Shadow's Bane

by Karen Chance

  “They destroy. They dishonor. They pay.”

  “The slavers?”

  A nod.

  “So, one, two, and three . . . are dead?”

  It seemed a fair guess.

  Another nod.

  “So that leaves four . . .” But he hadn’t spoken of them that way, had he? “Two groups of two?”

  Another nod.

  Okay, getting the hang of this now.

  “So you’re after two more groups of slavers. You know where they are?”

  “Not know. Not yet.”

  “It’s just . . . there’s a lot of slavers in New York. We’re trying to shut them down, but they’re good at hiding—”

  “They blaspheme. They disgrace!”

  “Yeah. They, uh, they’re bad people.”

  “They destroy. They kill and kill again!”

  “Okay. Okay.” I held out my hands, in the universal “see, I have no weapons, please don’t kill me” gesture, because he was suddenly furious.

  And bending over me in a way that would have been intimidating, even if my weapons hadn’t still been in the car, except for the pain in his eyes. “They take fey, make fight, make die. And after die, they dishonor. They steal—”

  He broke off with what I could only assume was a fey curse.

  “They steal . . . what?”

  But I didn’t get an answer this time. “So many lost. So many forgotten. Cannot go back. Cannot go home.”

  “We’ll help them get home. We’ll help you.”

  He’d turned his head to look out over the water, but now he turned it back. His eyes were suddenly tired and sad, which was somehow worse than the anger. “No. They never go back. Bones lost now.”

  And I suddenly remembered something Caedmon had said. Something about the bones of a dead fey needing to be sent back to Faerie. But that wasn’t anything a slaver would care about, was it? If someone died in the fights, or any other way, what would they do?

  Probably just bury them, and leave them to rot. Why risk opening a portal when, every time you did, it had a chance of being detected? Why bring the Circle down on your head just to honor an old tradition?

  An old tradition that was sacred to a certain portion of Faerie, who believed that if the bones weren’t returned a fey soul was lost forever.

  They kill and kill again.

  No wonder he wanted them dead.

  I suddenly noticed that my eyes were wet. I wasn’t the weeping type, but the depth of his pain was palpable. And not just the emotional kind, I realized, catching sight of the blood leaking out from under the pad the woman had put on his chest. She might have done her best, but it wasn’t good enough. He needed stitches, or whatever the troll equivalent was.

  Because, no matter how strong you are, you can still bleed out.

  Screw it.

  I took out my phone and called Claire.

  She showed up faster than I’d expected, an old trench coat over her nightgown and her hair in the kind of big foam curlers that make for nice, loose curls the next day. She’d brought her kit, but been smart enough to leave the Light Fey at home.

  “Thanks,” I told her, as she paid the cabbie, because I’d managed to drown the lambo. “By the way, did I ever say sorry about your car?”

  “Fuck the car.” She pushed a strand of red hair out of her eyes. “Where are they?”

  I led her down to the water’s edge, not knowing what kind of reception we were going to get. But to my surprise, the selkies took one look at her and crowded up on land, as much as they could with the rocks in the way. Blue didn’t react, except to watch her as she examined his fellow fey and dispensed one of her patented horrible-smelling concoctions.

  “They’re so thin,” she murmured.

  “Yeah, I don’t think they’ve eaten much lately. And they didn’t like jerky and Cheetos.”

  Her lip curled. “Who does?”

  I bit back a reply about Claire’s ten thousand recipes for chickpeas, because this wasn’t the time.

  “We need to get them home,” I said instead.

  “And put them where?”

  “They could stay . . . in the dining room?”

  “I thought the vampires were in the dining room. Or did you move them upstairs?”

  Shit.

  “You, uh, you know about that?”

  She shot me a look. “Dory. I have a houseful of fey guards. They don’t miss much.”

  Yeah.

  Probably should have thought of that.

  “And you’re not upset?”

  She sat back on her heels, and looked sort of sad. “I’m upset that you feel like you have to sneak people around. It’s your house, too.”

  I sat there blinking, but she was already moving on to Blue. I tensed a little; I don’t know why. I knew what she was, what she could do. But she looked so tiny next to his massive bulk that I worried anyway.

  Until I saw the most amazing thing I’d seen all night. The huge, battle-scarred, fearsome troll; the guy who had dangerous slavers quaking in their boots; the guy who had torn apart a warehouse full of who knew what kind of traps, snares, and hexes, not one, not two, but three nights in a row, and that after kicking ass at a no-holds-barred epic fight—that guy—relaxed back against the tree and closed his eyes.

  And fell asleep.

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Half an hour later, I was pouring a two-liter of water over Claire’s green-to-the-elbow arms, and Big Blue had a bunch of concrete in his chest. At least, that’s what it looked like. I assumed it was something more medicinal, since Claire had troweled it straight into the big wounds, where it finally stopped the seepage.

  It had also left Blue looking like an about-to-be-vacated apartment, with spackle everywhere, but apparently it would be absorbed by the body as it healed and wouldn’t do any harm. And it didn’t look like it had hurt him, since he’d snored through most of it. In other news, my car was back without noticeable damage, and so was a truck, which Fin had had a couple of his boys bring over, since he hadn’t been able to find anyone to install a hitch in the middle of the night.

  They were big, strapping guys that he used for security and other things, like loading up a bunch of selkies.

  They’d also brought Fin a charm, which had transformed him into a short guy with a wild shock of brown hair and a big nose. It was weird; he still looked identifiably himself, with small eyes and roughly the same shaped face, just humanized. At least enough that we weren’t likely to scare anybody else.

  So things were looking up.

  “Things are looking up,” I told Claire.

  She bit her lip.

  “Aren’t they?”

  She tilted the bottle’s mouth to stop the flow, and lathered up with some soap she’d brought with her. She made her own, when she had time, and this one smelled of lavender. It was nice.

  Her expression wasn’t.

  “I did something,” she told me abruptly. “I was waiting up to tell you about it, because I couldn’t get you on the phone, but then—” She glanced around at a burly guy walking past with a human-sized seal over his shoulder, and sighed.

  “Then things got crazy.” I grinned at her.

  She didn’t grin back.

  “You’re going to be angry,” she told me.

  “I doubt that.” Claire and I had our differences, from time to time, but we rarely fought.

  “I don’t.”

  She was rinsing off, and I could almost see her steeling herself. She finished, and the thin shoulders went back, the curler-bound head came up, and the green eyes met mine head-on. Because, whatever else Claire may be, she isn’t a coward.

  “I called Louis-Cesare.”

  For a moment, I just blinked at her. It was the last thing I’d expected—they didn’t even talk
in person if they could avoid it, much less over the phone. I hadn’t even known she had his number.

  “I didn’t even know you had his number,” I said, and it was her turn to blink.

  “It . . . was in the house phone. He called once when you had your cell off.”

  “Oh, yeah. Right.”

  She blinked some more. “Aren’t you angry?”

  I handed her some napkins to dry off with, because we didn’t have a towel. “Should I be? What did you talk about?”

  She just looked at me some more. This was getting odd. “I told him I liked his suit.”

  “It was a nice suit.”

  “Dory!” Claire’s eyes were getting brighter, rivaling the gas station lights behind her. She tried drying off using the napkins, but they shredded and stuck to her skin. “Damn it!” She shoved the wet wad in a pocket. “This is when you yell at me for sticking my nose in your business! This is when you tell me I went too far, as usual, and trampled all over your boundaries while trying to help. This is when you tell me I’m a crap friend for hating your boyfriend like a bigoted know-it-all, because sure, I know vampires better than you, when you’ve lived with them for centuries!”

  There was a pause. She seemed to be waiting for something. Which I guess she didn’t get, because the thin eyebrows drew together.

  “Well?”

  “Well, what?”

  “Aren’t you going to say it?”

  “Why? You already did.”

  And, okay, in retrospect, that probably wasn’t the right response, because she burst into tears. I awkwardly put an arm around her shoulders, because that seemed to help last time. And had it angrily shrugged off.

  “Don’t be kind!” she told me. “I’m a shit friend; I know it! I’ve been telling myself that for the last two hours—”

  “I didn’t say you were a shit friend.”

  “Well, I did! And I am!”

  She angrily wiped off napkin residue like she was shedding a second skin.

  “You never yell at me, even when you should. And I know why,” she said, when I started to open my mouth. “You never had a roommate before. You don’t have anyone to compare me to, but trust me, I’m shit.”

  “Claire, you’re not shit—”

  “Yes, I am!” She looked up, eyes blazing. And then suddenly slumped against the car, the fire gone as fast as it had come. “See? I can’t even let you yell at me properly; I have to boss how you do it. I’m overbearing and interfering and everything always has to be my way. I try not to be—I do—but then something comes along and it—it just isn’t right. And I have to fix it—I have to try, even if I end up screwing everything up and making it worse than before. Because I’m shit.”

  She slid down beside a tire and hugged her knees.

  I’d been in that position earlier, and it sucked. Nothing ever went well in that position. That was the world’s-out-to-get-me-and-probably-will position, and it made me sad to see Claire in it.

  I went over and sat beside her.

  “You’re not shit,” I told her.

  She looked at me, her eyes filled with tears. “You haven’t heard what I told him yet.”

  * * *

  —

  A couple minutes later, I was on the road to Horatiu’s, with the pedal pressed all the way down. Not to see him this time, but to prevent a possible murder. Because when Claire fucked up, she did it right.

  Not that she’d meant to. She’d hoped to get Louis-Cesare and me back together by spilling the beans. Namely, that I loved him and was just doing this to protect him, and how he should have been able to see that when it was clear as day to everyone else, and that he should have stayed and fought for me. But instead he’d just turned and walked away—I guess she’d talked to Soini—and if he was that much of an idiot, he didn’t deserve me.

  When she finally let him get a word in, he’d reminded her that she didn’t know anything about our relationship, and that it was her father-in-law trying to steal me away in the first place. And apparently succeeding, because I clearly preferred him! And that this was none of her business, so perhaps she should—and he meant this in the most respectful and courteous way possible—die in a fire.

  Then, of course, Claire got pissed—because let’s face it, it never takes much to set her off—and said that she must have misjudged him, that he really was a giant idiot and that I’d probably be better off with someone else, anyway.

  Like that Marlowe fellow.

  I didn’t know why the hell she’d picked him. Kit Marlowe was the consul’s pit bull and chief of security. He was also a giant dick. He and I cordially loathed each other, and while we had developed a somewhat decent working relationship recently out of necessity, our lips still had a tendency to curl when the other walked into a room. He hated—and I mean hated—the idea that a dhampir was on his beloved Senate, polluting it with my very presence. And I . . .

  Well, I just hated him.

  He made it really easy.

  So, no, Marlowe was not an issue.

  But, apparently, Louis-Cesare now thought he was, because Claire’s mouth and brain don’t talk to each other when she gets upset, and Marlowe was one of the only nonfamily vamps she knew. And she’d somehow managed to convey the idea that he’d been nosing around, and was now ready to pounce since his competition had just fled the scene.

  Like the cowardly bastard that he was.

  She’d fit that phrase in a few more times before she realized that my ex was no longer on the phone. But not like he’d hung up. More like he’d simply dropped it while doing something else, something that I really hoped wasn’t driving hell-bent for leather toward a certain annoying bastard of a Senate member.

  Who was, uh, probably about to have a bad night.

  To give her credit, Claire had tried calling Louis-Cesare back when she calmed down, but his phone was busy. It was for me, too, which was a problem. But not as much as hearing one of his masters, who had answered the landline at his place, inform me that he’d left rather abruptly earlier this evening, and could he take a message?

  No, but he could convey one. Only, apparently, he hadn’t, because I hadn’t gotten a call. That was a problem since, according to the Senate’s New York HQ, Marlowe was currently at Mircea’s Central Park apartment for some reason. And Mircea’s place was roughly three hours from Louis-Cesare’s. Which would be great if Claire’s little creative foray hadn’t taken place over two hours ago, and if I wasn’t in Brooklyn.

  I tried mushing the pedal through the floor, but it would only go so far.

  So I gave up and called Marlowe, or rather Mircea’s place, because I didn’t know his personal number.

  Burbles of House Happiness answered, and was overjoyed to talk to me.

  “Lady Dorina! How wonderful!”

  “Dory. Is Louis-Cesare there?”

  “No. I haven’t seen his lordship for, why, it must be almost a week now. Is he supposed to be here?”

  “No. No, he is not. Is Marlowe?”

  “Oh, yes. Lord Marlowe is entertaining tonight. Shall I tell him you’ll be joining us?”

  I didn’t know why Marlowe was entertaining at Mircea’s apartment, or why he was entertaining at all. He was a spy, not a diplomat, and an abrupt bastard at the best of times. But I didn’t ask because I didn’t care.

  “Can I talk to him?”

  “Of a certainty. Give me a moment.”

  He wandered off, and I got another call.

  I answered it before looking at the screen, and damn it, I knew better. “Louis-Cesare?”

  “James.”

  Shit.

  Guess he’d had time to clean up the mess.

  “Uh, look, James, I can’t really talk right—”

  “The hell you can’t. You destroy my crime scene and then you have the gall—”


  “I didn’t destroy anything. Your own guys did that.”

  “That’s not what they say—”

  “Well, of course it’s not what they say. I bet they didn’t mention trying to beat me up as soon as the lights went out, either.”

  “Their report says the opposite. That you almost killed them trying to get out the door!”

  “I couldn’t even find the door, and you were there!”

  “And didn’t see shit thanks to a couple thousand spells going off in my face!”

  My phone beeped again.

  “Hang on,” I told him.

  “Hang on? Hang on? Don’t you dare—”

  “Yes?” I asked the second line.

  “Dory?”

  Shit.

  Stan.

  “Oh, hey, look, man, I’m kind of busy right now—”

  I hit the dashboard.

  “What was that?”

  “Just, uh, just putting away some bad guys. You know how it is.”

  I hit it a few more times, which sounded like . . . I was hitting the dashboard. Stan seemed to think so, too. “So hit ’em in this direction and bring back my truck. You know it’s three days overdue, right?”

  “Sure. Absolutely. Was just going to do that. Uh, look, is there some kind of weekly special?”

  “Yeah. Bring my truck back before the week’s out and Roberto’s boys don’t break your legs.”

  Pissant little son of a—

  “You know I’m a senator!” I said, to no one, because he’d already hung up.

  I switched back to James.

  Or so I thought.

  “You are not invited!”

  “Marlowe?”

  “Do you understand me?” The voice was livid.

  What else was new?

  “Invited to what?”

  “None of your business! Go away!”

  “Listen—”

  “No, you listen. This is an important night for me—for all of us. I am not going to have you ruin it!”

  “I’m not trying to—”