Blood Drawn: A novel of The Demon Accords

by John Conroe

  “No daydreaming, Chris,” Nika called out. “And don’t forget those weapons…”

  Neeve struck again, another lunge followed by a left-handed swing with a sword that was suddenly twice as long as it had been. I stepped in close, blocked the swing with my aura-covered right arm, and deflected the jab with my left forearm as I punched her square in the sternum, if elves have sternums. Neeve flew backward ten feet, backrolling to her feet, a flicker of mild surprise crossing her face.

  “… morph. And yes, they have sternums,” Nika finished.

  “They’re really light too,” I said. It felt like I had punched a pine box, her body harder than a human’s, but lighter.

  I felt the goblin coming at my back and this time I spun, backhanded it, and then dove to the right into a judo roll. Grim felt the passage of a lethal lance point jabbing through the space I had just occupied. The white goblin had smashed into a building fifteen feet away and was picking itself out of broken wooden siding.

  “He’s playing with you, Princess,” Stacia said. “You know that, right?”

  Neeve shot her a quick glare, glanced at her ape-like familiar as it shook its head, then came at me, blades striking fast and hard. And morphing. They changed at the speed of thought, from sword to spear to axe to things I didn’t have names for. Liquid one moment, diamond hard the next. And she knew so many ways to use them, transitioning through technique after technique just as fast as her weapons changed shape. She scored some hits even though I was a lot faster.

  But my body was armored in aura and even the Black Frost weapons couldn’t bite through it.

  “Enough messing around, Chris,” Nika said. “We’ve got things to do.”

  I know my sister-in-law well enough to understand she was picking up something from the warrior elf. Something important.

  I turned and grabbed the goblin. He was strong but Grim was stronger, pinning the long gorilla arms to its side and the using the heavy beast as a shield against its master’s weapons. With my speed and my new squirming shield, I quickly backed the elven assassin against a warehouse wall, the crowd rushing away like water. She tried to use a flail-type weapon, clearly hoping the flexible connection from her handle to the evil spiked head would safely bypass her goblin. The nasty weapon hit my shoulder but bounced off and Grim had had enough. He threw the ape thing at her, stepped forward, and punched it in the head hard enough to knock it out and then yanked both weapons from her hands, tossing the writhing, twisting black weapons onto the ground well away.

  She immediately pulled a knife but Grim pinned her hands out to each side. Her knee came for my groin, but I twisted and took it on my thigh. Then I head-butted her. She slumped and I stepped away, leaving her to fall, stunned, on top of her unconscious goblin.

  Stacia was suddenly by my side, squatting down to hold up Neeve’s head. “Curiosity satisfied, Princess?” she asked. A slim, pale hand swatted at Stacia’s, but no elf was as strong as a shifter, especially one as strong as Stacia.

  Nika was now on my other side, leaning down to study the elf, who was starting to regain a little of her faculties. “She came with a message before all this went down.”

  “Oh, dear; I hope she can remember it,” Stacia said in a tone that clearly didn’t give a shit.

  The warrior princess forced herself to her feet, Stacia letting her go as she stood. She looked down at her familiar where it lay.

  “He’s alive. Heart’s steady,” Nika said to her, although I suspect that the elf could hear that steady drumbeat as well as we could.

  Neeve looked around on the ground and her eyes locked onto the two rods of black that laid in the dirt behind me. Then she raised her silver eyes to meet mine.

  “You treated me dishonorably,” she said, angry for the first time.

  I felt my eyebrows go up. “Oh?”

  “You did not fight me seriously. You fought with less than your full abilities.”

  “Which is why you are still alive,” Nika told her. “Had he been serious, you and Torg would both have died in the first seconds of the fight. Had he drawn his sword, there would be just pieces of goblin, elf, and Black Frost blade on the ground. To you, he is a young human, while you have lived for centuries, but you fail to understand: He is of divine origin, and this form he wears was crafted by the Creator for his warrior. And remember, we are guests of the Realm Holder. Breaking the peace accord he has with your mother would not be honorable either. So he let you live… for now. You came here to speak to Declan, so speak.”

  The deadly silver-eyed elf studied the blonde vampire for a very long moment, eyes hard and unreadable, then thinned her lips and nodded once.

  “Mother has information you greatly desire,” Neeve said to all of us. “But she will only speak to you in the Winter Court—on her grass, as you say.”

  “Turf,” Stacia supplied. “On her own turf.”

  The elf frowned at her and then shook her head. “Whatever. If you wish it, you must accompany me to my mother’s court.”

  “That tracks,” Stacia said, unsurprised but unhappy. “She does so love to nest in the center of her dark web.”

  “She will love the compliment you have paid her,” Neeve said. “Spiders are abundant in both Courts—one of nature’s most successful survivors. But it is too late to travel to Mother, so it will have to be the morrow.”

  “Too dark?” Declan asked.

  “Like your world, there are… denizens of our Realm that much prefer darkness to daylight,” the elf said with a nod toward Nika. “They are, however, much more volatile than vampires.”

  “You don’t think we could survive them?” Declan asked.

  “You would, but Mother would be most wrought at the losses. We will go in daylight, but fear not, vampire. It seems our sun is not hostile to your kind. I will collect you at dawn.”

  She turned and left with her casual grace, melting into the shadows as easily as Nika herself might. The goblin shook its head and ambled after her.

  Chapter 22

  “So where do we even begin?” Lydia asked. We were gathered in our rooms at the inn, with Omega projecting Tanya, Arkady, and Lyda’s images via Declan’s nano bracelets.

  “Let’s start with the Navy incident,” Tanya suggested.

  “Yesterday Carrier Strike Group Three, based out of San Diego, California, was proceeding to Okinawa,” Omega said. “Over the Japan Trench, the new sensors I provided picked up a Vorsook scout ship hiding in the depths. The Vorsook pilot attempted to flee, firing a directed energy weapon at the USS Ketchikan on its way to the surface. The strike group engaged the scout ship with their own DEWs and ultimately destroyed it. Father was able to use the sub’s sonar to call a very large water elemental from its own resting place and convince it to stop the sub from sinking.”

  “How?” Tanya asked. “How could you convince it to help a sub full of humans?”

  Declan scratched his head and looked mildly guilty. “I told it the sub was useful in the fight to stop the end of Earth. I didn’t explain it was full of people; that wouldn’t have mattered. But it was surprised to wake up and find the scout ship had been lurking down in the Trench with it. That annoyed it.”

  “What was the scout doing? Hunting the elemental?”

  “It is very unlikely that the scout ship would be able to sense a sleeping elemental, even one of that immense size. I have the same technology and yet it is Father who inevitably finds each elemental that we visit.”

  “How many people died?” I asked.

  “A total of thirty-one sailors died, twenty-six aboard the Ketchikan and five spread out among the surface fleet. Twenty-two personnel were injured, seven critically. The seven have been treated with Demidova emergency medical preparation Mark 15 and are out of danger.”

  “The ships killed the scout ship by themselves?” Nika asked.

  “I may have provided some targeting help, but the weapons technicians essentially succeeded on their own. That was important.”
/>   “To instill confidence in their new weapons?” Tanya asked.

  “Exactly. The Navy has debriefed the senior officers of the group and reported the successes and failures to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. To say that military morale has improved is a vast understatement. They are also beginning to view Father as an important ally rather than a rogue power.”

  “See, honey? You simply need to heft up a sub full of drowning sailors while sitting in a pub on another planet to make new friends,” Stacia said.

  “Good God, you really did, didn’t you?” Lydia asked.

  “You make it sound like I used magic from a world away. I just used words,” Declan said. “Omega did most of the heavy transmission work.”

  “Yet it was you who changed the sub’s acoustic array by your will alone to speak to the Leviathan.”

  “We met that one early in the process. Just glad he remembered me,” Declan said, ignoring Omega’s point.

  Stacia snorted. “They all remember you. No one else in the history of the world has ever spoken to so many elementals.”

  “Well, the world is pretty old, and much history has been lost,” Lydia pointed out.

  “Not to the elementals,” Stacia replied. “They would remember, and they don’t.”

  “I think the main point here is that Declan and Stacia’s work with elementals has already paid dividends,” Tanya said. “At least for the sub sailors that survived.”

  “Agreed,” I said. “Which brings us to our visit by Princess Neeve.”

  “Yes, her,” Tanya said, her voice cold. She turned to Nika. “What did you get off her?” I had a moment of disassociation as my eyes told me she was there, but my nose and other senses got nothing from her image.

  “She’s extremely hard to read,” Nika said. “Her mind is alien and kind of… fractal, I guess I’d call it.”

  “What does that mean?” Lydia asked.

  “It’s really difficult to describe,” her sister by choice said. “Human minds, including were and Darkkin, bounce around, touching on this idea and then that thought, unless the person is focused on solving a problem or involved in a detailed conversation. Then it’s more linear, but still has moments where attention jumps off track a little. Worse for regular humans, in general, and very jumpy for a were, especially as the moon waxes toward full. Darkkin are, again generally, more ordered, unless they are hungry. But Neeve’s mind is like a crystal, with multi-faceted compartments. When she’s using one facet or compartment, the others don’t intrude unless she needs to reach for a memory or piece of information.”

  “That sounds very orderly,” Tanya said. “It seems like a mind like that would be easier to read?”

  “Right? But it isn’t. It’s actually harder, almost like the separate compartments have hard walls that resist my intrusion.”

  “Wow, that explains so much,” Declan said.

  “Not to us, Ichabod,” Lydia quipped instantly.

  “Well, it’s just that when I was trying to learn how to open portals, it was difficult to keep everything in mind at the same time, which puzzled my instructors, who had no such problem,” he said.

  “But you picked it up with ridiculous speed,” Stacia said.

  “Once I realized I couldn’t do it like they do… holding all the details of the portal’s construction in my mind. I had to prepare, writing out the details with chalk or marker.”

  “But you rip open portals all the time now without any writing implements?” Tanya asked.

  “Repetition,” he said. “Like muscle memory.”

  “Which is the only kind of memory you can squeeze into that empty cavern you call a skull,” Lydia said.

  “Lydia,” Tanya admonished.

  “She doesn’t like us being on a separate world,” Nika said. “She misses us.”

  “Shut up, Kreskin,” the smallest vampire snapped.

  “Well, so far, this trip is moving at light speed,” I said. “Contact by the Winter Queen mere hours after arrival. Now a trip to her court tomorrow. Who knows; maybe we’ll be home by tomorrow night?”

  “Or Morrigan’s prisoners in her dungeon of doom and torture,” Stacia said.

  “Yeah, I agree,” Tanya said. “A more obvious trap, I can’t imagine.”

  “I don’t think so,” Declan said. “It’s too obvious. Plus, I think she really wants us to fully occupy the Vorsook and maybe even bloody their noses.”

  “Listen, Captain Optimistic,” Lydia said. “You’ve got my sister and brother-in-law with you. If you get them hurt or held prisoner, I’ll kick your lanky ass all over that planet.”

  “It’s so cute when the little ones act tough,” Declan said with a big grin. “But hear me out. Much of the reason the Queens have come after me is they want the elementals of the Middle Realm to restock their arsenal against the Vorsook. They’ve both learned that I’m not a pushover and more importantly, the people in my life are just as formidable. So why not help direct us into confrontation with their enemy? Maybe we weaken the Vorsook, maybe I’m wounded or killed and they can try and claim the Middle Realm; after all, why do you think Neeve wants to fight Stacia and me so much?”

  “Could she claim your Realm if she killed you?” I asked.

  “Not sure, but I think it’s a possibility,” he said.

  “So why not lure you out of your realm and then kill you?” Tanya asked.

  “It’s a possibility, although I think Chris set her back tonight,” Declan said.

  “Thoroughly schooled her,” Stacia said with a nod. “She’s not had a defeat that complete in her whole life. I mean, we were a challenge, but Chris just whacked her around like a baby.”

  “And now she has the whole rest of the night to prepare,” Lydia said.

  “Maybe. But I doubt she’ll run home and tell everyone how badly she got beaten,” Declan said.

  “I agree,” Nika said. “She was hard to read but I know for a fact that her world was rocked by that little contest and her self-image took a severe blow.”

  “So you intend to do it?” Tanya asked. “Go to the Winter Court?”

  “I don’t see an alternative,” Declan said.

  “But we’ll be as prepared as we can be, right, Dec?” Stacia asked, raising one brow at her witch.

  He sighed and nodded. “Yeah, I’ll wear the nano armor.”

  “And you have the portal popper ready?” the blonde werewolf pressed.

  “I do.”

  “What’s a portal popper?” Lydia asked. “Sounds like a teleportation travel snack.”

  “It’s something I’ve been working on, something new,” Declan said.

  Lydia’s image turned to Nika. “Since he’s being all mysterious, maybe you can tell us?”

  “Actually, I can’t. They’ve shielded it from me,” Nika said.

  “Hopefully we won’t need it and it’s still new, so I’d rather not get into details yet,” Declan said. “It might not even work.”

  “It works frigging great, and you know it,” Stacia said.

  “Wait, it’s untested?” I asked.

  “Not untested. Unused in combat,” Stacia said. “It’s been tested and retested and it’s some scary damn stuff. And it has huge potential if it is scaled up.”

  “Omega?” I asked.

  “I agree with Stacia. It is a game changer, as they say, but it is Father’s to explain, so you will all just have to wait and see.”

  “Well, at least get a better name,” Lydia said. “Portal popper? That’s not gonna scare anyone, and I, for one, don’t want to be embarrassed by some lame-ass doomsday weapon named after a snack food.”

  “We’ll work on that,” Declan said.

  “How’s things on your end?” I asked, trying to change the topic fast. “The kids okay?”

  “They’re fine,” my vampire said. “They want to know where you guys are, but they are good. However, one of Deckert’s people was on the subway today and saw something that caught her eye. Seems there’s some kind o
f street prophet down there who is spreading predictions.”

  “So?” Stacia asked. “There must be hundreds of wackos around the globe doing that.”

  “Well, the thing that caught Ilyana’s eye was a written quote. It was so oddly specific that she snapped a photo of it and showed it to Deckert. He brought it to Arkady,” Tanya said, turning to look at her giant head of security.

  “Says When child of Eater dies by man, the son of the Emerald will call forth the Leviathan from the depths,” Arkady quoted in his thick accent. “Sound like today, no?”

  Tanya gave me a quirky little smile, then we both looked around at the others, who were uncharacteristically silent. Stacia was frowning, Nika looked puzzled, and Declan’s eyes were wide.

  “Well?” Lydia demanded when the pause stretched out into awkward territory.

  “Well… I have about a thousand questions,” Stacia said. “When was it written, who is this prophet, and how is it even possible?” she asked, turning to Declan as she spoke the final part.

  “Well, seers occur all the time,” he said. “Aunt Ash has some abilities along those lines, but there are lots of people who get prophetic images or messages. Chris gets visions of demons before they happen; my aunt knew when I was fu… messing up almost before I did. They pop up randomly throughout the population. Some seers have a fleeting moment of accuracy, others, like Nostradamus, go on for years.”

  “We’ve just started investigating,” Tanya said. “Arkady didn’t bring it up until we heard about the Navy incident. I’ve sent Katrina to look into this guy.”

  “Katrina? She’ll just get annoyed and rip his head off,” Stacia said.

  “No, she’s intrigued,” Lydia said. “You just have to know how to focus her is all.”

  “There’s a way to focus her?” Declan asked.

  Lydia smirked. “Yup, but no one has commented on the obvious elephant in the room.”