Maddox understood hunting others, but he’d never had to hunt the rest of them. Why would he? They’d been friends, allies, and occasionally competitors for centuries. Time wore away the harsher edge of their disagreements, and they learned to seek each other out when they wanted the company and to ignore each other when they didn’t. “Rogue always liked the keep. It’s defensible. High in the mountains. We still own all of the land and the territory. It’s never been developed. Urban expansionism won’t reach there. The villages on the other side of the mountain are well tended and looked after. They have no reason to come looking for us.”
There was another reason Rogue would have taken her there. If Maddox put away his rage for a few minutes, that would hit him, too.
“That’s halfway around the world,” he argued. “She was already weak.”
“And craving,” Fin confirmed. They were nearly a mile down the mountainside, and there was no sign of pursuit. A fact Maddox had obviously noticed as his agitation increased. “Rogue can feed her, deartháir. Even he understands how important it would be for a baby vamp to eat. His blood is older than ours.”
“Not by much,” Maddox snarled, but some of the heat drained from his tone, and the scorching air around them cooled. “If he took her there...”
“He did.” Of that much, Fin was certain.
“You think he’s going to try and wake Alfred.”
“I would,” Fin admitted, and Maddox glared at him. “Look, Alfred went to sleep because the world had worn him out. He’d tired of waiting. We were as safe as we could be, and we didn’t need him to look after us. But when he went to ground, Rogue...” Rogue turned away from them.
Even when Fin would try to lure him out, Rogue never stayed. He always came. He’d never let them down, not once. But when he finished his task, he vanished again. Try as he might, Fin hadn’t been able to keep him with them. Maddox no longer bothered and acted like it was a crime to even try and lure Rogue out of his self-imposed exile.
“She isn’t ready for Alfred.”
“I doubt she’s ready for any of us,” Fin said with a shrug. “It’s our job to protect her and make her ready. Besides, she’s got spunk. You’re already a little crazy about her, aren’t you?”
Never had he been so jealous of and thrilled for the dragon in equal measure. Fiona MacRieve was the answer to so much. All they had to do was save her from the insanity of vampire politics, keep the shadow demon away, and show her that being a hybrid was destiny.
“She’s a stubborn wench,” Maddox grunted. “Fierce, too. I could live without her need to fuck the stupid out of people.”
Eyebrows raised, Fin eyed him. “She needed to feed, and I don’t think she planned to hop on and ride the guys.”
“The shadow demon’s been fucking her.”
“Well, that was before she met us.” Fin kept it philosophical. They’d hardly been monks. Well, Maddox might have been, there was no telling with him. He didn’t share much, and Alfred probably wouldn’t know a date if it woke up and bit him. Rogue? Yeah, Fin wouldn’t place money there either.
Fine, Fin hadn’t been a monk.
Course, if the warden had been paying her visits, that would explain the shadow addiction. They could keep her away until they cleansed her system.
“You up for transporting two of us?” Maddox asked abruptly, and Fin didn’t bother to hide his smirk.
“Already eager to see her again?”
“I made her a deal,” Maddox gritted out. “She’d listen to the whole story, then she was free to go if she wanted.”
“That’s a terrible deal, why would you offer her that?” Fin stared at him.
“Because she wants nothing to do with us, and she’s still fighting the fact she was turned. She needs a sense of control.” Then Maddox gave him a firm look. “I plan on honoring my word.”
Of course, he did.
Dragons had honor for miles. Sometimes for days.
Why had the species begun to die out? Oh right, they honored their treaties when so many others didn’t.
“Well, good for us, I made no such promises.” He clapped Maddox’s shoulder and then focused. Inside him, the magic unlocked. Portal magic wasn’t difficult. If anything, it was one of the first mysteries he’d trained in as a young druid. Trees linked the world, their root systems tangling deep beneath the earth and creating routes that those who developed the art could slip along.
Even when a tree had been uprooted, the memory of its pathways remained, which meant even wooden structures couldn’t keep him out if he could find the right one. It was knowing how to read the myriad of pathways and follow them. Taking passengers along was slightly more difficult.
But only slightly.
Maddox didn’t block him out as he wrapped his power around him. If anything, the dragon allowed Fin access to his own strength, not that this simple transport required it. The world whooshed past them as he found the route they needed and followed it home.
Coinnigh an Rí, King’s Keep, had been the center of Alfred’s domain for years beyond counting. They’d all called it home at one point or another. Granted, it was a monolith built almost completely from cut stones hauled miles from their natural habitat and put together.
Magic infused some of the stones, but the rest of it? They’d held it with strength, skill, and wit. When that wasn’t enough, a few good slaughters had at least been entertaining. The factions left them alone. But they’d begun to fade from common memory. A choice, really, if the majority didn’t think about them, they didn’t have to fend off the occasional glory seeker.
The problem, however, was the reckoning Fiona faced. The turning of other species besides human into a vampire was considered impossible, improbable, and socially unacceptable. The legends around so-called hybrids had painted them as monsters.
Well, at least they got that part right.
While rare, hybrids existed in a delicate balance. One Fin, Maddox, Rogue, and Alfred maintained. They were all hybrids. Some of the first.
Currently, the only ones beyond Fiona.
They’d waited a long time for her.
Too long.
Whisking along the paths, he slowed them as they neared the ancient oaks bordering the fields nearest the keep’s location. With a pop, he stepped out and yanked Maddox with him. The dragon looked vaguely green, and Fin chuckled as he patted him once and left him to catch his breath. It was a testament to how much Maddox wanted to see her again that he’d not objected to transporting on the ancient pathways.
He preferred to fly, but the keep was halfway around the world from where they’d penetrated Nightmare Penitentiary’s defenses. It would have taken him a while to get there, and that meant leaving the beautiful Fiona to Fin and Rogue.
Huh. Maybe he should have let Maddox fly on his own.
The sight of smoke curling toward the sky from one of the chimney flues had Fin smirking. He smacked Maddox’s arm again. “See, I told you he would bring her here.”
The defenses were still active, but they had nothing to worry about. They passed harmlessly through the magical field that would send up an alarm to them no matter where they were of possible invasion. Once inside, Fin took a cleansing breath.