DRESSED FROM HEAD TO TOE IN BLACK, I crept over the rocks. I moved as silently as I could, avoiding the scree and loose rocks everywhere.
Roran was an excellent guide. He was sure-footed and skilled enough with his magic to give us just enough light in the dark to be sure on the rocks.
Someone’s sword rang against a rock.
I snapped around to look.
It was one of the newer temple dedicants, and he looked completely chagrined. I waited until he reached me, and then I snatched the scabbard belt and jerked it off.
“Wear it across your chest. If you hang it loose, it bangs on things.”
“Yes, mistress.” He scrambled to sling it across his chest and readjust all of his gear and equipment.
Shaking my head, I started up the hill again, working to regain my position near Roran. He smirked when I finally fell in next to him.
“Did you straighten him out, ilati?”
“Yes. Of course. One of the first things my father taught me was how to wear a sword properly for different situations.”
Chuckling, he offered a hand up the rock ledge we had to climb over. “I still get a kick out of the fact that someone as sweet and kind as you can beat the tar out of anyone in the temple except Dorian.”
“Frustrating, really,” I said. “I need to best him instead of calling a draw every time.”
Roran barked a laugh, and then slapped his hand over his mouth.
We continued over the sharp hills through the night with the moon above. The Scar had grass and rocks, and that was about it.
Our group was made up of Roran, Vitas, Carolee, two dozen dedicants-turned-soldiers and me. That was all. We were the decoy group distracting from the northern raid. While we had to be careful and quiet, it wasn’t as important as the real group.
The actual assault group in the north consisted of Staviz, Drez, Rilen and Ophelia and a few more of the extremely skilled dedicants and civil soldiers.
Though no one really thought Ophelia should be going anywhere so soon after the death of Argo, she wouldn’t be stopped.
I understood.
As the moon sank to the horizon, Roran found an overhang to provide a bit of shelter. “We’ll stop here for the rest of the night. Get some sleep. Our current plan is to sneak around East S’Kir, draw some attention away from what’s going on in the North, and sneak back out. Less than a day in the vampire territory.”
“Fire, Master Roran?” someone called.
“Yes, it’s safe here,” he nodded.
In just a few minutes, several small, smokeless campfires crackled, along with a few tents, including ours. Roran heated some soup and bread near the fire and settled me into the tent in my sleeping bag.
“You’re getting sleep too, aren’t you?” I asked.
“Not terribly tired, honestly.”
I pursed my lips. “Me either.”
Settling on top of his sleeping bag, he sipped the soup as he stared at the fire. I adjusted so I could sit next to him.
“Do you…do you remember the vampires?” I asked, barely a whisper.
He nodded. “I do. I remember traveling to see friends who lived near the Stronghold. Our mothers had been classmates and friends, and we would play together as children, and then became friends ourselves. Kita and Valsavo. Sister and brother.”
“It was different…”
“S’Kir was different. The God had not been lost. There was no temple. There was no spine. The vampires and the druids had a king. There were skirmishes between us, but they were small, and usually, resolved quickly. We made friends with the vampires and they with us. Rilen and I would get into all kinds of trouble with Kita and Val. Leaving horse pens open, spooking sheep. Getting lost in the forest, camping in the south. Swimming in the Western Sea.” He glanced at me. “Probably a lot like you and your friends when you were younger. Just with vampires.”
Chewing on a piece of bread, I thought for a moment. He seemed willing to talk, and I didn’t want to spoil that.
“So they were your friends.”
“They were all of our friends,” Roran said. He laughed ruefully. “Kita was my first bedmate. We were wicked together, and…well, at the time, the things we did were dirty and kinky.” Shaking his head, I could see real mirth in his eyes. “If she could see me now…”
“Is she still alive? Do you think?”
The mood sobered a bit. “I don’t know. She was courting another vampire, so she was in the far, far east when the Spine rose. If she didn’t take her Eternal Slumber…”
“Eternal Slumber?”
“Druids take the Drink. Hemlock, nightshade, foxglove, and apple seed essence in the vampire’s draught. We fall asleep and never wake up. Vampires are a little more… violent. They have a virulent ability to heal and resist poisons, so they take Eternal Slumber. A ritual beheading, attended by friends and family.”
“Like our Last Night celebration.”
“Not exactly, but that would be the best parallel.” Roran sipped his soup. “We were so young when I saw her last that I don’t know if she would have taken that path. I know she wanted children.”
I turned the soup jar in my hands, picking up Jallina’s habit when she was thinking. “Would you have married her?”
“I would, but not with her desire for a family.”
My heart stuttered in my chest. “You… don’t want children?”
“Very much so.”
“Then…”
He laughed and patted my knee. “Vampires and druids can’t have children together. If a mixed couple wanted children, they had to adopt, or agree to try a natural pregnancy from outside the marriage. Vampires…um. They don’t like to share.”
I chuckled. “Neither does Dorian. I thought he was going to rip Vitas’s hand off.”
Roran smirked. “Dorian does like to share. Just not outside the bedroom.”
That was very, very true. “So would you have stayed with Kita?”
“I was so young, and it was so long ago, I can’t answer that. I miss her friendship more than anything else. I miss being able to wind our way from the Western Sea to the Dawn Sea with nothing better to do than talk, sleep, eat and make friends with local residents.”
“Release the cows on the cornfield.”
The laugh was deep and honest. “Yes, that too.”
I let the silence stretch a moment before I brought up the next question.
“Do they drink blood?”
He nodded slowly. “Yes. Blood is power. Just as for us sex is power.”
“Is that all they drink?”
“No, no… they need food too. Not only blood.” He looked up at the sky full of stars. “Blood is important to them. They won’t take without permission, and they won’t share unless it suits them.” Turning slowly, he considered me sitting there. “Being bitten to share your blood is one of the most gods-damned erotic things I’ve ever experienced. Their bite alone can make you come.”
“Kita?”
“Yes.” He flushed red.
“You had her bite your cock, didn’t you?” He cleared his throat, and I started laughing. “You did, you goddamned filthy bugger!”
“She was there, I was hard…”
I couldn’t stop laughing and flopped down on my back, trying to control it. “You are far, far more filthy than you’ve let me know!”
“I wouldn’t call it filthy,” he said, leaning back with me. “I would call it…adventurous.”
Lifting an eyebrow, I stared at him. “I would call it filthy.”
He rolled his eyes. “Okay, I’m filthy.”
“I like that about you,” I admitted.
His hand traced circles on my stomach, and we just laid there for a few minutes in the dark.
“Roran?”
“Yes, Kimber?”
“Do you…do you prefer men?”
He didn’t answer me right away but kept making tiny little circles with his fingers. “I can guess why you ask that. I’m always after Dorian. But I don’t. Not really. I like both, men and women. It probably took me five centuries to consider a male partner. Rilen and I mated Dorian a thousand years ago. It’s been all we’ve really known. I seem to be a little more randy than my brother, so... I sought him out more often.”
His hand slipped below the waist of the pants I was wearing and down between my legs. “But this… this is also ever so lovely. Soft and responsive. And you taste like nothing else in the world.” Fingers stroked over my labia, dipping in to touch my clit, and then circle my entrance. “I don’t prefer men. I prefer something real. Something I can love, and comfort and support and fight, both for and with. Something that might want all that back.”
“Rilen said you’ve shared women a few times…”
Working around my waist, I could feel the tickle of his new, more powerful magic over my skin as he peeled away my pants. “We did, but never anyone like you. They were flings. Just something to switch up our bedroom antics. There will never be anyone else in our bed but you now.” He rolled to rest between my legs, at my now bare and ready pussy. “I love your eyes. The angry, cold blue flash, and the deep, welcoming green. There are so few people with eyes like yours.”
I slipped his pants down over his hips and to his thighs, his heavy erection still pointing up at his stomach.
Hard was an understatement.
Grabbing one of the globes of his ass, I pulled him down, into me, fitting him against me, and he slipped down inside me.
“I sincerely hope you and your twin never ask me to judge a bigger cock contest, because there’s no way I could make the call.”
“We are identical,” he breathed, his hips taking a gentle, slow rhythm.
“Mmm,” I answered, enjoying the slow burn of his cock stretching and filling me. “I’m glad we’re druids. It’s so much fun finding power.”
A touch of his magic tickled my clit while he held his rhythm. “You don’t mind being our little harem mistress?”
“No, not at all, not when I get—ohhhh—to fuck you all almost at will,” I answered, lending a little motion of my hips to his.
He leaned down on his elbows and smoothed my hair from my forehead. “The bedroom is much more fun with you there.”
I kissed his nose as a little more magic tickled my clit. “I also like watching you three.”
“Oh, really?”
“Really,” I breathed, my body starting to churn under his careful assault. “Watching Dorian take you. Watching you suck him. Listening to you and your brother take your pleasures from him. Oh, yessssss.”
We both fell silent, only the sound of our breathing filling the tent. His hips were slow and measured as he pumped in and out of me. His magic danced on my clit and pricked at my nipples.
It was a magnificent contrast to the frantic fucking of the day before.
It was just as good.
“Kimber,” he breathed in the quiet. “My ilati. Our ilati. I love you…”
He found my lips and kissed me as if he were fucking me—slow, careful, tender, and thorough. He lent me his flavor and stole my breath.
This was what making love was.
Perfect give and take.
Rilen had done this to me in the garden. Now his twin did the same in the dark of night.
“I love you, too, Roran.”
Under the moon, he drew out my climax. A long path to the top, and when his name fell from my lips as I came, it was not an explosion, but a great roaring bonfire that would burn those who tried to tear us apart.
* * *
Roran motioned for everyone to stay low and keep as quiet as possible.
We had finally emerged from the rocks of the Scar midmorning into a pine forest. We made excellent time through those trees because the needles made no sound as we walked.
The pine forest, though, was utterly disconcerting. If one of us didn’t keep a close eye on the others, it was easy—more than easy—to get lost.
Stopping just at the edge of the forest, we looked out to see where we were and what was around us.
It was a whole lot of nothing. Rocks as far as the eye could see, and no water or vegetation or shelter ahead of us.
“That’s not good,” Carolee observed.
“The Rocks,” Roran said, tapping the ancient map. “We’re south of where we need to be, so we need to follow these woods until we … well, I guess come out at the Chasm or an armory.”
“What would a vampire armory look like?” Vitas asked. “We know next to nothing about them or their architecture.”
“Small low buildings. No windows. Possibly brick. Guarded,” Carolee said. “Fences? Maybe guard dogs.”
Vitas and I glanced at her. She shrugged. “Makes sense. That’s what we would put them in, and we’re not so far removed from them that it’s impossible to guess, you know?”
Roran smirked and motioned us all to start moving up the line of trees again.
I cast out with my magic to see if I could feel anyone around us, but there were only trees, bugs, and a few animals. Not much else.
“Do we need to make noise or create a distraction so the others can do their job?” one of the soldiers asked from behind us. “Just sneaking around isn’t going to really do anyone any good.”
“We have to get away from the rocks,” Roran answered, pointing to the miles of empty, lifeless terrain. “We can’t do anything with that. There’s not even a tree to set fire. Once we’re back in an area where we can cause some damage, then we will.”
Satisfied, the group was quiet again.
“Did Dorian have any time to teach you?” Roran asked.
“Teach me what?” I asked.
Our voices were low, quiet, deep.
“Vampire speed.”
“No. This all happened too fast. There was no time for a lesson.”
Roran snickered. “Well, there was, but…”
My face heated. “You enjoyed me punishing him.”
“Of course I did because I got to help.” He tossed me a sidelong glance. “Don’t be fooled, ilati. He liked your punishment.”
“Well, I liked punishing him. I’ll do it more often.”
“Shh!” Carolee’s voice cut through the quiet of the midday forest and had us all dropping to the ground.
I listened.
There was nothing for a moment, and then the padded footfalls of someone further in the forest.
Vitas moved toward us silently and pressed a finger to his lips. He grabbed a broken branch and scribbled in the dirt.
Thought I heard something earlier. Dismissed it. Definitely deep in the woods.
Concern wrinkled my forehead, and I wrote in the dirt as well. I cast out before. Not five minutes. No one.
Roran wrote Vamp speed.
They could have been following us all along, and we wouldn’t have known because of how fast they could run in close, spy, and run back out.
Carolee took the branch. Shit.
That was the most accurate statement of all.
Vitas tapped on the ground again and scribbled. We have to make noise. We have to blow something up. If we don’t, they might realize we are the decoys.
He was dead on. We had to.
I grabbed the stick. We keep moving. Everyone needs to cast out and see if there’s someone out there.
Everyone nodded, and we spread through the group with us to tell them what we were doing. Vitas and Roran pulled the pack off Roran’s back, and I could see some long thick sticks that looked like huge fireworks.
My brain supplied the answer: dynamite.
They were going to be ready to blow something up.
On Carolee’s signal, the group stood and started walking again, even more quietly. I trotted up next to Roran and leaned into his ear.
“What if you ran ahead to see where we are and if there’s anything coming up? You can do it, so why not use it?”
He smiled and tapped his temple. “Good idea. Just keep walking forward, and I’ll see what I can do.” He pressed a kiss to my lips. “You’ll have to make sure I have power tonight.”
“Mm. I’ll have to come up with some ideas.”
“You two are gross,” Vitas whispered.
“Please. Half of S’Kir heard you two going at it last night,” Roran said. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
He was gone.
Vitas shook his head. “Not going to get used to that any time soon.”
I shot him a look. “Don’t have to. Just have to learn how to do it. You have the… stuff ready to go?”
“Yes. We just need a target. An appropriate one. We can’t just lob this stuff through the air and hope that a random building was important enough.”
Holding up a hand, I stopped him. “I know.”
Now that we knew we were being watched, it was easier to find the sounds in the forest as we walked. The other’s footfalls were silent, but not completely. Just a small rustle here and there. Easy to pinpoint.
Roran jogged back up to us about fifteen minutes later and looked exhausted.
“Just one in you?” I asked as he dropped a kiss on my lips.
“Just one today. I don’t need anymore.”
Carolee gasped. “You found something.”
He nodded. “I found an actual armory. It’s on the way to the stronghold if I don’t miss my guess. It’ll be a perfect target.”
Vitas nodded. “Will we be able to actually recover anything?”
“If we’re patient and careful, yes, I think we can. As many long guns as we can carry, more than enough ammunition.”
I stared at him. “Will we be able to get back?”
“At that point, as long as we head straight for the Chasm, yes. No climbing the hills. If we get guns, run. Just run for the Chasm. The road nearby will take you there. It’s the right place for it.”
Vitas and Carolee nodded, fading back to tell the others.
There was sharp swish that cut the air at that moment.
Everything went black.