Well, that was interesting at the very least. Someone with money and power was moving amongst the higher echelons of mortals, either connecting them to nightwalkers, or as a nightwalker themselves. Such things weren't unknown to the Sun Guard, we always had a side eye locked on the rich of the world.
That much money and power can lead one to believe being immortal would be a good idea, making them easy marks for the nightwalkers, and poor picks for our order. But we had seen no sign of that in London, until this moment. Sonia's heartbeat was steady, she gave no indication that she was lying.
"Lest you think me a complete monster," she said, and pressed a button on her desk that buzzed softly. "Mary, bring in the list, please."
The door opposite the elevator swung open, and a young woman entered. She wore a tight tweed suit with heels far more practical than Sonia's and moved with brisk efficiency across the office. I tensed, fearing a shout of alarm when she spotted the sunstriders and our unnatural eyes, but she merely fired off two quick smiles to us and placed a slim envelope on the desk.
"The current list, as requested. Do you need anything else, Sonia?"
"That's all, thank you."
Sonia waited until Mary was out of the room, then carefully unwrapped the thin red string holding the envelope closed. She upended it, tapping it until a narrow sheet of thick paper fell into her hands, a handwritten list covering one side. Before she turned it around for us to see, she scanned it, the corners of her eyes crinkling in annoyance over one line in particular.
"This is a up-to-date list of all residences my people suspect of being ghoul crèches."
She placed the paper on her desk and slid it across to us. While the number of locations was concerning, the addresses themselves meant nothing to me. Judging by Roisin's soft, irritated snort, they didn't mean much to her, either.
"Thank you. We'll look into them," I said and reached for the paper.
Sonia's hand darted out and grabbed my wrist. A flicker of fear crossed her features, and her grip was iron-tight, but she mastered herself quickly enough and softened her faint scowl back into an easy smile.
"These are very exclusive addresses. Please be discrete."
I flashed her a fanged smile. "No promises."
Four: The Infection Within
Approaching the Durfort-Civrac estate broke my heart every time. It lay at the end of the road like a cracked-open ribcage, the front carved out and destroyed not only by the battle, but by the builders as they decided what could and could not stay while they repaired the ancient structure.
I dreaded this return, as I did every morning, for it brought only pain. The haunted ache in Emeline's eyes. The broken-down bodies of the Sun Guard. The accusatory stares of the other sunstriders.
And the memories of the night Ragnar had attacked our home, and all that came after.
Though we had taken the fight to Ragnar's hive after the assault, and burned it when we were through, the fire could not cleanse us of what we had seen. The hollows of his hive had twisted down into the bedrock of London, gnarled roots of corruption clutching at the soil as every branching pathway led to one horror after another.
The Venefica's doing, that sorceress of my ancient bloodline. Endless experiments by Ragnar and that witch in his quest to use his powers under the light of day. In her quest to fulfill her oath to me and unleash herself to do as she pleased throughout the world.
We took notes. We recorded it all. And in the end, Emeline bade us lock the notebooks away for future generations—there was no way we would ever forget—and burn the hive. Burn it all.
For our dead, we did what we could. For those sunstriders locked in stasis, we interred them as we would the sleeping. Maeve claimed it was only a matter of time until the Venefica's spell wore off, and they woke with fresh eyes. We believed her, though she fidgeted every time she said it, and tried not to count when we met each other's eyes. But we did anyway. Of course we did.
Nine. Nine sunstriders, in all the world, left standing.
Coteries broken—only Roisin and I left of ours, Sebastian's fate lost to us as he was not among the bodies of the hive—singles and doubles, fragmented alliances. Not a whole coterie among us. Not a whole heart, either. Possibly never again.
The halls of the Durfort-Civrac estate rang empty under the echo of the builder's hammers, as they coaxed the structure into resurrection. Stitching the bones of stone back together, while we lived in vestigial pockets attached by raw sinew. The air laid heavy with the tannic bite of Maeve's enspelled tea as she brewed cup after cup to send the builders home with vague memories of restoration, instead of morbid nightmares of twisted bones and stains which could not be rust.
We sunstriders gathered in the library with the dawn, worn and torn, blood of many origins staining our clothes in flicks and bursts. Grime encrusted our bodies. Sweat—not our own—hung heavy and stale in the air. And though the others met my eye, and though they treated me as redeemed—I had slept the oubliette, after all—a flicker of accusation always remained.
Your fault.
My fault. And it was, there was no denying such. For I had dared to love a mortal while the sunstrider power was still young in my veins, and when we'd danced upon a cliff overlooking the sea I had faltered—had failed to notice when he'd taken too long to return.
And when I'd found him again, scenting the trail of his body, of his life's blood, down to the sea, it had been too late. Far too late. For Ragnar had already bled him dry, and Lucien lay contorted on the sand, struggling against himself as Ragnar's tainted blood strangled him back to unlife.
It could have ended there, in that moment. The tragedy of my weakness wiped clean. Ragnar had been younger, and vulnerable. And Lucien... Lucien would have been as easy for me to kill as it is for a mortal to step on an ant.
But I couldn't. Some blood... some blood I cannot shed, I learned in that instant. And I had bent, to soothe my grief, and done as Ragnar bade and summoned the Venefica from the sea to fix Lucien. To fix me.
In bending to my desperation, I became unworthy of repair.
The oubliette had been meant to wipe my crimes clean, to bury the history of my failure in atonement, but that crime echoed through the centuries. So long as Ragnar worked the Venefica's magic against us, the others must know why. I saw that knowledge in their golden stares, saw the way their bodies tensed when they noted the silver mote staining my eye, and wondered if they'd ever count me as one of them again.
The remaining members of the Sun Guard filtered in after us. Emeline, last of all, her glass-pale eyes like the thin layer of broken ice across a killing-cold lake. And yet, she stood tall, neatly presented in a slim black dress and modest penny loafers, her hair coiffed, and her chin tipped up in challenge.
"We have stood the night watch," she began, as she had begun all of these meetings since her mother's death under Ragnar's claws, with the Sun Guard's ritual words for acknowledging a war. "And now the dawn rewards our strength."
We tilted our heads up to bask in the warm light of day filtering through the cracked glass cupola. The mortals closed their eyes, letting the warmth seep into them, but we sunstriders stared hard at the burning rays, our eyes kin to the light and therefore protected. Though the broken glass had long since been swept from the floor, the jagged maw of the cupola remained damaged. A low priority, all things considered. Ancient wards kept the rain and elements out of the library, and so the room appeared open to the vault of the sky, broken teeth of glass edging it all around.
My blood stained those glass teeth, for it had been I who sprung through the dome, desperate to save Roisin when Ragnar had taken her. I had not succeeded, not in that attempt, and the rusty smears of old blood spoke to me, always of failure. Of my inability to control my impulses, of my willingness to throw myself upon the fire without thought.
Every time I looked at those shards I felt them dig into me, pierce the core of what I thought of as myself. No brave, strong, warrior of the ligh
t had leapt through that glass. A desperate, worn, and mind-broken woman had.
The actions had been hundreds of years apart, but it pained me how much the woman I had been in that moment looked like the woman who had summoned the Venefica.
I wondered what Roisin saw when she looked at that glass, but I never asked. I told myself it would be silly, that our relationship was not built on that kind of sharing. In truth, I was afraid to know that she saw what I did. As the only one of the sunstriders who did not look at me with betrayal, I could not bear to see a crack in that veneer.
The silent moment passed, and we turned our attentions back to one another. Emeline inclined her head to Seamus, who still had his earpiece in and had glanced away from his tablet only long enough to regard the sun with the rest of us. "Report, please, Mr. Canavan. How many?"
"Three crèches identified and sterilized last night, with another possible seven identified by suspicious CCTV footage."
"Seven?" Talia squeaked, then put a hand over her mouth as Emeline sliced her a look. A new crèche or two a night was normal. Anything upward of four was extraordinary.
"Yeah." Seamus scratched the front of his neck. "I mean, I could be wrong, but Kira—" He nodded to one of the IT workers who had worked at another Sun Guard house before they were all attacked and forced to gather here at the estate of our leader. "—worked up this new algo to cross-check footage of confirmed crèches against footage from all over the city. The footage quality is shite, though. Grainy, and those cameras are old. We have to send people to check them out in person."
"But you don't believe the number is incorrect," Emeline said.
He nodded. "I looked at the places the algo flagged. I think they're right."
"Any sign of the targets?" Lucien. Ragnar.
"No. Not yet. Sorry. I keep getting glimpses of someone moving around the crèches but they're good, probably aware we're using the network. Here." He flicked at the tablet and then turned it around, swiveling slowly so that all the gathered sunstriders could see.
A black shape moved across the grainy field of black and white footage. A hint of a hip, the harsh angularity of an elbow—the suggestion of a head, and perhaps flowing hair, then gone in a blink, dissolved into oily mists.
"One must be powerful to maintain a semi-corporeal form. They must be ancient." Alec, a bookish sunstrider I had not known before I found him sleeping in Ragnar's hive, stepped forward. The man had the angular face of a deep-water fish, his thin lips constantly tugged back by the width of his jaw. His human mouth had been forced to grow to adjust to his fangs. Though undeath had washed some color from his cheeks, he had the brown-red glow of a man who grew up on the plains of the steppe.
"It cannot be Ragnar," I said carefully, feeling all the gazes of my brethren shift to me. Light, how much I had longed for their return when I had been alone in the world, and now their very presence shamed me. "He was severely injured in our last encounter. I am only certain he survived because I have scented his presence on newly-made ghouls."
"Lucien is too young," Julian said. He was one of the youngest sunstriders, and always quick to support whatever research Alec dug up. I couldn't blame him. Now that they were awake, the younger members were so very eager to do something.
I licked my lips. "Yes and no. He is the most recent nightwalker we know of, that is true, but he is not without his powers. I fought him when he took Eleanor—" I nodded to the sunstrider I had interrupted him kidnapping at Chatham House. "—and he was quite strong then. Ragnar trained him well. And that night at the hive... There is no telling what the Venefica's spell did to him. He dissolved into smoke, and took Ragnar with him. I would have thought such a trick beyond his powers until that moment."
Alec gave Julian a side-eye and rubbed his jaw with his thumb, considering Lucien's fate as if he were a specimen pinned beneath his microscope. I swallowed an angry outburst, and let him speak. "It is possible. And there could be a younger turn of Ragnar's we don't know about."
The sunstriders murmured quietly amongst themselves. The diluted scent of nightwalker on the ghouls had lead to much speculation on their maker.
"I have been digging through the annals," Emeline said, to cut short what appeared to be a brewing argument. "I have yet to find records of another turn of Ragnar's. But—" She cut us a look, stemming conjecture. "—I have merely scratched the surface of our research, and he may have made one recently."
"There is another lead," I said carefully. "The woman I spoke with tonight, Sonia Rossi, had a great many things to say about ghouls infiltrating her social circles. These are not crèches, as we know them. These are the rich and powerful of London, and I believe they must still be in contact with a nightwalker to maintain their status—and sanity—in public. For all the ghouls released across the city to keep us busy, I don't believe we were meant to find these. At least, not so soon."
I handed the sheaf of paper Sonia had printed out for me to Talia, who skimmed the addresses hungrily. After a moment, she swallowed. "These are all Kensington addresses."
Seamus whistled low. "No wonder we didn't catch it. That neighborhood has kept the CCTV cameras out, and they're not the kind of people you'd bump into down at the shops."
"We must get eyes on the situation," Emeline said.
"It's my lead. I'll follow it up," I offered, catching Roisin's eye to be sure she would nod, subtly, to agree with me.
"No." Emeline shook her head. "If these people are in contact with a nightwalker then they will either know you by appearance, or be able to mark a sunstrider by their eyes and scent. It must be a mortal who makes first contact, and one who is not unknown to them." She tugged her dress straight. "It must be me."
"Absolutely not," I snapped out the words before I could think, images of her mother crowding my mind. Brave Adelia, lying dead at my feet after sacrificing herself to save her daughter. I could not let Emeline stroll into a possible hive. The dishonor to Adelia's memory would be too much. Luckily, I had other reasons. Ones she would have to listen to.
"If they know of me, then they'd know of you. Their suspicions would mount the instant you stepped through the door."
"We have no other," Emeline countered. "These people do not welcome new money, at least not well enough to let their vulnerabilities show."
"There's me," Talia said, her voice soft as she curled the corner of the paper between two fingers.
"No," Emeline said. "You are not a field agent."
"Right. So they don't know who I am. Ragnar saw me when he came here, but he wouldn't bother to describe a simple mortal to his hive. And they wouldn't blink if I showed up at one of the weekend parties. I get invitations all the time."
Seamus stared at her as if she'd sprouted two heads. "What the hell?"
"I'm a Locke," she said, quietly.
A common enough name, I thought, and then I recalled the many Locke Banking buildings I had seen all across the city, and my eyebrows shot up.
"Interesting," I said. She flushed.
"I can do this, Miss Emeline." Talia clutched the papers against her chest. "I want to help."
"If you go in, you're not going in alone," she said, and with that concession I knew the decision had already been made.
"I can help with that," Maeve piped up and wiggled her fingers at me. "Put a little glamour on Mags here so they can't sniff her out. Can't do anything about the eyes, though."
"I'll stay hidden."
A commotion in the broken foyer reached us. I craned my neck, recognizing the voice if not the words themselves. DeShawn Culver had barged into the construction zone and was being scolded by a builder for getting too close to a hardhat-only area. The consternation twisting up his face made me smile.
It'd been awhile since I smiled.
Emeline sighed, a low sound that pushed out her lips and carved the lines around the hollows of her cheeks even deeper. "You're all dismissed," she said. "Get some rest, restore yourselves in light and blood. We fight again with
the dusk."
They saluted her one by one, and while a few of the mortal guard stopped to chat with DeShawn, the sunstriders ignored him as they drifted up to their rooms and private conferences. To them, DeShawn was an anomaly to be excised, a pebble stuck in their shoes. He was not Sun Guard, and he was not sunstrider, and therefore he was of no importance to our order.
They failed, as I had done upon first meeting him—and, admittedly, still did on occasion—to understand the power he wielded. Times had changed, as the saying went, and the modern forces of law were not the flimsy things they once were compared to us. Still, I might have brushed DeShawn aside as a vain man full of bravado, if he hadn't stood with us at the estate. If he hadn't turned the tables in Ragnar's hive.
Annoying, yes, but brave.
"Emeline!" He shouted as he strode through the library doors. Roisin had left to seek her rest, but I lingered, intrigued by his presence.
"It is Miss Durfort-Civrac, or Miss Emeline, if you must."
He winced. "Right, sorry, Miss. We gotta talk."
"And what is it this time?"
Catching the sunlight glancing off her sunken cheeks—her skin nearly translucent from lack of rest—I wondered, did she sleep? When did our leader rest?
"My boss ain't happy," he said. "She thinks the veil is crumbling all around us and any night now we'll open our doors to a hell-scape of blood and fire."
It was Emeline's turn to wince. "And which boss is this?"
He licked his lips. "Her Royal Majesty."
She hissed a breath. "Come to my office. We must talk."
Five: Weight of Ages
While DeShawn and Emeline retreated to hash out their problems, I showered and changed. Then I stood in the sunlight upon my balcony and basked in the warmth, letting the strength of my mistress flow through me. Though we tended to personify our elements—sun and gold, moon and silver—and ascribe to them personalities, foibles, I could not help but wonder if this was folly. If the beings we viewed as our makers were little more than forces of nature in the world, like gravity or rain.
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