Page 35 of Dark Rover’s Luck (The Children Of The Gods #95)

35

FENELLA

F enella sat in an uncomfortable chair in Amanda's laboratory, electrodes stuck to her temples like some ridiculous science fiction prop. The whole setup reminded her of a low budget film about mind control, complete with blinking monitors and hushed, technical conversations she couldn't quite follow.

"Try to relax," Amanda said, adjusting something on her tablet. "Tension can interfere with the readings."

"I'm perfectly relaxed," Fenella lied, gripping the armrests tighter. "Nothing more soothing than having my brain probed by aliens."

Amanda chuckled. "When you are one of those aliens, it's not so bad, right?"

As Fenella cast the ridiculously beautiful professor a glare, she caught Din giving her an encouraging smile from his position in the rear of the room.

Another professor. No wonder they were teaming up against her.

"The electrodes don't read your thoughts," Syssi explained. "They just measure electrical activity in different parts of your brain."

"That's supposed to be reassuring?" Fenella arched an eyebrow.

Amanda chuckled. "It's completely noninvasive. I promise you won't feel even the slightest discomfort. And remember, you can stop anytime you want."

Fenella sighed and tried to loosen her shoulders. She didn't have any special abilities. But these women, her newfound relatives, seemed convinced otherwise, and she didn't have the heart to quash their enthusiasm.

"Let's start with something simple." Amanda positioned herself behind a computer screen that Fenella couldn't see. "I'm going to show Kyra a series of geometric shapes. She won't say anything, but I want you to try to pick up on what she's seeing."

"Telepathy?" Fenella scoffed. "You're joking."

"Just give it a try," Jasmine encouraged. "Clear your mind and see if any shapes pop into your head."

Fenella rolled her eyes while Kyra seated herself across from her. At Amanda's nod, Kyra's hand closed over the pendant at her throat, and her eyes grew distant.

Five minutes of silence followed, during which Fenella thought of juicy steaks, red wine, cocktail recipes, and the tile pattern in Shira's bathroom—anything but geometric shapes.

"Anything?" Amanda asked finally.

"Unless you were hoping I'd telepathically pick up on Kyra's thoughts about vodka martini variations, the answer is no."

Amanda made some notes. "That's fine. Let's try something else." She tapped her tablet, and the monitor in front of Fenella lit up with a simple game interface. "This will display a shape, but there's a three-second delay between when the computer selects the shape and when it appears on the screen. I want you to try to guess what's coming."

"Precognition?" Fenella sighed but nodded. "Fine."

The first shape—a red triangle—appeared without warning. Fenella hadn't had even an inkling it was coming.

"That's all right," Amanda said. "Let's try again. Focus on the blank screen."

Shape after shape appeared—circles, squares, stars, hexagons—and Fenella punched the keys more to appear as if she was cooperating than because she was sensing what shape was coming next. After twenty minutes, she was too frustrated to continue and had developed a headache.

"This is pointless," she muttered. "I told you I don't have any special abilities."

"Let's see how Kyra does," Amanda suggested, gesturing for Kyra to switch places with Fenella.

Relieved to be free of the electrodes, Fenella walked over to where Din was sitting and sat on the chair next to him.

He reached for her hand and clasped it. "How are you doing?"

"Not good. My head is about to explode."

"Ready?" Amanda asked, and Kyra nodded, her fingers wrapping around her pendant.

The first shape hadn't even flashed on the screen when Kyra punched a key and spoke. "Green circle."

The green circle appeared.

"Blue square," Kyra said confidently, and sure enough, a blue square followed.

"Yellow star... Red hexagon... Purple triangle..."

Kyra identified shape after shape with perfect accuracy, her expression calm and focused, fingers never leaving the amber pendant at her throat.

"Show-off," Fenella muttered, but there was no real heat behind it. Instead, she felt a twinge of something like envy. Not for the ability itself, but for the confidence with which Kyra wielded it.

After a few minutes, Kyra started to make mistakes, and Amanda stopped the experiment.

"Incredible readings," Amanda said, studying her tablet, then moving to another station. "Jasmine, you're up next." She waved her over.

Jasmine settled into the chair with an ease that suggested she'd done this before. Instead of a shape-guessing task, Amanda provided her with a sealed envelope that had something written on top of it.

"Those are coordinates," Amanda said. "Try to describe the location."

Jasmine closed her eyes, and after several moments of silence, she opened them. "Sydney Opera House," Jasmine said with a hint of uncertainty in her voice. "Am I right?"

"I don't know," Amanda said. "If I knew what was inside, you could have picked it up from my mind, which could have confused the results, but since those envelopes are prepared ahead of time by my assistants, I have no idea what is inside them. You have to open the envelope to find out."

Jasmine did as instructed and pulled out a postcard depicting the opera house.

"Look at that." Amanda grinned. "Just as I suspected, that was far viewing. The ability to perceive distant objects or locations."

"Wow. I had no idea," Jasmine said. "I thought it was the scrying stick."

"It helped you focus," Amanda said. "Now let's see what happens when you work together. Did you bring the stick with you?"

Jasmine nodded. "It's in my purse."

"Go get it," Amanda instructed.

After Jasmine got her stick, she and Kyra sat side by side. Kyra's hand was on her pendant, while Jasmine's fingers were wrapped around her stick. They joined their free hands, forming a connection.

"Let's try something more challenging," Amanda said, producing a new envelope. "This contains coordinates to a location that's not a major tourist attraction. See if you can describe what's there."

The women closed their eyes, their clasped hands tightening. The air in the laboratory seemed to thicken, an almost tangible energy building around them. Fenella felt the fine hairs on her arms stand up.

"A temple," Jasmine murmured. "Ancient... crumbling... half-buried in sand."

"There's a false wall," Kyra continued, her voice distant.

"Darkness..." Jasmine's voice grew softer.

They fell silent simultaneously, their eyes opening as they released each other's hands. Both looked slightly dazed.

"That was..." Kyra began.

"So much more powerful than when we worked separately," Jasmine finished.

"Excellent," Amanda said with a grin. "The neural synchronization patterns are extraordinary. Your abilities aren't just adding together—together they're amplified exponentially."

"What did we see?" Kyra asked.

Amanda gestured at the envelope. "Open it and find out."

As Kyra lifted the picture to show everyone, it depicted exactly what they had described—a burial chamber in some desert location. Kyra turned it around to read the inscription on the back of the photograph. "This is a tomb site in China."

"It's exactly what the Clan Mother suspected," Syssi said. "There is a resonance between you."

Fenella shifted uncomfortably, acutely aware that she was supposed to be part of this magical family circle. The only problem was that she apparently didn't have anything to contribute.

"So where do I fit into this?" she asked.

Amanda turned to Morelle, who had been observing silently from Din's other side. "What do you sense?"

Morelle switched seats and sat next to Fenella. "May I?" She extended her hand.

"Sure." Fenella clasped the female's slender hand.

Morelle held on for a long moment before letting go. "There's definitely power there. I can sense it, and it calls out to me." She smiled. "I'm like a vampire smelling blood. When I sense power, I want to absorb it."

Fenella shivered at the predatory gleam in the female's eyes. Morelle hadn't been joking. She looked like she was hungry and wanted to drink up what she'd sensed in Fenella.

"Can you tell what kind of power it is?" Amanda asked.

Morelle shook her head. "To me, they all seem the same. Power is power."

Fenella frowned. "So, I supposedly have some mysterious power that no one can identify, and I can't access? That's helpful."

"We just haven't found the right trigger yet," Amanda said, undeterred. "Let's try a different approach."

For the next hour, they subjected Fenella to a battery of tests. She tried to bend spoons with her mind, which was utterly ridiculous, predict the order of a shuffled deck of cards, which was embarrassing, and guess the contents of a locked box, which was as pointless as all the rest.

Each failure only added to her frustration.

"This is a waste of time," she finally snapped, tearing off the electrodes for the third time. "I don't have any magical powers."

"Morelle sensed something in you," Kyra insisted. "And the Clan Mother believes you're meant to help us find Khiann."

"Based on what? The fact that we share a great-great-great-grandmother from eight centuries ago?" Fenella stood, pacing the small space between monitors. "That's hardly a mystical connection, or any connection for that matter. I bet most of the residents of my little town in Scotland have more recent shared ancestors."

Kyra watched her for a moment, then unclasped her pendant from around her neck. "Try this," she said, holding it out. "Maybe it will help you focus your power like it does for me."

Fenella stared at the amber stone with its etched symbols. "What am I supposed to do with it?"

"Just hold it," Kyra said. "Sometimes an object can help focus abilities."

"That's actually not a bad idea," Amanda said. "If your abilities are similar, the pendant might serve as a catalyst."

Fenella sighed but took the pendant, if only to humor them. The stone was warm from Kyra's body heat, smooth except for the etched symbols that caught against her fingertips.

"Now what?" she asked.

"Just concentrate on it," Kyra instructed. "See if you feel anything."

Fenella stared at the amber, feeling faintly ridiculous. But just as she was about to hand it back and suggest they call it a day, something changed. The warmth of the stone seemed to intensify, spreading up her fingers into her palm. The laboratory around her grew distant, sounds muffling as if she were underwater.

And then—images.

A darkened room, men with guns, the acrid smell of blood and gunpowder. The pendant burned hot against her skin as bullets flew overhead.

A mountain pass, snow blinding in the sunlight, the pendant growing warm in warning as hidden snipers took position.

A concrete room, a young girl tied to a chair, her eyes wide with terror. The pendant was vibrating with urgency as Kyra cut through the ropes.

The visions came faster, one bleeding into the next—fragments of missions, moments of danger, split-second decisions. Fenella gasped, overwhelmed by the flood of memories that weren't hers.

The pendant slipped from her fingers, clattering to the laboratory floor, and Fenella staggered backward, would have fallen if Din hadn't moved with immortal speed to catch her.

"Bloody hell," she whispered, her heart racing. "What was that?"

Kyra bent to retrieve the pendant, examining it for damage. "What did you see?"

"Your bloody life," Fenella said shakily. "Is the pendant okay?"

"It's fine. Nothing got damaged." Kyra pulled the string over her head and tucked the stone under her shirt. "What did you mean by my bloody life?" She imitated Fenella's accent.

"Gunfire. Rescues. Places I've never been. Things I've never done." Fenella ran a trembling hand through her hair. "It was like the pendant was showing off, letting me see everywhere it had been with you and how it had helped you."

Amanda's face broke into a delighted smile. "Psychometry," she said, typing rapidly on her tablet. "The ability to obtain information about a person or event by touching objects associated with them."

"Brilliant," Jasmine breathed. "That's why the Clan Mother thinks you are the key to finding Khiann. If you could touch something of his..."

"You might be able to see where he is now," Kyra finished.

Fenella shook her head, still dizzy from the intensity of the visions. "That's not how it worked. I didn't see where the pendant is now—I saw where it had been in the past. It was its history, not its present."

"But Khiann is in stasis," Syssi pointed out. "For him, there is no present—only the moment he was placed there. His 'now' is still five thousand years ago. The problem is that we don't have anything of his that he carried with him when the earthquake happened. Whatever he had is buried with him."

Din put his hand on Fenella's shoulder. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," she said automatically, then reconsidered. "Actually, no. I feel like someone just force-fed me a decade of someone else's memories."

"That's essentially what happened," Amanda said. "Your brain processed years of sensory information in seconds. It's no wonder you're disoriented."

"Can any of you do this?" Fenella asked, looking around at the others. "Get visions from touching objects?"

They shook their heads.

"Each of us has different abilities," Jasmine said. "Kyra has precognition, I have far-viewing, and you have psychometry."

"But together we are stronger." Kyra's eyes were bright with excitement. "Together, we might be able to find Khiann when none of us could do it alone."

"I don't really see how." Fenella sat heavily in the nearest chair. "And how come it has never happened to me before? I've touched plenty of objects that belonged to other people. I never got any impressions from their lives."

"Maybe it has to be a special object," Syssi said. "We should have you talk with Jacki, Kalugal's wife. She has the same type of talent. They are in Egypt right now, but they are coming back for Kian and Allegra's birthday on Saturday."

"Those visions hit me like a freight train," Fenella murmured.

"The shared lineage must be the key," Amanda said. "That could be another reason why it never happened to you before. You need Kyra and Jasmine to resonate with you." She shook her head in wonder. "The Fates have outdone themselves this time."

"So, what now?" Fenella asked, still feeling lightheaded and overwhelmed.

"Now we practice," Kyra said. "Together and separately. We hone our abilities until the Fates provide us with the missing piece we need to find Khiann."