Tamhas

by Ava Benton

  Alan and Tamhas exchanged a look I couldn’t make sense of.

  “What about the Blood Moon Priestesses?” Alan asked.

  He might as well have lapsed into Greek. “Excuse me?” Talk about a left turn. It felt like having a rug pulled out from under me.

  “The Blood Moon Priestesses. Surely, you’ve heard of them before.”

  I was still breathless after panicking over Emelie. My brain scrambled to catch up with him. “Um, no. I’ve never heard of them. What is this all about?”

  A chuckle rose up among them, a chuckle that made me want to kill them all. One by one. Slowly. They laughed at me like they thought I was lying. They would never believe me, no matter what I said. They had walked down that tunnel determined not to believe me. I was wasting my breath.

  “You expect us to believe this?” Alan asked, folding his arms. God, he was huge. They all were.

  “I don’t care if you believe it or not.” I spat. “It’s the truth. I know it’s the truth.”

  “You don’t care?” one of them repeated, laughing.

  “No. I don’t. I know you don’t want to believe it. I can tell you don’t. So it doesn’t matter to me. You’ve already made up your minds, haven’t you?” The laughter died—and to their credit, some of them averted their eyes when I turned my focus to them. It wasn’t so funny when they knew I knew what they planned to do with me.

  They were going to kill me. I knew it. I guess I had known it all along. I had trespassed, I knew their secret.

  I didn’t have to take it lying down, though. I wouldn’t let them steamroll me. I stood with my hands on my hips, daring all of them to hold my gaze. They might have been dragons, but did they have the guts to look me in the eye?

  “I didn’t know anything about what happened here when I arrived—and if I knew before then, I sure as hell wouldn’t have come. I don’t want any part of this place or any part of you. And I don’t know who the Blood Moon Priestesses are. I’m from New York, for God’s sake. I grew up across the river, in New Jersey. I never even went to church. So whatever it is you all do here together, I wouldn’t know about your dragons or your priestesses or whatever. There’s no clearer way I can think of to explain it to you.”

  They weren’t laughing anymore. A few of them glanced at each other, then at the back of Alan’s head.

  I looked at him. He was looking at me. Why? Trying to decide whether or not I was telling the truth—and if I was telling the truth, why did he think I would know anything about these priestesses? I had never known a priestess in my entire life, and I had known a lot of people.

  He took a step back. His jaw moved like something behind his lips wanted to come out, but he fought against it. What was he thinking? I wished I knew. I was always pretty good at sensing what other people were thinking—it used to help a lot when I was fighting, being able to sense what my opponent was going to do before they did it. It helped when I was tracking a bail jumper or somebody Hank had been hired to find, too.

  I had always taken it for granted.

  But these people, these dragons? They were unreadable. Was this what other people felt like? Having to guess at the thoughts of others? It was like being blind, just flailing around in the dark and hoping I eventually hit a light switch to help me see.

  “You should eat something,” Alan finally decided, taking Tamhas by the arm and waving a few of the others behind him.

  They hurried off, a little way down the tunnel, while the rest of them hung around and watched me.

  I was accustomed to being watched. Even in a cage, which was almost like a cell. But I’d always had an opponent in the cage with me—and I’d gotten paid for it, which made a huge difference.

  Even so, as much as I hated to prove Alan right, I was starving. Was this what animals felt like in a zoo? I wondered this as I unwrapped a protein bar and took a bite, watching them watch me. The bar tasted like sawdust in my mouth, but I ate it like it was the most delicious thing ever.

  Damn it, I wished I could sense their thoughts.

  Maybe I could find out if any of them felt sorry for me. I might be able to work that angle, play on their sympathy, get them to speak up for me. I might be able to get out of this yet if I had somebody on my side.

  But they were blank. Like books without words.

  There was only one person—one dragon—who’d be on my side, and I wasn’t even all that certain that he was.

  11

  Tamhas

  Well?” I asked once we were out of earshot.

  Alan frowned. “Do you even have to ask?”

  My stomach dropped. The dragon roared loud enough that I could hardly hear anything around me. Even the ever-present buzzing of the generator and the lights faded into nothingness when compared to the strength of his rage.

  “You don’t mean what I think you mean.”

  Alan’s jaw was clenched tight. “What other choice do I have? She has to die.”

  “You can’t do that.”

  His eyes narrowed. “What gives you the idea that you can tell me what it is and isn’t in my power to do? Have you forgotten who was unanimously accepted as the leader of the clan in Gavin’s place?”

  “Gavin wouldn’t have killed her.”

  Owen sighed. “What do you think he would’ve done, Tamhas? She’s a Blood Moon Priestess. She bears the mark.”

  My thoughts raced as I scrambled for a way to defend her. There had to be something I could say that would get through to them. “Tell me: didn’t the coven go extinct once the rift occurred? That was what we always believed. Is it not?”

  “Aye,” Alan acknowledged with a slight nod. “And now, it’s clear that we were wrong.”

  “What if we weren’t wrong?”

  “Oh, come now.” He looked at Owen and Dallas, who both snickered.

  “I mean it,” I pressed. “What if they went extinct? Simply stopped practicing their magic?”

  “What difference does it make?” Dallas challenged. “She’s still a witch.”

  “Aye, what if she doesn’t know she is one.” I believed this to be true.

  “Would you please stop making up excuses for her when you know not whether they are the truth?” Alan sounded defeated, exhausted. “If you hadn’t been foolish enough to bring her into your life, we wouldn’t be having this argument. Somewhere along the line, you forgot how dangerous the outside world can be. I suppose we all did. I can’t blame you for things which occurred prior to the kidnapping.”

  “What?” Dallas spat, glaring at Alan in disbelief.

  “I said what I said,” he maintained, returning Dallas’s stare with quiet confidence.

  Dallas backed down, but looked resentful when he did.

  Alan continued, “We were all lax in our way. Perhaps we were foolhardy, believing that so many centuries passing without incident meant we were untouchable. I know I was guilty of this. Gavin was, as well. He didn’t find it necessary to lock our security down as tightly as it could’ve been.”

  “Yes, and look what happened as a result,” Owen muttered. “No one should’ve been able to find us. No one. Even if Tamhas had carried on an email correspondence with the lass, she shouldn’t have been able to trace us as she did.”

  “She didn’t trace us,” I reminded him. “Her friend did.”

  “A friend who might very well be a Blood Moon Priestess, as she is,” Alan murmured half to himself, as though he were just coming up with this on his own.

  “You don’t know that,” I argued.

  “No. I don’t.” His stare was cold. “And neither do you.”

  “You’re really planning on going through with this?” I asked, dreading the answer. Knowing the answer. I didn’t want to hear it, but I had to. I needed to know for certain what he was going to do.

  “Aye,” he nodded. “We have to put her to death.”

  “Over my dead body, you will.”

  “Don’t do this,” Owen warned in a quiet voice.

  I
ignored him.

  Alan’s gaze was sharp as he took me in. “You would turn your back on your clan in order to protect an enemy?”

  “For the love of all that’s holy, Alan, you don’t know that she’s an enemy. You know nothing about her. Even if she is who you say she is, it doesn’t mean she came here with any ill intentions!”

  “No, but that would mean she was lying, wouldn’t it? Because she swears she’s never heard of her kin. How could she not know she’s a witch? How would it even be possible? Can you imagine not knowing you were a dragon? Because the two situations aren’t that dissimilar.”

  “I’d think I would know I was a dragon the first time I shifted,” I said. “Your analogy falls flat.”

  “You know as well as I do that a witch isn’t like humans. They have has special gifts.”

  “And whatever she sets her mind to, she excels at far beyond the performance of a mere human,” Dallas reminded me. “I can attest to that, trust me. So, can Ainsley and Isla.”

  “Another reason to believe she’s a witch,” Alan added with a smug expression.

  “If no one ever told her of her powers, she might simply believe herself to be special—but not a witch. Humans don’t jump to such conclusions, because they don’t believe in the presence of anything bigger or more powerful than themselves. It’s a great weakness of theirs.”

  The three of them nodded—they didn’t want to agree, but there was no other choice. We all knew of the foibles of humans. We’d been watching them long enough, after all, traveling into the village which over time became a town, then a city, in order to purchase supplies.

  And as time had passed and the old ways had faded into nothing more than memories, they’d forgotten the tales of magic and turned to mysticism. They’d rather worship an unseen deity in a church and pin their superstitions to it, than to believe what their ancestors had witnessed with their own eyes.

  The dawn of technology hadn’t made things better in that respect. They worshipped their devices—phones, computers and the like. They believed what they could hold in their hands. I understood this to a degree.

  Something passed over Alan’s face. Perhaps his dragon reminded him of the task at hand, how he could not afford to weaken in his resolve.

  “Nonetheless,” he insisted, “she’s seen us. She knows who we are, where we are. What if she were to reach out to this friend of hers and call in assistance? What if she were to run off and tell the authorities about us? We cannot allow for such a breach. You know this is true as well as I do, Tamhas.”

  I opened my mouth to argue—the dragon egged me on, pushed me forward, thrashed and threatened—but there was nothing to say. I came up empty. Alan was right, at least from his perspective and from the perspective of the clan. She was a threat as long as she breathed. We couldn’t allow her to bring the outside world into our world.

  Even so, there was no way I could let her die. Not when she was mine to protect.

  Instead of informing my clan of this, I said, “I’m very tired. I believe we all are. Let’s at least give it the night, think it through. The last thing we want at this time is to behave rashly.”

  “It won’t change anything,” Dallas growled.

  “No, but we’ll at least rest easy in the knowledge that we didn’t end a woman’s life without a second thought,” I fired back. My patience was thinner than it had ever been, and he insisted on stretching it even thinner. The dragon could only abide by so much of that.

  “Tamhas is right,” Alan decided to my great surprise. “We ought to take a step away, get a little sleep, decide how best to go through with this. If she is a witch, it won’t be as simple to kill her as it would if she were an ordinary human.”

  “Aye, and her death might set off the awareness of the rest of the coven,” I suggested.

  Was it so? I had no idea. But just the suggestion was enough to plant the seed of doubt in Alan’s mind. I could see it in his eyes that I’d accomplished this. He’d question himself from this point on.

  Good.

  I needed every ounce of help I could get.

  12

  Tamhas

  How anyone managed to get any sleep that night was far beyond me.

  Perhaps they weren’t asleep. Perhaps they were awake, lying in bed, staring at the ceiling as I’d been.

  I hadn’t been trying to fall asleep. I knew better than to waste my time in such futile pursuits. There was no chance of my sleeping while Keira sat in a cell, so close to where I rested. An ocean had separated us for so long, and all I had to do was walk down the tunnel to see her.

  The whole thing was too surreal to make sense of. I could barely get a grasp on the big picture. She’d found me because she’d wanted to find me. Because she must have felt as I had, that there was something special between us. She hadn’t been able to put words to that instinct any better than I had prior to meeting her.

  All I’d known up to that point, up to the moment when I’d first laid eyes on her in person, was that she was special enough to take massive risks for. Over and over, time and again, each conversation more dangerous than the last. Always the threat of revealing too much, always the question of whether she would be able to find me if she got it in her head to do so.

  She’d gotten it into her head, all right. Clever girl.

  Meeting her was an entirely different story. What had once been a feeling, the sense that she was worth risking everything for, had become a certainty.

  I needed her. She was meant for me, and I for her. There was no question in my mind.

  The very thought of her suffering in that cell made the struggle to keep my dragon in the back of my consciousness more difficult than it had ever been. Nearly impossible. It was exhausting. But no matter what a relief it would’ve been to let go and allow my dragon half the freedom it craved, the potentially catastrophic outcome was enough to hold me back.

  I would only make it harder on her if I weakened. She needed every bit of strength and resolve I possessed.

  The corridor was empty, quiet. Just as I’d expected.

  I darted down to the control room, it was empty.

  A relief, since I wasn’t certain how I’d explain what I was about to do if it wasn’t. Owen, especially, would’ve been keeping an eye on me in search of suspicious behavior.

  I filched the key for the cells, kept on a hook alongside the door as it had always been. We’d hardly ever needed to use it—there was even a faint outline left on the wall when I removed it, it had hung unused for so long.

  The doors to the private chambers were closed, one after the other. Even so, I made a point of taking my time, doing what I could to appear casual. Yes, you’re out for a midnight stroll, I chided myself. It was all too ridiculous, but I hardly had experience with this type of situation.

  I found her sleeping, curled up on her side with her fists tucked under her chin. She didn’t stir when I approached. Probably too exhausted from what she’d been through.

  It gave me the chance to watch her unobserved. To listen to the sound of her light, steady breathing. To take in the scent of her without the rest of the clan swarming around me—warm, sweet, pleasant, like a perfume I’d want to enjoy for the rest of my days.

  The blanket somebody had seen fit to give her was only over her torso, leaving her arms free. The ink on her shoulder, trailing down her arm, was impressive. A flowering vine which ended at her elbow. Feminine, yet tough. Like her.

  The muscle under that ink was impossible to ignore. She was strong. Perhaps stronger than she should’ve been by rights. A professional fighter. I would’ve wagered anything that she was undefeated. Did she not wonder why she was so successful?

  I remained in place when she stirred. I’d taken the trouble of stealing the key in order to talk to her, after all, not merely to observe her as she slept.

  There was no surprise on her face when she recognized me.

  “I wondered when you would come,” she whispered in a groggy, sl
eep-filled voice. I waited as she sat up, swinging her legs over the cot and rubbing her eyes. When she bent at the waist as though to stretch her stiff muscles, I caught sight of a pair of wings tattooed on her upper back—delicate, beautiful work.

  I looked up and down the tunnel before inserting and turning the key.

  She gasped. “You have a key?”

  “It isn’t my personal key,” I whispered, holding a finger to my lips to signal for quiet.

  She blushed. “Sorry.”

  “I don’t want them to hear us.”

  No, what I wanted was to take her in my arms and stretch out on top of her in that cot. I wanted to feel her warmth, to sink into it, to take her and make her mine for always. To tantalize my senses and make her scream for me, scream until there was no question of another man ever satisfying her as I did...

  Stop that, I silently urged my dragon. Now’s not the time for that.

  He was having none of it..

  I couldn’t give in. Not yet. Not until she understood. It wouldn’t be fair to her if I took her unawares, bound us together forever without her knowing everything there was to know.

  Not to mention the fact that there were things I wanted to know as well. Too many unanswered questions.

  “May I sit?” I asked, gesturing to the foot of the cot.

  “It’s yours, isn’t it?” She stood rather than share the cot with me.

  I could understand that, even if I didn’t like it much.

  Keira walked back and forth in front of me, from one set of bars to the other. “Why did you come? What do you want to know that I haven’t already told you?”

  “I want to know who you are.”

  “You know that,” she hissed, shooting me a filthy look. I had to remind myself of what she’d reportedly done to three full-grown dragons outside the cave. I was in a cell with this woman. She was no dainty, fragile thing.

  With that in mind, I chose my words carefully in spite of my dragon’s protests. “I know what you’ve told me. Surely, there’s something else you never shared.”