Claws sank into me and yanked me up. Not darkness or death, but Leviathan. He let out a disgusted laugh in my head. :She refused to leave even the scaly chicken behind.:
Head lolling, I was beyond pain as Leviathan carried me up and out of the cenote. We passed Rik in his rock troll form, our queen clinging to his back as he scaled the limestone cliff. The dragon tossed me down on the ground, and Itztli stuck his bleeding wrist in my face. :Feed, brother. I can’t heal you like she will, but at least let me ease your pain until she’s here.:
It was an indication of how close I must be to death for my brother to be willing to feed me. He’d done well to hide that dread from our queen last night when she’d taken us, but she’d have every ugly secret soon enough. I wouldn’t torment him needlessly, but I did send a wave of gratitude to him. :She’s the last queen of Isis. If I die, she’ll bring me back.:
He didn’t protest. Clutching my sobbing niece in her arms, Mayte knelt beside me, tears in her eyes. “Oh, brother. What have you done to yourself?”
She laid her hand on my head and her power sparked along my scales. She’d healed me before, but this time… It wasn’t her touch I wanted. She released a soft little sigh and pulled her hand away with a wry smile. “Here’s our queen now.”
Rik cleared the edge of the cenote and Shara slid down beside me. I could smell her blood already, her magic sinking into me before a single drop of her blood passed onto my tongue. Her bond glowed like a soft, glowing moon in a clear midnight sky, shining light on all of my internal hurts, while simultaneously wiping them away. She lifted my head into her lap and pressed her wrist against my muzzle, dripping blood from the dragon’s bite.
I opened my jaws and carefully cradled her fragile arm inside my mouth, letting her blood drip down my throat without tearing her skin any further. Her fingers stroked over my head and down my neck, kneading strength and power into my hide. “Without you today, both Xochitl and I would be lost to Ra.”
Rik made a low, dangerous rumble, though he didn’t take her to task for risking her life, and ours, to save the child. I might be her newest Blood, but with her bond shining in me, I knew her heart. She would never hang back, waiting for someone else to help. Not with any child at risk, and certainly not one she’d taken into her heart like my niece. She’d made Xochitl an Isador heir. She would die for her. For any of us.
Not that we would ever allow that to happen.
The great jaguar god came closer, moving as though something deep inside him still pained him. He dropped a hand on Mayte’s shoulder. “I thank you all. I had no idea the sun god would be able to strike us so effectively. It’s quite humbling to know that all my immense power means nothing, as I was forced to watch helplessly as my daughter was carried away.”
His voice broke, and Xochitl reached up for him. He pulled her up into his arms and Mayte swiped her tears away. “Without you, Shara, we would be lost. But it’s my great shame to admit that someone in my household must have betrayed us. Very few people knew you were coming to Zaniyah until the very last minute before your arrival. Before this incident, I would have sworn that all my people were one-hundred-percent loyal, but Bianca feared someone might alert House Skye that we were expecting you.”
“Bianca.” Shara said the name flatly, her mouth twisting as if she’d tasted something bitter.
“No,” Mayte gasped, shaking her head. “I can’t believe it. Her family has served Zaniyah for generations.”
“Who else knew I was coming? Who else would have the contacts to reach out to one of Ra’s believers? Who else knows Xochitl’s habit of riding with her father?”
Pale, my sister closed her eyes, her mouth moving as she whispered softly beneath her breath. Her hair lifted, fluttering about her face, her voice rising, though I couldn’t understand her words. I knew she spoke in our ancient tongue, but those words were forbidden for my ears to understand.
When she opened her eyes once more, they flashed like cold diamonds. “The spell is cast. We’ll know the truth once we return back to the nest.”
“What about the black dog?” Shara asked, turning to Rik. “Were we able to capture it, or at least kill it?”
:I have him,: Xin said in our bonds. :I kept him alive for you.:
A grim smile flickered across Shara’s face. Cold chills raced down my spine at that look. Retribution. A promise of pain and punishment. Justice. A goddess’s righteous fury.
I almost felt sorry for whoever had dared not die when Ra’s plan failed.
Almost.
6
Shara
Wrapped in blankets from the emergency stash in the Jeep, Rik and I rode back to the house with Mayte and Tepeyollotl. She drove, and he bounced Xochitl on his lap. Now that she was safe, she recovered quickly, eagerly telling her parents about what had happened from her perspective.
I’d tried to convince Tlacel to ride with us, but he’d insisted he was healed enough to fly back with Mehen and Nevarre. He’d torn himself up to keep us from sliding through the portal. Broken bones, shredded muscles, bruised and bleeding organs. I kept a careful touch on his bond, watching for any difficulty or lingering pain, in case he needed another round of healing.
I leaned forward and whispered to Mayte, “When will she be able to call her own Blood? She needs more protection.”
“It varies greatly,” she whispered back. “The more powerful a queen, the earlier her Blood are called, generally speaking. But it depends on many other factors, too. The nest nurtures her power and helps it come in quicker, which will draw Blood to her sooner, but she may not call any until she’s past puberty or even in her early twenties, as you did.”
She glanced at the man beside her and switched to our bond. :I always assumed he’d be enough to protect her from anything, but his powers are limited, too. I never dreamed something would swoop down from the sky and carry her away. I wish I called more than jaguars.:
:You helped call my flying jaguar,: I reminded her. :Intent is everything. She mentioned a ceremony tonight. Maybe you should try sending out a call for another winged jaguar for an extra layer of protection in the sky.:
:Yes. I’m stronger now, thanks to you, my queen. I have the capacity to call another couple of Blood that can help us protect her until she has her own.:
Xochitl turned to her mother, her eyes bright. “Mama, what do you call a flying horse?”
“There was a horse named Pegasus who could fly.”
“Then I’m going to call unicorns that fly like Pegasus. I want Blood who can fly so they can stab any mean bird that tries to get me again with their shiny horns.”
Mayte smiled, though I felt the wrench in her bond. A mother’s fervent wish that her daughter not grow up too quickly. That she never be in such danger ever again, even though she knew pain and fear and disappointment were inevitable.
Goddess, let her have a great deal of unwavering love in her life, too.
“That sounds like a great plan, sweetie.”
I felt the tingle as we passed through the nest, but this time, the energy felt more like a buzzing hive of angry bees. Mayte drove up to the back of the house where a knot of people waited for us. They parted as she parked the Jeep, revealing the consiliarius on her knees. Blood trickled from her mouth and nostrils, her eyes wide and flashing white. She tried to stand as Mayte got out of the Jeep, but flopped and jerked helplessly, unable to rise. Something popped loudly, and her mouth twisted with a grimace of pain.
Mayte’s spell was not something to fuck with.
“My heart, please take Xochitl to get something to eat.”
Tepeyollotl gave their daughter a playful toss, artfully distracting her from the scene unfolding. “What do you think unicorns eat, butterfly? We should ask Sarah to make some special dishes, so they come to your call quickly.”
“Cake!” She squealed with laughter as they headed for the kitchens. “They eat cake, Papa.”
Gina came to my side as I got out of the Jeep, and her eyes
were tight with concern. “What happened? One minute we were talking, and the next she let out a horrible cry, fell to her knees, and started crying and begging for help as she crawled out here. I tried to help but…” She shook her head.
“My most trusted confidant,” Mayte said in a flat, hard voice. “My betrayer.”
Gina sucked in a shaking breath. I took her hand firmly in mine to make sure she knew instantly that I didn’t doubt her in the slightest.
“My queen,” Bianca moaned with pain. “I didn’t know they’d use Xochitl. I swear. It was only supposed to be Isador.”
“You betrayed Zaniyah. You brought shame to our house by betraying our new queen to her greatest enemy, and then gave them our only Zaniyah heir. Why? Why would you do this?”
“I was trying to protect us! Protect you! I thought she would take everything, and if I could get rid of her first…” Bianca swallowed hard, blood dripping down her chin. Eyes wild, she turned to me for assistance. “Please, Great One, I had no idea—”
I quivered with rage. Great One. That was Isis’s name. Not mine. The sky darkened. Clouds boiled on the horizon and thunder rumbled. Lightning tore across the sky, opening it up for a deluge of rain that hammered the crowd, drenching us all. But Isis’s rage could not be cooled by rain.
Bianca found her pride and stiffened her spine, raising her voice to be heard over the storm. “You’re unharmed. Xochitl is fine. Besides, you can always have another heir. I was trying to save us all.”
“You would damn a child to Ra’s hell to save your own skin.” My voice echoed with Isis’s thunder. Wind whipped across the plaza, overturning tables, chairs, and even a few potted plants. “There can be no forgiveness for worms like you.”
“There will be no Fire Ceremony tonight.” Mayte didn’t sound like herself any longer. As I gazed at her, I saw a different shape overlaid on her familiar features, like a blurred photograph of someone caught in motion, or old-fashioned double-exposed film. Her goddess hovered over her, long black hair waving around her down to her knees.
No. That wasn’t hair. They were snakes. They hung around her legs, almost like a skirt.
“Perhaps in sacrifice, this worm can find some way to atone for her sins,” Mayte said.
Bianca’s bravado faded quickly. “No, please. We don’t sacrifice any longer.”
Staring at Coatlicue’s avatar and heir to Her power, I felt certainty shifting inside me. Sacrifice was needed. A great deal of blood. But not all of that blood had to be shed in retribution. I wouldn’t interfere with what Mayte needed to do…
But I had a brutal, bloody task to accomplish, too.
The pressure inside me rose, dragging my head to the side. My gaze collided with Itztli’s and I remembered the obsidian blade he’d shown me last night. As soon as I thought of it, he strode forward and knelt in the mud before me to lay the blade on the ground at my feet.
“My queen. Use me as your blade. I’m yours.”
7
Itztli
I came to my queen as willingly as my brother, but not as easily.
My pulse hammered frantically in my throat, and my stomach churned with the sour taste of fear and uneasiness. In the joy of coming into my power last night, I’d managed to suppress the dark stains in my memory, but soon, she would know the truth. Tlacel had already proven exactly how precious he would be in her service.
Now I would prove how monstrous I would be.
Shara looked down at my obsidian blade a moment, and when she met my gaze again, the same blackness filled her eyes, a glittering icy darkness of faceted glass. Hairs rose on my arms. The goddesses walked among us tonight. Coatlicue had already doomed me. If Isis turned me away too, I would beg to be sacrificed along with the consiliarius who’d betrayed my family.
My queen tipped her head back, letting the blanket slip from her shoulders to the ground. Rain sluiced down her cheeks like tears. She let out a soft sigh and met Mayte’s gaze. “Would it be terribly inconvenient if you had a large tree in this spot?”
The sound my sister made might have been a laugh, but it hurt my ears. Last night, they’d laughed and splashed each other in the grotto like two maiden goddesses, but tonight, the earth mother’s killing devastation roared in their power. “Not inconvenient in the slightest, especially if it’s large enough to provide some shade for the courtyard.”
“Oh, it’ll be large enough, I think.” Shara dropped her gaze back to mine and I flinched. She stripped me bare. In a single look, she weighed my heart and began to sift through my mind. All too quickly she would find the poison that remained.
I didn’t pull away. I didn’t try to hide. I let her have it all.
She cupped my chin, her fingers hard on my jaw. The pressure stirred something inside me. It lifted its head, the monster’s interest piqued. Not my giant dog. No, this was something else entirely. Something I loathed with every fiber of my being.
She whispered inside my head. :What are you protecting me from?:
She could have pushed that cracked door wide open and dragged my filthy secrets out one by one. Gratitude that she didn’t, that she allowed me to face those truths one by one in my own time, clogged my throat. :It’ll be easier if I show you, my queen.:
Tales of twin gods were common to my people, which made the reality of growing up as a twin much more difficult. In ancient times, when twins were born, it wasn’t uncommon for one of them to be killed. Sometimes it was easy to see which twin should be sacrificed, because one would be born with a deformity. For others, like me, the deformity wasn’t apparent immediately.
I was the gigantic black dog, like Xolotl, Quetzalcoatl’s monstrous twin, and Tlacel was the beautiful feathered serpent.
Thus it had always been since the day I was born.
She slipped deeper into my mind, past my conscious thoughts to actual memories. Reading them like a book, watching flashes of my childhood like a movie.
Our mother had delivered us during the bloody time of Tenochtitlan’s invasion and the crumbling of the mighty Aztec civilization. Grandmama and Mayte often said our mother died when Tenochtitlan fell, but that wasn’t entirely true. She lived, long enough to deliver Mayte hundreds of years later.
But Mama was never the same after she left Tenochtitlan. After she delivered me.
As a young queen ripe with power, Citla Zaniyah had gone to foster with an older and more renowned queen descended from the Great Goddess of Teotihuacan, and when she returned, she was changed. Silenced. Broken. No one ever spoke of her time there, or who our father, or fathers, were. Though I heard the whispers.
I was so different from Tlacel. He was kind and generous, beautiful and gentle. He would never harm another.
I, on the other hand, had gained the reputation for being sullen, dark, and yes, extremely dangerous. I fought to the death like a starving dog over scraps of refuse. Mama had retreated into her mind, and Grandmama had been busy establishing the new Zaniyah nest and moving our family from Tenochtitlan. But one thing always stuck in my mind.
Mama never had Blood. Not even an alpha. So who, then, had sired us?
When I was older, I asked Grandmama what had happened to my mother. She had only shaken her head and said some things were better forgotten.
Forgotten. Like how I came to be. How I was so different from my brother. As we matured into young Aima males, hungry for the chance to serve a queen, the differences in us had become even more stark and grim.
Grimacing, I pulled back from those memories and focused on Shara. She cupped my face in both her hands and leaned down over me, staring deeply into my eyes. She turned the page in my mind, and I was sharing blood for the first time with someone not family. My first sib, my first lover. Shame clawed at my throat, and I tried to shut the memory away, but I couldn’t refuse my queen.
The first taste of sweet, new blood. Her hot skin against mine. Her cries that had quickly turned to screams. Even when she fought me and clawed at my face and arms, I couldn’t st
op. The pain only inflamed me. I wanted more. I wanted her to shred my skin off in strips. I wanted to cover her in my blood and wear hers too.
They’d had to drag me off her, beating me like a wild animal until sense slowly edged back the red haze clouding my vision. Panting, achingly erect, and covered in blood, I could only watch as she fled from me. That look of horror and fear on her face flashed in my mind constantly, but especially when I fed. Even from family. I hadn’t touched Tlacel’s or Mayte’s blood in over a century. It’d been so long…
I was afraid someone would have to drag me off them, too. That I’d turn into a savage monster and devour the people I loved most in the world. Or, that if they tasted my blood, the same savage, mindless hunger for blood and pain would contaminate them, too.
It was one reason we’d never served a queen despite our age and potential power. Tlacel refused to go without me, and I couldn’t bear to feed or risk touching a woman ever again.
:After that incident with the sib, Grandmama sent us to the same nest where Mama had fostered. She said I needed to know the truth about how I was sired. I needed to understand what I came from, in order to protect us all.:
We’d gone to the nest of Theresa Tocatl, descended from the Great Goddess of Teotihuacan. Little was known about the goddess, though She was always depicted with spiders. Sometimes as a giant mouth lined with teeth. Her Blood each descended from the old gods. A jaguar god. A sun god. A quetzalcoatl god. And the flayed god.
After seeing how the latter Blood fed, I knew who my father had to be.
Even now, my mind flinched from the memory.
We Aima reveled in blood, but the Flayed One reveled in pain as much as the blood, and he saved his darker tastes for hapless human women. He could strip the whole skin off his sacrifice with only a small slit in the chest, and he gave the skin to his queen to wear.
Queen Takes Rook (Their Vampire Queen Book 4) Page 5
