Blood Domination (Blood Destiny #4)

by Connie Suttle

  "Agreed," Wlodek sighed. "Had they captured her, we would now be facing a terrible crisis. Not only can Lissa slip inside any home or building, no matter how well protected, but she can also take others with her. World leaders would die easily and unsuspecting. Others could be captured and turned to add to Xenides' army. This is more frightening than anything I have ever seen."

  "Do we need to hide our girl, now, to protect her?" Merrill asked.

  "I am afraid this must be so. I cannot have her and Charles followed discreetly every time they go out. We need our Enforcers and spies elsewhere. Everyone I have is out tracking Xenides and his contacts."

  "I have a proposition to make in that respect," Merrill said.

  "And that would be?" Wlodek asked, a rare bit of curiosity in his voice.

  "Griffin is asking for her help."

  Wlodek held his breath for several seconds. He knew about Griffin, as well as what he was. "I heard he was retired."

  "He is. He wants her to help one of the others, now. There is something of a crisis going on elsewhere, and her talents might be utilized for that."

  Wlodek watched his vampire child's face. Griffin was as close as any brother to Merrill, and their friendship had spanned more than fifteen hundred years. Merrill provided assistance to Griffin when they'd first met and now, as a favored friend, Merrill reaped benefits from that friendship. Wlodek only suspected what some of those benefits might be and had never questioned Merrill about any of it. He didn't need to know everything, after all.

  "How long?" Wlodek asked. "And will he guarantee her safety?"

  ""I don't believe he would deliberately place her in danger, and you know time and distance have no meaning to him or his kind. He says he can have her back in a week, our time, if you want."

  "Make it a month," Wlodek made a counter offer. "We can hope that Hancock will be satisfied with what he has and go forward with that. Perhaps Xenides will be thrown off the trail as well. We will use this time to decide what to do with Lissa when she returns.

  "Hancock's lucky we aren't pulling our vampires away from him," Merrill snapped. "And if Lissa asked, Weldon Harper would pull his wolves away as well."

  "Kenneth White drew that to his attention, I believe," Wlodek almost smiled. "I'm thinking about asking Dalroy and Rhett to offer their services. They are my hidden Enforcers inside the U.S., you know."

  "I suspected as much," Merrill nodded. "Griffin will come and pick up our girl in two days. He will explain as much as he can to her then. She is curious about him anyway."

  Chapter 2

  "Lissa, Griffin is coming to see you tomorrow," Merrill informed me the following evening. It was July fourth and Franklin, Greg and I had just had a friendly argument over how tacky it might be to celebrate Independence Day in Great Britain.

  "Why is he coming to see me?" I asked. "He's your friend and I'm doing okay, I think."

  "He'll explain that when he arrives," Merrill said. "And he's not just my friend. I believe he likes you very much."

  Honestly, I had no idea what to do with that information. Griffin seemed like a very nice man in an older, fatherly sort of way. No, he didn't look old; he didn't look any older than Merrill did and Merrill appeared to be in his mid-twenties. There was just something about Griffin that gave off that vibe to me. Not to mention the depth of knowledge and experience in his hazel eyes. I couldn't explain my feelings about him any better than that.

  "I've known Griffin all my life," Franklin got in on the conversation. "You can say anything to Griffin. Tell him anything. He'll only have your best interests at heart, Lissa."

  "Fine," I said. "At least I won't toss and turn in my sleep, worrying about why he wants to see me."

  "Too bad we can't shoot off fireworks," Greg grumbled, turning back to the holiday. He was missing the celebrations back in the states.

  "Want to go flying instead?" I asked. Greg stared at me as if I were crazy for a moment before the light came on.

  "You can do that?"

  "Are you afraid of heights?"

  Greg snorted. "Not at this stage of the game," he said.

  "What about you, Frank? I can take you both at the same time."

  "I've never done anything like that," he said. "Greg and I kicked around the idea of going skydiving. This will be better, I think."

  "Good. We'll go. And as an added treat, we'll go through the ceiling and out through the roof." Greg looked as if he was a little worried over that, but I grabbed his arm and then Frank's and we were mist in a blink. Ignoring Merrill's call to be careful, we did go through the ceiling and then through two more floors plus the attic, coming out over the roof of the house and then zooming off toward the coast.

  "I'm sorry I never asked you to do this before," Franklin said as he and Greg watched the ocean wash up on a beach covered in pebbles not far from the port city of Dover. We could see the white cliffs down the way, shining under a waning crescent moon. Greg and Franklin had their arms around each other, so I just sat down off to the side and allowed them their moment together. They let me know when they were ready to go home.

  * * *

  "Little girl, I have to ask you to trust me," Griffin said the following evening.

  "Frank said I could," I told the tall, brown-haired man. He did have a nice smile, I'll give him that.

  "I'm retired, now," he informed me. "But I used to take on some pretty nasty things. That was my job. Others are still doing that job and I need you to help one of them. This is going to involve some major travel. Don't worry, we'll have suitable clothing and such waiting when you get there; you don't need to pack a bag," Griffin held up a hand. "The thing is, I can only get you so far and then someone else will meet us at that point to take you to your destination." I watched Griffin closely; he was excited about this, I could tell. I just didn't know why.

  "What about blood and things like that?" I needed a food source, after all.

  "That will be provided," Griffin assured me. "I've talked this over with the Liaison, and he's quite excited about it, too."

  "To whom are you taking her?" Merrill asked, uncharacteristically curious.

  "Dragon," Griffin grinned. I stared at Griffin, my mouth surely open in surprise. Dragon? There was somebody named Dragon? That didn't sound promising. Who named their kid Dragon?

  "What sort of help does he need?" Merrill's left eyebrow lifted a little. Right then I was wondering what Mr. Spock might have looked like with piercing blue eyes. Griffin snickered.

  "Hey, get out of my head," I grumped. "Will I be able to phone Gavin? You know he'll want to know where I am."

  "Your communication devices will not work where you're going," Griffin informed me. He sounded almost happy about that fact. "Wlodek will let him know that you will be unavailable for a time."

  "You want me to do this?" I turned a puzzled gaze to Merrill.

  "I think it will be good for you," Merrill said. Well, I'd heard that before.

  "Come with me, little girl. It's time you saw the wider universes." Griffin took my hand before I could protest and just like that, we were gone.

  * * *

  Griffin and I were standing in a spacious kitchen, with twenty-foot plate glass windows overlooking a rocky beach far below the house. It was evening wherever we were; a full moon hung low over the water. Either we'd gone back or forward in time or we weren't on planet Earth any longer. I was staring at the moon in shock, trying to determine just where the hell I was and how Griffin had managed to get me there when a two-year-old child ran past me, screeching. "Justin, slow down!" A woman's voice shouted and I whirled in a blur to see whom it was, receiving another huge shock.

  Griffin placed a hand on my shoulder just to calm me a little, I think. Here was the woman in Merrill's photograph, alive and in the flesh, with long, pale blonde hair and blue eyes. And she was drop-dead beautiful on top of that. I'd thought she looked gorgeous in the photograph on Merrill's bedside table, but the reality was so much better. No wonder he
was head over heels for her. No way could anyone else compete with that. No way. The sad thing, though? Her husband was standing right behind her. She had a ring on and so did he. Poor Merrill. Griffin squeezed my shoulder again. The child was now standing before me, staring at me curiously with gray eyes. His father's eyes. I saw that right away.

  "Hello, young man," I knelt down to his level. He reached out and patted my face.

  "Carry me," he demanded.

  "You get your way a lot, do you?" I asked, smiling and tapping his nose. He laughed so I lifted him up. He seemed happy to sit on my hip and was now toying with my hair. Griffin was about to make introductions when a giant appeared next to us, scaring the bejeezus out of me. Reflexively, I misted at least twenty feet away in the blink of an eye, the child still in my arms.

  "Holy shit," the blonde's husband swore.

  "Lissa, it's all right, this is Pheligar, the Liaison," Griffin was trying to reassure me. Nobody else seemed to be having a cow and the kid, Justin was his name, I guess, loved the fact that we'd just gone across the room in no time flat.

  I put Justin down carefully and sized up the Liaison. Not only was he around eight and a half feet tall but he had blue skin, blue eyes and close-cropped, wheat colored hair. He wore loosely woven clothing—a tunic over shapeless pants—plus sandals. He looked like a huge, blue hippie. The skin and eyes were what amazed me, however.

  "Is he safe?" I glanced at Griffin.

  "He is," Griffin assured me. I walked over to the Liaison and stood before him, looking up at his face. He looked down at me. We stood like that for several seconds.

  "Honey," I finally said, "I don't want to offend you or anything, since I don't know what your customs and culture are like. But I have to tell you, your skin is like a summer sky. Your eyes put all that to shame, though. They're like the bluest northern sky, the blue that you almost can't believe on the days you actually get to see it." I hadn't seen daylight in a long time and I missed it. And this guy? He was like a walking sky to me.

  Who knows whether I offended him or not? He reached down and lifted me up so I'd be on a level with his face, frightening me so much I nearly misted out of his arms. Something held me back, though, and it wasn't any of my doing.

  "I am doing this," he said in perfect, unaccented English. "I have not received a compliment of this magnitude before. I appreciate your words."

  "Uh, you're welcome." My words were almost a squeak. How many people can say that they, as grown adults, were picked up by someone that was nearly twice their height?

  "Lissa, this is Pheligar, the Liaison between the Powers That Be and the Saa Thalarr." Griffin now stood beside the blue giant. I was officially in a science fiction movie. Powers That Be? Who were they? And the other words—Saa Thalarr? What language was that? I definitely needed to take language lessons.

  "Neaborian is not available on any language discs or in any books that exist in this time frame," Pheligar informed me, picking the thoughts right out of my head.

  "Pheligar, if you'll set her down, we can introduce ourselves," the blonde said, sounding a bit snippy.

  "You smell like sunlight," I said to Pheligar as he settled my feet on the floor. That brought a slight smile to his lips. "Larentii feed on sunlight," he said as he let me go.

  "Then you are truly lucky," I said. "I wish I could see sunlight. Nowadays it just fries my skin."

  "We know you're vampire," the blonde's husband remarked as they led Griffin and me toward a sitting area behind the kitchen.

  "If you'll lower your shields, Lissa might tell you something of yourself," Griffin observed dryly. I had the idea that he wanted to laugh with glee, but was holding it back for some reason. Pheligar came along behind us; he'd picked up Justin and was allowing the child to pound him on the chest.

  The blonde looked at her husband, who shrugged and then lowered his shields. The scent almost overwhelmed me when it came. Power. That's what I smelled. Along with the tiniest bit of vampire. I knew that as surely as I knew anything. He wasn't that old, however. Not for a vampire, anyway. Less than three hundred would be my guess. Now I knew whose apartment it was that we'd borrowed in London.

  "Merrill said the apartment belonged to a friend," I said. "It has your scent all over it. I smell power. A lot of it. You were vampire; I still smell a bit of it around you. Less than three hundred years old, I think."

  "Holy fuck." The blonde woman was staring at me now, as was her husband.

  "This is Adam Chessman," Griffin said, patting my hand. We'd sat on a comfortable sofa across from the blonde and the former vampire Chief of Enforcers, Adam Chessman. I'd heard his name, here and there. Someone told me he'd disappeared. Here he was—alive, well, and now something other than vampire. What I also knew was that whatever he was, his smell was very similar to the extra scent that Merrill carried. Don't get me wrong, Merrill was still mostly vampire. But the other part of him was something wondrous. The first time I'd smelled Merrill, it reminded me of a fresh breeze blowing through a field in springtime.

  "You've heard of me?" Adam asked. He was a handsome man, no doubt about it, with gray eyes and nearly black hair. Merrill might be more handsome, but Adam was the one married to the blonde.

  "The vampires talk about you, sometimes. Said you took Saxom down and then disappeared," I answered.

  "I did destroy Saxom," Adam nodded and put his shield back in place. It made me wonder about the shield around the woman and the ones around Griffin and Pheligar.

  "I am Kiarra, First among the Saa Thalarr," the woman introduced herself. Her name rhymed with tiara, the way she pronounced it. "You know about Saxom?"

  "I know next to nothing about Saxom," I answered honestly. "I'm getting to know his turns very well, however. I've killed several of them so far, and most of them have been misters. If the Vampire King and his court would turn me loose, I'd take out the rest of them."

  Kiarra was standing now and staring at me, a hand over her mouth. "Enough about Saxom," Griffin whispered next to my ear. I nodded. The topic was obviously upsetting Kiarra.

  "Have you always been able to turn to mist that quickly?" Adam asked, covering the ensuing silence.

  "Not always. The first time I did it, it took five minutes, I think. My time improved after that, until it's instantaneous." Kiarra sat down again as I explained my misting talents. Adam rubbed her back solicitously. Something about Saxom, even the mention of his name, sure upset her in a hurry.

  "You've seen her take Justin with her," Griffin said. "Lissa can transport just about anything or anyone," he added.

  "I was never able to turn that swiftly, until Kiarra offered her blood," Adam said. "And I could only transport myself. This is more than interesting."

  "She can mindspeak, too," Griffin went on. "She's perfect for this assignment."

  I turned to stare at Griffin. He was going to have to explain things to me, some day. Adam mentioned getting Kiarra's blood and then being able to turn to mist faster. I wondered what else her blood had done for him. At least one of those things was present—he'd fathered Justin. The boy looked exactly like him.

  "Pheligar, do you wish to place the implant or would you like me to do it?" Kiarra asked, turning back to business.

  "I will do this," Pheligar stood and handed Justin off to his mother.

  "Implant?" I squeaked. All the alien stories were about to come to life for me. The tales about experimentation on board spaceships crowded my mind; I was just about to panic and go to mist.

  "Lissa," Griffin turned to me and took my face in his hands, "it is alien technology, but it's a shield that an advanced race created. It will allow you to stand in full sunlight without being burned. You'll be sluggish if you wake, that's just your nature, but you won't burn, little girl. I promise."

  "How long will it last?" I asked. I sure as heck didn't want to be tossed into sunlight, only to discover the batteries had run down.

  "It has a normal lifespan of a hundred years," Griffin replied. Well
, somebody was way more efficient than we Earthlings.

  "Is this going to hurt?"

  "See for yourself," Pheligar knelt before me, holding a small, flat disc in his hand. His hand was so large it made the disc appear microscopic. "It goes here," he placed the disc on the tip of a finger and pressed it against the back of my neck. When he pulled his finger away, the disc was gone. "It has been placed," he said. "Did you feel pain?"

  "Uh, no," I said, surprise in my voice. He could do that without causing pain? That was exceptional. "Where were you when I got bitten by werewolves?" I blurted.

  "Possibly on the Larentii homeworld; I would have to check the timeline just to make sure," Pheligar replied. Well, nothing got past him. I could see that right away. "I am giving you the required communication skills as well," Pheligar tapped my forehead with a large, blue finger. I stared at him in shock after my eyes refocused from the bright flash he'd created. Communication skills? What did that mean?

  "Pheligar will take you to Refizan," Griffin stood.

  "Wait, aren't you going to explain this a little more?" I asked. "Where is this Refizan place? What am I supposed to do there? Who's going to take me home when this is over? Where are you going?" I was panicking—this was happening much too quickly.

  I should have saved my breath; Griffin disappeared and Pheligar had me out of there in a blink, landing me in a smaller apartment with fewer windows and not nearly so nice a view. There were two men there, waiting for me. One was around six-three and wider across the shoulders than Gavin. He had Asian features, wore a scowl on his face and had long black hair, braided down his back. His arms were also folded across his massive chest, as if he disapproved of me right off the bat. I was going to have to take lessons from Wlodek and get that non-expression thing going. I needed it more and more often, nowadays.

  The other man was around six feet tall with light brown hair, hazel eyes and was mostly human looking but didn't have much of an expression going, either. If I expected Pheligar to make introductions, I was very wrong. "Here is the girl," he said and promptly disappeared.