The Morgan Effect: Life's Chronicles of a New Era

David Black: Meanwhile

Epilogue

Meanwhile Black's shell falls to the floor of the house Cosette grew up in. The home that her father built for her mother just after they'd left the Temple.

His body had slipped into the secret entrance and his legs carried him to the wall opposite. After dropping to the floor with a plop, Black curled up. The floor was cold and his fever appreciated the minor relief. The wind howled like a hungry wolf down the chimney and the room's temperature dropped several more degrees. The atmosphere fit his mood perfectly and only sufficed to darken his world.

Black found the solitude and chill to be every bit of the comfort he'd thought it would be. When he got off the plane back in Paris the air was thick and much too hot. The plane was stuffy and filled with too many people; the streets were like that too. Black dashed through the crowds to this little house and shuttered himself in.

No sun touched him and no caress of wind reached him.

After his pup had left, he chased her, though not immediately. He waited the day out, and once the sun had fully set, he ran out the door after her. His pup was clueless on the matter, but the sun was his literal enemy. Every ray of the sun's direct light cause Black to shift into a statue of pure stone.

Black was restless to find her, but he'd be no good if he was in stone. So, he tried to track her after the sun disappeared. Her energy was strong enough that the trail was still notable. He chased his tail a bit, and followed her first to the library. After getting off the elevator and stepping into a building that probably knew more about him than he was OK with, he followed her swirl of color to a desk in the back.

It was saturated in her energy, more than it should have been. Black stepped closer and closer to the desk and felt the warmth that was Cosette.

Someone was sitting in her desk, but a stern look and maybe a probe of energy solved that problem. Black ran his hands over the back of the desks and inhaled the air she had once occupied.

She was using her energy to do something.... Was she ill and in need or was it something else entirely? I can almost smell the power in this area. She stayed here for a while, and left only to return several times. But then she didn't come back.... She found what she was looking for... or she found her next clue. I've to know what she was looking for if I'm going to find her; her energy should still be on some of the books she used.

For an hour he ran back and forth from her table to the book shelves. She'd read history books and old journals and excerpt notations and even a Book Master's work. They all had to do with one subject, though almost a hundred were read. They all had to do with Maxim or the Abram Gorgon war. She's doing research, and this is what she's using her energy on....

On every book he found a substantial amount of energy laced through its pages. From her trail he knew that she had left here some time ago, but the amount of energy on the books suggested differently. His years of hunting gave him a clear image of exactly what was happening. Cosette was using her energy to study. Even before his pup fully learned how to use her powers, she was mastering them. His eyes almost welled with tears at her strength, and he wished he was there to witness. This however, only served to strengthen his resolve to find her.

Her trail led him to a café, but she wasn't there either. Black ran around the city all he could, but still didn't find her. The graveyard held her energy, so he raced to the entrance. There was something very strange however. Pushing past the gates of the graveyard, Black felt the difference in energy. Cosette was nowhere to be found, but her energy was everywhere. Something very wrong had happened here, and Cosette was in the center of it. It was like with the books in the library, only so much worse.