Elysian Fields

by Suzanne Johnson

  He smiled, which cracked his busted lip and sent a trickle of blood onto his chin. Served him right. “No, except for a small exchange of blood.”

  “Can we bond until the loup-garou business is over and you’ve gotten your political benefit, and then undo it?” Elven divorce court was probably about as entertaining as the scene I’d just endured.

  Rand pressed the hem of his sleeve against his lip to stop the bleeding. “Um, well, no. It’s permanent.” Recognizing the disgust on my face, he spoke faster. “Look, I’m offering you a way out. You can keep your life here. You won’t turn loupgarou. You keep the staff. You keep your job. And I know you and Alex are involved. Do you want to leave him?”

  God, no, I didn’t want to leave him. I wanted to be able to live my life here, not hide out in the Beyond and meet with Alex in stolen moments, if I could even trust myself not to hurt him. Look at the problems Jake was having. I didn’t want Alex to start fearing me the way I’d begun to fear Jake.

  Tying myself to Quince Randolph for the rest of my life— even in some bonding of convenience—made me ill. I had to consider it, but needed more time.

  “I’m sure there’s more,” I said. “What about my elven skills. Will they change? Will you get power from me?”

  “You’ll get more from it than me in terms of skills,” Rand said. “I won’t pick up any wizard’s magic, but if we’re bonded you’ll be immune to our mental influence, even mine. Your empathic and aural skills will be stronger. As for me, well, I’ll be able to communicate with you mentally—the way I did in Elf heim, only you’ll be able to talk to me as well.”

  Oh, great. Rand would be able to annoy me from a distance.

  Encouraged by my silence, he kept yapping. “This can be a good thing, Dru. You can stay here in your house. You can see your friends. You don’t have to give up your life to either the Elders or the call of the moon.”

  Speaking of friends . . . “You’d have to break things off with Eugenie because I don’t want to see her pulled in the middle of a mess she can’t possibly understand. She cares about you, and you’ve just been using her as a way to get to me. And break up with her in a way that doesn’t hurt her or make it look like it has anything to do with me.”

  “Then you’ll do it?”

  I closed my eyes. I’d be stuck with some sort of contact with Quince Randolph for the rest of my life, which was disgusting. On the other hand, at least I’d have a life. I’d have my job. I’d have a future in New Orleans. I’d have the possibility of a future with Alex. The Elders might even get some political stability from it with the elves. In the end, maybe it was worth the tradeoff. It wasn’t like I had to live with the guy. Maybe I’d never even have to see him again.

  Besides, with Mace Banyan and the Synod aware of the loup-garou exposure, what choice did I have? Put up with the pest, die nobly, and sign Jake’s death warrant as well, or be consigned to the Beyond forever . . . if the Elders didn’t find a way to force me back under their control.

  Crap. This was too big a decision to have to make in this short a time, but Rand was right. Alex, if not Zrakovi himself, wouldn’t allow Rand to get this close to me again. “What do we have to do?”

  Rand reached in his jeans pocket, pulled out a small, ornate silver knife, and lifted my arm to make a small incision near where the healed scratch from Jake had been. He lifted my bleeding arm and dropped his mouth to the cut, drawing my blood into him. I tried to pull away but he held it fast, sucking on the wound. What did he think he was, a freaking vampire?

  He leaned over, his mouth just above mine, and whispered, “With your blood you are bound to me.” He kissed me softly, lingered over it, and I elbowed him in the gut as hard as I could. The metallic taste of my own blood was vile, and I had no sympathy as he doubled over in pain. I still had the growing strength of a loup-garou.

  He smiled up at me, his eyes a glaze of glassy blue. He’d gotten off on that. Just gross me out already. “The kiss is part of the ritual. Now, you.”

  I still had time to back out. Alex would be furious but I was doing this for him as much as for me. For us. For Jake.

  I nodded, and Rand flicked the knife across his neck, just over the collarbone. I started to point out how much more intimate this was going to be and insist he cut his arm, but, really, I just wanted it done.

  He tilted his head toward his shoulder, baring his neck. I pushed his hair aside and hoped I could do this without barfing. I don’t want to be loup-garou. I don’t want to give up my life to live in the Beyond and hide from the Elders. I don’t want to be put down like a rabid dog, and I sure as hell don’t want to be locked up in Ittoqqortoormiit. If I shift, Mace Banyan wins.

  I touched my tongue lightly against the blood trickling down his neck, and was surprised to find it tasted rich and sweet and most un-bloodlike. I put my lips over the cut and sucked in a tiny bit, trying not to think about what I was doing.

  “Say the words,” he whispered.

  I had to think a few seconds to remember what words he meant. “With your blood I am bound to you,” I said in a flat tone. I wanted him to know I certainly did not get off on it.

  He smiled. “Now, kiss me.”

  Ick. “Do I have to?”

  “Yes.”

  Fine, whatever. I leaned in and lightly touched my lips to his, then shoved him as hard as I could when he tried to slip an arm around me. He slid off the bed with a tumble and landed hard on his fine elven ass. If Quince Randolph thought being bonded to me would be a day in the park, he had a few surprises coming. “I hope that hurt.”

  “It did.” He grunted as he climbed to his feet.

  I stood up too fast and had to catch myself on the nightstand to keep from falling over. The energy that had been building in my muscles disappeared, and the achiness returned with a vengeance. The cut on my arm continued to bleed. I was no longer recovering like a loup-garou. Hallelujah.

  “Now get the hell out of here, Rand. Go home. Think up a way to gently break it off with Eugenie. And keep your freaky Synod away from me.”

  “I’d suggest you listen to her unless you want your ass handed to you again.” The low, hard sound of Alex’s voice preceded him in the doorway by a half second. He must’ve heard Rand hit the floor. “Eugenie’s downstairs now. I’d rather not kill you in front of her, but I will. Don’t doubt it.”

  “Talk to you later, Dru.” Rand limped past Alex and disappeared into the sitting room. A few seconds later, his boot heels echoed on the stairwell.

  I guess some part of me—the part that sneaked an occasional romance novel home from the grocery store—wanted Alex to rush over and hold me, make sympathetic noises, and generally make me feel safe. I didn’t remember going back to Rand’s in the transport, but I vaguely recalled Alex carrying me across the street and up the stairs of my house. Taking off my boots. Washing blood off my face from the nosebleed I always seemed to get around the heavy use of elven magic. Talking to me in a gentle drone.

  Now he stood framed in the doorway with an expression I could only describe as bovine. As in the angry bovine being teased by the clown right before he spears the cowboy’s butt with his horns.

  “Don’t you dare blame me for getting kidnapped by elves.” I stood up and waited for the wave of dizziness. The room swayed on cue.

  “I don’t blame you.” Alex pushed himself off the doorjamb and wrapped his arms around me. “I’d kill Quince Randolph if I wasn’t afraid it would start an interspecies war.”

  I rested my cheek against his warm chest and his grip on me tightened. This was what I needed.

  “What did they do to you?” His voice was soft. “What did I just walk in on?”

  I didn’t think I could go through it all, not yet. A lot of the experiences I’d relived, especially from my childhood, weren’t even things Alex knew.

  I spoke into the dark fabric of his shirt, keeping my eyes focused on one little loose thread next to a buttonhole because I knew if I closed my eyes, I�
��d see death and loss. “They took control of my mind, my thoughts, my memories. I was helpless to stop them. If I’d been there much longer, I don’t think I’d have lived through it.”

  Alex’s arms tightened around me, and standing this close, his fear and anger and sorrow were impossible to keep out. “It’s over now. What they did had to be illegal, and I’m going to make sure Zrakovi doesn’t slide it under the rug. They have to pay.”

  I pulled away from him. “There’s something else I need to tell you—about why Rand was here.”

  Alex led me to the bed, and we sat facing each other. “Trying to make excuses for tricking you into a transport, I’m sure.” His jaw clenched. “Tricking both of us.”

  I shook my head. “No, it’s more than that.” I explained the bonding, the loup-garou angle, the elves’ bureaucratic maneuvering, Rand’s suspicion that Mace considered me a political liability. “So I did it,” I said. “The loup-garou nightmare is over.”

  Alex hadn’t moved. He hadn’t spoken. I felt the distance between us growing. “Did it ever occur to you that you might talk to me before making a decision like that? Did it not even pass through your mind that you’re not the only one this affects? Jesus.” Alex ran his hands through his hair and stood abruptly.

  “Wait.” I stood too fast and stumbled until the room stopped spinning. “I don’t want to be tied to Quince Randolph, but I also don’t want to spend the rest of my life running. The elves know about me, Alex. They know I’m carrying the loup-garou virus, and they know Jake caused it. Mace Banyan could destroy us all. If this neutralizes him and puts the whole issue to rest, we can get on with our lives. Rand’s a minor nuisance by comparison.”

  “Shit.” Alex sat on the edge of the bed with a slump of shoulders. “How did they find out?”

  I sat beside him. “They saw it when they were plundering through my head—watched the whole scene with Jake more than once, like a freaking movie. Rand thinks Mace plans to let the Elders kill me, or set me up in some way so they have no choice. Then the elves can get their staff back.”

  “Why not just give it to them?”

  A question I wished I could answer. “I tried, but there’s something more going on with them I don’t understand. I think the staff is just an excuse. Something political that Rand’s involved in. Maybe some power play within the Synod.”

  I had to make him understand. “I don’t want to leave you here and live in the Beyond like I’ve done something wrong. I don’t want to be like Jake, afraid of who I’m going to hurt. I don’t want you to end up being afraid of me.”

  Finally, the tears came. I tried to stop them, but the levee had broken, flooding me with so much hurt and anger and fear I thought I might drown in it.

  Alex pulled me against him. “I get why you did it, but I don’t like the idea of Quince Randolph in our lives. I don’t trust him.”

  “Neither do I, but we’ll figure it out.” We had to.

  He held me but didn’t say anything more. We were touching but I felt the gap between us and didn’t know how to bridge it.

  “DJ, I’m doing my best here, but . . .” Alex shook his head. “I don’t know what I’m doing anymore. What’s right, what’s wrong, what’s best for everybody. Nothing can just be simple with us.”

  With me, he meant. I swiped my palms across my swollen eyes and stood up. I knew Alex was frustrated by yet another layer of my messy life, but as much as I’d like to fix it for him, I didn’t have any answers.

  “I’m going to take a shower.” I turned and walked to the dresser, looking in the mirror at a woman whose face said she’d spent the last few hours in hell.

  Alex cleared his throat, making me think he’d choked back a few tears of his own. “Make it a quick one. Zrakovi’s downstairs.”

  CHAPTER 24

  More than an hour later, just after two a.m., I stood in the living room with Eugenie while Alex, Zrakovi, and Rand sat at my kitchen table—the latter only because Zrakovi insisted he stay. They were waiting for me to do some quick damage control with my best friend and send her on her way.

  “Tell me what’s going on, DJ.” Tears shone in Eugenie’s eyes. “I’m begging you. Look at Rand. He’s been beaten up, and it’s obvious Alex did it. He told me things weren’t working out between us and he didn’t want to see me anymore.”

  She tightened her lips as she looked over my shoulder at Rand. “The only thing Alex and Rand have in common is you, so tell me what happened.”

  I was going to hell for lying, no doubt about it. “Rand got mixed up in some of our business, that’s all. And my boss from the FBI is here.” I pointed through the kitchen door at Zrakovi, who sat at the head of the table in his business suit, his expression blank but his shoulders tense. “Let us talk and then I’ll come to your house and tell you everything I can. I promise.”

  Eugenie looked at the floor, and the hurt in her eyes when she looked back at me broke my heart. “You always say that, DJ. Do you know how many times you’ve said, ‘I’ll tell you everything when I can’? And you never do. I know you have an important big-shot job. I know I’m just a hairdresser. But we’re supposed to be friends.”

  God, I’d never made her feel inferior, had I? I didn’t think of her as “just” anything. She was the funniest, most warmhearted, most generous person I’d ever met. She didn’t have a dishonest bone in her body.

  But I did. Maybe my reasons were sound, but I had lied to her again and again. I closed my eyes because I was too chickenshit to look at her when my hollow “I’m sorry” came out. “I’ll try harder. I really will.”

  “Trying’s not enough.” She pulled her shoulders back and gave me a fierce look before walking out, ignoring Rand. Any grounding ritual had long worn off, and there was enough hurt and anger floating around this house to drown in. I didn’t know if I could ever put things right with her unless I told her everything, and my hatred of Quince Randolph—who would now and forevermore be a part of my life in some way—grew deeper.

  I’d made what I thought was the best long-term decision for everyone and hadn’t considered what the short-term fallout would be for Alex and Eugenie. Asking Alex his opinion before I made a decision hadn’t occurred to me, and it should have. I’d tried to do the right thing for everyone and still screwed it up.

  When I returned to the kitchen, Alex was seething at Rand, Rand had pressed a bag of frozen peas to his battered face, and Zrakovi thrummed his fingers on the tabletop.

  Quince Randolph might not be the scariest elf on the block but only because he’d gotten his way so far. He was strong, devious, and God only knew what kind of powers he had. Eugenie thought relationships were all about love. In the prete world, love was an inconvenience or, at best, a perk. In the prete world, it was all about power.

  I sat in the empty chair, wishing I could be anywhere else, except maybe Elfheim. “Can’t we talk about this tomorrow?” My voice rasped like a three-pack-a-day smoker. I didn’t remember many details of what my body had been up to while my brain was being plundered like one of Jean Lafitte’s pirated galleons, but crying and screaming had been involved.

  “No.” Zrakovi sipped a cup of coffee someone had made, probably Alex. The Elder’s usual laid-back friendliness had turned terse and somber. “I must know what happened. The full Council of Elders will convene in a few hours to decide on the actions we wish to take against the Synod. Start at the beginning.”

  I glared at Rand. “Please. Feel free to go first.”

  He gave me a tight-lipped smile. “Mace Banyan asked me to bring Dru—I mean DJ—to the Synod instead of waiting for the meeting you’d set up. They wanted to question her in Elfheim without any of you controlling her answers. No offense. It wasn’t supposed to be any more than that. Just questions and answers.”

  Zrakovi turned to me, his expression leaving no doubt that a recap was non-negotiable. I clutched my coffee mug and went through it in monotone. I didn’t leave out any details, even the most private ones about
my mother or how I’d trashed my parents’ house when she died using raw, emotion-fueled physical magic more powerful than any I’d been able to duplicate since.

  Gerry always said it was because I got in my own head too much, a detail I didn’t share.

  “Mostly, they wanted to see anytime I’d used elven magic, how I’d discovered my skills, and anything that . . .”—tore me up emotionally—“was particularly painful in my life,” I said. “I don’t know why they needed so much detail.”

  “To see how much of a threat you pose, gauge how much of our magic you can do, and watch how you react under stress,” Rand said, ignoring a look from Alex hot enough to boil water. “But they broke the agreement I had with them by performing a regression. A regular human wouldn’t have survived it. Maybe not even a regular wizard.” He turned his good eye to Zrakovi. “I’m sorry. I got Dru out as quickly as I could, and will be punished by the Synod for it.”

  Rand had more layers than a Vidalia onion. He was positioning himself to be the go-to elf for the wizards, and he thought bonding with me would strengthen that position. He was already working his political angle. In his own way, Rand was more devious than Jean Lafitte, only without the charm or the French accent. At least Jean had his own, albeit skewed, sense of honor.

  Alex spoke up for the first time, his voice tight and angry. “Is regression legal? It’s a mental version of rape. They imposed their will on DJ by force, took away her choices, did things to her without her consent. They should have to pay for it.” He turned eyes of dark-brown fire to Rand. “All of them.”

  Zrakovi leaned back in his chair, fingers steepled in front of him. “I need to check precedent. The elves have had little to do with other species until now, so it might not have been an issue that has ever arisen, at least not in recent memory.” He pierced Rand with a forbidding look. “If it isn’t illegal now, rest assured I will be bringing it up before the Interspecies Council and asking for sanctions.”