by Patti Larsen
“Creator.” Meira exhaled. “Okay, then.”
I shrugged to Mabel. “Sister Fate didn’t take it well,” I said and told them the rest.
My drach ancestress sighed deeply before nodding. “Tragic,” she said. “But their lives together have been a tragedy from the moment Max and Bellanca met.”
I pondered that while Zoe explained the white sorcery to my sister. Meira frowned as she listened, eyes flashing to me while she held out one hand, a flare of white flame bouncing on her hand.
I answered without thinking, using my right arm, the white sorcery bursting to life with a happy hiccup. And the black ribbon tightened around my wrist to the point of pain. I yelped, not out of real hurt, but rubbed at it while it loosened at last in response.
“Any idea what this is for?” I held it up to Zoe who shook her head, frowning.
“Only darkness surrounds the vision of it,” she said. “I’m sorry, I don’t have anything at all.”
“So back to the white sorcery, if you please.” My sister was turning into a serious bossy pants. “Now that it’s awake… what does that mean?”
Zoe shrugged. “I don’t know that either.” It was the first time she sounded truly young and distressed. “I wish I had more answers. I do know the power you have is keyed specifically to the pair of you. But, unlike the dark sorcery you’re used to, it doesn’t exist with others. At least, not yet.”
“Is this the same power Jean Marc has access to?” It had to be.
Zoe’s dark eyes flared with flame. “Yes,” she said, her voice smoothing out. “Power he’s not meant to control. That may either be an advantage to him or his undoing.”
I’d take undoing, thanks.
“How about in the other Universe? Do they have this white sorcery there?” Was that what made the Order so powerful? But no, I’d felt their magic when they’d tried to cross through one of Gabriel’s Gateways in Creator’s chamber under the Stronghold. It had been dark sorcery.
Zoe shook her head, frowning, rubbing at her temples as the flames gutted out and left her. “I don’t think so,” she said. “It’s Creator’s magic. Dark Brother took black sorcery with him when the two Universes were formed. I believe Creator hid the purified version from him to protect it.” Zoe released her hands. “I wish there was more clarity, but the two Universes coming together make it difficult.”
I squeezed her shoulder. “You’re doing great,” I said.
Zoe smiled gratefully in answer. “When the two Universes finally become one,” she said, “when one or the other side wins, that winner will possess the purified sorcery and it shall be the source of all power in creation.”
“So we have an advantage, then.” Meira crossed her arms over her chest. “But we need to figure out how to use it.”
“If it’s an advantage,” I said. “Hopefully we’ll never have to physically fight the Order anyway.” Why did I get the feeling I was full of crap? The very idea of coming face-to-face with that menace made me want to crawl into a deep, dark hole and hide forever.
“I can come with you.” Meira gestured around her. “Ram and Sequoia can take care of things here.” I was sure her mate and Sass’s sister would be more than capable, but I shook my head.
“There’s nothing to fight, nothing to do.” Frustration welled. “You’d be hanging out in Wilding Springs waiting for something to happen.”
Meira nodded, glum. “I know you’re right,” she said. “I just hate feeling helpless.”
Couldn’t tell we were sisters, right?
“Your assistance will be required eventually.” Zoe tossed her hands in the air. “I just don’t know when or why or where.” She grinned at me. “Useful, aren’t I?” And yet, there was a self-assurance to her that remained no matter her own frustration.
Being Fate had its perks.
We left Meira and Mabel, heading for home again while I fretted internally. Nothing was worse than having nothing to do. Though I could go to the Stronghold and question Belaisle, or check in with Charlotte or talk to Mom and see if I could smooth things over there, I thought first of Max. He needed me, despite his thoughts of small things to the contrary. But, before I could head for the Stronghold, Zoe lit up her fire again and, a moment later, we stepped out into the basement in Wilding Springs.
She hugged me, held me tight in the quiet coolness of the empty room. “I need to see Piers.” She leaned away, smiling brightly through tears. “I fear I’ll lose him someday,” she said. “But I can’t let him go. Is that selfish?”
I shook my head, emotions flexing wildly at the thought of Quaid. “Hold onto him for as long as you can,” I said.
Zoe nodded, kissed my cheek. “No matter what you believe,” she whispered into my hair, “everything will happen as it’s meant to.” She stepped away again, embracing the flame, disappearing in a wash of fire. And I let her go, a small sigh tightening my chest.
Soft feet padded down the steps, Sassafras waddling his fat cat body to the bottom. I stepped forward, scooped him into my grip, hugged him tight.
“I thought you went to Hong Kong with Gabriel,” I said.
“I did,” he said, a frown pulling his heavy, silver brows over his amber eyes. “But you needed me here. And I’m glad I came home.”
Oh, crap. “What’s wrong?”
“Not sure if it’s wrong,” he said. “But there’s someone in the kitchen who keeps demanding you appear out of thin air.” He rolled his eyes. “It turns out the Empress wants to see you immediately.”
***
Chapter Twenty Two
I stood there with Sass in my arms, debating. “Does she, now?”
The silver Persian grunted. “Most disagreeable messenger she sent, too,” he said. “Shocking red hair, green eyes, tall? Sarameia something-or-other.”
I knew her, didn’t I? Ah, yes. The vampire queen who’d been the Empress’s lackey the first time we’d met. “Sarameia,” I said with mock arrogance. “Queen of the Goreck Blood Clan, First Lesser Monarch to the Empress of all vampires.”
Sass snorted. “That’s the one.”
Lovely. But it made me more inclined to go see what the nasty old vampire queen in my kitchen wanted. While I might have a bit of a love/hate relationship with the Empress thanks to the vampire essence inside me, there was nothing about Sarameia I remotely liked.
She sat at my kitchen table with a look of disdain on her face, red hair garish in the kitchen light, glaring at me as though I’d left her waiting far too long. With an imperious gesture, she rose to her feet, glaring down her nose at me while Tippy stood off to one side, looking like she was going to stake the old queen any second now.
“Finally,” the vampire queen said. “The Empress has been kept waiting long enough.”
With a firm but gentle hand—considering the circumstances—I grasped Sarameia by her power, opened a hole in the veil, and shoved her through while she screeched protests. With a final flick of magic, I sealed it shut behind her to the sound of splashing.
Tippy’s slow clap made me grin while Sass stared at the place the queen had been for a long moment.
“Where did you send her?” He looked up at me, amber eyes glowing.
“She’ll be fine,” I said, setting him down on the table. “As long as she knows how to swim.”
Sass chuckled. “You do realize the Empress won’t appreciate you sending her messenger to the middle of the ocean.”
“Like I give a damn what Moa thinks.” Since we’d met, the self-proclaimed Empress of all vampires—her title acquired thanks to her being the origin and source of vampirism—had waffled between my good books when she was being helpful and my bad books when she was being a pain in my ass. This was more often than not these days. And though I admired her tenacity and her ability to survive all this time, she’d come up against me far too often for me to just run to her beck and call.
She’d tried to kill Danilo Moreau on the steps of the werepalace, using Jiao as her weapon. And w
hile he was under siege at the time by the World Paranormal Council and was, presently, in custody of said council for betraying us to normals by selling out the werenation to the mafia, that didn’t give her the right to kill him. Or anyone that wasn’t a vampire.
“Are you going to see what she wants?” Tippy took the seat Sarameia once occupied, large breasts straining under her tight t-shirt.
I sighed. “I guess so.” Jeeze. Maybe Max was right and the small stuff wasn’t that important. I turned to Sass who watched with careful amber eyes. “Feel like kicking vampire butt with me?”
His ears perked, whiskers quivering. “I thought you’d never ask.”
And so, a few minutes later, grumpy and holding my demon cat in my arms, I carried us through the veil to the Empress’s palace in Nepal. While part of me realized showing up in her private bedchamber wasn’t all that politic, I was on the short end of a chewed down fuse at the moment, white sorcery and Belaisle and Creator crowding my head.
The Empress better have something good or I’d be out of there, pronto.
She seemed to be waiting for me, seated on a large throne that hadn’t been in the room before, her bed draped and closed off. So she’d expected me to appear here? She was learning my impatient ways.
Moa is nothing if not clever, my vampire sent with her own admiration showing.
Just because she lived this long doesn’t make her special, my demon snarled. Just tricky and manipulative.
Agreed, Shaylee sniffed.
And yet, my vampire sent, mild and chiding, she understands us, doesn’t she?
Moa bowed her head to me as I set Sassafras down on the ground at my feet. With a surge of magic I gave him human form, watching him grow and change beside me. The purified sorcery in me stirred, curious about what I was doing and, before I could stop it, corrected a small flaw in my technique. Sass’s amber eyes glinted at me, turning brown again with the gold flecks alight as we both realized what it meant.
Not only was the white sorcery intelligent, it understood everything. And had given him what he needed to be stable.
Oh, dear. Sass who could be human or cat at will? I was in trouble now.
Why did that make me grin like a madwoman? Probably for the same reason he grinned wildly back before the pair of us turned, in tandem, to face down Moa.
Her pale, pinched face seemed even more washed than usual, a faint tremor in one hand as she gestured for us to come closer. I ignored her, staying where I was, refusing to play her subordinate game. Sass looked around with a bored expression, yawned absently. I could have kissed him.
“I’m here, Moa,” I said. “What?”
Her beady black eyes shifted from Sass to me and back again. She was well aware of what I’d just done. And had to know how impossible it really was. We paranormals had control of the elements. But altering someone fundamentally, from their DNA up… only the Black Souls had managed it here on this plane, with the werewolves. And even their design was flawed. Jiao and her people seemed more capable of full shape shifting but I hadn’t been close enough to her during the single transformation I’d witnessed to know if she was more like the drach or like the werewolves. That made Sass’s alteration different. He wasn’t a shape shifter. He was both cat and human all at the same time, both possibilities existing in the same place.
The longer I thought about it, the more freaked out I felt while Moa finally spoke and pulled me back from the brink of hysteria.
“I have been granted permission to speak at last,” the Empress said in her clear and girlish voice.
Well, that was interesting. I’d wondered all along who she worked for, who owned her. “By?”
She shifted on her throne before stepping down, tiny feet silent on the stairs until she stood on the ground at my level. Shocking to see her this way as she drew close, the withered remains of an old woman, a sack of wrinkled skin over bone, those small, black eyes fixed on me. Though she was diminutive, massive power lived inside her, stirred my own in answer. The top of her head, shining black hair falling in pin straight length back from her wrinkled face, barely reached the center of my chest as she reached out and poked me with one sharp fingernail.
“There are those,” she said, soft and light, always surprisingly youthful, “to whom the alliance you created is seen as a threat.”
“How nice for them,” I said, poking her back. She chuckled suddenly, startling me, making me smile though I wanted to scowl. My vampire sighed in my head.
Disarming, this first child of mine, she sent before falling still.
“You are indecipherable to them, Sydlynn Hayle.” Moa squinted up at Sassafras who stuck his tongue out at her before grinning like the brat he was. She tweaked his nose with thumb and index finger and turned back to me. “They hate it. But I find I adore you as I have no one in many, many centuries.”
“You have a funny way of showing it,” Sass said, his usual sarcasm in full force.
Moa shrugged her thin shoulders, a cartoon caricature of a person. “I have my own needs and goals to attend,” she said. “And though I have encouraged my counterparts to reveal themselves, to prevent conflict, it has taken this long for them to agree.”
“I’m listening.” We all were, demon, vampire, Sidhe. Even the white sorcery, to my surprise, though no further personality showed. Thankfully. I didn’t think I could share my head with yet another voice, thanks.
There’s gratitude for you, my demon chuffed.
Smartass.
Moa turned, heading for a long, low bench near the gaping window looking over the mountains. I joined her, Sass drifting along beside me, though he remained standing while I sat next to the vampire empress. She sighed, weariness showing in her for the first time.
“This idea of yours,” she said, “to form a world council. It’s not the first time such a thing has been suggested. Or implemented.”
Okay, what?
“You’re saying there’s another WPC?” Sass didn’t miss a beat.
She nodded. “Though we don’t use such titles for which you feel the need,” she said. “It has been in existence for almost as long as I’ve been a vampire.” Holy crap. And they were just telling us this now? “Witches were never permitted,” Moa said, slightly apologetic. “Nor sorcerers. Only the older races.”
That meant Sidhe and vampire, but was I missing a race? “Who?”
She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter now,” she said. “If you want more details, you need look no further than you drach friend.” Sly and cunning, that smile of hers.
Max. Damn it. “Don’t play games with me, Moa,” I said. “Just spill it.”
The Empress leaned closer. “They have agreed to speak with you,” she said as though it were some great honor or something. “With the possibility of inducting you into their number.”
I laughed in her face. Stood up and walked away, still laughing, bitterness churning in my gut. “Tell them,” I said, spinning on my heel with Sass beside me, “they can go to hell.”
The veil parted with a snap as I jerked it open and leaped through in a fit of temper, slamming it shut behind me. Sass watched with dark eyes while I paced the basement, muttering to myself.
“The nerve,” I finally said out loud to him. “The absolute nerve. They screw with me on purpose, hide who they are, undermine us in who knows how many ways”—surely Danilo’s attempted assassination was only the beginning—“and they expect me to just go see them and beg them to let me join their little council?” I slammed power into the floor beneath me to let out some tension, shaking the house above. Followed by a soothing surge of magic to the family who reacted with instant terror at the ripple of expended power. I sighed in frustration while Sass continued to watch in silence. “Aren’t you going to say anything?”
He shrugged, even more catlike than usual if that was possible. “Temper, Syd,” he said.
Argh.
I stomped toward him, grabbed his hand, jerked him with me through the vei
l. Sass didn’t try to resist and I couldn’t help but get the impression he was enjoying himself, the contrary creature.
***
Chapter Twenty Three
The stronghold entry was quiet, empty, but I could feel my target up ahead and made a straight line for him where he hid in his quarters. Max might be pining away for his lost love, but he was going to answer for this.
You betcha.
I hit his door with power, only to come face-to-face with Jiao. She tried to fight me, body twisting while her inner dragon pushed back, but she was no match for me. With a cry, she fell back at last, and, unrelenting and uncaring, I shoved her aside and crossed to Max.
He turned, slow and ponderous, tears on his face, shock replacing sadness as I hauled off and smacked him with all the strength in my arm, power behind it. I took him by surprise, sending him staggering back a half step before he could recover. And while I’m not normally a violent person with my friends, I wanted to hit him again, damn it.
“Tell me,” I snarled in his confused face, “why Moa just offered me membership in a council on my plane that’s supposedly been around forever. One she says you know something about, Mr. Small Stuff?”
Max’s confusion deepened a moment before understanding dawned in his diamond eyes. Instead of growing angry, as I expected him to—as I wanted him to, damn it, in the state I was in—he sank to the edge of his bed with shock and wonder on his face.
“How fascinating,” he said.
I was going to hit him again, I swore it.
“I’m certain it is,” Sass said, his sarcasm slapping me before I could smack Max. “Care to fill us in?”
Max met his gaze, not even registering Sass’s change. “I’ll try,” he said. “When Moa first became a vampire, the other races on your plane reacted badly.”
“What races?” I prodded him with one finger. “What races, Max?”