Page 20 of The Shadowed Oracle (The Bonded Worlds #1)

Dean held up a finger, walked back to the control panel and opened one of the metal drawers in the old desk underneath. After a few missteps, muttering to himself, he found what it was he was looking for. He pulled it from the rusty compartment like he’d just caught a fish with his bare hands.

“Here it is,” he said excitedly. “From the man himself.”

Dangling from his fingers was a small, leather-bound notebook with no markings or lettering. “If you’re wondering why it looks so old,” Dean chuckled. “It’s because it is. Karis brought it here from his home outside of Hydor about a billion years ago.”

Shuffling through it gently but quickly, he stopped at a page in the middle. Placed within the bound pages was an even more ancient-looking piece of loose parchment, tattered around the edges, and full of colorful depictions akin to Egyptian hieroglyphics.

Dean noticed Ingrid staring at the archaic drawings, apologized, then flipped it over to reveal the other side.

“ The Mother relinquishes, pulling from her unending well, ” Ingrid read aloud. “ She does not entreat on her children, does not beg to be compensated.”

She paused, peeking around the withered page to lock eyes with Dean, “What is this?”

“A page from their… I guess you could call it their bible. The Volmen Vericious . But most call it the Loquent Truth now,” Dean said plainly.

“Copies of the original text are nearly extinct. But these updated versions, they’re full of liberties taken by the most devout followers.

And these teachings are circulating again, after millennia of being mostly weeded out. ”

Fighting the urge to snag the thin document from his hand, Ingrid asked if she could see it for herself.

Dean obliged, gingerly passing it to her.

The smell it gave off was at once putrid and intoxicating.

Something like death and decay permeated the air, but along with it was a mysterious, otherworldly musk.

She held it at eye level, again orating for Dean, “ It is in this hecatomb that we children must take heed of. For the absence of a question does not mean an answer should not be given. To feed her, as we have been fed, there is no greater pursuit. No grander sacrifice.”

She lowered the page again, pursing her lips curiously. “It’s trying to convince us to kill people, right? That’s why you’re showing me this?”

Dean nodded. “It doesn’t end there. The revisions go on to talk about a bonded world—Earth.

They talk about Viator going on crusades to this other world to make offerings to The Mother, to Ealis.

All throughout history, people like Makkar and his followers have come here to honor their god with sacrifices.

It preaches of a sort of scale. A give and take.

Not just hinting but actually declaring that any Viator can go through the portal, take human life, and Ealis will eventually bless them with unrealized powers in exchange for their offerings.

I know it sounds like a reach, but you haven’t been there.

You haven’t felt the infectious energy that’s all around you. It tends to breed believers.”

There was a twinge of nostalgic ire infecting Ingrid now, reminding her of the nuns back at the group home. She remembered a specific pious nun in particular, all pale frowns and sharp stares, using God as an excuse to physically punish some of the children.

Ingrid was one of those children, one of many, but she had never uttered that admission aloud. She refused to lump herself in with the children she knew that suffered far worse. Hurt by the hands of those who claimed to be dedicating their lives to the fight against evil, no less.

Wherever you went, no matter the God, no matter how divine the teachings or how much good could come from faith, there were always those who would distort the message to fit their own desires.

Misreading Ingrid’s contemplative silence as more skepticism, Dean said, “And before you ask again about the abilities, I’ll give it to you as simply as possible.

Some Viator can conjure fire, manipulate plant-life, oceans and rivers.

While Karis could temporarily close portals, invade other Viator’s minds, see outlines of the near future and past. But all of these powers, however small, they are few and far between. Any gift is rare.”

“What about Makkar’s? Is he?—"

Dean shook his head. “We’ll get to him later.” It seemed like he was stopping for his own sake more than Ingrid’s, as if he didn’t like to linger too long on how skilled his opponent was.

Ingrid left it. She didn’t need more on the subject of powers, anyway. Her imagination had run wild and she preferred it at that juncture to reality. Picturing herself washing away every last Wrane with a snap of her fingers had been the only soothing part of any of this.

And as for Makkar, she’d quickly drawn a picture of him in her mind, too. She’d known plenty of men like that. Men with far less influence and power, but still, conceited enough to think they were owed everything they ever wanted.

“He won’t stop. Ever. Will he,” she said. It wasn’t a question. Dean had said as much, but it was now sinking in fully for her. “Those murders, here, they’re just a fraction of the violence to come.”

“We can only guess,” Dean said. “But the toll is likely somewhere in the thousands across North America alone.”

“Thousands?” Ingrid repeated it under her breath. There was no way to quantify that number in her head. How many people had she met in her lifetime? And how many of them could she remember by name? “And the government, the FBI, have they caught on to the connection?”

“Yes,” Dean said simply. “You met with just the one agent, but there are more here. All investigating the same thing, just not willing to accept that the unexplainable really is unexplainable. They’re helpless without the aid of someone who knows about Ealis.”

“You mean like you and your team?” Ingrid asked. “The one that was out there hiding in the park today?”

“Yes.” Dean answered quickly, proudly. “You’ll meet them very soon. If you want to, that is?”

“All up to me, right?” Ingrid nearly laughed. “Like I’m just going to go back to bartending after today?”

Dean’s eyebrows dropped. “Wait, weren’t you just about to leave? You’re not telling me that was more acting, are you?”

Ingrid looked to the door, then sheepishly back at Dean. “That might’ve been a little brash of me.”

“Well, just so you know,” Dean lifted his hands, shrugging innocently. “I’m not stopping you. You can leave whenever you want.”

“Sure. Just head back home. Get a good night’s sleep. Then right back to work tomorrow. How’s it going boss? My weekend? No, a little strange actually. I’m being hunted by creatures from another world and I’m not a human being. But anyway, did we get the new cocktail menus printed yet?”

Dean absorbed the string of jokes, paused, then burst into laughter.

Ingrid joined him, shaking her head playfully.

Communicating with just their eyes, their shrugs and subtle movements, they settled into an easy silence.

For a moment, they were just two people.

Two people around the same age who could relate to one another more than either had thought possible in a long, long time.

After a minute, feeling the ache in her chest from that fall in her hallway, Ingrid said, “I need to get some sleep.”

Dean nodded coyly, standing and leading Ingrid to the door. He opened it for her and walked a good distance behind as they snaked their way back to the surface level of the house.

The naked walls seemed to echo every sound as they made their way to the master bedroom.

“I’ll be on the couch,” Dean said, leaning against the doorframe. “Just in case you need to find me.”

“I won’t.”

“Easy there, I wasn’t being crude.” He handed her a comically large keyring, jangling with every key to the house. “The place is all yours.”

“If I can guess which key is which, you mean. This is a mess.”

Dean lifted the clanging set and directed her attention to the small labels on each key. “Right here, smart ass. Oh, and I probably don’t need to explain why there are locks on everything, right?”

“I worked that out for myself. It’s like an escape room in here,” Ingrid smirked, taking stock of all the glinting metal and fortified thick wood. “Speaking of, there aren’t traps set around the house, are there? Not gonna fall into a spiked pit while getting some water from the kitchen, am I?”

Dean kept a straight face, “No traps.”

“Good. That should do it then.” She clapped her hands together, trying desperately not to look at him, then closed the door and locked it without a word.

She could almost feel Dean winding up some sarcastic remark when she reversed the process she’d just gone through, whipping the door back open to stare at him with tired, glossy eyes.

“Okay,” she said. “It works.”

“Fully functional locks,” Dean’s tone went stale, almost bored. “No ulterior motives. No traps. And adequate protection. Just like I promised.” He pulled out another viseer stone from his jacket pocket and handed it to her.

“What am I supposed to do with this? You never taught me how?—”

“Put it under your pillow,” Dean interjected.

His eyes drifted downward, searching her slowly. She had a sudden flash of self-consciousness when he stopped his examination at her waistband, where the gun now resided.

“That little guy,” he said. “It won’t do much good if another Wrane comes to you in the night.”

A frightening thought, but best left for tomorrow. “And what about you?” she asked, arrantly unserious. “What if you stalk me in the middle of the night?”

“Funny.”

“Was it?”

Both of them stood in silence, looking directly at one another until Ingrid felt the slightest unease, dropping her eyes to the floor. She didn’t even move when Dean’s hand disappeared from her sight, moving close to her but again stopping short.

“It’ll get easier,” he said. “We’ll take it slow with the lessons, so the information doesn’t feel like an overload.”

“Thank you.” Ingrid smiled and went back inside.

“Goodnight,” Dean said through the door.

“Goodnight.”

She faced her new room, listening to his footsteps as they faded away. A twin-sized bed sat in the corner, a drawerless side table next to it, with one antique lamp resting atop and a desk planted in front of the small, barred window.

Bare essentials, just like the rest of the house.

The only other noteworthy thing in the room was the closet.

Seeing it, she was reminded she’d left her suitcase in Dean’s car.

It only carried the clothes she’d brought, though—her purse, gun, and her father’s necklace were all on her person—so she felt it was okay to leave it for the morning.

Everything, she decided, could be left for the morning.

To her surprise, the only thing she could think of, even after her world had been dug up from under her and turned on its head, was finding a place to rest.

The second her head hit the pillow, she drifted off, enjoying the most peaceful, dreamless sleep she’d had in a decade.

For the first time since she was just a child, the monsters left her alone.