The Savage Blood (Savage Series, Book 2)

by Tamara Rose Blodgett

  He slid behind the prince and aligned the blade at his neck. Clara's gills widened unmercifully, reacting to her fright and shock like a swimmer when drowning.

  He ran the blade across the prince's throat and a gap like a second mouth appeared, arterial blood spray blanketing Clara's face and splattering the gills that were open to the night. She began choking, her lungs constricted by the hold and her new slits filled with the prince's blood.

  Tucker dumped her to the ground as Matthew let the prince slide to his feet and charged Matthew.

  Clara watched from the ground, gasping for air and feeling her vision waver. All around her the sounds of battle raged. She saw Clarence in the distance stabbing the hateful Robert and Bracus taking four of the fragment by himself.

  The two men above her fought with bare fists and Clara saw the dagger used on the prince lay a few feet away from Matthew as he pounded his fists into the face of Tucker. Tucker was on his knees, hanging onto the edge of Matthew's tunic. A final pummel and he fell to the side, his head a beaten and bloody egg against the grass.

  Clara watched as three of the fragment advanced behind Matthew and raised a shaky hand in warning, her gasping breaths slowing.

  She was drowning. Her nose had shut down and breathing out of her mouth an impossibility. The gills were utterly useless and would mean her death. If she had not been so panicked about her demise she would have laughed at the absurdity of it all.

  She clawed at her throat as Matthew fought the three that approached. Two attempted to hold him as one beat him, but he tore one arm free and grabbed the nearest head, bashing it into the one who beat him. His powerful arms cracked the two together over and over again. Then bending at the waist, he scooped up his fallen dirk, the hook at its end backlit by the moonlight and drove it into the third as he rose, stabbing him soundly in the lower belly. He punctured the belly of the fragment in a final upward arc, dragging it to his sternum. The skin split and steaming entrails fell out like tangled and bloodied ropes.

  Clara closed her eyes, the crashing and fighting a background symphony as her heart slowed its rhythm, her tenuous hold on consciousness slipping away.

  Suddenly, a gentle hand held her head up, and she used every ounce of strength left to open her eyes as Matthew's face swam into view.

  His startled face beheld her gills. “Clara...”

  She tried to speak, “I...I...drown...”

  His eyes widened and he shouted for Evelyn. Clara watched as an elf with silver hair skipped between lumps that lay in the field.

  “Oh no! What is wrong with Clara?” Clara watched recognition form on Evelyn's face. “She is Band...” she said, her eyes wide in her face.

  “Grab my rucksack. Now! Be about it!”

  Clara watched her run between the bodies, her hair glittering in the starlight and closed her eyes again. She was so tired, she must rest.

  Matthew scooped her tight against him. “Do not die, Clara...do not die!” he yelled. “I cannot lose you as well, I cannot,” his voice breaking on the last word.

  His grip was painfully tight as Clara breathed in his clean scent.

  And breathed no more.

  “No!” Matthew bellowed. “Evelyn!”

  The next thing Clara knew, liquid was splashing on her neck and a hiccup of oxygen entered her. She gasped, struggling anew, trying to get more. Her heart rate climbed in a system bereft of air.

  “More! Poor it into her throat slits!” Bracus bellowed.

  More deliciously cool liquid entered her gills and the hiccup grew into breath, releasing the stranglehold of suffocation that had nearly robbed her life.

  Gentle hands pressed against her sternum rhythmically and she opened her eyes to see Anna pressing on her chest, her hands in the shape of a cross, tears staining her face and trembling at her jaw before falling between Clara's breasts and drenching the spot. Carefully, Anna removed her hands from Clara's chest.

  Sarah wiped the hair off Clara's sweaty brow and Bracus and Matthew had either of her hands. Clara took a deep breath, her breastbone aching as she did so, a cough erupting out of her mouth.

  Sarah pulled her head onto her lap, the men moving to stay near her. “Dear Guardian, we thought we had lost you,” a tear escaped her eye and rolled over the lump on her cheekbone, distended from the abuse of Tucker.

  Clara said nothing for a moment, absorbing the scene around her, silently looking for the people that she felt responsible for.

  Charles was absent.

  “Where...” her voice rasped and she cleared it, trying again, “where may Charles be?”

  Bracus and Matthew looked at each other. Clara nodded. “I know what state he is in. Where is he now?” Her eyes moved between the two men.

  “He is safe,” Clarence said on his approach. Clara saw him staring as if mesmerized by the sight of her gills. She fought embarrassment. He had thought her royal and now she was clearly in another category.

  Other.

  Clarence seemed to shake something off. “How fare you, Queen Clara?”

  She nodded. “I fare well as the Band was near at hand.” Clara's gaze roamed the tight group that were gathered.

  Evelyn came forward. “It is what we do when the Band rides away from the clan.”

  Clara's brows rose.

  Bracus said, “The salted water calms the throat slits when there is a foreign body...”

  “Blood,” Matthew said with regret. “The throat slits cannot have anything but air and the salted water inside.” He gestured to his own, flaring slightly as he spoke.

  Clara looked at him with her heart in her eyes and a small sliver of happiness took residence in his face as she said, “It is because of you that I live. Prince Frederic meant my death.”

  Clarence nodded. “From all accounts, he is not want to stop.”

  Sarah looked a question at him.

  He sighed. “This may be too tender for feminine ears,” he said significantly.

  Evelyn huffed. “Tell us, Clarence. It matters not what gender we find ourselves in.” She glowered at him and his brows shot down above his eyes.

  As Clara saw him preparing to chastise Evelyn she preempted it, “I think, dear Clarence, that pertinent information may be more important than our feminine sensibilities.” Clara did tire of the endless circular speak when there was mixed company.

  “Speak plainly, Clarence,” Sarah encouraged.

  He looked at their faces and said, “There were rumors that the prince had indulged himself with females of his sphere. That he had mayhap gone too far with one and King Otto moved heaven and sphere to quiet it.”

  There was silence for a time and Clara noticed the sky had lightened, losing the depth of true night.

  Bracus saw her looking and said, “Dawn approaches.”

  Clara lifted her torso off of Sarah and sat up, looking at Clarence.

  “Whatever the prince may have been, it matters not. His lifeblood covered me in his death. He will no longer be able to abuse females.” Uttering the words a relief she could taste.

  Joseph and Philip walked up, each one with Charles' arms around their necks, his height dwarfed by theirs. He slumped and stumbled intermittently between them.

  Clara tried to stand and Bracus and Matthew helped her to her feet. Her hand immediately went to her chest where it throbbed painfully.

  “Look!” Evelyn said, pointing to Clara.

  All eyes turned to her.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “Your throat slits are no more,” Matthew said, wrapping his hand around her throat, his thumb stroking the center of it, settling in the hollow between the bones. Her heart sped under his touch. Their gazes locked and she stepped away from him, his hand falling away.

  She turned and walked slowly to where Charles hung between the two Band. Her heart ached at the sight of his face a swollen mess.

  She came before him and he watched her out of the slit of one of his eyes. She drug his face to her and pressed her fo
rehead against the only uninjured spot that remained.

  “How fare you?” she whispered against his neck, her breath easing around him like a cocoon of heat.

  He nodded, taking one arm from around the neck of Joseph and pulling her against him. “I fare well, now that you are within my sight, my grasp.”

  Tears rolled down Clara's face and Charles rubbed them away with the pad of his thumb. “Cry not, Clara. I shall live to see another day.”

  “Why did they beat you?”

  He shrugged and winced. “For sport.”

  “I loathe them,” she said fiercely.

  “And I,” he agreed.

  Clara pulled away and faced the group. “Where are the fragment?” She looked about her, bodies lying everywhere. “We know their number as forty men...?”

  “Forty-three,” Matthew clarified.

  She stared and Bracus responded. “We have dispatched over twenty...”

  “There is bad news, Queen Clara,” Philip said.

  What more could there be?

  “Some of the bodies are missing.”

  Terror pierced her heart and it began to beat wildly, her arm automatically reaching out to grasp Charles for support. She was instantly ashamed of her fear. But her body remembered everything for her and its response she was helpless to control. “Whose?”

  The Band looked at one another.

  “Who?” Clara asked as a command.

  “Prince Frederic....” Joseph said.

  Evelyn came to Clara and looked at her. “And their leader, Clara.”

  Tucker.

  Clara backed away shaking her head, hysteria beginning to hem her in. “No! I saw him die! I wore the prince's blood on my face!” she yelled. “He cannot live.”

  Matthew grabbed Clara and drug her against him, putting her face against his chest, her hitching sobs muffled by his body.

  “You killed him,” she whispered and his arms tightened about her.

  Bracus stroked her back, his hand winding around the back of her neck. “He suffered a most grievous injury. Most could not survive it. Surely he has slunk off somewhere to die.”

  Clara wanted to believe the prince was bleeding out as she stood there in Matthew's arms, but he had escaped as an eel in butter before.

  “What of the other...?” she pulled back, searching their faces.

  Joseph shook his head and pulled Anna to him. “We have not found them.”

  “The remaining fragment has fled. We are free to leave this place. With their diminished numbers, they dare not attack,” Philip said as Sarah gave him a look from beneath her eyelashes. He saw it, boldly staring at her until her gaze fell and heat rose on her cheeks, noticeable even in the gloom.

  “We ride now. There is nothing good with lingering here. What if they gather their wits about them? I, for one, need food and water,” Bracus commanded then looked at Clara, his eyes softening.“We must press forward, Clara. I cannot let another round of fighting with the remaining fragment ensue. Your protection and that of the other females is paramount.”

  Clara took in the group, the women with wide shocky eyes, the Band bloodied and filthy. They stood with the skin shredded off their knuckles. They had hit human flesh with enough force to slough the skin of their enemy off their bones. Finally her eyes rested on Charles.

  She nodded at Bracus, longing for another embrace.

  Aching for one.

  Instead, she turned to find some clothes that she and the women could change into for the long travel that lay ahead. It was critical that they put distance between themselves and the fragment.

  Distance between the prince and Tucker.

  Her hand floated to her neck, smooth and free of gills. The Band watched her gesture. She was different in their eyes now. She was more than a select.

  She was a female of the Band. She was not Band, but the organic matter that made them ran through her veins, her body.

  The mystery of her gills reappearing and disappearing would need to be solved in the future.

  Very soon.

  CHAPTER 12

  Clara was decidedly tired of the quest. The horses had moved endlessly northeast. The Band had assured her that it would be no more than a week hence. That the sea would be within their sight.

  Clara ruminated on the glass piece that marked the stairwell turn in the Royal Manse. Were the waters of the glass as blue as the sea?

  Was her natural mother the woman in the glass? Immortalized with the sea a riot of flaming waves around her? Did her gills disappear?

  Bracus halted the procession. Clara drug the white gloves, now layered gray by travel dust, off her hands and flexed her fingers. She shielded her eyes with her hands, hitting the wide brim of her hat as she did.

  Clara tired of all the accessories that she must wear Outside or her skin would blister. Evelyn wore no hat, but used a foul-smelling, grease-like substance on her nose and cheekbones that kept the sun's damage to a minimum. Consequently, Clara enjoyed teasing her. She looked as the skunk, a creature which lifted its tail when threatened and sprayed a fetid smell such that ones eyes watered with it. Stripes lay under her eyes and her nose had a stripe of fair skin that ran its length.

  Bracus dismounted and jogged back to the middle, grabbing her mount's reins. “This is a place we shall remain for two fore-nights. There is a glade, which lays very close to the river.”

  She stared down at Bracus, the sun beating upon shoulders connected to arms that were the size of her thighs. A blush struggled to assert itself on her already flushed face at the sight of his physique and what it made her think of.

  A small smile graced his lips and was gone. He knew what affect he and Matthew had on Clara and he would not press his advantage. It was a dangerous thing, Matthew and he toe to toe on more than one occasion.

  “Does it have salt?” Clara asked as a distraction.

  “You know that it does,” he looked at her levelly. Bracus had broached the subject of the appearance of her gills. How had they manifested, under what conditions?

  Clara could still not bear to think of the near drowning, her hands shaking whenever she thought of it, her chest tightening, her hands dampening.

  She could not speak of it.

  Matthew and Bracus had argued. He felt Clara should not be forced to confess things that gave her such obvious, physical duress. Bracus disagreed, saying that the knowledge of their appearance was more important.

  Charles had ended the disagreement by insisting Clara choose a date that she would speak of it.

  That date was today.

  It had been one week past that the fragment had been subdued in battle. Even now, the twenty or more that had fled may be reassembling for another attack. Prince Frederic and Tucker possibly amongst them. When she closed her eyes she could still feel the blood splatter on her face and neck, see him slump to the ground, remember the meaty sounds of Matthew's fist pummeling Tucker.

  She glared at Bracus and he laughed. “Dear Clara, do not attempt to intimidate me. We must know what happened at the river. It is not curiosity that motivates me.”

  Clara crossed her arms, she did not believe him.

  “Not entirely,” he amended.

  “Humph!” she exclaimed, expertly dismounting into Bracus' arms.

  “What!” she spluttered and he laughed, swinging her around in a circle. The heat that climbed her body from their contact a fire licking between them. The easy smile slipped from his face to be replaced by a burning intensity, need.

  Clara's arms wound around his neck and he stared into her eyes, his grip tightening about her waist.

  “I believe you forget yourself, Captain Goodman,” she said in a droll way.

  He sighed, allowing her body to slide down the front of his.

  Very unseemly.

  Matthew rode up upon his mount, casting a dark look between the two of them so close together.

  “What say you, Captain?”

  “I say that we must set up camp,” Bra
cus said to him, his eyes all for Clara.

  “Mayhap our queen does not need such thorough assistance in her dismount,” he said in a level tone.

  Bracus looked at him, saying nothing. Their gazes locked and tension began to build as static upon the air.

  Clara stepped in front of Bracus, pressing her back against his chest and gazed up at Matthew upon his mount. She took off her hat and twisted it in her hands. Matthew's eyes fixed upon the loosened hair that hung about her like spun copper in the sun. “You are too right. I tire but not enough for more than a hand to but guide me.”

  Clara looked at him and as he gazed at her she let all the feelings she had for him fill her eyes, her intent and emotions naked to him.

  He let out a mighty exhale and his eyes shifted to Bracus. “We break for camp then,” he said as a statement.

  Bracus nodded and Clara allowed him to take her horse as he and Matthew followed her into the forest, the cool depths a salve to the heat of the day and their tempers.

  *

  The faces glowed around her, the firelight dancing with moving shapes on the group. She searched each one, finding only acceptance. Clara took a deep breath, Charles at her right hand, Sarah her left.

  She began, recounting the whole of it. The game of hide and seek going too long, Thomas calling them out. Finally needing to evacuate their hiding place.

  “When did you realize you were alone?” Clarence asked.

  “When my guard lay about, gutted like swine,” she replied without emotion.

  Matthew and Bracus looked at her. “You understand that we could not find you. That you were hidden and our number was not great enough, without the element of surprise, we dare not take on the whole of the fragment?” he asked, the standing question in his eyes.

  Clara's eyes remained steady on Bracus. “I have never had protection until now. I am not accustomed to relying on it. The only thought in my head was of Evelyn.” She glanced at the girl, cuddled up against Bracus' side.

  Matthew's hands clenched and Clara stilled his response with a palm. “It is not that I believed you would not come for us. I was certain you would.”