{Blood~Sisters} -A Fantasy- *Scroll I- What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Stronger*

Prologue

The wind tore at his cloak as if trying to yank the child from his grasp. A thin wail wavered in the impending storm, a link shattered before it was born.
A dark shadow descended on the pair. “You sent for me?” a deep voice rumbled.
He hesitated, not wanting to relinquish her, yet having no other choice. “Yes, take her and leave. You must never return. Protect her and make her your own,” he said, his voice tinged with regret. The child was taken from him and he had to let her go. He felt the grief as he watched them depart. This was good, this was the best for everyone, and…yet…he wanted to rage and scream at the unfairness of it. They were his and he had had to accept the inevitable, he had to send them away, far away where he could never hold them again, never see them grow, never love them. It wasn’t fair and yet it was his choice.
As they disappeared into the gathering darkness a fair skinned woman appeared at his side clutching a squirming bundle to her chest. Lightning flashed as a torrent of rain bore down upon them, thundering on the wood beneath their feet.
They stood silently, watching the ship approach beneath the disappearing shadow. The turned and gently took her hand in his. “Goodbye,” he whispered, the word filled with everything he could never say.
Then, with the soft touch of lips against her skin he was gone.

Scroll I-
What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger

The sun dawned clear and bright over the horizon, spreading its light until it touched the many skyscrapers of Seattle, spreading until it touched the whitewashed three-story apartment building with its crisp hedges and spotless parking lot. Its inhabitants were just stirring for a long days work or school except for the pair that resided in the topmost apartment farthest to the right.
Within that particular apartment there were two bedrooms, one bathroom, a kitchen, and a living room, all of which were furnished with the bare necessities. The living room contained a bookshelf, a flower patterned couch, and an old box television with a set of rabbit ears. Each bedroom was furnished with a bed, a dresser, and a weeks worth of clothes while the bathroom held within its walls four towels and almost no necessities. The kitchen, on the other hand was well stocked with food and pans, both of which were being used for target practice.
Crang!!
Whonnnnng!!
Crack!!
Splat!!
Whonnnnng!!
“Take it back, you worthless mutant!!!” seventeen-year-old Rina Adair screeched, chucking whatever she could reach at her uncle. “My food is not inedible, revolting, stale, or a pile of dung!!! Don’t you know I’m a blossoming young woman with a delicate sense of who I am? You should be supporting me instead of insulting me. What sort of uncle are you?”
“One that knows food,” Jeremy Adair said, calmly bating the tomatoes from his face, “and when it is toxic or not. That food was giving off green smoke, so not only was it burnt it was poisonous. What did you mix, mandrake root with salamander tongue?” grinning wryly, he slyly added, “As to your being delicate, I have my reservations.”
Rina froze, her well-toned arm still suspended in the air with an onion clutched in her hand. “Why were those things in the spice cupboard?” she asked suspiciously, deftly ignoring his last comment.
“They weren’t,” Jeremy said, plucking the onion from her hand as he passed her. “I rearranged everything yesterday while you were at school, assuming that you would be intelligent enough to look at the labels, but I guess not.” His muscles rippled beneath the thin cotton shirt as he deftly dodged the frying pan she hefted at his head. “Shall I add target practice to the list of things I need to teach you?”
Rina flushed a blotchy crimson as she snapped, “Well, that’s the last time that I get up early to cook you breakfast.”
“Good, I’d like to live to see tomorrow. Put the scissors down,” he said sharply as she snatched the only remaining item from the counter. When she didn’t respond he added, “Don’t make me take them from you,” and dropped the onion as he crouched into a ready position.
A slow smile curved at her lips as she stared at him. Well, it he wanted to be that way, fine. She dropped the scissors as he lunged for her and they fell to the tiles in a tangle of flailing limbs and laughter. For a few moments they grappled and then Jeremy had her; her arms pinned above her head, his knee in the middle of her back. “That was too easy. You need to work on getting out of a wrist lock,” he said with a slight smile.
“Sure, whatever,” she grunted. “Now let me up.”
He released her hands, but remained kneeling on her back. She turned her head, spitting her reddish-blonde hair from her mouth as she did so, and said, “Knee, too. I’ve got school to get ready for. You know, the thing with other hormone driven knuckleheads my age. Hello, earth to mutant. Anyone in there?” she asked, waving her hand in front of his face and snapping her fingers a few times.
He blinked for a moment and then the smile faded from his lips. “Ah…school,” he said as though just remembering. Letting her up he turned to the door and was about to make his way out when his feet suddenly fell out from under him and the ground rushed up to meet him.
“Have a nice fall,” she laughed as she bounced over him and out into the hall where she slipped into the bathroom before he was even on his feet again.
Instead of going after her as he normally would have he turned into the living room and crossed to the balcony. He paused and strained his ears for a moment, hoping to catch the sound that had piqued his interest not but a few seconds earlier.
The trees to the left of the apartments rustled slightly in the wind; birds chirped; squirrels chattered angrily at one another; rain water ran into the sewers; everything was peaceful in the early morning. Yet, he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was out there, something was watching them. His breath froze as he caught the sound of agonized whispers.
“Rina…ours…blood…return…”
A light hand touched his shoulder and he spun around, snapping the wrist into his grasp out of old reflexes. He caught himself as he found Rina’s deep silver eyes bearing into his. “What is it?” he asked, his voice a little harsher than he had intended.
“You’ve been standing here for the last five minutes,” she said, studying his reaction and the emotion displaying itself across his face. Relief, fear, and anxiety flickered through his expression before he released her and turned his head away.
“I’m fine,” he rumbled at last. “You should get to school before you’re late again. No need for you to end up on the Beka Bill twice this year.” Jeremy watched her cast him a curious glance before turning away and snatching her backpack from the couch and head for the door. As she turned the doorknob he added, “No wandering with your friends today. Understood, Rina?”
Rina froze. How did he know her plans today? They’d been making these plans for nearly three months, being careful not to tell anyone that would stop them. Who told him?
“No wandering for today,” he repeated. “You can go tomorrow, after I’ve gone hunting.” She gave him a blank look, but said nothing as she yanked the door closed after her.
Rina took the stairs that morning instead of allowing herself the one moment during the morning that she could be lazy in favor of working some of the irritation out of her body. When she got to school she had some serious questions to ask and some people to take a hard look at. By the end of the day she’d know who had slipped and told her uncle about their plans for the day they’d been planning for nearly three months.
* * *
Jeremy listened to her footsteps disappear before he turned back to the balcony and stepped out. Sweeping a hand over each wooden pillar he made sure his neighbors wouldn’t hear a word of the conversation he was about to have, nor see the two he was about to call. “GET OUT HERE,” he roared and the entire balcony shook from the force of his power straining to be released and devour all in its path.
For a moment, the wind froze, then two figures appeared to each side of him. A slender woman with blood-red hair, gray eyes, and an almost perfect face disfigured only by a jagged scar that ran across her right eye to the bridge of her nose to her cheek stood to his left. A well-built man with black hair, black eyes, and stern features that would deter even the bravest man from seeking a fight with him stood to his right.
“Donra, Seku, why are you here? I thought father made it painfully clear that if I accepted this post that I would be cut from the court for good. Have you disobeyed him to come to me?” he asked without looking at them, his green eyes following Rina’s retreating figure.
A low chuckle rumbled in the air, hanging between them, and easing the tension a little. “How can we disobey a dead king?” Donra asked, shifting her weight a little so that the klinking of her weapons could faintly be heard.
Jeremy took a moment to digest that information. “So, he’s dead what does that have to do with me?” he asked, glancing at the woman that had been his fighting instructor when he was younger.
“Still as mistrustful as always, hmm, prince?” Donra laughed.
“I prefer suspicious,” Jeremy replied, “but that doesn’t answer my question. Why are you here and what does my father’s death have to do with me? So the old jackass finely kicked the bucket, fan-fucking-tastic. I don’t care. If you’ve nothing useful to tell me leave and never darken my life here again.”
Seku gazed after the girl that had disappeared for a moment. “She is not even a year old and yet she is considered an adult among the humans. Quite a remarkable difference between us. They have peace here while we constantly war among ourselves for a throne that means little when barely anyone recognizes the king if we ever come to an agreement or the fighting ceases long enough for a new king to take the throne.”
Jeremy tensed. If Seku was speaking of what he thought he was, then…
“We need you to return. The fighting has started again since your father was assassinated five years ago. The four great families have begun their feud anew. Your sisters are fighting each other for the right to the throne because you have not claimed it, you the rightful heir. You have the power needed to quell the families, stop the fighting, and set things in order again. We’ve come to take you back, take you home,” Seku said softly, his dark eyes glittering dangerously.
“And if I refuse?”
“We’ll drag you back like we did when you were a child,” Donra said with a grin. She was confident that the prince would come without a fight, that he would take care of his people, that he wouldn’t let them go on massacring each other. They were already dwindling in number and they needed a ruler that could unite them instead of leading to more bloodshed as his father had. He was the strongest of the newest generation and the most civil minded of any of their number, he was the best candidate for the throne.
He threw his head back and gave into the laughter that had been building. “I refuse. Let them kill each other. I don’t give a damn. If you’re so concerned for our races continued survival then why don’t you two fight for the throne and rule together. Murder those bitches that call themselves my sisters and rule yourselves, because I won’t.”
“I thought you’d say that,” Seku said smoothly. “That’s why I brought my sons.”
Jeremy’s head snapped to the side so fast he cricked his neck. “Your sons? Why?” Seku merely smiled a grim smile as he disappeared.
“For just a charge you are awfully fond of the girl, even considering whom her father is,” Donra said quietly. “Watch her. There are others circling.”
Turning to face Donra he growled low in his throat to see that the woman was already gone. Damn them, trying to force his hand. Well, if they really wanted to toy with him using Rina then they would have another thing coming. His eyes flashed from green to gold to red to green again as he leapt off the balcony and plummeted to the parking lot below. Them he could deal with later, these things he couldn’t—not with the way they had been circling all morning.
* * *
Rina stared at the chalkboard without really seeing what her teacher was writing. She drummed her fingers on the hardwood desk as she waited for the last bell to ring. Her silver eyes flashed to the three girls huddled in the corner and felt her temper rising again. As it turned out, her “friends” had let it slip to the entire school that they would be clubbing that evening with fake I.D’s and everything, so it had been no problem for her uncle to figure everything out and practically order her not to do anything for the day.
The bell rang and she was out of the classroom before anyone was even on their feet. She was crossing the school lawn by the time other students were just pouring out the front doors and had reached the gate that led beyond the chain link fence and school grounds when she heard someone calling after her. Turning slightly she glared at her “friends” and waited for them.
They reached her and doubled over, gasping for air as they each tried to speak, to apologize for saying something about their plan. “Shut up,” Rina said coolly. “I’m not interested in apologies. I don’t even really care that you told everyone, its more the fact that you told when you specifically asked me not to say anything to anyone. When you ask a certain amount of secrecy of me, I want the same in return. That’s it, that’s all I’ve ever wanted.”
The three girls flushed and lowered their gazes. She’d always been like this, expecting them to uphold themselves what they asked of her, something they had not always done. “Still, we’re really sorry,” Helen mumbled.
“Sure,” Rina said, her anger abating for a moment. She glanced just beyond the gate and wasn’t the least bit surprised to see her uncle leaning against the cherry tree’s trunk waiting for her. “Look, we’ll have to put off going out tonight. I’m grounded.”
They blinked at that. “Why?” the three chorused.
“My uncle heard about our plan and forbade me from ‘wandering’ tonight,” Rina shrugged as she shifted the weight of her backpack.
Helen leaned to the side to stare at the man Rina called her uncle. “I still say he’s sixteen,” she muttered.
“He’s thirty-three,” Rina replied absently as she inhaled deeply and narrowed her eyes at her uncle. “My father died when he was sixteen and Jeremy took custody of me because there was no one else to take care of me. Simple as that. look, gotta go. I’ll talk to you guys tomorrow.”
They said their goodbyes and then darted off for their buses before they took off without them. Rina watched them go before closing her distance between them and tilting her head back so she could look him full in the eye.
“Good job with the contacts, but your eyes aren’t quite as emerald as my uncle’s,” she said mildly, “and he’s not quite as tall as you are. I can look him in the eye without tilting my head back when we’re this close.”
The man smirked. “I never could quite get the shade of the eye correct. Oh, well,” he sighed theatrically. “You’re not too smart, coming to face me without your friends if you realized I was a fake. They might have helped you a little.”
“Doesn’t matter. I can take care of you myself,” Rina said as she slid her backpack from her shoulders and tossed it to the side.
“Can you?” he asked, his smirk widening a little. “Perhaps you could handle me alone, but I doubt you can handle both of us.”
She didn’t have time to scream, didn’t have time to turn, didn’t have time to react. A strong hand clamped over her mouth from behind, a sweet odor filling her nose before her vision tunneled and she sank into oblivion.
* * *
The sun was beginning to set as he knelt beside the cherry tree, his soft brown hair falling about his lean face, his clothes stained with their black blood, his hand shaking as his fingers closed around the scrap of cotton they had discarded. For a moment all he could see was endless red as he rose to the killing edge. Clenching the cloth in his hand he stood, ignoring the mutters that he drew from passers-by.
“Donra, Seku!! Get your asses out here,” Jeremy growled, barely keeping his temper in check.
There was a second’s delay in which they hesitated, but there they stood on either side of him as they had that morning. “You knew,” he hissed quietly. “You knew that there were shapeshifters about and yet you didn’t see fit to tell me about them. While I was busy dispatching of the fucking vamps you were having the time of your lives watching my…charge…being snatched away by those beasts. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You refused,” Donra said, suddenly finding her nails very fascinating. “We had no reason to tell you that they were about. What do we owe to a bastard brat that abandoned his people?”
The cloth was slowly turning red as he dug his fingers into his palms to keep from attacking his old teacher. “Leave me,” he said dangerously, “before I kill you. Take your sons with you, because I won’t differentiate between dragon, vampires, or shapeshifters tonight.”
They gave him a startled look and took a cautious step away, but did not immediately disappear as he had commanded. True, he was a dragon that had risen to an edge where most would not pause to tell apart their child from their enemy, but he was still much younger than they and together they could deal with him. Couldn’t they?
Their eyes met and in that instant both knew that even their combined power wouldn’t hold him as it had when he was still a child. Then, they were gone, racing against the winds to put much needed distance between them and the enraged dragon. Three shapes joined them before they finally stopped just outside Seattle where land met water and the smell of salt filled the air.
Panting and clutching at the stitches in their sides Seku voiced what the both of them were thinking, “We fucked things up big time.”
The three young dragons glanced at their father, their confusion clear. Seku merely shook his head to silence the question they might have asked. There would be time to explain later, for now they had to put more distance between them and the enraged prince before they tried to convince him to return with them later.
* * *
In the gathering darkness, the two shapeshifters appeared to the three vampires. Over one’s shoulder a slender figure was draped. “We fulfilled our end of the bargain. Yours?” the second, the one that had posed as Jeremy to draw her out, said. When they said nothing and merely shifted and traded glances beneath their heavy cloaks he snarled softly. “We can return her to the dragons and point their prince in the direction of your hole or you can give us what we traded our services for, now.”
Captive and item traded hands that night, neither knowing the weight that each carried. The vampires had no way of knowing that they had chosen the wrong girl just as the shapeshifters had no way of knowing that they had just sealed their fate.