blood 03 - blood chosen (30 page)

Now the magic of faerie had broken those velvet ties and Scott walked beside her as Combatant rather than soulmate. He still cared, but it was a different care.

Tharell stopped her. “Julia.”

She turned, her hair stirring in the breeze, the dappled sunlight through the trees before them like fallen puzzle pieces. It softened Tharell's almost-black skin to a sparkling lavender haze that rode him like an iridescent layer in a glimmering cloak of flesh. Tharell saw her as a liquid gold apparition, her hair curling at her waist. The gilded cord on the blood red Sidhe's garb became her. The color was bold against her delicate coloring, matching the woman within.

“When can we expect you?”

Julia now understood a promise made to the fey was a serious one; she had been instructed. Oath breakers would be punished, even her. Jason held one of her hands, stroking the knuckles almost absently.

“Don't promise what you can't keep,” Jason reminded her gently, his abrasive defense long gone.

Julia didn't miss it. “I won't.” He squeezed her hand.

She looked at Tharell, and like the Combatant, his size was intimidating. But it was the rawness of not belonging to anyone that struck a resonating chord with Julia. “Soon... before the end of the year.”

“Our time runs differently in faerie. Our magick,” Tharell reminded her.

Julia clarified. “In three more human months.”

“We will use the world's time instead of faerie as a marker,” he said as a partial question.

Julia nodded. “It's the only time I know.”

Tharell smiled. “For now.”

Julia's lips lifted at the corners. “Yes- for now,” she agreed. “Goodbye, Tharell.” Her eyes went to the Sidhe warriors who remained. Who no longer fought for an insane ruler. Possible future allies. They nodded back and Tharell echoed her goodbye, “Until we meet again, Julia of the Singers.”

She went to walk away, then thinking of something critical she called to Tharell and he replied, his bound hair whipping around his body like an errant tail. “Yes, Queen Julia?”

She hated the title but pushed forward. “Thank you for... helping with Jacqueline and Tony.”

“You are most welcome.”

There was such a thing as a jail made of fey magic. It was strong enough to hold Jacqueline until the mess of royalty could be sorted out. Julia needed time, and the fey had given her that by incarcerating Jacqueline and Tony. It'd be enough for a while. But not forever.

They left the mound behind, jailers of the woman who would murder her and Tony, a violent offender.
They deserved each other,
Julia thought.

But it was Adi who summed it up perfectly as the distance grew between them and faerie. The space now looked like any small knoll in the middle of open land between patches of forest. “Queen Wench and King Jackass are where they belong.”

Julia couldn't rouse a smile at Adi's humor but peered over her shoulder at Reagan, thinking she looked sad too. Maybe it was anticlimactic? Reagan impressed Julia as someone who took their vengeance very seriously.

Julia shook it off. She couldn't heal the wounds of everyone. There were several that still oozed the blood of the last two years of her life.

Julia wanted healing. Needed it.

Jason kept her hand in his and Scott took the urn with William's remains as they traveled to Region One, his look contemplative, serious. But he stayed by her side.

They traveled the long journey in relative silence.

All of them locked within the recesses of their own thoughts.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Were

Harriet put his arm out in front of Tai. “Hold up.”

Tai stopped walking, the soft ground thick and squishing between the deeply patterned soles of his boots.

“What?” Tai scanned the deep woods, every shadow looking the same and he inhaled, the sharp scent of cedar and Douglas fir filling his lungs. He was irritated, exhaling the smell of forest in a rush. A worthless hike in the middle of bum-fucked Egypt wasn’t his idea of solid investigative work. Tai Simon wanted done with this. Hell, he wanted a cold beer.

A smile flashed across Tom Harriet's face and was gone. “Y'know, if you weren't such a pansy you'd think of this as an adventure.”

Tai sighed again, Harriet had always been a strange ranger. “Yeah, I'm sure you're yukking up, all Mr. Nature and whatnot.”

Harriet laughed, looking at his partner, more at home playing chess than in the outdoors. “You got that. That broad's cigarette marathon burned my nose hairs.”
Literally
, he thought.

Tai put his hands on his hips, looking deeper into the vast pockets of the forest. “Didn't you say you were from the Colorado wilderness or some survivor's crap like that?” That's when Simon caught sight of it. Brown, solid. Rocks.

“No,” Tom replied, his nostrils flaring in recognition.
Close, very close.

“Where then?” Tai asked absently, moving toward the outcropping of nutmeg-toned boulders.

Tom Harriet watched the broad back of his partner move toward the entrance to the Northwestern Den and felt a hard smile form on his face as he answered, “Alaska.”

Tai turned suddenly back to Harriet, his tone sounding a primal alert as Ford appeared behind him.

*

“Not yet,” Harriet said and Ford backed further away from Simon.

Tai turned. “What the fuck.” His eyes narrowed on Ford then they skirted to Tom Harriet, his partner of two years.

“What the fuck is going on Tom?” Simon asked in a low voice. It was mainly inquiry but suspicion had leaked in there as well.

Tom held up his cell. “I'm sorry Tai, I've been given orders.” His eyes met his partner's with regret. “And they don't include you. Or, they could...?”

The hell with this
, Tai thought as his gun cleared its holster as fast as Harriet knew it would and he put up his hands. “Listen... Tai, don't make us kill you. It doesn't have to be this way.”

“He's not going to make a good gopher, Tom, you gotta know that,” Ford said, his outfit no longer that of a FBI agent but one of someone who was a serious outdoorsman. Or of someone who had an agenda to journey for a time outside.

“Stay where you are,” Simon said, his gun hand steady. Harriet knew that it wouldn't stay that way. There was only so long a person could hold a weapon steady until gravity had its way with you.

“Put the gun up Tai, and we'll talk.” Harriet raised an inoffensive palm, speaking in a soothing way.

“Don't play me, Tom.” Tai gave Harriet cool eyes. Weirdness aside, he was getting his game back on.

Harriet shrugged, letting his hand fall as he continued, “We have a proposition you can't refuse.” What he really meant was an offer Tai shouldn't refuse. Simon heard all of that in one sentence.

Simon's hard eyes met Harriet's. “Fuck that and the Trojan your ass rode in on, partner.”

He said partner like
dick.

Tom sighed.
Shit
. He flicked a glance at Ford, his liaison for the pack. “Show him.”

Simon added a second hand to the grip of his piece, the barrel unwavering from Ford, who was currently performing a striptease.

No reason to ruin perfectly good clothing,
Harriet thought.

“Whatever you're going to do- don't. I Will. Fucking. Shoot,” Tai said.

Harriet knew he meant it.

He didn't shoot in time though. Ford burst his skin in a hurricane of skin and the gore that makes people human, flinging his change at Tai. The shot went high as Ford's talons caught the gun and hooked it into a skating dance of speed and air where it sailed harmlessly into the forest.

A male screaming wasn't a typical sound. People are so accustomed to the idea of a female screaming or being threatened but a man in true fear for his life. A hard man like Tai?

It was something to behold.

He wailed in a pure mix of surprise and terror as Ford's snout got within striking distance of Tai.

“Wait,” Harriet said and it was painful to watch Tom's power arrest the movement of the less alpha Were, Ford. He growled, trying to shake off the neck-tightening rush of energy that laid over him like a chokehold. But he couldn't, Tom was alpha and that was all.

Tom strode to where Tai Simon lay on the ground, his expensive suit ruined by the change of Ford, bits of his human body shed all over Simon. Tai's best feature, those blue eyes that had gotten more conquests into the sack than Harriet could count, were so wide the whites had overcome the blue.

“Tom!” Tai shrieked, wrestling under the five hundred pound black Were, his fur glistening like a wet shadow in the ambient light of the woods.

“Quiet and listen up, Tai.” A few soft huffs of breath from the Were and those shocky eyes went to Tom's. He paused, letting Tai think about his options.

None.

Finally realizing his conundrum, Tai asked in a breathy voice, “What?”

“I am a werewolf.” Tom smiled; sometime telling was showing. “We are seeking some naughty, runaway people of the blood. Karl Truman is the key.”

Tai looked at the Were, whose breath warmed his neck, then back at Harriet. “Okay...” he choked out, “seeing is believing. But what do I have to do with it.” Tom watched his partner’s eyes fill back with a semblance of logic, his humanity reasserting itself and he was glad Tai wasn't going to lose it over the show.

Harriet smiled. “I've always liked you, Tai.” Tai Simon looked at him like he was a liar and Tom supposed he deserved that. Harriet frowned. “This is straight reconnaissance, Tai. You help us retrieve Truman and a few supernaturals who were missed in our initial acquisition, and you can become one of us as a reward.”

Tai looked at Tom, then his eyes moved to the Were above him, the paws driven into his chest. The crushing weight only relieved because his haunches were on the ground. “I think being one of you sounds like a bad plan.”

Ford's form bled until he was wolfen and Tai took a deep breath, trying to find the steady in his new reality and grasping onto nothing. All the straws of logic were firmly out of reach. There was a half-wolf, half-man hanging over him. He could feel himself slipping.

Harriet waggled his finger at Tai, “Ah-no. Don't lose your balls now, Simon. Keep it together.”

Ford growled, “It is help now or die.”

Tai breathed deeply, summoning whatever courage remained. Gunless, on the ground, and between two creatures of legend, he wasn't doing too bad, everything considered. “Shit choices, Tom,” he finally said.

Harriet shrugged.

“Alright,” Tai said slowly. “I guess I'm on board.”

Harriet jerked him up by the hand and they looked at each other. He almost upended him. “Why didn't you just... I don't know, tell me.” He took his hand back as if burned, glaring at Harriet.

Ford looked at him, his hair stuck together by dried gunk from the change and Tai couldn't help but stare back. Especially disconcerting where the werewolf's package, holy fucking crow. “Like what you see, Simon?” the thing named Ford asked.

Simon gulped. “Blown away, more like.” His eyes went to Harriet. His former partner. Because they sure as hell weren't anymore. Tai didn't know what they were.

“We thought it was a botched acquisition and we'd live with the dens of the south getting a hold of that Blood Queen. But then Karl Truman got involved and everything went to hell in a hand basket.” Harriet was oh, so reasonable.

They're certifiable,
Tai thought, backing up a little. Space was better. He couldn't breathe with that thing up his ass and now Harriet was an unknown. Tai was looking at surviving, one moment at a time. The  creature had been on his weapon before he could fire. Hell, it'd been almost before he could
think
to fire. His piece was somewhere in the shadowed ground of the forest now.
Damn
. Disarmed and fucked. What a hot mess this was.

“The Packmaster of the Southeastern tried to kill Truman,” Harriet announced.

Ford was suddenly human and it made Tai jump a foot.
Whoa... shit,
Tai thought, backing up further. More space.

“David bit him and he was a red.” Harriet gave Simon only what he needed to know. “He had Were genetics, and a roll of the damn dice... he's a Red.”

“Wait!” Tai said and they looked at him. “So this cop from Homer, traces these... blood people,” he stabbed at his own memory for the naming and they nodded. “And he gets this close,” Simon made his index and thumb almost touch, “and you try to off him?” He spread his palms out wide from his body, saw the gunk on them and wiped them on his ruined- beyond-repair suit.

“I'm a plant for the Alaskan den.” Tai looked at Harriet and he gave a small bow. “I am not from this pack. Those Blood Singers escaped our region when a Were botched the taking of the Blood Queen. Now, we're stuck in a political conflict of regaining control of our blood population through whatever means necessary.”

Tai stood there for a moment, his mind touching on a hundred questions but stalled on the most important one. “What means?” His eyes searched Tom's.

Harriet laughed. “What other means? We travel to where the blooded people live, take what's ours and acquire Truman. We don't want any rogue Reds in this region. Too much of a wild card.”

“The Packmaster of the Northwestern and Southeastern don't know about Ford here.” Harriet jerked his thumb toward Ford, a tough man, low to the ground, hard and brutal in his bearing.

“This is a lot to take in,” Tai said, buying time. He didn't know how long or well that would work, after all, Tom Harriet would intimately anticipate Tai. They'd been partners for going on two years.

“We'll fill you in more on the way. I had to make sure Ford would follow through before we worked together,” Harriet said. Ford grinned but all Tai could see was the way his other mouth had looked minutes ago and shuddered.

Tai stood straighter, warming to his new role of survival. It was the only choice. Death wasn't a good one. “What's the plan?”

Tom Harriet smiled, pleased. He knew Tai would come around. Some wouldn't have been able to wrap their head around it. “We move north, to where the blooded people dwell. I now have the complete loyalty of Ford and he can identify the other Reds. We'll take them and whatever witnesses there were to the night the pack tried to acquire the blood Queen.”