Embrace the Mystery Read online

  She didn’t know very much about Lorelei. She’d shown up a couple of years ago and stayed to help, but Batya didn’t ask questions, one of her rules in the ex-pat community. She believed it was important for all ex-patriots, those realm-folk who chose to live in the U.S apart from their birth-realms, to feel like they could start over without having their histories made public.

  Suddenly, the air outside the gallery lit up and streams of killing energy passed from Quinlan to the hovering wraith-pairs. Quinlan rose into the air as well, at least three feet off the ground.

  He looked magnificent, even from behind, because he held his arms wide and flung impossible arrays of battle energy at the enemy, something that would have destroyed a normal wraith-pair with the first blow.

  Yet the Invictus couples barely moved as they slowly advanced on him, pressing their joined energy hard at him in brilliant streams of alternating red and blue light.

  The golden aura of the ancient fae grew brighter as the battle raged. Maybe she gained energy from the sight of destruction.

  Probably.

  The woman was evil.

  Batya heard Lorelei’s soft sobs, but her own inclination leaned away from sadness or even pity in this moment. She’d grown up with the destruction that the Invictus pairs could inflict, which was one of the reasons she’d left Grochaire in the first place. She’d had enough of the war.

  The other reason began to forge a heavy vibration through her body, the part of her that was monumentally and powerfully fae. For a moment, she even wondered if she could pull this off, because she’d kept her power dormant for the past century.

  Yet with one man’s life hanging by a couple of blue streams of energy, she gathered her power. Quinlan belonged to her, not to these vile, wraith-vampire Invictus pairs and he sure as hell didn’t belong to an ancient fae who even she could detect smelled like rotting garbage.

  “Stay back, Lorelei. But don’t worry, this won’t hurt you.”

  Batya moved forward and began accessing one of her powers, a realm frequency that many fae shared that made use of enthrallment in many different forms. The canvases and easels all around her began to vibrate and shake as she gathered her power. Some of them even fell to the floor.

  Damn the Invictus anyway and if this ancient fae had charge of them, damn her as well.

  Everything happened at once.

  Both massive wraith-pairs charged Quinlan. A brief flash of red and blue light flew into the air on impact, then Quinlan crashed through the window.

  “There she is,” the ancient fae called out. “Get her.”

  But without giving it too much thought, Batya sent her enthrallment power outward and wrapped her gallery up inside a shield, like she’d just set a hard cement wall all around the perimeter of the entire building.

  Beyond the shield, the woman ensconced in the golden light writhed. “Where is she? What happened? Where did everything go? What the hell is this?”

  “Mistress we don’t know. But we hit Mastyr Quinlan with everything. Wherever he is, he’s probably dead.”

  “Do you think that’s any consolation? I don’t give a ripe fig about his ass. I wanted the woman.” Her voice vibrated with rage.

  Lorelei joined her. “What did you do, Mistress Batya?”

  Normally, Batya didn’t allow anyone to address her in the ancient realm way, but she let it pass for now since she had a bigger problem. She had one half-dead mastyr vampire lying on a bed of shattered glass.

  She dropped to her knees beside Quinlan. He had burns all over his body and most of his heavy battle leathers and Guardsman coat were gone. His long, thick, black hair remained intact, but she wasn’t sure how.

  “Will you help me, Lorelei? I need to get him to the healing room.”

  “Of course, but will your shield hold?”

  “Yes.”

  Lorelei glanced toward the broken window. “But how are you maintaining it?”

  Batya met her gaze, staring at her hard. “The same way, I think, that you were able to see that bitch out there.”

  A blush crawled up Lorelei’s cheeks. Batya had suspected for a long time that Lorelei had many secrets and tonight she’d put a spotlight on at least one of them.

  Lorelei merely nodded. “Fair enough.”

  “Now do you, or do you not, have levitation powers here?” Batya’s own abilities in that area, much to her dismay, left a lot to be desired. Many powerful fae could fly, but even with her three-hundred-plus years, she still couldn’t lift her feet off the ground. But she could raise other things for short bursts, like near-dead vampires.

  Lorelei sighed. “I do.”

  “Then you take one side of this big Guardsman and I’ll take the other.”

  When Batya slid her arms beneath Quinlan, he moaned heavily. She sensed that a number of his bones were broken and that left alone, he’d die.

  She sent a calming vibration through his mind and somehow that did the trick. He dropped into a much-needed coma.

  When Lorelei worked her arms beneath Quinlan as well, and she opened her levitating power, some of it zinged against Batya.

  I’ve never felt anything like that. Who the hell are you?

  Lorelei’s lips quirked. An ex-pat, like you. That’s all.

  Like hell. But Batya smiled.

  “On three.” She counted down and together, two Grochaire ex-pats, levitated a near-dead mastyr vampire, weighing in at a heavily muscled two-forty and not an ounce less, and carried him through the blown-apart gallery to the infirmary off the back hallway.

  The healing room held a large bed so that family members could often sleep beside their loved ones, or just be near them when they passed.

  Mostly realm-folk survived whatever trauma or disease came at them, one of the perks of being long-lived.

  Yet Batya had noticed that sometimes the spirit of her fellow realm inhabitants gave out when a human spirit didn’t. That was one of the mysteries of her world.

  As she and Lorelei worked to get the blood-feeding-tube down Quinlan’s throat, she doubted he’d succumb to a loss of will, or anything else like that. Only these levels of burns and physical destruction could take Mastyr Quinlan out.

  For the next several hours, she and Lorelei took turns donating blood to the feeding-tube apparatus. Vampires were excellent self-healers and more than anything, blood would do the trick. So together, they donated and watched as minute upon minute his skin knitted together and his broken bones stretched out and re-formed properly.

  She kept him out cold so that anytime his powerful conscious mind tried to rise back to the surface, she’d send a reassuring vibration, from her healing frequency, straight to the center of his brain. He seemed to know her and to acknowledge her presence, because he didn’t fight her, but each time settled back into his unconscious state to let his body do the work.

  Lorelei brought her a tray of food of fresh fruit, an orange muffin, and a vanilla yogurt. Batya didn’t speak as she ate, but she did inspect the enthrallment shield she’d created. The preternatural wall held and wouldn’t budge unless she made a decision to release it. She could also open up small portions in order to let people come and go if necessary.

  Though the wraith-pairs had left at dawn, an elven female, wearing protective sun-gear, stood guard across the street within a faint enthrallment shield so that the humans couldn’t see them. The ancient fae was having her gallery watched.

  By nightfall, having been up for twenty-four hours, Lorelei needed some sleep.

  Quinlan was well on his way to healing and she’d removed the blood-feeding tube. He’d be waking up in the next few hours at which time she’d give him a solid wrist-feed.

  For now, however, with Quinlan’s skin mostly restored and sleeping as he was on his back, she stretched out on the bed, pulled a separate blanket over her and turned on her side to look at him. With all the lights in the room off, she altered her vision and saw him in a soft glow.

  He had an incredible profile.
His nose was slightly crooked like it had been broken in some way he couldn’t repair or maybe he’d been born that way, but she’d always thought it his sexiest feature. He had thick black brows, and his hair lay twisted and matted beneath him. She didn’t envy him that brush-job.

  Her hair was similar so she knew exactly what he faced when he finally recovered.

  She tucked her hand beneath her cheek and sighed. Not a bad night-and-day’s work, saving a mastyr vampire from an ancient fae and two uber-powerful Invictus wraith-pairs.

  Was this the future then? An army of wraith-pairs that could defeat even a powerful mastyr vampire?

  If this were true, then what would happen to the Nine Realms? How could Grochaire or any of the other North American realms stand?

  Well, she couldn’t solve all the world’s problems, at least not tonight.

  She smiled as she fell sound asleep.

  * * * * * * * * *

  Quinlan woke up slowly, his mind cluttered with images that he couldn’t quite make sense of, like huge vampires and wraiths, snowfields, and a deadly net flying through the air.

  But beneath the revolving spin of scattered sights and sounds, rode a sense that he should be up and doing something. He just didn’t know what.

  His eyes took their time opening and they hurt in a strange way, like he’d been staring at the sun, a very bad thing for a vampire.

  He recalled seeing something gold and glowing, but what?

  Some of his bones ached, especially his ribs, and he could feel them reforming, which meant he’d been hurt recently, but how? Why?

  A weight across his upper thighs and another across his chest stung a little where his skin hadn’t completely healed.

  So he must have been burned as well.

  He reached down to remove the first weight and found a woman’s arm.

  An arm.

  He smiled. Though he wasn’t sure why, he liked the woman’s arm over his chest and he could live with the moderate pain it caused.

  He sighed and his mind drifted back into oblivion once more.

  Sometime later, he awoke again with a new weight pressed on his chest, something heavier this time and his nose tickled.

  Opening his eyes, which didn’t sting nearly as much as earlier, he lifted a hand to rub the tip of his nose. He found several strands of coarse hair curled just so to make his skin itch.

  Blond hair. Very thick and wavy.

  He knew this hair. He was sure of it.

  Ah, the woman again.

  She lay on his chest, the cause of that heavy weight.

  His ribs still hurt, but not that much, not enough to make him want to wake the woman up and tell her to move.

  Instead, his lips curved once more. Oddly, he felt more relaxed than he had in a long time, in decades, maybe even centuries. His stomach didn’t even hurt.

  Weird, that.

  He wanted to explore why his stomach wasn’t all cramped up with blood-hunger, but he drifted off once more.

  When he finally woke up for good, the first thing he realized was that he was in a fully aroused state and the woman lay partially on top of him.

  He opened his eyes and found that no aches remained in or near the sockets, but his stomach warned him that he was low on fuel and not the kind that a meal could provide.

  He needed blood.

  The woman was still on him, only this time she lay completely over him, snoring gently.

  He cradled her with one arm. She wore a skirt of some kind and a blouse. A bra.

  He wore nothing and the sheet that had once covered him hung around his knees.

  Shifting slightly, the woman snuggled closer, tilting her face into his neck. She found the skin at his throat and slowly started nibbling, then she began to suck.

  His cock loved what she was doing, but somehow the whole thing seemed wrong. If only his brain would pull together and work properly, then he could figure this out, like who she was, where he was.

  He looked up at the ceiling and saw a beautiful painting of a woman with wings, an angel perhaps, in flight. The colors were navy and a violet or purple. He wasn’t sure about the names for the different hues.

  She seemed happy and somehow the painting made him feel at ease, which he supposed was the purpose, if someone was in what he could only interpret as a kind of healing facility. Glancing around, he recognized fae-paraphernalia, some scented candles, a blood-feeding tube.

  At that, he frowned. He needed to feed again, but given the severity of his injuries, the woman must have already donated through the tube.

  And just like that, the images coalesced. He recalled flying through Batya’s art gallery, having been thrown through the window. He remembered a painting of a snowfield, and another in a meadow littered with the unique camping tents that his troll brigade used in the mountains. There were other images like streams and maybe a river, of a trail through a fall forest, almost brilliant orange, and burning or maybe it was just the colors of fire.

  Batya’s paintings of course, remembered in vivid detail.

  Batya. Yes.

  He held her in his arms, the woman who suckled his neck softly in her slumbers. He squeezed her and his cock moved against her abdomen.

  He drifted his nose, as he’d been wanting to for weeks, along the line of her cheek. He dragged in air and there it was, the scent he now associated with her, an erotic, flowery fragrance, like something found in the tropics.

  For a moment, he thought about moving his hips on a downward trajectory, until he could position himself between her legs. He knew her sleep-style a little, since the first time he’d brought her to ecstasy, she’d barely been awake, just coming out of her slumbers. Very wicked of him, but it had been worth it.

  On the other hand, he didn’t feel right about invading her like this. Seduction was one thing, but taking advantage of a vulnerable female was not his style, despite that she sucked his neck and now rolled her hips into his with matching need.

  He groaned then squeezed her waist, shaking her just a little. He needed her to wake up, to stop moving on him.

  She cooed in her half-sleep. “Quinlan?”

  “I’m here.”

  “Oh, that voice of yours, as deep as the ocean, and you smell so good, like wood-smoke.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  She swirled her tongue over his neck.

  “You need to stop doing that.”

  “But you taste so good.”

  “Open your eyes.”

  “They are open.”

  “No, they’re not.”

  She chuckled softly. “Yes, they are.”

  He drew back just enough to look at her, wondering if he was mistaken, but her eyes were fully closed. Yep, still half-slumbering and he knew he could take her. Was ever a woman more accessible at this point in her sleep than Batya?

  “Wake up.” He spoke in a sharp tone, which snapped her eyes open.

  “Quinlan? What are you--” She broke the question off mid-sentence and blinked several times. “What am I doing here?”

  He chuckled softly. “It’s okay.”

  “Did you pull me on top of you? Quinlan, is that you pressing into my belly?”

  “The answer to your first question is, no, I did not pull you on top of me like this. I awoke in just this position. Several times in fact, and each time you were sprawled over me, but this is your latest arrangement.” He cleared his throat. “As for the second question, yes, that’s me pressing into your abdomen.”

  She didn’t move for a very long moment, though her limbs had stiffened slightly. She just kept looking at him, and blinking rapidly. He couldn’t imagine her thoughts and he had no idea what she would address first.

  But a faint smile made him hopeful as she said, “Well, the rumors about you are exactly spot on, but I won’t say more about that.”

  He smiled. He knew what she meant and damn him for loving that she’d just said it. His cock twitched appreciatively.

  She drew
back a little and searched his face. “How do you feel? Any pain? You’d been fried to a crisp and had a bunch of broken bones when we brought you in here.”

  “I’m fine. Just a little soreness here and there, but I’ll need to feed soon.”

  At that, she relaxed against him and offered her wrist. “Go ahead. Take what you need.”

  Quinlan stared at her for a good long moment. He’d expected a lot of things, but not Batya offering up her arm. He knew she was generous: she had a free-clinic and had brought in some kind of ex-pat to help her out, a woman who lived in an apartment on her premises.

  He also knew he was the last man who deserved that kind of generosity. He had no illusions about who he was. He’d spent his life trying to atone for his father’s death.

  But that Batya would donate so freely when he’d been harassing her for weeks about needing to get into her bed, crushed something inside his chest.

  He didn’t press her either about finding another doneuse. To refuse her wrist would have been tacky after all she’d done for him.

  When she curled her arm so that he could take her wrist at a good angle, and without giving it too much thought, he lowered his fangs and struck to the exact, practiced depth and began to suck down the sweetest tasting blood, flowery and erotic, just as he’d imagined.

  However, given that she still lay on top of him, his other problem suddenly got worse.

  * * * * * * * * *

  Batya realized her mistake when she watched Quinlan’s eyes roll back in his head with his first draw at her wrist. An involuntary flex of his hips followed so that she felt his cock glide up her lower abdomen in one long erotic stroke.

  Sweet Goddess, I’m sorry, Batya, but you don’t know what you taste like. Don’t worry. Just ignore my response.

  But Batya couldn’t. He’d been working her up for weeks. He’d brought her to climax several times with just his vibration and he looked so good close up, with his golden skin and sexy crooked nose, his full lips plundering her wrist.

  A simple idea came to her given their shared level of need, so with her free hand, she carefully drew her skirts up so that when she turned back to him, she felt him skin-to-skin, the base of his cock pressing against her mound.