The Thrice Marked

by Liddie Cain

  I leaned toward them and tried to shake off Lear from my mind, “I would place it where Sylvia wouldn’t be feeding from if I were you.”

  “Ariel suggested merging yours with your mark from Mac,” Sylvia told me.

  “Oh, well I trust her opinion on it. Darby, think you can lay it on there for me?”

  Darby nodded and stood up with one of the feathers. I laid over onto my side and pulled my shirt up. Lear turned his head away but I could tell he was interested in what was happening. “It’s okay if you watch Lear,” I said.

  He slowly turned back to face us and watched as Darby lowered the small white feather to the demon mark I had uncovered. Mac’s addition to the mark was on the front side of my ribs, three nickel sized circles. Darby pressed the feather down onto it with her hand and closed her eyes. I closed my eyes as well and both of us prayed together.

  Light glowed from under her hand, the intensity rising until I could see it through my closed eyes. I opened them and looked down. There was no pain from gaining the angel mark which was very different from gaining the demon ones. It had hurt enough to make me almost pass out from both Felix and Mac’s.

  The light diminished, then disappeared completely. Darby lifted her hand to reveal the real feather gone and the mark of it left behind on my skin. It weaved from the bottom of the first circle, up over the top of the middle and back under the last one. I smiled and touched my finger to it, tracing its graceful arch. At least it had put a feminine touch to the two masculine marks.

  Darby held up the second feather and told me, “I want mine in the same place as yours.”

  It was a girlish gesture to get matching tattoos and it was probably silly, but I hopped up with a big smile and she laid down in the spot I had just vacated. She pulled up her shirt and I laid the feather over the same area of her ribs. I covered it with my hand and closed my eyes. For Darby, I pray that this mark of blessing shields her from evil intent. May heavenly light shine through it when she is lost in the dark.

  The light flared under my hands. I could hear Sylvia suck in an uncomfortable breath and knew that both of the vampires would have to turn away from the heavenly glow. I felt the sweet breeze of the powers of blessing focus from above, down through my skin and into the hand that pressed into Darby’s own skin. The sphere of shielding around us was visible in my mind even with my eyes closed. I had the impression of Ariel watching over the both of us and smiling as she did.

  It was done and the light faded, the sphere of protection dissipating since it was not needed. I lifted my hand and looked down at the feather mark that graced her skin. Her’s had nothing to weave around so it laid there without distortion. Darby smiled up at me, “Got part of our wings back.”

  “Yeah. Need a few more for flying though.”

  “One day,” she said softly.

  I decided to give Sylvia and Darby some alone time since we didn’t know how long we would be gone on this excursion into Fairy. Lear went with me over to my parent’s house. Mom had called to let me know that they would be home in a couple of hours and I needed to talk to them about going with us too. If Conall could have them as guests in his court, I wouldn’t have to worry about Meredith or any strange vampires linking them to me. It would also mean that Mac wouldn’t have to watch out for their safety while he was dealing with her.

  There was a palpable awareness of the fact that I was alone in their house with Lear. I wouldn’t have called it attraction despite how good looking it was. It was more that I wasn’t exactly easy with him or him with me. He seemed to be honorable enough but he had lived a long time in a more violent dominion. I could understand some of his guarded personality.

  As an older vampire, he was good at playing dead, so to speak. Younger vampires still breathed, blinked and fidgeted out of muscle memory. Those habits faded the longer they existed. Lear no longer mimicked breathing. Perhaps he did when he was in public but I had only noticed him inhaling to speak around me.

  “Is it rude to ask how old you are?”

  “I do not find it rude. I was born in 1874 a couple of years after my family had immigrated from Ireland to Massachusetts. I was turned in 1902 by Monroe.”

  “So you were recruited?” I asked.

  “Yes. Monroe made me what amounted to a magistrate at the time in 1985, but then we were just called Master of Region. I stuck close to home because I had human children that went to live with my brother. I was turned after an attack that left my wife dead and me dying.”

  “Did your children know?”

  “No. Things were different then. My brother and his wife became their parents and I did not interfere other than using some entrancing to help my brother in business.”

  My throat grew tight at the idea of him watching his children grow and never feeling their touch again. I couldn’t imagine how difficult it could have been. Silence stretched between us and he surprised me when his hand laid on my shoulder.

  “Your emotions are easily read on your face. It was a difficult time in the beginning but I have plenty of things that I look back on fondly. They were young and their memories of me and their mom faded. My oldest son took control of my brother’s vehicle production industry after the wars were over and my great-great-great-grandson still runs the government contract production industry that the company evolved into over the years. Monroe recruited me for the investments into their company. It wasn’t until years later that I realized the attack that led to me being turned wasn’t random.”

  “He had you attacked and then stepped in to save you.”

  “Yes. He killed my wife and took my human life so I would do anything to help my brother succeed and provide for my children. Those stocks made him a large portion of his wealth.”

  “So Monroe was really not a friend,” I said softly.

  “No, he was not.”

  I had been glad that Felix had put a stop to Monroe before, but I was even more glad now. Lear had started looking at Dad’s overflowing bookshelf so I left him alone to browse and went into the kitchen to make a fresh pitcher of tea. I felt Mac’s aura brush across my skin and smiled as I put the water on the stove to boil.

  He walked into the kitchen a moment later and looked at me with a soft expression. “Brings back memories seeing you in this kitchen. Like we just got out of school and came over here to hang out before the football game. You normally had your hair up in a ponytail though.”

  “And you were more interested in the sweet tea I was making instead of the pulse in my neck,” I replied playfully.

  “Both are irresistibly sweet on the tongue, my Dove.”

  He stepped up behind me as I poured the hot tea over the sugar in the pitcher and ran his lips up the side of my neck. Suddenly, the mark on my side flared back to life and both of us froze. Felix was there for a flash. In my mind I could see through his eyes and could see a small cottage that was heavily covered in vines and overgrown foliage. I could feel his mental struggle like he was clawing himself to the surface out of sleep, but he was standing.

  “Felix,” Mac and I said his name together, our minds linked by the mark. Felix turned and we saw a flash of a woman’s face before the connection was severed and the mark lay dormant again.

  I sagged back into Mac’s arms, my head swimming from the sudden mental jolt of the brief glimpse. He held me securely and spoke against my ear, “You’ll find him.”

  “At least he let us know what the house looks like,” I responded shakily. I straightened. He looked at me in question to make sure I was steady and I nodded at him, but nudged me toward the kitchen table and took over the tea pitcher. I watched him finish stirring the sugar as he added more hot water then left the tea bags floating on the top to steep.

  Lear walked in because he had sensed something was wrong. “Is there something I can do?”

  Mac pushed his fingers back through his hair before answering him, “Go back home and help Jason. He is trying to keep Meredith entertained but I don’t think he�
�s having a lot of success.”

  “You are the only one she cares to be entertained by,” Lear responded.

  My face grew dark with irritation as I thought back on watching her put her hands on Mac. He wore a similar expression but nodded. “Yeah. I think she believes that she can force a relationship with me with some similar intentions of using Roz that Monroe had.”

  “I will go see if I can help distract.”

  His grey gaze lingered on my face before he turned and left. I watched him go and still felt unsure of him. It wasn’t that I felt that he was a bad person. There was just a hint of ruthlessness in his aura that I couldn’t get around. Maybe it was his age? He had over one hundred years longer than Mac for his humanity to fade.

  “He intrigues you,” Mac stated as he scooped the tea bags out of the pitcher and moved it to the fridge.

  “Yes, he does,” I replied. “But also makes me uneasy.”

  “Lear has had to be practical to survive, but he is peaceful at heart.”

  I said nothing, still feeling like I was just unsure about him. My hand rubbed across my ribs where my demon mark sat, my mind turning back to the brief connection with Felix. There hadn’t been a lot of coherent thought to tell me what he was feeling. It had been mainly confusion and frustration.

  “I couldn’t tell if Felix was there against his will or not,” I finally said as Mac came to sit down across the table from me.

  “He was definitely not himself and seemed like he needed help.”

  “But is it my help he wants?”

  His hand closed over mine. “There are things the two of you need to work out but he never stopped loving you.”

  “Sometimes that’s not enough. Sometimes you can decide that you don’t want to love someone.”

  “It doesn’t make the love go away,” he responded firmly.

  “No, just makes it wasted for the sake of stubbornness. He can be out there thinking that he chooses to deny love because he doesn’t want to hurt me again or that he’s afraid I’ll never love him the same way and he doesn’t want to go through the hurt.”

  “You’ll regret it if you don’t try. The two of you have too much history to ignore.”

  “I’m gonna try. At first it was so raw it was hard to look at him, but now…”

  Those green eyes softened as he watched my face. “Now, you see him as the man you met as Roz more than the one that betrayed you.”

  “Yes, and that isn’t something he would do now. But it didn’t seem like something he would do as Cyrus either.”

  He pulled my arm until I slid out of my chair and into his lap. His lips pressed against mine, but for comfort and affection, then he tucked my head against his shoulder and held me.

  We had just moved to the living room to sit together on the couch when the air thickened and Meredith’s aura filled the room. A distortion shimmered in the corner and she stepped through it. My ears popped as the atmosphere around us snapped back to normal and she gave us a smile that wasn’t kind.

  “I thought we had a meeting planned, Macory Jacobs,” she said with a shade of threat in her words.

  I felt his irritation bristle through him but he swallowed it down and found a pleasant tone to respond with, “My apologies, I thought Jason could handle it.”

  “If I wanted to meet with the lovely Jason, I would have scheduled the meeting with him.”

  “I didn’t mean to anger you, we can of course talk if you want to talk.”

  She strode across the room and her power boiled around her in a sudden breath stealing swarm. It was a drastic jump in power from what she had shown before. Mac tensed beside me. She was showing a higher level of power than I had even seen in Felix. Tapping into that much power made her human shell burn down across her body until the fire ember core was visible beneath it. Her skin had turned into ash and dancing flame brighter than I had ever seen on an archdemon.

  Mac noticed it too. He pulled in a slow breath and breathed out through the skin tingling power that rose over us. “It appears that Devina has also blessed you with a power lift.”

  “Yes, our Lady has granted me this so that I may consolidate this dominion and Monroe’s old dominion. Don’t you feel lucky to have such a powerful mistress to lead you?”

  “Of course.”

  When she moved, it was beyond my ability to comprehend the quickness of it. It was even faster than Mac could respond. I was suddenly in her arms and across the room from him. She was a head taller than me and her pink manicured nails traced across my jaw line.

  Her words were directed to Mac even as she stared down at my face. “I think you know that I’m interested in coupling with you. You seem only to have eyes for our fallen angel here.”

  I stayed very still against her, feeling my heart rate rise steadily. The grip of her hand on my jaw tightened and her face came closer to mine. I leaned my face away only to have her jerk it back toward her again.

  “There is no need to harm Rozalyn. We are not monogamous.”

  “You do not date others.”

  “Not long term, but you know that feeding is often sexual and I do not feed from Roz regularly.”

  “True,” she purred out, “but if the two of you were still together I would have to win her heart as well. If she didn’t like me, you wouldn’t like me either.”

  “You killed Destiny,” I whispered.

  “An unfortunate necessity, yes. Such bold disrespect cannot be tolerated if one is going to secure their power base. I regret that it caused you pain.”

  “Meredith, release Roz and I will do whatever you like.”

  “I can be good to her, then both of you would like me.” Her fingers stroked my cheek as she spoke barely above a whisper. I cut my eyes to Mac and he met my look with a guarded expression.

  “I cannot bring Destiny back. She was a contract soul. She asked to be turned. But Devina can intercede on her placement in the lower realms. Would that win your favor, Roz?”

  “Yes,” I quickly replied. In no way would it make me forgive her, but I would play along if it would help Destiny find some peace in her afterlife. She remained still for a moment, her eyes growing unfocused. Then she blinked and met my gaze again. “It is done.”

  “Thank you,” I replied. I slowly started to straighten out of her arms. She allowed me to put a little space between us but her hands remained on my shoulders.

  “Roz is not a lover of women?”

  “No,” Mac replied for me.

  “A shame,” she sighed, sliding her fingers through my hair. “You are very pretty. You would be even more striking if you did a little more makeup, you know?”

  “So I’ve been told,” I replied dryly.

  “Let’s go back to my house and talk about everything.” Mac held out his hand to her, trying to get her to stop touching me.

  “No,” she said darkly. Then I was propelled back against the wall, her hand around my throat and tightening to the point where I couldn’t breathe. “I would rather have your allegiance out of affection, Mac. But it’ll never happen with Roz around. She’ll never approve of me. So I might as well have your allegiance out of fear.”

  My vision was starting to bleed to grey around the edges, but I still saw the figures of my parents walk into the living room. I tried to tell them to leave but I didn’t have enough air to get any words out. Mac was there trying to pull her arm free but she hit him with a burst of power and he flew across the room.

  I reached out toward her, my hand pushing up against her chest. Instinct from my past angelic power traced down my arm again like my mortal body should be able to do it too. It wasn’t the same as before. There wasn’t a place in my mind that opened to control it. It was more like a strong emotion, like a tear that rises unbidden, a bead of light that surfaced from my fingertips. It needed to be there to save my parents. I still didn’t believe it was possible to do it even as I saw the light broadcast from my hand.

  Meredith fell to the floor and I fell beside h
er, fighting to get a breath down my closed throat.

  Mac was there in an instant and pulled me into his arms as I managed to draw in a pain rasp of a breath. Meredith laid there with her eyes closed but she shifted her head from side to side. Dad rushed over to his.

  “Go back out,” Mac said quickly as he stood, picking me up as if I weighed nothing. Just as we got to the front door it was suddenly covered in a wall of flame and Mac jumped backwards.

  “Not so fast,” Meredith said, still lying on the floor. “Make your pledge to me, Mac. Or you will choose which one dies first.”

  He slowly sat me down. When he pulled me against him, I saw the bag of things that Jason had brought over here earlier. Right on top of it was the roving candle that was used for the Unseelie King to travel. Mac released me and walked to Meredith.

  I scooped the roving candle up and stuck the wick into the flames that were still simmering across the front door. The ceiling was beginning to scorch from the heat. I sat the candle on the floor beside me once it was lit.

  “Put the fire out and I will give you my pledge,” Mac was saying when he got into the living room. The fire suddenly vanished. My mom was whispering furiously to my dad as I kneeled beside the candle and whispered hoarsely, “Conall, Unseelie King, I bid you to come to me.”

  Dad leaned over and touched my back, “Are you okay, honey?”

  I looked over to see Mac on his knees in front of Meredith, who had now managed to stand.

  “Did your mortal angel just use angelic power against me?”

  I had. It had spilled across my skin and I had felt the angel mark flare on my side. I said a quick prayer of thanks, thinking of Ariel. But there was no time to examine if I could do it again.

  “I don’t know,” Mac answered.

  “Conall, Unseelie King,” I whispered again. “Get your ass up.”

  The candle flared. Smoke began to thicken, then filled the entryway around us. Meredith was distracted from taking Mac’s blood pledge by the heralding sound of Conall’s falcon cry. Then the smoke cleared and Conall stood with four guards behind him.