Anyway, before I had a chance to say anything, Rudy’s face melted.
At least, that’s what it looked like to me. It took me about three seconds to realize he was a shapeshifter—that melty look was his face beginning the process of changing to its new form.
What seemed like an agonizing twenty seconds later, full of snaps and cracks, like the sound of bones breaking and reforming, he stood before us in his shaggy-haired, multi-pronged horned glory.
Rudy was a reindeer shifter.
He bounded away, his hooves clattering on the bricks, but never slipping in the snow. I watched him go with my mouth hanging open.
“I thought all the shifters were predators,” I observed to no one in particular.
“Most of them are,” Damon replied mildly.
“But the prey-animal shifters who survive into adulthood?” Bain added. “They’re total badasses.”
“I wouldn’t want to mess with Rudy.” Luc glanced up at the ever-darkening sky. “I’m glad he still owed me a favor.”
“Couldn’t we get a room at an inn?” Eileen asked. “Just for one night. It’s cold and I’m sure being out in this weather isn’t good for the baby.”
Damon pursed his lips in irritation. “I’ve already told you. All of the inns in this part of town are watched by DeMarco’s spies.”
Not that I would ever want Eileen to stay in a Blood Heights inn. They were generally crowded and dirty and often the scene of murderous brawls.
Rudy returned—in his human form—before Eileen could say anything else. He’d overheard the conversation, apparently. “I already checked the places farther out. The inns are all full. No one has any room for anyone, pregnant woman or otherwise, tonight. I did find a place you can stay, though, but only for one night, maybe two.” He glanced around nervously.
I found myself hoping he wasn’t about to turn us in for the bounty money DeMarco had put on us. Though I was less concerned about it when he shifted again.
As he led us away, I could see how Rudy would be a badass—that rack of antlers on his head would make for a vicious weapon. And I wouldn’t want to be under his hooves, either. He was muscular and sturdy in his reindeer form.
Luckily, he was on our side—at least until he repaid whatever debt he owed Luc. So we followed Rudy the Badass Reindeer Shifter onto the main thoroughfare.
People in the Heights never really looked at each other as they moved from place to place, other than to evaluate another person’s threat level. That was even more true tonight than usual as the snow began to fall harder and harder, swirling up in eddies around us. Everyone who was even vaguely humanoid was wrapped up in layers that muffled their voices and covered their faces. Including us. We were just six more unremarkable travelers.
Of course, we were the only ones trailing along behind the reindeer with the glowing eyes who glowered at everyone—and everything—he passed. So we weren’t precisely invisible, either.
Not that it mattered—we didn’t stay on the main street very long. As soon as he could, Rudy ducked down a dark alleyway.
I checked the charms I had stashed in various pockets. I hated to use them just traveling from one place to another. But more than that, I would hate it if this Rudy guy led us straight into a trap. Line
So I pulled out an Illuminate charm and stopped long enough to tug one glove off with my teeth.
From another pocket, I took a lancet I’d picked up at the apothecary’s on the edge of the Heights when I had gone out shopping to replenish my charms. I used it to draw out a tiny drop of blood—enough to activate the charm without hurting myself too badly. All magic requires some form of sacrifice. At least with these kinds of preloaded charms, it was only the tiniest of sacrifices.
I activated the Illuminate charm, feeling it buzz against my skin, a sign that it was working. I whispered the invocation word and tossed it into the alleyway ahead of us. It skittered along the pavement, then lit up with a dull, blue-white light.
The alleyway was completely empty.
The reindeer snorted and turned his baleful gaze my direction. Then, with a clattering of hooves, he trotted over to the charm and stomped on it until it shattered.
Delicately, he grasped the string that held what remained of it with his teeth and brought it back to me. He waited until I held out my hands to drop the shattered remains of my charm into my cupped palms.
“Fine,” I said. “No more illumination charms. But if you lead us into a trap, I’m killing you first.”
Rudy snorted again and turned back down the once-more darkened alleyway. I dropped the spent, broken charm on the ground and fell into step with Bain, who cast a sympathetic glance my direction.
“I don’t think he’ll betray us,” Bain whispered.
Rudy led us in deeper and deeper into the Heights, through sections I would never have dared travel in alone. It was a warren of houses and streets with old, worn staircases connecting various levels, alleyways that dropped off into lower sections of the Heights and steps that might or might not lead back up again. I don’t know that anyone had ever truly mapped the center of Blood Heights. The earliest inhabitants of the city had simply claimed the highest ground, protected it as their own—and then tunneled inward. The Heights may have started as a hill, but now that hill was gone, and what remained was an outward shell protecting the most dangerous of the city’s inhabitants.
Rudy led us downward in what felt like circles—a spiral moving through dangerous parts of the Heights, then into even more dangerous sections. And when we came to the end of that spiral, circling around a warehouse, we exited into an open space in the center of the tangle of streets and alleys. There, surrounded on three sides by walls without windows, sat a perfect, tiny cottage.
I glanced at my demonic companions. “Did you guys know that was here?”
“Not a clue,” Damon said, shaking his head.
Luc frowned. “This place must be hidden by magic.”
Bain had drawn his magical sword and carefully pointed it toward the cottage. The sword glowed brightly. “Definitely magically protected,” he said.
Rudy snorted derisively and tilted his antlered head toward the cottage, urging us to follow him. He trotted up to the door and pawed at it, rapping the green wood with his front hoof.
The rest of us followed more slowly, keeping Eileen carefully protected in the center of our small group.
The door swung wide open and a pleasant-faced, round old man with a white beard and pink cheeks opened the door.
“Rudy,” he exclaimed. “So good to see you again. Come in, come in.” He opened the door even wider and waved his arm invitingly as if to usher us in.
The reindeer shifter trotted in without hesitation. The rest of us glanced at each other. Then, with a shrug, Damon took a step toward the door.
The old man looked him up and down. “Well, this is a surprise. We don’t get your kind around here very often.”
That’s interesting.
The first time I had seen these three demons, a magical scan had not given away what they were at all—they had just shown up as some kind of magically inclined humanoids.
“Good to meet you, old fellow,” Luc said. He held out one hand to shake the old man’s. “My companions here are Damon, Bain, Grace, and Eileen.”
“Nicholas,” the old man reciprocated with his name. He gave everyone else a cordial nod, but when he got to Eileen, his eyes narrowed, and his head tilted. “Looks like your group will have a new member soon enough.”
Who was this guy? He was awfully perceptive, even for someone who lived in the Heights.
Someone who lives at the very center of the Heights, I reminded myself. That had to count for something.
As we filed into his tiny cottage, I was surprised to discover that it seemed much bigger than it appeared to be on the outside.
Rudy was back in his human form already, sitting at a big wooden table in a kitchen area and munching on a carrot.
“Nick has agreed to keep you safe here a night or two,” Rudy said, his mouth full of vegetable.
“Stay here through your solstice,” the old man agreed. “After that, I’ll be busy. Once I’m gone, you won’t be able to find your way back here for a while, if ever. So you will need to find someplace more permanent by then.”
“Thank you,” Eileen said. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this.”
Nick eyed her belly. “Don’t thank me yet. There’s not a whole lot I can do for you—a day or two of shelter might not feel like all that much by the time this is all over.”
“What do you know about it?” I demanded. My hands were itching to pop out my knives, throw this old man down on the ground, and force answers out of him.
I did a magical scan of him.
He glowed so brightly in my ethereal sight that it almost knocked me back. A bright white light with sparkles like snowflakes flickered around him. Whoever this guy was, he was seriously powerful. He might look like a sweet old man, but there was no way in hell I would fuck with him.
He was even scarier than the reindeer shifter.
I glanced over at my demons. Apparently, they had all made the same calculations.
Suddenly, we had gone from being polite to being extremely polite.
“So,” Nick said brightly, shutting the cottage door against the storm raging outside, “who wants milk and cookies?”
I think we all slept better that night than we had in the three weeks since we’d rescued Eileen from DeMarco and his enforcers.
Nicholas had gone somewhere for the day—Luc, who was up first, said the old man had bid him a good morning and suggested we be prepared to discuss our plans with him when he returned that evening.
So we spent most of the day around that kitchen table trying to figure out what resources we had at our disposal. Damon found a scrap of paper somewhere along with a pen and was writing out our list of information as we came up with it. As it turned out, most of our resources were the people we knew — the connections we had in Blood Heights.
“The biggest problem with most of these,” Bain said, leaning across table and tapping his forefinger against the list of names Damon had compiled, “is that they are all connected to Johnny DeMarco in one way or another.”
“Have we made any headway in figuring out who the demon was that kidnapped Eileen?” And impregnated her, I added silently, though I knew everyone here was well aware of the events.
“He told me his name was Gabriel,” Eileen repeated for probably the hundredth time.
“Clearly he is impersonating an angel,” Luc said, shaking his head. “I don’t know any demon in all of the demonic realm who has used that particular name before.”
“Figuring out who he is—that’s the next step to take in arranging a permanent safe haven for all of us,” Damon said. “However, in the meantime, we need to find a place to hide out, preferably until the baby is born. Our immediate need is for a place to stay where we won’t easily be found by DeMarco’s men. We can figure out who this demon is pulling DeMarco’s puppet strings after we’re settled in somewhere.”
“It feels like it’s going to take a miracle for that to happen,” Eileen said.
The rest of us froze and looked at each other.
Miracles.
Something we hadn’t talked about much. But we all knew that miracles were a particular kind of magic. All too often, the kind of magic associated with a savior.
And saviors were the ultimate kind of magical sacrifice.
Savior was also a word that this Gabriel—or whoever he really was—had used to describe Eileen’s baby. He’d said she was carrying a savior for all demonkind.
“Could we do it?” I voiced the question I knew my demons wanted to ask, too.
“Do what?” Eileen’s confused glance didn’t surprise me. As far as I knew, she didn’t have any magical ability at all. My own had shown up late, but it wasn’t all that unusual for magic talents to appear during puberty. Eileen, on the other hand, had never given the slightest indication that she had latent magical ability.
Until a demon had chosen her to bear his child, to be the mother of the demon savior.
“What are you talking about?” Eileen asked again.
“A particular kind of magical spell,” I said.
My foster-sister nodded, but her frown didn’t disappear.
“I don’t think any of us has the power to pull off a miracle-level spell.” Damon chewed on the inside of one cheek as he considered.
“Even if you drew from me?” At my words, Eileen’s frown deepened. She didn’t approve of the fact that the three demons who were protecting her were actually lust demons—Incubi, technically. And she definitely didn’t like the fact that they drew their power from me these days.
She’d like it even less if she realized how rough they sometimes were with me.
And how much I enjoy it.
I shook the thought off. It didn’t matter. We would do whatever we needed to in order to keep her safe.
At least, I would. The demons were more interested in the child and what it would mean to have a half-demon savior.
But for right now, our interests were aligned.
And if the thought of being their source of sexual power for the next six or seven months sent a frisson of excitement through me every time I thought about it? Well, that was my issue to deal with. Not Eileen’s.
“This Nicholas guy were staying with,” I said suddenly, breaking into the silence. “He’s powerful. Really powerful.” I glanced around the table at my guys, who nodded seriously. “If he was willing to help us with this, we could definitely hit the level of power we needed for miracle-style magic.”
Bain was already nodding, and Luc had leaned back in the chair, crossing his arms as if we were done discussing everything.
Damon, however, looked skeptical. As usual.
“I wondered how long it would take for you to get there,” a voice boomed from the doorway as the door blew open, letting in a swirl of snow-laden air.
I turned to find Nicholas striding in, shaking snow off his bright red coat lined in white fur and stomping ice and snow off his black shiny boots.
He took off his coat and hung it on a peg by the door, then pulled off the boots to reveal bright red woolen socks beneath. “It’s really the only reason I’m here right now,” he announced. “I usually don’t spend much time in this home at this time of year.” He grinned, and his eyes twinkled. “I have other things to be doing.”
I opened my mouth to ask any of the questions that were running through my mind—Who was he? Where else did he have to be? What other homes did he have?
But he moved up beside me and placed a hand on my shoulder. A wave of calm certainty flowed through me and I realized that none of those answers actually mattered.
“You will help us, then?” I asked instead.
“Absolutely. Let’s begin.”
Yeah. It was going to be a hell of a Solstice night.
“Go gather your things,” Nick instructed.
He led us through the warren that was his cottage, so small on the outside, but enormous inside. We ducked through a low door and emerged in a courtyard at the back of the building.
Nick had us stand in the middle of the space, holding hands in a circle.
“We will need the parameters of the spell,” he said.
“We are looking for a safe haven where Eileen can have her baby and we can do whatever we need to in order to protect them,” Damon said.
“Anything else in particular?” Nick asked.
“Only that it be someplace DeMarco’s men can’t get to. And someplace this child will be safe when it’s born,” I added.
Nick nodded, then he stepped into the circle, taking my hand on one side and Eileen’s on the other.
He paused before he began working to stare intently into each demon’s eyes. “Do you know what you’re getting into?”
My three guys
glanced at each other and one by one shook their heads.
“Not exactly,” Damon said.
“All I know is that it’s important,” Bain said. “I feel like I don’t have any other options.”
Even Luc, the one I could count on to be eternally cheerful, grew serious. “I’m not entirely certain why Eileen’s child is important. But I know that it is.” He darted a glance at me. “And Grace is almost every bit as important as the child, as far as I’m concerned.”
All three demons nodded solemnly.
My cheeks burned. I wasn’t sure how to answer that, or even if I should.
In the end, it didn’t matter. “That’s the right answer,” Nick said with a grin.
And then his power poured out of him and into us.
It was like being struck by lightning.
A lightning bolt of joy.
I found myself laughing and crying same time as his power swept through me and gathered up some of my own magic. And then it went past me and out to Damon, who held my hand. As it spun through each of us, I could see it pick up parts of our power, gathering strength as it moved from Damon to Bain, from Bain to Luc, and then from Luc to Eileen.
That’s when it exploded.
Eileen might never have had magical power, but something about the baby she was carrying certainly added to the spell.
It was like power of a star gathering right at her belly button—right at her womb.
And then Nicholas set a word I didn’t understand—something from a magical language I’d never heard used before in the Heights or anywhere else—and that power shot straight up above us.
It moved into the sky like a new star and began to drift over the Heights.
“The star will lead you to your safe space.” Nick nodded at us to pick up our bags.
“It’s not exactly what I would call unobtrusive or discreet,” Luc observed.
Nick laughed, a hearty, round sound. “Perhaps not. But we’re the only ones in this world who can see it.”
I pondered those words as I picked up my bag and slung it over my shoulder. The only ones in this world? Were there people in other worlds who could see our shining star?
Wicked Winters Page 10