Blood Politics (Blood Destiny 4) (20 page)

“Sorry,” I said, although I wasn’t really.
 “But I need you now, not in three days’ time when you bother to answer me.”

He clasped his heart in mock agony.
 “You wound me.”  He leaned in towards me.  “I was busy annoying your brawny Brethren Lord.”

Uh-oh.
 “Bloody hell, Solus, is that really necessary?”

“Not in the slightest,” he grinned at me insouciantly.
 “But it’s a hell of a lot of fun.  The Furry One doesn’t like me very much.”

“I can’t imagine why,” I murmured, eyeing him unhappily.

The Fae arched an eyebrow and watched me carefully.  “Have you read the translation yet?”

“Been kind of busy to be honest.
 It’s back at home.”

He grinned.
 There was an edge to it that both surprised and concerned me.  “Interesting,” he said, with a suspicious note of underlying glee,  “be sure to let me know when you do.”

I filed away his on
-going interest in my reading of the translated Fae book for later.  There were more pressing concerns to deal with right now.  I gestured towards the centre of ward instead.  “Can you transport me inside that?”

Solus turned at stared at it, his skin visibly paling as he did so.
 “That’s a dryad.”

I nodded
.
 
His fists clenched, and a ripple of fury shuddered through him.  I swallowed involuntarily.  I’d never seen him this upset before.  He reached out and touched the ward, then drew it back again.

“You don’t know what could be in there.
 Just because it looks empty, doesn’t mean it is.”  His voice remained curiously emotionless and flat, which was almost more scary than if he’d allowed himself to show what he was really thinking.

“It’s not empty.”
 I outlined for him my theory about the Batibat.

He shook his head.
 “Except Batibats wouldn’t attack dryads and certainly not like that.  They prefer young men.”

“Let me guess,” I said drily, “you’re an expert on Indonesian daemons along with everyone else.”

He sent me a puzzled look.  “It’s common knowledge, dragonlette.”

I rolled my eyes.
 Of course it was.  “I don’t need you to spell out the dangers for me, Solus, I just need you to get me inside.”

“I’m not sure I can.
 Even if I managed it, it would drain me of all my energy and then I wouldn’t be able to help you if things went wrong.”

“I think I’m capable of looking after myself,” I scoffed.

“You let a vampire get the better of you barely two days ago.”

“It was one.”

“Eh?”

“It was one vampire.  And if you look closely, you’ll see that he’s not doing so well as a result.”

Solus looked understandably confused.  I gently pointed out Aubrey’s figure to him.  Even with the hat and trenchcoat, his features were obvious.  The Fae’s mouth dropped open.  “Is that…?”

“Yup.”

“He’s a master vampire, dragonlette.  One of the strongest.  What in the hell…” Dawning realisation lit his features.  “He drank your blood.”

I nodded.

“And because your blood has the power to heal, it healed him.  He’s no longer a vampire.”

“Yup.”

“Bloody hell, dragonlette, do you realise that this makes you number one on the vamps’ hitlist?  They’ll do anything either to control you or destroy you.  That’s unbelievable power.  How many people has he told?”

I shrugged.
 “None.  He’s afraid of what the others’ll do to him if they find out.”

Solus blinked slowly.
 “Of course.  A cured vampire is the antithesis of everything they believe in.”  He smiled, and it wasn’t very pleasant.  “How very interesting.”

“Solus?”

“Hmmm?”  He was still watching Aubrey with a worryingly predatorial expression flickering through his eyes.

“You can’t tell anyone.”

“Mmm.”

“Solus, I mean it.
 He was a horrible vampire.  And right now he’s a horrible human.  But he has a chance to maybe turn things around and be a better person.  You are not going to fuck that up.”

“Dragonlette,” he began.

I looked him in the eyes.  “Don’t.”

“Okay.”

“Give me your word, Solus.”

“Okay.”

I narrowed my eyes at him.  He lifted his hands up in the air.  “Fine!  I give you my word.”

“Excellent.
 Now, get me in there.”

“It’s not a good idea, dragonlette.”

“Please.”

“If I do this, then in return you need to do me a favour.”

Of course.   Why would I have expected anything less? “What?” I said, exasperated.

“I don’t know yet.
 But,” he held up one long elegant index finger, “you will owe me one favour of my choosing to be fulfilled when I require it.”

I gritted my teeth.
 “Fine.  But no giving away of my firstborn or secondborn or anything like that.  No hurting of anyone, physically or emotionally. “

He winked at me.
 “What if it’s an evil tree daemon?”

I gave him my death stare.

“Okay, okay, nothing that involves children or hurting things, I promise.” He gave me a cheeky boyish grin.  “As if I would anyway, dragonlette.”

I really hoped I wasn’t going to regret this.
 Solus snapped his fingers and the air immediately began to flicker purple.  “Give that bitch hell,” he said, suddenly all serious again.

I nodded.
 I intended to.

Chapter Fourteen

The molecules in the air snapped and bit.
 As soon as I registered the purple shimmer, I stepped forward, not hesitating further.  I was too nervous to delay further.  Whatever had done that terrible thing to the dryad was not the kind of being that I should take lightly.

Transportin
g through felt different to how it usually did.  Clearly the ward was going to make things as difficult as possible, and it created the effect of feeling as if my body was being rent asunder.  The world outside the barrier pulled at me, as if, with a magnetic urge, it was demanding my physical presence remain there.  I couldn’t see what was happening to Solus, but I heard his cry of pain as I wrenched myself through, then collapsed panting, with pricks of tears forming in my eyes.  My stomach lurched with devastating nausea, even worse than I normally experienced.  I tried to force myself to face the tree, just in case my arrival had woken the Batibat from her sleep and she was already on her way to meet me, but the retching overtook me.  My fingernails stabbed into the blackened ground, clawing in agony as my once pleasant breakfast deposited itself unceremoniously in front of me.  I was dimly aware of the blur of frantic gestures from my little band of followers on the other side, but the effort to raise my head and acknowledge them to reassure them that I was alright was almost too much.

When the convulsions finally stopped, I collapsed, my cheek hot against the soot.
 I gasped for air several times, and had to force myself to take in deep heaving breaths to calm myself down.  Eventually I was able to scramble back to my feet, where I stood trembling.  I looked behind and saw Solus down on the ground.  Lucy had managed to get round and was by his side, her hand on his arm.  She mouthed something to me, but I couldn’t work out what it was.

“Is he okay?” I shouted over.

She looked puzzled and mouthed something again.  Shit.  Clearly the ward blocked out sound too.  I pointed down at Solus to highlight my worry and concern.  She blinked in sudden understanding, and nodded back, this time enunciating her words more obviously, stating what appeared to be ‘he’s fine’.  I watched him carefully, relief flooding through me when he stirred and slowly sat back up.  He pushed his hair away from his face and grinned boyishly.  I rolled my eyes.  Idiot.  Then, however, his gaze fixed on something behind me and his pupils narrowed to tiny sharp pinpricks of glass.  Lucy too was now frozen and staring beyond me.  I guessed the Batibat was finally awake.

I concentrated on my hands, allowing my now familiar green fire to light up and flicker, then I slowly turned, every sinew of my body ready to launch myself at the she-daemon.

Aubrey had been right.  The Batibat, standing heavily in front of the dead tree, and thankfully blocking the dryad from my sight, was indeed hideous.  She was morbidly obese, virtually the width of a small car, with folds of greyish fat and loose skin hanging down from every rounded corner of her body.  Her breasts were drooping enough to hit the centre of her stomach, and her dirty blonde hair was scraggly and limp.  My mouth dried, but I forced myself to lift my eyes up to hers.

She looked down at my hands then back up to my face, with a complete lack of expression.
 For once in my life, I had absolutely no idea what my opponent was about to do.

I tilted my chin up.
 “Hello.”

The Batibat stared back at me, without so much as blinking.

I tried smiling.  It didn’t reach my eyes, and I was well aware that I had the habit of looking like a maniacal psychopath when that happened, but I wasn’t quite sure what else to do.  She still just stared at me.

Okaaaaay.
 I took a step forward. She didn’t move.  I kept my arms by my sides, trying to show that I wasn’t going to attack her unless she struck out at me first, but I didn’t extinguish my flames, making sure that she knew that I was also more than ready to take her on if I had to.  It occurred to me that maybe I should have thought this whole operation through in a little more depth first.

Just when I was starting to wonder if the Batibat was completely immobile, she suddenly let out a huge shuddering sigh, and turned her back on me, lumbering back to the tree that was just a few feet away.

“Hey!” I shouted out towards her, suddenly alarmed. The last thing I needed was for her to get back within the branches and completely conceal herself again.  At least right now I knew where she was. “Where the fuck do you think you’re going?  I want to talk to you!”

She completely ignored me, continuing her shambling return to the tree.
 I so wasn’t in the mood for this.  I outstretched my arm and extended my index finger to just beyond her body, zapping the ground with a line of green fire.  Thanks to the already heavily burnt earth, however, my efforts immediately sizzled away into nothing.  The Batibat didn’t even react, hooking one hand into one of the lower branches, and swinging herself up with a dexterity that astonished me.  She clearly possessed some kind of affinity with trees, not least because the branches that looked dead enough to snap the second so much as a whisper of a breeze gusted by them, easily held her weight.  Before I could so much as blink, she had completely vanished.

I remained standing in the same spot for a moment, utterly dumbfounded.
 I flicked a glance over to the mages and Aubrey who were still on the other side of the barrier, all their mouths gaping open, and gave an expressive shrug.  So much for big old scary me, then.  The seeming apathy of the tree daemon had me baffled. The entire point of forcing both Solus and myself to the point of physical pain to transport through the ward had been to confront her.  And yet she just seemed as if she couldn’t care less.

I considered my options.
 I could of course climb the tree as she had done.  But I was no tree spirit.  I’d end up flat on my arse with a bunch of broken sticks around me.  The Batibat’s very essence had been absorbed by the wood.  The only thing that would be absorbed if I tried to do the same would be everyone’s recognition of my own stupidity.  I kicked irritably at the ground, sending a cloud of black dust into the air.

Sighing deeply, I figured that the least I could do now that I was here was to disentangle the dead dryad from her dishonourable position.
 It wasn’t just that releasing her body from the hold of the tree might re-ignite the Batibat’s interest and encourage her to reappear, but also that the dryad bloody well deserved to be taken down and properly cared for.  I’d promised both her and myself that I would do that.  The thought of having to touch her dead skin and feel the weight of her against me, without anyone nearby who would be able to help and provide companionship through the horror, made me sick to my stomach.  I had no right to that emotion though.  What Mereia had gone through to end up in that position in the first place was far worse than anything I could experience by cutting her down.  Once her body was safely removed then I was going to torch that fucking tree with the Batibat inside it.

With a heavy heart, I walked round to the other side and looked upwards, avoiding spending too long gazing at the dryad’s sunken skin and dead eyes.
 Instead I focused on her hands, trying to work out how she was being held up.  Aubrey had been right before: her wrists were somehow twisted into the very branches of the tree itself.  I’d already surmised that I wouldn’t be able to climb up and reach her, so there seemed nothing else for it but to use shots of my green fire to bring her down.  I’d have to do this carefully if I was going to give her the dignity she deserved.