Exile: Sídhí Summer Camp #3 (31 page)

The entire process took less than ten
minutes. Once again, the two of them appeared on a raised platform
at Kenai. Hundreds more had gathered, but most of the waiting
phoenix were not armed.

Pausing, they watched people rush across the
area.

He shoved his hood back and turned to Sarah
who was concentrating on the growing crowd.

“Hey,” he said. Gaining her attention, he
gently tugged her hood down. Coal black orbs looked up into
his.

“I didn’t plan that speech, it just
happened,” she said rapidly, sucking in several deep breaths. Too
quick to be seen, a flicker of something passed through her eyes.
It didn’t matter. He could feel her burning self-doubt.

Something close to satisfaction filled him as
he realized he was the only person on earth who could see the true
person beyond her glacial mask, not that he approved of her current
emotion.

“You were perfect,” he growled, trying to
destroy the lingering insecurity he saw deep in her eyes.

Leaning into his embrace, she smiled. “You
would say that if I promised each person a head of cabbage and a
dollar a day.”

“Not cabbages,” he said, laughing at her
analogy. He lightly kissed her pinched features. He doubted if
anyone else would see anything but her ice princess mask, but he
knew her much better. “You wouldn’t have said what you did if you
hadn’t meant it.”

“I meant every word, but I hadn’t planned
such a public separation from the empire. I just hope the
repercussions aren’t as bad as I fear.”

“I don’t think it can get much worse. Anyway,
your dad agreed with you.” He paused before asking, “Who all did
you send that speech too?”

“Ah,” sounding strangled, she turned light
pink.

“Sarah?” he asked, intrigued by her
reaction.

“I didn’t send the whole thing,” she said,
sounding as if she might be hedging her answer. Her face turned a
deeper shade of red. “I sent the entire speech to everyone in
Phoenix Valley.”

“And?” he pushed for a straight answer.

A delighted laugh erupted from directly
behind him. “The world,” Bea said smugly. “She sent it to everyone
in the entire world! Teach those filthy dhark lords to keep their
grubby hands to themselves.”

Turning, he found the wind-blown phoenix
folding her wings against her back. The curved tops arched a good
two feet above her head.

He tried to swallow his humor, but it turned
into an outright chuckle. “The entire world, as in Earth and all
the valleys heard you?”

Sarah’s beautiful face turned brilliant red.
Groaning, she thumped her forehead against his shoulder. “I’ve
screwed-up major. Everyone will know I’m Chi’Kehra.”

“Maybe, but I don’t think so,” Bea said,
glancing across the milling phoenix one last time, before focusing
her entire attention on Sarah. “The only thing most people heard
was, ‘Today, we fight! Today, we throw off the chains of evil!
Today, we become a nation without the taint of the Dhark Empire!
Today, we will destroy our enemies!’”

“In my voice,” Sarah grumbled. She poked him
in the chest. “Stop laughing.”

“I didn’t say anything,” he said, with a
small shake of his head.

She snorted. “You don’t need to say anything
for me to feel your humor.”

“Okay, so I admit, I love seeing you filled
with emotion, any kind of emotion. And you have to admit, it is
funny. You never lose your cool, but when you do, it’s a
magnificent sight.”

“It didn’t sound like you,” Bea said,
interrupting them.

“Come again?” Sarah questioned.

“You rarely raise your voice,” Nick said,
immediately understanding.

“Yes,” Bea hissed in triumph, “exactly. You
were yelling and snarling. It no more sounded like you than a house
cat sounds like a wild khatt.”

Nodding her head in understanding, Sarah
waved toward the growing crowd and changed the subject. “Most of
them aren’t armed. What’s going on?”

“With the influx of phoenix, I’d say the
fighting will quickly turn into a victory. When the other side
realizes they are as good as dead men walking, most of our warriors
will spend more time chasing dhark soldiers as they try to escape
Trellick Valley.”

The Dhark Empire would never stage a rescue
mission for their men; they would abandon every soldier caught
behind enemy lines. A gut-deep knowledge told him it was completely
opposite of how Sarah would react to losing even one of her
men.

Out-of-the-blue, Bea stated, “When they first
entered the valley, the soldiers targeted populated areas.”

A growl rumbled from Sarah. “I know. I
already sent warriors in to assist the worst hit areas.”

Bea nodded, but her frown deepened. “I
figured you would, but even if the dark armies are stopped
immediately there will be a lot of damage.”

“And thousands injured,” Sarah said softly.
Her jaw clenched, and a shaft of Sarah’s pain rammed through Nick’s
chest. “There are thousands of small communities and secluded
houses that need to be checked.”

She glanced toward the growing number of
phoenix that filled the area, and understanding flickered across
her face. “You sent out a call for rescue workers?”

As soon as she asked, the sea of red clothing
registered to Nick. In one way or another, each person on the field
wore a red shirt or a strip of red cloth pinned to their clothing.
Red was the universal color all Sídhí connected with rescue
workers. On most battlefields, a rescue worker was untouchable, but
he didn’t trust their enemies to honor that unspoken agreement.

“Yes, covering the towns with enough
volunteers will be difficult, but even with the large number of
workers arriving, I’m afraid it could take weeks to check on all
the outlying homes,” Bea said. “It’s going to take me a few hours
to really get everything moving, but I’m organizing each rescue
party to have at least one warrior to stand watch for every group
of ten or so workers.”

He grunted in approval. It seemed Sarah’s
general agreed with him. This one, he could work with.

“Sounds good,” Sarah said with a nod of
approval. “We’ll be back in a couple of hours, and I’ll start
porting them to different locations.”

^____________

Sarah leaned into Nick’s hold. With the
crystal embedded in his skull, she didn’t need touch to port him,
but her hunger for his touch was at an all-time high.

They appeared in the War Room, near a row of
stacked servers, an area that Timothy guarded with the fierce
protectiveness of a werewolf guarding newborn pups. It was the one
place in the room she knew would be empty of people.

“Get away from there,” Timothy said with a
snarl, turning toward her as his fingers continued dancing across a
keyboard. His eyes popped open, and he stuttered an apology.

“No worries,” she soothed, stepping away from
the essential equipment.

From across the room, her dad waved for her
to join him and a dozen others as they stood around a large wall
map. The map was actually a combination of a dry wall board and a
map. The permanent image of Trellick Valley covered a ten-foot span
of wall detailing towns, roads, gateways, and other critical
points.

Two of her dad’s aides were hastily adding
and removing information such as troop movement, new attacks, and
requests for help.

Passing in front of the wall of monitors, she
heard Nick snarl under his breath. She agreed. The raw footage of
the on-going battle was horrifying, but it was easy to see the tide
was rapidly turning in their favor.

She felt pulled. She wanted nothing more than
to port into one of the battles and start hacking her enemies to
small pieces. Unfortunately, being the one in charge meant
utilizing her ability where it would do the most good.

“What happened to ‘we will talk about it when
I get back’?” her dad asked, his eyebrow quirking up in a very
familiar manner.

“No comment,” she said coolly.

When he folded his arms and just stared at
her, she chuckled. “All right, I might have gotten carried
away.”

Wrapping her in a one-armed hug, he snorted.
“You think so?”

“Maybe,” she said, unable to keep her lips
from twitching in amusement. It didn’t help that Nick thought the
whole thing was awesome and kept teasing her about it. Glancing at
the board, she asked for a verbal report, “Status?”

“The empire’s army at West Coast Metro has
disbanded, but not in a good way. When the phoenix started their
attack, units of approximately one hundred men scattered. At least
a thousand escaped the pincer move,” he said, pointing to the North
American west coast, indicating the sprawling metropolis.

“Roughly, we’ve lost thirty-five hundred
warriors. The death count among our civilians is estimated at seven
thousand.” At Sarah’s hiss, he paused. “Once the invaders were
inside the valley, units of vampires ported into urban areas. They
brought in thousands of werewolves and sasquatch and released them
in heavily populated areas. The bloody empire has been running live
footage of the attack.”

“They want it to be a warning to other
valleys,” Sarah said slowly, feeling her lip curl into a snarl. She
growled in fury. The people around her echoed her response, which
only increased her urge to do something reckless.

Nick’s hand touched her shoulder. His eyes
burned bright with unspoken emotion, and his words rumbled with
heat; his fury burned through her brain. “I want them as dead as
you do, but if you lose your head it might mean more death, not
less.”

“Agreed, the empire deserves nothing less
than to be crushed,” her dad said as he gestured to the map, “but
let’s work on this before we destroy the dhark lords that ordered
this done.”

“No.” Sarah sucked in a breath, trying to
calm down. It didn’t help. “We can’t let the attack go unpunished.
We need an immediate response. If we don’t retaliate, even with the
gateways closed, we risk the empire as seeing us as weak.”

“If they think we’re an easy target, they’ll
latch onto the idea of trying to crush us like a bug,” Nick said,
his face told the entire story. He wanted retribution as much as
she did.

“Do we know which dhark lords were behind the
invasion?” Sarah asked, walking toward a second whiteboard, one
depicting the various valleys that created the Dhark Empire.

“Yesterday, about noon, Lord PhñDick and Lord
Trenton called an emergency council session at Dhark Plaza,” her
dad said sourly. “I was not invited. Two of our spies within the
PhñDick household broke their cover to bring me the rumors of an
imminent attack.”

Several low growls sounded through the room.
Her dad nodded, as if acknowledging their anger. “When the first
man tried to leave, he made the mistake of trying to help a young
blood slave escape at the same time. I can’t blame him. The boy was
not much more than a toddler. General PuckinKnück, Lord PhñDick’s
trained bully, caught them. He had our man beaten near to death.”
He paused, clenching his fist around the hilt of his sword. “They
didn’t kill him, because they wanted our spy to be alive when the
boy was thrown into a sasquatch pen. The beast - according to our
second man on the inside - had been starved for several weeks.”

Fury filled Sarah; she couldn’t tell if the
emotion came from her or Nick.

“The boy is dead,” Nick said in more of a
statement than a question. A snarl carved a look of fury across his
face.

“Yes, ripped to pieces.”

“How many of our people are left in the
empire?” Sarah asked, as a tentative plan formed in her mind.

There was no way she would let PuckinKnück
get away with killing a child in such a hideous manner, much less
allow the dhark lords get away with attacking her valley. Once
again, she felt pulled between helping her people and teaching her
enemies what it meant when they targeted her people.

“Yeah, there are thousands of displaced
people, including a bunch of children that need help, but from what
Bea said she won’t have the rescue workers organized for several
hours,” Nick said, rubbing her tense shoulders.

“That’s true,” she agreed. “If I attack them,
it’ll need to be a lightning quick strike that the empire will
never forget. I won’t have time to do a thorough job, but they’ll
know they have a much bigger monster by the tail than they ever
dreamed possible.”

Nick’s soft growl of approval warmed her
aching soul.

They made hasty plans, and she knew they’d be
cutting the two-hour limit close.

Nearly thirty minutes later, Sarah had
identified and ported every known spy and ally out of the Dhark
Empire. She could only port those with crystal ID shards, so she
knew others remained, especially within TèVarrn prison, but
entering the prison would require days of planning and that was
time she didn’t currently have.

“Ready,” Nick said softly as he walked up
behind her.

She’d been studying the map of the Dhark
Empire, but she already knew it by heart. She knew exactly where
she was going.

“Where we are going,” Nick said, correcting
her unspoken words.

“Yes,” she readily agreed, “I meant, where
are we going, not just me.”

With a mixed honor guard including elves,
vampire, and phoenix, Sarah ported them to their first stop within
the Dhark Empire.

The world exploded with gunfire aimed
straight at them. The ammunition bounced off the near invisible
surface several feet away. The attack was futile. No bullet could
penetrate her shield.

Behind her concealing mask, Sarah smiled.
With the ultrathin membrane of synth crystal surrounding the group,
the guards had been unnecessary. Her warriors served a different
purpose. She knew her actions would be remembered; actually, since
three of her people carried cameras sending streaming video to
Sídhí’s version of U-Tube she had made certain the entire Sídhí
world would remember her actions.