Queen of the Darkness (49 page)

Is it ready?he respectfully asked the large golden spider who was the Weaver of Dreams.

Web is ready,the Arachnian Queen replied, delicately brushing a leg against one of the drops of blood sealed in shielded water bubbles.
I add memories now. But... Need human memories.

Ladvarian bristled.
She was
our
dream more than theirs.

But theirs, too. Need kindred
and
human memories for this Witch.

Ladvarian’s heart sank. It had been easy with the kindred. He had told them what was required and that it was for the Lady. That’s all the kindred had needed to know. But humans would want to know why, why, why. They would take time to persuade—and time was something he didn’t have.

The Strange One will help you,the spider said.

But the Lady knows packs of humans, whole
herds
of humans. How—

The First Circle have strong memories. They will be enough. Ask the Gray Black Widow. For a human, she is a good weaver.

She meant Karla. Yes. If he could persuade Karla...

Wait for the right time to ask. After Witch has gone to her own web. The humans will listen better then.

I’ll go to the Keep now and wait.Ladvarian looked around one more time. There was nothing left to do.

The chamber was ready. The tangled web was ready. The kindred who belonged to the Lady’s court were gathered on the Arachnians’ island to give their strength to the Weaver’s web when the time came.

One more thing,the spider said.
Gray dog. You know this dog?

An image appeared in Ladvarian’s mind.
That’s Graysfang. He’s a wolf.

Send him to me. There is something he must learn.

18 / Terreille

It was a war camp, not the sort of place he would have looked for Hekatah or Dorothea. Around the wide perimeter, metal stakes had been driven into the ground every few yards. Embedded in the stakes were two crystals, one on each side, spelled so that anything going between them would break their contact with the crystal in the next stake and would alert the guards. The camp itself had clusters of tents for the guards, a few small wooden cabins built close together near the camp’s center, and two wooden huts that had heavily barred windows and layers of guard spells around them. In front of the cabins were six thick wooden stakes that had heavy chains attached to them. For prisoners. For bait.

As soon as he walked past the perimeter stakes, they knew he was coming. On the journey there, he had thought again about what he was going to do. He could kill Hekatah and Dorothea. He could unleash the strength of his Black Jewels, destroy everyone in the camp, and take Lucivar, Marian, and Daemonar home. But it wouldn’t stop the war. Terreille needed to be confronted with a power that would terrify the people sufficiently that they wouldn’t
dare
fight against it. So it always came back to provoking Jaenelle enough for her to unleash her Ebony power and give the Terreilleans a reason to stay in their own Realm.

As he walked toward the center of the camp, guards followed him. No one approached him or tried to touch him.

Round candle-lights set on top of tall metal poles lit the bloodstained bare ground at the exact center of the camp. Lucivar was chained to the last stake. The lash wounds on his chest and thighs had scabbed over and didn’t appear to be deep enough to cause him serious harm. There were bruises on his face, but those, too, would cause no permanent damage.

Saetan stopped at the edge of the light. He hadn’t seen Hekatah in ten years—hardly more than a breath of time for someone who had lived as long as he had. And he had known her for most of those years.

Even so, despite Dorothea standing beside her, she had withered so much,
decayed
so much, he wasn’t really sure it was her until she spoke.

”Saetan.”

”Hekatah.” He walked to the center of the bare ground.

”You’ve come to bargain?” Hekatah asked politely.

He nodded. ”A life for a life.”

She smiled. ”For
lives.
We’ll throw the bitch and the babe into the bargain. We don’t really have any use for them.”

Did she think he didn’t know they would never give up Daemonar? They had been striving for centuries to get a child out of Lucivar or Daemon that they could control and breed in order to bring back a darker bloodline.

”My life for theirs,” he said.
Everything has a price.

”NO!” Lucivar shouted, struggling against the spelled chains.
”Kill them!”

Ignoring Lucivar, he focused on Hekatah. ”Do we have a bargain?”

”For a chance to see the High Lord humbled?” Hekatah said sweetly. ”Oh, yes, we have a bargain. As soon as you’re restrained, I’ll set the others free. I swear it on my word of honor.”

They ordered him to strip—and he did.

Removing his Black-Jeweled ring, he tossed it on the ground. He had put a tight shield around it so that no one could actually touch it. If he needed to call it back to him, he didn’t want their foulness absorbed by the gold.

As two guards chained him to the center post, Hekatah slipped a Ring of Obedience over his organ.

”You look well for someone your age,” she said, stepping back to give his naked body a thorough inspection.

He smiled gently. ”Unfortunately, darling, I can’t say the same about you.”

Viciousness twisted Hekatah’s face. ”It’s time you learned a lesson,
High Lord.”
She raised her hand at the same time Dorothea, with a look of perverted glee, raised hers.

Lucivar had once tried to explain to the boyos why a Ring of Obedience could force a powerful male to submit, so Saetan thought he was ready for it.

Nothingcould have prepared him for the pain that filled his cock and balls before it spread through his body. His nerves were on fire, while agony settled between his legs. He couldn’t fight it, could barely think.

His sons had endured this, had
fought
against Dorothea’s control knowing that
this
was waiting after every act of defiance. For centuries, they had endured this. How could a man not become twisted by this? How...

He screamed—and kept on screaming until his body just shut down.

19 / Kaeleer

Surreal paced back and forth in Karla’s sitting room, growing angrier by the minute. She wasn’t sure why she’d chosen to vent her frustrations to Karla. Maybe it was because Karla had seemed so damned indifferent to everything that had been happening.

All right, that wasn’t fair. The woman was grieving for her cousin, Morton, not to mention that she was slowly recovering from a vicious poisoning. Even so...

”The bastard sounded like it was an inconvenience that would interfere with his manicure,” Surreal raged at Karla. ” ’We’ll see what we can accommodate.’ Hell’s fire, it’s his father and brother!”

”You don’t know what he intends to do,” Karla said blandly.

The blandness pushed Surreal’s temper up another notch. ”He doesn’t plan to do anything!”

”How do you know?”

Surreal sputtered, swore, paced. ”It’s as if he and Jaenelle
want
us to lose this war.”

For the first time, temper heated Karla’s voice. ”Don’t be an ass.”

”Now, look, sugar—”

”No,
you
look,” Karla snapped. ”It’s about time all of you looked and thought and remembered a few things. The boyos’ instincts are pushing them toward battle. They can’t change that any more than they can change being male. And the coven is made up of Queens whose instincts are urging them to protect their people.”

”Which is exactly what they should be doing!” Surreal shouted. ”And you don’t seem to have that problem,” she added nastily. Then she glanced at Karla’s covered legs and regretted the words.

”When Jaenelle was fifteen,” Karla said, ”the Dark Council tried to say that Uncle Saetan was unfit to be her legal guardian. They decided to appoint someone else. And she said they could ’when the sun next rises.’ Do you know what happened?”

Finally standing still, Surreal shook her head.

”The sun didn’t rise for three days,” Karla said mildly. ”It didn’t rise until the Council rescinded their decision.”

Surreal sank to the floor. ”Mother Night,” she whispered.

”Jaenelle didn’t want a court, didn’t want to rule. The only reason she became the Queen of Ebon Askavi was to stop the Terreilleans who were coming into the kindred Territories and slaughtering the kindred. Do you really think a woman who would do those things has spent the past three weeks wringing her hands and hoping this will all go away? I don’t. She needs us here for a reason—and she’ll tell us when it’s time to tell us.” Karla paused. ”And I’ll tell you one other thing, just between us: sometimes a friend must become an enemy in order to remain a friend.”

Karla was talking about Daemon. Surreal thought for a moment, then shook her head. ”The way he’s been acting—”

”Daemon Sadi is totally committed to Witch. Whatever he does, he does for her.”

”You don’t know that.”

”Don’t I?” Karla said too softly.

Black Widow. The words bloomed in Surreal’s mind until there wasn’t room for anything else. Black Widow. Maybe Karla
wasn’t
indifferent to what was happening. Maybe she had
seen
something in a tangled web. ”Are you sure about Sadi?”

”No,” Karla replied. ”But I’m willing to consider the possibility that what he says in public may be very different from what he does in private.”

Surreal raked her fingers through her hair. ”Well, Hell’s fire, if Daemon and Jaenelle
were
planning something, they could at least tell the court.”

”I was poisoned by a member of my court,” Karla said quietly. ”And let’s not forget Jaenelle’s grandmother, because I’m sure Jaenelle hasn’t. So tell me, Surreal, if you were trying to find a way to totally destroy those two bitches, who would
you
trust?”

”She could have trusted the High Lord.”

”And where is he right now?” Karla asked.

Surreal didn’t say anything, since they both knew the answer.

20 / Terreille

”I think it’s time to let Jaenelle know you’re here,” Hekatah said, circling behind Saetan. ”I think we should send a little gift.”

He felt her grab the little finger of his left hand. He felt the knife cut through skin and bone. And he felt rage when she dropped to her knees and clamped her mouth over the wound to drink his blood. A Guardian’s blood.

Gathering his strength, he sent a blast of heat down his arm, psychic fire that cauterized the wound.

Hekatah jerked away from him, screaming. While he had the chance, he used a little healing Craft to cleanse the wound and seal up the flesh enough to keep infection at bay.

Hekatah kept screaming. Dorothea rushed out of her cabin. Guards came running from every direction.

Finally the screaming stopped. He heard Hekatah scrabble for something on the ground, then slowly get to her feet. As she circled around him, he saw what the blast of power had done. Since her mouth had been clamped on the wound, the psychic fire had kept going after it cauterized the blood vessels. It had melted part of her jaw, grotesquely reshaping her face.

In one hand, she held his little finger. In the other, she held the knife. ”You’re going to pay for that,” she said in a slurred voice.

”No,” Dorothea said, stepping forward. ”You said yourself that we have to keep the damage to a minimum until Jaenelle is contained.”

Hekatah turned toward Dorothea. Saetan felt sure the sick revulsion on Dorothea’s face would drive Hekatah past any ability to think rationally.

”Until Jaenelle is contained,” Hekatah said with effort. ”But... that doesn’t mean ... he can’t pay.”

Turning toward him, she raised her hand.

For the second time, the agony from the Ring of Obedience ripped through him. That was devastating enough. Hearing Lucivar’s pain-filled, but still enraged, war cry as Hekatah also punished the son for the deeds of the father produced an agony in him that cut far deeper.

21 / Kaeleer

Daemon wished Surreal hadn’t been around when Geoffrey brought the small, ornately carved box that had been delivered to the Keep in Terreille. He
had
suggested that, since the verbal message had said it was a ”gift” for Jaenelle, Surreal’s presence wasn’t required. She had countered by saying she was family and had just as much right to know what was going on as he or Jaenelle did. Which, unfortunately, was true.

”Do you want me to open it?” he asked Jaenelle when she had just stood there staring at the box for several minutes.

”No,” she said too calmly. Using Craft, she flipped the lid off the box.

The three of them stared at the little finger nestled in a bed of silk—a little finger with a long, black-tinted nail.

”Well, sugar, I’d say that message is to the point,” Surreal said as she stared at Jaenelle. ”How many more pieces do you need to get back
before you do something?
We’re running out of time!”

”Yes,” Jaenelle said. ”It’s time.”

She’s in shock,Daemon thought. Then he looked at her eyes—and couldn’t suppress the shudder. They were sapphire ice. But behind the ice was a Queen who had been pushed far beyond even the cold rage males were capable of unleashing. Because he was looking for it, because he could descend far enough into the abyss to feel it, he sensed that Hekatah’s little gift had fully awakened the feral side, the
deadly
side of Witch. She was no longer a young woman who had received her father’s finger as a demand for her surrender; she was a predator studying the bait laid out by an enemy.

Dorothea and Hekatah had seen the young woman. They had no idea who they were
really
dealing with.

”Come with me,” Jaenelle said, lightly touching his arm before she walked out of the room.

Even through his shirt and jacket, her hand felt so cold it burned.

Careful to keep his eyes and expression bland, he looked at Surreal—and felt a little dismayed by the fury that looked back at him. That was when he realized that, despite being chilled to the bone, the room was still warm.