3013

by Kali Argent

  “He’s here.”

  “You kidnapped an elder?” Kai touched his fingertips to the center of his brow and sighed.

  Tira nodded. “It was more efficient.”

  “It’s been a while since I’ve had a female in my bed,” the elder muttered, “but I have to admit I didn’t enjoy it as much I thought I would.” He pushed the mess of tousled, silver hair out of his face and stared down his bare chest to the black, silky pants riding low on his hips. “Well, this is embarrassing. We should coordinate next time so we’re not wearing the same outfit.”

  “Ivy and Rya are missing,” Sion said, his tone level.

  Straightening at once, the smile vanished from the elder’s face, all remnants of sleep gone. With a wave of his hand, he dressed them all in black, lightweight pants with matching leather vests and hard-soled boots.

  “When?”

  “Just minutes ago.” Sion looked from the elder to Kai, then to Tira. “There’s no scent trail, so I can’t track them. I’ve stared at this map until my eyes hurt, but the bodies we found were dumped randomly. There’s no pattern, not that I can see. I’m a stranger here, an outsider, but this is your home. Think.” He stared hard at Elder Blue. “We’re assuming that these females were taken to be part of a ritual. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but right now, it’s all we have. Think,” he implored again. “Where would the sentries take them for something like that?”

  Rubbing the back of his neck, the elder paced in front of the sofa, shaking his head and mumbling to himself. “It’s only happened once before, many thousand years ago when we were still primitive and dwelled in mountain caves. This kind of ritual takes an enormous amount of energy.”

  “Okay.” Sion didn’t know squat about magic or rituals or spells, and he didn’t care. He just wanted to know where to find his mate. “What does that require?”

  “The full moon for one, specifically when it’s at its apex.”

  Looking past the elder to the high window, Sion stared up at the shining, circular moon and felt his heart seize. “That’s less than twenty-minutes from now.”

  “There are places with natural energy,” the elder continued as if Sion hadn’t spoken. “Waterfalls, the junction of two rivers, certain places in the mountains.”

  “So, that’s where we start.”

  Tira shook her head. “There are too many to search. We don’t have enough sentries, and we’d never find them in time.”

  “There are the Adderstones,” Kai suggested. “They amplify magic.”

  “They’re too well guarded.” Tira’s tone lacked conviction, and worry lines marred her brow. “Garrik and I will secure the wards.”

  Damn, Sion had been so lost in his own panic, he’d forgotten about Garrik. “He doesn’t know his sister is missing.”

  “I’ll handle them.” Tira took his hand and squeezed hard. “Find them.” Then she was gone.

  “The young female.” Turning sharply, Elder Blue marched back to the holographic projection screen to study the image of Glenda Rivers. “She was the start.”

  “I thought they all had to be sacrificed together?” Sion struggled to catch up to the conversation he hadn’t realized he’d been having. If the females could be picked off one by one, they had even less time than he thought.

  “The five, yes.” A deep valley formed between the elder’s eyes, and his teeth grinded together audibly. “This kind of ritual usually requires more than one caster.”

  Normally, Sion liked Elder Blue, but this was not the time for him to become all mysterious and cryptic. “No one knows what the hell you’re saying. Speak plainly.”

  Elder Blue jerked and lifted his head slowly, as if he’d only just realized he wasn’t alone in the room. “Glenda Rivers wasn’t part of the ritual. She was...the battery. The caster syphoned her magic and her baby’s energy for the power to complete the spell.” His mouth set into a grim line, and his nose wrinkled in disgust. “We’re looking for a male.”

  “I was with you until that last part. How do you know it’s a male?”

  “Because,” Kai answered, disgust written in every line of his face, “the baby was his. This is the blackest magic, Sion, the kind that burns through and consumes the soul. The power needed for this kind of spell requires the sacrifice of someone close to the caster. Someone connected by blood.”

  Sion hadn’t eaten in hours, but he felt the bile rise in his throat as his stomach threatened to expel its meager contents. “He killed his own child?”

  “Yes.” Elder Blue nodded solemnly.

  “Well, he’s not taking mine.”

  Kai regarded him for several seconds, then nodded. “Nor mine.”

  Rya had been eager to share important news with him, but she’d never gotten the chance. The dizziness, her visit to the med-bay on X21, the exhaustion, it all made sense now. Sion had never thought about being someone’s father, being responsible for a tiny, fragile life, but he wanted it, more than he’d wanted anything, and the gods have mercy on anyone who tried to take that from him.

  “I know where they are.” Garrik appeared six inches from where Sion stood, his fingers wrapped gently around the wrist of the young, human female from the space station. “Isla, tell them.”

  Swallowing loudly, Isla looked around the room with wide, fearful eyes. In her hands, clutched to her breasts, she held a hairpin encrusted with blue jewels Sion recognized as Rya’s.

  “In a clearing, shielded on three sides by blue mountains with snowcaps. There are flowers growing in the field, black ones, but they sparkle in the moonlight like glitter.”

  “Candia,” Garrik elaborated. “They only grow at the base of the mountains in the north of the Eastern Isle.”

  “How did you do that?” Sion asked the female.

  “When I touch something that belongs to someone, I can see them, where they are in that exact moment. I don’t how I do it. I just do.”

  Sion was already moving, going in search of his weapons, and preparing for battle, but he had to ask, “How often are you wrong?”

  Stiffening, Isla shook her hair back and stared up at him resolutely. “Never.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Rya came awake on a stone slab, her arms and legs bound by invisible ropes. Overhead, the moon climbed higher in the night sky, and a cold breeze swept down from the mountains. Lit torches stood like sentinels, illuminating the clearing and casting shadows that danced over her naked body.

  Four females rested atop other stone tables, the altars arranged in a perfect circle with a fifth, smaller one in the center. All five Adderstones—emerald, amber, ruby, sapphire, and onyx—gleamed brightly in a straight line atop the slab, and a cloaked figure chanted in the language of the ancestors, his hands hovering above the gems.

  “I’m going to rip your arms off and beat you bloody with them!” Ivy screamed, twisting and jerking against her magical restraints. “I don’t give a damn who you are, you’re going to regret this, you filthy piece of shit.”

  “It’s no use,” the female across from Rya said, her tone defeated. “You can’t break the bindings. They’re too powerful.” She laid motionless, staring up at the starry sky. “We’re going to die here.”

  “No one is going to die except for him.” Ivy continued her struggles, her face contorted into a mask of vehemence. “Hey, cocksucker! How about you let me loose, and we’ll see what you’re really made of, yeah? You’re pathetic. Hiding behind your title and your magic.”

  The way she spoke, with such pointed insults, Rya realized Ivy knew the male holding them captive. Rya hadn’t yet seen his face, and she couldn’t hear his voice well enough to place it. Sorting through the context clues, however, she came up with a pretty good guess.

  “Finn Silveroak.”

  “No,” Ivy bit out, her lips pulled back over her teeth. “Worse.”

  “It’s almost time,” the male announced, lowering the hood of his cloak to reveal long, silvery-blond hair.

  “No
,” Rya gasped. “Why?”

  Shaking back the sleeves of his robes, Elder Tak Meadowlark turned to face them, his unlined face alight with a crazed excitement. “This is the only way, Vasera,” he answered calmly, his head tilting as though he found her dim. “I wish you could see that. I have to protect our people.”

  “By killing them?” Ivy shot back. “You’re crazy.”

  “You came here, with your big ideas and concocted stories of soulmates in faraway worlds. You brought that animal, that beast.” He turned his head and spat on the ground. “You filled the peoples’ heads with lies, and you’ve turned them against me.”

  “Trust me, they didn’t need my help. I knew from the moment I met you that you were a big bag of dicks, and I doubt I’m the only one who saw it.” Ivy laughed at his look of outrage. “And that beast is going to tear you into little bitty pieces when he gets here.”

  Ancestors above, Rya couldn’t begin to imagine what Sion was going through right then. He’d come for her, of that, she had no doubt. Sion, Kai, Garrik, Tira, they’d bring others, and they’d rain down the fury of a thousand suns onto the elder. She only hoped Sion found her in time.

  Beyond their immediate circle, sentries—some she recognized, some she didn’t—stood guard, creating a barrier between the females and anyone who would hope to rescue them. She couldn’t see them all, but she estimated there to be twenty, maybe more, all dressed in black tunics, and each with their swords drawn. The part of her not panicked by her predicament wondered if the sentries had aligned with the elder of their own accord, of if they’d been pulled under his spell.

  Then she realized it didn’t matter. Most of them likely wouldn’t live to see the sun rise.

  “I have to right this wrong, to repair what you’ve destroyed.” Turning back to the altar with its five, flowing gems, Elder Meadowlark tilted his head back to look up at the sky. “When the sun rises in the morning, everyone will know you as a harlot and a fraud. They’ll be scared, of course. They’ll need a leader, someone to give them answers, and they’ll praise me as their savior.”

  “That’s your big plan? Attack the summit. Induce fear into the people of Xenthian. Then cast your spell so everyone will forget what an asshole you are so you can swoop in and play hero.” Ivy scoffed. “Yeah, let me know how that works out for you.” Suddenly, she started laughing. “You did your weird hoodoo stuff on Wyn Nightstar. You sent him to kill me.”

  “Wyn Nightstar was a fool and a terrible disappointment.” The elder turned, his gaze straying to Rya. “If he’d succeeded in the task I set him, none of this would be necessary.”

  “You’ve tried to kill me once and failed.” Ivy laughed again. “What makes you think you’ll have any better luck this time?”

  Rya wished she could be as fearless as Ivy, to taunt the elder with glib remarks and imaginative threats. She wasn’t brave, though. She was terrified, not just for herself, but for the life growing inside her. There hadn’t been time to tell Sion the news, to share in the joy with him. Despite his own upbringing, or maybe because of it, he would be a wonderful father, and together, she’d have the family she’d dreamed about for centuries.

  But the moon had almost reached its apex.

  “Why did you send someone for me at the citadel?” she asked, guessing it would probably be her only opportunity for answers. “Just after the summit? I wasn’t with child then.”

  “I sent no one for you after the summit.” Elder Meadowlark pushed back the sleeves of his robes again and waved his hands over the Adderstones. “It was, however, quite troubling, but I’ll deal with him later.”

  “You’re pregnant?” Ivy ceased her struggles momentarily to smile at her. “Congratulations.”

  The female had clearly gone mad. “I’m afraid I can’t share in your enthusiasm at the moment, Ivy.”

  “What? This?” She tried to jerk her hands up again, a smile still stretched across her lips. “We’re going to be fine. Kai and Sion are coming for us. You know that, right?”

  “I know.”

  “No. Don’t just say it. Feel it.”

  Rya laughed in spite of herself. It had been the same thing she’d told Sion the first time he’d attempted to use magic. She thought back to that day on the beach, to the kiss they’d shared later in her quarters. His promise to always love and protect her.

  I’ll conquer galaxies to keep you safe...

  Her heart swelled until she feared it would burst as the unshakable certainty that Sion would keep that promise filled her. The fear she’d felt since opening her eyes melted away, and in its place, a scorching rage unlike anything she’d experienced burned through her. Rya still didn’t consider herself brave, but neither was she a coward. If she was to die, she’d do so fighting until her last breath, not waiting idly to be slaughtered on an altar of self-righteousness.

  As the elder chanted, so did she. Her words were quieter, calmer, a severance spell to unbind her from the stone slab. The restraints were too powerful, too much for her alone.

  “Help me.” She chanted louder, spurred when Ivy’s voice joined hers. “We are not helpless,” she told the other females. “This is not our fate.”

  One after the other, three more voices joined them, their cries carrying up the mountains to echo through the night. Louder and faster, they fought for their lives with the only weapon at their disposal, but after several minutes where nothing happened, the effort seemed useless, pointless.

  “Don’t stop,” Ivy demanded. “Louder. Keep going.”

  “Enough!” Spinning in a full circle with his arm stretched out in front of him, the elder effectively silenced them. “Your magic is of no use here, but it is terribly distracting. Quiet, now.”

  Rya’s mouth continued to form words, but no sounds escaped her. She didn’t stop, though. She continued the chant in her mind, screaming the words over and over until her neck ached and her temples throbbed.

  When she began to tire, when hope seemed lost, she heard the most beautiful sound rise up in the night. Dark and dangerous, full of fury and purpose, a loud roar ripped through the sky to bounce off the nearby mountains. Her mate had come for her, and he was pissed.

  The starburst-shaped mating marks on her the side of her neck tingled, and Rya nearly wept when Sion bounded over the knoll, his massive feline body rippling with each graceful stride. Garrik came next, followed by Kai and Tira. Elder Blue materialized at Sion’s flank, his silvery hair whipping around him in the wind, and even Lorcan, the king’s attendant, appeared on the elder’s other side with a fierce look of determination.

  “Rya, are you hurt?” Sion sent to her through their mental link. “Just hang in there. I’m coming for you.”

  Yet, he didn’t move other than to swat away a couple of sentries when they approached him.

  “I’m not hurt. Not yet. Sion, you have to hurry.”

  “There’s a barrier,” he explained. “Elder Blue is trying to bring it down.”

  Sliding her gaze to the right, she found the elder easily, his hands raised and his eyes closed.

  “Hurry. The moon is almost at its apex.”

  “I know. It’s going to be okay.”

  Sion kept his thoughts peaceful so as not to frighten his mate, but they had even less time than she realized. The moon had already reached its apex, and the ritual had begun. If he couldn’t get through the barrier in time to stop Elder Meadowlark, there would no one left to save.

  He couldn’t tell Rya that, and he purposely blocked his thoughts from her. Around him, the battle raged. Sion had been assigned to protect Elder Blue, to shield him from attack while he worked to bring down the seal. He did so with enthusiasm, biting, slashing, and crushing any guard who came near them, but most of his focus was on Rya.

  “Be brave, princess. I’m almost there.”

  Lowering his head, he growled at Elder Blue.

  “I’m trying,” the elder shouted back. “It would go a lot faster if I had some help. As it stands, I need
more time.”

  There was no help.

  Kai battled a sentry with long golden hair, their blades sparking as they clashed. Lorcan moved in a strange dance with another sentry, circling one way and then the other before lunging forward to pierce the male through the chest with his sword. Garrik had lost his sword some time during the fight, and had turned to his throwing daggers, which he wielded with frightening accuracy.

  Tira had also abandoned her blade in favor of hand-to-hand combat. With a running leap, she landed on a guard’s back and locked her knees against his midsection as she gripped his head in both hands and twisted his head to the side with an audible snap. The male dropped to the ground, unmoving, and Tira bounded back into the fight.

  There was also no more time. Elder Meadowlark chanted faster, his voice lifting up over the noise of the battle. In front of him, the Adderstones glowed brighter as they vibrated against the stone slab.

  “Sion,” Rya screamed into his head, her tone frightened and filled with pain. “Sion, it’s happening. Hurry!”

  Elder Blue didn’t respond when Sion growled at him again, other than a shake of his head. He hadn’t broken through yet, and they’d run out of time.

  The medic at the manor had told Sion he had natural magic, and he’d made it sound as though it differed from the Xenon. By that logic, even if the Xenon couldn’t get through the barrier, maybe he could. Either way, he had to try.

  Fuck it.

  He took two steps backward, let loose an ear-piercing screech, and hurled himself at the invisible seal. His head felt like it would explode, his chest constricted, and for a moment, he couldn’t breathe. It reminded him a little of transporting, and when the discomfort passed, when he could breathe again, he found himself on the other side of the barrier, with nothing between him and the elder but a few feet of open grass.

  The elder’s eyes widened, and his hands shook, but he didn’t retreat. Turning his face to the sky, he chanted faster, hurriedly trying to complete the ritual before Sion reached him. So intent on his task, he didn’t even try to defend himself when Sion leapt through the air and landed on him, crushing the elder’s spine beneath his massive paw.