Blue Blood (Series of Blood Book 3)

by Emma Hamm

  “You’re old.” She laughed. “When did you become so old?”

  The Hag chuckled warmly. “A long time ago. I have been old since the day I was born.”

  “I don’t remember you old. You were stunning and powerful.”

  The Hag winked. “I’m still both.”

  Tiny lumbered towards them, shaking the ground. Mercy was thrilled that she could actually feel the ground move. The messages in the flames had never been so vivid. Ignes couldn’t capture the true power of these creatures.

  Her skin tingled just being around them.

  “Mercy,” Tiny chuckled, “perhaps we should allow Ignes free reign?”

  “I’m not sure you really want to do that.”

  “Oh, we do.” He extended a new broom for Ignes to hop onto. “We’ve prepared something special for him.”

  Mercy held Ignes up and felt no sense of loss when he willingly left her. She trusted these people. She had known all of them since they were very young.

  “You knew we were coming?” Mercy asked.

  The Centaur nodded. “The Korrigan told us.”

  Mercy was stunned. “When did that species of Fae start living here?”

  A sniffing sound was her answer.

  Mercy spun on her heel, wishing she hadn’t let Ignes go. The crackling on the broom grew louder, but her defensive flames didn't ignite. Flames should have burst around her like a shield. But without Ignes, she was weak.

  Behind her stood an incredibly short man. Wrinkled and balding, with a smile that split his cheeks too wide, he was not very intimidating. But she recognized the way his eyes saw through her. He looked into her soul and found her unimpressive. A Korrigan was never to be taken lightly.

  They were technically a species of Gnome, which were a subspecies of Fae. But the Korrigan had made such a name for themselves that they were separated from the others. Namely because they could see the future.

  “You aren’t part Oracle?” she questioned. Oracles were known to lie and call themselves Fae. The Fae protected each other, Oracles had no such support.

  “Never ask a Fae to lie,” the little man replied.

  She didn’t trust him. Not like the others. But she would admit that he was powerful. Magic made the hair on her arms stand up straight. Mercy nodded at him. “All right. You saw us coming?”

  “I saw fire,” he told her, and sniffed again. “It wasn’t hard to guess who that might be.”

  If he had seen flames in his visions, Mercy was the logical conclusion. But he may not have interpreted her approach as a positive. Flames could be both welcoming and destructive.

  From the way he stared, Mercy assumed he had come to the same conclusion.

  “I mean no harm,” she told him.

  “I suppose you don’t. But then again, neither does a knife.”

  He wandered past her and waddled deeper into the many tents. A few times, he stopped, hitched up his pants, and continued walking. Mercy wondered why no one had gotten the poor man clothing that fit.

  But that wasn’t for her to worry about. He wasn’t for her to worry about; she had enough of her own problems.

  Tiny and the other familiar faces were staring at her. Concern wrinkled their brows. Grumbling, Mercy gestured with her hand.

  “What did you prepare for him?”

  A small smile spread across Tiny’s face. “We emptied out an old well. We thought you two might like to fill it with a little lava.”

  Ignes grew so excited that his flames burned even Mercy’s eyes.

  She laughed with real joy. “We can certainly do that. He would love it!”

  She walked with the others towards the well, but stopped when Jasper groaned. Mercy looked back at him. He had rolled onto his side, facing the forest they had come from.

  Rolling her eyes, Mercy waved the others along. “Go on ahead. I’ll get the big guy.”

  “You sure?” Tiny asked.

  “Yeah. He needs to be introduced slow and easy, or he’ll faint again.”

  With a wink, she wandered back to her Fairy and wondered how she was going to keep him awake this time.

  Jasper sat on a log at the edge of a fire, wondering how he had managed to get himself in this predicament. One moment he was in a cell, and just two nights later he was staring at what some would call a nightmare. The rest would call it hell.

  The creatures around him were more demon than man. Hell, some of them weren’t even man anymore.

  He had thought he’d seen some drastically changed humans. Jasper hadn’t thought that magic had made human bodies so warped and wrong. The Centaur actually had a horse’s body below his hips. The Banshee didn’t have a corporal form.

  And the Giant?

  Jasper didn’t want to think about the Giant. Every time the ground started to shake, he got the jitters again. A real, honest to God, Giant.

  Waking up had been disorienting. His head spun from the moment he looked up into Mercy’s ombre eyes. Unsurprisingly, she had been less than accepting of his need to ease into this new world. Instead, she threw him to the wolves and left him alone.

  She had held her hand out for him and then withdrew it immediately as he reached for her. Jasper had thought they had created a bond in the forest. Fleeing from a common enemy could do that to people.

  But no, they had gotten nowhere. She withdrew back into herself and left him to fend for himself in this strange new world. And this place was a completely different world.

  His spine hunched as he watched real creatures walking among him. The Korrigan made Bluebell nervous. Even his tiny twitches made Jasper’s skin crawl.

  “Not natural for a Fairy to become something else,” Bluebell grumbled. “If he was a Fae, this wouldn’t be happening. He’s something else that he doesn’t have any right to be.”

  Jasper couldn’t help but agree.

  Mercy was talking to the Thunderbird, another creature that made him nervous. He wanted to flinch every time it opened its beak. Beak! Sure, there were plenty of people that had bits and pieces of creatures showing through. Horns, feathers, scales, the lot.

  But he had never thought in his life that he was going to look at something that wasn’t even remotely human.

  The log creaked. He clenched his jaw, muscles bouncing, as he steeled his will. He could turn and see who it was that now sat beside him. It required more bravery than it should have.

  Another beak. Wrinkles lined the Hag’s face, and she was covered with what he would describe as moth-bitten wool. She looked horrible. Scraggly hairs framed her face in long, tangled strands. She needed to bathe, or see a Sorceror about getting some kind of glamour.

  She held a wooden bowl out to him.

  He didn’t want to take it. He didn’t want to be poisoned, or worse, by creatures he didn’t know or trust. At some point, he knew he had to throw in the towel and just let life take him down the river. His stomach growled loudly.

  So, he took the bowl from her with a small nod of thanks.

  She didn’t appear capable of smiling, but the tiny wrinkles at the corners of her eyes deepened. When she opened her beak to speak, he tried not to wince at the chalkboard scraping voice. “We must look very strange to you.”

  “That’s, uh—” He scratched the back of his neck. “That’s one way to say it.”

  “You know we all looked like this long ago.”

  “We?”

  “The creatures inside of us.”

  A question burned in his chest until he couldn’t hold it any longer. “If you look like your creatures, do you still share a space with the humans?”

  Her silence made him fidget. Jasper understood how rude it had sounded. He had blurted the words as though they were vomit. These people hadn’t said a bad thing to him, and here he was asking personal questions. Maybe Mercy was right, and he did try to dissect people upon meeting them.

  “We still share a space with them,” the Hag finally answered. “Without them, we would not exist. Surely you do not t
hink we would stamp them out so quickly?”

  “I don’t know what to think.” He lifted the bowl to his mouth to keep his tongue from wagging any further.

  It appeared he was not going to be given that amount of privacy. Instead, the Hag used the pause to ask a question of her own. “How did you meet our girl?”

  He swallowed hot soup too fast and began to cough. “Uh, we both, uh… Well you see—”

  Mercy’s voice drifted out of the fire. “We were in a prison.”

  The flames roared higher into the night. Within them, a scene manifested. He stared at the image of himself caged in a cell, anger distorting his face into that of a wild animal. Somewhere behind him, the shadows rolled. Jasper hadn’t realized he looked quite so fierce. His hair was tangled into a lion’s mane, beard overgrown, dirt smearing his arms and clothing. It was easy to forget he was a large man when he housed a Fairy inside of him.

  “Mercy,” the Hag gently chided, “eavesdropping is rude.”

  “And yet, it is the only way I hear things at all.”

  The flames shifted back to a normal bonfire’s height. Jasper couldn’t help but wonder if she still listened. His eyes found her seated at the Giant’s much larger fire, which spewed sparks constantly into the air. She laughed at a conversation he could not hear.

  His gaze lingered upon the long line of her throat. Cords of muscle disappeared into the brightly colored wrap someone at the camp had given her. She looked as though she wore flames instead of fabric. Fitting, as she often burst into flame without warning.

  “You watch her very carefully for one who professes not to like her.”

  Jasper dropped his eyes to the Hag. “I never said I didn’t like her. We just—” he paused, wording his next statement as carefully as possible “—don’t get along.”

  “I’m not so sure about that. It’s in your body. The way you hold yourself perfectly still when she is near you. I have seen such behavior from young men like yourself.”

  “I’m getting old,” he told the Hag. “I’m not the young man I used to be.”

  “You have many years ahead of you, especially if that Fairy stays with you.” She grinned, the wrinkles crinkling as her beak snapped. “I will tell you a story. In exchange, you will give me a gift.”

  “I have no gifts to give.”

  “And yet, you will listen. Your presence is gift enough.”

  He shouldn’t argue. He was in their home, and they hadn’t complained about him staying. Not to mention that the Hag could probably curse him into his next life.

  Bluebell stirred. “She seems nice.”

  An arched brow was the only response Jasper gave her.

  “Really. I trust her. You should listen to her story. I like stories.”

  That was the best he was going to get out of the Fairy tonight. Her voice was sleepy, and every time he felt her move, it was as though she was curling up inside the warmth of his own mind. She wished to rest. As did he, if he could sleep in a camp full of creatures.

  “What would you tell me then, Hag?”

  The beak snapped open and shut. “When I was but a little girl, I was shunned for my looks. No one had seen a child emerge from the womb as though she were ancient. My body was weak. My beak had not yet hardened. But my magic was strong.

  “There were few who would linger near me. All were ancient women. Hags as well, but not as strong as I. It was they who told me there was a hidden place within fallen leaves for people like me. I would be hidden by Mother Nature’s arms. And inside the hollow parts of the earth, a kingdom of misfits I would find.”

  The others gathered around them. The Centaur folded his legs beneath him and eased to the side. The Thunderbird sat gracefully in repose while Tiny picked Mercy up and deposited her far too close to the flames.

  Jasper half rose from his seat before he remembered she wouldn’t be harmed by the fire. He sat back down slowly, hoping no one would notice he had moved.

  The Hag continued, “It was here I found them. Tiny was the first, living among the animals in the woods. He was frightening when I first saw him. Larger than life, but infinitely more gentle than any I had ever met before.”

  Tiny blushed tomato red and ducked his head.

  “It was he and I for a very long time. We had difficulties staying warm in the winter, until one fateful night. We couldn’t get a stack of logs to light, as the snow had made everything damp. And then they simply…ignited. With no explanation at first. There was just fire. Hot and merry and everything we desired.

  “Out of the fire came a voice. We had not expected to hear someone speak, let alone a man. Yet it was a man’s voice. I will never forget the words it said—”

  The Hag was interrupted by a voice bursting out of the fire before them. “Chase away the winter storms and banish your shivers by my light.”

  Jasper stared into the flames, trying to see Ignes. He could not make out the creature’s form, but he knew the Pheonix was there.

  From across the campfire, he caught Mercy’s red gaze.

  “I thought it was an Elemental.” The Hag chuckled. “Tiny thought he recognized the voice, but I didn’t think that was possible. Ignes was all too proud to announce he was the last of his kind. We happened to be very close to the maze Mercy had been imprisoned within. He told us of her. The lost woman, the one who was capable of ruin and rebirth.

  “We tried many times to find you, dear girl. We did not succeed. The maze had bigger plans for you. Instead, we were forced to stay in touch through the fire and your dreams. But I can say I am pleased to see you released in my lifetime.”

  Jasper could hardly believe his ears. He leaned forward while blurting, “Are you saying you all knew her? Or knew of her?”

  “Most in this forest knew of Mercy and her plight. Ignes is quite the storyteller. She was something of a myth.”

  He was tongue-tied. He couldn’t imagine ever hearing about a woman buried deep in a maze and not thinking it was an elaborate story. There couldn’t be any truth in it. Surely something like that would never happen nowadays.

  Mercy tsked. “You all knew I was real. And you knew I was very far from some locked up fairy tale princess.”

  “You were a legend,” the Hag corrected her. “I remember being very young and wondering what you would really look like.”

  “I sent messages as myself.”

  “What you would look like outside of the flames, we did not know.”

  Jasper licked his lips and spoke up. “How long have you all known about her?”

  The strange creatures exchanged questioning glances before Tiny finally answered.

  “We first found out about Mercy sixty-five years ago.”

  “Sixty-five years,” Jasper repeated. He slumped backwards. “Good lord, that’s a lifetime.”

  His brain stuttered. Mercy had told him her slumber had lasted two hundred years. But how could anyone truly fathom that? So much had happened in that time, and he had no way of understanding what she had gone through.

  And now he knew. Or at least could put a number it to. Six of his lifetimes, and she still stayed sane. Now he had an inkling of how much strength lingered underneath her skin.

  He looked at her through Ignes’s flames, watching her face as she studied him. He did not know what the look meant. She was always so stern. Even now, when she was surrounded by what was the closest thing she had to family.

  He had only seen cracks in her tough exterior a few times. There was no rhyme or reason to what would make her smile. The rush of wind through her hair, maybe, or perhaps the thrill of the chase.

  Jasper wasn’t certain he would ever be able to make sense of her.

  Her eyes seemed to catch fire as they stared into him. His chest heated, as though she had lit a spark inside of him as well.

  Bluebell sighed. “She’s so pretty. Like a gemstone.”

  A low, rumbling growl vibrated his throat.

  “She is! Look at her!”

  He was
. He looked at her in the same way a man on a frozen tundra would stare into a warm blaze. She was color and light all wrapped in a singular form. A creature captured for one moment that could easily slip through his fingers.

  “...but we always hated thinking of her all alone. Wouldn’t you agree, Jasper?” The Hag looked at him.

  Jasper blinked a few times and realized all of them were staring at him. His cheeks heated with a blush he was thankful his beard partially hid. Had he been staring at Mercy this whole time? He couldn’t recall anything the Hag had said.

  “I-I’m sorry, what?”

  Tiny burst into laughter that made Jasper’s eardrums ache. “She was saying she is glad you found our Mercy and that she’s not alone anymore. A big strong man to take care of her can’t hurt.”

  “A big strong—” Jasper parroted seconds before Mercy interrupted.

  “We’re not together.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “Our paths are the same for now. They will split again.”

  “Oh.” The Hag twisted her gnarled hands. “We thought perhaps you and Jasper were… Well.”

  “No.” Mercy shook her head firmly. “No.”

  “Oh.”

  The awkwardness in the camp was thick enough to cut with a butter knife; even Tiny appeared uncomfortable. Strange how just a few days with Mercy had changed Jasper’s opinions. Maybe he simply needed something to hold on to. The woman made of flames was burning every other memory out of his mind.

  “Besides,” Mercy said as she leaned back onto her hands, “he has another woman. Her name is Lyra.”

  He recoiled. “How do you know that?”

  “You call her name in your sleep.”

  Again, Jasper felt the collective eyes of the creatures on him, bouncing back and forth between Mercy and him. They appeared to think this was a great show. And perhaps it was. For all he knew, these people who had locked themselves away in the woods didn’t get out much.

  “Lyra is a very dear friend.”

  “I’d say more than that,” Mercy corrected.

  “Maybe at one time.”

  “Not now?”

  “Not ever. She found her happiness in the arms of a dead man.”