Main | Characters | Cities | Fiction | Music | Photos | Quotes | Links | Gaming | What's New
Eliza Brennan - Dhampyr
Background | Allies | Gallery | Fiction | Music | City | Home Plan
Eliza: Scars
“And you learn to hold on
And time will make it heal”
Melissa Etheridge – The Different
Months ago Mac’s mother confirmed that I was pregnant and surprised us with the news that we were having twins. After the initial shock wore off we were pretty happy about it. We’ve got lots of years to catch up on and more than enough love for two children. Now with my due date looming only a few months away I wonder if we were really prepared for what it will be like to have two babies in the house.
The entire Brennan family is almost more excited about my pregnancy than Mac and I are. His parents seem to think the twins will go a long way toward making up the years that Mac and I lost when he was a vampire. Siofra and Glen are happy that our children will be born within months of their own twins so they’ll all have someone to play with. I think Angus and Cara look on the two sets of twins as children they can never have.
Noinen has been overseeing my prenatal care, and Siofra’s for that matter. Mac tried to convince me to see the only doctor on the island, or at least one in nearby Virginia Beach, but I didn’t want to risk any abnormal blood tests from my dhampyr blood. We’d finally agreed to pretend I was seeing a doctor on the mainland while his mother looked after me and the kids.
Through Mac’s fingers I can feel the remains of a scar that runs across my side. It’s stretched out of shape now from my pregnancy, but still quite noticeable on my skin. The blade had gone deep, so deep I might have died had Mac not bargained for my life. Others had finished the healing Taeynd had reluctantly begun and there’d been no lasting damage from her blade. I’m thankful he hadn’t bargained with her any further; I wouldn’t have wanted to try and raise these children without him, if not quite alone.
Safely held in my husband’s arms, I let my mind travel back to the night months ago when I’d gotten that scar. We’d gone into an alternate universe to find Joel, the man destined to be Mac’s teacher and Corrine’s husband. He’d been under the spell of an evil woman, and it hadn’t been easy to get him out.
Seven Months Ago
I’d spent hours sitting up listening to the quiet sounds of the inn wondering about the prophecy Peorth had given us earlier in the evening. It had talked about a seed that would be sown, and Mac seemed to think it meant that I would get pregnant. I wasn’t so sure.
Though I’d only been a vampire’s servant for a short year of my life, because I was a child of a vampire my body had always acted like that of a ghoul. Ghouls couldn’t have children. The fact that I’d had Corrine was a miracle, and I wasn’t entirely sure that same miracle could happen twice.
Putting my hand low on my stomach I wondered if I could be pregnant. Mac and I’d never talked about using anything to stop a pregnancy and he’d been human for months now. I hadn’t thought about having another child, but now I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
I rolled over and shook Mac’s shoulder to wake him, calling his name softly. Besides the fact it was time for him to take over the watch, I wanted to talk to him about the prophecy, about the possibility of another child.
Normally it didn’t take much to wake my husband and I knew something was wrong when he didn’t respond. Hell, his breathing didn’t even change. I shook him harder, hard enough to wake him even if he’d been dead drunk, but he didn’t move. Rolling out of bed I called Corrine’s name, but she wouldn’t wake either.
The panic in my voice must have woken the Gwrhyr. He lifted his head and looked around, asking, What’s going on? The wolf spoke directly into my mind in the same way he spoke to everyone.
“They won’t wake up,” I hissed. I’d always preferred anger to fear. It was easier to deal with, and usually got better results.
Getting to his feet Gwrhyr padded over to the bed. He watched as I shook Mac again, but there was no waking him. The wolf jumped on the bed to examine my husband himself while I moved to the door connecting our room with the Johnson’s.
Kenaz woke up when I opened the door and carried a candle into the other room. “Ma’am?” she called softly. “What’s wrong?”
As I walked toward the bed I told myself I didn’t need to panic the child. “Hi, honey. Did you sleep okay? Any bad dreams?”
She sat up and shook her head. “No. What’s wrong?”
I tried to smile reassuringly. “Everyone is being sleepyheads; do you think you could help me wake them up?” She nodded and got up to help me try and rouse Siofra and Glenn. Unfortunately, we couldn’t.
“Are they gonna die?” the girl asked me solemnly.
Shaking my head, I vowed, “Not if I can help it.” I stalked back to our room and started getting dressed in my men’s clothing and leather armor.
Taeynd has them, Gwrhyr told me gravely. There’s nothing you can do. She will come here and take us all back to Horsetower to deal with as she wills.
He was right, I knew he was right, but that didn’t mean I had to like it, or that I wouldn’t die trying to change it.
A moment later he fell to his stomach on the bed, ducking beneath the pitcher of water that I’d thrown across the room. It shattered against the wall and water splashed over the bed and everyone on it, and still Mac didn’t move.
“Not helping,” I growled angrily. “Either get off your sorry ass and start helping, or blink back to wherever the fuck you came from and let me handle this.”
At least the wolf had the grace to look embarrassed as he shook the water from his fur.
“Can’t we just leave?” Kenaz asked from the connecting doorway.
“I don’t know,” I told her. There had to be a way out of this, a way for us all to escape. “It will be hard to get everyone out of here, you’re not big enough to help me carry them.” I looked at Gwrhyr and prayed that these four were the only ones in the inn affected by Taeynd’s magic. “I’m going to move Glenn and Siofra into this room. Go see if Peorth and Os-tur are all right. If they are, maybe they can help us.”
He nodded and blinked away.
“If not, we’re screwed,” I muttered softly. Taking a breath in the hope that it would keep me calm, I turned to the child. “Kenaz, will you help me pack everything up?”
While the girl packed, I moved Glenn and Siofra into our room, putting Siofra on Corrine’s bed and Glenn in my place next to Mac. By the time we were done, Gwrhyr popped back in to the room.
Peorth will not wake either, he told me. I told Os-tur to bring her here.
I stared at him in surprise. “You speak kitty?”
I speak feline, he replied coolly, much as I speak werewolf. It is the language of the Im-ryn.
“Whatever.” I wasn’t much in the mood for one of his lectures. “Go keep watch for Bloodmark’s men.”
At a quiet knock on the door, I opened it and let Os-tur inside. He laid Peorth down on the bed with Corrine and Siofra before turning to me. “Do you know what is wrong with them?”
I shrugged. “Some kind of dreamwalking gone bad, maybe. Gwrhyr thinks Taeynd has them.”
“She will not stop at controlling their spirits, she will come for their bodies,” he told me. “We two cannot hope to stand against her.” Earlier I’d seen Os-tur flying over the city in the form of a large, cat shaped dragon. If he was worried, there was cause for panic.
“Then we have to get out of here,” I said firmly. “Can you bring our wagon around?”
“I can,” he assured me.
I eyed his chest and shoulders. He wasn’t a large man in human form, but I was hoping he was stronger than he looked. “How strong are you? If I drop them out of the window, can you catch them?”
He nodded. “If you are strong enough to carry them to the window, I will not let them fall.”
“For real now, I’m stronger than I look,” I said with a wry smile. “Can we get out of town at night?”
He shook his head no. “They close the gates at sundown.”
That figured. “Do you know of someplace safe to take them in town?”
After a moment’s thought, he said, “I do.”
“Let’s get it done then.”
After he walked out with his packs and Kenaz, I barred both sets of doors. I laid two guns and my sword on the bed, then opened the window and waited impatiently for him to bring the wagon around. I knew he was probably moving as quickly as possible, but we didn’t have any time to spare, a fact that was confirmed by the ringing of hoof beats through the streets.
For a moment I let myself think about the prophecy, about the seed that I could even now be carrying. If I was pregnant, I had to do everything in my power to protect the child. On the other hand, there was no way I could know for sure. I had to focus on the things I was sure of. I had to protect Corrine and Mac, Siofra and Glenn, even Kenaz. I’d do what I could to get them out and worry about whether or not I was pregnant later.
They’re coming, Gwrhyr announced as he popped back into the room.
Without glancing back, I told him to take the packs to the wagon. He couldn’t help me lift anyone, and we’d need weapons and supplies if we did manage to get out. It took him several trips, but he did it.
As soon as I saw the wagon coming down the alley, I went to the bed and lifted Peorth in my arms. Returning to the window I saw Os-tur standing in the wagon bed. I let the woman go but didn’t wait to make sure he caught her before turning back to the bed. He had caught her or she’d land in the wagon bed, either way I had to move quickly to get everyone else out, or at least as many as I could.
As I picked up Corrine I heard the sound of boots on the stairs. By the time I’d dropped her into Os-tur’s waiting arms the guards had begun pounding at the door. The door began to creak and I knew it wouldn’t hold for long, but I took the time to send Siofra down after the other women. As the Im-ryn caught the woman, Gwrhyr appeared in the wagon bed beside Corrine and sat the pack he’d been carrying down beside her.
“Go,” I called down to Os-tur. “Get them to safety.”
“What about you?” he demanded as he climbed into the seat.
I shook my head. There was no way I’d leave the men to Taeynd’s mercy. I knew I couldn’t win the upcoming fight, but I had to try, if only to give Os-tur a chance to get the others away. Perhaps he’d find a way to wake them and they’d be able to rescue Mac and Glenn. I didn’t hold out hope I’d survive, warriors tend to kill those who are trying to kill them and I wasn’t giving up without a fight.
“Just go,” I told him.
Thankfully he listened and flicked the reins, guiding the horse away from the inn.
Gwrhyr popped back into the room as I reached the bed, at nearly the same instant the door flew open. I emptied the guns into the opening and ignored the cries of pain from the guards who fell back into the flickering shadows of the hall. With the sword in my hand I stood just inside the doorway, doing my best to keep them back.
While it would have been impossible for me to take on twenty men by myself on open ground, holding them off through the doorway was a hell of a lot easier, mostly because only one could come through the doorway at a time. That didn’t stop others from shooting at me, but luckily most of them were bad shots, and the few bullets that did find their mark pissed me off more than anything.
I’ve always thought of fighting as a dance, a deadly dance, but a dance just the same. Fighting was something I’d been born to do, and it came as easy to me as dancing. I could hear the pounding rhythm of my heart in my ears, driving me on as I landed blow after blow. Blood began to make the wooden floor slippery, but I’d fought harder battles than this one and won.
Gwrhyr tried to help as much as he could without getting in the way. Most of the guards focused on me, making it easy for him to leap up and tear out a throat or two. When the connecting door to the other room broke through he defended it as best he could, but the wolf was no match for the Black Guard. A sharp yelp told me he was too injured to help any more, and I turned to see that he was covered with blood just before he blinked away.
The undefended doorway made it impossible for me to keep my defensible position near the door to the hall. I fell back to the center of the room and continued to fight my way through the warriors intent on taking my life. I felt wounds from their swords on my arms and legs yet there was nothing I could do but keep fighting with the sword, with my fists and feet, anything to try and take out as many of them as I could before I fell.
Suddenly a woman’s voice rung out through the room. “Enough!”
That one word was enough to make every man in the room break off from our struggle and move back out of my reach. I turned to face Taeynd, surprised to see that it was the same woman who had haunted my nightmare earlier in the evening. She stood there with a pleasant smile on her face, as if this were a social occasion.
“Are you the one who tried to wake him?” she asked me.
I started to swing my sword in a killing blow, but it flew from my hand and embedded in the wall above the bed Mac and Glenn were lying in, very near the place I’d broken the pitcher earlier.
The woman moved closer to me. “You don’t look like much.”
“Maybe not,” I said in a low voice, fighting against an unseen force that held me immobile. I couldn’t move so much as an inch except to breathe and speak.
From the corner of my eye I saw Mac and Glenn stir as if trying to wake from their sleep. My heart leapt in hope and in fear; hope that they would live through whatever nightmare Taeynd was putting them through, and fear that she’d kill them quickly now that I could no longer defend them.
The woman turned to the bed. “It was too easy, wasn’t it?” she murmured as she pulled a gun from her belt and pointed it at my husband.
I couldn’t bear to watch Mac die, not again, no matter how strong her magic was. Somehow I managed to pull a knife from my sleeve and shoved it into Taeynd’s side just under her rib, angling it upward to embed it in her lung. I nearly laughed at the surprised look on her face. “What, you didn’t think you could bleed?”
Her laughter rang out, sending shivers down my spine. In one quick motion she pulled the knife from her body and shoved it into my side, just above my hip. She slid the knife into my flesh just as easily as I’d driven it into hers a moment earlier. “Blood and bone, sea and stone,” she chanted so softly I could barely hear her. “Skin and name, wind and flame. Spirit now be to me bound ‘til death lays your body in the ground.”
I stood there stunned for a moment before the pain set in, shocked at the speed of her movements. Then it hit me, hot agony radiating from the blade like heat from a burning building, consuming me.
My hands lost all coordination and I had to fumble for the knife hilt that lay against my skin. I pulled the blade from my body but I didn’t have the cooperation of my fingers to hold on to it. I heard it clatter to the floor, the sound echoing through my mind.
“Take them all,” Taeynd Bloodmark ordered her men.
I tried to protest, tried to move to protect my husband and my friend, but there was no strength left in my legs. As I fell to my knees, strong arms grabbed me. I fought the darkness that dragged me down, but this was a battle that I couldn’t hope to win.
Voices chased me through the darkness and I fled before them, desperate to escape. Then bodies were everywhere around me, forcing me to fight for my life. I struck out, spinning and whirling in an effort to fight off my attackers, but it was no use, there were too many of them. I managed to find an opening and ran again, ran until I could run no more and I fell exhausted to my knees.
The wound in my side burned and I put a hand to it, feeling the warmth of my blood seeping away. Somewhere inside of me I knew was Taeynd’s blood, driven deep into my flesh with the knife she’d stuck in me. I could feel it like an infection, knew my body was trying to kill whatever part of her she’d put inside of me.
“Blood and Bone,” Taeynd’s voice echoed through my mind. I could feel the pull of her words, of her blood inside of me, the force of her magic straining to bend me to her will. I wanted to fight, but I wasn’t sure I had the strength to.
“For someone who’s unbondable,” Mac growled from somewhere unseen, “you’re awfully damned—”
Taeynd’s voice cut him off. “Sea and Stone!” Her words reverberated through every fiber of my being, pulsing through my veins as if by will alone she would bind me to her. A part of me struggled against her even as I wondered why I was still trying to break free.
“For someone that is immune to the blood bond,” Mac told me, “you’re awfully damned—”
“Skin and name!” Taeynd yelled, cutting off everything but the feel of her inside me, in my veins.
She tried to overwhelm me with sheer force, but by playing rough she was playing my game and I’d be damned if I let her take my free will without a fight. Rage filled me, pushed at the bonds she was trying to wrap me in, driving it back.
“So, you’re saying that she gave me blood and it didn’t do anything to me?” I asked Mac.
“Yes, that’s what I’m saying,” he replied irritably. “I’m saying you’re acting like a damned—”
“Wind and flame!” Taeynd shouted angrily. “Spirit now be to me bound ‘til death—”
“Doesn’t really work that way, bitch,” I growled, looking up to see her standing over me. I felt the power in my blood rising, feeding on her power until it was receding rapidly. “Not with me, anyway. Nobody owns me, no matter how their blood gets in my veins. I’m a freak of nature, you dig?”
“No! I will have you!” she cried almost frantically. “Until death lays your body in the ground!”
I could feel her power beating like butterfly wings against the force of my anger. There was no hope for her, I’d lived with rage for decades, knew how to use it in a fight. This was one puppy she was never gonna get on her leash.
With a final scream of anguish I felt her will leave my body, watched her form disappear like smoke in the wind. I knelt there in the darkness she left behind, grateful for once that my mother had cursed me with her vampire blood.
Mac grinned down at me, pleased somehow that the efforts to bend my will had failed. “You’re just full of surprises.”
Then he was gone, and I was alone. He’d been there with me only moments ago, yet now he was nowhere to be found. I cried out his name and stumbled to my feet, running through the darkness, searching for my husband, for anyone, for a way out of this eternal night. The wound in my side drained my strength, and no matter how I tried I couldn’t heal it. Finally pain and exhaustion overcame me and I fell to the ground, calling Mac’s name one last time as I rolled to my back.
I felt a hand on my forehead and opened my eyes to see an unfamiliar old woman bending over me. I rolled away from her, off the bench I’d been lying on and onto the floor, landing on my hands and knees. Something sticky lay pooled on the stone floor beneath me, and I lifted a hand to see that it was nearly transparent and yet covered in not so transparent blood. From the smell it was my blood, yet I wasn’t feeling any pain.
“He is better off than you are,” the woman said softly, “although he’s under Taeynd’s care, as you are.”
I looked up to see that my body was still lying on the wooden bench I’d rolled off of. I was pale and covered in scratches, dirt and blood. More blood trickled slowly from a hole in the leather armor I still wore and dripped to the ground, into the puddle I’d landed in. I looked like I’d just gone through a battle, but it took me a minute to actually remember the inn and the Black Guards that I’d fought and killed. I quickly realized that I’d been pulled from my body in some sort of astral projection. I hoped like hell that it hadn’t happened because I was dying.
“I would heal you if I could, but my magic has not the power here,” the woman claimed. She was standing on the other side of the bench looking down at me, both the body on the bench and the ghostly me kneeling beside it. With a shock I realized that her eyes were pale with cataracts, and that her eyelids were covered with a fine web of tattoos. She glowed slightly, illuminating the stone floor and walls of the cell we were in, yet she was as transparent as I was.
“I’ll heal soon enough,” I growled as I got to my feet, trying not to look at my still form on the bench. “Where is Corrine? Where are the others?”
“Do you not care for yourself, Elizabeth?” she asked softly, gesturing toward my unconscious body. “Do you not care that your body lies here dying?”
“I care,” I growled, looking down at my still form. To my relief I was breathing, barely. If I was breathing I was alive, and with life there was hope. “I’ll heal. I have to know that they’re safe.”
“Are you mortally wounded so often that it bothers you not, Elizabeth?” she asked softly.
“Often enough.” I moved to the walls to look for a way out. My body wasn’t going anywhere at the moment, but depending on how long I’d been out of it I might be able to heal enough to move when I woke up. “Where are the others?”
She watched while I studied the door as if her blind eyes could follow my movements. “Your daughter and sister are on their way to rescue you.”
“No,” I said, turning quickly to face her. “If they come here, they’ll be taken too.”
“It is important that you survive this,” she said patiently. “The seed has been sown.”
I put my hand on my side and could feel the stickiness of half dried blood, feel the hole in my armor, even the hole in my flesh where the knife had been driven deep. If I had been pregnant, chances were that I wasn’t any more. Even if by some miracle the child had survived the wound there was no guarantee that I would, despite what I’d told the old woman.
“That doesn’t matter now,” I said, burying the grief I felt over a child I hadn’t even dreamed existed before tonight. “Keep Corrine away from here.”
She smiled again, this time as if she knew more than I did. “Destiny is more important than what you believe.”
I didn’t know whether to believe in Destiny or not, but there was nothing I could do about it either way, not in ghostly form with my body bleeding to death in front of me. “If I survive this,” I told her harshly, “and my husband or daughter are hurt in any way, I will find you and rip you apart with my bare hands, I swear it. Now tell me how to get out of here!”
“You must kill Taeynd Bloodmark,” she said seriously.
“I figured.” I gestured toward the door. “Put me back in my body and point the way.”
She tilted her head as if she were struggling to understand me. “Do you kill so easily?”
“Lots of practice.” I’d spent years killing on orders; Taeynd’s death would be one I’d enjoy. “Can you get me out of this cell?”
She ignored my question. “You could have escaped the inn,” she reminded me. “You could have fled when you got the other women to safety.”
“Mac and Glenn wouldn’t wake up, and I couldn’t leave them there,” I explained impatiently. “What was I supposed to do, let her take them all without trying to save them?”
“Many women would have done just that, yet you fought the Black Guard knowing you were with child.” She looked at me contemplatively, once again giving me the impression that she could see despite her dead eyes. “You truly are a Dagger.”
“I’m just me,” I said sadly. “Just me, that’s all.”
“You are very lucky you can even think of escape,” she said softly. “Taeynd cast a binding spell on you and somehow your body fought it off. That’s very extraordinary.”
“Just another day at the office,” I murmured dryly.
She studied me softly. “Taeynd tried to bind a shapeshifter to her once. He was the only creature that I ever saw throw off her influence, if only through death. Perhaps that is why it didn’t work on you.”
“You’ve got your story wrong, old woman,” I said dryly. “I’m not a shifter. My mother was a blood sucking fiend.”
She looked as if she didn’t understand what that meant. “Your father?”
“Keep it up and I won’t wait to kick your non corporeal ass,” I promised her.
Her dry laughter warmed the room, making me hope for the first time that I’d live through this. “I would not fight you.”
“Makes it easier for me.” I found myself grinning at her.
“I must go,” she said, her face suddenly growing serious. “Taeynd is coming.”
“Wait,” I protested. “Tell me how to—”
“There is no time, Elizabeth.”
Though I wasn’t trying to move, my spirit was being pulled back into my body. I fought to stop it, but there was nothing I could do.
“Rest now,” the old woman said soothingly. “You will need your strength.”
A moment later I was back on the bench and every pain I hadn’t felt suddenly flared to life. With a strangled cry I found myself swept away into the shadows of my mind, fleeing from the pain.
Somewhere in the darkness I became aware of a dripping sound. It started out soft, but got louder and louder until it was all I could hear, all I could focus on. I wanted to make it stop, but I barely had the strength to breathe, let alone move. My side was on fire with pain, though for the life of me I couldn’t understand why it hurt so badly.
Then I heard Mac’s voice and it gave me something to focus on besides the dripping. His voice meant that he was alive and close enough for me to hear him.
“And this is supposed to quell my mind?” he asked in the cold hard voice I’d come to know when he’d been a vampire.
“Just to encourage you in your decision making,” a woman’s voice replied calmly.
“You truly are clueless, aren’t you?” he demanded.
“Apparently I am,” she said, sounding amused. “Perhaps you could enlighten me.”
Mac sighed. “No.”
“We can sit here,” she drawled, “listening to her die.”
With a start I realized that the woman speaking was Taeynd, and that they were talking about me. The pain in my side was from my own knife, the knife she had driven deep in my flesh. I’d been hurt this badly before, once or twice in my life, lost this much blood, but Mac or my mother had always been there to save me.
The dripping continued for a long time, drowning out any other sounds. I wondered how much of my blood had drained out onto the floor of the cell, how long it would be before I’d lost too much to survive.
After what felt like forever, Mac spoke again. “Perhaps as an act of good faith you would alleviate some of her wounds.”
“As an act of good faith, I haven’t killed her already,” she replied harshly.
“Because you know once you’ve killed her you’ll never get me, and you want me,” he shot back. “That’s not good faith, my dear, that’s logical.”
She seemed unconcerned about logic. “I’ll get you one way or another. I prefer it to be of your own free will, but I’ll have you regardless.”
“Hmm, doubtful,” he murmured. “However, should you choose to go by the free will, let’s talk of the act of good faith.”
“And if she’s not in danger you’ll hesitate in your decision making and—”
“I’ll be more open,” he cut her off, “because as it stands now, you haven’t got a snowball’s chance in hell, bitch.”
Her laughter tinkled out, sending shivers of fear down my spine. “Such colorful words people from your world use.”
“You ain’t heard nothin’ yet,” he growled.
“Would it suit you if I stopped the bleeding?” She spoke as if she were asking him what kind of tea he would like, as if my life meant absolutely nothing to her. For real now, it probably didn’t.
“It would be a good start,” he agreed.
The wound burned so hot that I would have screamed had I been able to. After long endless minutes the burning receded, leaving behind only an ache that I knew would take blood or magic to heal. After fighting with the Black Watch I was fresh out of spare blood, and unless Glenn was nearby, magic was also out of the question.
“Feel better now?” Taeynd asked.
When Mac answered, I realized she’d been speaking to him. “A bit more reassured.”
“Are you ready to make your decision or do you need more encouragement?”
“I don’t believe encouragement would be an appropriate word.” He sounded more reasonable than before, more willing to deal with her. “Let’s talk reward.”
“To feel magic again would not be a reward in and of itself?” she asked, her voice low and seductive.
“No,” he said bluntly. “I tried telling you the first time we met, you just don’t understand.”
“Explain it to me,” she suggested.
“I don’t believe you can understand it,” he replied simply.
“You don’t know until you try,” she coaxed.
“No.” Once again his voice was cold and hard. “You’re the one that wants something from me. What are you willing to give up for me and my free will?”
“Why should I have to give up anything?” She sounded used to getting what she wanted, and I hoped Mac wasn’t trying to push her too far. “I’m offering you many things. Magic, the darkness…”
“I don’t want the magic or the darkness,” he scoffed.
She sounded intrigued. “What do you want?”
“Glenn, Eliza and Joel free.”
While I was happy to hear that Joel and Glenn were still alive, I wanted to curse Mac for trying to trade his freedom for mine. If the bitch bound my husband to her there was no telling what she’d do to him before we could free him. That was assuming she’d actually free us, not kill us and dump our bodies somewhere.
“Define ‘free’,” Taeynd murmured.
“Out from under your sway and out of your castle never to return or be bothered by the likes of you again,” he said plainly.
“And if you change your mind once you join me?” she asked. “You might want them near you.”
“No, I wouldn’t,” he replied calmly. “See, it’s not about me, it never was about me.”
She hesitated for so long I wasn’t sure she was going to answer, but finally she did. “I’ll think on it. Are those your only terms?”
“I’ll think on it,” he drawled coolly.
Suddenly their voices were gone, and silence filled the room. It was as if a door had been closed, leaving me alone in the darkness. I’d never minded the darkness, it was where I’d spent most of my life, before Mac had found me, but now I prayed for a light.
I’m not sure how much time had passed when I felt something smooth brush against my side. I didn’t have the strength to move away from the pain the wet touch caused. The wound caught fire once more, burning with an agony that nearly sent me back into the blackness of oblivion. When I felt that rough and warm touch again it washed over the pain, easing it into a painful tingling.
Even as I pushed the warm touch away I realized it had been a tongue, and that the tongue belonged to Gwrhyr. I turned my head to look at him, whispering his name and wondering where he’d come from, hell, wondering where I was. There was light in the cell, though it was dim, falling from a window high in the wall. Then it all came back to me; not being able to wake anyone up, trying to get everyone out of the inn, fighting the Black Guard, the struggle for my freedom.
Hello, Elizabethprudence. The wolf always had to use my whole name, as if it were one word. Not that I was special, he did it to everyone. How are you feeling?
“Where’s Corrine?” I whispered. The last time I’d seen my daughter, Gwrhyr had been with her. Then I remembered that he’d returned to help me fight off the Black Guard. Pain bloomed in my side as I remembered the knife sinking into my flesh, the fevered dreams with the old woman in the starring role. Taeynd had found us, we had to be prisoners in her castle, if the others were even still alive.
She is several feet below us.
I closed my eyes and shook my head slightly, wishing my daughter was not as stubborn as her father. I’d sent her to safety for a reason, and that reason was not so she could risk her life trying to save us. I wanted to ask about Mac, but I was afraid he’d already made the bargain for my freedom, that or he was already dead.
They say ‘get ready’.
“For what?” I demanded as I tried to roll onto my side, hoping I had the strength to sit up.
I didn’t get very far before my surroundings changed. Instead of lying on a hard bench in a cell, I was lying on a hard floor in a dark tunnel with family around me. I could see Corrine kneeling over a man I didn’t know, but before I could try and get to her I felt Siofra’s magic go to work on me. You’d think by now I’d be used to them healing me without warning, but I wasn’t. Still, being able to move without gasping in pain was a good thing.
With a little help from Siofra I sat up feeling weak but whole again. She handed me a flagon of water but I pushed it away. “I don’t want water, I want Mac.” He was the only one missing from this little gathering.
“We’re getting him,” she assured me as she stood and reached for Glenn’s hand.
Before I could stand up Mac was there, helping me to my feet. A quick look told me he wasn’t hurt and I wrapped my arms around him, leaning on him to hide my weakness. He tried to check me over, but Siofra’s voice stopped him.
“I fixed her,” she said softly.
Fixed me, like I was a puppy that had needed spaying. I tried not to let myself get irritated at the comment, but I hadn’t quite regained my equilibrium yet. I didn’t have the energy to do anything but cling to my husband and thank the gods we were together again.
“I highly doubt that,” he murmured against my temple.
“She has no more injuries,” Siofra revised with a smile.
“Let’s go,” Mac suggested.
“Yes please,” I agreed as the world around us shifted yet again. When it settled down we were standing in the middle of the common room of a large hut. A middle aged woman was making tea near a wood cooking stove and a younger woman was nearby weaving on a loom.
Sitting by the fireplace carding wool was the old blind woman from my dreams. She felt my gaze and winked at me, leaving me so stunned I didn’t protest when Mac guided me toward a chair. It was only when he tried to make me sit down that I protested. I didn’t know where we were, and I didn’t have a weapon. As far as I knew, Bloodmark wasn’t dead yet, now wasn’t the time to let our guard down.
“Sit down,” he said firmly.
I sat to make him feel better, not because I still felt a little weak. Siofra had healed my wounds, but she couldn’t replace the blood I’d used during the fight with Bloodmark’s guards. Only time or Kindred vitae could do that.
How long have you known you were pregnant? Siofra’s voice asked in my head.
I gasped before I could stop myself my hand going to the cut in my armor that was still coated with drying blood. If the baby had survived the last twelve hours Siofra would have felt it when she’d healed me, healed us. I could scarcely believe it was true, but I knew she wouldn’t lie. Mac’s child was still held safe within my womb.
Present Day
Mac’s arms pull me closer, his breath warm against the back of my neck. Lying there safe in my husband’s arms I thank the gods that our children had survived the trip to free Joel, that we’re all safe back in our own world. I close my eyes and let the worries of the past fade away as I surrender at last to sleep.