I lay immobile on the ground, barely breathing, sick from pain, remorse, and the continual shocks of death. Then cold flowed over me, drawing the anguish from me as darkness that did not give way before the fires of the Hell Dragon emerged from the shadow of the standing stones.
“I’m late. I apologize.”
I almost sobbed in relief at the rumbling, impossible sound of Carlos’s voice beside me. His presence seemed to draw death away from me, like a lightning rod attracts the fury of the sky. It did nothing for my other pains, but at least I was able to move and breathe again.
Rui laughed and turned to make a mocking bow. “Hah! The very last Count of Atouguia. I thought you were dead.”
Carlos reached for him, hands like claws and black wings of power spreading wide. Rui swept his hands upward. The stones seemed to buck and thrash, throwing Carlos back, but this time he wasn’t knocked to the ground. He turned and swept behind the blood-splashed rocks, Rui pursuing him as the Hell Dragon swirled in the sky and roared back at the ground.
The farmhouse on the hill above the dolmen burst into flames and distant screams erupted with the fire and smoke. The light of the conflagration cast the scene in hellish, flickering light.
The monstrous thing swept onward, raising a bank of flame that caught the second truck and flipped it, tumbling like a toy along the road in the sudden superheated wind. Men crawled from the twisted vehicle, burning like the morbid candles of Rui’s temple and threw themselves down to roll or simply to fall and lie burning on the ground. But their agony was a glancing blow to me now. Carlos had done something to me—or at least for me—and I was grateful.
Quinton started forward under the distraction of the newest assault, but his father twitched the gun a little to get his attention. “Let the mages kill each other. I have other plans for you and your girlfriend.”
“My wife.”
Purlis raised his eyebrows. “Oh, so you did it, did you? I hoped you wouldn’t.”
Brightness fell on the ground and we all looked up, seeing the brilliant flare of the Hell Dragon swooping downward again. It sped, blazing from the heights of the sky toward the highway. Its fiery breath would set the width of the road and a dozen yards on each side aflame. Already the river steamed from the heat of the fires on the hillside, spreading across the dry fields with a crackling roar and the stench of destruction.
I squeezed my eyes closed, rolling onto my shoulders to free my hands and slip them, still bound together, under my hips. The riot cuff cut into my wrists and made my injured hand feel like it was going to explode under the pressure. I screamed into the dirt and rolled into a ball to pass my hands below my feet. Flat on my back, sweating in the heat and pain from every part of my body I concentrated on the skeleton of the Hell Dragon, reaching for the one bone I knew—my own.
It resisted and rang like steel, refusing to come at first. Then it sprang free to fall hot on my hand, blazing and trying to fuse to the finger I’d cut it from. The song of the Hell Dragon altered only slightly and it rippled, the fire within it turning slightly golden, but otherwise the burning construct was unaffected by the removal of the bone.
It wasn’t a key—it wasn’t important enough to bring the beast down. If I kept it, it would burn through my flesh and set the rest of my bones on fire. I yelled and let go my mental hold. The bone leapt back to the Hell Dragon and the light of the dire beast flared white and red again. I could hear it roar and turn in the sky with a sound like wind tearing through the sails of a foundering ship.
I had no other choice: I’d have to swap bones if I could. It would probably kill me—a fiery death from which I wouldn’t stand a chance of waking. But it would be worth it to stop Rui and Purlis. I hoped Quinton would forgive me.
I kept my eyes closed as I tried to remember all the bones, tried to reach for one that I had an affinity for, mentally scrabbling. . . . It seemed far away, but I could hear Purlis talking to Quinton nearby. “She’s too much like your mother. She’ll never really give up her life to be with you. She’ll leave you in the end, like Liz did me.”
“Mom left you because you’re a monster. And you had her locked up in a mental institution because you can’t live with the truth, while your actions only confirmed it. You are a piece of work, Dad.”
I remembered and reached with my hands and my mind for the bone Rui had found such an amusing match—James Purlis’s left tibia. It was the bone of a man who was shorter than I, older, smaller in every way. The bone now inhabited the Hell Dragon Purlis had hoped to control to bring Europe to its knees, but he hadn’t even tried yet because he was too obsessed with his anger at his son to realize he couldn’t. I’d have to take it—it was the only shot I had left.
Heat and light rushed toward me and I felt a tearing, splintering pain in my left leg, my knee and ankle seeming to twist themselves apart as my own tibia started to pull toward the dragon’s skeleton to displace Purlis’s. I resisted the scream that rose from my gut, wrenching my will against it as if the sound would ruin my intent. I could feel blood running from my knee and along my leg like a line of fire, pooling around my ankle and heel. Then a steely cold wrapped around a burning shaft of light seemed to sear me, blinding me through my closed eyelids with hot illumination that rose from inside my own body. But it wasn’t like the burning of my finger bone against my severed knuckle. It felt as if the bone had ripped itself loose and left a hollow filled with some living light that tore through my flesh like a knife, burning with cold instead of heat.
I should have been dying, burning from the diseased and fiery magic that animated the Hell Dragon, but something wasn’t happening as Carlos had said it would. I had no strength to try again, even if I could figure out what to do. I wanted to shout, to scream, to weep, but I couldn’t. I was done and I was broken and it was for nothing. . . .
The strange singing sound in the night broke and soured, the ground beneath the standing stones seeming to shudder in revulsion at what it had vomited forth.
I opened my eyes, mere slits against the anguish gnawing on my body and the despair clouding my mind, and looked into the brightness of the Hell Dragon plunging down.
Then it twisted, coiling, tearing, screeching out of tune, and ripping into pieces as it fell toward the earth. . . .
Beside me, Purlis’s scream matched that of the drache, and I turned my head as he lit like a torch. A fiery shape burned against his leg, sending up a stink of melting plastic and steel as the bone he’d given up returned and sank into the body of his prosthesis, melding to him, knitting back in place now that there was no place else for it to reside. The fire of the Dragão do Inferno blossomed bright, consuming him from the inside out. Another horrifying scream came from the darkness beyond the stones as the scorched debris of the Hell Dragon rained to Earth in cinders and ash.
Against the fire I could see two black figures locked in struggle. The larger had taken hold of the smaller’s head and driven the other to his knees. A flickering ember flared nearby and illuminated them for a moment, and I could see blood coursing down Rui’s face from his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth as Carlos leaned forward as if to whisper to him. As the ember died, I saw the gleam of Carlos’s sharp white teeth and then more blood as the vampire ripped his old student’s throat open.
I closed my eyes and turned my head against the ground, letting go of everything, not sure exactly why I wasn’t dead. What had gone wrong that seemed to have gone right instead?
The blazing light within me died out and the feel of cold steel and hot iron faded, leaving only the throbbing and stinging of torn flesh and shattered bone behind. It felt worse than amputating my fingertip had and I was glad I was too tired to look to see what had happened to my left leg. It didn’t feel right—it felt torn and hollow, the joints ripped apart and twisted, but not the way it had when I’d broken it as a kid or when I’d ripped up my knee a few years ago. I didn’t know if the b
one I’d tried to give up was there or not. It had left—I was sure—but I wasn’t sure it had come back and it shouldn’t have. . . . I felt worn too thin to puzzle it out and I didn’t care.
I felt Quinton lift me into his arms and start running.
I raised my head off his shoulder. “Did we live?”
“For now, but you won’t last a lot longer if I don’t get you to a hospital quick.”
“Oh,” I said, feeling light-headed. Blood loss—it was almost familiar now.
Darkness loomed ahead, taking shape like a storm cloud becoming flesh. The light of the fires all around us cast moving light on Carlos’s face, streaked with blood and ash.
“Give her to me,” he ordered.
Trembling, Quinton did and Carlos stooped to sit on the ground with me leaning against his side and my legs laid across his lap. “That was foolish, Blaine. You keep leaving parts of yourself in strange places.” I could feel his hands stroking down my ruptured leg. It felt cool and wonderful, and I sighed, going limp against him.
Quinton’s voice seemed to come from a distance. “Is she . . . ?”
“Dying is not dead. Yet. Be patient,” Carlos counseled him.
I decided the conversation wasn’t real and responded to Carlos’s first words to me in a whisper, because it was all I could manage, “Seemed like a good idea . . .”
“Why did you choose to do this?”
“There wasn’t one I could take. Mine wasn’t a key. I had to swap. The only one that I could move was Purlis’s. I didn’t want it . . . but it didn’t come anyway.”
“Three positions, only two bones. The spell sent the bone back to its original owner as I told you it would. Yours became part of the drache, but it broke the song and now the bone is burned to ash. I can’t restore it.”
“That’s all right,” I said, feeling much too woozy to stay awake. “Just want to sleep.”
“No,” Quinton said in an urgent whisper.
“Quiet,” Carlos whispered back. Then he returned his attention to me. “I can save you, but . . . this is too close to blood kindred and I may not be able to stop the process. You would become like me.”
“No,” I said. “Rather die than be you.”
Carlos’s laughter was the last thing I heard as I fell unconscious.
EPILOGUE
I woke in another white bed that smelled of bleach and laundry starch. No light fell through the window and the roiling nausea of vampire made Carlos’s appearance at the foot of the bed no surprise at all. Quinton was next to the bed, sleeping in the least comfortable-looking chair I’d seen in a long time. I could hear other people sleeping in the room, glimpse the nighttime glow of their auras, but no one stirred.
Carlos raised his finger to his lips, but I’d had no intention of waking anyone. He came to the head of the bed on the other side from Quinton. “Listen well,” he said, his voice not even loud enough to be a whisper, more a sound that only played in the shell of my ear. “Between us, Quinton and I have disposed of loose ends while you slept. Some explanation about terrorists has been made and the wreckage is being restored, the cholera cleaned away. The mages are dead, the spies dispersed, the Ghost Division is no more, and you, Harper Blaine, were never here. Only a couple with the improbable names of Kit and Helena Smith—tell your spouse-in-soul that he has a puckish humor and terrible taste in noms de guerre.”
I nodded. “I know.”
“Quinton knows the details of how, and as soon as you wish to leave this place, you can resume your life—lives—in Seattle. Or not, as you please.”
I watched him as he fell silent, looking from me to Quinton with a thoughtful expression. After several minutes he added, “Your leg, I fear, I couldn’t save, nor the fingertip you lost. There may be something others can do, but this is beyond my abilities.”
“I can live without them.”
“You may not dance again and it pains me to imagine it.”
“I can dance in my mind all I want. Besides, I did enough dancing to last a lifetime. Now I need the rest of my lifetime to live.”
“With him?”
“With no one else.”
“Good. Perhaps I shall see you again, then.”
“You’re not returning to Seattle?”
“Not for the foreseeable future. Cameron no longer needs me and I wish to use your gift more fully.”
“I thought that was gone. . . . You died. And I still don’t understand what happened there. I felt you die—but I never felt Rui or Purlis, or so many of the others. . . .”
“Some of those deaths I took from you, but as for the last, you were too close to death yourself to feel them. As for me, the appearance of my death was greatly exaggerated. I am a necromancer and difficult to kill with death still wet on my hands. Even my own death. I realized, in the moment, that my seeming to die would solve certain problems. I turned back to tell you, but circumstances made it impossible. I regretted that, but I knew you would continue with the plan as best you could and I would join you when I woke. It was Saint Jerome’s Day, and I’ve always been born on that date.
“As to the gift, I don’t refer to the blood you lent me. I will be eternally grateful to you for the days I spent in the sun, but I meant the curiosity, the desire to know. That I wish to honor. I will pursue it, but not in Seattle. Not for a while. Life, even mine, is transient. All bones are dust in time and I shall not further waste my hours in the sun.”
He bent close to me. “It would have been my honor to have you as blood kindred, but it would have withered you. Few have the fortitude to choose as you did. You are the most remarkable individual I have had the pleasure of knowing.” He kissed my forehead and rose, stepping back into shadow and walking away in silence.
“I was kind of fond of you, too,” I whispered to the empty darkness.
“Hmm?” Quinton stirred and sat up in his chair, blinking at me. “Hey,” he said.
“Hey, yourself,” I replied.
“I thought I heard you talking to someone. . . .”
“Carlos. But he left. Mysterious Stranger and all that.”
“He does favor a dramatic entrance.”
“And exit. He said he’s staying here awhile.”
“Yeah, I thought he might.”
“You guys still talking behind my back?”
“All the time.”
“I’ll have to catch up. How’s the family doing? Your sister and the kids, mom, all that . . .”
“They’re good. I’m still working on getting my mom back into the normal world—Dad’s death is making it easier and harder—but everyone else is moving forward. Sam’s here, and Ben and Mara—they’re with the kids at the guesthouse.”
“Not the Casa Ribeira,” I said.
“No. I’m not sure I’d ever want to see that place again. But on the family front, Piet is flying back from the Azores today, so the family will be together again by tonight. Soraia apparently is still having trouble, but she’s doing better than we could have expected. I think that’s because of Mara. And you were right on that score—she’s the perfect person to help my niece. Mara says Soraia is a witch, and not just any kind but some sort of special witch. I didn’t get it, but you might. Sam’s a little freaked, but she’s getting over it. And the funny thing is Mara says this type of witch is a once-in-seven-generations thing, so . . . somewhere in our family or Piet Rebelo’s, there’s a sort of super witch. I think it’s kind of cool.”
“I’d rather she were just an ordinary girl. It’s easier.”
“I know.”
“And why does she call you ‘Tio Pássaro’?”
Quinton blushed. “It means ‘Uncle Bird.’ You know—Jay . . . Bird.”
“Oh. That’s cute.”
Silence fell again and we both sweated it out. He glanced away and then back, his eyes not meeting
mine. “So . . . the leg . . .”
“I know. Carlos said he couldn’t save it.”
“Maybe not, but Sam says she knows a surgeon who might. She’s bullying the hell out of your doctors to get this guy out here to look at you, but it still might not . . .”
“Doesn’t matter. I’ll be all right. I danced a lifetime’s worth. I can spend the rest of my life just walking—or not. With you.”
“Uh . . . is that . . . ? There was this question I asked you and you never answered. I mean, things were hectic, I know, but I meant it. I still do. I always will.”
I looked at him through the dimness of the hospital room lit with a single night-light, through years in hell, through life and death and back again, through monsters and ghosts and despair and everything between where we were and what we wanted to be.
“Yes,” I said.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I had originally planned to go to Portugal for a month and do research in person, but a lot of things happened that forced me to cancel the trip, so this whole book was written using online sources and picking people’s brains. I also cooked and ate a lot of Portuguese food and drank a lot of Portuguese wine—as research! I’m pretty sure I made mistakes and I apologize for anything (and everything) I screwed up.
And if you’re thinking, “Why Portugal, Kat?” I blame Carlos. I’ve always had a strange affection for Portugal even without having been there, and, of course, Carlos is Portuguese. Since this book leans heavily on Carlos’s backstory, there was nowhere else to set it (and I’d already set it up in the previous book).
Portugal has an interesting history and I’d already used the Lisbon Earthquake of 1755 as a historical reference point in the series. It’s still one of the most devastating natural disasters in recorded history—a magnitude 9 earthquake that wiped out the whole city of Lisbon, took down most of Casablanca, toppled church towers in Seville, and was followed by a tsunami (some reports claim two) and a fire that raged for ten days. Many historians and economists feel it was the beginning of the end for Portugal as a world power—at the time, Portugal was the undisputed ruler of the seas.
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