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6.
Seth
sauntered into the debriefing room. Why they called it a
debriefing room was beyond him, it was more like a closed in living
room, with a white board on one wall and couches and armchairs
scattered around the room. There was only one desk and
that was shoved into the corner of the room.
Darius
and Marcus lounged on couches, and Ross was draped in an armchair his
leg over the arm swinging music only he could hear.
“You’re
late.” Gabriel’s voice whipped across the
room.
“Yes
fearless leader, but only a minute.” He flopped bonelessly into
another armchair.
Gabriel
rolled his eyes and decided it wasn’t worth the discussion
today. They had too much to get through.
“First
things first,” he sat on the backrest of the chair near him,
tucking on foot behind his knee. “Welcome back, this was
an important mission and I happy that you’ve all come back
safe. Though I’m sure I got a few gray hairs from
worry.”
The comment got the
laugh he intended.
The
door opened again and Rogue walked in, closing it behind her. She
moved with grace that was unearthly. Her coal
black hair flowed down her back and around her ethereal
face.
“Seth,
Darius, Marcus” she smiled in greeting as she passed each of
them.
“Mother.”
Ross twisted his lips as if the word were
poisonous.
“Offspring”
she spat back as she moved past him.
Ross
dropped his head to let his hair fall forward but Seth saw the flash
of pain in his eyes.
The
history between that mother and son was nothing but painful. Seth’s
heart went out to Ross, but there were some things you didn’t
meddle in and Ross and Rogue’s relationship was one of
them.
Rogue moved
to one of the armchairs near the white board and sank delicately into
it.
“Glad you
could make it Rogue.” Gabriel’s frowned at her.
She
just smiled and waved a hand.
“You
requested a member of the counsel, I am a member of the counsel, I
had no choice but to come. Continue please.”
Gabriel
raised a brow.
“Where is
Renegade?”
“My sister will
not be joining us, unfortunately she has a meeting with the demon
Magareth, apparently he has a problem with something other the
other.” She waved her had dismissing the whole issue.
“Of
course you couldn’t deal with it, diplomacy could walk up bite you
in the ass and you wouldn’t recognize it. So instead of
having Ren here were stuck with you.” Ross shifted
higher in his chair, bracing for the retort that would come.
“You are so much like your
worthless lycos father you make me sick!” she spat the words at
him.
Ross sat
forward in his chair. That was not the insult he’d been
expecting.
Darius
jumped up and laid a restraining hand on Ross’ shoulder,
“Don’t go there man,
she’s not worth it.”
Ross
shrugged Darius’ hand off. “Don’t you dare mention my
father. Don’t even think about my father.” He
hissed through clenched teeth.
The
men stood, half expecting to have to stop Ross attacking
Rogue.
Rogue
opened her mouth to reply.
“Enough!”
The command in Gabriel’s voice was absolute
He
stepped between them, the expression on his face
dangerous.
“Ross,
do you have to taunt her every chance you get?”
Ross
looked down, he knew he was guilty, but the bitch just rubbed him
wrong.
Rogue
smirked.
“And you,”
Gabriel turned to her. “Can you try and remember
firstly, that you are his mother and secondly, an angel, and stop
behaving like a world class bitch.”
She
opened her mouth to retort, but Gabriel stopped her raising his
hand.
“Remember this is my
compound Rogue. You are only here because Renegade asked
me not to ban you.” His eyes glowed “Don’t” the word was icy.
“push me.”
“Now,”
he stepped back to rest his hip on the chair again, “can we get to
the debriefing please.”
He
signaled for to Seth to start.
Seth
sat down again leaning forward his elbows on his knees.
“As
you all know, the assignment was to infiltrate Sandamar’s
organization by posing as a rogue group of lycos.”
“God
what a pain in the ass it was shielding to make them think I was
Fillias.” Marcus complained.
“Yeah,
yeah, shut up. I’ve got better things to do than listen
to you complain all day.” Darius rolled his eyes at Marcus, then
had to duck when a scatter cushion came flying at his
head.
“As I was
saying,” Seth sighed like a patient parent.
“With
a little help from Xander, we were accepted into the
group.”
“Who is
Xander?” Rogue arched a brow.
“Vampire,
one of ours, deep cover,” Gabriel answered her “I’ve
know for a few years that Sandamar was up to something. So
I put Xander in pretty early in the game. As far as I know
Sandamar trusts him completely.”
“Yeah
Xander is a pretty scary vamp, he does evil so well.” Darius
shuddered.
“Once
we were in we found out about his plan to kidnap Namara
Emralding.”
Rogue
hissed “The Dragon Duchess? That would start a
war.”
Seth nodded “A very
bloody war, there would be no way to keep the humans out of it.”
“That, I’m sorry to say,
would be the least of our problems. I had a feeling
Sandamar was going to go after Namara.”
“Oh? Why?” Seth asked puzzled.
“I’ll
explain a bit later, please finish first.”
“Well,
the kidnapping was fairly straight forward, thank the gods. Sandamar
had someone watching Namara, the minute she was alone he had her
grabbed.”
“How
did he keep her from shifting to dragon form?” Rogue
looked puzzled.
“Mekaata
bracelets.” Seth frowned.
“Yes,”
Gabriel folded his arms across his chest, “I thought those were
lost in antiquity. It seems our Sandamar has been a very
busy boy.”
“Did
you get them off for her yet?” Darius asked.
Gabriel
shook his head “No, It’s not something I can do, only
a family member and a serious incantation could remove them. I’ve
contacted Drake hall, they are sending her older brother. He
should be here by tomorrow sometime. They were very
grateful to find out she is okay, but still seriously pissed, and I’m
pretty sure we are going to pick up some of that badness.”
“Just our luck, we play
knight in shining armor and get a beating for it.” Marcus
griped.
“Shit
happens.” Ross shrugged.
“That’s
gospel.” Darius agreed.
Seth
sat back in his chair to get more comfortable and explained how the
troll had attacked Namara, then told them about the argument he’d
had with Sandamar so they could get guard detail for
Namara.
“Once we got guard
duty I had Darius contact you Gabe, and we got our instructions to
hump it out of there.”
“Did
you find out anything else of importance while you were
there?” Gabriel asked.
“Sorry,
no, Sandamar didn’t exactly accept me into his inner circle. I’m
sure if there is something else Xander will find a way to get the
information to us.”
“Your
escape wasn’t so uneventful. Want to tell me what went
down?”
Gabriel sat on the
arm of the chair he’d been leaning against.
“Getting
out wasn’t the problem. It was easy enough to sneak
Namara out of the dungeon. Xander kept an eye out for us.
The only hiccup we had was the troll that stumbled across us. We
took care of it, but we should have killed it, because Sandamar
sicked his Merl and some of the vamps on us.”
“I
hate those weird ass vamp mages.” Darius
shuddered.
“Well
I dusted him in a hurry. We didn’t need magic adding to
our problems.” Ross stretched his legs out and leaned
back.
“Yeah, the
Merl stopped the van, but the moron obviously couldn’t aim properly
cause he ended up stopping Drew’s car too.”
Seth
told Gabriel about his fight with the vampire and how Drew hand
landed on his claws.
“Ouch”
Gabriel winced. “That had to hurt.”
“Yeah,
she handled it great, I’m amazed she hasn’t started freaking out
yet.”
“Well since you
turned her,” Gabe grinned and Seth had a feeling he wasn’t going
to like what was coming. “you get to look after her. Training
her in her new abilities is your baby.”
Seth
wanted to argue, there were people who were better at teaching than
he was, but something made him stop. He had to admit he
was glad that Gabriel had made her his responsibly. It
felt right, and he if he was going to be honest he would probably
have been damn pissed if the job had been given to anyone
else.
Gabriel
stood up and fetched a pile of papers off of the desk, he handed
everyone one.
“This is the
reason I had a feeling that Sandamar would go after Namara.
I
found this, in the course of my studies, it was part of an ancient
text. It’s pretty obscure but not impossible to find if
you are really looking, and I have a feeling Sandamar’s really been
looking. I’ve translated it and made a copy for
each of you.”
Seth looked at
the sheet of paper in his hands. There was one verse
printed on it.
A
fiery emerald moon holds the hidden force.
Encasing
power of all divine.
The
flowing ruby river,
innocent,
imperial, drained
Then will
the lock be opened.
Seth
grimmaced. This was not good.
Marcus
frowned at the paper in his hand.
“No
offence Gabe, but how the hell does this gibberish tell you that he
was going to go after Namara?”
Ross
sighed and stood up, moving to the white board he picked up the
marker and wrote the verse down, double spacing the
lines.
Gabriel
raised a brow but didn’t say anything. If Ross wanted to
make his job easier he wasn’t going to complain.
He
circled the words fiery, emerald and moon in the first
line.
“Fiery is fire
right. What is Namara’s breath weapon?”
“Fire.”
Marcus answered.
He nodded.
“That’s right. What color is Namara’s dragon form?”
“She told me its Jewel
green. The whole Emralding family is green in dragon
form.” Darius’ face was worried as he answered.
“Right
again.” He linked Fiery and Emerald on the board and wrote above it
Green Dragon.
“Moon
is easy, the moon is often associated with women. So we
know we are looking for a Green female dragon.”
“Smart
ass” Marcus muttered under his breath.
“What
was that?” Ross turned to look at him.
“Nothing,
carry on.”
Ross
turned back to the board and underlined the word
divine
“Encasing power of
all divine – basically this tells us that somehow the green female
dragon is the key to getting the power of a god.”
Marcus
whistled softly. “No shit?”
Seth
blew a breath out, “This is more serious than I realized.”
“Yeah, but how do we know
that Namara is this specific green female dragon?” Darius asked.
“I’ll get to that. The
next line tells us that Sandamar will have to take her
blood.”
Gabriel
nodded, “Ruby river says it all.”
“Just
frigging tell me why it’s Namara, and not some other dragon
female.” Darius ran a hand through his hair in
frustration.
“This
line tells us.” Ross underlined innocent, and
imperial.
“Namara is the
youngest of the Emralding line, she’s also the only female not
mated, in the royal family. Knowing how jealously the
dragons guard their unmated females, it’s a pretty sure bet that
she’s still a virgin. I’ve already noted that she’s dragon
royalty. We also know he’d have to drain her, it says it
pretty blatantly”
“Fuck!”
Seth cursed vehemently.
“Eloquently
put.” Gabriel’s lips twitched.
“He
can drain her when carrion crows have stripped ever last bit of flesh
from my corpse.” Darius spat.
“He
won’t get to, we’ll make sure of it. From now on
Namara is our number one job.” Gabriel was taken back by Darius’s
heated reaction.
“Yeah,
looks like we have guard duty again.” Marcus grinned
“A
little unrelated, but I’m curious,” he looked at Ross, “how the
hell did you figure all that out from reading that gibberish
once.”
Ross
shrugged. “Understanding gibberish is what happens when you spend
too much time writing song lyrics. Basic verse and imagery
dude.”
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