Ruled by Tainted Blood
Blood Phoenix Chronicles: Book Two
Michael J. Allen
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1: Fires of Rebellion
Quayla
Waking naked in the bloody waters of the fountain within our sanctum garden wasn’t what I’d expected.
A low moan lamented dull, throbbing stabs of pain. My eyes refused to open. Elven blood and bone exploded behind my lids, current pain connecting to remembered agony. Even before I managed to flee the show, I knew I was broken.
“Ani?” the single word escaped in a croak.
“Shield Quayla!” Excited relief filled our Shield automata’s voice. “You’ve returned to consciousness.”
Except, she’s not an artificial intelligence. She’s something else.
“Yay?” I swallowed. Sucking on my tongue failed to milk any moisture free.
Dry mouth occurred in most mortal lives, especially after a night of revelry. The condition shouldn’t happen to me—a mythological creature formed of water.
Questions escaped my lips in a drawn-out moan. “Is Vitae safe? Are we secure? Where am I?”
The escaping words fostered a vague sense of déjà vu, like Anima and I had already had this conversation.
“Vitae is fine. You defeated the main Sidhe assault.”
Main?
Hesitance crept into Anima’s words. “He put you in the garden fountain to help you recover.”
“There was more than one assault? What aren’t you telling me? Where’s Vitae?”
“The assault you met hid another. The repercussions required Vitae to leave you in my care. He and Summus have gone to speak with the Sidhe Courts.”
I pushed up into a partial sitting position. One hand slipping on the fountain’s edge, splashing in a bare few inches of water. I looked down.
Blighted hells, Vitae’s going to kill me for using up Mare’s essence.
My body rested in the blood-stained dregs a fountain once containing the last of Mare’s essence. Skin puckered around impaling bone chunks and metal shards. “He just left me here? No one’s here but you?”
“Th-that’s correct.”
Shrapnel tore skin as I shifted, further staining what remained of the fountain’s waters.
Vitae just abandoned me here? After I saved him? He left me bleeding in the fountain...alone?
Heat crept into my voice. “What could be so bad he abandoned me to help a divine?”
Anima didn’t answer.
It took several tries to focus my mind enough to transmogrify my body from human flesh into my native watery essence. I didn’t fully transmog to my real form, just enough to make removing shrapnel less painful. The shift happened more rapidly thanks to recent reading.
I yanked shrapnel out of my body piece by piece, dumping the shards on the garden floor and rebalancing my essence to fill in the wounds. I reverted to human shape and grabbed a tiny wing on one of the five, diminutive stone angels looming over my spinning head. Casting my eyes between the small statues to the marble archangel for moral support, I struggled to lift myself. A sluggish thought brought my gaze back to the putto—often misnamed cherub—I gripped as an anchor.
The alcove between the putto’s feet gaped empty.
Repercussions...Creator’s mercy!
Cold swallowed me. My fingers slipped. I crashed down into the fountain unable to catch my breath. A panicked crawl through the basin brought me to another empty alcove and then another.
My hand came down onto piercing pain.
I turned over once-more-bleeding fingers to find sapphire shards digging into fresh, pink skin. The world slowed. Gravity doubled and doubled again. My head turned toward my egg’s alcove like an ancient cemetery gate.
Fragments of celestial silver and sapphire trailed from the alcove into the fountain’s basin.
My voice pitched toward subsonic. “Ani?”
It wasn’t abnormal to feel different in a new body. I’d chalked up disorientation to the new form and my injuries but evidence stared me in the face—just as wrong...broken...shattered as I felt.
“I’m sorry, Shield Quayla, but something broke your egg during the theft of all the others.”
No. That’s...that can’t be possible.
I’d never been without an egg, never been without that last anchor to Creation that would’ve protected me against True Death.
“There’s more, Quayla. I hesitate to burden you further, but your mass is wrong,” Anima said. “Your nest didn’t contain enough essence to grow a full-size body when you killed yourself.”
Lingering cold became an ice age.
Shields varied in size, so being smaller than normal wasn’t the end of the world. My lessons suggested ways to adjust mass, but the loss of my egg felt crippling.
Suffocating and on the edge of abject panic, I tried to emulate our earth phoenix Terrance’s calm practicality. A quick count of limbs and digits confirmed a functional body, but no matter how hard I tried to push concern aside and find a rational course of action, I couldn’t escape the reality sucking me in like a black hole.
My empty nest hadn’t contained enough essence during my last rebirth. My egg had been destroyed.
A sudden sense of being crushed returned.
How close to True Death did I come?
flashed through mem Our sanctum had suffered attack and if the Sidhe came back any death meant permanent Destruction.
Vitae just left me here dying with an empty nest and no egg.
I collapsed back into the fountain. An itch in my cheeks forewarned tears, but I couldn’t afford any more loss of essence.
“Creator, what do I do?”
“Draw in the waters,” Anima said.
My gaze fell on the fountain’s remnants, head already sweeping back and forth. “I can’t. Vitae will have my head.”
“You need all of the strength you can gather.”
Anima was right. Besides, Vitae could’ve used his essence to heal me before he left. Instead he’d dumped me in the fountain and left me to my fate. Despite being an unintended compliment, it reinforced one thing: my desire for Vitae’s approval was just as misplaced as our air phoenix Caelum said.
If he doesn’t care enough to help me after I saved his life, I’m done caring what he thinks.
I drew in the fountain’s waters. The extra water steadied my head and added some mass, but didn’t fill the ache left in my chest by waning anger.
I picked shattered sapphire shards and bent celestial silver, cradling the pieces to my naked breasts. Touch against the dead egg fragments no longer tingled my skin. I circled into a fetal ball in the bottom of the fountain, wrapped so tightly around what remained of my egg that the shards left blood trails painting my chest.
I saved him, did my duty, sacrificed myself for the Shield, and Vitae still abandoned me without a care whether I lived or died.
Ignis
A firestorm swirled Ignis back into existence. Flames reflected off the mirrored metal of his nest’s alcove, redoubling the heat of his furious snarl. Ashes floated down around him, settling back into the stone basin. He stared into his reflection, eyes still glowing coals.
“How dare he?! I’ll hunt that infernal elf down if it takes—”
Anima’s voice rose from his nest. “Shield Ignis?”
“What?” Ignis snapped. “I’ve got to get back there.”
The Shield’s automata sounded hurt even though she wasn’t designed with emotions. “T
he Shieldheart and Summuseraphi are en route to where you died. You’re needed elsewhere.”
“That son-of-a-bitch faerie ripped my heart out of my chest while I was still alive.”
“I’m sorry for your pain, but the Sidhe ambushed each of our shields and they’ve launched multiple coordinated incursions. Two shields and a Divine One for a single site is overkill.”
Ignis pushed open the alcove. Lingering handprints glowed on the metal. He descended the rear access steps of his apartment building’s ancient dead boiler. He yanked a pull chain. The handle warped, but a short deluge of scalding water from the newer boiler cooled his skin.
Putti had reworked the boilers so that neither could be removed without compromising building integrity. They’d added an adjoining entrance behind both into Ignis’s basement apartment.
A section of brick wall swung out of the way, admitting him into a large corner shower unit. A twist of a handle opened up shower heads above and around him, tepid water lowering his body temperature the rest of the way. He never used the hot water tap even during bitter winters.
Ignis stepped from the shower onto a fluffy slate grey rug and grabbed a matching if fluffier towel. He patted himself dry and took only a moment to double check his reflection. He was in a hurry to rip the Unseelie knight’s head off, but haste was dangerous—particularly when combined with fire and fury.
A glance at the mirror showed Ignis in need of a body-wide shave, but otherwise his basic size, shape and nationality had returned to a close approximation of his former self.
Focus in his final moments had informed the makeup of his new body. He’d learned the technique from an earth phoenix that had been positively persnickety about appearance. It didn’t always work and little changes crept in no matter how much time he had to concentrate, but he didn’t need as many changes of clothes as Aquaylae or Caelum.
Nobody needs as many changes of clothes as Caelum.
Ignis dressed quickly and grabbed a spare hilt from his underwear drawer. The foot-long ironwood rod resembled nothing so much as a thick, intricately carved flute. Nonetheless his weapon’s flexibility served him better than Aquaylae’s karambit hilts or even Vitae’s fighting canes.
Ignis touched an alderwood box gilt with tarnished silver on his dresser. He placed his other hand on the gem in his chest and closed his eyes.
“In service unto death I swear this life unto the Undying Light.”
A gleam of white light leaked from the box’s seams. Ignis opened the tiny chest, removing a golden pocket watch intricately carved with the image of an angel. He tucked his means of contacting Vilicangelus into a pocket and hurried out the door.
One hand tucked inside his jacket and fingers wrapped white-knuckled around his hilt, Ignis exited his apartment building tense for a fight. Heat clung to his new skin, blood burning in his veins. Knight Dolumii had ambushed him with the help of some Wyldfae. They’d killed him. Dolumii had stolen his heart.
If he thinks he’s going to control me, he’s got a lot to learn about fire.
Much to Ignis’s disappointment, nothing so much as looked at him funny during his march to the bus stop.
Nothing’s waiting for me here because I was the first ambush.
Ignis took a deep breath, smothering the coals of fury that started to outline his body in a nimbus of flame.
Calm, the flame of a scented candle or sandalwood and incense. Wildfires are destructive, and once unleashed control becomes problematic—not something anyone wants in a metropolitan area.
Ignis hated taking public transit, but he wasn’t comfortable storing money digitally and accumulating debt was out of the question. Without an easily-melted banking card of some sort, he couldn’t call Uber or another of the cab company replacements. Seeking a banking branch for taxi cash required time he didn’t have. He reached the bus stop as the MARTA bus rounded the far corner. The dirty, dented vehicle stank of natural gas. Its door opened and a wave of Sidhe taint rolled over him masking all other smells.
Ignis licked his lips, smiled and stepped inside.
So, who’s today’s contestant? Fae Kissed or faerie?
No one jumped him.
He scanned the half full seats. No one looked at him for more than a glance, but no one failed to take that glance.
“Were you going to pay?” the driver asked.
Ignis slipped his emergency five into the bill reader, ignoring the label warning him that the unit didn’t give change. The bus gave a small jerk as it lurched back onto the road.
Ignis stepped between benches and seats, keeping a hand on the guide bars to ensure his balance. He inhaled as he passed each passenger, envying Caelum his nose.
Old lady—no.
Two toughs—no.
Middle-aged waitress—no.
Corporate clone—no.
Each filled seat failed to intensify the taint, but the prickle along his skin identified the magic’s origin as Unseelie.
Ignis closed to the final row of seats. A fine-featured young man muttered slippery words meant to persuade the clothes off a teenage girl not long into her breeding years.
Ignis inhaled the increased taint.
He dropped into the seat behind them and leaned his arms on both chair backs. “Unless you want to bleed purple for the young lady, I suggest you sit up straight and don’t say another word until we step off this bus.”
“What’re you talking about?” the boy said. “Buzz off, creep.”
Ignis grabbed the back of the boy’s throat. “You must be new to this Shield.”
The girl paled, eyeing them both. “W-what’s going on?”
“Everything will be fine, Miss. He won’t bother you anymore. The young gentleman and I are just going to get off at the next stop.” Ignis let a flicker of his anger heat his fingers. “We need to chat.”
“He wasn’t bothering me,” she said.
The young man jerked from Ignis’s grip and whipped around. “I don’t know who you are, but hands off or I call a cop.”
Ignis frowned. He grabbed the boy’s shirt, jerked him forward and inhaled.
“What the hell, freak?”
“What’s going on back there?” The bus driver called.
“Everything’s under control.” Ignis pulled an old wallet and flipped it open. At the distance, his spare fire inspector’s badge did the job. He turned toward the girl. “Just questioning a suspect.”
Her expression flickered. Then her whole image flickered.
“By the Undying Light,” Ignis said. “I order you to hold and be known.”
The girl looked from Ignis to the boy and back. “I-I’m not sure what you’re talking about.”
Ignis’s eyes narrowed. “I think you do. After the boy’s gone.”
“Who’re you calling boy? We’re basically the same age.”
Ignis smirked. “Would you care to repeat that? Are you telling an enforcer of law that you’re a twenty-year-old male trying to seduce a teenage girl?”
“Um, well, I said basically the same, I-I’m seventeen, so—”
“ID, please,” Ignis said.
A little ring heralded an impending stop.
“I didn’t do anything. I’ve seen TV. You can’t question anyone underage without a parent or guardian present.”
“Show me your ID to establish your age, and I’ll let you go.”
“Screw you.” The boy lurched out of the bench, grabbing a rail as the bus pulled up to a stop. He rushed out the door before Ignis could follow.
Ignis didn’t bother.
He turned to the girl.
Her image vanished with a pop. A grizzled-looking pixie scowled around the cigar parting his salt and pepper beard. “What’s the deal, bird? Do you have any idea how much fresh wafer semen goes for at the Goblin Market?”
“Ensorcelling a mortal’s mind violates the Articles of Ararat.” Sightline blocked by the bus seat, Ignis slipped his spare phone from one pocket and an elderberry thorn loop from
another.
“I didn’t do a damned thing to his mind. I didn’t offer him any deals. Hell, he was practically begging to put his little worm in my hand.” The pixie grinned. “Besides, nothing happened thanks to you. No slime, no crime.”
“You’re wrong—plenty of slime in that seat.” Ignis tossed the loop into the seat next to the little pixie.
The faerie leapt up, flitting away from the loop. He raised his eyes back to Ignis in time for Ignis to snap the surprise photo.
“Name, Sidhe,” Ignis said.
“Cember, bird.”
“This is an official warning. Leave the mortals alone and return home.”
“I am home,” Cember said. “Next stop.”
Ignis tensed. “There’s an Arch at the next stop?”
Cember’s brow wrinkled. “Not that I know of, just my apartment.”
“You don’t live in Faery?” Ignis asked.
“Cember fetch this. Cember do that. Cember lick my ass so I don’t have to bathe. Thanks, but no thanks.”
“How’d you pay for the apartment?” Ignis asked. “Fairy gold?”
Cember snorted. “Greenbacks, pal, and before you ask, they were as genuine as winter rain. Earned fair and even, disgusting as that is.”
“How?” Ignis asked.
Glamour changed Cember into a grizzled, middle aged man.
“I’m a private dick—surveillance, lost objects, just like in the Philip Marlowe books. Getting candid pictures is easy when you can fly into the room with an invisible camera.” Cember rang the stop request and stood. “I’ve been warned. I’m going.”
“I don’t like the idea of an Unseelie running around the city unsupervised,” Ignis said. “What’s to stop you from converting mortals?”
“I can glamour, okay, but wishes aren’t my bag. Hell, who wants the administrative headache of keeping track of all those deals? Besides, if I were dealing, I’d have to answer to the Court, and that means losing my anonymity. Thanks, but no thanks.” Cember headed for the exit.
Ignis didn’t stop him. He retrieved the thorn loop and sat back in the seat thinking about the encounter. The bus pulled into Dunwoody station. He rode the escalator up to the train platform. Along the way, another taint played across his nose.
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