The welcoming committee, no doubt. She gripped the pruning knife at her hip, ridiculous as a weapon though it was. She hoped her own magic would function in a world designed for banished Fae, but it wasn't the only resource she had. Jacob, as a trained warrior, had taken over many of her combat requirements since his vampire transition. However, she'd fought in the Territory Wars and knew how to handle a variety of weapons. She was also well versed on hand-to-hand fighting techniques. Since most of them had been employed against vampires of similar strength, at least in her earlier days, she'd had to rely on skil , not superior strength, to win. That would stand her well here. She hoped.
The ground under her feet changed, became unstable. She lurched forward another step and suddenly she went from deathly blackness into startling daylight. It was like birth. A birth into hell .
Harsh sunlight beat down upon her. Turning around, she saw no evidence of a black tunnel through a cold forest. It was all sandy, blinding desert, at every point of the compass. So eerily flat and devoid of geographic features it had to be an enchantment. The sand burned through her thin boots, tel ing her they wouldn't be a sufficient protection for long. This kind of sunlight was designed to peel the skin from the body. She thanked all the gods she had dissuaded Jacob from coming, even as she realized she herself might be overcome from the heat in the end.
She couldn't feel Jacob at all. He'd been right. The portal cut her off from his mind, from everything. It was always a disturbing feeling not to have it, when they used that connection like a sixth sense. Pushing aside that sinking feeling, she verified the pouch of Jacob's blood had made it through. Then she reached under her tunic. She'd brought one other item besides Rhoswen's “supplies.” She'd showed it to Jacob in her mind when they were discussing how she might find the rose bush, but she hadn't been sure if it would make it through. She'd hoped, though, because she'd felt a strong compulsion to bring it.
Cupping it in her hand, she held the enchanted rose that Keldwyn had given her months ago, the surviving rose from her father's rose bush. At the time, she'd believed that his offering it to her had been motivated by sentiment. Knowing what she now did of Keldwyn, she hoped there were other r e a s o ns . Now's not the time to become inconsistent, arrogant schemer.
Closing her eyes, she held the rose in her hand and thought about that decaying rose bush, her father's soul beneath it. Almost instantly, she felt a barely there but distinctive . . . pul .
Just like a Ouija board. Her lips curled over her sharp fangs.
Tearing away the hem of her thigh-length tunic, she removed her boots and stuffed the extra fabric down into the soles, standing on each folded boot in turn to protect her feet until she put them back on.
Better. Removing the wide brimmed hat from the pack, she fitted it squarely on her head. Three days.
She had three days to do this.
Tucking the rose back beneath her tunic, she felt the pulse of its magic like a tiny heartbeat, confirming it could guide her from that sheltered position. Shouldering the pack, she moved forward, made it twenty steps through the deep sand, and then came to an abrupt halt.
Despite there being nothing on any horizon a moment before, three figures had appeared, not anywhere near as far away as they should have been. She could tel they were swathed in a ragtag col ection of protective clothing. As the dry wind brought their scent, her eyes narrowed, her pulse quickening. They didn't smel . . . alive.
Putrefaction. As someone who'd walked the earth a thousand years, she well knew the smel of rotting flesh. They began to move toward her more swiftly.
She'd also seen an enemy charge before. They wouldn't be pausing to find out her business or seek her as an all y. These were bandits, wanting to take whatever she'd brought through for their own survival.
Reaching deep inside of her, she hoped the magic was there. It was, but there was a price to be paid. Cursing, she kicked at the hot sand, trying to get to a lower point. Even though she only saw more sand, it stil put her closer to Earth. There was Earth energy here; she could feel it. Fae magic couldn't be spun from something unnatural, no matter how unnatural the results.
Ripping off her boots, she plunged her feet into the hole she'd made, gritting her teeth as the sand that poured back on them burned her flesh.
She saw the gleam of sharpened objects carried by the oncoming attackers, perhaps the Fae form of prison shivs, things taken from previous arrivals. She could also now see the source of the smel . The clothes they were wearing, the layers, had come from the skins of other victims, improperly tanned and leathered. It didn't matter to the wearers, because she was seeing faces that had long ago peeled away into cancerous, tumescent terrain.
Blackened lips, swol en places on the throat and around the eyes. The tips of the pointed ears pushed through lank, filthy hair, all of it framing eyes sun-poisoned mad.
She could fight this group off, but how many more like this would she encounter? She'd only gone twenty steps before she'd been discovered. How far would she have to go to get to that rose bush?
“Father, help me,” she muttered. Bracing herself for the attack, she reached down through her scorching feet to summon the magic to repel them.
With berserker rage fueled by bloodlust, Jacob managed to crack several of the branches by midday. The effort left his arms bloody. He'd given his lady a large amount of blood, so it only depleted his strength further. It didn't make sense, but at times a vampire nature was very much an animal one, particular when goaded by fury or fear. He was smarter than this, but feeling that darkness close around her, the way her mind simply winked out of existence, no longer accessible to him, was more than he could tolerate. He understood her logic, knew he couldn't fol ow her into the sunlight, but that meant nothing. He was supposed to be with her. His gut was fair screaming it.
Jacob had gotten his upper body free when Keldwyn arrived. He came with one of the serving girls, a wide-eyed waif who'd apparently heard his struggles and gone for help. Jacob had to wonder if he'd paid her to come to him at any signs of trouble, because he didn't figure Keldwyn had been lounging around the castle grounds with nothing better to do.
Plus it looked like he'd ridden hard to be there.
At the sight of him, Keldwyn wisely pushed the girl behind him and told her to stay at the door. Moving toward the bed, he lifted his hand and the branches remaining on Jacob's lower body loosened, fel away. As he shoved out of them, he leaped from the bed and charged for the door, not giving a damn about why Keldwyn was here.
He hit a wal . It knocked him to the floor, made him see spots. Keldwyn completed the shield chant, lowered his hand. “If you try again, it will stop you again. You cannot help her, Jacob. The desert world is on a different time scale from this one, anyhow. It has been a few hours here, whereas there it has been two days.”
He took deep breaths he didn't need, trying to steady himself. Jesus, his brain was scrambled. And his lady needed him calm. He would have thanked Keldwyn for that sharp blow the floor had delivered to his head, as bracing as a slap, but he wasn't feeling particularly grateful. “So she essential y has more time than she realizes,” he managed in a hoarse voice. “Three days here, according to Rhoswen's specifications, could be a week or more there.”
“Yes, and no. You are correct about the time, but the conditions in that world . . . it is unlikely she will survive three days, even in that world's time.” Jacob hit the floor the same way again. The girl made a smal noise behind Keldwyn. “Send her out of here,” Jacob snarled.
“I will not. Once you calm down, you will need human blood.”
“I'm not taking it from an unwil ing host.”
“An utterly irrational response, just like the way you're acting now. But she is not unwil ing.” Keldwyn extended his hand. “Sel ya?”
Sel ya was a blond-haired, blue-eyed human delicate enough to pass as Fae. Though she looked pale and a bit nervous, there was a strength to her elfin features. A firm hold to her chin told him Keldwyn was tel ing the truth.
“It would be my honor, sir.” She bobbed a curtsy.
“I'm not a sir,” Jacob grumbled, but he slid to his backside, bracing himself against the bed. Pul ing his knees up, he used them to hold his elbows as he rubbed his face. Having enough blood would help him think through this, figure it out. He took another deep breath, met her gaze.
“I'm hungry and not entirely stable, Sel ya. I need to ask the impossible. I need you not to be afraid. You can't let me smel your fear, you understand?”
“I can entrance her, so she has no fear,” Keldwyn noted. However, Sel ya surprised Jacob by meeting Keldwyn's lifted hand with her own. Putting her smal palm against his larger one, she blocked the entrancement magic before it happened.
“If it's all the same to you, my lord,” she said, “I think I can do what he says without that.”
“You've fed a vampire before.” Jacob recognized it when her gaze turned back to him.
She nodded. “A few years ago, he helped me get away from a . . . bad situation in my world. He doesn't know this is where I ended up, because he had a sorcerer help me, and that was one of the sorcerer's and Lady Rhoswen's conditions, that he not know where I was, just that I was safe, and happy. But while I was staying with Lord Mason, I fed him once or twice.”
Son of a bitch. It almost made Jacob smile.
Mason and his female projects. “Are you happy, Sel ya?”
She nodded. “Getting there, sir. I've a better chance of it here than there.”
Moving forward, she knelt careful y between his splayed and bent knees. With girlish charm, she put one hand on each of them. “How do you want me, sir?” she asked.
On a sandwich, with ketchup and a side of chips, came his eager brain, his nostrils already flaring at her sweet scent. He had too little control, and he couldn't spare anything for finesse. So he simply slid his arm around her waist, brought her fast and hard against his chest so she tumbled against him. Her arms fel around his shoulders, but then gripped as he took hold of her hair, turned her face into his shoulder and sank his fangs into her throat.