Exile: Sídhí Summer Camp #3

by Jodie B. Cooper

  Beth roared.

  Blood spewed past the greenery.

  “Well, that’s one more down,” Nick said with a grunt of satisfaction.

  “Crap,” Sarah snapped softly and lunged toward the beach area.

  The female lamia shifted, turning her lower half into a thick coppery coil. She slipped off the jet ski and into the lake.

  Sarah was half a second behind her.

  “No!” Nick roared, but it was too late.

  Sarah dived into the water after the snake-woman.

  As he ran toward the water, he heard the other teens swarm out of the forest like a nest of furious hornets.

  The water churned and Sarah flew up, out of the water with the lamia’s strong tail wrapped firmly around his mate’s throat. The fact her eyes were ice-cold kept him from panicking.

  As he rushed into the water, Sarah twisted and slashed the muscled-tail with whitish claws, ripping through the flesh as if it were paper. Blood sprayed everywhere, but Sarah’s move had the desired effect or so Nick thought.

  The tail released Sarah.

  She dropped into the water with a resounding splash.

  He struggled through the hip deep water to reach her afraid the snake-woman would attack while Sarah was off balance. He’d fight a dhark lord, much less a lamia, to keep his mate safe.

  She shot up. A snarl covered her face as she searched the water. “Where is she?” Sarah asked, a deep growl rumbled across the water intensifying her demand. “You cut a lamia’s tail and they always attack. Stupid creature left instead of attacking. What is with that?”

  Her eyes bore into his and he couldn’t help the tense laughter that escaped. “Dang it woman, here I was praying the lamia would leave and you want her back.”

  Her lips twitched and she chuckled softly as his arms wrapped around her. “I wasn’t finished with her.”

  They turned toward the beach in time to see Mac’s sudden arrival, and his display of temper.

  “So much for having one of them to question,” Sarah said with a huff of exasperation.

  Chapter - Day at the Beach

  The next morning, Sarah was awake and headed toward the commissary before anyone realized she was gone. Halfway there she slipped off the path and ported to the small chamber in Guardian Alexander’s castle.

  Lizzie, Guardian Alexander’s mate, stood by the window. “Knocking at the front door is considered polite behavior for all Sídhí races,” the brunette said sharply. Her tone held a note irritation, and a hefty amount of fear.

  Guardian Alexander appeared in front of his mate. “Do not ever appear in my home without warning,” he said, baring his very human teeth as the room filled with his growl of warning.

  “If I ever need to warn you of something, I don’t think you’ll like the result,” Sarah said with a cold voice. Her lips tilted, hinting at a merciless smile. She glanced at Lizzie’s white face and felt a shaft of regret. The woman had been through hell, and Sarah didn’t like adding to that grief. “But from now on, unless it is an emergency, I will knock.”

  “Thank you,” Lizzie said, stepping from behind the large man. Her fingers trembled as they grasped Alexander’s arm, contradicting the calm words.

  “Yesterday, we were attacked by trolls and lamia. We were at one of the picnic areas near The Maze,” Sarah said, quickly stating the purpose of her visit.

  “Yes, we heard,” Alexander said with a hint of annoyance in his voice. “Brianna, the young shapeshifter, has become a permanent fixture in Chief Henderson’s office.”

  “She’s been talking to the dragon in charge of the camp?” Sarah questioned, wondering what else the little troublemaker had been up to around the camp.

  He snorted. “Not talking with him, complaining to him about everything and anything.”

  “We’ve put a warning out about the injured lamia,” Lizzie said, her voice growing stronger as she settled into a role she appeared to be comfortable with doing.

  “The trolls were just a distraction. I wasn’t the target, Nick was.”

  The guardian nodded his head in agreement. “They’ve targeted your mate.”

  Sarah let the mate comment slide. She wasn’t ready to discuss what happened with the Dyrst’Lye dragon he sent.

  “You mean your partner has targeted my mate, or am I mistaken in believing Guardian Clara acted on her own and not on your orders,” Sarah said quietly. She thought she could trust Alexander, but preferred to err on the side of caution. Her gut insisted the gray dragon she hit with javelins, the troll’s mistress, and Guardian Clara were all the same person, but she needed a bit more evidence Alexander wasn’t working both sides to trust him completely.

  Alexander growled and took a single step forward before his mate tugged him to a halt.

  “Clara took great pleasure in torturing me,” Lizzie said, fire burned in her soft brown eyes. “She is no longer a guardian and is now on our Most Wanted List.”

  ____________

  Sarah grabbed a few items from the well-stocked commissary and reached the cabin just as the girls were serving breakfast.

  No one said anything about her late arrival and Nick seemed to understand her need to be alone. She settled next to him at the table and he told her the details for the days agreed upon activity, which amounted to a full day at the lake.

  Breakfast didn’t take long, not when everyone wanted to hit the beach. They hadn’t been in the water very long when Cabin twenty-four arrived and challenged Sarah’s cabin to a game of water volleyball.

  Unbelievably, Sarah and her team lost the first game. The day at the beach raced by, and before she knew it, it was mid-afternoon.

  Mitch blamed the third lost game on Beth, which caused a flare of tempers among the few shifters watching the game. The blond-haired walking-mountain shrugged and demanded a rematch.

  Other cabins joined the fun and players began rotating between games.

  Energized and exhausted at the same time, Sarah dropped to the brilliant red and blue beach towel Nick had spread-out for them when they first arrived at the beach. Keeping an expressionless face during the games had proven impossible. Sighing in disgust, she admitted she had finally stopped trying.

  Her eyes found Nick among the players of the current game. He waved and threw her a kiss.

  Lips twitching, she pretended to catch the invisible caress. By the end of summer, her rep would be shredded to pieces. Damage control would be a nightmare.

  “Want to grab some bottles of water for everyone?” Katie asked, as she dropped onto a nearby beach towel. Her eyes flickered to Jared as he hit the ball.

  Sarah agreed and they headed toward the cabin.

  Deciding to add sandwiches, they took a lot longer than planned. Finally finished, they piled sandwiches (sealed in small bags), plastic bottles, and the contents of the refrigerator’s small ice bin into a big plastic tub. Each girl grabbed a side of the bulky tub and carried the hot pink container toward the beach.

  Emily met them halfway. Her eyes were wide. Sarah caught a hint of fear in them.

  “What happened?” Sarah demanded, clenching her hand around the thick rope handle.

  Glancing to the north, Emily swallowed.

  Sarah followed Emily’s unspoken hint and watched Nick’s back disappear between the trees. He wasn’t alone.

  ____________

  Nick hit the ball over the net, but his mind wasn’t on the game. Over the previous few months, he had considered a dozen scenarios of why Sarah acted the way she did. None of them came close to the truth. He couldn’t go on the way he was, not with the truth beating at his brain.

  They needed to talk, but he was not looking forward to the discussion.

  Finishing the game, he switched out with a boy from their sister cabin. The big shapeshifter introduced himself as Derek and smiled nastily at Mitch.

  Nick chuckled. The next game should prove entertaining. He glanced toward the cabin, wondering what was taking so long. When he turned back
to the beach, Shelby was kneeling on the beach towel in front of him.

  “Shelby,” Nick said, clenching his jaw. He didn’t want to hurt the girl. “We have a lot of good memories, leave it at that.”

  “She’s not your mate,” Shelby said, her eyes filling with unshed tears. “Please, you’ve got to listen to me.”

  “Sarah is my other half. She completes my soul,” he said, hoping his other half wouldn’t show up and kill the innocent girl in front of him. Once again, it struck him that his mate was Chi’Kehra, the vampire’s worst enemy. “She’s also very territorial. You need to leave.”

  “Nick, have I ever lied to you?” she asked desperately. Not waiting for an answer she quickly added, “There is no way someone like you could ever mate with Lady Sarah, the Horror of Trellick Valley. Have you heard some of the stories about her? She is evil.”

  “Enough,” Nick said, snarling at the girl. “My synth sang for her.”

  At his words, her mouth dropped open. She looked stunned. “How? I just don’t understand. There was no one else around. A Sídhí can only mate with one person and my synth sang for you on the beach.” Her eyes filled with horror and a delicate hand slapped over her mouth. “Oh, no, I just told you. Oh, crap!”

  Telling a destined mated, one whose synth had not yet sang, was a serious breach. Horror stories abounded through every valley about mates who spoke too soon and ended up losing their mate.

  “Calm down,” he said gently.

  Emotion filled him. He had known some girl’s synth would sing for him, but that nameless girl had been a stranger without a face. Shelby lived three blocks from his house. In frustration, he rubbed a hand down his face. What a screwed-up mess. He did not want to destroy her life.

  “No,” she groaned, “it’s not okay. If the other half of the mating doesn’t hear the synth sing, we aren’t supposed to tell them. Horrible things happen!”

  In the distance, he heard the whack of a screen door slam shut with the force of a gunshot. Ignoring her wail of despair, he grabbed her arm and scrambled to his feet. Adding Sarah to the mix was so not happening.

  “Nick!” Emily snapped at him. His younger cousin’s eyes flashed sparks of fire as she blocked his path to the forest. “Don’t do this.”

  “Tell Sarah I’ll be back in a while,” he said, pulling an unresisting Shelby behind him.

  Chapter - When All is Lost

  Sunset came and went, Nick did not return. Still, Sarah waited for him. She considered calling Mac, but refused to be that girl, a girl that didn’t trust her boyfriend to talk with another girl.

  Still as a marble statue, she sat unmoving on the edge of the beach under a large furble tree. The ticking minutes turned into hours. It was late, nearly midnight, but she couldn’t sleep, not with Nick out with another girl. She wanted to trust him. She was trying so hard to trust him, but the flickers of doubt had started eating at her.

  He said he loved her. That he wanted forever. He had promised.

  Like a tuneless chant, she repeated the three little sentences. Eyes unseeing, she stared toward the lake like the Stone Maiden of Sídhí legend, wishing to the depths of her soul that he would walk out of the trees.

  A familiar scent circled behind her. A twig broke. She snorted to herself. The great outdoors was not kind to Mitch. He was like a giant moose in a china shop.

  Twenty feet in front of her, Brianna walked across the moonlit sand. Short, blonde hair swung, nearly touching her shoulders. She must’ve gotten it cut, because the blonde cap of fine, straight hair looked a bit shorter than it normally did.

  “I haven’t forgotten our conversation that was cut short,” Sarah said, as a form of greeting.

  “Yeah, well, that’s not why I’m here,” the girl said smugly.

  Sarah waited, not caring one way or another.

  A sour look pinched the girl’s lips. “How much for a hit?”

  Sarah’s eyebrow rose in shock as the girl spouted gangster-like jargon. When Brianna didn’t react, Sarah assumed the girl was still in her puberty cycle and couldn’t see very well through the darkness. “A hit? Exactly what kind of hit?”

  “An assassination,” she snarled. “How much?”

  “I charge on a case-by-case basis,” she said icily, not telling the girl she had never accepted payment for any assassination. The majority of her targets were sadistic pricks that came to her notice. Most people who tried to hire her, ended-up as the target, not her employer. “Before I will consider the assignment I’ll need to know who it is.”

  “Consider? What do you mean? You’re an assassin. If I pay you, you’ll kill who I want,” she said, curling her lip in a snarl of distaste.

  “And that person is?” Sarah asked, casually leaning against the spongy, blue tree as she waited for an answer.

  “First, tell me how much it’ll cost,” the girl snapped.

  “Five million down, ten million upon completion,” Sarah said with ice-cold finality.

  The girl said quickly, “Fine, but you can’t kill her if I’m anywhere near her. I have to have a solid alibi.” The girl’s suddenly anxious voice hinted at the target.

  Repulsed, Sarah’s eyes narrowed. If the girl wanted to kill her best friend, Sarah might conveniently forget she owed the young phoenix. Remaining silent, she let the girl stew.

  “Well?” Brianna demanded.

  “You haven’t named the target,” Sarah said, glancing to her right as leaves rustled. If he leaned-out much farther, Mitch would be visible.

  “Beth, Alpha Prime of Haven Valley. You’ll kill her without witnesses and you won’t discuss this with me unless I start the conversation.”

  Sarah caught herself just as she started to shake her head in disbelief. The girl was a piece of work in progress, and not a good one.

  “I’ll consider it,” she said, waiting for the explosion she knew was coming. Something about the girl was off, but she couldn’t put her finger on it.

  “Consider it?” she shrieked in a hiss of disbelief. “Fifteen million and you’ll consider it? Exactly when will I have an answer?”

  When you end-up hog-tied and delivered to Phoenix Valley. That will be your answer, Sarah silently promised the girl. She couldn’t kill the girl, not after Brianna helped save Nick’s life, but she certainly wasn’t going to kill Beth. The shifter was a snarly, pain-in-the-backside, but that wasn’t a good enough reason to kill her.

  “One week,” Sarah answered. Standing, she disappeared into the dark forest leaving the girl sputtering in anger.

  She had more important things to do than talk with the little traitor, namely finding Nick. It had been hours since he disappeared into the forest with Shelby.

  She’d waited long enough. If talking was all Nick and Shelby had been doing, he would’ve returned to the cabin by then. She refused to dwell on what they might have been doing, because if his synth sang for his ex-girlfriend, anything could have happened.

  She picked up his rich, intoxicating scent. Within fifty feet, his scent trail stopped. It didn’t dissipate slowly; it stopped cold in the middle of a small clearing. Concern lashed at her.

  Well, hell’s bells, she should have checked on him sooner. There had been hundreds of people on the beach, each of them witness to her status as Nick’s girlfriend, a girlfriend that gazed at him with hunger in her eyes.

  With sinking clarity, she clenched her fist tight. She’d put him at risk. She had enemies by the bucketful, not to mention the camp’s resident terrorist group who had tried to kidnap Nick just yesterday. She’d let her girlish concern over his reaction sway her better judgment.

  With a snarl curling her lips, she gave up her self-imposed promise not to mentally check-up on him. “Nick?”

  Silence answered her call.

  “Mac?” she called.

  No answer.

  Pausing, she took a deep breath, inhaling through her nose she smelled hundreds of various scents. The sharp bite of ticked-off lightning combined with the smel
l of Nick’s anger and pain. Now, that she thought to look for them, the stench of volatile emotions filled the air. She also caught the faintest hint of the seashore, and more importantly, she smelled a woman, the female dragon that had shadowed Shelby two nights before.

  At least she assumed the cabin parent masquerading as human was dragon. Most of the adults in camp smelled human, but had the distinct energy glow of a Sídhí shapeshifter. For all she knew, the woman could turn into a khatt or werewolf. She needed to remember dragons weren’t the only race of shapeshifters.

  She circled the clearing, but there was not another trail leading away from the area. Under a small bush, she found two discarded bracelets. The dragon must have removed Nick and Shelby’s silver, before porting them away.

  She reached for the lingering pulse of power, an echo of energy that surrounded all teleports, but it had already melted into the surrounding environment. Turning her search to the ground, she hunted for additional clues.

  A sprinkle of white glinted on an exposed rock. Kneeling, she rubbed a bit of dried silver off the rough surface. The substance smeared under her finger. Cautiously, she sniffed the silver powder, smelling the tang of metal and the bitter odor of mite poison.

  Sarah rocked back on her heels. She knew exactly what the silver powder was, and it was not a good sign. Fairy enhanced silver-water mixed with mite poison was a nasty combination. It wasn’t anything like the mundane version of silver-water.

  The correct dosage would knock most victims unconscious nearly instantly. From the angry overtones covering Mac’s storm-laced scent, the tranquilizer had shut him up as well, but the mixture had not been strong enough to knock him out immediately. There were a few advantages of having a six-thousand-year old body.

  She halfway pitied the kidnapper. Being phoenix, Mac’s system would burn through nearly any drug at a rapid pace. A ticked-off phoenix was beyond dangerous.

  “Mac?” she tried once more, pushing a surge of power behind the mental call. No answer. With that push of power, Mac should’ve heard her at the North Pole.

  Opening her mental senses wide, the crystal springs within each valley lit up like a beacon, millions of smaller sources scattered across hundreds of valleys like stars in the sky. Waiting a moment, she allowed the pulse and ebb of energy to settle into a rhythm that she could follow.