Page 43

43

MAX

T he wheels of the jet touched down with a gentle bump, and as Max lifted the window shade, he was momentarily blinded by the harsh California sunshine.

When they'd left, the weather was still clinging to winter, but it seemed that summer had suddenly descended while they were away.

He immediately closed the shade and turned to look at Kyra, who was still dozing off or just keeping her eyes closed. He wanted her to have these last moments of peace to relax because as soon as they disembarked, she would once again get consumed by caring for her sisters and their kids.

The truth was that he couldn't wait to be alone with her, and not just because he wanted to strip her naked and make love to her all day and night long until he erased every last bit of subconscious memory of all the horrible things that had been done to her. Logically, he knew that he couldn't do that, but emotionally, he was driven to give it his best shot. For now, though, he would just love a couple of hours without anyone else making demands on her time.

As they taxied toward the clan's private hangar, Kyra opened her eyes and looked at the closed shade. "Can you open it? I want to see where we are."

"Of course, but be ready for extreme sunshine in your eyes."

She shielded them with her hand. "I'm ready."

"Home sweet home," he said as he lifted the shade. "Or rather, home away from home. The village is about two hours from here, maybe more, depending on traffic."

Kyra nodded, scanning the airstrip. "It's nice to have a private airfield and a hangar. I didn't even know it was an option."

He chuckled. "We live in the land of the free, where everything is possible if you have the money to bribe local politicians or if you can thrall them to do what you want."

"And the clan can do both."

"Correct."

As the plane came to a complete stop, Max saw that the medical van was already parked by the hangar, with Julian and Gertrude standing beside it. The bus was a little farther away, parked next to Morris's car.

"Remind your sisters about the screening," Max said. "Tell them it's nothing to be afraid of, and to prepare the kids."

Concern flashed across Kyra's face as she looked back at her sisters and their children. "Do you think the Doomers implanted Yasmin's kids with trackers? Or Parisa's? They could have done that while the boys were at school."

"It's possible," Max said. "With how sophisticated the Doomers suddenly appear to be, they might have gotten to the boys in school, given them a shot, and then made them forget about it. It's even more likely with Yasmin and her kids, who were held by the Doomers for several hours before we got them out. Then again, Yasmin and her children were in the safe house, and no one came for them while the Doomers came after the rest of us."

"So, can we skip Yasmin and her kids?" Kyra asked. "They are the most fragile right now."

"Of course not. It would be irresponsible of us to bring anyone to the village before verifying that they can't unknowingly bring the enemy to us."

"What's going to happen now?" Soraya asked.

"As I told you before, all of you need to be scanned for trackers," Kyra said. "Then we'll board the bus that will take us to the village. It's a two-hour ride from here."

"I hope the bus has a toilet," Parisa said, seemingly unconcerned with the scanner.

Parisa's youngest boy looked at him with big, rounded eyes. "Will it hurt? "

Max crouched down to the boy's level. "Not at all. It's just like taking a picture, only lying down. You will need to be very still while the machine takes lots of pictures."

The child didn't look entirely convinced but nodded anyway.

"Is it an X-ray machine?" Parisa's oldest asked.

"Similar," Max said.

As Morris opened the plane's exit door, Max extended the stairs and led the way down, with Kyra directly behind him and the rest of the family following in a tight cluster.

He welcomed the familiar dry and warm California air. It was wonderfully clean up here in the mountains.

"Welcome back," Julian said, extending his hand first to Kyra, then to Max. "I'm glad to see everyone made it out safely." He shifted his gaze to Kyra's sisters and their children. "Welcome to the United States of America," he said more formally, then looked at Kyra again. "Care to do the introductions?"

Gertrude joined them, and Kyra introduced her as well.

The children shook hands with the doctor and the nurse, and they in turn smiled and said all the right things, but the kids were still eyeing the medical van with trepidation. One of Parisa's sons was edging behind his mother, while Yasmin's youngest had buried her face in her mother's side and refused to shake hands with anyone or even show her face .

"Come on, Cyra," Yasmin tried. "It's rude to hide your face from the nice doctor."

Cyra shook her head while continuing to bury her face in her mother's skirt.

Gertrude crouched down next to the girl. "Hello there. I'm Nurse Gertrude, and I want to play a fun game with you."

The girl peeked at the nurse with just one eye, the other still hidden in the fabric. "What game?"

Gertrude smiled warmly. "Have any of you ever played spy games?"

The question caught the children off guard, confusion momentarily displacing their fear.

"Spies?" Parisa's youngest son repeated with a frown.

"Yes," Gertrude confirmed, her voice lowering conspiratorially. "Bad guys sometimes put little tracking devices on people without their knowledge so they can find those people later. We have a special spy-catcher machine. Would you like to see how it works?"

When Cyra nodded, Gertrude offered the child her hand, and to everyone's great surprise, the girl took it and went with her.

Max was sure that the nurse had used thralling to convince the child to come with her. That little girl had only let go of her mother's skirt when she'd fallen asleep, and from the moment she'd woken up, she'd gone back to clutching it like a lifeline.

"She's good with kids," Yasmin said. "Now that the most scared one went first, the others will have to follow."

"Does Gertrude have children?" Kyra asked.

"No," Max said. "But she's been the clan's nurse for many years."

While Kyra and her sisters looked on, the children went through the scan one by one, each emerging with a small sticker badge that Gertrude had apparently prepared beforehand.

At some point, Kyra turned, smiled, and waved at Okidu, who was waiting patiently by the bus.

"Kian's butler is such a nice guy, but he's strange," she said.

"Of course he is." Max watched Gertrude escort Soraya to the van. "Didn't I tell you that he is not human?"

Kyra raised an eyebrow. "I thought immortals didn't age, and he looks to be in his mid to late forties. Did he transition at a later age? Which reminds me," she leaned closer to him, "Will my sisters look the same after their transition, or will they look more youthful?"

Chuckling, Max lifted his hands. "That's too many questions all at once. First, Okidu is neither human nor immortal. He's kind of a cyborg, although the term doesn't do him justice. He was created on the planet of the gods, and he's part machine and part biological being, but he's sentient, and he's constantly learning by mimicking and other means. That's how he can appear so human. There are only seven Odus on Earth, and all originally belonged to the Clan Mother. She gave one to each of her children, and three remained with her. Okidu takes care of Kian and his family."

Kyra stared at the Odu, then back at Max. "And you just have him driving buses and serving drinks?"

Max grinned. "He does a lot more than that. He also cleans Kian's house and some of the spaces at the keep, cooks, and even babysits. Kian treats him as a member of his family."

"Yet he calls him 'master' and behaves like a servant," Kyra said.

"That was his original programming, and he sees no need to change it. He enjoys what he does and gets greatly offended if anyone even suggests doing something that he considers his own domain. The more sentient he becomes, the more he clings to his role. I guess it gives him purpose and satisfaction in the same way that our occupations do for us."

Kyra grimaced. "I'm officially out of a job and need to rethink my career. But back to the butler. If he's part machine, he's probably very strong. How safe is it for him to babysit for Kian? I mean, as long as he's just a robot and does precisely what he's programmed to do, that's probably fine, but being sentient brings with it the good and the bad. You know what I mean?"

Max knew precisely what she meant, and he had no doubt that Kian had done some hard thinking before he felt comfortable leaving Allegra with Okidu.

"The Odus had thousands of years of the Clan Mother's positive influence, and she's always treated them as family, even when they weren't sentient, and more so after. Just as good parents produce good children because they set a good example, the Odus had the best possible example. They've learned kindness from the Clan Mother. Besides, they are programmed never to harm anyone unless they're protecting clan members."

"That's supposed to be comforting?" Kyra asked, keeping her voice low. "There are so many things that can go wrong within those parameters."

"Like what?" he asked.

Kyra pursed her lips. "I can't think of anything offhand, but I'm sure I'll come up with several ideas once I have some time to ponder this. In my experience, no matter how tightly you define the rules, there are always unforeseen consequences when it comes to dangerous tech or weaponry."

He found it fascinating that Kyra had picked up on the inherent danger the Odus represented without knowing anything about them and what they were capable of.

Was it instinct? Or was it her pendant sending her a warning?

It was under her shirt, and she hadn't reached for it like she did every time it warmed up or vibrated or whatever else it did to warn her, so her response probably hadn't been triggered by it.

"How did you get your pendant?" he asked.

She lifted a brow. "That's a random question. Where did it come from?"

He shrugged. "I was just thinking that if Okidu was dangerous, your pendant would have warned you."

Now her hand went to it, clutching it over her shirt. "It's not always reliable. I trusted it to give me a signal if my decision to get Soraya first was wrong, but it didn't warn me or prompt me to choose Yasmin instead."

Max tried to think of a rational explanation for that, but it was kind of an oxymoron to rationalize the behavior of a mystical object.

"I don't know what to tell you. Maybe it's not always on task." He wrapped his arm around her middle and drew her closer to him. "If you don't want to tell me how you got it, that's fine."

"I have no problem telling you. When I was escaping the asylum with the other women who helped me get to the resistance, we stayed the night at the house of an old relative of one of them. who also gave us clothing to hide who we were. I found the pendant in her backyard and brought it to her, thinking she'd lost it, but she said she threw it away and that I should keep it. I tried to refuse and offered to give it to Bahar, who was her sister's granddaughter, but the woman said that the pendant had found me and that I should keep it. I thought she was just rambling nonsense, but I didn't want to offend her by refusing, so I took it. I had no idea it would guide me from that day on."

“That’s a fascinating story. Have you ever gone back to thank her for it?”

Kyra shook her head. “When I returned to Tehran several years later, she was gone.”