The Best Medicine Ch. 02

Vanesse gulped a heavy breath. That was exactly what she had planned on doing, and she had not even thought of the consequences.

The hyena hunting party returned, carrying what appeared to be the goblin truckers they had seen earlier that day. The sight of them made Vanesse's blood start to boil over.

"Alani, keep those things away from the Princess, and keep her away from them," the werehyena added, seeing the look of bloody mayhem on Vanesse's face.

Bud and Ace oversaw the containment of the prisoners while everyone else either guarded the SUV or guarded the entrance. Apparently, the truckers had followed at a discreet distance, parked their rigs in another area, then had crossed over to the sounds of fighting. They must have seen the bikes and known where they were.

Once Trina was stabilized, Farmer grimly walked over to the captives. She grabbed one and, with as much effort as most people would have removed a sheet of paper towel, she ripped the goblin's arms off. She then beat the screaming creature to death with his own limbs.

Vanesse leaned out the door of the SUV and vomited.

"That," Farmer started, "was for ruining a perfectly good fight. Now which of you will pay for hurting a perfectly good battle-dancer while trying to off MY kidnap victim, and which of you will try to put me into a better mood by cooperating and telling me absolutely everything I want to know?"

The two goblins start pouring their black little hearts out. Apparently there were any number of rewards out in regards to Princess. Most were of the variety involved the Princess getting turned over to the Crown or to individual Lords who sought favor with the crown. Then there were a few rewards sent out by other would-be kidnappers, but there was one out there that would only be handed out in the case of the Princess's death. That reward was huge, and there was a convoluted set of steps required to either inquire about or collect payment on.

"Okay, you guys gave me a lot of information, but since neither of you answered my question --" Farmer stopped, pulled a gun out from under her vest, then blew holes in both of their heads. She turned when she heard Vanesse gasp. "Remember Princess, the bullets that went into your best friend were meant for your head. Don't be mourning these little thugs quite yet."

The SUV slowly began to move, with Alani behind the wheel while Farmer stayed in back to keep an eye on the patient. Vanesse looked at the dark-skinned beauty, confused and intrigued, but most of all, grateful.

"So you're really a doctor? How? . I mean --"

"My guidance counselor in high school said I should, and those folks are never wrong," Farmer said, giving a slight smirk. "But just to be safe, a fortune cookie told me that someday, I would hand out drugs. At the time, it all seemed to be indicating convergence."

Vanesse's eyes drifted over Trina's face. "You're beginning to sound like her."

"I was sounding like that first."

The Princess smiled slightly. "She's fifty years old. I'd say she got there first."

Farmer raised her eyebrows. "Forgot how slow you folks mature. How old are you?"

"Thirty."

"Don't mean to sound mean . . . well, not this time, but you seem a lot younger. You act a lot younger."

"I've been out of circulation for a long time. I guess I lack life experience."

"Well, you're getting some now."

"How did you go from being a doctor to being a ruffian?"

Farmer actually laughed at that. "I was always a ruffian. I just used to be a lot more civilized about it. But seriously, I was always the idealist in my youth. You know, compassion and what-not and thinking I can change the world. Then I did a stint in Africa with Doctors Without Borders, and found out a life lesson."

"Which was?"

"The world doesn't need my help changing," Farmer said, her voice actually sounding sad. "Whenever we say that we want to change the world, and by 'we' I meant the human race at the time, we generally mean that we want to save ourselves. The problem is, humanity doesn't really want to be saved. They're so hung up on their own self-importance to do shit about the planet. And once you've seen the aftermath of an African conflict, you begin to wonder if they're really worth saving anyway."

"That's kind of harsh, isn't it?" Vanesse was surprised more and more by this woman, but a cynical view seemed unlike her normally jovial nature.

"It's how I see it. You see enough villages burnt to the ground, the women and girls raped, the boys forced into militias, and the men killed out of hand, all for what? So many of the groups in conflict don't even remember why they hate each other." Farmer looked down. "I was actually kidnapped by one warlord's men. They decided that I'd make a nice present for their boss. A local village woman who's granddaughter I'd helped through a really bad infection decided to call in what she believed was her debt to me and came after me. Turns out she was the matriarch of a werehyena pack. She rescued me and then . . . then she changed me."

"She . . . did she give you a choice?"

"Yeah, sort of. I was scared out of my mind, and I had NO idea what I was getting into. I wound up leaving her pack because it was either that or kill her. Came back to the United States, realized that I could never go back to the way my life was before. I hit the open road, picking up strays as I went."

"In some cases literally," Jack said, laying still next to Trina.

When Vanesse looked at Farmer, the matriarch was grinning. "That would be Doreen, this cute little thing I found in Gorman, Texas." She pointed out the window at a biker off the right hand side, a pretty blond girl who would have looked more at home in a cheerleader outfit than on top of a motorcycle.

"Boss," Alani said from the passenger side, pointing something out to Bud. Her ear was pressed to a satellite phone. "Friend of mine in real estate just found us an abandoned ski lodge registered up here. It's about twenty kilometers, but there's not likely to be anyone there."

"It'll have to do. Get directions to the guys riding point."

"Other news, we may need to be there for a while. We've got a big storm coming in."

"Fuck!" Farmer growled. Trina was in bad shape, and this was not going to help. She needed to contact the Alpha, since the death of the battle-dancer was certainly going to be deemed unacceptable. And more importantly, Farmer did not want the woman to die. Trina was a pretty funny smart-ass, when she was not calling Farmer out at any rate. "Get there, and get there now."

Trina remained frightfully pale and unconscious until they pulled off the main road and down a poorly maintained road leading off into the woods. The lodge they found had seen better days, but the walls still stood and the roof was intact. A big "For Sale" sign decorated the way in, but it did not look like the place had many visitors scoping it out. There was still a fine layer of snow on the road, disturbed only by animal tracks.

"You ten," Farmer said, the moment she got out of the SUV, "I want you finding firewood. I'm sure the fireplaces still work. "Bud and Ace, take two more and head down the road to the next truck stop, or a town if you find one. I want supplies. Pay cash, don't start trouble. Oh, and make sure to get plenty of batteries for the satellite phones. Doreen, take three and scavenge the lodge, see what got left behind that might be usable. Alani, head back up to the entrance to the driveway and do what you can about hiding our tracks, visual and scent. If you figure something out, cover our asses once Bud and his crew get back."

"What about me?" Vanesse asked quietly.

"You and Jack find anything that can hold water, since we'll be needing it. Once you find stuff, fill it with snow and put it next to the fires. It ain't gonna be great, but it'll be the only fresh water we have for a bit."

Vanesse marveled at how Farmer had taken charge of the situation. She was strong, authoritative, and everything that Vanesse was not. That struck home, but she was not going to let it stop her. She and Jack went looking for water containers while the rest of the werehyenas started to patrol.

"Are you okay?" Vanesse asked, looking at the bandage over Jack's arm, taped up to stop the slight bleeding.

"I'm good. We heal quickly. I just need to get some meat in me, and I've got a feeling that Farmer will authorize a hunt later."

"This is all my fault," Vanesse said. "If I had just stayed put --"

"We really didn't give you much of an option."

"We were planning on running away anyway."

Jack stopped. "Huh?"

"I . . . It's been so long since I was part of the world. I wanted to understand why everyone had turned against the elves. I just couldn't believe that they were as bad as my uncle said."

"And you're uncle is the King?"

"Yeah."

"Well like Farmer said, the other races haven't turned against the elves. Honestly we're all way too busy worrying about the Unveiling."

"What's that?"

"The Unveiling? Surely you've heard . . . maybe you haven't. Not if you've been isolated. About six months ago, the Council announced that it's time to come out to the humans. Figured we can't hide anymore."

"I heard one of the guard's rumbling about that, but I thought the notion had been shot down. I know that my uncle wants the elves to go deeper into hiding."

"Nowhere left to hide, in my humble opinion," Jack said, opening up some cupboards in the kitchen, looking for supplies. "Of course, I think this whole thing is going to lead to a cluster fuck, but that's why they're doing it with a test audience. Some big shot vampire and his household down in Georgia are making the initial pitch to some guys in the government. You know, work out a plan."

"Lord Stapleton? He was the last one in charge, back before . . . before my isolation began," Vanesse said. She had almost said, "Before my parents died," but those were memories she did not want to revisit.

"That's him. Anyway, he's pretty much the biggest territorial lord on the planet now. I mean, between leading the unveiling and looking after the Greater Dragons --"

Vanesse was so startled that she tripped over a warped floorboard and crashed into the ground. "Greater Dragons?!"

"Oh yeah. They're back, or so I'm hearing. Access to them is limited, but some yahoo thought that if he had some pet dragons, he could take over the surrounding territories. Turns out that they managed to hatch some petrified eggs, but Lord Stapleton beat his ass down with the help of Shadow Wing --"

"The last Moon Dragon is back?!"

"You HAVE been out of it, haven't you? Yeah, one of Stapleton's git inherited the power. She's supposedly the most badass baby vampire ever. But she's looking over the eggs that have hatched."

"How . . . how many?"

"Don't know."

Vanesse sat on the cold tile, rubbing her wrist she had used to brace her fall. "I've missed out on everything. What kind of ruler could I be if I don't know what the hell's going on? Why would my uncle not tell me these things? Why wouldn't Trina --" She stopped there. She knew why Trina hadn't said anything. Now she just wanted to know why Trina had given her Word to the King.

Elsewhere, Trina was slowly opening her eyes, though the world was still kind of blurry. She was surprisingly warm, but incredibly weakened. She felt a firm surface pressed against her back --

"What the hell?" she whispered.

"Glad to see you're still with us," Farmer said from behind her. When Trina looked like she wanted to struggle, Farmer kept her locked in a tight embrace. She had found a small room with its own fireplace, which was currently being lit by one of her boys. "I'm not trying anything, no matter how tempting," she said warmly. "I just needed to keep your temperature up, and this was the best way I could think of until that fire is going."

The idea made sense, even to Trina's addled brain. And the sensation was somewhat pleasant. She shook that thought. "Where --"

"Vanesse is okay, and she's off looking for something to keep water in. We're holed up in an old ski-lodge, and we may be here for a few days. I need you to take it very easy. You lost a lot of blood, and I don't know how much damage the iron did. You know, if that Princess of yours knew how to heal --"

"Don't blame her," Trina mumbled absently as her eyes tried to focus.

"Why?"

Trina finally realized that she had started a conversation she was not sure she wanted to have.

"Remember the bet? You have to answer my questions honestly for 24 hours."

"But I'm injured?" Trina whispered, tilting up at the end like it was a question.

"Your mouth works fine. I'd like to put it through some tests," Farmer said huskily, "but answering questions will have to do. For now."

"Do you ever show respect to anyone?"

"I thought I just did," came the amused response. "You don't take invitations for great sex delivered via clever innuendos to be respectful?"

"You really are full of yourself aren't you? Augh," Trina gasped, an attempt to look over her shoulder causing intense pain.

"Don't move."

"NOW you tell me."

"You're actually doing better than I thought you would. That lycanthrope blood may be helping with healing, though it won't be able to do anything about the iron poisoning. Which gets me back to my question. Why doesn't Vanesse know about healing?"

"Because no one's told her. I . . . I was forbidden to tell her anything about the healing arts."

"Why? By who?"

"By the King, and because he feels that nobility was meant to be served, not to serve those beneath them. Healing drains the user for the sake of someone else, and he thinks that the Princess should consider herself above others."

"That's . . . well, absolute bullshit."

"And the King has joined an ultra-conservative movement within the elvish people. He has a low opinion of sexual activity to begin with. It is for procreation only, and he actually believes in trying to move back towards arranged marriages, dominated by the husband. Some of the nobles equate our deviation from the old ways as the reason why our population is so low."

"Do you think that?"

"No. I think that we've lost too much of our habitat to the human race, and that putting more restrictions on reproduction is species suicide. But I can't change the rules. Only Vanesse can, and her uncle is doing what he can to make her either sympathetic or compliant," Trina spat out.

"So why didn't YOU tell her the truth?" Farmer asked again.

"Because I gave my Word to the King. When Vanesse's parents died --" Trina had to stop and collect herself. Thinking of that night still gave her chills that seeped into the thickest parts of her bones. "I was so scared for her and I couldn't handle it. They hadn't caught the sorcerer who had killed them yet, and Vanesse was too young to take the crown. So Tarrin took the crown, and he decided that he was going to be authoritarian. He said that the Princess was in grave danger, which at the time she was. He said he was going to send her somewhere safe."

"He certainly did that."

"He told me that the Princess needed a serious battle-dancer and that I was too young to take care of her. I was thirty-five, for the love of . . . Anyway, he said that if I didn't do exactly what he said, that he'd dismiss me as Vanesse's protector."

"He can do that?"

Trina sighed. She was tired, and she was hurting, but she felt strangely elated. She had needed someone that she could talk to. It was just weird that that person was a woman she had tried to pummel into the ice earlier. "Normally, he could, but not me. He didn't know that, but I was so scared that he would try to find something. He was obsessed with surrounding her with HIS people. She'd just lost her parents, and I couldn't let him try to figure something out that would get rid of me. I was the closest thing to family she had left."

"No cousins or anything like that?"

"Both her parents were only children. Her grandfather is out there somewhere, but King Tarrin did everything he could to drive a wedge between them. He told Vanesse that her grandfather didn't care about what had happened to her parents and that he was a selfish old man who had turned his back on his people."

"Not true?"

"Not that I know of. He . . . he has a lot of responsibility, so he wasn't around as much as maybe he could have been when Vanesse was younger. She and I don't talk about him. I think she already felt abandoned, so her uncle's poison didn't help."

"Wait, if he was her grandfather, than means he was the king, right? Why did he abdicate?"

"He was given the opportunity to represent the elves on the Council. So he handed the crown --"

"Vanesse's grandfather is the Shepherd?!" Farmer asked, more loudly than she had intended, causing her patient to wince. "Sorry."

"Yes. He tried to contact her in the early years I believe, but King Tarrin was Vanesse's legal overseer by then. He did not have to give Vanesse's grandfather contact, so he didn't. He thought that the Shepherd was too radical and progressive, and would be a bad influence on her." Trina's eyes closed a little, and she started feeling dizzy.

"Okay, you get some sleep," Farmer whispered. "We'll talk more later."

"I gave my Word --" Trina whispered, her voice fuzzy around the edges.

"And you kept it," Farmer told her.

"Couldn't tell . . . Vanesse," the elf said, her voice urgent. "Couldn't encourage Vanesse. I gave my Word to the Crown." Then Trina was unconscious again, finding refuge from the pain in an encompassing oblivion.

The fire had been going strong for a few minutes, so Farmer extricated herself from the blanket, checked to make sure that Trina's pulse was steady, then got up to stretch before going looking for her quarry. It turned out that Vanesse was not hard to find. She and Jack had found a large number of old bowls, even a plastic barrel, and had cleaned them out and filled them with snow, which was slowly turning to water near the lodge's massive central fireplace.

"How is she?" Vanesse asked.

"Stable, at least for now. Once everyone is back and things are set up, I'll give her another transfusion. The iron weakened her though. I don't know how it's going to affect her recovery. Why don't you go in and keep her company. I'll send some food into you soon. I need to get on the horn and figure out why the hell someone's trying to kill you."

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Across the pond . . .

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The Shepherd had just gotten out of a meeting with the Lesser Dragon's new representative to the Council when the Alpha caught up with him. And the look on the Alpha's face let the elf know that something had gone wrong.

"What is it?"

"Things have gotten complicated. I heard back from Farmer and then checked out a few things. Someone is using the chaos surrounding the Princess's disappearance to try and get rid of her. They're a huge bounty being offered for her death."

The Shepherd stood, his face pale with worry. "Vanesse, is she --"

"She's all right, but her battle-dancer took three iron bullets that were meant for your granddaughter's head. Farmer extracted intel from the would-be assassins, which I confirmed while you were meeting."

"Trina's dead?" It was a thought that hit the Shepherd every bit as hard as if it had been his own flesh and blood. Trina had been raised like part of the family since she had been twelve years old.

"No, but she's in bad shape. Farmer's an M.D., but she can't do anything about the poisoning. Trina needs a healer, and your granddaughter doesn't know squat about her powers." The Alpha took a deep breath. "Here's what I found out from Farmer." The powerful werewolf explained everything that Farmer had told him, starting from the fight to the assassination attempt to the wounded Trina's conversation with Farmer.