by Maria Lima
“Tucker’s right.” Adam straightened and turned to me.
Niko patted the top of my head. “Done,” he whispered.
I shook my hair free and ran my fingers through it. It felt so good to be loose of that crap. “Right about what?” I began twisting a braid as I spoke.
“They are not asking to fight us. It seems to be a challenge of proof.”
“Proof? Sorry, I don’t follow.” A part of me was disappointed. Actual physical battle against Gideon? Oh yeah. I could do that. Niko handed me a hair tie as I finished braiding. “Thanks.”
“Background or short version?” Tucker asked.
“Short version first.”
“We need to prove that we belong here. That the land is tied to us.”
I stood, sweeping my gown out of the way. I couldn’t wait until I could go home and change into something less heavy. It was still bloody hot outside and the a/c in here, though doing its job, couldn’t overcome stifling layers of fancy gear. “Okay, let’s try for something a bit more explanatory and less cryptic,” I said as I strode over to the desk.
The parchment gleamed in the soft overhead light, its colorful illuminations as complex and grand as any manuscript painstakingly hand-drawn by medieval monks. Only this was fresh off the pen… or spell. I could feel magick tied into the complex symbols and imagery. Unicorns, wyverns, dragons, and other fantastical creatures entwined in some sort of mystical dance, while runes and knots embellished the sides of the parchment. Perhaps they were only protective spells, keeping the information from being read by anyone other than us. Perhaps not.
“Did you feel the magick?” I asked.
Adam nodded. “It is part of the material itself.”
I looked at him in surprise. “And you didn’t think to not touch this without checking with me? What if—”
“It’s mostly harmless,” he said, without apology.
“And you can tell this how?” I crossed my arms and glared at him. He may be his father’s son, but when he became vampire, the Sidhe part of him died, replaced by the magick of the Nightwalker.
“I’m not sure,” he said. “But I know.” He smiled. “Give me a little credit, Keira. I may no longer have my magick, but I can feel it.”
“Hmph.” I stepped closer, but avoided touching the document. “I’ll take your word on that for now. What language is this? I sort of recognize the symbols, Ogham runes, right?”
“Beith-Luis-Nin, yes.” Tucker ran a hand down the side of the sheet. “They used the script to write in the Old Tongue, grandfather to modern Celtic languages. See this word?” He pointed to a set of runes. “Arigeacht. It means ‘fealty.’” His brow furrowed as he translated. “Here, ‘Gideon Branogeni Mucoi Kelly.” That’s ‘Gideon, born of Raven of the tribe Kelly.’ It goes on with various phrases of ownership? I’m not positive. I can recognize the runes, as they’re similar to my own early learnings, but the language is old, not something I’m well versed in.”
“‘Born of Raven?’ That’s precious.” I growled. “His mother wasn’t named Raven, but that was a name she took after Change.”
“Is that significant of something in particular?” Adam asked. “I know that in some cultures, children take a new name upon adulthood, but I’d never thought you did so.”
“Not typically,” Tucker answered. “Alys, Gideon’s mother, fell very much into the sixties counterculture. She ran off to the Haight in sixty-five, came back a few years later and Changed somewhere around the early seventies. Then she seemed to fall back in with the family and got pregnant with Gideon.”
I stared at my brother. “You’re not joking?”
“No, why would I be?” He seemed puzzled at my question.
“So Gideon is the product of some airhead former druggie hippie—and the Faery King?” I began to laugh. Oh, the irony. “No wonder he’s so fucked up. I never knew that about his mother. He didn’t talk about her much.”
“I never said she was a druggie,” Tucker said. “Though you aren’t off the mark. She really enjoyed the sixties.”
I couldn’t control my mirth. “This is priceless.”
Adam shook his head, smiling at me. You amuse me, he said with a look. I could only wipe my eyes and shake my head. It was too funny not to laugh. Despite the Challenge and the silly pomp-and-circumstance of the Reception, I couldn’t help but think life had become something out of a bad Syfy Channel fantasy movie. What next? CGI dragons? Mega Shark meets megalomania?
Adam’s hand brushed the center portion of the scroll, ignoring my chuckles. “Much of this primary text is in the old language. Part of this is slightly more modern, not using Ogham. It’s a mix. The Ogham speaks of dair and muin—oak and vine—or oak and neck to be more precise. Old-fashioned way to describe property, land. Here, ymarddelw.”
“That word I know,” I said. “That’s Welsh. ‘Setting up a challenge.’” I peered between the two men. “Here, ymhòni, that’s more a claim, a challenge for one’s self.”
“He seems to be claiming the land if we cannot show our own claim is valid.”
“So, I’m guessing this doesn’t simply mean showing them your deed to the ranch?” Not that I actually thought it would be that easy. It couldn’t be, otherwise Gideon would have never tried this on. He may be another Kelly heir, but if my heirship was anything to go by, I didn’t lose my own natural instincts. Gideon had never done anything that required real work. He tended to look for the easy way—thus his walks on the dark side. Short cuts came naturally to him. Short cuts and lack of forward thinking—“consequences” wasn’t a word Gideon thought much about.
A grin flashed across Tucker’s face at my sarcastic statement, an expression endemic to him but that I’d seen little of tonight. “Remember what I told you about this land being on ley lines?”
“Yes, you said something about that when we met the werewolves’ Fenrir last week. That I’m tied to the land because I’d bled here. I bonded here and I Changed here.”
He tapped the scroll again. “This basically challenges us—as a group—to prove our ties and to prove the land responds to us and accepts us as its caretakers. If we can’t, then Gideon can claim the right of perchenodelb, of ownership.”
“Okay, then maybe I do need the long parts version,” I said. “How the hell are we supposed to do that?”
“Keira, Gideon states that the land is failing here under our care. That the long drought is a direct result of it rejecting us.”
“Is that possible?” This was so far out of my knowledge base, I couldn’t begin to understand the entirety of it. I’d been trained to fight, trained in some court protocols, a little healing magick. Nothing about land and ties and whatever. I didn’t suppose that Gigi thought I’d need it—or at least need it quite just yet.
Adam shrugged. “Perhaps. There has been much chaos since I came.”
I snorted. “You think?”
Tucker rolled up the scroll and tied the ribbon around it again. “I think it has less to do with the fact that we’ve experienced upheavals,” he said. “I don’t think that really matters so much.”
“But then what does?”
My brother’s voice turned solemn, almost sorrowful. “Land usually responds to life, fertility, growth.”
“Well, yes.” Where was he going with this? Basic agricultural information notwithstanding, what he was saying seemed obvious enough. Land prospered with rain, nurturing, and care. The last few weeks here had been hellacious and still were—a record heat wave and subsequent drought. But this kind of weather wasn’t uncommon to the Hill Country. So the weather records were being smashed. It’s not the first time and hey, climate change, right? Other parts of the nation had record snowfalls, flooding. It was just our turn here. It wasn’t the first drought season, nor would it be the last. We were doing everything we could to help—limiting our water use, making sure all the livestock watering holes were okay. Adam kept a herd of rescued exotics on the ranch, alongside the usual whitetai
ls, a few head of cattle—nothing out of the ordinary. This was part of living in South Central Texas, in the Hill Country.
“Keira, I think what Tucker is trying to say to us is that we brought death, not life,” Adam said in a gentle tone.
My brow furrowed. “Death. Well, yes, but people die—”
“Not people, us,” Niko spat. “I get it.”
The clue shoe finally dropped on my head as Adam’s meaning sank in. “Well, fuck. Death. As in the living dead.”
I sank onto the edge of the desk, my skirts knocking the parchment to the floor.
The four of us watched it roll itself up, bounce and rattle against the polished hardwood as it rolled and stopped at my feet. I could almost see the magick within it quivering. I looked away.
“So the land is dying because you are vampires and not strictly living.”
“And we are infertile,” Adam reminded me. Right. Dead men can’t make babies—a phrase I’d snapped at my aunt Jane when she’d tried to convince me to return to Canada, to leave Adam. Of course, that conversation had happened before everything changed… including me.
“Which means…” I didn’t even bother to finish my own sentence. I knew what it meant. In the traditional “king must die” sense, the old king, when no longer fertile, sacrificed himself so the new, young king could take his place, impregnate his queen and continue the line, satisfying the land. Persephone, eat your bloody heart out. I was living with Hades—and his sidekicks. “I do hope no one’s considering what I think they’re considering,” I warned. No way was I about to allow anyone of my family to commit suicide so we could keep real estate.
Three heads shook in the negative.
“Then what do we do?” I asked. “Do we let Gideon take it?”
“First, before we do anything, we need to leave,” Adam said.
“Leave?”
“That would be part two of the Challenge.” Tucker bent down and picked up the scroll, tapping it on his palm. “This says that if we choose Truce, during the challenge period and through the final day, no one may live on the land in question.”
I rubbed my forehead. “This whole thing is giving me a headache.”
“It should do,” Adam said. “I believe that part of the interwoven spells is to cause consternation and confusion.”
“Lovely. Because you know, my life so far has been so full of bunnies and fluffy kittens that I needed something like this to take my mind off the sheer boredom.” I stood. “I need to get out of this gear and into something more me,” I said. “Let’s table this for now, regroup after some sleep?”
“I’m afraid we can’t.” Adam stepped closer and took my hand. “It is fairly specific. We can either leave now and continue the Challenge, allowing ourselves until Lughnasa to provide our proof, to have the land accept us, or we pay a price.”
Fan-bloody-tastic. So we evacuate the only true home I’d known in a long time, uprooting an entire group of vampires who were innocent of anything more than being Adam’s people. They didn’t deserve this. We didn’t deserve this. “Does that thing explain what the ‘price’ is?” I asked. “Or does it just leave it up to us to figure out?”
“It’s rather vague,” Adam said. “Just that there will be consequences.”
“Multiple and varied,” Tucker supplied, almost in humor.
I couldn’t really blame him. In one respect, this entire thing was beyond ridiculous. I mean, who the devil presented Challenge anymore? This wasn’t the old days, the old ways. We were in twenty-first century America, with cell phones and digital entertainment and space flight. Yes, Faery still existed, but they kept Underhill, out of sight. I knew that my Sidhe cousin Daffyd had been hungry to get out, to come Above, but he’d been trapped in the pocket of Faery, not free to return to his home. This entire situation could only come from some sort of misguided jealousy. Right?
“You’re not helping,” I said to Tucker.
“What Tucker means, love, is that the Challenge, though specific in what we must do, isn’t quite as forthcoming in what exactly happens if we ignore it. Only that the payments will be numerous and of great consequence.”
Every muscle tensed as fury flashed through me. Great consequence? Knowing the bloody Sidhe, this could be anything from petty annoyances up to and including death. When they spoke of payment, they didn’t mean money. Sidhe had no need for currency—they only traded in lives and life force. All I wanted to do right now was to find my former lover and pound him into the ground with my fists. No magick, just pure unadulterated physical joy of beating him into a pulp. Adam grabbed hold of my wrists and pulled me to him, his eyes flashing. For a moment, I wasn’t sure if he was aroused or disturbed—or both. He held my wrists tightly to his chest, kissed each of my tightly closed hands and then looked me deep in the eye.
“We will get through this. We will do it together.”
“All of us,” Niko said. “As a family.”
I let my head sink onto Adam’s shoulder. “All of us.” That’s the only way I could do this. My new family, my brothers/Protectors, blood-bonded and sworn to me and Adam. I wasn’t alone anymore. Didn’t have to fight Gideon on my own. Didn’t have to run from my mother’s icy indifference.
After a few moments of silence, during which I attempted to collect myself, my brother spoke.
“So what’ll it be? Door number one?”
What indeed? The lady or the tiger? Problem was, the lady was often more vicious than the hungry beast.
CHAPTER FOUR
“It is a wise father that knows his own child.”
—William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Act 2, Scene 2
A knock on the door interrupted my thoughts.
Niko looked to us, a question on his face. I nodded, as did Adam.
“See who it is. The wards didn’t ping, so it’s someone neutral.” As all three men looked at me quizzically, I shrugged. “What? I’m perfectly capable of spelling up a few warning wards,” I said. “Early detection system. Easy peasy.”
A laugh, and Niko opened the office door, Tucker right beside him, both men creating a block with their bodies, just in case. I chuckled at their actions.
“I came to see my son and daughter.” Drystan’s calm voice didn’t betray anything. It was as if he’d stopped by for afternoon tea.
“Let him through,” Adam said.
“Aeddan,” Drystan nodded in acknowledgment as he stepped into the room. “My daughter.”
“Drystan.” I echoed his greeting.
“What brings you here, Father?” Adam asked.
“I could not help but believe that I may be of some assistance.”
“Against your only other son?” Adam’s sarcasm nearly equaled my own usual tone. “I find that difficult to believe.”
Drystan raised both hands in a gesture of peace. “I come to help, Aeddan. I find that I dislike this division.”
I snorted. “You didn’t seem much fazed by it a few months ago,” I said. “When we first met and you’d taken to Gideon as if he were the prodigal son returned. Only that’s really Adam, isn’t it?”
“Prodigal son?” Drystan sounded confused. “I do not understand your reference, Daughter, but yes, I must admit that then I was not so knowledgeable about my second son’s… shall we say, proclivities?”
“Since when do Unseelie shy away from the dark side?” I retorted. “Unless you mean Gideon’s lack of anything that resembles leadership skills.”
Drystan laughed and stepped closer. “My dear child, you are a fit match for my only heir. May I?” He gestured to a chair next to me.
“Please. Sit.” I said the words with as much grace as I could. I didn’t dislike Adam’s father, per se, but I didn’t trust him, either. When we’d gone to Faery in the spring, right after I’d Changed, he’d been all “hail fellow, well met” to Gideon, though I had to admit he’d shown the same cheery welcome to us, too. At least the Unseelie tended to stab you as they faced you. They didn’t h
ide much, unlike my mother’s relatives who often fed you sugar as the dagger entered your back.
“Your brother,” Drystan said to Adam, “is not the kind of person I’d wish as my heir.”
“So he did ask you,” Adam said. It wasn’t a question.
“Yes, and I quickly disabused him of the notion.”
“Was that before or after he tried to kill me?” I asked.
Drystan sighed. “My apologies, my dear. I did not intend for any of this to happen. Not then, and not now.”
“Answer the question, Father.”
Both Niko and Tucker moved just a little closer. They’d both fallen back into guard mode as soon as Drystan had entered.
“Before. I swear it.” Drystan caught my gaze, his expression open and guileless. “I had hoped to have your cousin, my son, as companion. A son at Court again,” he explained. “When he came to me. I only wanted…”
“A son to replace the one you sacrificed?” I stood, needing to move. “Tell me, Drystan, do you regret it?” I stepped closer and closer, forcing myself into his personal space, my eyes sparking.
“Keira, no,” Adam said. “It’s not—”
“What? It’s not relevant? Maybe just not polite? Oh, no, definitely not.” I stepped even closer, letting my anger show, letting some of my shielding down. The vibrating tension of my energy surrounded me.
Drystan cringed visibly, but recovered in a moment. He straightened, haughty once more. “I did what was necessary, Daughter. You could not begin to understand.”
“No, you’re right about that one. I have no idea—”
Adam’s hand clamped down on my arm. “Keira, this is neither the time nor the place.” He turned to his father as I stepped back, heeding Adam again—but only for now. I had every intention of pursuing this later. “Father, why did you come here? You said you wished to help.”
A quick nod from Drystan. “I do.”
“Can you help us read the Challenge?” Tucker asked. “You surely must have experience.”
“I can try,” he said. “But my only knowledge of these Challenges comes from lore. There have been no Challenges in my time.”