Blood Kin (31 page)

A nonchalant shrug accompanied his answer. “Oh, I didn’t actually know about my father before,” he said. “But once I did, I wanted to find him. So here I am.”

“Commendable, I suppose.” I crossed my arms. “What about the coma and your impending death? I get a frantic visit from Isabel who tells me I have to come to BC, then
I get there and am told you are stable, no need to rush and now you aren’t even at the enclave. You’re
here
… in Faery.” I gestured, indicating our surroundings. “Wherever here actually is.”

“You mean you didn’t know?” Gideon sounded legitimately surprised. “I’d assumed you came here because—”

I broke into laughter, cutting him off. “Oh. My. Gods and goddesses. You really thought I came down here because of
you
? That’s some ego you have, Gideon Kelly, though I shouldn’t be surprised. You always thought the world revolved around your shiny ass. Well, I have news, oh cousin and very former lover—it is so not all about you. In fact, it was never at all about you.”

With a toss of his head and a vicious sneer, Gideon pushed past me, giving Adam an angry look. As he brushed by, a wave of dark energy hit me. My knees buckled. I grabbed onto Adam as I wavered, my balance fighting with the sense of power emanating from Gideon. My own shields responded, a moment too late, trying to shut out the energy. Dizzy, I held on to Adam’s arm and shoulder, attempting to block what I could. Tendrils of energy still seeped inside. I could nearly see them, they vibrated so strongly, humming with a dark song, a melody that sounded vaguely familiar. Adam grabbed onto me, brow furrowed in a look of concern.

“What have you done?” He directed his anger at Gideon.

I broke free of Adam’s grip and took a step toward my former lover.

Gideon paused when he saw my movement. He threw me an amused look, then continued to Drystan’s side. He turned and then gave me the slow once-over, his smirk
deepening, chest puffing out with self-importance. Oh, yeah, power play and loads of it … literally. The energy increased and pushed at me, the tendrils turning into thick ropes, weaving together, a multiheaded hydra attacking, looking for a way in.

I stood my ground, fists clenched. At my side, I heard Adam’s quick breath. He took my left hand, forced my fist open and intertwined his fingers with mine.

“Let me help,” he whispered so quietly that even I had trouble hearing him. What was he asking? I couldn’t split my concentration now. Gideon’s energy pulsed against my own reinforced shields. He pushed. I swallowed hard and tried to envision a smooth, reflective wall of glass and steel behind it—a mirror to reflect. Would it work?

Men could be so predictable. I should have expected this … revenge, was it? He’d been so angry when I left him. He’d never understood why I hadn’t gleefully jumped into his plans.

My mind began to wander back to the day of my final argument with Gideon. Focus, Keira! Forcing my attention back to the present, I fought the sinuous energy as it wove around me, surrounding me, looking for a weak spot, a way in. I tensed, trembling with the effort. The room around me faded. Breathe, Keira. Breathe through this. You can—

Without warning, a surge of power breached my defenses, invisible hands touching me intimately, as I loved to be touched, as he’d well known once upon a time. “No,” I gritted the word, clamping down on the power and unleashing my own. A second wave, dark green, the fresh scent of spice and vanilla bolstered by a musical chime of unearthly beauty, joined my own energy, merged with it, dancing, teasing. I tried to shake it off, then caught the flavor. Adam. I couldn’t risk looking at him right now.

Resenting that I needed his help, but grateful for it, I stopped trying to shake him off.

Gideon’s energy persisted: insistent, forcing, touching, a tendril up my side, across my breasts, on the insides of my thighs. The power clinging to him, the sheer energy of magick flowing in and around him—so heady, dark and extremely dangerous—so seductive, so … repellant. I didn’t recognize this energy signature. It was so much more than he’d had back when we’d been a couple. He’d only had potential then, but this, this was the completed story; the denouement had come and Gideon, like me, had Changed—and apparently not for the better.

With a snarl, I fully accepted Adam’s gift, weaving our power together, and with a twist and pull, tore Gideon’s energy from us, pushing it away, rejecting it, thrusting it out, slinging it back toward its originator.

Gideon stumbled, hands out, grasping for support and, finding none, he sank to his knees, head bowed. His dark hair hid his expression, but I was willing to bet he was no longer smirking. Drystan, beside him, watched in amusement. Fucking Sidhe royalty.

“What in all the levels of all the hells was that? You’ve Changed—how?” I took a step forward, stopped only by Tucker, who immediately moved me to one side and stood in front of me, in instant bodyguard mode. On his other side, Niko took a similar stance, fangs bared and a subharmonic growl sliding past me. Adam remained at my side, hand gripping mine tightly. I shuddered as the tension rose in the room, a palpable sense of energy rising—thick and livid from Tucker and Niko; amused and tinged with darkness from Gideon, who’d recovered and stood.

I gritted my teeth and fought the renewed surge of energies, concentrating on bolstering my personal shields,
wanting to stop it from affecting me. Was Gideon’s power more than mine? Or was it that he’d never held himself to limits and was doing the power equivalent of flashing fang for a vampire? One deep breath, another and then—

“Enough!” Drystan held up a hand. “Gideon, that will do. The two of you, enough. Keira, he is no threat.”

I’d have argued, but that was when a new surge hit me and I blacked out.

A
WARM WETNESS
slid across my face as I came to, gagging on raw power that, somehow, my body saved up and, at the same time, was trying to expel. Too little, too late, I thought as I turned on my side and took deep breaths. I had no intention of vomiting.

“Keira?” A woman’s quiet voice came from my right. I blinked, taking in my surroundings. Wherever I was it was too dark to see well, unless I concentrated, and right now, my head felt as if someone had used it for a soccer ball. The soft light of a few lit candles overlaid the natural dark shine of the stone walls. I lay on some sort of chaise, the dark upholstery plush and soft under my skin. A small woman sat next to me, a cloth in her hand dampened with something that smelled faintly of lavender and other herbs, a bowl of water on a small table next to her infused with the same scent.

“May I?” she asked, her words soft. “It will help.”

I nodded, my head protesting the movement. “How long?” I croaked as she bathed my forehead with the warm cloth. The lavender and other herbs smelled wonderful, soothing calming and restorative all at the same time. My skin tingled under her ministrations.

“Not long,” she said. “An hour, perhaps.”

She perched on some sort of ottoman. The lights in the room had dimmed … or was it me? I blinked again and the woman clucked as she placed a cool hand on my forehead.

“Stay still, child,” she said. “You’ve had a power surge and need to restore yourself.”

“A what?” Tucker growled, voice coming from behind me. I turned my aching head in his direction. He and Niko flanked the low chaise, standing in identical postures, still playing bodyguard. Huh. Was I going to have to Mark the vampire, too? It wasn’t a bad idea … though as bad ideas went, what the ever-loving hells had my great-great-granny gotten us into? Two heirs? Two Changed Kelly heirs, both simultaneously half Sidhe and somehow interwoven in those lines of succession, too? Had she been hedging her bets? Or was this all some inane and extremely long-term plot to have the Kelly clan be the unifier of all the superteams … so to speak? In any case, the only one with the final multizillion-dollar answer wasn’t in the room. I’d lay all sorts of bets that Drystan, like my mother, no doubt, had very little knowledge of the endgame.

“Power surge,” the woman responded. “And be quiet. Keira will need quiet for a time.”

“What’s that?” I murmured, my body beginning to relax as she massaged my temples.

“It’s to be expected from a newly empowered Sidhe. You’ve only come into your power recently, I take it?”

I nodded and immediately regretted the movement as my head decided to send another jolt of pain through my body. “Crap, that hurts,” I whispered. “My head—”

“Is she going to be all right?” Tucker asked the woman.

“Yes, it’s just a wee bit overwhelming right now. Everything for her is magnified.”

“How’d this happen?” Tucker asked. “She was fine, then—”

“Then Gideon let unchecked power free—she reacted.”

She scowled at the bowl of herb-scented water. “I am sorry for that, Keira. He should not have been—”

“There are a great many things he should not have been.” Tucker gritted the words through his teeth. “Including that powerful. Has Drystan explained any of this?”

She shook her head. “He’s said nothing, for all that I am his sister. Please, call me Glenys.”

Adam’s aunt. A family member from Adam’s side of the family—his Sidhe side. Well, come to think on it, he was fully Sidhe, fully Unseelie Court, well, plus that whole vampire thing. Underneath the throbbing pain, I held on to my sanity with the tips of my mental fingernails, hoping that I wouldn’t let myself fall into a gibbering heap.

She placed the cloth on my head. “Drystan keeps much from me, from the rest of the Court. None of us knew of Gideon until now.”

“At all?” I croaked. “No one?”

“We knew of his existence, but since he was born Above, we thought he’d remain there.” She smiled. “I suppose we should have known better. My brother is a tricksy one … with a long eye for the future.”

I shifted on the chaise, my body aching, every muscle sore as if I’d been beaten by an expert. In a sense, perhaps I had been. How the fuck had
both
Gideon and I Changed? In everything I’d been taught, there could be only one heir at a time and those were few and far between. Many many centuries could pass before a new heir emerged. “I don’t understand—”

Glenys’s melodious voice soothed me, as if she felt my anxiety, a hand covering my eyes, soft scent of lavender filling my nostrils. “Hush, child, relax. Focus on your body, the channels of power. They’re all twisted inside of you. You need to fix it.” The words faded into one another
as I let the words wash over me, muscles relaxing in the wake of her calm.

“Breathe deep, Keira,” she instructed. “Focus on my voice, center your energy, stabilize it, balance …” She began to hum a low tune, soft and quiet as her words had been. “Breathe in, out. In. Out. Focus.”

I complied, calling on training I’d had in meditation to help harness the potential talent in me, now realized and cut loose by my brush with Gideon. I caught my breath, losing the rhythm, but she shushed me again, still humming. Minutes, hours, days, time flowed into itself and back again as I sank deep into my own awareness, found the wild strands of power straining to escape. I corralled them, twisted them back to where they belonged, wove them back into the pattern of my body, my energy field. As the last strand fell back into place and merged with the rest, I let out a huge sigh and my body finally let go of the pain.

“Wow,” I said in a near whisper. “You’re good.”

“Thank you,” she said. “Aeddan has always been a favorite of mine. My brother’s only son—at least, the only one he acknowledged. When he was first made vampire, I was there. I helped him. Those first few days of rebirth can be difficult.”

I studied Glenys’ countenance. She had one of those placid, serene faces often found in Renaissance portraits of women. Her dark auburn hair was dressed in two plaits, caught up behind her head at the nape of her neck. She wore a tunic and skirt, subdued dark colors complementing her pale Sidhe complexion.

“Thank you,” I said. “For helping me. For helping Adam before.”

Glenys gave me a quiet smile. “I am glad that I could be of service to you and to Aeddan. Your situation is unusual enough as it is.”

“You said a mouthful, Glenys,” I said as I sat up, my energy now back to normal. “What do you know of all of this?”

“Nothing more than you do, my dear. I apologize for not being able to enlighten you.”

“Were you aware of Gideon’s Change?” I asked her.

“In theory and in rumor, yes,” she said. “I heard him discussing such with Drystan earlier this day. Am I to understand that he was once your lover?” Her gentle eyes blazed, a shrewdness and penetrating power now filling them.

“Afraid so,” I said. “I had no idea, though—”

“Of any of it,” Tucker interrupted. “I’m thinking Gigi has a load of ’splaining to do.”

“I should think so,” I said. “Where the hell is Adam, anyway? My vote is to get our carcasses out of Faery and back to Vancouver.”

“That’s just it,” Tucker said. “After we brought you here to this room and Glenys arrived, Niko and I went back to the Great Hall. I wanted explanations and, frankly, I was ready to kick some Gideon Kelly ass. Everyone was gone from the hall.”

“Gone where?”

“No idea,” Tucker answered. “Niko and I searched around for a while, but all we saw were those blank corridors.”

“They’ve taken Adam,” Niko growled. “I can’t feel him.”

Startled, I instinctively reached out with my own
senses. I knew Adam’s signature nearly as well as my own brother’s. When he was anywhere near, it was there, a reassuring sensation. But now, Niko was right. It was gone.

“Fuck.” I swung my legs around to stand. “We’ve got to go find him.”

“I believe Drystan is in conference with both his sons,” Glenys said. “I sent one of the servants to find Aeddan, but they were denied access to Drystan’s rooms.”

“Bloody brilliant.” I gritted my teeth. “That’s all we need—for Adam to get into it with his father and Gideon. After what he did to me …”

“What exactly
did
he do?” Niko asked. “All we could see were flashes of light, then you collapsed.”

“He attacked me,” I said bluntly. “Got inside my shields, touched me in ways not at all appropriate without permission and some simply not appropriate at all.”