Blood of Centaurs: Book 12 of The Witch Fairy Series

by Bonnie Lamer

  “Xandra?” Kallen says. “Do you need assistance?”

  I shake my head. “No. Just building up my courage.” My words don’t appease him but Kallen holds his tongue. I love him even more for that.

  Setting the knife down, I say, “I need you, Dagda, Yerwen and Bayard.”

  Surprise flashes over Kallen’s face. “What do you mean?”

  Picking up the knife again, I grimace. “I’m going to need your blood.”

  Placing a finger under my chin, Kallen gently lifts my face until I meet his eyes. He studies me for a moment. Finally, he nods and kisses me lightly. Rising to his feet, he goes in search of the other three I need.

  “You really know how to freak people out,” Kegan says with a low chuckle as if he read my mind a moment ago. I give him a sour look. Holding his hands up in front of him, he says, “I am simply making an observation. No judgment here.” He winks at me.

  I can’t help a small laugh. “Yeah, I do kind of freak people out, don’t I?”

  Putting a comforting arm around my shoulder, he says, “Freak or not, you are still my favorite cousin.” We are cousins by marriage now.

  “I assume you want to keep that arm,” Kallen says, kneeling next to me again. Chuckling, Kegan removes the offending arm from my shoulders.

  Dagda, Bayard and Yerwen are standing in front of us now. Looking up at the three Kings, I say, “I need each of you to kneel behind a candle. Dagda, please take the north position. Bayard the east and Yerwen the west. Kallen, you’ll be here next to me at the south point.” Each King takes his place by a lit candle. Bayard is a little slower than the rest as he has more legs to bend. Yerwen is careful to keep his hair well away from the flame.

  Closing my eyes, I let magic build inside me. It fills me quickly, eager to be unleashed. Opening my eyes again, I recite the words forming in my mind. “A quest for peace gone awry, good intentions torrefied. Traitors heed a call to arms, victims fall beneath their charms. Amongst the ashes of torched hope, a single figure bears the scope. Lost, bound, wracked with pain, shackled now in iron chains. Beyond our vision true and psychic, I will make this victory pyrrhic. As her bloody bindings must now burn, only a bloody sacrifice will her location discern.”

  “What is the meaning of this?” Kono demands.

  She has moved to take a defensive position in front of her King. Which means she has entered the area within the candles.

  The Sasquatch must not know a lot about magic because this was a really stupid move on her part. There is a reason the candles are in place. Certain spells require boundaries as the magic needed begins to grow. The magic must be contained so it doesn’t become wild and dangerous as it learns of its task. This can be said emphatically about my magic. Which is why Kono becomes a Sasquatch torpedo. My magic wraps around her, lifts her and uses her as a battering ram to create an exit in the windowless wall of the marble tiered room.

  “Woo hoo!” Taz shouts. “Sasquatch stupidity segues stylishly to Sasquatch shish kabob!” His use of alliteration is impressive.

  I had intended to use blood for the spell. The knife in the bowl was to be used to poke the finger of each being at the different compass points. They would then drip their blood in the bowl and I would light it on fire with the candles beside them to give my magic even more oomph. Now, my magic has discovered its own way to get the blood needed to fuel its ability to locate Tana. Living battering rams tend to get a little bloody in the process of being banged against a wall.

  The room has erupted into a giant ball of chaos. Other Sasquatch are grabbing hold of their Supreme Commander, trying to still her. The Centaurs have moved Bayard to a corner of the room to try to prevent him suffering the same fate as Kono. Pholos is ordering some of the Centaurs to assist in rescuing Kono. The three Fairies in the room have taken up defensive stances around me. This is for the protection of not only me, but of the other beings in the room. If anyone touches me at the moment, the magic I am unable to pull back will burn through them with death being the most likely outcome.

  As soon as Kono’s head finally creates an opening in the wooden wall, my magic escapes through it so fast I am yanked forward and fall flat on my face. Ow. That hurt.

  “Xandra, are you okay?” Kallen asks. He reaches down to touch me but pulls his hand back when Felix snaps at him. The Tasmanian devil isn’t being mean, he is trying to save Kallen from being a conduit for my magic. From my uncomfortable position nose down on the floor, I can tell Kallen figured that out. He doesn’t try to help me up again.

  I always forget how strong my Witch spells can be. Probably because it’s been a while since I created one so strong that the magic is able to render me basically paralyzed under its power. There is so much magic in the room, even the non-magical beings can feel it. This is most likely due to the fact the magic is trying to take up all the space in the room and has now pushed every Sasquatch, Centaur and Fairy against the walls. And fight as they may, they can’t free themselves.

  It’s the blood. I only needed a little bit of blood for the spell. A pinprick from four fingers. Instead, the magic opened several bloody gashes on Kono’s head and the spell imbibed it all. My magic is now drunk on blood.

  I wish I could say it is good news that I can suddenly move again. I am on my feet and walking quickly in the direction the spell is dragging me. Why couldn’t my magic have used the door?

  Felix and Taz bound in front of me and they do their best with their teeth and their paws to make the hole in the wall bigger as I fight to slow my magic down. By the time I get to the hole, my Familiars have succeeded in making it big enough for me to be pulled through it without my head being ripped from my shoulders. I’ll make sure Tabitha gives them extra bacon for this.

  As soon as my body exits the building, so does my magic. This explains the sudden explosion behind me. Kallen, Kegan and Dagda thought as one and each threw magic at the wall, knocking it to the ground with more force than was probably necessary. I’m surprised the rest of the structure is still standing. It is only an instant before the three of them catch up with me. As well as the Centaurs, Sasquatch and most of the Fae army that crossed into this realm earlier. Only a few of them stay behind to secure the area.

  I wish my magic would simply teleport me to wherever I need to be instead of making me trot what must be at least three miles now. My gorgeous, always in shape, well-toned husband isn’t even winded as he jogs next to me. Even my biological father is in better shape than me. When we get back to the Fairy realm, I’m starting an exercise regimen. I mean it this time.

  About five hundred yards ahead of us, a small building comes into view. Actually, small is too big of a word. The building is tiny. It’s more the size of my tree house back in Colorado. Even I’m taller than the roof on the thing. Is Tana in there? If so, she must take up half of the available space.

  The closer we get, the louder the crowd following me gets. I want to tell them to shut it, but it’s not like we’d be any sneakier if they weren’t talking. There’s at least fifty of us and the tiny building is standing alone in the middle of nowhere. One look out the window anytime in the last five minutes and whoever is in there would have seen us coming.

  Fueled on Sasquatch blood as it is, my magic not only leads us to Tana, it clears the way. The walls and roof of the structure are ripped from the base. There, in the middle of what appears to be a hovel, is Tana. She is blindfolded, bound in iron chains as Felix had said and slumped against a little table. Around her is a straw pallet on the floor, a chair and the tiniest stove I have ever seen. This is someone’s home.

  Muddled by magic as it is at the moment, my brain can still put the scene together. The Sasquatch are tall. Almost as tall as the Centaurs. There is no possible way either could fit inside this structure. I don’t know how Tana got in. The door that blew away a moment ago was too small for her to fit through.

  I see it now. The outline of a trap door on the floor next to Tana. Dagda has run ahead and is ripping t
he iron from her, burning himself in the process. He’s so consumed with freeing Tana from her bonds, he doesn’t pay attention to the trap door he is kneeling on. The one most likely used to get her inside the tiny structure.

  He may be in shape, but Dagda’s still considerably heavier than a Faun. Which is why the trap door isn’t able to withstand his weight. Which is why he falls through it.

  Tana screams as she watches her husband descend into darkness. One hand is free and she reaches into the hole in the floor after him. He’s too far down.

  Kegan and Kallen finish removing the iron while I focus on Dagda. I use magic to bring light to the darkness under the trap door. There, about eight feet down on the dirt floor, is my biological father. When he fell, he must have triggered some sort of contraption or booby trap because there is a rock lying near his gaping head wound. He is barely conscious.

  He is conscious enough, however, to mumble exactly what he plans to do to the Fauns responsible for all of this. I am so glad I’m not one of those Fauns.

  16

  It doesn’t take long for me to heal Dagda and Tana. Kegan and Kallen have minor injuries on their hands from the iron and insist they can wait, but I heal them, too. It’s important everyone is at their best as we figure this out.

  “Fauns?” Bayard is mumbling incredulously. “Fauns are behind this?”

  “Yes, Father,” Pholos snaps. “Fauns.” I can’t blame him. That was the tenth time Bayard said it.

  Kegan and Kallen have crawled down beneath the floor to check things out. “There are tunnels going off in a couple of different directions,” Kallen calls up. I hadn’t really paid much attention when I teleported down there and then immediately teleported Dagda back up to heal him. Not ready to explore the tunnels yet, Kallen and Kegan return to the surface.

  “Tunnels?” Kono says. She turns to Pholos. “Do the Fauns travel underground?”

  Pholos grinds his teeth together for a long moment before responding. “It appears so,” he finally growls.

  Dagda, his arms securely around Tana, is even better at growling. “Why did you not inform us of the danger of a Faun uprising? We would have been better prepared.”

  Pholos steps toward the Fairy King in a way that is too menacing for Kallen’s and Kegan’s taste. They meet the Centaur halfway between his starting point and Dagda and refuse to let him by. Not willing to attempt physically moving the two Fairies who have enough magic between them to take down the entire assembly of beings around us, Pholos halts. Grinding an angry hoof into the ground, he says, “We knew nothing of the Fauns’ plans. There has been no indication of any type of uprising.”

  He’s not lying because I don’t feel like bugs are crawling on me, yet I can’t shake the feeling that this isn’t quite the truth. “Would you really have noticed?” I ask.

  The look Pholos sends my way makes me want to hit him with magic. The Centaur can look awfully mean when he wants to. “I have eyes and ears,” he growls.

  “Yes,” I say slowly, “but how often are they pointed at the Fauns? You guys almost completely ignore them. So much so, they need to scramble out of your way or they’ll get trampled. You don’t really see them and I seriously doubt you listen to anything they have to say unless it involves something they are doing for you at the moment.” The treatment of the Fauns has weighed heavily in the back of my mind since we arrived. I had intended to talk them, get a feel for how happy they are before we left. It seems things are as I suspected, they aren’t happy. Far from it.

  “Have the Fauns organized into a hierarchy?” Kallen asks Bayard. Pholos isn’t really in the talking mood. At least, not in a ‘let’s have a reasonable conversation’ kind of way.

  Bayard takes a moment to consider. “They have always had an unofficial hierarchy, I suppose.” He doesn’t really sound certain of this.

  “Who was the Faun who came to the Fairy realm with Pholos?” I ask. The Fauns had a representative present when we gathered the heads of the various realms together to stand against my doppelganger.

  Pholos’ face turns red. “My assistant,” he says.

  “So, basically he was a random choice to represent the Fauns,” I interpret.

  Pholos isn’t ready to admit this. “He was a logical choice. Working closely with me, he is well versed in the workings of the realm.”

  “Has anyone seen a Faun recently?” Kegan asks. “I have not seen one since I arrived.” Now that he mentions it, they have been distinctly absent as events unfolded.

  “Which Faun owns this…dwelling?” Kono asks, her distaste of the hovel quite apparent.

  Bayard looks first to Pholos and then to the other Centaurs around us. There’s a lot of shrugging going on. I suppose it’s reasonable that the King wouldn’t know where each Faun lives, but it seems someone would know. It’s not like it sits on a crowded street in the middle of a Faun village.

  Instead of pondering ownership, maybe we should be focusing on why Tana was left in a hovel in the middle of nowhere. Perhaps because no other Faun structures will be affected when this one blows up? That would be my guess.

  I am so glad Kallen’s reaction time mirrors mine. Dagda and Kegan are only a fraction of a second behind. Between the four of us, we manage to contain most of the blast. The other Fairies around us are able to prevent any major injuries from flying debris that escapes our magic. If Dagda hadn’t brought his troops over, this could have been the disaster it was meant to be.

  “Incoming!” a Centaur shouts. He rushes to Bayard with several others and once again the Centaurs attempt to protect their King from flaming arrows. The fire and arrows’ origins cannot be determined through the haze of the explosion. This was well planned. The Fauns knew I would find Tana and they knew I wouldn’t come alone.

  But what they didn’t plan for is me being sick of this crap. Sick enough of it, I’m going to draw so much magic, I am going to terrify even my husband with how much I have within me. I am pulling it from the earth so hard and fast, the ground around me is trembling. Even doing blood magic couldn’t focus my energy better than I am at the moment.

  “Um, you guys may want to back up,” Kegan advises, well, everyone.

  Worry and fear mix together in Kallen’s voice. “Xandra, you are very close to causing an imbalance of major proportions.”

  Yeah, I feel that, too. I just don’t quite know how to calm down at the moment. It’s like my whiny inner child has decided to take over. She’s saying with each pull of magic that she never wanted to come here. She never wanted to work with either the Sasquatch or the Centaurs. She never wanted to get twisted into the dynamics of the Faun and Centaur relationship. She never wanted to bring Zac here and she never wanted to send him home thinking he made Tana disappear. She didn’t want to have to rescue any member of our envoy from a death threat. She didn’t want to be attacked by flaming fricking arrows. More than once. Granted, no one else wanted to do these things either, but that’s beside the point. Needless to say, my whiny inner child is pretty damn powerful when she’s this riled up.

  Taking Kegan’s advice, everyone except Kallen backs away. I glance up at his beautiful face and I see the decision in the depths of his green eyes. He’s not going anywhere. Even if it means suffering the aftermath of my magic. I’ll try really hard to keep that from happening.

  Two pinches on my back indicate the arrival of my wings. Whether they are here to help contain my magic or make it stronger, I don’t know. I turn my attention to the trembling ground. Kneeling, I place my hand palm down on the dirt. “Find the truth,” I say in a voice that echoes through the cracks forming in the earth. My magic releases in a blinding ray of Angel light.

  The world around me stills. Even the smoke in the air stops moving. Not a single chest around me rises to take a breath. I am no longer in the Centaur realm. I am in Angel time.

  My wings announce the presence of another Angel. “Xandra?” Ray says behind me.

  “Hi, Ray,” I say, not turning.

&n
bsp; “What are you doing?” the Archangel of Order and Harmony asks me.

  “I’m seeking the truth.”

  “You are tapping into a power I did not know you possessed,” Ray informs me.

  I begin walking, steering around the remnants of the hovel and the flames that are no longer truly lit. “What power is that?” I ask, still not glancing back toward the Archangel.

  “Mine,” he says.

  Okay, that makes me stop. And turn around. There is Ray in his brilliant, Archangel glory. His beauty is radiating outward in a soft glow. Strange, I’ve never seen that happen before. I cock my head to the side and study the phenomena more closely. It’s not radiating, it’s being pulled.

  “How am I doing this?” I ask.

  Ray shrugs. “With you, it seems anything is possible. I do not suppose Raziel gave you a heads up about this?”

  I can’t help a short laugh. “You know him better than that.”

  Smiling fondly, Ray says, “Yes, I do.” He looks around us. “I am afraid I am at a loss. I know where we are, but as I am not omniscient as our friend is, I do not know why.”

  “I was supposed to help mediate a truce between the Centaurs and the Sasquatch.”

  Taking in the site of the explosion and the flaming arrows littering the ground, Ray asks, “How is that working out?”

  “Poorly,” I drawl. I turn and begin walking again. “But I believe I will find answers this way.” I can feel the pull between Ray and me now. I feel badly about it, but since I don’t know how I’m doing it, I don’t know how to fix it, either. So, I’m going to do what I set out to do. I’m going to discover the truth.