Almost immediately, I started to panic, picturing myself caught inside the stone like a fly in amber—suffocating before I could reach the other side. Fueled by desperation, I struggled forward until my body was completely encased. My heart hammered, my lungs already aching for air that wasn’t available.
Oh, god—was I still too weak? Was I going to die like this?
But I couldn’t fail. Rans was on the other side of this barrier. I had to get to him. I had to let him know what Nigellus had done to him.
I gritted my teeth until I felt cartilage popping in protest and gathered all of my strength. Channeling everything into the effort, I shoved forward, focusing as much on my magical core as my muscles. Incrementally, I felt my balance shift, my center of mass moving farther from Hell and closer to Earth. My home… and the place containing the one person I suddenly wanted to see more than I wanted anything else in the three realms.
The resistance against the fingers of my leading hand eased, as though I’d poked through to the other side. Putting all of my physical and magical strength into it, I tried to push more of myself into that welcoming blankness. Gradually, my arm emerged, and then my shoulder. My face broke through, into the warm air and utter blackness of the Moaning Cavern on Earth’s side of the barrier. I dragged in air with the desperate gasp of a drowning victim and continued to strain forward until I reached some sort of magical tipping point and collapsed forward, completely free of the gate.
At which point, I very nearly tumbled headfirst down the pile of boulders leading to ground level. Ground level, where a gaping pit leading to another, deeper cavern lurked somewhere nearby. I caught myself, scraping my hand and both knees, even through the denim of my jeans.
My bag was still clutched in my other hand, but sadly it didn’t contain anything remotely helpful in my current situation, kneeling one hundred seventy-five feet below the surface in a pitch-black cave. I’d checked my pathetic little flip phone last night, but even with the power off, the weeks spent in Hell had drained its battery to nothing. Not that the light from the tiny screen would have been all that helpful in navigating, really—but it would have made me feel a lot better.
Knowing I needed to move in case Myrial decided to come after me—melted eyes and all—I started feeling my way down from the ledge. I had no idea how long it would take her to heal, but I suspected it wouldn’t be long. My best chance was that the guards would prevent her from charging through after me when it was clear she was bent on action that would violate the no-interference-on-Earth provision of the treaty. Clearly she didn’t hold much stock in that provision, but as long as the guards did, it might be enough to save me.
Though I was still going to have to save myself from the whole being trapped in a dark cave thing. I reached the floor of the tunnel and took several deep breaths, calling up my memories of the one other time I’d been here.
“There is a pit directly behind you,” Nigellus had warned, illuminating a dark gap in the irregular stone floor with his flashlight app. “Though it’s not very deep. Beyond it lies a rocky incline leading to the main chamber, which contains the staircase to the main entrance. Ahead of us lies a larger seventy-five-foot drop leading to a third chamber, but that area is blocked off at the moment.”
So I needed to feel around—carefully—until I found the pit. Then I would know I was heading in the right direction through the tunnel. If I hit a fence or barrier, it meant I was going the wrong way.
I can do this, I told myself, even though the solid black of my surroundings was already making me feel frightened and disoriented. I already forced my way through the gates of Hell. This is nothing, and Rans is somewhere up there on the surface.
Facing the rock pile, the pit should be on my right. For lack of any better plan, I pivoted carefully in that direction—a precise quarter turn. Then I dropped to my hands and knees again, trying to ignore my bruises and scrapes as I carefully began to feel my way forward, pulling my suitcase with me. With the energy Myrial had sucked out of me, on top of what I’d used getting through the gate, I was probably S.O.L. when it came to fast healing, too.
All I could do was keep creeping forward. I found the edge of the pit after only a few minutes of searching, and held my breath as I skirted around it. Safe on the other side, I let out a sigh of relief and kept moving.
The following couple of hours were nightmarish. The distant moans that had given this cave system its name were eerily reminiscent of the sound the breeze had made at night as it blew across the top of the tree-trunk cell where the Fae had held me for torture. I kept expecting to feel skittering legs running across my skin as I crawled forward a painful few inches at a time in the darkness.
When I first heard the sound of human voices laughing and talking somewhere ahead of me, I was afraid I was hallucinating. But then something flashed in my vision in the distance—light reflecting off the walls of the cavern.
“Hello?” I cried, holding my breath as I waited for an answer.
There was a pause, then someone called back, “Hello?”
“Yes!” I yelled. “Hello! I’m in the dark! I need help!”
After a bit more calling back and forth as the people tried to determine where I was in the tunnel system, I collapsed back to sit against a section of the wall. It took them about twenty minutes to find me, at which point I had to spin a story about a fictional friend who’d dragged me down here and abandoned me as a practical joke.
My rescuers were understandably incensed on my behalf, though they did give my carry-on bag several odd looks. I brazened it out, not acknowledging the oddity of having luggage with me, and fortunately they were too polite and concerned to press the issue.
Ironically, once I had light, I could see that the tunnel we were traversing was smooth-floored and carefully maintained. It didn’t take much time at all to get to the main cavern and—more importantly—the heavy spiral staircase leading to the public entrance of the cave system.
“Thank you,” I told the group of three college-age guys. “I don’t know how I would have gotten out of there without your help.”
The one holding the light smiled, but he looked troubled. “You should maybe tell the police what happened—or at least the park rangers. That was way beyond a practical joke.”
I nodded earnestly and made agreeable uh-huh noises, already backing away with a wave and hurrying toward the staircase. Climbing the heavy iron spiral with bruised knees and scraped palms was just about as much fun as it sounded, but before long I was at the top, emerging into the light, huffing and puffing.
Clearly, I looked about as bad as I felt, because a park employee hurried toward me, wearing an expression of worry. I held up a hand, trying to get my breath back.
“Um… yeah. Slight mishap,” I said. “I’m okay, and I’m not planning on lodging any complaints or filing any lawsuits, promise. But if you could point me to the nearest place where I can get something to drink and charge a cell phone, that would be awesome.”
TWENTY-FOUR
I’D THOUGHT QUITE A BIT about the next few stages of my plan. Now that I was out of Hell and back to human civilization, stage two was getting enough juice in my cell phone to try calling Rans. The problem was, after nearly a month, I had no clue whether he’d be in St. Louis, Atlantic City, London, or Timbuktu. I was really, really hoping it wasn’t Atlantic City.
With the battery indicator showing ten percent, I called up my saved numbers and dialed. There was a pause as I held the phone to my ear, broken a couple of seconds later by three rising tones, rather than ringing.
“We're sorry,” said a recorded female voice. “You have reached a number that has been disconnected or is no longer in service. If you feel you have reached this recording in error, please check the number and try your call again.”
I hung up. So much for stage two. Time for stage three.
I dialed again, and Guthrie picked up on the second ring.
“Yes? Who is this?”
There was a beat of silence on the line. “Pretty sure he left the country last week, Zorah. Is everything all right?”
No, I thought.
“Yeah,” I said. “I just, uh… need to see him about something.”
“Well,” Guthrie said, “he didn’t really talk to me before he left, but I see an airline ticket to Heathrow in my credit card records, booked under his most recent alias—the John Reynolds one. So I’d try London or York. That’s probably why his U.S. mobile number is disconnected. It’s easier to get a new SIM card when you’re traveling abroad.”
“Okay,” I replied. “You said York. That’s where he’s from, right? Does he have a house there or something?”
“I’m pretty sure he still does, yes. Sorry, Zorah—I don’t have an address or anything like that. And that may not even be where he is. But he did definitely book a flight to London.”
I chewed on my lower lip, thinking. “All right, that’s still helpful. Thanks, Guthrie—I mean it.”
“No worries,” Guthrie said, sounding distracted. “You sure everything’s okay?”
“Yeah, fine,” I lied. “I’ll let you get back to what you were doing. Thanks again.”
After I’d hung up, I paused, thinking hard. No one involved was going to like what I had in mind for stage four. But the alternative was to involve Nigellus, and that wasn’t going to happen if I could possibly avoid it.
I chose a different number and dialed it, holding my breath as I waited to see if the owner would be around to pick it up. It rang. And rang. And rang. I tapped my fingers impatiently against my thigh, hoping against hope that I wouldn’t be stuck here for hours waiting on someone to hear the landline jangling and answer it.
On the tenth ring, I heard a click.
“Demonkin.” The voice on the other end of the line sounded like its owner would have been happier getting a call from Hitler than from me.
“Tinkerbell,” I replied. “Hi. I need a favor.”
A pregnant silence ensued, going on long enough that I started to get nervous.
When Albigard finally broke it, his voice could have flayed skin. “And why in all the realms would you assume that you would get such a thing by calling me?”
I took a deep breath. “Because I gave your reputation a boost in the Court by letting you haul me into Dhuinne?”
“In return for which, I arranged to have your sire removed to safety,” Albigard retorted.
I closed my eyes. “True. And I owe you for that.” Even if that ‘safety’ turned out to be… not so safe. “Look—I have information. I need your vow that you won’t use it to harm Rans, but if you promise me that, I’ll give it to you in exchange for a lift.”
Another pause.
“A ‘lift.’” Albigard made the word sound as though it tasted bad. “To where?”
I wavered between starting my search in London versus going directly to York. But I was no private investigator. If Rans had arrived in London and lost himself in the city—or gone elsewhere in the UK—I had no good way to find him. It would be hard enough trying to track him down in York, but maybe there were public records of property ownership I could check, or something.
“York,” I told him. “England.”
“Ah,” Albigard said. “I should have known.”
My heart rate picked up. “Why should you have known?”
“You’re chasing after the bloodsucker,” Albigard said impatiently. “Obviously.”
“Do you know where he is?” I blurted.
Albigard gave a snort. “You don’t think I’ve had his movements under surveillance since that performance in front of the Fae Court, demonkin? I’m not sure whether to be insulted, or mourn your sudden mental incapacity.”
“Albigard. Do you know where he is?” I repeated with more force.
The Fae made a sound of disgust. “Didn’t I just answer that? He’s off licking his wounds at the millhouse. Combined with your disappearance from the human realm a few weeks previously, the situation begs several rather interesting questions.”
“I was in Hell,” I said. “With my father.”
Albigard gave another impatient sigh. “Yes. I already know that,” he said very slowly and clearly, as if to an imbecile. “Fine. Are you someplace out of sight?”
“No.” I looked around at the gift shop. “Give me ten minutes.”
I hung up and unplugged my phone, waving to the girl behind the counter in thanks. After chugging the rest of my tea and dumping the bottle in a recycling bin, I grabbed my bag and hurried out, scanning my surroundings for a secluded spot. With all the scrubby trees and boulders around the area, it wasn’t hard to find one.
I waited, tense and impatient. A few minutes later, I was rewarded when a sizzling sound cut through the air. A line of fire appeared in the shape of an oval large enough for a man to step through. Despite appearances, the figure that appeared through the portal was no man, however. He was Fae—proud and haughty, crackling with magic that danced against my skin like prickling needles, setting my teeth on edge.
“What is this information you wish to trade?” Albigard asked without preamble.
“Hello to you, too, Tinkerbell,” I said pointedly.
He waved the words away. “You should learn not to waste time on meaningless prattle, demonkin. Now tell me.”
I clenched my jaw. “Promise me that you won’t use the information to hurt Rans. Or give it to anyone else who might use it to hurt him.”
I wouldn’t have thought it possible to convey an eye-roll so clearly without actually moving one’s eyes.
“I so vow. Now stop dawdling.”
My mouth felt dry, and I swallowed. I was counting on Rans’ assessment of Albigard’s character, before Albigard had pissed him off by taking me to Dhuinne. They’d been allies—of a sort, at least—and Rans had admitted openly to sharing sensitive information with him in the past. I sincerely hoped that meant what I was about to do was not, in fact, a horrible idea.
“Drinking small amounts of vampire blood on a regular basis extends the human lifespan,” I said. “If not indefinitely, then at least by decades or centuries.”
Albigard stared at me very intently, a small furrow marring his perfect brow.
“And I only learned about it because I saw it in action, firsthand… and on a large scale,” I finished, staring back just as intently while I waited to see if he would connect the dots.
His frown smoothed in the next instant, replaced by a blank facade of indifference. Bingo.
“I see,” he said, his earlier impatience replaced with blandness. “Come. I will take you to the millhouse. As I will not be able to stay, please pass on a message for me.”
I nodded, even as I wondered why he didn’t just deliver it himself. “What’s the message?”
Albigard seemed to steel himself. “A highly placed member of the Unseelie Court is colluding with someone from the upper echelons of Hell. I do not know to what end, but someone needs to find out, and soon.”
The familiar feeling of being at capacity when it came to bad shit happening around me returned with a vengeance. I closed my eyes for the space of a breath before opening them again. “Okay. I’ll pass it on. Thank you.”
Albigard only grunted. With a wave of his hand, a new portal formed. He turned to step through it, and I followed, my heart pounding like a frantic beast trying to escape the cage of my chest. Terror and excitement at what I would find on the other side flooded me in equal measure.
The sense of falling through a vertigo-inducing tunnel assaulted my senses, and I stumbled forward a step when my feet touched solid ground again—barely avoiding slamming right into Albigard’s back.
“He is here,” the Fae said. “Move a step or two to the side, demonkin.”
I frowned, but complied, since I’d already dodged sideways a step to av
oid him.
“What—” I started to ask, only to be interrupted when the door of the tumbledown stone cottage sitting perhaps twenty-five yards away flew open.
My heart skipped a beat as a familiar, dark-haired figure stormed out, blue eyes blazing fire. He held a scabbard in one hand, grasping the sword hilt in the other and sliding the blade free with a hissing scrape of metal.
Albigard snorted softly and melted back through the portal with effortless Fae grace. It snapped closed behind him, an instant before the iron blade flew through the place it had been and arced to the ground, burying itself in the loam with a sharp twang. I blinked. Apparently that was why Albigard wouldn’t be delivering his information in person.
My gaze turned back to the scowling vampire. I was vaguely aware that I was gaping at him like a fish, while inside my body, my organs tried to rearrange themselves, swooping and flipping crazily. His eyes settled on mine, the unearthly blue glow bleeding out of them as he stood, tense and unmoving.
“I need to talk to you,” I choked out, past the lump in my throat. “I’ve learned something about Nigellus, and the tithelings—it’s important.”
A look of caution flickered across his features, quickly covered by a cool mask. I remained rooted in place as he stalked past me and retrieved the sword from its resting place in the damp earth, wiping each side of the blade on his trousers before sliding it smoothly back into its sheath.
“Oh?” he asked in a conversational tone. “You know you could have just emailed, luv. I’m sure Guthrie would’ve given you the address.” He returned to stand a few paces in front of me, looking me up and down. “Blimey. You look like you’ve been—”
“To Hell and back?” I offered weakly.
“I was going to say ‘dragged through a hedge backward.’”
All of my resolve to be an adult about things and not give into my long-established weakness for this man was disappearing under a wave of panic. He was here, and I was here, and now I had to tell him that one of his most trusted confidantes had been using and abusing him for centuries.
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