She followed Daniel to the main gate, where heavy rope barred the human onlookers from approaching the prisoners. Protest emerged as a low hum, no one daring to speak out and call attention to themselves.
Isis remained as close to Daniel as possible while he and the other convicted prisoners were given bundles of supplies and clothing. They had no weapons with which to defend themselves from rogue Freebloods.
Head high, Isis boldly walked out with the humans. The gates remained open behind her. The Lawkeepers wouldn’t close them on one of the Nine.
She and Daniel gazed at each other, not daring to touch. His blue eyes seemed to catch the sunlight and reflect it under her hood, giving her nowhere to hide.
“I don’t want you to deal with this alone, Isis,” he said.
She moved closer, slipping the knife and her secret bundle of clothes and food into his hand. “You cannot protect me,” she said, backing away. “Daniel, listen to reason. You must go, or you will distract me with worry for you. You will hinder every action I take to counter Anu’s ambitions. If I could find a way for us to stay together without endangering your life or my duty to Tanis, I would gladly take it.”
“I’ll be sticking close to Tanis, so you can find me again when it’s safe for you.”
She swallowed. “Do you remember the location of the nearest human colony? You can warn them of what is occurring in Tanis. Or you can carry out your duty and return to your own colony to bring them the information you were sent to gather.”
“Not without you,” he said.
“Lady Isis,” the captain of the Lawkeepers said, edging between her and Daniel. “We will leave shortly. Will you go back inside?”
“I will accompany you to the final location,” she said, “and return with you to Tanis.”
The captain opened his mouth, on the verge of argument before closing it again without speaking. The other eleven Lawkeepers gathered the prisoners and herded them away from the gates.
The group walked northwest throughout the day, crossing over prairie, forest and the ruins of old towns, passing gradually into the foothills. Isis felt pity for the fearful men and women, and even for those who concealed their fear. Daniel strode ahead of them all, his head up, stopping only if one of his fellow humans needed his help or support. He seemed to give the other humans courage and purpose.
He will see them to safety first, Isis thought with relief. He will not abandon them in the wilderness. She knew he would inevitably attempt to return to Tanis, no matter what she said. But she would have some time to see what she could accomplish within the city, whether she decided to work only with those of the Nine she trusted or also with the humans under Hugh’s leadership.
The group of exiles reached their goal just before sunset: a large, rocky outcrop near a woodland that provided shelter and potential hiding places from any threats they might face on their first night of exile. The prisoners’ hands were freed, and as the Lawkeepers prepared to return to Tanis, Daniel took Isis’s arm and led her around to the back of the outcrop.
He kissed her, and she returned the kiss with a desperate fear.
“It’s all right,” he said, gathering a handful of her hair and pressing it to his face. “We will find a way, Isis.”
“I believe you,” she said. And she did, in spite of all the obstacles they faced.
“I’m going to get these people to the nearest human colony,” he said. “After that...”
She took his rough hands and kissed his knuckles. “I depend upon you to be sensible, Daniel,” she said.
He only kissed her again. The other humans joined them, crowding close, and she and Daniel stepped apart.
“If you are ready, Lady Isis,” the captain of the Lawkeepers said with a slight bow.
Somehow, Isis managed to break away from Daniel, though it seemed as if her heart were tearing in two. She turned twice to look back at him, and each time he met her gaze directly and with reassuring confidence.
When she and the Lawkeepers moved out of sight of the prisoners, Isis drifted in an inner space filled only with loneliness and longing. She couldn’t bring herself to think of what her next act in Tanis should be; the city was as unreal to her as the woods through which they passed and the stars in the indigo sky overhead. She hardly noticed when they stopped to rest, and two of the Opir guards left to hunt for game. When they returned, she took her share of the blood with indifference, though she noticed that it seemed slightly off in taste and texture.
After that, her dream-state took on a new life of its own, and she lost track of time and place. Only gradually did she begin to realize that they had been traveling too long, and that Tanis was nowhere in sight. Still she was unable to focus, and the Lawkeepers didn’t seem to hear her questions, even when the sun began to rise again and they pulled their hoods up over their heads.
They stopped again in a place she didn’t recognize, and one of the Opir guards, his face a blur in the light, urged her to lie down and rest. Some remnant of self-preservation made her refuse, and the others pushed her to the ground, one of them forcing the mouth of a blood-flask against her lips. She choked on the stream of foul-tasting liquid, her body aware that it was tainted even before her mind recognized that she had been betrayed.
The sun blinded her as the Lawkeepers dragged off her day coat and left her in the open grassland, the altered blood curdling in her stomach. The sky seemed made up of a hundred colors she didn’t recognize, and her skin felt scalded.
Isis rolled over onto her stomach and breathed in the scent of dry earth. She knew that her betrayers had counted on her sickness from the blood preventing her from reaching shelter soon enough, but she was not about to grant them victory.
Her legs and arms like rubber, Isis dragged herself to the west, toward a stand of battered trees along some minor watercourse. Her attempts to rise met with utter failure. Still, she remembered Daniel’s face and continued to fight, inch by inch, reaching out to gather handfuls of golden grass to pull herself forward.
She had gone no more than a hundred feet when the boots appeared—one pair directly in front of her face, a dozen more surrounding her. She froze, waiting for a strike to her heart or the removal of her head from her body.
“Here,” a man said, holding his hand down to her. Several others moved closer, helping her to her feet, supporting her weight as she swayed and began to fall. They covered her with a day coat, and one of them put a water flask to her mouth. She drank greedily, though her stomach fought to reject what she swallowed.
“Easy,” the first man said. “We’ve come to take you to safety.”
The sky was too bright for her to see his hooded face. “Who...are you?” she whispered.
“My name is Cassius. We’ve been following you, but we had to wait until the others were gone.” He spoke softly to his comrades. “We have horses. If you can hold on for a few hours, we’ll get to a place where you can rest. Whatever they gave you obviously wasn’t a fatal dose.”
A dose of what? she wondered. But she couldn’t keep the question in her head. Cassius and the others lifted her onto the back of a horse, already occupied by an Opir woman who supported Isis against her chest.
When they started moving, Isis drifted into semiconsciousness again, feeling the horse’s movements but unable to make sense of them. She heard voices like the grumbling of badgers. Occasionally someone put water to her mouth, and her body insisted that she drink.
At sunset, she ejected everything she had swallowed, including the tainted blood. Her thoughts became more lucid, and when they reached their destination, she could see the details of what appeared to be a military camp in a clearing among tall pines, complete with uniformed, well-armed Opiri and tents in precise rows. Large pens held cattle as an obvious source of blood. She saw no humans at all.
A tall, imposi
ng Opir met her as the others helped her dismount, his black hair swept behind his shoulders. She felt the force of his will immediately, a fierce and dangerous determination, and realized who he was even before she recognized his features.
“Ares!” she said, her voice still a little hoarse. “But they said you had been killed.”
“They say many things about me,” the Bloodmaster said, supporting her on one arm.
“But what are you doing here?” she asked, her gaze sweeping the camp again. “Who are these Opiri?”
“Anu’s army,” he said, hatred glittering in his pale eyes. “I am its commander.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You were never meant to.” He guided her in among the tents and to a field chair. “I sent men to follow you once you left Tanis. I’d heard that someone in the city wished you ill enough to threaten your life.”
“You heard? But how—” She looked more carefully into his eyes and gave a brief laugh of astonishment. “You are the one who warned me that Anu meant ill for the humans of Tanis. You were in the city all along.”
“Only when Anu and the others called for me to attend them,” Ares said. “I couldn’t let myself be seen talking to you.”
“But why did you—” She broke off, remembering that she had more urgent concerns. “If you followed me, you saw the exiles. Did you observe what became of them?”
“I had men follow them, as well,” Ares said. “They should be here very soon.”
“But why would you bring them here?” She got to her feet, swayed, and sat down again. “What do you intend to do with them?”
“Help them find a safe place,” Ares said, “before what almost happened to you happens to them.”
“You mean that someone is out to kill them?”
“They have all been deemed troublemakers, have they not?”
A sudden thought crossed her mind, and she exhaled sharply. “One of them—Daniel—was looking for you. He seemed very anxious to find you, and even when he was told that you had left the city—”
“I know,” Ares said, his expression very serious. “I learned that he was in Tanis only after his arrest. He should never have mentioned my name.”
“He said you had been his master in Erebus, and that he was concerned for your well-being.”
“The young fool,” Ares said, shaking his head. “If he came to Tanis to look for me—”
A commotion from the rear of the camp cut off his words. Dozens of Opiri soldiers turned to look. The human exiles walked into camp and made their way between the tents toward Ares, Daniel in the lead and Opir scouts around them.
Daniel came to a dead halt when he saw Ares. Ares rose to face him.
“You’re here,” Daniel said, in a voice almost too soft to hear.
Isis witnessed a very peculiar thing then. All the brooding ferocity seemed to go out of Ares, and for a moment his expression softened to one of affection and relief.
“My son,” he said.
CHAPTER 22
Daniel found it difficult to speak. Ares looked the same as he always had, as of course he would; the years hadn’t touched him, and he exuded as much power and regal authority as ever.
And he was alive.
“Ares,” he said, swallowing. “Father.”
They came together, gripping each other’s shoulders. Ares’s brief smile quickly turned into the kind of frown that had always terrified his serfs; not because they feared he would hurt them, but because he had so seldom turned it on them.
Now Daniel bore the brunt of it. Still holding his shoulders, Ares set him back and looked him over critically.
“It is fortunate that you are still alive,” Ares said. “Did Avalon send you to complete my mission?”
“I volunteered,” Daniel said, holding his father’s gaze. “I suspected soon after I got here that you hadn’t left Tanis.”
Ares made a sound of disgust and opened his mouth to speak again, but Daniel looked past his shoulder and saw Isis walking toward them, a little unsteady on her feet. He squeezed Ares’s arm and ran to meet her, catching her and holding her against him.
“Are you all right?” he asked, turning her face up to his with his fingertips. “What are you doing here? Have you been sick?” He looked at Ares as the Bloodmaster came up behind him. “Where did you find her? What was—”
“Your father?” Isis said faintly. She straightened and pushed against him. “Your father?”
“I am certain his failure to tell you is not because of any lack of trust, Lady Isis,” Ares said in a wry tone. “I was under the impression, from my brief observations in the city, that the two of you enjoy an unusually close relationship.”
Daniel’s face heated, though he had no reason to feel any embarrassment...except for concealing such an important fact from Isis. “I thought it was best that you didn’t know,” he said to her.
“Know that you aren’t human at all?” she demanded, pulling away from him. She included Ares in her challenge. “Or is there some other essential fact I am missing?”
Ares glanced at Daniel with grim amusement. “Tell her, Daniel,” he said.
“I am half human,” Daniel said. “Most of the rest of what I told you is true. My mother was impregnated before the War began. It was a consensual relationship.”
“But my old enemy Palemon frightened her away,” Ares said. “Daniel neglects to mention that by failing to find her, I was responsible for what happened to her and our child in the twenty years before I obtained Daniel from Palemon.”
There was an awkward, painful silence. “Your son does not seem to hate you, Lord Ares,” she said.
“He has forgiven much,” Ares said.
“It’s in the past,” Daniel said.
“But your enemies remain,” Isis said. She looked at Ares. “Whatever the purpose of this army, it cannot be a good one. You warned me of Anu’s ill intentions, and now we know what those intentions are. If you work for him, you work against your son and all who support the cause of equality in Tanis. Why did you bother to save these people if—”
“I work for Anu,” Ares interrupted, “only because I have no other choice.” He included both Isis and Daniel in his gaze. “He forced me to recruit Freebloods from within and without Tanis to form this army, and to train them to fight at my command.”
“Disciplined Freebloods?” Daniel asked. “That’s an oxymoron.”
“Not with my troops,” Ares said, though he spoke with far more bitterness than satisfaction.
“What does Anu intend for this army?”
“I don’t know,” Ares admitted. “He hasn’t seen a reason to tell me.”
“And why did you agree to do this?”
“Trinity,” Ares said. “Anu has her prisoner somewhere in the towers. He made clear that if I did not obey him, or if I attempted to challenge him, she would die.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Let me inform my troops that they are to make our other guests comfortable, and we will discuss this at greater length.” He smiled at Isis, a rare glimpse of softer emotion. “You will need blood—”
“She’ll have it,” Daniel said.
“Good.” He pointed out what appeared to be an officer’s tent. “You may rest there for the time being.”
He gave Daniel one more stern, relieved glance and started for Daniel’s fellow exiles, who looked more bewildered than frightened. Daniel and Isis entered the tent Ares had indicated.
“What happened?” he and Isis said at nearly the same moment.
Daniel guided her to the cot and crouched beside it. “We were heading west, to one of the human colonies I passed on the way to Tanis. Early on I had the sense that we were being followed, so we lay low for a while. Around noon today we were ambushed...or so we thought. The Free
blood soldiers who found us claimed they meant us no harm, but that there were others nearby who did. We didn’t have much choice but to go with the soldiers.” He glanced toward the tent flap. “I had no idea Ares had sent them.”
Still clearly shaken by the day’s events, Isis relayed her own story. “On the way back to Tanis I was given poisoned blood and left to burn in the sun.”
“Anu,” Daniel said, thinking very black thoughts. “There’s no question now of you returning to Tanis.” She looked down at her hands, and he took them between his. “Isis, I should have told you of my relationship to Ares as soon as I knew I could trust you. The moment I saw Hannibal, I realized that he could expose me, because he was in Erebus when Ares acknowledged me as his son. But he didn’t, for reasons I can’t fathom, and I hoped to maintain the fiction that I was fully human, in part so that Opiri like Anu would underestimate me.”
“This explains how you were able to fight Opiri and defeat them,” she said, her hands tense and resisting his touch. “Even so, you are like no dhampir I have ever seen.”
“I’m a freak,” he said, “a mutation. No one knows why I look as I do, though I’ve heard speculation that it’s because an Elder was my father.” He touched his mouth, with their unremarkable cuspids. “I don’t need blood, but I have the speed, strength, night vision and reflexes of Opiri. The best of both worlds.”
“And the means to masquerade as human.” She sighed. “You would have given yourself away soon enough, if you had continued to fight. Someone would have realized the truth.”
“I know. But I’d hoped to collect more information and find Ares before that happened.”
“And so you have.” She withdrew her hand. “Your father is a powerful Bloodmaster. He is also one of the ancient gods. But now Anu has power over him, and he could be a great threat to us if Anu chooses to turn Ares and these Freebloods against those who defy him.”
“If that’s Anu’s intention,” Daniel said. “But I guarantee that Anu won’t use Ares lightly. He’s a deadly weapon that could easily turn in Anu’s hand.”
Harlequin Nocturne May 2016 Box Set Page 21
