"Apparently he left her bed while she was sleeping. I did not think it wise to question that fact of my Queen."
Noah looked at the enigmatic brunette, lifting a corner of his mouth as he tucked his shirt into his jeans.
"A wise decision."
"No doubt," she agreed in the easy humor that had helped her win over many thickheaded Demons these past months. Siena had proven herself beyond wise by sending this sturdy, half-bred woman to him on her behalf. She had the perfect temperament for making friends, and, clearly, never held a grudge for more than a heartbeat.
"Can you join me?"
"The sun does not affect me. I am at your service."
"Good. We have to find someone who can notify Jacob and others. I have the terrible feeling we are going to need help."
"And Siena. She will have both our heads if we do not fetch her as well," Myriad insisted.
"Agreed!"
CHAPTER 14
If there was a nature of things that Noah knew with perfect clarity and instinct, it was smoke and fire.
As they neared the home of his family, he could smell and feel both.
Terror flooded Noah as he came over the crest of the mountain, dragging himself and the half-breed out of smoky form and into solid shape. The only thing he could see of the house was smoke and the tumble of flames roaring from gaps left by shattered glass. Everything not made of stone was conflagrating easily and wildly because of its age and richness in fuel.
"Legna!"
Noah released his power and seized the flames burning the structure. The heated backlash that followed as he violently sucked the fire's energy into himself literally blew Myriad off her feet. She landed about ten feet away on the charred grass, shaking her head as she tried to resettle her jostled brainpan. Again, she took it in stride, not even bothering to dust herself off as she scrambled after the Demon King.
As they ran, Demons began popping up around them. No matter how much she saw it, Myriad swore she would never get used to the suddenness of Demon teleportation. Clearly the Mind Demons Noah had contacted were working overtime to bring reinforcements to them. The Enforcers blazed into form, assorted warriors coming quickly in their wake.
Noah had to crash bodily through the charred front door, skidding across the floor as he shot through, barely in balance. He fell in a rare moment of awkwardness, soot and melted debris sliding beneath his feet. His fall brought him face-to-face with a body, and he suddenly found himself looking into the open, vacant silver eyes of his brother-in-law.
"Gideon…"
His shock was written all over his voice and face. He slid to his knees and leaned over his sister's husband, feeling for a pulse. Noah had never known such fear as he did in that horrible moment. Not even when he had seen his mother's violated body upon her death had he allowed himself to feel such a debilitating, paralyzing emotion. He had been forced to be strong then, for Legna's sake, because she had been but a babe when she had seen her mother in that state. But this he felt and felt deeply. Just as Legna would-
"Legna!"
Noah's head snapped around as he reached out, mentally screaming for her, demanding she answer and searching with all his power for her energy signature.
"Legna!"
Jacob and Isabella came rushing into the half-destroyed house. Isabella cried out in despair when she saw Gideon's lifeless form. But she was rudely pushed aside when Siena burst into the house and moved to see what had so horrified everyone into standing so stock-still.
"Gideon!" the Queen gasped, dropping swiftly to her old friend's side.
He could not be dead. He was too old, too powerful! If he was dead, that meant that Elijah…
Siena pushed the thought aside violently, reaching for Gideon's throat as Noah gained his feet and ran up the stairs three and four at a time.
"Is he…?" Bella dared to begin to ask.
"We need a medic in here!" Siena screamed, her voice echoing in the desolate house. "Where is Elijah?"
"Elijah?" Jacob demanded. "Elijah is here?"
"Yes, he is here somewhere. I felt him when I woke earlier. It is what led us here. I know he is here. Where is he?" Siena asked urgently, standing up and looking all around herself for signs of her new husband. She was breathing hard enough to hyperventilate, coughing on the residual smoke seeping through the room. She searched her thoughts and her soul for any sign of Elijah's consciousness, his powerful presence suddenly vacant from her awareness, clouded by her panic.
Jacob and Isabella took her vacated position over Gideon, and Isabella gasped when she realized she had just knelt in a pool of the Ancient's blood. Closer now, under the charred clothing and soot from smoke, she saw he was severely wounded, burned and also bitten, his flesh torn as if he had been brutally attacked by a pack of wild animals.
"It was animals. Dogs, wolves, and snakes. Venomous snakes!" Jacob hissed.
Jacob, the tracker to the end, turned over Gideon's limp hand, pulling several long blond strands of hair from between his fingers.
An Elder Body Demon, a medic in the warrior corps, hurried into the house, followed by about a half dozen other warriors, who immediately took to searching the house. The medic joined Bella and Jacob, laying hands on the Ancient Demon.
"He's dead," he murmured. "But only just. Move back."
The Enforcers did as commanded, leaving the medic to do what he could in peace, their sense of duty firing through their joined minds.
"Ruth," Jacob said needlessly, snapping the fine blond hairs between clenched fingers.
The name drew Siena's full attention.
"Ruth?" There was nothing but rage and pain in the Queen's eyes as she repeated the cursed name. "That bitch did this?"
Furious, the Lycanthrope Queen made a low, dangerous sound. All she could remember all of a sudden was how she had first found Elijah, bleeding, in agony, and close to the end of his mortality because of his last encounter with the Demon female who had betrayed her kind. Driven to a near emotional madness, she barely recognized the weak whisper of scent that drifted into range of her senses.
Then suddenly her head perked up, her ears and whiskers twitching forward. She was quite a sight, few of the Demons present having seen her Wereform before now, finding the sleekly furred and formed female cat as powerful and intimidating as she truly was, her wild fear and racing bio-signs apparent to even those who did not naturally sense such things. Jacob knew, as he would know with any wild creature of nature, that she had caught the scent of what she had been looking for.
"Elijah," Jacob whispered.
Siena growled, the half-cry of the puma making warriors step back out of age-old habit. Lycanthropes were a tough breed and nothing to mess with, not even in peacetime, and they knew to give her a wide berth. But the Enforcers followed her as she raced out of the door with her remarkable speed.
"She's going to kill herself," Jacob bit out, rushing after the heedless woman.
"How…?"
"The sun," Jacob explained to his less experienced mate. "It makes her kind sick. It poisons them. She's strong, but not that strong. There isn't even a cloud in the sky or a tree to shade her."
But Bella knew what was propelling the Queen. She had once knelt in Jacob's blood, just as she had Gideon's a moment ago, terrified he was about to die. In that moment, nothing could have stopped her from doing everything she could think of to defy fate in order to save his life. It had been Gideon who had saved him then, but now it was Gideon who was in need of being saved by his own miraculous skills. But who could work that miracle? She had only ever seen Gideon perform such feats.
The physician, in this case, could not heal himself.
Jacob and Bella ran after the Queen, but she was powered by the speed of the cat that she was. Only Jacob would have been able to match her, but he refused to leave Bella behind in this dangerous situation.
Siena tore over the lawn at full speed, but that speed downgraded visibly to her pursuers the longer the sprint became. She was heading for a distant tree line as her gait shortened, began to become awkward, dragged as if she was running through a sea of water instead of air.
"I have to catch up with her. She is never going to make it in this sunlight," Jacob shouted to his wife.
"Catch her! I'm fine," she insisted, pushing at his shoulder to urge him to the speed he was capable of.
Siena was blinded by tears, heedless of the nausea and weakness dragging at her struggling body like thousands of claws bent on rending her to shreds, working to slow her down and freeze her in position just short of the goal she needed to reach so desperately. The Queen fell over her own feet, crashing clumsily to the ground with a painful jarring. The strike on the ground seemed to burst her apart, her frantic sobs, held trapped within herself until that frustrating moment of impact, blinding her as she tried to stagger to her feet.
An outraged cry of wild terror echoed into the morning air as she struggled halfway to her feet, forcing herself forward with hands and feet and any other part of herself that would gain the purchase to propel her toward her goal.
Siena reached the tree line just as Elijah's form solidified suddenly before her, reaching for the frantic crash of her propelled body. He was overwhelmed by the emotions of his mate that had drawn him there, her feelings of distress having lured him like a clamoring beacon. She was so hysterical with paralyzing panic that she hadn't heard a single thing, felt a single feeling he had tried to communicate to soothe her.
They crashed into each other as she finally reached him, his opened arms scooping her up as she threw herself awkwardly against his body. She pushed herself into him, and into him again, forcing him to hold her tighter to keep her from harming them both in her desperation. She was so violent as she grabbed at his body that her feet came up off the ground, her arms nearly throttling him. She held on to him as if the world was ending and she needed to meet doomsday with him from the inside of his body, or his soul, whichever she could reach with all her efforts.
Her claws retracted to safety as she reached for his face, cupping it with desperation as tears fell over her furred face and dripped onto him, her soft lips trembling with sobs as she kissed him. She could not even breathe she was so upset, her padded fingers inspecting his scorched and wounded body frantically. It was merely battle scarring, nothing lethal, since this time his surprise at running into a pack of magic-users at Gideon's had been buffered by the fact that the open area had given him visual warning. In fact, he had been the one to surprise them. He had been fighting them, chasing them into the woodlands even as he picked them off one at a time with hailstones, lightning, and hurricane-force winds that blew right past any defenses they tried to throw at him.