Blood Rebellion (Blood Destiny #7)

by Connie Suttle

  "Biscuits," Crane grinned and offered them one. They used the bread to dip up their stew.

  "These are wonderful," Hart smiled happily. There was enough for everybody to get one and Crane to get two. The skillet was huge.

  "If you have honey to go with them, they're even better," I said.

  The following morning I was hauled away early—the cooks had come calling, asking me to show them how to make biscuits. We made biscuits and Crane got as many as he wanted, with a little honey. I also learned that we'd be getting close to the mountain range by nightfall and things were going to be tighter, security-wise, after that. Until now, we hadn't done any night guard duty, but each company would be asked, so our time was coming. Dragon talked to us about it over breakfast.

  "Guard shifts are four hours long," he said, "two shifts per night. Six companies guard the perimeter every night and walk a portion of it. You're responsible for getting to the perimeter on time to relieve the previous watch. Do not fall asleep—it will be strokes if you do."

  "And you made me come here," I grumped at Drake. Dragon cleared his throat. Time to shut up.

  "If you see or hear anything suspicious, alert the others," Dragon went on, ignoring me. "Your superior on the night watch will decide whether it bears further investigation."

  "Don't worry, Gavin is exactly the same," I told Devin later. She'd explained that Dragon didn’t mean the chastisement personally. He'd chewed me out after the meeting because I wasn't treating everything more seriously. Considering I hadn't volunteered for this assignment to start with, I thought I was displaying amazing restraint.

  * * *

  "If that were one of my boys, I'd force them into a sparring match and drive them into the ground," Dragon grumbled, pacing. Crane and Devin watched as he vented his frustration. "If I pull her onto the sparring square, she'll just block all my blows and yawn while she does it."

  "Dragon, she isn't military and hasn't ever been military," Devin said. "This is all new to her. If you wanted a specific behavior from her, you should have been talking to her from the beginning instead of jumping her now, when she interrupted you."

  "I've given Drake and Drew a dressing-down; they should have been giving her instruction," Dragon muttered.

  * * *

  "You get the second guard shift." Crane had been sent to hand out my assignment—Dragon was still seething, I figured. I just nodded at the former General. Drake and Drew were pissed at me, too, since Dragon had yelled at them after he yelled at me. Well, the end of this little vacation couldn't come soon enough. I set my internal clock for half an hour before I had to relieve the first guard, who happened to be Drake. He, Drew, Rik and Pheran had all gotten the first shift. Pheran Tiger was point man on that shift for us. I was going out on the second shift with Tava, Crane Trevor and Dragon Taylor. Dragon Taylor was chief cook and bottle washer on the second shift for us.

  "Lissa, if you see or hear anything, let me know," Dragon Taylor was driving his point into my head, almost. I wanted to tell him I got it the first time, but my mouth had gotten me into trouble to begin with. I just nodded and went to walk the perimeter.

  Each of us had a hundred yards to guard and we walked that hundred yards. The second shift is the hardest—the time when most people are sound asleep. Or, if they're awake, wanting to be asleep more than anything. Except for vampires.

  I felt more comfortable in the dark—I didn't have the hot sun glaring down on me and making me wish for the darkest of sunglasses. The night was cooler, too, and I could listen better—the noise of thousands of horses clopping along wasn't confusing everything. The scents carried better on the breeze as well—everything was quiet except for a few guards walking the perimeter. The wind was blowing past me that night, which meant I got the scents from the camp instead of what was in front of me. More than anything, I wanted to turn to mist and check things out that way, but figured I was in enough trouble as it was.

  Roughly two hours before dawn, when I'd been walking my little section of the perimeter I caught a sound, although the wind was doing its best to carry it away from me. I stopped still, trying to catch it again. While I stood there, wondering if my ears had played tricks on me, my skin began to itch. Then I heard it. I'd heard that sound before—René had died shortly after.

  Arrows! I sent the mental shout to anybody with the talent to hear me. I didn't wait, either; I knew where that sound originated and I misted in that direction as quickly as I could. The camp was boiling behind me as the first volley was released. Falchani fought without shields. Arrows could be swift and deadly if something wasn't done about them.

  I found the archers in a ravine roughly two hundred yards north of the Falchani camp. The enemy sent a second volley while I'd misted like a bullet in their direction. There were twenty of them and they all died, trying to fight an enemy they couldn't see. They'd hit me in the upper arm, though, when I materialized enough to take heads.

  The camp was still boiling over when I walked back inside the perimeter, wondering what the best way was to remove an arrow from my arm. The metal point had gone clean through and was sticking out on the other side, making it difficult to move my right arm, in addition to hurting like hell.

  Dragon was suddenly in front of me, the usual scowl on his face. "They're all dead," I muttered, stalking past him.

  "Lissa, you have a fucking arrow in your arm," he snarled.

  "Like I didn't notice?" I kept walking.

  "Baby, we have to get you into the tent," Drew was beside me—Drake too, and they were hustling me toward our tent. Dragon had probably sent them mindspeech. I didn't really give a damn at the moment. I was ready to break the point of the arrow off myself and jerk it out—it hurt. All I had to do was reach the fucking point to begin with.

  "Lissa, what happened?" Amara was inside the tent waiting for me. Griffin was there, too, but he was standing back to allow Amara the healer to take over.

  "About twenty archers, two hundred yards north of here, that's what happened," I grumped. "They were downwind; otherwise I would have smelled them long ago. The wind was carrying the sound away, too, until I heard the bowstrings being pulled back. That's how René died, you know. He was shot through the heart with a wooden arrow, when the Dark Elemaiya came through the gate in Kansas City." I was babbling and hadn't realized it. "Where's Karzac?" I asked. I figured if any healer was going to show up, it would probably be him.

  "Karzac's busy," Griffin said. I blinked at my father.

  "Gracie's pregnant; Karzac is going to get his child, after all these years," Amara said softly while she sheared off the arrow point using power. Well, if anybody wanted to deal me a blow to the system, along with the arrow through my arm—that would be the way to do it. Karzac had gotten Grace pregnant. I couldn't get pregnant. Ever. I went completely still.

  "Amara, that should have waited for another time," Griffin said. Amara was pulling the arrow out of my arm and she was left staring at the bloody shaft in her hand as I misted away.

  Chapter 5

  I hadn't tried to bend time before, but I did it then. My arm was still bleeding sluggishly while I stood outside Howard Graham's cell at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester. It was late afternoon there and sunlight shone through the tiny window in his cell. He looked a lot older than when I'd last seen him inside the county courthouse. Now he'd been sober for a while and he had six months left before a stroke would kill him.

  "Who's there?" The sunlight was glaring, keeping him from seeing me clearly. He'd been sitting on his bunk so he stood and moved to the other side of the cell to get a clearer view.

  "You should know who it is," I snapped. He walked forward, then, so he could peer at me through the bars of his cell.

  He didn't say anything for a long time; he just stared. Finally he spoke. "You look like your mother," he said.

  "I don't. My mother was beautiful. They had to keep the casket closed because her face was nothing but a bloody pulp." I wasn't going to
mince words. Howard Graham and I hadn't spoken since he'd nearly killed me when I was nineteen.

  "You weren't mine." Well, some things would never change.

  "I know I wasn't yours," I said right back to him. "I didn't find out until recently, but it's true. If you had a child, you shithead, he would probably be sharing a cell with you, right now. Your less than honorable attorney paid under the table for a DNA test and bribed somebody to draw the blood during one of my doctor visits," I said. "I got the information from his legal files."

  "He told me," Howard Graham agreed, nodding his head. At least he didn't stink of gin, now. That's one of the things I remembered about him—the smell of gin on his breath when he'd yell. He'd had to dry out when he went to jail. "I have a couple of friends here and we talk when we're allowed out of our cells to exercise," Howard Graham went on. "One of them has a son, who's eleven. All he talks about is that boy. I asked him once what he'd do if he found out the boy wasn't his. He just looked at me like I was crazy. And then he told me this; 'Howard,' he said. 'I was beat up when I was a kid. Went to bed hungry, too, lots of nights. I don't want any kid dealing with what I lived with, growing up. I don't care if that boy belongs to the mailman or the neighbor next door. He's not gonna suffer, if I can help it.'"

  "So, he's a decent man, as far as kids go, then," I muttered. "What's he in for?"

  "Dale's in for involuntary manslaughter. Ran a stop sign while he was drunk. He'll be out in six months."

  "So, I'm supposed to believe that because some friend of yours you met in jail turned on the light, you're a changed man, now?" He wasn't going to convince me of that.

  "No. I still get upset about it," Howard Graham said, sighing and shaking his head. "I couldn't help it. Still can't. But you have to believe me when I say I did love your mother. I just didn't know how to handle this." He gestured toward me.

  "That makes me feel so much better, especially since you killed her and all," I retorted.

  "What are you doing now?" he asked, changing the subject. I just stared at him for a moment, shocked at the question. "I'm Queen of Le-Ath Veronis," I said. "If you don't know what that means, watch this." I gave him the best hiss I could with fangs, claws, red eyes and everything. I turned to mist, too, right in front of him, while he screamed his lungs out for the guards.

  * * *

  "What?" I wasn't a pleasant sight, I'm sure, when I became myself inside the tent. Only a few minutes had elapsed since I'd disappeared but now Dragon, Crane and Devin were inside the tiny tent with Drake, Drew, Amara and Griffin. I still had fangs, claws and red eyes when I got there, so I had to pull all that back to normal.

  "Lissa, where have you been?" Dragon was trying to keep his voice civil.

  "Well, I hear Grace and Karzac are about to be parents. So I went to visit Howard Graham inside his jail cell. The only thing different about him was that he was sober."

  "Lissa, is he still alive?" Griffin asked softly.

  "Oh, yeah. The old bastard was still alive when I left him," I grumbled. "Is there any more pleasant news you'd all like to drop in my lap to make my life complete?"

  "Lissa, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said anything," Amara told me, looking at my arm. I'd forgotten about it during my conversation with Howard Graham.

  "Why should you be sorry? You don't have to apologize to me," I told her. "We're in the same boat, you and I. We're not getting kids. All you got was a Queen bitch vampire for a stepdaughter. There's no justice in that for you. You deserve better. You deserve a child of your own, Amara. Don't you think so?"

  "Lissa." Dragon said right beside me.

  "What?" I turned to look at him. His fingers touched my forehead before I could stop him and I collapsed like a sack of grain.

  * * *

  "Every one of them, decapitated. Quite neatly, too, Warlord."

  "What happened?" The Warlord studied his Lord Marshall while he sipped a cup of tea inside his tent.

  "The girl gave a warning to her superior, as I understand it, and since she was closest, went after the archers herself. I spoke with her tribal leader earlier. He said the arrows were going to do a great deal of damage if we waited until we had men gathered to go after them. The girl ran to the ravine where they were hiding and stopped them after only two volleys. She took an arrow in her right arm—thankfully, she's left-handed—and managed to kill the archers while they were scrambling to get away. All they'd brought with them were their bows. They couldn't fight her in close quarters."

  "We need to find out if they have more trained archers. It will not be good news if they do. Granted we have some shields with us, but not nearly enough and many of the warriors do not know how to use them." The Warlord set down his cup and frowned.

  "We've only dealt with a few archers here and there—this is the first time they've banded together," Wolf, the Lord Marshall acknowledged. "The General is out visiting the wounded—we're lucky we only lost one man in the attack."

  "Are the wounded able to travel? I'd like to go on in the morning."

  "I believe so, Warlord. We can leave them with the cooking tents if the attacks come soon." The Lord Marshall examined the map lying on the small table between himself and the Warlord. They'd been plotting strategy.

  "Good. Spread the word; we'll leave first thing in the morning."

  * * *

  I wasn't speaking to anybody. Drake and Drew had given up, after a while. Dragon still walked around with a deep scowl on his face, but that was nothing new. I wanted to be happy for Karzac. He'd delivered so many babies; it was time he got one. I berated myself for not feeling better and more cheerful over the whole thing. Had Dragon known before they'd taken me on this little jaunt into the wilderness? I wasn't about to go Looking. My life was miserable enough, thanks.

  My arrow wound was already closed up and almost healed but I still wore the bandage. Amara said no sparring for a day or two. What we did in the evenings, now, was watch Crane train Tava, Hart and Nima. Crane Trevor and Dragon Taylor were helping and they'd spar with the women. Veykan sometimes helped out, or Turtle, even. I was bored and depressed. There wasn't a rooftop to sit on or that's where I would have been, pondering the difficulties of my life.

  "Lissa, there's nothing we can do to change things," Drew sat beside me while I watched Crane put the three women through their paces. I'd heard from Drake that they hadn't been trained properly at all. I wasn't surprised—I figured the men had cut corners with their training, just so they could have an easy lay out of it. Yeah, I wasn't in a charitable mood toward anybody, nowadays.

  "Well, I'll just feel this way for a while, then," I muttered.

  "Lissa, we love you. Drake and I. Karzac loves you. We've been afraid to tell him that you know already. I think he'd come if he knew you were gone."

  "Oh, yeah, the whole time-bending thing," I grumped. Nobody was listening to us—Crane was shouting at Tava, who was doing her best to block Dragon Taylor's blows while their blades clanged in the early evening quiet. "Besides, Karzac needs to stay with Grace. That's his baby. No way he needs to come haring after a neurotic Vampire Queen."

  I was trying to come to grips with this—Karzac needed to stay with his baby until that baby was grown. He or she was going to need a stable home life and a permanent father in residence, as far as I was concerned. The poor kid was going to have to get used to the idea that his mother had multiple mates, even if they were the best guys in the universe.

  "What did Howard Graham say to you, baby?"

  "He said a lot of things but the words I'm sorry have never passed his lips."

  "I wish we'd known each other, growing up," Drew said, putting his arm around me. "Drake and I got into all kinds of trouble. If we'd had a friend that needed looking after, well, we might not have raised so much hell."

  "I'm glad you got to raise hell," I said, bumping my forehead against his arm. "Somebody needed to. I was afraid to breathe, most of the time. It was a relief to go to school in the mornings. Nobody could
touch me there."

  "Gracie is our second mom," Drew said suddenly. "If Mom was gone on assignment, Gracie was there. Or Gram. We knew, early on, that we had an extended family. We still call Mack Daddy Mack, and the others, too. They were all dads for us. Of course, Dad had the final say if he was in, but Uncle Crane stood in for him if he wasn't, or one of the others. Karzac certainly did. We knew we could go to him for anything. Radomir helped teach us hand fighting. We had to work to get to his level, he's so fast. Lisster and Rush taught us how to fish. Justin and Mack taught us how to ski and surf. Grampa Adam and Grampa Martin showed us how to build things. Lynx, Russell and Will taught us how to gamble. Behind Dad's back, of course. Grampa Merrill taught us how to manage money and he and Grampa Adam help us with our portfolios."

  "It's good you had all those people to depend on. I'm happy for you," I sighed.

  "Lissa, what I'm trying to say is that you're part of that family, now. Karzac didn't expect this. Neither did Grace."

  "I know. I'm just trying to come to grips with it. I'm going for a walk, now."

  "Baby, no. Don't go off by yourself. Or let Drake and me go with you. We need to know how to fix what bothers you."

  "There's no fixing some of what bothers me," I said and stood up. Drew didn't like it and his dark eyes were narrowed in concern, but I walked away from him anyway. The clashing of swords grew dim as I made my way toward the edge of the camp. There wasn't any place else to go so as soon as I was out of sight, I misted away, heading toward the river. It had a few days to wash itself clean since we'd been there so I took a dip and then let the last heat of the day dry me off. Reemagar was sitting on the riverbank when I was dressed again.

  "What are you doing here?" I asked. I might have expected Connegar, but he wasn't the one to come. I didn't have a comb with me so I had to run fingers through my hair to get the tangles out before braiding it again.

  "I came to see you. The others do not know you are gone since Dragon will bend time to get you back again right after you left. I know, as do the other Larentii."