Honey, I hear you and you can even communicate like this while you're in snake mode, I replied.
"This will make things so much easier," Norian muttered. "Come on, let's do a little snooping."
We did some snooping, three blocks away from the Temple of the New Dawn that was under construction. A market district surrounded the new structure and just about anything could be had up and down that street. We got breakfast sausages rolled up in baked dough and we ate first, before Norian began asking questions.
"Have there been any disappearances?" Norian asked a vendor who sold silk scarves.
"Rumors are everywhere, and we all look to the news vids for better information, but there's nothing coming from the news services." The scarf merchant sniffed as if he suspected the news vids weren't accurate. He was right.
"Is there anyone you know who has come up missing?" Norian pressed on.
"A vendor down the way disappeared two eight-days ago," he said. "I didn't know his family, so I haven't made any inquiries about his disappearance. He could be ill or called away on some errand. I don't wish to jump to conclusions." Our vendor wasn't sure what to tell us, exactly, since he didn't know who we were. Therefore, I placed compulsion. Things went smoothly after that.
"Everyone is frightened," the vendor stated, after I ordered him to speak the truth. "We don't know whom to turn to, any longer. The people who are missing—nobody has seen any of them again. Children are missing, too. We don't like it, but the ones who have contacted the journalists also end up missing."
When we got as much from him as we could, I placed compulsion to forget that we'd been there before moving on. I say we take out the f**kers now, I sent to both my companions. My language caused Rych's eyebrows to rise momentarily.
I promised the Twenty that we wouldn't have a repeat of Twylec, Norian practiced his newly acquired skills of mindspeech. It's to protect you, Lissa Beth.
You tell them everything? That had me stopped dead in the middle of the busy walk, forcing people to move aside all around us since foot traffic flowed continuously.
Only the one, Norian grumped as he took my arm and we started moving again. How will it look if you are seen near that sort of thing regularly? Rumors fly about you anyway, breah-mul. We do not wish for more troubles to land on your doorstep.
"Nobody ever worried about that before," I grumped aloud. Norian pulled me closer to him.
"We worry about it, now," he hissed in my ear. Refizan certainly remembers a little Vampire Queen. Even though the cameras went dark or fuzzy during the Conclave on Nemizan, do you think they aren't talking about that anyway and speculating wildly? Cheah-mul, you are in enough danger. Let us protect you when we can.
Norian's words almost made me stop again but he prevented it, keeping a tight grip on my arm and pulling me along with him. Rych had moved to my other side and I walked in step, flanked by both of them. We talked to three more shop owners before taking a break for lunch. I'd had to place compulsion with each of the three in order to learn what Norian wanted to know. It wasn't good—any of it.
"Where are we meeting with your people?" I asked, as we ate at a small table inside a café. Norian was cold, I could tell, and he wanted to eat inside rather than staying outside and ordering from a vendor's cart.
"About six blocks from here, at another hotel," Rych answered. Norian's mouth was full, so he let his assistant take up the slack.
"Do any of them know where we're staying?" I asked.
"They think they do—I've got a suite set up not far from here, under Norian's name." Rych was proud of himself, I could tell. He grinned as he bit into his sandwich.
I nibbled at my food. I was far away, though, in thoughts anyway. All the vendors we'd spoken with had mentioned children disappearing. I didn't like that one bit and wanted to go right to the temple and pull any out that might be there. Norian was doing his best to hold me back.
"We'll take care of business later, when it's dark and we know which of our agents are moles," Norian tapped the edge of my plate, bringing me back to my uneaten food. "Eat your lunch—I don’t need a collapsing Liaison." I sniffed at his words and lifted my sandwich.
* * *
Norian gave an improvised speech, telling twenty-nine operatives that we were making some progress in this case, but it was going slowly and we weren't likely to find anything truly incriminating for a while. I'd gone Looking, just to make sure there weren't any cameras or listening devices on any of them, but they probably knew better than that. Nobody had anything. Norian was misleading them, too, putting any moles' fears to rest that we didn't have any solid proof yet. When his speech was over, I mingled with the crowd and told Norian and Rych through mindspeech just who the bad guys were. Six of them were tainted and Norian had their names by the time they walked out the door.
That evening, he placed a call to each of the six operatives, asking them to meet him at our bogus hotel room. Rych answered the door and each of the six were led to a bedroom for a private conference with Norian. I was inside the bedroom with Norian and watched as each one was bitten by a twelve-foot lion snake that leapt at them the moment they walked through the door. All six died of poisoning and all six were transported, courtesy of yours truly, to Tykl. Someone would pick up the bodies later. Rych/Lendill never saw the snake and never asked questions, either. We all knew what was going to happen to those operatives when they were invited to the suite. Perhaps Rych thought I did it—he'd seen me work when Norian and I had come to help him while he was under attack.
"Now, on to other business," Norian shrugged into his coat later. "Lissa Beth, you named every one of the six we suspected," he added. "Rych here," he clapped his assistant on the back, "had already gotten hits on all of them; we just wanted confirmation. Now, feel free to take us to the dungeons of the Brotherhood of the New Dawn." He grinned at me. I turned all of us to mist and got the hell out of there.
Norian probably didn't want me to kill the guy, but I did it anyway. No way was he going to live after raping a nine-year-old. That brother of the New Dawn got sent to Tykl in two pieces, just as dawn was breaking there. He got to keep company with the poisoned mole operatives.
* * *
"Lissa Beth, if you're done now, we need to have a few words." Norian was back to hissing after I dropped eight children off at an emergency room and sent them inside, some of them nearly unable to walk, they were so brutalized.