Sentinel Of Khoth Read online

  Talysia chuck­led and shook her head af­ter tak­ing a sip of the wine the wait­ress de­liv­ered to their ta­ble. “That’s not what is be­lieved in my realm. Be­cause I can­not com­pel oth­ers with my voice I am seen as weak and an abom­i­na­tion.”

  “I’d say it’s bet­ter that you can’t com­pel oth­ers. No one should have that much power over an­other be­ing. I’m not sur­prised they’re ass­holes. I think you’re stronger than any of them. You have pow­ers from your dad, right?”

  The smile that spread across her face stole Finn’s breath. At least he thought it was Talysia’s smile when his head spun, mak­ing him nau­seous. “If you count freez­ing stuff as a power, then yes,” Talysia replied.

  “Are you kid­ding me?” Finn said on a cough. “That’s badass. I met the Vam­pire Prince and Princess in the Tehrex Realm and watched them wield their twin pow­ers. Bres­lin con­trols fire and Bhric the ice. The shit he cre­ated was un­real. He could dec­i­mate en­e­mies or stop catas­tro­phes or make a drink cold.”

  “Could he make a sculp­ture like this?” she asked as she poured her wa­ter from her glass and cupped her hands around it. Be­fore the wa­ter hit the ta­ble, it be­came a block of ice she kept sus­pended in mid-air. With a fin­ger point­ing at the large cube, she ran it up and down the ice and it wa­vered, be­came wa­ter then moved and re-so­lid­i­fied in a new shape.

  Finn gaped at the minia­ture dragon sit­ting in her palm. “I have never seen any­thing like that be­fore. That’s far cooler than com­pelling oth­ers. You could even cre­ate weapons if you had to. I wish I could do that.”

  “You think about weapons a lot.” she ob­served.

  Point­ing two fin­gers at his chest Finn chuck­led. “Cuele­bre Maa­hes. Comes with the ter­ri­tory.” Sud­denly it be­came dif­fi­cult to breathe as Finn’s chest tight­ened and he started gasp­ing.

  Talysia jumped to her feet and rushed to Finn’s side. “What’s wrong?”

  His face went from a golden bronze to bluish, and he couldn’t re­spond be­cause he was too busy gasp­ing for breath. “T…t…” was all he man­aged to get out be­fore fall­ing out of his chair.

  A waiter hur­ried over when Talysia started shak­ing Finn. “Is he okay? Should I call a mu­nun­dugu?”

  How the hell was she sup­posed to know? It was clear he was sick and some­thing aw­ful was mak­ing his body writhe, but he was a knight. Would An­gus want just any­one to treat his best pro­tec­tors? She doubted that. If this was some­thing that could af­fect the en­tire realm, he would want to con­tain the knowl­edge to avoid mass panic.

  Blaine, she thought a sec­ond later. He’d given her his com­mu­ni­ca­tor when she went to Finn’s house to take care of him. His friend wanted to make sure she had help if it was needed.

  Tug­ging the com­mu­ni­ca­tor from her purse, she fum­bled to turn the thing on and pressed Blaine’s con­tact. A sec­ond later his deep voice called out, “Hey, Talysia. You get tired of Finn al­ready?”

  “No,” she shouted. “Blaine, I need your help. There’s some­thing wrong with Finn. He can’t breathe.”

  The sound of cough­ing filled her ears be­fore Blaine asked, “Where are you guys?”

  “At Ti­tan’s Fall. Are you okay?”

  “I’m not feel­ing the great­est. I’m send­ing Leg­ette there to get Finn. He’s close by,” Blaine replied.

  “What should I do? He’s turn­ing blue,” she cried out.

  “You can give him mouth to mouth,” the knight replied.

  “This is no time to make jokes,” she rep­ri­manded.

  “He’s not mak­ing jokes,” Leg­ette’s deep voice in­truded be­hind her. “That’s how you help him breathe. Watch out. I’m go­ing to pick him up.”

  “Go with Leg­ette, Taly. I’ll see you at Tate­nen,” Blaine said be­fore their con­nec­tion ended.

  Leg­ette leaned down and hefted the knight into his arms as if he were pick­ing up a small child. These males were im­pres­sively strong. It made her miss her dad even more. He was the strong­est male she knew un­til meet­ing the Maa­hes.

  Sure, she’d seen shifters, vam­pires, and other crea­tures in the Tehrex Realm, but she’d never seen their strength. Talysia wasn’t sure what to do when Leg­ette set Finn down on the side­walk then started strip­ping his clothes.

  “I need you to climb on my back then I will have Samuel lift Finn to you. You need to hold onto him for the short ride to the cas­tle,” Leg­ette in­structed her.

  Keep­ing her gaze fo­cused on Finn, she nod­ded her agree­ment while send­ing a prayer to the Gods that Finn was okay. He’d stopped gasp­ing, but now his breathes were shal­low and un­even.

  In a flash of light, a dragon stood in the street close to her and she re­al­ized why there were streets on Khoth. If there weren’t there would be nowhere for the drag­ons to shift and take off or land. She’d won­dered about that from the mo­ment she learned there were no cars in this realm. It wasn’t all that sur­pris­ing to her given there were no cars on Ca­lypso, ei­ther.

  Rolling her eyes at her ran­dom thought process, she climbed on Leg­ette’s back and Samuel, the waiter that ap­proached her in the restau­rant, lifted Finn to her. It was awk­ward and af­ter she nearly dropped Finn, Leg­ette was forced to lower his body to the ground and tilt to one side, so it was eas­ier to get Finn in place.

  Wrap­ping her arms se­curely around Finn, she called out, “Okay, I’m ready.” And, prayed she wasn’t ly­ing.

  With a flap of his wings, Leg­ette’s mas­sive dragon form lifted into the air with Talysia and Finn on his back. She was jos­tled, but it wasn’t too bad. The short flight to the cas­tle was so fast that Talysia barely had time to think about los­ing her grip on Finn.

  She liked him more than she ex­pected, and didn’t want any­thing to hap­pen to him.

  When Leg­ette’s feet touched the ground, he low­ered his body and a group of knights hur­ried to his side. “Taly, push his leg over the side and we will catch him,” Blaine or­dered.

  “Don’t let him fall,” she warned as she pushed Finn’s leg over and held his hands while grav­ity took him down.

  She was jump­ing down when Blaine chuck­led and winked at her. “Don’t worry, I won’t. Finn would kick my ass if I did.”

  Talysia fol­lowed Blaine and the oth­ers in­side the stone struc­ture. They walked quickly to­ward the room she was taken to a few days ago. Sev­eral males and fe­males were wait­ing and one male in par­tic­u­lar took charge and be­gan giv­ing or­ders for blood to be drawn and other ex­ams to be done.

  Talysia stood off to the side and watched as they worked. Blaine ap­proached her side and bumped her with his shoul­der. “Don’t worry, Dyson is the best healer we have. What hap­pened?”

  Talysia found her­self re­play­ing the past sev­eral days. How Finn re­cov­ered, yet still seemed tired and weak, but had in­sisted on tak­ing her out to din­ner. She told him how Finn was dis­tracted when they ar­rived and started cough­ing then couldn’t breathe.

  It seemed as if the doc­tor was lis­ten­ing to her re­count the events be­cause he or­dered im­ages of his chest which would in­clude his heart and lungs.

  “It’s a good thing you were with him. The restau­rant would have called the clos­est mu­nun­dugu to help him and with­out know­ing what’s go­ing on that could have caused more prob­lems than it solved,” Blaine in­formed her.

  “I thought about the same thing which is why I called you. He’ll be al­right, won’t he?” she asked as her heart pounded against her chest.

  Blaine wrapped an arm around Talysia’s shoul­ders and hugged her close. “He’s go­ing to be fine.” The prom­ise didn’t ease any of the ten­sion stiff­en­ing her shoul­ders. “C’mon, let’s get you a drink and sit down.”

  Talysia fol­lowed and prac­ti­cally fell into a chair. It wasn’t un­til she was seated that she re­al­ized ther
e were a ton of peo­ple sit­ting there, in­clud­ing two kings and queens. The Cuele­bre King, An­gus, and the Vam­pire King, Zan­der, along with, their mates. Sud­denly, she thought she was los­ing her mind for com­ing here. She could get an up­date from Finn later.

  Be­fore she could get up and es­cape the ta­ble, Blaine handed her a glass of what smelled like tea as he took a seat next to her.

  “Thank you for call­ing Blaine, Talysia,” An­gus said in his Scot­tish ac­cent. It was shock­ing to learn the leader of the drag­ons’ ac­cent came from Earth. Now, it made her won­der about his story.

  She re­called the tid­bits Finn shared with her about An­gus search­ing for the love of his life, Keira and be­ing stuck in the Tehrex Realm for a hun­dred years. There was so much to the story Finn told her about their por­tals be­ing sealed and them be­ing iso­lated for the en­tire mil­len­nia their king was miss­ing.

  “Of course, Your High­ness. I wasn’t sure of pro­to­col but thought it best to con­tact one of the other Maa­hes.”

  “Och, you’ve a keen sense aboot you. It was the safest op­tion.” Talysia thought the King’s praise should have made her feel bet­ter, but she couldn’t think of any­thing ex­cept whether Finn was go­ing to be okay.

  Nod­ding, she glanced over at the ta­ble Finn was rest­ing on. It seemed as if he was com­ing around. His head turned from side to side and she swore he locked gazes with her.

  With­out think­ing, she got up and crossed the room. Foot­steps echoed be­hind her, but she didn’t pay them any at­ten­tion. She had eyes only for Finn.

  “Sorry,” he croaked when she grabbed his hand in hers.

  “There’s noth­ing to be sorry about. I just hope they have some an­swers.”

  “We do, ac­tu­ally,” Dyson said from her right.

  “What hap­pened to him?” An­gus de­manded from closer than she ex­pected.

  Both she and Finn looked to­ward the doc­tor as he ad­dressed the king. “Long story short, par­a­sites are at­tack­ing his sys­tem.”

  “What?” An­gus barked at the same time Finn choked the word from his dry lips.

  Dyson’s ex­pres­sion was un­read­able, and it was all Talysia could do to keep from jump­ing down the doc­tor’s throat. “There are par­a­sites in his blood stream, and sev­eral have at­tached to his heart and lungs. I think one of them punc­tured a small hole in one of the lobes of a lung,” the male ex­plained.

  “How the fuck does he have par­a­sites in his body?” An­gus barked.

  “Not ex­actly sure. I’ve never seen any­thing like it,” Dyson ad­mit­ted.

  “How do we kill them?” An­gus or­dered.

  “I need to do more re­search, but I rec­om­mend we quar­an­tine him and Talysia in sep­a­rate suites in case she is in­fected,” Dyson replied.

  Talysia barely heard the re­sponses be­fore Blaine was pulling her from Finn’s side and telling her to re­main in her room un­til she heard any­thing fur­ther and to also re­port any changes she might feel. As the doors to the room closed, Talysia’s heart started rac­ing in her chest. She hadn’t said good­bye to Finn and now she was locked in­side a room.

  The last vi­sion she had of Finn was of him look­ing around with wide, pan­icked eyes. That could not be the last time she got to see his gor­geous face. She had no idea if any­thing would grow be­tween them, but she was wanted to find out.

  * * *

  Chap­ter 10

  Pac­ing the stone floor, Finn was about to go postal. He would lose his fuck­ing mind if he didn’t get out of the small room. In the past twenty-four hours, he vac­il­lated be­tween his worry for Talysia and the par­a­sites chok­ing the breath from his body.

  As a Cuele­bre dragon he had su­pe­rior heal­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ties and was stronger than most be­ings. He could crush an en­emy with one blow, but there was noth­ing he could do to com­bat these mi­cro­scopic crea­tures swim­ming through his blood stream.

  The mere thought of a for­eign en­tity in­side his veins wreak­ing havoc on his in­ter­nal or­gans made him sick to his stom­ach and in­fu­ri­ated Finn at the same time. It didn’t seem right that he was at the mercy of some­thing he couldn’t fend off.

  All of that was com­pounded by his worry for Talysia. What was she go­ing through? Was she be­ing tor­tured by re­peated blood draws like he was? If it wasn’t for his preter­nat­u­ral heal­ing, he would have passed out from blood loss hours ago. And yet, Dyson kept re­turn­ing for more.

  A noise in the hall­way brought his in­ces­sant pac­ing to a halt. It sounded as if there was a con­tin­gent of Maa­hes out­side the door. Blaine’s voice was among those he was able to dis­cern.

  Head­ing for the door, Finn was sur­prised to find it un­locked. “What’s go­ing on?” he blurted when the door swung open. He made sure to take a cou­ple steps back­ward in the event he was in­deed con­ta­gious.

  Blaine shook his head, but Caleb ig­nored him as he spoke. “You’re not the only one in­fected with these ticks.”

  Finn gazed at Caleb and hor­ror dawned on him. “How’s Talysia? Please tell me she’s okay.”

  “Told you jack­wagon,” Blaine cursed at Caleb. “The siren is fine, ac­tu­ally. She was sent home. Seems you haven’t given her any­thing. But there are sev­eral of us that have the same par­a­sites in our sys­tem.”

  “I don’t un­der­stand,” Finn said as he breathed a sigh of re­lief. He hadn’t re­al­ized how heav­ily his con­cern for Talysia weighed on his shoul­ders un­til it was re­moved.

  “C’mon. Dyson, An­gus, and De­clan are wait­ing for us in the throne room,” Blaine en­cour­aged.

  “Some­one bet­ter start talk­ing. If Talysia is fine what’s go­ing on? Did Dyson find a cure?”

  “We’re all in­fected,” Caleb ad­mit­ted a sec­ond later.

  “What?” Finn ex­ploded.

  “What the prole is try­ing to say is that any­one who fought those small bas­tards in the train­ing yard the other day was in­fected with the bugs,” Blaine in­formed him.

  It was af­ter Blaine ex­plained the ex­tent of the prob­lem that Finn re­al­ized his clos­est friends didn’t look so great. He was too pre­oc­cu­pied mo­ments ago to no­tice the sal­low pal­lor of both Caleb and Blaine, as well as, Slate and Bane. Their nor­mally tanned skin was pale and sickly.

  And, Slate was wheez­ing while Bane had cough­ing fits ev­ery few steps. Finn was so busy wrapped up in his own head and deal­ing with his own bouts of hack­ing to re­al­ize they were just as af­fected.

  “What the ac­tual fuck is go­ing on?” Finn asked as he fol­lowed the knights to­ward the throne room.

  “I wish I knew,” Blaine replied. “Best Dyson can fig­ure is that those things passed some­thing onto us when we were bit­ten.”

  Finn was lost in thought for sev­eral sec­onds try­ing to re­mem­ber if there was any­thing that he could re­call about the small Un­seelie they faced a few days ago. En­ter­ing the throne room, Finn scanned the gath­ered males and gri­maced when he saw the metal tray that was set up next to the large ta­ble.

  “Well,” An­gus asked the palace Mundunugu. “Is that what has af­fected my Maa­hes?”

  Finn held his breath as he walked with said fel­low knights to the group. The small, hairy body was sliced open and splayed on the ta­ble while Dyson used some con­trap­tion to get a close look at the crea­ture’s in­nards.

  Dyson’s head lifted and he picked up a pair of metal tweez­ers that he used to point at some­thing in­side the crea­ture. “Yes. The par­a­sites in­fil­trated their blood­stream and are also in their saliva. Al­though, it doesn’t ap­pear as if they are dam­ag­ing this host.”

  The room was silent for sev­eral tense sec­onds. If this was Un­seelie in na­ture, then there was likely no easy way to elim­i­nate it from their sys­tem. Nearly half of the Maa­hes were in­volved in the bat­tle. It wa
s ter­ri­fy­ing to think about the realm be­ing in so much dan­ger with­out them to help pro­tect the civil­ians.

  “Shite. How do we kill it?” An­gus de­manded, and Finn didn’t miss the con­cern in his light green eyes.

  “I’m not sure, Sire. I haven’t dis­cov­ered any­thing that im­pacts it. This crea­ture has been dead for days, yet the par­a­sites are healthy and ac­tive as ever.”

  “Cyril de­signed this. There’s not go­ing to be an easy so­lu­tion,” Leg­ette added. “We can’t af­ford for half of our fight­ing force to be out of com­mis­sion. No doubt the bas­tard’s been plan­ning this for years.”

  “We knew he wasna silent for no rea­son,” An­gus ac­knowl­edged as he rubbed his jaw. “Ev­ery be­ing has a vul­ner­a­bil­ity. We need to find oot what will de­stroy this bug. I know Cyril planned his at­tack to weaken us. We must re­main vig­i­lant in the event he makes an­other move while we’re deal­ing with this is­sue.”

  “The fucker’s try­ing to dis­tract us,” Finn blurted. “I’ve won­dered why he launched so many at­tacks af­ter the bomb­ing at the beach, and now it makes sense.”

  “Aye,” An­gus agreed with a nod. “He has us right where he wants us. We canna leave Ray­nah Beach unat­tended, nor most of the out­ly­ing cities for fear he will cause more dam­age.”

  “At least he can­not at­tack you here at the palace or the civil­ians within Du­a­mutef. Per­haps we should evac­u­ate the out­ly­ing cities and towns and bring ev­ery­one here,” Leg­ette sug­gested.

  An­gus be­gan pac­ing across the stone floor much in the same manic man­ner Finn was back in his room. “Nay. There isna enough space to fit ev­ery­one. Be­sides, we would be leav­ing ar­eas vul­ner­a­ble to the Un­seelie. I willna al­low them to claim any­more of our land. Run as many tests as you need to find oot what kills that par­a­site,” the king or­dered Dyson.