B00T3PMJTS EBOK

by Tracy Tappan

  “Where the hell have you been?” he demanded. He fucking hated stakeouts, and being forced to watch Ria’s apartment building on personal time had only fueled his vile mood.

  “Oklahoma,” Ria answered. “I took my sister home to my parents, then stayed for the holidays.”

  That’s right, abracadabra, the Mendoza case had been solved by Elsa’s miraculous return. No ransom given over, no explanations offered from the kidnappers, just—zam!—Elsa stork-dropped back onto Ria’s doorstep. Sure. Anyone who believed there wasn’t more to the case than that, John had some beachfront property in Florida to sell them. Real cheap.

  “I’m sorry about what I did to you, John,” Ria said, giving him a pleading look. “But I didn’t have a choice! The man who kidnapped my sister made me.”

  The man in question was the sociopath with the scar on his lip who’d abducted Kendra Mawbry six months ago the night John had been shot. SDPD had acquired a description of the perp from Elsa upon her return, although clearly Ria had always known who the bad guy was. Thanks for nothing, angel face.

  “Your blood was Elsa’s ransom,” Ria continued. “My sister’s kidnapper said he’d r-rape and kill Elsa if I didn’t get him a pint of your blood.”

  John froze. “What…? You mean specifically my blood?”

  Ria nodded. “I overheard him talking to one of his men about it, and I guess there’s something in your blood he wants. Needs. Some…element.”

  John took a quick step back as his heart ground to a shuddering halt. The night he’d been in the hospital after being shot, Dr. Edward Sevilli had approached John with the results of a blood test. A strange element popped up in your blood work, John…nothing identifiable as strictly human. John had been trying to convince himself this “element” was a mistake, but now here it was again.

  A swallow worked its way down his throat. How in the world had Scar Lip known about John’s so-called inhuman element? And what did he need it for? Shit, the maniac must know what it was! “What is it?” he growled at Ria. “What’s in my blood?”

  “I don’t—”

  She let out a squeak when he snatched her up by the arms. “What’s the element?” he yelled, shaking her. Finally a chance to get some answers! “Tell me!”

  “I don’t know,” she cried out, her face draining of color. “I really don’t, John, I swear!”

  He released her and jerked around, forcing several deep breaths that seemed to quake his lungs on the way in and out. “Dammit,” he hissed. On top of his physical decay, now he was starting to lose it upstairs. He dragged an unsteady hand through his hair. Jesus H. Christ in a hot house, once again this case was back to blood. He had to get this figured out before he actually did go certifiable.

  It was time to contact his mother.

  Blood-Bonded by Force

  Book

  Two

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Ţărână: eight and a half months later, August

  Little Deandra Ungureanu appeared in the doorway of the make-believe straw house, dressed to the nines in a piggy costume of Pändra’s own making. “Not by the hair of my shimmy shim shim!” the young girl yelled at the top of her lungs.

  Lysha Costache and Kristara Crişan, the two other five year old girls dressed in piggy costumes, exchanged a look across the small school stage—one girl from her “stick” house, the other from the “brick” one—then shifted over to check in with Pändra. Seven year old Ællen, the Big Bad Wolf, who was facing down Deandra, didn’t say anything either.

  “Oh.” Deandra’s face fell. “I mussed up my words again, didn’t I?”

  Pändra emerged from offstage, chuckling as she took Deandra’s hand and urged her out of the pretend house. “Didn’t I tell you not to give a toss if you fluff your lines?” Smiling, Pändra went down on one knee in front of the little girl. “No matter what you do, your parents will love it, I guarantee. So no worries, right?”

  Deandra frowned a little. Her mother, Ellen the dentist, was a chipper sort, but Pedrr, the girl’s father, was a bit of a brooding fellow, and Deandra tended toward his more serious personality.

  Pändra waved over Lysha, Kristara, and Ællen, and the three scampered obediently to her side. “And you lot press forward with your lines regardless. After all…” Pändra threw her arms up in the air. “The show must go on!” Her over-exaggerated antics earned a round of giggles from the little girls, as it was intended to do.

  Pändra laughed along with them, the moment of simple, innocent joy washing over her in a surreal warmth. Sometimes it was still hard to believe she worked alongside Claresta at Ţărână’s elementary school, even though she’d been doing so for several months now. Had anyone ever told Pändra that one day she would be helping shape the next generation, she would’ve handed over her noggin for football practice.

  Eight months ago, she’d done what was required and had a dab at an assortment of jobs in the community, chopping vegetables and stirring sauces at Marissa’s Restaurant, putting up dry wall in the new bowling alley, handing dental instruments to Dr. Ellen, selling movie tickets at the Town Cinema, lifeguarding at the Water Cliffs, fixing cars with Llawell in the garage, slapping bandages onto boo-boos as nurse’s aide with Shaston at the hospital, flipping burgers at the diner, and more. The only jobs she hadn’t tried were at places where she was persona non grata. As in, she hadn’t trained with the warriors, Thomal and Arc’s domain—not to mention that Vârcolac whose fang she’d broken—and she hadn’t worked at Beth Costache’s TradeMark clothing store.

  Both omissions had been just aces with her.

  Although…she suspected Beth would’ve been willing to parley a truce with her, if given the opportunity. Which surprised the beans out of Pändra. She doubted she would’ve be so magnanimous had their roles been reversed. But Beth was the sweet and forgiving type. Arc, on the other hand, most definitely was not, and he stood as a massive, immovable blockade between Pändra and the rest of the Costache clan.

  Difficult to blame him for that, not after what Pändra had done to both the Costache brothers. If she could go back and change the night she’d gone spacky on those two, she would, for certain. Although that would first entail her going back and being reborn into a different family, one without a father who’d so seriously buggered her up, both with the power of his dark enchantment as well as his hot-then-cold method of parenting.

  A lifetime spent with a father who would lull her into a false sense of security and wellbeing with his charm, care, and approval, only to clobber her, mentally or physically, in the next moment when she failed to please him or dared to defy him, lay at the root of her actions against Thomal and Arc…and so many others. According to her therapist, Karrell, Pändra had resorted to subjugating and hurting people as a way to gain power in a world where she was essentially powerless. Not exactly the most attractive thing to learn about oneself. Even though, oddly enough, this was why she’d gravitated toward becoming a teacher. The role gave her a chance to love young, impressionable beings unconditionally, to accept them not in spite of their faults and mistakes but because of them. As had never been done for her.

  Now the power in her world came from love, giving it and receiving it—from her sister and brother, Tonĩ and Ãlex, the friends she’d made in the community, and these adorable young ones.

  Too bad not from Thomal.

  Over the last eight months her estranged husband hadn’t shown any interest in becoming an actual bonded mate. His attitude toward her had moved from icy fury to cool indifference to brief moments of terse civility…and ended about there. She was doing her best to make amends. She’d already apologized—which he’d accepted, though brusquely—but beyond that she didn’t know what to do. Except to keep her nose clean and work hard, which, hopefully, he’d interpret as a reason to give her a chance. They were biologically stuck with each other, after all. It would be nice if they could make a go of it beyond the nothing they currently had. No, not just nice, but essent
ial. Pändra had just come too far and grown too much over the last months to settle for less than true happiness. With Karrell’s help, she was slowly coming to the conclusion that she deserved that.

  “Hey.”

  Pändra turned on her knee. Well, speak of the very devil himself.

  Thomal stood in the doorway of the classroom, a satchel of art supplies tucked under his arm. “I thought you weren’t teaching today.”

  Pändra came to her feet, catching back a flare of disappointment. It should come as no surprise that her husband hadn’t wanted to bump into her. “Just running a little late on rehearsals, is all. All right, lasses, off you go and change into your normal duds.”

  Lysha, Deandra, and Kristara opened their arms to Pändra.

  Pändra bent over and hugged each girl in turn, the backs of her eyes prickling. She didn’t think she’d ever get used to how grand their affection felt. As the girls dashed off, she glanced at Ællen. “You can go fetch your art kit now, lad. It’s time for your drawing lesson.”

  The boy sprinted into the next room.

  Thomal pinned his gaze onto the opposite wall, no doubt fascinated by the world map there, not just avoiding Pändra now they were alone.

  ’Course not.

  “I’m glad I have a moment with you, Thomal,” Pändra said, anyway. “I wanted to tell you what brilliant work you’ve done with Ællen. Confidence-wise he’s an entirely different lad from eight months ago. Has he shown you his comic books yet?”

  “What?” Thomal’s eyes darted over to her. “No.”

  She smiled. “He will. He draws loads of them. At first he didn’t fill in the thought bubbles, so when we read them together, we’d invent the dialogue.” She laughed. “But I think he got fed up with the barmy things I had his heroes saying, so now he writes his own words.”

  Thomal paused. “Does he still get the letters backward?”

  “Sure.” She shrugged. “Sometimes. But he doesn’t care so much now.” She nodded at him. “You did that for the lad.”

  Thomal set his art satchel on the communal table, turning away from her again.

  She scooped up her sewing basket to take home with her tonight, along with Kristara’s costume, which she’d noted had a tear along the sleeve. “Your dyslexia went away when you entered your blood-need, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “No problems at all with it anymore?”

  “No.” He hitched a shoulder. “Every now and then I misdial a phone number, but who doesn’t?”

  Pändra thought for a moment. “I’m not sure if we should tell Ællen that, though. I don’t want to raise his hopes, if it doesn’t turn out to be the case for him.”

  Ællen raced back in the classroom, carrying a satchel similar to Thomal’s. “Ready!” He plunked his satchel down, then gave Pändra a quick goodbye hug.

  “Cheers,” she said, smiling. “Have fun you two.” She strode down the hall. Well, not quite down the hall. Actually, she stopped just outside the classroom doorway and clandestinely observed the two artists, unpacking their drawing supplies and chatting.

  Today wasn’t the first time Pändra had spied on Thomal while he worked with Ællen. She supposed it was poor form, like eavesdropping, but she was too fascinated by how much Thomal changed whenever he slipped into his creative side to resist watching. The moment he opened his artist’s pad, the dark edges melted off him and the anger he wore like a shield dropped away. She’d stand in this hallway and watch, enthralled, as he put his very soul into everything he taught Ællen, becoming so engrossed in his art she couldn’t figure why Thomal had ever gone into soldiering.

  It touched her, deeply, to see him that way, and, ugh, she hated to be no better than a silly moo who got all squishy over a man because he had a secret sensitive side, not to mention being good with children and a nice, attentive bloke to his mum, but… Truth was, she loved those qualities about him. And the lost soul she sensed he was.

  “Oh, I’m glad you’re both here.”

  Pändra nearly jumped out of her skin as Donree, Tonĩ’s assistant, appeared at the other end of the hallway.

  Thomal turned his head to look.

  Ah, botheration. Caught.

  Donree came the rest of the way down the hall and looked between Pändra and Thomal. “Dr. Parthen would like to see you both in her office right away.”

  When Pändra arrived at Tonĩ’s office with Thomal, Jaċken, Dev, and Ãlex were already inside. Tonĩ was seated behind her desk, and as they entered, she offered them a smile of greeting that didn’t quite curl her mouth all the way. Poor girl. Tonĩ had entered her last month of pregnancy—month ten in the Vârcolac gestational cycle—and looked worn out all of the time. Her humanoid body wasn’t especially well adapted to carry a baby for that long, so she was probably as uncomfortable as a woman could get, her belly stretched huge as a Goodyear blimp. Most days Jaċken looked like he’d swallowed a prickly pear.

  “There’s been a symbol killing,” Jaċken told them without preamble.

  Pändra came to a halt. “What? Again?” There hadn’t been a murder since Dr. Preston’s.

  Soon after the plastic surgeon’s unfortunate demise, the community had engaged in a whirlwind of preparations to man an attack against Videön. The plan would’ve even included contacting Raymond, but mostly had entailed getting Pändra up to speed as a fifth element, so that she could perform the ritual to save all Fey life and power on earth.

  Right. She’d felt no pressure a’tall when the dotty character Idyll O’Shaughnessy had come down to Ţărână to help Pändra. That’d been eight months ago in this very office, the Special Ops Topside Team of warriors also in attendance, watching Pändra make an utter hash of it.

  “First off,” Idyll had said to her. “We want to practice out-of-body travel by having you journey into either the Lower or Upper World. Once you’ve mastered that, we can align the necessary four components for your journey into the Shifted World.”

  Pändra nodded mutely, still overcome from learning that she was an all-important fifth element.

  Idyll held a small drum that she’d created out of a bowl and some canvas cloth. “I’ll pound this at a steady rhythm of about four to seven beats per second. Your brain waves will soon follow that rhythm, then change to match it, putting you into the theta state necessary for a deep, meditative trance. Are you ready?”

  Pändra grimaced. “Not particularly.”

  Idyll lowered her drum to the couch and gave her a motherly look. “Shall I help you relax a bit first?”

  “Sure. Got any tequila?” Pändra had meant it as a silly quip, but as she was hit by a blast of hostile tension from Thomal, her chest heated. She and Mürk had gone out for tequila after the “event.”

  She stiffened up tight after that. No fecking way could she relax. But actually…the shamanka’s voice was very soothing as she talked Pändra through some centering exercises. Soon, Pändra’s body was melting into the chair, her brain switching to a soft hum.

  She didn’t think she’d be able to go any further than that. One part of her mind remained very aware of everyone staring at her, the hubby in particular. But as Idyll beat her drum, Pändra reached for the essence that was supposed to be inside her now and…I’ll be buggered. She found it. Of all the things. It was like a different life-force, moving about inside her head, winding the hum into a vibration. Pressure built inside her ears, from the inside of her skull out. Her fifth element wanted to get out. Go places.

  In her mind, a long, dark hallway appeared. At the end was a door, divine light spearing around the seams. She knew, without knowing how, that she would need to pass through that door to travel to the next sphere. All was fine. She felt absolute control within herself. Her fifth element would allow her to determine exactly where she went. Yet…as she approached the door, she felt a pull at something deep inside of her, something frighteningly deep. She didn’t know what it was, but instinct told her to back away. Run, even.

  S
he flipped her eyelids open.

  Idyll stopped thumping her drum. “What happened?”

  “I…” Pändra broke off. As imperative as this ritual was, an excuse like I wimped out seemed dreadfully insufficient.

  Idyll set the drum aside again. “Out-of-body travel requires complete vulnerability, Pändra. You have to bare yourself to the Otherworld forces in order to be allowed passage. Otherwise there can be no trust between our world and theirs. Do you understand this?”

  Complete vulnerability. Bare yourself. She understood. She just couldn’t do it. She hadn’t allowed herself to be completely vulnerable since she’d been out of nappies, so the idea wasn’t the freshest.

  Tonĩ cast a sidelong glance at Thomal. “Maybe we should clear the room,” she suggested softly.

  “No.” Pändra stood up, her throat constricting. “I’m sorry. I can’t do this.” She’d rushed out of the office. Her guilt over letting everyone down had been somewhat relieved by the cessation of Symbol Killer slayings. She’d thought she was off the hook. It appeared not.

  “I’m sorry,” Pändra repeated now to Tonĩ. “I know I’m the one who’s supposed to prevent these killings. I’ve tried to perform the ritual again on my own, but—”

  “You don’t need to apologize,” Tonĩ interrupted. “Rituals of a supernatural nature are tricky. I know you want to help. In fact, Ãlex has an idea that involves you. It’s…a bit racy, though.” Tonĩ glanced at Thomal.

  A scowl began to build on Thomal’s brow. “What is it?”

  Ãlex stepped forward. “I’ve been monitoring Pändra’s topside email account,” he said, then aimed at Pändra, “As you approved.”

  Pändra gave her half-brother an it’s okay nod. A couple of months ago the Council had deemed Pändra sufficiently well adjusted to community life to be allowed access to her old email account. She’d declined—unable to think of a single soul she’d like to have contact with—but, aye, had agreed to let her account be monitored.