Chapter 10: The Lunar Conclave

Chapter 10: The Lunar Conclave

The second Silencer’s voice cut through the night, sharp with suspicion. "Marco? Report."

Leo didn’t flinch. He stood in the gaping doorway of the mechanic’s bay, a silhouette against the deeper darkness within. The pistol in his hand was an extension of his will, its cold weight a comforting anchor. The ecstatic fire of the feeding still burned in his veins, a clean, high-octane fuel that had incinerated his fear and left behind a chilling clarity. He was no longer a terrified architect. He was a predator, and his territory had been invaded.

He raised the pistol, his enhanced vision painting the man outside in shades of moonlight and shadow. He could see the tension in his shoulders, the way his weapon swept the area in a tight, professional arc. He could smell the same sterile, antiseptic scent as his partner. The smell of emptiness.

Instead of firing, Leo called out, his voice steady. "He's not reporting."

The man froze. His flashlight beam snapped to the doorway, pinning Leo in its blinding glare. "Drop the weapon. Hands where I can see them."

Leo didn't move. He felt the creature inside him, a coiled stillness, a perfect balance of sated power and readiness. He is alone, it whispered. He is cautious. His light is out.

"You're the one who should be cautious," Leo said, his voice resonating with an authority that surprised even himself. "You're trespassing. And you're hunting things you no longer have the right to understand."

The Silencer took a step back, repositioning himself. "We are cleansing an abomination."

"You're murdering family," Leo countered, the words flowing from a place of instinct, of blood-memory. "You're trying to silence the starlight because you're terrified of its song."

That struck a nerve. The man's stance faltered for a fraction of a second. It was all the opening Leo needed. He didn't fire the gun. That was too simple, too human. He let the power he'd just consumed well up inside him—a fraction of that overwhelming life force—and pushed it outward. It wasn't a physical blow, but a wave of pure psychic pressure, the focused will of the creature within.

The Silencer cried out, staggering back as if struck, his hands flying to his head. The flashlight clattered to the ground. The mental assault was disorienting, crippling. Leo stepped out of the garage, moving with a fluid grace he'd never possessed. He closed the distance in three long strides, and before the man could recover, he brought the butt of the pistol down hard against the side of his head. The man collapsed without another sound.

Leo stood over the two unconscious Silencers, his chest rising and falling in a slow, steady rhythm. He felt no remorse, only a cold, logical satisfaction. The threat was neutralized. He took their weapons and their car keys, tossing them far into the thorny embrace of a cholla cactus patch. They would wake up with splitting headaches and a long walk ahead of them. It was more mercy than they had intended to show him.

As the adrenaline of the confrontation faded, a new sensation took its place. It started as a faint hum at the base of his skull, a silver thread of sound in the silence of his mind. It was not a whisper from his own passenger, but a call from somewhere else, somewhere far away. It was a note of kinship, a melody of shared starlight that resonated with the creature in his gut, making it stir with a feeling of longing, of recognition.

Sister, it pulsed, a feeling of profound familiarity and urgency. She calls us. We must go.

He abandoned his grandfather's wrecked truck without a second glance. He got into the Silencers' black SUV, the engine starting with a quiet, powerful purr. There was no map, no destination in his conscious mind. He simply drove, following the silver thread of the psychic summons as it pulled him deeper into the desert, away from the paved roads and into the vast, unblinking eye of the night.

The journey took hours. The SUV’s advanced suspension smoothed out the rugged terrain as he followed a path that wasn't there, guided only by the creature's unerring sense of direction. The landscape transformed, the flatlands giving way to towering mesas and labyrinthine canyons carved by millennia of wind and water.

The pull led him to a sheer rock wall that seemed to mark the end of the line. But the creature insisted. Here. We are home. He got out of the vehicle and walked towards the cliff face. As he drew closer, he saw it: a fissure, a crack so narrow and shrouded in shadow that it was invisible from more than twenty feet away.

He squeezed through the opening, and the world changed.

He was in a hidden canyon, a vast, circular amphitheater of stone open to the moonlit sky. The air was still and sacred, imbued with a palpable energy that made the hair on his arms stand up. The walls of the canyon were covered, from floor to rim, with ancient petroglyphs. Thousands of them. Spirals and suns, figures with unnaturally long limbs, and everywhere, the same two recurring symbols: the crescent moon, and the sinuous, many-legged form of a centipede. This was a temple. A church dedicated to the starlight in their veins.

And he was not alone.

Fires burned in a wide circle in the center of the canyon floor. Around them were people. Perhaps two dozen of them. A young couple, their hands clasped together, their faces etched with a mixture of hope and fear. A grizzled old rancher whose leathery skin looked as ancient as the rock around them. A woman in the simple dress of a remote religious sect. They were all different, yet he felt an instant, shocking connection to them. He could feel their passengers, the warm, living glow of the starlight each of them carried. It was like seeing in a new color, a spectrum of life he had never known existed.

An old, familiar figure detached from the group and approached him, her form illuminated by the firelight. It was Elara.

"I knew you would answer the call, boy," she rasped, her hawk-like eyes appraising his uninjured state and the cold confidence in his posture. "I felt the commotion on the road. Two lights were extinguished. But yours… yours is burning brighter than ever."

"I did what I had to do to survive," Leo said, the words simple and true. He looked at the assembled Keepers. "You are my sister?"

A dry smile touched her lips. "In the blood, we are all brothers and sisters here. We are the Conclave of the Old Blood, the last of the loyal lines."

"What is this place? What is happening?" he asked, taking in the ritualistic feeling of the gathering, the expectant energy in the air.

Elara’s gaze lifted to the sky, to the moon, which was just beginning to show the faintest, dark sliver of an encroaching shadow. "You came at the appointed time. The lunar eclipse approaches. It is a time of great power, a time of transformation."

She led him closer to the central fire, and the other Keepers nodded to him in greeting, their eyes holding a shared, secret understanding. He was one of them now.

"For generations," Elara began, her voice taking on the cadence of a storyteller, a priestess, "we have served as Keepers. We have offered our bodies as vessels, as nests, to shelter the starlight from a world that would see it extinguished. We have fed them, nurtured them, and carried them through our bloodlines."

She turned her intense gaze back to him. "But they are not meant to be passengers forever, Leo. The bond is not just about survival. It is about creation. The creatures within us are not just living; they are gestating."

The word hit Leo with the force of a physical blow. Gestating.

"They are growing," Elara confirmed, seeing the shock on his face. "Preparing. The eclipse is not just a celestial event. It is a signal. It is the moment the cradle has been rocked long enough. Under the shadow of the moon, they will be 'born'."

A murmur of awe and terror went through the assembled Keepers. The young woman clutched her stomach, her eyes wide. Leo felt the creature inside him shift, a coil of anticipation, a deep, primal readiness that had been building since his grandfather’s death.

"Born?" Leo asked, his throat dry. "What does that mean? What happens to us?"

Elara's ancient face was grim, the firelight carving deep lines of sorrow into her features. She looked at him, and then at all the others, her family of hosts.

"That," she said softly, her voice heavy with the weight of centuries, "is the part our ancestors never fully understood. They called it the Ascension. A joining. A transformation of both Keeper and child into something… new. But the texts are old, the memories are fragmented. The birth of a star is a violent, beautiful event. And no one can say for certain if the vessel is meant to survive it."