by Karen Chance
“An eternity,” I muttered, and felt Louis-Cesare’s chest vibrate slightly behind me.
“I consider you and Louis-Cesare to be friends of my court, and as such, would feel remiss if I did not finish our discussion, however uncomfortable it might seem at the present.”
“Uncomfortable for who?” I said sourly, but he was already moving on.
“As I said, I do not think that your sister, as you call her, is a monster—or a demigod, either. The gods seem to have begun their experiments by crossbreeding themselves with humans, as well as with demons and fey, and fairly indiscriminately at that. But the results were . . . a mixed bag. Some of the children they sired were mad, if the ancient myths are anything to go on, and the rest were either too weak or too disobedient to be useful. They frequently caused as many problems as they solved.”
“Iphemedia,” Louis-Cesare said. “She was a human woman who gave birth to the Aloadae giants by Poseidon. They were so powerful that they kidnapped Ares and required both Apollo and Artemis to take them down.”
I looked at him over my shoulder. “Hassani told you that,” I accused.
He looked hurt. “I read.”
“You read Barbara Cartland.”
“Shh,” he said, because Hassani was continuing.
“The gods did not want rivals,” the consul said. “But rather loyal and capable armies. Indeed, looked at through the right lens, that is what most of the old legends are about. The story of Lycaon, King of Arcadia, for instance, who was transformed along with fifty of his sons into the first werewolves by Zeus. Or the centaurs, who may have been a failed attempt at another shapeshifting army y Zeus, but which stalled halfway. Or the Spartoi, who were said to be Earth born warriors who sprang from the teeth of a dragon. We now assume “teeth” to mean DNA, which is often found in the roots of teeth, and which Ares crossed with the human genome to make another fey-human hybrid.”
“Can we fast forward?” I asked Louis-Cesare.
“He’s coming to the point,” he assured me, and then dunked me into the waterfall to rinse my hair.
When I emerged, I discovered that that had been a lie, because Hassani was still going strong.
“—Amazons, who were described as the daughters of Ares and a wood nymph, but nymphs in the Greek tradition are almost always fey of one type of another, and most of the Amazons do not appear to have been strong enough to have been demigods. This may indicate a fey-human hybrid which was facilitated by Ares—”
“Oh, God, make it stop!” I said.
“—but I digress,” Hassani went on, as if he’d heard. “The point is that the gods seemed to have replaced their early efforts at having children to assist them in their wars with attempts to make armies by hybridizing “lesser creatures”, possibly infused with a small amount of godly DNA to bump up their effectiveness. Which brings me to your sister.”
I sat up.
“The gods must have learned a great deal from their experiments, information they left with their fey allies, who continued their work. We both saw the results of some of the fey’s experiments, which were loosed on us at your consul’s court. They were supposedly the failures, and yet they were formidable.”
“Damn,” I said, and Louis-Cesare reached over and stopped Hassani mid-word, giving me a moment.
I needed it, because the consul was right about that much—the fey had been experimenting. I’d been running across some of their rejects for a while, including my adopted son and the misbegotten monsters the fey had thrown at us as cannon fodder. I just hadn’t thought that I might be one of them.
I scowled. Only I wasn’t, and neither was Dorina. This was—I didn’t know what this was, but it didn’t prove anything.
“You don’t believe him,” Louis-Cesare said, watching me.
“Do you?”
“I don’t know. But it would explain a great deal—”
“It explains nothing! My mother died.” I didn’t know why nobody seemed to get that simple point. “If she was some super soldier, she might still be here. She certainly wouldn’t have met her end screaming on the end of a pike!”
Louis-Cesare didn’t say anything, but I could tell that he wanted to.
“What?”
“Merely that, when your parents met, two lines of godly experimentation came together for the first time. Vampire from your father, and . . . whatever your mother may have been. Neither of the two strains may have been completely satisfactory on their own, but together . . . they created something new.”
I frowned at him, because that had actually made a weird sort of sense. Except for the obvious. “Then why the hell was she in Romania, living like a peasant?”
“I don’t know.” He shook his head. “But she blended in well enough to fool even your father. Perhaps that was one of her gifts: camouflage. Perhaps she escaped from the fey, made her way to Earth, and went to ground, in the most out of the way place she could think of. Perhaps she thought she’d be safer in a peasant’s cottage than somewhere more prominent—”
“So she dates a prince?”
“People do fall in love, and she did not live with him in the castle. Perhaps—”
“Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps! This is all speculation!”
“Yes, it is. But what else can we do? She is not here to ask.”
“No.” I hugged myself. The water suddenly felt cold. “She isn’t.”
Louis-Cesare pulled me back against him. He didn’t say anything, and for a long time, neither did I, but not because I was processing. I should have been, but all this was too much to take in, and it brought up too many memories.
My mother’s house, snow covered and burnt out, like a reproachful corpse. The wind high in the tree tops, seeming to whisper: “Too late.”
Mircea, giving me a sketchbook that he’d made, with her image caught a thousand different ways, so he’d remember even as the centuries piled up.
Dorina, sitting on the slant of a roofline, outside my window. Showing herself to me for the first time as a transparent, spirit-like being. Not like the specter tonight, but softer, sweeter, speaking of hope and new starts and a better life for both of us.
Where was that life now?
“How do the fey even know about her?” I demanded harshly. “I didn’t even know until recently.”
“You mean Dorina?”
I nodded.
“Efridis,” Louis-Cesare said, his own voice tight. Probably because she was the fey queen who had ordered his possession. “She fought you herself, and had plenty of time to receive reports from others who had done so. She may have even seen the experiments that created your mother. As Aeslinn’s wife, she surely knew about them.”
“But she’s dead—”
“Yet plenty of her people aren’t, and she had time to tell any number of them about her suspicions.”
I didn’t like it, but it fit. Dorina had helped me to defeat a queen of the light fey, but had she outed herself in the process? I shifted uncomfortably.
“There is one thing that does seem certain,” he murmured. “The fey wanted her very badly. They traded a great many warriors’ lives for her, something Aeslinn can ill afford at this juncture.”
That was another point, much as I hated to admit it. I didn’t know how many fey Aeslinn had lost in the assault on his capitol, but it had been a lot. And his people had a really low birthrate, meaning that he couldn’t easily replace them. Yet he’d just risked something like a hundred soldiers to do a snatch and grab on Dorina?
My frown turned into a scowl as I contemplated the obvious reason why.
Louis-Cesare seemed to think the same. “The fey may not be able to recreate the events that led to Dorina’s birth, but they do have thousands of years of godly experimentation to draw on. If they have a living example to hand—”
“They could extract her DNA, study it, and make thousands of Dorinas,” I finished for him. “Or people just like her.”
“Not just like her. Ones loyal to
them, brought up to be their obedient servants—”
“Not if they’re like Dorina!”
“But they won’t be,” he said gently. “However uncomfortable your early years may have been, you complemented each other perfectly. You acted as camouflage for her, while she kept you safe through your travails. Giving both of you time to make up your minds about the people you wished to be. The children brought up by the fey will have no such advantage.”
“And the fey timeline often runs faster than Earth’s,” I realized. “If they hit a patch like that—”
“They will have an army in no time.” He moved around to see my face, and his own was serious. “How old were you before you were deadly?”
I thought back, which wasn’t easy with the blood freezing in my veins. “I don’t remember.”
“Your first kill then.”
“I could walk,” I said slowly. “I remember toddling over to a wolf, which was trying to steal some of our stew. The Romani group I was with had gotten drunk that night and forgotten to put it away. It was winter; the beast was probably just hungry. But so were we . . .”
“You killed it.”
I nodded, remembering the warmth of its blood on my hands, the softness of its fur, the sadness I had felt at its death. “One of the women made me a coat out of its pelt,” I said quietly. “They called me Little Wolf for the longest time . . .”
Louis-Cesare sighed. “I do not think there is time to waste, then.”
No, but I’d been wasting plenty of it! “I need to talk to Hassani,” I said angrily. “I need to talk to him now!”
That was easier than I expected, as it was a smart T.V. that could connect to the computer in his office. I’d gotten out, dried off, and put on a robe by the time Louis-Cesare managed to get him online. But Hassani still looked a bit shocked.
Like I gave a damn.
“Yesterday morning, you were trying to ship me off to Whatshername’s temple without a word.”
“Hatshepsut’s Temple,” he agreed.
“With all this happening? With time running out?”
“As I believe I said, it would have reassured my people to see us carrying on as normal whilst the investigation was made.”
“But that’s not what you did. You took me downstairs—”
“Yes. After you made it clear that you intended to follow your lover—excuse me, your husband—and find your sister. It occurred to me that you might be the only one who can.”
“But your people must have seen something. They were all over that bazaar—”
“And I have shown you what they saw. I have held nothing back.”
“I need to talk to them, everyone who was there—”
“Lady Basarab—”
“—and I need to see the bodies. I know they’ve been gone over, but I want to see them again—”
“Lady Basarab—”
“—along with anything they were wearing, and that includes—”
“Dory!”
I paused, because the volume had just missed a shout. But he was looking a lot less prim and proper, suddenly. For the first time since I arrived, he looked like the man I’d seen at our senate. For the first time, he looked like the assassin instead of the teacher.
I immediately liked him better.
“Do you know why I help you?” he demanded.
“Because we’re friends of the court?” I deadpanned.
His eyes flashed dangerously, and Louis-Cesare tightened the hand he’d placed on my arm. I didn’t need the warning. I could almost feel the consul’s power, his anger, from here, and he was in his office almost a block away.
But I didn’t think the anger was for me, something he confirmed a second later.
“I lost ten Children in the assault on this court, killed not in combat, which would at least have been an honorable end, but by a coward’s weapon, a missile that tore through my shields and incinerated them where they stood. I lost six more in the fight that followed, chasing thieves and murderers through the streets, and another seven in the temple below us, battling the ancient curse they unleashed upon me. Twenty-three, young one. Twenty-three who drank of my blood, who shared my trials, who lived in my heart. Twenty-three whom I shall never see again.
“Someone will pay for that.
“Someone will bleed for that.”
“Fuck, yeah,” I whispered.
“But these are enemies I do not understand, who come from a land I do not know. I have only one card against them, and I am playing it. Find them for me. You know all that we do, and you know her better than any of us. And she knows you. You are two halves of one soul, yearning to be reunited. You will find her.
“And you will call me when you do.”
“I’ll call you,” I said. “If she’s left any of them alive.”
And for the first time, Hassani and I shared a look of perfect understanding.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Dory, Hong Kong
Supernatural Hong Kong was looking a little worse for the wear these days, having been through a major battle recently. And by worse, I mean half tumbled down skyscrapers with mostly missing windows, other buildings blackened and burnt out, and large swathes of land chewed up as if a gigantic mole had been tunneling. It honestly didn’t look that much better than it had during the battle itself, except that the fires had been put out.
Largely put out, I corrected, noticing flickering red light staining the inside of an already charred hulk. Of course, that could have been somebody making dinner. Housing was at a premium these days, and squatting was rampant in anything that was remotely structurally sound.
Although some people had been more creative than that.
“What the—what is that?”
Bahram, the big, bearded vamp from Hassani’s court, grabbed my shoulder and pointed at something off to the left. I had no idea what, because I was driving, which in Hong Kong meant piloting a repurposed rickshaw around the skies. And because the skies were so full, he could have been pointing at anything.
“Don’t grab me,” I said, shrugging off his hand.
He turned in his seat to stare at something behind us, and Rashid, the big, bald vamp on the other side of the backseat, frowned. “Shouldn’t Louis-Cesare be driving?”
“Why?”
A crazy-ass vehicle comprised of a couple smallish fans and someone’s living room sofa dipped down almost on top of us. Once upon a time, that would have been illegal. You couldn’t merely slap a levitation charm on something and call it a day. There were rules; there were laws; there were standards.
Right up until the city got the crap blown out of it, along with half of its vehicles. Now, it seemed that anything worked, only it didn’t. It didn’t at all! I grabbed a broom stick off the floorboard and beat on the bottom of the couch.
“Mm goi jeh!”
A small child’s face appeared over the back of the sofa, and stared down at me curiously, before someone whom I assumed to be her grandmother pulled her back so she could stare at me instead.
“Mm goi jeh!” I repeated. Which was the polite way of saying “move your ass” in Cantonese. At least, I assumed so, since it had been yelled at me a few dozen times now.
It seemed to work. A moment later, the fan on the left-hand arm of the sofa was turned to the right, causing the whole contraption to veer in that direction. And almost collide with a floating Pot Noodle Shop in the process.
“That is why,” Rashid said dryly.
“I do not know how to drive one of these,” Louis-Cesare informed him, just before we were bumped by a careening taxi, which resulted in us scraping along a levitating sidewalk for half a block before I could get the sticky control mechanism to put us back into what passed for a road.
“Neither does she,” Rashid replied, holding on white knuckled to the side of the rickshaw.
He said something else to Bahram, but I didn’t understand since it was in Arabic. That was probably just as well. My backseat dr
iver had been kibitzing ever since we left the rent-a-rickshaw place, and I was getting tired of it.
I didn’t clap back, however, because I was busy keeping us alive. The rickshaws were kept in the air by standard levitation charms, but that was the only thing about them that was standard. They were powered by huge fans in the back, like the ones on airboats, and they were dangerous as hell.
Ours had a safety cage over the wildly whirling blades, but plenty of those around us did not, and there weren’t a lot of road rules in Hong Kong. That had always been true, but it was especially so now, as the usual land arteries had been mostly severed by damage from the battle, and people had been forced to take to the skies. That had resulted in a much more crowded airspace than I had seen before.
And the damned pirates didn’t help.
“Not today,” Louis-Cesare said, and brought up an arm, knocking a would-be thief back onto his flying rattletrap.
It was a casual gesture, but it must have been damaging, because it really pissed off the thief. He was a vampire, if a very stupid one, who didn’t bother to check out the power signature of the guy he was attacking. The rattletrap swerved away, and then abruptly swerved back, and the bastards actually tried to board us!
Bahram and Louis-Cesare made quick work of them, which was good as I was busy accepting the fact that we were lost.
“God damn it,” I muttered, and fished the map out of my jeans again.
I’d had the guy at the rickshaw place print it out for me, because my phone’s tiny screen was hard to read, but it didn’t help much. Especially not here. I stared around, looking for a reading light, and wondering where all the animated ads had gone.
Once upon a time, the skies would have been full of transparent fish swimming across the darkness, their glowing sides advertising sushi bars and sashimi places, or if said fish was also wearing a monocle, possibly fish and chips shops. There would have been cuties in miniskirts waving from the sides of buildings, trying to lure people into clubs and karaoke bars; fake, neon rain pattering down for half a block, only to have a swirl of branded umbrellas come flying to the rescue; and actual, physical ads jumping off their billboards to harangue passersby.