Power of Three Read online

  “She was pregnant when she died, and that’s why he never could father a child with her. But who is he? And why is he with her now, when she’s yours—”

  “Stop it, Elain.” Despite the fear in his tone, he made no move to pull away.

  He couldn’t, and they both knew it. Whatever this was, she was in control of it, and of him.

  For now.

  “That’s why, all those years they had together,” she said, the visions sweeping and flowing through her, of a man and woman, she didn’t know who they were, but Ryan knew them, especially the woman, because the woman had been her, although in this vision she was a different incarnation.

  “That’s why, no matter what, they couldn’t. Because she was and is and will be yours again, but is also his now. And she was…she was pregnant with your baby before.”

  More images, of a stone cairn eerily reminiscent of the one Baba Yaga had built with her own two hands, only this time it was two men helping Ryan do it. Doing it for Ryan, because they were having to take turns trying to keep Ryan alive because she was dead…

  Finally the vision started to fade and Elain released Ryan’s hand before he could pull away.

  They silently stared at each other.

  “You are not my Seer,” he warned.

  She leaned in close, right in his face. “Doesn’t really matter, does it, Amiago?”

  She heard his sharp intake of breath, but he didn’t reply.

  “I feel it,” she said. “Something different. Gigi didn’t just throw her powers into me like Callie did to Mai. Something else happened. So what deal did you make with that old bitch to send her off-Earth, hmm?”

  They both knew who she was referring to, and it wasn’t any of the women Elain had seen in her visions, either.

  That’s when Elain finally noticed and really saw the garnet amulet around Ryan’s neck, almost concealed by his shirt collar. She’d seen it other times before tonight but had never paid it any attention before. It’d been what he’d reached for when he’d cast the barrier.

  She’d seen someone else with an amulet, too, now that she thought about it.

  She grabbed it, closing her fist around the stone, still staring into his eyes.

  Now it was her turn to gasp. “The old Triad is really gone.”

  He slowly nodded. “You knew this. You were told this.”

  Stunned, she opened her fingers and stared at the stone lying against her palm. She understood not exactly what it was, but the fact that Ryan—or someone from The Firm—had given her one made a lot of sense now, especially in light of the earlier revelation Baba Yaga had made to her.

  “Why?” she asked.

  Elain liked that he was sharp enough and skilled enough to grok what the hell she was asking without her needing to go into detailed backstory, or breaking out hand-puppets.

  “She didn’t tell me exactly at first what she was doing. I saw no harm in it. I guessed later, when I saw what had happened in Maine. There is still a Triad. That is the important thing. It has passed on to you three.”

  “She willingly gave up most of her powers,” Elain whispered.

  Crap. That meant she couldn’t think of her totally as Baba Bitchy any longer.

  “Yes,” Ryan said.

  “But she can still—”

  “With the little bit of assistance I have given her, yes. It falls under certain…parameters. She is rendering assistance to me and mine in a very delicate matter. In return, I have made certain…allowances. I am stretching the boundaries of my authority, but since it actually crosses into an area of my concern, it’s allowed and will not be questioned.”

  Elain finally released the amulet and stared at him. “She didn’t just join BettLynn and the Beasts. She knew who BettLynn’s father was, and about his cockatrice genes, however diluted. She occluded BettLynn with her powers, the way…”

  Elain didn’t want to finish that statement aloud in case Baba Yaga was listening in somehow. “So no one will ever know about BettLynn’s cockatrice side. Because the genes would have passed through to her because of Paul Abernathy.”

  He nodded. “Yes.”

  “She mingled BettLynn’s aura with the Beasts’ auras. She didn’t just reunite old loves and souls. She set it up so absolutely no one can tell BettLynn has cockatrice in her. BettLynn’s cockatrice genes have been totally occluded.”

  “BettLynn doesn’t have cockatrice in her. Not any longer.”

  Elain studied his gaze. “Sonofabitch,” she whispered. “Baba Yaga absorbed it?”

  “She is very old and is—was—very powerful. I don’t know the intricacies of it all. She talked with me and we struck a bargain. In exchange for her assistance, I have taken her into the fold, as it were, with The Firm.”

  Another realization hit Elain. “Baba Yaga couldn’t not know about Aliah and her baby, then, could she? She must have set it up for Gigi to…do what she did, right? Baba Yaga is the one who set everything up to work out like this.”

  He shrugged. “That I don’t know. If she did, she didn’t tell me. She does appear to be one to make highly detailed long-ranged plans. I’m not trying to evade the question, either. I truly do not know the answer. I would not, however, risk revealing the truth to her about your son without you having answered that question first. Just in case.”

  “Son of a bitch.” Elain needed a moment, to breathe, to absorb it all. “Ryan, quick dicking around. What, exactly, are we dealing with?”

  His expression hardened. “Something very old, very nasty, and apparently with an extremely large grudge against yours truly. And, unfortunately, it impacts all of you directly.”

  “Why? And how?”

  He sighed. “I don’t know all the whys, or all the hows yet. This is why I wish to have a private sit-down with you alone so we can discuss all of this and bounce things off each other. I truly adore Lina, but she is far too emotional and unreliable still to be entrusted with some knowledge. Even you will agree to that.”

  Heat filled Elain’s cheeks, but she nodded. Yeah, knowledge like the fact that Marston Hill was alive and well and living in fricking Bolivia with Ortega Montalvo, head of the jaguars and a dear Lyall friend and wolf Clan ally. Lina would burn down fricking Bolivia and everyone in it without a second thought to kill Marston Hill, if she could get away with it.

  “But what matters,” Ryan continued, “is who the person holding the grudge is in relation to all of you, and that is what is important. Because he is alive, and well, and out for blood. And because I believe he is, historically, the ultimate sire of the cockatrice race.”

  Chapter Four

  Elain stared at Ryan. “What?”

  He smiled. “Ready to quit yet, love?”

  “Yeah, about too damn long ago, and no, we’re not done talking yet. You don’t get to drop a bomb like that on me and just disappear.” She continued staring at him. “This one fucker…Wait, how can he still be alive after all these years?”

  “Different realms have time streams which flow at different rates. Some flow faster, some flow slower. There are even a few which flow backward in relation to ours.”

  “You realize astrophysics wasn’t part of the original job description, right? If you’re expecting me to shit a treatise on quantum mechanics out my ass, you are going to be sorely disappointed. I barely grok some of the jokes on The Big Bang Theory.”

  “I only know what Baba Yaga told me she’d discovered during her travels, along with pieces of information I’ve gathered from elsewhere.”

  “So this one guy. One fucking guy. He’s the cause of the cockatrice?”

  “The sire. I believe so, yes.”

  Countless questions rolled through her brain, so many that she couldn’t grab onto any one of them. “But…why?”

  “That is a question I cannot answer yet. Not with any degree of certainty.”

  “Oddr, the head of the Seer Clan. He was killed by that cockatrice whackadoodle, Ahriman. That means Ahriman was descended fr
om this guy you’re talking about, right?”

  “Correct, I think. Still not sure exactly why, but this being, whose name we believe to be Boorman, has a grudge against myself and The Firm. Which wasn’t always called that, of course.”

  “Oh, of course.” She stood there staring at him, the shock of Ryan’s revelations still setting in.

  I’m standing in a barn, in my bathrobe, talking to the Devil, inside our own little personal Cone of Silence.

  She could write a book, but no one would believe it.

  She wasn’t even sure she believed it.

  Elain pondered on that before she spoke again. “There is a massive big-picture we’re missing, isn’t there?”

  He shoved his hands into his pockets. “I believe so, yes. I think we’ve seen glimpses of it, but it’s far too large, and encompasses such a great span of time that we’re having difficulty locating the outer edges of it so we can begin to piece the entire puzzle together.”

  “But why is this a grudge against you personally?”

  “As I said, I don’t know exactly. I have a few ideas but no concrete proof yet. Yes, I shall share details with you if or when I receive them. The time for circumspection between us is far past. Considering this concerns a direct physical threat to Earth, not just a metaphysical one, we must work together to contain it.”

  Elain reached up and rubbed at her throat. “Who was killed by the sword? There were two women.” She’d seen it in her vision, but it had felt like the same woman. Another reincarnated soul, perhaps? It would certainly make the other stuff she’d seen about Ryan make sense.

  He nodded. “She was. In two different lives.”

  “The woman I saw taking care of your wounds?”

  “I saw the vision as you had it. That hasn’t happened yet.”

  “But it will.” Elain stared at him. “She’s someone else’s One now, isn’t she?”

  His gaze dropped to the ground. “Yes.”

  “Is that force field thingy still in place around us?”

  The barest hint of a smile. “Yes, the barrier is still in place.”

  “You want to talk about it? Just because I’m not your Seer doesn’t mean I won’t hold your confidences as one.”

  It took him a moment to respond. “Your men won’t demand you talk?”

  “Not if I invoke ‘Seer Says,’ they won’t.”

  The heavy sigh escaping him felt like it weighed a ton. Not just figuratively, either. As he gave her the brief version of the story, she knew it was more than just her pregnancy hormones making her eyes tear up.

  “You could have had her back,” she whispered.

  “He would have died. Killed himself. He was far closer to that point than he realized, thank goodness.”

  “You gave her up for him.”

  “To save him.”

  She threw her arms around him and didn’t know if she was more surprised by that or if Ryan was. “Thank you for trusting me with that info. You’re a good guy. Why don’t you all try harder to get the truth out about what you do?”

  He shrugged, not hugging her back. “Why bother? The logical already do not believe in us or what we do. The rabidly devout would simply think it’s another ‘evil trick’ to deceive them. We do what we do, we get none of the credit, and we’re decried as evil. It isn’t exactly the best job in the world, but it’s important and needs to be done. Someone has to do it.”

  She finally released him. “What about your father? What does he do now if he’s retired?”

  “Lives on Boca Grande with Mother. Likes to fish for tarpon.”

  “No. Way.”

  He smirked. That smirk, the cute one that didn’t even annoy her. “Way.”

  “So…you know about Connor, don’t you?”

  He nodded. “No, Gigi didn’t tell me. After I was relieved of babysitting duties, I decided to look into what happened and…let’s just say I heard enough of what transpired, and saw the aftermath, to allow me to put the pieces together. Yes, I shall keep your secret. And no, Baba Yaga cannot force me to reveal anything I do not wish her to know, if she doesn’t know already.”

  Elain stared at him for a moment. “You’re right that we need to sit down and talk. Maybe what I can do is go to Maine, to Lacey’s, and we can spend a few days there together after the baby is born. The guys won’t object to me being at the Clan compound, and Lacey won’t interrupt us.”

  “Perhaps you’re right.” He rested his hands on her shoulders. “Please, be careful. Trust no one, not even supposed family, except those who you already instinctively feel are trustworthy. We don’t know who is involved in this. Despite appearances, I am not omniscient. It is not beyond the realm of comprehension that there might be others involved in this plot. Aliah had to have help, had to have a safe place to spend her winter and to prepare to have her baby.”

  Elain snapped her fingers. “I’ll have Blackie investigate that and see if there’s any missing person reports up there matching her description for that time period.”

  “Eh, how about I take care of that task for you?”

  “Why?”

  He scrubbed at his face and pointed toward her house. “You have a secret in there needing preserving until we know for certain whether or not Baba Yaga knows about him. You went to great lengths to hide his origins. It would be silly to raise questions now from others who have no business knowing about those origins, would it not?”

  Duh. “Oh. Yeah. That’s true.”

  “I do have a good idea once in a while.”

  She thought about her father’s brothers, and one of her men’s cousins, whom she knew were in cahoots with Rodolfo Abernathy, but not to what extent. “I need to do some housecleaning around here, metaphorically speaking. I need to find out what was going on and who else might have been involved. Rodolfo was paying my dad’s brothers. And one of the guys’ cousins.”

  “Wise.” He walked her back across the yard and stopped about where he’d met up with her. “I’m lowering the barrier, so watch what you say.”

  “Is that something I’ll be able to do, too, one day?”

  “I don’t know, love. You aren’t exactly the same as I am. It might be something you can already do, for all I know.” He smiled. “You seem to have some abilities in that area already.”

  “Can I ask you something else stupid?”

  “Certainly.”

  “You guys carry swords sometimes. Why?’

  “Because a lot of what we fight is corporeal and can be killed by a sword. They’re also special swords, tuned to us. Each archdemon assigned as an Enforcer or Protector is given one. They are forged with special properties that help overcome certain powers others might have.”

  “Can you teach me how to use a sword? How to fight with one?”

  He cocked his head. “I would think you’d ask your men that question. They were raised in Scotland. I’m sure they know how to fight.”

  “I need someone who isn’t…emotionally involved.”

  “Who won’t pull punches?”

  “Right.”

  He pointed at her baby belly. “Well, regardless, not until after you give birth. I’m all for people being kick-ass, as it were, but even I am not cold enough to make a pregnant woman learn to fight with a sword when she doesn’t need to. Besides, were you not rather proficient with a gun in Maine?”

  “I might not always have a gun.”

  “I can almost guarantee you will rarely have a sword.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Aren’t you an expert at martial arts?”

  “Not with a sword, I’m not.”

  “You are wearily persistent.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  He smiled. “You will, believe it or not, find yourself quickly growing into your job.”

  “Can I tell you a secret?”

  “Of course.”

  “I see you happy in the near future. Happier than you’ve been in a long damn while. It’s separate from th
is.”

  His mask fell back into place. “Is this about earlier?”

  “Why don’t you go by Amiago any more? She loved that name.”

  “It hurts too much.”

  She reached out and touched his face, stroked his cheek. “You torture yourself by staying close to her.”

  “To keep her safe.”

  “To keep yourself from moving on.”

  “There is no more moving on.”

  She offered him a kind smile. “Good night, Ryan.”

  * * * *

  Ryan dropped the barrier around himself and Elain before he returned to his condo in Atlanta, where upon his return he immediately headed for the kitchen and poured himself yet another stiff drink.

  It wasn’t his first of the evening, and it likely wasn’t his last, either.

  “Well?”

  He turned to see Baba Yaga the matron standing there. “How much did you hear?”

  She shrugged. “I can’t hear shit once you raise a barrier. You know that as well as I.”

  “What does she know? Of your past, and of the others?”

  “Not enough. To tell any of them everything at this point would likely bend or break their sanity. They know nothing of my early past or the lines. They need to grow into their roles, grow stronger, before that can be revealed to them.”

  “But you’re sure?”

  “Absolutely. I did the research and worked it back. They are all direct descendants.”

  He swirled his drink around in his glass before taking another sip. “We have to tell them at some point. They need to know their heritage.”

  “We could bring in your dear old Daddy to do the dirty work.” She practically spat the three words.

  Ryan pointed at her with the hand holding the glass. “Bitterness will get you nowhere. Besides, if we go that route, we have to tell Callie and Gigi first, out of respect. It’s only right. I shall insist upon that.”

  She crossed her arms as she leaned against the kitchen doorway. “Does he even give a shit? Really?”