Chapter 11
SEKH
With the thrall’s face fully revealed to my All Seeing eyes, his recent movements played out in our bond like a movie.
As she asked, I started with when he arrived at the gate. Days ago, before the Dauphine had even been killed. He moved with purpose, bypassing Leonie’s former Blood without hesitation. He knew they were shells.
Instead of going into the house, he went straight to the basement door and threw himself into the pit. But he didn’t move toward Leonie right away.
Leeches swarmed him. Enough that he howled—until they tried to get into his mouth.
Then he just moaned and twitched in the mud while they fed.
Fat, stuffed leeches fell off. More took their place.
Until finally, he rose from the pit. Covered in mud, but empty of any queen’s blood.
He sat on the concrete ledge doing nothing.
Until the Dauphine began to scream in agony as my queen’s poisoned blood spread through her body. He howled with her. Writhing on the ledge. Tearing his own flesh with his nails and fangs. Then he raced out into the city and began feasting.
Contaminating himself with human blood. Creating as many thralls as possible before dawn, when he returned to the nest. His eyes bloodshot, his teeth blackened and stained. He dove into the pit again, and this time, he moved to lie in wait beneath the trapped queen.
“Of course,” she whispered, nodding. “The leeches fed until all her blood was gone. But why?”
“So there was nothing remaining that you might be able to compel,” Guillaume replied.
“But she was still alive when he first arrived.”
I nodded. “I don’t see her in the nest, so she must have left for Galveston already. This was her contingency plan. If she survived, she could simply give him her blood again.”
“There’s something we’re missing. Something she left that makes them appear as blanks.” She shook her head, tightening her fingers on my arm enough that her tantalizing nails pricked my skin, though sadly not enough to feed. “If it’s not her blood or magic—”
“Magic doesn’t have to be blood,” Leonie said. “We use blood because that’s where our easiest, more natural magic lies, inherited in our bloodlines from our goddesses. But not all magic works through blood.”
“Very true.” Gwen nodded, her mouth twisting in a grimace. “Look at Arthur’s ability to gather souls for millennia, making himself stronger and stronger. It was done through a simple ring.”
From the deeper shadows beneath the tree, her dark fae Blood clicked his razor teeth. “There was nothing simple about a ring forged in Tylweth Teg.”
Without our queen making any further request, Tlacel picked up the bucket and ran off to gather more water, while his brother and Llewellyn began stripping the snarling, snapping creature for a thorough examination.
“Where are his thralls?” Shara asked softly, turning her head to look up at me.
Her lips curved as if she had a delightful secret.
With a slight push, her nails slipped into my skin.
Her pupils dilated, turning her shining eyes almost black.
Her nostrils flared. She licked her lips as if she could taste me directly on her tongue.
I willed my blood to pour into her. Fill her up. Overflow. Let her taste me for all time. While I allowed the thrall’s movements throughout the city to play in her bond. He might have only had a single night, but he’d created dozens of pockets of ravenous thralls in his wake.
Abandoned warehouses along the river. Boarded up houses that had never been repaired or inhabited after the last devastating hurricane. Hunting in dark alleys. Slaughtering and turning humans all night. His army of thralls waited only for the sun to set so they could attack.
She marked the locations in our bonds, using the rolling tapestry in her mind to show us exactly where the nests of vermin awaited.
:Your queen holds your bond. Harm no innocents. Otherwise, anyone who wishes to feast, go. Fill your bellies with my enemies.:
Immediately, Vore scuttled across the nest toward the gate, keeping to the lengthening shadows as the sun hovered low on the horizon. The dark fae wizard simply disappeared.
The dragon twitched, his sinuous neck rasping against the ground, but he didn’t join them.
Very little surprised me any longer, but I couldn’t puzzle out his reasoning for staying.
Perhaps he wasn’t as bloodthirsty as he so vocally advertised.
Or maybe he simply wanted to wait for full darkness so he could fly lower without the risk of being seen by humans.
Shara looked at me with a quizzical tilt of her head. “I thought for sure my general would wish to feast.”
I gave her a slow, sultry smile. “My feast is here, Your Majesty. As long as you’re feasting on me.”
“Can Vore and Merlin alone take care of so many thralls?”
I huffed out a laugh. “Prepare to be astonished, my queen. Your ushi-oni’s hunger knows no bounds.
From the glimpses I’ve Seen outside of queen nests, he could devour all of the thralls you marked himself in a matter of an hour.
It’ll be interesting to see how many the wizard can get before Vore finds them. ”
Tlacel returned with more water and proceeded to scrub the thrashing thrall while the other two Blood held him down. The thrall kept trying to shred them with his jagged teeth, so Itztli stood on his neck, pinning his head to the ground.
Shara stood, regretfully removing her nails from my arm. I took her hand and tucked her arm through mine, delaying while the rest of her Blood deployed to be absolutely sure the enemy thrall wouldn’t have a single opportunity to so much as touch her with his filth.
Even her alpha moved past me to join Itztli in simply standing on one of the thrall’s arms. He howled, his limb crushed beneath our alpha’s formidable weight. But his screams silenced immediately when Guillaume’s sword dug into his scrotum.
The thrall stared up at the knight, eyes wide, unmoving.
“Human or Aima, thrall or Blood, very little scares a man more than steel in his manhood.”
The dragon slithered closer to the thrall, flashing his teeth and wicked claws. :Cut me off a tasty tidbit, knight.:
“Not yet,” Shara said lightly. “I’ve had nails and teeth in your manhood, G, and you certainly weren’t scared.”
Guillaume dug the tip in a little harder to the thrall, making him whimper.
“That’s a different situation entirely, my queen.
Nothing gets a Blood harder than his queen’s attention on any part of his body.
Shred my dick or bite it off as you will.
In the end, I know your magic will regenerate whatever needs healing. ”
She stretched out her hand over the thrall, wrist up, and allowed a small drop of blood to well on her skin from where she’d pierced herself.
One drop.
Colors sharpened despite the fading sunlight.
My senses heightened. My canines ached as badly as my cock, eager to sink into my queen.
I breathed deeply, loudly, sucking in as much of her scent as I could.
We all did. Even—especially—the thrall. Though his hunger was now warped with a desire to contaminate and foul her magic rather than embrace her.
In her bond, I saw a small smear of something on the thrall’s lower right side near his groin.
Though when I looked with my own All Seeing eyes, there was no such shadowy spot.
Only the pasty, grayed skin of a corpse.
She moved her hand closer to the spot, tipping her arm to allow a single drop of blood to splat on the shadowed smear.
The thrall shrieked as if Guillaume had shoved the entire sword up his rectum like the Impaler.
He thrashed so hard he dislocated his own shoulder and broke his spine beneath her Blood’s boots.
Though he still screamed—until Shara called her blood back to her.
Revealing a simple black symbol of thin lines, curves, and dots etched in the thrall’s skin.
“A sigil.” Her voice echoed like a distant call from thousands of years in the past, taking me with her.
To the crumbling ruins of Arcadia where the cult of Despoina first began.
Sacred herbs burned in a brazier, mixed with kykeon, the drink of the Eleusinian Mysteries.
Then carefully etched into each of her Blood’s skin in a nondescript area. “Seuls mes yeux peuvent voir.”
“Only my eyes may see,” Guillaume translated softly.
Shara blinked, pulling herself back to the present with a grimace.
“All of Jeanne’s closest Blood will carry such a sigil on their bodies.
That’s why they look like blanks even to Sekh.
They probably each also found ways to eliminate her blood from their bodies, so I can’t use that to track them either. Any other ideas?”
“I can start by Seeing this asshole’s entire life as far back as possible,” I offered. “I’ll note any other faces he reveals to me and See them as well. That may give us other locations or clues that may help us track them down.”
At her nod, I immediately shifted my focus to the thrall’s face, tracking his comings and goings for centuries, though I continued listening as much as possible.
“Then we go to each of the blood circles she stole,” Guillaume added.
“Claim the nest as your own, release anyone trapped inside, and let the general See the activities inside each of those circles. One by one by one. It’ll take time, but that will allow us to build a full picture of the Dauphine’s former activities. ”
“You weren’t her only goal,” Leonie said.
Which drew all of our attention to her. She didn’t wilt beneath so many eyes, even formidable Blood powered by our queen.
Shara blazed with all the power of She Who Is and Was and Always Will Be, but she hadn’t hesitated from returning Leonie’s power to her.
Power that had multiplied through agony and torture, then combined and regenerated with Isis and Coatlicue’s magics.
Leonie stood strong and proud at Shara Isador’s side. Healed. Whole.
And pissed the fuck off.
Leonie tipped her chin up proudly, her eyes gleaming with power.
“Her bond with me went both ways, to a point. She was strong enough to hide most of her intent and thoughts from me, but as time passed and she continued feeding on me, that bond widened. I gleaned more from her than she wished. There’s a queen in Mexico she suspected of having produced an heir, though no formal announcement was ever made. ”
“Mayte,” Shara whispered softly. “My first sibling.”
“The New York City queen wanted her. Badly. But so did she, if only to destroy the young heir before she could rise in power.”
Outwardly, Shara only nodded, but her heart panged at the thought of any harm coming to Xochitl. “Go on.”
“Another younger queen who disappeared. She took over that House in case the queen came back. I distinctly remember her saying, ‘If she dares return to take a seat at the Triune opposite me, she’ll live to regret it.’”
Shara’s eyes tightened slightly. “A younger queen who disappeared, who’s strong enough to take a seat at the table. That sounds like Helayna Ironheart or Karmen Sunna to me. Karmen’s older, but she was taken too.”
“It does indeed,” Guillaume confirmed.
“We know Ra took Karmen to Heliopolis as a child. Could the Dauphine have been involved in Helayna’s kidnapping? Sekh?”
I gave a slow blink, shaking away the thrall’s past to focus on my queen. “I’m sorry, my queen. Who?”
A face appeared in my queen’s mind. I would have described her as a young queen—not even two hundred years old—before meeting Shara.
Dark eyes with hints of green. Short brownish-red hair streaked and tipped with black, awkwardly cut and jagged about her shoulders, some areas close to her scalp.
A sprinkling of freckles across her pale cheeks.
“Helayna Ironheart,” Shara replied. “Can you See when she was attacked?”
Through Shara’s bond, I Saw her at House Ironheart’s cabin with the other queen and three strange Blood the likes of which I’ve never Seen before. I couldn’t See when they first arrived at the small cabin north of here. My queen didn’t hold that circle.
I flicked back through time, scanning for the queen’s face, and found her decades ago near a deep lake. She ran from a nest down a sloping hill covered in trees toward the shoreline with another queen.
“Pause,” Shara said.
I held the other queen’s image. She wore a white sleeping gown and robe. Her hair hung down her back in a thick blonde braid.
“That’s Illa Fólkvangr. Her hand and tongue are upstairs in one of the drawers, and she’s at the bottom of that lake I see behind her in your vision. Switch back to Helayna and See who took her.”
I focused on the other queen following a small white fox through mud and broken trees. There must have been some kind of natural disaster. The little fox disappeared beneath a fallen tree, and she rushed forward, crawling underneath the branches of a massive pine tree.
In a flash of brilliant emerald light, she was gone.
“I’m sorry, my queen. That’s all I can See.”
“So something magical interfered with even the All Seeing, Never Sleeping General’s ability. That could have been the Dauphine, but something tells me it wasn’t.”
“I agree,” Leonie said. “The flash of green doesn’t feel like her.”
Nevarre’s giant raven cawed overhead. :When I remained behind in the Ironheart nest, Helayna admitted she thought her sire might be Loki.:
“Of course,” Shara whispered, nodding. “Another god to sire a queen when they were few and far between. He’d certainly be capable of such magic.
Though why would he kidnap and torture his own daughter?
No matter. I have to warn her. If she goes to House Fólkvangr, she may very well encounter one of the Dauphine’s thralls lying in wait. ”
Gwen pulled out a cell phone. “I’ll tell Kevin and he’ll warn them. The Ironheart consiliarius has talked with him already and has his information.”
“Thank you.” Shara came back toward me. “Can you still See if I’m feeding on you?”
“Of course.” Though she knew that was a stretch, so I amended my answer with, “I’ll try.”
She lay her head on my chest, her arms around my waist. My heartbeat quickened, eager for the prick of her nails.
Though she only laughed softly, drawing my gaze down to her legs.
The dragon wrapped his tail around her ankle and tugged, as if he could convince her to move to him instead of me.
Irritation flashed through me but I refused to give him the pleasure of a retort.
“I have need of my general first. But perhaps you could snack on the thrall until it’s your turn, my dragon. I’m finished with him.”
:I can always snack, my queen. As long as I’m next.: