A group of Manticores were gathered around Fazion, looking him up and down as if they thought the man was on the verge of falling apart. “I’m fine,” he barked and pushed a hand away from him.
Stryfe nodded and folded his hands behind his back. “Yes, Sire.” The others followed his lead and fell into place behind their captain.
Gridlock came from the rear of the Vault and threw his weapon onto his shoulder. “I don't understand where they could have gotten to. We had the entrance covered. There’s no way that they could have gotten past us.”
“Never say never when it comes to the Fae,” Irulan sighed. “We’re quite a resourceful people.”
“So I’m beginning to see,” Tam frowned. “All we’re got to show for our efforts are hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of damage to the property, and who knows how much to some of the tech that was stored in here. Top that off with almost getting his only daughter killed…father is going to have a cow.”
“It was my idea, Tam. I’ll take the blame,” I sighed, then added. “Is he back yet?”
Tam threw an arm around my shoulder, “I’m afraid so, woolybooger.”
Ask me to face a Banshee that had the power to melt brains with her wonder breath, no problem. Ask me to go tell my father that we were about to give our insurance adjuster enough work to last for weeks, I’m shaking in my boots.
Irulan took my hand, and we headed for the outside. “I’ll stay with you the entire time,” she promised. It was a nice gesture, but I was still nervous.
Chapter 22
We limped through a back entrance and boarded the elevator that led to the lower levels. I’d never felt so tired in all my ninety-eight years. My body ached in places that had no business aching, and my head felt like it was one throb away from exploding. I squeezed Irulan’s hand and leaned to look past her at Fazion. Both of them looked as bad as I felt.
Day one was a total bust. Or was it? We exited the elevator and David’s aura was the first thing I felt. I jumped out of the elevator, dragging Irulan behind me. “What the hell, Val,” she croaked as she stumbled to keep up with me.
“That is what’s up,” I said, pointing toward our son. David was up and walking. Some had gone inside his head and pulled him free of the sleep I’d placed him in. We both started running and reached him at the same time. David was walking with his head facing the ground and had no idea we were there until he was wrapped in our arms.
“How,” I croaked while Irulan asked who. In our current state of mind, we failed to remember that Daddy was the only one that could have accomplished the minor miracle that was standing, enveloped in our arms.
I pushed my horribly unsuccessful attempt at capturing the Banshee out of my mind, but only for a few moments. That's all the time that Daddy allowed me with David before I felt his aura wash over me.
“You need to give report, Valeria,” my father grumbled and laid a hand on my shoulder. “Let my grandson go. I assure you he isn’t going anywhere.”
Those words were music to my ears. The best that I’d heard all day. David stepped out of our arms and kissed us both on the cheek. “I’ll talk to you later,” he said, then eased by us, continuing on whatever mission he was on before we stopped him.
With David gone, there was nothing left to do, but fall in line behind Daddy as he walked toward the small conference room. Everyone else was waiting for us, but I needed a few moments with my father. I waved Irulan by and closed the door.
“Before we go in, Daddy, I want you to know that it was my fault. Everything that happened while you were gone was because of my idea. Don't be mad at the boys for agreeing to go along with my plans. I didn’t leave them much of a choice.”
“I knew the moment that I left the building that you were going to try something, Val. You wouldn’t have been you if you hadn’t.” He brushed a finger across my cheek and cracked what passed for him, as a smile. “But just so you know, you will never do anything like that again. Am I clear?”
“Daddy?” I couldn’t make that promise.
“It was worth a try,” he frowned and opened the door.
The mood inside the room was past somber. Everyone that turned to face me looked like they had lost their best friend. Some of them had. Good vampires, werewolves, and Fae had lost their lives tonight and for what. We had nothing to show for their sacrifice.
“I am so sorry,” I stuttered, unsure of what else I could say to ease everyone’s spirits.
Stryfe was the first to speak. He pushed away from the table and stood up. “You fought as hard as any man that was there. Your actions were quite a commendable performance. What are you sorry for, Princess?”
Constantine nodded and cracked a slight smile. “You don't have anything to apologize for, woolybooger. We tried a plan, and it didn’t work. We didn’t have all the variables. Now we do, so we can come up with a better one.”
“Do sit down so we can get this little pow-wow under way, Blood-Sucker,” Fazion groaned and leaned back in his seat. In true Fazion fashion, he was seated at the head of the table, snapping his fingers and pointing at the only two empty seats that were on either side of Ire. “Right there with you now.”
Daddy looked at me and sighed. “There is a time when diplomacy will only get you so far. Sometimes one must remind the guest that they are on your property and if they don't get the hell out of my seat I’m going to remove them myself.” When Daddy was done, Fazion rolled his eyes and stood up.
“If you wanted the chair all you had to do was ask,” he mumbled as he got up and moved to a seat on the opposite side of Irulan. Fazion wasn’t fooling me. He used his pampered prince attitude to cover up his fear. That was fine with me. I was scared also. I took the last chair and Daddy moved to his newly vacant seat, only to stand beside it. Typical. Everyone turned to look at Daddy who nodded his head and pointed at Fazion.
“From what I understand you knew about the nature of this Banshee’s partner. Tonight’s blood is on your hands. I should kill you now.” Stryfe bristled in his seat and leaned forward. Tam and Constantine responded in kind, tilting their heads to stare at him. Unless someone did something, this was going to go south really quick. That someone was Valerian. My brother, the mediator, stood up and cleared his throat.
“Pointing the blame isn’t going to solve our problem, Father. We need to find a way to contain or destroy these things, and we’re running out of time.”
Daddy wasn’t easily assuaged. He narrowed his eyes at Vedo and gave him the scariest Trumaine Stare that I had seen in a while. Vedo looked into our fathers steel gaze and shook his head. “I’m not scared of you, Father. When you're wrong, you're wrong. You didn’t see them fight out there. They don't deserve to be brow beaten when they've lost people also.”
Daddy hissed and curled his hands into fists. He didn’t like being talked back to by any of his children. To do it in a room full of people was a no. Ballsy or no, Vedo was bartering trouble by standing up to him right now.
Irulan, who knew my father as well as well as I did, pushed away from her seat and stood, “Everyone has been through a lot, Valerian, Hadrian isn’t pointing fingers. His nerves are raw, as are everyone else’s. Isn’t that right, Hadrian?”
She gave Daddy an out that wouldn’t make it look like he backed down from his son. His nostrils flared; he dipped his head and then sat down. For a brief moment, the room was quite. Then Tamerlane solved that by picking up where Daddy left off and flat out accused Fazion of setting us up to fail. My brother didn’t know how right he was, but I couldn’t admit that. Instead, I sat back and watched him and Stryfe go back and forth. All the camaraderie from earlier was gone.
When Tam was done shouting accusations, he switched to calling them incompetent and over confident. He had a point about them being over confident, but again, my saying so wasn’t going to help the situation. I took the arguing for as long as I could. When the Manticores began to question my performance while we were locked in the Vault, I�
�d had enough.
“I’m done with this,” I shouted and stood up. I turned for the door and held my hand out for Irulan. “You’d rather beat your chests and try to establish dominance while the clock is ticking. The lot of you can get bent as far as I’m concerned. Come on, Ire.”
Irulan shook her head at the men of our family and joined me. “What has the world come to when Val is the one making sense,” she sighed. Valerian’s mouth dropped, and Constantine looked like someone had poured a bucket of cold water down over his head. When we walked out the room was silent.
I waited until we put some distance between us and the room before squeezing Ire’s hand and bringing it to my lips to kiss it. “Nice job, but did you have to make me the butt of your joke.”
Ire shrugged and kissed me back. “Whatever works,” she said, and pulled me in the direction of a door at the far end of the room. “Come on. I’ve got an idea.”
When we got to the room, it was nothing more than a table and a row of chairs. I looked frowned at Irulan and shook my head. “I thought making out in the broom closet was tacky and totally out of line considering everything that was going on?”
Irulan laughed and reached by me to flip a light switch. “I needed that,” she chuckled and motioned for me to take a seat. “We’re here because I can't get a word in edgewise in the room full of testosterone. I don't think killing them is going to be the hardest part of our problem anymore. I saw fear in both of their eyes. That means we were close. Our biggest problem is going to be drawing them back out.”
Ire closed her eyes and began to speak in Old Elvish. When she was done, the air around her hand began to ripple and churn. Before I could ask what she was doing a thick, leather clad book appeared in her hands. Ire eased the book to the table and conjured another. “Here,” she held it out for me and sat down. “There was once a time, right after the Great Divide, before the doorways were discovered, when people used Summoning spells to call one another through the barrier between realms. Its old, wild magic and very volatile but we might be able to bend it to work for us.”
I flipped open the cover and frowned at the gibberish that filled the first page. “How am I supposed to read this?”
Ire pulled the book around to and pointed to a symbol. “It’s not that much different from the language that we use now and you can read it just fine.”
“Finally,” I balked.
“Look for the spell, Val. It should say, ‘To call a soul’, or something like that.” Ire turned to her book and slowly began flipping through the pages.
I sighed and began to decipher to small symbols before me. “Haven’t your people every heard of a table of contents,” I grumbled after thirty minutes of slow reading.
“They’re your people also, Val, and no, not when these spells were recorded. These books were written just a few years after the realms were born, making them hundreds of thousands of years old.”
We went back to reading and weren't interrupted for over two hours. When we were, it came in the form of a knock at the door. I stretched, grateful for the diversion and twisted my head so I could see my savior. “Come in,” I called out.
The door swung open and David, Rowan, and Dante were standing on the other side. There were slight wrinkles under David’s eyes, and he looked tired, but that was understandable after all that he had been through. Rowan peeked at me around his shoulder. She looked sheepish and afraid, not the way that a daughter of a Great House should ever look. I went to them and threw my arm around David’s shoulder.
“Hey, you, I’m glad that you came to find us. I needed a break.” I reached behind him, took Rowan’s hand and pulled her to my other side. I was the middle of a teenage sandwich. I’d take that any day over the crap-fest that I was currently neck-deep in.
“Stop beating yourself up, Rowan. David is fine; everything is okay.”
Rowan squeezed my hand and a tear slid down her face. “I am so sorry, Mrs. Trumaine. I never meant for any of this to happen. If I had known…”
I gave the girl a small shake, cutting her off. “How many times have you said that today? We know and I don't blame you. Your father, on the other hand, he's on my shit list.”
“My father is going to send me to Romania once all this is over,” she croaked.
“I won't let that happen,” David declared. He said it with such conviction that I gave him another squeeze.
“Spoken like a true Trumaine.”
“I mean it, Ma. She's not going anywhere.”
My boy had it bad. I gave them both a kiss on the cheek and led them to the table. “Have a seat kids. Join the fun.” Dante had already beaten me to the table and had taken my spot in front of the Elven tome.
“This is fascinating,” he mumbled to himself. Irulan lifted her head from the book and frowned at Dante.
“What’s fascinating and when did you get here?” She asked and turned in her chair. Her eyes lit up when she saw David standing beside me. “Come here, youngling.” Irulan pulled David into her arms and squeezed him so hard that I believe I heard a few ribs crack. David didn’t utter a word; he just threw his arms around her and let her have her moment.
When she let him go, he moved to Dante’s side and looked over his shoulder. “What’s with the book full of chicken-scratch?”
Irulan sighed and opened her mouth to answer but Dante beat her to the punch. “This is no chicken scratch, David. This is one of six written languages of the Fae. I believe the oldest.”
Irulan elbowed me in the side and pointed at the boy. “Take notes, Val.”
“Get off me,” I grumbled and gave her a light shove.
David laughed and poked me in the side. “I think she's right, Ma.”
“Et tu, Brute?” I placed a hand over my heart and swayed backward before moaning, “not my son also.”
That earned me a giggle from Rowan. “Your mom is cool, David.” While I wanted to sit and bask in the declaration that I was indeed a cool mom, Irulan had her, ‘I’m thinking’, face on.
“What is it, Ire?” She was standing over Dante, her head swaying back and forth between the two books.
“Those sly old fuckers,” she spat and reached by him to grab the spell book. She slammed it down on the table next to the one that she was reading and tapped a page. “Dante take a look at this and tell me what you see.”
He nodded and repositioned his chair to inspect the pages in question. After a few moments of intense scrutinization, Dante laughed and pointed to a line of symbols in one book and then to another line in the second. “They are parts of the same incantation.”
He pulled the books together, positioning them so that the edges overlapped and waved me over. “See this, Ms. Valeria. Even though they are parts of two different spells, if you read these lines one after another, they serve a completely different purpose.”
I fumbled through the symbols and shook my head. I wasn’t an idiot by any means, but magic wasn’t my strong suit. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but when you put them together it calls a person from, Tirn Aill. Isn’t that hell? We want the Banshee, not a daemon.”
Irulan wrinkled up her nose and sighed. “To the Fae that wrote these spells, this realm was hell. I don't think that there was much differentiation after the Great Divide.”
“This must be read aloud,” Dante mumbled, “While this one is silent and this one requires a focus. This spell is very elaborate.”
“Travel between the realms was forbidden for centuries. They had to be secretive or risk punishment from the High Kings, or worse,” Irulan said and leaned forward to rest on her palms. “Let me see that,” she motioned to one book. Dante complied, and she studied the pages, her head darting from one book to the other at least twenty times before she turned to another and slid the book back to him.
“What about that?” She tapped a symbol and smiled.
“That would…warp the first spell, calling someone inside this realm, maybe?” Dante sounded a tad unsure, but Irulan h
ad a wide smile on her face.
“Brilliant. I’m going to have to show you my library one day.” Ire said before slapping the table. “I can do it. I can get the Banshee wherever we want her.”
Dante grabbed a book and held it to his chest. “Wait a minute. This is for practical application? I had no idea. Mrs. Trumaine you can't. The magic is…”
“I can handle the magic, Dante. Why don't you and David take Rowan and get something to eat.”
“We’re not hungry,” David spoke up. “I know something is after our family. We came to help.”
“Are you crazy,” I yelped before I could stop myself. “You have no idea what you're talking about. You're just a kid!” There was no way in the hell either one of them was setting one foot outside of the Vault until both of those things were either pushing up daisies or back in the FaeLands, permanently.
David squared his shoulders and frowned at me. “I’m not just a kid; I’m a vampire and your son. I won't stand by while something threatens our family. I want to help.”
I couldn’t be angry with him for wanting to protect us, but the answer was no. I wasn’t going to be diplomatic in my delivery to spare his feeling. But Irulan was. She stepped between us and rests her hands on his shoulders. “You’ve already helped. The best thing that you can do for us is stay safe.”
“That’s not good enough, Ma,” he shook his head. David folded his arms across his chest and frowned at me and Irulan.
“It’s going to have to be, young man,” my father announced out of the blue.
Everyone in the room looked toward the door. Daddy was there, flanked by my three brothers and my mother. “We need to talk.”
“So do we,” Irulan offered. “I think we've come up with a way to bring the Banshee to us.”
Black Moon Rising (DarkLife Saga) Page 22