Bloodline World Seven Book Bundle: 7 Books from the Bloodline Awakened Series and Scarlet Dragon Saga

by J. P. Rice

  “That will be enough out of you,” she said, taking two more purposeful steps toward me. She reached across her body and backhanded me on my left cheek.

  My ears rang in pain as she continued, “When you stole Haruki’s magic, you stole his identity. He went from being considered a deity to being shunned by his own followers. If you were wondering why he hasn’t said a word, it is because he stopped talking after you raped him of his magic. Now he is the sad, pathetic mess you see before you.”

  She flexed the fingers of her right hand as if she were debating whether to slap me or punch me. “He never eats, barely sleeps and stares off into the distance wondering what could have been. Look at him. Look at your destruction. Own it. Think about it.”

  I couldn’t think about it. I had to remain resolute in my stance. How could I feel bad for someone else when no one gave a shit about me? No. I couldn’t allow my head to go there.

  I stared at the wrinkled mess of a man, his face so lined that his dark eyes were barely visible. I remembered the day I had met him. He’d stood with his chin raised, a sign of great pride. Now his head sagged and he stared despondently at the ground.

  Before I felt any sympathy for him, I turned away, but the thoughts wouldn’t dissipate. I’d lured Haruki to the lake where the Morrigan was lying in wait. She’d captured him rather easily, but the torture had taken weeks before he’d agreed to give up his magic.

  The Morrigan had convinced me that the process was normal in the world of the supernatural. I was so caught up with the prospect of having magic that I hadn’t stopped for a second to consider the consequences. It had taken about fifty years to realize my actions were wrong.

  The Huntress went on about Haruki’s struggles in life, occasionally stopping to assault me. I collected a mouthful of blood as she stared at me with a smug look of satisfaction glued to her face. I parted my lips and spat out the liquid, drenching the Huntress’s face in blood. She gasped and stepped back, wiping her cheeks with the sleeves of her elk skin jacket.

  “You’ll pay for that,” she promised and grabbed Haruki by the shoulder. She led him out of the room, once again leaving me in darkness.

  Another person holding a torch entered the room. I waited for my watering eyes to settle from the sudden rush of light. A short man with a ragged yellow beard to his belly, dull blue eyes and a wind burnt face walked toward me with a stool in his hands. It was the druid named Finchley.

  He smiled, and I noticed several missing teeth. The short druid with close-cropped blond hair that bordered on gray walked right up to me. “My, my, my, how the tables have turned. Remember when you had me tied to a post? Remember that? When you and the Morrigan took turns whipping me into submission. Remember those good times? Because I surely haven’t forgotten.”

  He turned around and removed his hemp shirt, exposing a back full of grotesque scars. I turned away and closed my eyes.

  “Look at it,” he screamed. “Look at your work. Or I will burn you at that stake.”

  My neck finally acquiesced, and I faced forward and opened my eyes. He made me look at his mangled body for a solid minute before he put his shirt back on.

  Finchley planted the torch in the ground next to him and looked up at me as he spoke, “It had taken me nearly four hundred years to learn that magic. And then in the blink of an eye...” He blew into his open hand. “Just like that. It was gone forever. Never to return.”

  It was getting harder not to respond, but this was the best way. I’d be lying if I said this wasn’t affecting me emotionally, but I had to fight it off. A confused soul was destined to wander aimlessly, searching for answers that would never come. It was much better to die with peaceful thoughts and a clear mind. My soul would thank me later for that.

  The druid extracted two items from his back pants pockets and approached me. As he neared, I saw he was holding two smaller torches. He dug into the crotch of the pants and produced a ball of string. Gross.

  Finchley pushed the step stool next to me and tied the two torches to the wide rectangular post on either side of my head. He stepped down and reached into his back pocket, producing a little pack of wooden matches. He struck a match and climbed back up on the stool. He ignited the torches and blew out the match.

  If I turned my head in either direction, the flames would ignite my hair. As the warmth kissed my cheeks, it forced to look straight ahead. In silence, the druid began to disrobe. He stepped out of the hemp pants and stood nude, scars painting most of his body. Apparently, he wanted me to see more than just his back.

  “All of these are from you.” He pointed to a hideous purple one near his hip. “Remember that one. When you bit and tore away a chunk of my flesh. Never truly healed. Your lips and mouth forever stained with my blood.”

  Finchley snapped, “Huh? Do you? Or have you forgotten about my pain and suffering?” He softened his tone. “Sure. You got what you wanted and moved on.”

  He spun around, and I fought away tears as I stared at his mangled back with its intersecting avenues of scars. It had been a blur at the time and I hadn’t thought about the aftermath or fallout. I’d felt jilted by life with the disappearance of my husband and I wanted to acquire as much magic as I could by any means necessary.

  I closed my eyes and hoped it would all go away.

  “You close your eyes, I’ll set your pretty red hair ablaze,” he threatened and screamed, “Look at what you have done. I battle chronic pain in nearly every part of my body. All due to you.”

  Finchley softened his tone as tears built up in his eyes. “I pray nearly every day for the Gods to put me out of my misery. Yet the Gods are cruel, though not nearly as cruel as you. Of all the people in all the worlds? Why me?”

  I didn’t have an answer. The Morrigan and I operated randomly, leaving it up to chance. I did what I had to do. I did what I had to do. I did what I had to do.

  “Why me?” he shouted.

  “Just the luck of the draw,” I lamely explained.

  “So I lost my life strictly because of bad luck?” he asked, incredulous and plucked the torch back out of the dirt.

  I tried not to respond, but ended up uttering, “We didn’t pick you for any reason other than you had a healthy reserve of magic.”

  He gazed at the wall, twisting the torch in his right hand. “The talented have always been persecuted throughout history. Often seen as a threat. But I was a threat to no one. I used my magic benevolently. For the benefit of my family. That was it. And it sickens me to think about what you have used my magic to do. To cause suffering. Despicable.”

  He spat in my face, knocked the two tiny torches away from my head and walked out of the room. I took a few shuddering breaths and watched the torches burn away as his spit ran down my nose.

  Before the spit on my face evaporated, someone else walked through the opening. An immense bearded man wearing layers of boiled leather protection appeared from behind the flames and approached me purposefully. The Bavarian Warlock. His freckled face leaned toward me and he placed his torch near my head, inspecting me.

  His greasy hair swung from side to side as he shook his head and turned to leave. Faster than a tornado, he whipped back around and clocked me in the jaw with a closed fist. I saw spotted lights in my vision, swirling together and streaking left and right.

  If those men hadn’t tied my hands behind my back, I would make sure my lower jaw was still hinged. Instead, I pressed my tongue against my teeth, expecting a few to fall out but they remained in place.

  “Hurts, don’t it?” he said and inhaled audibly through his nose, his nostrils flaring.

  Even if I could open my mouth, I wasn’t going to. The Morrigan had informed me that a person’s thoughts right before death often accompanied them for the rest of time. And I considered her an authority on the subject. If my mind was manic and confused when I died, it would follow my soul, torturing me for the rest of eternity. Even though I knew my actions were wrong, I had to remain resolute.


  I did what I had to do. I did what I had to do. I did what I had to do.

  The warlock pulled a circular silver tin from his pocket and cracked it open, exposing minced tobacco. Using his thumb and forefinger, he grabbed a pinch and stuffed it into his bottom lip. “As bad as that hurts, it’s nothing compared to what you did to me. I regained strength in my muscles, but my brain and heart never recovered. You didn’t steal my magic. You stole my livelihood. It was how I made my money. How I supported my family.”

  He sat down in front of me and jammed the torch into the ground. He leaned back on his hands, spat out a big brown wad, and continued in a somber tone, “My wife left me, but you don’t care. I thought she loved me, not the money. Wrong. I became so desperate, I resorted to a life of crime. I was convinced I could buy her back. No better than you, a magical thief. I thought if I could just get some money, she would surely take me back.”

  The warlock paused and turned away, fighting back emotion. “The money I stole only got me further away from her. Until one day I stopped and realized that the futile exercise was wearing my soul down to a nub. I purposely got caught hoping the authorities would put me to death. Put me out of my misery.” He faced me, and tears welled up in his eyes. “And I can trace it back to that one fateful day.”

  He spat another brown wad near my foot. “My chivalric nature of helping a woman in distress caused all this. By the time I’d realized it wasn’t a real water dragon but only an illusion spell, my fate was sealed. I went from having the greatest life in the world to a vagabond thief, begging to die. I drink to excess every day in an ill effort to forget it all. But the smoking branding iron of memories only sinks deeper into my flesh, sizzling and never allowing me to forget. It’s torture.”

  Using a crooked finger, he scraped the chew out of his lip. Like he was tossing a Frisbee, he flicked his wrist toward me, and the soggy chunk of tobacco splattered against my shin. “Now that you’ve seen a few of us, I ask, was it all worth it?”

  Tears rushed to my eyes and my lips trembled, but I kept them sealed.

  The warlock stood up and grabbed his torch. “I’ll take your silence as confirmation that it wasn’t worth it. I look forward to watching you die. In my sad existence, a bright red light lies ahead.”

  Sixteen more visitors marched in. Each one assaulted me verbally and physically. I started to realize that even if I didn’t respond to their questions, these sounds and images would haunt my soul. I couldn’t keep my head clear before my execution.

  The pain in the front of my shoulders led me to believe that my arms could fall off at any moment. How long had I been here? I’d lost consciousness a few times. How long was I out?

  My feet ached and I was ready to die, when a tiny creature marched into the room. The last visitor had left a torch planted in the ground, but I still couldn’t make out the colorful being.

  As the six-inch figure came into focus, I noticed four transparent, membranous wings lined with a spiderweb pattern. Next, I saw the tiny head. She had a bright orange face with silver compound eyes, a defined nose and mouth and two short antennae on her chin. Her giant scarlet ears resembled earmuffs on a human.

  Her purple thorax matched her slender segmented abdomen. I noticed she had a big lump on each side or her body, in between the thorax and abdomen. The bulges caused her to lean forward as she walked. An elongated stinger carried the color of burning coals and extended from her abdomen to scrape the floor when she walked. She marched right up to me and flailed away at my ankle with her two miniscule hands. If her attack weren’t so embarrassingly pathetic, it would be downright adorable.

  The dragonfly stepped back and wiped her hands off. She spoke in a cartoonish, high-pitched voice, “I would have flown over here, but you stole that from me. Along with all my other special skills. Luckily, I can still walk. Most dragonflies don’t have that ability.”

  She paused for a few moments and backed up. “I used to have the greatest hearing, freakish in fact. I was tasked with keeping our village safe because I could hear an oncoming attack from over a mile away.”

  I had a bad idea where this story was headed, as she continued, “You robbed me of keeping my village safe. Two months after you stole my special abilities, my village was slaughtered. I failed to protect the nymphs of the pond. Everyone died except me. I could have saved them.”

  She extended her right arm toward me. “You. You killed them. Their blood is on your hands.”

  She swallowed down some emotion. “I was shunned and thrown out of the village. I tried other places to no avail. Once dragonflies realize who I am, they run in the other direction. Won’t even talk to me. I should have let you kill me. I’d rather be dead than live like this. If I wasn’t such a coward, I’d have killed myself a thousand times by now.”

  Her words hit me like a two-by-four upside the face. If only I had taken their immortality. But I hadn’t. No. It was much worse than that. I’d taken their will to live. And yet they remained chained to immortality, waiting for the glorious day of death that would never come. Swimming in a sewer of lifelessness, struggling just to keep their heads above the waste.

  My death was on the horizon and I couldn’t hold it in anymore. I needed to confess and cleanse my soul. “Do you really want to know why I did it?”

  “I need to know,” she said as she paced in front of me, the still firelight shining through her patterned wings.

  I took a deep breath and let it rip. “Okay, here goes. My mother and father are both Gods. I grew up in a village of elves and I didn’t find out who they were until I was twenty-two. I couldn’t understand why I didn’t have magical abilities. Soon after, I found a husband and cast all those worries aside. And then one day, he went away on a mission for Lugh’s Spear. He left June 14, 1805, just after midday. It was unseasonably cool with only a few clouds in the sky.”

  I caught my breath and continued, “He was wearing a golden ringmail jacket over layers of boiled leather. The jacket gleamed so bright in the dull sunshine. I remember seeing the trails of steam come from his mouth when he said goodbye. He reached inside his collar and pulled out the gold half-heart locket hanging from his silver chain. I held up the other half to the gold heart, and we matched them up perfectly, sharing a brief hug. He waved and turned his back. And I haven’t seen his face since.”

  The dragonfly stopped pacing. “Boo freaking hoo,” she commented, shaking her head.

  I didn’t blame her one bit. “I don’t expect sympathy. After a year had passed, I was at my wits end, my stomach constantly knotted in worry. I set out to save my Darabond. I befriended the Morrigan and asked for her help in finding my husband.”

  “You’re friendly with the Morrigan?” she asked and perked up.

  “I am. She’s one of my closest friends, oddly enough. She corrupted me, to be honest. Convinced me that the only way to find my husband was by taking magic from others. Told me that was what everyone did. I’m not sure if I believed her, and regardless, I went along with it. She used me as a guinea pig, seeing how much magic she could stuff into me before I exploded. I was desperate to find Darabond. I would have done anything.”

  The dragonfly stared at me, and for a brief second, I thought she would take mercy on my plight. However, she shook her head quickly, then went back to pacing. “Don’t try to make me feel bad for you. Not happening.”

  I said, “I’m just telling my story. It feels good to get it off my chest. Reflecting back on it now, it’s easy to see I shouldn’t have done it. But as I said, I would have done anything to reunite with Darabond. After the first taste of magic, I couldn’t get enough. It turned into a feeding frenzy.”

  “It’s good to be the fisherman and not the bait. I wouldn’t know,” added the dragonfly.

  “I’m sorry. Wait, what’s your name?” I asked.

  “Titania,” she announced proudly.

  A grin started to take shape on my face until I remembered the situation. “Like the Queen from A Midsummer Ni
ght’s Dream.”

  She stood up straight and leaned up against the torch, the flickering flames only a few inches above her head. “Yes, yes. Everyone says that. But I don’t want to be compared to a little faerie from a Shakespeare play who whispers in people’s ears. I’m no damselfly in distress. I wanted people to think of me as one bad bitch. And I was on track for that until you hunted me down for sport and drained my will to live.”

  Titania’s words were like dagger blades in the gut. I told her, “I said I was sorry.” I stopped and thought for a moment. “Whoa. You’re the first person I’ve ever apologized to. For what it’s worth.”

  She looked at the ground and made a ‘patoot’ spitting sound. “It’s worth nothing.” She raised her head, her strange eyes judging me. “You know, it takes a special kind of asshole to steal the powers of a tiny dragonfly. Even with my special skills, I didn’t pose a threat to you.”

  “Look, they’re going to kill me soon. Is there anything I can do to make it up to you?” I genuinely wanted to know.

  Titania thought for a few moments. “Because of my reputation, no other dragonflies will socialize with me. Do you understand how lonely I am? How desperate for friendship someone becomes after a hundred years of being shunned. I need a friend. The only thing you could possibly do is give me back my friends and my magic. But since you cannot do...”

  I cut her off, “I can do that.” So she was desperate for friends and magic.

  “What?” she asked in shock and her multifaceted eyes bulged. Her arm slipped from the torch and she fell to the ground. “Son of a bitch.”

  “I can give you back your magic and then some. The same way I took it from you. I can turn you into one bad bitch,” I promised.

  Titania contemplated my words as she got up and dusted off her thorax and abdomen. She asked rhetorically, “What would it all mean if I have no one to share it with? I don’t have anyone to raise hell with.”

  “Ha, you sound just like the mopey and melancholy Morrigan. She and I used to cause some major destruction.” If I was going to die, I could at least give Titania back her magic.