Bitten (The Graced Series Book 2) Read online

  The door smashed open and her husband stood in the threshold. He was breathing heavily, scowling in anger.

  “Let me see this child you have given me,” he said.

  The babe was still feeding, but he plucked it from her breast, supporting his daughter’s weak neck with one large palm. Ezra raised her hands uselessly. The newborn cried at the sudden loss of nourishment.

  “Demon!”

  Ezra shrunk back, thinking the insult had been spat at her. But then she saw her husband’s shaking hands, his trembling body. He all but threw the infant back at her.

  Awkwardly Ezra took back the baby, the child’s cries high-pitched from the rough treatment. She didn’t know what to do, what was happening.

  “You didn’t tell me you had demon blood in you!”

  “Demon blood?” Ezra blanched. “I don’t know what you are talking about.”

  “The babe, look at its eyes!”

  Ezra looked down, at the squalling infant, at the child she’d nurtured in her womb for nine long months.

  Green.

  Murky, not yet fully developed, but its eyes were definitely green.

  She almost dropped the infant.

  “It’s not in my family!” Ezra shouted back.

  “You dare imply it is in mine?”

  Ezra stared at her husband, mute rage filling her. Not his family: not his father, the perfect headman with his perfect wife who had perfect sons — excluding his dead daughters — whose line had been ruling the Trsetti for generation upon generation.

  “Or is this demon the offspring of some other man?”

  She wanted to laugh at that claim, but if he thought she had been unfaithful, he would give her back to her family; leave her in shame. No man would marry her after that. “I was a virgin when you took me to bed. I conceived that very night.”

  Those facts he could not argue with.

  Red faced, rage burning in his brown eyes, he jabbed a finger at her. “If you do not get rid of that demon, I will. You have until tomorrow morning.” He slammed the door behind him, and the walls rattled from the force.

  Ezra shut her eyes, tears burning behind her eyelids, as he shouted to his father and whoever else was in the room that he wanted a divorce. Biting back a sob, Ezra nodded to herself. She’d get rid of the baby. Then maybe her husband wouldn’t leave her, wouldn’t force her back to her family to be ostracized.

  *

  Ezra’s fear and anger suffused Hannah. She experienced it all, as Ezra swaddled the infant, then slipped outside her little cottage and walked up the slopes to the Old Woman. It had hurt the new mother to walk, but she’d made the two-hour journey the following morning. She’d unwrapped the infant and then without even a backward glance, left. It would be up to the Old Woman to do what was right.

  That is where the blanket’s memories ended. Or Ezra’s memories, at any rate. The remaining echoes were the babe’s, and they spoke of discomfort and hunger.

  Shaking from the emotional journey, Hannah picked the infant up and held it close, hugging it to her chest. To be left unwanted out here was heartbreaking. How many children had been similarly discarded over the years? She wondered how many bones she’d find, if she were to walk toward the little town in the valley down below.

  She’d always thought the Trsetti were good people, despite being fearful of those who were different. They’d been nothing but honest and hardworking in the little contact she’d had with them. Their fear, well, it had been based on physical differences; hair, skin or eye color. Anyone who didn’t look like them was a demon. Hannah’s mother had told her it was a remnant from a war the villagers could barely remember. Her own differences had made them wary around her, but they had accepted her as her skin was not too much paler than their own, and many villagers had black hair. They’d also thought her eyes were a very dark Brown. Which they weren’t.

  But Hannah had never guessed they would kill a baby because of its eye color. It was abhorrent. Disgust welled in her and she wanted to march down that slope, right up to Ezra’s door and yell at her. Call her out as the murderer she was, as her husband was.

  But the baby was hungry and cold and Hannah needed to sort through the rest of the blanket’s memories. Hopefully, there was something that showed her how to feed a child who had no mother. No doubt one of the grandmothers had known what to do and their memories were as locked into the blanket as Ezra’s.

  She hoped they’d been nicer people.

  Chapter 6

  Near the Trsetti village

  “So, whose wife did you screw this time?” Byrne asked with a sigh. He kept his hands steady while he worked. Stitching was difficult for him; he was a big man with big hands. It took a lot of concentration to do a proper job of sewing someone up. Especially since Fin wouldn’t let him cauterize the wounds.

  Chicken.

  Fin flinched and with one hand adjusted the raw steak that was dripping red down his cheeks. It looked like he was crying blood. An overly dramatic thing for Byrne to think, but Fin was all about the drama. The more, the better. Go big or go home, that was the human’s saying. “Headman’s son.”

  Byrne added the final stitch to Fin’s arm, rinsed the needle, and held it over the small fire he’d thrown together to sterilize it. He then packed it away in the first aid kit that was part of their travel gear. Byrne had had plenty of cause to put the medical equipment to good use since he’d met the human. Like now, where he’d had to put in fifty stitches, mostly on Fin’s arms, some on his face. Luckily for Fin, the stitches barely intersected the man’s intricate tattoos.

  Byrne still needed to rinse the cuts clean. Infection wasn’t a big concern for weres, but humans could die from septic wounds, and Byrne owed Fin too much to let the idiot get sick over a few measly cuts. Picking up a bottle of spirits from a leather bag near his foot, he quickly — and quietly — unscrewed the lid. The bag was nestled on a bed of pine needles, the greenery scenting the air with crisp, acidic freshness, mingling with Fin’s aroma of sex, minar root, blood and dirt, and the normal Fin odor: verbena and lemon.

  The tall pine trees created a sense of seclusion, something that reminded Byrne of home, a place he hadn’t seen in far too long. But not long enough that he was tempted to return there, either.

  Byrne hadn’t wanted to shift camps, but had thought it would be the smart thing to do, just in case the stupid humans decided to try and attack them under the cover of night. This area hadn’t had a human walk across it in at least a year. He’d have smelled it otherwise.

  “Hopefully you didn’t sleep with the heir’s wife,” Byrne said.

  “No, her husband was the second son. Apparently.” Fin shifted uncomfortably on the ten-yard-long log Byrne had set out next to the fire as a make-shift chair. “The first son’s wife was in confinement giving birth to the much-awaited boy-child of his father’s dreams.”

  “Eh, tribesmen. Don’t understand them.” Byrne had grown up — like most people on the northern continent — in a matrilineal descent structure. There was no doubt that a woman’s babe was a woman’s babe. The father on the other hand...well, the child may not be his, and there was no way to tell. Not unless there was a Green-eyed human around — a Graced — who could read the mother’s mind. Little villages like the one the Trsetti lived in were Graced-free, though. Only Brown-eyed folk lived there.

  Graceds, weres and vampires — and even some other humans, if they had the wrong skin or hair color — were demons to the villagers. Monsters.

  Those terms meant nothing to anyone with half a brain. There were no such things as monsters or demons. But it did tell Byrne that the person who used those words was ignorant and foolish. But that didn’t make them less dangerous. At least the bigger towns and cities didn’t follow the same idiocy.

  Fin had enough Brown in his eyes that he could usually pass for a normal human. The Trsetti had noticed, though.

  “I hadn’t realized that the woman
was talking about her sister-in-law; I didn’t think she was married,” Fin said.

  Byrne raised an eyebrow. “So you wouldn’t have had sex with the human female if you knew she was married?”

  “Probably not.”

  Byrne doubted that. Fin was generally led about by his brain, but not the one in his head. And he’d been dosed up with an aphrodisiac. The man wouldn’t have been focusing on much else aside from what was going on in his pants.

  Byrne upended the bottle of vodka over Fin’s arm. The human jerked, but the were grabbed Fin’s arm, holding it in place. The man’s screech was loud enough to make Byrne wince.

  “Loud, much?” he muttered.

  Panting, Fin tried to snatch his hand back, but couldn’t shake loose from Byrne’s grip. The human lowered the steak from his swollen eyes. “Just in case you can’t work it out, I’m glaring the fuck out of you right now.”

  Byrne laughed, a burst of surprised sound. “Ooooo, I’m frightened.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “You wish.”

  “Asshole.”

  “Precious petal.”

  Byrne grabbed Fin’s other arm, and poured more of the vodka over his friend’s wounds.

  “Mother fucker!”

  “There, there. All done. Such a whiner.”

  Fin slapped the steak back to his black eyes. “Do you know how much that hurts? I’m not like you; I don’t heal this shit up in five minutes.”

  Byrne grunted. “It’s more like two.”

  “Smartass.”

  Byrne bandaged Fin’s newly stitched wounds. Then, folding a piece of cloth, he soaked it with alcohol and dabbed the material against the scratches on Fin’s face. At least the clever bastard had protected his greatest asset when the beating had gone down.

  Fin swore in a dozen languages, and shrank from Byrne’s ministrations.

  “Now Fin, do you really need to use all that bad language?”

  The last curse caught Byrne’s attention — it was spoken in his native Armonite. Man, he hadn't been back to his birthplace in centuries. “You hope I suck on a horse’s penis and choke to death? That’s just gross. I’m not into bestiality.”

  “You are a beast.”

  “True. But I have standards.”

  “Standards? You’d actually have to have sex with someone to have standards.”

  Byrne rolled his eyes, not that the human could see the gesture. “Look, I’m not the one who screwed my way through the last three towns.”

  “All those women were hot.”

  No doubt they were. Byrne had a face like chiseled jet. Fin was pretty as a daisy. Women loved him. And he loved them. Too much, if you asked Byrne, which Fin never did.

  “Yeah, and the last one drugged you,” Byrne said.

  “I was tired.”

  “So she wanted to give you some help?”

  “You could say that.”

  “Idiot.”

  “Cocksucker.”

  “Dick.”

  “Tickle-brained maggot.”

  Fin paused, thinking about Byrne’s insult. He shifted his head in a strangely bird-like manner.

  “Good one.”

  “Thanks. I try.”

  Chapter 7

  Oberona Mountains

  Hannah’s head ached: a slow throbbing behind her eyes. Raising her free hand, she rubbed her sore orbs, but it didn’t ease the pain. Only time, and actually sorting through the mess inside her head, would help.

  Hannah stared with resentment at the cloth lying on her bed. Why had Ezra chosen a blanket with so much history woven into its fibers? She’d wrapped a valuable family possession around an infant she hadn’t wanted, and then left both to the Old Mother. Maybe it was a way of saying sorry to the poor baby. Hannah could find out, but that would mean picking through the fine layers of memory, and she had a baby to look after.

  As it was, she’d be dreaming Ezra and her mother and grandmother’s memories for weeks to come. Maybe it hurts so much because you’ve been lazy, her mind whispered. But, she argued with herself, it was hard to practice with her ability, isolated as she was up here. There weren’t people or their things to touch.

  Liar. What about the tapestries?

  Hannah’s eyes tracked to the monumental works that hung on her walls. So many more hands had touched those pieces of art. So many more memories drenched the fibers. They would be ten times worse than the blanket; it would overwhelm her for days if she touched them. But what else did she have to do up here? The older she grew, the more control she had. She should have been practicing. Her mother would be disappointed in her. But she was afraid. She admitted that. Absorbing memories debilitated her. When she’d been younger, she’d been trapped, paralyzed, in a kind of coma. It had been difficult to determine where she ended and the foreign memories began.

  A gurgle drew her attention back to the bed. The baby wiggled her arms free. They were no longer blue-tinged, but Hannah worried the air in the cabin might not be warm enough, despite the fire. She didn’t know what a human might need, temperature-wise. Stooping at the hearth, she added more wood and poked the flames back into roaring life.

  The baby whimpered softly, and Hannah rushed back to her, making shushing sounds. The whimpers became a wail, and something...tickled inside her head. The baby, Hannah realized, was probably trying to project her need telepathically. But Hannah had strong shields against Greens, against telepaths — she hadn’t wanted to risk absorbing someone’s memories through an inadvertent mental touch as well as physical contact. It was good to see her defenses hadn’t deteriorated through lack of use.

  The infant’s cries were echoing off the cabin’s walls now.

  “What do you want, little one?” Hannah asked. Her voice, rusty from lack of use, was raspy and squeaky.

  That’s what I sound like? I’d better practice speaking.

  Running a gentle hand over the baby’s head, Hannah made soothing sounds. The physical connection sent rushes of feeling through her, but it wasn’t overloading. Hannah was at no risk of a meltdown. Rather, it made her stomach ache with hunger.

  What could she feed a baby that should be nursed at its mother’s breast?

  Picking the infant up, Hannah held her to her chest and began to rock, trying to emanate calm. It didn’t work. The little girl was making sucking faces between cries. This close, the screaming hurt Hannah’s ears, but what was a little more pain? She forced her aching head to sort through the memories from the blanket. Hopefully, they would provide her with something useful.

  As her mind turned inward, the infant’s cries faded to nothing. Hannah searched through the memories that she had dumped like a box of papers in an unused corner of her psyche, rummaging through the recollections with increasing rapidity. She ignored Ezra completely this time; as a new mother, the woman would know nothing of caring for babes who had no access to breast milk. She struck gold with the great-grandmother, Zeda — the woman had been a midwife — and while Hannah would need to dip back into her memories again some time, she had what she needed for now.

  She didn’t know how much time she spent sorting through the long-dead woman’s memories, but when Hannah returned to herself the baby was screaming hysterically. She placed the desperate infant on her bed, then hurried outside to Betty. According to Zeda, goat’s milk, a bit of water and some honey should do the trick. It wouldn’t be anywhere near as good as breast milk, but Hannah was short of that commodity here on the Old Mother.

  Quickly she milked Betty into a glass jar, thankful she had decided against letting the goat roam for the evening, then brought the jar and a piece of unchewed leather back into the cabin. She made a teat out of the boiled leather; if she had had time, she would have re-boiled it, but the baby’s screams were deafening, and she was worried the child would exhaust herself. Hannah added the water and honey, and then warmed the glass jar briefly over the fire in a bent metal cup. After testing that the mi
xture wasn’t too hot — on her wrist, like Zeda had done — she filled the teat to halfway. She cut a small hole at the bottom and then held the baby in the crook of her arm, like the memories showed. The infant’s head thrashed from side to side, her face wrinkled and furious, her mouth open.

  At first, the baby wouldn’t take the teat. “Come on, little one, you need to drink.”

  Desperate, Hannah dabbed her finger in the milk mixture and then inserted it into the babe’s mouth. The child sucked greedily and quickly, and Hannah replaced the finger with the teat. But the baby spat it out, so she tried her finger again. Eventually, the babe took the leather teat, and Hannah kept a careful watch on how fast the baby drank. “Good girl, that’s it. You were starving, that’s all. It’s all right.”

  It was a messy business, with the milk spilling over the baby’s mouth and down her neck, but it seemed to work. After an hour, the baby stopped sucking and lay there, quiet and still. Worried that she’d done something wrong, Hannah propped the little one forward, hand under the baby’s chin and patted her back. A burp followed, along with half the milk the infant had consumed. But she didn’t start crying again, for which Hannah was thankful.

  According what Hannah had learned, the babe would be hungry again in a few hours and she’d have to repeat the whole process. A strange feeling like hysteria bubbled through her. Although, now she had an idea about what to do, it shouldn’t be so stressful. At least, that’s what she told herself.

  “Time for a sleep, little one.” She laid the baby on the bed and wiped her clean of milk and vomit. Then she put a pot of water to boil over the fire and dropped the leather teat in it to cleanse it. She was going to have to see if she had any more leather that Betty hadn’t already nibbled on.

  I can do this, Hannah thought, looking back at the baby, who was now sound asleep.