Ruled by Tainted Blood Read online

  Vilicangelus sat slumped over in a Roman-style u-shape chair. A jagged scar throbbed across Vilicangelus’s breast. Burns charred his right arm, side and the stump of his leg.

  He looked up, golden hair falling away to display a face burned almost to the bone.

  Summus fell to the floor at Vilicangelus’s feet. “Dearest Creator, I’m...I knew...”

 

  Summus looked into Vilicangelus’s one golden and one melted eye. He concentrated. You cannot speak?

  Vilicangelus shook his head.

  “Things are worse. I can barely keep up with the Shields you entrusted to me, and then there’s Vitae—um, that is, Atlanta’s—”

 

  “Is there anyone who can help oversee your old territory while I recover?”

  Vilicangelus shook his head.

  “Totally lost? As in they had no chance to elevate anyone?”

 

  “How? Why?”

 

  “I know Vusolaryn and Mariena are powerful faeries, but—”

 

  And the Lady of Water trapped Quayla.

  Summus fell backward off his haunches. Righteous anger blossomed into a bonfire. “Vitae caused all this? Should I seek a replacement?”

 

  “What about Atlanta?”

 

  “What about Quayla? They’re all under a lot of pressure.”

  Vilicangelus smirked.

  Quayla

  “That was rude, Vitae,” Anima said. “You should not speak to Summuseraphi in that manner.”

  Vitae darkened. “Silence, automata. Shields are speaking.”

  I rounded on Vitae, shoving him backward to the edge of the fountain. “Ani is as much a part of this Shield as you are.”

  Vitae’s eyes flashed dangerously, sweeping back his robes to reveal the two confiscated Champion blades.

  Ignis and Terrence stepped between Vitae and me. I couldn’t see their expressions, but their bodies held taut, fighting stances.

  Terrance’s deep voice filled the greenhouse. “It seems obvious that we are all so exhausted that we’ve forgotten both manners and that we are a family.”

  “Vitae’s the one treating everyone like garbage,” I said.

  Vitae’s light, liquid tone carried real menace beneath the silk. “You are lucky they intervened, Aquaylae, before you forced me to discipline you.”

  “Bring it on!” I extruded blades into the karambit in each hand. “I’ve faced down one of the Dark Trinity, you don’t scare me.”

  “Quayla, that’s enough,” Ignis put his back to Terrance and Vitae. “We’re all under a lot of strain, but we need to act in concert to overcome this threat.”

  “Don’t tell me you aren’t angry, Ignis. I can see it in your eyes.”

  “No doubt he is fed up with your tantrums,” Vitae said.

  Terrance’s low growl mimicked an avalanche. “You will restrain your tongue, Shieldheart.”

  Tension ratchetted up. My hands tightened around both hilts.

  The others stiffened.

  I readied myself for a defensive but decisive assault. Taint flooded my senses. The world spun. My hilts tumbled from my grip, essence shrinking back into me in response to a sudden wash of terror.

  “We have a major incursion inside the Atlanta Marriott Marquis,” Anima said. “The Isaac is sending over video feed.”

  Ignis stabilized me, holding me as I retrieved my hilts, He helped me into the command center.

  Interior and exterior views filled the small room. Cosplaying wafers ran from a sudden forest of green spreading out of the hotel’s entrances. A massive, humanoid tangle of kudzu towered at least ten stories from foot to thorn-crowned head. Forty feet of leafy arm swept across a balcony, sending wafers screaming through shattered railings.

  Last in the room, no one barred my way when I spun and raced toward the sanctum’s balcony, gathering essence as I ran.

  “Stop!” Vitae commanded.

  My limbs hesitated. I whirled around, rapids racing through my veins and a waterfall roaring in my ears. “What?”

  “You mustn’t expose us,” Vitae said. “Even you must’ve grasped that by now.”

  I pointed at the monitor. “Cat’s out of the bag, Vitae. People are dying. We’ll worry about collateral damage once they’re safe.”

  Vitae yanked his cigarette case from his robes. “I’ve enough of self-important children.”

  He withdrew a glowing white feather. “Vilicangelus. Vili—”

  “Vilicangelus was injured,” Ignis snapped. “We’re all out of Divine backup, so check your ego, because Quayla’s right.”

  Vitae shook his head. “Vilicangelus.”

  Terrance slapped the feather from the life phoenix’s hands. “You are right about one thing, Vitae. We have had enough of self-important children.”

  Vitae opened his mouth, but Terrance’s massive hand collided with his face. “Quayla is charging to rescue mortals without a nest or an egg, like Mare, so you will close your mouth, join with this team and do your duty, or by the Undying Light I’ll put you in your egg to think about it for a century.”

  I didn’t wait for them to settle things. I bolted outside and threw myself from the building’s top. Essence exploded from the tiny star I held under pressure, rippling outward in tingling waves to form my wide wings and luxurious tail.

  The exhilaration of falling, then diving through the sky like a peregrine pouncing on prey electrified me. Despite the pleasure of flight distracting me of the very real chance of dying a True Death, I adjusted pinions to sweep me back toward the clouds and climbed higher into the sky.

  Had it been night, I might have worried more about the luminescence of my true form showing up against a dark sky. The sunshiny day would hide me better above the buildings, quite a bit better than blue sky would hide Ignis.

  I threw energy into speeding my flight.

  Saturday boasted the highest concentration of DragonCon attendees. Instead of taking advantage of the power boost from countless people inadvertently honoring them, the Sidhe were using that strength to openly attack the mortals.

  They had to be stopped.

  Before everything I sacrificed was for naught.

  20: Tangled Fates

  Quayla

  Hundreds of attendees surrounded the chaos pouring out of the Marriott. Most kept to a relatively safe gawking distance and many of them held cameras up to capture the event. Vines writhed out of the hotel’s every opening, expanding onto the streets. Mortals struggled to escape their leafy captor helped by cosplayers hacking the vines with formerly peace-tied swords.

  Police cars screamed through the streets with their lights blazing, rushing to reinforce officers already working convention security. Firefighters joined the armed cosplayers, attacking the edges of the spreading foliage with axes or freeing people imprisoned in cars tangled in the spreading kudzu.

  I circled high above.

  The cat’s definitely out of the bag. Still, no point making things worse. Think.

  Not even Terrance could bull his way through the impenetrable wall of southern foliage. Whatever the faeries intended, they’d blockade themselves inside in a way that prevented all of us entry—except maybe Ignis.


  I can’t wait. People are dying.

  Curses sealed my doomed intentions of a stealthy approach. Wings folded and talons outstretched, I dove. Floors flashed by almost too fast to count. With closed eyes and a pivot of feathers, I juked my dive into the side of the hotel, smashing through floor to ceiling windows into someone’s room.

  I snapped open my wings, back-winging as hard as I could. A talon caught bedclothes and suitcases, adding further disarray to the shattered glass and chaotic assortment of food wrappers and costumes littering the room.

  I hit the wall between living area and bathroom too hard, a talon punching a hole in the drywall and evoking a scream from someone inside the bathroom.

  Pain lanced up and down broken legs.

  Shattered wings burned.

  Pain didn’t matter.

  Only mortal lives mattered.

  I’m a shield of the Undying Light and my charges are endangered.

  Pushing essence into a tight ball at my core, I gathered will and desire for another transmogrification. Instead of restoring my former clothes, I chose to follow Terrance’s example with the help of Primal Battle. Employing essence to form a thick leather bodysuit left me resembling a skinny looking woman from one of the comic books—I couldn’t remember which.

  A pale, shocked face watched me through the hole in the bathroom wall.

  I cringed and offered a little wave. “Hi. Sorry about the mess.”

  The wafers eyes rolled back into her head. She vanished from sight followed by a heavy thunk. I disentangled myself and rushed for the room’s exit, pulling my amulet from where it was squeezed by the leather bustier.

  “Anima, if you can hear me, we’re going to need a lot of putti.”

  I reached the balcony overlooking the atrium. I’d misjudged my descent, piercing the hotel at least a dozen floors higher than intended.

  “Nice of you to make us an entrance, little sister.”

  “Yeah,” a dark chuckle escaped Ignis. “You might’ve let the shield best designed as a battering ram handle that.”

  “I was in a hurry,” I whipped around. Vitae’s absence didn’t surprise me. The sight of Ignis and the armored Terrance in winged human shapes left me gaping.

  I thought only divine could do that.

  Ignis smirked. “Nice outfit, by the way.”

  “How do we handle this?” I asked.

  “I’ll give the construct heart burn, Terrance will pull the weeds out by their roots and you can help by trimming the hedge when you’re not too busy getting people clear.”

  “That plan sounds suspiciously formed to keep me from fighting. I’m a full shield, same as you guys.”

  “No one ever said you weren’t, little sister, but you don’t have two millennia of battle experience.”

  “Besides, the plan was formed to limit your risk,” Ignis said. “You don’t know if your stolen nest has any essence in it and we never got a chance to reform your egg.”

  Terrance laughed. “That’s Ignis’s dispassionate way of saying we love you and want you to stick around. You’d think a fire phoenix would have a little more personality.”

  “Some of us can rise above maternal tendencies, Mother Terra.”

  Desperate shrieks punctuated their banter. Ignis and Terrance threw themselves into the atrium’s airspace.

  So much for not drawing more attention.

  I dove off too, transmogrifying once in the air. I tightened my essence into a compact star, preparing to transform back when a wall of vines slammed into me.

  The blow sent me tumbling through an opening in an already broken railing. Impact dazed me, causing me to slide down onto several supine bodies. Several blinks dismissed my disorientation so I could check the wafers. I cut a shirt away from an unconscious woman, wrapping the words ‘Don’t Panic’ around another woman’s head wound. I hurriedly moved them deeper into the hotel away from the kudzu elemental.

  Where is Vitae when we need a life phoenix?

  I did a quick circuit of the level, bandaging and moving injured further from harm’s way.

  Beyond the railing, Ignis fought like nothing I’d ever imagined. He shot through the kudzu creature like he was rocket propelled. Wings one part inferno and a second part scythe sliced through the beast like Dylan’s beloved lightsabers.

  A wild blow missed Ignis by feathers. The flailing vines careened through a railing several stories above me. They impacted on a costumed woman filming with her phone, hurling her into open air.

  I dove, transmogrifying with less thought than it had ever taken before. I impacted the woman with bone-jarring force. We crashed down a debris strewn hallway branching off from the balcony. I flipped beneath her as we bounced, cushioning her as best as I could.

  A quick check confirmed the woman alive, unconscious and in serious need of paramedics. I pried the phone from her death grip and rammed a karambit blade through it.

  Stupid wafer.

  I hurried to rejoin the fight. The level—in easy reach of the beast—had been decimated, but debris and bodies had been mostly swept away.

  A leafy fist rocketed toward me.

  I dove sidelong, shifting to liquid to speed my slide before kicking off a door frame and shooting back the way I’d come. Karambit blades hacked away vines as fast as I could swing them.

  The elemental’s other hand slapped me against the first.

  I bounced off one arm and against a wall. Vines unraveled from both beastly limbs and writhed around me. Grabbing my arms and legs, they forced me to strain against their impromptu drawing and halving.

  Fire exploded the wrist holding my legs a moment before Ignis swept a flaming blade through the plant monster’s opposite elbow.

  The tension on my body fell away, but despite losing attachment to the rest of the creature, the vines snaked their way over me in an extremely convincing python imitation.

  This thing is as bad as real kudzu. Leave even a little bit behind and it grows back twice as bad.

  My karambit knives quickly proved insufficient for defense against the fierce flora. I transmogrified once more. The vines took a moment to adapt to my change in form. I leapt from their grasp, snapping open my wings and sweeping them down for a little extra height.

  Rather than flee, I started a spin. Feathers fell from my wings and my body, orbiting me in glistening shades of sapphire. Unlike at the humane society, there was nothing living visible in the immediate area except the monster.

  Feathers lost their form, their liquid joining with neighbors into a long spiral of water like a ribbon trailing from a spinning ballerina’s fingers.

  The severed vines reached up for me, climbing up a level and trying to encircle me for another attack.

  I let them, hardening my will and spinning faster.

  The vines closed the sphere.

  I released the ribbon of razor-sharp water.

  Shredded kudzu tumbled to the atrium floor as my spiral blade hacked into the main beast. Ignis drove his flaming blade into the incision I’d made, foliage wilting, shriveling and combusting near the blazing winged man.

  I perched on a section of undamaged railing for a quick breath.

  “This damned thing smells of you and Terrance,” Ignis shouted on a close flyby.

  Far below, it was hard to tell whether the monster or Terrance was doing the most damage. Both were getting as well as they were giving.

  He needs help.

  I glanced at Ignis.

  Both of my elders fought like they wielded the fury of the Undying Light Himself. The full fury of their elemental wrath was terrifying and magnificent at the same time, but Ignis fared better by the sole virtue of his element.

  I scanned for more mortals. The higher levels of the atrium were ringed with video recording bystanders. A scream turned my attention to the floors below.

  The plant elemental stumbled backward against one side of the atrium, a foot coming down through several floors.

  Vitae stood in the hotel ent
rance surrounded by dying foliage. Vines writhed toward him from every angle only to shrivel away the moment they touched him. He held a Sidhe Champion blade in each hand, swinging them in a whirling pattern than made the blades scream as he tore into the kudzu elemental’s nearest leg.

  Vines whipped out from the leg, trying to wrap Vitae as they had me. The more vines touched him and shriveled away, the more Vitae’s aura intensified.

  His voice filled the atrium. “I command you in the name of the Undying Light to kneel, beast!”

  Kneel?

  The monster actually hesitated.

  “Aquaylae,” Terrance pointed. “Help those mortals.”

  I threw myself from my perch, eyes scouring the areas where the monster had crashed through more of the hotel. Sure enough, a woman in a Poison Ivy costume covered a cowering child, her skin pale and covered with blood the color of her hair.

  I pivoted, turning sideways to slip between the monster’s legs toward the fearful mortals.

  The creature brought its legs together as the smoldering stump of a new arm smashed down to ram me against their quickly woven together shins.

  I threw my talons forward, reversing my wings so that their thinnest edges faced the elemental. I focused on the lead feathers like I had the ribbon, thinning them to an edge and trusting momentum to take me through the impromptu thicket.

  I did everything perfectly—except notice the broken furniture the creature had gathered up as a makeshift spiked fortification just beyond its legs.

  “Aquaylae!” Terrance careened into me, knocking my flight path askew as his flight rebounded down the same target path I’d intended. His bulk smashed through foliage, obsidian and iron tearing vines from his way. Even armored with granite, the force of his impact drove pieces of the barricade through his armor.

  Terrance!

  I changed flight paths, heading to his aid.

  “See to the wafers!” Vitae commanded.

  A life phoenix was far better equipped to help Terrance than I was. I hesitated for only a moment before leaving Terrance to Vitae’s care.

  Magic washed through the atrium like a tidal wave dumped down a well. I executed a barrel roll in time to see water falling from firehoses on a dozen levels form a fist.