9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9

Debbie, Tarkers and Wakado arrived the next day; they must have dropped everything to come running and, as Queen, I appreciated their haste and show of loyalty. As requested, this time they came alone. Greg hustled them into my office with Jacob in tow, and I summoned Ben to join us.

When we were all in my office, I began. ‘Thanks for coming here, gentlemen. It seems only right that you are part of this since most of you were with me when I went to see the Librarian. In some ways that started it all. I'll tell you a little about the question I asked, and what it means for us.'

I sat back in my big-boss chair. ‘I can't tell you the specifics of the question or the answer, so we're going to speak in broad terms. I had a conversation about the lost orb.'

‘The Orb of Lochlan,' Wakado breathed, leaning forward.

‘Right, that's the one. It's time for a little history, which you may or may not know, so apologies if I'm teaching a dragon to hoard.' I cleared my throat. ‘The orb, when combined with the seat of power, allowed the seat of power to speak to all wolves. Not only that, it allowed the seat of power to connect to the Great Pack in order to release our wolves' souls back to it. Finally, the orb allowed wolves to access their dormant air powers.

‘The orb's importance can't be overstated. We're lucky in that Nina – the seat of power – can still send souls to the Great Pack by using muscle memory, but without the orb she can't speak to other wolves except for me and David. Equally importantly, without it we can't access our lost air powers.' I had to tread carefully here. I couldn't mention the Third realm to anyone who didn't know about it, and the others only had one triangle on their head. ‘For that reason, with the Librarian's help, we managed to identify the thief.' I kept things deliberately vague. Wakado's eyebrow went up a little, but he didn't ask questions; he knew better.

‘I recognised the family line right away,' Greg interjected. He was still glancing at the security console as he spoke. ‘He was a Hunter, one of Geneve's brethren.'

‘Geneve the ancient, powerful dragon Elder who just removed Emory from power?' Debbie asked faintly.

‘One and the same,' I agreed. ‘And for the record she's a total bitch, which is why I have absolutely zero compunction in stealing something from her. Especially something that shouldn't have been hers to begin with.'

There was a knock on the door and David poked his head into the room. ‘Sorry,' he said when he saw everyone gathered in my office. He pushed his glasses back up his nose and pointed at the security desk. ‘I was just coming to man the console.'

Greg considered it. ‘Probably a good idea, then my focus doesn't need to be divided.' He jerked his head towards the desk. David scurried to sit down and started clicking his way through various camera views.

I trusted David. When we'd been trying to identify the Domini mole by putting a camera in the pack lounge to see who came to check if a rose had been placed on the mantlepiece, he'd gone to bed early. Plus, he'd been horrified at the destruction of the garden and his plants. It had obviously been agony for him to watch his hard work go up in flames.

‘Discretion is required,' I said to him.

He nodded. ‘Of course, Alpha.' He turned back to the screen.

Greg turned away from the console to face us as I started speaking again. ‘Geneve stole the orb from us, and now we're going to steal it back.'

‘It's not theft if she stole it from us in the first place, Your Maj,' Tarkers objected. ‘It is reacquisition.'

I smiled at him. ‘Call it what you will – I couldn't give a fuck. The point is that the orb is ours and we're going to get it.'

I nodded to Greg and he took over the briefing. ‘As you know, I am former brethren. As such, I've been privy to a great deal of sensitive information over the years, sensitive information that we can now use.'

Debbie grinned. ‘I like the way this is going.'

‘Me too.' Tarkers smirked and rubbed his hands in mock glee.

‘Like all Elders, Geneve has grown more paranoid with age, and for us that's a good thing. She no longer protects her hoard with runes because she doesn't trust the witches.'

Tarkers made a noise of disbelief. ‘For real?'

‘Indeed,' Greg confirmed. ‘She's also made plenty of enemies during her long life. She has sticky fingers, and we're not the only ones she has stolen from. By all accounts, she's also taken a precious dwarven artefact that they want to get back. '

Wakado sat back. ‘Now we're cooking. If she doesn't use runes anymore, we can use the dwarves to tunnel right into the hoard.'

Greg grinned. ‘Bingo.'

‘Why haven't they gone after their treasures themselves?' Tarkers asked dubiously.

‘They don't know she's stopped runing,' Greg replied. ‘About sixty years ago the dwarves tried to recover the artefact but they were unsuccessful.'

‘What happened to them?' Debbie asked.

Greg grimaced. ‘There was a total loss of life.'

‘Yeesh,' Tarkers breathed. ‘The whole recovery team died? Just how sure are you about this runing thing?'

‘All but certain. I rang a witch friend,' I told him. ‘She said that there wasn't a record of a recent runing request near Castell Dinas Bran. By "recent", she meant that there hadn't been one for more than a decade.' I paused. ‘That doesn't discount the possibility of a black witch runing the castle, or even a white witch doing it off the books.'

Greg spoke up again. ‘She might not have runes securing her hoard, but she does have an army of deadly, highly trained brethren soldiers.'

‘That's not good,' Debbie complained. ‘I much prefer my enemies to have incompetent soldiers.'

Wakado snickered. ‘Me too.'

‘Competent soldiers aren't a problem,' Greg said. ‘But we're going to need a diversion.' He grinned. ‘Luckily, I'm an explosives expert and we have some aerial support.'

He nodded towards Jacob. ‘I'm going to create some bangs and whistles, and my airborne friends here are going to drop smoke bombs to keep them busy.' He paused. ‘Where possible, we are aiming to distract rather than destroy. We want to draw the brethren away from Castell Dinas Bran, but we don't want to kill them. Lethal force is a last resort.'

‘As it should always be,' Wakado rumbled.

‘Indeed.'

I looked at my brother. ‘How are we doing so far?'

Ben nodded. ‘Sounds good to me.' He was pale and sitting on his hands, rocking in his seat.

He's hiding something, Esme noted quietly.

Agreed. But is it something we need to know or something that would fuck up everything if we knew it?

She shrugged. If he's not willing to tell us then it doesn't matter which it is. As usual, she was right.

Greg went on. ‘I want Debbie and Wakado with me to help cause chaos, together with Jacob and his team. In the meantime, Lucy, Tarkers and Ben will sneak down the tunnel created by the dwarves.'

He paused. ‘Because of the previous … incident … the dwarves are willing to tunnel to the hoard but they won't break through, so we'll need to use explosives for the final breach. We'll need to time that explosion precisely to the one that I'm going to set off to draw attention to me. You then get into the hoard, grab the orb and go. We'll continue to engage the brethren soldiers until you confirm you're safely out of the hoard, then we extract the distraction team with the help of the dark seraph and get the hell out of Dodge.'

‘Any questions?' I asked.

‘When are we doing this?' Debbie asked.

‘Did any of you have any particular plans for tonight?' I queried archly.

At that moment there was a knock on the door and Seren and Marissa burst in, visibly agitated. ‘What's wrong?' I demanded.

‘Daniella is missing,' Seren burst out.

‘She hasn't been seen since the early hours this morning,' Marissa chimed in. She was wringing her hands.

Goddamn it.