In the Beginning... (63 page)

She was shaking in front of him, pale and
frightened, but he had no time to deal with her. He grabbed her arm
and pulled her from the grotto. He shoved her toward the doors to
where her family waited. He had no time to be gentle. Not now.

And screw Rydere’s edict against him leaving the
resort. Fire threatened them all—his
Rajni
included.
Rydere’s orders meant little compared to that one simple fact.

Someone needed to head toward the smoke and
investigate.

Who better than he?

He waited until she was gone before shifting.

What would it do to the little girl to know that the
main result of her grandfather’s fucking with his life had resulted
in this peculiar little gift no one else knew about?

Whatever Taniss had done to him had involved both
druid and mage blood—mixed with shifter.

With his sense of humor how could he not pick the
bat as his favored animal form?

He was a damned vampire, after all.

***

Cass could feel the earth screaming as the fire
scorched across its surface. Didn’t anyone else hear it? Feel it?
How could they sit so calmly eating while the forest around them
burned? Didn’t they care?

Emily looked up when Cass burst into the dining
room. Everyone who was still in this world was at the
table—Mallory, Josey, Jade. Their men. Others. “Cass? What’s
wrong?”

“Fire. There’s a fire; we smelled it. Nalik…Nalik
said tell Rydere.” She wanted to cover her ears, but didn’t.

Rydere, Aodhan and Cormac all stood. Barlaam reached
for an intercom. Rydere wrapped a hand around her arm and pulled
her over to the table. “Sit. I’ll find Black and see what’s going
on.”

“Can’t you feel it? Smell it? Jade?”

Jade wrapped her arms around Cass. “They’ll take
care of it. Barl, what does happen here in case of a fire?”

“We evacuate. Depending on the severity and
direction. Our head of security monitors the US Forestry Service
and FEMA radio chatter.” Barlaam had a hand on Jade’s back, and he
patted Cass’s hair with the other. “She needs a blanket. It’s
chilly in here.”

Cass felt a blanket draped over her a few moments
later. But it didn’t matter. She was burning, her skin blazing hot
as the earth heated up nearby.

Why did they not feel it yet? Was it just her? If
so, why had
Equan
Black believed her?

Chapter Three

It was foolishness, an evacuation of this magnitude,
but the Dhar had left it too damned long. Nalik fought the urge to
point that out to Rydere, as the crowd of their people milled
around them more than twenty-four hours after Nalik had
investigated the damned fire.

Rydere had not asked nor heeded Nalik’s council in
thirty years, what was to say the other male would start again now?
Evacuating fifteen thousand people from a fire that both he and
Rydere knew hadn’t been set by a damned fucking human. But Nalik
hadn’t figured out exactly who or what had started the fire that
still burned. On two sides of their town.

Evacuation was now required of everyone in the city
and surrounding area. The hope was that the hotel building itself
would survive.

Nalik knew that hope was probably useless.

The human girl was there, pale and willowy, near the
rest of the females of her family. Had she no males around? Other
than that damned Lupoiux wolf sniveling beneath the wolf god’s rule
in Levia? Were there none to step up in her father’s stead?

The bonds of his responsibility to his Rajni had him
moving to stand behind her. She did not turn, did not acknowledge
him. Why should she? He had spoken so little to her, and what he
had, it had not been good.

But she didn’t look frightened or worried. She
looked ill. Hurt. His decision was made easily in that moment. He
placed his hands on her shoulders and turned her. Her green eyes
were clouded and she trembled. “Cassandra? What ails you?” Where
were the healers? Jareth’s
Rajni
? Barlaam? A rush of panic
unlike anything he’d experienced in thirty years filled him. “Tell
me.”

Her lips moved. No sounds escaped. He fought every
instinct he possessed calling for him to pull her against him and
fight whatever threatened her.

“Cassandra?”

“Can’t you hear the screams?”

The only screams he heard were the ones of the
beings who’d died in her grandfather’s laboratory. Those screams
played over and over in his head every time he closed his eyes. But
he doubted those were the screams she meant. “No. Who?”

“The trees. The plants. All of them. They’re crying
out as the fire kills them. I hear it, and I can’t make it stop!”
Small feminine fingers clung to his
vestis
. Her head barely
reached his shoulder, though she was taller than average for a
human woman. He was taller than average for a Dardaptoan male.
“Please.”

“It’ll stop, girl. As soon as you leave this world
and enter the next. Clamp your hands over your ears, if
needed.”

“I don’t want to go to the demon world. I want to go
home.” Her whisper nearly broke him, and the pleading in her eyes
almost finished him. But he could not do what she asked of him.
They both knew that.

Where were the others? Those responsible for this
female? Shouldn’t Rydere or this girl’s sister have stayed with
her? There were several Tanisses milling about the growing crowd.
Shouldn’t she be with her own Kind? Or were the Taniss females as
heartless as the grandfather? How could they not look at their
young cousin and miss the suffering? Damn them all. “You’re not
going home. You’re going to Relaklonos. You’ll be safe there.” And
away from him. He couldn’t hurt her there, and she be surrounded by
some damned powerful demons in that world. One of which she claimed
was near on to family to her. She’d be safe. “Your sister will be
there.”

“No. They’re taking her to Levia, wherever that is.
I’m supposed to be going with Mickey, Mal, Jade, and Josey.” Her
hands slipped up to cover her ears. “I can’t think right now.” She
rocked, tried to close in on herself.

Why?

He looked around at the crowd pushing in on them.
Several of his Kind were repeating her actions, and he cataloged
them. Ruanth and Clayr, both of Adrastos House, Mig of Awan House,
four people from the Jareth House.

Realization hit him. Each and every one of them were
females from druidic mothers or fathers. “You’re Druid.”

She didn’t stop rocking. Did she realize she was
using his chest to shield her from the rest of the room? He forced
his hands off of her shoulders, but what in the three hells was he
supposed to do with them? She was too close for him not to touch
her. He settled for placing one hand on her back and the other hung
at his side. His Rajni, in his arms. How often had he dreamed of
such?

Druid. It would explain her odd attraction to the
plants of their world. Druids gained strength from the soil, the
richer in nutrients the better. Many also had the ability to heal
the earth when it was scarred.

But how did an ordinary human female of no great
years become Druid when no one else in her immediate family showed
the same signs?

Was there truth to the few rumors he’d heard of
Taniss experimenting on his own grandchildren? He’d heard the
rumors several months ago, but had discounted them as fallacy.

Why not?

He himself was living proof that Taniss had played
around with things no human had right to.

His fingers tangled in her hair and he turned them
both abruptly. If she was Druidic—any part of her—then a raging
forest fire would be harder for her than others. And she didn’t
need anyone watching her as she struggled to deal with it. “Well,
where’s Jareth and his female, then?”

He searched for them himself, and found them near
the east wall. His own House stood nearby, pitiful in numbers
compared to the Jareth House, or the Sebastos beside it. Half his
people had chosen the demon world. And the other half the deities.
No other of the ten Dardanos Houses had chosen to fracture the way
his had.

He’d heard the talk amongst his Kind when none
thought he was close enough to hear.

A vampire had superior hearing, after all. That was
one of the traits the girl’s grandfather had sought to enhance with
his damned Frankampire. “Get ahold of yourself. I’ll take you to
your cousin.”

And then he’d watch her disappear into the demon
world forever. It was for the best. He knew it.

It couldn’t happen fast enough for him.

Chapter Four

He left her with her cousin; the one who did not
hear or speak. She stared at him, but took the girl lovingly in her
embrace. The cousin nodded at him, her green eyes questioning. He
said nothing, not even to the male who was always at the cousin’s
side. He had no liking for Cormac Jareth, despite the history they
shared. They had hunted together once, slaying demons who’d strayed
into their world. Been friends. Trusted each other with their very
lives.

Ironic, that they now sent their peoples’ children
and women into the demon world for safety.

How poorly Rydere had led their people these last
thirty years.

He turned his back on his
Rajni
and walked
away, his decision made. He would not be accompanying his people to
the demon world. He held too much distrust for the occupants of
that world, and with her there, too much distrust of himself.

But the land of the goddess had no draw for him.
He’d despised that female for three decades for what she’d allowed
to happen to his sister, and he would not place himself in her
charity. Yet Rydere had made it clear that Nalik was to leave
Dardanos with the rest of their people. Preferably in a direction
opposite of the one in which Rydere was taking his female.

Theoretically Nalik understood it. A traitor still
hid within the ranks of Nalik’s House, one who had threatened the
precious little female of the
Dahr
. Why wouldn’t Rydere
suspect him? He’d been hated and loathed since he’d been found in
that damned laboratory. That was made clear to him by the touch of
eyes upon him as he passed. Multiple gazes, multiple people nervous
and frightened of him, of the vicious scar that dissected his
cheek. Dardaptoans didn’t scar.

But then again, he was no longer a true Dardaptoan,
was he?

Did some of these whelps know that? Did they
understand that if he so chose to, he could kill them with barely a
thought? That he truly was a monster amongst them? That he was
exactly what Leo Taniss had wanted?

A damned freak, with the abilities of more than a
dozen Kinds, with none of the power or strength. And only his
tenuous hold on what ethics he’d had drilled into him by his
grandfather to keep him from acting on those angry impulses.

Ethics, and a damned vow of passivism.

The best damned hunter, fighter, of his people, now
espoused passivist philosophy. What would these people staring at
the freak amongst them think of that? He could imagine the derision
and scorn that would be greeted with.

What would the girl think, knowing what he was?
Knowing that some bitch goddess had fated her to be with the likes
of him?

Yeah. She’d hate him more than his own mother
did.

Nalik scanned the people gathered, looking for the
woman who’d whelped him. She wasn’t hard to find, hard to hear. She
held court near the crowd headed toward the goddess world. No demon
world for his mother; she would consider such a place to be filth
beneath her.

Someone screamed, someone behind him. He turned,
hand going to the sword strapped to his hip. He had told no one of
his vow, and the sword was expected. So he wore his sword. And
almost seven hundred years’ worth of habit and defense was
something hard for him to break. What did he expect to find, to
battle, that would require a sword in a supposed modern time such
as this?

It was probably some cowardly female or youth
unprepared for the way of inter-realm travel. That’s all it could
be. The mists of openings between the worlds were growing near the
centers of each group. They would be at the chosen destinations in
a matter of moments. Provided the screamers weren’t ruining it for
everyone.

He stepped toward the screaming, a last vestige of
the protector he had once been pushing him. His gaze immediately
sought out his female. He would never claim her, but when he was
able he would protect her. He could do no less than that. He owed
the girl at least that much, and with a traitor amongst his own
family, with a bounty upon her head, that was why he’d stayed in
Dardanos this past twelve months. But once she was in the demon
realm, he would be responsible for her safety no longer.

It would rest in the hands of Jareth and Adrastos,
mates of her cousins, but no real relative of hers.

That did not sit well with him in that moment. Not
when he thought deeply upon it.

Their own females were threatened by this traitor;
why would they spare a moment to worry about the young human girl
with no apparent mate nearby?

Why should they?

The screams grew louder, more than one voice.
Female. Where was his?

He thought he saw her, near the back corner. Away
from the portkey ether. Too many damned people separated him from
her. He shoved some out of his way; others got the message and
nearly dove out of his path.

At least his reputation came in handy.

As the last bunch of idiots got out of his way, it
became clear who was screaming.

The deaf girl. Her sister, there by Barlaam—who was
doing his damnedest to get through the crowd toward...

Cassandra.

She was screaming, her terror ripping into his
heart.

He started shoving, pushing people too stupid to
move out of his way.