Out of Mind

“We can’t be sure Rock knows you’re back,” Ben said.

The woman hissed with frustration. “What happens to us now?”

Rock’s voice became silky and completely unlike that of the man Willow had known. “You will be punished, but you will get another chance. You are resourceful and we need you. Let’s go and get our next orders. There has been one change I know of. The Protector has given up on infiltrating mankind with single emissaries. Our numbers on earth will grow faster in future. We will be everywhere among them. First New Orleans, then wherever the Protector decides after that. The humans will be allowed to relax, to grow complacent, but not for long. Our everlasting lives depend on the secrets they are hiding from us.”

“They are already searching for the legend. They are curious about the keys. If they connect the two it will be very dangerous for us,” Vanity said.

“Yes,” Rock agreed. “But we should return to Safeplace Embran. There are signs we are breaking down, you and I. I have brought us something to help us on our way.”

Cracking noises followed, and cooing, like the cries of large doves.

“What are we going to do?” Willow asked.

“Stop them. But it may be even trickier than we expect. There was someone else with Vanity before Rock arrived. We heard another voice. But I’m only hearing Rock and Vanity now. Someone must be hiding in there.”

“We can’t take them all on by ourselves,” Willow said.

“I intend to manage nicely on my own until Sykes and the others get the message.”

“I want you to know something.” Willow reached for his hand. “I shouldn’t have sent you away. I should have had the confidence to trust your love.”

He crouched beside her. “You sound as if you’re saying goodbye. Nothing is going to happen to either of us.”

“I can’t live without you, Ben.”

His hug gave her some courage. “Tell me one thing,” he said, and his arms shook with emotion. “Admit we’re Bonded forever.”

She felt tears on her face. “Forever,” she told him.

Ben stood again, and with his back still to the wall, he slipped to the doorway, took a cautious look into the plant-filled spaces of the conservatory and crouched low. “Please stay here,” he said. “Get outside as soon as you can and call Nat. See who else you can reach. Make sure Nat knows to wait for a signal from me before coming in here.”

She didn’t answer, and he didn’t wait before leaving her.

Chapter 36

The Embran, Ben thought, didn’t know quite as much as they thought they did. For one thing, they didn’t know that with some help from him—and Mario—the Millets already had three keys, not one. The failure to find the right angel frustrated him. He and the others would keep looking, that’s all.

“How will the Millets become complacent as you suggest with one of their own missing?” Vanity asked. “They will continue searching for Willow.”

“And they will find her when Zibock sends her back,” Rock said with an unpleasant laugh. “All memory of what she has experienced will be gone by the time she returns to the surface. They will think she has suffered an attack of amnesia and wandered away or some such nonsense, but they will not discover where she has been.”

“And she will accept this?”

“In time. She can’t change it.”

Ben wanted to laugh. He had witnessed Willow’s struggles to remember her experiences, but they were getting clearer rather than so distant they showed any sign of disappearing.

He would warn her not to let anyone outside the Millets and Fortunes know the truth yet.

Hidden by plants, Rock and Vanity were at the far end of the long conservatory. Ben launched himself invisibly in the opposite direction, planning to come on them with no warning. In the nanoinstant he took to reach an open closet and slip inside, his other sight caught what hadn’t been obvious with human eyes. Under a table draped with a long oilcloth, a man with long blond hair. Absolutely still, his arms wrapped around his shins and his head on his knees, his outline shivered as if he were in the process of, but never quite transforming into something else.

“You’re trying to hide something,” Rock said, almost growled at Vanity. “Move out of the way. What do you have there?”

“What do you mean?” Vanity said.

“Save it. Get away from the cage. You’re hiding something.”

“Let’s concentrate on what’s important.” The man beneath the table spoke up suddenly, his voice echoing. He emerged from his hiding place, but Ben didn’t recognize him. A tall, elegant man in a brown silk shirt and black pants, he had disturbingly light blue eyes.

He continued to fade slightly, only to return to sharp image. And he sauntered between the tangle of foliage toward the other end of the room.

“Well, if it isn’t Vanity’s slave.” Rock laughed at the man. “Hello, John. I knew you were listening. The same as you’ve known I’ve been here in New Orleans all along.”

“I thought you were—”

Vanity cut the man off. “Rock, you and I will join forces and do as much as we can now. We can go back to Zibock with enough to make him even more happy than you already have.”

“Sure,” Rock said. “Why didn’t I think of that?”

Ben winced. The answer had come too quickly.

“When will the Millet girl be returned?” Vanity said.

“When I give the signal, Zibock will send her back,” Rock said promptly.

Ben smiled to himself. Rock didn’t know Willow had been found unsuitable for the Embran’s purpose. He also didn’t know she was already back and in this very house. Ben wondered about this Zibock’s plan. It seemed he was playing Vanity and Rock off against each other.

“Perhaps you should wait until we leave,” Vanity said thoughtfully. “I have collected a number of human specimens. We could take them back to Zibock. They may be useful—or not.

“Until Willow returns, the humans will be obsessed with finding her and we’ll be safe. Then her return will distract them further. The longer we put off having them concentrate on finding us, the better. They’re going to find out something about where we come from eventually.”

“They don’t have to,” Rock said. “And remember we can wipe their memories clean. If any of them get through, we will deal with them.”

Only you aren’t so good at getting rid of memories yet. In short bursts, zipping from one gap between plant displays to another, Ben worked his way toward the other three.

Using his third eye, he could see them completely. Rock, in his thick-soled shoes and black leather pants, stood a little apart from the other two. His head was in its human form again. Vanity wore a sleeveless top and tight jeans. John’s elegant clothes made them an odd set.

A mark on the back of Vanity’s left shoulder made Ben stop breathing. It was a festering burn, and he had little doubt how it had happened. In the moment of battle with the batlike creature in that empty shop, he had used his defensive gift. Vanity was that creature, and she carried his scar no matter what form she took. He smiled at her arrogance in assuming he would have no opportunity to make the connection.

He would never forget how that burn had damaged the source of her invisibility and left one side of her bat body fully revealed to his human eyes. Had she repaired herself at all, he wondered, or was she still only able to squirt the fluid, the source of her shield from ordinary sight, on one side, never to be completely invisible again?

Once more he concentrated his powers solely on searching out Sykes. Still there was no hint of him and Ben