I raised my eyebrows, wishing for the ability to lift only one in that snide, slightly insulting manner that Leo’d had. “I’m listening.”
“The four.Perhaps.And if the Flayer of Mithrans dies before actual battle?” she asked.
“If the Flayer dies without them fighting and with his bloodline, timeline, and historical line untouched, then all debts will be paid.”
“I can agree in theory.”
“Not good enough.”
Soul splashed the steaming water. Fins and silver hair caught the cloud-gray light. Steam made little balloons of pale mist, puffing high into the air and hovering over the water. “There is one problem to all you ask. I can no longer access my dragon form.” She laughed sadly at whatever she saw on my face. “I have been punished for changing the timelines when Leo was at Sangre Duello and his head flew from his body. I am stuck in human and mer-form and cannot shift into my dragon. I can bargain back for my true form if I have access to a rift. Which you are hiding from us, the dragons of rainbows and air, who own all rifts.”
“Your kind doesn’t own the rifts,” I said, my brain trying to find the point that was still eluding me. “You didn’t make them. The rifts simply are.”
“I am under attack for not letting my sisters go back in time to destroy all vampires,” she hissed, fury rising, the water simmering harder, steam rising from the pool in heavy clouds. “Only the Mercy Blades, eleven in all the world, have kept their word to the Mithrans, have backed me against my own kind.”
“And if you get access to a rift?” It came to me. “You’ll jump through and be gone, and our bargain will be trashed.”
Soul narrowed her eyes at me like a ticked-off mermaid. “Yes. It means I may be pulled through to another world and leave you alone to finish the fight with the Flayer of Mithrans. Rifts are dangerous,” she repeated.
“And if you fall through, the other arcenciels will go back in time and kill the SODs before they’re even born.”
“Killing the Sons of Darkness before they are born has been a potentiality since you were crowned withle breloque.” Her tone was sour, bitter as wormwood.
Empress,Beast thought at me.Soul is not the empress of the arcenciels. Jane has crown.
It hit me, like being slapped with the fin of a bathing dragon. Beast was right. I hadlebreloque. I was empress of the vamps and, with the corona, I was also the Dark Queen. The arcenciels wanted the crown. They wanted a lot from me and I held the royal flush—the corona. Before I had time to reconsider, I took a big honking chance and said, “You help me with the Flayer of Mithrans or you get nothing from me. The holder ofle breloque, the Dark Queen of the Mithrans, no longer negotiates with the people of the rainbow dragons. The beings worshipped as gods by the People of the Straight Ways have been foresworn too many times.” I lifted my jaw into the air. “I’ve told you what I want. Take it or leave it.”
Soul spread her mouth wide. Her predator teeth flashed at me. She lunged from the heated pool, mouth open wide. I ducked and slipped on the icy ground. Rolled to my backside hard, back to my knees, through the snow. Not fast enough.
Her teeth tore through my shoulder, ripping my clothes and taking off a layer of flesh and muscle. Blood pulsed into the air, scarlet and shocking against the sea of white and grays and blacks of snowfall. Soul reared back, a cobra position, flared and violent.
She took two rounds to her torso, kill shots had she been human. The shots echoed in the trees as she flipped in midair and arced back into the water with a gigantic splash. The water churned white and red and the bloody pink of diluted blood, changing quickly to blue, to black, and back to the murky brownish green of the creek. Shevanished beneath the surface. I fell to my knees, ears deaf.
Stunned, I slapped my pawed hand over my wound and said, “What the... She bit me!”
“Jane!”
“I’m okay,” I whispered, lying, as pain blasted through me. A chunk of flesh was actually missing, the wound so wide and deep I couldn’t cover it with my good hand to apply pressure. The teeth had torn through arteries, nerves, bitten muscle away. My blood was pumping fast, saturating my clothing, drenching the snow around me. The pain grew, a gnawing electric agony. I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move my fingers or hand. Arcenciel bites were poisonous. And psychoactive. And it looked as if regicide was commonplace in arcenciel circles. “I have to shift.”
“Yeah. Fast.” Eli raced through the trees as blood pulsed through my grip. “Why did she bite you?” he asked as he reached me.
“I made the mistake of acknowledging I was her queen. I don’t think I was supposed to know that and I think it pissed her off.”
“That looks painful,” a woman’s voice said.
Eli targeted the woman faster than I could focus. Liz Everhart stood in the trees, dressed in blue snow-ski gear, cross-country skis on her feet, her scarlet hair partially hidden under a hat the same blue color. “Easy there, big boy. I’d hate to bury you. Again.”
Big boy? Again?
Eli scowled at her, but my half-cat nose picked up a scent from Eli’s skin, strong even over the smell of my blood. He set his weapon down and pulled medical gear from his pockets.
Eli wants witch woman,Beast thought at me.Mate for Eli?
Hey. I’m dying here,I thought at her, just as I fell forward and my head bounced on the snow.
Eli caught me, too late, demanding, “Shift. Shift now.”
“At least I’m not wearing boots,” I said. Or tried to. The world telescoped down to pinpoints of light. And Beast tore through me.
