She stepped forward, catching the eye of the Sarthes, and held up a hand. “Karslan y butif Scarlet ti Tuatha Dé Danaan gar les. Gar! Butif!”
Scarlet Sweet
Anya Bast
Chapter One
“He’s a drunk,” Cerian said under her breath. “The only hope for our people isthat , down there.” She gestured toward the dark-haired, broad-shouldered man sitting in the tavern below them. “A star-cursed, drunken, outlander Vampir.” She swung her head to gaze at Lympia with disbelief shining in her eyes.
“You don’t know for certain he’s drunk,” said Lympia. She batted her blue eyes there were fringed with light pink lashes.
A loud crash jerked Cerian’s focus back to Rhys ap Griffyn. He’d toppled the table over in front of him, sending his tankard rolling across the wooden floor and sloshing the potent spirit it formerly contained all over his neighbor—a very large Ystani warrior. Now the cursed Vampir roared at everyone around him, yelling in some foreign language at the top of his very powerful lungs.
Cerian gripped the edge of the window set into the tavern’s slanted roof and stared down in disbelief. They’d crawled up here so they wouldn’t have to enter the packed tavern to get a clear preview of the man sent to save their people. She squeezed her eyes shut on the spectacle below. The knot in her stomach grew tighter by the moment.
“Well, at least he’s agood-looking , star-cursed, drunken, outlander Vampir,” offered Lympia with a weak smile.
Low, angry voices had Cerian staring below again. The Ystani warrior had taken issue with the spirit now soaking her mottled leather tunic. She rose to her full seven feet of finely honed muscle and hissed at the Vampir, baring dark red teeth. Cerian could almost smell the warrior’s fetid breath. Rhys ap Griffyn was getting a whole face full.
Rain began to fall and Cerian shifted uncomfortably on the straw-thatched roof. Cold drops plopped onto her head and back, soaked her hair and clothing.
Could this get any worse?
Several other warriors stood from a small table in the corner and pushed through the crowded tavern toward the Vampir. For the most part, they looked primate evolved, like a human or a Tuatha Dé Danaan, but Cerian knew better. Their abnormally well-developed musculature and the three indentations in their jutting chins gave them away.
As they crossed the floor, they unsheathed their short blades. They did it discreetly, as though they planned a quick, unobtrusive, and deadly attack. Cerian realized then that thingscould get worse.
Much worse.
“Sarthes,” breathed Lympia.
“Sweet goddess,” Cerian cursed. “How could they know?” She glanced nervously at Lympia. “Do you think they know? Maybe they’re here by chance,” she finished hopefully.
Lympia pursed her lips and frowned. “Whatever the reason, the Vampir is vulnerable in his condition.”
Cerian watched as the Vampir whirled. His broadsword was strapped crosswise from shoulder to hip against his back. He drew it, as though sensing the danger approaching from behind. With the firelight from the tavern’s hearth glinting off the blade’s edge, he didn’t look vulnerable. Then he tottered unsteadily to one side.
Cerian sighed and glanced at Lympia, who nodded. They flipped themselves over the edge of the windowsill and dropped down silently into the throng, drawing several half-interested looks from the jaded clientele.
The acrid smoke from the cook fire and the sweat and oily skin of the tavern’s occupants caught and held in her nostrils and throat. Grimacing, Cerian ignored it and opened her mind, sensing the pulsing waves of thought energy around her. Weaving, prodding, and molding that energy, she made a way through for herself and Lympia. Short swords drawn, they stalked past the hulking bodies of the tribal aliens around them, prompting them to step aside.
When they reached the Vampir, he’d engaged the three Sarthes already. The tavern’s inhabitants backed away, all except for the Ystani who stood in the shadows, likely waiting for her chance to take a bite of the Vampir.
Rhys ap Griffyn stood with both large hands wrapped around the grip of his broadsword. The three Sarthes circled him warily, their short swords in hand. They also had disruptors, Cerian was sure, even though they’d been outlawed on Gaman since the Thirty Year War had come to a tenuous end. They wouldn’t work on the Vampir, though. His brain didn’t follow the patterns the weapons were designed to fracture.
She had an outlawed disruptor of her own strapped to her waist, though she wouldn’t use it unless it was very necessary. The last thing she needed was theUnionto come down on her people for her misuse of weaponry.
Cerian frowned. Despite his totter to the side and his loud show earlier, the Vampir didn’t look drunk. His dark brown gaze was steady and alert. The solid muscles of his body were tensed and ready for action. His gaze didn’t waver. His steps didn’t falter now.
Whether he was drunk or not, Cerian needed to put an end to this before it became a full-blown battle. The Vampir couldn’t handle three Sarthian warriors and an affronted Ystani all by himself.
She stepped forward, catching the eye of the Sarthes, and held up a hand. “Karslan y butif Scarlet ti Tuatha Dé Danaan gar les. Gar! Butif!”
The Sarthes stilled for a moment, considering her. Then the blondSarthefired back an answer in his guttural language. They wouldn’t hurt her, the intended consort of their leader, but the Vampir had to die before he completed what he’d been sent here to do.
Something inside Cerian withered. Ta’bat, leader of the Sarthes, knew what she intended. Somehow he knew, and wanted to stop it.
One of the Sarthes stepped toward the Vampir with a battle cry and all the fury of the Underworlds broke loose. Metal met metal. Blades soared through the air like dangerous birds.
Cerian and Lympia charged into the fray, forming a back-to-back circle with the Vampir. Rhys ap Griffyn quickly understood they were there to help him, though he growled at Cerian once, the low, hair-raising sound coming from between his shapely lips. His message was clear. He knew they were there to help, but didn’t necessarily welcome it.
One of the Sarthes met Cerian’s blade and the thrum of the contact echoed down her arm and into her shoulder.
The Sarthes were doomed from the beginning. After all, they couldn’t hurt her. Ta’bat would likely subject them to a fate worse than death for that. They had to take her slashes and cuts, though it wasn’t she, in the end, who felled them.
The Vampir fought like a man possessed. In a shower of ringing clashes of blade and brawn he hardly let either Lympia or herself get a poke in sideways. He cast a territorial glance in her direction as he made short work of the last one. Then he smiled triumphantly, standing over the three. Cerian watched his nostrils flare, probably at the scent of the fresh blood all around them.
Cerian rolled her eyes. “Not bad for a drunk.”
“I wasn’t drun—” He whirled to the side, his sword at the ready, as the Ystani warrior rose behind him, red teeth bared.
Cerian was faster. She grabbed a hurling pick from her pocket and threw it, catching the Ystani in the neck. The warrior looked stricken, grasped her throat, and fell with a loud thump to the floor of the tavern.
The tavern’s inhabitants had retreated to the bar and the edges of the room. Not unfamiliar with such brawls, they simply looked on with average interest, though the three Sarthes and the Ystani lay bleeding on the floor by their feet.
“Come on,” said Cerian. “Where there are three Sarthes, there are bound to be twenty. They want you dead, Rhys ap Griffyn.” She shuddered. “And what the Sarthes want, they usually get. Let’s move.”
He ignored her and pulled his bloody shirt away from where it clung to his skin, swore low in some language she didn’t understand and yanked it and his scabbard over his head.
Cerian tried not to look at his wide shoulders, hard chest and rippling abdominal muscles. Tried not to trace the thin line of dark hair that trailed down his stomach and below the line of his leather trews.
Lympia was right. He was a good-looking, star-cursed, drunken, outlander Vampir. His musculature was sculpted and strong—the body of a warrior. His hair was short and dark, and he had a face that would make any woman’s heart beat faster.
She shook it off. Not hers, though. She had no time for such indulgences.
Lympia stood beside her. Her body was taut as a bowstring from the fight. “Let’s get going,” she echoed.
As if he had all the time in the world, he pushed a hand through his hair. The action showed the curves of perfect biceps. “Why do you think to order me? Who are you?” he asked.
Cerian’s gaze snapped to his. She motioned the Ystani. “Looks like I’m your savior.”
“You’re the one I was supposed to meet. Cerian, leader of the lost faction of Tuatha Dé Danaan. TheScarlet .” It was more statement than question.
She nodded curtly. “We’re not lost. You found us, more or less.” She gestured at her friend. “This is Lympia. She’s a Zaenian, but an adopted member of the Danaan.”
Lympia bowed slightly, her black, ringleted hair falling over one slim shoulder.
Cerian headed toward the door. “Can we please leave now?”
They exited the tavern. The rain still came down hard. Cerian led the way toward the rover. She threw an angry glance over her shoulder at Rhys. “Were you the only Vampir the Council of the Embraced would send? Do we rank so low on the scale that they’d send a lush—”
He moved so fast it astounded her. With his free hand, he grabbed her by the upper arm firmly, yet he did not hurt her at all. “I told you once already, I wasn’t drunk. I’ve been followed since I landed, but I didn’t know by whom. I bluffed, that’s all, trying to get them to attack me while I was ready for them and they believed me vulnerable. Better then than while I slept at night.” He flashed white teeth in a smile that was far more feral than friendly. “Understand? I was drawing them out.”
The man looked like a predator, long, sleek and dark. Like a huge cat slipped out ofmidnightto ambush her. He didn’t look anything like she thought he’d looked. Hadn’t expected the man to make places low in her body go tight and sensitive with sexual awareness. Although, after she’d received word that the Council of the Embraced would send someone, she hadn’t thought much at all. She’d simply been relieved she’d have a way to stave off the Sarthes.
She fought the urge to twist from his grip like a child. “Yes, fine. I understand.”
He released her and walked to the rover. “Alcohol doesn’t affect the Embraced, only large quantities of blood inebriate the Vampir.”
“I didn’t know that.”
He flicked her a darkened glance. “Better start learning.”
Unease flickered through her. She masked it and stepped into the beat-up silver rover with Rhys and Lympia behind her.
* * * * *
Rhys sat down in the right seat and watched Cerian sink into the left and push a series of buttons that lit when she touched them. The ancient, dented vehicle revved to life. Raindrops hit the huge windshield in a relentless rat-a-tat-tat. She flicked the wipers on.
She was beautiful, even more beautiful when that sour look was wiped clean of her face in the heat of battle. Thanks to some odd coupling in the line of her ancestors, she was a unique marked Tuatha Dé Danaan. Marked meant she was predestined to be Embraced—fated to become Vampir. Soon she would be a Vampir sidhe—the first of her kind.
He’d been sent to Embrace her.
The Embraced fell into two categories. The Vampir were those who were born at birth with a caul,marking them to one day be located by theirpere de sang ormere de sang and be Embraced. Or they were unmarked humans who were Embraced and were strong enough to pass through the ordeal and attain fully Embraced status.
Those not strong enough to pass all the way through the transformation made up the second category—the Demi. The Demi fed from lust and sex, not blood.
He shifted his gaze to Cerian. She was smaller than he thought she’d be, small and curved in the nicest ways possible. Though it was clear enough the woman could fight. Leather cupped her shapely ass and tight, worn fabric stretched across her full breasts. The strap of the scabbard fastened across her back, like his, and was pulled between her breasts, offering him an exceptional view.
Her hair was a riot of different hues of brown, light as Ursi sugar, dark as deep turned earth and every shade in between. It fell past her waist in a series of tiny braids. He’d noticed earlier how the secured ends brushed her ass when she moved.
She flicked a glance at him and jutted her jaw slightly as she guided the vehicle into the forest. “What are looking at?”
He smiled slowly. “You.”
She gave him a sidelong look and flushed. He knew he wasn’t the only one feeling the flare of sexual awareness between them.
Cerian stiffened visibly. “Well, stop it. Look at Lympia,” she snapped.
He turned his head and watched the Zaenian woman. She dropped her exotically colored lashes and then looked up with heat in her beautiful light eyes. It was a blatant invitation. Her chocolate-colored skin gleamed soft and supple in the dim light within the rover. He watched the rise and fall of her full breasts.
She was a rare breed, too, on this war-ravaged planet. Gaman was a dumping ground for various races across the universe. They all vied for a piece of this place and fought tooth and nail to get it. Only strict laws, backed up by the threat of unforgiving violence by the Union of Gaman, maintained any peace at all. TheUnion, the governing body set up by the strongest of the tribes in order to end the Thirty Year War, ruled with an iron fist and showed no mercy to those who flouted their decrees.
“I haven’t seen a Zaenian in a long time, Lympia.” commented Rhys.
Her pale blue eyes clouded like a storm on a summer’s day and filled with as much volatility. “I am one of the last of my kind,” she answered. “The Thirty Year War decimated us.”
“What tribe waged war on you?”
Lympia focused her gaze past the windshield of the rover and into the darkness-swathed forest. “All of them.” Her gaze flicked back to his. “But I have a special interest in seeing the Sarthes fail in their conquest of the Danaan.”
Still in sitting position, he bowed from his waist in deference to her and her people. “That is why I am here,” he answered.
He turned back to Cerian. “Why does Ta’bat want you so badly?”
Cerian glanced at him. “Crystals, very rare ones. My people mine them under the mountains where we live. We’ve had several tribes try and take them from us, but theUnionhas ruled that none can do it by force. However, the Sarthian ruler, Ta’bat, can take me as his consort. That’s the only way they’ll ever get their hands on what we mine.”
“Why didn’t those Sarthes just try and take you back there? Why doesn’t Ta’bat press you into it?”
She shook her head and her braids made a susurrus of sound as they brushed. “Can’t. TheUnionwon’t let them force me physically, but they will let them cut off our food supply to compel my hand.” She turned to him with desperation in her eyes. “My people are starving, Rhys.”
It was the first time she’d said his name in a nonformal way and it took him aback for a moment. “Why is my Embracing you going to save your people?”
She smiled. “Youmust know the answer to that. The Sarthes hate the Embraced. Ta’bat’s people will never allow their leader take one as consort. There’d be a bloody civil war. If I’m Embraced he’ll be forced to leave us alone, at least until he figures something else out. It will depend on how badly he wants our crystal, in the end.”
The lights flickered on and off in the rover as they crashed through the forest. The whole vehicle sounded as if it would fall apart at any moment, creaking and banging and shivering beneath them. Although he didn’t need the bright headlights of the rover to see them, the high beams revealed many large, felled trees. Their upturned roots rotted in a tangle against the riven ground of the old forest. Victims of the long and bloody Thirty Year War, he surmised.
They cleared the trees and Rhys saw a mountain in their path. They seemed to be on a direct collision course with it.