| “Oh My Goddess,” Isabel breathed out reverently an hour later in Tess’ house. “Is that what I think it is?” “Holy Hecate Catwoman I think it is,” Alex answered his girlfriend with a wink. The others, even the sullen Kyle, laughed at his perfect imitation of Robin from Batman & Robin. “Watch it bird-boy,” Isabel said dryly. “Or you’ll be at the bat cave all alone later tonight.” Alex grinned at that and winked at her again just before he grabbed her and kissed her soundly. He loved it when she joked around with him. It made her that much more beautiful and approachable, to everyone…not just him. “Yeah,” Maria said, coming back to the situation at hand. “It is the Book of the Phoenix. Mom gave it to me and Kyle just before she left to go back and watch over Jim. We’re supposed to study it to find the path ourselves.” “Well then,” Trent said from where he sat beside an oddly quiet Jessie. “Let’s get started then. The faster we find the path, the faster you guys can kick some ‘Master’ ass and the faster things can get back to normal around here. Well,” he added as Jessie gave him a sharp look out of the corner of her eye, “as normal as they ever could be around here anyway.” “Where do we start?” Kyle asked gravely as he tried to keep his mind off the fact that his dad was passed out in the Deluca home. Beside him, under the table, Tess put a calming hand on his thigh and squeezed comfortingly. She hadn’t stopped touching him in some way or another since she and Michael had found him with Maria an hour earlier. “Where we always start,” Sean said from where he lounged by a wall. The danger was radiating off him in waves that were so tangible they were almost visible. All of them gave him a wide berth since he had come back into the situation, and no one wanted to be in Max Evans’ position when Sean got a hold of him. “The beginning. Start at page one and work your way through it page by page Einstein.” The others all nodded silently and began to pile around Maria and the book as she slowly opened it to the first page. Michael didn’t even glance at the book that his girlfriend was holding. Instead he turned to catch Sean’s eye and nodded imperceptibly. Maria, as she always did with him, noticed what was going on and nodded with her head for him to go on ahead with his unspoken plan. Michael smiled slightly at her motion, and thanked whatever deity was responsible for sending him her. “Can I speak to you outside for a minute?” Michael asked Kyle, his tone quiet. Both Kyle and Alex turned to look up at him in silence. Alex looked the shortest amount of time. He simply stared into his best friend’s eyes for a moment before nodding in understanding and moving to stand up. Kyle watched both of them for another moment before standing up himself and following them out of the living room. “They’ll be back Tess,” Isabel said softly when Tess made the move to stand and follow them all out of the room. “You’ve calmed his anguish. Now let them go get him out of the sad phase and into one that is actually useful to us. They need to do the guy ‘let’s go be masculine and plot mass destruction’ thing. Let them do that.” Tess bit her lip uncertainly but finally nodded and turned her attention back to the book in front of her. ************************ “What’s up?” Kyle asked as he followed Michael and Alex into the kitchen where Sean was waiting for them. “Your dad,” Michael said firmly. “You need to put it behind you for the moment. Forget that it happened. There is nothing that you can do for him right now at this moment and if you keep dwelling on it there will be nothing that you can do to help us either.” “Your wrong,” Sean said coldly from where he was leaning against the refrigerator as if he owned the place. He smirked briefly at Michael before continuing. “There is one thing that he can do for his dad. You can protect him Kyle. If this ‘Master’ wins you can be assured that our kind won’t be the first to go. It is outsiders that have the biggest threat against them in this, especially those outsiders who consider themselves hunters. Do you really think that there is a Hunter in a hundred mile radius that this ‘Master’ doesn’t know about? Aunt Amy can help keep him safe right now. No one can if we fail. If you want to help him out then forget about him and concentrate on the real matter at hand. Put all your energy in this. Help him by putting him out of your mind.” “Like Liz is out of yours?” Kyle asked sharply as for the first time in over an hour he began to feel something beyond numbing despair. Not even Sean’s eyes flashing dangerously calmed the rush of anger boiling in his veins. “Liz is at the Master’s mercy Kyle. Your dad isn’t,” Alex said coldly, his eyes ice-hard like his voice. “He’s at Aunt Amy’s mercy, something that I don’t think he’s going to mind too much once he comes to his senses.” “Liz is a part of my soul baby cousin,” Sean growled as his usual sea-green eyes began to shift and glow amber. “She cannot just be forgotten. And my feelings with her can be used to our advantage. Yours’ cannot. I am pissed at my situation. I am so mad that it is taking nearly all of my power from the witch side of my heritage not to shift and maul everything in sight. You cousin,” Sean said coldly but honestly, “you are so scared by your situation that you cannot operate at all. Anger is power. It can be harnessed and used to benefit the cause. Fear like yours cannot. It is a weakness that can and will be turned against you…against us.” “Your dad is safe Kyle,” Michael added. He knew that he had to diffuse this situation and fast. Kyle had needed to be knocked out of his fears, not cuddled like Tess had been doing. But if Sean kept pushing on Kyle, the guy was going to attack. “All your dad has to do is wake up and see Aunt Amy. Can you really see him turning away from both of you? You are his son, and if I see it than any idiot can see that he is totally and ridiculously in love with Amy. Once he gets over the shock of everything, he will accept it and you know it. So stop dwelling on something deep down you know doesn’t have a chance in hell of happening and get back to dwelling on what you know is going to happen and is going to happen soon.” “I am not scared at the moment,” Kyle growled out as he glared at his cousin. Sean expertly hid the grin that really wanted to break through as he watched his cousin’s blue eyes turn hazel and then amber. Sean smirked as he came to the realization that there was another cat in the family. “You two go back,” Sean said firmly. “Kyle and I will be along in a minute.” Both Alex and Michael looked at Sean for a long moment before nodding and leaving the kitchen. “He might have pushed him too far,” Alex said as they headed back to the living room and everyone else. “Brooks knows what he’s doing,” Michael disagreed. “He’s just accomplished exactly what he wanted to. He pissed off Kyle enough that he is not brooding over his dad anymore. And he has pissed Kyle off enough that he is beginning to channel the shifter within. Mission accomplished all the way around the spectrum.” “You two planned this earlier didn’t you?” Alex asked before they rounded the corner. Michael nodded silently as they entered the living room, leaving Alex to shake his head in amazement as he moved to stand beside Isabel. Michael caught Maria’s eye and nodded. Maria sighed and made room for him beside her before turning her attention back to the book. *********************** “Something funny cousin?” Kyle demanded once Michael and Alex had left them alone and Sean was still smirking. “No…nothing…” Sean said as he continued to smirk. Kyle growled in his throat and his eyes flashed even brighter with fire than before. Before the eye could blink, Sean made a grab for the younger guy’s throat only to have his hand swish through thin air. Sean tried not to laugh as he looked down and saw Kyle on the floor – in all his glory as a lion. Instead of laughing like he wanted to, Sean, even quicker than Kyle had, shifted in one fluid motion into a larger and more muscular lion. One that was king of his jungle and completely sure of remaining that way. For a moment the two cats just watched each other waiting to see what moves the opponent would make. Finally, at the exact same time the two dominant males of the same species dove for each other, growling, scratching and ramming into everything in their way. It was the sound of a lot of dishes breaking at once that had everyone running into the kitchen and finding the two of them literally at each other’s throats. Though Sean was winning as he had Kyle pinned to the ground, even though he was fighting hard to keep the younger man there. “Enough!” Maria yelled as threw an arm up in the air, as if pulled by a string the two cats were thrown away from each other. Kyle’s shifted form landed hard in the refrigerator, while the more experienced Sean simply shifted back in human form in mid-air and brushed himself calmly off. “You ought to be ashamed of yourselves,” Maria said as she glared at the both of them. Sean got the worst of it as Maria was having problems glaring at a giant cat lying dazed in front of a refrigerator. “Don’t just stand there like an idiot Sean Brooks. You got him to shift so you have to get him to unshift. He doesn’t know how on his own.” “He just has to get out of bloodlust mode Little-bit,” Sean said with a shrug. “I’m afraid that I’m the last one to help him out with that. I send to put him in bloodlust pretty fast all on my own. Find a way to calm him down and he’ll shift back.” “I can’t believe the two of you,” Tess said harshly as she moved toward her soulmate, completely unafraid of him in his cat-form. She knew of everyone that she had the least to fear from him, even in this form. “Fighting like to kittens instead of like the distinguished Princes you are.” She paused in her tirade as she knelt in front of her soulmate and ran her hands over his mane and behind his ears. What started out as a growl ended up as a purr and in seconds of the caress, Kyle was himself again. “You both owe me a set of dishes,” she told them as she glared and stood up. “Now I believe we have a text to translate.” With that the others left, leaving Sean and Kyle the only ones left behind. “She acts like I did that on purpose,” Kyle mumbled under his breath as he glared at his cousin. To his surprise Sean laughed and threw an arm around his shoulder. “One thing you have to learn there cub,” Sean said as he led his cousin to the living room. “Women are more vicious than any jungle cat and it is even harder to figure out what sets off their tempers. By the way, that was good back there. Not many could fight like that one their first shift. We’ll try to get away to work on it later.” With that the older and colder boy moved to pick up a part of the book that Leigha and Ryan had photocopied while everything had been going on. Kyle watched his cousin in something like angered amusement, then his eyes shifted to his girlfriend…looked like he had just landed himself in the dog…no…cathouse for a while. *********************** It was forty-five minutes of nothing and silence before Alex’s voice finally broke through the underlying tension in the living room with an excited yelp. “I think I found something. Everyone who has a copy of this section turn to page three-thirty-three.” There was a shuffling of papers as Maria and Michael used the actual book to turn to the page, Tess sighed and moved over to share her printed copy with Kyle and Sean, and the Juniors all grouped together over Trent’s copy. Isabel simply moved closer to Alex and read over his shoulder. “This passage is talking about some Dark warrior who finds the “Royal” talisman of power, and if this power is unleashed into the hands of the unworthy one then the “Last of the Thrones” can be harnessed,” Alex gave everyone the short version of what he had just spent the past twenty minutes translating. “It also says that the only hope of finding the talisman and the warrior is through that of the bond…” Jessie said as she read over Trent’s shoulder, her body completely pressed against his back and shoulders as she used his body to brace her weight. “A bond of ‘selfless and unrecognized’ love,” Leigha added as she leaned across Ryan to get a better view at the text herself. Both freshmen girls remained innocently unaware of the control issues that they were causing Ryan and Trent to experience through their extreme closeness. “What the hell does that mean?” Kyle and Tess asked at the same time. That seemed to be the cue as everyone began to yell and argue as they voiced their opinions. Alex had smother a laugh as Michael suggested that they call Madam Cleo and get her opinion on the matter. Finally it was Isabel’s Ice Queen tone that brought everyone to silent attention. “Could you all get any stupider?” She asked as she rolled her eyes and looked down her nose condescendingly at everyone but Alex. One couldn’t look condescendingly at someone who just crossed his eyes and stuck his tongue out at you. “It is so obvious. Don’t you see? We have the map right here with us. All we need is the right key and we’ll have it all.” She paused in her speech to look pointedly at Sean. “May I present our map…to the talisman…and to Liz.” “Huh?” Michael asked in confusion causing Maria to laugh at him. “Of course,” she said through her laughter. “How could we possibly be blind to that? ‘Selfless and unrecognized love’…that’s Sean. He loves Liz selflessly. He’s risking his life for someone who left him…who threw his love in his face.” “And his love is unrecognized,” Tess said as the realization began to dawn on her. “Liz threw it back because Max got to her before Sean could really give it to her to begin with. She doesn’t know…thus it is unrecognized.” “So what do you suppose that we do about it?” Sean asked wearily as he shifted in his chair. “It isn’t like Liz is some sort of homing beacon that I can zone in on. We aren’t Michael and Maria for the Goddess’ sake.” “What we have to do cousin dear,” Maria said as she glared at him momentarily for that last comment, “is link with you to awaken your bond. She is your soulmate…you know it…you love her…and your soul calls out for that to be recognized if not returned. If I can find a way to waken your link with her…your soul will call out for hers enough to lead us to her…to them. Now are you game?” Sean sighed and nodded. He really hated having Maria in his head. She had a way of finding out everything that he didn’t want her to know. “Come on Kyle,” she said to her brother. “I’ll need you to help me. We have a better chance because we’re his blood.” “Here,” Tess said as she got up and gave her seat to Maria since she was between the two boys. “You guys will need to all be touching to link.” “This might take awhile,” Maria said as she sat down and motioned for Kyle and Sean to move closer to her. “It’s never been easy to link with Sean on my own, I bet it will be twice as hard with Kyle trying too.” She paused to link her hands with them and began to take deep breaths as the boys linked hands as well. “Breathe together…calm thoughts…let us in Sean…let us…” It took less than twenty seconds after they all linked hands. Maria’s mantra to calm them down and put them in sync ended mid-phrase as the three of them slumped in their chairs completely linked with each other and passed out from the power generated between the three cousins. “You know it is kinda freaky that Maria keeps blacking out when she links with people,” Alex whispered to Isabel as they all waited for something to happen. Isabel nodded at her boyfriend. She had all ideas that the only person that could link safely with Maria without blacking out from the power of the witch was Michael. She just hoped that this didn’t take long. Power like Maria’s had a tendency of trying to drain any power that it was linked with for any significant period of time. Kyle was relatively safe because he was Maria’s soultwin, Sean didn’t have that definition. Ten tense and silent-filled minutes passed before, with a loud gasp, the three of them shot up straight in their chairs. Everyone looked at them expectantly and noticed that Kyle and Maria were looking at Sean the same way. The slightly older young man was sitting still in his chair with his eyes closed and a concentrated look on his face. Suddenly his eyes opened and everyone took a step back when they caught sight of him. His eyes were so amber they were almost a living flame in their intensity. “I know where they are…” TBC |
| Part 33 |
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