Star Angel: Return to Anitra (Star Angel Book 2) by McDaniel David G

Author:McDaniel, David G [McDaniel, David G]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Black Helm Publishing
Published: 2015-10-14T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 23: NIGHT OF THE BEAST

Lindin took a sip of tea; looked again at the screen of information on the desk before him. Displayed was a field brief from agents tasked with liaising between his Venatres Intelligence Command and the small group of Dominion revolutionaries across the sea known as the Conclave. The Conclave who, while admittedly useless in terms of a real, active rebellion, had proven useful in other ways, most notably when fencing the contacts and information needed to execute Lindin’s grand plan to steal the Holy Relic: The Icon, closely guarded treasure of the Dominion. That plan nearly succeeded those many months ago, when Horus—Zac, he reminded himself—stole the thing right out of its tightly guarded spot at the heart of the Dominion’s Imperial Compound, almost getting it into Lindin’s hands.

But somehow the initial promise of that operation went terribly wrong. Rather than bring it directly to Lindin and company Zac used it to flee and, unexpectedly, returned, bringing a girl with him. A girl that, frustratingly, ended up a force more powerful than they could ever have expected and, at the end of it all, vanished with the Icon. Thus ending any hope to which Lindin held. Success, elusive—so elusive!—so close yet, ultimately, the gambit failed. The Icon was gone, lost forever.

Until now.

As if the forces of cosmic fate were teasing him, laughing at their favorite plaything—the gullible Lindin—now … the Icon was back. Two Icons. The one once held by the Dominion plus another, an Icon from “Earth”.

Brought back by the same girl that took the original.

Jessica.

In the wake of that news Lindin fought a cascade of powerful emotions. Working to remain calm even as he waited for the arrangement of passage and the arrival of those treasures, leaving to fate the intervening moments over which he had little control. By report the girl, Jessica, was, even now, on her way to him. Aboard some nondescript freighter out to sea. And so his excitement was, again, inflamed, barely contained, along with the fear that all might be lost.

It was a difficult time.

Jessica. He remembered her vividly. A face he would never forget. Not because she was too young to be in the middle of all this, so alien and yet so human—the first visitor to Anitra since the Emperor himself. Not because she was memorably … compelling, though she was; a timid teenage girl, unassuming, trapped by circumstance yet quickly, through her own determination, becoming the center of everything. Nor did he remember her so well because she’d caused so much trouble—though surely she had.

No, he could not forget her simply because of the first time he looked into her eyes. Such depth to that stare, a disarming intensity that, at first, seemed little more than the fear of being so far from her known elements (he assumed) but, only later realized was, in fact, something greater. As if she was the one calling the shots. One step ahead of everything—and everyone. It was this

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