blood 03 - blood chosen (24 page)

Domi stepped back cautiously from Cormack. “We will discuss this later.”

“I do not wish to entertain the same old boring argument time and again. There are those who matter...” his eyes fell on Tharell's and he kept his chin high, “and those who do not.”

It was the girl who broke the tension between the three warriors, looking from one to the other, having been quietly listening to their interchange. “Sounds like a conceit problem.”

Tharell balked. He could not believe the Rare One could silence three warriors of the Sidhe.

Yet, she had.

*

Julia

Julia let the comment sit there in the new place she found herself in.
Let them chew on that,
she thought as she looked around at the rough-hewn walls made of some kind of dark gem.

She looked up at the huge man who held her.
Who had fooled them all,
she reminded herself. Julia scraped up the shreds of bravery that remained and knit them together in a shield. They obviously were not keen on killing her, so she'd take her chances. “Please, put me down.”

Shouldn't she feel the effects of being away from Scott? What had he said; they might have three days before incapacitation from lack of proximity. Another thing to worry about besides the wonderful kidnapping.

Again.

She gazed at the three curiously, the two who had almost come to blows were shocking. Julia knew she should stop being surprised by the events in her life, but they kept cropping up. The weirdness. Every time Julia thought she finally had a grasp, another strange group or event transpired.

They looked like men; big men. But one had skin the color of Easter egg grass and navy hair, so deep a cobalt it looked almost black. But Julia had the walls of the cave for comparison. His was a rich blue that caught the muted light and flung it back like midnight kissed by the sea. His eyes were like silver dimes stuck in a face with aristocratic planes and angles- hard, but ending in full lips that were almost red but not quite. Julia heard Cyn's voice in her head,
kinda like a hot Christmas elf
. And he was... but there was the sword in his hand, and his very presence screamed
dangerous
. Her face swung to the gold one and she kept her jaw from dropping with an effort. He was like a low burning flame with two ebony jewels for eyes. But for all the hot coloring... his stuck up attitude made him less beautiful. If he would have just stood there and said nothing, he would have been beautiful. But he'd spoken and his words made him ugly. Not that their looks were important. Julia's thoughts already turned on how to get out of this latest disaster.

But it was the man who stood beside Julia that caught her attention. After all, he was strong enough to carry her from Region One to...

“Where are we?” Julia asked to the three. If she knew more, then she could figure out a way to get out. After all, she'd escaped the vampire coven.

“We are within Unseelie territory,” Tharell said.

“Huh, that explains so much, thanks.” His brow quirked at her words and brilliant blue eyes with violet rings around the outside, blazed out of his dark face. It would have been easy for Julia to classify him as African American. But he wasn't human. He was other. And his skin was truly violet. She had never seen a purple that dark on anything. Julia studied his face and found his eyes kinder than those of the gold fey.

“Okay... so you guys are the fey?” Julia asked the obvious and the gold one replied, “Yes.” He looked down on her. Not just from his height, but in his bearing. “You will be taken to meet our Queen momentarily. I am Cormack.”

Julia's hands popped onto her hips, ignoring the introduction entirely. “Here's the thing.” They looked at her with surprise and curiosity. “Cormack. I'm kinda done being abducted by every group on the planet.” Julia put her finger to her chin, rolling her eyes up to the ceiling. “Actually, I'd like to know if there's any other group I need to know about because I'm all ears.”

“I was not told she was rebellious,” Cormack admitted, flustered.

Julia was glad to see it. She wasn't in the business of playing nice when she was kidnapped. It usually ended badly and it looked like Cormack wasn't used to being dismissed.

Tharell hid a smile at the assertive Singer's comment and Domi grinned outright. “We only know how she was before the initial abduction... this,” Domi palm-swept her body, “is not what our human intel gave us.”

“The last two years of being kidnapped and held prisoner will change a girl.” Julia stared at them. If they knew so damn much, they should certainly know about what she'd been through. The fey knew where to find her and went through a lot of deceit and preparation to get her.

Tharell laughed, a deep rumbling sound like a loud purr and Julia jumped at the sound. It was like velvet on the air. “Precious!” Tharell said, grinning.

Cormack scowled at him and Julia took notice again of all the problems within the group. If she could find a weakness, Julia would use it. Being part of the Singer mess was preferable to this unknown. Anything was.

“Why am I here?” Tharell's grin remained and Julia smacked her captor in the arm and it was like hitting stone. Tharell's grin widened, his teeth a white slash in his face. “You mean to hurt me, little one?”

“Hell yes!” she stomped her foot. Yeah, childish. Julia didn't care. “You pretended to be some long lost sister, and made everyone fall asleep. That was a chode move.”

“Chode?” Domi asked.

“Dick head,” Julia responded. “Actually, it's a great 'all-encompassing' term. Chump, dick hole, putz, butt munch, douche...”

“Ah, your American slang, so charming,” Cormack said. She could tell he was less than amused.

Screw him and the horse he rode in on. Julia wanted to go home. Even if it was ten shades of screwed up and dysfunctional, it was hers.

Tharell put his large hands on her shoulders and gave her one hard, brisk shake, his humor gone. “You will come before our Queen and she will dispel this notion of returning that you have. There is no return from the Unseelie fey.” His bright eyes gazed into hers. “And the Queen is less... inclined to humor than the three of us.”

His eyes were no longer kind... but weary.

And he thought they had a great sense of humor? This Queen must be a laugh a minute and that made Julia began to feel frantic. She pivoted, trying to go back the way she assumed they came and dove into a thicket of thorns. They pierced her flesh and Julia yelped at the thorns as they set into her body. “Ah!” Julia shrieked as the fey warriors waded into the branches. Julia twisted in the thorny-filled arms of the plants and watched them whip and tear at the men as they came for her. Bloody mouths from the wounds of the thorns opened on their arms, legs... faces.

They were trying to get to her and the thorns were trying to keep her.

As soon as Tharell touched her the branches lifted, but continued to wrap the other warriors, the long branches bending to become vines around the limbs of the warriors.

“Stop!” Julia moaned in a voice laced in pain and fear, a command she was unaware of held within her voice. The branches shivered at the word, carefully lifting out of her skin and she slumped into Tharell's arms, relieved. Julia watched as they tore holes out of the other men without any of the care they'd given her.

“I am Tharell,” he said above her ear and Julia could only nod as she watched the macabre scene play out in front of her.

“Get me out of here,” she whispered.

Tharell lifted her easily out of the nest of thorns, their tips soaked in the blood of the fey, and the purest blood of all. Ultimately, it was the Rare One's blood that had quieted the sentry of thorns.

The briar could not be subdued except by blood.

Tharell had a thrill that hummed in his bones. He had not believed that the Rare One would revitalize his people.

But the briar as the Unseelie's first defense was formidable indeed. If they had not been here to capture Julia Caldwell, she could have commanded her escape and the thorns would have bowed to her.

Her blood.

*

Heidi

“Wake,” Trevor whispered anxiously, his lips hovering over those of the Reader. Then, “Please wake,” he begged.

Heidi opened her eyes with a great, whooping inhale and on her next breath she whispered, “Julia.”

Trevor sat back on his ample ass and broke out in a fiery wave of relief. “Thank God.”

Marcus gave a single curt nod and straightened, wondering yet again, if Trevor had been too fine a Deflector. He had kept the Reader's talent so under wraps that she must not have had sufficient time to warn the Region when the fey infiltrated.

“She doesn’t look a thing like Jules,” Cyn reflected.

“Yeah, duh, Cyn,” Jason said and Scott scowled.

“What now?” Scott asked and Marcus looked at the genuine Reader, the only subject he hadn't met. The one he regretted not making acquaintance with. For if he had, Heidi would not have been a stranger to him and he would have known it was deceit when they fey weaved his lies. But who could have presumed the fey were a real entity? No one he'd encountered had ever made mention of the fey except as a bedtime tale.

“Heidi will tell us the outcome and then...”

“You decide what course of action to take,” Manny intuited.

Scott shook his head. “That's a negative pal. Julia is mine. And currently, I'm not getting anything... not a bleep on the screen.”

Jason cleared his throat.

“Buzz off, you don't want her—really,” he responded to Jason's nonverbal grunting.

“Bullshit,” Jason disagreed in a growl.

“Yeah? Well, now that she's been taken, a-fucking-gain, you suddenly want to play ownership?
Hero
. No. Suck it.”

“How is this helping get Julia back?” William asked quietly. Then, “The fey are formidable, if legend speaks true. What's more... they have a prison of a territory. One must be fey to enter, the tale goes.”

“Shit! Fuck! Shit!” Scott roared into the closed space of the Reader's room. He whirled on William, “How can you be so stupidly calm, drinker?”

William's bald gaze met Scott's. “One of us needs to be. It is not you. And the Were, who claims wedded ties to Julia, cannot decide if he wants to shit or get off the pot.”

Scott blinked at the first crude phrasing he'd ever heard William utter and was left speechless.

William nodded elegantly, in an unpracticed gesture. “Yes, I too can ape like a human thug. However, I generally choose not to. You heard and understood that bit though? Did you not?”

Scott's eyes narrowed on William. “This
thug
, as you so aptly named me, will see this through to the end. By any means necessary. Do
you
understand?”

“Yes. I think we do finally understand each other.”

“Well you two dipshits go ahead and talk about whether or not I care about Julia—while I find her,” Jason said. “First come, first serve.”

“Oh?” William arched a perfectly black brow. “And how might you find her with the fey that so brilliantly put us all into a magic-induced coma?”

There was a few seconds pause. “He does not have a ready answer,” Jacqueline pronounced. And Tony, fully healed from the beating from Reagan, smirked at Jacqueline's side.

Cyn groaned,
those two.

“Oh... and you do?” Jen asked with disbelief.

“And who among you are fey?” Jacqueline queried. All remained silent. “As I thought.” She laughed, pleased.

“Don't tell us? Your criminal, murdering ass is fey,” Cyn said in a tone of resignation, flapping her hands on either side of her body in a parody of wings.

Jacqueline made a show of smiling and answered, “I am.”

Adi groaned and Slash grimaced.

“You need me,” Jacqueline stated as fact.

And for once, no one could refute her. It was on the tips of all their tongues, bitter and eager to escape their lips, but they remained silent.

Jacqueline was vile, but oh so necessary.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Queen Darcel

The sickness raged as usual, but Darcel mastered her expression effortlessly, a benefit of her time in the Unseelie court, where emotion was viewed negatively- as a telltale weakness. It would not do to have others see that she was in pain. Darcel had thought she was beyond being distracted by anything. That nothing could cause the pain she weathered to become background to the constant agony.

Darcel was wrong.

The young blood Singer walked in, dwarfed by Darcel's finest guard, the half-breed, Tharell. They were quite the opposite of each other, one dark and one light. It had always pained Darcel that Tharell was not pure Sidhe. For if he had been, he would have been first on her list to call to her bed. As it were, she still might. In secret. Perhaps all of his luscious burgundy skin underneath her hands could make her forget the sickness for a moment.

The girl was beautiful for a human.
It must be the Singer blood
, Darcel mused. The purest of all bloods. Julia Caldwell was very fair, the hair that fell to her waist was too gold to be platinum and too light to be dishwater blonde. It rode that fine line of hay in color but with such variegated shading it didn't appear lifeless, but teemed with depth and shine. However, it was her eyes that were her most arresting feature, like the spun gold of Cormack's skin with a hint of fine whiskey. Lion's eyes.

Those eyes met her own in a bold and inquisitive stare. Darcel tramped down on her irritation. How dare Julia Caldwell behave as if she were equal to the Queen of the Unseelie? Darcel seethed, but it would do no good. She
needed
the Rare One. She was not fey and certainly no Sidhe. Yet, that was of little consequence. For the girl possessed the rarest blood to have made an appearance in this last one thousand years.

Darcel rose, the pain of the sudden movement grinding her innards into a churning hot nest of agony, causing her vision narrow to a pinpoint as the girl filled that small focus.