Poison Tree

before he felt the double concussion of tires exploding. Despite his

Triste reflexes on the wheel, two flat tires on the still-slick roads sent the car into a spin.

Before he could even panic, the nose of the car was in the ditch between the road and a state forest.

“Cute,” Christian said dryly as he hastily removed his seat belt and exited the vehicle.

Alysia did the same. Neither of them was stupid enough to believe this had been an accident, even before Alysia knelt down and picked up one of the silver stars that had been strewn at the edge of the road, waiting to destroy any tire that crossed them.

Alysia swore loudly, one hand instinctively going to her chest as the tension caused a twinge in her bruised ribs, the other reaching into her backpack, Christian hoped for a knife. Apparently, she had kept the weapons— probably for their sentimental value—but hadn’t kept easily replaced things like concealable sheaths on hand.

He drew his own knife and stretched out his awareness, trying to sense for anything alive or undead nearby. No one had gone to this much trouble to cause the accident without having a trap ready to close on them.

“We need to get away from the road,” Alysia said. “This is too exposed. Good Samaritan, EMT, police, tow company, anyone could pull over and we wouldn’t know if they were for real or the next part of this trap. Can Triste power keep us from freezing to death if we go hiking?”

He didn’t get a chance to answer before two more of Maya’s crew showed up. Like wild dogs, they tended to travel in packs. Two years earlier, he would have put Alysia at his back and they could easily have taken down a half dozen of Maya’s boys, but she was out of practice, and if Alysia was the target, Christian didn’t want to put her directly in the vamps’ line of sight.

While he was looking over his shoulder to check the situation on her side, however, he missed the appearance of the third vampire. He barely caught a glimpse of the crossbow aimed at him before the bolt hit him high in the right side of the chest.

Perversely, Pandora’s training meant he could feel the exact damage done to the soft tissue of his lung, could feel where the edge of a barbed bolt nicked the aorta, a killing injury to almost anyone else.

It took the wind out of his lungs, made him fall, forced him to turn his attention inward to keep his body from bleeding to death.

Alysia wil have to hold her own.

CHAPTER 12

TIME AND EVENTS seemed to blur. The ght with the vampire, Alysia, and then Jeht had taken less than a minute, but it seemed to stretch into an hour in Sarik’s memory.

In comparison, all the rest happened in a blink. The hunters arrived. Mark the groundskeeper came running after Quean, who had followed Jeht. The man took a child’s fist to the mouth as he tried to pull Quean away from the bloody scene.

Lynzi ran up next. She started to kneel to check Jeht for wounds, but Sarik shook her head. He was ne. He ordered Quean to calm down. The younger tiger obediently relaxed in Mark’s arms and, sucking his thumb, looked as innocent as any four-year-old.

Jason arrived, but when he first reached for Sarik, she recoiled.

The copper-rot taste of blood was still thick in Sarik’s mouth, but the uid itself had gone dry, leaving a sticky, ashy texture like talcum powder on her tongue. She had more blood on her hands from the knife Jeht had handed her. She couldn’t stand for Jason to touch her.

He knelt beside the body instead and told them all, “His name is Liam. He works for a mercenary named Maya. He—”

“He was after Alysia,” Sarik said before Jason could blame himself. “I saw him stalking her. I needed to warn her. Alysia said this is about her. She says she didn’t mean to bring danger here. She’s leaving until it’s sorted out. She’s gone now.”

“Sarik, I think you should come inside and sit down,” Lynzi said. “You’re in shock.”

“We can clean this up,” one of the hunters offered.

Lynzi nodded to them and ushered all the rest inside to the conference room in the administration building.

Jeht and Quean wouldn’t leave Sarik’s side, insisting on sitting on the oor next to her chair.

Jeht seemed to have decided that he was her protector. He accepted her as a gure with authority over him only because she was Mistari, an adult queen, and he had seen others at

SingleEarth defer to her due to her position as a mediator. He seemed to have decided that, if he could not return to the Mistari homeland, he would create his world here instead, and sit by her side as her enforcer. Quean simply watched, wide-eyed, taking his lead from

Sarik and Jeht but never even asking what had happened. Blood was nothing new to him.

Sarik wished they could visit one of the tribes that ran more peacefully so that the boys could see that it was possible to live without violence. It was unlikely that any such tribe would be willing to welcome him into their midst—Jeht especially was too much of a threat, a miniature prince who had been raised as a warrior—but seeing how such tribes existed might make him realize that there was value in something other than brute strength.

“Sarik?” People had been talking to her while her mind was so far away.

“Sorry,” she said, trying to focus. “I’m being stupid. I wasn’t even the one who was attacked. I shouldn’t be this disturbed.”

It was the taste of blood in her mouth that had done it. That, and Jeht’s smile after he’d made the kill. She remembered what that childlike pride felt like.

“That’s your father talking, not you,” Jason whispered to her. He sat beside her and took one of her hands in both of his. “You shouted to warn Alysia, right?”

“I attacked the vampire,” she admitted. “I saw the earring. Recognized it. I knew shouting would warn both of them. I didn’t know who would win, so I didn’t give him a chance to hurt her. Or to run.”

“Thank God you didn’t,” Jason answered. “Liam wouldn’t have dared return to Maya without having accomplished his mission. If you had shouted, he would have fought. You did the right thing.”

“Was I still doing the right thing when I told Alysia to stop?” she snapped. “When she was about to kill him, I froze. Jeht is the one who threw himself into the ght without hesitation.”

“If my impression is correct, Alysia is a trained ghter,” Lynzi said, joining the conversation. “So is Jeht, as much as we hate in our culture to admit such a thing about a child. You’re not, Sarik. Never be ashamed that your instinct doesn’t tell you to go for the kill.”

I used to be a fighter, Sarik thought. Now I’m just a victim who needs to be protected.

No, not a victim, she corrected herself. A survivor. Pul it together, Sarik.

She took a deep breath and looked up. She could tell that Jeht, sitting near her feet, had sensed her drawing up her strength. He sat a little straighter.

“I know you’re still shaken,” Lynzi said from across the room, “but if you’re ready, we need to know exactly what happened. We cannot a ord to assume that Alysia was the only target or that these attacks will stop just because she left. I have been doing research into the Bruja guilds since the rst attack, and, well, let’s just say I hope we can avoid a direct conflict.”

The words echoed something Alysia had said: I’m not pitting SingleEarth against the Bruja guilds, not over me. SingleEarth isn’t weak, but–

Sarik had interrupted Alysia there, but she knew what the rest would have been: Neither is Bruja. And Bruja had more trained, ruthless mercenaries.

In as much detail as she could manage, Sarik recounted everything she had seen, from the moment she noticed the vampire behind Alysia in the parking lot to when everyone else started to arrive.

Jason supplemented the story with what he knew about Maya. “She specializes in captures—kidnapping, extortion, that sort of thing,” he said. “If that’s the goal, it would explain why the rst attack wasn’t meant to be