Blood Heat

by Maria Lima

  “Anger comes in many guises,” Mark said. “This is why I’m working so hard at having the boys fit in. My nephew Gregor and another boy, Luka, are enrolled in school. They’re both stable, even-tempered boys. Having them on the football team goes a long way in gaining acceptance—or at least to being ignored. We’re not a long way from Jasper here. I don’t want to wake up some night to find crosses burning on our lawns. Most folks think we’re just a bunch of Austin-type hippies—white folk who prefer to stick to their own.”

  “White folk.” Tucker nearly spat out the words. “I thought you said you took in wolves from all over.”

  “We do,” Mark insisted. “I just know that it’s best to keep those of color closer to home.”

  I gritted my teeth and clenched my jaw at his words. Adam, who knew my temper and my feelings about this, wrapped an arm around my waist. “Keira, let’s go for a short walk. Perhaps you can pinpoint the source of the anger. Tucker, you stay here, please. Niko, if you’ll accompany us?”

  I kept my mouth shut and my words close until we were completely out of earshot of the wolves and heading out toward the parking lot. We walked past the ticket booth and Will Call window, to the first row of cars, ending up behind a huge SUV of some sort. With a quick focus and burst of a little energy, I threw up a muffling charm that would render my conversation with Adam and Niko unintelligible to any but us three.

  I took a deep breath, then another, and then a third. Then I exploded.

  “He’s fucking as bigoted and discriminatory as the reddest of necks around here. He’s only sending the white folks or those who can pass out into town? What right has he—”

  Adam cupped my cheeks with his hands, his gaze catching mine. “He has every right, love,” he said in his best calm, soothing voice. “He is Fenrir and absolute leader.” I started to pull away, still not over my righteous fit, but Adam held tight, as only he could. “Think about it, Keira. You are judging without all the knowledge. You—we—are not in his position. We live in a closed world. Our land is ours, and your town knows you and your family—has known them for decades. You are lucky that Rio Seco was settled by a more diverse group of people. Marcus has not had such luck. His place is here, in White Rock. His children, his pack’s children must somehow be assimilated in this human society. Is that not what your father wished for you? for Marty?”

  I nodded, unable to say anything that didn’t sound petty or annoyingly whiny, especially when he brought up my now-dead cousin. Adam was right, but how could I stand by and see this deliberate discrimination perpetuated by a man whose own family barely escaped mass genocide, not a hundred years ago? This was the twenty-first century, and we were still fighting the same damned battles: being different could get you ostracized … or even killed.

  I huffed. “Adam, you don’t get it. How can someone whose family has experienced this kind of discrimination, even genocide because they were ‘different,’ do this to his own people?” I turned to Niko to illustrate my point. “Niko, you get it. I hate to be this blunt, but you were a whore, right?” The word fell between us, foul and angry.

  Niko remained calm, though, regarding me with a solemn and steady air, his blue eyes deep wells of thought. “I was.”

  “And how did people treat you?” I pushed a little harder. He didn’t even flinch.

  “At best, I had patrons who allowed me to sleep indoors, sometimes on a pallet, most times on the floor. At worst …” He turned away, staring into the empty air, as if to compose his reply. “At worst,” he continued, “I was in the stinking, fetid gutters of the city, praying I could steal enough stale bread to survive just one more day.” He turned back to me, just as calmly as before. “Either that, or praying that death would finally come to take me and relieve my suffering.” He turned to Adam, his expression softening. “Eventually, it did.”

  Adam raised his hand and stroked Niko’s cheek, a look of love, fondness, and caring directed toward the man who was his second. Their bond comforted me. It had lasted more than four hundred years, first as mentor and student, then lovers, then as family. My own bond with Adam was so new, so fresh, that some days, I wondered if it could last. Seeing him with Niko reminded me that anything was possible.

  “Adam,” I began gently. “Do you see? You were—no, are—a prince of the Sidhe, heir to the High King of the Unseelie Court. As vampire, you are ruler in your own right. My story may not be as dramatic as Niko’s, but it’s close.” I moved closer to the two men, wanting nothing more than the comfort of our chosen family tie. “You know that I spent the first seven years of my life captive in Faery, Underhill—the unwanted and uncared for daughter. Then my father rescued me and I came to Texas, to my Kelly family. Even then, I was called names by the local kids. I was different, still am. I had a funny accent, was too pale for this sunny place, didn’t have the right cultural references.”

  I took his hand as he reached to stroke my cheek as he had Niko’s. “No, please, let me finish. If it weren’t for Bea taking me under her wing, who knows how I would have ended up? I’m no great shakes as it is. I’m fucked up in a lot of ways. I don’t trust easily. But one thing I do know—I’d never, ever condemn my people, those of my family, blood or chosen, to live as second-class citizens because of who they are, or who people perceive them to be. I can’t … and I can’t understand why Marcus allows this, how he tolerates it.”

  “Keira, when I became vampire, it was at the behest of my father,” Adam said. “All these ridiculous machinations and plotting—both his and Minerva’s—to unite all the kindred, all those of us beyond human. His minions held me down as the vampire chosen to be my maker drained me of all blood, aided by my father, who drained me of magick and my life. They let me fade, starve as we can, depleted of all energy. They held me captive in an empty cave for three days, then, three days later, came to get me as I awoke raging with blood thirst and vengeance.” His green eyes held steady on my own gray, his expression hardened. “They set me free from my bonds when we reached Above, right in the middle of a small village of humans. I fed until I was sated.”

  I reached for him, but as I had, he took my hand and held it back. “Now you must let me finish,” he said. “My own people, my Sidhe brethren, became frightened of me. Superstitious lot that they are, they feared that my new state would make them my cattle, my food; that I could drain them just as easily as I’d drained those villagers. My new vampire ‘family’ …” His voice dripped with sarcasm as he said the word. “Let us just say that fear was not the emotion they felt toward me.”

  “Hate?” I ventured a guess, now beginning to understand another facet of this man I knew so well, yet so little. He nodded his assent.

  “Though the youngest of the vampires as they reckon age, I was by far their elder in years, and by far their superior in rank. No one knew what to do with me, so I was given a small tribe of my own straight away, bypassing normal process or procedure.”

  The three of us stared at one another for a few silent moments. So many differences in our lives, in our making and shaping, yet, at the root, so very similar.

  “Well, hell, then, I guess we’re all a bunch of sorry-ass loser freaks,” I said and burst out laughing. “I concede your point, Adam. I have no clue about the wers’ true situation and should trust Marcus.”

  “Trust him?” Adam raised a sardonic brow. “Oh, love, not as far as he could throw me. Understand that we do not know his agenda, nor his long-range plans and goals. Trusting him is not something I would do quickly.”

  Yes, this was more like it.

  “I don’t want them to suffer,” I said. “I realize probably better than you two how right-wing this town is, but I thought better of him.”

  “Because you enjoy his company?” Adam teased lightly.

  I gave him a peck on the mouth. “No, fool vampire, because I kind of like the guy. He seems a good sort, and anyone who’s watching out for the welfare of those less fortunate, especially when his own core family isn
’t rolling in dough, rates plenty of gold stars in my book. This was just unexpected.”

  “Yes, but practical,” Niko said.

  “Niko and I, and I’m sure your brothers and Liz would agree on this, Keira. Sometimes, one must take the long vision, the slow road. It’s much harder to see from your perspective.”

  “From a relative youngster?”

  “If you like.” He smiled and kissed me. “It is very difficult for you to be able to fully integrate, to embody the long-range planning, the centuries of perspective as we can. As heir and as a Kelly, you have a much better point of view than most, but one eventually learns that battles must be chosen quite carefully. Plans that seem to be less than fruitful in the shorter term will win out in a much longer one.”

  “I acquiesce to your great wisdom, O ancient one.” I caressed his cheek. “I know I’m impatient and that’s something that a few months under Gigi’s care isn’t going to change immediately. I promise I will try to understand Mark’s intentions.”

  “He’s a shrewd one, indeed,” Adam said. “Taking this longer road, when perhaps his intentions won’t bear fruit in his own lifetime—this is a good leader.”

  “I’d wondered about their life spans. I’ve only known a few wer here and there, during my European days. None well enough to ask personal questions of.”

  “They are strong, heal quickly, can withstand many injuries that would disable or debilitate a human of similar size. They are also immune to many common human diseases, like colds and flu. Their life spans, however, are just slightly more than average for a human. Eighty, ninety years or so. Unlike us, they can be killed outright.” A shadow passed over Adam’s face then.

  “You’ve known some?”

  “I have,” he said. “A story for another time, perhaps, but yes. I once befriended a pack of wolves, some decades back. Many of them died in Prussia, fighting on the side of the Allies.”

  Niko nudged Adam’s arm. “Shall we return?” he suggested quietly.

  “Yeah, we’d best,” I said. “Someday, when we’re settled into this ruling thing, I want to hear stories from the both of you—family stories, history stories. From my brothers and Liz, too. I’ve lived such a short time, known such a small fraction of life.”

  Adam tucked my hand into his crooked arm. “Sounds like a lovely way to spend a quiet evening at home. We can be our own bards.”

  I paled a moment, remembering the bards we’d recently run across in Vancouver, scions of the Unseelie Court, Adam’s kin. “Stories, then,” I said. “Our own.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  “MY APOLOGIES, MARCUS.” I settled into the seat next to him again. “I was way out of line.”

  He gave me a slow nod, almost a bow. “You have a right to question me,” he said. “In the reality of things, you are my liege. I hope, however, that you will come to know why I do what I do.”

  “Is that why you invited us here tonight?” Adam asked.

  “Not exactly,” Marcus said. “I truly did wish to get to know you-all, to present myself on behalf of my people. There is one other thing, but that can wait until after—”

  “Oh, fuck.” The words spilled unnoticed from my mouth as I saw her. She was with someone I didn’t know, another woman. The two of them climbed up the stadium stairs, heading in our direction. My breath and my words were trapped inside me as I watched Beatriz Ruiz draw nearer.

  Bea looked the same as always, her thick, wavy black hair caught up in a high ponytail to escape the heat. She wore a cute white strappy blouse with denim shorts and a pair of sandals. The woman walking next to her was a knockout. She stood taller than Bea and exuded exotic. Hell, if I didn’t know better, she could be my own sister. As the thought crossed my mind, I quickly muttered a curse on the very idea. Gigi had better not have any more little familial surprises for me.

  I couldn’t feel any connection, nothing that said Kelly to me. Despite that, even her build resembled mine—sturdy, with some curves. We were both definitely women, not girls, but neither of us were as curvy as Bea, who could give Salma Hayek lessons. The main difference is that this woman was at least four or five inches shorter than me—still, a few inches above Bea’s petite height and she was like sex on a stick. Her outfit was very similar to Bea’s own. On Bea they were attractive, comfy summer clothes; on this women they were enticing and inviting. The woman walked with a fluid grace, her loose dark hair hiding her face. Who was she?

  The two women had their heads together as they approached, chattering away, sharing something I couldn’t hear above the pounding in my own chest. Fuck. This is my Bea. My best friend being all chummy and BFF-ish with some Other Woman. Whoa, there, Keira, I thought to myself as I realized my train of thought. What the fuck’s gotten into you? I swallowed hard and schooled myself to greet Bea. She still hadn’t noticed me, deep in conversation with her companion and balancing a cardboard tray holding four Coke cups.

  As she got closer, Bea glanced up, as if to get her bearings, then stopped abruptly, the Cokes shimmying in their holder. She grabbed at them with her right hand, saving them from a sure and messy demise on the bleachers. A breath, then two, as the world stopped. I’d heard that phrase before—the world stopped—and never really known what it meant. I thought I’d experienced it a few times in my life: when I’d first seen Adam across a crowded room and my primal brain said “I want that, yes, him”; when I met the Kellys for the first time, a crowd of adults of every shape, color, and size, crowding around a too-skinny waif who was still getting used to the sun. But this, this was like everything—sight, scent, taste, noise—all vanished as I focused on only one thing: the face of the only person not Kelly who’d known me nearly all my life.

  Bea blinked a few times, eyes shining in the reflected light from the stadium. Her mouth opened, closed. No sound emerged. Like me, she seemed incapable of moving, of saying anything. I felt the seconds ticking, as if Captain Hook’s infamous crocodile stalker approached, except the tick tocks were in my own head, a metronome measuring the stretch of silence, stretching it thin, stretching beyond its capacity, stretching to its very limits, to its breaking—

  A two-second recon on her part as she sussed out who was around her, then she shoved the Coke tray into Tucker’s belly, not stopping to see if he’d even grabbed on to them. With a cry of joy and tears rolling down her cheeks, Beatriz Consuela Esperanza Ruiz, sister of my heart, scrambled up and threw her arms around me.

  I was truly and finally home.

  I crushed her back, my arms immediately closing into a vise grip. This was more than friends, almost more than lovers. This was family lost, now returned. Except who was the prodigal here? Me, I guessed, my brain whirling with words I couldn’t even form. My ears and brain weren’t capable of translating the noises coming from Bea herself, her face buried in my shoulder.

  After a moment, she stepped back and, head tilted to check out my own teary face, began to scold. “Don’t you ever do that again,” she said, finger wagging. “Never.”

  I hugged her again and let go. “I promise, Bea, never ever.”

  All the men stared at us as if we’d gone bonkers. Adam raised a brow in a silent question. I knew what he wasn’t asking. I gave him a slight shake of the head, then turned back to Bea.

  “I left because I had to, you know that.”

  Bea’s “never” wasn’t about what had happened to Pete Garza, though I knew that was what Adam was thinking. She meant my leaving without talking to her. Ridiculous, yes, because she’d been the one refusing to talk to me, but who the hell cared? She was here and I was here and we were making up.

  “I know,” she blubbered, grabbing a tissue from a pocket and wiping her face. “It was just—”

  “I know,” I said. “Utter hell, Bea. So much happened.”

  “I was scared,” she began, fingers twisting the sodden tissue, tearing it into bits. “When you …” She didn’t finish her sentence.

  When I deliberately and with great pleasure
sentenced her would-be rapist and murderer to death-by-Sidhe, to have his disgusting life drained from him, the body forgotten, lost in the depths of a cave. Pure justice, yet outside the bounds of any human law.

  “It’s who I am,” I ventured, hoping that she’d not chosen to forget my true nature. Even though it could mean the end of a thirty-plus-year friendship, resuming it had to be on real terms. I’d come to that realization while I was in Canada—I was Kelly, I was heir, and I was not human, no matter how long I’d been among them. My ethics were not always her ethics, and would never be.

  She studied me in quiet defiance, a hand on my arm. “I know exactly who you are, Keira Kelly. I’ve always known. You, too. All of you.” She deliberately stared at Tucker, then Adam, then Niko. “You are what and who you are. And that’s that.”

  I broke out in laughter. That, indeed, was that. The separation was over and we were back to Bea’n’Keira.

  “Who’s your friend?” Tucker asked Bea, as Marcus took the Cokes from Tucker’s hand.

  The woman perused him up and down, a slow and steady expression of appreciation beginning to form. Niko, still on my other side, let a small growl escape. The woman laughed, then held her hand out to me. “Dixxi Ashkarian,” she said. “I take it you must be our Keira Kelly.”

  The wolf power was there now that my senses were not saturated with the presence of Bea, who still hung on to me as if I’d vanish again. “I am,” I said to her. “Sorry I can’t shake, I need to be a little cautious with the, well, you know—” I said as a young couple, wrapped up in each other, seemingly oblivious to whatever “stay away” vibes Marcus was exuding, tried to come sit in the empty area just next to us. With a quick thought and a bit of focus, I sent out a perimeter spell. The couple, who’d been deciding exactly where to sit, quickly scuttled away to the far end of the bleachers. I laughed and nodded at Dixxi. “Consider yourself greeted with the highest politeness possible.” Despite my earlier reaction, I liked her. Her aura, her underlying energy soothed me more than bothered me, unlike her Fenrir’s, who I suddenly realized was trying to get my attention with a diplomatic throat clearing.