by May Sage
Luke had no idea. He pointed to Rain. “That would depend on her. If she wants to stay, we’ll stay.”
He hoped she didn’t. Nola was great, and he wouldn’t mind returning for a vacation, minus the whole ritual, gods, and possession shit. But home was Lakesides to him.
"I think you shouldn't," said Charles, after thinking things through for a moment. "There's a reason the original White twins parted ways. If Nola and Salem fall, the witches of this continent will need another fort. Someone else to rally behind. That's your girl."
That she was.
“Besides, Rain has given Michelle and you all of the ancestors' power. You can’t access it, so it’s all Michelle’s. For a year, she’s going to be extremely dangerous. Nola won’t be quiet.”
That settled it; he’d ask Rain to go back to the pride, because fuck, they both deserved a little bit of quiet.
“Also, I’m sorry about the kitten thing. You’re right, it was a poor fit, really.”
“Thank you!” he shouted happily.
Apparently, all it took was fighting a goddess side by side to earn the right to be called by a normal name around here.
“What, with ancestral shields around you, and a witch mate? I’ll just go with Magic Pussy.”
The vampire winked, before retreating into his crypt, while Luke was too stunned to speak.
Fucking bloodsucker.
End
* * *
Next in the series: Hellcat.
You can look forward to one witchy and one vampire series from May Sage in 2019.
Frostbound Throne
New from May Sage
This was how she died. She knew it, felt it to her bones. There was no other way, not here. Saving herself would mean condemning every breathing soul in the city of night. As little as she liked most of them, and however much they hated her in return, she couldn’t bring herself to destroy so many just to save herself.
She should give in now. Drop her bow, accept her fate. Yet she shot one arrow after the next, desperately holding on to life.
Devi took down enemy after enemy, her mind processing each kill with a cold, analytic indifference. They were relevant because she knew there had been fifty-one arrows in her quiver. Each fae she killed represented one arrow lost. There was every chance she'd run out of weapons before she reached the gates.
She was at the very center of the city, in the large Square of Dawn, famous for the obelisk erected at the end of the last war. The closest exit was a mile east, and there were three dozen enemies around her right now and more coming at every passing moment. It was a credit to her skill with a bow that none of them had managed to get close to her yet.
A horse whinnied to her left, and Devi’s head turned sharply. She expected enemy knights. She’d managed until now because she’d only had to deal with foot soldiers; fae knights were another matter altogether.
When they came into the square from the south avenue, there were only two riders. She stiffened in alarm, until her eyes took in the colors of their habits and then their faces.
Devi had no issue recognizing the two males, although she’d never seen either dressed in anything other than their fine court attire. Now they wore plain reinforced gear under dark unseelie coats.
Neither of them looked any less intimidating for it.
“Vale.”
The name fell from her lips in a tone she had never used to say it. With relief. Barely conscious of her decision, she adjusted her position to aim at the enemies following Vale and his second, rather than foolishly carrying on attempting to clear a path out of this nightmare. Vale was more important. If he lived through the night, there would be hope for the Isle.
Her shot hit the mark, killing a fae right behind the prince. As the enemy tumbled, Vale turned to see where the arrow had come from, his eyes landing on her.
He was on the other side of the square, but her vision could distinguish him quite clearly. For the first time since they’d met, he wasn’t amused. His trademark smirk had disappeared. That shouldn’t have come as a surprise given the circumstances, but his expression wasn’t what Devi might have expected. Vale wasn’t confused, shocked, or scared, unlike her. The dark prince seemed downright pissed right now. His violet eyes, so like his mother’s, watched her with pure fury.
Devi’s heart hit her stomach. Was this her fault? Had the attacks started because of her? It wasn’t impossible at all, given her history.
Then, to her astonishment, Valerius Blackthorn, the dark prince, lord of the court of sin, lifted his hands, pulling on the reins to turn his horse away from the road leading to the eastern gate. Away from safety. Instead of heading out, he rode at full speed toward her. Her. The half-breed who was “nothing,” according to him.
Devi regained her senses just as he reached her, in time to take his hand and hop behind him on his black mount.
“Fucking idiot!” he yelled before leaning forward and whispering sweet spells at the horse, who obeyed his master’s urging, rushing through the streets of the city of night.
* * *
Frostbound Throne: Song of Night is available now.
Check out Diplomacy
Strands of Starfire #2
Dara was used to that look. It started at the tip of her toes, roamed all the way to her chest, before pausing and making its way to her eyes. Then, there was a sigh.
“What is this?”
A few years back, she might have bothered to feel offended. Now she winked playfully.
“Come on, Cap. I’m sure you’ve seen a girl before.”
He had, and he’d probably also seen the very occasional, rare female in the royal forces of Zeru, but what he most certainly had never witnessed was a long-haired female wearing gold and red in the army.
Every commoner was required to shave their head in the summer to avoid getting lice. People didn’t tend to own more than two or three sets of clothing, so with time, the color faded. Dara’s ruby shirt was visibly new. She didn’t actively try to shove her superiority in everyone’s face, but her older clothes disappeared from her extensive wardrobe once they were well worn.
The last strike was her exosuit. If it wasn’t for the latest tech armor, embedded in her gold band at her wrist, she might have passed for a noble’s daughter. The device said otherwise.
No one wore gold on Zeru, except for the members of the royal family.
It might have been wiser to remove the device and wear one of the basic exosuits allocated to soldiers of her rank, but she couldn’t. Or, perhaps, wouldn’t.
The exosuit was the first bequest of King Kraul Rexis that hadn’t been a pretty dress or a doll. Dara had grown up believing that there wouldn’t ever be a place for her at her father’s court. She was the third daughter, the daughter no one had wanted. King Kraul doted on his radiant firstborn, Feray. He admired his second child, Lany, the smartest female in the realm. By all accounts, his third born should have been a boy, an heir. Instead, he fathered Dara, the petulant, the belligerent, the unruly. Dara, who didn’t distinguish herself by her beauty or her brain, who had no skill to speak of, save for a certain gift for getting up to mischief. She liked climbing the sculpted silver walls of their home, running barefoot, and playing in the mud. In one word, she was unsuitable.
By the grace of the Goddess Light, Kraul was given a boy eventually. He adored Feray, admired Lany, and needed Kaur to take his place one day. Dara was ignored when he was at leisure to pretend she didn’t exist and frowned upon when he was reminded of her inconvenient presence.
When she became a woman, she was told that the one way she could make herself useful was to marry relatively well. She was encouraged to attend school in the understanding that she’d spend her time hunting for a suitable prize. And yes, she was given a list of suitable families.
Dara had been a clueless freshman, desperately seeking a field where she might possibly be average. She never found that. She took a military technical class and astounded everyone—herse
lf included—by excelling at it.
“Strategy is in your blood, young lady,” a professor had said one day.
A compliment. Perhaps the first one she’d ever heard.
Little by little, Dara took courses that suited her natural talents, and before she knew it, she was the first female military analyst to ever graduate from the royal zeruvian academy.
No one from home had paid attention to what she was doing at the royal university, simply glad to have her out of sight for a few years. Dara had hoped that she might be able to break free from her family, get a job, and lead her own life, but she was recalled to the palace the day after her graduation.
She’d expected that it would cause an uproar. To be told that she’d yet again ruined their good name and any such nonsense. At age twenty-one, she’d been better equipped to handle it, at least.
Instead, she’d walked into a party a year ago. A party for her. The entire Rexis family had been in attendance, along with every influential individual usually summoned to such gatherings. At the end, King Kraul waved at a servant who brought her the retractable exosuit she now wore, equipped with the very latest military intelligence and the very best safety features.
Her father never said a word, but he had acknowledged her. Childish as it was, she wanted to hold on to that moment. The exosuit was staying.
Part of her fantasy came true: she was allowed to do the job she wanted. The only downside was having to deal with males such as the one in front of her.
She’d been sent to the Maerdo district because of a hostage situation that had lasted for over twenty-four hours now. The stats indicated that casualties could start at any point. It wouldn’t have been brought to her attention if the incident hadn’t taken place inside a factory that produced highly combustible substances. If things went sour, the entire city might wind up on fire.
“We asked for backup because of a serious issue and we get a photo op for the crown?”
She heard a variation of that on a daily basis. It had been a long time since she’d bothered to wince.
“Look, sweetie, you don’t have to like it, but I’m here because you’re shit at your job. I’d let you wave your dick around if we had time, but we don’t. Move out of the way, or I’ll make you. You wouldn’t want your friends to see you taking a beating from a girl, now, would you?”
Only two out of the six guards circling the captain of the squad managed to convincingly hide their chuckles.
The cap was pissed, but he did step aside, probably because when it came down to it, she outranked him.
Dara headed for the monitors displaying the videos and holograms they had functioning. She entered her codes and logged into the system mainframe.
“Where have we lost visual?” she asked, all the while checking the production levels underground.
“On the first floor and the second floor,” one of the soldiers replied; not the captain, of course. Dara had never received any help from his kind. It wasn’t how alpha males worked.
Good, all cameras were still functioning where it mattered. She took in the scene and stiffened. There was nothing concerning as of yet, but the fusion gases were usually monitored around the clock. As no one had tended to the machines for the last twenty-four hours, the temperature and pressure underground had risen to a level she didn’t like.
“Raff,” she called, after activating the communicator fitted around her jaw, “can you run some numbers for me?”
“What, now?” her associate asked, his tone downright outraged.
It was the middle of the night, close to the morning. But Dara could already hear his fingers tapping on the pads of his portable data processor.
“Moan later; it’s an emergency. I’m sending you some figures. Run a diagnostic and give me a timeframe for a system failure.”
Dara dumped the relevant files through their messaging system, before switching her focus and calibrating their functional drones to scan for movement and heat signatures.
There were less than two dozen hostages; in the grand scheme of things, they weren’t her priority. In fact, they had barely been mentioned in her electronic briefing. Saving the entire city from a toxic outage was a lot more important than worrying about a few low-class night janitors and technicians, as far as her superiors were concerned.
Still, it would be nice to also save their skins if she could. Dara wasn’t one to settle for good when she could shoot for an excellent outcome.
The heat signature recorded by her flying drones outside indicated that twenty-two individuals were on the first floor and seven on the second floor.
She touched the gold exosuit fitted with a processor and asked to be reminded of the exact number of hostages. Twenty. If they were all still alive, it meant that there were nine hostiles.
“Have they made contact?” she asked.
“No, ma’am,” a soldier replied. “The building’s remote security system alerted us of the breach. At the owner of Intertech’s demand, we’ve made use of the building’s alert system to offer a deal, but they’ve made no reply.”
“Which means that whatever they’re after is inside the building. I’m guessing that there are assets, or money, on the second floor.”
Now, the captain talked. “That’s classified information. Intertech is a private company, and they refused to divulge details of their floor plan, as is their right. They develop cutting edge technology and if a competitor—”
“Please do shut up, Cap. Silence is a great improvement over your rambling.”
Sadly, he took it as a suggestion and did not, in fact, shut up. Dara ignored him, as her communicator activated.
Raff had results and they weren’t good.
“Alright, so you’re in a bit of a bind.” When Raff said that much, it meant that it was time to stock up for the apocalypse. “Basically, things don’t look that bad right now, and if everything goes well, I don’t predict a complete system failure for three days. But the cooling system, and the pressure regulator are old, and have been known to malfunction. If one gives out, the other will follow; that would change the timeline from three days to something like three minutes.”
Shit. No wonder they’d called for her.
Dara knew that she wasn’t the best at what she did on the planet; there were smarter, stronger analysts. Some had a lot more experience than her. She’d distinguished herself in a very short time for one simple reason: she could get things done faster than anyone else. It had very little to do with her actual skills, but where others had to worry about following procedure and reporting to their superiors, Dara was a Rexis. That meant that, at the end of the day, the worst thing that could happen when she messed up, was her getting a slap on the wrist. It annoyed her superiors to no end, but that didn’t stop them from using it when they needed someone to barge through the systems and procedures.
Which was exactly what she did now. Dara got into the building’s audio-amplifier system.
“Hey, guys,” she called out cheerfully. “I’m a royal system analyst, level one, rank, commander.” She let it sink in for a few seconds. “Yep, that means you’re in trouble, and likely to either be blown to tiny particles when I launch an attack, or, if you’re lucky, you’ll spend the rest of your miserable days in a black hole.”
The former outcome was more likely.
“Guys, you refused to be bribed, you haven’t killed hostages,” that she knew of, “and you’re not in the executive suite, where you could have access to the company’s funds. No, you’re on the development floor. That makes you one of three things: spies after their research, terrorists wanting to use it to blow something up, or idealists against the evil corporation. I’m inclined to believe you’re behind the third curtain. If that’s the case, reply, now. I’ll give you access to a broadcast channel. If you prove Intertech is out to screw people, you get to walk out of there through the front door, free. You have ten seconds. I will not repeat this offer.”
Half an hour later, Dar
a drove her hovering speeder through the back gate of the royal tower, yawning. She had tons of paperwork waiting for her because she’d, yet again, ignored every single rule and regulation in the handbook. But Intertech was going down, the liberal fighters were on their way home, the hostages were free, and the techs were fixing the pressure regulator and cooler in the basement. All in all, she took it as a win.
She would have preferred to head home, to her small downtown apartment, but she knew that she was going to be called by a committee to be yelled at, first thing in the morning. They generally did it here at the royal family’s residence, in her uncle’s office. Lonar Rexis was the general of the army; her direct superiors somehow believed that he had a degree of influence on her. During the meetings, he made sure to look suitably grumpy, frowning and narrowing his eyes. After they left, he ordered tea and pulled out his chessboard. She hadn’t lost to him since she’d been sixteen; he wasn’t yet tired of trying to win.
Rather than having to wake up early for her summons, she opted to stay in her old rooms.
Dara knew something was wrong as soon as she got out of her vehicle. She couldn’t tell how. Her skin felt cold, her hair stood up at the back of her neck.
She walked the familiar sleek corridors, heading to the elevator, as her room was on the fifty-seventh floor, but after a few steps, her feet refused to move.
The tower was silent. Too silent. Even at this time, she should have come across at least a few robots or a servant. The lights were off on this floor, except for a dim red line on the walls either side of her, to ensure people could find their way. It was normal, and yet, it wasn’t.
Dara looked at the elevator ahead of her. A little voice at the back of her mind told her to take it. Get to her room, tuck herself in and take some well-deserved, much needed rest.