She was shaking in front of him, pale and frightened, but he had no time to deal with her. He grabbed her arm and pulled her from the grotto. He shoved her toward the doors to where her family waited. He had no time to be gentle. Not now.
And screw Rydere’s edict against him leaving the resort. Fire threatened them all—his Rajni included. Rydere’s orders meant little compared to that one simple fact.
Someone needed to head toward the smoke and investigate.
Who better than he?
He waited until she was gone before shifting.
What would it do to the little girl to know that the main result of her grandfather’s fucking with his life had resulted in this peculiar little gift no one else knew about?
Whatever Taniss had done to him had involved both druid and mage blood—mixed with shifter.
With his sense of humor how could he not pick the bat as his favored animal form?
He was a damned vampire, after all.
***
Cass could feel the earth screaming as the fire scorched across its surface. Didn’t anyone else hear it? Feel it? How could they sit so calmly eating while the forest around them burned? Didn’t they care?
Emily looked up when Cass burst into the dining room. Everyone who was still in this world was at the table—Mallory, Josey, Jade. Their men. Others. “Cass? What’s wrong?”
“Fire. There’s a fire; we smelled it. Nalik…Nalik said tell Rydere.” She wanted to cover her ears, but didn’t.
Rydere, Aodhan and Cormac all stood. Barlaam reached for an intercom. Rydere wrapped a hand around her arm and pulled her over to the table. “Sit. I’ll find Black and see what’s going on.”
“Can’t you feel it? Smell it? Jade?”
Jade wrapped her arms around Cass. “They’ll take care of it. Barl, what does happen here in case of a fire?”
“We evacuate. Depending on the severity and direction. Our head of security monitors the US Forestry Service and FEMA radio chatter.” Barlaam had a hand on Jade’s back, and he patted Cass’s hair with the other. “She needs a blanket. It’s chilly in here.”
Cass felt a blanket draped over her a few moments later. But it didn’t matter. She was burning, her skin blazing hot as the earth heated up nearby.
Why did they not feel it yet? Was it just her? If so, why had Equan Black believed her?
Chapter 3
It was foolishness, an evacuation of this magnitude, but the Dhar had left it too damned long. Nalik fought the urge to point that out to Rydere, as the crowd of their people milled around them more than twenty-four hours after Nalik had investigated the damned fire.
Rydere had not asked nor heeded Nalik’s council in thirty years, what was to say the other male would start again now? Evacuating fifteen thousand people from a fire that both he and Rydere knew hadn’t been set by a damned fucking human. But Nalik hadn’t figured out exactly who or what had started the fire that still burned. On two sides of their town.
Evacuation was now required of everyone in the city and surrounding area. The hope was that the hotel building itself would survive.
Nalik knew that hope was probably useless.
The human girl was there, pale and willowy, near the rest of the females of her family. Had she no males around? Other than that damned Lupoiux wolf sniveling beneath the wolf god’s rule in Levia? Were there none to step up in her father’s stead?
The bonds of his responsibility to his Rajni had him moving to stand behind her. She did not turn, did not acknowledge him. Why should she? He had spoken so little to her, and what he had it had not been good.
But she didn’t look frightened or worried. She looked ill. Hurt. His decision was made easily in that moment. He placed his hands on her shoulders and turned her. Her green eyes were clouded and she trembled. “Cassandra? What ails you?” Where were the healers? Jareth’s Rajni? Barlaam? A rush of panic unlike anything he’d experienced in thirty years filled him. “Tell me.”
Her lips moved. No sounds escaped. He fought every instinct he possessed calling for him to pull her against him and fight whatever threatened her.
“Cassandra?”
“Can’t you hear the screams?”
The only screams he heard were the ones of the beings who’d died in her grandfather’s laboratory. Those screams played over and over in his head every time he closed his eyes. But he doubted those were the screams she meant. “No. Who?”
“The trees. The plants. All of them. They’re crying out as the fire kills them. I hear it, and I can’t make it stop!” Small feminine fingers clung to his vestis. Her head barely reached his shoulder, though she was taller than average for a human woman. He was taller than average for a Dardaptoan male. “Please.”
“It’ll stop, girl. As soon as you leave this world and enter the next. Clamp your hands over your ears, if needed.”
“I don’t want to go to the demon world. I want to go home.” Her whisper nearly broke him, and the pleading in her eyes almost finished him. But he could not do what she asked of him. They both knew that.
Where were the others? Those responsible for this female? Shouldn’t Rydere or this girl’s sister have stayed with her? There were several Tanisses milling about the growing crowd. Shouldn’t she be with her own Kind? Or were the Taniss females as heartless as the grandfather? How could they not look at their young cousin and miss the suffering? Damn them all. “You’re not going home. You’re going to Relaklonos. You’ll be safe there.” And away from him. He couldn’t hurt her there, and she be surrounded by some damned powerful demons in that world. One of which she claimed was near on to family to her. She’d be safe. “Your sister will be there.”
“No. They’re taking her to Levia, wherever that is. I’m supposed to be going with Mickey, Mal, Jade, and Josey.” Her hands slipped up to cover her ears. “I can’t think right now.” She rocked, tried to close in on herself.
Why?
He looked around at the crowd pushing in on them. Several of his Kind were repeating her actions, and he cataloged them. Ruanth and Clayr, both of Adrastos House, Mig of Awan House, four people from the Jareth House.
Realization hit him. Each and every one of them were females from druidic mothers or fathers. “You’re Druid.”
She didn’t stop rocking. Did she realize she was using his chest to shield her from the rest of the room? He forced his hands off of her shoulders, but what in the three hells was he supposed to do with them? She was too close for him not to touch her. He settled for placing one hand on her back and the other hung at his side. His Rajni, in his arms. How often had he dreamed of such?
Druid. It would explain her odd attraction to the plants of their world. Druids gained strength from the soil, the richer in nutrients the better. Many also had the ability to heal the earth when it was scarred.
But how did an ordinary human female of no great years become Druid when no one else in her immediate family showed the same signs?
Was there truth to the few rumors he’d heard of Taniss experimenting on his own grandchildren? He’d heard the rumors several months ago, but had discounted them as fallacy.
Why not?
He himself was living proof that Taniss had played around with things no human had right to.
His fingers tangled in her hair and he turned them both abruptly. If she was Druidic—any part of her—then a raging forest fire would be harder for her than others. And she didn’t need anyone watching her as she struggled to deal with it. “Well, where’s Jareth and his female, then?”
He searched for them himself, and found them near the east wall. His own House stood nearby, pitiful in numbers compared to the Jareth House, or the Sebastos beside it. Half his people had chosen the demon world. And the other half the deities. No other of the ten Dardanos Houses had chosen to fracture the way his had.
He’d heard the talk amongst his Kind when none thought he was close enough to hear.
A vampire had superior hearing, after all. T
hat was one of the traits the girl’s grandfather had sought to enhance with his damned Frankampire. “Get ahold of yourself. I’ll take you to your cousin.”
And then he’d watch her disappear into the demon world forever. It was for the best. He knew it.
It couldn’t happen fast enough for him.
Chapter 4
He left her with her cousin; the one who did not hear or speak. She stared at him, but took the girl lovingly in her embrace. The cousin nodded at him, her green eyes questioning. He said nothing, not even to the male who was always at the cousin’s side. He had no liking for Cormac Jareth, despite the history they shared. They had hunted together once, slaying demons who’d strayed into their world. Been friends. Trusted each other with their very lives.
Ironic, that they now sent their peoples’ children and women into the demon world for safety.
How poorly Rydere had led their people these last thirty years.
He turned his back on his Rajni and walked away, his decision made. He would not be accompanying his people to the demon world. He held too much distrust for the occupants of that world, and with her there, too much distrust of himself.
But the land of the goddess had no draw for him. He’d despised that female for three decades for what she’d allowed to happen to his sister, and he would not place himself in her charity. Yet Rydere had made it clear that Nalik was to leave Dardanos with the rest of their people. Preferably in a direction opposite of the one in which Rydere was taking his female.
Theoretically Nalik understood it. A traitor still hid within the ranks of Nalik’s House, one who had threatened the precious little female of the Dhar. Why wouldn’t Rydere suspect him? He’d been hated and loathed since he’d been found in that damned laboratory. That was made clear to him by the touch of eyes upon him as he passed. Multiple gazes, multiple people nervous and frightened of him, of the vicious scar that dissected his cheek. Dardaptoans didn’t scar.
But then again, he was no longer a true Dardaptoan, was he?
Did some of these whelps know that? Did they understand that if he so chose to, he could kill them with barely a thought? That he truly was a monster amongst them? That he was exactly what Leo Taniss had wanted?
A damned freak, with the abilities of more than a dozen Kinds, with none of the power or strength. And only his tenuous hold on what ethics he’d had drilled into him by his grandfather to keep him from acting on those angry impulses.
Ethics, and a damned vow of passivism.
The best damned hunter, fighter, of his people, now espoused passivist philosophy. What would these people staring at the freak amongst them think of that? He could imagine the derision and scorn that would be greeted with.
What would the girl think, knowing what he was? Knowing that some bitch goddess had fated her to be with the likes of him?
Yeah. She’d hate him more than his own mother did.
Nalik scanned the people gathered, looking for the woman who’d whelped him. She wasn’t hard to find, hard to hear. She held court near the crowd headed toward the goddess world. No demon world for his mother; she would consider such a place to be filth beneath her.
Someone screamed, someone behind him. He turned, hand going to the sword strapped to his hip. He had told no one of his vow, and the sword was expected. So he wore his sword. And almost seven hundred years’ worth of habit and defense was something hard for him to break. What did he expect to find, to battle, that would require a sword in a supposed modern time such as this?
It was probably some cowardly female or youth unprepared for the way of inter-realm travel. That’s all it could be. The mists of openings between the worlds were growing near the centers of each group. They would be at the chosen destinations in a matter of moments. Provided the screamers weren’t ruining it for everyone.
He stepped toward the screaming, a last vestige of the protector he had once been pushing him. His gaze immediately sought out his female. He would never claim her, but when he was able he would protect her. He could do no less than that. He owed the girl at least that much, and with a traitor amongst his own family, with a bounty upon her head, that was why he’d stayed in Dardanos this past twelve months. But once she was in the demon realm, he would be responsible for her safety no longer.
It would rest in the hands of Jareth and Adrastos, mates of her cousins, but no real relative of hers.
That did not sit well with him in that moment. Not when he thought deeply upon it.
Their own females were threatened by this traitor; why would they spare a moment to worry about the young human girl with no apparent mate nearby?
Why should they?
The screams grew louder, more than one voice. Female. Where was his?
He thought he saw her, near the back corner. Away from the portkey ether. Too many damned people separated him from her. He shoved some out of his way; others got the message and nearly dove out of his path.
At least his reputation came in handy.
As the last bunch of idiots got out of his way, it became clear who was screaming.
The deaf girl. Her sister, there by Barlaam—who was doing his damnedest to get through the crowd toward...
Cassandra.
She was screaming, her terror ripping into his heart.
He started shoving, pushing people too stupid to move out of his way.
She wasn’t just screaming because of the damned plants in her head now.
Purple mist was tugging at her, in ways he had never seen. Purple mist unlike that which was supposed to transport so many of his people to the other worlds. Those clouds were a dark green and a brackish gray. Not this strange purple. And he’d never seen a portkey pull someone in. Not like that.
He reached her just as Jareth, and Barlaam, and someone else—Adrastos, he thought—started cutting at the ether.
It would do no damned good. You couldn’t cut what had no damned substance. Instead he focused his attention on the girl.
She was on the floor now, trying to crawl away from the binds of mist tugging on her. He would never forget the terror on her face. Not in the rest of his days, would he forget how she had looked at him with pleading in her eyes. Pleading to save her from the threat she just was too damned human to understand. How much did she even know about the people surrounding her?
He couldn’t battle back the grasping ether, but he could touch her. He might be able to forcibly separate her from the damned whatever it was. He grabbed her under the arms and yanked her from the floor. The mist clawed at his feet. But it no longer touched his Rajni. “Wrap your arms around me. Now!”
“Nal! Give her here!” It was Aodhan, reaching for her, ready to take his wife’s cousin. To save her, despite the fact that he was now surrounded to the waist. “Hurry!”
He would have to toss her, but he knew that Aodhan would catch her. The warrior rarely missed at anything. “Take her!”
The mist was growing, surrounding them both. He almost lost sight of Aodhan. The girl was clinging to him too hard for him to throw her to the other man. Her fingers dug into his skin and she kicked and bucked, trying to move them both further from whatever was attacking her.
“Cassandra! Hold still!”
She seemed to hear him; her struggles ceased. Her arms wrapped around his neck, her legs his hips. She laid her head against his neck.
The utter faith and trust in her sudden action had him almost sick. He pushed that aside. Tried to pull out of the mist. He could still hear her family screaming around them. But it was muted now. He lunged, toward where he thought the east wall of the hotel lobby should have been. Toward safety.
Chapter 5
The screams in her head stopped.
Equan Black landed on her, his big body nearly crushing her. She fought the urge to cling to him. He was big and safe and warm, and like it or not, everything that looked at him was probably frightened out of their minds.
His hands were on her back, and he rolled slightly, sh
ifting his weight off of her. She dropped one hand to the floor beside her as the last of the purple mist drifted away.
She’d never been so terrified. All she’d been able to hear was the dying world around her, the trees and plants screaming as they were scorched beyond hope. Since the moment she had been in the gardens with this man and first heard the fire approaching from so far away. It had driven her almost mad.
Now...now she heard birds. The floor beneath her hand wasn’t a carpet or rug. It was grass. Had they made it to the demon world? Why had the purple cloud pulled at her the way it had? Was that normal? Mallory and Emily had explained to her what was going to happen today, but this didn’t sound like what they said it was supposed to be. If it was, why had he grabbed her? Why had Mallory screamed her name the way she had?
“Where are we?”
He looked at her—glared at her, really. Fear streaked through her. It always did when he looked at her just like that, although she didn’t normally find him frightening. Just a bit sad, a bit lonely. Except when he had that look in his eyes. It reminded her of a wolf, like the one Aodhan had tamed as a pet. Somewhat wild, untamed. Capable of ripping someone to pieces and enjoying it. “I don’t have a damned clue.”
She looked around, but kept herself half under him. Like it or not, he was the familiar. “It doesn’t look like Colorado.”
“It doesn’t look like fucking Gaia.”
“Excuse me?” She ignored the cursing. She’d certainly heard worse from her cousins, her uncles. “I don’t know what you mean by Gaia.”
“How much did that sister of yours keep you in the dark? Don’t you know where you’ve been living this past year?” Derision was very clear for her to hear in his words and it had her protective instincts rising.
Everyone had noticed how he avoided her sister as much as he could. Even she had, and she’d never understood. When asked, Emily had just brushed it off, saying that Nalik Black had been through hell, and would get used to the Tanisses around him eventually. Her sister had been deliberately vague, Cass realized now. “Why do you hate my sister?”
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