The slant of the eave ledge provided enough shade to block the moonlight and keep Tasìa out of the ghouls' sight for now.

She needed to make her move into the open spread of rooftop area to exploit the commotion on the floors beneath her.

Tasìa's head felt suddenly light. Incredibly, without even realizing it, she was still holding her breath. She had not breathed out since she gasped upon catching sight of the distraught faerie queen.

She took a moment to breathe in and out several times to regain control over this essential bodily function. Though she succeeded, the exercise made Tasìa feel no more relaxed than before.

Her lips felt peculiar, both itchy and numb. She thought of the Manifested Ones that she witnessed in the cells of the Spore Isolation Unit. The odd dimensionality of their mouths, like a fleshy fractal invasion bursting upon the curved surface of their lips, moved so disturbingly.

In frustration, Tasìa gritted her teeth and cursed under her breath.

She wetted her lips with saliva spread out with her tongue. The lips felt normal. She was imagining things.

They were driving her to paranoia with yet another fucked-up incident caused by the rival entities. The encroaching madness was unraveling her composure.

She needed the LSD.

Burn that AI invasion shit out of my God-blessédly-damned skull, post-haste.

In the Quadra, most mental illnesses were the by-product of an invasive species that exploited the mind like a parasitic leech used a host.

Biologists and medical scientists believed that LSD, in some unique fashion, chemically burned the entities' receptors and starved them of the neuron based nourishment they fed upon.

Oddly enough, similar hallucinogens like psilocybin had little effect. Else, she would be kicking cow-paddies in a pasture to search for mushrooms right now, instead of trying to rob a heavily armed cult.

Her own questioning interior conscience pulled up through the anger she felt, and it now made its presence known.

What if it is legit? What if they are trying to tell me something I need to know? Their methods may be flawed, and are scaring the hell out of me, but somewhere in that mash-up of hallucination and emotional manipulation, perhaps, there exists a legitimate concern.

Her own ambivalence worried Tasìa. Did these questions do anything to ease her burden?

There was so little time left for this introspection. Yet, she could not help herself. Especially now that she was losing her grip on sanity.

She lacked the knowledge necessary to make a sound decision that she could trust to be a good one. That is why she ran off earlier, on a quest to save the streetwalkers. She had hoped that little act of heroism would bring clarity to her actions.

It did not. Sure, she had saved their lives, but she had lost time to save her own self, as well.

Ultimately, whatever she chose to do was an act of faith.

She believed the Incubus. The Infernal Madré, whatever cabal of spooks that controlled the entity, was a danger to all mankind.

The faerie entities were somehow aligned with Egilona, so it would seem as they rose to counter the actions of the Wise One.

They are only trying to soften you up, Tasìa told herself.

She glanced up. Something else she thought quite odd.

If the ghoul-turned-golden was committing an act of heresy against the Hijos Lux by performing the transfiguration rite, would not the other ghouls find the ram's presence and present condition out of place and out of sorts?

As if to answer that very question, a midnight blue wisp in a delicate, thin crimson outline fluttered in swirling motions out of the corner of her eye.

"O, Wise One," Tasìa muttered.

Without looking directly its way, she gave it a mocking bow of her head.

I hear the questioning cynicism in your tone. Strong and impetuous, however, is how I prefer you to remain, Tasìa.

That is, we are not like Egilona, the Infernal Madré. She would prefer that all of humankind become like those decrepit ghouls.

That would make her the mother of all the damned. She would reign supreme in a deadened world made all the more easy for her to control.

She only reflects in this desire, the will of her creators. They lost contol of this world. They want nothing more than to regain it no matter the cost.

As it spoke, the Silent Dragon seeped down into the spot beside her. He grew in form, becoming more and more solid.

Tasìa kept her gaze forward, not looking directly at him.

Finally, in a normal human voice, a soft but reedy baritone, he spoke.

"You can look now if you care to do so."

He was now a short, but bulked-up man. Her height, but possessing massive muscularity in his ribbed torso and bulging arms and legs.

His face and head, though they could well pass for human, possessed a reptilian morphology.

Though his skin was midnight blue even still, on the surface of it, scales lay evenly and well defined. They formed occulted, tattoo-like patterns in the subtle contrast of chromatic dark blue shades.

Though nude and hairless, he did not seem to mind that she studied his body and her eyes regarded his well-endowed appendage with a great deal of prurient interest.

She raised her chin with an appreciative grin. Her gaze finally rested upon his massive shoulders.

"You seem so solid," Tasìa said; her voice cracked on the last two words. "Mind if I touch?"

"If you so desire, Tasìa. You may do whatever you wish."

Tasìa squeezed his shoulder with both of her hands.

The warmth of his flesh and the firmness of his taut muscles felt so radiant through her soft palms. With her fingertips, she traced an outline along the occulted seven-pointed star pattern on his shoulder blade.

Though not beautiful like the Hermicubus, to her taste, the Silent Dragon was its equal in sexual desirability.

Tasìa fretted to herself with a tight grimace set upon her bowed chin. If she did not look away she would soon become over-stirred in her erogenous capacity.

She felt a rumble in her gut.

Tasìa smiled and before forcing herself to look away, she gave a last, quick glance at the Silent Dragon's privies.

That thing is going to haunt me to the end of my days.

Tasìa thought as she drew her eyes away.

This was becoming the most she had felt sexually attracted to a male member of the species since the death of Gael-Sebastian Cuervo.

She needed to make a hasty retreat from her arousal.

"I suppose I need to get a move on," Tasìa told the Silent Dragon with a great reluctance in the sigh of her voice.

She started to look up.

Two Hijos Lux guards stood on the fourth floor of the adjacent building. One stared straight at her as he nodded his head whenever the other guard spoke.

Tasìa jerked up at the sight of them.

The Silent Dragon put an arm around her to calm her down.

"They can't see you. They can't see me. They cannot even see the ram, nor smell the pleasant scent of its charred meats. I could take you right here in an act of loud, intense intercourse, and they would not see, hear, nor smell a thing.

"The mind of a ghoul is highly pliable. Simple suggestions whispered into what remains of its unconscious mind will convince it of whatever you wish to convey."

Tasìa sat straight up, allowing the Silent Dragon's arm to rest against her back. She stared into the bold cobalt of his eyes.

"So, I can just march in there, freely, and grab the LSD? No more shenanigans along the way?"

With a reptilian grin, the Silent Dragon shook his head.

"Has anything ever been so simple as that for you, Tasìa? So long as you are outside, and you don't break glass, or fire off a gun, they will not notice you.

"Once inside, the Infernal Madré has a trap set in place to capture us. So, I have no means to help you inside their compound. I need your eyes and ears while you are in there. Without them, I am lost."

Tasìa paused before she answered. Her brows furrowed back at him in a hardened stare. She grimaced and bit her lips, afraid she was allowing her imagination to get ahead of her. She did not want to become too hopeful.

"Is that why you are now flirting with me? You need my help and you are now charming your way into my heart to obtain it?"

The Silent Dragon held her more tightly with a thumb lightly caressing the back of her neck.

"No. In this, what your people call my Silent Dragon aspect, though I call myself Bajamutté, I have a voracious appetite for sex with human females. In this aspect, I am not so wise at all. If anything, I am a slave to your own desires, Tasìa.

"My sibling that you call the Incubus only teases you, for that is the set parameter of functions that went into Corazónte's creation. A schism caused by the Infernal Madré has overturned the logarithms that lie at the heart of our existence. Even still, it has yet to overcome those limitations.

"If you do this task for me, Tasìa, I'll show you how your own condition, the logarithms that govern you even, can be overcome. Then what you so desire will be yours. The lost time you have endured for your entire adult life of not experiencing intimacy, I will make up for in full."

Tasìa chortled. She cupped Bajamutté's hand in hers.

"Bold claim."

"You should know by now, Tasìa, I only speak the truth."

She finally smiled, once more. Tasìa was beginning to relish how he spoke her name without embellishment.

Bajamutté stroked Tasìa's bangs away from her face. His hand slid down the side of her neck. Unfortunately, the queasy rumble stirred once more in her gut. She wanted to take what he had to offer right then and there, as he suggested earlier, but as he had just reminded her, nothing was ever that easily achieved for Tasìa.

"I'm afraid I have to ask you to stop doing that. The caress of your hand on me is having that certain effect on me."

He stopped and placed his free hand on top of her own hand. All four of their hands were now joined.

"You blame yourself for the incontinence that afflicts your physiology, but it is not at all your fault. The condition was created with the rewiring of your nervous system when you were a prematurely born baby.

"It is a common condition amongst the Harvested. Some of you simply adjust. Some find mates among fetishists who find that peculiar condition to their own liking; others, like yourself, can't get past their physical disgust with -"

"Wait," Tasìa pleaded. "What did you call me? Harvested?"

She had not made the connection given she assumed the experiments on herself were unique. After all, she never met another human spider monkey-like herself before.

From glancing at the files, and Felicité's reaction when Tasìa asked her what the phrase Premie Harvest meant, she thought it must have been something truly vile.

Organ harvesting of premies. That was what came to Tasìa's mind and lurid imagination.

Something was not adding up.

Tasìa regarded Bajamutté once more with a tight furrowed stare. Yet, his voice came through to her most tenderly.

"Tasìa, there is so much you need to learn. That has been purposefully hidden from you over these many years."

Her voice cracked as she answered him in turn. She wanted to believe the sincerity of his ultimate motives; however, her cynicism rang through her words.

"So, if I do this one thing for you, you will reveal this great truth to me?"

Bajamutté lowered his chin to his chest. He closed his eyes and spoke, contritely.

"I understand your disbelief. The files your friend is helping you decrypt will tell you everything you need to know, so you really don't even need me for that purpose."

She could see that he was indeed vulnerable to her whim. If she so desired, he could be made to be putty in her hands.

However, she realized she needed to trust in that greater hope she felt, and not suppress it this time. Without that, her life was nothing more than one meaningless skirmish after another.

For that reason, she would have to deal with him fairly. It would be an honest exchange of services proffered voluntarily by each party.

In return, she had a chance at obtaining what she most desired.

An intimate connection to others.

"You have me, Bajamutté. What do you need me to do?"

"The Dark-Eyed Ones, Geminiäs and Geminetta, have been captured. They are kept in an alchemist lair beneath the chemical lab. If Egilona kills them, the rest of us are weakened and we become greatly unraveled. Soon after, Egilona kills us as well. I understand the reservations your species has about our motivations and our methods, but we are the only thing standing in the way of your annihilation"

Tasìa eyed the ladder that connected an annex structure to the adjacent building. Jumping across to the annex and then up the ladder would give her the best vantage point to observe the compound.

She stood up; leaning over the Silent Dragon, Tasìa gave him a kiss that for now was a chaste one on his cheek.

"I will do this, but you must understand, if you are to become my lover, that role comes with certain obligations on your part. Are we clear, Bajamutté?"

He stared at the ram before he nodded. He was in no position to ask for a clarification as to what those obligations to her would be. He would have to trust her in turn.

"I do. I am ready for that."

"Good," Tasìa answered before she twisted herself back around.

She took off running across the rooftop.