by Anne Bishop
Saetan held on until Lord Magstrom left the Hall. Then he threw the brandy glasses against the wall. It didn't make him feel better. The broken glass reminded him too much of a shattered crystal chalice and two sons who had paid dearly because he was their father.
He sank to his knees. He'd already wept for one son. He wouldn't grieve for the other. Not yet. He wouldn't grieve for that foolish, arrogant Eyrien prick, that charming, temperamental pain in the ass.
Ah, Lucivar.
5 / Kaeleer
"Damn it, Cat, I told you to wait." Lucivar threw an Ebon-gray shield across the game trail, half-wincing in anticipation of her running into it face first. She stopped inches away from the shield and spun
Lucivar leaned against a tree, finding a little comfort in the rhythmic whack whack whack coming from the clearing. At least destroying the abandoned shack with a sledgehammer gave Jaenelle an outlet for sexual rage and burning energy. Even more important, it was an outlet that would keep her in one place for a little while.
around, her glazed eyes searching for a spot in the thick I undergrowth that she could push her way through.
"Stay away from me," she panted.
Lucivar held up the waterskin. "You ripped up your arm I on the thorns back there. Let me pour some water over I the cuts to clean them."
Looking down at her bare arm, she seemed surprised at the blood flowing freely from half a dozen deep scratches.
Lucivar gritted his teeth and waited. She'd stripped down to a sleeveless undershirt that offered her skin no protection in rough country, but right now sharp pain didn't hurt as much as the constant rub of cloth against oversensitive skin.
"Come on, Cat," he coaxed. "Just stick your arm out so that I can pour some water over it."
She cautiously held out her arm, her body angled away from him. Stepping only as close as necessary, he poured water over the scratches, washing away the blood and, he hoped, most of the dirt.
"Have a sip of water," he said, offering the waterskin. If he could coax her into taking a drink, maybe he could coax her into standing still for five minutes – something she hadn't done since he'd brought them to this part of Ebon Rih.
"Stay away from me." Her voice came out low and harsh. Desperate.
He shifted slightly, still offering the water.
"Stay away from me." She whirled and ran through the Ebon-gray shield as if it weren't there.
He took a long drink and sighed. He would get her through this, somehow. But after the past two days of unrelenting movement, he wasn't sure how much more either of them could take.
Hell's fire, he was tired. The Masters of the Eyrien hunting camps couldn't match Jaenelle's ability to set a grueling pace. Even Smoke, with that tireless, ground-eating trot, was struggling. Of course, unlike one drug-driven witch, wolves liked to do things like eat and sleep, two items now high on Lucivar's list of sensual pleasures.
He called in his sleeping bag, unrolled it, and used Craft to fix it in the air high enough so that his wings wouldn't drag the ground. Pushing the top of the sleeping bag against the tree trunk, he sat down with a groan he didn't try to stifle.
""Lucivar?*
Lucivar looked around until he spotted Smoke peering at him from behind a tree. "It's all right. The Lady's tearing up a shack."
Smoke whined and hid behind the tree.
He puzzled over the wolf's distress, then hastily sent a mental picture of the broken-down structure.
*Cabin made by stupid humans.* Smoke sneezed.
Lucivar smothered a laugh. He couldn't argue with Smoke's conclusion. The wolfs reference points for a "proper human den" included the Hall, the cottages in Halaway, the family's other country houses, and Jaenelle's cabin. So it made sense that Smoke would see the shack as a den made by an inept human.
As knowledge of the kindred's reemergence spread, the human Blood had divided into two camps arguing over the intelligence and Craft abilities of the nonhuman Blood. It had amused and dismayed the few humans who had the opportunity to work with the wild kindred to discover that they had similar prejudices about humans. Humans were divided into two groups: their humans and other humans. Their humans were the Lady's humans – intelligent, well trained, and willing to learn the ways of others without insisting their way was best. The other humans were dangerous, stupid, cruel, and – as far as the feline Blood were concerned – prey. Both the Arcerian cats and the kindred tigers had a "word" for humans that roughly translated "as "stupid meat."
Lucivar had argued once that since humans were danger-
ous and could hunt with weapons as well as Craft, they | shouldn't be considered stupid. Smoke had pointed out that the tusked wild pigs were dangerous, too. They were still J stupid.
Reassured that the Lady wasn't attacking anything with four feet, Smoke disappeared for a moment, returning with a dead rabbit. *Eat.*
"Have you eaten?" When Smoke didn't answer, Lucivar called in the food pack and large flask Draca had given him before he and Jaenelle left the Keep. He'd almost refused the food, thinking there would be plenty of fresh meat, thinking there would be time to build a fire and cook it. "You keep the rabbit," he said, digging into the pack. "I don't like raw meat."
Smoke cocked his head. *Fire?*
Lucivar shook his head, refusing to think about fires and sleep. He pulled a beef sandwich out of the pack and held it up.
*Lucivar eat.* Smoke settled down to his rabbit dinner.
Lucivar sipped from the flask of whiskey and slowly ate his sandwich, his attention partly focused on the sound of breaking wood.
This trip hadn't gone as he'd expected. He'd brought Jaenelle out here so that she could release the savage, drug-induced needs on nonhuman prey. He'd come with her to give her the target that would enrage, and satisfy, the bloodlust the most – a human male.
She'd refused to hunt, refused to buy herself a little relief at the cost of another living creature. Including him.
But she'd had no mercy for her own body. She had treated it like an enemy worthy of nothing but her contempt, an enemy that had betrayed her by leaving her vulnerable to someone's sadistic game.
*Lucivar?*
Lucivar shook his head, automatically probing for the source of Smoke's anxiety. A few birds chattering. A squirrel scrambling through the branches overhead. The usual wood sounds. Only the usual sounds.
His heart pounded as he and Smoke ran to the little clearing.
The shack was now a pile of broken timbers. A few feet away, Jaenelle sat on the ground, spraddle-legged, her hands still gripping the sledgehammer's handle while the head rested between her feet.
Approaching cautiously, Lucivar squatted beside her. "Cat?"
Tears flowed down her face. Blood dribbled down her chin from the bite in her lower lip. She gulped air and shuddered. "I'm so tired, Lucivar. But it grabs me and. ."
Her muscles tightened until her body shook from the tension. Her back arched. The cords in her neck stood out. She sucked air through clenched teeth. The sledgehammer's handle snapped in her hands.
Lucivar waited, not daring to touch her while her muscles were tight enough to snap. It didn't last more than a couple of minutes. It felt like hours. When it finally passed, her body sagged and she began crying so hard he thought it would tear him apart.
She didn't fight him when he put his arms around her, so he held her, rocked her, and let her cry herself out.
He felt the sexual tension rising as soon as she stopped crying, but he held on. If he was reading the intensity correctly, she was over the worst of it now.
After several minutes, she relaxed enough to rest her head on his shoulder. "Lucivar?"
"Mmm?"
"I'm hungry."
His heart sang. "Then I'll feed you."
*Fire?*
Jaenelle's head snapped up. She stared at the wolf standing at the edge of the clearing. "Why does he want to build a fire?"
"Damned if I know why he wants one. But if we did build o
ne, I could make some laced coffee."
Jaenelle pondered this for a while. "You make good laced coffee."
Taking that for a "yes," Lucivar led Jaenelle to the other side of the clearing while Smoke started searching the debris for pieces of wood big enough to use for fuel.
Lucivar called in the food pack, flask, and sleeping bag
he'd left by the creek. Jaenelle wandered from one side of the clearing to the other, nibbling the sandwich he'd given her. He kept an eye on her as he built the fire, called in the rest of their gear, and made camp. She seemed restless but not uncontrollably driven, which was good since they were losing the light and the day's warmth.
By the time he had the whisky-laced coffee ready, Jaenelle was tucked in her sleeping bag, shivering, eagerly reaching for the cup he handed her. He didn't suggest that she put on another layer of clothes. As long as she focused on the fire being the source of warmth, she'd be reluctant to wander away from it until morning.
He was rummaging through the food pack, looking for something else he could offer her to eat, when he heard a delicate snore.
After more than two days of unrelenting movement, Jaenelle slept.
Lucivar closed her sleeping bag and added a warming spell to keep her comfortable as the temperature dropped throughout the night. He pulled the coffeepot away from the heat and added more wood to the fire. Then he pulled off his boots and settled into his sleeping bag.
He should put a protective shield around the camp. He doubted a four-footed predator would want what was left in the food pack enough to challenge the combined scents of human and wolf, but they were on the northern border of Ebon Rih and uncomfortably close to Jhinka territory. The last thing Jaenelle needed right now was being jolted awake by a Jhinka hunting party's surprise attack.
Lucivar was sound asleep before he finished the thought.
6 / Hell
Resigned to the intrusion, Saetan settled back in one of the chairs by the fire and poured two glasses of yarbarah. He'd decided to spend some time in his private study beneath the Hall because he hadn't wanted to deal with any more frightened, clamoring minds – not after the past twenty-four hours. But Black-Jeweled Warlord Prince or not, High
Lord or not, a man didn't refuse a Dea al Mon Queen when she asked for an audience – especially when she was also a demon-dead Harpy.
"What can I do for you, Titian?" he asked politely, handing her a glass of the warmed blood wine.
Titian accepted the glass and sipped delicately, her large blue eyes never looking away from his gold ones. "You've made the citizens of Hell very nervous. This is the first time, in all the centuries you've been the High Lord, that you've purged the Dark Realm."
"I rule Hell. I can do as I please here," Saetan said mildly. Even a fool could have heard the warning under the mild tone.
Titian hooked her long, fine, silver hair behind her pointed ear and chose to ignore the warning. "Do as you please or do what you must? It didn't escape the notice of the observant that the Dark Priestess's followers were the only ones consumed in this purge."
"Really?" He sounded politely interested. In truth, he felt relieved the connection had been made. Not only would the rest of the demon-dead relax once they realized his choice of who had been hurried to the final death was based on a specific allegiance, anyone Hekatah approached in the future would think long and hard about the cost of such allegiance. "Since you've no personal concern, why are you here?"
"You missed a few. I thought you should know."
Saetan quickly masked his distaste and dismay. Titian always saw too much. "You'll give me the names." It wasn't a question.
Titian smiled. "There's no need. The Harpies took care of them for you." She hesitated for a moment. "What about the Dark Priestess?"
Clenching his teeth, Saetan stared at the fire. "I couldn't find her. Hekatah's very good at playing least-in-sight."
"If you had, would you have hurried her return to the Darkness? Would you have sent her to the final death?"-
Saetan flung his glass into the fireplace and instantly regretted it as the fire sizzled and the smell of hot blood filled the room.
He'd been asking himself that question since he'd made the decision to eliminate all the support Hekatah had among the demon-dead. If he had found her, could he have coldly drained her strength until she faded into the Darkness? Or would he have hesitated, as he'd done so many times before, because centuries of dislike and distrust couldn't erase the simple fact that she'd given him two of his sons. Three if he counted. . but he didn't, couldn't count that child, just as he'd never allowed himself to consider who had held the knife.
He jerked when Titian brushed her hand over his. "Here." She handed him another glass of warmed yarbarah. Sitting back, she traced the rim of her own glass with one finger. "You don't like killing women, do you?" Saetan gulped the blood wine. "No, I don't." "I thought so. You were much cleaner, much kinder with them than you were with the males."
"Perhaps by your standards." By his own standards, he'd been more than sufficiently brutal. He shrugged. "We are our mothers' sons."
"A reasonable assumption." She sounded solemn. She looked amused.
Saetan twitched his shoulders, unable to shake the feeling that she'd just dropped a noose over his head. "It's a pet theory of mine about why there's no male rank equal to a Queen."
"Because males are their mothers' sons?" "Because, long ago, only females were Blood." Titian curled up in her chair. "How intriguing." Saetan studied her warily. Titian had the same look Jaenelle always had when she'd successfully cornered him and was quite willing to wait until he finished squirming and told her what she wanted to know.
"It's just something Andulvar and I used to argue about on long winter nights," he grumbled, refilling their glasses. "It may not be winter but, in Hell, the nights are always long."
"You know the story about the dragons who first ruled the Realms?"
Titian shrugged, indicating that it didn't matter if she knew or not. She'd settled in to hear a story.
Saetan raised his glass in a salute and smiled grudgingly. Jeweled males might be trained as defenders of their territories, but no male could beat a Queen when it came to tactical strategy.
"Long ago," he began, "when the Realms were young, there lived a race of dragons. Powerful, brilliant, and magical, they ruled all the lands and all the creatures in them. But after hundreds of generations, there came a day when they realized their race would be no more, and rather than have their knowledge and their gifts die with them, they chose to give them to the other creatures so that they could continue the Craft and care for the Realms.
"One by one, the dragons sought their lairs and embraced the forever night, becoming part of the Darkness. When only the Queen and her Prince, Lorn, were left, the Queen bid her Consort farewell. As she flew through the Realms, her scales sprinkled down, and whatever creature her scales touched, whether it walked on two legs or four or danced in the air on wings, whatever creature a scale touched became blood of her blood – still part of the race it came from, but also Other, remade to become caretaker and ruler. When the last scale fell from her, she vanished. Some stories say her body was transformed into some other shape, though it still contained a dragon's soul. Others say her body faded and she returned to the Darkness."
Saetan swirled the yarbarah in his glass. "I've read all the old stories – some from the original text. What's always intrigued me is that, no matter what race the story came from, the Queen is never named. In all the stories, Lorn is mentioned by name, repeatedly, but not her. The omission seems deliberate. I've always wondered why."
"And the Prince of Dragons?" Titian asked. "What happened to him?"
"According to the legends, Lorn still exists, and he contains all the knowledge of the Blood."
Titian looked thoughtful. "When Jaenelle turned fifteen and Draca said that Lorn had decided Jaenelle would live
with you at the Hall, I had thought she w
as just saying that to block Cassandra's objections."
"No, she meant it. He and Jaenelle have been friends for years. He gifted her with her Jewels."
Titian opened and closed her mouth without making a sound.
Her stunned expression pleased him.
"Have you seen him?"
"No," Saetan replied sourly. "I've not been granted an audience."
"Oh, dear," Titian said with no sympathy whatsoever. "What does the legend have to do with the Blood once being all female, and why didn't we keep it that way?"
"You would have liked that, wouldn't you?"
She smiled.
"All right, my theory is this. Since the Queen's scales gifted the Craft to other races, and since like calls to like, it seems reasonable that only the females were able to absorb the magic. They became bonded to the land, drawn by their own body rhythms to the ebb and flow of the natural world. They became the Blood."
"Which would have lasted one generation," Titian pointed out.
"Not all men are stupid." When she looked doubtful, Saetan let out an exasperated sigh. The only thing more pointless than arguing with a Harpy about the value of males was trying to teach a rock to sing. He would have better luck with the rock. "For theory's sake, let's say we're talking about the Dea al Mon."
"Ah." Titian settled back, content. "Our males are intelligent."
"I'm sure they're relieved you think so," Saetan said dryly. "So, upon discovering that some of the women in their Territory suddenly had magical powers and skills.."
"The best young warriors would offer themselves as mates and protectors," Titian said promptly.
Saetan raised an eyebrow. Since landens, the non-Blood of each race, tended to be so wary of the Blood and their Craft, that wasn't quite the way he'd always pictured it, but he found it interesting that a Dea al Mon witch would make that assumption. He'd have to ask Chaosti and Gabrielle at some point. "And from those unions, children were born. The girls, because of gender, received the full gift."
"But the boys were half-Blood with little or no Craft." Titian held out her glass. Saetan refilled it.
