Emma (Dark Fire) (36 page)

Chuckling, she silently promised to pay him back for his insult, while nodding her head in agreement with his plans for Beth. “You mean your new chosen Alpha Prime will lick our feet after putting her on the throne.”

He grunted. “True. And poor little Beth doesn’t have a clue that the traitor has been within an arm’s reach for her entire reign.”

Clarabelle smiled smugly. “And the dragon council?”

His smile turned dark. Deadly anticipation flared deep in his eyes. “They couldn't find their backside with both hands. At the emergency meeting, Cornelia announced she has made contact with Chi’Kehra,” he said in a snarl, gently rubbing his hand over her chest where Chi’Kehra's spear had punctured her right lung, while the second pierced her heart. “If that isn't bad enough, the high councilwoman announced she is working toward an alliance with a second extremely powerful individual.” He snorted. “The rumors in the council range from the ancient Princess Serena to the phoenix prince.”

“Cornelia will have better luck on an alliance with Prince McKenzie – who was quite mad before his disappearance – than with Chi’Kehra.” Clarabelle chuckled evilly, rubbing her body against his. “The high councilwoman can't make an alliance with someone that's in our hip pocket.”

Hot air hissed through his teeth, and his deep satisfaction raced through her blood. “You captured the Chi’Kehra’s mate? What’s his name? Nick?”

“His capture hasn’t been confirmed, but the gnome in charge of the trolls watched the attack,” she said, not admitting her original plan had been messed-up when the mites attacked. “Lady Sarah ended up with two stingers in her back as she protected him. The gnome and trolls should reach them in plenty of time. Even being Chi’Kehra, she won’t be immune to the mite poison.”

He nodded his head thoughtfully. “If the trolls fail, we’ll be better off with Chi’Kehra dead than an ally to the council. See to it that she is either killed before the mite poison wears off or that we have her mate as a hostage.”

Chapter - Mite Poison

Brianna's pointed question as to how Sarah escaped the mite feeding tube caught Sarah off guard. Not reacting wasn’t easy, but years of training kept Sarah’s face unmoving in an emotionless mask. One wrong step and her house of cards would go tumbling. The worst part of the entire situation was it wouldn't take a very big step, because her cards were starting to look like Swiss cheese.

“The other vampires still have their claws,” Sarah said calmly.

Brianna snorted. “Yeah, half an inch on the hand opposite of the silver cuff. When you came out of that tube and started ripping the shroud off Nick, you had three-inch claws on both hands. Even with silver on, you could kill a shifter in animal form.”

“I react oddly to poison. It’s possible the mite poison enhanced my Sídhí abilities instead of restricting them.”

“I agree that mite poison is weird stuff. It causes intense pain and blocks most of our Sídhí abilities, but it doesn’t stop a vampire’s claws or teeth.” She waved to Sarah’s bracelet, saying in an argumentative voice, “that much silver should stop your claws.”

Sarah glanced down, gazing into Nick's sleeping face. She searched her brain for an answer, but the sluggish thing refused to spit out an answer. She couldn’t very well give Brianna the complete truth. She snorted to herself. No, the truth was not an option. Who would believe her body was flooded with enough synth crystal that her synth laced blood reacted against the stinger and the natural Sídhí poison, violently shoving the stinger and poison out of her body? Not a soul. At least, not anyone who wouldn't ask dozens of questions and probably guess she was Chi’Kehra.

Sarah shrugged and knelt beside Nick. She took a deep, steadying breath, rhythmically caressing his silky black hair. He helped her without his knowledge. She couldn't explain the odd reaction. They hadn't bonded, but touching him calmed her.

When Sarah didn’t answer, Brianna continued, “The guardians in Haven Valley use hollow point bullets. Each bullet is fairy created and filled with mite juice blended with silver. The shell bursts after the bullet enters the body. Most people take an hour or more to wake-up. The more bullets, the longer it takes.”

Sarah narrowed her eyes, trying to force her brain to open her mouth, but Brianna wasn't finished.

“You got hit with stingers filled with concentrated mite juice.” Brianna held up two fingers as she made her next point. “And your shirt is ripped where the stingers entered your back in two different places. Without someone to rip out the stingers, you should still be unconscious.”

Sarah swallowed a curse. Brianna was proving as methodical as other members of her deadly race.

Sarah took a deep breath, ready to plunge into her explanation. If her hurried words didn't convince the girl, she'd silence Brianna by making the girl permanently disappear, but it wasn't the solution she preferred.

She silently snorted. She didn't like the idea, but Mac would love it. He would give up nearly anything for Brianna to be dumped into the restricted Phoenix Valley, anything just as long as they'd have another female phoenix.

She had never understood why every phoenix was rabid about mating within their race. Perhaps that unusual racial hiccup was why Mac, who was over six-thousand years old, didn’t have a mate.

“I don't know about Haven Valley, but in Trellick Valley for the last thirty or so years we've started having unusual gifts pop-up. I don't know why, but the synth crystal in my body is a bit different than most. It reacts to a foreign object in my body and disposes of it.” Sarah hedged her answer the best she could, twisting partial truths with lies. “I guess the synth cleansed me of the poison and I woke-up in the tube.”

“A foreign object? You mean like a bullet or something or just poison?” Brianna asked, seeming more curious than anything else.

Sarah sighed, relieved the girl seemed to be accepting her badly scripted lie, but irritated she had to embellish the untruth a bit farther. A lie was only good for one thing and that was getting the teller caught up in the deception. “Yes, a stinger or poison, anything like that.”

“Then why didn't the synth shove that arrow out of your shoulder?” Brianna asked. Crossing her arms over her stomach, a look of calculation stuck on her face making her youthful appearance look grim.

Sarah got to her feet, stepping over Nick until she stood between her defenseless mate and Brianna. The honeycomb towered in front of her, quietly looming behind the girl. “Exactly how did you know I was shot with an arrow?” Sarah said in a very calm, soft voice. Her emotions tightly reigned in behind an uncaring mask of ice.

Brianna carelessly shrugged her shoulders, grinning as she struck a nerve.

Sarah moved swiftly, her years of experience kicked in as her fingers reached for the girl’s neck.

Brianna reacted. Slipping out of Sarah’s reach, the short-haired blonde twisted and kicked at Sarah.

Sarah dodged the well-aimed hit, catching Brianna in the ribs with a return kick.

Hard striking hits and kicks flew back and forth.

Seeing an opening, Sarah lunged forward. Ignoring a sharp crack to her ribs, she grasped the girl around her neck.

Sarah's fingers quickly tightened around the girl’s throat. Her lips twitched, immensely enjoying the physical release of her pent-up emotions.

Air flowing into the girl stopped. Brianna snapped her mouth open trying to breathe.

Sarah’s fingers dug deeper, shoving the girl backward until Brianna’s head thumped against the rock wall. She allowed the girl to see a flicker of satisfaction glint through her vivid blue eyes.

“You will answer me,” Sarah said in a lethal voice that sent a shiver of caution up her own spine.

She watched Brianna’s eyes turn pure silver. A reaction that might have been deadly had the girl reached the next phase in her twenty-one day puberty cycle.

Brianna's mouth opened, but nothing came out. The girl didn’t give up easily. Moving with precision, she attacked Sarah with her hands and feet, anything that she could move.

Sarah shifted out of the way, barely missing a knee Brianna thrust at her.

Brianna punched outward, rapidly taking another shot at Sarah. The heel of Brianna’s right hand hit her square in the side, on the lower edge of her ribs.

Sarah grunted as pain shot through her body. Her arm deflected a second and third attack. Curling her lip, less in pain than in distaste, she grabbed Brianna's left arm and flipped her, face-first against the wall. Tightening an arm around Brianna, she gripped the girl's soft neck with claw-tipped fingers. Flexing tense fingers, she kept the pressure firm, without breaking the skin.

Easing forward, she softly repeated her order at the base of the girl’s skull. “I don't play nice and I never bluff. Answer or you'll feel exactly how deep my claws can go. For each minute you don’t answer, my claws will sink-in another little bit until I snap your head off your shoulders.”

Sarah laughed, intentionally emphasizing her softly spoken words with her trademark lunatic-like laughter.

Odd, the added twist to her ice queen act had always scared the daylights out of prisoners and friends alike. Even Mac appeared disturbed by her bizarre laughter.

“Trust me, Brianna, you are Sídhí and that means this little game could last hours.”

A breeze swirled past Sarah’s cheek, catching her attention. Startled, she leaned down toward a wide opening. The gentle wind grew stronger. The breeze smelled of a thousand scents. Above all, the air smelled of the fresh outdoors. The blending smelled wild, smelling of trees and flowers, of mountains and deserts, and of alien places.

Confused at the odd mixture, she glanced down the row of tubes. Earlier, she had been so intent on finding Clarisse she had focused on the mud-encrusted tubes, essentially ignoring the half dozen larger tubes, the tubes with glow moss.

She moved to the left, getting a better look into one of the large tubes. The perfectly round opening, nearly three feet wide, glowed with a soft whitish-blue intensity. A solid gust of air blew her hair back as the breeze slid past the tube’s smooth inner walls.

Understanding trickled through her molasses-filled mind.

Glow moss didn't cover the walls, and the tube was definitely not a dead-end. There was no rear wall. The tube was actually a tunnel, slanting sharply downward, quickly disappearing into the unknown.

That wasn’t the only deceptive point. The walls were not perfectly smooth. She looked closer, until her nose nearly touched the surface. Swirls of an etched pattern covered the glass-smooth surface. They curled around the tube in a distinctive design.

The bluish-white glow coming from the narrow tunnel took on an entirely new meaning. She gazed into the tunnel with growing awe. The entire tube was made of synth crystal, glowing with suppressed energy.

A burst of excitement exploded through her chest taking her breath away. She glanced around the cavern, wishing she had time to inspect the honeycomb a bit closer. The archways near the far end of the cavern took on an entirely new light.

She wondered if the dragons had any clue what lay hidden within their valley. She doubted they knew. Either that or they didn't understand the significance of the honeycomb. At first, she hadn't either and she had been searching for one of the Ancient ruins for years.

Well, her dad had been.

The little, mud crusted tubes had thrown her off. The smaller tubes must’ve been added later, because there was no reference to them in the dead Chi’Kehra’s journal. If she could just interpret the notes in the journal and harness the power of the ruin, she had a chance to protect her valley against the Empire.

She snorted. One small problem, the ruins were located in Dragon Valley, not Trellick Valley.

Brianna squirmed, pulling her attention to the girl.

The girl’s face looked slightly blue, while her eyes were solid silver. Her struggle had turned frantic. Not surprising, considering her lack of oxygen

“I asked you a question,” she said coolly.

She shook the girl, but when that didn't work to loosen the girl's tongue she slowly extended her claws, carefully puncturing the girl's neck a hair's width from a major artery. She didn't want the girl passed-out from lack of blood, simply talkative.

It didn't take a genius to understand Sarah's anger. Only the original cabin members, the dragon guardians, and Sarah's attacker knew about the arrow. That left two options: Brianna was either working with the Khr'Vurr or she had watched the attack take place several days earlier.

Well, maybe a third. It was possible one of the others told Brianna about the attack, but she didn't think so. Nick had clammed up tight. Mitch hated the shifters. Katie and Jared knew too much and didn't talk about what they knew. And even though Emily talked non-stop, the shifters had rebuffed her attempts at friendliness. No, she didn't think anyone was talking about the attack.

She automatically placed Brianna in the worst category.

Life within a Sídhí valley wasn't a democracy. The girl needed to convince Sarah that she wasn't a member of the Khr'Vurr, not the other way around. She briefly wondered if Beth was a member of the Khr'Vurr as well.

She stifled a shudder before the physical response had time to ripple down her back.

The Dhark Empire didn't support the so-called Freedom Fighters, but several of the dhark lords did. That was bad enough, but Haven Valley was large and very powerful. The secretive valley was literally a sleeping giant. Having that much power supporting the Khr'Vurr created a nightmare of possibilities.

The average person thought the Khr'Vurr was strictly a dragon-based organization, freedom fighters who struggled against the domineering Dragon Council. The majority of people would be wrong. Over the last few decades, the Khr'Vurr had been indiscriminately adding members from every known valley.

The Khr'Vurr’s deadly strategy had slowly appeared before her family’s watchful gaze. Sarah knew the dragons planned to do more than simply overthrow the Dragon Council. She just wished she knew what those plans entailed.