Demon Storm: Belador book 5 (18 page)

He pulled back at that. “What?”

“Think about it Tzader. For four years I watched the two of you live this way with you coming here in hologram or her going to you that way. I couldn’t allow her outside this castle when she was at the height of her power inside it and there was no other Treoir alive. Would you have risked her being harmed or killed?”

“Of course not.” Was Macha saying ... “You
did
want us together?”

“Please don’t tell me I’ve gone through all of this to mate Brina to an imbecile,” Macha muttered, starting to turn away then stopping.

But not moving far enough for Tzader to get a clear look at the hologram. “If you weren’t against us being together, why didn’t you help us?”

Macha spun around, her dark, gauzy pants spinning into a liquid shape. “I. Did. I allowed you four years to figure it out, because I foolishly believed that two people who constantly swore their undying love to each other would be motivated enough to find a way to make it happen. When you
both
settled into this state of... of... I have no idea what to call it. Basically, you were both content to live this way forever because of being immortal. Living forever doesn’t give you the luxury of sitting back for the ride. We are responsible to Beladors all over the world. Not just me, but you and Brina as well. ”

The light bulb moment blinded Tzader with realization. “This whole thing about you ordering Brina to move on with her life and have an heir, then telling me to allow her to move on was
your
way of solving our problem? Are you kidding me?”

“Don’t take that tone with me. It was inspired thinking. Far more than you two were doing.” She glared down her nose at him. “You two did
nothing
to solve the problem. Your answer was for me to break an oath I made to each of your fathers. I’m insulted you even considered that I would do such a thing.”

How had she turned the tables to make him feel like a nasty slug? She’d put him and Brina through hell because that was her wacked-out idea of tough love.

Tzader argued, “You didn’t even give us a chance to come up with a plan.”

Light exploded around Macha. “I. Gave. You. Four. Years. To be honest, I began to question whether you really loved her.”

“
I loved her enough to run through a ward that kills immortals to get to her!”
he shouted right back.

“Then you should have tried harder to find a way to be with her.” 

Silence whipped through the tension, slicing it up and shoving his anger around.

Tzader locked his arms tight, because he wanted to strike out at something, but dammit. Macha was right. He didn’t want to admit that her screwed up thinking had a lick of logic, but seeing the situation through her eyes put everything in a different perspective.

Tzader’s father would be ashamed of him for expecting Macha to break her word. Brina’s father would be disappointed in both of them, too.

They weren’t teenagers any more.

That meant taking responsibility for their decisions.

Like the fact that he and Brina had chosen to be complacent for four years. Why? Had they really thought Macha would fix this for them? What had they been waiting on?

He could only blame so much on his father, Brina’s father and their duties to the Beladors.

Tzader ran his hand over his face then down to the tired muscles in his neck. When he looked up at the goddess, it was with regret pouring through his heart. “I apologize for all the times I asked you to break your vow to my father. To have even requested that lacked honor on my part. Brina and I are as much at fault for this mess.” He still wanted to strike out at everyone from Macha and Allyn to the Medb, but he only had to find a mirror to locate his enemy.

“I accept your apology.” Macha’s hair and clothes quieted along with her voice. “Now that there is no ward standing between you and Brina, it will be up to you two to move forward. The next time you come up against an obstacle in life, and you two will, figure it out. Don’t wait for me or anyone else to solve your problems. You’re by far the best Maistir I have and more than suitable to be Brina’s husband. If she ...” Macha took a breath that made her voice catch. “
When
she returns, you two have my blessing to be together.”

“Thank you. Would you mind moving aside so I can see ... her?”

Macha took a moment, then she floated out of the way.

Tzader couldn’t breathe. “No, the druid said–“

“That he hoped the hologram would last four days.”

Eighty percent of Brina was gone.

At the rate the image was deteriorating, would the lingering pieces of Brina’s hologram last even one more day?

Breathe.
Brina had not vanished yet. Tzader shouted, “
Darwyli!”

The druid appeared, took one look at the hologram and muttered, “Worse than I thought.”

Tzader hadn’t needed to hear that. “How long does she have?”

Swinging his ancient gaze past Tzader to take in Macha, Darwyli lifted two white eyebrows in question.

Macha lowered her chin and pushed a narrowed-eye look at Darwyli. “You may answer his question, druid.”

Darwyli harrumphed, then his expression eased with understanding when he addressed Tzader. “’Tis not long. I think we’re down to less than a day.”

Tzader pinched the bridge of his nose. “This can’t be happening.”

“We have a greater problem, Tzader.”

He dropped his hands and stared at Macha in disbelief. “Do you really think that’s possible?”

Her animated face and hair turned stone-cold still. “I’ve been called to a Tribunal meeting.”

“Now? Haven’t they heard what we’re up against?” Tzader shouted, furious at VIPER, the Medb, Noirre majik and the world in general.

She lifted a hand to ask for silence when she could have used that same hand to lock his jaws. When she spoke, her voice was softer than he’d ever heard before. “That’s why I believe they’ve called the meeting. We are the force behind VIPER and the coalition. We’ve always held the majority of control because of that power. Now that our forces have been weakened, sightings of the Medb have been reported all over the world. Our people estimate over forty witches and warlocks in Atlanta alone.”

Her words hollowed out his gut. “Tell me that the Tribunal is raising a defense to help our tribe.”

Her chuckle was short and grim. “Hardly. I’m fairly certain they are calling me in to ask me to withdraw my pantheon from VIPER voluntarily so they won’t have to do it by force.”

Energy sparked around Darwyli. “That would be an insult you could not allow.”

None of that made sense to Tzader. “Why would VIPER even consider such a thing when we still have the largest army of nonhumans?”

“For that very reason,” Macha explained. “VIPER does not have the resources to defend our tribe when they know every enemy we’ve ever had will come for us, starting with the Medb. The Medb’s current lack of leadership will only add to the chaos. VIPER is pulling in all agents to protect its base of power.”

“We can only assume the Medb lack leadership at this point,” Darwyli said, but Macha ignored him.

Disgust stamped each of Tzader’s words. “The coalition would leave us high and dry after all the Beladors have done for them?”

Macha’s hair lifted up and down when she shrugged her shoulders. “Ours is not the kind of world that binds allies forever. They may simply look at this as nothing more than evolution, the survival of the fittest.”

Tzader searched for something appropriate to say, but the only word that covered it was, “Fuck.”

“I’m not a fan of that language, but it’s not far from my initial reaction. I’m going there now and I will stretch out the meeting as long as I can. You won’t be able to reach me unless you request Sen to come for me. If he does, the mere fact that my pantheon can’t maintain its defense without me will draw a vote of no confidence with regard to keeping us in the coalition. You’re in charge while I’m gone. We can’t afford for any issue to be brought in front of a Tribunal right now. Understood?”

“Yes.”

Macha lifted her hand and paused. “If Brina returns, I’ll know it immediately. Or if ... she doesn’t, I’ll know that, too. Pull in the gryphons and all our warriors on the island to the castle if that’s what it takes to hold Treoir, but it must not fall into the hands of the Medb even without Brina here.”

Macha disappeared.

Silence stumbled through the room.

Darwyli sighed with the weariness of one so old. “I don’t mean to add to your burden, Tzader, and I didn’t want to speak of this with Macha present, but I think you should know that the hologram’s disintegration may affect Brina.”

“You don’t think she can return?” Tzader’s heavy heart rallied from too many blows to thump with panic at that possibility.

“No, I believe she can return as long as she has something that offers a path back, which is this hologram. But that projection is part of her, just as breathing is. I only want you to be prepared for the possibility that she may not return to us whole.” 

As Tzader turned back to the hologram, another piece of Brina’s dress broke away, crystalized and twinkled out of existence.

He wanted her back no matter what.

How had his mighty tribe come to this point?

E
verything was too quiet, even in an old neighborhood at ten in the evening. Even the balmy breeze of earlier had settled.

Where was that witch doctor?

Evalle searched the night for movement from where she and Adrianna hunched down in a dark shadow created by a deteriorating, single-story ranch-style house forty years old. A modest home on what was still a nice corner in the town proper of Stone Mountain, Georgia. This house was newer than many in the area like the residence across the street she’d like to own. She loved how someone had glassed in the porch on one side. That two-story brick-and-stone structure had to be at least seventy years old, and came with a nicely trimmed yard.

As opposed to the weeds surrounding the house she hid beside. A fallen For Sale sign in this yard told of the tough housing market, and two broken windows pointed at a bad influence infiltrating the neighborhood.

The human scum that local police handled.

But dealing with demons and witch doctors like Nadina fell under Evalle’s job description.

She studied a two-story, saltbox-style colonial house also across the street and next door to the brick home with the glass porch. The unadorned wooden structure leaned to one side. Understandable for a house built before the Civil War and still settling into the Georgia clay. A security lamp on a pole just past that house shed the only light in this area.

Evalle reached for her spelled dagger and came up empty. She’d left it hidden in Storm’s Land Rover. Adrianna had warned her that the spell on the dagger could possibly alert Hanhau to Evalle’s presence, assuming they found a way for her to sneak into Mitnal.

Thinking out loud, Evalle whispered, “We might be staking out the wrong house.”

Adrianna hadn’t moved a muscle since crouching next to her when they arrived forty minutes ago. “Kai said Nadina had taken possession of a former Civil War infirmary near a bald mountain. We’re within sight of Stone Mountain, the only bald-looking mountain I know of in this area, so the question is whether your friend’s intel on this specific house is good.”

True. Stone Mountain was a gigantic granite belch, one big smooth chunk of rock rising over sixteen hundred feet.

“I’m not questioning Isak’s intel. If I pressed him, he’d tell me the dates this place was active and how many soldiers were treated here right down to their names and injuries. His information is solid. I’m just wondering why we haven’t seen a sign of Nadina.”

“She probably knows something or someone is hunting her. I would.” 

Evalle swept a look at Adrianna, who had said that in all seriousness. “Can she find us first?” 

“I honestly don’t know what she can do, but I wouldn’t underestimate her.”

As if I have to be told that after Nadina tricked Storm, who knew the witch doctor better than anyone?
“What do you think Kai meant by Nadina taking possession of this house? Does she mean literally?”

“To some degree, yes. If this house was a former hospital, then it will be full of spirits. Nadina would use her majik to overpower what is generated by the spirits still present in the building.”  Adrianna gave a soft sigh, the only sign of any weariness. “Where’s your artillery division?”

“Isak said he’d be here by ten.”  Evalle lifted her watch. “He’s got forty-five seconds.”  She looked up, took in the immediate area, then gazed over her shoulder, searching every shadow down the street behind her that crossed at this intersection.

A shape emerged from a black pocket of nothing off to her right three houses away. She whispered, “Here he comes.”

Adrianna stretched to look past her. “Where?”

“Give it a minute.”

Isak covered sixty feet of distance without ever coming fully into focus while doing so. Adrianna didn’t have Evalle’s natural night vision, but even so if Evalle hadn’t been familiar with the way Isak and his men operated, she wouldn’t have known what to watch for.

“Oh,” Adrianna murmured with a hint of feminine admiration when Isak crossed the last thirty feet to reach them. He wore a monocular that allowed him to see everything Evalle could.

Describing Isak as attractive was too limiting.

Blue eyes full of sharp intelligence, a body built for bulldozing over the first line of any defense and a sexy grin capable of leaving panties strewn in his wake.

Big, bad and black right now from head to toe, even black smudges on his face to camo his lightly tanned skin.

Judging by the usual amount of weapons both visible and assumed hidden in that vest among other places, he was armed to take down a city by himself. The rifle-like weapon he held at ready was similar to the one he’d loaned Evalle to kill Svart Trolls, a mercenary bunch of black ops nonhumans who’d invaded Atlanta earlier this month. But this new mega weapon painted in matte black appeared to be outfitted with a few extra tricks if those three switches meant anything.