Protector of the Flame (10 page)

“You leaving us. The memories are choppy. I mostly remember Dad. I remember him shooting himself.”

“Your father didn’t commit suicide,” Sothis said in an uneasy tone.

“I know. Cyrus showed me a report stating he was murdered, but I clearly remember that he killed himself.” Her father falling to the floor, blood leaking from his head into a crimson pool. The image was always with her.

“That bastard.”

“Do you know who messed with my memories?”

The aircraft jerked and vibrated as they hit turbulence. Sothis looked straight ahead.

“Mom?” Serenity waited. “Mother!”

Sothis pinned her with a steely look. “Do not call me Mother.”

For years, she’d dreamed of the moment when she could confront this woman, learn why her life had been ripped apart, unleash pent up anger and pain, but instead she cowered like a scared child. “What happened to our family?”

“I gambled with the wrong person and lost everything.”

Silence cut deep as Serenity waited for an elaboration that never came. “After twenty-five years, you owe me more than that.”

“I owe you?” Indignation rang sharp. “Everything I’ve done has been to keep you safe, so you could grow up free and you almost threw it all away going to Aten.”

“I had to go to Aten. That bitch Seshata gave me this cursed necklace.” Serenity yanked the collar of her shirt down. The chain lay entrenched in her flesh, but the amulet rested on the surface of her skin.

Sothis reached for it and then froze. “Ah.”

“You can’t take it off?” Her mother had been born and raised at House Aten. Surely that counted.

“I no longer belong to Aten.”

“You’re loyal to Sekhem now.” A disgusting, horrible truth, which couldn’t be avoided.

“Sekhem?” Sothis smirked. “My allegiance is to the Paladins.”

The Paladins were a wing of Sekhem. “To be loyal to one is to be loyal to both. Right?”

“We’re here.”

The one question she’d forgotten to ask. “Where are you taking me?”

Through the clouds, Sothis pointed to a small island in the distance. A speck in the endless sea of blue. “To the Great Library.”

“To Neith, the historian?” Neith was the oldest living Kindred to walk the earth and Blessed. “Why?”

“It’s the only safe place for you now.”

Serenity pulled off the parka. “Take me to Cyrus at House Herut.”

“You wouldn’t survive the month at Herut. This is the only way to keep you alive.”

The plane jerked. The engine puttered. A roaring buzz filled the cabin. According to the fuel gauge, they were on empty. She cringed at the thought of crashing. “Do we have life jackets? I’d hate to survive this long just to drown.”

“You never learned to swim?”

“Daddy was supposed to teach me, but…” Serenity’s gaze flowed from her mother’s face to the stretch of watery blue below. “Who killed my father?”

The question had gnawed at her since Seshata revealed someone had tampered with her memories.

Sothis stiffened.

“I don’t have memories of you, besides the day you left. I could never remember your face, just your eyes…and that fucking smile.” Anger roiled and her energy stream stirred. With a deep breath, she suppressed it. She didn’t want to lash out. She wanted answers. “Why didn’t you come back for me? You didn’t know if I was safe or even alive.”

“I couldn’t go back for you,” Sothis said in a flat voice.

“Why not? You have no idea what I went through without you. What really happened?”

Face ashen as death, Sothis remained stoic.

The petering buzz of the engine filled the dead space. Serenity’s heart throbbed for more. Inches from her mother and they might as well have been on separate planes.

“Don’t you want to ask me any questions?” Tears stung her eyes. “Don’t you want to know anything about me?”

“No.” The answer was sharp, final.

Serenity twisted in her seat. She closed her eyes and concentrated on sublimating the ire bubbling. The last thing she needed a few thousand feet above the ocean was to lose control of her
ingenium
.

Chugging turned to a strange silence. The engine died and the aircraft coasted downward.

Drowning was number three on her list of horrible ways to go. Maybe being torn to pieces by sharks should be number three. She clutched her seat. “If we’re going to die, you could at least give me answers first.”

“I refuse to let you die.” Sothis kicked the steel panel in front of the engine twice.

After a click, followed by a long sputter, the engine jolted to a start.

A cloud bank parted. A majestic island came into view. Serenity’s gaze fixed on an immense iridescent white building in the shape of an octagon with a sparkling dome in the middle. The impressive structure glittered in the sunshine like something from a fairytale. Tall pillars lined the front reminiscent of an Athenian temple.

Gears shifted on the aircraft and they descended, landing on a strip of grass. The aircraft coasted to a stop.

Massive trees and dense foliage surrounded them. A less precise landing definitely would’ve hurt. Serenity put on her backpack and followed Sothis off the plane.

“How did you find me?”

Sothis slung a black duffel bag across her body. She was taller by two inches, but they had the same lean frame and curves. “Oracles had visions of you and Cyrus. I heard Sekhem sent scouts. By the time I got to Valhalla, Mrs. Carter told me you’d left for your honeymoon.”

“Mrs. Carter wouldn’t tell you anything.” The old woman had been a loyal cook and housekeeper to Cyrus for more than thirty years. She’d never betray them.

“She didn’t believe any of my stories, regardless of how creative. So I told her the truth, that I was your mother. Strangely, she accepted that.”

Her mother hadn’t aged a day from the photos, so lovely, so youthful.

“She’s been around Kindred for decades and knows we don’t age like ordinary people.”

Sothis closed her eyes, raising her face to the sky, then lowered to her knees, cheek canted toward the ground.

“What is it?” Serenity looked around for snakes and wild animals, less concerned with the ground.

“There’s something peculiar about this place.”

They trekked through grass and trees until they came to two Sphinx statues carved out of the same shimmering white stone as the octagonal building. The statues stood thirty feet high and at least fifty feet wide.

Sothis stopped. “I can’t go any farther. Ask to speak to Neith. Show respect by kneeling. Tell her I humbly request an invitation.”

This was the big plan? Separate and beg for entry. “You’re not coming with me?”

“It would be seen as an act of aggression, provoking a violent response. Make it clear I’ll leave if I’m denied permission.”

“I wasn’t invited either.”

“You don’t belong to a House. Technically, you’re as neutral as Neith.”

Gritting her teeth, Serenity proceeded forward, gripping the straps of her backpack. She approached a fountain unlike anything she’d ever seen. At the center, an obelisk with Egyptian hieroglyphics sat in an open stone flower. Water flowed over petals made of rock, pooling into a base so large it looked as if giants had constructed it.

A path cut through the middle of landscaped gardens, leading to the steps of the monumental building. A white tiger purred to her left.

She swallowed hard, slowing her pace.

A bald woman strolled parallel to the tiger, squirrel monkey perched on her shoulder. She had an attractive face and wore an ivory tunic with matching pants.

Serenity walked around a sundial and ascended the front stairs of the building. Cameras mounted to pillars followed her. A man with cropped hair, wearing the same ivory outfit, waited in front of carved stone doors.

“I’ve come to see Neith. I’m—”

“I know who you are,” the man said. He extended his arm in a graceful motion. Coarse grains of power brushed her energy stream and the doors opened.

Neat trick.

She entered a marble foyer the size of a house.

Men and women dressed in dark blue, fifty or more, stood shoulder to shoulder in a semi-circle, eyeing her from head to foot. Although they didn’t have weapons, their confident stance, the way they protectively held back the crowd beginning to form told her they were all warriors or had some power that could harm her. Of that she was certain.

The cool, airy room had an exceptionally high ceiling, but did little to ease her sense of containment. She flexed her fingers and curled them back around the straps of the backpack, glancing at the Egyptian statues separated by columns around the periphery. Scanning the faces in the crowd sent jitters flurrying in her stomach, so she looked down. An emblem of a shield with a key and sword across the front adorned the middle of the marble floor.

Doors straight ahead opened. The whispering crowd peeled to the sides, making a path.

A woman with silver hair floated in on a cloud of ivory. Her silk gown hung down to her ankles. Lustrous, thick hair fell loose about her shoulders. Centuries of wisdom was etched in the porcelain face. Deep wrinkles pinched the mouth. Crow’s feet cut around shrewd eyes, an opalescent shade of gray kissed by shadows of sky blue, that studied Serenity.

“I am Neith. Why have you come?”

Chapter Eleven

Unquestionable authority and unearthly grace radiated from Neith.

Serenity knelt before the ancient beauty. “My mother, Sothis, brought me. She humbly requests an invitation.”

Whispers echoed throughout the hall.

“Rise, Serenity, daughter of Lucien. You’ve no need to kneel before me.”

Mouth dry, heart galloping, Serenity stood.

“A Paladin on my sacred grounds? Why has she brought you?”

Serenity dug her nails into the leather straps of her bag. “She said it was the only safe place for me.”

Neith stared at her with the same clean slate expression she’d grown accustomed to with Abbadon—shielding all thought, all emotion. “Soren—” she turned to the man who had opened the doors with telekinetic powers, “—bring forth the Paladin.”

Ten warriors from the semi-circle shifted into battle mode—skin turning midnight blue, wings the same deep shade emerging—and followed Soren outside.

Neith circled Serenity, scrutinizing from head to toe as one would a piece of livestock being considered for purchase.

Doors to the right burst open.

A young girl pushed through the crowd up to one of the warriors. “Move, Argyle!” the girl demanded. The warrior looked down at her in irritation but let her through. Wild copper blonde curls framed a radiant, prepubescent face.

A smile swept across the girl’s face. A man with wheat-colored hair was close behind and grabbed her by the shoulders.

“Stop it,” she scolded as she hit his hand. He didn’t let go and pulled her into his five-ten frame. She came up to his chest. “She’s prettier than her picture. Don’t you think, Cae?”

The man whispered in the girl’s ear.

She rolled her eyes. “There’s no danger.”

“Nakia is right,” said Neith, eyeing Serenity. “You are lovelier in person.”

Serenity spun as Sothis entered the hall surrounded by warriors.

Her mother knelt before Neith on both knees. “Thank you for allowing me to enter.”

“Why have you come, daughter of Aurora?”

“Lady Neith—”

“The titles of nobility used by the Great Houses are not recognized here.”

Head bowed, Sothis said, “Forgive me. This is the only safe place for Serenity. Many seek to snuff out her flame or bewitch her.”

“I practically delivered your daughter myself, safely, secretly, into the hands of her
kabashem
. No one from his House or any other knew of the file I gave him or of Serenity’s whereabouts. And Cyrus is not just any Kindred, but one of the most powerful to ever live. Explain to me exactly how she ended up in the hands of her Paladin mother at my doorstep.”

Palms flat against her thighs, Sothis kept her eyes lowered. “She was on her way to Aten. I intercepted her.”

“Aten?” Neith raised an eyebrow.

Serenity stepped forward. “I had to go to House Aten in—”

“You had to go to Aten,” Neith interjected with a mocking smile and laughed. Her voice resounded off the walls. “So it’s true. Reborn souls retain their essence, ever determined to repeat the same mistakes. You are a magnificent phoenix, but still too eager to burn. Tell me why you had to climb into the mouth of an active volcano.”

Serenity lowered the collar of her shirt to reveal the necklace. “I’ll do anything to get this cursed thing off. Even climb into a pit of fire.”

Humor drained from Neith’s face. Staring at the cursed charm, she stepped closer and snatched the amulet from Serenity’s neck.

Impossible!
Serenity staggered back, mouth hanging open. “I thought you were neutral. Only someone from Aten could remove it.”