Page 87 of Darkness

He finished his report about his and Arianna’s opinions of Morrisey. Before Farren could overthink, he hit “Send” on the email.

Chapter Twenty-eight

If Farren’s apartment was unwelcoming, Leary’s office slammed the door in the face of any soul brave enough to approach. Especially with Leary glowering behind the desk. Leary’s scowl was the unfriendliest Farren had ever seen. Rigid cords strained his neck.

“Austen, I know he’s your partner, but too many things have pointed to him being like you.” He ticked off points with a tap of his pen against his desk. So, that’s where Farren learned to hate the fidgeting. “He can see most travelers the way most humans can’t. The whole weird thing he does mapping out a crime scene. You said you suspect he’s getting feedback from the dead through touch. Those are Domus traits, so he must be one of your kind.”

How Farren hated when Leary, or anyone else, invoked “your kind.” Farren shouldn’t have sent last night’s email evaluating Morrisey’s training. Since coming to Terra, Farren had done his best to educate himself, the better to blend with the humans. The first thing he learned? Humans were capable of much brutality. Brutality to put even the most violent of his kind to shame.

Some of the biggest crimes against humanity traced their root causes to the concept of other. Once you saw someone as different from yourself, it became easy to fall into a pattern of them being lesser, not equal, and therefore undeserving of humane treatment.

How Farren hated the word other. He’d put up with being seen as other for years, fighting not to become a superior asshole himself. Damned if he’d let anyone do so to his partner. There were distinctions and classes in his old realm, but they’d all had a place. If anyone stepped out of line, they were punished. Provided that they simply lived their lives without harming anyone else, they were left alone to get on with it.

“Perhaps he had ties to another realm besides the one I’m originally from.” See Farren not refer to his former realm as mine. “Or maybe he’s a human sensitive.”

Leary’s smugness was uncalled for when he pushed a stack of papers toward Farren. Farren took them and began perusing. Fuck. “What’s all this?” Please let it not be another case. Farren’s desk was already groaning beneath the strain.

“I thought a lot about your theory of someone deliberately bringing travelers into this world for profit and took it one step further.”

Farren scanned the top paper again. This didn’t make any sense. “You can’t be serious.”

“I am. And let me tell you, it wasn’t easy pulling forty-some-odd-year-old records.”

This couldn’t be. "I've never come across anything like this before. We cherish and care for the young of Domus. Abuse is unheard of. No one would ever steal a spawn, err… child.” Changeling. Weren’t there human myths about changelings?

“Yet you see the evidence.” Leary pointed to the stack of papers currently trembling in Farren's hand.

“Circumstantial evidence at best.” This can’t be. No way. No how.

“How else would you explain? Your kind can’t cure everything in a host body, but it isn’t beyond possibility to heal some things. Now, explain to me the difference between spawn and children.”

"In Domus, where there is neither male nor female, two individuals of similar or equal rank can choose to bond, or the bond can choose them."

“Only similar or like?”

Farren pondered how to answer. Many things he’d heard but never knew for a fact. “There have been rare cases of other ranks, but it’s taboo and against Domus laws.”

“Why?” Leary asked, tap, tap, tapping with the pen again.

“Imagine the power of a Princeps combined with the violence of some of the lesser ranks.” Farren’s parents had filled his head with many cautionary tales.

“So, what about spawn?”

“The life force sustaining those on Domus combines the couple’s energies to produce a spawn. We wake up one day to discover we've been blessed. Because we live so long, normally, spawn are rare, precious, and kept secret during the early years of life. Parents tend to be paranoid. My sibling had three, which is extremely rare these days.”

“Is it possible the parents hid the spawn in question so well that no one knew?”

“Doubtful.” Still, those stories existed for reasons. Farren studied the first document until the words ran together. Morrisey James had been born prematurely with a heart defect and spent the first two months of life in a newborn intensive care unit, fighting for life. Suddenly, and with no apparent reason why, he began improving. Doctors called his sudden turnaround a miracle.

A duty nurse mentioned the parents having brought in a faith healer. That had marked Morrisey’s turning point.

The parents had also apparently paid the healer $50,000 dollars.

Fifty thousand dollars. The worth of a child? If Leary was correct, did they even know they’d paid this person not to heal their child but possibly to extricate him from his body and replace him with a traveler? An infant traveler. Sure, spawn died in other realms, but would someone actually take one from there to sell to Morrisey’s parents?

The parents were both dead, so not available for questioning. An infant clinging to life suddenly recovers. Money changed hands. An older couple later adopted the child.

Leary broke into Farren’s thoughts. “This seems to have been going on for far longer than you suspected. I believe Morrisey may well be a traveler, bought and paid for.”

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