Blood Queen (Blood Destiny, #6)

by Connie Suttle

  "They did place a tracking device, but Ren says that's only for emergencies, and Lissa doesn't know. This isn't an emergency. Is there any milk?" Charles asked. Brownies were best with a tall glass of cold milk. Devin poured a glass of milk and handed it to Charles.

  "Charles, are you trying to stand in our way?" Drew snapped. "We want her, and you take her away at the first opportunity."

  Charles's hand stopped halfway to his mouth, the brownie poised in midair. Slowly he lowered it to the plate. "Is that what you think? Damn. No, that wasn't my intention," Charles admitted. "I knew Lissa was upset over Gavin, and I was just trying to get him to loosen up toward her. You don't know how much he loved her before. Now he's like an iceberg. Of course it didn't help any that this investigation turned out like it did—I don't think I've ever seen a time when I hoped so hard that the perpetrators were vampires instead of something else."

  "Where is she? Tell us." Drake crossed well-muscled arms over his chest and glared at Charles. "You said Gavin and Tony were coming back without her."

  "Morro Bay," Charles went back to his brownie. "Don't go tonight, she'll be upset."

  * * *

  "This is quite amusing." Prince Cridel of the Bright Elemaiya held the gate with his Dark counterpart, Martis. The Ra'Ak had merely asked them to hold gates open on select worlds so the transports might be accomplished with none the wiser. Cridel hadn't seen what was coming through; none of them had. As long as it caused problems and ultimately brought the Ka'Mirai to them, he had no difficulty with it. The Ra'Ak materialized at the edge of the gate after making his brief delivery. The Ra'Ak was in humanoid form; otherwise, Cridel might have worried. Friesianna instructed him to flee through the gate if he saw the Ra'Ak in any other guise. Even she knew not to trust them, although she'd been more than willing to make the alliance with them and their Dark Elemaiya cousins.

  * * *

  I was staring listlessly at my breakfast at the hotel restaurant the next morning when a jacket was tossed onto the booth opposite mine. I raised my eyes to see that Joshua, the Werewolf FBI agent had found me.

  "If you'd bothered to tell me where you were staying, I could have gotten here sooner," he said, sliding into the red leatherette booth. It was retro—1950s retro. The tabletop was plastic, made to look like a black and white checkered cloth.

  "I only moved here last night," I said, dipping into my scrambled eggs, which were now cold.

  "I went to the ranch yesterday afternoon," Joshua said. "Talked to the owner who said he'd talked to you. He took me to the same spot. Thanks for leaving the evidence there; I collected it and we've got people working on it now."

  "I didn't want to disturb it in case you guys did think to look into it," I muttered. My toast was the only salvageable thing on my plate now; the rest was too cold and tasteless. The waitress came to take Joshua's order—ham and eggs, with extra ham. Werewolves were the same, no matter where or when you were. They could still eat more than two normal people. Joshua snacked on my cold bacon while he waited for his food. I pushed my plate toward him and he ate the cold hash browns, too.

  I drank my coffee; the waitress had given me a fresh cup that was nice and hot. Joshua didn't even comment on the fact that I was eating toast and drinking coffee. His food came and he ate quickly and efficiently. "How long in your job?" I asked. I knew he was seventy or so.

  "Thirty years," he stopped eating for a moment and grinned.

  "Who is Grand Master, now?" I asked softly.

  "Jason Harper," he said.

  "Is he related to Weldon and Daryl Harper?"

  "Daryl Harper's great-great-great-grandson. I guess that makes him Weldon Harper's great-great-great-great-grandson. I was born long after Daryl's stint as Grand Master. His son, Daryl Harper Jr. was taken down pretty quick and there was another two not so good ones in between, but Jason came along about twenty years ago and took care of that problem."

  "I knew Weldon and Daryl. Daryl's wife was pregnant with Daryl Jr. when I saw him last." I wondered how werewolf history had been affected when I'd been removed from the records of that era.

  "Want to come to the newest site when I finish breakfast?" Joshua asked.

  "Sure, if you don't mind," I said.

  "It's the least I can do since you led me to the only evidence we've been able to collect so far," he said. "And you can call me Josh, when nobody's looking. Otherwise it's Agent Billings."

  "Sure thing, Agent Billings."

  "What can I call you? That was a hint, you know."

  "Lissa," I said. "Just Lissa."

  "I can track you through your registration at the hotel."

  "Then do it," I shrugged.

  "You don't seem worried that I can find out all about you," he sipped his coffee.

  "Agent Billings, if you threatened me at all, I'd let you know," I muttered.

  "You're that confident?" He watched me over the top of his coffee cup.

  "No. It's just that I've been dead before. Should still be dead, actually. I don't think you could do any worse to me than what has already been done. How's that for an answer?"

  We walked out of the restaurant later and I climbed into Agent Billings' vehicle, flying north with him toward San Luis Obispo. There was another army of police and FBI agents covering an empty stretch of beach when we set down.

  "Who's this?" An agent walked up to Josh and me as we made our way toward the biggest knot of investigators on the beach.

  "Special consultant," Josh sounded snarly. The other agent backed off. We continued toward the site as the other agents moved aside to let us through. The only things left at this site were a large beach blanket, a cooler, suntan lotion and a few toys. Fuck.

  "Their vehicle is located on the parking area off the road," someone told Josh as I stood, staring in horror at the toys scattered across the blanket. "It's registered to a Michael Thomas. Married. Wife and six-year-old daughter." I wanted to kneel on the sand and scream.

  There was no scent around this area; Josh and I both checked unobtrusively. There hadn't been any contact between what had swept this family away and any of the objects left behind. "We got something!" Someone shouted just north of us. Josh grabbed my arm and hauled me in that direction. Something turned out to be a small blanket that looked as if it had been carried for years—the kind a child might refuse to turn loose of at night, though it was full of holes and should have been tossed long ago. It also held the stench; the one Josh and I both recognized yards before we reached the scene.

  "Going north," I muttered to Josh, who nodded slightly at my side. Someone was saying the blanket looked as if it had been dropped from the sky. There were no footprints, paw prints, claw prints, hoof prints—nothing anywhere around. No beach grasses or plants had been disturbed; the blanket had just magically appeared there. I drew in a huge breath.

  "What is it?" Josh demanded, pulling me over to the side so he could talk without being overheard.

  "Nobody ever sees anything, do they?" I asked urgently.

  "No. Nobody has seen anything. It's like one minute they're there, the next they're not."

  "What will people think if you leave for a while?" I asked.

  "I'll just say I'm following a lead; they've got more than enough here," he muttered and walked away. I watched him as he talked to somebody who looked to be in charge while the winds off the ocean whipped hair into our faces. The man Josh spoke with looked grim, but he'd looked grim before Josh approached him. The man nodded and Josh walked back to me. "We can go," he said. We made our way over loose, warm sand toward Josh's vehicle.

  "Just get us out of sight; somewhere we can leave this thing behind," I said, meaning the hovercar. Josh nodded, started the thing up and off we went. We traveled two miles north of the crime scene before Josh parked at a lookout over a particularly pretty stretch of beach. There were people below us, either lying in the sun or playing in the water. I sighed.

  "Are you afraid of heights?" I asked.

  "No
t particularly," Josh said.

  "Well, Agent Joshua Billings," I said, patting his shoulder, "prepare to be airborne." I turned both of us to mist and followed the coastline, paying special attention to the higher cliff areas. Twenty miles north of the last crime scene, I caught the briefest whiff of stench and zoned in on that.

  Have you ever gone looking for something, thinking it might be one thing, and when you find it, discover that it is so much worse than you'd imagined? I remember once when Don and I had a couple of cats, we'd installed a pet door so they could come and go as they pleased. One day when I was cleaning, I caught a whiff of what might have been a mouse decomposing. Thinking the cats had brought one in and left it in the house; I started moving furniture until I found what I was looking for. It wasn't a mouse. It was a snake. Dead, thankfully, but a snake, and a poisonous one on top of that. What Josh and I found was something out of nightmares.

  A huge nest was situated atop a rocky cliff, built of tree limbs, grasses and anything else available. Some of those tree limbs were thicker than my arm. What lived in that huge nest, though, was the frightening thing. They looked like evil pterodactyls. There were two of them inside the nest and each was larger than an ultralight aircraft. I could feel Josh's impatience as we misted over the nest. It had to be twenty feet in diameter and the two creatures inside were the source of the stench, along with the regurgitated bones littering the nest itself. The nestlings were curled up and sleeping after a nice meal of a man, a woman and their six-year-old daughter.

  I misted Josh downwind and dropped him on the ground, materializing right beside him. He was cursing softly and hauling out his communicator.

  "Not yet," I put a hand over his. "Those are the babies. The parents are still out there somewhere and we don't need to blow this." Under other circumstances, I would never have called them, but I needed help and knowledgeable help on top of that. Griffin—Pheligar, can you hear me? I sent, praying that they could.

  I hear you, baby, Griffin came in loud and clear. Pheligar's assent was right behind Griffin's.

  We have some terrible creatures, here, and they're eating people, I sent. Please come and look before I try to kill them.

  Griffin and Pheligar were beside me in seconds, frightening Josh half to death. He was used to the extraordinary, but he wasn't prepared for an eight and a half foot blue Larentii who fed on sunlight.

  Pheligar was the one who transported us nearer the nest—he shielded us, somehow. "Flakkar," Griffin muttered.

  "Yes," Pheligar nodded slightly at Griffin's assessment.

  "Flakkar?" Josh was still quaking from Griffin and Pheligar's sudden appearance, but he kept his wits about him enough to ask good questions.

  "Giant, flesh-eating, flying reptiles. They bend light around themselves, effectively hiding from any observer," Griffin muttered. "And they have a heavy shield that defies most tracking methods and mutes sounds. The only warning you have is their stench. They are next to impossible to locate."

  "I am concerned over how they arrived. Flakkar do not have the ability to transport themselves across the universe," Pheligar observed, frowning at the sleeping young inside the nest.

  "Somebody imported those things?" Josh was about to hyperventilate.

  "That's exactly what happened," Griffin looked grim. He sent out mindspeech, I guess, because Pheligar's shielded space became crowded quickly. Dragon and Crane arrived, with Adam, Kiarra and Kyler.

  "Why don't you let me take care of this?" Kyler stared at the Flakkar.

  "Because you will release their particles," Griffin held Kyler off. "Agent Billings here would like bodies and evidence to show to his colleagues." Josh nodded rapidly at Griffin's assessment.

  "I'll do it," I said. "We just have to wait for Mom and Pop to get here."

  "Get them right behind the head, their necks are thinnest at that point," Dragon was at my side and offering instructions. I didn't think the little ones were going to be a problem; it was the bigger ones that concerned me. I nodded up at Dragon. He grinned and hugged me. "My sons are worried," he leaned down to whisper in my ear.

  "Uh-huh," I whispered right back. "About what?"

  "That you might not come home," he said, hugging me and kissing the top of my head. Dragon was saying home as if I belonged there or something.

  Mom and Pop Flakkar came home right about then, letting their light-bending shields down. They clutched a large cow in each gigantic claw. I'd seen the vibration of the air around them when they first came in, besides smelling the additional stench. I'm going, I sent to the others and misted outside Pheligar's shield.

  Papa Flakkar was the first to go, but maybe I should have gotten mama first. She was shrieking and flapping, causing quite a stir. And the babies? They weren't nice either. It was going to be a trick, getting close enough to take heads; the whole nest was boiling with Flakkar. I was fine, getting a good shot at one of the young, but the minute I got one of her kids, mama kicked into a higher gear, thrashing, snapping and clawing like a three-dimensional buzz saw. When I saw my chance at her, I took it, but as my hands and claws materialized to sever her spine, her remaining child got in a blow of his own. I was shrieking in pain after mama's head was separated from her body, and that's when somebody else stepped in. Baby Flakkar's body disintegrated into tiny sparks that winked out as they floated away. I was standing in the middle of the nest, hugging my arm to me; it was bleeding all over the place. My flesh had been sliced to the bone.

  "We'll take care of this," Karzac was beside me, as was Pheligar, Renegar, another Larentii I didn't recognize and at least three healers. It didn't matter; I fainted in less than two seconds.

  Chapter 11

  "Did you see this?" Flavio handed the microcomputer to Gavin and Tony. The screen displayed the image of an FBI agent, standing beside three large corpses.

  "They look like dinosaurs," Tony muttered in disbelief. "Flying dinosaurs."

  "The forensic specialists are not releasing particulars," Flavio said. "However, the Larentii say these were brought here from another world. If these hadn't been found, they would have continued to feed off the population. The nest was shielded in some way unless you came very close to it; I'm not sure how that was accomplished. Lissa stayed behind and killed those things, although the authorities are taking credit for eliminating them."

  "I still don't remember her," Tony said, sorting through the photographs and text on the small computer.

  "None of us remember," Flavio shook his head. "Although Wlodek's memories of her are very clear, now. He wasn't surprised in the least that she was able to do what she did." Gavin didn't comment; he wanted to leave.

  * * *

  "We can feed you soup," Drake was sitting beside my bed and grinning at me when I woke. I slapped a hand over my face.

  "Please don't feed me anything," I muttered through my fingers.

  "Tummy upset?" A hand started rubbing my abdomen from the other side, and I found Drew lounging on the bed beside me when I turned my head.

  "Who said you could get in my bed?" I asked. Drew gave me a lazy, heart-squeezing smile.

  "We did," both said at the same time. Drew hadn't stopped rubbing my belly, either. And just like the lazy lizard I was, I enjoyed it. Those guys weren't hard to look at. Uh-uh. Not hard at all. "I feel like a cougar," I said, closing my eyes in pleasure.

  "You're not. Dad says you're officially forty-nine years, eleven months and eight days old. We're a hundred and one. Way older than you, itty bitty pants." Drake was now scooting in on my other side.

  "Itty bitty pants?" I frowned at him as he settled on the bed beside me. "Who taught you English?"

  "We had a tutor," Drake leaned in to kiss me. "And then we went to college," he kissed me again. "Want to see our resumes and statements of net worth? Grampa Adam takes care of our investments."

  "I tell you to sit with her and I come back to find you in her bed?" Karzac came in and swatted Drake on the leg, just when I was beginning to think I m
ight have to throw one of those boys on his back and see how his belt unbuckled.

  "Damn," Drake grumped softly, sliding off the bed. Drew came off on the other side.

  "Let's see the arm," Karzac said, asking for my right arm. It had been deeply sliced by the Flakkar.

  "It looks okay," I said, showing him my scar. There was only the faintest of white lines there, and that was fading fast.

  "Baby, don't come back to us like that again," Drake scolded from the foot of the bed. Drew nodded and agreed with his brother. "Karzac gave you three bags of blood this time."

  "How long have I been out?" I was trying to sit up. Karzac pushed me down again.

  "The best thing about your vampirism is that any blood will do to replenish what you have," he said, ignoring my question.

  "You've been down a day and a half," Drew said.

  "You didn't wake me?" I knew I felt sluggish, but a day and a half?

  "You missed the family dinner at Grey House," Karzac grumbled. "I have informed Wizard Shadow of your condition. He has been upset and irritable ever since, according to my sources."

  "That's not awkward or anything," I mumbled. "Have they found out how the big, bad and stinky things got onto the planet?"

  "Not yet. Everyone is looking into it, however."

  "Maybe they should check other worlds, too, and see if the same thing is happening elsewhere," I suggested.

  "I will send mindspeech," Karzac said, folding out of the room.

  "Good," Drake smiled. "Now, where were we?" He and Drew climbed right back in bed with me. When I woke the second time, it was to find a chest bearing a black dragon in front of my face. They'd taken their shirts off while I slept. Now there was a very nice nipple located in a strategic spot within the tattoo. I touched it lightly.

  "I'll pay major money if you'll put your mouth on that," Drake said lazily.

  "I'll bet you say that to all the girls," I removed my fingers from his chest and rose to a sitting position. Drew was lying on his stomach on the other side, his long braid in a curve down his back. "How do you guys deal with all this hair?" I lifted Drew's braid and fingered the thickness—it was like black silk.