by Ophelia Bell
This one male, however, was proving to be a problem and she cursed herself for leaving behind the sixth satyr in that dark cell with his ursa lover. She figured they would eventually die there, starve to death with no way to free themselves. But she’d been wrong about that.
Nereus was a problem. His son probably would have been too, but the difference was that Calder hadn’t been mated yet. The other four satyr’s she’d managed to break were similarly unattached. Only Nereus with his perfect beauty and perfectly inaccessible heart still fought her despite every effort she made to sever that bond he had with his mate.
The thing was, there was no way that bond could have held true, so his continued spikes of consciousness made no sense.
“Bring him out and prepare my lab for him,” she said.
The scientist frowned at her. “Without his blood we’ll need to adjust the schedule again.”
“So adjust it,” she snapped. “I need to get into his head and figure out what the hang-up is. I can’t do that from out here. It should only take an hour or two.”
The huge satyr took some effort to remove from the tank, requiring one of the scientists to dive in and attach a harness to him, carefully avoiding his horns. They used a motorized winch to carefully lift him out and lower him onto a waiting stretcher.
Meri’s pulse raced as he drew closer, his impressive shape glistening with the water that sluiced off him. Despite being more or less immobile for centuries, none of the five satyrs had atrophied the way a human might have under the same conditions.
Her own partially human body required more diligent care to keep it in shape, though the magic of her spirit maintained it somewhat. Over the centuries she’d lost her appetite for regular food, preferring the special cocktail of blood from the higher races that her hunters captured for her.
As Nereus was strapped down to the stretcher, she eyed the strong pulse in his throat, suddenly salivating as she imagined how he would taste straight from the vein. Most of her sustenance was taken from vials and bottles stored after the blood was collected. As long as the owner of the life-giving substance survived, the blood still carried power, so it didn’t matter when she drank it. It was always more delicious directly from the source, however.
The orderlies wheeled her captive satyr down the hall to her secure lab and then obediently took up their places to guard the door while she worked. Even though Nereus was catatonic as well as strapped down, she refused to take any chances.
Once alone in the lab with him, she stood back and simply admired his shape. With his power neutralized he’d reverted to his primal form, as had all his brothers, and barely fit on the huge examination table. His horns stretched back from his temples, brushing past the edge and pointing toward the floor. At the other end, his shining black hooves hung off the end. They tapered up into legs that were thick as tree trunks and covered with dense fur that curled into a luxurious fleece as it dried.
Meri’s eyes grazed the dark mound that concealed his cock. In another time she might have tested his body’s instincts and worked him until he was stiff enough to give her a sample of his essence. It wasn’t his seed that interested her any longer, however.
“Let’s see if we can break that stubborn mind of yours once and for all, my love,” she said, picking up a scalpel from a tray of instruments and leaning over his placid face. The familiar angles of his bone structure filled her field of vision and made her pause. If she didn’t know any better, she might have mistaken him for one who was sleeping peacefully. She was reminded of a time she’d come across him this way and lost herself for a moment too long as she sat and stared in wonder at his beauty.
She shook her head, grimacing when the rest of that memory rushed back. He hadn’t been alone that day, and when she’d seen the nymph he’d lain with, the sense of betrayal had been so complete her blood turned to ice.
If only it had been another of her Thiasoi sisters, they might have invited her to join them. The Thiasoi often dallied with each other when they weren’t on duty, but Nereus had always been neutral and distant to the others. At first, seeing him slumbering with the afterglow of a melding had given her hope. Perhaps he would give her a chance to meld with him too; then he would surely realize that she was the more worthy nymph to mate with.
The other nymph had roused and sat up, spied Meri across the expanse of Nereus’s broad chest, and frowned.
“Can I help you, Meri?” Nyx had said, but Meri was too shocked, too hurt by the presence of her Dionarch lying in the arms of the man Meri desired. She stared at the woman, rage building until she forced herself to turn and run without a word.
If she could have murdered Nyx, she would have in the moments that followed. From the seclusion of the shadowed grove nearby, she saw Nereus rouse. He distracted Nyx with a tender touch and the nymphaea leader gave him a loving look. Nereus pulled Nyx close and proceeded to make love to her with such adoration on his face, Meri’s heart filled with hatred.
She’d hated every second of watching the pair of them together, watching them meld each other and knowing they had chosen each other for mates. But she couldn’t tear her eyes away. No male had ever looked at her the way Nereus looked at Nyx.
She didn’t care about it now, and stared down at Nereus coldly as she made a small slice at the side of his throat and bent to press her mouth to the cut. There was a time when she’d have taken his essence in other ways, but his blood was the surest way to control his mind.
The powerful tang of the magic hit her tongue and her spirit thrummed. These satyrs were the most powerful creatures of all the Ultiori’s prisoners, and the oldest. They’d been difficult to control when she first captured them, but she had Nikhil and his significant power to aid her quest at the time. Now that these five males were securely under her thrall, she would do anything to keep them there. If they escaped, there would be no reclaiming them.
Nereus was the weakest link, and she had to get into his head to find out why.
She made a swift cut at the tip of her finger and squeezed a drop of her own blood into his mouth. Then with her fingers pressed to his temples, she closed her eyes and delved deep, searching for any sign of activity in the deeper recesses of his mind.
She was met with shadows as she wandered through. The landscape of his desolate consciousness resembled a long-dry riverbed, the earth black with rich silt and cracked from lack of moisture. The place smelled dry and ancient, dusty and unused. With a thought she swiftly followed the winding path of the riverbed that had once been her captive’s connection to his source of power and his link to his fellow soldiers.
Nothing but more dry, cracked earth met her as she traveled, though she recognized the landscape as a replica of the Haven she had once loved and called home. There was no life left here, no spark of magic. Only rocks and dirt and withered plants. This was what she hoped to find, but it didn’t explain why his consciousness seemed to flicker periodically.
Standing at the edge of an empty pit that had once been filled with the waters of the Haven’s Source, she felt a prickling sensation at the back of her neck. Her body stiffened with the certainty that she was being watched. She turned slowly and peered into the shadows, looking for any sign of movement.
Taking a few steps closer, she saw a shape in the darkness that stood out from the background within a stand of dead forest. The outline of a smooth, arced horn caught the scant light. Then it moved from behind a tree, and she saw a familiar profile.
“How are you still here?” she said. “I destroyed your spirit.”
Nereus didn’t answer, but he turned his head and she caught the glint of his whirlpool iris.
She took a step closer, gritting her teeth. “Tell me.”
“Nyx. Is she well?” he asked.
“What do I care if Nyx is well? Tell me how you even exist in here. I destroyed your consciousness.”
His brows twitched in confusion. “No … I’m definitely here. But this Haven isn’t the one I remember. I keep searching for her, but can’t find her. There’s nothing but … this wasteland. How did you get here?”
She tilted her head, curious what this lost version of Nereus knew and secretly irritated that he didn’t seem to recognize her.
“What do you remember?”
“I remember Nyx.” His frown softened into a smile. “Making love to her. Melding with her. The children she bore and how I loved them more than life.”
“Is that all?”
“What else is there?” he asked.
What else, indeed. If that was all that defined his life, it would be easy enough to subdue what was left of his consciousness. Meri drew on the ancient power of her spirit, built up from eons of consumption of the blood and power of her captives.
The darkness flowed from her in waves, filling the desolation left in Nereus’s mind and drowning the spark of his consciousness in the process. He disappeared beneath the surface and she waited to see if he would reappear. When she saw no sign of him, she withdrew.
Staring down at the motionless body, she shook her head. “It’s such a shame you had to choose her, Nereus. I suppose I should thank you for that favor, though. If I had kept pining for you, I never would have tried to seduce Aodh and convince him to blood meld with me. I never would have had a taste of what it means to truly be immortal. Someday soon I will have that again, and permanently. Nyx may have loved you, but you were never worthy of an immortal mate. The mate I finally choose will be worthy of me when I claim my immortal body.”
She went to the door and called the orderlies, instructing them to return Nereus to the tank. His blood was far too valuable a resource for him to remain outside it for too long.
As the scientists reconnected Nereus’s tubes and his blood began flowing again, she left them and went to the locked door of a secure vault beyond the huge tank. The myriad tubes coming from the satyrs’ tank disappeared into the wall beside this door, pumping a steady supply of blood into the locked room. She pressed her still bloodied fingertip to the bio-scanner, unlocking the door, and entered, then shut the heavy vault door securely behind her. Within the room she faced a smaller tank similar in construction to the one that held the bodies of the satyrs.
The creature that floated inside the tank was nowhere near as impressive as the five huge satyrs, but it was the most wondrous thing Meri had created in all her centuries of tests and experiments. Her entire life’s work was embodied in that small shape suspended in the thick, translucent fluid.
It had years to grow yet, to become strong enough to exist on its own. If she transferred her spirit prematurely, she would be too weak to harness the full potential of the power that infused the tiny immortal creature.
Meri pressed her hand to the glass, cooing softly at the cherubic shape. She was a pretty little thing, very pink and healthy from the strength of the blood that fed her vital nutrients through the amniotic fluid she lived in.
Perfect. She was perfect, right down to her ten fingers and ten toes, but especially the powerful blood that flowed in her tiny, perfect veins. The most important part was that the child was a completely empty vessel, simply waiting for Meri’s spirit to fill and give it purpose.
She wondered if Nikhil even knew that he’d succeeded in his quest to create a child. The blood of his lover and all her brothers had been the key. The female Elite’s womb had been the nest where this little creature had first taken root.
Who knew that love had been the final ingredient that she’d always missed? But it hadn’t been enough to keep the child away from her. Once the embryo proved viable, she’d spirited it out of Neela’s womb like all the others before that hadn’t survived.
When the time came, she would be invincible.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Assana
Assana stood beside Silas in the shadows of the damp cave, staring back into the darkness with the din of the waterfall drowning out her thoughts. She glanced at Silas, who appeared just as apprehensive as she felt. He’d volunteered to do this alone, and for that she was grateful, but she didn’t envy him the experience. She squeezed his hand.
“Are you ready?” she asked.
Silas swallowed and shook his head. “If you’re too scared to go in, maybe I should be too.”
“You have no reason to be scared, Silas. I do. I’m the one who nearly raped her own brother after going in there. You’re not me, so you’ll be fine. As long as you’re in your true form when you enter the Diviner’s chamber, you have nothing to worry about. She gets into your head, but you have nothing to hide and no danger of losing your sanity like I do.”
He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly through his nose. “Right. No secrets. No danger of going mad … Nothing for me to worry about.”
He sounded like he was trying to convince himself of that fact, which made Assana wonder if he really did have something to hide. “She’ll know about your power. You have the rooting under control now. You’re still storing power from me, right?”
Silas shed his clothes and drew her hand to his groin, placing her palm against his balls. She gasped at the warm weight of them and the slight tingling of her skin in proximity to their power.
“My balls feel like they’re filled with warm lead. Not a bad feeling, exactly … just … heavy. I keep thinking they’ll bang together and make noise when I walk.”
Assana raised an eyebrow and gently hefted the soft pouch, stroking a thumb over the velvety skin. “Feels good to me,” she said suggestively.
Silas groaned when his cock twitched against the back of her hand, and she released him with a grin.
“Hold that thought,” he said. “We’ve got important work to do when I’m done here. Where will you be?”
The “important work” wasn’t precisely work. At breakfast that morning, Assana’s mother had commented on her appearance and noted how easy it was to tell when a third melding had occurred. She’d reminded her mother that it took time to meld three times, but Nyx had called her bluff and so was expecting the pair of them to have completed their third melding by the evening meal.
“I want to go talk to Gavra before this afternoon. If we have to go through with a third melding to appease my mother before he’s released, I want his blessing.”
Silas frowned and cupped her cheek. “Are you sure it’s a good idea to visit him without me? If your sanity is at stake, you’ll need me with you.”
She wrapped her fingers around his and kissed his palm. “I’ll be fine with the bars of his cage between us. I don’t need to get that close to explain things to him. It’s just a conversation. If we were in the same room together, then I’d worry.”
“All right,” he said and bent to kiss her. “I suppose this is it. Wish me luck.”
She gave his hand a squeeze and said, “Good luck.”
His huge body shimmered and went to all fours. A moment later, a huge brown bear stood in front of her, nuzzled her hand, then turned and walked into the dark corridor.
When Silas disappeared from sight, Assana closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Her desire for Gavra hadn’t subsided since his kiss the night before … or since she’d first laid eyes on him, for that matter. Silas’s attention had been a sweet diversion, the pleasure he gave her easing the pressure of want, but hadn’t succeeded in quenching the deeper draw she had to the big red dragon.
She didn’t have time to wait for Silas to meet with the Diviner before talking to Gavra, though. Her home and her sisters were in danger. Her mother at risk of ruining an ages old alliance that might be the only thing standing between the Haven and its oldest enemy. Gavra deserved the courtesy of knowing that their hand was being forced. She and Silas would have to complete their third melding this afternoon or her mother would become suspicious.
Assana passed through the veil of the waterfall that concealed the entrance to the Diviner’s cave and lingered in the cool water a moment to brace herself for the moment of facing the more volatile of the two men she loved. The mere prospect of gazing into his eyes again, much less having an entire conversation, made her skin tingle pleasantly. Her mind tripped over itself, lost in a haze of images of every moment she’d been in Gavra’s presence since the day they’d met, and the tug of Fate’s thread on her soul. She let herself be pulled along now, only because her intention was to go to him, not because it was where her desire led. It was okay if she intended it instead of letting it control her … wasn’t it?
Before she could even track the scenery along the path between the waterfall and Gavra’s cage, she was standing a few feet from the steps that led to the structure itself. It wasn’t a short walk, yet here she was already, barely able to recall a single pace. Her heart pounded, her mind screaming at her that she needed to be more aware, more cautious, even as she felt that tug of Fate’s string as insistent as the tug of the River’s power when she drifted.
Only she was sure she hadn’t drifted to him. She’d only walked, propelled by her need to be close to him. As she ascended the mossy stone staircase up to the platform of his cage, she saw the shadow of his huge body draw close to her, as though he too were drawn by her proximity. They didn’t speak a word until they were close enough to touch.
Assana was only one more step from pressing against the bars of his cage when Gavra wrapped his fingers around them and said, “Stop, Assana.”
She obeyed, though she wanted nothing more than to take that last step.
“Where is Silas?”
“He is meeting the Diviner to ask for her wisdom. If anyone knows how we can counter the blood meld thrall Mother has over the other Thiasoi, she will know.”
“You shouldn’t be here without him,” he said. His knuckles were white from the force of his grip, his red eyes focused intently on her face.
“I can go where I wish. This is my home.” Even as she said the words, she felt ridiculous making the stubborn excuse. The danger of getting too close to Gavra was real; her instincts pulled at her as though she’d been trapped in a net and was slowly being drawn in, unable to disentangle herself from his lure.