Page 49 of House of Kallan
“Oh yeah, but we already covered that, really. If we count Cobalt’s abduction and believed death, that might have been the beginning,” Toby said. “But I think Ady’s arrival and then subsequent abduction was what truly prompted us to take action.”
“Okay, I know that one,” I said.
“Actually, maybe you don’t know it as you think you do,” Hawthorn said. “Ady wasn’t actually abducted. It began slightly differently. One of our friends, Shiloh Aves, was attacked and abducted by ORKA. In order to get him back, Ady revealed to us that she was a double agent with ORKA and as a big group, we concocted that, given the information she had available at the time through their database, there wasn’t a lot known about demons so she’d bring her nightmare in as a basic, common demon and turn him over. That’s what happened, but as she was writing up her report, Silence showed up and left Shiloh in favor of bringing the banshee they’d lost some ten or more years ago back.”
“Oh, no,” I said. “How did Silence know she was there?”
“Exactly!” Toby said.
“We don’t know the answer,” Hadrian said. “So much of what we speculate on is related to just that. We’re creating connections in the only way we truly understand them to relate. But the bottom line is that Silencesomehowgot word that there was an ice phoenix at this ORKA site; but, from what Shiloh remembers, he thinks they thought he was pretty much dead because the dumbass humans were pumping him full of pain drugs that did nothing but cause him more pain. He couldn’t respawn there, primarily because of the drugs keeping him in a very ugly state.”
“Ady said that they somehow got word that there was an agent there who just turned in a demon. They took no interest in even seeing the demon, but went straight to the cameras to find Ady,” Hawthorn said.
“And that leads us back to Ryker’s rescue,” I said.
“Yes,” Toby said. “While that seems like it should be good enough, since then there has been much more. Though I suppose Obry and Jennings were probably strictly ORKA related.”
Much of the room nodded.
“During the almost year and a half since the Ady thing—during which time Obry Aves and Jennings Wyn, new wives at the time to some of our family friends were taken by ORKA as Toby said—Silence was quiet. No activity to speak of,” Hadrian said. “But then our friends, the Igarashis, were celebrating the arrival of their new wife on a family vacation in the mountains and they were attacked by Silence.”
“By a fucking army,” Rahael muttered.
“We discovered that while they were creepily quiet, Silence had been hard at work. They prepared weapons that forced our storms out of their monsters and back into human bodies,” Hadrian said.
My eyes went wide as my stomach churned. I couldn’t even imagine!
“While they survived, two of their husbands had some pretty bad injuries and one died,” Hadrian said. “We arrived in time for Lazarus and Cobalt to restore Koh’s life, but… barely.”
“Wait,” I said, sitting forward. “Koh? As in Kohara?” Of course, he meant Kohara. Igarashi wasn’t exactly a very common name. Why had I just now put that together?!
“Yes. No doubt you’ve met him a time or two at work,” Hadrian said.
“We have director meetings monthly,” I said, feeling a little ill.
“That attack showed us they weren’t looking to kill the Igarashis, despite the hit on Kohara. We found their vehicles. They wanted to take them back alive. What’s more, we found that the army that they sent after the Igarashis, while actual living monsters, were little more than puppets, somehow being controlled,” Hawthorn said.
“What the fuck?” I muttered.
“We haven’t even gotten started,” Toby said, sighing.
“The Igarashis wanted to counterattack. That’s when we discovered the horrors they kept inside their facilities were worse than we had ever considered possible,” Hawthorn said.
“It wasn’t just the women. They were literally trying to sew together a living monster and human. We found an entire fucking compound of monsters forced into their hybrid states, attached to wires with chips buried deep within their brains. They were literally robots being controlled by computers,” Toby said.
“Oh my gods,” I whispered.
“And they had… monsters,” Toby said, shaking his head. The haunted look in his eyes said that he wasn’t talking about those like us. “They were grotesque. Unreal. There were incubation tanks and thesethingsthat were… unreal.”
“After we rescued those being held and sunk that facility, Silence went dormant again. So we focused on locating every single facility we could. And thus discovered the Breeding Houses and Haven was born,” Hawthorn said, smiling at me.
“Our group of friends are split between actively hunting ORKA like game and focusing their efforts on Silence. We crossover often and are always on call to help either effort,” Hadrian said. “Which brings us to more of ORKA and to the point of why we think perhaps they’re connected in some way. Almost a year and a half ago, we found ORKA had been holding pegasi and… torturing them.”
My eyes went wide. “How the hell are they doing that?”
Hadrian and Hawthorn shook their heads. “Good question,” Hadrian said.
“During the raids to take down ORKA and find the rest of the pegasi herd, we discovered that they have new magic weapons. This isn’t the first time. We knew they had ill-gained magic from somewhere. But when our friends’ new husband was burned by a magic stick that produced fire, we discovered that the magic within the stick was actually sorcerer magic.”
