AN: First of all, thank you all so much for your mind-blowing, wonderful reviews! Thank you all so much for sharing your thoughts, I love all of you reviews to pieces. And I really wanted to answer all of them personally, but life got in the way. This time I'll try my best and actually get back to you.
XXI
Two weeks.
Two weeks and no sign of Tamsin.
She had virtually vanished into thin air, and Lauren was about to go mad with worry. She hadn't slept in days, and was practically running on caffeine and the work she had neglected over the last few weeks. Because there was nothing else to do – an unusual experience, considering that she was waking up nearly every night from bad dreams, only to relive the craziness of the last few days. Sometimes even weeks. Compartmentalizing emotions had always been one of her strong suits, but everything that had happened since Tamsin decided to ask for the human's help with the sphere had gotten under Lauren's skin.
She had hoped that she could come to terms with it once she'd be home again. With one or two, or possibly ten hot showers, cocoa, and the peace she found in her work. But no, the events of London clung to her. No matter how hard Lauren tried to be okay, they resurfaced every night, following her into her dreams.
Well - Not every single night. Bo had slept on her couch in the third one, "just in case my" -her voice had faltered, the tiniest fraction, Lauren wouldn't have noticed if she didn't know her inside out- "my father tries something." And a few hours later, around 3am, Lauren had crept downstairs to get a glass of water. She couldn't sleep. Bo had heard her, of course. The succubus appeared out of nowhere, and held her again for the few remaining hours of the night. They'd woken up on the couch, with the worst back pain Lauren had felt since those idiotic military folding cots.
And the hardest thing was that Lauren knew what she needed. No matter how often Bo offered to talk about it, it wasn't her Lauren wanted to speak to.
The human really did her best not to be that affected by Tamsin's sudden and unexpected disappearance. But she was. She had been angry at first, bordering on outright furious. Tamsin had said she'd turn up the next day. She had practically promised it. Lauren still remembered the look in her eyes that day at the Dal. But she hadn't showed up. And not the day after. Nor the one after that. And gradually, Lauren's anger had turned into something worse.
Tamsin's phone was turned off, her car unmoved and the few things she stored in her and Dyson's office remained untouched. No one knew where she was. The shapeshifter couldn't pick up her scent, nowhere in town. She didn't come to the Dal to get drunk. It was like a huge gaping hole in the earth had opened somewhere and swallowed her whole. Lauren simply didn't know what to think about it. And it drove her up the walls of her apartment.
She was there right now, Bo and Dyson as well – Dyson to make 'security checks' as he had called it, making the place as safe as possible against the Wanderer. If anything could do that. Bo was there because she hadn't left, basically, since the trio, or Kenzi's angels, as Kenzi was referring to them now much to Lauren's dismay and Bo's amusement, got back from London.
At the moment Dyson was distributing oblique crystals in her apartment. If someone had told her younger college-self that one day the ex of the person she had had the most important relationship of her life with, who coincidentally happened to be a member of a superhuman society that lived hidden among the oblivious rest of humanity; if someone had told Lauren that that man would be hiding calibrated moonstones to pick up Fae energy waves; Lauren would have laughed for two days straight and then suggested getting professional help. But here she was.
Standing in the kitchen, her hip against the counter and her hands nursing her third cup of coffee, staring into the distance. Bo was sitting on a barstool beside her, and had her watchful eyes on Lauren.
"I'll place a few upstairs, at the windows," Dyson announced and jogged up the stairs. Lauren was so absentminded she didn't even register fully what he'd said.
With the uneasiness clinging to every fibre of her body, she shook her head, failing once more to shrug it off. Her long blonde hair cascaded down on her shoulders. It had been quite some time since her last haircut, but then again there had never been much time for anything since Bo sauntered into her life.
Bo saw the gesture and glided up to her, to massage her neck. Her heels clicked softly on the floor, and the blonde couldn't help but close her eyes and remember how familiar that sounded, and felt. And one second later Bo's skilful fingers begun working on her back. Bo used her entire hand. Thumbs and palm, fingertips and heel, gently tracing the outline of Lauren's neck and shoulder muscles, putting exactly the right amount of pressure on the knots she found. Lauren nearly melted, and placed her cup on the countertop next to her. She could Bo's voice whispering in her ear. "Relax, Lauren. There's nothing else we can do right now."
Lauren had been about to lean back into her touch. There was an incredible tenderness in it. But Bo's words brought the tension back into her muscles. Lauren sighed softly, while she drew her fingers through her hair, to give the succubus better access to her neck. "I know, Bo, and that's exactly what's bothering me."
"But we can't help it. We don't know what else to do. Even Trick has no idea of how to handle the Wanderer."
"I hate not knowing."
"I know."
"But – ah -"
Bo had found a particularly painful spot, between the blonde's shoulder blades, and soothed away the tension with a few experienced strokes of her thumb. She chuckled when she heard Lauren respond so vocally under her hands, "I haven't had you moaning this loudly in a long time."
Both of them froze instantly. Her thumbs stopped circling and simply pressed against the blonde's back. Lauren couldn't see Bo's face, but she sure that the succubus was biting her lip right now, trying to think of a way to get out of the awkwardness her thoughtless comment had steered her into. And then, against all odds, Lauren felt a laugh rising in her chest. She didn't bother to stifle it. "Is that all you can think of right now?"
Bo relaxed audibly again. "Nothing else." But thankfully she didn't address the giant elephant in the room. At least not directly. Instead, her hands wandered down to Lauren's lower back. The blonde sucked her bottom lip between her teeth, closed her eyes, and inched closer to the succubus. It wasn't even a conscious decision. Her mind was somewhere else, but her body reacted like it always had in Bo's presence. Like a knee-jerk reaction.
Their kiss on the airplane and Bo's words hang in the air between them. And Lauren begun thinking of it as a silver lining on her horizon. A chance at peace. And happiness. Something she hadn't thought possible in quite that way. Bo had virtually offered herself, completely open and extremely vulnerable, to Lauren. The ball was in Lauren's corner of the court, and she knew it.
They were dancing on that invisible line again. Their balance could tip in either direction, and Lauren didn't want to screw it up. There was so much that could go wrong – Bo and she were tangled up in such a big muddled mess of feelings it was hard to see an easy way out of it. She just needed time. She needed to process London. She needed to understand that she killed six men and somehow, impossibly, drained their energy to bind it to that silver ring on her finger.
She needed to talk to Tamsin.
Finally Bo's hands fell away again. She didn't step back, though. Her presence was prickling on Lauren's skin, despite the inches of air and clothes separating them.
"Won't you tell me what's really bothering you?" Bo asked softly. "I see that you're worried about the Wanderer. But that's not everything, is it?"
Lauren hesitated a moment. When she opened her mouth again her voice was much more hoarse than intended. "It's just…"
"Yes?"
"I don't understand why Tamsin isn't showing up," Lauren admitted, and deflated a bit.
"You're worried about the Valkyrie?"
Lauren paused again. Then she turned around to face Bo. The succubus dark eyes didn't give much away, despite Lauren's searching gaze. "I don't know. All I can remember is her telling me that she'd come over the next day, and now she's gone."
"Mhm," Bo murmured, tilting her head to the side. "I see."
"You do?"
Bo ignored her question, and bit her bottom lip. "I know it's a shit situation, and the conclusion is even worse, but we might have to face the possibility that Tamsin ran."
"She didn't."
"We don't know that."
"She did not run!"
Bo nearly took a step back. She lifted her hands, in an attempt to try to calm the blonde. "Wow, Lauren, relax. I'm not trying to argue with you. I'm just pointing out a possibility."
Lauren ceased glaring at her and frowned instead. "Sorry, Bo, I don't want to argue either. I'm just tired of all this."
Bo chuckled, and took a step closer again. "I've noticed."
"What do you plan to do next?" Lauren sighed.
"Wait and see what happens?"
"We can't do that. What if something happened to her?"
"Tamsin is a big girl. She can watch out for herself."
"But what if she needs help?"
"She could come and ask for it."
Lauren sucked her lip between her teeth, about to argue back.
Dyson chose that moment to enter their conversation. He was wearing nothing but black jeans and a white shirt that was definitely one size too small. They could basically see the muscles in his arms and chest flex under skin with every movement he made. And Bo didn't deign him one look. He didn't seem to focus too much on Bo either. Maybe Kenzi was right. Maybe he was finally moving on. The human had mentioned that briefly the day before, and Lauren had filed away as one of the facts she was aware of but had no idea about how it was supposed to make her feel.
"I've put a stone in every room. If something Fae happens they'll tell us immediately."
"A Fae alarm?"
"As long as you don't want to stay in the Dal or at Bo's place," Dyson answered.
Bo smirked at Lauren. "The offer still holds."
"No, thanks," Lauren said, pretending that her decision to stay here wasn't about the same thing she had offered Tamsin. In case the Valkyrie ever turned up again.
"Do you need me any longer?" Dyson asked, putting on his jacket. "If not, I'll go looking for my partner."
"No, not really. Thanks for everything you did today, though. You're a great help," Lauren said.
"That's alright," Dyson answered and gave her a genuine smile. Softly, she smiled back. He was a Fae, and hadn't always been this kind to her, but she did think of him as someone she could be friends with. At some point.
Bo waved him goodbye, and a second later the shapeshifter left the flat. The door fell shut behind him, the sound echoing through the room and the silence in it. When Lauren looked back at Bo she found her eyes already on the blonde. She blinked and looked away quickly, rubbing the back of her neck.
"You know, I'd give everything to see your aura right now," Bo admitted.
Lauren frowned, and started pulling the rings off her finger. "Well, that's not too difficult –"
"No," the succubus stopped her, grasping Lauren's hands with her own. "I don't want to. I'd be like I was spying on your thoughts. I don't want to do that."
"Oh. Okay. Thank you," Lauren breathed, and felt a wide smile spreading over lips. "But why would you be interested in seeing it?
"Because I-" Bo begun, and stopped abruptly again. A few seconds later she finished, with a vague nod, her eyes somewhere on Lauren's left, "okay, I don't have a particular reason."
Lauren let it go. There was something else Bo had reminded her of; something she deserved to know. Her gaze dropped to the counter and she cleared her throat, her thumb drawing circles on the back of Bo's hand. "Uhm, Bo, there's something I wanted to talk to you about."
The ensuing silence was loaded. Lauren didn't stand it for long. She looked back up, and found Bo staring at her, wide eyed. Her eyes darted back and forth between Lauren's, searching for a sign of whatever had her using that quiet tone.
So Lauren just blurted it out. "Tamsin told me something else last night. I wanted to ask her about it again before talking to you, but now that she's not here it seems unfair to keep it from you."
"Yes?" Bo asked, and squeezed her hand reassuringly.
"I… Because of London," Lauren begun slowly and stopped again. Her gaze dropped to the ring on her fingers while her voice faded away. Bo's and her hands were still intertwined. She looked at them while she pulled herself together and whispered the next sentence. "I might be able of sustaining you now."
To her credit, Bo didn't react much. She didn't say anything at all, to be exact. She might have stopped breathing, though. Lauren wasn't sure. All she knew that Bo was sitting opposite her, her strong, warm hands wrapped around the human's like so many times before, and slowly came to realize that Lauren said something that, in the right circumstances, at the right time, would have changed everything. There was nothing about Bo's succubus nature that wasn't one hundred percent clear to Lauren, she was her doctor and knew her biology probably better than the Fae herself, but Bo's needs had been the first of many wedges that, once driven into their relationship, had splintered and burst it like a wine glass that had been dropped on time to often, finally breaking to a myriad shards, sharp and hurting.
Self-preservation had never been one of Lauren's strong suits, but she had learned in her time with Bo. She had learned from Bo.
(Tamsin might have been the catalyst, smug, and angry, and beautiful in her own right, but her speech about kissing Bo would never have had the same effect on its own.)
In the end, the blonde had to glance up again to make sure Bo had understood her.
Bo was looking at her with a swirling mixture of so many emotions in her eyes that for a second Lauren felt herself getting lost and drown in them. If she had spent an eternity and a day looking at Bo being this open and vulnerable and hers like this, she wouldn't have regretted it once second. In Bo's gaze there was a fair amount of surprise and confusion, maybe even hurt, and the tiniest fragment of fear lurking in the shadows, but one heartbeat all of that was completely swept away by the amount of warmth and joy and rapture and light; and an infinite amount of tenderness; and something else.
The curve of her lip twitched and turned upwards, and there was it again, the dazzlingly blinding smile Bo – sweet, sweet Bo - had reserved for her, and only for her. Accompanied by the dimple in her cheek. Lauren could see physically see how Bo allowed a giant weight to be lifted from her shoulders. Momentarily, Lauren did forget to breathe. She had literally lost track of how many times she had fallen for that woman, she couldn't even recall a time anymore when she hadn't felt that very particular pull in her stomach whenever she was around her, that woman had reached the point of being so beautiful that it was physically painful to see her, but the way Bo looked at her right now, damn. Breathless didn't even come close.
"So, given that I've heard you correctly, what exactly do you mean?" Bo managed to ask, eventually, and brought the blonde back out of her trance.
"It's the rings, apparently. It absorbed the life energy of six Berserks. That should suffice, shouldn't it?" Lauren asked with a somewhat painfully strained voice.
"It's that what Tamsin said?"
"Yeah."
Bo bit her lip. "Okay. Then let me say something as well."
Lauren noticed that she didn't comment on any of the many implications of the epiphany. But she let the succubus carry on.
"Lauren, I've seen her aura. It's blazing. I know what it feels like – hell, I have first-hand experience." Bo's voice faltered.
Lauren raised her eyebrows. "And what's that?"
Bo pulled herself together again, took a deep breath and looked the blonde straight in the eye. "I think she loves you."
Lauren held her gaze. And felt, almost physically, something in her ribcage crack, give way, and burst.
"Lauren, no listen to me," Bo hissed. Her grip of her fingers around Lauren's wrist strengthened, she felt that the blonde was about to pull away. "I honestly don't care what's going on between you and Tamsin – well, I do care of course, but it's none of my business and I'll step back as soon as you tell me to, but let me say this: Tamsin has given you the first sphere because she was forced to. If I remember correctly she'd have left without a single word if she had been able to. She just wanted you to find out how the sphere worked beforehand."
"That's not what happened," Lauren said, frowning. She noticed how hollow her voice sounded.
"I don't know what happened. But you can't deny that she used you," Bo insisted.
"Maybe in the beginning. But she changed. We all changed."
"Tamsin has always done what she wanted, and not necessarily what everyone else thought would be the best."
Lauren's jaw muscles clenched so much the tension was only a fraction short of smashing her teeth. She withdrew her hands out of Bo's and grasped the countertop at her side. If she had looked, she'd seen her knuckles turn white.
Of course she had noticed that Tamsin had a strange jealousy thing going on. How she behaved around Lauren, and how Bo's relationship with the blonde rubbed her entirely the wrong way – and that kiss at the warehouse – spoke volumes. But she'd never even dared to dream that it would go that far. A tiny part of her had also thought that it was about Bo. Not in a romantic way – Tamsin was most definitely not in love with the succubus, not after the dawning – but in some form of envy. From Tamsin's perspective it looked like Bo had done very much wrong in the past, but that never caught up with her, whereas the Valkyrie had to suffer tenfold for every mistake she had ever done.
"Lauren, maybe…" Bo's voice faltered and she bit her lip before she continued, not looking at the blonde, "maybe she thought that now that you have the sphere you don't need her anymore."
Lauren's face fell. For a second her mind tried to process those words. Then she felt like someone had emptied a bucket full of ice water on her head. Or maybe a bathtub.
Tamsin had always said that she had never planned to stay. At high speed, her mind was connecting the myriad of little dots, the hints Tamsin had played at with her words and her behaviour in the last few weeks, amounting to London and their conversation yesterday. See you around, Lauren.
But no, that couldn't be right. Tamsin would never leave her. She had promised that she'd stop running.
And yet, the nagging feeling in the back of Lauren's head wouldn't go away. Things just didn't add up.
And then there was the horrible, misguided, utterly absurd thought that she might not see her again. And it was worse than Lauren ever thought possible. Completely unjustifiable so. Yes, they had slept together – once, which Lauren didn't get tired of repeating. A single time. But they had developed a bond beyond that night. Lauren had somehow managed to begin thinking that they were more than one-time lovers.
Plus, Tamsin would not just vanish into thin air because they had found the second sphere. If there was one thing she knew, it was this. The human was absolutely positive about it.
"We have to find her," Lauren said, eerily calm. If only to make matters clear.
"Don't you think we should wait a bit longer? Maybe she needs time. Maybe she wanted to be on her own for a bit."
"She'd have said something. Why are you so keen on believing that she's done something selfish?"
"Because she always is!" Bo said sharply, and by the look that flashed over the face she regretted it immediately. "I'm sorry, Lauren, I didn't want to –"
Lauren didn't let her finish. "Dyson is already looking for her. We can take my car, and go as well."
She was about to march to the door, her mind swirling with an overwhelming cocktail of confusing thoughts and emotions and memories that didn't make sense, and yet, she was on the verge of seeing clear.
Bo stopped her by grasping her wrist. Her sleek fingers were wrapped around Lauren's arm before the blonde registered that the succubus had reached for her. "What?"
"Can we at least finish this conversation?" Bo asked.
Lauren frowned, but hesitated, and allowed Bo to keep her in place. The succubus let go of her hand again and started fidgeting from one leg to the other, while Lauren folded her arms over her chest.
"Lauren, I made mistakes in the past, but I learnt from them. What the dawning did to me was not a transformation. I'm still the same person, but I'm stronger than ever before. I can suck people's Chi across the room at will. Look." Suddenly her eyes flared up, bright and icy and incredibly blue. A second later they turned brown again, as fast as they'd changed colour the first time. "But I've got it under control. I can stop whenever I want to. Do you know why? Because I think of you, Lauren. The thought of you gives me strength." She hesitated for one heartbeat more, and then blurted out, without taking as much as a breath, "I love you."
Lauren blinked, she felt her eyes getting hot and stinging. "Oh, Bo," she whispered, and clenched her hands so hard she could feel her nails leaving crescent marks on her arms and palms wherever they touched. There couldn't have been a worse moment, but she felt her heart open and soak up every single one of the succubus' words. They threw her into a whole new set of confusing and conflicting emotions, but at least she was sure about how she felt towards Bo. Not that she was ready to articulate it. But her feelings for the succubus would never change, no matter what she said or did.
"I am the person I am today because of you, Lauren. Without you, I'd be less human. The dawning changed me. And without you, without you at my side or on my mind, anchoring me, I'd be a raging succubus – and I'd hurt people. But I never want to do that again."
Lauren was still speechless. Her eyes never left the succubus, and she could watch Bo's beginning to shine more and more as well. Bo's voice threatened to break and give away how afraid she felt.
"And I - I broke Nadia's curse."
"You – what?"
"I was the one who pulled that nail out of that damn post in Mail. To end the Dark Fae shaman's curse. I brought her back. I wasn't allowed to tell you, because it'd elicit a counter spell, or whatever, but I suppose it doesn't matter much now."
And there was a faint note of something shifting in the air around them. Something at the very edge of Lauren's senses. Something tugging at her, in the periphery. Bo seemed to feel it too, maybe even stronger, but with a single gesture of her hand and a flash of blue flickering up in her eyes, it flickered once and was gone. Bo was a post-dawning succubus. There was not much that could threaten her now. Then her eyes turned back to the heart-felt brown, focused entirely on the human.
But Lauren didn't concentrate on her, nor on the vanishing feeling of uneasiness that had tried to overcome them. Instead, the blonde's mind raced back to what she still thought of as the most horrible few weeks of her life. They had been, quite literally, life changing. Simultaneously, some of the most beautiful and then the most horrible moments of her life had been tied to the last days of Nadia's life. To her awakening.
And then Lauren had lost her for good. Nadia had been ripped out of life, the first time by the Light Ash, for five whole years, and then by the Garuda. And Lauren hadn't even gone through the typical stages of grief, something she could have coped with. It had been pain, just endless, all-consuming pain.
All the long yearned for moments Lauren had shared with Nadia might have happened while her girlfriend was possessed by a Fae. And those moments had included intimacy. Lauren had never felt as disgusted of the whole Fae world, and herself, as she had in the weeks following Nadia's death. And all of that came rushing back at her now, breaking out of the neat boxes she had tried to force and hide it in.
Finally, Lauren raised her eyes again and looked at Bo, rephrasing her question. "What did you do?"
Bo's eyes filled with tears. They started running down her cheeks, and when she tried to blink and wipe them away she smudged her mascara. "I am so sorry, Lauren. But I don't regret it. I did everything in my power to make you happy. I couldn't stand the thought of you being chained to the Light because of your girlfriend, much less her being in an eternal coma so you'd work for them. I hated it. So I did my best to help you, and it worked. But I am so sorry for what happened afterwards. Please, believe me, if I could I would go back in time and change everything. I didn't know about the Garuda. I didn't know what would happen. I am so sorry."
"You woke up Nadia, in the knowledge that I was in a relationship with her? That I'd go back to her?" Lauren's voice was cold and controlled, unlike Bo's.
"The thought hurt, of course, but it hurt more to see you unhappy. I want you happy, that is all that matters to me. All that ever has and always will."
Sharply, Lauren drew a deep breath of air and forced herself to focus. She had no idea how to even begin processing this. So she didn't, and let the waves, the white noise, wash over her head.
"Please, Lauren," Bo said and reached for her, "tell me what you're thinking."
Lauren flinched away from her. "Why are you telling me all this?" She hissed. "What are you expecting me to say? Thank you for interfering with my life without asking, again and again?"
"No! I'm just trying to be honest," the succubus pleaded.
"What the hell, Bo? You dump all this on me – after one and a half years – and expect me to be totally okay with this? I loved Nadia!"
"I know!"
"Apparently not. You would have spoken to me earlier!" Lauren exploded.
"I couldn't. I would have, if the choice had been mine to make."
"Your choice?! Of course it was! It's always your choice, your life, your fate. What about the rest of us? Don't we get to decide about our own lives?"
"Yes. Yes, you do!"
Lauren took a deep breath and tried to centre herself. "Why are you telling me this?"
And that was the moment when Bo cracked, and spilled out what she had been holding back. "Because I am afraid of losing you!" Bo yelled, her face flushed and her chest heaving up and down.
They stared at each other for a long moment, the silence between them getting heavier and heavier.
Then Bo opened her mouth again. "Because I'm shit at coping. Because I can't think when I believe you're in danger. Because I love you."
"Bo," Lauren murmured. She kept her voice purposefully low to avoid hearing it break. "You will never lose me. Never. But you can't expect me to come rushing back into your arms after everything that happened."
"I know. But I'm here for you now, and I promise to you that it will never happen again."
Lauren pinched the bridge of her nose. With her eyes closed, she murmured "sorry for exploding like this. But it's still a sensitive issue for me. And thank you for being honest with me. Finally."
Bo swallowed. She didn't have her voice fully under control. It faltered the tiniest bit, about to break if she hadn't been speaking very quietly. "Do you want me to leave so you can have time on your own?"
"No," Lauren said, sharply, and faster than intended. She just had to entangle her feelings from her rational thoughts, and what she felt in the past from the present. If there was a way they could muddle through this then it was side by side.
Bo remained silent.
"And Tamsin triggered this?" Lauren managed to force out, finally, and looked up again.
The succubus smiled. Very faintly. But it was there. "Yeah. Her ring, to be exact. When it gave me that electric shock on the airplane, after I kissed you. I still believe that it was because of the connection she was with you via that ring."
Lauren glanced at the smaller of the two silver bands at her hand. She scrutinized it closely. She hadn't given it much thought in the past, but there were a few confusing runes running around it all the time. Wavering and flickering faintly, but constantly there. She had translated them, but there was no sense she could discern in them. The kept flashing up at her, though, pulsing with a unnerving regularity. She had forced them at the back of her head - what use was in trying to figure them out without Tamsin here? It was the first ring, her ring, the one she had fished out of her sphere such a long time ago, that displayed the runes. She'd know what to do about it. But she wasn't here.
Bo's words had made Lauren think, though. A connection. That might explain something that had happened last week, a few days after Tamsin's disappearance.
Because there had this moment when, lost in thought, Lauren had played with the rings on her finger. She had pulled one of them off – the heavier, broader new one. Its colour, a watery silver, had vanished immediately, and turned into bleak grey. Lauren hadn't noticed it. With only the smaller, in comparison more fragile looking ring left on her finger a sudden wave of sadness and weariness had swept over her. She had felt like someone had physically switched off a few lights, tinting the room a few shades darker. A coldness had crept into her lungs, too. It drowned out all the normal, quiet sounds of the house around her, and replaced them with nauseating white noise. As fast as possible Lauren had slipped her own ring on again. The feeling had vanished as fast as it had overcome her.
Puzzled by the experience, she had planned on trying to figure out what it meant. But then something else had happened, workwise, and she had put it back at the back of her head.
That came haunting her now. It kind of slapped her right across the face, to be exact. A connection. Access to her Chi.
Lauren's heart missed a beat.
She had always linked the rings to the energy in the spheres, while it was the complete opposite way around. The spheres were linked to the energies of their carriers. Without her own, stronger ring overshadowing it and only Tamsin's ring on her finger, Lauren had experienced what the Valkyrie had felt that very moment.
"No," Lauren whispered, "no."
"What?" Alarmed, Bo looked back and forth between Lauren and the rings at her hands. This time Lauren didn't move away when she placed a hand on her arm, trying to calm her. "What's going on?"
"She went for him," Lauren forced out, her voice shaking. And then she gripped Bo's hand. "She went for your father. On her own."
…
They had to find her.
Lauren had never been more furious in her life. Two full weeks, and she had been sitting in her office or the lab, doing experiments on neuronal stem cells to calm down.
She had experienced anger before, of course - there had been a cold determination sitting in the centre of her chest, driven by strategic calculations and reason. She had nurtured it and used it like a shield. Nothing else would have brought her through the darkest times of her life - her brother's fate, the Fae, Nadia. Bo. Lauren compartmentalized.
But she had never felt like this. Surging through her veins, to singeing her bones, making the edges of her vision flicker. Her hands would have been shaking if she hadn't been gripping the steering wheel with so much force. There was a tremor in them nonetheless. Her breath came steadily and easily, but she could have been ten miles under water and it wouldn't have made any difference in the way she felt the pressure on her shoulders and around her chest.
Bo had thrown more than enough concerned looks at her, all the way while they rushed out of Lauren's flat to her car and then again on the road. Lucky for her, she hadn't said anything. Lauren would have exploded in her face, in all likelihood.
Because of all the thoughts running through her head the one that fuelled her the most was the fact that Lauren knew where they had to go. She had known it all along. It had been staring in her face - and she hadn't seen it. Those damn runes were coordinates. In a stupid code, but there was no other way for the ring to tell her. Feverish, she had looked up the pages on which the runes were explained in the biggest, oldest and most important book on Norse mythology. She had smuggled it out of the compound, it had been written by a Nordic Fae a few centuries ago and was only so well preserved because he had forced the essence of a domovoi into its covers, for protection. The number of the pages, in the order as they appeared on the ring (and shone brighter and brighter as Lauren deciphered them; a clear sign to her that she was on the right path, urging her own; it was its only available way of communication), had told her all the time where she could find Tamsin.
In a grim tone she had explained her suspicions to Bo while they hastened to the car and drove to the place Lauren had identified as the gate. It had to be be some form of gate.
There was one to Valhalla a few miles away, apparently, Dyson had looked there for Tamsin once, but didn't pick up any trace of her. Of course. It was the exit, where you get washed up and spat out. If you ever made it out again.
It wasn't the entrance.
They didn't have to look long for the second gate, the one Lauren had in mind. Normally, these kinds of doors were held open by lightning bird feathers, if it wasn't a hub like the travel agents like the Bashira Falak Mana maintained. And there were probably loads of them around. If you knew where to look. Under different circumstances Lauren might have told Bo that C.S. Lewis, who had a few Fae genes and more books from his mother, had used them as inspiration for his gates to Narnia and other places. Bo would had grinned to herself, murmured "of course," and dropped a comment or two about Stargate, and Lauren would have rolled her eyes at her.
But here they were, and Lauren's mind was racing. The only problem was that she had no idea where the gate would lead them. It could be everywhere on the globe - and beyond. She didn't want to think about that. And surely, the connection between their rings wouldn't have worked if Tamsin had left earth for some other place.
The gate they found didn't look particularly promising. Just an old garage, rusty and graffiti all over it, but there were runes among those letters, and this time Lauren had no trouble figuring out what they meant. They welcomed them.
Bo shifted uncomfortably at her side while Lauren parked the car. "Are you sure we should be doing this?"
"There's no other way," Lauren said, and clenched her jaw even more. "We have lost too much time already. Every second counts."
They left the car, its doors falling shut behind them while they walked towards the runes on the metal garage door. Lauren didn't know how she felt. The boiling anger had calmed down a bit. It was still there, right underneath the surface, but she'd have felt better if she could have called it a strange form of roaring courage, or something. But it wasn't. It was fuelled by pain and regret and the inexplicable fear of losing a friend and a tad of anger at the unfairness of the world in general. She had allowed fate to play with her too long. She had no idea why exactly Tamsin had thought it would be a good idea to go for Bo's father without their help, but she was not going to let her get away with it. She was done with being a pawn in someone else's plans.
She'd get in there, get Tamsin out of the greedy hands of that megalomaniac bastard, if it was the last thing she did.