Into the Fire

by Jeaniene Frost

  “You would have widowed Kira.” Mencheres’s words were a harsh rasp. “You would have brought war between our two lines, forcing Bones into a fight against your people that would have resulted in many deaths. Our allies would have been forced to choose sides, too, bringing more death, until you could have shattered the peace we’ve had since Appollyon failed to incite a war between vampires and ghouls—”

  He stopped speaking, and I saw understanding dawn on his and Vlad’s face at the same time that I figured it out, too.

  “Sonofabitch,” I whispered, turning to the necromancer.

  Neryre’s expression was as stony as our surroundings, but her eyes flicked a little too quickly between Vlad and Mencheres. Her scent changed, too. Now I knew what “busted” smelled like.

  “You sought to destabilize the vampire world by pitting two of the most powerful undead lines against each other,” Veritas stated, coming into this section as well. “Why?”

  “My people would have restored order.” Neryre’s gaze manifested pure hatred as she stared at Veritas. “We would have been the only ones powerful enough to bring peace between all these warring sides, then the rule outlawing magic would have had enough support to finally be overturned.”

  I was stunned by how callously she admitted to plotting so many deaths. Yet deep down, the part of me that was growing harder by the day also admired the simplicity of their plan. All they had needed to get that disastrous ball rolling was the death of one powerful vampire due to the betrayal of another.

  Then Neryre stabbed a finger in Mircea’s direction. “He had committed himself to freeing our people, yet he left our order to pursue petty vengeance. That is why we hunted him down, and why we were going to kill him until we discovered his tie to her and the Impaler. Without intending to, Mircea handed us the easiest means to enact our chaos.”

  “How many more are in your order?” Veritas asked, ignoring that last part.

  Neryre smiled in an oddly dreamy way. “I don’t know, and if you torture me for a hundred years, you will still get the same answer. Long ago, our leaders determined that we would not know anything about each other, so that if one coven was caught, it would not endanger the others. Our cause will triumph. If not today, then another day.”

  “Oh, I’m all for people being free from oppression,” I said, “but you can’t build any real freedom on top of piles of bones. Vampires were wrong to hunt and murder witches, yet you admitted that your order would be just as brutal, if given the chance.”

  “They deserved it,” she snapped.

  “You’re wrong,” I said softly. “Yet you’re not going to live long enough to see that, because the good man you helped murder in the other room will be avenged.”

  Then my whip shot out, but before I could snap it, Neryre exploded as if she’d swallowed a nuclear warhead. Vlad stared at the flaming remains a moment before his gaze met mine.

  “Now you have your vengeance, Leila, and if there are consequences for her death, they will fall on me.”

  Veritas gave Vlad a truly exasperated look, as if she didn’t know whether to yell at him or start punching him. “No matter what Neryre claimed, I could have gleaned more information out of her.”

  “It’s nothing you can’t learn for yourself with a little due diligence,” Vlad countered. “We agreed that there would be no survivors except one, and he is coming with me.”

  “He hasn’t said if he’s going to let you leave,” Veritas said, with a meaningful glance at Mencheres.

  I stiffened. She was right; Mencheres hadn’t said what he was going to do about Vlad’s potentially lethal intentions toward him.

  “Well?” Vlad asked Mencheres.

  His emotions snapped closed, giving me no idea if he was preparing to fight for his life, or if he loved Mencheres enough to be willing to face whatever was about to happen without fighting back.

  I wasn’t willing, and despite knowing that Mencheres could rip my head off with a mere thought, I started to send electricity into my whip. No matter what, I would never stand by while someone tried to hurt Vlad.

  Maximus moved closer, his body relaxed, but I knew he hadn’t picked that exact moment to merely stretch his legs. He wasn’t about to stand by and let anyone hurt Vlad, either.

  Mencheres said nothing for so long, my nerves were screaming from the tension. Then, at last, his mouth stretched into a thin smile.

  “I will not fulfill the necromancers’ plans by striking you down and causing the same chaos that they sought to cause when they used Leila’s tie to Mircea against you.”

  I almost sagged in relief, yet Vlad’s shields dropped and sadness poured through our connection despite his gaze remaining steady.

  “I will not ask for your forgiveness. My intentions were unforgivable, but I hope you know that if it had been any other life except hers that they had held over me, I never would have even considered harming you.”

  The faintest smile curled Mencheres’s lips. “I do know that, because if I were ever forced to choose between Kira’s life and anyone else’s, she would live and they would die. Besides”—here his voice turned husky—“I might be angry with you, but a father always forgives his children, even if those children are not of his own blood.”

  A choked sound came from the other side of the room, and tears pricked my eyes as I got the subtext. Vlad did, too, and shock flashed through his emotions. Then he looked back and forth between Mircea’s prison and Mencheres’s face.

  “You want me to forgive him? He’d still love to kill me!”

  Mencheres moved closer. “Centuries ago, I decided to take a bitter, violent young man under my wing even though I knew at the time, he would kill me if he could. If you are grateful for my choice then, you will honor my wishes with Mircea now.”

  “Don’t do me any favors, you fucking poor excuse for a father and a man!” Mircea shouted.

  Mencheres’s mouth quirked. “Children. They say the sweetest things, do they not?”

  Annoyance, anger, and admiration threaded through my connection to Vlad. “If this is your punishment for my former actions, then I commend you on your cruelty.”

  Mencheres patted the side of Vlad’s face. “I knew that you out of all people would appreciate it.”

  Then Vlad looked at me. “Mircea won’t stay in our house. After all he’s done, you need not have him near you.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. Yes, Mircea had done a lot to me, but he’d been acting out of his own awful pain, and he’d also saved us, too. “We’ll just rename the dungeon the time-out room.”

  “I am not going with you!” Mircea continued to rage. “As soon as I am free from this quartz, I will disappear!”

  “Excellent point,” Vlad said dryly. “You’ll need to keep him encased in that black quartz all the way back to my castle, or he’ll use his dematerializing trick to escape.”

  Mencheres smiled. “That can be arranged.”

  Chapter 49

  I found myself walking very slowly back through the tunnels. I’d been able to restrain the worst of my grief out of revenge-lust and fear for everyone’s safety, but now I didn’t have that. When we reached the antechamber and I saw Marty’s lifeless form again, it would ruin me.

  “I’m not leaving with you,” Veritas announced, giving a critical look around the tunnel. “I might not have any prisoners for the council, but other Law Guardians will want to see this nest. It could hold clues to the others in this cult. The tokens in the pit that were used to manifest the creature hold enough magic to warrant further investigation in and of themselves.”

  Vlad stopped in mid-step, almost causing me to walk into his back. “Yes, the creature that almost killed us. Tell me, how were you not caught in that spell along with the rest of us?”

  My gaze swung over to Veritas. I’d been so wrapped up in everything else, I hadn’t had time to wonder that, but it was a really good question.

  She arched a brow. “I ducked behind the door when I saw
them beginning to cast the spell. Didn’t you see all the warding symbols painted on the walls? They were there to contain any magic into that antechamber alone.”

  Her explanation was plausible, but somehow, I wasn’t buying it. Sure, that would explain how she’d been unaffected by this spell, but it didn’t explain how she’d been able to corral five necromancers into Mircea’s prison without getting affected by any more spells, and they had to have been casting them. It also didn’t explain how she could pause time the same way that a super-powerful demon could. No, Veritas had secrets. Big ones.

  But I had no interest in finding them out. She could keep them, especially since I wanted her to keep my secrets, too. I didn’t need her sharing my trueborn witch, demon-kin status with the rest of the Law Guardians. They had proved to be far less than receptive to my kind in the past.

  We entered the antechamber, and I braced for the pain that was about to deal me a knockout blow. Yet when I saw Marty’s body, I blinked in shock, wondering why I was seeing two of him.

  One Marty was still sprawled on the ground, his head lolled back and his body now withered enough to resemble an ancient mummy. The other Marty floated next to the body, taking turns staring at it in a bemused way while also staring at his hand as if admiring how he could see the floor through it.

  “Marty!” I shouted, and ran over to him. Yet when I tried to hug him, I ran right through him, my arms still outstretched. Then I spun around to find him shaking his head at me.

  “You can’t hug a ghost, Leila, and unless this is the really low-rent version of heaven, that’s what I am now.”

  I knew he was right. His being see-through while his dead body was lying in front of us made that abundantly clear, yet I still found myself fighting to process it.

  “But you’re—you’re still you,” I sputtered.

  He grunted. “Yep, seems so. Most ghosts I’ve come across aren’t, but there are some who keep their marbles.”

  I was torn between being overjoyed to see him and being concerned for him, well, still being here. “Didn’t you, ah, see a light or a tunnel or anything?”

  Even transparent, he managed to pull off a very jaded look. “You think I’d still be here if I had?”

  “Some ghosts stay on to do one last thing,” Vlad said, slowly coming forward. “Some remain a while longer to make sure that their loved ones are safe. Some never leave. I’ve met a few of those. They form new lives out of their afterlife.”

  Marty gave him a faint smirk. “New life, huh? Guess if I can go through walls, you can’t threaten to keep me away from Leila if I return to the carnival circuit during season.”

  “No,” Vlad said quietly. “I can’t keep you from doing anything now.”

  Marty glanced back at me. “There’s even a bright side to being dead. Who knew?”

  I couldn’t believe that he was taking this with such a blasé attitude. I could hardly keep it together, and I wasn’t the one who’d just been murdered and come back as a ghost.

  “Marty, I . . .” I tried to get the words out without crying, and I failed miserably. “I’m so sorry I failed. I wish I could have saved you.”

  “Oh kid.” He started to put his arms around me, then stopped when they went through my waist.

  “Let’s try this,” I said, sniffing back my tears as I got on my knees so we were eye level. Then I held my hands up. He smiled crookedly, putting his up, too, and I felt a slight tingle as his palms merged into mine.

  “You didn’t fail me,” he said in a gruff voice. “You fought hard. That’s all any of us can do, and sometimes, things don’t turn out the way we want them to. That doesn’t mean you have anything to feel bad about. It’s just life.”

  “I know,” I said, trying to smile. “You don’t have to worry about me.” Maybe his “one last thing” was making sure that I’d be okay. That was so like him. “I’ll be all right, Marty.”

  “I know you will, kid,” he said, chucking my chin without touching it. “You’re tough. Always have been.”

  “So are you, and I love you so much,” I said, choking back the tears.

  He smiled. “Love you, too.” Then he looked up toward the ceiling. I did, too, but I didn’t see anything except more warding symbols, so I was surprised when he patted my cheek as best he could and said, “I, uh, think my ride is here, kid.”

  Wait, no! I thought, but I forced another smile. Don’t cry. Don’t you dare let the last memory he has be of you breaking down in tears!

  “Then you’d better go. Say hi to your daughter for me, and tell her she has the best father ever, okay?”

  He started to float up, and with every foot he ascended, he started to fade even more. “I will,” I heard him say, his voice growing fainter. “And I’ll tell her that one day, she’ll meet her other sister, too . . .”

  That’s all I heard before he disappeared. I waited for several minutes, staring so hard that my eyes burned. Then, at last, I felt Vlad’s hand on my shoulder.

  “He’s gone, Leila.”

  “I know,” I said, my tears breaking free because saying it made it real.

  He turned me around and pulled me into his arms, dropping his shields so that the warmth of his feelings matched the comforting cocoon of his arms.

  “I’m here,” he murmured. “And I always will be.”

  I gripped him back, glad when his arms tightened even more. “I’m going to hold you to that for the rest of our lives.”

  Epilogue

  “The house is beautiful,” I said, looking at the countless strands of garland that hung along the walls and the mistletoe sprigs that dangled from every crystal chandelier, not to mention the gigantic tree in the great hall. I had never seen Vlad’s castle decorated for the holidays before, but he did it the way he did everything else: impressively.

  “It still seems hard to believe that this is our first Christmas together,” I went on, a pang hitting me as I realized it would also be the first Christmas in many years that I would spend without Marty. At least Leotie had called, promising to drop Gretchen off at our house tomorrow morning. Either she was over her hunger, or Leotie knew the danger of my transferring the legacy to her before Gretchen was ready had passed. Not that I intended to transfer it to her now. I hadn’t wanted this power, but somewhere along the way, it had become a part of me.

  Just like Marty would always be a part of me, no matter that he was gone. At my request, Vlad had cremated his bones into a fine powder, and I’d split up the remains into little urns that I sent to some of Marty’s old friends on the carnival circuit. They’d promised to take him with them when they traveled next season. It was the closest I could get him back to the job he had loved so much.

  Vlad’s brows drew together. “That seems impossible.”

  I let out a dry chuckle. “Well, time flies when someone’s constantly trying to kill us, right?”

  “That’s not what I meant,” he replied, drawing me in his arms. Then a warm, rich swath of emotions brushed mine, growing in intensity, until it felt like I was sinking into a pool of heated silk. “I can’t have only loved you for less than a year. Every day, I am more and more convinced that you have always been a part of my soul.”

  I slid my arms around him, staring into his deep, coppery-colored eyes. “No,” I whispered. “You’ve always been a part of mine, even before we met.”

  He kissed me, his mouth, lips, and tongue causing a lot more heat to build in me, then he drew back with a slow smile.

  “Since it’s Christmas Eve, I’m going to give you one of your presents. You should like this one. It’s a secret I haven’t told you before.”

  “Let me guess; you’re the inspiration behind the Frankenstein novel, too,” I teased.

  He arched a brow with familiar arrogance. “The drivel I inspired is at least much more successful than that.” After my laugh, he got serious. “You know that I resisted telling you that I loved you to the point of letting you walk out on me, but deep down, I think I knew
it from almost the first.”

  I couldn’t stifle my slight snort, remembering what he’d told me before the first time we’d slept together. I can give you honesty, monogamy, and more passion than you can stand, but not love . . . “Then you sure had a strange way of showing it.”

  “You remember my summoning Mencheres almost immediately after I brought you to my castle?”

  I frowned. “Yeah, to help you find some artifacts for me to pull essence imprints from so I could track down who’d kidnapped me and tried to make me find you for them.”

  “And to ask Mencheres a question,” Vlad replied, his tone deepening. “You don’t remember that part?”

  I thought back, once again amazed that eleven or so months felt like years ago. “I vaguely remember something about a question you didn’t want Bones overhearing . . .”

  He snorted. “Indeed I did not.” Then his expression changed, and the feelings that brushed mine were tinged with the painful sting of loss. “After my wife and my son died, I was consumed with rage and the need for vengeance. Yet after I killed everyone I believed to be responsible, I felt no better. Instead, the worst kind of emptiness filled me. It kept growing, invading the deepest parts of me, until eventually, anything seemed better than the bottomless nothingness that had taken residence in my soul. Anything.”

  I knew what he meant. Oh, how I knew. I didn’t have the physical scars on my wrists anymore, but the memory of the pain that had led me to such an act was a scar that would never fade. “I understand,” I said, tears pricking my eyes.

  He gave me a jaded look even while his fingers brushed my wrists in a gentle caress. “I know you do. Mencheres sensed it in me, and he told me something that I immediately dismissed as a meaningless, compassionate lie.”

  “What did he tell you?” I asked softly.