Blood Crown

by Tamara Rose Blodgett

  She reaches forward, gently squeezing Jacqueline’s shoulder. “It’s all good. You feel better, and you’re doing right by Hashna.”

  “That’s right... Mom,” Scott says, gifting Jacqueline for the first time with the name he must feel she’s finally earned.

  A fat tear slides out of her eye, and she hands Hashna to Domiatri, who takes her without a word.

  “Thank you,” Jacqueline says tearfully.

  Scott moves to embrace her. “I’m so glad you’re not trying to kill Julia anymore, Mom.”

  They laugh, breaking apart.

  Julia hits him in the arm, and Scott grins. His attempt at levity works, and the awkward and heavy interchange lightens.

  Julia’s glad. She’s thankful for more than Jacqueline reversing her direction, the birth of a baby, and her present security. She finally feels a bit of hope. And that’s a rare emotion. One Julia hasn’t felt since she began running from a certain beach in Alaska.

  Scott turns to look at her, his arm around his biological mom’s shoulders, while a warrior of the Fey looks very un-barbaric as he coos at the small bundle in his arms.

  They begin to walk the long tunnel of stone. Once cloyingly dark, the square stones have lightened to a pale gold. Julia runs her fingers over the rock, finding it smoother than it looks.

  “What about Tharell and Delilah?” she asks, studying the slightly glowing stone beneath her fingertips.

  Domi, who’d been walking ahead, halts.

  Scott and Julia turn to stare at him as her fingers fall away from the opaque walls.

  “That is a matter of great debate.”

  Julia’s heart begins to race. “Who’s debate?”

  Jacqueline appears uncomfortable, shifting her weight and Hashna within her arms.

  “The new court.”

  “Darcel’s gone,” Scott states as if everything should be perfect now that Delilah has killed the evil ruler.

  Julia had hoped that would be the case.

  “Aye,” Domi replies, “but in her place, the court has adopted a democracy of sorts.”

  “So... politics.” Scott crosses his arms, giving Julia a meaningful glance. They discussed the political climate of Faerie at length and hoped it would have elevated to something better after Darcel’s death.

  Domi’s nod is curt affirmation, and a strand of his deep-blue hair escapes the binding at his nape.

  “That still doesn’t explain where Tharell and Delilah are,” Julia says slowly, not liking the subtle evasion the first time she asked it.

  After exchanging a glance with Domi, Jacqueline replies, “They are being held.”

  Julia holds her breath then releases it in a burst. “Where?”

  “Fey prison.”

  Scott’s jaw jerks back. “That seems harsh. They returned of their own volition. They didn’t have to.”

  Actually, that wasn’t entirely true. Tharell was messed up being outside Faerie. Eventually, he would have been forced to return or go nuts.

  Domi nods. “Yes, however, Delilah killed the queen. And they are both death-bringers. Mortal enemies of the Fey.”

  “But Tharell couldn’t live outside the mound forever,” Julia says. “And he is fey too.”

  “And well they were aware,” Domi says.

  Julia narrows her eyes, and Domi studies her for a moment, clearly intuiting her expression.

  “It was not I who commanded their incarceration.” His face becomes peaceful. “And what concern is it of yours—when you come here to have the question of the demon spore answered?”

  It isn’t. Technically. But Julia doesn’t like Scott’s half-sibling locked away. And from the sick look on Jacqueline’s face, she doesn’t like it, either.

  Domi’s jade-green eyebrows shoot up. “Tharell steeped you in his duplicity. How can you be that quick to forgive? Or further, concern yourself with his well-being?”

  Julia knows she should hate Tharell. She’s also aware that not everything in the supernatural world is black and white. Tharell was a nutjob because he was ill outside Faerie, and his demonic genetics surfaced, dominating everything else within his biological fabric. Now that those genetics are no longer in control, he has free will.

  But the fey have taken that choice from him.

  Julia can’t help that she wants to advocate for the underdog. She used to be the queen of that.

  Now she’s the queen of all.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Jenni

  Guilt swamps Jenni. She somehow netted Devin and Ella into her mess, and now the three of them are homeless. Not that Ella’s complaining.

  “Jenni!” she calls out excitedly.

  Jenni turns to find the little girl “setting up” the four-man tent Jenni chucked into the car at the last minute.

  Using a mallet to pound stakes into where dirt meets sand, she wastes a glance at the mom and daughter. A state-run restroom building casting a lengthening shadow that threatens to engulf their meager “house” in the next ten minutes.

  The sun has sunk low, scattering rays of molten tangerine and faded yellow across the shore of Forest Beach, where it meets the lapping water of Horsehead Bay.

  “What is it, honey?”

  “I found a seashell!” she exclaims, having abandoned setting up camp for holding up half a bleached clam shell.

  Devin meets Jenni’s eyes, and she can hardly look away. Instead of condemnation, Jenni sees compassion.

  Jenni supposes with the hard life that Devin’s led, that this little field trip is the least of some of the challenges she’s encountered.

  Like Bray.

  “That’s great,” Jenni replies, distracted by the thought of that jerk, who is clearly a werewolf like her.

  Jenni is beginning to wonder how he didn’t know she was one when they first encountered each other at the fast-food place. A mystery. She doesn’t need the answer, though, because she’s in survival mode. Get through this current disaster. Become retrospective when time allows.

  Yeah, that sounds more doable.

  Grabbing a knapsack and her colorful crossbody purse, Jenni walks over to the tent.

  Devin looks up. “Do you have enough food?”

  Jenni nods. “It’s not that nutritious, but I guess we won’t starve in the next twenty-four hours.” She sets the cardboard box down outside the lip of the flame-orange tent and scoops a lantern out of the corner of the box. It’s an archaic thing, the kind that hisses when it’s lighted. But beggars certainly couldn’t afford to be choosers. And Jenni, Devin, and Ella qualify as beggars right now.

  After all, this camping stuff used to be her parents. It’s not new, modern, or easy to set up, but it beats sleeping on beach pebbles.

  “Did you figure out the tent?”

  Devin’s bottom lip trembles.

  “What?” Jenni asks, sinking to her knees in front of Devin.

  “Back when I was close to my family, we did a lot of camping.” Her eyes shine in the low light of a swiftly concluding sunset. “I can even figure out this old thing.”

  Jenni doesn’t say anything. There’s no salve she can put on the wound of Devin’s distance from her family.

  Her eyes move to Ella, who’s busy collecting every shell she can, and Jenni’s heart constricts. My parents would want to know their grandchild.

  Now is not the time for introspection.

  “There’s a Safeway around here, I think,” Jenni says instead, subtly changing the sad subject.

  “Good,” Devin says, wiping her eyes and taking the mallet from Jenni, she pounds in the last corner stake.

  They turn and look at Ella.

  “Come on, baby. Let’s go to sleep.”

  Jenni takes in Devin’s eyes, bright with still more tears and red-rimmed from exhaustion.

  “Ah-uh!” Ella cries. “I found anudder seashell, and it’s not dark yet.”

  Devin sighs, starting to rise.

  Jenni puts her hand on Devin’s shoulder. “I’ll get her. You
hit the bag.”

  She gives a grateful smile, backing inside the tent and pulling the box filled with supplies with her.

  Jenni leans over the lantern and twists the knob, lighting it with a match she’s extracted from a square small box.

  Like a strobe in the encroaching twilight, it illuminates a serious beachcomber a few yards away, her tiny brow furrowed as she hunts in the near-dark.

  Grasping the lantern handle, Jenni stands and walks over to Ella. As she crouches beside the five-year-old, Ella says without looking up,

  “Look what I got, Jenni!”

  Ella’s not just collecting shells. She’s scooped up an array of pebbles and rough sea glass into the bottom of her shirt, weighing it down with her treasures.

  Jenni ruffles her hair. “Here, let me take those.” She sets down the lantern, twisting the base into the sand so it doesn’t tip, and holds out her palm.

  Ella quickly fills it.

  Jenni laughs. “I think that’s all we can fit for now, hun.”

  “Ahh,” she mourns, her face scrunching.

  Heading that off at the pass, Jenni says, “We might camp here for a few days.”

  Ella brightens. “So I have more time to get stuff?”

  Jenni nods. “But right now, your mom and I are tired. So we all go to bed, then in the morning you can collect more cool stuff.”

  “Okay, I guess,” Ella says, trying hard, and failing, not to be sullen.

  Jenni hikes the lantern and closes her fingers around the treasure as they make their way to the vague outline of the tent.

  They should expect a reprisal from Bray.

  Jenni knows to her marrow that it’s not the last they’ll see of him.

  Jenni cracks an eyelid, groaning as she rolls over within the warm cocoon of her sleeping bag. The movement puts her eyes exactly in the path of a splash of sunlight that penetrates the tent seams.

  She blinks, awakened by Ella’s light snoring. Devin’s dark-brown eyes fix on Jenni’s gaze.

  “I hate to make too much noise, because once she’s awake, the Energizer Bunny couldn’t compete,” Devin whispers.

  “I got that,” Jenni laughs softly, jerking her chin toward the pile of sea treasures.

  “Yeah,” Devin agrees as a lone tear crawls out of her eye.

  Jenni sits up, the sleeping bag falling to her waist. “Hey.”

  “I can’t do this,” Devin says, pressing the bottom of her palms to her eyeballs. Maybe she thinks it’ll stop the tears.

  Jenni knows from brutal experience that nothing stops tears that mean to flow.

  She is also aware what “this” is. Obviously, yet another life disruption is destabilizing to a young woman who’s struggled to get her life together.

  Jenni reaches across Ella’s slumbering form and grabs one of Devin’s hands. She lets her other hand fall from her eyes and into her lap.

  “Yes, you can. You beat drugs, and it was terrible. You can survive the unknown.”

  “How do you know I can?”

  Jenni feels a bitter smile seat itself on her face.

  “Because I became addicted to opiates when the cancer made Swiss cheese out of my body.”

  Devin blinks. “No shit?” she whispers, her lips parting in surprise.

  “Yes. No shit. I had nothing to lose—I was already dying.” Jenni lifts her shoulder then lets it drop. “At least I could be high. There was that.”

  “God.” She sweeps her punked-out hair away from her forehead. “What about your patients?”

  Jenni shakes her head. “They were never aware.”

  “How many nurses are using?” Devin asks, unable to cover her shock.

  “How many nurses are dying of terminal cancer at twenty-eight?” Jenni counters.

  Devin stares at her for a full minute. “Good point. What made you quit then? How did ya?”

  Jenni takes a deep inhale. “I wasn’t present anymore. You know—alive. I was just using and counting the days until I was gone. Ultimately, it was greed.”

  “Greed?” Devin’s light eyebrows lift.

  Jenni nods. “Simple greed. My life was slipping away, and I was trying to dull the pain with drugs, but it was stealing my will, my consciousness. And my boyfriend had dumped me.”

  “I hear that—the douche,” Devin mutters.

  “So I finally quit when I was down a few shifts and I’d have five days off in a row.”

  “Shit,” Devin breathes out. “That’s hardcore.”

  “It was,” Jenni admits, remembering the throwing up, shakes, and generally wondering if she could live through it.

  She wouldn’t wish that five days on someone she wanted dead.

  Not even Lance, for instance.

  “Why are you smiling?” Devin asks.

  Jenni shakes her head. “My ex came to mind.”

  “That’s evil.” Devin covers her mouth with her hand, clearly stifling a giggle. Slowly, her hand falls, and she asks, “When you’re talking about dying of cancer and being addicted to painkillers, you think of him?”

  Jenni nods. “Yeah, Lance was a real prince. The sicker I got, the less he wanted to be together. But”—Jenni holds up her index finger—“he wasn’t man enough to just dump me when we found out I was terminal.” Now it’s Jenni’s turn for tears. “Nope. He let me go in stages because he was too much of a coward to just make a clean break.” Jenni swipes the tears angrily from her cheeks. “Then I heard through the grapevine that he’d been telling everyone he wanted to give me space because I’d supposedly needed distance.”

  “A lie,” Devin guesses.

  “Yup.” Jenni stares at her folded hands resting in her lap. The Sesame Street pajamas are juvenile and comforting—her macaroni and cheese wardrobe.

  “So Bray?” Devin says, exchanging a glance with Jenni, loaded with pure anxiety.

  “I am definitely a werewolf,” Jenni states. Removing an elastic hairband from her wrist and putting her now-lustrous hair in a high ponytail, she makes a messy bun out of it.

  Acknowledging she’s this new mythological being is an exercise in the surreal, but Jenni moves past it. “Anyway, I don’t know why Bray didn’t recognize I was one of his kind. Why didn’t he react?”

  “That part doesn’t really matter, Jenni.”

  “It feels like it should.” She rolls her bottom lip between her teeth, thinking.

  Devin gives a helpless little shrug. “Maybe it’s because you had just—I don’t know—become one. Maybe you weren’t fully online.”

  A laugh bursts out of her, and Ella stirs.

  Devin puts a finger to her lips.

  And they have a horrible moment of fighting laughter.

  “Right, sorry.” Jenni ducks her head. Neither one of them want Ella being an audience to the Werewolf Discussion.

  “It’s a solid theory. But what I wanted to say was... I can smell when your period ended.”

  “Holy shit,” Devin says, her nose wrinkling. “That’s sick as shit.”

  Jenni blinks. “Like cool? Or gross.”

  “I don’t know,” Devin admits slowly. “Some of both, I guess.”

  “So what I’m saying is, if Bray is a werewolf, then being in the car will throw him for a while, but not forever.”

  Devin’s brows draw together. “He was a drug addict.”

  “Still is from the looks of his arms. He was a pincushion when he stopped by your work anyway. Maybe we’re overthinking it all.”

  Devin props her chin on a fist. “Yeah,” she says slowly, clearly thinking through the events of the last day, “maybe the drugs don’t affect him.”

  A lightbulb snaps on in her mind. “Right!” she exclaims then shoots a look at Ella, whose eyes move swiftly beneath closed lids. “She’s going to wake up soon.”

  Devin gives a distracted nod, leaning forward. “You thought of something.”

  “If what I am speculating is true, then Bray being a druggie isn’t the same as you being one. I bet the werewolves co
nsumption of everything is rapid.” Jenni places a splayed hand on her chest. “I’m a good example. Look at my appetite.”

  Just then, Jenni’s stomach lets out a supreme roar.

  Devin slaps a palm over her mouth. “Oh my God, that’s so it.”

  Jenni smiles. “Yes. So if I need a million calories a day, it stands to reason that my metabolic function doesn’t mimic a human’s, but that of this—whatever I am now.”

  “A woof,” Ella says in a sleepy voice.

  They both look down. Wide brown eyes blink up at them out of the top of a much-too-big sleeping bag. Ella sits up, putting her palms behind her and giving the biggest yawn Jenni’s ever seen.

  “Yes,” Jenni concedes quietly, “a woof.”

  “Like the bad man?” Ella frowns.

  “Yeah, baby.” Devin smooths Ella’s dark-blond hair from her brow and begins to plait it from the crown.

  “But Jen-Jen isn’t bad.”

  That’s up for debate. Jenni can’t help but wonder what would have happened to these two without her presence.

  “Hey, stop that.”

  Jenni’s head snaps up from being mesmerized by the methodical crisscrossing of hair as Devin searches her eyes. “If Bray is a woof, he would have sniffed us out eventually, right?”

  Jenni’s nod is reluctant. “He would have discovered Ella.”

  “And you know this.”

  Jenni catalogs the myriad of multi-layered scents that have been drowning her for the last almost forty hours, the unbelievable strength, the reverse of her prognosis, her altered appearance... the ravenous appetite.

  And she’s just one day and some change into this new creature she’s become.

  “I know it.”

  “God, we’re so screwed.”

  She twists a hairband at the braid’s tail.

  “No weren’t not, Mama.” Ella tips her face against her mom’s upper arm. Devin bends her arm at the elbow, spreading her palm across Ella’s small cheek and pressing the girl against her.

  Jenni’s gut feels like lead. “We stay ahead of him; we find help.”

  “Who’s going to help us? We can’t exactly go to the police,” Devin says. “They’re probably looking for us. Even though, technically, we haven’t done dick.”