Blood Reign (#4): Alpha Warriors of the Blood (The Blood Series) (4 page)

Tharell tried not to dwell on deceiving Julia. The guilt would be more powerful than he could stand.

Many years had passed since he had come across one as compassionate as she was. The Blooded Queen had promised to consider gifting her people if they were willing.

Tharell did not think Faerie had time to wait on her decision. Other matters outside the scope of Faerie were part of his thought processes. It made his head ache like a rotten tooth.

“Enough,” Tharell interrupted their arguing in a quiet voice of authority. It did not boom, but nearly so. Every gaze at Region One landed on him.

Michael made a little motion with his arms like flapping wings. “What? Are you going to lay more Faerie dust on us? Zap us all into comas again. Pfft... loved that noise.”

“Michael,” Marcus warned. “Let him speak.”

“Fine.” Michael lounged up against the wall, mauling a sucker in his mouth.

“I will not lay down the weapons of the fey, nor will I use them against you in the time of our alliance.”

“Very precisely worded,” Delilah, Jacqueline’s daughter, said.

Tharell nodded. “We are a precise people.”

“Fey are not human,” Jen said. All her brothers attended the meeting, and Tharell looked at each one.

“Nor are you. We are humanoid. We share similarities with humankind. We can breed with them, but they are the lesser evolved of us all.” Tharell lifted his chin and went on, “Your Singer Combatant was severely lacking in their protection of Julia Caldwell.”

Scott moved forward.

“Rest easy, Singer warrior; the Red Were are as diabolical planners as any I have ever known. We postulate they move toward reuniting all their kind. To have it as it was before the Americas became what they are today. Before my kind came from Europe.”

He treaded more softly, though it did not come naturally. “Domiatri and I have brought the prisoners with us. They will be under lock and key of the magick of the fey for the duration of the journey.”

Jacqueline and Anthony.

They were heathens. And though Tharell understood the loathsome back-story to the female monarch of Region Two, it was difficult to hear the reports of the pain she allowed meted from her mate, a sadistic Were.

Besides the rutting that they began and ended, upon which Tharell came in the middle of most consistently, whispers of rape and perversions had reached his ears. He flicked his gaze to the cuffed Jacqueline, her once lovely, dark eyes shadowed with smudges. Bruises in sizes that only fingerprints could leave, covered every place the eye could behold.

And ones Tharell could not see.

She was proven evil, yet it turned his guts to see any female ill-used. And that she possessed the blood of the fey? More so.

However, in the end, it was a Singer matter. As was getting their consent for her journey with him and Domiatri as well.

Tharell studied Marcus take in the proof of her injuries, both old and new.

“If Jacqueline goes with the fey, then I will, too. We're mated, she can't go without me,” Tony said.

Tharell expected him to club his own chest like the purported caveman of eons ago. When he did, giving himself a stout punch in the chest, Tharell laughed aloud, and Tony's gaze narrowed upon him. “What are you laughing at, you effing grape?”

Tharell's smile died out like a flame starved of oxygen.

“You will not come with us. You do not have Faerie blood. You are an insubordinate, criminal Were.”

Jacqueline said nothing, head bowed, eyes glazed. Jen, the Singer leader's daughter approached the apparently cowed Jacqueline.

“Hey, Jackie-baby... what are ya doin'?”

When Jacqueline didn't rise to the dig, Jen looked around, her gaze coming to rest on Tharell. “What did you do to her? Not like I give a shit, but it's weird. She's so… subdued.”

The female needed to come with them. Period. She had married the Were, a proven rapist and abuser of women from all reports. A bad choice—albeit her own.

Tharell looked down for a moment.

Could they have left the Singer female vulnerable inside her soft prison with the Were? Her powers oppressed as they are by fey magick?
His gaze snapped to her form, seeing the sunken shoulders, thin frame, and beaten countenance.

“Nothing's wrong,” Tony said defensively. “Jacqueline's great. Right, honey?” Butter could have melted on his tongue. He darted his tongue out and gave Jacqueline a long lick on her neck.

She flinched away from him.

Jen frowned, folding her arms. Scott went to his biological mother. The woman responsible for attempting to poison Julia.

“Get Cyrus,” Scott said. The Combatant's gaze moved over Jacqueline.

Jen left the room.

Scott's accusation lay within the black depths of his eyes. “I thought you said she would be safe?”

Domi gave Tharell a cautionary look. Tharell did not need the warning. Caution had been beaten into him. Literally. “She is alive. You insisted the Were and Singer be held together. They chose to mate. Your leader”—he swung a hand at a troubled Marcus—“attended the ceremony. Each stipulation was followed”—Tharell grappled with the idiom most apt—“to the letter,” he finished.

Cyrus, the Singer healer, rushed into the room, his shock of white hair standing on end.

Jacqueline, the subject of belated concern, toppled over like flower whose stem has been cut.

Scott caught her.

Tharell watched it all indifferently. Tony's face, indomitably etched with guilt and fear, told so much.

Tharell closely held the secret of why she would be wont to faint.

Scott settled her carefully on the floor. The Healer came forward, his hand hovering at her forehead and gliding down her body in a near miss of flesh kissing flesh. He did not touch her but hesitated near her pelvic region.

“Fractured pelvis,” he said, his voice without intonation. His hand  went lower, paused at the ankles. “Contusions healed...” His eyes flicked to Tharell's and narrowed into a glare. “And fresh.”

Tharell had done exactly as he had stated he would. No more and certainly no less.

“Dehydration, exhaustion...” His hand returned to her lower belly, concave beneath her clothes. He lowered his palm and finally touched Jacqueline. She gave a pathetic moan and tried to bat his hand away, her mewls of fear so horrible to witness Jen raised a hand to her mouth, and she gave her father a raw look of horror.

“She is pregnant. But with this pattern of abuse, she might not keep the...” Cyrus' gaze moved to Tony, whose gloating sneer hung from his face. “Whelp,” Cyrus finished softly, removing his hand slowly.

Scott stood, his hands balled into fists.

“Don't,” a soft voice said from behind him.

All eyes turned as Lacey Greene entered the room.

Tony broke the bloated silence. “Just like old times.”

Scott hit him so hard he dropped to the ground, out cold.

Tharell watched it all, and then his gaze came to Jacqueline. She was the key. Without her, they could not journey after Julia.

There were too many challenges to a fey this far from Faerie. She would need to be with them at all times.

She would serve as buffer.

But first, she must get well.

Time was the enemy.

Julia got out of the way as a Red Were shot his fist into the scarred Were’s mouth.

It should have ended the charge. It didn't.

His speed in half-wolfen form mesmerized her. He ducked the shot, and bony talons burst his fingertips. He didn't stab the Were but slashed behind and in front of himself in a spin of limbs, like the hands of a clock moving in opposite directions.

Blood rose to the surface of the tall man who had come from behind Slash and on the chest of the Were that he fought now.

Julia gulped when Truman, looking far more at home as a Were than he ever had as a cop, scooped up the human male and tossed him casually outside the back of the van.

Julia took Adi's hand, and she gently snatched it away, shaking her head. Julia looked down at the deep cuts from the silver and nodded.

It was just one Were now against Truman and Slash.

Then he changed, howling.

The gunk of his human existence splattered the inside of the box van, landing in jellified lumps that tumbled and slid down the walls to land as disgusting, jiggling dollops on the floor.

It was raining human gore inside the truck, and Julia rushed to the back to get out, Cyn at her heels.

A werewolf launched himself inside as they tried to exit.

Jason flew at him, their wolves colliding midair.

Julia didn't stick around. Her small telekinetic ability and aura reading would not protect them from a captor gone crazy.

She slid out backwards while Truman and Slash's tails gave an ominous flick as they cornered the one Were in the truck.

“Let's get out of here. They can find us once they shred him,” Adi said, and Julia nodded.

“That's a no-shitter,” Cyn agreed.

They used the metal handle on the sides of the truck and slid down the back.

They turned to run and Lily blocked their path.

“Hi, bitches,” she said in a conversational tone and threw something at them.

Julia watched it the way one would when deeply startled mixed with fear. She couldn't galvanize herself into action.

Adi could. “More stupid fey mojo! Let's split!”

She grabbed Julia's hand and she slumped.

Fully awake. Fully paralyzed.

The glitter fell, and the numbness spread from her core to her fingertips.

Adi shook her head and growled low.

Cyn leapt at Lily, who laughed.

She drove in talons that erupted as she leapt. One minute she was Julia's bestie, with tattered but still coifed hair, clothes, and nails, and the next she was a semi-furred Were creature.

Her talons burst through Lily’s other side, her dark skin rupturing like a split plum. Guts spilled from the front, and sinew and flesh hung in twisted strings from the end of Cyn's razor-sharp tips.

“Heal that up, you interfering twat.”

Julia lay on the forest floor while the noise of distant cars whizzed by, and couldn't take her eyes off Cyn. Pale blonde fuzz covered her head to toe as Lily slid off her talons.

She put a hand, fingertips finished with short talons, against Lily and shoved her the rest of the way.

“Kill that fey jerk off,” Adi gasped from beside Julia.

Cyn approached them, and her pendulous breasts swung, nothing hidden from view, even what proved her female. She was comical. Lily lay behind them, gasping, and Cyn put her dangerous hands, gore to her upper arms, on her slim hips.

Naked.

“Kill her, Cyn,” Adi croaked.

“Right,” Cyn said, and it came out,
Rawght.
Like gravel crunching underneath tires.

She went back to Lily and calmly centered her foot above her skull.

Julia couldn't watch. She turned her face away, instead looking at Adi. Who never took her eyes off Cyn.

The skull makes a distinctive sound when breaking. To Julia, it was like cabbage being squished mixed with dry timber breaking. She would have covered her ears had she been able to move.

She could breathe, but that was all.

Cyn took a look at herself, and her expression filled with horror.

There was just so much a small town girl from Alaska could take. Changing into a naked half-Were and bashing a Faerie's head in was probably a little much.

Cyn turned to the side and threw up.

The smell wafted to Julia, and she helplessly lay there praying she wouldn't get sick and choke on her own vomit before the cavalry showed up.

Instead of Jason, Truman, and Slash coming to their rescue, a contingent of ten Were surrounded the women.

Cyn changed back as she lay naked beside her own vomit.

Adi struggled to shake off the newest Faerie dust Lily had laid on them.

Julia couldn't move to fight off the Were whose snout appeared alongside her neck and took a long, pulling inhale of her scent.

“This is her,” he said with a nod.

Jason growled behind her.

Julia couldn't blink. Tears came anyway.

There were simply too many Were.

The Were who'd been inside the truck had healed the damage Julia's friends had laid on them.

Ten more had come.

It hadn't been escape for them, but a rendezvous for the Reds.

*

“Careful,” the Were that held Julia said to the one she couldn't see, who walked beside them.

Julia could hear the train but not see it. Where there was a train, there was roads.

She moved a toe. It was a fantastic accomplishment. She also needed to itch her nose so badly she couldn't think of anything else.

Cigarette smoke clogged her nose, and she sneezed.

Green eyes met hers. They spun like Jason's and she blinked slowly, trying not to think about where he was.

“You're awake,” the Were stated softly.

Julia said nothing. Her mouth wasn't working right. Just the sneeze. Her paralysis was lifting... slowly.

A second Were filled her vision. His eyes were mud struck through with moss.

The smoke thickened as she choked and coughed.

A hand lashed out and the other Were went flying.

To have that violence directed so close terrified her.

“I won't hurt you,” the Were said.

Sure.

He turned his face away and a snout grew, lips pulling back from teeth no longer human. The unseen Were didn't approach again.

“When I say be careful, that means not smoking next to the Blooded Queen.”

A yip reached her ears, and the Were's features bled to human again. Julia could only watch as things that should never shift looked like small moles burrowing underneath the flesh of his face, realigning his bone, muscle, and arrangement of features within human norms once again.

Julia blinked, and he was a man again.

They'd been standing outside a freight car, only the roof’s lip visible to her from being held in arms rather than standing on her feet.

Suddenly, they were airborne, and she yelped.

They landed with a bouncing thud inside the car.

He laid her gently on something soft. Julia had never wanted to move as badly as she did right then.

She was now facing everyone with whom she'd been taken.

Jason, Truman, and Slash were badly beaten. Julia's eyes took in a bubble of bloody mucous trying to boil out Truman's nostril, and a deep, abiding rage welled up inside her.

It felt like something she could use.

When Lily came into sight, looking perfect, that anger burst from her like a star escaping her chest.

Lily's smug look of satisfaction changed instantly to terror.

It was a supernova of power. Julia's new powers were ever evolving. She knew this. As Rare One, they'd told her they'd come randomly.

Sometimes random worked.

Bright, searing light cut through the murky car. It illuminated things she didn't wish to see, the injuries of the males who'd tried to protect them, the new contingent of Were, a tightly bound Cyn and Adi.

The source of the energy was she. It threw off the paralysis like a snake shedding its skin, and Julia sat up. Awake, energized, and whole again.

Lily waded through the light, her face distorted in pain.

“Julia,” she began.

Julia thought she might be trying to plead her case. Julia would never listen. She was done negotiating with anyone who mistreated her people, herself and lied to do it.

She would not allow it.

Julia could control the light. She used it like a sword at Lily, who stopped looking black and began to glow. She screamed, high and tight. Lily's skin flaked into large chunks that floated like singed paper coming close to the mouth of the sliding train car door, they were sucked out like captured bugs.

Lily's mouth was the last thing to succumb to the combustion of her body in a yawning inferno of heat and molten consumption.

Her teeth made almost no noise as they fell on top of the pile of ash that had been her body.

Julia didn't pause over her remains but found her friends instead.

Her husband.

His eyes met hers. One was swollen shut but the fine, clear hazel of the other was sure.

Of her.

The light changed, becoming iridescent. It sparkled and fell like moving glitter on the wind. It cloaked the Red Were, healing Jason, Truman, Slash, and even Cyn and Adi of their minor injuries.

Unfortunately, it invigorated the Red Were who had taken Julia.

When he hit her from behind, the light seeped out of existence and the Were in charge of the reacquisition captured her as she fell.

The last thing she heard was Jason.

Howling.