Page 9 of The Gathering Storm

Chapter Three

Rebecca Upton stood quietly at the head of the conference table, one hand loose along the top of her chair as the Council of Seven and their respective retinues filed into the room. She nodded to each councilmember in turn, and was greeted in kind.

Mutual respect earned over centuries of battle and kinship, centuries dominated by a blood feud with the Shadow and the loss of so much knowledge of their own origins. And now, they might truly be on the verge of rediscovering those origins and of having within their grasp a means of ending a never-ending war.

Hawthorne the Beheader, now the de facto head of the line of Bagda, gifted Rebecca with a rare smile as she took a spot near the middle of the table. Love had mended that one’s heart. Few deserved it more or had worked so hard to obtain it.

A thin slice of pain struck Rebecca’s heart. Robert, her own love, had been found only after a millennium of searching. Their life had never been perfect. No couple’s was, but it had been close, so damn close, and now, that near-perfect life was being threatened. Robert was hiding something from her. She knew him too well not to recognize the signs. She’d have to push him about that, later when he couldn’t bury himself in work or the ever demanding needs of their growing family.

And she’d have to tell him. About the vision given to her by the Woman with No Face, and of the Woman’s words. About the possibility that Rebecca’s long life might be drawing to a close, and with it, their marriage.

Robert would be philosophical. The disease eating away at his muscles lent him that calm, but Rebecca could find no peace in the possibility of living eternally at his side after their respective deaths. It wasn’t her nature. It wasn’t in her blood. The People were fighters. They had to be, and among them, the Blade was one of their greatest warriors.

Her hand tightened on the chair. Lukas Alexiou might be her doom, but damned if she’d go down without a fight.

Lydia Truthteller of the line of Kiya, eldest of the Seven Sisters, settled into a chair at the opposite end of the table, directly across from Rebecca. “Is it true? Has the Oracle been named?”

“Nala, the name given by our blood enemy.” Rebecca pulled out her chair and sat amid the concerned murmurs passed from one ear to the next around the room. “She responds only to the Shadow and only in a language so ancient, it has largely been forgotten by us all.”

“Or was never known to us.” Hawthorne’s gray eyes remained placid as she fixed her gaze unwaveringly on Rebecca. “How did Alexiou come by this language?”

“He will not say.” Or was waiting for the People to offer the appropriate price for such knowledge. Who could tell what game the Shadow Enemy’s leader played? Even the canny Alexiou seemed not to know. Rebecca delicately cleared her throat and continued. “Business called him home to New York. He has asked my leave to return and visit Nala again.”

Miriam of the Nine, an immortal Daughter of the line of Marnan, leaned forward and said, “You will allow this?”

Rebecca nodded. “Until we can find a way to communicate with the Oracle, I feel we must.”

“So be it,” Lydia said, her rich voice flat. “While he caters to the Oracle’s whims, we will use the time to learn everything we can of him and the Shadow.”

Eleanor Shadowfell, of the line of Ganenda, the next youngest of the Seven, placed her palms flat on the table, covering the bound agenda laid open in front of her. “Learn of him, yes, but caution must always be exercised when dealing with a man as dangerous and unpredictable as Lukas Alexiou.”

A shiver snaked down Rebecca’s spine, followed by cold dread as the Woman’s words whispered through her mind. The Shadow approaches and the Blade must yield. A vision of her sword’s blade shattering under the crushing weight of a formless shadow. Her death, foretold. Of everyone there, Rebecca knew without a doubt exactly how dangerous the Shadow could be.

“Is it true his hold on the Shadow is weakening?”

Rebecca focused on the speaker, her aunt Anya Bloodletter, the embodiment of Abragni, the youngest of the Seven, on the Council. “Unconfirmed rumors.”

Anya’s cornflower blue eyes crinkled at the corners in a half smile. “So that young buck Drew Martin didn’t beat the shit out of Marco Alexiou?”

“A just retaliation,” Rebecca countered. An unsanctioned retaliation, true, but a just one. The People couldn’t run around exacting Retribution Willie nilly, even if this one had been earned by Lukas’s younger brother. Marco and their uncle Pinico had captured Rebecca’s next youngest daughter Jerusha and tortured her for days while Drew, Jerusha’s lover, had tracked them down.

As soon as Jerusha was safely home, Drew had taken three men, a small army given their military training, and meted out revenge on Marco. Rumor had it he was recovering in hiding, but even in hiding, Lukas’s deranged younger brother could cause trouble.

Given the Oracle’s affinity for Lukas, now was the worst possible time for turmoil among the Shadow Enemy. As long as Lukas remained in control, as long as Nala favored him, he could be swayed to the People’s ends. They had no such hold over his younger brother. If Marco was indeed straining at the bit, the resulting upheaval could spell serious trouble for the People, right when the Prophecy of Light was on the verge of being fulfilled, allowing the People to conquer their blood enemy and forever after live in peace.

Rebecca sat back in her chair and allowed her gaze to touch on each of the seven women gathered around the table, there representing the descendants of each of the Seven Sisters, the progenitors of the People. “We now have control of three of the Bones of the Just. One set was found in a nightclub in Gainesville. My daughter Jerusha smuggled the second set of remains out of Turkey recently, and not long after, I sent a team to retrieve the third set from a museum in Boston.”

Lydia nodded and a small smile warmed her dark eyes. “And we search for the remaining four. What news?”

“I’ve assigned a team of IECS scientists to the task, led by Sigrid Glyvynsdatter.” Rebecca caught Anya’s satisfied nod out of the corner of her eye and a fraction of the burden weighting her down lifted. “She asked me to press each of you again to have every single member of your lines return the DNA tests she mailed to them. Each returned test adds to our knowledge and can help us identify the remaining Bones of the Just.”

Agreeing nods and softly voiced assents passed around the room. Rebecca held up one hand, halting the rising excitement. The Bones of the Just, the name given to the skeletal remains of the Seven Sisters, were important relics of the People. Having them gathered in one location after millennia of not knowing where they were would rally the People behind any cause. If ever such accord was needed, it was now.

“There’s more,” she continued. “We now believe the mention of the Bones of the Just within the Prophecy indicates that wherever they are gathered becomes the People’s ultimate Sanctuary.”

The tide of conversation rose over Rebecca’s remaining words. She sat back and yielded to it, and to the hope underlying each voice, a hope she clung to even as worry remained a stalwart beacon in her mind.

Sigrid sat at her desk studying a printout of DNA sequencing taken from a recent saliva swab. Thanks to the discovery of the first set of the Bones of the Just some months earlier, funding had been provided to expand the onsite lab facilities. She’d cleared out a room, ordered the necessary equipment, and recruited technicians to expedite processing the hundreds of samples flooding into her office.

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