Page 35 of Dark Destiny: The Fates' Bargain

How would she even find out? Who would she ask?

She looked down the aisle and saw Bowen, sitting two rows back beside another Guardian. Bowen would know or would know how to find out. She could ask him.

Later. When Tomek was awake, and she could walk up to the Guardian. She wasn't going to shout her question for everyone to hear.

The bus slowed, turned, and then, without warning, the windows turned opaque, as if coated with a white-gray film.

The women who had noticed gasped, and Zohara's hand shot out to grip the seat in front of her.

"It's all right," Yamanu said from the front of the bus, his voice calm and unhurried, and carrying a slight musical note. He said it first in English, then again in the old tongue, slower, his accent mangling the vowels but conveying the meaning clear enough. "Nothing is wrong. It is a security measure. The entrance to the village is a secret, even from its residents. No one is allowed to see where the entrance to the tunnel is. The windows will clear when we reach the garage."

Sullha released a breath and slumped in her seat.

Just a security measure. She'd lived her whole life in a secure enclosure, and she knew all about security measures. They served two purposes: to keep undesirable elements out and to keep the inhabitants in. And if this place was so secure that even those who lived there didn't know how to get in, then why did they insist on keeping Yaaf and his friends out?

Yaaf and his friends belonged in the undesirable category, or at least the suspected category, but what exactly did these people think that they would do to them?

This too she would have to ask Bowen when she had a chance.

The bus entered a tunnel, the windows that had been milky white turning dark gray and the temperature dropping. Then the bus came to a stop, and a moment later, a hydraulic sound was followed by a lurch, and Sullha's stomach dropped toward her feet.

They were going up.

The bus was not moving. She was certain of that, because nothing rolled beneath them and the engine had gone quiet, and yet the whole vehicle was rising, smoothly and steadily.

Around her, the women grabbed for each other and for their seats. Someone made a frightened sound. Sullha pressed her palm flat against the seat in front of her and made herself breathe, because they had put the women on this bus and driven them into a mountain, and if the clan had wanted to harm them, there had been a hundred easier ways.

Something was carrying them. That was the only explanation. A platform, some enormous machine built for the purpose of lifting an entire bus and everyone in it, and she added it tothe list of things she would ask Bowen about when she got the chance, a list that had grown longer every hour since the boat.

When the windows finally cleared, they were in an underground garage, rolling through a cavern of concrete pillars, painted lines, and rows of parked vehicles.

"Tomek." She smoothed his hair back from his forehead. "Wake up, sweetheart. We're here."

He blinked and then sat up and pressed his face to the window. "Where's here?"

"Somewhere under the village. We go up from here."

"Up the stairs?"

"I don't know. It felt like some sort of machine lifted the whole bus. You slept through it."

He pouted. "Why didn't you wake me up?"

"There was nothing to see. The windows turned the color of milk. The glass wasn't see-through."

He looked at the window that was clear now, then back at her, and frowned. "Did you fall asleep, Mama? It must have been a dream."

It certainly felt like it. Any moment now she would wake up and find herself in the tiny room in the enclosure that she'd shared with Tomek.

They left the bus, a group of scared women, several burly Guardians who looked happy to be back home, and two of the strange Kra-ell warriors, who she thought were male but wasn't sure. They were all tall and unnaturally thin, and wore their hair long, gathered in a ponytail. The only difference she'd noticedbetween males and females was that females' facial features were more delicate and prettier. It had been Bowen who had ended up telling her about the Kra-ell and how the clan had found them, or rather how they had found the clan. It was such a fascinating story, and she was sure there was much more to it than the shortened version Bowen had given her while Tomek had been asleep on the plane.

Three elevators were more than enough to carry all of them up to the surface, and as she entered the center one with Tomek's hand clutched in hers, she caught her reflection in the mirror and winced.

Her arrival in her new world was not going to be dignified.

She was grateful for the clothes she'd been given in Safe Harbor, but the shirt hung off her shoulders like a tent, the trousers stayed up only because she'd rolled the waistband three times, and the flip-flops on her feet were so oversized that she'd developed a kind of sliding shuffle just to keep them from escaping.

There was nothing to be done about it though, so when the doors opened, she lifted her chin and shuffled forward.