Leoht (BloodRunes: Book 3) (19 page)

“Are any of them dangerous?” Layna asked, a
hint of concern in her voice.

“Nothing I can’t handle. I have had to move a
bit more slowly in the wooded area since I can’t see as far around
me and there is so much more life here.”

Gryffon turned his head to look behind them
nervously and took a deep breath. “We should probably wrap it up
and move out. Even though we haven’t been detected by anything too
bad yet, there’s always the chance. Anything else you need from
us?”

Katya shook her head. “Stay safe,” she told
them, surprising herself at how sincere that farewell was. Layna
gave her a little wave and she was suddenly staring back at her own
reflection once more. She held it there a moment longer, her dark
eyes staring back at her, before tucking it away in her bag.

She couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling she had
about the use of the collar. Like everything else it seemed that
related to the King, this prospect made her uncomfortable. She
forced the thoughts from her head and concentrated on her
surroundings.

Since she had entered the forest, her journey
had been much more eventful and exciting. There were constantly
creatures skittering around on the forest floor, and she suspected
many more above her that she couldn’t see. Every once in a while
she would hear their hooting calls or see evidence of movement or
things falling from high in the canopy above her. The weather was
warm, and inside the confines of the vine-covered trees, the air
felt sticky and heavy.

Even the plants were foreign and Katya found
it more and more difficult to determine what was edible and what
was not. Once, she had even come across a vine which she swore
moved of its own accord towards her. It was keeping her on her
toes, and she was grateful for the reprieve from her spiraling
thoughts about the King. The more she thought about it, the more
confused she became; there was no good answer. Her rational mind
and her emotions simply had completely opposite views on the
matter.

She stopped her foot mid-motion a foot above
the ground. She had almost set it down on the ball of mushroom
below it. She carefully moved off to the left and resumed her
walking. Her wandering thoughts had almost made her make a possibly
deadly mistake.
Concentrate
. She had poked at one of the
mushrooms with curiosity earlier and it had exploded into a cloud
of spores. The barest whiff of them that had assaulted her nostrils
had burned her lungs painfully. Stepping on one and getting a
mouthful was sure to be unhealthy.

A branch snapped to her right and she felt
Marak tense on her arm. She drew her knives and carefully and
silently picked her way to place her back against a tree. Slowly,
she poked her head around the edge. Twenty paces away a large
deer-like animal picked its head up, sensing her eyes upon it, and
it turned and fled.

Katya lowered her knives. She turned back
towards the game-trail she was currently following, only to
suddenly be knocked off her feet as something large and hard
slammed into her.

The knives went flying out of her hands and
disappeared into the underbrush. Katya scrambled to evade the
beast’s next pass, and her eyes searched the forest for the thing.
It was gone.

A screeching noise came from above and behind
her and she turned in time to see a giant bird coming straight
towards her before it knocked her flat once more, a talon grazing
her shoulder.

It disappeared into the foliage above,
winging away at a speed that seemed impossible. Katya crouched low,
frantically searching the ground with her hands for a weapon while
watching the canopy above.

She saw it detach itself from the trees and
had mere seconds before it was on her again. Its wings were scaly,
devoid of feathers, and a large horn protruded from its back,
giving it a frightening visage. There were long claws on the tips
of each of the wings as well as the talons that Katya had already
experienced.

It was coming at her, talons outstretched,
and Katya knew it was coming in for the kill. Her searching hands
came upon something round and she spared a glance in the direction
to see that it was the mushroom. She gently but quickly tore it
from the earth and flung it up at the approaching bird, rolling
away and covering her head with her arms.

The thing screeched in pain and frustration
and Katya kept rolling. When she slammed up against a tree, she
carefully opened her arms and peeked out. The dust from the
mushroom cloud had almost settled and the bird was nowhere to be
seen. Katya slowly rose to her feet, keeping an eye out above her,
and made a wide circle around the toxic explosion. She found where
her knives had fallen and carefully tucked them back into their
sheaths.

All of the action she’d had out here made her
wish she had brought a longer range weapon, a katana maybe, and a
bow. With all the poison and caustic substances, the close-range
knives would not have been her defense of choice.

She craned her neck around to examine the
wound on her shoulder and she shrieked as she saw a beetle the size
of her pinky trying to burrow its way into her flesh. She tore it
out of the wound and flung it away from her, batting at the back of
her shirt to make sure there were no more on her. She hurriedly
healed the wound, drawing the energy from a stone she had been
charging along the way and breathed a sigh of relief when it was
safely covered by skin once more.

When the energies around her had started to
become erratic, Katya had decided that using a stone to store power
in small doses to draw upon when needed would be safer than opening
herself up to the power in an emergency. A flux in the amount when
she was trying to open only a tiny channel was less likely to
overwhelm her than if she was wide open trying to cast a spell. She
was grateful for it now. If she had had to leave the wound to close
on its own because the energies were uncooperative, she would have
been most displeased.

She had discovered that the chaotic nature of
the power out here seemed to come and go, almost like the weather
patterns back in the cleansed area. Some days it was more constant
and stable, and other days it was so chaotic as to be untouchable.
Katya called these times ‘magic storms’. She had yet to determine
if the creatures out here could detect and control the power around
them. So far she hadn’t seen evidence of it, but she wasn’t ready
to rule it out either. So much of what she had seen was foreign and
she wouldn’t doubt it if they were actually utilizing it, just in a
way she was unable to fathom.

Katya resumed her trek and soon came across a
bush whose berries she had found to be edible. Her stomach growled
at her, reminding her that she hadn’t eaten in some time, and she
paused once more to fill a sack with them.

As she picked the plump berries, their juices
staining her fingers purple, she found herself chanting in her mind
each time she plucked one off the vine:

The King is friend.

The King is foe.

The King is friend.

The King is foe…

CHAPTER 12

Jezebel blinked blurry eyes and groaned as
she pushed herself into a sitting position. That damn Gryffon, how
dare he stab her! Coughing, she raised a hand to the wound in her
chest and found it was still sticky with coagulated blood. She
reached for the power to heal it and heard someone groan next to
her. Devon was propped up against a tree, white as a ghost.

“You have,” he gasped, “to stop draining,” he
took a labored breath, “me.”

Jezebel stopped her spell, she hadn’t
realized she had been using his energy. Was she that weak that the
spell had automatically started working? “Why is it drawing off
you?”

“I think it’s worse than it seems at first
glance,” he answered, looking slightly less drawn now that she had
broken the connection. “While you were unconscious the wound sealed
itself, but you may be bleeding internally. See how the area around
it looks like it’s been bruised?” He looked up at her and his eyes
widened a bit.

“What?”

“You’re coughing up blood too, the knife
might have nicked your lung.”

She looked at him in alarm and immediately
closed her eyes and turned her attention inward. Things didn’t look
quite right, but she didn’t really know what they were supposed to
look like either. If only she had read the book on healing. Maybe
she could transport back to the room and get it…

Devon’s ragged breathing reminded her that
she was drawing off his strength and she broke the contact once
more. A transportation spell would use all of his energy, and then
she’d have to hope that she had enough left to heal herself after
spending the time reading to find the information she needed. She
was feeling rather light-headed and images swirled before her eyes.
She doubted she could concentrate on the page long enough to
research her problem.

Damn Gryffon. Not only stabbed her but broken
his life-sucker as well. She could use some of his strength right
about now.

She had a desperate thought. The King had
saved her from dying after her hounds had gone mad, she was
important enough for him to keep alive. Perhaps Devon had enough in
him to get her to him and he would save her. He had to. He wouldn’t
let his First Advisor die!

Her mind made up, she concentrated on the
King’s conference area, imagining in her mind exactly as it had
looked. Then she opened the channel to Devon and his moan was the
last thing she heard before the gut-wrenching pull of the transport
enveloped her. She felt the spell weakening and she panicked,
afraid she’d be lost in a void between places, and she pulled
harder from Devon. A backlash of power hit her, like a rubber band
being snapped, and with a jolt she found herself on the floor
before the King’s desk, panting from the effort.

His head appeared over the large desk. “I
thought that was you.”

“You have to heal me,” she commanded him,
“That bastard stabbed me and took away my means to drain him to
heal it.”

“That bastard?” the King asked innocently, “I
thought that was me? Wasn’t that what you called me, right before
the first time you got yourself mortally wounded?”

“Just do it!”

“I don’t think so,” the King said coldly. “It
was a mistake the first time. You were useful for my project, but
I’ve come to realize that I don’t need to create the perfect mate
to produce an even more powerful offspring. I am already that
powerful offspring.” He grinned at her, his pearly white teeth
gleaming in the candle light. “Would you mind transporting
somewhere else to die? I don’t want to get your blood all over my
carpet. I just had it cleaned.”

“How dare you?!” Jezebel screamed at him, her
breath catching on the last word and she coughed uncontrollably for
a few seconds. When she got control of her wheezing breath, she saw
with horror that her hand that she had used to cover her mouth was
now covered in fresh blood.

“Oh,” the King lamented, “too late.”

“Save me,” Jezebel was going weaker and she
resorted to begging, “and my father will get you anything you want,
money, power…”

“Your father is dead, remember?” the King
said softly. “Probably the only person who ever cared about you,
even if it was only as a reflection of himself.” He paused and
looked thoughtful. “Although Devon held some affection for you as
well, where is he nowadays?”

Jezebel searched along the connection to the
man, and realized it was gone. Did that mean he was…she couldn’t
even think the word. Somehow the King seemed to figure it out
anyway.

“Did you kill him?” He shook his head at her.
“You drained him trying to save yourself, didn’t you? How selfish
of you. Well, I guess even he was using you. Did you know that he
was working for me?” She shot him a half-hearted glare. Devon
wouldn’t have, he, he-

“What, did you think that he loved you too
much to ever do something like that?” the King mocked her. “You
really are pathetic you know. You have never been in control.
I
was the one who allowed you to join the Order. And you
weren’t even a real member.
I
infiltrated their ranks and
used
you
, or rather used Devon to do my own bidding. The
Order was going to kill you.” He put his pointer finger and thumb
against his chin as if in thought. “Come to think of it, your own
father was going to kill you because of the shame. You were simply
the breeding stock, but when it was determined that you were one of
those that are sometimes developed due to too much inbreeding…makes
you people a little nutty in the head…” he spun his finger around
his temple, “it was determined you should be culled from the
program. And then of course there was the incident with your father
actually using your bond to cast a complete control spell on you,
that
was a fun little episode.”

Jezebel felt the heat rising in her face and
her breath came in ragged gasps as anger welled up within her. Why
was he intent on torturing her like this? He needed to get to the
healing!

“Oh what else, shall I go on?” He drummed his
fingers on the desk now, his calm recitation of her supposed faults
making her eyes blaze with hatred. She never should have come here.
He wasn’t finished yet, however, and had apparently come up with
something else. “Ah yes, there’s of course me again, blocking your
memories so that you’d do my bidding once again. That I found
particularly entertaining after the nasty names you called me in
the tomb.” He shook his head at her and made a tsk tsk sound. “This
list just seems to go on and on. Even now I can smell it on you,
someone else has been using you as well. You really are a waste of
space, Jezebel. Are you sure you don’t have enough energy go
somewhere else to die? I’m afraid it’s too late about the blood,
but at least I wouldn’t have to get rid of your corpse.”