“That’s quite enough, Embry. You can save it for your hearing,” said Matthias.
And before she could make a reply, she was sucked into the shadow.
* * *
Gage landed on his back in an echoing marble chamber. The impact jarred his shoulder and drove the breath from his lungs. The buzz of voices he’d heard on his arrival abruptly halted, as if an off switch had been flipped. The silence was heavy. Above him the domed ceiling was covered in—were those frescos?—except for a large black mark in the center where the paint was bubbled and peeling. A scorch mark, he realized. Embry.
He rolled to his feet into a fighting stance, eyes searching the room for her. Lucius was right there to strike him between the shoulders, driving him back to his knees.
“Get your hands off me, you traitor,” Embry snarled.
Twenty feet away, Matthias was trying to help her to her feet.
“Traitor. Strong language to use against one of our most faithful Shadow Walkers. Particularly from someone who defied a direct order.” The speaker was a thin man in flowing cobalt robes. A fae, judging by the slight point to his ears and the slant of his very green eyes. He stood at a podium of sorts where he had apparently been addressing the other hundred or so Mirus denizens who filled the stadium seating of the chamber. It was a freaking paranormal Congress with species and creatures he’d never seen or heard of.
“I class you a traitor too, Ephraim. You would have left my father to rot.”
“Embry.” Adan’s voice was soft but firm with rebuke.
“Your father knew the risks of his mission. We made a decision based on the well being of all Mirus peoples. We couldn’t risk the human world at large becoming aware of our existence,” he snapped. “That has always been the prime directive.”
“Then you need to update that directive to line up with reality because they had more than twenty Mirus citizens of various races as their prisoners and lab rats. Their military sure as hell knows we exist.”
A murmur spread through the room. Gage wondered how they could be so shocked, so out of touch with reality. I guess a few centuries in hiding makes you cocky.
“Adan is this true?” asked another Council member.
“It is. They’ve been… collecting us for quite some time. Testing, learning our weaknesses, our defenses.”
“How much did they learn?” demanded someone else.
“About me, nothing but that light would keep me bound. About others, I don’t know.”
“And these other prisoners. What happened to them?” asked a filmy creature that seemed not entirely part of the current dimension.
“Some were killed in our fight to escape. Eighteen made it out,” reported Adan.
“Where are they now?” came another voice.
“Free,” said Embry, her lips curved in the barest of satisfied smirks.
“We should round them up, debrief them. Why were these others not brought to our attention?” Ephraim glared at Matthias.
“Our orders were to bring these three in,” he said.
Scowling, the fae turned to Lucius. “Gather a team and find the survivors. We must know how compromised we are.”
The wraith gave a short bow and dematerialized.
“I destroyed their entire computer system,” said Embry. “One of Thorn’s viruses.” She reached into a pocket of her cargo pants. “Their files were encrypted, but I made a copy. I’m not sure how much is left of this hard drive, though.” The blackened square was warped and melted in places. “Thorn might be able to lift something from it.”
“Then the information was contained,” said Ephraim.
“Not necessarily. We have no way of knowing whether the data was backed up solely on the servers there. I just cut one of the heads off the hydra. I didn’t kill the beast. We have to assume there are other files, other compounds. The day is coming when we won’t be able to hide any longer.”
“We will come back to address the issue once the remaining survivors have been debriefed. In the meantime, your actions must be dealt with accordingly. You disobeyed a direct order, defied your commission in the Investigation and Enforcement Division, used your connections illegally to go against that direct order, and you brought a human into Mirus business.”
Ah, thought G