“Where are they?” The end of the staff wavered with the shaking of my arm, so I grasped it two-handed, sending sparks out the tip.
“They’re not here—Mace doesn’t like to leave Elf heim. Don’t shoot that thing at me.” Rand eased off the bed with his hands up and sat in a chair in the far corner of the room. “Just listen to me a minute before you leave.”
The fear dissipated, replaced by its bully classmate, anger. “Go to hell. This is all your fault.” My voice was hoarse, and I vaguely remembered screaming as I saw my mother die again and my grandparents give me away. Tish dying. Gerry dying. Rene’s brother dying. Jake’s life destroyed. So much death. So much loss. I couldn’t stop shivering.
“Let me help you.” Rand stood up and started toward me, but I held the staff up again and its sparks sent him back to his chair.
“I swear to God if you come anywhere near me, I will fry you.” I hadn’t been sure the elven staff would work against an elf, but he seemed to respect it.
“They were just supposed to ask you questions, I swear. I would never have taken you to Mace if I’d had any idea he’d try something like a regression. I fought them to get you out of there.”
I’d never felt so violated. They’d stripped away my will, torn my memories from me, made me relive things I’d spent years putting behind me, seen private things no one else had any right to. “I’m never going to forgive you for this. Never.”
My head pounded, and the room spun in a way that made me queasy. “What are you doing here? Who’s downstairs?”
“Sit on the bed before you fall. I promise I won’t come near you.” Rand gripped the chair arms as if to convince me he wasn’t moving. “It’s important that we talk and there isn’t much time.”
“Who’s downstairs?” I asked again.
“Alex and one of your Elders. Why do you think my face looks like this?”
I opened my mouth to scream for Alex, but closed it again after taking a closer look at Rand. His lower lip was cut and swollen, a bruise was already purpling on his jaw, and he’d have a black eye within the hour.
“Alex did that?” Good for Alex.
Rand touched a finger to his lip and winced. “He was tearing up my store when I brought you back.”
A new panic arose. “Did you hurt him?”
“No, I didn’t fight him.” Rand started to rise, then thought better of it and settled back in the chair. “Look, we don’t have long. If he catches me up here, he’ll try to kill me and I’ll be forced to defend myself this time. None of us wants that.”
I stared at him, wondering what he could do that I hadn’t seen. Whatever it was, I didn’t want him doing it to Alex. “What
do
you want?”
“I want us to be bonded to each other. It’s a short ritual, a blood exchange.”
Was he flipping insane? “If I do anything with you involving blood, it will be because you’re injured.” My voice got louder as I talked, despite Rand’s gesturing for me to talk softly. “I want you out of my house. Out of my life. Out of Eugenie’s life. If you or any of your Synod members come near me again, I will kill you with your clan’s sacred staff.”
Rand’s gaze on me was steady and intense. “Do you know yet if you’ll shift to loup-garou at the full moon?”
The question surprised me and dampened my anger. “What?”
Then the enormity of the question slammed into me. The whole Synod knew I’d been exposed to the loup-garou virus. They’d watched the scene with Jake over and over like a viral Internet video. It was ammunition, and I had no doubt they’d use it. The elves could have me destroyed without Mace Banyon breaking a fingernail.
I shuffled to the bed and sat heavily, leaning against the headboard and closing my eyes. What a disaster. If Mace Banyan did nothing until the full moon, I had one week of my life left. Or he could already have gone to the Elders, in which case Willem Zrakovi was downstairs deciding my fate.
“Answer me, DJ. It’s important for us to talk about this before Alex comes up and finds me here.” Rand leaned forward in his chair but didn’t make a move to come closer.
No point in pretending now. “I don’t know for sure, but a blood test has shown the virus is active in my system. I’m already healing fast, which means it isn’t dormant. It’s virtually assured that I’ll shift. The Synod knows I’ve been exposed, so what are they going to do about it?”
Rand nodded. “Mace will use it to destroy you; he’s furious that our staff claimed you, and you have a lot more of our magic at your disposal than we realized. You haven’t begun to even discover it yet. This whole thing was set up to see if you were powerful enough with the staff to pose a threat to us, and he’s convinced you are.”
I shook my head, not understanding. “How can I be a threat to him? To any of you?”
Rand fidgeted in the chair, and I got the impression he’d be pacing the floor if I hadn’t been clutching Charlie. “Think about it. If the elves and wizards ever break their truce, the wizards would be at a huge advantage if one of their own could do elven magic.”
“Then why are you telling me? If I’m a threat to the Synod, I’m a threat to you.”
Rand studied me a moment before answering. “You’re not a threat unless the elves and wizards end up in a war, and I don’t want that. I actually don’t think Mace does either, but he still finds you a threat and your loup-garou exposure makes it easy for him to get rid of you. If the Elders don’t lock you away or kill you themselves, he’ll find a way to goad you into losing control so the Elders will be forced to act.”
Damn. I couldn’t wait until next week to move to Old Barataria. I needed to go tonight. I got to my feet and opened the top drawer of my dresser, pulling out clothes and throwing them on the bed. “Get out of here. I have to pack.”
Rand was across the room and grasping my wrist before I realized he’d moved. “If you bond with me, you won’t shift.”
I wrenched my arm away from him and backed up a step. “What kind of crap are you trying to pull on me? Why would I believe anything you say?” I might be impulsive, maybe even naïve at times. But I wasn’t stupid.
Rand’s blue eyes were almost glowing. “Elves can’t become loup-garou. If we bond with a blood exchange, it will counteract the virus. You won’t shift, DJ. Mace’s threat will be neutralized.”
I shoved the pile of clothes out of the way and sat on the bed again. I’d only thought things couldn’t get worse. There had to be an angle. “So Mace wants you to bond with me so he can blackmail me into siding with the elves?”
Rand’s chuckle held no trace of humor. “Mace would kill me if he found out I’m trying to bond with you.”
I looked at the elf, hate and despair and hope mingling in an ugly stew. Elves apparently didn’t heal quickly like shapeshifters or weres. If anything, his blackening eye looked worse. I, on the other hand, was feeling stronger by the second. Can’t keep a good loup-garou down. “What’s in it for you?”
He sat beside me on the bed, shifting farther away when I waggled the staff at him. “Political leverage. My mother is dying, and I will ascend to chief of the Tân, a full member of the Synod. Our clan is the smallest and therefore has the least power. Mace wants to reduce our Synod vote by half. But if I have a connection to the wizards, he won’t dare move against me or my clan.”
I rubbed my eyes. “I don’t want any part of your political crap, and bonding yourself to me doesn’t mean the Elders would back you in a Synod power struggle. Forget it.”
Rand inched closer. “It will work, and it’s good for both of us. You’ll be in a stronger position with your Elders as a liaison with the Synod. I’ll secure my clan’s position in the elven hierarchy and have an alliance with the wizards that would make Mace think twice about ever breaking the truce between our people. And you won’t turn loup-garou and either be killed or spend the rest of your life in hiding.”
I sighed and closed my eyes. Crap on a freakin’ stick. I couldn’t even think about the political fallout right now. “Well, doesn’t that sound like candy and unicorns? Look, I don’t trust you. I’m not agreeing to anything without finding out exactly what this bonding entails, so I need time to think about it. I need to do some research.”
Rand gave an impatient growl. “We don’t have time. The closer you get to the full moon, the more the virus takes over your system and it will be harder to counteract.” He touched tentative fingers to his eye, which had almost swollen shut. Alex’s knuckles were probably bruised. “Not to mention the wizards won’t let me anywhere near you again, not in time to make this work. It has to be now. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”
Yeah, and I might believe him. Or not. “Okay, what does the bonding mean? You say it gives you political clout, but how?”
He hesitated, which ratcheted up my suspicion level. “It’s a sacred union among my people. You’d be given the rights of any full-blooded member of my clan, plus a high standing from being bonded to a member of the Synod once I ascend.”
The last elf lesson with Adrian seemed like a month ago instead of a day, but I remembered him saying the elven clans had remained pure. “Tell me this isn’t like a marriage because if it is, the answer’s not only no, but hell no.”
Rand studied the hem of his sweater and didn’t meet my eye. God, I’d nailed it. “We’d be mates. But it’s not a marriage like you’re thinking about.”
Right. “Does it involve an exchange of vows?”
He shrugged. “It does.”
Uh-huh. “Does it involve a physical consummation?” Because I would never have sex with Quince Randolph. Not. Ever. Happening.
He smiled, which cracked his busted lip and sent a trickle of blood onto his chin. Served him right. “No, except for a small exchange of blood.”
“Can we bond until the loup-garou business is over and you’ve gotten your political benefit, and then undo it?” Elven divorce court was probably about as entertaining as the scene I’d just endured.
Rand pressed the hem of his sleeve against his lip to stop the bleeding. “Um, well, no. It’s permanent.” Recognizing the disgust on my face, he spoke faster. “Look, I’m offering you a way out. You can keep your life here. You won’t turn loupgarou. You keep the staff. You keep your job. And I know you and Alex are involved. Do you want to leave him?”
God, no, I didn’t want to leave him. I wanted to be able to live my life here, not hide out in the Beyond and meet with Alex in stolen moments, if I could even trust myself not to hurt him. Look at the problems Jake was having. I didn’t want Alex to start fearing me the way I’d begun to fear Jake.
Tying myself to Quince Randolph for the rest of my life— even in some bonding of convenience—made me ill. I had to consider it, but needed more time.
“I’m sure there’s more,” I said. “What about my elven skills. Will they change? Will you get power from me?”
“You’ll get more from it than me in terms of skills,” Rand said. “I won’t pick up any wizard’s magic, but if we’re bonded you’ll be immune to our mental influence, even mine. Your empathic and aural skills will be stronger. As for me, well, I’ll be able to communicate with you mentally—the way I did in Elf heim, only you’ll be able to talk to me as well.”
Oh, great. Rand would be able to annoy me from a distance.
Encouraged by my silence, he kept yapping. “This can be a good thing, Dru. You can stay here in your house. You can see your friends. You don’t have to give up your life to either the Elders or the call of the moon.”
Speaking of friends . . . “You’d have to break things off with Eugenie because I don’t want to see her pulled in the middle of a mess she can’t possibly understand. She cares about you, and you’ve just been using her as a way to get to me. And break up with her in a way that doesn’t hurt her or make it look like it has anything to do with me.”
“Then you’ll do it?”
I closed my eyes. I’d be stuck with some sort of contact with Quince Randolph for the rest of my life, which was disgusting. On the other hand, at least I’d have a life. I’d have my job. I’d have a future in New Orleans. I’d have the possibility of a future with Alex. The Elders might even get some political stability from it with the elves. In the end, maybe it was worth the tradeoff. It wasn’t like I had to live with the guy. Maybe I’d never even have to see him again.
Besides, with Mace Banyan and the Synod aware of the loup-garou exposure, what choice did I have? Put up with the pest, die nobly, and sign Jake’s death warrant as well, or be consigned to the Beyond forever . . . if the Elders didn’t find a way to force me back under their control.
Crap. This was too big a decision to have to make in this short a time, but Rand was right. Alex, if not Zrakovi himself, wouldn’t allow Rand to get this close to me again. “What do we have to do?”
Rand reached in his jeans pocket, pulled out a small, ornate silver knife, and lifted my arm to make a small incision near where the healed scratch from Jake had been. He lifted my bleeding arm and dropped his mouth to the cut, drawing my blood into him. I tried to pull away but he held it fast, sucking on the wound. What did he think he was, a freaking vampire?
He leaned over, his mouth just above mine, and whispered, “With your blood you are bound to me.” He kissed me softly, lingered over it, and I elbowed him in the gut as hard as I could. The metallic taste of my own blood was vile, and I had no sympathy as he doubled over in pain. I still had the growing strength of a loup-garou.
He smiled up at me, his eyes a glaze of glassy blue. He’d gotten off on that. Just gross me out already. “The kiss is part of the ritual. Now, you.”
I still had time to back out. Alex would be furious but I was doing this for him as much as for me. For us. For Jake.
I nodded, and Rand flicked the knife across his neck, just over the collarbone. I started to point out how much more intimate this was going to be and insist he cut his arm, but, really, I just wanted it done.
He tilted his head toward his shoulder, baring his neck. I pushed his hair aside and hoped I could do this without barfing.
I don’t want to be loup-garou. I don’t want to give up my life to live in the Beyond and hide from the Elders. I don’t want to be put down like a rabid dog, and I sure as hell don’t want to be locked up in Ittoqqortoormiit. If I shift, Mace Banyan wins.