Bound by the Vampire Queen (11 page)

Closing her eyes, Lyssa breathed in, tuning everything out, the dryad’s fading life spark, the fact Jacob could be incinerated in the next few moments.

She made it all go still, reaching out for whatever it was her Fae blood could sense. It was close to the dividing line of night and dawn and they stood at a body of moving water in a park that had been here for many years. It had to work.

Jacob stayed still beside her, trying to hold his breath, trying not to sway on his feet as the flames of hell began to lick at the soles of his feet, sweeping upward. He wasn’t bursting into flames, but he could feel it coming, any moment.

“Put your arms around both of us, Sir Vagabond,” she said, in a frustrated tone. “I have no idea how this is going to go, but I can feel—Now. Put your arms around me
now
.”

At the snap of the sudden command, he wrapped his arms around her. Their combined weight slid them off the bank, and she staggered, having to hold on to the dryad rather than use her arms to balance.

The creek rocks stabbed through the thin slippers she wore. Jacob wore boots, but the rush of water soaking his jeans was bliss. He tightened his grip on both women, bracing himself to hold them steady.

But he could only hold them steady against the things he knew.

He felt it then, too, what Lyssa had sensed. An energy rushing down upon them. And music. The melody was familiar, tugging at him like a mother’s lullaby, calling him… somewhere. The doorway and the music were in that energy rush, forming a bill owing mist as it rolled toward them.

It wasn’t coming fast enough. Raising his head, Jacob saw the dawn light pierce through the trees, sucked in a breath as sunlight stabbed through his chest like a stake. Then that sunlight expanded outward, blinding him, and the water rushing over his feet became diamond shards, slashing his skin.

Once, when working at the Ren Faire, he’d been thrown from a horse. His foot had caught in the stirrup and the mare had panicked. As she bucked and twisted, her hooves hit him in the head and other far more tender parts. She’d dragged him a good pace before they’d been able to calm her and get him free. That was a fond memory next to this. The slam into hard ground, like a giant had picked him up and hurled him against a brick wall, made the rocky pasture ground he’d bounced across seem like a feather bed in comparison.

“Shit.” He didn’t use the word often, but the moment seemed to require it. He tried to move and none of his limbs responded. Panic sliced through him. Surely he hadn’t arrived in the Fae world injured and unable to protect Lyssa, a complete liability to her. Of course, knowing his lady, she’d get tremendous female satisfaction from winning the coveted I-told-you-so laurel.

If you are able to be a wiseass, I’d say you are fine.

He’d located his lady in the first second, but was relieved to find the mind-to-mind connection was intact. In the next breath, he realized she was right.

He was hurting too much to be paralyzed, an ironic relief. A shudder racked him down to his bones, making him bite down another heartfelt curse. He felt like throwing up, but managed to push that back as well.

Now she knelt, sliding his head into her lap. Her hair brushed his face before she gathered it up, pul ed it away, though he liked the silk of it against his flesh. It distracted him from the fact he felt like ten pins scattered across a lane by a truck-sized bowling ball.

“Give yourself time, my love. Look at it all. Just look at it.”

Hearing the solemn wonder and rarely used endearment, he took the time to do just that.

He pried open his eyes. She’d straightened so he was staring right up into the sky. He’d viewed many beautiful night skies, that tremendous expanse that made the soul feel inexplicably small and yet treasured at once, as if he were gazing into something far deeper than his eyes could see. This was as if that screen had been pul ed back, so he could see why his soul felt that way. A carpet of stars spread out in random swirls against the deep purple expanse. The large yellow moon hung among them, tiny wisps of dark clouds making it look as if it was drifting, a ship at full sail. He wondered if Van Gogh had ever visited the Fae world in his madness.

Three shooting stars burned a path below the moon. Then he realized they weren’t shooting stars at all.

Fireflies danced in the air above him, so bright they blended with the stars, except instead of clean white light, there was a touch of red flame in their afterburn. When one came in range, he was staring at a tiny fairy, no bigger than one of Lyssa’s fingernails. A naked male with long silver hair and tiny black antennae protruding from it, just above his ears. He studied Jacob with insectlike green eyes.

Instead of almond-shaped, they were perfect, pupil-less circles. The wings of the firefly Fae were like a hummingbird’s, moving so fast they were invisible except for a tell tale blur of motion. His skin abruptly glowed bright with that reddish light, then he zoomed back up to his fell ows again.

With the pain receding enough for his nerves to register something other than agony, Jacob realized he was on a soft bed of green grass, his elbows tickled by nodding wildflowers. As he processed that, the dryad stepped into his line of sight.

She paid no attention to him. Her gaze was on the skies as well, the fireflies specifically. Though she was still obviously weak, she was standing on her own. The way she was breathing—deep, from the soles of her feet—it was obvious she was pulling in energy, holding herself up with it. When she reached up, the tiny creatures landed on her slender fingers.

At the contact, her mouth tightened, making her thin face even more painfully drawn. Her gray-green eyes, like the bark of an ancient tree, overflowed with tears.

Lyssa laid her hand on Jacob’s chest. He closed his fingers over hers.

Still holding the tiny creatures, the dryad shifted her attention from the skies to the green field that spread out to her right, populated by white flowers that glowed silver and gold in the moonlight. Jacob followed her gaze to the edge of the meadow. A thick forest marked the boundary, but beyond the forest there were four hill's, so substantive they looked like the overlapping domes of four planets on the horizon. Even in the darkness, it wasn’t hard to see their shape, because of their size and what was perched on the top of each one.

Four castles. Just like the stories he’d heard, each one represented an element. The Castle of Air looked like it was made of crystal, the moonlight making the facets glitter silver. It shimmered at its foundation, as if instead of a moat it was circled by a twisting, cycling wind.

The Castle of Water shone as well, but the gleam of its walls was obviously a complicated series of waterfalls, shaped and directed by the castle’s angles and channel points. Even at this distance, the cascades reflected silver and blue. The top of the hill was a body of water, and the castle sat on it, instead of a land mass.

The Castle of Fire was unmistakable, a torchlike flame shooting up into the darkness, haloed with an aura of gemlike deep reds, purples and browns. Its moat was a flow of lava.

Since the Earth castle had less reflective surfaces, it was hard to determine its features, even with vampire sight. The grand silhouette was lit only by the lights of its inhabitants, but Jacob envisioned walls of clay, turrets covered with moss, trailing ivy and braided vines instead of drawbridge chains. Idly, he wondered if any of them had a dragon.

Silly knight. You didn’t even bring a lance.

Lyssa’s fingers whispered over his temples, helping him focus. The clean air had a sweet, wild taste. An indescribable world bursting with life energy, unfettered, brimming with magic. No wonder the dryad was so overcome. She’d spent two decades of her life without this… lifeblood. He’d detected a mere wisp of it when he’d held her in his arms. Her essence was intertwined with all the life here.

Magic existed in the human world, but it was an echo, a memory of what it had once been when their two worlds had been joined. Mere rivulets, trickling out the seams of the solid locked doors that divided them. A spark of it must survive in every soul, because Jacob felt a recognition now that brought a tangle of joy and sorrow together.

The dryad turned toward him, her small mouth pressed into a line, those tears running down her face still . She wore nothing, her long body a smooth sculpture, pale skin colored only by the soft pink of nipples and sex. She had a pendant around her neck. It had been dull stone when she’d stepped out of her tree, but now it glowed green and amber, a luster like the heat energy of a banked hearth fire.

Keeping her gaze on them, she removed it, laying the object at Jacob’s feet. Then, in a blink, she was gone, moving swiftly across the field. The wings that had been like crumpled paper against her spine now snapped out like a geisha’s fans, a flash of green and gold color. She moved only a foot above the grasses, as Essie had described. The fireflies were a trail of glitter behind her, in close pursuit.

“Do you think she gave us that as proof that we brought her here?” Jacob mused.

“How would she know we freed her to prove something to the queen?” Lyssa responded.

“Perhaps it was a way of offering thanks.” Jacob bit back a groan as he managed to sit up.

As he did, he picked up the pendant, feeling its warmth. Sliding the chain through his fingers, he lifted it, threaded it over Lyssa’s head and then situated it in the pleasing valleys of her breasts. His fingers rested there, over her heartbeat.

“According to the old lore,” he said, “the Fae believe saying thank you is an insult. Instead, you give gifts, tokens of appreciation. But it would have been helpful if she’d stuck around, at least until we meet the queen.”

“If I’m right, and the queen put her there, then perhaps not having her with us is less confrontational.”

She helped him stand, then surprised him by removing the necklace. As she went to her toes to put it around his neck, he bent his head obligingly, sliding his hands to her hips to steady them both, but said, “Isn’t that your trophy to bring to the Fae queen?”

“Perhaps, but your newest female admirer laid it at your feet. Plus, as my servant, you’re supposed to carry my things anyway, right?”

He considered the pendant where it lay against his T-shirt, amused when her fingertips stroked the hard cleft between his pectorals in imitation of his own sensual meanderings in her cleavage. “I guess this means at least one Fae likes me, even though I’m a nasty vampire.”

“One and a half. If I count for anything in your little fan club.” Lyssa sniffed. “Of course, my love is fickle.

I wouldn’t depend on it overmuch.”

That made him smile outright. Fortunately his head didn’t split open. He’d gotten too used to bouncing back instantly from injury. The Fae queen had let him come, but apparently wasn’t entirely happy about it.

Lyssa, on the other hand, seemed as energized as she’d been before she stepped across. Perhaps more so, because the magic in this world seemed to enhance her Fae side in a way that only magnified her captivating presence.

“You need blood,” Lyssa said.

“Not yet.” He shook his head. “I would never tell you what to do, my lady, but in this world I’d recommend treating me as you did when I first came into your service. Simply expect I'll be at your back and serve as you demand. Let me worry about the rest.”

She gave him one of her impenetrable looks.

“Seeing as you
are
my servant, and I value your services, if I see a need to protect you, I will . It’s very hard to train a new servant. Some of them are impossible, though. It’s best to simply dispose of them and start from scratch with a more docile model.”

Despite his aching body, he flashed fangs at her.

“I am ever at your disposal, my lady.” He nodded toward the castles. “I expect we'll find the queen in one of those. Looks like we can make it to any one of them at an easy pace in a couple hours.”

“Time and distance are probably more fluid here.

Whichever one we head toward, I have a feeling we'll still end up at the one she wants us to visit.” Lyssa lifted a shoulder. “Since Keldwyn said she’d expect us by the end of the full moon, and we’re early, I don’t see a need to rush, except to find you cover before dawn, which feels quite a few hours off. Apparently we arrived right after sunset.”

Jacob frowned. Lyssa could sense the rising and setting cycles here, but he couldn’t at all. He supposed he could have the vampire version of jet lag, but in the mortal world, he was as aware of the time as if he had an internal Greenwich clock. When he’d first become a vampire, he’d understood why vampires never had clocks in their homes, unless put there for the convenience of human staff. But here… nothing.

Like his fast healing, it was something he relied upon, not just as a convenience, but for survival.

Regardless, he put his uneasiness aside and offered Lyssa his hand. It pleased him that she took it. They headed across the sloping field, through the silver and gold flowers, down toward the edge of the forest. Each step jarred him, but he set his teeth against it. It would get better, and as soon as they were someplace less open, he’d feed.

He considered the horizon. “So do you think the Castle of Air is transparent? We could sit on the front lawn and watch the lady Fae changing clothes.”

“Leave it to the male mind to jump to the most important thing about a transparent castle.” Lyssa pinched his arm. She swung around in front of him, holding both hands now and peddling backward. Her jade eyes sparkled, her mouth curving as she looked up at him.

“My lady?”

“It feels so… different here. So familiar…” She shook her head, but let go of him to turn a full circle, her arms outspread. “Did you notice, as weak as she was, how our dryad was walking, her eyes sparkling? There’s a vitalizing force here for Fae blood. It’s like coming to a place you’ve missed for a very long time, where you thought you’d never be welcome again.”

Her lips curved. “It makes me want to dance. I have a great urge to… frolic.”