"We will hold you up if you have difficulty walking," Lendill must have seen the look on my face. He wasn't going to put his hands on me. I didn't want his hands on me. Right then, Karzac or one of the Larentii might have been the only male hands I would allow. I struggled down the hallway, jerking my elbow away from Norian Keef and teetering dangerously as we reached the stairs leading to the dungeon. There wasn't anything left in my stomach to heave up; otherwise I might have stopped to do so halfway down the steps. My breaths were short and labored by the time we reached the bottom, where a wide, flagstone floor lay outside the row of cells inside Queen Lissa's dungeon.
My vision grayed and I struggled to clear it as we walked down the flagstone-lined hall. Bel had been placed inside a cell about halfway down. "Reah?" His voice was barely a whisper as I lurched to a stop before the bars holding him back. He was leaning against a wall of his cell near the bars. I saw he didn't touch the bars—likely they were spelled, preventing Bel from using his power.
"Bel?" I wanted to weep, but there weren't any tears. My voice was dry as sandpaper.
"Thank the gods, Reah, I thought you were dead." Bel bumped his forehead against the wall and closed his eyes.
"We might be persuaded to keep her alive—if you consent to tell us what you know," Lendill now had my neck gripped in his hand. That brought a pain-filled whimper—the puncture wounds where Tory's teeth had penetrated my neck were still blazingly painful.
"Don't hurt her!" Bel shouted, standing straight and glaring at Lendill.
"You have no right to demand anything!" Lendill shouted back. "She is our conscript—we can do what we please with her. Tell us what you know!" He removed his hand from my neck and gripped my right shoulder, just where the ranos-shot had entered. And then he shook me—hard. I shrieked, dropping to the floor in excruciating pain. Then I began to convulse.
Consciousness can be a fleeting thing—I was aware for brief moments and during those moments, I realized I had no power over my body. None. It was jerking uncontrollably. At times, I saw the lights in the ceiling overhead in blurry brightness, at other times I saw the shoes Director Keef wore. All while my body jerked in spasms that I couldn't stop. My teeth clacked together and I bit my tongue several times. I heard shouting. Men's voices. Men. They had brought me to this. All my life, men had controlled me in one way or another. My mother had died, leaving me alone and unguarded. Perhaps her lot hadn't been that much different from mine. I don't know how long the seizure lasted; I only know that unconsciousness came after what seemed an interminable amount of time.
"Do not attempt to give me excuses. I am a breath away from killing you both." Kifirin stood before Norian Keef and Lendill Schaff. "I care not that you were attempting to get information the only way you could. Do you wish to go and explain that to our little one in there?" Kifirin flung an arm toward Reah's bedroom. It had taken two Larentii, with Karzac helping, to get the seizures to stop. Karzac had yelled first, before Kifirin arrived. They hadn't waited for her to drink the protein smoothie—it was liberally laced with sugar. Reah had been dangerously hypoglycemic and that, combined with the stress, the forced walk to the dungeons and Lendill's pain-inducing grips had triggered the seizures. "If the Larentii hadn't come, she would be dead now. Is that what you wanted?" Kifirin blew angry clouds of smoke as he glared at Norian and Lendill. While it was dangerous if any High Demon blew smoke, when the god of the Dark Realm produced his smoldering breath, lives hung in the balance.
"We didn't realize how bad off she was." Norian hung his head.
"And yet you failed to ask. You were only interested in what you consider your own gain, here. I warn you, this is a larger game than even you realize. And on many levels. I am leaving. If I stay, my anger with you will grow and you will die. I leave you with your lives. For now." Kifirin's dark eyes were filled with stars. Norian knew that the god was passing judgment. Kifirin folded away as Norian and Lendill stared.
"Norian, if you had grown six heads, I might have been less surprised." Lissa glared at her mate. "And Lendill? Where the hell did that come from?" Lissa paced inside her bedroom while Norian watched.
"That wizard cares about Reah. We can't beat a confession out of him and our treaty with Mandil prevents compulsion to force them to confess, so we went in another direction to get information." Norian realized he stood on unsteady ground with Lissa.
"So, instead of punishing the criminal, you punish the innocent to get what you want?" Lissa stopped pacing for a moment.
"We thought the healer had taken care of everything," Norian grumbled, sitting on the end of Lissa's bed.
"Norian, she was shot with a ranos pistol. Those things can kill Ra'Ak spawn, remember? And then she was claimed by a High Demon. I'm vampire, Norian, and I didn't get over those puncture wounds in my neck for days, even with a Larentii's help."
"Your son did that," Norian defended himself with what he knew.
"Yes. He's High Demon. I admit it. That's how they claim their mates. That's how I have two sets of teeth marks in my neck, thank you very much. If Lendill had investigated that stupid kid to begin with instead of ignoring Reah, then people would still be alive and you'd likely have more information than you do now. As it is, you have nothing. You don't know where they were staying, where their supply is kept and who got them onto Tulgalan to begin with. Don't point the finger anywhere except where it belongs, Norian Keef."
"Lissa, if you were still working with me," Norian was back to grumbling.
"I put in my time, Norian. Part of that was when I was pregnant with Gavril. Gavin still has a fit over that. At least Ildevar allowed me to serve twenty-five years instead of the original thirty. I'm done with that, now. I have a planet to run, Norian. That's my job. Why don't you ask your current Liaison, the King of Lavareal, if he'll go out and catch criminals with you?"
"He wouldn't bother, and he'd be less than useless anyway," Norian sighed, thinking of his current overseer. Norian had gotten Ildevar Wyyld to agree to make Le-Ath Veronis the permanent base for the ASD—it had better security than any other Alliance world and he preferred being closer to Lissa.
The lot of Liaison for the ASD—although it was merely an empty title in most cases—was assigned to rulers of Alliance worlds for periods of thirty years. Lissa had been the only hands-on Liaison in Norian's lengthy experience as Director, and since her life and the rule of Le-Ath Veronis had been placed on hold for so long, Ildevar had shortened her tenure by five years.