Lost (39 page)

I felt Celeste
stiffen next to me and realized that we were holding hands again,
that or maybe we'd never stopped.

"So this
has all been a waste? Everything we've been through was for nothing?"

"Would you
say that the changes you've been through are a waste? You've both
learned things about each other and yourselves that were vitally
important. If for no other reason, your time here was well-spent."

Celeste was
shaking now. She was gripping my hand tight enough that I had to
squeeze back in order to avoid being hurt.

"I could
have used my question to save my people back in New Orleans. If I'd
known this is how you were going to answer me I wouldn't have wasted
my question."

The queen
pulled back slightly. She didn't actually move, but I felt a
difference in the air, a hardening of the energy around us.

"No
outcome is ever sure when you undertake it. Your question was not
wasted. Eventually you will know the full measure of its value and
you will regret your hastiness."

Celeste pulled
as though to drag me back towards the surface, but I held my ground.

"Thank you
for your wisdom."

The queen's
face softened slightly. "I will not promise you what you seek,
Isaac Nazir. I will, however, commend you on the feelings and
principles that cause you to undertake the course you have already
selected."

"Even
though you already know exactly how things will end up?"

"That was
a question, Isaac Nazir, but some rules were indeed made to be
broken. I do not see all, but I do see the results of that which you
are most concerned about."

"You make
us take you on faith just like you do with Set."

"Perhaps,
but that is not the primary cause for my actions. I am not
infallible. The path that I have embarked on has required a price. I
am less than I was when I embarked on it."

"Then
why?"

"Because
each action ripples through the time stream forever. Sometimes the
ripples are small, sometimes they are large, but they never fully
dissipate. There is a cost to everything, Isaac Nazir, and much of
what I—my sisters and I—focus on is limiting the costs
that must be paid to achieve that which needs to be achieved.

"You have
various costs that could be paid, I am merely shepherding you onto a
path where the cost you pay will be the best cost."

"Not the
smallest cost?"

"Not
necessarily. The smallest cost is not always the best cost. Besides,
you are already willing to pay the ultimate price, does it matter
which price you ultimately end up paying?"

It did. It
mattered because I didn't want to die. I wanted a way out, just like
anyone else would have, but she was right. I was finally ready to
accept the responsibility for my actions.

"Thank
you, I think I understand."

"You're
welcome. You're wrong. You don't understand it all, but you
understand more than most. You understand enough."

As Celeste and
I turned to leave, the queen said one more thing. "Your work and
our work are not incompatible. In fact, our key is also your key. We
won't let you go completely unguided into the darkness that awaits us
all.

"Tell your
friends about us, tell them that if things become impossible that we
will come to them. Tell the key. Tell Alec Graves. He needs to know,
everything depends on it."

Isaac Nazir
The Lamia Enclave

Everyone else
had already packed up and left our quarters. Jax was able to walk
under his own power, as was Ash. Kristin was awake now, but still
worryingly weak. It had been obvious that she wasn't going to be able
to walk to the portal. I'd expected for Ash to pick her up and carry
her out. He was just a wolf, but that still made him plenty strong
enough to carry Kristin however far she needed to be carried.

It had shocked
all of us when Set had arrived with three workers a couple of minutes
before we were ready to go and offered to carry not only our bags,
but Kristin too. For a second I thought that Ash was going to refuse
the offer, but something in Set's eyes convinced him to trust the
lamias.

As the workers
picked up the bulging black duffle bags, Ash passed Kristin over to
Set, who thanked him for the honor of carrying a queen, and everyone
started towards the valley. Just before he got to the exterior
doorway, Set turned back to me.

"You have
calls that will be arriving soon, Isaac Nazir. My queen has agreed to
help establish the portal to get you back to the spot in the time
stream that you requested, which means you have plenty of time to
talk to the friends who are calling you. Stay here where you can have
some privacy, we will all be waiting at the portal when you are
done."

Kristin
mustered up a weak smile for me and then both of them were gone. It
was just me and my phone.

Not even five
seconds after my phone finished powering on the first call arrived.
It was Jasmin of all people.

"Jasmin,
is that really you?"

"Hi,
Isaac."

Her voice was
like a little slice of paradise. She sounded tired and like she was
under more stress than normal, but it was still her, and that was one
of the best going-away presents that anyone could have given me. It
wasn't just chance that had made her call arrive now, just before we
left the enclave. I was apparently a much slower learner than I liked
to think I was, but I'd at least figured that much out.

Set, probably
working hand in hand with his queen, had manipulated things so that I
would have a chance to talk to Jasmin now when I most needed the
sound of a friendly voice to give me the strength to go through with
what I needed to do.

"You have
no idea how good it is to hear your voice. Everyone else has pretty
much gone dark lately."

Jasmin was
quiet for a second. With someone else that might have meant that they
were trying to decide how much to tell me, but this was Jasmin. She'd
just come right out and tell me what was on her mind. She just needed
a minute to fit the fact that I was getting blown off by Alec in with
everything else she knew.

"I
was afraid of that, I just tried Alec and he didn't pick up. Are you,
Ash and Kristin all okay?"

It was the one
question that I couldn't answer. Kristin was awake now, but she
hadn't managed much more than an occasional weak nod or smile. There
wasn't any way to know for sure how much of that was from her
injuries and how much was because of Dream Stealer, but it was easy
to assume the worst. Ash was obviously still worried about her, but
it wasn't my place to fill Jasmin in on all of the gory details.

I was still
debating how much to tell her, when she apparently decided that I
needed a nudge.

"Tell
me the truth, Isaac."

"Things
are pretty bad here. Kristin got hurt and lost a lot of blood. I've
spent weeks worrying that she was never going to wake up from her
coma. We got forced down to the territory claimed by Ash's old pack."

"What
the crap were you guys thinking? You have to get out of there right
now or Onyx and the others will kill you!"

It
was such a simplification that I wanted to scream. My beast didn't
appreciate being ordered around, but he'd hardly even stirred since
I'd woken up an hour or so before.

It
was another thing to worry about. A few days ago I would have given
anything to have my beast calm down so that I wasn't always on
hair-trigger. Now he'd calmed down and I was worrying that he'd been
permanently damaged by the lamia poison that had come so close to
killing me.

I
was about to head right back into Onyx's territory, and Jasmin was
telling me to get out. I wanted to follow her advice. Two months ago
I would have just told her that I didn't have any other choice but to
go back to New Orleans, but now I knew that wasn't right. I just
couldn't live with all of the other choices out there.

Jasmin wasn't
privy to what was going on inside of my head and apparently decided
that she'd been too aggressive.

"I'm
sorry, Isaac, that was out of line. I'm having a harder time keeping
control of stuff lately."

I
couldn't help the laugh that escaped me. She thought that I was
worried about who was dominant to whom, but I couldn't care less. In
this instance it was easier just to go along with her.

"Join
the club. It seems like I want to rip the head off of anyone who even
talks to me lately. The truth is that it's too late. Onyx's people
found us within a few hours of our arrival. Ash tried to shoot his
way out, but this new guy just shrugged off all of the bullets and
practically tore him in two."

"He'll
be okay, though, right?"

There
was a level of worry in Jasmin's voice that surprised me for a
second. She and Ash hadn't ever been very close and I was pretty sure
that she and Kristin actively disliked each other, but the more I
thought about it the more I realized that I shouldn't be surprised.

There
hadn't ever been very many of us to start out with, and the forces
arrayed against us hadn't gotten appreciably smaller. Even the loss
of just one of Alec's supporters made it that much less likely that
the rest of us would make it to see next month.

She
was worried about Ash because she could see herself in his place, but
I didn't know what to tell her. He was up and moving around, but
there still wasn't any guarantee that he was going to make it.
Whatever Set had done to seal off the tear in his artery had an
expiration date on it. Once that patch disappeared it was just a
question of whether or not his body could heal the rip before he bled
to death internally. I didn't even know if Celeste had told him that
yet.

"I'm
not sure. Normally I'd say yes, but you know Ash, he's not a very
fast healer."

It
was as close to the truth as I could get without telling her
everything, without telling her about the lamias and what it was I
was about to go off and do.

"I'm
sorry to hear that."

"Yeah,
me too. How's Ben?"

"Weaker
every day. I don't know how much longer he's going to make it, but
Rachel seems to finally be helping me rather than just leading me on
some kind of cross-continental wild goose chase. Have you heard from
any of the others?"

Someone
else might have missed the pain in her voice when she talked about
Ben, but I could hear it. Jasmin had racked up more practice dealing
with pain and pretending that it didn't bother her than anyone else I
knew.

Jess
was up there with her when it came to dealing with pain, but she'd
never been as concerned with presenting a tough front to the rest of
the world as Jasmin was. I wished that there was something I could do
to save Jasmin from the heartbreak she was in for if Ben didn't wake
up soon, but I couldn't shield her from that any more than she could
shield me.

It
was nice to be able to retreat back to safer subjects.

"Just
Andrew. He's okay. We only had a minute to talk, but he told me that
Jessica phoned him. He said that she was being really evasive about
where they are, but that she's found some kind of big secret."

"I'm
not sure whether that's a good thing or a bad thing."

"I'm
pretty sure it's a bad thing. Whatever Wyatt is involved in isn't
good."

She didn't know
what to say about that, but I hadn't been expecting anything
different. She probably thought that I was still just hung up on
Jessica.

The problem was
that I wasn't hung up on Jess anymore, but I still didn't like Wyatt.
I'd said all along that there was more going on than met the eye with
him, Carson and Grayson, but nobody had believed me. Now I had proof,
but still nobody was listening.

Nicolas had
fought using the same strange fighting style that Wyatt had used to
beat me. All by itself that would have been enough to convince me
that he was linked to Wyatt and the others, but when you threw in the
fact that Nicolas had known Carson by name, it was solid proof that
the power bloc represented by Wyatt's group was trying to play both
sides against the middle.

I could hack
into government databases, but I didn't know how to function in the
world of politics and backroom power-brokering. That had always been
Alec's area of expertise and now that I needed him to figure out what
was going on, he wasn't even answering my calls.

"I'm
serious, Jasmin. I'm starting to feel like I'm playing the wrong
game, like I thought we were playing checkers and now it turns out
that everyone is playing three-dimensional chess. Onyx has a new guy
here, someone I've never heard of before, and he fights like Wyatt
used to fight."

"That
weird grappling style?"

"Yeah,
that alone would pretty much make him unstoppable for the rest of us
who don't know that kind of fighting, but that isn't all. Ash shot
him—several times, and in all of the right places—but it
didn't even slow him down. I saw bullets ricochet off of him after
hitting places where I've been cut before. There shouldn't have been
bone there, but there was."

Even
as I said it, I realized how ridiculous it sounded, but I finally
seemed to have Jasmin's full attention.

"Does
he have blue eyes?"

"I
don't remember for sure, but I don't think so. Why, how does that
matter?"

"You
need to do everything you can to stay clear of this guy, Isaac. You
weren't imagining things. I can't explain, but your suspicions are
correct, whoever he is he's going to be faster, stronger, and harder
to kill than any hybrid has a right to be."

It
had been staring me in the face for years. Alec had always been a
good fighter. He'd been so good and it had just been the natural
order of things for so long that I'd never stopped to wonder if he
was
too
good.