THE DESTROYER: By Lori Titus
Wednesday, February 29th, 2012The Marradith Ryder Series: The Art of Shadows, Part 70
David started the car. Marradith waited until they got back onto the road before speaking again.
“Spill,” she said.
David gave her a sidelong glance. He could feel her anger like heat in the close space between them, but he hoped that if he chose his words carefully, she’d listen.
“You know that my parents were both Sojourner,” he said. “Do you ever wonder how they met?”
Marradith’s brow wrinkled. “Well I thought that was fairly obvious. Didn’t they work together?”
“After they were married, they occassionally worked assignments together. But that’s not how it started. You know that The Circle used to have us killed? They were very successful in reducing our numbers. Some years ago, the Sojourners decided to do the exact opposite. There was a program designed to have Lamia breeded.”
“Bred…like livestock?”
David stroked the wheel. “They would never call it that. It wasn’t exactly like slavery. They chose people to be married off, but the families were kept together. You know, they are all about keeping families together. How else do you manage to get generations of new blood to use as agents? At least, for our kind.”
“Alright. But your parents. They seemed happy together. I did gather that much from what I saw of your memories.”
“They were. It was fortunate that they were well suited for each other, and that they had a spark. They take personality traits into consideration when they match people up. Just as a dating service would.”
“I hadn’t heard about that, but I don’t find it shocking,” Marradith said. “What does Adam and Xia have to do with what you are telling me?”
“When my father was killed, I was only nine years old,” David continued. “There had been some other killings within our community, amongst families that we knew of. Lamia under the care of the Sojourners were a very tight group at that time. It wasn’t until the murders started again that the families started to spread out. Before my Father died, I heard talk about Adam, and how he was using Lamia for his purposes. Or trying to.”
“For what, exactly?”
“Adam is a demon of the highest order. He can shapeshift. He can inhabit dead bodies. But he can move across universes, and that’s where his greatest power lies.”
“Wait a minute. This is sounding a lot like the myth of the Destroyer,” Marradith said softly. “There’s a reason they call it a MYTH.”
“I’m telling you what I know,” he said softly. “Adam moves across universes and changes things. Unravels timelines. We don’t know why exactly, but he became obsessed with the idea of destroying Lamia. Within our community, we believed that there was a specific person that he was looking for. But that he was settling for killing as many of us as he could.”
“How do they know? Was this all folklore?”
“I can’t tell you exactly how the adults knew about this, but there had to be something written somewhere.”
“And how does Xia fit in?”
“She’s a similar being to Adam. A lesser demon than he is, a minion of sorts, but still extraordinarilly powerful. She is the one that came for Rafael and nearly killed him in New York.”
“If she is so powerful, how come she didn’t get away with it?”
David sighed. “She was supposed to enforce a contract that was no longer valid, so Rafael had a chance to live. Don’t be fooled. She is not likely to mess up again any time soon.”
“Alright. So you believe what you saw was Adam, the night your Father died. How can you be sure? If you heard all these stories just before it happened, is it possible you thought you saw something that looked like what people were describing?”
“Some things you just know, Marradith.”
“Alright. So what happened after your Dad was killed?”
“My mother went to Rafael. And he didn’t believe her. There was some fuss about the Sojourners looking into it, but that was bullshit. They sent out a couple of agents to question people, but they didn’t turn up anything. In the end, they said they couldn’t find the killer, but that they believed it was not done by a Supernatural.”
“You mentioned Justin…”
“Yes. But in fairness to him, he wasn’t the lead on that case. But I still didn’t trust going to him with my story. When your Mother picked me to be your guard, it seemed like fate. I have wanted to meet you for a long time, and this was an easy way to do it.”
“Why?”
“I needed to know if you are a match for what may be coming. Adam may have slowed his activities down, but I don’t believe he has stopped for one minute. This recent attempt on Rafael is a sign of that. Adam doesn’t like Castillo, that’s for sure, though I can’t tell you why.”
“You said that Justin wasn’t the lead on the investigation into your Father’s death. Who was?”
“Fiona Shepherd,” he replied. “She was the head of the program that matched and mated the Lamia together, and we knew as soon as she was on the scene that a cover up was in play. It was her project, she wasn’t going to admit that things had gone so horribly wrong, or that there was a threat they were unable to protect us from.”
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©2012 Lori Titus
Hunting in Closed Spaces: The Marradith Ryder Series is now available in book and Kindle form on Amazon.com . Other projects include Harmony’s Prophecy, which she co-authored with Angel Brown Kemph. Follow the author on Twitter as Loribeth215.
