard that Selene could permanently turn off any power she
chose.

“Help
us,” Ellie said.

Selene
was also able to enhance powers, although she didn’t seem to have much
conscious control of it. Suddenly, it felt as though a surreal calm washed
through Adelaide. At the same time, the beast inside her backed off, growling
in defeat as it slunk away. Finally, after what seemed like ages, Adelaide was
able to uncurl from her fetal position and sit up. With a weary hand, she
brushed sweat-soaked hair away from her face, and then she wiped the streaks of
tears from her cheeks.

“Thank
you,” she muttered, unable to look directly at anyone. She was so embarrassed
that she couldn’t keep a lid on her own powers, her own body.

“Why—?”
Selene started, but broke off.

“Why
didn’t I want you to take the dragon away?” Adelaide asked. Glancing up, she
caught Selene’s silent nod.

Adelaide
hunched a shoulder. The question was one she wasn’t entirely sure she knew the
answer to. “I’ve already lost most of who I am. And the dragon connects me to
you guys in an odd way I can’t explain. I just… I don’t want to lose any more.
But—” She sighed and shook her head.

“But?”
Ellie prompted.

“This
isn’t working.” Adelaide finally looked up to find that not only were Alex and the
three girls in the room, but so were the other two guys. At some point during
her struggle to reign in her inner demon, Ramsey and Griffin had joined them. “This…
all of this,” she flung her arm wide, “is too much for me to take in.  Maybe I
could eventually get past that. But not with this dragon thing on top of everything
else. I’m dangerous like this. I think…”

She
looked down at her clasped hands in her lap and voiced a thought she’d been
having almost since the moment she had woken up without memories. “I think I
need to go away. By myself. Send me with books – nice, old-fashioned books – and
newspapers or magazines or something to read and catch up on things on my own.
Preferably nowhere near people I could hurt.”

“You
want us to essentially exile you?” Lila gasped.

Adelaide
pushed herself to her knees and reached out to grip both Lila’s hands in hers. “It’ll
be safer for everybody that way.”