The one to the left is tall. His pale hair is some shade of blond in daylight, but in the moonlight, it is silver.
His gaze flashes in her direction. His eyes are also light.
Tessa's heart thuds. He can't see me.
Maybe he's a Tracker? Tessa doesn't enjoy being noseblind. No Were does.
Clearly he doesn't belong here, and neither does she.
So they're equal. Tessa decides not to worry about it for now.
Something snaps behind her, and she whirls, talons spiking out of her fingertips in a painful burst. She's still in quarter by a thread. Tessa doesn't make a sound, planting her feet wide and crouching.
Then she recognizes Tahlia.
Tessa's embarrassed. She made a novice mistake by becoming so engrossed that she forgot her surroundings.
“You're defending yourself against me?” Tahlia asks in disbelief.
Tessa straightens, feeling a new flush of stupid. “No.” Her talons slide back, and the fine hairs at her nape smooth against her sensitive skin. “I didn't scent you.”
“Sloppy,” Tahlia remarks with a little smile.
Tessa scowls.
“Thanks for nothing.”
“Don't be cross. I think it's odd you missed me, is all.” She hikes an inky eyebrow.
“Yeah. I was concentrating on them.” Tessa points to the four males who are almost to the front porch of the mansion.
She twists in their direction, her eyes narrowing at the men. “Hmm. Who are they?”
“Don't know.”
“You don't sound as though you're too thrilled.”
“Nope. Don't like it.”
Tahlia turns back, her eyes are navy pools of midnight. “Why?”
Tessa blows out a frustrated breath. “Listen, you seem like a nice kid. But it's only a matter of time until Drek finds you and it's faerie tale time.”
Tahlia blinks.
“For me?” Tessa plants her thumb between her breasts. “I have to consider everyone to be a threat. And it's just a little bit too convenient those two show up right after us, from the same direction we came from. Nah, I don't like it on principle. Plus, I can't scent them.”
Tahlia's quiet.
Finally, Tessa says, “Well?”
Tahlia gives her a sidelong glance, her lips pulling into a small smile. “I think we should find out who they are. I have to keep busy with something.”
Tessa lets out a breath, feeling as though she just passed a test. “Thanks.”
Tahlia shrugs. “For what?”
“For being my only friend.”
Tahlia's smile widens and she lifts a delicate shoulder. “You're my only friend too.”
Tessa's grin slips. “Why? Didn't you have some whelplings to hang out with among the Lanarre?”
“Common Were? Certainly.” Tahlia's smile is a flat line. “Now ask me if I was allowed to belong? To be a part of anything?”
“Were you?”
Her voice goes low as she answers, “No. Never.”
“Why the hell not?” Tessa shakes her head in mild disgust. “Yʼknow, for being it for Lycan kind, being Lanarre sounds pretty sucky.”
“It wasn't my role.”
Tessa gives her a sharp look. “What is then?”
Tahlia eyes fall away from Tessa's to train on the perfect half-moon. “Whatever they have of me.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Julia
Though Julia's circle of trustworthy supernaturals grows, it's still small.
Scott and Jason stand at her side while she tries not to let the strengthening soul-meld out of the bag like an escaped cat.
Tharell needs to be questioned.
The scar at his throat pulses like a lavender creek that runs with thin blood beneath it. Julia's own throat tightens at the sight, and she couldn't swallow if her life depended on it.
Scott takes her hand, and the knot in her chest loosens. She can breathe—and think. And she'll need to because Tharell holds answers to important questions. His knowledge is one of the key reasons she didn't have him killed as so many wanted.
She hides her gratefulness for Scott's gesture, and he squeezes her hand when he feels it course through him. Their bond makes secrets impossible. It's a relief, and a curse, to have it back.
Jason stiffens and Tharell smiles from his bound position at the ground.
“Trouble in paradise?” he murmurs, his beautiful turquoise eyes bright, though hardly any light reaches the deepest part of the Singer training barn.
A small window, too tiny to fit anyone older than a nine year old through, allows pale moonlight to slant inside. The illumination strikes Tharell's deep-purple hair, turning it into a spoiled-plum color.
Julia doesn't bother with fabrication. “Yes.”
She grabs Jason's other hand, and he looks down at her, his eyes shadowed.
“I already know, Jules.”
She bows her head, and Tharell laughs. Welling despair rises inside Julia like a geyser, threatening to burst from her mouth and force her to verbalize things she would rather not say.
Tharell quips. “So human—yet not.”
“Shut the fuck up.”
“Can't argue with that, Caldwell,” Scott adds.
Tharell grins at their discontent, and Julia is plagued with second thoughts about letting him live and the shame of thinking it.
Jason tenses. “No—Scott, kicking his teeth in won't solve anything.”
“But it'll make me feel so much better,” he says.
Jason barks out a laugh. “Amen to that.”
“You wouldn't be so sure of yourself if I was unbound and deep within the arms of the sithen. There, it is I who maintains all the power,” Tharell says in a bald voice.
Jason shrugs his words away. “You're a dick.”
Tharell turns his penetrating glare to Jason. “Your crude names do not move me, Singer.”
“I can think of something that will,” Scott says and steps forward.
Something painful flares inside Julia's gut, and she gasps.
Scott stops mid-stride, and he whips his head around to look at her. Jason's hand moves to her back. “What?” they ask at the same time.
The three of them look at Tharell.
His veins glitter black beneath his plum-colored skin, rising to the surface to pulse in time to his heartbeat.
Julia's mimic his, but hers are golden-silver and perfect, like jeweled lace.
Her belly begins to throb with the beginnings of something that pulls her toward Tharell. She takes a single, staggering step toward him.
“Ahh…” he says, relaxing against his binds.
“What. The. Fuck?” Jason yells, dropping her hand and going for Tharell.
Scott grabs his arm.
Jason whirls, narrowly missing Julia as his fist reactively plows toward Scott's jaw.
Scott jerks his face away, barely missing the blow intended for Tharell.
Tharell chuckles as Julia drops to her knees, cradling her stomach with both arms.
“What have you done?” she whispers. Scott and Jason turn, their hands fisted in each other's shirts.
“It is not I who has done anything. But the saber.”
Julia forgets that her soul-meld with Scott is suffocating them, falling back two-fold as it pours into the crevices as though it never left.
She doesn't recall that her husband is ready to come to blows with Scott again or that Tharell should never see her bare skin.
Julia rips off her shirt. Scattered buttons fly like plastic raindrops. She throws the long-sleeved shirt to the bare cement floor.
She tears her cami sky high, looking down at the horror on her stomach.
Scott falls beside her, his large palm covering where the saber struck and Cyn healed her.
His eyes bulge. “Ah!” he says in a hoarse shout.
But his palm can't hide the damage. A comma-shaped whip of black stands above her belly button. Where she was pierced with the bl
ade, spiderweb-fine threads spread from the deep blackness, lined in red.
This morning, the mark appeared to be a bruise. It pulsed and itched, and Julia had assumed the sensation represented residual healing. Too many things clamored for her attention for her to worry about a healing wound.
But this wound isn't healing. It's spreading like a contagion.
The finer ends of the ebony threads extend to her ribcage.
“You sicken,” Tharell says with utter certainty, eyes on the spreading black highway of encroaching marks. His eyes alight on Scott's face like blue fire. “She slows its progress but not the inevitable.”
“Why?” Julia cries.
“The blood of the demonic has entered your system. Even as the Blooded Queen and your precious angelic blood combat the spore—it is insufficient protection.”
Scott lets go of Julia's skin as if it burns him, and he grabs Tharell off the floor, hiking him until their noses meet.
He shakes Tharell. “Tell me how to undo this?”
“No,” Tharell says with a cunning smile.
Scott drops him with a grunt of disgust, and Tharell stands, though his feet and hands are bound.
Scott retreats one step and clocks Tharell in the face.
The blow rocks the Sidhe warrior back against the wall, and he spits black blood onto the concrete between them. “Strike me all you wish, but it will not save her life.”
“What will?” Jason asks.
Julia lifts her head at the sound in his voice—inescapable consequence.
Julia totally knows the answer.
“Give her up, Were.”
Jason whirls, beating the wall with bruising force. “No!” he bellows.
Julia covers her ears.
Hot tears roll down her cheeks and splash at her knees, dampening her jeans like drops of sorrow in a sea of denim.
Her heart thumps against her calm, eating at it with each beat. Resignation crushes her spirit.
“This isn't what I planned, Caldwell,” Scott says. “I'd never cause her this kind of sorrow if I had a choice.”
On her knees, Julia looks up at Scott.
Jason turns, fists at his side, veins standing out like stark pathways of rage on his flesh.
Julia quickly gets to her feet, standing between them.
Tharell remains silent against the wall. His swollen lip heals as he watches the emotional war between the three of them.
“Julia,” Scott says in a low voice, gently moving her so that she is no longer between him and Jason, setting her farther away from Tharell. The growing evil in her belly quiets at Scott's touch.
“I feel it,” he says quietly.
“I know.” Julia can't keep the relief out of her voice when the seed of evil flinches from her soulmate's touch.
“Stop talking in fucking code,” Jason yells at them and Julia flinches. Spittle stands at the corner of his mouth.
As Julia gazes at Jason, she realizes for the first time that maybe, what's happened to both of them separately in the last three years, might make it impossible for them to be together now, with or without the soul-meld. What Julia needs is to take care of her people, not walk on eggshells around Jason. She needs someone who thinks of others first and doesn't react with anger whenever something doesn't go his way. Those revelations move through her mind like a flash flood.
Jason sees them anyway.
“What? Is this it, Jules? You get a little soul juice back, and it's all about Scott again?”
Julia's silent. Finally she shakes her head. “I don't feel like having this discussion in front of Tharell.”
“Do not mind me,” Tharell says unhelpfully.
“Shut up.” Jason shoots him a hard look, and Tharell smirks, shrugging.
Jason turns back to Julia and she sighs. “I am sick. There might not be any me to have.” Julia's eyes search his wild ones. “You're so caught up on having me like a favorite bone you can't see the bigger picture.”
He folds his arms. “Nope. Don't see it.”
Where has Jason gone? More than that—why haven't I noticed?
Maybe she hadn't wanted to. “Tharell's awful, but he's right. There was demon's blood…”
“A high demon. The lowly would not have adequate power to sicken the Blooded Queen.”
“What?” Julia asks.
Tharell hops a step away from the wall, and Scott moves protectively in front of Julia. She grasps his biceps, feeling the hard muscle beneath.
“Say what you have to say from there, asshole,” Scott says.
“There are high demons. I have demonic blood, as we've already determined. The high demon in charge of these matters is called Praile. He is who would have instructed Tony to slaughter the Singers of this region, weakening them so the Blooded Queen might be unguarded. It was a stroke of luck for the demonic that Julia was pierced with the saber.”
“No Combatant to help her,” Scott says thoughtfully.
Tharell shakes his head. “I was called upon when the lowly appeared for battle. I partook because I had no choice.”
Tharell lifts his healed chin, his disdain clear. “Blood rules all.”
Julia believed it. If she'd learned nothing else within the last three years, it was that.
Blood governs us all.
“So I die?” Julia whispers, fighting tears. After coming all this way, some demonic blood is going to kill me. She's been poisoned, hunted, kidnapped, and stabbed. But this?
She has people to rule, things that matter beyond her own self.
For the moment, she will have to ignore the underlying tension between Jason and her. The Singers come first. But she can't rule if she dies.
Then Tharell surprises her. “No. You will not die from this alone. But a high demon can finish the job.”
“Fat chance.” Jason gestures around him. “We've got plenty enough guys sitting around, waiting for the chance to kick some demon ass. The fire dicks missed their window. Too bad, so sad. ”
Tharell inclines his head. “No one would be a proper match for the likes of Praile.”
Jason's jaw works back and forth. “Some kind of fire prick struts in and kills Julia?”
“He will be able to sense our blood within her body.”
“So we're screwed?” Jason presses.
“What? Is he our advisor now?” Scott stares at Jason, palm flung toward Tharell. “This fey is the one who betrayed us, tried to kill another Sidhe warrior, and we've kept alive only for answers I'm not even sure we want or should listen to.”
“Kill me and take away more answers,” Tharell comments in a sage voice.
Julia asks, “Why, Tharell? Why would you do this?”
Tharell's face shuts down. “You are a true and honest leader, Julia. However, in faerie, I am merely tolerated because my blood is not pure. When Queen Darcel was murdered by the lovely Delilah, I was free of some of it. But I will never be released from the prejudice of the pureblood Unseelie in a place where I must dwell to flourish. Further, my actions are moderated by my mixed genetics—I must do exactly as I am told. And”—his eyes sink into hers like barbs—“no one has asked the right question.”
Julia moves toward him, and Scott tries to stop her.
“No, Scott—”
Tharell's so tall, she cranes her neck to meet his eyes. Her mind turns over the facts of how Tharell has behaved. Suddenly, she hits on the reason. The answer was in Jacqueline from the beginning.
“If you were to never leave faerie—the sithen—would you be okay?”
Tharell smiles. “That, my Blooded Queen, is the right question.”
Their gazes lock as though no one else exists. Right now—for Julia, no one does. The world consists of only her and Tharell.
“What's the answer?” Julia keeps her eyes on his face as if it’s a target. Before he replies, his expression gives away the answer—and something else.
Relief.
“Yes,” he answers.
She can see
that he’s relieved that someone could look beyond his deeds. Jacqueline isn't the only one who's crazy outside of faerie.
For some, insanity is the gift of leaving the sithen.
For Tharell, with his demonic blood, it was a death sentence.
But Julia's willing to offer a stay of execution—if she lives long enough.
*
Julia is glad when they leave Tharell in his cell. The two men wish for his death while Julia longs for less suffering.
She strides toward the one person she knows is insurance against Tharell. She needs to get him to faerie, but she can't have him doing more things against her while he’s under the influence of demonic intent and insane due to his distance from faerie.
The only one who's a threat to him will be his guard, if she's willing. Julia hopes for Tharell's sake that she is.
Julia's nearly at a jog, but Jason and Scott are walking fast, easily keeping up to her five feet four inches.
“We haven't figured anything out, Jules.”
Julia whirls on him, jabbing her finger into his chest. “My life is a mess. I'm sorry. But I didn't ask to be taken back in Alaska any more than you asked to be attacked and turned.” Her eyes blaze into his, and Jason doesn't drop her stare.
“Why is the answer to saving you always me letting you go?” he asks softly. His response deflates her anger.
Julia's finger drops as her top lip rolls between her teeth. Seconds later, she replies, “I don't know.”
She stares at him, looking over a man who, by human standards, she's married to. He’s handsome, protective, and smart. They have a long history together. They've been through so much—too much.
Her heart feels like it's in her throat, and Julia stifles a sob when she realizes she’s fallen out of love with Jason.
She tries to rationalize her feelings. Maybe it's the soul-meld.
But maybe it's just life, the life she did not choose.
“I can smell it on you, Jules.”
She startles as though she spoke her horrible epiphany aloud. But she didn't.
“What?” she asks softly.
Jason flicks a glance at Scott, who's stood by her side silently for the entire thing.
Scott steps toward Jason. “Fuck you, Caldwell.”
Julia wants to scream at them and beat on their chests. But they're doing such a great job of it without her.
Angelic Blood (#5): Alpha Warriors of the Blood (The Blood Series) Page 11