by Ophelia Bell
The Lamia’s spell. The female creature who, like his own sister, had become infamous among all the races over the centuries for her seductive nature and her thirst for blood. No one knew why she did what she did, or what her origins were. But she’d disappeared ages ago, not long before Belah’s own infamy took hold. Since then the Lamia had become no more than a myth—something to frighten children into behaving, much like his own sister.
Yet he had no evidence of that creature’s existence. Nikhil, on the other hand, was still a very real and present problem. There was no denying their old enemy had captured Ked’s sister, held and tortured her for seven days, at the end of which he’d stabbed her and let her bleed. The act was too similar to that night three thousand years ago when Ked had found his sister all but dead and the only way to revive her was to make the most impossible bargain to bring her back to life.
Belah’s state hadn’t been the only thing driving their decision when Ked and his brothers approached her power-hungry former lover. They’d woken up one morning after having a series of shared dreams. In them, he and his brothers had witnessed Belah’s torture. Her veins cut open and her blood running freely. And in the dreams, her blood had spilled onto the floor and immediately taken shape into every magical creature in existence. One after the other, each drop became something more fantastic than the last. Creatures they knew of, and then creatures they’d never seen before.
In the dreams, the new creatures had fought to the death against the old ones. Dragons, turul, ursa, and nymphs all fought on a field of Belah’s blood against the other creatures that arose from the red lake that surrounded her.
That was when Ked and his brothers realized that a female’s blood held the power of creation. They couldn’t let Nikhil keep that power. It might be too late for Belah’s old lover, but at least they could retrieve her blood before Nikhil understood the value of it.
Now, he had the blood of countless females. They may not be immortal, but Ked couldn’t deny the chill that ran down his incorporeal spine at the thought of what the Ultiori could possibly want with so many females. The understanding that it was Nikhil—the man who had drained his sister’s blood—who had orchestrated this ongoing abduction over the centuries, made his teeth manifest and clench hard together, and his fingers tighten into solid fists. Darkness flowed out of him in waves and he had to force himself to pull it back, to return to the shadows.
It didn’t matter whether his sister forgave Nikhil. Ked would find a way to kill the man, if it was the last thing he did. To put an end to the abductions and the suffering.
Tonight, he couldn’t, though. He’d made a promise, and his heart lay at the end of the corridor he drifted down, his shadow shifting along the edges to avoid the dim light.
He moved toward the music that drifted down the hall, seeping into his soul. Toward Evie.
He would like to greet her as himself the first time, but it would be too dangerous to become fully solid until he got her out.
Rounding the last corner toward her voice, he paused, swirling cautiously as he assessed the unexpected scene before him. There were three cell doors at the end, one the same opaque white glass as most of the others in this place, but two were clear. Slumped to the floor against the two clear doors were two of the Ultiori Elites Ked had worried about running into. “Sleeping,” the North brothers had said, but they looked unconscious to him, and their minds were in an almost catatonic state.
Testing them with his own mind, he found remnants of a dark presence that had controlled them briefly, but was gone now. They would wake soon, as would the pair of female captives that were similarly slumped unconscious against the other side of each door, inside the cells.
It was a curious scene that Ked felt warranted more scrutiny, but the strangeness alarmed him enough to move quicker.
He turned to the one opaque cell door where her beautiful voice came from and slid beneath it. Once inside, he let his shadow seep through the cracks and into the corners, surveying the dark room to determine what, if any, threats were inside and what state Evie might be in before he took her out.
All he found was a pair of bodies crumpled together naked on the floor. Their limbs were entwined as though they’d been making love, but the woman was halfway sitting up, with the man’s torso draped across her lap. She wept silently, running her fingers through his dark red hair as she sang to him.
A pool of blood surrounded them, originating from a deep gash in the man’s upper thigh—a wound no human man could survive for very long. A set of bare footprints crossed through the red fluid. Someone had been in here and done this barefoot, but Ked had seen no bloody footprints in the hall. It had to have been Nikhil.
His impulse was to rage at the sight, but her song prevented it, kept him still and enraptured simply being in the room with her finally.
Ked stayed in the dark corner, mesmerized by the sight of her. She was every bit as beautiful as her picture, but mussed and naked now. Her long hair hung in messy tangles around her shoulders, almost covering her small breasts. The man’s arms were wrapped around her hips, his head turned to one side, his cheek resting on her thighs. His skin was as pale and smooth as marble, and he was completely, utterly still.
Tears streamed over her cheeks unchecked. The song changed from what he’d believed was her mating call into what was now a low, haunting melody in an ancient language Ked understood. He sank down to the floor and closed his eyes, entranced by the song that reminded him so much of the day he’d rescued his sister from the same kind of ordeal. He had no tears today, though he might have if he’d been corporeal. All he had was anguish and regret about all the things he’d done wrong in failing to see how dangerous his sister’s lover was.
He closed his eyes and let Evie’s song sink into him, owning the ache that had so long been a part of him yet had remained unrecognized. His failure as a brother in spite of his power as a leader, and even as a god.
In that old language, Evie sang about love so deep it went through you and wrapped around again, binding you tightly to the other person. Then she sang about how deep the loss was when half of your soul died and that binding disappeared, leaving you too weightless to exist, like gravity had suddenly been turned off and you had no way to maintain purchase on the earth.
That made Ked’s heart stop. He’d been weightless his entire life. He wanted solid ground, but he feared it, too. Dragons were meant to be airborne. Yet they had legs, and human forms.
He remained still for another moment, waiting for a lull in her song when he could take action. He needed a moment to catch his breath after his revelations.
The singing stopped.
“I know you’re there. Show yourself, please. And tell me it’s not Fate’s cruel trick that I lose one true love and find another in the same night.”
Chapter Six
Ked
Canadian Rockies
Present Day
“You’ve been listening for a while. I also know who you are, Ked, and what you are. And I know—” Evie’s voice shook. “—I know you are mine. Like he was mine for so long.” She dipped her head and kissed the bare temple of the too-still man on her lap, tenderly brushing his hair back over his ear.
Ked pulled himself out of the corner and summoned his shadows back to him. Standing before her, he manifested his human form, disregarding his own mandate that he keep to shadows until he got her out; disregarding his desire to tear down the walls of this place with his bare hands and destroy every hunter in residence.
She needed to see him, now that she’d called him out. That was all she needed. No heroics, no destruction.
“You loved him?” he asked.
“More than anyone else. Until you.”
Ked closed his eyes. She was a turul, he reminded himself. She would know him instantly as her true mate, if they were meant to be. He let out a deep breath and colla
psed to his knees beside her.
“What happened?” He placed his hands on the back of the inert man on Evie’s lap. The body was warm, but he didn’t sense a pulse.
“Sayid found us together. Marcus hadn’t come to me in so long. I missed him. I didn’t care what would happen because he said he was getting me out finally—that you’d received his message and you were coming for me, but then Sayid showed up. He wasn’t happy.”
The name she used made Ked pause. She must mean Nikhil. Was Sayid the name he went by now? No, it wasn’t his name. It was his title. A fresh wave of guilt and regret washed over him. He and his siblings had hidden themselves for too long. They’d been fools to leave their race to the wolves the way they had. The hibernation cycles meant to protect the dragons had only served to alienate half their race, to the point they broke the laws to avoid the cycles of sleep. As a result, too many of them had been taken and were locked up in the cells Ked had passed before arriving in this room. And he knew this wasn’t the only Ultiori facility. There might be hundreds more. He couldn’t think about that now, though. The broken-hearted woman in front of him was his reason for coming in here to begin with.
“Marcus was the one who sent the message?” Ked looked down at the body draped across her thighs. It still held a dim aura around it, so similar to the faint aura of his sister the day he’d taken her away from her lover, bloody and broken. The man wasn’t dead—at least, not entirely.
“He did it because he loved me, and for once, I let go of my resentment and loved him back the way I craved to do ever since he became like you,” she said. Her lips quivered and her eyes filled with tears. “He always loved me, but until tonight, I never loved him enough. He still tried to save me even though he didn’t think he could be saved, himself.”
“He saved you both,” Ked said. “Someone got his message to me that you were here. A female dragon said she was approached by a hunter who gave her your name and this location. She was told to take the information to the Council. Not an easy task for a dragon of her low rank, but she did it. I’m here to get you out, Evie. Your brothers are waiting nearby.”
Evie’s face was wet with tears, her eyes shining with those still unshed. “I’m not leaving. Not unless you bring him out, too. I know he’s dead, but I won’t leave him here for them.”
Something about her bearing seemed stiff to him. She barely moved her head when she turned to look at him, and she hadn’t shifted a muscle of her body. The only movements were her hand on the dead man’s hair and the occasional flux of her facial expressions.
That was when he noticed the wall behind her back was coated with blood, the scent strong. She was still bleeding from unseen wounds.
Ked’s power surged, blotting out the light in the room. His nostrils flared as he reached a hand out to her.
“You’re hurt,” he said.
She flinched back from his fingers. “You just ruined the mood.”
Ked drew his hand back and stared at her.
Evie shrugged enough to wince at the pain. “It wasn’t a good mood, I admit, but you succeeded in making it worse.”
“What did he do to you?” he growled.
Ignoring the question, she said, “Can you please turn the lights back on? I spend too much time in the dark as it is.”
He blinked at her, surprised at her lack of reaction to his power. He willed the lights to illuminate again.
Evie regarded him for a moment before speaking again, seeming to consider her words. “It was one of the strangest encounters of my life, believe it or not. After he took my wings and stabbed Marcus in the leg, I thought he was going to kill me… I believe I was his target, at any rate, but he didn’t expect Marcus to be in here. At the end just when I was sure he’d end me, I started singing. He just fell to his knees and listened, and it was like a veil lifted from him. Then he apologized, swore he didn’t mean it and left as though he were on a mission to kill the thing that had hurt us. Like he hadn’t just been in the room the entire time, holding that knife.”
“He’s a mad man. We’ve known this all along.”
Evie shook her head. “No. I know madness when I hear it and I’ve seen him act strangely before. When he came into the room he was like a juggernaut, his eyes were wild like some unnatural rage powered him. But when I sang, it was as though he became another person. Every word he spoke at the end was the truth. I believe he really was used by some other power and now that he’s free he’s after that thing’s blood.”
“You and my sister can compare notes when we get you safe,” Ked said, losing patience with her story, though he reluctantly began to wonder whether Belah’s insistence that Nikhil had been controlled by something else might be true. “I’m taking you both out of here now. It won’t be pleasant, but it won’t kill you. Just… hold on, okay?”
“Good luck with that,” Evie said, lifting one hand up in front of her face. Around her wrist was a tattoo that glimmered with faint silver light. Through the bloodstains that covered her other wrist and her ankles he saw more. Shackles that were likely designed to keep her in this cell somehow.
Ked had no time for such tricks. With a breath and the power of a thought, Evie’s shackles were gone, but he could do nothing for the bloodstains or the wounds yet.
Ked bent and slipped an arm around her waist, hoping he was avoiding the worst of her injuries. When she leaned into him, he finally caught a glimpse of her bloody back. Two ragged, semi-symmetrical wounds graced each shoulder blade, and it was then that he noticed the floor around them was covered in feathers, and her amputated wings lay atop her small cot.
“Don’t look at them, please,” Evie whispered shakily. “I just wanted to be his angel for one night. That’s all. I guess I was the angel of death.”
Ked’s rage returned, blotting out the light again and illuminating the profound emptiness and grief that overwhelmed Evie. To lose one’s wings would be the most horrific torture imaginable.
He clutched her to his chest and wrapped his other arm around the naked man draped across her lap. The body slumped into him coldly as he gathered his power to get them out.
The swirling void of shadow opened for him, and he flowed through as easily as ever, pulling his passengers along. At the other end they would be safe. Perhaps not whole, but at least Ked would have time to help make them so.
Chapter Seven
Ked
Canadian Rockies
Present Day
When he reappeared in a cloud of dark smoke in the clearing, Ked fell into a pile with the other two wrapped around him. Marcus’s unconscious face met his, expression as serene as carved stone.
Ked had considered ignoring Evie’s plea and leaving the man behind, but he couldn’t deny the Blessing Marcus carried now, along with a connection that went even deeper. He was effectively dead, yet his aura still glowed strong. If Evie hadn’t noticed, Ked guessed that he was the only one who could sense the black glow emanating from the unconscious man. He recognized it because the aura was identical to his own, so dark it seemed to suck the light away. And for that reason, Ked knew the man wasn’t truly dead—that he could be revived.
He was in the same state Belah had been when Ked had found her so long ago, her own blood drained from her to feed her lover’s mad need for power—or so he’d believed until very recently. Regardless of what had compelled Nikhil to drink it, Belah’s blood had rendered him immortal, the same way Ked knew his blood had done for Marcus.
Marcus could be killed, but Ked hoped that wouldn’t be necessary, at least not right away. He hoped he could revive him just enough to glean some information about their enemy, and perhaps learn whether the Norths were correct in trusting him again after his betrayal. After that, he would have to decide the best course of action based on what Marcus shared.
The lingering presence of Ked’s own magic provided a connection that should as
sist with the interrogation. Almost as strong as actually being marked by Ked, though not enough to heal Marcus fully.
Evie’s brothers gently carried their sister away, leaving Ked alone with the man he’d thought was a traitor, but who he desperately hoped would be redeemed. The last time he’d killed an Elite, it had left him with a hollow ache inside that had never really gone away in the intervening centuries.
He reached out a hand and touched the man who lay beside him. All it took was a fingertip on his arm and a dark, violet spark shot between them. Marcus’s eyes opened.
Ked clenched his teeth hard when he looked into those light green eyes. The allure of his Blessing was strong. Ked was overcome by a powerful urge to mark and mate the man. The fact that Marcus hovered at the edge of death’s abyss didn’t change his compulsion to possess him. He only knew of two ways to save him, if he proved worth saving, and if the darkness he sensed in the man meant what he believed, it would take work before Marcus accepted either of those options.
“What did you do to her?” Marcus rasped, grasping at Ked’s forearm with a grip so fierce it contradicted his weakened state.
“She’s safe. You’re both safe now.”
Marcus closed his eyes and sighed. “Good,” he said. “I can die now. Please make it quick.”
“That’s not going to happen, not until we talk. You’re too important for me to kill.”
Important was an understatement. What Marcus may know about the enemy only scratched the surface. Blessed humans were so rare, it was nearly impossible for a dragon to control themselves when they found one. Wars had been fought over them in the distant past, and for centuries their enemy had systematically used them against the higher races. Regardless of what Marcus may have become since joining the enemy, Ked rejected the idea of killing a Blessed, particularly one who still carried a piece of Ked’s own power in his soul.