Bloodbreeders: Seeking Others

by Robin Renee Ray,

  It was hard to tell if the smell was getting worse, because it all smelled the same to me; filth, rotting flesh, and death, not to mention the constant overflowing evidence of human waste that coated the floor, spilling from every corner. Once we reached the bottom, several of our kind began surrounding us, forcing us into the middle of the room. Annanothra pushed herself with her one good arm, with what I think was a smile on her face, but one couldn’t tell due to the rotted flesh, with Caden right by her side.

  “Either you are truly looking for my protection pretty boy, or you are a far better liar than the likes of me,” she said, grabbing the leg of one of the bloodbreeders closest to her so that she could pull herself up to get a better look at me.

  “I would never say such a thing about a woman with your power, but I did warn you they would come to destroy everything that you have just like they did my home,” Caden replied, shrugging his shoulder toward Jacob.

  “We came only looking for the one at your side, My Lady,” Jacob proclaimed, stepping in front of me.

  “Then why come mocking my people, and why bring the one who has caused death everywhere she goes?”

  “Had we come in looking as we normally do, would you have listened to our pleas, or asked our allegiance with death being the only other option?”

  “This one came in on bended knee, and so far what he has said has been true,” she replied, looking around Jacob up at me.

  “He’s lying,” I blurted out. “The only reason he dropped down on his knees was to save his own hide.”

  “So, you have caused no harm where you port?” the crippled queen smiled.

  “They had it coming, and if you were doing the same here, you’d have it coming as well,” I smiled right back, gaining several coughs and wrinkled brows from Jacob and Cates.

  “Word spreads fast in our world, and he is not the only one that has spoken of the one who brings change, but this is my community. All those who have nowhere to go and show me their allegiance are welcome to stay…if they can survive my other members of course.”

  “I see nothing wrong with allowing those to live a free life. This one at your side was killing just because he could, without offering anything. He will pay for what he’s done, even if it means going through you and your people, Annanothra.”

  “Renee,” Jacob hissed.

  “No, Jacob. If she is as honorable as she says she is then she wouldn’t allow a slave trading piece of shit to hide out here, making her feel like he would do anything to live free among her clan, pack…whatever this group’s called.” I pushed the gore from my face and went down on my knees. “He is a lover of men and wouldn’t have let you touch him if you were the most beautiful woman on earth. He did what he did to use you.”

  “What would you have of me? Would it not be the same thing? Come into my home dressed to mock my people so that you could find this she-man and make him pay for his crimes?”

  “We just want him, and then we’ll be on our way,” I said, getting to me feet.

  “What you want and what you get is altogether different, wouldn’t you agree? No one comes into my territory and tries to make a fool of me,” she snapped her fingers, as two big bloodbreeders took Caden under the arms.

  “Wait, you can’t do this, we had a deal,” he whined.

  “I knew you were bringing trouble our way the moment you opened your mouth. Strap him to the table,” she ordered. “Shall you enter your cells on your own, or shall we see just how true the stories are that we have been told about the red demon?”

  “I can tell ya right now that I’m not going in any cell,” I swore, pulling my blade out in one hand and my gun out in the other, knowing I only had one or two bullets left at best.

  Annanothra began laughing so hard, that she had to lean over to hold herself up off of the dirt floor, glancing up every so often, as if completely amazed at what she had just heard and saw. As quickly as she had begun laughing she froze, bouncing her hand off the ground several times, then once again all hell broke loose. Jacob pushed me back in time to block the blow of a long blade coming down at the back of my neck. Cates spun around in time to slam his fist into the chest of a smaller man, but not fast enough to dodge the curved blade that came down at his left elbow. He yelled out, grabbing the smaller breeder by the throat and snapping its neck to the side, dropping his corpse in the form of ashes to the floor.

  Annanothra was pushing herself back into the small cove that she had come out of when I went after her, getting a blow to the back of my head. I went down feeling the warm fluid of my own body running down the sides of my ear and onto my cheeks. I rolled over, bringing up my gun only to have it kicked free from my hand, hearing the pampered breeder yell out.

  “Kill them all, but keep the pretty one on the table,” she called out, talking about, Caden.

  “You gotta help me,” he began pleading. “You don’t know what they do to people like me.”

  I felt a spray of warm droplets shower over my face, as two bodies dropped like puppets beside me, soon turning to an ash-like mush. Cates and Jacob stood slightly bent at the lower back, gripping their weapons, waiting for the next group of morbid looking breeders to attack. Cates’ arm was missing from the elbow down, yet he held the muscles tight as if he had a fist ready to knock whatever came his way to the blood coated earth. I got to my knees and pulled one of the old ragged shawls off and crawled up behind him, causing him to jump, turning, ready to bring down that invisible club of a hand on me.

  “I need to wrap your arm,” I explained as I tightly bound it around his mangled elbow.

  “It’s nothing girl, we’ve got more important things to deal with right now.”

  I was about to respond when we all heard the wicked screams of the one and only leader of the misfits. Something had set her off into a manic rage and I was thinking that she may have just found out about the little werewolf leper in the woods, that died at the hands of several of my people. He had attacked me first and they had come to my rescue. Jacob grabbed me by the wrist and practically yanked me back up the hand carved dirt steps, with Cates bringing up the rear. Shouts and yells could be heard coming up close behind us, then one piercing scream from Caden, then his high pitched voice went silent. Cates began crashing his body back and forth into the hard packed earth walls with each step of his massive form, blood gushing from his wound with every impact.

  “Cates, stop, please!” I screamed, not knowing the meaning behind his actions.

  “Just move, woman!” he yelled back as chunks of earth began to fall.

  I knew then that his means were to bury the ones coming up behind us, and I hurried to get out of his way. The first thing we encountered when we raced out of the hut was Garvin and Sydney back to back, swinging their blades at anything that came too close. None of us could tell our werewolf from theirs, we just ran as fast as we could into the cover of the forest. The one thing we all heard were the cries of the leaper breeder’s leader, screaming out that her son had been murdered by the interloper’s, then silence fell as we passed through the dense forest floor. Jacob moved at a steady pace, cutting as he leaped over dried trees that had fallen long ago, slashing his way through the vines that not even Mother Nature could untangle.

  I searched the air with every break of the canvassing trees, looking for our winged friend, but she was nowhere in sight. I could hear many feet hitting the ground, but the dark of night made it too hard to tell who was who as we passed. I heard Garvin yell out that Cates was losing his step, not needing anything else to tell me that he had lost way too much blood and needed to be attended to immediately. The stench of rotting death filled the air as if it were poured over our heads. I grabbed my mouth, looking to my right, seeing a figure that I knew wasn’t one of ours just by the way it leaped from tree base to tree base.

  “Come together, Jacob!” I yelled, hoping he would listen, but he waved his arm to keep moving. “Something’s out here, and I don’t think it’s the Scabs.”
>
  I ran right into the river standing knee deep before I realized that Jacob and some of the others were at its edge. I looked around to see if I could see the figure that was moving like liquid speed, vanishing just as fast, and saw nothing but my wounded companions filing out of the dark forest. Derek was the last to step out of the trees backwards, holding his blade at shoulders length. Garvin and Sydney were applying pressure to Cates’ arm, as he tried to act like it was a mere flesh wound. Jacob said nothing as he turned his head back toward the wall that we had just escaped from, so deep in thought that he never replied to my asking him what he saw, until I walked up and touched his arm.

  “Even the Scabs lay low tonight. We must hurry,” he said with a warning tone, then walked over to Cates. “Can you move my friend?”

  “Like the wind in a vicious storm,” he replied pulling himself up, using Garvin as a crutch. “I felt it also.”

  “They’ve found us,” Jacob whispered, glaring into the night.

  “Who found us?” Sydney asked, readying his club for the attack.

  “You’re not talking about Annanothra’s people are you?” I asked, trying to penetrate the night myself. “Or, Scabs?”

  “The elders…” he paused, and was about to speak again, when one of our companion’s heads rolled out the forest and right down to the edge of the water. Koi was no more.

  “Move now,” Jacob demanded, pushing each one of us across the slow running river, watching, waiting for the assassins to come flying out at us.

  Fala broke free from the entanglement of the forest floor as we made our way to the other side. His beast form was bleeding from every place my eyes could see, but he stood on two strong legs. He tilted that enormous head back and howled a sound that sent shivers down my spine, and then he stormed into the water, never once looking down at the remains of his fallen friend. Derek made his way up beside me and never left his post until we made it back to Sam and Kedel’s home. It was then that he, like many other times, disappeared before I even knew he had left. Dawn was laughing at us, turning the morning sky into a soft hue of baby blue, with death on our heels, some of whom need not care whether or not the bright glowing ball was above them.

  “Can we hide here?” I asked, leaning over grabbing my knees.

  “Sam and Kedel are no longer here,” Sydney replied, crouching down next to me and Cates.

  “Are they dead?” I asked, looking back at the small shack-like home.

  “I can’t tell. I just know they’re not in there anymore.”

  “We have no choice,” Jacob claimed, leaning down and lifting Cates to his feet. “Fala will protect us the best that he can.”

  “And the elder’s assassins?” Sydney asked, taking Cates under his severed arm.

  “He too must seek shelter from the day. It’s the one we just made very angry that you should fear while you sleep.”

  “She’s a breeder too,” Sydney replied without thinking.

  “A breeder with many, many, followers,” Jacob added, then kicked in the back door.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Everything looked very much like it had when we left earlier that night. There was no sign of any struggle, and my hopes were that both were safely hidden away in the forest. Derek came through the back door, nodding once at Jacob, and then began searching the place for a basement, finding a small root cellar filled with jars of garden vegetables and stew meat. Jacob and Derek lowered Cates down into the small area first, because the weakness of blood loss was showing more with each passing second. Fala had offered to feed him, but Cates refused knowing it would weaken the only form of protection that we had left. Once we were all crammed into the cellar, it reminded me of being in the motor room on Sydney’s father’s boat, making me wish for the first time that I was back on the ship with the others and had left Caden to his own demise.

  “How many do you think the elders sent?” I asked, waiting for the pull of day to take me under.

  “Two, maybe three, but they’ll be gone when we wake. We will get back to the ship and make our way as far from here as we can.”

  “Why would they leave if they just now found us?”

  “To tell the elders of our count and strength. I assure you, they will be back. Waiting in the shadows until the elder’s wishes have been met,” Jacob explained closing his eyes and leaning his head back.

  “Then we go straight to London. Forget the other places…for now,” I whispered as I began to drift off.

  “London will have many challenges as well…London.”

  My last thoughts were not of never waking again, if the home we hid in was attacked by the creatures of the surrounding forest, but of what we would do with the young ones on the ship once we reached London, with Johnny being on the top of that list and Tanda close behind.

  ***

  I couldn’t tell if it was the knowledge of the night that woke me, or the fine tapping that wanted to make me scream. Instantly I sat up, seeing everyone right where we had left them. I pushed off of Garvin’s shoulder and Derek’s thigh to finally witness death on the man-boy that had seen it on me from the moment we met. I wanted to see his flesh soften, as the color of life tinted his cheeks. I laid my hand on his chest, lightly at first, and then laughed at my own reason, for we slept like the dead and he wouldn’t know my hand was there anyway. I pressed harder, leaning my upper body to search his porcelain features. Jacob’s eyelashes were thick and black and his brows naturally arched to match the slight slant of his eyes.

  He was the age of one of my younger brothers, yet hundreds of year’s worth of growth and beyond brutal happenings had barely showed him to be more than a teen. I was grateful to be alive in the root cellar of friends, who may or may not be dead, but all I wanted at this very moment was for everyone to wake, and get back to the ship and not stop again until we reached the shores of England. I was fixing to place my fingers on a scar close to the base of Jacob’s throat, when he opened his eyes and flipped me on top of Cates, who moaned out in pain.

  “I was just checking to see if you were awake,” I claimed, as his face calmed realizing I wasn’t the enemy.

  “You could lose your life doing that,” he replied, taking my hand and moving me off of Cates.

  “Oh no, something’s wrong,” Cates said in a serious low tone.

  “What? We’re here Cates,” I replied, leaning down over him, with tears in my eyes.

  “I can’t find my left arm, have you seen it?” he chuckled, getting a slap across the chest from me.

  “Son-of-a-bitch, Cates. You almost gave me a heart attack, and that wasn’t funny you big ole bull,” I half laughed and cried seeing the sparkle of life in his eyes.

  “I’ll go check on our wolf friend,” Jacob interjected with his own form of laughter, and then climbed the short stack of steps.

  Fala was waiting outside the door when Jacob opened it, telling him that nothing had moved throughout the night. The two of them helped Cates out of the cellar, with me pushing from the back snickering the whole time. Cates took what he needed from Fala, while Jacob and I began looking out the windows for our boats that would get us off this hellish piece of land called, New York. I could see the foaming after effects of the rolling waves, but it took me more time in finding the boats than it did Jacob.

  “There, to the right. Sam must have moved them,” Jacob proclaimed, pointing toward a cluster of shrubbery and trees that hung out over the ocean caps.

  “Thank goodness, and I don’t care if we have to row all the way out into the middle of the ocean to find our ship, I want out of here, and I don’t ever want to come back.”

  “I don’t think any of us will have to row for very long, Renee” Jacob said leaning closer to the stained window. “I believe our Shyanna, has brought the ship back to us.”

  “I don’t see it.”

  “Look with your heart, not your eyes…then open them and you will see the swinging lights on the deck.”

  I looked back at Cates, who
was looking better, but still gripping what was left of his arm, with sheer pain on his face. I turned back, closed my eyes, and reached out with my mind finding Tammy and Jessica, climbing down the rope ladder on the side of the ship getting into one of our smallest boats. I opened my eyes, putting both hands on the glass and saw the twinkle of lights in the storm that was building out in the blackness of the waters.

  “They’ll be here before we get the others in the boats,” Jacob smiled.

  “What the hell do they think they’re doing?” I asked, rushing back to the cellar door. “Out! Everyone out right now.”

  “But, Mom, can’t we just sleep for five more minutes,” Derek jokingly said, knocking me out of the panic state that I was in just mere seconds before.

  “Yeah, we had a little bit of a hard night,” Sydney laughed, elbowing Derek.

  “We have to get to the ship, glad to see y’all in such a good mood, but if we don’t hurry, we’ll have Tammy and Jessie here.”

  “What?” Garvin asked.

  “Shyanna must have worried them so much they brought the ship back in, and I think they think they’re coming to our rescue, so let’s move it,” I explained, moving back as the boy’s made their way out of the small encasement.

  “Jessica is a warrior inside. She knows I would do the same for her,” Jacob remarked as he rewrapped Cates’ arm with a clean cloth he must have found somewhere in the house.

  “We can meet them halfway if we hurry. I don’t want them anywhere near this shit.”

  “You have such a way with words, Renee,” Cates added, laughing through his pain.

  “Do you really want Tammy to see the likes of what we just went through?” I asked, watching him bounce to his feet. “We really need to hurry.”

  “You heard the lady,” he said, looking around.

  “What do you need?” I asked, wanting to help.

  “Have you seen my arm, can’t find the thing anywhere,” he turned slowly looking back down at me. “Wonder what your lassie will think of me now?”