I detached my blood canteen from my belt, took off Sarrat’s sheath, and pulled my sweatshirt off. “Dump it right here.”
He frowned. “Just dump it out on the ground?”
“Yep.”
He unzipped the backpack, unscrewed the cap, and turned it upside down. The undead blood splashed out onto the pavement. I dumped the contents of my canteen into it.
Normal human blood would have coagulated without refrigeration after a full day of riding in my canteen. The magic in my blood had kept it fresh longer and, as it collided with the puddle of vampire blood, my power shot through it like fire along a detonation cord. The two liquids fused into one pliable, obedient mass. It streamed to me, guided by my will, climbing up my feet, over my legs, over my waist and chest and arms to coat my entire body up to my chin. It felt warm against my skin, the arcane power within it shimmering and ready.
One final push, and it snapped into shape. Blood armor sheathed me, flexible, thin like a second skin, and yet impenetrable to claws and normal swords.
Everyone had stopped what they were doing and was staring at me.
“Okay, I’m dressed,” I announced. “Let’s get this party started!”
Curran grinned.
“You heard the Consort,” Keelan growled. “Fall in. We don’t have all day.”
Everyone decided to simultaneously look somewhere else. I swiped Sarrat off the ground, poured my leftover blood onto the blade, and hardened it to a razor-sharp edge. It wouldn’t last long once I started using it, but while it lasted, my sword would cut through bone like butter.
I walked over to Conlan and hugged him.
“Mom,” he said quietly. “I’m not a baby.”
“You will always be my baby. Deal with it. When the fight starts, stay with the archers. They’re vulnerable to melee and they’ll need your protection.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Listen to your mother,” Curran said.
“Yes, Alpha.”
We started toward the light again.
“Can you do that?” Darin murmured to Conlan.
“Not yet,” my son said.
The gap in the trees grew closer and closer. A hundred yards, fifty, twenty-five.
The safe zone ended.
Curran looked at me. I shook my head. There would be no more claiming. The forest’s magic was too deep, and I was too tired. We’d have to solve this problem the old-fashioned way. A claiming broke when its creator died.
Curran squared his shoulders. He seemed larger somehow, looming, his face predatory and fierce, almost cruel. He was a lion who had sighted a territory he wanted, and he was ready to take it.
We hugged the greenery and carefully moved to the edge of the forest.
A grassy plain stretched in front of us, still green and vibrant despite it being fall. In the middle of the plain, a low hill curved, and on top of that hill a fortress rose, ancient and massive, dominating everything around it. We were looking at the outer wall, and it was all round towers, almost a hundred feet high, packed nearly side by side, with very little actual wall in between.
Built with clay bricks and partially sheathed in slabs of granite, the towers went on and on, in two straight lines that met at a right angle almost directly in front of us. The two sides we could see were each over a mile long. If this fort was square, the entire town of Penderton would fit inside that wall.
It didn’t look like any architectural style I knew. I had never seen anything like it.
Curran closed his mouth with a click.
“Where did they get the granite? The nearest quarry is hundreds of miles inland.”
“I don’t care. I want it,” Curran growled.
“It’s a fine castle, my lord,” Keelan called out. “Let’s liberate it and all the people in collars with it.”
We had a lot of open ground to cover between the woods and the walls. The archers especially would be vulnerable. Their effective range was about two hundred yards. If the evil in the fortress opened this fight with shapeshifters, there would be no point in shooting them. The arrows wouldn’t do enough damage, and the shapeshifter charge was too fast. The archers would be better used against the hunters. For that, we’d need to walk them closer to the walls.
Something moved at the top of the corner tower. People came into view. Two dozen hunters armed with javelins, six priest-mages, and in the middle, a tall woman in white.
Rimush passed me a pair of binoculars.
She looked like one of the hunters. The same slender build with an odd shoulder line and limbs that looked too long. But unlike the hunters, she hadn’t smeared any clay on her hair. Her long locks streamed in the wind, and they weren’t black, brown, or blond. Her hair was a light, ethereal blue. The exact same shade that tinted all that clay on her followers’ hair and faces. She had marked them as hers.
Her face was unnaturally white, probably tinted with powder or some kind of paint that was a lot smoother than the blue clay. Bloodred pigment stained her eyelids and the space under her eyes. Her whole face looked like a skull with two bloody holes where the orbits should be. The priest-mages hovered around her, anxious.
Hello, evil in the forest. I’ve come to borrow a cup of sugar and to chat about Penderton. Is it a bad time?
The woman said something, baring her teeth. They were sharp and triangular like those of a shark. The skin on her exposed arms was an odd, faded ochre and patterned lightly as if someone had painted a ghostly brindle over it with bluish-green pigment. Teeth, hair, skin…
Turn your head, turn your head…
She snapped at one of the priest-mages, presenting me with a view of her ear. Pointed. Got you.
“Fae,” I said.
“What?” Curran said.
“She isn’t human. She’s fae.”
“Fae?” Keelan asked. “Here?”
“Fae legends aren’t confined to Ireland. They pop up in folklore all through Europe and Asia in various forms. The leading theory is that modern humans and fae had a common ancestor but diverged in prehistory. We had interbred at some point after that divergence, which is why human parents sometimes give birth to a fae child. Magic activates the dormant genes. Our Pale Skull Queen is a prehistoric fae.”
And Dad would just love that little tidbit. When he was building the Order of Sahanu, his assassins, he’d specifically looked for fae children because of their significant magic reserve. Father, did you know fae are capable of claiming? His head would explode.
I lowered the binoculars and turned to look at our crew.
“That explains a lot of things,” Curran said. “Like the absence of iron. Okay, the Pale Queen on that tower is our primary target. Their society is rigidly structured. She’s on top, then the priest-mages, then the hunters and shapeshifters on the bottom.”
“If you don’t have magic, you’re not shit,” Keelan said.
“Yes,” Curran confirmed. “She’s going to assess us by what she knows. She’s seen Kate do magic and claim the land, so she will view her as a queen and us as her disposable underlings.”
“We’re going to use it to our advantage,” I said. “Once the fight starts, she will key in on me because she thinks I’m the biggest threat.”
“She’ll sit in her tower and field her shapeshifters,” Curran said. “Judging by her previous actions, she thinks of her subordinates as subhuman. She’ll hurl them at us because she doesn’t care if they survive. When that happens, we’re going to pull the fight to the left to give Kate room to work. We need to get to those walls with minimal casualties.”
I nodded. “I’ll be throwing magic around so don’t be in front of me. Heather, your people, Conlan, Darin, and Jushur will need to hang back and to the right. Don’t be directly behind me but stay close enough until you get in range that I can close the distance and protect you if there are surprises. Be careful. This is her territory, and we don’t know what she’s capable of. She could collapse the ground under you or blow up her walls to crush you.”