The Dove Read Online Free

She smiled.  “I need to show you something.  I think I understand why I always felt the need to be close to you.”
    “Nicole!”  He repeated her name, but with less enthusiasm.  There was something about her expression and the tone of her voice that made him stop.
    “Lemarik came to see me, Brother.”  She told him.  “He showed me the truth.  Of how we were joined at birth.”
    Luke pressed his hands over his ears.  He did not want to hear this.  He knew about it.  He didn’t know how he knew, but he knew.
    “And how we were separated.”  She continued as she took hold of his arms, pulling his hands away from his head.  “It is the same with all the Watchers, Luke.  We have all been torn asunder.  We were never meant for this world or this life.  We were an accident, but we belong together.  Not as lovers, not as brother and sister, but as two halves of a whole.  Unity is the Word, Luke.  Unity!  That is what we are searching for.  We have been running about lost and the answer was right in front of us the entire time.”
    “Nicole…”  Luke shook his head and the silver earrings jingled in his hair.
    “My mother placed these in my father’s hair.”  She caught the braid in her hand and looked at the silver in the moonlight.  “Our mother has found the answer, Luke.  She is where she belongs with John Paul.  That is why I tried to take him for myself.  That is why I tried to take Uncle Luke.  Because something was missing.”
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but you’re scaring the hell out of me!”  He took hold of her hand.  “How did you get here?  Did you see our father?  Do you know where he is?  Did you see Lucio?”
    “Look at me, brother!”  She grasped his face in her hands and he locked eyes with her.  A few moments later, the apprentice collapsed into the grass and the apparition of his sister evaporated in the ground fog.
    Selwig, who had been watching this cautiously from his perch on the pony, approached Luke slowly, dropped from his saddle to the ground and pulled Luke into his lap after Nicole disappeared.
    “Master Luke!”  The healer rummaged in his bag with one hand and pulled out a small bottle of oil.  “Master Luke!  Wake up!  Please wake up.”  He held the opened bottle under Luke’s nose.
    Luke snorted and coughed and opened his eyes.
    “Master!”  Selwig brushed his hair from his face.  “Are you all right?  Did she hurt you?”
    “No!”  Luke pushed himself up and looked about the deserted meadow.  The horse and the pony stood a few yards away, champing on their bits.  “Where is she?”
    “She’s gone, Master!”  Selwig told him.  “She simply faded away after you fell.”
    Luke got up and brushed off his pants.
    “What happened?  Who was it?”  Selwig stood beside him and stuffed the bottle back in his bag.
    “My sister, Nicole!”  Luke smiled at him.  “She brought some very interesting news.”
    “Does she know where Vanni is?”  Selwig asked him hopefully.
    “No, but she knows where Sir Ramsay is!”  Luke whistled for the horse.  “We have to tell the Master!”
    “But what happened?”  Selwig asked him as they mounted their rides again.
    “I found out who Sophia is!”  Luke smiled down at him.
    “Ohhhh.”  Selwig fell silent as they started back toward the house.
     
     

    Chapter Two of Sixteen
    And when he had opened the fourth seal And I looked, and behold a pale horse
     
     
    Bari Caleb ‘Joel’ Kadif did not feel like an Emperor.  He felt like a murderer.  He’d never felt so low in all his life.  He sat on the tiled floor of the laboratory, staring at the door of the oven.  The automatic timer on the furnace had turned it off almost and hour before, and still, he sat, unable to drag himself up.  It was incredible to think that he had burned the body of the child… the dead child…thinking that it would help to bring his mind back from the depths of