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Samantha took in his words, but her mind already felt full of black smoke, so she didn’t quite get what he was trying to say.
But she heard Ethan’s name and she wanted to be with him. Ry could take her to Ethan.
She stumbled more than once as she made her way to Ry, who stood on the central disk. When she saw the glitter in his eye, she knew it would be a mistake to go with him, but how could she refuse him? She could feel his need.
Once she reached him, the crystal apex lit up her fae power and strengthened her, which in turn apparently gave Ry a rush because he cried out, “Sweet Goddess, I could live in this stream of energy forever.”
A female voice intruded, very softly. “Ry, take your prize to Sweet Gorge and complete the bond. Do it now.”
“Yes, Mistress.”
Leaving the house proved a simple thing since Vojalie and Davido had retired to their rooms.
Ry took her in his arms, flew her to the front door, and straight up into the air past Ethan’s Guardsmen.
Samantha wasn’t surprised that the powerful vampires hadn’t seen her. The ancient fae clearly had many tricks, but what would she find at Sweet Gorge?
*** *** ***
With Finn nearby, and fifty of his Guard spread along the southern ridge, Ethan stared down into the gorge.
He’d been right. Something big was on the wind, a fulfillment of the vision Samantha had seen, the one that Quinlan would soon take part in.
One of his Guardsmen had already been killed and lay deep in the gorge while two others were trapped in some sort of strange webbing that neither he, nor any of his men could explain.
He paced near Finn. The rest of his entire Bergisson force was on the way, coming from every part of his realm.
Even Quinlan had sent for two hundred of his Guard from Grochaire and was waiting for them to arrive at the far eastern realm-to-realm access point in order to bring them over to Sweet Gorge.
He shoved his hands through his hair, while images of what the gorge had looked like forty years ago kept flashing through his brain, unbidden, as though placed there to torture him.
He grew edgier by the second. He needed to act, but Finn kept warning him to wait.
Another roll of images as the past rose up to torment him: Bodies everywhere, beyond the web holding the two warriors. Sweet Goddess, he could see women and children bloodied, drained, dead. Men as well. Realm-folk of all kind. A woman held her troll-babe in her arms, both dead.
He shouted into the air.
A hand clapped him hard on the shoulder. “Ethan!” Finn called sharply.
Ethan whirled, his mind encased with too much gore and his heart weighed down with guilt and pain. “They died here.”
“Who died here? Your family, you mean? Fuck, Ethan. What’s going on?”
“I have to help them.”
“Help, who?”
“My mother and father.”
Finn grabbed both his shoulders in his hands. “Look at me!”
Ethan stared hard at Finn. He focused harder. Finally, the images left and he pressed fingers against his eyes. “Sweet Goddess, I’m being tormented by the past.”
“Don’t think about it.”
He shook his head. He felt better. “Where’s Quinlan?”
“ETA 10 minutes. His Guard just reached the access point. He told us to hang tough.”
Ethan nodded. Movement from the web below drew his attention. One of his men struggled to escape, but the web tightened and he called out in anguish as the tendrils cut him.
Ethan made his decision. “At least I can do this. I can get them the hell out of there.”
He launched with Finn calling out. “No. It’s a trap. Ethan!”
He stopped before he reached the web. He knew enough not to touch the webbing, but that’s when a second layer released and the next thing he knew he was spun midair then pinned on his back, held in place by a top web.
He couldn’t move. Even the smallest shift of his body, sent tendrils up from the netting hooking him in tighter.
He’d never felt so helpless, which pissed him off. He balled his hands into fists, but now his hands were covered with tendrils that pulled and clawed at him, breaking skin and causing him to bleed.
He had to lie still, maybe the hardest thing in the world for him, to just stop. And do nothing.
Worse followed as he stared up at the ridge, where Finn stood with at least fifty of his Guardsmen because suddenly Ry appeared. But he wasn’t alone; he held Samantha in his arms. And if that wasn’t strange enough, somehow he was cloaked from view.
A stench reached him, of filth and decayed matter, a thick odor laced with fae magic.
Then he understood: enthrallment. Fae enthrallment power, like nothing he’d ever known before.
She was here. The dark fae entity, the cause of all the trouble at the gorge. He understood several things at once, that she’d somehow gotten past all five of his Guards and that she was using Ry and intended to use Samantha to take control of Bergisson.
He watched Finn weave on his feet, then cover his face with his hands. The same thing happened to his entire Guard up and down the ridge.
Ry pierced Ethan’s mind telepathically. It won’t be long now and I’ll take back what is mine.
Ethan tried to respond, to yell at Ry, to talk sense to him, but Ry cut the communication quickly.
He also attempted to reach Samantha, but he couldn’t path to her, couldn’t access her telepathy.
At the same time, images of the massacre returned and once more slammed through his mind. He knew he was being messed with, which helped him to understand at last what must have happened to Andrea, that the ancient fae had tormented her as well. Because what else could have prompted such a faithful woman to leave her home forever?
Ethan went very still inside and the images of forty years ago melted away, as though his own turmoil and bitterness had kept them there.
He was left with the difficult reality that he could have been wrong all this time about Samantha’s mother and what had really happened at Sweet Gorge that night. Until recently, he’d thought it had simply been a large, random Invictus attack that Andrea had seen in a dream but refused to report. She’d deserted Bergisson that night, leaving him to clean up the worst disaster his realm had ever experienced.
Guilt had covered him for decades, the sure knowledge that if he’d been more responsible, his family wouldn’t have died.
Now, tonight, in this moment, the truth rose to hit him harder still that Ry, along with a powerful enemy just barely making itself known to the Nine Realms, had planned and executed the massacre that night. Davido had been right after all: The sheer numbers would have overpowered him and he would have died as well.
