Brides of the Kindred(117)

The man with black and red eyes nodded approvingly. “Very good. I advise you to remain calm and not fight the situation. Your fear will only stimulate the AllFather and he is much less likely to be lenient when he is stimulated.” Standing up, out of the shuttle, he was even taller than she’d first thought. The black cape he wore covered his broad shoulders and fell to his calves, making him look positively enormous and even more menacing, if that was possible.

“What are you talking about? What does the…the AllFather want with me?” Liv forced herself to lift her chin and stare him in his strange red and black eyes, ignoring the silent guards who were still holding her.

“To see if you are the one.” He jerked his head at her guards and turned.

“The one what?” Liv protested as the two silent, grey-skinned guards dragged her along.

“The one who is prophesied.”

Though she was still scared to death, Liv was also getting frustrated. “Prophesied to do what?”

He turned his head and looked back at her. “That remains to be seen. Perhaps much, perhaps little. But either way you can be certain it will be less painful if you just submit.”

Liv opened her mouth to ask more questions and then closed it again. God, what was she going to do? They must have mistaken her for someone else. But how could she convince Mr. Tall Dark and Scary of that? And what would the AllFather do to her?

She remembered well the scenes from her dream-sharing with Baird. The cavernous shadowy room with the huge screen projecting his thoughts and memories. The glowing wires coming out of his skin…No, don’t think of that. Liv tried to concentrate on the scenery around her instead but it wasn’t much help.

The interior of the Scourge ship was dark and silent. The guards dragged her through claustrophobically narrow metal corridors which connected vast rooms filled with huge, complicated machinery. Liv saw more grey-skinned beings working on the equipment but none of them spoke a word, even to each other. They shambled about their tasks with their heads bowed like people working in their sleep. It was eerie—like watching a factory full of zombies. And what was the machinery for? Did it run the ship? Or was there some other purpose for the enormous, silent mechanisms she was seeing?

She was afraid to know the answer and anyway, she was only half interested in the question. Looming much larger in her mind was her eventual fate. What was the leader of the Scourge going to do to her when he found out he had the wrong girl? And who was the right girl, for that matter?

The trip seemed to take forever but it was still over much too soon. Before she knew it, they were standing in front of a pair of double doors that looked to be four stories high. The doors were dark grey metal with strange designs etched in glowing neon green. Liv wondered if the designs were some kind of decoration or alien script. She didn’t get a chance to stare at them long, however. The tall man with the black and red eyes made a curt motion with one hand and they swung open silently revealing a large round room.

A blast of something came out of the vast shadowy space—nothing tangible that she could see or smell but something nonetheless. To Liv it felt like her entire body had been stroked with a giant hand, one that was cold and clammy to the touch. A feeling of horror like nothing she had ever felt before filled her. A sense that whatever was behind those glowing green doors was evil and meant her harm.

Liv sagged in the guards’ grip, her knees giving way as a nameless dread filled her. Her mind was suddenly full of tragedy, darkness, death. She couldn’t go in there and face the source of those emotions which she understood instinctively weren’t really hers. Couldn’t come face to face with any being that was capable of causing so much fear and distress without even touching her—she just couldn’t.

“Do not worry about the fear you feel—it is simply the AllFather’s aura,” her captor said casually, motioning for the guards to drag her inside the room. “He is one of the Old Ones and does not need a link to harvest emotions.”

Liv didn’t care what he needed to harvest—all she knew was that her mind kept filling up with that horrible, nameless dread, making it almost impossible to think. It was like someone was pouring black, cloudy water into her skull, coloring everything with its murky presence. “Please,” she whispered through trembling lips. “Please, no. I’m not who you think. There must be some…some mistake.”

“We shall see.” Her captor nodded at the guards. “Bring her before the throne and leave her there. The AllFather’s aura will keep her from trying anything rash.”