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“Darla needs you.”
I blinked a moment, surprised as usual by his abruptness. “Wait, what?”
“She’s been in psychic communication with the vampire we made contact with back in the capital.”
“Wait, she can reach all the way back to the mainland?” That was Kai, naturally, because of course he heard from the kitchen. Shifter hearing was both a blessing and a curse.
“Not usually, but while the two of you were recovering, the local fae woman helped Darla make a …” He paused, as if he were trying to find the right words. “Um, amplification circle of sorts? Circles are the shape of choice with most magics.”
“It’s an eternal symbol. No end or beginning, so it has a lot of power.” I shook my head, realizing I was getting distracted. “But she needs me?”
“Yes, she says there are some questions regarding magic and the Shriek you’d be better equipped to ask.”
“Would it be all right if I tagged along?” Kai asked, and honestly, I felt relieved. I’d never met this vampire, and although Darla trusted him, the idea of having any psychic link was nerve wracking.
“I don’t see why it wouldn’t,” Oren said with a resolute nod. “But let’s hurry. The link takes effort to maintain, and even more to establish, which was why Darla didn’t want to come fetch you herself.”
“By all means, lead the way.”
The three of us hurried the short distance over to Darla and Oren’s cottage. It’d only been a short bit since I’d been over, but their scents had become much more entrenched in the entire house. Clearly, despite the incursion of guards, the party, and other social obligations, the two had wasted no time getting plenty busy.
It should have been embarrassing, but I was happy for them. Oren seemed happy, as much as I could tell with him, and I knew Darla was more satisfied than she’d been in a long, long time.
Speaking of Darla, she was sitting in the middle of the living room, the furniture all pushed to the sides of the space to make room for the circle painted on the floor with different shades of pink and blue. There were flowers all around the edges, and certain key points where the circle and sub-circles had differently shaped crystals atop them. It reminded me of the type of set-up Yvonne had, but the runes specifically called on the school of magic with which I was most familiar.
“There you are,” Darla said, which was disconcerting considering her eyes were most definitely closed. “Here, take a seat on either side of me and take my hands. It’s for the better that you’re both here anyway.”
“So, how does this work?” I asked, following her direction. Her palm was cool in mine, which was a nice counterpoint to the nerves I was feeling.
“Simple translation, really. You ask me something, I’ll relay that to Tomas in my mind, then he’ll answer in his mind, and I’ll relay verbally to you. It’s going to take an insane amount of time, but hopefully, it’ll be worth it.”
“Okay, so I guess we’ll start out simple,” I began, trying to keep my nerves out of my voice. I knew Darla was translating for me, yet I didn’t want to sound naïve to this elder vampire. “Does he know anything about the Shriek?”
“He says he knows many things, but he’s not going to waste his time with generalities if you don’t know what you need.”
“Bullshit,” Kai cut in. I saw Darla’s eyebrows shoot up though her eyes remained closed. “No, I’m sorry, but that’s bullshit. He didn’t establish a psychic connection with you across the entire ocean just to get finnicky about us asking specific questions. If he knows anything about the Shrouded Shriek, whether it’s his toothpaste or what his favorite underwear brand is, we want to know it.”
I grinned to myself, although I shouldn’t have. It wasn’t often I got to hear Kai mouth off to someone and put them back in their place, but goodness, it never got old.
“Tomas asks what you know about the Five Blessed Bloodlines.”
Excitement bubbled up within me, and I raised my hand like I was actually in school at the coven again. “I know vaguely of them. They were blessed with magic by the gods themselves, and they’re the start of all magic users and cryptids that exist today.”
“He says close, but only three of the bloodlines actually disseminated amongst the populace, diluting themselves over generations and generations.”
“Wait, only three?”
Darla paused a moment, and I wondered how much Tomas was saying and how much the psychic was editing, if she was editing at all. “Yes. He says that one of the ancient bloodlines began in a priest for the most powerful of gods. He boasted that he was their most loyal and fervent of servants, and they imbued him with their power.”
I didn’t know where the conversation was going, but my stomach told me it wasn’t anywhere good. It wasn’t like Tomas wanted to tell me peaceful bedtime stories about ancient figures.
But Darla continued on, her expression betraying nothing. “That priest was none other than the man who’d become the Shrouded Shriek.”
“What?” I wasn’t sure if Kai or I had exclaimed it first, but we both were clearly taken aback. But after the initial shock, about a dozen, even a hundred questions filled my head at once. “There’s no way that the Shrouded Shriek is that old!”
“But he is,” Darla continued, her tone so unlike her own, I had to wonder if her translation were more like channeling. “The once blessed priest decided to be selfish with his gift, and he tried to convince the other bloodlines to maintain their purity as well, to only intermingle with each other in order to become increasingly powerful. This greed began to twist him, and although his power did indeed grow as the world kept on, it wasn’t enough.
“Eventually, that priest became a warlock, and that warlock became a warlord. He was constantly searching for new ways to gain power. To wrest more of that blessed magic away from the gods.”
