I felt more comfortable in the dark—I didn't have the hot sun glaring down on me and making me wish for the darkest of sunglasses. The night was cooler, too, and I could listen better—the noise of thousands of horses clopping along wasn't confusing everything. The scents carried better on the breeze as well—everything was quiet except for a few guards walking the perimeter. The wind was blowing past me that night, which meant I got the scents from the camp instead of what was in front of me. More than anything, I wanted to turn to mist and check things out that way, but figured I was in enough trouble as it was.
Roughly two hours before dawn, when I'd been walking my little section of the perimeter I caught a sound, although the wind was doing its best to carry it away from me. I stopped still, trying to catch it again. While I stood there, wondering if my ears had played tricks on me, my skin began to itch. Then I heard it. I'd heard that sound before—René had died shortly after.
Arrows! I sent the mental shout to anybody with the talent to hear me. I didn't wait, either; I knew where that sound originated and I misted in that direction as quickly as I could. The camp was boiling behind me as the first volley was released. Falchani fought without shields. Arrows could be swift and deadly if something wasn't done about them.
I found the archers in a ravine roughly two hundred yards north of the Falchani camp. The enemy sent a second volley while I'd misted like a bullet in their direction. There were twenty of them and they all died, trying to fight an enemy they couldn't see. They'd hit me in the upper arm, though, when I materialized enough to take heads.
The camp was still boiling over when I walked back inside the perimeter, wondering what the best way was to remove an arrow from my arm. The metal point had gone clean through and was sticking out on the other side, making it difficult to move my right arm, in addition to hurting like hell.
Dragon was suddenly in front of me, the usual scowl on his face. "They're all dead," I muttered, stalking past him.
"Lissa, you have a fucking arrow in your arm," he snarled.
"Like I didn't notice?" I kept walking.
"Baby, we have to get you into the tent," Drew was beside me—Drake too, and they were hustling me toward our tent. Dragon had probably sent them mindspeech. I didn't really give a damn at the moment. I was ready to break the point of the arrow off myself and jerk it out—it hurt. All I had to do was reach the fucking point to begin with.
"Lissa, what happened?" Amara was inside the tent waiting for me. Griffin was there, too, but he was standing back to allow Amara the healer to take over.
"About twenty archers, two hundred yards north of here, that's what happened," I grumped. "They were downwind; otherwise I would have smelled them long ago. The wind was carrying the sound away, too, until I heard the bowstrings being pulled back. That's how René died, you know. He was shot through the heart with a wooden arrow, when the Dark Elemaiya came through the gate in Kansas City." I was babbling and hadn't realized it. "Where's Karzac?" I asked. I figured if any healer was going to show up, it would probably be him.
"Karzac's busy," Griffin said. I blinked at my father.
"Gracie's pregnant; Karzac is going to get his child, after all these years," Amara said softly while she sheared off the arrow point using power. Well, if anybody wanted to deal me a blow to the system, along with the arrow through my arm—that would be the way to do it. Karzac had gotten Grace pregnant. I couldn't get pregnant. Ever. I went completely still.
"Amara, that should have waited for another time," Griffin said. Amara was pulling the arrow out of my arm and she was left staring at the bloody shaft in her hand as I misted away.
Chapter 5
I hadn't tried to bend time before, but I did it then. My arm was still bleeding sluggishly while I stood outside Howard Graham's cell at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester. It was late afternoon there and sunlight shone through the tiny window in his cell. He looked a lot older than when I'd last seen him inside the county courthouse. Now he'd been sober for a while and he had six months left before a stroke would kill him.
"Who's there?" The sunlight was glaring, keeping him from seeing me clearly. He'd been sitting on his bunk so he stood and moved to the other side of the cell to get a clearer view.
"You should know who it is," I snapped. He walked forward, then, so he could peer at me through the bars of his cell.
He didn't say anything for a long time; he just stared. Finally he spoke. "You look like your mother," he said.
"I don't. My mother was beautiful. They had to keep the casket closed because her face was nothing but a bloody pulp." I wasn't going to mince words. Howard Graham and I hadn't spoken since he'd nearly killed me when I was nineteen.
"You weren't mine." Well, some things would never change.
"I know I wasn't yours," I said right back to him. "I didn't find out until recently, but it's true. If you had a child, you shithead, he would probably be sharing a cell with you, right now. Your less than honorable attorney paid under the table for a DNA test and bribed somebody to draw the blood during one of my doctor visits," I said. "I got the information from his legal files.""He told me," Howard Graham agreed, nodding his head. At least he didn't stink of gin, now. That's one of the things I remembered about him—the smell of gin on his breath when he'd yell. He'd had to dry out when he went to jail. "I have a couple of friends here and we talk when we're allowed out of our cells to exercise," Howard Graham went on. "One of them has a son, who's eleven. All he talks about is that boy. I asked him once what he'd do if he found out the boy wasn't his. He just looked at me like I was crazy. And then he told me this; 'Howard,' he said. 'I was beat up when I was a kid. Went to bed hungry, too, lots of nights. I don't want any kid dealing with what I lived with, growing up. I don't care if that boy belongs to the mailman or the neighbor next door. He's not gonna suffer, if I can help it.'"
"So, he's a decent man, as far as kids go, then," I muttered. "What's he in for?"
"Dale's in for involuntary manslaughter. Ran a stop sign while he was drunk. He'll be out in six months."
"So, I'm supposed to believe that because some friend of yours you met in jail turned on the light, you're a changed man, now?" He wasn't going to convince me of that.
"No. I still get upset about it," Howard Graham said, sighing and shaking his head. "I couldn't help it. Still can't. But you have to believe me when I say I did love your mother. I just didn't know how to handle this." He gestured toward me.
"That makes me feel so much better, especially since you killed her and all," I retorted.
"What are you doing now?" he asked, changing the subject. I just stared at him for a moment, shocked at the question. "I'm Queen of Le-Ath Veronis," I said. "If you don't know what that means, watch this." I gave him the best hiss I could with fangs, claws, red eyes and everything. I turned to mist, too, right in front of him, while he screamed his lungs out for the guards.
* * *
"What?" I wasn't a pleasant sight, I'm sure, when I became myself inside the tent. Only a few minutes had elapsed since I'd disappeared but now Dragon, Crane and Devin were inside the tiny tent with Drake, Drew, Amara and Griffin. I still had fangs, claws and red eyes when I got there, so I had to pull all that back to normal.
"Lissa, where have you been?" Dragon was trying to keep his voice civil.
"Well, I hear Grace and Karzac are about to be parents. So I went to visit Howard Graham inside his jail cell. The only thing different about him was that he was sober."
"Lissa, is he still alive?" Griffin asked softly.
"Oh, yeah. The old bastard was still alive when I left him," I grumbled. "Is there any more pleasant news you'd all like to drop in my lap to make my life complete?"
"Lissa, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said anything," Amara told me, looking at my arm. I'd forgotten about it during my conversation with Howard Graham.
"Why should you be sorry? You don't have to apologize to me," I told her. "We're in the same boat, you and I. We're not getting kids. All you got was a Queen bitch vampire for a stepdaughter. There's no justice in that for you. You deserve better. You deserve a child of your own, Amara. Don't you think so?"
"Lissa." Dragon said right beside me.
"What?" I turned to look at him. His fingers touched my forehead before I could stop him and I collapsed like a sack of grain.
* * *
"Every one of them, decapitated. Quite neatly, too, Warlord."
"What happened?" The Warlord studied his Lord Marshall while he sipped a cup of tea inside his tent.
"The girl gave a warning to her superior, as I understand it, and since she was closest, went after the archers herself. I spoke with her tribal leader earlier. He said the arrows were going to do a great deal of damage if we waited until we had men gathered to go after them. The girl ran to the ravine where they were hiding and stopped them after only two volleys. She took an arrow in her right arm—thankfully, she's left-handed—and managed to kill the archers while they were scrambling to get away. All they'd brought with them were their bows. They couldn't fight her in close quarters."
"We need to find out if they have more trained archers. It will not be good news if they do. Granted we have some shields with us, but not nearly enough and many of the warriors do not know how to use them." The Warlord set down his cup and frowned.
"We've only dealt with a few archers here and there—this is the first time they've banded together," Wolf, the Lord Marshall acknowledged. "The General is out visiting the wounded—we're lucky we only lost one man in the attack."