“It was just…rough. Mastyr, are you all right?”
Shit, because he’d been thinking about the blood rose, he’d gotten carried away. “Who the hell cares if I’m all right? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” She rubbed her neck and as his vision warmed again, he saw the bruising.
“Sweet Goddess, I’m so sorry. A thousand apologies. Do you want me to summon one of the fae healers?”
But at that, she smiled. “No. I’ll be fine in an hour or so, I was just surprised. You’ve never been like that before. Was it the woman, the human?”
He waited for her to say more, to mention that Samantha had fallen into a vision, but she didn’t say anything. And he really didn’t want to reveal the truth to her. “No, I was stupid. I let my blood starvation reach a critical level.”
“Stupid is right when you know we’re all here to serve you.”
“I know that.” His doneuses were a real blessing in his life. Early on he’d used them as much for sex as for blood, but the combination had caused too many bonding issues so that in recent decades he had a non-involvement policy with the women who donated. “How’s your mother?”
“She’s fine. One of the fae healers gave her a poultice and the ulcers on her legs went away within a week.”
“Good, I’m glad to hear it. Do you want to go back to the prave? I’ll take you back if you like.”
“No, that’s okay.” She chuckled softly and once more rubbed her neck. “I think for now I’d better head home.”
“Oh, Goddess, I’m sorry.”
“Stuff it, Ethan. You’re a good guy. We all think so and you’re allowed to make a mistake now and then.”
With that, she headed north, away from Shreveport and toward Bergisson. He turned and glanced through the trees, noting that his Guard had returned and now hovered above the ground at the edge of the parking lot, waiting for him.
Time to go kick some Invictus ass.
But as he sped in their direction, he wavered slightly and almost tipped into the pavement which would have sent him crashing into a nearby Ford truck. At the last second, he righted himself.
Well, that had never happened before.
As he landed close to his Guard, Finn called out, “What the hell was that?”
“I think I took the draw too quick.”
A chuckle went through the men. What vampire hadn’t been a little tipsy after slaking a blood-thirst too fast?
Of course the trouble was, Ethan knew that wasn’t the real problem at all.
The real problem was that his blood rose had arrived in a half-human woman who didn’t know she was part fae, and whose blood would finally ease his starvation, but for many reasons she was off-limits.
When he’d handed out orders for the next few hours, he took Finn aside and told him about Samantha. He needed at least one other person in on his current conundrum.
“What do you plan to do?” Finn kept his voice quiet. “I mean, will you take her on since she could resolve the starvation?”
“That she could take care of my blood-needs permanently is the only part of the equation that tempts me. The rest has the appearance of a nightmare waiting to happen. I felt her power, Finn, she’s on Vojalie’s level, or if not hers then some of the more powerful fae in the Bergisson Guild.”
Finn whistled. “And she has no idea.”
“Well, she does now, but she seemed pretty shocked out when she left here.”
Finn’s phone rang, one of the Guard lieutenants informing him of an Invictus-pair sighting not far from Caldwell in the northwest, about thirty miles from the realm’s wastelands. “Are you coming with?”
Ethan frowned. For one of the few times in his career, he didn’t have a quick answer. Something about Samantha held him back. He shook his head. “I think I need to sort things out here first. You get the Guard on this, but if you need me, call right away. In the meantime, give me updates.”
“You know I will.”
As he watched Finn, and the rest of the Guard take to the air, he felt the familiar pull to be with them, his brothers in arms, to be fighting alongside them, which only made him resent even more that Samantha existed.
What a fucking mess.
Chapter Two
As Samantha drove home, she kept shaking her head like she needed to clear her ears of water. What she’d learned tonight had set her on her heels and she could hardly make sense of it all. On some level, she felt like she moved through a dream and that maybe the events at the prave had never really happened.
She hadn’t imagined the vision, though, because it existed inside her now like a living, breathing thing. She could feel the images moving near the edges of her mind and that if she wanted, she could experience the whole thing all over again.
She knew from her studies of the realm-world that very powerful fae women were known to have visions. She stopped at a stoplight, watched it turn green but only stepped on the gas when the car behind her honked.
She needed to pay better attention to the road.
She kept her thoughts simpler.
She’d had a vision; she wouldn’t deny the truth.
But something else became clear as she turned down her street: The vision was fae.
She’d had a fae vision.
Which meant…
She was part fae.
And the fae part of her dominated the human part.
Pulling into her driveway, she sat in her car for several long, astonished minutes.
Part fae?
But how could that be?
She got of the car and turned to stare up at a clear sky with a full moon. The April Louisiana night air was soft on her skin, not cloying like it would become in just a few more weeks.
The hour had to be past midnight.
Time even felt different to her now. She knew the hour and the minute: 12:11.
She pulled out her cell: 12:11.
How did she know the time like that?
She shook her head yet again as she made her way to the front door of what was once her beloved grandmother’s home, now hers. She loved the small old house, built a long time ago. It grew into its creaking floors and musty smell, all familiar like songs that had been sung but kept echoing down each hall.
Fae.
And a blood rose.
Her heart seemed to lumber in her chest now, and when she touched her neck, the vein rose. She could feel it beneath her skin, rising for what? As though she didn’t know. Rising for a sharp pair of fangs that belonged to a vampire.
A specific vampire.
A mastyr vampire, powerful, built, gorgeous, and weighed down with responsibility.
That’s what she felt when she thought of Mastyr Ethan, that he bore the weight of Bergisson Realm like a stone strapped to his back.
The moment images of him moved through her mind, however, her heart began to beat really hard, like nothing she’d ever known before. She dismissed the thought that she might be having a heart attack since her newly discovered faeness knew better. A need swept over her, to reach out to Ethan, to leave her house, to enter Bergisson, to find him and to feed him, just like in the vision, to offer up her blood as his blood rose.
At the same time, she resented that she had these thoughts at all. She’d grown up knowing about the Nine Realms, and that one of them actually had an access point in her home town of Shreveport. But the most she’d ever felt about realm-folk was a sense of uneasiness she couldn’t explain.
Now she knew why.
She was one of them.
She made her way to the workshop at the back of her house, where she designed her jewelry. Though she had a bachelor’s in sociology and she was working toward her masters, she made her living through selling her creations online and in the local shops. Her grandmother, part squirrel by nature, had left her an inheritance large enough to allow her a certain amount of freedom. Despite the fact that she had no family left, she considered herself blessed because she was free to purs
ue her own dreams when so many others couldn’t.
She sat down at the small antique oak desk that had belonged to her mother and which had been her favorite, something her mother had given her, one of the few keepsakes from a family Samantha knew little about.
Now she understood why her mother had refused, however gently, to talk about her family. How could she have when her parents had been fae? No, that couldn’t be right. Her father was human; his Louisiana heritage went on and on. This was about her mother, but she didn’t look fae. They had such pointed chins and strange ears. She’d seen her mother’s ears.
The truth settled in on her in a terrible way that her mother’s ears had been altered to fit her new human life.
Samantha felt ill. There were too many truths here to digest all at one time, too many new and frightening realities.
As she sat down, the ladder back chair creaked like the floors. This was the place her mother had written her journals, a bunch of them, all locked up in a black lacquer box, which she pulled in front of her.
“What are you writing, mama?” Samantha remembered asking her once.
Her mother, Andrea Bergisse, had smiled but even then, even when Samantha had been young, she’d seen and felt her mother’s sadness.
“Oh, child, just my life story in case you need to read it one day. But wait until you feel a call to my journals, not before.” She’d had such a pretty Louisiana lilt.
“What do you mean ‘a call’?”
“Somethin’ here, child.” She’d put her hand against her chest and patted with her fingers. “Here. It’ll be like a soft vibration; a train whistle from a long ways away. You’ll know. Promise me now”
“I promise.”
Funny, that in all these years, she’d kept the box in its locked up state, as though she’d known all along that what lay inside was not something she ever wanted to know.
Yet, the time had come to look at the truth. She had a string of critical decisions to make, that much she understood, so she might as well get started. The sooner she figured things out, the sooner she could put this night behind her.
She placed her hand on top of the box, now smooth and cool beneath her fingers, except this time she felt a new sensation, a vibration, very subtle and as far away as that distant train whistle.
Then she got it. She was feeling fae magic, the same kind of vibrations she’d felt at the bar just before the vision had opened up.
Pulling out the center drawer of the desk, she removed the old and very dull brass key, then fit it into the box’s slot. The moment she turned the key, and the mechanism shifted, the fae vibration sang up her arm, like a soft jolt of electricity. For a split second, she could almost feel her mama beside her, a hand on her shoulder, telling her everything would be all right.
But how could it be? Samantha’s life had just been tossed high into the air and she had no idea what it would look like once it crashed back to earth.
She lifted the curved lid and there they were, each encased in a dull red leather, a full inch thick at the binding, five in all.
Samantha stared at the journals, but settled her hands in her lap. She didn’t want to do this.
She had all that she’d ever wanted in her life, well almost. Except for a man and maybe children, she had a good life with a job she loved, enough money to live on, an important ongoing education, and a home that had been built by her paternal grandfather. She didn’t need more than this. She didn’t need these journals, or her overwhelming desire for a vampire, or the knowledge that she was half-fae.
And she especially didn’t need to be something called ‘a blood rose’.
She slammed the lid down on the box and for one of the few times in her life she gave herself to the sudden despair she felt and wept, for her family long gone, for a vision that haunted her, for a world she wished didn’t even exist.
*** *** ***
Ethan followed in the wake of Finn and his team as they headed back toward the Bergisson plane to resume patrol duty.
But when he arrived at the checkpoint, he hesitated. Something nagged at him, refusing to let him leave the earth-plane. He hovered a foot above the ground, near the Guardsmen who controlled all the comings and goings between earth and Bergisson Realm, debating once more exactly what he should do next.
His thoughts were fixed on the woman, Samantha, a fae and a blood rose, who’d had no idea until this very evening that she was part realm. He couldn’t imagine what she was going through right now.
He shook his head: a blood rose. In Shreveport.
He still recalled his first meeting with Mastyr Gerrod’s blood rose, Abigail, and how with just a touch of her hand, a very human handshake, the woman had connected with his personal frequency, essentially his vampire mating frequency.
Even though he hadn’t actually touched Samantha tonight, something similar had happened; his mating frequency had come alive like bells pealing in a town square. The vibration still lingered, a physical sensation he couldn’t shake and which kept his drive toward her as strong as when he had first seen her.
That’s when the reason for his hesitation fell into place.
He wasn’t the only mastyr vampire in Bergisson.
Ry was one as well.
He knew from his original experience with Abigail that Samantha wouldn’t just be attracted to him, but to all mastyrs. Her blood rose potential, therefore, made her extremely desirable in his world and in the same way made her equally as vulnerable to abuse.
These thoughts sent his mind into a tailspin of horror, of Samantha being pursued by other mastyrs, and not just by Ry, who he didn’t trust, but by any of the mastyrs of the Nine Realms. Once it became known that another blood rose existed, how soon before Samantha became the object of serious pursuit? And some of the eastern mastyrs were known to be really wild.
If he didn’t bind Samantha to him, one of the other mastyrs probably would. Ry, for instance, wouldn’t hesitate to take her by force, especially if he thought it would give him dominance over Ethan.
For the past fifty years, since Ethan had replaced Ry as the Mastyr of Bergisson, a painful rivalry had ensued. Ry had grown bold in his attacks on Ethan, whether publicly or privately.
He’d always resented that Ethan had usurped him in the governance of Bergisson Realm, even though Ethan hadn’t been the author of Ry’s removal. Nine Realms laws dictated that the most powerful vampire in the land would rule the society. Once he’d come into his mastyr-power, the governing Sidhe Council, a deeply respected and ancient joint-council of the Nine Realms, had tested both Ry and Ethan and had found that Ethan’s power surpassed Ry’s by a significant degree.
Of course there had been downsides, one of which meant that his power as a mastyr vampire constantly drained him of his resources, putting him in a perpetual state of blood-starvation despite how often his list of doneuses serviced him. The other most significant repercussion, of course, was Ry and his fairly constant bucking of Ethan’s authority.
Now, a blood rose had arrived, with the capacity to keep a mastyr vampire satisfied, and if he didn’t do something, Ethan knew in his gut that Ry would make a play for Samantha and he’d do it tonight.
Ethan had no intention of binding Samantha. But he sure as hell wouldn’t let Ry take her either. At the same time, the thought of any mastyr vampire getting near Samantha set off his battling frequency. So what was he supposed to do?
Sweet Goddess, the thought of binding Samantha, getting that close to her or any female, gave him the shakes. From the time that he’d buried his family, he’d promised himself that until he’d secured Bergisson in permanent peace, essentially eradicating the Invictus, he had no intention of building a long-term relationship with any woman. He fought the enemy every night of his life, striving to protect those in his care: A million realm-folk. He simply didn’t have time to be a boyfriend to any woman; human, fae, or otherwise.
And the hell if he’d let the sudden and unexpected arrival of a blo
od rose change his commitment to his realm.
He slid his iPhone from the pocket of his battle leathers and dialed up his second-in-command. “Hey, Finn. I’ve rethought the Samantha situation. I’m concerned that Ry might get to her and you know what he’s like, he won’t believe that she would have any other purpose but to take care of him.”
“Your woman needs protection.”
Ethan repressed a hostile growl. “She’s not my woman, Finn. Let’s get that clear right now. But she does need protection and not just from Ry, but from all the mastyrs. The pull is strong and it’s one hell of a seduction to think that a blood-rose could put an end to the kind of blood-starvation each of us endures.”
“Do you want me to send a detail to watch over her?”
“No, I’ve got this.”
“Once Ry gets wind of all that happened at the prave, he’ll be out for your head and he’ll want Samantha. He may come after you and with what I observed at the parking lot, you might want some back up.”
Ethan’s temper shot through his head that Finn would question his capacity to defend Samantha. But even as he opened his mouth to argue the point, his stomach balled up into a knot, and that same awful dizziness forced him to drop to earth, and plant his feet firm. He held his phone behind him, squeezed his eyes shut and burned up the forest with a long string of obscenities.
Of course once he opened his eyes, both access point Guards were smiling.
Turning his back to them, he brought his phone back up to his ear. He’d never really thought of Ry as much more than an annoying mosquito he had to swat now and then. “I’m not worried. Where are you now?”
“Patrolling near the training camp, but no Invictus sign. We’re going to swing by Sweet Gorge once more, we’ll give the area a thorough reconnaissance, and if nothing surfaces, I’ll bring the patrol back to the Guard House.”
“Good. Has the body been delivered to the Morgue?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“Death by Invictus, as suspected. But what else is new? And as with the others killed out there, the physician found a lingering fae magic.”
“That’s not a surprise, not from a body found at Sweet Gorge.”