Blood Before Sunrise

by amanda bonilla

  His demeanor changed from anxious to enraged as he released his hold on me and shoved me to the ground. “I have lost you already!” he railed. “What has passed can never be undone!”

  “Exactly!” Brakae said, her tone harsh. “It can never be undone. So why seek revenge? Whom will it punish? No one. This is madness!”

  “This is a necessity! And I will do what must be done!”

  Faolán had to have fallen far to have once been worthy of Brakae’s love. I found nothing in him even remotely lovable or redeemable. But then again, I’d thought I loved Azriel once. The heart wasn’t only blind; it was deaf and dumb. Tyler’s obsessive nature had infuriated me; yet I loved him fiercely for it. I doubted there was anything he could do to make me fall out of love with him.

  Whether Brakae had loved Faolán or not, I had an obligation to protect not only the key to the Faerie Realm, but also time and the natural order. My conscience would not allow me to stand idly by while Faolán killed off every last human on the planet just because he’d suffered a broken heart. Talk about displaced rage. Faolán had been right about one thing: All the events of my life had led me to this one moment. My transformation from human to Shaede; my hidden existence from the world by Azriel’s secrets and lies; my eventual discovery by Xander; my love for Tyler; the blood sacrifice to give life to lifeless statues—all of it had led me to this.

  Faolán pointed the dagger at Brakae. “Come here, my love.”

  Standing with fluid grace, Brakae made her way to us. Her gait was slow, as if she resisted some invisible pull. I recognized that zombie dance, though I wasn’t sure how Faolán was able to control her. Faerie magic went way over my head. Another encyclopedia’s worth of information I’d have to pay Levi for—if I made it out of here in one piece, and if he was still alive when I got home. Brakae’s eyes, glowing soft blue in the wan moonlight, darted back and forth from me to him and back again. The stern set of her jaw told me she was fighting like hell. The way Faolán drew her to him like a magnet told me she was losing.

  “Darian,” he said, so calm I knew something bad was coming, “you have exceeded my expectations of you. You are the strongest Guardian I have ever known, except maybe for myself. Had we met under different circumstances I would have initiated you into our order, given you a place of honor. But you have worn out your usefulness, and I have no need for useless things. Go well into the afterlife.”

  He pulled the dagger away from my throat and handed it to Brakae before he shoved me hard into her arms. She caught me against her, looked deep into my eyes, and whispered, “I hope you’re as tough as everyone thinks you are, Darian. Remember, I trust you.” And before I could ask her what the hell was going on, she plunged the blade into my abdomen, low and to the right, carefully—or not so carefully—missing any major organs, just below my ribs.

  “Wake up. You have things to do, and you’re wasting time!”

  The sound of her voice was a high-pitched buzz increasing in volume as I came nearer to consciousness. A gnat hovering at my ear would have been no less annoying.

  “Where is he?” I asked. That sonofabitch was going to pay for what he’d done to me.

  The Sprite swirled around my head to the other ear, as if the one she’d been speaking into had malfunctioned or something. “He has stolen time and time’s Keeper. It won’t be long before everything is destroyed.”

  Even though I happened to be in the loop on this particular matter, I hated cryptic talk. Just once, I wanted someone to lay it out for me without the fancy subtext. What a serious waste of time.

  “Look, Tinkerbell, how about telling me something I don’t already know?” I said, batting all four or five inches of her away from my ear canal. “Wait a sec.” My torso throbbed with every word, and I laid my head back down on the grass to stave off a wave of nausea. “How do I know you’re a Sprite?”

  She giggled before circling my head in a dizzying loop. If I hadn’t felt like yakking before, that was sure to do it. All around me, I heard the cacophony of tiny wings buzzing. As my vision cleared and the star-filled sky came better into focus, I realized they weren’t stars at all, but a scattering of Sprites glowing with a faint bluish light. I felt a lot like Gulliver surrounded by all these Lilliputians.

  “Lie still,” she ordered in her tiny voice. “You need a Healer, but she hasn’t arrived. We’ll have to make do without her. You’re stabbed.”

  “No shit,” I said, rubbing my temple. Brakae fucking stabbed me. What the hell was all that about? Not exactly the best way to ensure your protector is in her best fighting form. “I don’t suppose you or any of your little friends up there know how long I’ve been lying here?”

  “Not long for O Anel,” she said.

  Wonderful. Just the answer I was looking for. She might as well have said, You’ve been here for-fucking-ever, you idiot!

  I pushed the thought of centuries passing in the mortal realm from my mind and focused on what I needed to do to get out of this goddamned backward place. The calm attitudes I’d encountered so far were starting to get on my last nerve. And that nerve was hanging on by a thread. The wound didn’t hurt as bad as the one left by Faolán across my chest, but that wasn’t saying much. Even if I could manage to find a weapon, I doubted I’d be able to wield one. Not to mention that I had no fucking idea where Brakae and Faolán had gone or how to find them.

  I looked up to the sky and the floating blue lights descending toward me. Like snowflakes, they landed around me, on top of me, a couple on my forehead for Christ’s sake! “Do you mind?” I said, shaking my head. The Sprites laughed, a sound that reminded me of crickets chirping, and jumped to the ground like a scattering of dandelion seeds.

  “Didn’t you hear what I said? You need a Healer, but we can help to at least mend your wounds.” This one seemed to speak for all of them. Maybe they were shy. “If you’ll be still, we can get to work.”

  Her sweet voice couldn’t have sounded more annoyed. I had a tendency to get on people’s nerves. And on the nerves of Shaedes. And Sidhe. And Lyhtans. And Fae. Now I could add Sprites to my list. If Tyler could see me now, sprawled out on the grass while itty-bitty creatures administered my medical care, he’d bust a gut laughing. I closed my eyes, reliving our last moments together, wrapped in each other’s arms. Tears stung my eyes, and my stomach twisted with the anxiety of what I might find when I returned home. What if he hadn’t waited for me, or worse, what if he wouldn’t forgive me?

  A shiver raced across my skin as the Sprites went to work, walking around on my body as if it were a construction site. In my mind, I pictured them with tiny hard hats and rolled-up sets of blueprints. But when I opened my eyes, I saw their serious faces and urgent concern as they poked around the wounds, sewing them up with sparkling strings that looked like cobwebs.

  “This has got to be some of the craziest shit I have ever seen.” I talked more to myself than to the Sprites. But really, I wished I were talking to Tyler. I needed someone who understood how completely surreal these moments were to me. I mean, even as a Shaede, I never thought I’d see little picturesque creatures with transparent wings sewing me up with supernatural thread. I could almost hear The Twilight Zone theme in the distance.

  I don’t know what they used, how they did it, or what magic aided them. Warmth radiated from the wounds, but not the fiery heat that had pained me before. The sensation comforted me, and I didn’t even feel the prick of a needle, that is, if they’d used one. Magic lived and breathed in O Anel with a steady pulse I felt all around me. But I also sensed the sadness of this place pressing in on me. “Why is nobody happy here?” I asked. “It seems like a pretty damned nice place to live.”

  “There is no consistency this close to O Anel.” This was said by the—what should I call her?—foreman Sprite. “The natural order is all about balance. You cannot have order without chaos. The mundane world keeps order, so we are left with its other half.”

  I had yet to see anything even remotely cha
otic in this peaceful place. Obviously this Sprite hadn’t seen the real world, where people warred over the silliest things and famine and disease stole the lives of thousands. They’d probably never witnessed a natural disaster or seen the effects of pollution. Faolán had seen it, and it had driven him mad. “You’re wrong,” I said. “This place can’t possibly be chaos. It’s way too perfect.”

  The Sprite laughed. I wanted to call her Cindy or Judy. She had that suburban look about her. She reminded me of a soccer mom: efficient and put together, perfectly coiffed and unflappable, like she ran a tight ship, remembered everyone’s schedules, and knew how to keep her brood of children in line. “Chaos isn’t always easy to see. You haven’t been here long enough to recognize it and form opinions based on more careful observation.”

  “What’s your name?” I had to know. I was moving on to Vanessa or Carri as possible choices.

  “Nila.” Huh, never would have thought of that one, but somehow the name fit with her large brown eyes, russet skin, and shoulder-length brown hair. “The sun rises and sets just as it should in the mundane world. The seasons come and go according to schedule. The tides ebb and flow. That is the order of your world. And you should feel fortunate to be gifted with its stability.”

  Stability. That was a joke. But I supposed in a realm where you could see miles of green meadow and suddenly walk into a copse of trees that sprang out of nowhere, the mortal realm might seem to be a fairly stable place. “Where’s Faolán?” I steered the conversation back where it needed to be. “I don’t have time to waste. I can’t let him mend that hourglass.”

  Nila eyed my wounds, much like the job foreman I imagined her to be. “A few moments more, if you’ll just sit still.” Testing the flesh with her finger as if judging a baking cake, she added, “And even then you won’t be completely healed. You need—”

  “I know,” I said with a sigh. “A Healer.” Running at half capacity wasn’t ideal, though if it was the best I was going to get, I’d have to take it. But a healed body and all the time in the world weren’t going to help me if I couldn’t find Brakae and the bastard who’d taken her. “Where’s Faolán?” I asked again. “Do you know how to find him?”

  “Brakae is no fool,” Nila said. “All you have to do is follow the trail she’s left for you. Now lie back,” she said, stomping her foot down on my forehead, “and let us finish up here. As you said, you don’t have time to waste.”

  Chapter 26

  I lay back and waited for Nila and her team to finish sewing me up. Two potentially mortal wounds in one day weren’t an all-time record for me, but the rate at which I healed was breaking all sorts of records. It took a considerable amount of concentration to keep from banging my head against the ground in frustration. Too many variables stood in the way of my success, one of those being Brakae’s not so gentle handling of me.

  She could have been under Faolán’s influence when she’d rammed the dagger deep into my flesh. I saw it reflected in her eyes. But she’d spoken to me with a presence of mind that belied his control. Had she simply been playing along so as not to alert Faolán to her stability? If she’d meant to really kill me, I doubt she would’ve bothered with the prestab warning. No, Brakae had only put on a convincing show for Faolán. She’d been precise in her aim. She’d avoided my lungs and directed the slant of her blade low and to the outside. I’d said I trusted her and meant it. No way would she betray me—not Raif’s daughter.

  As the Sprites worked on me, my hand wandered to my throat to where the pendulum should have hung. “Where is it?” I asked no one in particular.

  “Almost done,” Nila said. “Lie still.” A pit bull couldn’t have been nastier as she pushed at my forehead again with her foot.

  Just then, the Sprites looked up to the sky, and I followed their gazes. Dark night had melted away, the sky becoming bright with sunlight. This was the chaos Nila had described. Time couldn’t be marked in seconds, minutes, or hours. The sun broke over the horizon without preamble. If dawn had indeed preceded the sunrise, it happened in the blink of an eye—too fast for me to track. Black skies had been replaced with blue as if someone had flipped a switch.

  “Are we done?” Not that it mattered. I was out of here. “Time’s wasting.” Literally.

  Nila stepped away as the other Sprites took to the air, floating toward the morning sky, which matured to midday in what seemed like a matter of seconds. Faolán must have been close to following through with his plan; time seemed to move more unevenly than it already did. And I had a feeling, if I didn’t get my ass in gear, we were all as good as fucked.

  “Go, and be well.”

  Yeah. Okay. Sure. Time wasn’t something I could afford to waste. I took off at a slow jog in no specific direction without a word of parting to the company of Sprites. No “Thanks.” No “I owe you one.” Nila would just have to take my appreciation as a given. Light glinted through the tree branches, shimmering red and gold and bright green on leaves revealing their fall colors before my eyes. I’d thought spring ruled in this place, but as Nila had so graciously pointed out, the natural order followed a different set of rules.

  Where the hell was I headed? It wasn’t like Brakae had been so kind as to leave me a trail of bread crumbs to follow. I lacked a decent sense of direction, and as the landscape changed with each passing second, it was hard to find a landmark that might point me in the right direction. My lungs burned from running, the ache spreading into my chest. Slowing to a manageable pace, I stopped in a small clearing as I realized I’d landed myself in the middle of nowhere, alone, without a path to track. “Would’ve been nice if she’d left me some way to track her,” I muttered as I tried to catch my breath. “Like some sort of infrared trail showing me which fucking way to go.”

  Infrared. Jesus, I was dense. I’d felt her presence once; I could feel it again—just one of the perks unique to my evolution. Although the urgency of my predicament demanded that I keep going at a breakneck pace, I knew the only way I was going to find Brakae was to take things slow. Slow and steady. Fuck.

  Plopping down on the grass, I assumed a meditative pose. The sun sank in the horizon, an entire day gone in a matter of minutes. Closing my eyes, I drew several deep breaths—in…out…in…out…. A chill wind rustled the brittle leaves now falling from their branches, kissing my cheeks with the promise of winter.

  I tilted my head to the north, Brakae’s presence coming to me as a slow thrum, pulsing deep into every muscle. It was instantly calming, and I allowed the feeling to spread through my body until I felt as though I could lie down and take a fifty-year nap right in the middle of the forest. God, I wanted to. And I deserved it, damn it. But it would have to wait. First, I had to find my Time Keeper. Then, I had to kill the lousy SOB who’d taken her. Only afterward could I tackle the issue of getting my ass home. Maybe, when all of that was done, I would be allowed to rest.

  Slowly, as if I might disrupt the trail with any sudden movements, I opened my eyes and started north. I didn’t run this time but kept a steady and manageable pace, allowing myself the concentration I needed to sense the invisible bread crumbs Brakae had left for me to follow. Drawn as I was to her calming energy, my pace quickened as if all I’d needed to do all along was settle the fuck down and lift my nose to the wind.

  Twilight melted away as I walked, the sky darkening to a beautiful navy blue, and with the shifting of time, my panic mounted again. How much time had passed at home?

  “It’s about time you got your head in the game,” a voice said from my right.

  I whipped around, crouched and ready for a fight. A fawn-colored ponytail swung to and fro with the woman’s gait. Confident. Deadly. Ready.

  Moira.

  “I’m noticing a trend with you: You seem to always show up right at the tail end of the action.” I stalked toward her, trying not to favor my injured torso. Showing weakness could be dangerous since I wasn’t quite sure if she still wanted to kill me or not. “And where the hell did y
ou come from anyway?” I’d had a lot to process since I’d wound up in this backward place. Allies had become enemies, and enemies, allies. And just because Moira was apparently one of the good guys didn’t mean I wasn’t still wary of her.

  “You need to seriously work on your interpersonal skills, Darian.” Moira’s lips twitched, threatening a smile. “You won’t win many popularity contests with that attitude of yours.”

  As if I didn’t already know that. I was surprised I didn’t walk crooked from the weight of the enormous chip on my shoulder. Miss Congeniality, I wasn’t. But since I hadn’t exactly been a social butterfly for the past eight or nine decades, Moira would just have to cut me some slack.

  “You know, you could have saved everyone a lot of trouble if you’d just come out and told me what the hell was going on. I mean, did it ever occur to you or your brother to say, ‘Hold up, Darian. Before you run off with that hourglass, let us clue you in on a few things’? No, you decided to go all Xena Warrior Princess on my ass and scare me off. What the hell is it with you supernaturals anyway?” My temper threatened to get the best of me, but I kept my tone level. Sure, I was angry. But mostly, I was hurt. I didn’t want to be a pawn anymore. I had a hard enough time trusting, and it seemed that everyone I’d met wanted to use me for his own agenda. “Why do you all wait until the last fucking second to tell anyone anything? You know, I work a hell of a lot better when I’ve been prepared for a job. Winging it isn’t exactly one of my strong suits. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you guys get off on jerking me around.”

  “Save your anger for someone who deserves it.” Moira sheathed her sword and sidestepped me as if I were blocking her view, which only served to rile me more. “We can discuss all of your many issues later. But now, you have to focus.”

  “You haven’t seen angry yet.” I stepped back into her line of sight so she’d have no choice but to look at me. “Are we on the same side here, or what? I mean, fuck, Moira, way to instill a sense of teamwork. Since I’ve met you, you’ve tried to kill me. More than once. Way to welcome me into the bonds of sisterhood.”