Storm's Heart

by Thea Harrison

  NINIANE, Tiago thundered telepathically. She gave her head a quick shake, as if to dislodge his mental shout along with the other formless roar that had begun to fill her mind like white noise.

  Despite the cacophony between her ears, she could hear Aubrey perfectly as he continued. “But preliminary police reports on the second attempt are quite unequivocal. It was made by three individuals who were disguised to look like a Dark Fae triad, but they were, in fact, Wyr.”

  Were, in fact.

  The white noise took over her mind. She couldn’t think, couldn’t hear any more. Several people in the room were talking at once.

  Were. In fact.

  Wyr.

  She turned to Tiago with a look of such utter incomprehension, his expression turned savage and he started swearing.

  She did not even bother to ask him. His reaction was all she needed to know for sure. Aubrey spoke the truth. The Wyr had tried to kill her. A jagged landscape opened up inside her. It cut at her vital organs and made it difficult to breathe. Her longtime friends? The people she had hugged with such love when she said good-bye, who even now she missed so much, the people who were—

  Her adopted family?

  Well, didn’t that sound a little too familiar.

  Tiago knelt in front of her. His mental voice was sharp and urgent. Goddammit, don’t look at me like that. I was going to tell you but you were hurt. Then we ran out of time and I forgot, that’s all, I just fucking forgot. Niniane—

  He reached for her hands. She cringed away from him. He froze and looked as if she had knifed him.

  “Thank you for everything you have done on our behalf,” said the future Queen of the Dark Fae in a still, cold voice. Her face was polite and as blank as a doll’s. “We will see that you are fully compensated for all of your expenditures. You will leave us now.”

  For one pulsating moment she was sure he would refuse. Absolute anarchy flashed across his face, and she knew in that moment he was capable of doing anything at all. She huddled back in her seat, unblinking.

  She did not know what checked him. Something changed in his expression, an awful pained sadness. Then a barrier slammed into place, like a granite slab covering an open wound in the earth. He stood quietly and left.

  She talked with Carling and the Dark Fae delegation for another hour. The group laid plans. Since Dark Fae had been involved in one assassination attempt, Carling and her Vampyres would provide security for Niniane while both attacks were under investigation. Then assuming it could be established for a certainty that none of the senior officials in the room had been involved, Carling and her Vampyres would phase out on security and Arethusa and her forces would take over.

  In the morning the party would leave the hotel. They would move into the mansion where Aubrey’s wife, Naida, was preparing for their crossover journey. From there they would finalize preparations for crossing over to the Other land. Once they crossed, it would take several days of travel by horseback to reach the palace at Adriyel. Niniane’s coronation would be held a few days later.

  She agreed to everything they requested.

  After the meeting, Niniane went to her room in the penthouse. There wasn’t any reason not to. She had left the bedroom in a mess after showering and getting ready for dinner with her new cousin and his attendants. Geril had flirted with her on the flight out from New York, which she had not exactly welcomed. They had gone out to eat at a Greek restaurant, and he had persisted over saganaki and stuffed grape leaves until she was forced to politely but firmly shut him down.

  A second cousin flirting with the heir to the throne. I mean, come on. She hadn’t considered it exactly subtle, but she had slogged through the rest of the meal determined to keep an open mind and try to find something likeable about the man.

  Yeah, well.

  Her bedroom was the largest and most sumptuous of the six in the penthouse, and it was now immaculate. She lay down on the bed. When she closed her eyes, she saw Tiago’s tight, angry face, the sadness in his eyes as he looked at her, the muscle jumping in his jaw.

  They were in fact Wyr who had attacked her?

  Now, just wait a minute.

  Now that she was no longer dealing with the Dark Fae delegation, the cacophony in her head had a chance to subside. The quiet opened up the way for all the memories she shared with the sentinels to come rushing back to the surface.

  The hours upon hours they had spent drilling her on self-defense techniques, repeating each thing until she had mastered it. Despite her lack of aptitude, they wouldn’t quit and they wouldn’t let her quit when she got discouraged.

  The outlandish rambling faerie-to-harpy heart-to-hearts she had shared with Aryal over the years.

  The times when the gryphons had teased and flirted with her as they patiently put up with “babysitting duty,” when they had been pulled from their regular responsibilities to act as her bodyguard.

  The gargoyle Grym’s quiet, undemanding companionship as he provided guard duty on her walks through neighborhoods during the holiday season, and the Christmas presents of handcarved wooden puzzles he had created just for her.

  Dragos’s loyal support of her sometimes controversial choices on how to handle knotty PR issues, and his smiles of fierce satisfaction when she was proven right.

  Tiago’s protectiveness, the gentleness with which he handled her, the way he had removed the stitches from her side and then pressed his lips to the scar.

  She pushed upright as a rock-solid certainty settled back into its rightful place. The people who had attacked her and Tiago might have been Wyr, but Dragos and his sentinels had nothing to do with it. Of course they hadn’t.

  Oh, Tiago.

  She started to look around for her cell phone before she remembered it was still in her evening bag in the suite two floors down. Using the phone by the bed, she asked the hotel switchboard to dial the suite. She listened to it ring. Disappointment bowed her shoulders as no one picked up. When the voicemail system clicked on, she said, “Tiago, it’s me. I’m sorry I sent you away like that. It—the whole thing—just came as such a shock, that’s all. Please call me back if you get this, okay?”

  She hung up slowly. He might have already gone back to the suite to collect his things and leave. It certainly wouldn’t have taken him long to get his things. He traveled light. She picked up the phone again and dialed the front desk. When a pleasantvoiced woman answered, she said, “Hello, this is Niniane Lorelle.”

  “Your highness! Good afternoon, what can I do for you?”

  “I’m trying to get a hold of sentinel Black Eagle and he isn’t picking up in the downstairs suite,” she said. “Have you, by any chance, seen him recently?”

  “Yes, he left about fifteen minutes ago,” said the woman.

  This time the disappointment was crushing. She covered her eyes. “I see.”

  “Would you like to leave him a message?”

  Would he even come back to the hotel or was he already on his way back to New York? “Yes,” she said, her voice leaden. “If you see him, please tell him I need to speak with him. It’s very important.”

  After the woman promised to do so, Niniane hung up. And why wouldn’t he return to New York? He had seen her to safety, just as he had promised. After everything he had done for her, she had pretty much kicked him in the teeth.

  She couldn’t think and didn’t want to feel, so she curled up on the bed again and closed her eyes instead. She must have slept because the next thing she heard was a soft knock. Rhoswen’s pure voice asked if Niniane would like a supper tray brought to her.

  “No,” she said.

  She closed her eyes again. She heard quiet, grotesque footsteps echoing in the shadowed, silent palace halls. She stumbled in the pools of blood from her brothers’ small bodies. Blood had a raw-meaty smell and a consistency that was impossible to mistake, a slippery stickiness that coated her hands and knees as she fell. She scrambled to her feet and ran from a chill Power that hunted for
her. It tightened the air like an invisible boa constrictor as she hid in the dark and smothered in her own panic.

  The bedroom was fully dark when she next awakened. Disoriented, she fumbled to turn on a light and dig for her wristwatch. She hadn’t worn her watch to dinner because it hadn’t gone with her pretty red halter dress.

  9:30 P.M. Gah. Sleeping through the day was a stupid thing to do. Now she would be up all night. She sat up and stared at the floor, feeling thick and slow, like molasses moved in her veins or she was only half alive because a vital artery had been cut and she had been bleeding out while she slept.

  She looked at the silent bedside phone, and her eyes filled with tears.

  Oh no. No, she didn’t. She swore under her breath and pushed off the bed, grabbed a bottle of water from the small fridge and left the bedroom. There had to be something in that damn library that she could lose herself in. If she could not find a book, then she could by god find something to drink. Or maybe both.

  When she opened the door, two Vampyres stood in the shadowed hall, the male that Tiago had thrown into the stairwell and Rhoswen. With her sensitive Fae hearing, she could hear people moving quietly about in other rooms in the penthouse. It sounded for the most part like people were spending the evening in their rooms. She imagined a quiet night was a welcome respite to everyone after the drama of the last couple of days.

  “Do you require anything?” Rhoswen asked. “Perhaps some sustenance?”

  Niniane shook her head. “I’m going to the library.”

  The blonde Vampyre inclined her head. Niniane walked to the library, which was dimly lit by a small table lamp and the jeweled glow of moonlight shining through the stained-glass window.

  At first she thought she was alone in the room. Then she saw the still, silent figure in the armchair. She paused and almost left again, because she wasn’t sure she could handle more of Carling that day. But something about that entirely still figure drew her forward.

  Carling still wore the Egyptian-cotton caftan from earlier. She had removed the stilettos from her hair. The slender knives lay on the side table by the armchair.

  “Carling?” Niniane said.

  The Vampyre showed no response. Niniane took a step toward Carling then another, watching the incredible perfection of that profile against the jeweled backdrop of sapphire, ruby, gold and emerald in the stained-glass window behind her. Carling’s stillness was complete. Those long, dark eyes were fixed and blank, her lush lips slightly parted.

  Ice slithered down Niniane’s spine. All Vampyres could be eerie in their stillness, since they did not need to breathe. Rhoswen and the male Vampyre had been unmoving when Niniane had walked out of her room, but still they had retained a quality of alertness. She could sense they were aware of her.

  Carling seemed to be in a different condition altogether. She looked like she was a mannequin or like she was some kind of Stepford Vampyre waiting for someone to flip a switch and turn her on.

  Stepford Vampyre. Ew, actually.

  Niniane cleared her throat and said in a louder voice, “Carling?”

  “Macbeth was on to something,” said Carling.

  Niniane almost leaped out of her skin then felt like a fool. Carling had spoken in a quiet, absentminded voice and had made no sudden moves. Get a grip already, doofus.

  She asked, “What do you mean?”

  “In his soliloquy. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow really does creep in its petty pace from day to day,” said Carling. “What will the last syllable of recorded time be, and who will be the one to write it? No matter how long we live, we still wonder when our world will end and how.”

  Niniane’s unease increased. Carling had appeared to respond to her name, but she still seemed absent, her expression unchanging. She referenced Macbeth as if she were responding to the conversation that had occurred between Niniane and Rhoswen in the hall, but that had happened hours ago. Something was wrong, perhaps badly so. Niniane’s stomach clenched.

  She said in a quiet neutral voice, “Would you like for me to get Rhoswen for you?”

  Carling’s dark gaze snapped up to Niniane’s face, and in an instant the sense of wrongness was erased. “Gods, no,” said the Vampyre with a weary amusement. “Her frantic devotion is so tiring.”

  Niniane regarded her. She had a feeling she shouldn’t ask, but she couldn’t help herself. “Are you all right?”

  Carling smiled. “I am not doing too badly for an old, diseased woman. We Vampyres are the lepers of the Elder Races, you know, since we were human until we were infected, and of course all of the Elder Races are immune to the disease. I’ve always felt a somewhat irrational connection with the Wyr because of it. As the lepers and the beasts of the Elder society, neither of us are quite as acceptable as the rest of you.”

  Niniane quirked an eyebrow. “None of us are that acceptable, Carling.”

  The Vampyre chuckled. “Too true. Sit, little Niniane. We did not have a chance to finish our earlier conversation when your Wyr so rudely interrupted us.”

  He’s not my Wyr.

  A vicious surge of pain came out of nowhere. She took a deep breath and managed to keep the words from tumbling out of her mouth. Then the memory of Carling twisting the head off her own Vampyre and staring at its eyes as it crumbled to dust flashed through her mind, but Niniane stepped forward anyway to sit in the chair Carling indicated.

  “I don’t understand you,” Carling said, as she tilted her head and regarded Niniane.

  Niniane blinked. “You don’t understand me?”

  “Is that so difficult to believe? You don’t maneuver for power around me, and yes, sometimes you are afraid, but underneath it all sometimes it seems that you . . . like me. Even though that isn’t wise or safe. And you are sad at the same time. I find that puzzling.”

  Funny, how accurate Carling was at describing Niniane’s reaction to her. Niniane gave the Vampyre a lopsided smile then looked at her hands. She couldn’t possibly tell Carling that she thought the Vampyre was something precious and horrific, an enigmatic tragedy like the ruins of a historic battlefield.

  She settled for a small truth. “I do like you, even if maybe I shouldn’t. And sometimes I get sad when I think about all the friends or associates that you must have outlived. I don’t just mean humans. Losing human companions is painful enough. I’m talking about people who have our kind of life expectancy, I guess.”

  “You have already lost more than enough people in your own time,” Carling said, her voice gentle.

  Was that gentleness an illusion? Did Carling mimic human behavior, to manipulate or to be social, or were there tattered remnants of humanity still left inside that exquisite exterior? Niniane sighed. Whatever the ultimate truth was about Carling, Niniane would not be the one to discover it. “I wanted to ask you something, if you don’t mind.”

  Carling gestured with a few fingers.

  “Why do you hate Tiago?” The words dropped like stones thrown in a pond, causing a ripple of reaction that moved outward to an unseen shore. Carling never moved, but Niniane’s chest grew tight. She forced herself to breathe evenly as the silence stretched taut between them. She said, “I just want to understand.”

  The tension splintered as Carling exhaled an angry laugh. “The reason is so old it hardly holds any meaning, and he doesn’t even remember, which makes me even angrier. I met him once in Memphis.”

  “Memphis,” Niniane said, taken aback.

  Just as she was going to ask what Carling and Tiago were both doing in Tennessee of all places, Carling said, “Of course it wasn’t called Memphis then. That came much later. Then it was called Ineb Hedj. It was the capital of the entire world, and at dawn the sun would shimmer on the Nile like a sheet of hammered silver overlaid on jade and lapis lazuli.”

  Niniane caught her breath. “You met him in Egypt.”

  “Yes, a very, very long time ago. Tiago was a god, and I was a commodity. I was young and still human, taken out of poverty a
nd the river mud because of my looks. I was given to a god to entice him to stay with our people. I was entirely desperate, but he did not even look at me. He left and I was punished for it.”

  Niniane had gripped her hands together at the small, dry telling of the ancient story. She said, “That’s horrible.”

  “It’s ludicrous,” said Carling. “I didn’t want him. I was just a child with a pretty mouth, and he terrified me. I was glad he left.”

  Niniane forced her hands to relax. “What happened after that?”

  Carling’s lush lips pulled into a smile, as if she were the Mona Lisa of demons and had just swallowed a soul. “I clawed my way to a better life,” the Vampyre said. “I learned poisons and warfare and sorcery, how to rule over others, how to destroy my enemies, and how to hold a grudge with all of my heart. Then I discovered the serpent’s kiss that turned me into a god as well, and no one ever took a lash to me again.”

  Serpent’s kiss. Niniane stared at her. “You’re talking about the time when you became a Vampyre.” Carling inclined her head, and Niniane saw in the gracious, imperial gesture how much Rhoswen imitated her mistress. Niniane asked, “And Tiago never realized what happened or who you were?”

  “No.” Carling’s expression turned wry. “But when I look at him, I want to strangle him all the same.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Niniane said.

  “Child,” Carling said. The Vampyre’s dark gaze was quizzical, somewhat bored.

  “I don’t care if it did happen eons ago,” Niniane told her on a flash of ferocity. “I don’t care if there’s a more sophisticated way to respond or if it doesn’t matter to you anymore. I am sorry for what that girl went through. I’m sorry for what the girl I was went through. We may not be those girls anymore, but their ghosts live on somewhere inside us, if only in the memory of what happened, and someone ought to say it: those children deserved better.”

  Carling’s gaze dropped. The graceful wings of her eyebrows pulled together. She said, “You are right, of course. They did.”

  Niniane had slept too long, and none of it had been refreshing. Her eyes felt dry and scratchy. She dug the heels of her hands into them and rubbed. “It happened so long ago, and Tiago didn’t mean to do anything wrong. You do realize that, don’t you?”