Blood of Retribution (11 page)

“Ask him if he knows what magical race the scent belongs to,” Dagda says loudly as if Taz is deaf.

“Good lord, does the Fairy have to shout?  He has just been added to the whacka column in my book.  Please tell him I am more than capable of hearing not only him but everything that is happening within a quarter mile of the house.”

Ignoring his rambling, I ask, “Do you know what magical race it is?”

Puffing up his chest, he says, “No.”  His chest deflates again.

“Then why are you acting cocky.  You don’t know anything more than we do.”

Indignant air fills his black, furry chest again.  “I know that the reason I cannot ascertain the background of the one who left the scent is because it has been magically camouflaged, making it impossible for anyone to discover its source.  Did you know that?”

No, I didn’t.  Turning to Dagda and Kallen, I say, “Taz says that the scent has been magically camouflaged.  Can Fairies do that?”

Dagda is running his finger around the lip of his glass and a soft ringing sound is coming from it.  “It can be done.”

I don’t think I want to know the answer to my next question.  “How?”

“Dark magic,” Kallen says.  His eyes have become cold, disliking the answer as much as I do.

“Can the camouflage be lifted?” I ask.

“No,” Dagda says even though he looks lost in thought.  “It cannot.”

Makes sense.  It wouldn’t be a very good spell if it could be.  “So, this doesn’t do us any good.  We still have no clue as to who did this.”

“Correct,” Dagda says.  He lifts his glass to his lips and downs the scotch.

A knocking on the door draws all of our eyes.  It opens and Isla comes in.  She sits down on the blue leather next to me.  “I am sure Kallen has told you that nothing seems out of place.”  Kallen shifts slightly in his seat not wanting to say that we haven’t given him a chance to talk about it yet.  “I did, however, pick up the scent of a camouflaging spell.”

“At least one of you in here has a keen mind.  I would gladly share a dead wallaby with this one,” Taz says, licking his lips at the thought.

“I’m sure she’d be thrilled,” I mumble.

“Excuse me?” Isla says, her green eyes icing over.

“Taz wants to share a dead animal carcass with you for being smarter than the rest of us,” I say dryly.  “He thinks that’s a compliment.”

“I don’t ‘think that’, I know it is a compliment,” he growls.

Isla lets her eyes linger on him for a moment and then turns away, not feeling the need to acknowledge the compliment of a Tasmanian devil.  “I do not believe that the house is safe for habitation currently.”

Dagda nods.  “I agree.  I will have rooms readied for all of you at the palace.”

I shake my head.  “I knew I’d end up there sooner or later,” I grumble, resenting having to leave yet another home because of a death threat.

“I am sure you will find the experience tolerable,” Dagda drawls.

My cheeks flush.  “Sorry, that was rude.  I’m just upset that we’re all being driven out of our home.”  Because of me.

After a heartbeat, Dagda nods.  “Understandable, but it is for the best.”

My turn to nod.  “I know.”

Turning to Isla, he says, “If you are satisfied your search turned up no clues, I suggest we head out immediately.  We are too exposed here.”

“Yes, I agree.”

Dagda taps on the window and gives the guard standing outside a signal that must mean ‘let’s go home’ because the carriage begins moving a moment later.  As we travel back to the palace, he and Isla begin to discuss a plan for everyone’s safety.  “I believe it prudent for Xandra to remain within the palace walls,” he says.

“I agree.  She is too vulnerable,” Isla replies.

“I will post a guard outside of their room as well as increasing the guards along the perimeter,” Dagda continues.

“I believe an east facing room will be best rather than the Princess’s chamber,” Kallen adds.

“They speak as if you are not even in the carriage,” Taz says.  “I wonder if you have become invisible to everyone except me.”

“I feel like it sometimes,” I grumble.

Six green eyes turn to me.  “You feel like what?” Dagda asks.

I sigh.  “Invisible.  You guys are talking around me.”

“You are welcome to join the conversation,” Isla says.  I hear the ‘quit whining and get with the program’ command in her voice.

“I don’t like the idea of hiding out.  Shouldn’t I be out looking for whoever wants to kill me this time?”

“It is prudent to wait until the identity of your would-be murderer can be obtained before you go barreling around the realm exposing yourself to unknown dangers,” Dagda says in his best ‘I’m your father and your King’ voice.

I give him a sour look.  “That doesn’t make sense.  How am I going to find out who is doing this stuff if I’m trapped in the palace?”

“It does not have to be you who ascertains the information,” Dagda says tightly.  “I have a very capable security team.”

“Yeah, not from what I’ve experienced,” I say under my breath.

“Do you think you will ever stop doing that?” he asks dryly, clearly meaning my mumbling.  Kallen covers a little laugh with a cough.

I shrug.  “Probably not.”  Dagda narrows his eyes at me, but doesn’t say anything else.

“I must agree with Dagda on this,” Isla says, speaking more to Kallen than to me.  “The two of you will need to remain behind the palace walls while others search for the assassin.”

Despite his bedroom suggestion, Kallen likes the idea as much as I do.  “You truly expect us to sit on our hands and hide behind plaster walls?  Cowardice is in neither of our hearts.”

“There is a fine line between courageous and stupid,” Isla shoots back.  “I would like both of you to be on the right side of the line this time.”

“Hey!” I say before I even realize I’m going to speak.  “You make it sound like all we do is stupid things.”  I don’t like the ‘if the shoe fits’ look she gives me. 

“Grandmother, Xandra and I have faced more than one harrowing situation in our time together.  I believe we are best suited to determine our course of action here.”

In a heated voice, Dagda says, “Perhaps it is how you have handled these situations in the past that makes them continue to happen.”

“Whoa,” I say, wanting to step in before Kallen is tried for treason because he decked the King.  “If anyone is to blame for my overabundance of death threats, it’s you.”

Dagda’s eyes open in surprise.  “How…” he begins, but his words die off.  He is the one that set the prophecy of my birth in motion, and he is the first one to proffer a death threat, so he has no business criticizing me or how I’ve handled things.  Clearing his throat, he says, “We will return to the palace now and meet again in an hour, after you have gotten settled, to discuss our course of action.  By then, our heads will be clearer and we will be able to come up with a safety plan that is not guided by knee-jerk reaction or overconfidence.”

I’m glad he’s optimistic about that.  Seems doubtful he and I will see eye to eye, though.  I get that he wants me to be safe, but there is no way in hell I’m not going to go looking for whoever is doing this. 

We ride the rest of the way to the palace in silence.

Chapter 12

Dagda must have sent a message back to his staff that we were coming because there are two maids waiting for us in the great hall.  I assume that one is to bring Isla to her room and the other for Kallen and me.  Looking around the great hall, all I can think is that I am now in a gilded cage and Dagda is going to do his best to keep me here.  I don’t mean that he will hold me hostage.  No, he won’t do that.  Nor could he even if he wanted to.  He will simply assume I am one step closer to fulfilling the role of ‘real’ Princess, whatever that means to him.  He will want Kallen and me to stay under this roof for the rest of our days, preparing us for the day I will take the throne with Kallen at my side.  There are so many girls out there that want to be a Princess.  Why did my mother have to give birth to one of the few who doesn’t?

“Look at her clothes,” I hear one maid whisper to the other.  “She is a mess, but I hear that she cannot perform the simplest magic.  She will be in those filthy things until someone else decides to put her in new ones.”

Okay, I’m going to assume Dagda’s household is still fighting the darkness.  I don’t think he’d put up with insolent staff.  For all my whining about not wanting to be Princess, I find that I don’t want to put up with it either.  “Great way to start things off,” I say to the maid as I approach her.  She takes a step back.  “Stop,” I command.  Obviously, I’m not the only one who doesn’t consider me a Princess because the maid ignores my command and takes another step backwards.

Great, I have to do this the hard way.  Pulling magic, I use it to lasso the maid as I did Taz earlier.  She doesn’t fight it like he did, though.  She simply lets the magic pull her as her eyes widen in fear.  When she is close enough, I reach a hand out to touch her.  She flinches, which makes the darkness I still have inside of me from Kallen roar up and encourage me to give her a reason to flinch.  I clamp it back down and touch the maid softly.  With a rush that only she and I can feel, the magic jumps from her to me, almost knocking us both to the ground.

The maid stumbles back in horror.  “Princess, forgive me,” she says, dropping to her knees and bowing her head.  “If you let me have five minutes to collect my belongings, I promise to leave quietly and never return.”

Huh?  What is she talking about?  Reading my mind, Kallen leans down and says quietly, “She believes she will be fired for the way she spoke of you.”

I give him a ‘really?’ look and he nods his head.  Oh please.  If I got fired from my job every time I muttered something I shouldn’t, the prophecy would never be fulfilled.  I would have been fired the very first day.  Shaking my head, I say, “Please get off the floor.”  The maid stays where she is.  “Look, I’m not mad at you.  I say stupid crap all the time because I can’t keep my lips together long enough not to, so I’d be a huge hypocrite if I got mad at other people for doing it.  Besides, I’m assuming you usually have better control when there’s not a swirling cloud of dark magic hanging over the realm making people, I mean Fairies, do incredibly stupid things.”

The maid finally looks up at me.  In a small voice, she asks, “You truly forgive me?”

I snort.  “There’s nothing to forgive, so please get off the floor.”

Slowly, with disbelief in her eyes, the maid does.  “Thank you, your Highness,” she says with a bow. 

Um, that doesn’t make me feel any better than her being on her knees.  I’m about to say that when a gust of magic comes flying at me like a hurricane on steroids.  The kind of steroids that make people freak out and kill their families and then go lift some more weights until the neighbor smells the rotting bodies and calls the cops.  It hits me so hard, the little fling across the room I experienced earlier was like skipping through daisies.  This can’t even be described as a fling.  This is the equivalent of being hit by an angry rhino.  I fly across the room and land hard on the marble floor, my head probably leaving a crack in it.  Ow. 

I don’t have time to complain more than that about the pain because the magic circles me, lassoing me like I’ve done to others today, and it picks me half way up and drags me across the room to a random spot and shoves me to the ground again.  Pulling my magic is difficult considering my mind is busy focusing on the boa constrictor hold that is rapidly deflating my lungs.  I feel as if I’m soon going to be crushed until my ribs crack and puncture through several vital organs.   I’m pretty sure a have a concussion, too. 

My fight or flight response kicks in, and I’m able to pull the magic up through my body and let it leave through my pores.  It becomes a barrier between me and the dark magic and insulates me from any more injury from the crushing force.  Like an unbreakable bubble surrounding me.

Now I have to break through, somehow.  That part is a little more difficult.  I feel Kallen’s magic fighting the darkness from the outside, but it doesn’t want to budge.  I try simply pushing the dark magic away from me, but its hold is too great.  I try focusing on the dark magic, feeling it with my mind, looking for a weak spot.  I don’t find one.  Crap.  I need my wings.  Right here in the middle of the great hall with Fairies circling around me, I need to call to my wings.  Guess my secret isn’t going to be a secret much longer.  The whole realm will know I’m part Angel.  Unless I bring the fight somewhere else.

Concentrating on teleporting, I close my eyes and will both me and the dark magic to the forest.  I open my eyes and am relieved to find myself in a thick patch of trees.  Now I can call my wings.

They come to me in a flash, two little pinches on my back telling me they are in place.  Channeling my magic through them, a brilliant, pure white, light emanates out from me and the dark magic breaks apart like a china doll someone just chucked down the stairs.  It’s gone.  Even the magic I had been holding from when I touched Kallen and the maid earlier.  My wings have cleansed me of the all the darkness.  A black feather in my left, white wing is the only proof it once had a hold on me. 

It’s too bad that I can’t wear my wings all the time, but that would be too much exposure.  Both in giving my enemies knowledge of the extra power boost I have access to when needed and it would be disrespectful as I am not a full-blooded Angel.  My wings are only meant to be a part time, as you need them, kind of thing.  Not to mention they’re way too uncomfortable to wear all the time.  Sitting in a chair with a back on it is nearly impossible, and trying to roll over in my sleep?  It wouldn’t be happening.  I don’t know how the Angels do it.

Also, the few black feathers I have in my wings are proof that I have found myself in bad situations more than once where I ended up having to be cleansed.  I’m not sure if there is an infinite number of feathers available to me, just like I don’t know what happens if all my feathers turn black.  I’d rather not find out if I can help it.  With that thought, two little pinches on my back signify my wings going back to Angel time to wherever they’re stored there.

I am about to teleport back to the palace when the trees start to whisper.  As I stand up and brush myself off, running fingers through my hair to loosen the snarls and check for slugs or termites, I tell myself they’re not saying actual words.  But, I’m not good at lying to myself.  The sound is getting louder and clearer and a wind picks up, blowing the leaves and the brush around.  My hair slaps at my face and I try to ignore it so I can be ready if I’m about to be attacked.  Getting caught playing with my hair by an enemy would probably lessen the ‘look tough’ factor on my side.

Finally, I can make out the words that are dancing from tree to tree, leaf to leaf.  I should say the word.  Mine.  That’s the only word floating through the air.  Just mine.  What the hell does that mean?  I look around, trying to find someone responsible for this mini tornado, but there’s no one else in the woods with me.  Not even Taz joined me on this little sojourn.  Great.  Everyone is really going to think I’m crazy when I tell them the leaves spoke to me.  Maybe I should just give into the crazy that surrounds me all the time.  Being loony might actually be helpful in my quest for peace.  If I do stupid or impulsive things, I can blame it on the crazy.  I grimace when I think that that plan might work too well.  I don’t think I want everyone to think I’m batty all the time.

Mine.  What does that mean?  “What’s yours?” I ask the trees, feeling stupid talking to them.

Surprisingly, I get an answer.  “All.”

I scowl.  “That’s kind of greedy, don’t you think?”

Mine, is the only response I get this time.  “You need to bolster your vocabulary.  When all you do is repeat yourself, people stop listening.”  And when you talk to trees, people lock you up in a mental ward.

“All.  Mine.”

I sigh.  “Yeah, I got that part, thanks.”

“Death.”

“Hey, good for you, you added a new word,” I say, clapping my hands.  “I assume you mean my death.  Good luck with that.  And you’ll have to get in line.  Lots of people want to kill me.”  I feel like an idiot standing in the woods talking to air, but even the leaves aren’t going to get away with a death threat.  “Why don’t you show yourself so we can see if everything really is yours by seeing who can kick the other’s ass.”  I’m going to feel really stupid if a leaf steps up to the challenge.

The wind continues to blow but there’s no response.  “Yeah, that’s what I thought.  You’re all bluster and no substance.”  That sounded funnier in my head.

Giving up on this one-sided conversation, I close my eyes and teleport back to the palace.  Wow, I really wish I could see where I’m going to land.  I barrel into the maid that I was speaking with before and we knock heads.  Like the floor incident wasn’t already enough to give me a headache.  I think the maid is worse off than I am, though, because she twists her body awkwardly and falls to the ground, immediately grabbing her swelling ankle. 

With a sigh, I bend down to her.  “Sorry about that.  I’m not known for my perfect landings,” I say.  I reach out to her ankle, which makes her nervous.  “I’m only going to heal it,” I assure her.  She nods and doesn’t flinch when I lay my hands on her.  Channeling magic, I focus on her ankle and repairing the soft tissue damage it sustained.  In just a moment, her ankle is good as new. 

The maid gives me a small smile as she twists her ankle around making sure it’s all better.  “Thank you,” she says shyly.  Pushing herself up from the floor, she says, “I will show you to your room now if you like.”

With all the excitement, I kind of forgot why we’re here.  “That would be nice,” I say with a smile.  That will give me some privacy to tell Kallen about the talking trees.

Kallen comes to me and wraps an arm around my shoulders and pulls me close.  “I will never get used to you disappearing like that.”

I wrap my arm around his back.  “Good.  I don’t think I want you to.”  I look around.  “Where did Isla and Dagda go?”

“They figured you had the situation under control so they went their separate ways.  Dagda is working on putting together a security detail and Isla is heading up the investigation into her house being blown up.”

Yeah, I bet she is.  I feel sorry for whoever it is because after I’m through with them, she’ll take over.  This is not going to end well for the guilty party.

We follow the maid through a corridor that follows the path of the river flowing through the great hall.  We go past the throne room and keep going until we come to an old-fashioned elevator.  At least, it would be considered old-fashioned in my realm.  In this one, it’s probably just considered an elevator.  It’s a gilded, metal see-through box that has a gate that slides open, which emphasizes my whole ‘trapped in a gilded cage’ feeling.  It’s manned by an elderly Fairy who rises from her stool and smiles brightly as she opens the gate for us and then secures it in place after we’re tucked inside.  It’s a little bit cramped with the four of us.  I feel her draw magic and the elevator starts to rise.  It’s now that I notice the distinct lack of cables attached to the metal cage.  It is solely magic that is making us go up.  Boy, I sure hope her magic hasn’t faded like the scribe’s magic has.  Just in case, I hold tight to Kallen in case I need to teleport us out before we’re elevator pancakes when the old Fairy’s magic fails.  Kallen chuckles at my lack of faith, but I don’t loosen my grip on him.  When we are safely at the third floor, the old Fairy opens the gate and Kallen and I quickly step out.  The ride was a little bumpy, but it wasn’t too bad.  I’m still going to take the stairs from now on.