Battle for the Blood (9 page)

I crested the hill and spotted the source of the music, freezing at the strangeness of the scene.

Apollo dancing.

Lau dancing with wild abandon.

Three bewitching women in emerald gowns with long, golden hair that flowed like waterfalls down to their teeny-tiny dancers’ waists, writhing with them…no, leading the dance. A fourth woman stood apart from them, stomping a foot and playing a mouth harp, creating such music it was almost unreal. Enchanting. Her eyes speared mine as she spotted me, and they flashed a pale green, as if reflecting the moon. My feet started to move of their own volition, in time to the music. The sword felt heavy. Clumsy. Ugly. An artifact of war, rather than peace and harmony. Not joyous like the dance.

I felt Apollo’s joy, his lust, his want. The dance was wonderful, but the promise of more, a deeper dance, a joining…

I’d heard about fairy circles, about people whisked away to the land of the sidhe where time moved differently and the world went on without them. The women were certainly fair enough to be of the Fair Folk, but I thought there was something more sinister to the equation.
My
inner green-eyed monster, jealousy, had all but come alive, shredding the fog that wanted to draw me into the dance.

The sword in my hand snapped up. The music maker’s eyes widened at the sight, and she hit a discordant note.

The other three women whirled instantly toward me, the threat. Cold iron, I realized. If myth and legend had it right, if these witchy women
were
related to the Fair Folk, the sword was a very powerful weapon, even in my hands. As soon as they spotted it, they hissed and grabbed Apollo and Lau to use as human shields. The women no longer looked beautiful, only feral and somehow sticklike…and then I realized it was their fingers. Their nails had grown and sharpened like stakes that pricked into Apollo’s and Lau’s skin. Both stiffened on contact, their eyes rolling up into their heads. Their faces seemed to go slack, and then…and then the women’s nails turned blood red, as if…

I launched into the air, my healing wings at first beating frantically to get me aloft. I swept in, waving the sword in front of me, hoping that the fear and the iron would knock the demons back. Because surely they were demons, riled up in the same way as our captive Maniai. Oh, they might be called something else here—Unseelie, perhaps, part of the dark fairy court—but if their actions were any indication, that was just semantics.

I fell on the first wicked wench, swinging quickly, but ready to check my blow in an instant. She threw Apollo at me, and I had to pound my wings hard to rise up rather than let him crash into me. He fell to the ground, but I had to let him go. It left the one woman unguarded. A second aborted her attack on Lau to face me as well. That one leapt for my legs and managed to grab on. I kicked and flapped and tried to dislodge her, but she held on like a leech, her pinprick nails piercing my calves. The pain sliced through before lassitude started to overtake me. My wing beats slowed and I began to sink down to the ground. The sword again grew heavy in my hand, which relaxed around the hilt.

A second demon woman grabbed me from the side as I reached the ground, startling me into bringing the sword up reflexively. She hissed and fell back, and I whirled at the sound, striking the other woman a blow upside the head with the cold iron before she even registered my movement. The smell of burning flesh woke me from my daze. Or maybe it was the feel of those needlelike nails sliding out of my skin.

Lau cried out softly and sank to the ground as the woman who had hold of her released her. The demon and her two attacking sisters retreated to the side of the fourth, whose music had stopped. I had to decide between checking on Lau and Apollo, and making a run at the women going in for the kill, ensuring they could never attack anyone ever again.

A red haze fell across my vision, rage coming on with it. The demons had to die. It was the only way.

I went for them, slashing about me like a Fury, empowered by my rage. The sword no longer felt heavy in my hands, but as light as a feather. I brought it back like a baseball bat, ready to put everything I had behind my swing. The women’s flashing eyes widened, one brought her hands up in a defensive posture, looking helpless and afraid. A second of doubt pierced me, but it was too late. I was in full swing.

Just as I would have connected, there as a
pop
in the air, and the four women were gone. I was overbalanced with my swing and managed not to fall on my face, only by burying the sword tip in the ground and using the rest like a prop.

I stood there for a minute, breathing through the red haze, trying to banish my bloodlust and disappointment that it wouldn’t be satisfied. I should have taken yoga instead of kickboxing. I needed the meditation techniques.

But I didn’t have time now to slip into some kind of Zen state. I had to check on Apollo and Lau.

Lau was closest, and she was breathing, but not strongly. She looked denuded, skeletal, like the demon wench had looked as she began to drain her. I wondered how the wench looked now, flush with stolen lifeblood. I hadn’t noticed as I tried to murder her.

I patted both of Lau’s cheeks, trying to wake her up, and debated giving her a harder slap. It worked in the movies. In reality…well, if she did wake, she’d slap me back, and given the red haze still teasing at the edges of my vision, I didn’t want to risk the fallout. I didn’t know if our Maniai had awakened or whether the mania she inspired could reach out even in her dream state.

For now, I gave up on her and went to Apollo, who was waking already and rolling to his hands and knees, shaking his head as if to clear it. He looked drunk. Or drugged.

He looked up at me as I approached, his eyes widening, and he got clumsily to his feet, coming into a wary, squared-off stance.

“Tori,” he said, wariness making his voice deeper than usual, colder than usual too, “you’re glowing.”

“What?”

I looked down at myself, saw nothing.

“Your eyes. They’ve gone golden and feral. You’re…you don’t look entirely…sane.”

I stopped where I was, fear suddenly taking root and blooming like it had found overly fertile ground. First my wings, now my eyes. What would be next?

“Is it…just my eyes?” I asked.

Apollo picked up on my fear through our link, and he figured out exactly what I was getting at.

“I’m not sure.”

I started to panic, and he tried to head me off. “I mean, it’s just the eyes right now, but, Tori, things aren’t adding up. If I couldn’t resist the lure of the
baobhan sidhe
, being a god and all, you shouldn’t have been able to either. Coupled with your new wings and now your eyes…something’s going on.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” I said sourly. “And the
who what
?”

“The
baobhan sidhe
.” It sounded like
ban-she
, but I knew that couldn’t be right. Banshees were supposed to be ghastly, ghostly women who floated outside of old castles warning occupants of imminent death. So said Scooby-Doo. “Just about every culture has its version of the vampire,” he said, “and this is it for the Scots. They’re related to Lamia, strigoi, Lilitu, Mandurugo, Penanggal…”

“I can see the family resemblance,” I said ironically. If I had it right, Penanggal were supposed to have detachable heads that flew through the air, dangling their entrails behind. “But what does any of it have to do with what’s going on with me?”

Apollo looked away. “We should check on your friend.”

I snorted. “She’s fine. Answer me.”

“She’s lost a lot of blood.”

“Answer me,” I roared. My voice deepened and took on its own reverb, scaring even me. I took a step back, clasped my hands at my back, beneath my flared wings, holding on tightly for fear of what I might do. They wanted to clutch at his chest, lift him into the air and demand answers. It wasn’t me. And yet, it was instinctive, impulsive…and weren’t those things that came from the very deepest levels of our being, beyond even conscious thought? The things that said what we really were, caged only by culture and control? I was afraid of myself, and I knew Apollo could feel it. If he had any sense, he’d be afraid for himself.

But when he looked back at me, his eyes held mostly pain, liberally mixed with sorrow. “Think, Tori, when did all this start…your physical transformation?”

I forced down my impatience. If he knew, why didn’t he just
say
.
“On the battlefield,” I growled. “With Rhea and the titans, after I’d been…after I nearly died.”

“
You
didn’t die, but it’s like the weaker parts of you did. Maybe. Only the strong survived. And those parts are rising to the fore. Now with Namtar, the god of demons, rising…” He stopped, swallowed. “No, best if I let you come to it on your own.”

I was in his personal space faster than even I could register, my teeth bared like
I
was some kind of vampire. Like they might actually constitute a threat. The shock of it was all that kept me from actually laying hands on Apollo. I needed them to check for tusks or any other crazy features the gorgons seemed to sport in ancient art.

“Tell me,” I demanded, trying for quiet but hearing the rumble in my voice. “You said I don’t look sane. I don’t feel it at the moment. I need to know what’s going on.” My voice rose as I went on, but I fought to keep it under control.

“Tori, I don’t know if the gorgons are related somehow to demons or if demon blood slipped into your family line somewhere else along the way, but what I’m saying… I’m afraid that side of you may have awakened on that battlefield. Nothing works with you the way it should. When I gave you prophecy it opened up other pathways of your brain; it gave us our link. When I gave you the breath of life…I don’t know. Maybe I shouldn’t have done it, but it was the only way to save you. The point is that if you do have demon blood, and if Namtar is stirring things up, amplifying things, as Lyssa implied, as the
baobhan sidhe
hunt would seem to indicate…there might be worse to come.”

I looked at him blankly. My anger had ebbed, but left behind a void where I knew I should be feeling something, but I just couldn’t. If I thought too deeply right now or let my emotions loose there might be no coming back from gibbering insanity. If I looked into the abyss right now, it was going to look back. I wasn’t going to win that staring contest.

“Let’s get Lau back to the others,” I said.

He nodded, understanding that we were not going to talk about this. Not right now, anyway.

Instead, we dropped beside Lau. She moaned as we lifted her. Her eyelids fluttered open; she smiled sleepily and closed them again, laying her head on my shoulder as we got her upright. Awake, she’d have been horrified at the very thought. I considered having Apollo take a picture with his phone for posterity…or the Internet, but I let maturity win a rare battle. Since Lau wasn’t inclined to wake and walk by herself, Apollo scooped her up in a fireman’s hold and carried her back to camp. I remembered being held that way PW—pre-wings—back when Apollo had rescued me from an oceanic attacker, back when I was a mere mortal as opposed to…whatever I was now.

Time to worry about that later, when people weren’t dying and trying to eat each other’s faces off.

Eu-meh was awake when we got back to camp, staring at us as we crested the rise, as though she’d heard us before she saw us. Not just staring…staring
intently
at Apollo and the limp Lau he held in his arms. I had a feeling that either Lau moved soon or she would. I didn’t get the sense that would go well for Apollo.

“She’s okay,” I said to Eu-meh, hoping she’d understand. “She’s just…weak.”

Eu-meh squawked and started to rise. The tremors rippled out like she was at the epicenter of a quake. Lyssa slept on, but Hecate bolted upright, eyes as wild as her hair. Lau moaned right then, and Eu-meh skip-jumped over the prone and nearly prone forms on the ground to get to her side. She stuck her long neck out and nudged gently at Lau’s arm with her beaklike muzzle. Lau smiled and tried to roll in Apollo’s arms and he had to adjust his stance to hold her. Eu-meh’s head shot up to Apollo’s level, staring at him eye to eye, as if trying to communicate something like
if you broke her, I break you
.

“What happened?” Hecate asked, on her feet now.

I explained and the gaze Hecate fixed on me was nearly as intent as Eu-meh’s. “You met the
baobhan sidhe
and you didn’t wake me?”

“I didn’t know you were a fan,” I said wryly.

“Let’s just say that I admire their work.”

I shivered, glad that she was on our side.
Note to self: Never agree to meet Hecate in a dark alley. Find recipes that feature garlic and chili peppers.
I didn’t know if the garlic would work on Hecate or any of the bloodsucking supernats she admired, but I figured if I couldn’t ward them off, at least I could give them heartburn
.

“Whatever,” I said aloud. “We’d better get going. It’s too dangerous to stay here.”

“It’s too dangerous to stay anywhere until we get this whole situation under control. Haven’t you been paying attention?” Hecate asked.

Oh, she was
so
not going on my Christmas list. “We’ll have to sleep sometime,” I snapped back.

“Take it from me, you can sleep when you’re dead.”

Apollo cut in before I could make the scathing retort I hadn’t yet thought up. “How are we going to fly with
two
unconscious women?”

Eu-meh nudged Lau again. This time she moaned and opened her eyes, focusing on the dragon with a sleepy smile.

“Mornin’ already?” she mumbled.

Then she seemed to realize she was being held. “Hey, waz goin’ on?” She turned her head toward me. “Wha’ dija do?”

Why was everyone always asking me that? “Sucked your blood out through my fingertips. Only it wasn’t me. I’m the one who saved your ass. You’re welcome, by the way.”

Eu-meh’s head whipped around to me, and I was afraid she was reacting to my tone rather than my words, but then she blew hot air in my face and bumped me softly under the chin with her head like a cat might nuzzle her human. I stood there a little stunned.