Chapter 6

I couldn’t bring myself to check in with Uri when I arrived back home.

I know I was supposed to, but I was pissed off. More than that, the revelations uncovered in Malaga had seriously knocked my already diminished trust in both him and the organization he represented. The fact that he wanted me to report to him only, a concept that seemed perfectly reasonable when I was just looking for a mole, suddenly sounded very suspicious based on everything I had learned. My mood was hovering somewhere between dark and brooding and downright homicidal.

Meeting Uri in my current demeanor had a high probability of turning ugly.

I had no doubt he would be waiting. There was no question that, despite his resistance to my plan of action, he was as interested in its results. I didn’t think he was pacing the floors waiting for me to get in touch, and I seriously doubted he was even remotely concerned about my welfare. I simply had the information that he wanted. Not that I cared; neither he, nor anyone else in the Conclave, would be getting it until they answered my questions to my satisfaction. That was not going to be a small ask.

What I needed was time to process. Time to let this new information percolate and settle. Time to come up with a plan.

Of course, life never quite works out that way.

“Pete! Where the fuck have you been??” Charlotte shrieked as I walked through my apartment door. Leaping to her feet from her place on the sofa, hurtling across the room, and flinging her arms around me.

As inordinately happy as I had always been to see her, my mood had me fighting the urge to ask what she was doing here. The answer was obvious. I hadn’t seen my strawberry-blonde friend since the morning after the party, I hadn’t messaged her more than a handful of times since then, and as soon as I had left the country, I had turned my phone off. As far as she was concerned, I had disappeared from the face of the earth. As for how she got in, she was an Evo. The lock on my front door would barely have slowed her down.

It was instinct, it was a product of my absolute distrust, but I quickly scanned through her mind as secretly as possible. There was nothing. No signs of deception, no ulterior motives, only genuine concern. She was worried about me. It had started a few days ago; she had called, only to be repeatedly put through to my voicemail. It had steadily grown since then.

The person you are calling is not available...

After days of unread messages and dozens of times hearing that phrase down the phone, she had grown to hate that synthetic woman’s voice. She had dropped subtle questions to Becky and Philippa whilst at work. Neither of them knew about our friendship, so she couldn’t outright ask them about me, and she was absolutely certain they didn’t know what had happened at the party. But they hadn’t heard from me either. In an act akin to desperation, she had just come over. When I hadn’t answered the door, she had feared the worst. She had let herself in, honestly expecting to find my lifeless body hanging by the neck from the rafters.

She had never experienced a bonding herself, but she had heard the tales of one half of a bonding pair passing away, even through natural causes, and the other being so consumed with grief that they had committed suicide just to escape a pain that they knew would never ease. Human love was a powerful force, but an Evo bond was unbreakable. Except by death. It didn’t just leave an Evo with a broken, irreparable heart; it could shatter their minds as well. Two joined cities suddenly being ripped apart, two halves of a whole being separated forever. It was enough to make even the strongest of characters choose death over the indescribable pain.

Finding my apartment empty, she had just sat and let the panic overtake her. She had scanned for me, as far as her abilities would reach. Hundreds, thousands of miles worth of minds, just looking for mine. That activity was strictly forbidden in the Sect. As far as they were aware, that was the easiest way to attract Inquisitor attention. It wasn’t, I had stood in a room with 200 of them and scanned them all from a few feet away, and none of them had noticed a thing. It had taken an extraordinary amount of power for them to acknowledge my presence. Besides, she wouldn’t have found me if I had been in the next room; I had been blocking since I left the country. She hadn’t known that and had taken the risk anyway.

I felt the tension, the anger, the mistrust, and the suspicion melting away as I wrapped my arms around her and hugged her into me.

“Where have you been?” She repeated, her voice quivering slightly in relief. I could feel her heart racing through her chest as it pressed into mine. Charlotte loved me; she absolutely, unquestioningly loved me. Not in a romantic way, not in a sexual way, but it was a deep, profound friendship, the sort that made me as close to her as family. The thought of anything happening to me was too much for her to bear.

“I ... It’s a long story,” I sighed back. “I’m happy to see you.”

“Pete, please,” The relief was starting to erode the adrenaline that had been coursing through her veins, and her tears were starting to wet my shirt as she trembled in my arms. “What is going on? It feels like I’m losing you.”

“You’re not losing me,” I said softly. “I love you. You are all I have.”

“I love you, too,” she sobbed, pulling me closer. “Please talk to me.”

“I want to, but ... It’s a lot.”

“Tell me, please. I need to know what is going on. I need to know you are okay.”

I took a deep breath and nodded, relaxing my arms around her and letting one of my hands take hers. “Okay,” I said, turning her back toward the sofa. “But you are going to want to sit down for this.”

I showed her everything.

I showed her the conclave, I showed her the meeting, I showed her Uri’s direction to go to Malaga, I showed her my computer and how I had used it to find and track Inquisitors. I showed her the city, I showed her the office, the Inquisitors there, and I showed her what Miguel had told me. Then I showed her the Villa, the flames - and the note.

I showed her everything ... Six times.

The shock, the confusion, the suspicion, and the anger washed over her face in waves. Between each replay, she would sit in silence, frowning at the floor as her thoughts bounced around her head. She would open her mouth to say something, to ask something, to make an observation based on her own knowledge of Evo history, only for another thought to come along and silence it. Her mouth would close again before she would ask for me to show her one more time.

I had expected her to come to the defense of the Sect, railing against the idea that they had intentionally started the War of American Independence. Or that they had been clueless about their real assailants during the War of 1812 when they had been hunted down by their former brethren. But she said nothing. Miguel’s revelations had silenced any ability to defend her order, and they had rocked her to her core.

I could tell, just by the look on her face, that she had retreated into her equivalent of my bunker if only to allow the time-dilation properties of her mind to give her time to think. I had done plenty of that myself in the eighteen hours since I had stood outside that burning Villa.

I had Jeeves and the computer scan every square inch of land around me during my entire journey home to make sure that not a single Inquisitor was following me. Friend or foe, anyone caught trying would have been subjected to the full measure of my wrath. But both of them had come up empty, and I had made it home without issue. Still, an extraordinarily high proportion of that travel time had been spent pacing around my bunker, processing what had been said and trying, in vain, to come up with my next step.

It was a few hours before I dared to break the silence.

“So, what do you think?”

There was a long pause. “He wasn’t lying, was he,” she said without really asking the question. “It all sounds so ... so obscene. Yet the more I think about it, the more sense it makes.”

“What do you mean?”

She took another deep breath. “Before the party, I’ve never really known anyone who has been attacked by the Inquisition. I’ve known of a few people, people I had known in passing, or people I had met once or twice while I was considering Conclave membership, but never anyone personally. There never seemed to be any sense to their deaths. They were as careful with their powers as everybody else; they kept their heads down. They were ... small fish. At the same time, I know of people who have been wildly, dangerously careless with the use of their abilities. Recklessly so. Yet they are alive and well. If we were at war with the Inquisition, they wouldn’t kill small fish. They would use them to find bigger ones. I’m not a soldier, but that is simple intelligence gathering. That is really basic-level stuff, yet they weren’t doing that. From the outside, it always seemed like they were stumbling around in the dark. The Inquisition was a threat, a dangerous one, but it always seemed to me like their finding one of us was a question of luck, which makes their killing of insignificant Evos make even less sense.”

I nodded but let her carry on.

“Then there is the history of the Sect,” she continued. “There aren’t many left now who were still alive back then; my grandmother is one of them, she is almost 300 years old, but anytime she is ever asked about the Schism or the Conclave’s attacks on the Sect, she clams up. None of them want to talk about it, not with any amount of specificity anyway. The Sect starting that war, costing all those lives, does explain quite a lot. The same goes for the Conclave attacks on us. The first thing I told you about fighting is that it takes a lot for one Evo to kill another; I always wondered how those attacks were stopped. It was just like, one day, they gave up. Marco said that it was a Rogue faction and the Conclave stopped them, which made a little more sense, but the same flaw is still in that logic; it is still one Evo killing another. But the Inquisitors doing it, especially with Conclave help...”

“Explains a lot more,” I finished for her.

“Yeah.” She finally looked up from the floor and into my eyes. “But if that is true...”

“Then the rest of it may be true as well. That would mean that the Inquisition hasn’t been responsible for more than a handful of deaths in the last two centuries, and even those were authorized, maybe even aided, by the Conclave.”

“Which begs the question, who the fuck is Reniard Montreaux, and why the fuck did he attack you at the party?” Neither of us could even begin to answer. “Pete, this is beyond huge. This is the sort of information that could bring down the Conclave, maybe even the Sect as well. This is societal shift sort of stuff.”

“This is the sort of thing that people kill for,” I added, leveling my stare at her. The gulp of her throat told me she understood the implication. We were in danger just for knowing what we knew. And we had no idea who we were in danger from.

“We need to go to see the elders,” She finally said after another long pause and a deep breath. She waited for my inevitable dubious look. “I know, but I have known them all my life. I trust them.”

I sighed again; although I could concede that they seemed the least guilty out of everyone, so far, I still didn’t have enough information to count them as either allies or enemies. The simple fact was that I trusted nobody, with the exception of Charlotte. The Sect was definitely included. However, in the absence of a better idea, I agreed.

“C’mon, I’ll take you,” she smiled and stood, holding out her hand to help me up.

“What? Now?” I arched an eyebrow yet took her hand regardless.

“Do you have something better to do?”

“I mean, I was hoping for a shower and something to eat.”

She rolled her eyes but smiled. “Okay, fine. Wash the stink off you, then we go. We can pick up food on the way.”

The Sect, Charlotte explained to me as I groaned around a mouthful of burger, has stayed in the US up until the 1960s. But with the racial inequalities, the riots, and strife on the streets over civil rights and the whole Vietnam thing, with many of their members being of African American decent, the whole order packed up their shit and moved to - of all places - the UK. Their reasoning was that the Inquisition had confined itself mainly to the continent, and the Conclave had a presence pretty much everywhere, so the US was no more or less safe, by the mid-twentieth century, as anywhere else. Geographical proximity was seen as a net benefit to the Sect. Keeping everyone close ensured security. But with their Order spread all across the States, and with no consensus able to be reached on who moved and who didn’t, who moved to which cities, and so on, it was decided, and agreed, that everyone should relocate.

Plus, compared to the area the Sect was spread over, Britain was tiny.

Although she had mentioned they were all in the UK when she had first told me about them, Miguel’s revelation that they had started the Revolutionary War to escape Britain and the Conclave was one of those details that had flown under the radar in my mind. At least compared to everything else.

Even still, knowing that they were in the country, knowing that they couldn’t have been far away, I was surprised when less than 20 minutes after leaving the Queen’s Head, we pulled up outside the gates of a large, gated, elaborate stately home.

Sure! The Conclave meets in backwater labor clubs, and the Sect have fucking mansions. Who is trying to keep the low profile here? Why does this place reek of people who know they don’t have to worry about being discovered?

I mean, seriously! This place was fucking Huge. I had been to Longleat manor and Blenheim Palace as part of school trips like a lot of other kids when I was younger, this may not have quite rivaled them, but it was damn close. Well, in terms of the scale of the building, anyway. Longleat had grounds big enough to fit a safari park in it. Blenheim was even bigger. This place - I had no idea of the name - probably sat on grounds of about three-quarters of a square mile. Privacy was not going to be an issue here.

I was less surprised when the gates seemed to open of their own accord before the car came to a stop outside them. I’m sure the security of this place would have sensed Charlotte coming for quite some time before we actually arrived. I was a little more curious about what they would think of the tense, mistrustful ball of burning anger that was sitting in the car with her. If they could sense her, they sure as shit would be able to sense me.

Charlotte’s car pulled to a stop at the top of a curved, gravel driveway outside a pillared, alcoved entryway sitting atop three stone steps. Gargoyles stood on guard from the parapets of the manor, keeping watch over the driveway as the pair of us climbed out of the car. They must have been doing a pretty decent job because we hadn’t taken more than a few steps toward the door when it opened, and a woman who looked to be in her mid-fifties with platinum blonde hair stepped through it.

“Charlotte, darrrling.” she stretched out the last word in a way that made my skin crawl. Like one of those over-posh cretins that you see on bad TV shows. You know the type, the ones who try to appear to be rich and upper-class assholes if only to be seen as rich and upper-class. “It is always so lovely to see you.”

“Hello, Margaret,” Charlotte said as she flashed a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. The two women embraced and performed that ridiculous little ritual where they pretended to kiss each other’s cheeks without their lips actually touching skin. I looked on with an arched eyebrow. “This is Pete,” Charlotte finished after the little dance was complete. “He was the one I told you about.”

“Ah, yes, Mr. Roberts,” Margaret smiled politely. “It is very nice to meet you. The council of elders does not meet very often. You should feel honored that they have chosen to meet for you.” There was a challenge in her voice or at least a hint of disapproval. Unfortunately for her, her opinion of me meant absolutely nothing to me.

I gave my best impression of a polite smile back, one that didn’t only make no attempt to reach my own eyes but seemed to be actively avoiding them. I said nothing.

“Hmmmm,” she frowned. “Well, I should show you to the drawing room. The council is waiting for you.”

I nodded and gestured an arm toward the door, allowing her to go first. I flashed a glance to Charlotte, who was watching me with an amused-looking smirk on her face. She gave me a little nudge with her elbow as we fell in beside each other, a few steps behind Margaret.

Jesus, this woman even walks like she is looking down her nose at something.

After a few twists and turns down a mahogany-lined hallway, we approached a set of carved, ornate, and equally mahogany doors. Margaret pushed them both open and swept into the room, flashed her gaze around the group of men and women sitting at a large table, and then cleared her throat despite them all already looking at her. It was as if she was expecting credit for simply walking us this far.

“Ah, Mr. Roberts, thank you for agreeing to meet with us,” One of the men said as he stood. The suit he was wearing looked like it was worth more than most people’s houses. His thinning white hair was swept back on his scalp and perfectly groomed. I had no idea how old the man actually was; he was certainly an Evo - meaning he could realistically be any age - but he looked to be at least in his late sixties. Not only was he an Evo, but a powerful one at that; all of the people in the room were. They may not be anywhere near my power levels, but none of them were too far off from being able to give Uri a run for his money. “Thank you, Margaret,” He finished, giving the woman a cursory glance.

The woman nodded deeply, almost a bow, before turning to Charlotte. “Come along, dear,” she gave one of those hollow smiles.

“She stays,” The man said, leaving no mistake as to who was in charge. Margaret gave him a look like this was the most offensive thing she had ever heard. Like the elder had run over her cat and then slapped her across the face for making a mess of his tires.

“But...” she tried to speak, but another glance from the elder was enough to silence her words in her mouth. It was not like he was being harsh, or rude, or even condescending. He was simply speaking. Margaret, on the other hand, seemed to have a much higher opinion of her own importance than reality dictated, and if she wasn’t important, then the likes of Charlotte being more important than her was just too much to stomach. She huffed, turned, and stormed out of the room. I turned back to the man as he approached me, holding out his hand.