Vanished

by Kat Richardson

  “Kreanou, no!” she gasped.

  Trembling, the creature teetered to a halt, only barely human, barely controlled, its limbs pulled around into impossible geometries and its face elongated into a lupine snout bristling with rows of gore-splashed fangs.

  “It doesn’t want you,” Marsden called to me, running toward us, covered in dirt and grave mold.

  I dropped to my knees and brought the knife down across Alice’s neck, feeling the stitches pop and the magic that held her together wrench apart. And I felt nothing else: no pain, no remorse.

  The last leash of magic parted and the kreanou lurched forward. I kicked Alice’s body away from me as the monstrosity pounced onto it. Her head screamed and thrashed, gnashing its jaws as her breath ran out. I picked it up and staggered to the edge of the magical vortex hidden in the core of Mr. Hardy’s tree.

  I started to tumble into the sucking hole among the keening, churning ghosts, but I felt hands grab me at the waist and hold me to earth. I flung Alice’s head away into the pit and watched it vanish in the unknown dark. One of the creatures who’d caused my death—the important death at least—was gone, and though it didn’t change me back, I felt relieved by her passage.

  Marsden hauled me backward, away from the tree. The sound of distant sirens floated on the haunted breeze. I glanced across the churchyard, the turf torn, muddied, and gleaming with the slowly ebbing spells of magic. Of Alice and Simeon, only bloodied shreds of cloth remained. The half-decayed corpse of a young man lay among the wreck of Alice’s bandages—the remains of the kreanou, extinguished with his creator.

  Marsden kicked the moldering corpse into the vortex. Then he shoved on the shapes of time, and I tumbled through to a sunny afternoon in the churchyard that stretched nearly to Euston Road. We staggered, exhausted, toward Regent’s Canal and the waiting Morning Glory.

  EPILOGUE

  A little over twenty-four hours later, I was on a plane back to Seattle. I thought I should have stayed to help Michael with Will, but there was nothing I could do. Will’s injuries had been worse than I’d hoped and not as bad as A I’d feared, but ironically well cared for. I supposed that Simeon was responsible—that seemed like the sorcerer’s style, to keep his victims as well as possible until he was ready to dispose of them—and I was grateful for that much. Michael told me that the surgeons wanted to try some reconstruction on the torn flesh and muscle of Will’s hands, arms, and feet but Will had nixed it in an unexpected fit of anger, saying he just wanted to go home without anyone else cutting on him.

  Will had become unpredictably moody, swinging from anger to despair to manic, unreasonable joy over the smallest things. It worried his brother and Michael thought they would return to Seattle as soon as the work, school, and immigration issues were straightened out. London no longer held any charm for them.

  The condition of the churchyard at St. Pancras Old Church was written off to vandals. Clerkenwell’s vampires sank into the darkness and kept their own counsel. Of the asetem, I heard nothing. I supposed the one I’d met in the club had reported to Wygan and they were regrouping or carrying on with whatever could be salvaged of their plans. I could have asked Sekhmet, I suppose, but I hoped I’d never see the Lady of Dread again. Not in this life or any other.

  I’d accomplished what I’d come for. Will was found and safe. The problems of the Red Brotherhoods of St. James and St. John no longer concerned me. The paperwork to reestablish Edward’s control of—or at least the material grip on—his European holdings was on its way to Seattle and would be there within a day of my own arrival. If he was still around by the end of all of this, I imagined he’d find a way to reassert himself once the smoke had cleared. At least I’d done that much. I didn’t yet know who the mole in his organization was or what was going on, but that was a problem that would wait until I got home.

  And I wanted to get home very badly. There were problems there yet to be faced, threats to the world I knew. Wygan was moving to do something, of which I could only guess a small part, and none of his plans would be good for anyone I knew or loved. I didn’t kid myself that destroying Alice had put any kind of drag on his plan. He’d wanted her to change me and her failure would piss him off, but he’d either try again or find a way around it—he was nothing if not tenacious, as I’d discovered.

  He’d pushed my father and then me to be his tool, and so far we’d both resisted him, but he kept trying. I knew he wanted to make some kind of gateway in the Grey and that I was the thing he needed to do that. I wasn’t certain how he expected to accomplish that, what power I didn’t yet have that he needed, but I’d figure it out. And I’d stop him.

  I no longer had to ask “Why me?” Meeting Marsden and my experiences in London had answered a lot of my questions about why I was a Greywalker and how. I’d removed one of the enemies who’d made me what I was and I felt I was on the road to reasserting control of my own life.

  I still had questions, though, and I thought I’d have to find a way to my father’s ghost to answer them. But I suspected he wasn’t as deeply buried as Wygan thought. I was sure it was he who had opened the door to the ghosts I’d been seeing and hearing. They all called me “little girl,” after all, and I was far from little anymore. And I knew things about my father—and my mother—I hadn’t suspected. I loved him a little less blindly and despised her a little less deeply now. I’d have to learn more, but for now, I just longed for home.

  There was a lot waiting for me in Seattle. I was heading into an unknown with consequences I couldn’t imagine but envisioned the worst. And I hated the thought that I might have to do worse than I had done in London. I’d killed Jakob and destroyed Alice. They’d wanted me dead and they were monsters, but the grim weight of having killed still hung on me. It wasn’t the same as having plucked a poltergeist apart or torn a trapped soul free of a rotting zombie body. Self-defense drove me to it, I knew, but killing hurt, and there was more ahead, I was sure. Would it become easier, as Marsden had suggested? Would I come not to care? I prayed not. Changes were imminent and I feared what I might have to do and what I might become. But at least home would bring me back to Quinton. Who loved me. I hoped that was going to be enough.

  Somewhere over the Atlantic, my cousin Jill appeared, still drowned, still bitter. She glared at me. “It was your fault,” she muttered.

  Narrowing my eyes, I reached into her, tangling my fingers in the buzzing energy at her core, and then flicked her away. “You were the one who wanted to go swimming,” I muttered after the vanished ghost. I didn’t need her recriminations—I was sure I could heap enough on myself without her help. But that, too, would have to wait. For now, home would be enough.

  About this Title

  This eBook was created using ReaderWorks® Publisher 2.0, produced by OverDrive, Inc.

  For more information about ReaderWorks, please visit us on the Web at www.overdrive.com/readerworks

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Acknowledgements

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THIRTY-SIX

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  THIRTY-EIGHT


  THIRTY-NINE

  FORTY

  FORTY-ONE

  FORTY-TWO

  FORTY-THREE

  FORTY-FOUR

  FOURTY-FIVE

  FORTY-SIX

  FORTY-SEVEN

  FORTY-EIGHT

  EPILOGUE