by Nora Roberts
Riddock stepped back, and by the way his jaw tightened, Blair thought he knew the drill—and wasn’t happy about it.
Moira moved forward, waited for the crowd to subside. “People of Geall, I have come home to you, but not to bring you joy. I come to bring you war. I have been charged by the goddess Morrigan herself to fight what would destroy our world, the world of my friends, all the worlds of humankind. I am charged, with these five whom I trust with my life, with my land, with the crown I may one day bear if the gods deem it, to lead you into this battle.”
She paused, and Blair could see she was judging the tone of the crowd, the murmurs, pacing herself.
“It is not a battle for land or wealth, not for glory or vengeance, but for life itself. I have not been your ruler, I have not been a warrior, but a student, a dutiful daughter, a proud citizen of Geall. Yet I would ask you to follow me and mine, to give your lives for me, and for all that come after. For on the night of the feast of Samhain we will face an army of these.”
The vampires were dragged onto the field. Blair knew what the people saw. They saw men in chains, murderers yes, but not demons.
There were shouts and gasps, there were calls for justice, there were even tears. But there was no true fear.
The guards fixed the chains to the iron posts, and at Moira’s nod, left the field.
“These that killed my mother, that murdered your queen have a name. It is vampire. In her world, the lady Blair has hunted them, destroyed them. She is the hunter of this demon. She will show you what they are.”
Blair let out a breath, turned briefly to Larkin. “Sorry.”
Before he could speak, she vaulted out of the box and crossed the field.
“What is this?” Larkin demanded.
“You will not interfere.” Moira gripped his arm. “This is my wish. More, this is my order. You won’t interfere. None of you.”
As Blair began to speak, Moira left the box.
“Vampires have one purpose. To kill.” Blair circled them, letting them draw her scent, the scent that would stir the terrible hunger. “They feed on human blood. They will hunt you, and drink you. If food is their only purpose you’ll die quickly. In pain, in horror, but quickly. If they want more, they’ll torture you, as they tortured the family Larkin, Cian and I found dead in the forest on the night we hunted these down.”
The larger one tried to lunge at her. His eyes were red now, and those closest to the field would see the fangs he exposed.
“Vampires aren’t born. They aren’t conceived, they don’t grow inside a womb. They’re made. Made from humans. A bite from a vampire, if not fatal, infects. Some that are infected become half-vampires, slaves to them. Others are drained almost to the point of death, the very edge of life. Then they’re fed the blood of their sire, and they die only to rise again. Not as a human, but as a vampire.”
She continued to move, circling just out of reach.
“Your child, your mother, your lover can be turned like this. They won’t be your child, your mother, your lover anymore. They’ll be a demon, like these, with the blood lust that drives them to feed, to kill, to destroy.”
She turned, and behind her the vampires strained against their chains, howling in frustration and hunger as she stood just out of range. “This is what’s coming for you. Hundreds, maybe thousands of them. This is what you have to fight. Steel won’t kill them. It hurts them.”
She whirled, sliced the tip of her sword across the chest of the larger one. “They bleed, but they heal, and a wound like this will barely slow one down. These are the weapons that destroy a vampire. Wood.”
She drew a stake, and when she feinted toward the smaller one, he cringed back, hunching to defend his chest. “Through the heart. Fire.” She grabbed a torch, and when she flourished it in the air, both of them shrieked.
“They’re night feeders because the direct light of the sun will end them. But they can lurk in the shadows, walk in the rain. Kill when the clouds block the sun. The symbol of the cross will burn them, and if you’re lucky hold them back. Holy water burns them. If a sword is used it must cut through the neck, taking their head.”
She, too, could judge the mood of the crowd, Blair thought. Excitement, confusion, those first whiffs of fear. And a great deal more disbelief. They still saw men in chains.
“These are your weapons, these are what you have along with your wits, your courage, against creatures that are stronger, faster and harder to kill than you are. If we don’t fight, if we don’t win, a little more than a month from now, they’ll devour you.”
She paused while Moira walked across the field to her. “Be sure,” Blair murmured.
“I am.” She gripped Blair’s hand briefly then turned to the crowd where voices rippled with concern, confusion.
Moira lifted her voice over it. “Morrigan is called the queen of the warrior, yet it is said she has never fought in battle. Still, I bow to her command. This is faith. I cannot, will not ask that you have the faith in me that you would in a god. I am a woman, mortal as you are. But when I ask you to follow me into battle, you will follow a warrior. Proven. Whether or not I wear a crown, I will carry a sword. I will fight beside you.”
She drew her sword, lifted it high. “Tonight, on this ground, I will destroy what took your queen and my mother. What I do here I do for her, by her blood. I do for you, for Geall, and all humankind.”
She faced Blair. “Do it. If you have any love for me,” she said when Blair hesitated. “Warrior to warrior, woman to woman.”
“It’s your show.”
She chose the smaller of the two, though she judged he still had thirty pounds on Moira. “On your knees,” she ordered, holding her sword to his throat.
“Easy for you to kill when I’m in chains.” He hissed it, but he dropped to his knees.
“Yeah, it would be. And I already regret I’m not getting a piece of you.” She held the sword against his throat as she moved behind him. Then taking the key Moira had given her, unlocked the chains.
With pride and fear, she plunged the sword into the ground beside him, and walked away.
“What have you done?” Larkin demanded when Blair took her position in front of the box.
“What she asked me to do. What I’d want her to do for me if the situation were reversed.” She looked up at him now. “If you can’t trust her, why should they?” She reached up for his hand. “If we can’t trust her, how can she trust herself?”
She released his hand, and facing the field, prayed she’d done the right thing.
“Pick up the sword,” Moira ordered.
“With a dozen arrows pointed at me?” it demanded.
“None flies unless you try to run. Are you afraid to fight a human on equal ground? Would you have run that night if my mother had held a sword?”
“She was weak, but her blood was rich.” His eyes slanted to the left, to his companion, still chained and staked too far away to be of any help. “It was meant to be you.”
The knife from that had already been in her heart. The words only twisted it. “Aye, and you killed her for nothing. But now it could be me. Will Lilith have you back if you taste my blood tonight? You want it.” Deliberately she cut a shallow slice across her palm. “It’s so long since you fed.”
She watched his tongue flick out to lick his lips as she held up her hand so the blood would drip down her arm and onto the ground. “Come. Strike me down and feed.”
He yanked the sword free, and raising it, charged.
She didn’t block the first blow, but pivoted aside, kicked out to send him sprawling.
A good move, Blair decided. Add some humiliation to the fear and the hunger. He came up, rushed Moira with that eerie, preternatural speed some of them possessed. But she was ready for him. Maybe, Blair thought, she’d been ready all of her life.
Sword struck sword, and Blair could see that while he had more speed, more strength, Moira had the better form. Moira drove his sword up, asid
e, then plunged her own into his chest. She danced back, once more took her stance.
Showing the crowd, Blair knew, that while such a wound might be mortal in a human, it barely broke a vampire’s stride.
She ignored the screams, the shouts, even the sounds of panic and running feet and watched the combat on the field.
The vampire cupped a hand on his wound, brought the blood from it to his mouth. From behind her, Blair heard the sound of a body hitting the ground as someone fainted.
He came at her again, but this time he anticipated Moira’s move. His sword nicked her arm, and he cracked the back of his hand across her face. She stumbled back, blocking the next blow, but was driven back toward the second vampire.
Blair lifted her crossbow, prepared to break her word.
Instead, Moira dived down, rolled aside. She came up with her legs pistoning in a hard double kick that simply made Blair’s heart sing.
“Atta girl, atta girl. Now take him out. Stop fooling around.”
But it had gone beyond that, beyond merely showing the people what a vampire was capable of withstanding in battle. Moira brought her sword down to cleave a gash in its shoulder, and still she moved back rather than strike a killing blow.
“How long did she live?” Moira demanded. “How long did she suffer?” She continued to block, to drive even when the hand that gripped the hilt of her sword was slick with her own blood.
“Longer than you will, or the coward who sired you.”
He charged through her shock. She barely saw the move, would never know how she defended herself against it. There was pain, the sting as the sword grazed her side. There was her own scream as she swung her sword through the air, and took its head.
She went to her knees as much with the sudden tearing grief than from any wounds. She shook from it, and the roars of the crowd were like a distant ocean.
She gained her feet, turned to Blair. “Unlock the other.”
“No. That’s enough, Moira. It’s enough.”
“That’s for me to say.” She strode over, yanked the key from Blair’s belt. “It’s for me to do.”
All sound dropped away as she started across the field. Moira saw the sudden light, a kind of glee in the vampire’s eyes as she approached it. The hunger, and the pleasure of what was to come.
Then she saw the arrow whizz by, and strike its heart.
Moira whirled, the rage of betrayal ripping through her. But it wasn’t Blair who held the bow. It was Cian.
He tossed it down. “Enough,” was all he said before he walked away.
Chapter 17
Moira didn’t think, she didn’t wait. She didn’t take her place back in the royal box to speak to her people again. As she rushed away, she could hear Larkin’s voice lifted, strong and clear. He would stand in for her, and that would have to do.
She still carried her bloody sword as she sprinted after Cian.
“How dare you! How dare you interfere!”
He continued, reaching the courtyard now, moving across it. “I don’t take orders from you. I’m not one of your subjects, not one of your people.”
“You had no right.” She spun ahead of him to block him from entering the castle. And seeing his face, saw cold rage.
“I’m not concerned about rights.”
“Couldn’t you stand it? Watching me fight one of them, torment it, destroy it. You couldn’t stand by and see me beat down a second.”
“If you like.”
He didn’t push past her but changed direction to continue across the courtyard and through an archway.
“You will not turn from me.” This time when she rounded him, she laid the flat of her sword on his chest. Her rage wasn’t cold, but hot, bubbling through her like the wrath of gods. “You’re here because I wish it, because I permit it. You aren’t master here.”
“Didn’t take long, did it, for you to drape on the mantle. But understand this, princess, I’m here because I wish it, and your permission is less than nothing to the likes of me. Now either use that sword or lower it.”
She threw it aside so it clattered on the stones. “It was for me to do.”
“For you to die in front of a roaring crowd? You’re a bit small for the gladiator title.”
“I would—”
“Have given a hungry vampire his last meal,” Cian snapped. “You couldn’t have bested the second of them. Maybe, just maybe, you’d have stood a small chance against him if you were fresh and not wounded. But Blair chose the smaller of them to begin with because it was your best chance at proving your point. And so you did, be satisfied with that.”
“You think you know what I can do?”
He simply squeezed a hand to the cut on her side, releasing it when she went dead white and swayed back against the wall. “Yes. And so did he. He’d have known exactly where to come at you.” Cian lifted the bottom edge of her tunic, wiped the blood from his hand. “You wouldn’t have lasted above two minutes before you were as dead as the mother you’re so hell-bound to avenge.”
Her eyes went from fog to smoke. “Don’t speak of her.”
“Then stop using her.”
Her lips trembled once before she firmed them. “I would have beaten him because I had to.”
“Bollocks. You were done, and too proud, too stupid to admit it.”
“We can’t know, can we, because you ended it.”
“You think you could have stopped him from sinking his teeth into this?” Cian skimmed a finger down the side of her throat, barely lifting an eyebrow when she slapped his hand aside. “Stop me then. You’ll need more than a peevish slap to manage it.”
He stepped back, picked up the sword she’d tossed down. Smiled grimly when she winced at the pull in her side as he threw it to her. “There, you have a sword, I don’t. Stop me.”
“I’ve no intention of—”
“Stop me,” he repeated, and moved quickly to give her a light shove back against the wall.
“You won’t put your hands on me.”
“Stop me.” He shoved her again, then simply batted the sword aside.
She slapped him, hard across the face before he gripped her shoulders, pressed her back against the wall. She felt something that might have been fear, that might have been, as his eyes held hers transfixed.
“For God’s sake, stop me.”
When his mouth crushed down on hers, she felt everything. Too much. It was dark and it was bright, it was hard, and unbearably soft. All that was inside her rushed toward it, reckless and crazed.
Then he was standing aside, a foot away from her, and it seemed all the breath had left her body.
“That’s not the way he’d have tasted you.”
Cian left her trembling against the wall before he compounded an already enormous mistake.
He scented rather than saw Glenna. “She needs to be seen to,” he said and continued away.
Inside, Blair sat in front of the fire in the family parlor, trying to get her bearings. “Just don’t start on me,” she warned Larkin. “She wheedled my word out of me, and the fact is, I understood why she needed to do it.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because you weren’t there. Because she left it for the last minute. Ambushed me. Which was damn good strategy, if you want my opinion. I argued with her, and maybe I could have argued harder, but she was right. Mostly right. And, Jesus, she made her point, didn’t she? In spades.”
He handed her a cup of wine, crouched in front of her. “You think I’m angry with you. I’m not. With her, a bit. With her because she didn’t trust me with this. Because it wasn’t just her mother those things killed, but my aunt. And I loved her. It wasn’t just her people she sought to rally with this business tonight, but mine. And I can promise you, Moira and I will speak of it.”
“Okay. Okay.” She drank, looked at Hoyt. “Have you got two cents to put into this?”
“If you’re meaning do I have an opinion on it, I do. She shouldn�
��t have taken this on herself. She’s too valuable to risk, and we’re meant to be a circle. No one of us should make such important decisions without the others.”
“Well, if you’re going to be logical.” Blair sighed. “You’re not wrong, and if there’d been time, I’d have insisted she bring everyone in on it. We wouldn’t have stopped her, but we’d have all been prepared. She went all queen on me.” Sighing again, Blair rubbed at the tension at the base of her neck. “Man, she took some hits.”
“And Glenna will tend to her,” Hoyt answered. “She would have taken more if Cian hadn’t acted.”
“I wouldn’t have let it happen. I’m not going to kick at him for jumping in, grabbing the crossbow out of my hands, but I wouldn’t have let her take on number two. She was finished.” She drank again. “But I’m not sorry she’s tearing the skin off his hide instead of mine.”
“His is thick enough.” Idly Hoyt poked at the fire. “We’ll have our army now.”
“We will,” Larkin agreed. “None can doubt what we’ll come to face. We’re not a people of war, but we’re not cowards. We’ll have an army come Samhain.”
“Lilith will be here any day,” Blair pointed out. “We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us. We’d better get some sleep, get an early start on it tomorrow.”
But as she started to get up, Dervil came to the doorway. “I beg your pardon, but I’m sent for the lady Blair. My mistress wishes to speak with her.”
“Another command performance,” Blair muttered.
“I’ll wait in your chambers.” Larkin laid a hand on her arm. “You’ll come, tell me how she is.”
“I’ll let you know.” Blair started out, glanced at Dervil. “I know the way now.”
“I’m asked to bring you.”
At the door of Moira’s chambers, Dervil knocked. It was Glenna who answered, let out a breath of relief when she saw Blair. “Good, thanks for coming.”