Blood of Gods

by Scarlett Dawn

  But they were down to ten, and we were six, all swordmasters.

  I never put my sword away, and I pointed to Belshazzar with it. “Keep one alive!”

  “Mm, dinner.” He grinned, his fangs fully extended.

  Rilen and Roran leapt back over the fire and took on two of the pursuers each. Aiko walked slowly and threateningly around the fire with me and headed for two more of the men who had their own guns out—but they were our older guns and had only one shot each.

  Of course, they were really bad at choosing when to fire those shots and wasted them right at the beginning.

  At the same time, Aiko and I engaged them, and they were easy targets, having almost no training with swords. I kept half an eye to what everyone else was doing and tried not to run this terrible soldier through with my sword.

  It was a good choice because all of the men managed to take down the others without a second thought to actually keeping one of them alive to question.

  I had him on the ground in three easy moves and held the sword at his neck.

  “What do you want?”

  “Kill the interlopers.”

  “Yes, I heard that already.”

  “Mistress wishes you all dead.”

  “There’s no way that your nutty mistress got word that we were here after just a day,” I snapped.

  “The queen sees everything!”

  “That’s bullshit.” I grinned. “Your queen is mad. She can’t see the future, and she certainly can’t scry. How did you find out we were here? Who in Lick betrayed us?”

  “You’re not so important to be betrayed,” he growled as the others walked up and surrounded us. “You appeared in the town, from parts unknown, and dress differently. Our standing orders were to kill anyone who was not of East S’Kir and a vampire. So don’t think that you’re special.”

  I tossed a look at Aiko, who shrugged. “It’s possible. She could have a blanket order out to go after anyone they want, and we’d be a pretty good target. Especially if someone, anyone, not just the cells, saw us come into town. There’s always someone who reports and thinks they are doing the right thing because the crown demands it.” He looked down at the man and grimaced. “Following blindly is what got my sister murdered.”

  “There will be more of us soon enough. Queen Niniane has promised us that she will not stop us from taking the local towns as our own. You can kill me now. I expect it.”

  I whipped the sword away from his neck and looked to the king standing there. “Hungry, Your Highness?”

  “Starving.” He chuckled.

  I turned and walked away and heard the man try to get to his feet. I walked toward the fire to find some cloth to wipe my sword with, and I heard the gargling scream that told me Belshazzar had spiked his fangs into the man’s throat with reckless abandon, leaving him writhing in pain as Bel enjoyed his meal.

  Dorian rounded the fire again to reach me on the far side. “Kimber, I would like to speak with you.”

  “Oh, you would, would you?” I swiped the sword clean with a rag I had in my pack. I’d have to dig out the oilcloth to clean it properly later. I handed him the rag. “Well, I wouldn’t like to speak to you.”

  He took the rag, gingerly, and wiped his own sword blade clean. He took his time and eventually let out a sigh. “Kimber, I am not like other druids. I’m old. I’m stuck in my ways. I’m far less likely to trust than you are.”

  “Funny, I thought I said I didn’t want to talk,” I answered, digging through my pack for the cloth.

  I wasn’t going to make any of this easy for him at all.

  “Are you going to be stubborn?”

  “Just as stubborn as you always are,” I responded, finally pulling the oilcloth out.

  “Kimber...”

  I ignored him and carefully cleaned the sword that had been my father’s. Dorian stood over me watching for a few minutes.

  “Kimber, will you—would you please talk to me?”

  I looked up. “Was that really so hard? To ask to talk with me?”

  “I just told you I’m old and stuck in my ways.”

  “Those ways never included being polite to people? Dorian, all of the masters are stuck in their ways. I mean, Bebbenel is a giant asshole and treats me like crap, and Ophelia has been crass and short with me. Hell, even Vitas is a bit of a twit. But you... you share my bed. You’ve shared your mates with me. At some point did it occur to you to perhaps try being polite to me? Not treating me like a child”—I held up my hand to stop his words—“even though to you I am young.”

  “I don’t treat you—”

  I shook my head, exasperated. “Dorian. Do you even begin to realize your own contradictions? You simply cannot treat me like a child at all times when we aren’t debauching me in your bed. I’m an adult. I’m a grown woman. I’m a powerful magic wielder, and I’m a sword master, just as skilled as you.”

  “Debauch?”

  Laughing, I put my sword on my lap. “What else would you call it when Rilen and Roran have me between them, and I have your cock in my mouth? I’m not saying that I don’t enjoy you all. Believe me, that’s not it. But how can you say that I’m too young when you like when I ride you? It doesn’t make sense. I’m not asking you to be some sort of incredibly romantic suitor who brings me chocolates and flowers and gems that sparkle in the dark.

  “I am asking that you treat me like an equal. You raised me to the dais. You share your bed with me. You feel I’m worthy to help lead the people of S’Kir, to lead an army and to charge in and cut you down from where the horror that was my sire had you hung and bled.

  “But you will not trust me to care for myself. You won’t trust me to know what I need. I am half vampire, Dorian. I didn’t know what I needed when I came back. Aiko was my lifeline. He shared his blood willingly with me. We shared nothing more, nothing more, until the other night when Rilen joined us.”

  “I don’t know him,” Dorian stated.

  “Then trust me to know him. Trust Rilen to know him. Trust us until you get to know him. Yes, I realize that I don’t need his blood. We’ve discovered that. Rilen’s works just as well, and I’m sure that yours will work fine. But I need him—I want him there.”

  Dorian folded his legs and sat down next to me in the light of the fire. I handed him the oilcloth so he could clean the sword properly. He methodically rubbed the cloth over the now clean blade to transfer the oil to protect the metal, to keep it clean, and to make sure it kept its shine.

  “Kimber, you are precious to me. My…wife, Violet, turned on me not long after Niallan reached the age of majority. I don’t know who corrupted whom, but there was corruption, and I was left… alone. My brother didn’t understand what it was to have my heart ripped out by my son. He didn’t know what it was to be betrayed by the woman I thought I loved most in life. But he became my support while I attempted to get my head back on straight.

  “When Niallan stole the stones and fled S’Kir, I begged him to go after him, to kill him. I asked my brother to kill my son. Because I knew it was right. And my son betrayed me one last time by performing blood and bone magic with his mother’s own blood and bone to lock the doors.

  “I was given S’Kir to protect with my brother. When that care was betrayed, the very magic of the world threw up the Spine to punish… me, maybe? The vampires? And I was alone, again.

  “Rilen and Roran came into my life, and swiftly became what my brother had been: a rock. A steadfast place to rest and recuperate. I couldn’t bring myself to trust anyone beyond them.

  “When I met you at the temple… I was struck by you. Your simple beauty, your grace… There wasn’t much I didn’t find amazing about you. I kissed you at the duranke, and it was what I wanted and what I didn’t want at the same time. I pushed you away as much as I could. You made my heart hurt because I was afraid of feeling too much for you.”

  He smirked. “The sword practice in the basement changed a lot of that for me. I couldn’t resist you an
ymore. I didn’t want to. Killing Elex was an easy decision. He was wrong for you, and he would have betrayed us to a group that… would have worked with Savion or Niniane to bring down the Temple.

  “You were proving to be more capable, more intelligent, more powerful than I thought. When you were captured… I lost a little bit of my mind. Everyone thinks that I went galloping after you because you were mine, and I claimed you.

  “But the truth is, you claimed me. I had no choice but to go after you. And it…frightened me that you had found help from someone other than the twins or me. It meant I could lose you. It meant that I could be betrayed again. It still means that.

  “I acted the way I did because…I can’t lose you. It will kill me. I can’t lose any of you.”

  “Then trust me,” I said, putting a hand on his. “Please, Gods and Savior, trust me. I can love you as much as I love Roran and Rilen and Aiko. I want to.”

  Belshazzar belched from directly behind us. “Touching.”

  Without even turning to look, Dorian punched him square in the balls.

  “What the fuck, little brother?” The king gasped.

  “You are such a dick. I was having a moment with my woman.”

  “Now I’m your woman?” I said, pulling my hand from his.

  “You were always my woman.”

  “Of course,” I said. “That’s why I’ve been sleeping alone.”

  “You weren’t sleeping alone,” Belshazzar said, standing up as he recovered from Dorian’s hit. “The whales at the bottom of the ocean can bear witness to that.”

  19

  Kimber

  Aiko was a wreck. An absolute wreck. He got worse the further down the road to Elkthorne we traveled.

  For the first time since I’d met him at the Stronghold, he was getting on my nerves.

  “Aiko, please, please stop wringing your hands,” I snapped.

  He fisted his fingers instead, but he was still a mess.

  We stopped for lunch about three leagues from the city. We would be there by midafternoon after two full days of walking from Lick. Still no one would talk to us or bargain with us for a horse. I was glad that we were all in decent shape, or the walk would have done us in.

  All during lunch, Aiko paced. And his pacing was more like a run because of the length of his legs—and the height of his anxiety.

  “Aiko,” Rilen called. “What in the name of seven hells is wrong with you?”

  He stopped only to glance at Rilen sitting on the rock and then started pacing again. None of us could get him to stop. Even when we packed up and started walking again, he was a hundred paces ahead of us in no time.

  “Kimber…” Roran asked.

  “I have no idea,” I said. “I don’t know what’s wrong with him.”

  “Blood madness?” Belshazzar asked. Roran and I turned our heads and stared at him. He shrugged. “What? Could be.”

  “I highly doubt Aiko is suffering from blood madness,” Roran said. “As if you couldn’t hear that commotion last night.”

  The king pretended to shiver.

  I leaned into Roran’s ear. “Were you jealous?”

  “I’m going to walk with Aiko,” Belshazzar snapped and disappeared down the road in a blast of wind.

  Roran laughed. “Did you do that on purpose?”

  “A little,” I admitted. “He really is as big of an asshole as Dorian.”

  Dorian snorted and hiked past us. “We’re about the same level of asshole. Just different varieties. If you want to know why Aiko is nervous, think about his last name and where we are heading.” He paced himself faster to catch up to his brother and Aiko.

  Elkthorne.

  I’d already realized the connection, but there had to be something more. There was no reason for him to be acting quite this out of character. We had just been through a massive storm, he’d helped me survive the Stronghold, and I didn’t think there could be much more waiting for us that we couldn’t face.

  Rilen jerked his head back and broke stride. He glanced at us. “Elkthorne. You don’t think his parents are still there, do you?”

  Roran and I stopped walking and stared back at Rilen. Roran looked at me. “How old is he?”

  “Just about three hundred? Two hundred eighty-seven or so?”

  The twins traded looks, murmuring as one, “His parents are probably still alive…”

  We stood staring at one another for a long moment.

  “Are your parents still alive?” I asked quietly.

  “No,” Rilen whispered. “They both took the Sleep at the same time, about a thousand years ago.”

  “They were soul mates,” Roran said. “They were also very old when we were born.”

  “Two thousand years old,” Rilen said. “We did know them and knew them well. Dorian knew them, too.”

  “Aiko isn’t that old,” I said.

  “He’s nervous about seeing his parents again,” Roran suggested.

  I grabbed them both by the wrist. “Please, both of you. Don’t tease him about this. Don’t try to talk to him about it. Just let this happen. I know we mean well, but he’s still dealing with the idea that he’s attracted to the two of you.”

  They glanced at each other, then nodded. I gave each of them a quick kiss and turned us down the road again. We had to keep moving because now the others were long strides ahead of us.

  The trees cleared suddenly at the top of a short rise, and as we crested it, the city of Elkthorne opened before us.

  I had no idea there was as massive a city as S’Kir anywhere else, east or west.

  There was no other way to describe Elkthorne. It was just enormous, spread out between us and the water in the distance. There were tall buildings, at least ten stories, and instead of gleaming white like S’Kir, it sparkled in aqua and green.

  “Well…” Belshazzar said, “It’s the fucking Emerald City. Isn’t this nice.”

  “That grew,” Dorian muttered. “I don’t remember it being that…”

  “Large,” Rilen said. “I don’t remember as well as you do, I’m sure, but yeah, I kind of remember it being smaller.”

  “Elkthorne is the largest city in all of East S’Kir.” Aiko explained. “They have always managed to keep themselves somewhat separated from the business of the Stronghold. The forest and the water have always helped. They are a bit larger than when I was last here, but not much.”

  He started walking down the hill. “The green was chosen to keep the city from being seen, but that’s pretty much an impossibility now. It’s too big. Now it’s more of a tradition.

  “The city is led by a triumvirate—three people who are elected and hold the position for life unless the people vote for a recall, or they step down. They work together to keep the city whole and functioning.”

  “You’re not excited to be home,” I said.

  He glanced at me. “No, princess. I’m not. I left here two hundred years ago, and I didn’t think that I would ever be back. Not that I didn’t want to, but the circumstances were not… the best.”

  “Kicked out.” Belshazzar nodded.

  “No, Your Highness. I left. On my own.”

  The king’s eyes narrowed. “Huh. Wouldn’t have guessed either, actually. You’re too… nice.” The word came out on a sneer.

  “You don’t become a Lord Knight in Savion’s court by being nice, Your Highness,” he said. “You don’t survive attacks by the mad queen by not knowing what you’re doing.”

  “Where do we have to go, Aiko?” Rilen asked.

  “The town hall.” He pointed to the tall clocktower in the center of the city. “The Triumvirate will be there, and they will be holding hearings and such.”

  “And they’ll know where Niniane is holding Gwen?” Belshazzar probed.

  “They should, and they will either share it with us or kick us out of the city,” he answered.

  Belshazzar’s eyes grew red and angry. “What?”

  “We came here because this is where
they have the biggest spy network. This is possibly the only place in all of East S’Kir people won’t shoot at us and call us traitors. At least, not right away. We don’t have a lot of options.”

  Belshazzar had Aiko around the neck and off the ground in a blast of wind. “Listen to me well, boy. Gwen is more than just some random vampire. She is the Queen of the Vampires—”

  “Put him down,” Dorian snapped.

  “What do you care? I could kill him, and it would affect you the least.”

  “I said, put him down, Bel. Put the fucking vampire back on his own two feet.” Dorian folded his arms. “He’s been nothing but helpful all this time.”

  Bel started to squeeze Aiko’s neck. “I want the queen back.”

  “Belshazzar!” Dorian snapped.

  Rilen stepped up next to the king. “If you kill him, that doesn’t get her back.”

  “Neither does keeping him alive!”

  “Belshazzar, please, let him down,” I said. “Just put him down. He knows this place. We don’t. We need his help.”

  “You just want to fuck him,” he snapped at me.

  Aiko freaked out.

  I had no idea he was capable of it.

  His fangs dropped as his eyes went fully red, and his claws came out, stabbing into Belshazzar’s arm, and ripping the skin wide open. He twisted and wrapped his legs around the other vampire’s waist, twisting. Landing on the ground, it finally jolted Belshazzar out of his shock.

  Aiko stabbed his claws into the king’s arm at the wrist, and jerked his hand off his throat. Belshazzar stabbed his hand into Aiko’s side, slicing him open and rolling him on to the wounds. But Aiko kept rolling and ripped himself out of the king’s grip.

  Belshazzar snapped a hand out and grabbed Aiko by the ankle, and I saw the gun in the other hand.

  My sword was at his neck in the same instant. “Shoot him, and you’ve already had your last meal.”

  “Put your toys away, little girl.”

  “I wouldn’t call her that,” Dorian said. “And that’s not a toy.”