Hide & Seek: Games and Fangs (Ravana Moon #2), page 22
“No, she didn’t even make it all the way to the Tower, she stopped me in an alley and then told me sorry, but not sorry and hightailed it outta Seattle. I should have eaten her.”
“See, this is why I summoned a meeting with the Board. We cannot have such a high-risk person in the seat of Controlling Officer. It’s just not couth.”
“Listen here, you balding little shit stain, I will show you what’s couth. I have a company to run because if it’s not me in this seat, you won’t have a company at all. I will remove every bit of funding, and leave you bone dry. This is my company, and as far as I see it, the Board works for me. Not you. I don’t care if you are the founder. Now, get me Ester.”
“Red, you seem a bit high strung? Everything ok?” Massimo turned to me after I placed the phone back in my pocket.
“Yes, but I’m not simply Ravana anymore. Both of my identities have been combined.”
“When?” Delia gasped. Finally, something she could ask questions about.
“When the Barathrum left me. All magic left me as well. At least anything performed on my consciousness that was keeping specific information from me. Like for instance how Massimo is the one that killed me, my child, and my family. Now my father is dead, and I have two brothers and possibly my mother out there waiting for him to return to them with me in tow.
“There is a priceless artifact, one that shouldn’t really exist on the loose, with three…yes, three evil entities inside. Also, now that I’ve spoken with Marcus, the old coot. He’s trying to strip me of the Order.”
“Well, that’s not going to happen.” Emerick walked in the door, moving to my side he pulled me into his arms and kissed the top of my head. “They have other funding to consider. And he is not the one who founded the company. I did. It’s yours, darling.”
“I. Am. So. Lost.” Delia dropped down onto her sofa, and Massimo stormed out of the room.
I had to admit, even for me, it was a lot to take in. I also wasn’t a newly made vampire. So, to say she was taking all of this well was an understatement.
“Delia, there is so much to catch you up on, I just don’t have the time right now, but I promise, once this is all sorted we will have a sit-down.” I pulled Emerick’s hand and moved him toward the door. “Where did you go?”
“I was down in the lab checking in with the test results from Delia.”
“And?”
“So far, she seems to be exhibiting the same characteristics of you and I. You changed her. Just as I changed Mo and Torrid.”
“Right, but she was human to start. Liam didn’t have supernatural blood that we knew of, but if he is your brother…”
“Yes, it was latent in a strand of his DNA. I haven’t been able to identify the markers, but we have some extra chromosome. When left dormant, it’s still there.”
“So,” I started to think of the hounds deteriorating. “If Delia can’t sustain the extra chromosome, then she will deteriorate just like Papa’s hounds?”
“Yes. I need to warn you. She might die. The human kind of death.”
“I get that. We will figure out what to do. For now, we need to find the seal.” I looked back at Delia who was on the phone.
“Kelly, I can’t not yet. Please, baby, you have to be patient.”
“Delia, where is the Ruby of Amid?”
“It’s in the safe. You’re ok to wear the ring, as long as whatever you store in that stone is pure. It will make you strong. Just having both pieces nearby, and wearing that ring, it’ll increase your abilities.”
“Fine, then the ring stays on. In the meantime, rest. We will have answers for you soon.”
She nodded and went back to her conversation with Kelly. Emerick and I slipped out of the door to find Kelly on the floor in the hall. Tears marked her face. Her brown hair was pulled up into a ponytail, and she wore sweatpants and a large t-shirt. The days of the stiff dressed Keeper was over it seemed.
She shot daggers out of her eyes at me as we walked by, but I didn’t say anything. Between my memories of my life before and the ones I had of what I did to everyone while I was possessed by the abyss, I was on overload. I wouldn’t blame them all if they never spoke to me. Just as I thought that Emerick’s hand tightened around mine.
I didn’t lose all of them. He’d stuck with me. Even if he’d stayed at a distance, he was always there. His white feathered arrows still came to my aid whenever I was in trouble and needed a hand. For the most part, he helped make me the way I was; strong-willed and independent. I’d always been that way, and he had always saw to it, that I be given just as much chance to prove it as anyone else.
I would get the Seal back, hopefully before anyone realized what it held. I would figure out how to save Delia and reunite her with Kelly. Then I needed to work on the answers about the blade, and how Torrid really fit into all of this, as well as my father.
Getting to my family was something else entirely. I didn’t even know if they’d want to see me. I was quite obviously someone other than who they remembered. I was someone other than who I remembered.
Epilogue
The phone rang five times before I was able to figure out it was real and not a part of my dream. It was a horrible one I wanted to wake from anyway, but only if the real-life nightmare would go away.
“Ravana, you awake?” was the question to my inaudible grunt when I answered the phone.
“Barely. If your calling to yell at me, get in line and call back after sunset.” I almost hit the end call button, but Jax started yelling on the other end.
“The Barathrum is loose. Whoever took the Seal opened it.”
I flung the covers from me and sat up in bed. The phone going back to my ear. Sunlight shined in through the crack of the curtains making me close my eyes.
“How do you know?” The bed moved beside me, and a hand moved to my bare shoulder. I turned to see that Emerick obviously heard what was said on the other end.
“Gianna, her visions have finally come back. Though I think the twins gave her powers a boost. She’s still crying.”
“Okay, go tend to your wife. When and where?”
“Somewhere in Seattle. That’s all I could get out of her.”
“Great, thanks. We’re on it.”
“So, are we.”
About the Author
S.L. Perrine is a wife to a mechanic and mother of four crazy teenagers (3 are boys) who eat her out of house and home. Among writing, reading is another passion of hers. She also enjoys camping, fishing, and anything that means family time.
During the summer she can be found at camp with her laptop by the pool. She and her family reside in Troy, NY.
“I write stories to fill the world with imagination for those who have a hard time finding their own.”
- SL PERRINE, 2016
Website - www.slperrine.com
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Keep an eye out for:
Coming March 2019
S. L. Perrine, Hide & Seek: Games and Fangs (Ravana Moon #2)
