The Ruby Blade Page 12

  “And?”

  “We need a strategy. We didn’t want you to miss out on the fun, so we didn’t go without you.”

  “Thank you. I hate missing out on pitched battles where my side is grossly outnumbered.”

  “I’m here for you.”

  “We should do recon,” Emma said. “Who’s the sneakiest?”

  “Probably Raj,” I said. “If it was warmer, I’d be more help, but it’s hard to fly when it’s this cold.”

  “I can do the recon,” he said. “That’ll give us the freshest information and some time to plan.”

  “Alright, team! We’re doing great. Last item. New Orleans. Raj, I believe this is your item.”

  He was suddenly very business-like. “Eleanor’s dream of New Orleans also warned her that I would likely betray her. Although betraying the woman I’m attempting to seduce goes against every instinct, it’s likely Marie is holding the one item of mine that I’d do anything to have returned. This item, in addition to being valuable to me personally, is also a powerful magical artifact laced with the blood of me and my family—both biological and supernatural. If there was less than the fate of the world at stake, I would relinquish my claim at this time. I’ve lived without this item for a couple hundred years and could do so for a couple hundred more. But if this item isn’t in my possession when the well-spring makes the final sacrifice, the vampires and all who depend on them will die. The ruby blade of the Pratihari Dynasty must be present at the end of the world and I must be the one to wield it.”

  By the time he finished speaking, Raj’s face had lost all expression and his eyes were flashing as red as the rubies he was talking about. I shivered, a little in fear, but mostly in awe and arousal. My new boyfriend was powerful as fuck.

  He flashed me a quick grin, complete with fang, and then continued, “I have not yet figured out how I will retrieve my sword and salvage not only my burgeoning relationship with Eleanor, as well as self-respect and my friendship with you, but I will find a way. It is possible that my grandchildren will need to rouse themselves to aid me. Mircea will come if I need him, but the Basarabs, in general, are unreliable.”

  “What about your other children?” I asked.

  “Other children?”

  “You said you didn’t improvise on your first child. You didn’t say Mehmed was your only child.”

  “You are too clever by half, my sweet.”

  “You must have at least one other, and you must have improvised at some point.”

  “I have two other children, and they are powerful, indeed.”

  “Would they help us?”

  “One is out of the question and out of reach. I begin to believe that insanity is one of the gifts that runs in my blood. The other is a possibility.”

  “Where is he?”

  “She is accessible.”

  “Would I know her, the way I knew your grandchildren?”

  “Unlikely. She is powerful, but prefers to operate behind the scenes.”

  “She was a mage,” Florence said. We all looked at her. She was staring into space. “She was a mage before you turned her to help her escape persecution as a witch. She remained powerful and will help us. Without her, our cause will be lost.”

  “Well, then, that settles it. Looks like I’m picking up another minion,” I said.

  “She will be most amused to be considered the minion of a Fae.”

  “How long will it take you to get her and return?”

  “Three nights at the most,” Raj said after a moment’s thought. “One there, one back, and one to find her and convince her.”

  Since it was only a couple of hours before dawn, we decided to table the fetching of Raj’s progeny until the next night. However, when I woke the next afternoon, I remembered it was New Year’s Eve. I bundled up and went in search of the restaurant supplying our food. I found the restaurant, but William wasn’t there. I asked for John, and a short, stocky man appeared almost instantly. He took one look at me and bowed low. “Ma’am?”

  “I was wondering if I could make a special request for tonight?”

  “Our Alpha will be wondering when you are planning on honoring your request,” he said. He was shaking, and I knew he didn’t want to ask that question.

  I did a quick calculation. “Tonight is New Year’s Eve. I want to celebrate with my friends. I need five nights to gather our strength, do our reconnaissance, and prepare for battle. We’ll mount our offensive on January fifth.”

  “Thank you. I will pass that information on to my Alpha.”

  I was beginning to wonder about this mysterious Alpha I’d not met. It seemed odd that all the communications—possibly with the exception of the first night, I’d have to ask Florence—had been through the other pack members. I mean, sure, delegating responsibility was absolutely the right and responsibility of a good leader, but I’ve met shifters. They are control freaks, and we were powerful interlopers in their territory. Yeah, he was planning on using us to do something he was either unable to do—which didn’t speak well of his strength, or unwilling to do—which didn’t speak well for our chances. I shook my head to get my mind back on the topic at hand. I had a party to plan.

  “For tonight?” I asked.

  “Yes, what do you want?”

  “Three bottles of champagne if you have it, and something light—but a lot of it. Canapes or hors d’oeuvres or appetizers or something. And dessert. Chocolatey, decadent, sweetness. Oh, and do you have a disco ball?”

  “Of course. It is an honor to serve. We’ve missed having customers.” He wasn’t even pretending to look at my face anymore, and since I was wearing several layers of clothing, it wasn’t my rockin’ body distracting him unless he had a thing for women in parkas. Different strokes and all that.

  I left before he peed from an overt bout of submissiveness. It was clear and cold but I was enjoying the blue skies and crisp air. It was weird being out in a world without technology. There were no planes buzzing overhead, there was the occasional car motor, but not the constant sound there’d been before. I was standing in the middle of a town and the sounds were comparable to standing in the middle of a wilderness. I kind of liked it. Except for not having Taco Bell or Google, this wasn’t so bad.

  I walked slowly back to our motel. Raj would appear shortly after dark to say his farewells before heading out to fetch his daughter, and I wanted to waylay him before he left.

  Florence and Emma were arguing about something when I got back, and I ignored them. I stripped off my outer layers, grabbed my rapier, and started a series of exercises to warm my wrist, slowly at first, and then faster and faster until I was sweating. I dried myself off carefully before bundling up again and going outside. I found a dead tree to serve as a target and started practicing, first with my right hand and then with my left. I threw knives at the imaginary spot on the tree that meant instant death until my arms ached and the light was unreliable, then I picked up my knives, carefully cleaned them, and went back to the room.

  “Feel better?” Florence asked.

  “Much. I wish it was warmer. I’d like to go running.”

  “Do you ever worry that you’ll die before opening all the gates?” Emma asked.

  I stared at her. “That’s an awkward question.”

  “I’m serious. You talk about battles and all the people who are after you and placing death curses on you. You’ve killed people to defend yourself, and you keep going. You train and fight, but you never talk about not winning.”

  I was silent for a moment, and she opened her mouth. I held up a hand to stop her. “Wait, Emma. If you’re sincere and this is a serious question, then I want to give it a serious answer. Give me a minute.” I thought about it and what I wanted to say and how to say it. “I don’t worry about it. Worry accomplishes nothing for me. Either I’ll make it through or I won’t. I need to believe that I will because that confidence is power. When I doubt myself, I make mistakes, and I don’t want to make mistakes. S
o, I go through this knowing that Finn has placed a curse that will give me the option of dying and watching everyone I care about die or becoming an unthinking sex slave, and knowing that neither of those things will happen because we’re going to fix it. I know that we made a deal to clear three dozen very powerful folk out of the nature preserve and that we’ll have two vampires, a mage, a werewolf, and me to do it. I know that we’re going to face the Voodoo Queen of New Orleans at some point. I know that the ground around one of the gates is littered with land mines. I know all of these things, and I know that we are going to fucking win. Because we have to. We have to win because the alternative is not acceptable to me. The alternative, where we lose or we die or whatever means that I will not have a chance to fulfill my vow to Florence. It means I will never see Isaac again. It means that I will not get to learn how to best impale people from my boyfriend’s grandson so that I can use my new skills on the fucking elf that’s trying to screw everything up.

  “So no, I do not worry that I’ll die before opening all the gates.”

  Emma looked a little shell-shocked. I tried to soften my tone for the next bit I wanted to say. “What I worry about is that someone else will. That I will fail one of you the way I failed Isaac. The way I failed Finn. That I will not be enough to keep everyone safe and I will lose someone I care about.”

  “You care about me?” Emma asked.

  I snorted. “I wasn’t talking about you.” I stuck my tongue out at her and she laughed. The tension was broken and I heaved a sigh of relief. I didn’t like acknowledging my fears or worries. I didn’t want to have big, deep thoughts. I just wanted to do my job and get shit done.

  Florence looked up. “Raj is here.”

  He opened the door.

  ‘You can’t leave tonight,” I said before he could say anything. “It’s New Year’s Eve. We are going to drink champagne and dance under the disco ball, and toast at midnight.”

  “She’s made all the arrangements,” Florence said.

  “Well, if arrangements have been made, who am I to fight that?”

  William showed up a short time later with trays of finger foods: cheeses, meats, crackers, tiny pickled things, several bottles of champagne, and a disco ball. We ate and drank and laughed and told stories of New Year’s Eves past. I made everyone dance with me and when our clock chimed midnight, I kissed Raj and tried not to think about Isaac. He kissed me back until Florence and Emma protested, and then we broke apart, breathing rapidly, and grinning like fools.

  Raj left before dawn and said he’d be back by midnight the next night, hopefully with his daughter. “She’s headstrong; she may not agree to come.”

  “Just say, ‘because I’m your father, that’s why.’ Works like a charm every time,” I suggested.

  He laughed, kissed me hard on the lips, and then said to me only, “You honor me with your affection and your trust. I will do my best not to let you down.”

  I spent the next two days training. I convinced Florence to spar with me. I gave Emma my spare set of knives and did my best to teach her how to throw them accurately and gave her some more pointers on hand-to-hand defense. “You are a weapon, so you don’t necessarily need more weapons, but it can take a while to shift shapes, and if you’re surprised you’ll need to buy yourself some time to do so.”

  By nine o’clock on January second, I was a nervous wreck. I’m not sure what I was expecting from Raj’s daughter, but I really, really wanted her to like me. And to agree to help us, of course. That was obviously the most important thing. Not her approval of me as her dad’s girlfriend. It’s not like she was a potential stepchild. ACK! Too many thoughts.

  Midnight came and went, and Raj didn’t appear. Emma and Florence both went to sleep about two, but I stayed up with the bottle of wine, pacing.

  It was almost five when someone knocked at the door. I pulled it open almost before the knocking had stopped. Raj stumbled in with a woman in his arms. They looked completely exhausted. I moved out of Raj’s way and he stumbled to the bed, dropping the woman, and then collapsing on it himself. I remembered how terrible he’d looked when he appeared a few days ago; this method of travel over long distances must be extremely exhausting.

  “I looked terrible?” he asked, sounding affronted.

  I smiled, leaned forward for my kiss, and said, “Moderately terrible, yes. Do you need something to eat?”

  “Yes, but not you, not now. We’ll be okay in a half hour or so, and that’ll give us enough time to find something to tide us over until evening. That and a couple days will be enough to ready us for the coming battle. We’ll drink fully before heading out for the big fight.”

  The woman was looking a little better already. “That was simply horrible,” she said in delightful Scandinavian-tinged English. “Never do that to me again.”

  “I make no promises, Trina, but for now, we will travel only under our own power.”

  She sat up and looked around the room. Emma and Florence were both awake now and waiting to be introduced to the Swedish vampire.

  She looked at me and held out her hand. “You must be Eleanor. My father has spoken of you. I am Petrina.”

  I shook her hand and smiled. “It’s nice to meet you, Petrina. Thank you for agreeing to help. I indicated the others in the room. “This is Emma,” she stepped forward to shake hands, “and Florence.” I tried not to notice the extra spark of interest that lit in Petrina’s eyes when she shook hands with Florence. I didn’t want to think anything at all when my thoughts weren’t safe.

  “Trina cannot read minds the way I can,” Raj said aloud.

  “Florence still can,” I said.

  “We should go, though. We both need a snack and we will sleep through the day. We only stopped so you wouldn’t worry.”

  I wanted to assert that I hadn’t been worried, but since that was a lie, I just stayed silent.

  “Also, I wanted a kiss. Since we’re dating.”

  “I just kissed you, so you should be good to go now,” I said.

  He grinned a wicked, wicked grin, and I felt heat spreading out from the center of my being. “Maybe we could step outside for a minute and discuss the adequacy of that kiss in greater detail.”

  Chapter Nine

  RAJ AND PETRINA didn’t appear at sunset, and I took that to mean they’d decided to do the recon before reporting in. I ate the dinner/breakfast that appeared, barely tasting the food, and then paced until Florence suggested I head over to the gym to work out my tension.

  I glowered before admitting she was right. Even though the gym was only a couple blocks away, I still had to bundle up to get there without the cold becoming too much for me. I hoped I’d be able to warm up quickly in a fight, or I was going to be useless in our battle to retake the nature park.

  When I got to the gym, I stripped down to my leggings and tank top and did some sprints up and down the length of the gym until a sheen of sweat broke over my skin, and I was breathing rapidly. Then, after a look around verified I was alone, I stripped and shifted. I wanted to try to fly outside as a dragon to see if I could but needed to make sure I was warm enough first.

  Once I’d stretched my wings, I shifted to my bipedal form, ran outside, and shifted again. Before I could register the cold, I launched myself in the air. I’d been avoiding flying in populated areas, but I reasoned that there were no streetlights, and I was in a werewolf town anyway. If someone saw me, they’d either assume they were hallucinating or figure the wolves had something big up their sleeves.

  I was able to stay warm enough as long as I didn’t stop moving, and after an hour or so, I went back to the gym, shifted, and ran inside.

  I wasn’t paying attention to my surroundings, and when I went to retrieve my clothes, there were three men waiting for me. I recognized Jason and one of the others as the wolves who’d paid a visit when I was practicing with Emma. The third man, standing in front of the other two and emanating menace and power, was obviously the Alpha.

&nb
sp; I mostly ignored them and concentrated on getting dressed. I might be an expert at nude fighting, but I wasn’t about to have a naked conversation with three werewolves if I had any other options.

  No one spoke until I was fully clothes, rearmed, and walked to the middle of the gym to face them.

  “You’re the Fae,” the Alpha said.

  “I’m Eleanor,” I stuck out my hand. He ignored it, and since I didn’t want to humiliate him in front of his pack—yet—I let it go. “And you are?”

  “I’m the Alpha.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Duh. I’m assuming that’s not your name, though. I’m not going to call you ‘The Alpha,’ any more than you’re going to call me ‘Your Majesty,’ though, so you might as well tell me your first name.”

  He stared at me, and I met his gaze. I refused to be intimidated by this shifter. He was packing more power than Greg—the late Alpha of the Black Hills pack before Rebecca, his now-widow, took him out and claimed the pack for herself, but not more than Christopher or Luis in St. Louis, and certainly not more than Isaac. I wasn’t even sure that he was stronger than Emma if she’d ever let herself go.

  “Bruce,” he said, grudgingly.

  I don’t know why that struck me as funny, but it did. I inadequately tried to smother a laugh.

  “Okay, Bruce.” I giggled a bit and then bit my tongue to stop myself. I really didn’t want to insult him. “How can I help you?”

  “You are taking on our enemies tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow after sunset, yes,” I confirmed.

  “I wanted to assess your skills to make sure you were up to the task.”

  I immediately felt defensive, then reminded myself that he’s the one who hired us. I didn’t need to prove myself.

  “And?”

  “You look weak.”

  “I’m not.”

  “That’s what I’ve heard,” he said, a sideways glance to his right where Jason was standing revealed his source. He was doubting his second in command and came to see me in person. I was honored.