Hot Blooded

by Amanda Carlson

  The yellow had finished festering out. Now only bright red blood leaked from wounds, which thankfully were starting to close on their own. Danny had stopped thrashing once the poison had finished ejecting, but he was still out cold.

  There was a noise in the woods to my left. Ray was coming through the trees. It seemed he’d found his way back from wherever he’d hidden himself when the devils had attacked. I’m not sure how much he’d seen of them in the dark, but thankfully it had been enough to keep him away. “Ray, the threat might not be fully gone,” I called. “But for now I think it’s okay to stay. Just make sure you don’t step out past the trees to my right. Unless, of course, you want to be eaten alive by supernatural devil bats.”

  “I’m not going anywhere near there,” Ray grumbled. “I saw those things. I just spent the last hour huddled under a downed tree convincing myself I wasn’t dreaming. Every time I turn around there’s another freaking creature coming out of the woodwork. When does it end?”

  “To be fair, I’ve never seen anything like them either. There are a lot supernaturals on this earth that I’ve never heard about.” Witches might know about demons—and horrid demon pets—because they were natural enemies, but wolves had never bothered with the Underworld to my knowledge. The standing philosophy was: we stayed away from them and they stayed away from us. Demons could raise seventy-five different types of killer bats and we would be none the wiser. “Ray, as long as you’re back, make yourself useful. Can you be a sport and get us some water?”

  I’d been hoping for Eamon to return, but this would have to do.

  “How am I supposed to find water in the dark, Hannon?” Ray said. “I could barely find my way back here in one piece. My eyes don’t spark up every time I need to see.”

  I smiled in spite of the situation. “Our eyes don’t spark so we can see. They light because of the magic manifesting behind them. Eyes really are a portal into the soul, Ray. As for the water, it can be found in any of the packs. Just feel around.”

  “Fine,” Ray grumbled, as he shuffled his way around the area.

  “Water will be good,” Naomi agreed.

  “Do you think the venom will rinse off his skin?”

  She nodded. “I believe so.”

  Tyler still had a grip on Danny’s legs, but he stayed silent. We were all ready to spring if Danny started thrashing again.

  Ray tripped over something and let out a string of curses. “Jesus, what’s in this? Lead bricks? I can barely lift it.”

  “Just drag it over here,” I said impatiently. “Hurry. We have to rinse this stuff completely off Danny.” The yellow residue was now smoking where it lay on his skin. It was beyond nasty.

  Ray toted the pack along the ground. “Here.” He set the pack by my leg and leaned over my shoulder to squint at Danny. “Jesus.”

  The cross was still embedded in Danny’s chest. I didn’t know when we were supposed to get it out. “Do we take the cross out yet?” I asked.

  “Non. It needs more time. I will keep holding him in case there is a reaction. Run the water over him,” Naomi ordered. “Once he is free of all the venom, he should come back to us on his own. After his wounds heal over, we will remove the cross.”

  I let go of Danny and unzipped the pack. There was a big canteen sitting right on top. I unscrewed the top and doused the liquid slowly over his body. His clothes were shredded or had been eaten away, so it was easy to see his flesh. I handed the canteen to Tyler when I was half done, and he ran the rest over his legs. We were careful not to let the yellow crap touch us as it washed away.

  Once the water rinsed away the last of the venom, Danny started to moan in earnest.

  There was relief all around when his eyes blinked open. “What…?” He brought a bloodied hand up to his forehead. “… Happened? It feels like a lorry ran over my face and crushed my legs in the process.” He tried to sit up, but Naomi set a restraining hand on his chest.

  “Take it easy there,” Tyler murmured. “One thing at a time, tough guy.”

  “You must try to sleep,” Naomi said. “It will take time to heal all your wounds.”

  “Sleep, my arse,” Danny growled, glancing from her to me for an explanation. “My body feels like it’s been shredded by a weed whacker. Sleep is the last thing on my mind. And can anyone tell me why I have a bloody chunk of silver lodged in my chest?” Before we could answer, he plucked out the cross and tossed it into the forest with one defiant flick of his wrist.

  “No!” Naomi yelled as she jumped up and went to search for it.

  “You just threw away your cure, buddy,” I told him. “That was a little ungrateful of you, but we will forgive you given the circumstances.”

  “A cure?” Danny replied, a little bewildered. “How can that be a cure? It hurt.”

  “It’s some kind of spelled cross of Naomi’s that magically rids the bearer of all the bad stuff, but won’t kill you. It must have cost her a fortune.”

  “Well, then, I am indeed very ungrateful. I thank you kindly, Naomi,” Danny called. His body was healing extremely quickly now that all the gunk was gone.

  Tyler stood as Naomi came back. His voice was carefully measured. “How did you know we were going to need that thing?” He pointed to the cross, now wrapped in the shreds of her shirt so it didn’t burn her skin. “Did your Queen know we were going to encounter something from the Underworld?” Tyler’s voice began to ring with tension. “So you just happened to have a cure-all in your pocket for just such an emergency?”

  Naomi stared back at Tyler, her eyes defiant. They held a glint of a challenge. “I carry this with me always. It never leaves my sight.” Naomi bent over and picked up the bag it belonged in off the forest floor and carefully wrapped the cross back up, placing it in her pocket.

  “It’s pretty handy you had the only thing in the world that could’ve saved him,” Tyler egged, pushing for a fight. “Without it, he would’ve died.”

  “I earned this healing cross with the blood of my servitude,” she retorted, a steel edge lacing her normally lithe accent. “Selene would take it back from me if she was given the chance, but it’s mine now. I won it from her fairly.”

  “The cross was the Lunar Goddess’s trinket?” I asked. No wonder it worked on the devil venom. It had been made for a goddess.

  Naomi nodded slowly. “It was… yes.”

  “See,” Tyler accused, pointing at Naomi. “This proves my point exactly. Naomi and Selene know each other personally. Did you know that?” He turned to me, his eyes blazing. “We can’t keep trusting them blindly, Jess! If we do, we’ll all end up dead. The Queen gave us two vamps who have a connection to the very Goddess we’re trying to kill. This isn’t an even game; it’s rigged.”

  I ignored Tyler’s tirade for the moment and instead narrowed my eyes on Naomi, assessing. There was pain and some guilt in her expression before she finally glanced away. I ventured a guess. “You said you earned that cross with the blood of your servitude.” I pointed to her pocket. “You served Selene?”

  “Oui,” Naomi said thinly, turning back to face me.

  “Willingly?”

  She hesitated for a few beats. “Oui.”

  “Your Queen is very shrewd. I’ll give her that.” Sending two of her best, knowing they knew the enemy better than we did put us in a challenging position. “Did your Queen order you not to divulge this connection to us?” I asked.

  “We were to give you the minimum assistance, as always. It is so for any duty. She needn’t have ordered us to keep quiet specifically; it would be expected of us.”

  “Now that we know you’re connected to Selene, what happens next?” I asked. “If you served the Goddess, you have inside information, things that will make defeating her easier. Now that we know, what are you going to do about it?”

  Tyler stood next to me, silent, his anger vibrating around us in waves.

  A slow smile spread across Naomi’s features, making her appear both sweet and gruesome at
the same time. She was still covered in dried blood, the white of her cheekbones standing out in bright contrast against the red. “Now that this information is out it seems the rules have changed.”

  There was a gust of air and Eamon dropped beside her. “Naomi, you must keep your mouth shut. Our Queen will not tolerate anything more. We are almost to the boundary. That was our only duty. We will see them to the edge and leave—nothing more.”

  Naomi uttered a single word in response. “Non.”

  11

  “That is not what we are doing, brother.” Naomi put a hand on his arm, silencing him before he could form a rebuttal. He must have been lurking in the trees listening to us. My distaste for him heightened to new levels. “Have you forgotten what just happened here? Our duty was to take them to the entrance and to warn them of the dangers—all of the dangers. The winged devils were unexpected and much too far outside of her domain. Something is wrong here, different than it should be, and we will do our best to figure it out before it ends us all. The boundary lines have changed, and we will change accordingly.”

  “That is not our job,” Eamon insisted. “Our duty is to fulfill the Queen’s orders, not to divulge unnecessary information or battle what waits for us inside those lines. The Queen will not suffer us if we do not follow her wishes.”

  “You would choose to not repay a life debt?” Naomi quirked her head to the side. “You would choose instead to run with your tail between your legs yet again?”

  “Of course we will repay the debt,” Eamon sputtered. “But we need to do it according to our laws. We report back to our Queen and await her wishes. She will decide who owes and how much we pay. That has always been our way.”

  “My life was saved by one thing only: the blood of an immortal. To not repay such a gift immediately is unthinkable. We will repay the need, which means we will bring them to her door and give them the information they need to survive.”

  “The Queen will be angry.”

  “The Queen is diplomatic.” Naomi crossed her arms. “If I were to leave when the bearer of my debt is in need, we risk war with the wolves, do we not?” She shifted her gaze to me and raised an eyebrow.

  “Um… yes. Absolutely,” I answered, following her lead. “Eamon, you can’t desert us now. Your Queen wouldn’t want a war on her hands. As a rule, wolves must pay up immediately if they can. Nobody wants a life debt hanging over their heads. If you don’t pay it now as needed, I could demand something bigger from your Queen once we return. Then where would you be? There’s not a doghouse big enough, especially with what I’m going to ask for.”

  Naomi smiled, covering it up delicately with the back of her hand as she replied, “And once we arrive at Selene’s door, we will stay and help you defeat her. If we make it out alive, my life debt to you will be paid in full.” She inclined her head. “Agreed?”

  “Agreed,” I said quickly.

  Eamon gasped. “We will do no such thing! The venom has gone to your brain and made you rash. It’s too dangerous. I will not willingly return to that place and suffer at her hands agai—”

  “We will do it,” Naomi snapped. “You are my blood-kin first; my debts are yours to fulfill by honor. The Goddess will not harm us this time. We are smarter and stronger; we are not the children we once were.”

  Eamon raged, his hands balled into tight fists. It looked like steam could possibly pour from his ears.

  “If you don’t mind my asking,” I interrupted, trying to diffuse the situation. “How long did you… serve Selene? And why?”

  Naomi turned to me, her eyes stark for a moment before she answered. “One hundred and fifty years,” she replied softly. “We did not understand the gravity of our decision at the time. We were fledglings recently turned by a low-level master. Once it was known our special gifts in tracking and sensing were”—she cleared her throat—“rare, we became a bartering tool to make our master wealthy. He offered us to the highest bidder, which was the Lunar Goddess, but the Vampire Queen stepped in and gave us a choice—we could choose her or Selene. We were foolish. We thought being in the company of a powerful goddess would give us great power and ultimate status, that she could protect us better than our own Queen,” she scoffed. “But we were chained and treated like slaves for over a century. Unleashed only when she required us to do her bidding.”

  “How did you finally escape?” I asked. I was both curious and appalled.

  “She became lazy and began to leave us unattended for small periods. Then I happened across this.” She patted her pocket. “The cross can do more than just heal an immortal. It is a powerful weapon. While it was buried in Danny’s body, burning the poison of the Underworld, he was temporarily void of all his power.”

  “Pardon?” Danny interrupted. “I hadn’t any power? That’s funny, because I didn’t feel any different. Though I was unconscious through most of it.” He was still on the ground, sitting upright now, but not ready to stand. We were all following the conversation closely. Ray had taken a seat on a nearby log, and Tyler stood stoically with his arms crossed, patient for now to hear her out.

  “If it is used against Selene,” Naomi continued, “it will absorb her powers the same way, rendering her useless for the time it remains in her body. It will not kill her outright, but it will incapacitate her. Once she found out that the cross could work against her, she sought to destroy it… but it was already lost.”

  “And once she misplaced it—it was your property to find,” I finished.

  “Oui.” Naomi smiled like a shrew. “It was not my fault my jailer became careless and trusting in my company, that she mistook my placation for devotion and faithful servitude.”

  Keeping Naomi on my side was an absolute must from now on. She was proving to be a very smart, very powerful supernatural. Behind those petite shoulders and tiny waist was a cold-blooded killer.

  “If that cross can cure a supernatural, how come your brother didn’t use it on you? Why use my sister to get blood?” Tyler growled as he joined the conversation. He had calmed down, but not by much.

  Naomi turned to Tyler and addressed him directly. “There is a caveat to having ownership of the cross. Once it is yours, it will not work against you, nor will it aid you. The spell is dead to me, though the silver still leaves a mark on my flesh. Selene paid a great deal for its creation, to use against powerful enemies, and had the insurance policy built in that the cross would never be able to harm her. But the crafters of this trinket were very powerful in their own rights, and they played a little game. If the trinket was lost, whoever found it became its rightful owner. Once out of her hands and claimed by another, it could work against her. So in essence she had crafted the only means in the world to render her own powers useless.”

  “I’m sure whoever crafted it didn’t advertise their prank and risk her wrath, so how did you find out?” I asked. “Whoever did this played a dangerous game with a very powerful goddess.”

  Naomi shrugged. “I didn’t know until I pierced it into her flesh. It worked. Of course, I had a feeling, as I often do with such things, but nothing more.”

  “You engaged a goddess on a feeling.”

  Naomi started to pace along the tree line. Eamon was still angry, but he held himself silent while she talked. It was clear he didn’t have the power to stop her, or he would’ve used it by now. “Our lives were no longer worth living,” she stated evenly. “I had reached a breaking point and had made peace with a true death. At that point I would’ve been happy to die.”

  “But you still have the cross?” I asked, confused. “And Selene’s still alive. How did you get it back once you pierced her? She had to have been pissed off. You had her cross and you stabbed her with it. It must have been Clash of the Titans when she went after you.”

  Naomi stopped. “She did not have time to attack. After the cross absorbed her powers, I beheaded her.”

  “Wow!” I exclaimed on a low breath. I hadn’t been expecting that.

  Danny
whistled and Tyler exhaled loudly.

  “How could she survive a beheading and still be alive now?” I asked. Beheading was the one thing that could kill a supe, even a powerful one. No head meant no communication with the vital parts that kept you alive.

  “She is a goddess.” Naomi shrugged. “I learned too late that in order to kill such a being you have to kill the immortality in her blood, along with the body. I left her to rot, but it was not enough.” She sighed.

  “How do you kill immortality?” I asked. I’d never even heard of such a thing, but I was young. The amount of things I didn’t know would fill an ocean. I had some serious catching up to do. I guess that was the hundred-million-dollar question. Not being able to kill Selene in any of the normal ways was going to complicate things to an incredible degree—possibly even make it impossible to give her a true death.

  Naomi shrugged again. “I know not how. I have the capability of stripping her of power with this. That is all.” She patted her pocket. “The killing of the immortality will be up to you.”

  Now it was my turn to sigh. “I thought Rourke was the only one who had bested her and lived.” And I hoped he was doing it again right now. My heart gave an involuntary clench. He was alive. I knew it. But he didn’t have a lot of time left. We had to keep moving. “That’s what your Queen told me anyway. She said nothing about there being another who had escaped her wrath. Why would she lie about that?”

  “Our Queen has always been very skeptical of us after all those years spent with Selene,” Naomi replied. “She still wanted our talents, but distrusted our reasons for coming back to her. I divulged what had happened and showed her the cross, begging her for her protection. She demanded I turn it over to her. But she’d made a grave mistake. We had not yet pledged ourselves to her. I was not yet hers to control. A vampire needs to swear fealty and exchange blood with their master before they can manage them. I threatened to leave and she swore an oath that she would never take it from me while I lived. Eamon and I were desperate to belong to a powerful Coven, one that would protect us from the Goddess if she ever rose again, so we accepted.”