Emma (Dark Fire)

by Cooper, Jodie B.

  No, if Mac had known Haven Valley had a group of phoenix, powerful winged fairy, in their midst, he would have told her.

  The girl needed careful handling, very carefully indeed. Talk about a ticking time bomb. Thankfully, some races didn't gain all of their Sídhí abilities (or power) during puberty. Phoenix fell into that category.

  Brianna's background was certainly something to look into, but not at the moment.

  “Very funny,” Brianna said, baring her human teeth in a soundless snarl.

  “It seemed like a very real possibility. So, while you’re in human form, can you follow a scent or not?” Sarah asked again, maintaining the girl's guise of being a shapeshifter.

  Brianna turned toward another sealed tube. “What I can or can’t do isn’t in question since you’re the one who caught Clarisse's scent, you find her.”

  Sarah gave the girl points for keeping her temper.

  “Then let's finish and get out of here.” Sarah glanced at the discarded blue furble branches wrapped in mint. The teens had been creative when making weapons to use against the mites. “I guess you and Beth came back just in time.”

  “Yeah, you could say that,” Brianna said. Her face twisted in a scowl of distaste.

  Sarah motioned to the silly looking weapons the teens made. “All that mint came in handy.”

  “Yeah, mites don't like it. It burns them,” Brianna said, a sharp glint appeared in her eyes. “You know Haven Valley cultivates mite poison. We use it for crowd control. Even diluted, it’s really nasty stuff. I mean, even if one of our elders got shot by a low dosage of mite juice he couldn't have gotten out of that tube without help, not like you did.”

  Sarah kept her face void of emotion, refusing to show the slightest concern.

  “You’re a halfling with silver on your wrist. You shouldn’t have the strength or the claws that you obviously used to free yourself. So, how did you get out?” Brianna demanded. Her legs spread, holding herself in a stance capable of attacking without warning.

  Chapter - Gnomes

  Hours after setting a fire under the gnome, Clarabelle relaxed against the soft, spongy bark of a giant furble tree. Some twenty feet away was a cabin, a small sanctuary hidden from the sky (and the occasional dragon) by a thick canopy of giant furble and pine trees.

  Using the hidden, state-of-the-art cabin tickled her funny bone, especially since the carefully crafted cabin was a guardian safe house. What pleased her even more was the guardians had built the little cabin on her recommendation that the area was a restricted zone and away from prying eyes.

  She hummed to herself in pleasure. Guardian Alexander would wet himself when he found out he assisted the Khr'Vurr even indirectly.

  Movement within the cabin captured her attention. A female vampire stomped past the narrow window of the cabin. Her hip swinging form disappeared only to briefly reappear in the next window as she paced in a circle. With each turn around the room her short, red hair, matted from the yellowish fairy water, glinted orange in the beams of the setting sun.

  Clarisse had been ranting for a solid hour. For once, Clarabelle felt a twinge of sympathy for Harry. No one deserved the girl’s shrill rants.

  Wasn’t it enough the trolls delivered her without gnawing her up a little? No, of course not. The silly girl screamed non-stop after seeing the jagged claw marks running down her face. The marks would disappear soon enough. The girl was overreacting.

  The young voice coming from the cabin grew louder and more agitated by the moment. “I tell you that gray dragon is setting us up,” Clarisse said, waving her hand around the room. “Why else would she keep us here in the troll’s hunting grounds? She had me change the warning signs, getting my scent all over the place then had those hideous trolls bring me here! This will be the first place the guardians search!”

  “My sister would never...”

  “Sister!” Clarisse shrieked. “That over-sized lizard is your sister?”

  “Dragons are not lizards!” Harry bellowed, stomping toward the girl he glared down at her. “We are the most intelligent of all Sídhí races.”

  Clarisse snorted. “Right, that's why – when you’re in dragon form – you can’t talk without setting something on fire.”

  “I’m allergic to smoke,” Harry bellowed in the girl’s face, baring his teeth at her. “It makes me cough. That’s not my fault.”

  Clarabelle turned from the theatrics going on in the cabin to properly greet the man who suddenly appeared at her elbow.

  “Did either of them see you in human form?” Clarabelle’s mate asked worriedly, concern lashed her brain before she answered him with a small shake of her head.

  He pulled her tightly against him, smashing his lips against hers. When he finally released her, his simmering arrogance swarmed her. “Well then, things are coming along nicely. Did Harry find the missing shifters?”

  Clarabelle snorted. “No, I'll look for them myself this afternoon.”

  “No, you've taken enough risks for one day,” he said quickly.

  Clarabelle bristled at the order, but submissively nodded her head in acceptance. She hated orders. Even an order from her mate stuck in her craw, but she'd found arguing with him did no good. She took stock of the situation and changed strategies. “What about the Clan brat?” she asked, nodding toward the cabin.

  The girl’s shrill voice continued screaming at Harry non-stop.

  “I’ve had the portal near the olitiau nest recalibrated to exit into a rarely used portal within the Dhark Empire. Tell Harry to take the red haired brat to the portal and make sure she gets through safely.”

  “The Dhark Empire?” she asked, surprised he was willing to give up a trump card that could be used against the girl’s high council father. “I thought we wanted to keep Councilman MuskLeke’s support.”

  “We do, but Councilman MuskLeke and Duke PhńDick of the Dhark Empire have joined forces. It seems the duke is thrilled with MuskLeke’s genetic research. They are hip-deep creating a strategy to enslave the mundanes after releasing a genetic attack that will bring the population down to a manageable size. It will keep them busy for months. For my generosity in freeing MuskLeke’s eldest daughter, the councilman has given up the location of the Rshk’Garr ruins.”

  Clarabelle sucked in an excited gasp. Now she understood why her mate was vibrating with excitement. Flooding the Rshk’Garr ruins with liquid synth would take them one move closer to returning to the home world. “That will make six Ancient ruins we’ve flooded. According to my calculations, we need a minimum of ten active ruins.”

  “With one minor detail,” he added somberly. “I had one of my men do a quick survey of Clan Valley’s Rshk’Garr ruins. Numerous tunnels abruptly end.”

  “End? What do you mean, they end?” she demanded.

  He smirked at her rising panic. “One of the tunnels has a hidden gateway emerging into another valley. The ancient Rshk’Garr ruins continue, undamaged, in the next valley.”

  They were getting two valleys for the price of one. She smiled at their incredible luck. “Which valley?”

  “None other than Trellick Valley,” he answered. His dark chuckle sent a thrill through her. “I already gave the order to fill Rshk’Garr.”

  Irritation tightened her lips. It was her plan. She was the one who figured out how to fill the ruins with energy. He knew that.

  “Once Harry returns from delivering Clarisse, have him search for the shifters. With that prissy Alpha Prime dead, Haven Valley will fall into line with our plans.”

  Chuckling, she silently promised to pay him back for his insult, while nodding her head in agreement with his plans for Beth. “You mean your new chosen Alpha Prime will lick our feet after putting her on the throne.”

  He grunted. “True. And poor little Beth doesn’t have a clue that the traitor has been within an arm’s reach for her entire reign.”

  Clarabelle smiled smugly. “And the dragon council?”

  His smile tur
ned dark. Deadly anticipation flared deep in his eyes. “They couldn't find their backside with both hands. At the emergency meeting, Cornelia announced she has made contact with Chi’Kehra,” he said in a snarl, gently rubbing his hand over her chest where Chi’Kehra's spear had punctured her right lung, while the second pierced her heart. “If that isn't bad enough, the high councilwoman announced she is working toward an alliance with a second extremely powerful individual.” He snorted. “The rumors in the council range from the ancient Princess Serena to the phoenix prince.”

  “Cornelia will have better luck on an alliance with Prince McKenzie – who was quite mad before his disappearance – than with Chi’Kehra.” Clarabelle chuckled evilly, rubbing her body against his. “The high councilwoman can't make an alliance with someone that's in our hip pocket.”

  Hot air hissed through his teeth, and his deep satisfaction raced through her blood. “You captured the Chi’Kehra’s mate? What’s his name? Nick?”

  “His capture hasn’t been confirmed, but the gnome in charge of the trolls watched the attack,” she said, not admitting her original plan had been messed-up when the mites attacked. “Lady Sarah ended up with two stingers in her back as she protected him. The gnome and trolls should reach them in plenty of time. Even being Chi’Kehra, she won’t be immune to the mite poison.”

  He nodded his head thoughtfully. “If the trolls fail, we’ll be better off with Chi’Kehra dead than an ally to the council. See to it that she is either killed before the mite poison wears off or that we have her mate as a hostage.”

  Chapter - Mite Poison

  Brianna's pointed question as to how Sarah escaped the mite feeding tube caught Sarah off guard. Not reacting wasn’t easy, but years of training kept Sarah’s face unmoving in an emotionless mask. One wrong step and her house of cards would go tumbling. The worst part of the entire situation was it wouldn't take a very big step, because her cards were starting to look like Swiss cheese.

  “The other vampires still have their claws,” Sarah said calmly.

  Brianna snorted. “Yeah, half an inch on the hand opposite of the silver cuff. When you came out of that tube and started ripping the shroud off Nick, you had three-inch claws on both hands. Even with silver on, you could kill a shifter in animal form.”

  “I react oddly to poison. It’s possible the mite poison enhanced my Sídhí abilities instead of restricting them.”

  “I agree that mite poison is weird stuff. It causes intense pain and blocks most of our Sídhí abilities, but it doesn’t stop a vampire’s claws or teeth.” She waved to Sarah’s bracelet, saying in an argumentative voice, “that much silver should stop your claws.”

  Sarah glanced down, gazing into Nick's sleeping face. She searched her brain for an answer, but the sluggish thing refused to spit out an answer. She couldn’t very well give Brianna the complete truth. She snorted to herself. No, the truth was not an option. Who would believe her body was flooded with enough synth crystal that her synth laced blood reacted against the stinger and the natural Sídhí poison, violently shoving the stinger and poison out of her body? Not a soul. At least, not anyone who wouldn't ask dozens of questions and probably guess she was Chi’Kehra.

  Sarah shrugged and knelt beside Nick. She took a deep, steadying breath, rhythmically caressing his silky black hair. He helped her without his knowledge. She couldn't explain the odd reaction. They hadn't bonded, but touching him calmed her.

  When Sarah didn’t answer, Brianna continued, “The guardians in Haven Valley use hollow point bullets. Each bullet is fairy created and filled with mite juice blended with silver. The shell bursts after the bullet enters the body. Most people take an hour or more to wake-up. The more bullets, the longer it takes.”

  Sarah narrowed her eyes, trying to force her brain to open her mouth, but Brianna wasn't finished.

  “You got hit with stingers filled with concentrated mite juice.” Brianna held up two fingers as she made her next point. “And your shirt is ripped where the stingers entered your back in two different places. Without someone to rip out the stingers, you should still be unconscious.”

  Sarah swallowed a curse. Brianna was proving as methodical as other members of her deadly race.

  Sarah took a deep breath, ready to plunge into her explanation. If her hurried words didn't convince the girl, she'd silence Brianna by making the girl permanently disappear, but it wasn't the solution she preferred.

  She silently snorted. She didn't like the idea, but Mac would love it. He would give up nearly anything for Brianna to be dumped into the restricted Phoenix Valley, anything just as long as they'd have another female phoenix.

  She had never understood why every phoenix was rabid about mating within their race. Perhaps that unusual racial hiccup was why Mac, who was over six-thousand years old, didn’t have a mate.

  “I don't know about Haven Valley, but in Trellick Valley for the last thirty or so years we've started having unusual gifts pop-up. I don't know why, but the synth crystal in my body is a bit different than most. It reacts to a foreign object in my body and disposes of it.” Sarah hedged her answer the best she could, twisting partial truths with lies. “I guess the synth cleansed me of the poison and I woke-up in the tube.”

  “A foreign object? You mean like a bullet or something or just poison?” Brianna asked, seeming more curious than anything else.

  Sarah sighed, relieved the girl seemed to be accepting her badly scripted lie, but irritated she had to embellish the untruth a bit farther. A lie was only good for one thing and that was getting the teller caught up in the deception. “Yes, a stinger or poison, anything like that.”

  “Then why didn't the synth shove that arrow out of your shoulder?” Brianna asked. Crossing her arms over her stomach, a look of calculation stuck on her face making her youthful appearance look grim.

  Sarah got to her feet, stepping over Nick until she stood between her defenseless mate and Brianna. The honeycomb towered in front of her, quietly looming behind the girl. “Exactly how did you know I was shot with an arrow?” Sarah said in a very calm, soft voice. Her emotions tightly reigned in behind an uncaring mask of ice.

  Brianna carelessly shrugged her shoulders, grinning as she struck a nerve.

  Sarah moved swiftly, her years of experience kicked in as her fingers reached for the girl’s neck.

  Brianna reacted. Slipping out of Sarah’s reach, the short-haired blonde twisted and kicked at Sarah.

  Sarah dodged the well-aimed hit, catching Brianna in the ribs with a return kick.

  Hard striking hits and kicks flew back and forth.

  Seeing an opening, Sarah lunged forward. Ignoring a sharp crack to her ribs, she grasped the girl around her neck.

  Sarah's fingers quickly tightened around the girl’s throat. Her lips twitched, immensely enjoying the physical release of her pent-up emotions.

  Air flowing into the girl stopped. Brianna snapped her mouth open trying to breathe.

  Sarah’s fingers dug deeper, shoving the girl backward until Brianna’s head thumped against the rock wall. She allowed the girl to see a flicker of satisfaction glint through her vivid blue eyes.

  “You will answer me,” Sarah said in a lethal voice that sent a shiver of caution up her own spine.

  She watched Brianna’s eyes turn pure silver. A reaction that might have been deadly had the girl reached the next phase in her twenty-one day puberty cycle.

  Brianna's mouth opened, but nothing came out. The girl didn’t give up easily. Moving with precision, she attacked Sarah with her hands and feet, anything that she could move.

  Sarah shifted out of the way, barely missing a knee Brianna thrust at her.

  Brianna punched outward, rapidly taking another shot at Sarah. The heel of Brianna’s right hand hit her square in the side, on the lower edge of her ribs.

  Sarah grunted as pain shot through her body. Her arm deflected a second and third attack. Curling her lip, less in pain than in distaste, she grabbed Brianna's
left arm and flipped her, face-first against the wall. Tightening an arm around Brianna, she gripped the girl's soft neck with claw-tipped fingers. Flexing tense fingers, she kept the pressure firm, without breaking the skin.

  Easing forward, she softly repeated her order at the base of the girl’s skull. “I don't play nice and I never bluff. Answer or you'll feel exactly how deep my claws can go. For each minute you don’t answer, my claws will sink-in another little bit until I snap your head off your shoulders.”

  Sarah laughed, intentionally emphasizing her softly spoken words with her trademark lunatic-like laughter.

  Odd, the added twist to her ice queen act had always scared the daylights out of prisoners and friends alike. Even Mac appeared disturbed by her bizarre laughter.

  “Trust me, Brianna, you are Sídhí and that means this little game could last hours.”

  A breeze swirled past Sarah’s cheek, catching her attention. Startled, she leaned down toward a wide opening. The gentle wind grew stronger. The breeze smelled of a thousand scents. Above all, the air smelled of the fresh outdoors. The blending smelled wild, smelling of trees and flowers, of mountains and deserts, and of alien places.

  Confused at the odd mixture, she glanced down the row of tubes. Earlier, she had been so intent on finding Clarisse she had focused on the mud-encrusted tubes, essentially ignoring the half dozen larger tubes, the tubes with glow moss.

  She moved to the left, getting a better look into one of the large tubes. The perfectly round opening, nearly three feet wide, glowed with a soft whitish-blue intensity. A solid gust of air blew her hair back as the breeze slid past the tube’s smooth inner walls.

  Understanding trickled through her molasses-filled mind.

  Glow moss didn't cover the walls, and the tube was definitely not a dead-end. There was no rear wall. The tube was actually a tunnel, slanting sharply downward, quickly disappearing into the unknown.

  That wasn’t the only deceptive point. The walls were not perfectly smooth. She looked closer, until her nose nearly touched the surface. Swirls of an etched pattern covered the glass-smooth surface. They curled around the tube in a distinctive design.