The Blooded Ones

by Elizabeth Brown

  He galloped away from the English and turned his horse toward the river. He would take the fastest route, and get to his uncle before Nemattanew could poison his mind further.

  His woman. Maggie was his wife. And he would keep her.

  CHAPTER 23

  She sank back and pulled a thick fur around her shoulders as she sat listening to the beat of drums in the village. The rhythmic thud kept time with the chants of the warriors, their cries of thanks echoing through the bright autumn night and leaving a hollow emptiness within her. She thought of the tender words he murmured against her hair when they slept, and the way his breath felt against her skin. The memory only served to deepen her longing for him and brought the sting of tears to her eyes.

  She thought she might suffer remorse for abandoning her own time, and although there was a hint of sadness at never returning, the notion of living her life with Winn ran sweeter through her soul. Relief washed over her like a waterfall, the decision made, carrying her doubts and fears away as she looked forward to their future. Perhaps in some cosmic plane there was a reason for her journey to the past, one they would never discover, and if it was nothing more than the purpose of bringing two hearts together, she could live with that.

  She swiped the back of her hand over her eyes. Winn would return for her, she was certain. Hell, she made her own rules and ran her own life in her time, and as such, she should be well equipped to survive on her own in the past for a few days without him. She needed to learn the Paspahegh ways, and learn to be strong when he was away.

  Cold, hungry, and more than the least bit agitated by Winn leaving, she decided to solve all the problems that she could and worry over the things she could not change later. She could fix cold and hungry, but there was little else for her to do but keep occupied until her husband returned.

  Her husband, she thought, and smiled.

  She crawled over to her basket of clothes and pulled out her soft faded blue jeans. Torn at the knee, but still serviceable, she pulled them on beneath her doeskin dress. Next were her suede work boots, which she covered with her fur leggings and tied tight with rawhide cords. Satisfied with her work thus far, she examined her parka. Streaked with blood and slashed from shoulder to waist, it would offer little protection so she left it beside the fire. She could not fathom any useful task for her wristwatch, but she slid it over her wrist anyway.

  The night the Bloodstone took her she had been unusually bereft of any technology in her pockets such as a cell phone, not that it would have done her much good in her current predicament. She tightened the laces of her boots and double knotted them, then grabbed a traveling satchel made of beaver bladder with a long strap. She crossed the strap over her shoulder and settled the bag at her waist, then scourged for the few remaining bits of food left in the yehakin. There was not much to choose from since they expected to eat at the feast, but Winn usually kept at least some dried meat and corn cakes to munch on and she added what she found to her sack.

  She peeked out the yehakin and saw the villagers engrossed in the dance, and the sounds of the beating drums muffled her footsteps as she left. She crossed behind the yehakin without looking back, thrusting a fist across her cheek when a tear spilled as she made her way toward the corral. Spending time with the horses would soothe her, as it always did, and bundled up snugly as she was she could spend the night with them instead of alone in the yehakin.

  “Damn it,” she muttered. She shook her head when tender thoughts collided, ones of a soft gentle mouth caressing her skin, a firm hand that held her against his heart, the way he whispered endearments against her ear and sent shivers down deep in her belly.

  She cursed as she tripped over a fallen branch, and stopped to regain her sense of direction. She could still hear the hollow thud of the drums and the cries of songs from the village, and she could see the glimmer of the bonfire across the way when she looked back. Had she been so distracted by daydreams that she passed by the lean-to?

  With her ears filled by the fading pounding of the drums, she did not notice a snapping of forest debris on the path behind her until the footsteps were upon her. The hair pricked up on the back of her neck and she smelled his dank scent before she swung around to confront her stalker.

  Nemattanew stood crouched behind her, slowly rising to his full height as she glared at him. He was planted between her and the village, her only escape being the woods. She moved her hand to the knife at her waist for reassurance and glared at the man as she waited for his next move. Obviously, he had lied about his intent to leave the village.

  He took a step toward her, and she backed away an equal amount of paces.

  “So the Red Woman stays here.”

  “Just go away, leave me alone,” she said, her voice tapering off as it wavered. “Winn will be back soon,” she lied. She darted a glance to her rear to see where to escape, dismayed to see only dense brush and no discernible trail.

  They both knew it to be a lie, and a grin stretched over his lips.

  “I saw him leave the village. He goes to ask for your life, but we both know he will not get it. What then, Red Woman?”

  “You should worry what he will do when he finds you bothering me!”

  “No,” he growled. “You should worry if I will kill you now, or let you suffer. Perhaps I will keep you until he returns, and let him watch you bleed from my knife.” He reached out and snatched her wrist painfully, turning it over. He made a deep growling sound as he glared at the scar on her palm

  “Stay away from me!” she shouted, wrenching away from him.

  “Winn truly hides a Time Walker?” He raised his head to the stars and let out a chilling howl of laughter. “He thinks to keep you? What a fool he is!”

  She fumbled backward and felt the stab of a branch in her ribs and leaves brush her neck.

  “Run,” he grinned, his words dripping with excitement and malice. “Run as fast as you can. I give you five paces before I gut you.” He traced a path on his own chest with one finger from the base of his throat down to his navel. “I will see great honor when I bring your head to my Weroance.”

  She believed every ounce of his threat and took off in a sprint. The satchel bounced against her kidney as she darted through the trees, wincing at the sting of branches tearing at her face and neck. She jumped over a rotted fallen tree and lost her balance, falling to her knees on the pine-needle-strewn ground. Looking around, she tried to catch a breath, her chest heaving with the effort, and she sighed when she realized he was not pursuing her. When she struggled to her feet, her head still spinning, she was immediately knocked back to the ground by a blow from behind.

  She felt his face against the back of her neck as he leaned in close to her ear, with the stink of his rancid breath causing her nose to wrinkle in disgust.

  “Where is your warrior now, Red Woman? I see no man here, except me.”

  He bound her wrists behind her back with a thick rope and hauled her to her feet.

  She sat on her knees in the dirt, a pair of viselike hands gripping her shoulders to keep her as much upright as was possible with her head hanging limp. The return to awareness was abrupt, as if a light switch had been flicked on and suddenly she could see again, but a thick sour smoke filled her lungs and she twisted her head away from the scent. The hands held her tighter, and then she spotted a burning ember smoldering in the hand of another held directly under her nose. She scrunched her nose and sneezed, and struggled to sit back away from the ember and smoke.

  “Enough! Stop it!” she snapped. At the sound of her voice, the brown hand with the burning bundle of twigs pulled back away from her face and she coughed out the last remnants of smoke from her lungs.

  “Welcome, Blooded One.”

  Maggie looked up. The voice was stilted but clear, authority ringing through his words as sure as the smoke smothering her breath. It was Nemattanew who stood at her side keeping her upright, but the man who spoke sat on a high dais in front of her. He wore a
decorated breechcloth riddled with brilliant colored beads, his arms littered with thick copper bracelets and smeared with bright red paint. His face was creased with age, tanned to a dark hue, a stark pallet of amused disgust gracing his expression as he considered the white woman kneeling in a disoriented heap before him.

  “Welcome? This is hardly a welcome!” she replied, prompting a wave of gasps from onlookers. She suspected she was in a long house and with the cluster of people gathered, she could see this was some sort of ceremonial assembly. She desperately hoped that not all the pomp and circumstance was in honor of her appearance.

  The man considered her words, his black eyes narrowing into slits. The two beautiful women at his side moved closer to him when she spoke as if to shield him from the advance of the evil Blooded One. Maggie could not help a stifled laugh that emerged as the gloriously half-naked woman clung to the man, equally decorated in finery.

  “I am Weroance Opechancanough,” he said. His voice betrayed no anger at her words, only a curious tolerance, but his face still was hardened in a formidable mask. The strength of her resolve began to crumble as a sick feeling permeated the pit of her stomach and she realized exactly who the man was and how tenuous her situation had become.

  “I’m Maggie,” she answered, her voice wavering only slightly.

  “Tell me, Maggie,” he said. “Do you put a spell upon my nephew, as the Pale Witch put a spell on me?”

  “I don’t know any spells,” she replied evenly, figuring the stronger she sounded, the better. To sit like a quivering idiot and plead for her life would be useless, so if she were going to burn she would do it with a fight. “But I do know what happens to you and your people. Is that why you want me dead?”

  His lips pursed tightly and he patted the shoulders of each woman beside him, and then gave a curt nod to the other spectators in the Long House.

  “Leave us.”

  Nemattanew continued to keep a grip on her shoulder, and he made one attempt to argue in his own language before the Weroance issued a final order to dismiss him. The Long House emptied completely in less than a minute, leaving her on her knees at the feet of the leader.

  “I wonder why you still have a tongue, with the way you speak. Have you turned my nephew into a fool? Is sharing your furs such pleasure he would forget he is a man?”

  “Winn is no fool.”

  He slid off the platform, with much more finesse and grace than Maggie expected from an older warrior, then squatted down in front of her to eye level. When he reached out to touch one of her thick red braids, she swatted at his hand with her bound fists, which only caused him to smile. It was not a pleasant smile by any means, more forced and maligned, but it kept his hand away and for that, she was grateful.

  “Don’t touch me,” she hissed. She overplayed her hand against his composure and lost, a startled yelp escaping her lips when he snatched her chin in his fingers, his ebony eyes flaring.

  “I will touch what I please,” he snarled. “You only breathe right now because of my command. Perhaps you should consider that before you speak.” He released her chin and she sat back on the ground, her eyes still set warily on him as she fought to control her rapid breathing.

  “What do you plan to do with me?” she asked.

  “What my nephew failed to do.”

  “Your nephew is a…a decent man.”

  One eyebrow rose slightly. “Decent? What meaning is that?”

  “It means good. Kind.”

  His black eyes narrowed into slits and his weathered face hardened.

  “Winkeohkwet will not disobey me. No warrior of mine makes such a mistake. You think you are so important to my nephew, you think he would not crush your skull at my command?”

  She was sure he meant every syllable, from his declaration of wonder at her protest to his pledge to murder her himself. She swallowed back the bile rising in her throat and closed her eyes.

  “I know he would not hurt me,” she whispered.

  He darted forward and grabbed her neck with one large and surprisingly vise-like hand, the other latched to her shoulder to make it easier to drag her close to his pedestal. There he slammed her head down onto a flat, round stump protruding from the ground, the skin of her neck and shoulders scraping against the roots that anchored the stump to the ground. Her vision split into blackness with shredded stars whirling above, but before she could succumb to losing consciousness, his hand loosened on her throat enough for her to gasp air back into her lungs.

  “I have killed many Time Walkers. You are one of many, Blooded One, and you will not be the last.”

  She saw dark dried blood on the stump, her cheek pressed into the slimy wood that she realized was slick with gore from another recent sacrifice. She gasped another breath of air through her narrowed windpipe, unable to move since his fingers still held her down by the neck. What could she say to save herself? She was no Pale Witch, nor a witch of any kind, and her magic came from her knowledge of her own time, not some spell. Her stomach whirled and dropped when she saw him raise a mallet in his other hand.

  “I know when you will die,” she croaked. The effect was not instantaneous, but it worked. He slowly lowered the weapon and removed his hand from her neck, and she gauged her actions against his by very carefully raising her head. She kneeled in front of him, hoping her attempt at mimicking other Indian women would show him her deference. Trying to control her rapid breathing as her lungs screamed for more air, she remained hunched over at his command, her cheek caked with wet gore from a previous sacrifice on the stump.

  “Then your magic is more powerful than even the Pale Witch,” he said, careful and controlled in his response, spoken more to himself than to her. “Tell me, Blooded One, when will I die?”

  She made the decision, not certain if it would keep her alive, but afraid it was her only hope.

  “I see you trick the English by sharing their food. I see your warriors take many lives in one bloody day, in all the English villages. It will be called the Massacre of 1622. You think it will drive them back across the ocean, but it will not,” she said. Her voice gained conviction as she thought up more nonsense to cast doubt in his mind. “A Weroance who knows when his time ends cannot lead his people,” she said. “And the man who kills the Blooded One will curse his people for eternity.” She dared to look up and saw his eyes opened wide and his mouth slightly agape. “I have seen it…and it will be!”

  She clenched her hands tightly but could not feel the pain as her nails dug into her palms, too focused on the way the deep bronze of his skin faded to a gray tinged pallor on his face. The hand holding the mallet twitched and rose slightly, indecisive, before it dropped back down at his side.

  “Nemattanew!”

  The warrior responded to the Weroance’s command with only a few seconds delay, and Maggie realized he had been standing nearby the entire time.

  “Take her to the English, since they claim her as kin. She will share their fate.”

  Opechancanough lowered his head close to her crusted cheek, and though her heart pounded loudly in her ears, his words were clear.

  “You may keep your life today, as I spared the Pale Witch once before. When you see her, tell her what was done here today,” he whispered. “You will die, but not by my hand. I will not let you curse my people.”

  He straightened up and nodded. Nemattanew grabbed her by her bound wrists and dragged her out of the Long House.

  PART THREE

  CHAPTER 24

  She sat numb on the wagon bench, her head feeling as if an axe had split it, although it remained intact and throbbing. Nemattanew rode silently beside the wagon. The man called Thomas Martin who claimed to be her uncle drove from a bench in front of her, ambling along as if they found a stray Englishwoman every day. She closed her eyes for a moment with a semblance of relief. She was still alive, and that was enough of a victory for the moment.

  Whether Thomas had truly mistaken her for his kin or had some other d
evious plan in mind, she did not know, but she was certain she wanted no part in it either way. She subdued the urge to tell him exactly why she was not his niece, but the warnings from Winn still resonated through her. No one could know where she came from. No one would believe her, and the truth would likely get her strung up for witchery. Her only option was to play along with the English until she had an opportunity to escape.

  Thomas Martin finally breached the silence by clearing his throat with a cough.

  “I am glad to see ye hale my niece. It seems the savages treated ye with kindness. I am saddened to hear of yer ordeal since the accident and wish ye a speedy return to good health.”

  “W-what accident?” was the only sensible thing she could muster.

  “Why, yer fall from the ship. Ye were thought dead in the river. Ye know not what I speak of?”

  “Uhm, no. No, I don’t remember falling off a boat,” she murmured. He cracked the reins against the hide of the horse to urge it faster through the dense wooded trail.

  “No memory? Have ye lost yer sense, girl?” he asked.

  “No! I just don’t know what you’re talking about,” she lied.

  “So there it is. The escorts from the Company said ye took a fall no man could survive. Perhaps it jumbled yer memory a bit,” he shook his head in disgust. “I hope ye recover yer wits soon, or I will lose the price I paid for ye passage,” he grumbled.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Yer speech is queer, niece, did my brother speak so? Mayhap he spoke that blasted Scots like his wife and twisted yer English tongue for it.” He shook his head at her expectant appraisal. “No matter. I think young Benjamin has already taken a fancy to ye, so do not worry. He is a good man. Perhaps he will contract for you.”