Queens and Monsters: A Vampire Shifter Romance (The Blood Falls Book 1)
Queens and Monsters: Chapter 29

Being poisoned is trippy. I saw colors, but much more vibrant than normal, and nothing was the shape it was supposed to be. Everything kept changing, stretching, squishing. And that’s if any of it was even real. My body was somewhere warm and safe—that much I knew—but my mind was stuck in the Plane.

“There you are.” Someone said from the rippling smoky darkness. Sound stretched and squished too. It was like I heard every sound two or three times, sometimes slow and long, other times sped up real fast and on top of each other.

Whoever spoke to me was familiar, but not someone I recognized right away. I floated away, not really in control of anything. Maybe I could just stay here, flying through the Plane without a care in the world. I was sick of everyone putting so much pressure on me. I went from no one giving a shit what I did to seemingly everyone caring very, very much. I didn’t like it.

Well, I liked Dray, and Gigi, and the entire Wren family. They didn’t want me to be anything.

“Can you stay still for one minute?” The nosy voice came back, sounding exasperated with me. I tried to focus, to figure out if I knew them. “Rhysa, stop!”

The voice was feminine but it wasn’t Gigi or Bethany or any of the Wrens. It wasn’t Lou or even Seema.

“Rhysa!” The voice grew ten times louder and I got the sensation someone was floating right in front of me.

Strangely, the voice sounded like me. At least the tinny weird voice I heard played back in recordings, not the voice I heard in my head. Hearing your own voice is strange.

“Open your eyes!”

I felt that command in my cells. It was the kind of command I heard from so many teachers and foster parents. The sound of pure authoritative exasperation. I tried to open my eyes but they didn’t budge, not even for the Plane. I floated, floated, floated, trying like a cartoon character to get my eyes to open by waggling my eyebrows and scrunching my face.

Finally, one cracked open. Now I saw a fuzzy version of the real Plane rippling between my lashes. Also, there was a woman. Both my eyes flew open and I took in the sight of my mirror image, but this woman had brilliant red hair.

“Finally. You are stubborn. I knew you would be.” Her voice and the sounds around me slowly stopped stretching and distorting, blending into their real sounds. “Don’t go dying on me now. Not after all the work I’ve done.” She put her hands on her hips and looked me up and down.

My heart—wherever it really was—began to beat faster, pushing the poison through my veins. “Mom?”

Her eyes flicked back and forth between mine. “Hey.”

“You’re okay?”

She squinted. “Eh, let’s just say it’s complicated. They got to you, didn’t they?”

My tongue darted out, tasting the ash still on my tongue, my stomach turned. “Yes. Why did you curse me? Can you un-curse me?”

“Can I hold your hand?” She reached for me.

I practically threw myself at her. Could she have my hand? She could have anything she wanted! “Here.”

She took it tentatively, like she was afraid of what might happen when we connected. It was almost like a real touch. Her warmth calmed me. “The curse will protect you.”

“Really? It feels a lot like it’s killing me right now.” The connection with my body grew stronger, which meant I got to feel all the lovely effects of the poison. The muscle aches, the nausea, the pain.

“You’re even stronger than they saw. You’ll get through this.”

You’re even stronger than they saw. That echoed and echoed. I gripped her hand tighter. “What did they see? Why is this happening to me and not someone else?”

She gave me a tight smile. “I have no control over your destiny, only my part to play. When the door opened it ripped the fabric of time and set all of this in motion.”

“What does that have to do with the Axl’s? The Wren’s? Me? Help me understand!” If I didn’t start getting some answers I was going to come back from this near-death experience and use all these powers everyone kept saying I had to kick everyone’s ass.

Her eyes hardened. “It’s the House of Axl’s fault!” she yelled. “It will take everyone to save us.” She began babbling, her words whispered to herself. Then her eyes went wide. “You must learn to fight. I know you haven’t yet, but you must. Or maybe your magic is powerful enough. Yes. I see it. Yes. Learn to use your magic!” She gripped my hand in hers to drive home her point.

Her lucidity began slipping from her. She whispered more and more, her eyes growing glazed.

I shook her. “What about the curse?” Was she really going to leave me like this?

Her eyes locked with mine again, fully clear and focused. “Don’t you understand? It took everything. Too much. I didn’t just curse you. I cursed them all. The entire House of Axl.”

Oh my god. No wonder she was locked inside her mind. A curse that powerful should have killed her. “Marhysa.”

“You must go now. He’s here for you.”

I heard a roar in the distance and then something sucked me out of the Plane. Like a hook had reached around me and yanked me from my dreams, back into my body.

I sat up gasping in a strange bed, my hand wrapped up with Marhysa’s. She lay unconscious on the large bed, her red hair braided over her shoulder.

“Oh, thank god!” Dray slammed the wooden door open. His wild eyes locked on me as he stormed across the room. “You’re alive.”

It was probably more of a question than a statement considering all the blood covering my clothes and hands. “Yes.”

“You need a doctor. Can you shift?”

I could barely sit up. The room was already spinning again, but I did manage to see three men and two women come flying through the door with swords and knives.

And that wasn’t even the craziest part.

It’s what happened next that truly made me wonder if I was indeed alive.

“What the hell is happening?” One of the women glanced from Marhysa to me in horror.

Dray sneered. “The Axl’s poisoned Rhysa. You lied!” He flashed his fangs, angrier than I’d ever seen him.

They brandished their swords.

And that’s when Dray shifted. One moment he stood beside me shaking from his rage, and the next he transformed into a dragon that took up almost all of the room. He roared loudly, the heat from his breath threatening enough to know that actual fire would be deadly.

Then he swept me up into his arms and shifted away.

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