Exile: Sídhí Summer Camp #3 (8 page)

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 snorted silently. 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. Well, six-thousand physical years but that
still counted.

“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 also irritated that 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, keeping her emotions reigned in tightly
behind an uncaring mask of ice.

Brianna shrugged her shoulders carelessly,
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-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 wondered if
Beth was a member of the Khr'Vurr as well.

The idea was not an enjoyable one, and she
had to stifle 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 appeared
slowly 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.

The hair on Sarah's neck prickled. She hissed
through her teeth at the instinctive warning of danger.

Inhaling through her nose, she sorted through
the various scents and froze. She caught a trace of Clarisse, and
even worse, she smelled rotten eggs. Trolls!

She glanced behind her. No trolls. No
movement. The cavern remained empty. Something didn't feel right.
She felt like she stood behind a glass wall watching an undefined
danger approach, while hoping the danger wouldn't smash through the
thin barrier. She shook her head, trying to clear it of the cottony
feel that persisted. The movement didn't help.

Her instinct screamed louder, urging her to
fight but darned if she could figure out why.

Brianna squirmed, but stayed securely against
the wall.

Quiet as a tomb, the lack of noise within the
vast cave continued uninterrupted.

She rolled her head side-to-side, popping her
neck. Nothing helped stop the building sense of doom.

She hissed slowly through her teeth. Doom?
She was getting as melodramatic as Emily.

Brianna started snapping her teeth together,
which didn't make a darn bit of sense. If the girl wanted to
communicate, she could say the words telepathically. Her teeth
chomping accomplished nothing, except to create a small irritating
noise in the dead silence. The silly movement also shifted Sarah's
claws a bit deeper into the young girl's neck.

Young? Well, crap! Her thoughts screeched to
a halt.

Sarah sheathed her claws and loosened her
steel-fingered grasp.

Brianna sucked in a huge gulp of air.
Choking, her shoulders shuddered as she coughed and gasped in quick
succession.

The blood dripping down Brianna's neck turned
Sarah's fingers red. The rich color seemed to criticize her lack of
intelligence, especially when the small wounds lining the nineteen
year olds neck didn't start healing.

Sarah grumbled silently, berating herself.
She knew better. As far as outward appearances went, Brianna was
past puberty. Tall, blonde, and as Sarah's brother would say, ‘she
had a killer body’.

Looks were deceiving. Sarah continued
hammering herself. She had already figured out Brianna was in her
puberty cycle so it stood-to-reason the girl might not be old
enough to mentally answer.

Releasing her hold, Brianna dropped to the
ground like a sack of potatoes.

The girl rocked back and forth, clutching her
abused neck. Her rasping groans continued for several moments. When
the muscles along her shoulders and legs tightened, Sarah knew the
girl was faking it.

Arching a single eyebrow, she watched
dispassionately. The girl remained kneeling on all fours as she
struggled to breathe in a convincing manner. “I never thought a
phoenix would join the Khr'Vurr.”

“Phoenix? Khr'Vurr?” Brianna rasped in
question. Shaking her head, she stopped play-acting and glared up.
Her eyes didn’t focus on Sarah. Instead, her pale blue eyes slid
past Sarah’s waiting gaze, growing huge.

The girl uttered a shriek of pure terror.

At Brianna’s blood-curdling scream, Sarah
snapped her head upward toward the high ceiling. Her ice-cold
features contorted and she bared her fangs in a warning growl.

Several dozen cave trolls swiftly crawled
across the ceiling in a flow of movement.

Nearly hairless, dark burgundy bodies dotted
the ceiling. Ropes of thick muscle bulged as the large, ape-like
trolls used long, black claws to anchor themselves to the rocky
surface.

She locked eyes with the largest troll. A
single fight for dominance was better than having all of them
attack at once. Boldly, she stepped across Nick and roared a
challenge.

The troll’s wide jaws dropped open and the
creature howled at her, baring inch-long, yellow fangs. The sound
changed, going from a deep-throated howler monkey sound into a
hyena-like laughter.