Exile: Sídhí Summer Camp #3 (6 page)

The thump of his heart made her shudder and
hold him even closer. She'd nearly lost him. She couldn't make it
past that horrifying thought. She wanted to port him to safety, but
that wasn’t possible, not with Beth and Brianna present.

She didn’t know when the two shifters had
showed back up. They had obviously arrived in perfect time for a
rescue, but not so much for Sarah’s idea to port everyone to
safety.

Mitch and Emily were unconscious, same as
Nick. Paralyzed by the mite poison, they would never know if she
ported them out of the cave, but the shapeshifters really put a
kink in her idea. If Beth wasn’t such a critical part of the
political structure of Haven Valley, Sarah would make them
permanently disappear. Problem solved.

Forcing herself to calm down, she began
listening to the others around her. They had already decided what
to do. Sitting back, she let Jared take control of the situation.
It wouldn’t hurt anything and it would take the spotlight off her
dramatic escape from the mite tube.

“I’ll take Mitch,” Jared said with a grunt of
exertion as he picked-up the large halfling, settling the
deadweight over his shoulder.

Katie and Beth had one of Emily's arms.

“Can you and Brianna drag Nick?” Jared asked
Sarah, lips twitching. He was a horrid actor.

Wrapping her hand around Nick’s limp wrist,
Sarah nodded her agreement. The teens were halfway to the tunnel
leading toward the surface when Sarah smelled Clarisse. It was a
fleeting scent, but one she couldn't ignore.

“I caught Clarisse’s scent,” she called out.
According to the multiple groans she heard, she wasn’t the only one
who had completely forgotten about the red-haired vampire.

“All of you get out of here. I’ll find her
and get her out,” Sarah said, gritting her teeth in
frustration.

“What about Nick?” Beth questioned her,
nodding to the inert figure Sarah protectively stood over.

“I’ll stay,” Brianna offered eagerly. “You
can’t do it by yourself. You’ll still need help.”

“I was hoping Nick would wake-up by the time
I found Clarisse,” Sarah said, eying the overly eager girl. She’d
hoped to get rid of both shifters and port Nick to safety. Then
she’d return, find Clarisse, and dump the little traitor in a cell
under Trellick Castle. The girl’s scent had been all over the trail
going into the valley.

Sarah had a sneaking suspicion the Clan
Vampire had switched the warning signs going into the valley. No
doubt, ordered to do so by her superior within the Khr’Vurr. “You
have a chance to get out of here, take it while you can.”

“Where’s the fun in that?” Brianna said with
a grin. The girl glanced at Beth, obviously seeking her friend's
approval, before going any farther.

Jared's eyes narrowed at the exchange. He
glanced at Sarah and shuddered visibly.

She smoothed her features, hoping no one else
noticed her thirst for action. She was growing tired of the
charade. She wanted a few necks to snap. A little deadly force
would make her feel better, and be one-step closer to catching the
Khr’Vurr.

“If you hear or see anything, leave Clarisse
and get out,” Jared said, avoiding eye contact with her.

Yeah, she definitely needed to work on her
impassive face. She couldn’t help it; her emotions were running too
high.

She disliked staying behind, but had no
choice, not after she smelled Clarisse. She didn't like the
stuck-up Clan vampire, but she wouldn't leave the girl stuck in one
of the mite's feeding tubes either. And since Brianna was tagging
along, there’d be no dungeon cell in Clarisse’s near future.

The cavern swallowed the small scraping
sounds as the other teens escaped the confining area. Without a
backward glance, the group disappeared into the tunnel leading to
the small, picturesque valley. Sarah hoped the teens didn't run
into any mites. She couldn't race to save Jared and Katie, not this
time, not with witnesses around.

Briefly, she considered calling Mac to assist
them.

Her slightly insane friend, and personal
guard, would’ve hurried to her side at a moment’s notice, but as
usual, too many factors kept her silent. Mac had the ability to
hide what he truly was, but another – more important – reason for
not calling the phoenix was his aptitude for finding trouble where
none existed. Even the princeling admitted to being a magnet that
attracted turmoil.

Sarah held her body stiff, standing
pre-naturally still, silently ranting against her lack of options.
Nothing new in that choice, she stayed hidden in plain sight. False
truths surrounded her life, keeping her identity as Chi’Kehra a
secret and not exposing Trellick Valley’s mysterious wonders of
nature.

She was so sick of hiding. Unfortunately, she
wasn’t experienced enough to confront the dhark lords of the
empire, not if she wanted to win the war of all wars, a war that
hovered on the horizon.

She knew a deadly confrontation approached.
One of her guard’s – a two-thousand-year old phoenix by the name of
Garrick – had a powerful gift of foresight. The man had foreseen
the Sídhí war over-flow onto the mundane world. The glimpse of that
blood soaked foretelling never wandered far from her mind.

Shoving her problems to the back of her
brain, she gave Brianna a cold glance. She trusted the shapeshifter
less than a rattlesnake, which was not at all.

“Well?”
Clarabelle demanded of the wrinkly-faced gnome.

Less than three feet tall, the yellow-eyed
man was a carbon copy of the small Sídhí race of people. The
bug-eating, cave-dwelling society was legendary for their practical
jokes and sick humor. For the most part, she tolerated them. With
the correct incentive, they were easily controlled. Complete
obedience from the lesser race was all that mattered to her.

As Clarabelle’s large head neared his
trembling form, she curled her lips in revulsion. Folds of the
gnome’s pale, pasty colored skin quivered in fear. The little man
ducked his head, showing her the proper respect she was due.

By reporting his failure, he showed a hint
more intelligence than she believed him capable. She’d rather know
if a plan needed readjusting before it was too late, not that she
wouldn’t punish him for his failure. Fear was a great
motivator.

As she considered what his botched mission
meant to her plans, she allowed smoke to billow from her nostrils.
Her intentional slip of control had the wrinkled gnome crouching
beside the squirming troll, looking almost like a man-shaped Shar
Pei puppy.

When the little man didn’t run from her show
of displeasure, surprise rippled through her big body. At sixty-odd
pounds, the gnome would be less than a pre-meal snack for her, not
that she ate gnomes. Well, only a few and that was years earlier.
The unfortunate incident happened after one of the silly creatures
cut her beautiful hair too short.

The laughing-howl of a troll cut off her
train of thought.

Clarabelle’s foot pressed a little harder,
squishing the flopping dark red body of the cave troll under her
giant claws. The troll bellowed in fury. Its long, yellow teeth
gnawed on one of her claws in a wasted attempt to free itself. The
big male’s grunts and howls seemed to be a barbarian language, but
she knew the noise was only the animal’s attempt to frighten her
away.

Trolls, like werewolves or khatts, were very
smart animals. Notoriously short tempered and difficult to control,
most people never wasted their time training the brutish creatures.
Clarabelle, on the other hand, saw the opportunity they
presented.

Under her fierce glare, the troll’s handler
hunched his scrawny shoulders. “I tries to teach ‘em Mistress, but
I don’t always makes ‘em understand. I really tries!” the little
gnome squalled under her harsh glare.

“It’s nots my fault that them mites attacked
too soon. I swears it!” the stinky little gnome continued his
rambling excuses as Clarabelle rearranged her strategy.

She didn’t want excuses; she wanted results.
She wanted Nick, the Chi’Kehra’s lifeMate, alive and in shackles
before the night was over. Having Chi’Kehra as her personal lapdog
would not only guarantee success against the dragon council, but
the girl was critical to Clarabelle’s ultimate goal of returning
Dragon Valley to the Sídhí home world.

“You will hunt them down. I want the boy
captured, not dead. Do you hear me? You will bring him to me alive.
He won’t be any good to me dead. He dies and you and every
miserable gnome within Dragon Valley will die by my
dragonfire.”

The gnome dropped to his knees. His loud,
keening wail of terror pleased her.

"We might as
well start," Sarah said to Brianna, motioning toward the weird wall
full of holes. Stone tubes with mud caps that held the mite's
poisoned victims, a place to keep the creature's next meal alive
and fresh. The odd tubes probably held dozens of mite-poisoned
victims.

Unless they got lucky, finding Clarisse would
take hours.

Turning away from Brianna, she examined the
mud-capped tubes. There were hundreds of them. She ignored the
larger tubes that glowed with an inner layer of glow moss, focusing
on the smaller mud-crusted tubes.

Her vision dimmed and the tubes blurred.
Startled, she blinked several times before her eyes cleared.

She sucked in a startled breath. Quickly
smoothing the slight frown off her face, she chalked-up the odd
blurry sensation to the lingering mite poison in her body.

Brianna shrugged her shoulders. "Yeah,
sure."

The two teens began the long process of
breaking the hard mud cap off each tube, searching for their
missing cabin mate. They found numerous fiber-wrapped animals
including a werewolf and a bobcat. They did not find Clarisse.

They worked for hours.

Sarah paused from the boring task of breaking
into the tubes and rubbed her sore knuckles. She frowned. The pain
was unusual. She normally healed from small scrapes rather quickly,
nearly instantly.

Glancing toward the girl, she wondered about
the silent shifter and her best friend, Beth, Alpha Prime of Haven
Valley.

Haven Valley had been under surveillance for
years. The other Sídhí valleys had not known about the secretive
valley, but Sarah and her people had known about them. Trellick
Valley had numerous hidden gateways going into Haven Valley,
gateways that gave her army of spies free access to the shifter
dominated dimension.

From all reports, Beth ran a tight ship. The
young queen refused bribes, yanking wrongdoers up by the short
hairs. She called it the way she saw it, maintaining an eye for an
eye approach to her rule.

Brianna was a mystery. Every photo of the
girl showed a wide-eyed, skinny pre-pub. Sarah didn’t have a very
thick folder on the teen, but she remembered one nugget of truth.
Her spies believed the brooding blonde was Beth’s pet
assassin-in-training.

She tilted her head in thought. Perhaps that
was why Brianna volunteered to stay behind. No doubt, Beth saw
Sarah as a piece of Sídhí scum that shouldn't be trusted, a killer
that needed to be permanently removed from the world.

Sarah’s lips twitched with dark humor. The
two teens had a lot to learn.

Beth had no idea of the danger she had just
dropped her loyal little follower into. Given the time, if the
girls lived through attacking her, Sarah might agree to teach them
a small lesson or two.

The reports she received on Beth and her
brother, Derek, had been very detailed. The two royals couldn't
sneeze without her spies knowing when, where and how many times
they sneezed.

Brianna proved to be a different story. Beth
kept the young woman behind the scenes, away from prying eyes. She
wished she knew a bit more about the girl.

“If we split up, can you find Clarisse by
scent?” Sarah asked, determined to solve the mystery surrounding
the sleek shifter.

“Why shouldn't I?” Brianna demanded,
clenching her hands at her sides. Her chin jutted out in anger.

Well now, wasn’t that an interesting sore
spot?

Sarah hid a smile. She needed a good workout,
and if her reports concerning shifters proved accurate, the race
had a horrible temper. Supposedly, their ‘hot temper’ was as much a
shifter characteristic as red eyes were for a blood-drinking
vampire.

She studied the girl. What she saw only added
to the mystery. Normally, through her synth-drenched blood, she
could tell the strength of a shifter by the glow of synth energy
surrounding them, not so with Brianna. For all intents and
purposes, the girl smelled and looked like a mundane human with no
power glow at all.

When the two girls first appeared, Sarah
accepted Emily’s assessment that the girls were shifters. Perhaps
that assumption had been a mistake.

Sarah inhaled, separating the individual
scents until she found what she searched for. One minute Brianna
smelled human, the next she smelled unique, unique as in extremely
weird. Before puberty, all Sídhí smelled like a mundane human. A
person’s base scent didn’t change, except during puberty and then
in very brief spurts. Brianna’s base scent changed.

The girl actually had a very slight scent
that reminded Sarah of a fairy. The spring fresh scent wasn’t a
bold fragrance. The scent shifted, confirming her theory that
Brianna was in the middle of her twenty-one day puberty cycle. As
the fresh scent changed, she caught the sharpness of electricity,
like that of a spring lightning storm.

Sarah’s curiosity rose several degrees. It
didn’t seem possible, but Sarah had seen too many impossible things
in her life to discount the odd hint.

“There hasn't been a shifter around in
several thousand years,” Sarah said quietly, her voice remained
cool and distant as if discussing the weather, while enjoying her
decision to test a few theories.