Virgins and Vampires: Blood Falls (The Blood Falls Book 3)

For better or worse, Rhysa and I teamed up again to find her mother. Rhysa searched while I practiced the art of making psychic bubbles on the Plane. Everything was different there, but psychic energy was psychic energy, so the process was similar.

I was also grateful that the more I did it, the less I needed to rely on an extreme emotion to create them. Which made me more confident in my ability, something I would need if I wanted to create one while terrified.

“I found her.”

I popped the bubble. “Where?”

“Here.” She showed me the way.

“Where are we?” The psychic energy matched some of Rhysa’s.

“House of Nala. It’s like she’s sleeping…or gone dormant? This is her room.”

So she returned to her body to rest. Close enough to possibly tether, but without taking the final step to return to her body. “What do we do now?”

“You tell me.”

“Well, should we try to wake her? Or do we let her rest?”

I felt Rhysa’s emotions change to something like anger. “She’s had twenty years here. Wake her ass up.”

I sent psychic energy to the subconscious Rhysa identified as her mother. The energy there stirred, patterns erratic at first, then falling into a pattern. Marhysa woke with a start, flying away from us.

“I think we scared her.”

“No shit.” Rhysa went after her. “It’s me, Rhysa! Stop running!”

Suddenly she was in front of us again. “What are you doing here?”

“We need to talk,” Rhysa said.

“No. You can’t be here. It’s too dangerous.”

“Why?”

Marhysa hesitated. “Why do you want to know?”

Rhysa began ticking things off. “Well where do we start? How about how you saved us from banshees that shouldn’t even exist. Twice. Then there’s the Dreg Army. Mary and Helena are dead, by the way. Oh, and we’re preparing for the Ancient War to return.”

“Oh. Well then.”

“Yeah, I find it kind of curious you’ve been in a coma for twenty years while your consciousness has been floating around the Plane, all while this other shit is happening.”

“I didn’t do it!”

Rhysa’s anger and Marhysa’s surprise started to multiply, so I stepped in. “We don’t think that. But we need to know if there’s a reason you’ve stayed here all this time. We have so many questions and no answers. If you can help us at all…”

Her emotions settled. Rhysa’s did not.

“The banshees are new. There was one who kept coming and going. Coming and going. I thought it was strange. Normally banshees are ceremonial. They don’t come and go like that. She’s gone now, but these others came right after she left.”

“How many?”

If a consciousness could shrug, that’s exactly what Marhysa did. Her energy flickered and moved up and down. “A dozen perhaps? There were only six yesterday when they lured you away. I’m sorry about that. They surprised me. I couldn’t find you at first.”

“Do they know about you?”

Another psychic shrug. “They certainly learned I exist yesterday. Before? I don’t think so, but I don’t know. That’s why I came back home. I needed the energy in case I can’t come back for a while.”

“What the hell is going on?” Rhysa cut in.

“Nothing is at it seems,” Marhysa shrank back, her energy dimming a little. “But the pieces are coming together and soon it will be known.”

“What does that mean?” Rhysa yelled.

“Stop it,” I hissed. “You’re sending out a lot of energy.” Everything around her glowed on the Plane.

“You,” Marhysa said to me. “You need to know that your friend is important. What he learned is important.”

“Who?” A sliver of cold wormed its way through me.

“Your friend. Brother? He’s close to you. Where he went that day. He went and you didn’t. Maybe that was best. What he knows now is what you need to know.”

“Why?” Did she mean Kris? Where did he go? And why was it important?

“Because,” she reached out to both of us, connecting my energy to hers and Rhysa’s. “You’re the link. You see now, yes? How this must work? And if you know what he knows, then we can fight them.” Her energy flowed to Rhysa. “And you. Your friend who you love? Her love, the one she dreams of and who dreams of her, they’re the key. They must stop fighting it or it will be too late. Understand?”

“No!” Rhysa crowed. “You’re speaking in the same riddles as Ryddyck!”

“Who is Ryddyck?”

Rhysa’s energy flickered with frustration. “The one she dreams of. You must mean Gigi and Ryddyck.”

“Yes. Your friend. She is the sister? Of your love… the dragon. That link, it links you all. Your friend and the dragon’s link is very important. I didn’t understand it back then, but now that I’ve been here and I’ve watched Destiny realign and traced it back to the Severing of Destiny I see now that it had to be done. And they are—who they are, what they are is so important. You will play your role and they will play theirs. After the key is used.”

“Fucking hell. You start to make some sense and then you just go right off the rails again,” Rhysa muttered. “Why don’t you come back to your body?”

“Because of our link. I have to be here. If I came back then I wouldn’t be here and nothing would work. This,” she made our connection glow again, “is the only way.”

I felt it now. It wasn’t just a link. Each of us fed off the other in an important, vital way. I realized now how important that was. Marhysa couldn’t communicate like this without my psychic gift to channel her thoughts through. Rhysa’s version of the Plane made her a navigator in a way I never would be. There were many more layers, all just as important.

“There has to be another way,” Rhysa said.

“No, my daughter. I’ve been here a long time and I’ve worked out all the options. This is the only way it works.” She probably studied the timeline more than any samhain alive.

I trusted her plan, even if Rhysa couldn’t yet. “And the banshees? Are they part of this?”

“Oh no. But…” she became thoughtful, “they could be useful. But they’re here for the wrong reasons. As they are, they are only dangerous.”

“How do we get rid of them?”

“If you kill their bodies they might get trapped here, but most likely they’ll die here too.”

“But we don’t know where their bodies are.”

“They’re very angry,” Marhysa mused. “Normally I could trace that amount of emotion.”

“But you can’t?”

Her energy flickered in a shrug. “Why are they so angry? It’s not directed at you or anyone in particular. They’re just angry. It’s very interesting. I should walk back through the timeline again and try to find where they intersect with that anger.”

“Rhine probably brainwashed them. He was so power hungry everything he touched ended up twisted.”

Marhysa’s energy sizzled and switched to a different frequency. “Rhine?”

“My uncle…by marriage. My aunt was the first banshee you noticed coming and going.”

“Oh…”

“What oh?” Rhysa jumped back in. “Why is that interesting?”

Marhysa’s energy flowed to me. “I’ll have to go back to your birth. The answers will be there. And I’ll find the banshees’ anger. That whole group,” her energy flickered some more, “they have tried so hard to control the timeline, to take the Plane for themselves. They are to blame for the War returning.”

“Who else is in the group?” Rhysa demanded.

But there was no time for an answer. We drew too much attention. The banshees found us. I threw up a bubble even as their cries paralyzed me.

“You’re learning quickly,” Marhysa said. “This is good. You both need to leave. Go back to reality.”

“What about you?” Rhysa’s energy switched to panic. “Without the bubble they’ll kill you.”

“I can escape them. They’re too new. They don’t know the Plane the way I do.”

“We need to get them off the Plane or kill them,” I said.

“Then you need their bodies,” Marhysa insisted. “Go back and find their bodies. Leave me here. I’ll escape and go about my research.”

“Where can we find you?” Rhysa asked. “We need to be able to find you again.”

The shrieking pulsed strong energy against my bubble, but it held. For now. “She’s right. We need to establish a way to contact you.”

“Now that the Time has Come, now that you know, I’ll find you.”

“That’s not good enough!” Rhysa said.

I let them banter while I focused on the banshees. Marhysa was right. Their power came from their anger. There was so much of it. It took everything I had to fight it.

And fighting wasn’t in my nature. I didn’t like being on the defensive at all. It made me feel like I was backpedaling when I should be in control. If only there was a way to contain them or force them to return to their bodies.

Contain. Contain. I could contain them! “Marhysa, how is that you were able to give Rhysa and I so much energy?”

“Because I know the Plane better than anyone who has ever lived.”

“I’m going to need a lot of that energy right now.”

“Of course.”

A moment later she flooded me with power. Rich, intoxicating power. It flowed through me like time. I took the bubble that surrounded us, infused it with that power and psychic energy.

“What are you doing?” Marhysa asked, curiosity in her emotions now.

“I’m going to trap them. Can you lock it up?” The Nalas used spells and incantations to control the Plane.

“Of course. Just give me a second to remember…oh yes. I have it now.”

I shoved the bubble around the banshees. For a moment their shrieks hit me but then the bubble encased them, trapping the energy inside with them. Their energy instantly changed and I suspected they stopped their wailing as it fed back on them.

Marhysa’s energy swirled as she put a spell on the bubble, making it impossible for them to escape until she released them.

“That,” she said, “is what your friend learned when he left. You must know what he knows for the War that is here.”

Here. Rhine said the same thing. The War was already here and we didn’t know it.

“What did he learn?” Rhysa asked, her energy shimmering with excitement.

“The reason why this gift, these bubbles, are necessary to our fight. Now go. We have much to learn.” She pushed her energy out, sending us flying back to the point we entered the Plane.