72. Ell-rom

72

ELL-ROM

E ll-rom did his best to follow the conversation around the table, and most of the time, the earpieces did a good job of translating for him. The problem was when people talked simultaneously. The earpieces jumbled what they were picking up and provided him with a salad of words. If the clan's tech was there, he would have told him that the earpieces needed modification.

Still, he'd had no trouble understanding the exchange about Jasmine volunteering to take the tracker into her body, and he was grateful to Kian for suggesting an alternative. But then Kian had added that the scumbags he wanted to use to test the trackers were selling children, and Ell-rom's rage reached critical boiling point.

As his hand tightened around Jasmine's, she turned to him with alarm in her eyes. "You need to relax, love. Getting so upset is not good for you."

Of course it wasn't good. Was she worried about his supposed ability to kill with a thought?

He didn't know who to direct his thoughts at, so they were safe, but if they were with him in this room and he knew who they were, they would be dead now, no thought-killing ability needed.

His bare hands and fangs would have sufficed.

"I'm okay," he whispered. "I just need to know who is selling children and why." He paused, brow furrowing as he tried to make sense of what he'd heard. "There was that word that the translator must have misunderstood." He turned to Kian. "Why are childish people buying children? And how is it possible to buy and sell people?"

A heavy silence fell over the table. Ell-rom looked around, noting the grim expressions on everyone's faces. Kian's eyes blazed with inner light, and his fangs, which had been slightly elongated since he had started talking about the sellers of people, were getting longer.

Ell-rom had a feeling that his fangs were similarly extended, and he lifted the hand that wasn't holding Jasmine's to his mouth to check. They weren't protruding over his lower lip yet, which happened when they were fully elongated, but they were definitely and noticeably long.

"The word your earpieces translated erroneously did not mean people who act like children. It meant deviants who are attracted to children. Some of them manage to suppress their depraved urges, but others buy children and abuse them, sexually and otherwise."

It took him a moment to process what Kian had said, and as understanding dawned, Ell-rom felt a surge of disgust and burning anger that seemed to rise from the very core of his being.

He was dimly aware of his physical reaction, the bile rising up his throat and the further elongation of his fangs, but these sensations were secondary to the storm of emotions raging within him.

"What is this depravity?" he demanded, his voice a low growl. "How can this be allowed?"

Kian's expression hardened. "It's not, but there is not enough law enforcement dedicated to protecting children and women. Not here in the US and even less so in other parts of the world." He paused, running a hand through his hair in frustration. "Lately, it feels like it's open season on the defenseless everywhere. I don't know what has happened to all the good people in the world. Have they all been cowed into submission? Into accepting a reality where depravity is more and more accepted, even celebrated, and everything that's morally right is turned on its head and called wrong?"

Ell-rom struggled to process Kian's words. In his limited exposure to this world, he had met people who all seemed decent and kind. Jasmine had filled his head with Earth's diverse cultures and natural habitats, but no one had mentioned that this planet also harbored demonic monsters.

He couldn't reconcile that kind of darkness with the future he imagined for himself and Jasmine.

For Morelle.

"I cannot believe that such evil exists."

Ell-rom looked around the table, taking in the faces of those gathered. The gods, Aru, Negal, and Dagor, wore expressions of sorrow, but he could see that the state of affairs on Earth didn't cut them as deeply as it cut Kian and Annani. The three newly arrived gods cared, but they didn't consider humans their people, they didn't feel responsible for them, and they probably deemed them an inferior species.

It was also possible that they had seen much worse on other worlds, so Earth's evils didn't faze them.

Annani, on the other hand, had tears in her eyes, and so had Kian's wife, and the gods' mates just looked like they were barely holding them in.

He turned to Jasmine, expecting the same sadness, but found fury.

Strangely, her anger seemed to cool his down. It was as if he had to get ahold of his emotions so he could help her get ahold of hers.

"Are you okay?"

She shook her head. "I need a moment to calm down."

Suddenly, he wondered how close to home this issue hit for her. Had she seen the effects of this evil? Had she, perhaps, been touched by it personally?

The thought burned through his momentary calm and made his blood boil. His vision was tinged with a red haze of fury, and he felt a surge of power building within him. There was pressure behind his eyes that he hadn't felt before, and he feared that his deadly ability was trying to manifest.

Panic seized him, but the rage refused to recede.

"Ell-rom," Jasmine's voice cut through the haze. She cupped his cheek and turned his face toward her. "Take a deep breath. Just breathe with me, okay?"

"Inhale and exhale, slow and steady, in and out…"

He focused on her face, on the sound of her voice, using it as an anchor to pull himself back from the brink. Slowly, he felt the pressure recede, his fangs retract, and the burning fade from behind his eyes.

"I'm sorry," he murmured, suddenly aware of the concerned looks from around the table. "I lost control for a moment."

"Your reaction is natural," Kian said.

He had mistaken what had just happened as the normal anger of a good male in the face of cruelty perpetrated against the defenseless.

Ell-rom wished it was just that, but he knew it wasn't. He'd felt the surge of power, and there had been nothing normal about it.

"What kind of society allows its young to be abused?" he asked.

"A collapsing society." Kian's tone was grim. "The clan is doing all that we can to hold back the tsunami of evil, but there aren't enough of us to put even a dent in it."