“The sun?” Jim asked, and Elise wondered anew where his questions led. They felt like more than mere curiosity. They were akin to an interrogation.
“The sun is death to Men of the Tree.”
“Oh, God.” Jim said. “Do you feed on humans?”
Ulric's pale eyes glittered. “Only our enemies,” he answered softly. His incisors became fangs, and he opened his mouth, emitting a hiss like a cobra.
Jim stumbled back. “Holy shit, we've got the real deal here.”
Calia and Philip came to stand beside Adahy and Elise. Jim was in front.
“What ʻreal dealʼ?” Adahy asked. Elise felt his heart beat faster between them, his voice strong.
Jim kept his eyes on Ulric. “Real, live, shape-shifting vampires.”
Elise had followed the conversation very well, and her fear was a tangible thing—she could reach out and touch it.
She had drunk from this creature who was a human, yet not.
You will never be set free, Ulric's expression seemed to say.
“Jim,” Philip said, his eyes steady on Ulric. “What does this mean?” Philip's eyes traveled the fangs that prevented Ulric from shutting his mouth. Philip's dagger was in his hand.
Elise glanced at Jim and saw his readiness to fight. She did not have to take stock of Adahy to ascertain his readiness.
Jim answered, “I'm not sure about much, Philip, but this revelation isn't good.”
Philip was trying to present the good side of it. “They healed our females, whatever their true origins.”
Jim nodded but said, “And if I know my vamp lore, it's not without a price.”
A maddening smile returned to Ulric's face, and Elise shivered.
“What price?” Philip asked warily, his eyes never leaving Ulric.
“A high one,” Jim replied.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Vaughn
Vaughn and Zaid stood with legs planted far apart, squinting to locate the bridge.
“Aye, perhaps we come at the wrong time,” Zaid said.
Vaughn shook his head, his bound club of hair thumping between his shoulder blades. “No.” Vaughn scanned the sky, the boiling thunderclouds prohibiting the sun's rays from illuminating the portal.
The wind picked up, and the iciness bit at the tender folds of his throat slits. He saw Zaid affected similarly.
“The weather,” Zaid cursed.
“It is unpleasant.”
“Are you insane? It is misery in a cup which overflows.”
True. Vaughn turned to Zaid, smirking. “You are right, and the bridge will be no better.”
They turned to look at the entrance—or where the portal should have appeared. The icons were just as they should be, as they had been described. Yet having two large boulders and a stand of rare trees was not absolute confirmation of location.
The Clan of Massachusetts was not nomadic. For a century, Vaughn's people had lived beside the sea. Some could travel great distances inland and feel none the worse for it. Each of the Band was unique.
Alanna had two children—Edwin and Calia—who could travel without the sea by their sides.
Each time one of the Band used the portal could be their last. It was a chance many were unwilling to take.
The sun broke through Vaughn's morose thoughts, spearing the deep-gray boulders overhead.
Beams struck the ground in patches like the end of a rainbow, and Zaid pointed, his voice full of awed excitement. “There!”
Vaughn scanned the area and saw nothing.
“Look up, Vaughn.”
Vaughn's gaze rose, and there the portal hung. Shimmering in a loose undulating oval, it was as though someone had tied a ribbon of sparkling iridescence a horse length above, suspended in the air. The center was completely see through. Vaughn could view trees, angry skies, and wheaten pastures battered by snow and ice beyond.
“Quickly!” Vaughn said and ran for the portal.
Zaid hesitated a moment longer and chased after him.
Vaughn's hair swung heavily at his back as he sprinted, his daggers tapping his hips in time to his rhythmic strides.
He was half a horse length away when the portal flashed into nothing then immediately returned.
Vaughn did not allow trepidation to rule him.
The sun was gobbled by the oncoming storm.
Vaughn did not hesitate—he leapt.
A streak of lightning hit the ground beside his feet and the hiss of frying pasture grass sounded as his feet left the ground.
He pumped his arms and legs. Airborne, he sailed through the fading oval of color.
At the last moment, Vaughn took his body into a ball and plunged through the middle of the portal as he had been instructed from others who had traveled the bridge before him.
Instantly, ice-like small razors sliced at his body from all sides.
Vaughn bellowed at the pain.
Then the fire began.
*
Jim
Jim reined in thoughts of being dragged off to a coffin. He knew that was a myth, but the TV visual was in his head anyway.
And these guys were actual vampires—and Band, and some kind of weird-ass half monkey.
Jim fairly salivated with wanting a DNA sample. He controlled himself with an effort.
“They are Band,” Philip said as though convincing himself.
“Yup,” Jim said in a conversational tone.
“Yet they are Stone Giants,” Adahy noted.
Jim nodded again. They were so up shit creek. These guys were at the top of the food chain, and now every action was suspect.
Starting with the nip-and-bleed session with the girls.
Jim gave the women a sidelong glance. Their color had returned—not the artificial flushed cheeks of fever but that of robust health.
Pockmarks were partly healed, dead skin flaking off even as he looked.
Moonlight now speckled the forest at their feet like a dirty egg.
Jim had been a little slow.
None of the Tree Men wore many clothes. They were impervious to the elements.
Great, just great. So were they undead? Because Jim had a bit of experience with that. And of course, if his ass hadn't been on the line, Jim would have wondered if the legends of his world had their origins in this one.
Not the tree part though.
Jim gave Philip a pointed look of readiness. Philip tensed.
“I think we'll be taking off now. We have some people to meet.”
Adahy understood Jim's words well enough to gather Elise and move closer to Jim, Philip and Calia. They began to move toward where the forest thinned.
Ulric clucked his tongue, and noise that was words traveled.
Jim heard sounds of stealth.
But Philip and Adahy were already moving, grabbing the girls and pulling them behind them.
More of the Tree Men dropped out of the sky.
Jim looked up. Ropes that looked like discarded vines swung from recent use.
Jim's guts churned at their appearance. They looked alike. If he didn't know better, he'd say they looked like apey Band.
With fangs.
Now their number was fifteen where it had been five. It had happened with one roll of a snapping tongue—or fang click—courtesy of Ulric.
The many reasons why the Tree Men might want to keep them crowded Jim's brain.
Food.
Power.
In the end, Jim asked, and Ulric responded, “The women. We will keep the Pure One and,” he glanced at Elise, “the female of our blood, and you may go—in peace.”
Jim nodded in a numb way. That made sense. They saved the women so as to keep them and let the guys go.
As if that were going to work with the Band.
“Wait,” Calia said in a low voice. “I do not wish to be claimed by a male.”
Ulric shrugged his shoulders. The muscle showed even in the dim light that fed the dark forest. “You lay dying,” Ulric
said in the upper-crust speech some of the Band used. “It was I who cured you with my blood. And I will say you have already been claimed.”
Calia shook her head. “I am to journey with my brother to the Clan by the sea.”
Ulric's eyebrow cocked, and he made an exaggerated show of looking around. “And where might he be?”
“Listen, Ulric, we appreciate what you did for the girls...”
“Shut up, Jim,” he said with an accent and cadence so like Jim's own a wave of chicken skin broke over his flesh like tide to shore.
Jim's mouth snapped shut.
This was bad.
“He is lost, hunting for our food,” Calia said. Her voice was strong and untroubled.
Jim thought Calia was the bravest woman he'd ever met. He knew she hadn't been sold on Edwin's pompous ass, but he was still her brother. He saw her clinging to that, denying the fifteen sets of eyes watching the five of them.
“Or not lost as such,” Ulric remarked thoughtfully.
Calia gave a venomous hiss that was almost as impressive as Ulric's.
Then she flew at him, dagger raised.
And then the whole thing went sideways.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Vaughn
Vaughn groaned, rolling over onto his hands and knees on the compacted snow and ice where he had been spit out of the portal.
Though he had been instructed to recognize the subtle change within the bridge and ready himself for a smooth landing, it had not been one.
He had been so consumed with surviving the pain that Vaughn had allowed himself to be ungracefully tossed out, landing hard on his ribs, and even though he had broken no bones, there was not one inch without a bruise.
Vaughn attempted standing, was successful, then heaved his guts into the snow. Last night's meal came up in a rush. He helplessly evacuated what felt like his spine into the snow.
Vaughn stayed upright through sheer grit. He scanned the area and a sinking feeling took hold of his empty gut when he did not immediately locate Zaid.
He stumbled away from the grim mess in a clumsy waltz to a nearby tree and clung for until the world stopped spinning.
Misery of the acutest kind assailed him. Little by little, he was able to come to himself.
Vaughn hated that he was vulnerable for those moments. He could not have fought off anything. It was good that he'd come through the tunnel for Calia and Edwin. She would be weak and in need of protection.
A crunching sound behind him caused Vaughn to spin and crouch. The hilt of his weapon was cold against a bare space where his breeches were tied at his hip.
It was Zaid.
His warrior's body was also brought low by the bridge sickness, as Vaughn was thinking of it.
Normally fair of face, with his clothing in perfect order and battle ready, Zaid's hair club had become unbound, and stray chestnut-colored strands hung in the center of his face. He swung them away and shot a stream of vile looking spit off to the side.
Intense hazel eyes met Vaughn's. “That is not something I wish to repeat with any frequency, my friend.”
Vaughn smirked, giving his face a hard scrub. “Aye. A hell on earth.”
“ ʼTis true.”
“Did you vomit?” Vaughn asked.
“Every bit of my guts,” Zaid admitted. Straightening, Zaid placed a palm flat at his lower back and swiveled from his left to his right, taking care of a back pinched by the landing, Vaughn assumed.
“You?” Zaid asked, coming back to center.
“Aye, and then some.”
“Brutal business, that.”
Vaughn nodded. “Yet, it is important that we make haste to Edwin and Calia—intercept them so they do not travel for the first time without escort in that accursed thing.”
Zaid turned around, eyeing the space where the portal had been.
The two of them stared at the location, marking the surrounding topography to ensure a swift return—not easily done as the night had robbed some of their vision.
Both men lifted their noses to scent the air, throat slits splayed fully. There was a moment of silence, and then their heads snapped down, and their eyes met.
“Do you scent that?”
Vaughn did, though he had no context for it. “I do, yet I know not what I smell.” As far away from the sea as they had ever been, there was bound to be unknown scents.
Zaid lifted his head again, closing his eyes he breathed deeply.
“Band,” he intoned quietly.
“Aye,” Vaughn agreed easily. He had dismissed Band because Edwin and Calia were afoot he assumed. And Fragment were not heavily present in this region. They stayed and traveled in large groups, a number-based nomadic society of ruffians.
“A female of the Select.”
“Yes,” Vaughn said. He had smelled that as well. Calia, he assumed.
“Recently ill.”
I did not scent illness.
Vaughn stepped closer to Zaid. He was the best tracker of their clan and had not been chosen for this excursion randomly.
“And?” Vaughn asked, his voice tense.
“Animal, blood… other.”
“Other what?” Vaughn asked impatiently.
Zaid frowned. “If I knew that which I scented I would identify it immediately. The scents filter in and out.”
“In what way?”
Zaid was clearly frustrated, his brow knotted in concentration. “I get a whiff of Band,” Vaughn nodded, “then it seems to move to an animal I do not recognize.”
“What of the blood?”
Zaid nodded. “That is the most confounding of all.”
Vaughn waited, biting his tongue.
“It is not the blood of battle or Band—or animal—but something I have not scented before.”
“What?”
Zaid looked troubled, his face cast marble in the moonlight, bleached of its normal vibrancy—an uneasy image.
“I do not know.”
Vaughn ground his teeth. He did not like this turn of fortune. “Can it be Fragment?” he asked hopefully, already knowing what the answer would be.
“No. They smell as they should.”
“Derelict.”
Zaid gave a chuckle. “Exactly.”
Vaughn began to speak when a piercing scream slapped their eardrums. A female of the Select was in terror.
It was a very deliberate scream, and the men reacted.
The very fiber of their beings was plucked like an instrument.
Zaid did not look back to see if Vaughn followed but ran toward the sound. Vaughn ran as well but with the distinct feeling of a trap sprung.
*
Elise
Calia gave a warrior's wail and was on Ulric, dagger sunk in his shoulder before he had moved.
Ulric tore the blade out like a toy and tossed it into a nearby tree trunk with a twang as it impaled deeply.
He flipped Calia over, her chest heaving as she struggled.
Philip landed on him next. Elise felt it did not bode well that the other Tree Men did not move in to aid their leader.
Ulric roared, his skin sliding apart like a split fruit. He flung off Philip, who kicked out with a deft foot, cracking a rib as he did. He dragged Calia from underneath Ulric as the Tree Man sloughed his skin like a snake. Great strips of discarded skin fell like vile ribbons upon the earth, unraveling the partial humanity he had clung to moments before. Elise backed away.
Philip grabbed Calia, and they made haste to the border of the woods.
The Tree Men did not follow but watched with narrowed, reflective irises.
Ulric rose, even taller than Philip.
His savage face was severe with brutal lines and bones so prominent they shadowed his eyes. Long arms curled into fists. Short, pointy talons were tipped in black. Ulric spun, lifting his snout, and clucked.
More figures fell in front of Calia and Philip as they were almost free of the forest.
They moved to surround them.
/>
Despair washed into the shores of Elise, flooding her.
Then two figures appeared, and she and Adahy stilled. Jim gave the pair a questioning look, his fear for their uncertain futures plain on his face.
The Tree Men began to wail. The figures, two of the Band, were covered from head to toe in blood like the war paint of Adahy's people. Only the whites of their eyes were apparent in the thickened shadows.
Hands of the Tree Men reached out and were snatched away, the men falling to the ground and writhing in the throes of agony.
“What is this?” Elise whispered.
“Death Bringers,” Adahy replied quietly.
His voice held relief.
*
Minutes Before
“What say you?” Zaid asked.
“They are the thing of legend. People yet not. Blood Bearers.” Vaughn lowered his high-powered spectacles. Made of heated and cured ceramic, they were solely used for the portal travel. Things of metal did not survive the trip. He was thankful for his eyesight in darkness.
It was a matter of seconds before he saw what the creatures were and thought furiously of what he knew of them.
“They are alive but ruled by death.”
“Vaughn,” Zaid said in a fierce voice, “act quickly. A female's life might be at stake.”
Vaughn wanted to tear his hair out. The scream had been a Select's—he knew it. It made his bones ache to hear it. No member of the Band had that reaction except for authentic blood recognition.
Vaughn stood suddenly, a terrible idea taking shape. He turned to tell Zaid and stilled.
A small group of desperate Fragment stood behind Zaid, knives out, one at his back.
Vaughn smiled.
A prayer answered.
There were two large bottles of blood contained within the human body.
Coming from the dead, it would be protection against the Blood Bearers.
Vaughn attacked, and Zaid followed his lead.
*
Their bodies slicked with the newly dead Fragment's blood, Zaid and Vaughn advanced into the forest.
Vaughn held his breath as he prayed they were not too late—and that the legends of his Clan held true. And that Calia and Edwin would be the ones they saved.
savage 06 - the savage dream Page 14
