by Nora Roberts
With enormous relief, he shoved back the hood of the cloak. “Let’s show your cowboy some real moves.”
Chapter 12
Davey had been Lilith’s for nearly five years. She’d slaughtered his parents and younger sister one balmy summer night in Jamaica. The off-season vacation package—airfare, hotel and continental breakfast included—had been a surprise thirtieth birthday gift from Davey’s father to his wife. Their first night there, giddy with holiday spirit and the complimentary glasses of rum punch, they had conceived a third child.
They were, of course, unaware of this, and had things gone differently the prospect of a new baby would have put the skids on tropical vacations for some time to come.
As it was, it was their last family holiday.
It had been during one of Lilith’s brief and passionate estrangements from Lora. She’d chosen Jamaica on a whim, and entertained herself picking off locals and the occasional tourist. But she’d grown tired of the taste of the men who trolled the bars.
She wanted some variety—something a little fresher and sweeter. She found just what she was looking for with the young family.
She’d ended the mother’s and little girl’s giggling moonlight walk along the beach swiftly and viciously. Still she’d been impressed with the woman’s panicked and ineffectual struggle, and her instinctive move to protect the child. As they’d satisfied her hunger, she might have left the man and boy splashing unaware in the surf down the beach. But she’d wanted to see if the father would fight for the son. Or beg, as the mother had begged.
He had—and had screamed at the boy to run. Run, Davey, run! he’d shouted. And his terror for his son enriched his blood to make the kill all the sweeter.
But the boy hadn’t run. He’d fought, too, and that had impressed her more. He’d kicked and he’d bitten, and had even tried to leap on her back to save his father. It was the wildness of his attack combined with his angelic face that had decided her on changing him rather than draining him and moving on.
When she had pressed his mouth to her bleeding breast, she had felt something stirring inside her that had never stirred for another. The almost maternal sensation had fascinated and delighted her.
So Davey became her pet, her toy, her son, her lover.
It pleased her how quickly, how naturally he’d taken to the change. When she and Lora had reconciled, as they always did, Lilith had told her Davey was their vampiric Peter Pan. The little boy, eternally six.
Still like any boy of six, he needed to be tended to, entertained, taught. Only more so, in Lilith’s opinion, as her Davey was a prince. As such, he had both great privilege, and great duty.
She considered this specific hunt to be both.
He quivered with excitement as she dressed him in the rough clothes of a peasant boy. It made her laugh to see his eyes so bright as she added to the game by smearing some dirt and blood on his face.
“Can I see? Can I look in your magic mirror and see myself? Please, please!”
“Of course.” Lilith sent a quick and amused look toward Lora—adult to adult. Picking up the game, Lora shuddered as she picked up the treasured mirror.
“You look terrifying,” Lora told Davey. “So small and weak. And…human!”
Carefully taking the mirror, Davey stared at his reflection. And bared his fangs. “It’s like a costume,” he said, and giggled. “I get to kill one all by myself, right, Mama? All by myself.”
“We’ll see.” Lilith took the mirror, and bent down to kiss his filthy cheek. “You have a very important part to play, my darling. The most important part of all.”
“I know just what to do.” He bounced up and down on his toes. “I practiced and practiced.”
“I know. You’ve worked very hard. You’re going to make me so proud.”
She put the mirror aside, facedown, forcing herself not to take a peek at herself. Lora’s burns were still raw and pink, and her reflection so distressing that Lilith only looked into the charmed mirror when Lora was out of the room.
At the knock at the door, she turned. “That will be Midir. Let him in, Davey, then go out and wait with Lucian.”
“We’re going soon?”
“Yes. In just a few minutes.”
He raced to the door, then stood, shoulders straight while the sorcerer bowed to him. Davey marched out, her little soldier, leaving Midir to shut the door behind him.
“Your Majesty. My lady.”
“Rise.” Lilith gave a careless wave of the hand. “As you see, the prince is prepared. Are you?”
He stood, his habitual black robes whispering with the movement. His face was hard and handsome, framed by his flowing mane of silver hair. Eyes, rich and black, met Lilith’s cool blue.
“He will be protected.” Midir glanced toward the large chest at the foot of the bed, and the silver pot that stood opened on it. “You used the potion, as I instructed.”
“I did, and it’s your life, Midir, if it fails.”
“It will not fail. It, and the chant I will use, will shield him from wood and steel for three hours. He will be as safe as he would be in your arms, Majesty.”
“If not, I’ll kill you myself, as unpleasantly as possible. And to make certain of it, you’ll go with us on this hunt.”
She saw, for just a moment, both surprise and annoyance on his face. Then he bowed his head, and spoke meekly. “At your command.”
“Yes. Report to Lucius. He’ll see you mounted.” She turned away in dismissal.
“You shouldn’t worry.” Lora crossed to Lilith, slipped her arms around her. “Midir knows it’s his life if any harm comes to our sweet boy. Davey needs this, Lilith. He needs the exercise, the entertainment. And he needs to show off a bit.”
“I know, I know. He’s restless and bored. I can’t blame him. It’ll be fine, just fine,” she said as much to assure herself. “I’ll be right there with him.”
“Let me go. Change your mind and let me go with you.”
Lilith shook her head, brushed a kiss over Lora’s abused cheek. “You’re not ready for a hunt. You’re still weak, sweetheart, and I won’t risk you.” She took Lora’s arms, gripped tight. “I need you on Samhain—fighting, killing, gorging. On that night, when we’ve flooded that valley with blood, taken what’s ours by right, I want you and Davey at my side.”
“I hate the wait almost as much as Davey.”
Lilith smiled. “I’ll bring you back a present from tonight’s little game.”
Davey rode pinion with Lilith through the moon-struck night. He’d wanted to ride his own pony, but his mama had explained that it wasn’t fast enough. He liked going fast, feeling the wind, flying toward the hunt and the kill. It was the most exciting night he could remember.
It was even better than the present she’d given him on his third birthday when she’d taken him through the summer night to a Boy Scout camping ground. And that had been such fun! The screaming and the running and the crying. The chomp, chomp, chomping.
It was better than hunting the humans in the caves, or burning a vampire who’d been bad. It was better than anything he could remember.
His memories of his human family were vague. There were times he woke from a dream and for a moment was in a bedroom with pictures of race cars on the walls and blue curtains at the windows. There were monsters in the closet of the bedroom, and he cried until she came.
She had brown hair and brown eyes.
Sometimes he would come in, too, the tall man with the scratchy face. He’d chase the monsters away, and she would sit and stroke his hair until he fell asleep again.
If he tried very hard, he could remember splashing in the water, and the feel of the wet sand going gooshy under his feet and the man laughing as the waves splashed them.
Then he wasn’t laughing, he was screaming. And he was shouting: Run! Run, Davey, run!
But he didn’t try very hard, very often.
It was more fun to think about hunting and playing. His mo
ther let him have one of the humans for a toy, if he was very, very good. He liked best the way they smelled when they were afraid, and the sounds they made when he started to feed.
He was a prince, and could do anything he wanted. Almost.
He would show his mother tonight that he was a big boy now. Then there would be no more almost.
When they stopped the horses, he was almost sick with the thrill of what was to come. They would go on foot from here—and then it would be his turn. His mother held tight to his hand, and he wished she wouldn’t. He wanted to march like Lucius and the other soldiers. He wanted to carry a sword instead of the little dagger hidden under his tunic.
Still, it was fun to go so fast, faster than any human, across the fields toward the farm.
They stopped again, and his mother crouched down to him to take his face in her hands. “Do just the way we practiced, my sweet boy. You’ll be wonderful. I’ll be very close, every minute.”
He puffed out his chest. “I’m not afraid of them. They’re just food.”
Behind him Lucius chuckled. “He may be small, Your Majesty, but he’s a warrior to the bone.”
She rose, and her hand stayed on Davey’s shoulder as she turned to Midir. “Your life,” she said quietly. “Begin.”
Spreading his arms in the black robes, Midir began his chant.
Lilith gestured so that the men spread out. Then she, Lucius and Davey moved closer to the farm.
One of the windows showed the flickering glow of a fire banked for the night. There was the smell of horses closed inside the stable, and the first hints of human. It stirred hunger and excitement in Davey’s belly.
“Be ready,” she told Lucius.
“My lady, I would give my life for the prince.”
“Yes, I know.” She laid a hand briefly on Lucius’s arm. “That’s why you’re here. All right, Davey. Make me proud.”
Inside the farmhouse, Tynan and two others stood guard. It was nearly time to wake their relief, and he was more than ready for a few hours’ sleep. His hip ached from the wound he’d suffered during the attack on their first day’s march. He hoped when he was able to close his gritty eyes he wouldn’t see the attack again.
Good men lost, he thought. Slaughtered.
The time was coming when he would avenge those men on the battlefield. He only hoped that if he died there, he fought strong and brave first and destroyed a like number of the enemy.
He shifted his stance, preparing to order the relief watch when a sound brought his hand to the hilt of his sword.
His eyes sharpened; his ears pricked. It might have been a night bird, but it had sounded so human.
“Tynan.”
“Yes, I hear it,” he said to one of the others on guard.
“It sounds like weeping.”
“Stay alert. No one is to…” He trailed off as he spotted a movement. “There, near the northmost paddock. Do you see? Ah, in the name of all the gods, it’s a child.”
A boy, he thought, though he couldn’t be sure. The clothes covering him were torn and bloody, and he staggered, weeping, with his thumb plugged into his mouth.
“He must have escaped some raid near here. Wake the relief, and stay alert with them. I’ll go get the child.”
“We were warned not to step outside after sundown.”
“We can’t leave a child out there, and hurt by the look of him. Wake the relief,” Tynan repeated. “I want an archer by this window. If anything out there moves but me and that child, aim for its heart.”
He waited until the men were set, and watched the child fall to the ground. A boy, he was nearly sure now, and the poor thing wailed and whimpered pitifully as it curled into a ball.
“We could keep an eye on him until morning,” one of the others on duty suggested.
“Are Geallian men so frightened of the dark they’d huddle inside while a child bleeds and cries?”
He shoved the door open. He wanted to move quickly, get the child inside to safety. But he forced himself to stop his forward rush when the boy’s head came up and the round little face froze in fear.
“I won’t hurt you. I’m one of the queen’s men. I’ll take you inside,” he said gently. “It’s warm, and there’s food.”
The boy scrambled to his feet and screamed as if Tynan had hacked him with a sword. “Monsters! Monsters!”
He began to run, limping heavily on his left leg. Tynan dashed after him. Better to scare the boy than to let him get away and very likely be a snack for some demon. Tynan caught him just before the boy managed to scramble over the stone wall bordering the near field.
“Easy, easy, you’re safe.” The boy kicked and slapped and screamed, shooting fresh pain into Tynan’s hip. “You need to be inside. No one’s going to hurt you now. No one…”
He thought he heard something—chanting—and tightened his grip on the child. He turned, ready to sprint back for the house when he heard something else, something that came from what he held in his arms. It was a low, feral growl.
The boy grinned, horribly, and went for his throat.
There was something beyond agony, and it took Tynan to his knees. Not a child, not a child at all, he thought as he fought to free himself. But the thing ripped at him like a wolf.
Dimly he heard shouts, screams, the thud of arrows, the clash of swords. And the last he heard was the hideous sound of his own blood being greedily drunk.
They used fire, tipping arrows with flame, and still, nearly a quarter of their number were killed or wounded before the demons fell back.
“Take that one alive.” Lilith delicately wiped blood from her lips. “I promised Lora a gift.” She smiled down at Davey who stood over the body of the soldier he’d killed. It swelled pride in her that her boy had continued to feed even when troops had dragged the body, with the prince clinging to it, away from the battle.
Davey’s eyes were red and gleaming, and his freckles stood out like gold against the rosy flush the blood had given his cheeks.
She picked him up, held him high over her head. “Behold your prince!”
The troops who hadn’t been destroyed in the brief battle knelt.
She lowered him to kiss him long and deep on his mouth.
“I want more,” he said.
“Yes, my love, and you’ll have more. Very soon. Toss that thing on a horse,” she ordered with a careless gesture toward Tynan’s body. “I have a use for it.”
She mounted, then held out her arms so that Davey could leap into them. With her cheek rubbing against his hair, she looked down at Midir.
“You did well,” she said to him. “You can have your choice of the humans, for whatever purposes you like.”
The moonlight shone on his silver hair as he bowed. “Thank you.”
Moira stood in the brisk wind and watched dragons and riders circle overhead. It was a stunning sight, she thought, and would have sent her heart soaring under any other circumstances. But these were military maneuvers, not spectacle.
Still, she could hear children calling out and clapping, and more than a few of them pretending they were dragon or rider.
She smiled a greeting when her uncle strode over to watch beside her. “You’re not tempted to fly?” she asked him.
“I leave it for the young—and the agile. It’s a brilliant sight, Moira. And a hopeful one.”
“The dragons have lifted the spirits. And in battle, they’ll give us an advantage. Do you see Blair? She rides as if she was born on the back of one.”
“She’s hard to miss,” Riddock murmured as Blair drove her mount toward the ground at a dizzying speed, then swept up again.
“Are you pleased she and Larkin will marry?”
“He loves her, and I can think of no other who suits him so well. So aye, his mother and I are pleased. And will miss him every day. He must go with her,” Riddock said before Moira could speak. “It’s his choice, and I feel—in my heart—it’s the right choice for him. But we’ll miss him.”
Moira leaned her head against her uncle’s arm. “Aye, we will.”
She would be the only one to remain, she thought as she went inside again. The only one of the first circle who would remain in Geall after Samhain. She wondered how she would be able to bear it.
Already the castle felt empty. So many had already gone ahead, and others were busy with duties she’d assigned. Soon, very soon, she would leave herself. So it was time, she determined, to write down her wishes in the event she didn’t return.
She closed herself in her sitting room and sat to sharpen her quill. Then changed her mind and took out one of the treasures she’d brought back with her from Ireland.
She would write this document, Moira determined, with the instrument of another world.
She’d use a pen.
What did she have of value, she wondered, that wouldn’t by rights belong to the next who ruled Geall?
Some of her mother’s jewelry, certainly. And this she began to disburse in her mind between Blair and Glenna, her aunt and cousin, and lastly, her ladies.
Her father’s sword should be Larkin’s, she decided, and the dagger he’d once carried would go to Hoyt. The miniature of her father would be her uncle’s if she died before him, as her father and uncle had been fast friends.
There were trinkets, of course. Bits of this and that which she gave thought to bequesting.
To Cian she left her bow and quiver, and the arrows she’d made with her own hand. She hoped he’d understand that these were more than weapons to her. They were her pride, and a kind of love.
She wrote it all carefully, sealed it. She would give the document to her aunt for safekeeping.
She felt better having done it. Lighter and clearer in her mind somehow. Setting the paper aside, she rose to face the next task. Moving back into the bedroom, she crossed to the balcony doors. The drapes still hung there, blocking the light, the view. And now she drew them back, let the soft light spill through.
In her mind’s eye she saw it again, the dark, the blood, the torn body of her mother and the things that mutilated her. But now she opened the door and made herself walk through them.
The air was cool and moist, and overhead the sky was full of dragons. Streaks and whirls of color riding the pale blue. How her mother would have loved the sight of them, loved the sound of the wings, the laughter of the children in the courtyard below.
Moira walked to the rail, laid her hands on it and felt the sturdy stone. And standing as her mother had often done, she looked out over Geall, and swore to do her best.
She might have been surprised to know that Cian spent a large portion of his restless day doing what she had done. His lists of bequests and instructions were considerably longer than hers and minutely more detailed. But then he’d lived considerably longer and had accumulated a great deal.
He saw no reason for any of it to go to waste.
A dozen times during the writing of it he cursed the quill and wished violently for the ease and convenience of a computer. But he kept at it until he believed he’d spread his holdings out satisfactorily.
He wasn’t certain it could all be done as some of it would be up to Hoyt. They’d speak about it, Cian thought. If he could count on anything, he could count on Hoyt doing everything in his considerable power to fulfill the obligation Cian meant to give him.
All in all, he hoped it wouldn’t be necessary. A thousand years of existence didn’t mean he was ready to give it up. And he damn well didn’t intend to go to