The push-pull of power made it difficult to think. Everything that was me—the sunstrider part of me—told me this place was befouled, a ruined land not worth saving. The land itself, and the wards of power baked into it, pushed me back, rejected me, told me I was not wanted here and never would be.
But that mote in my eye... Every so often, a spear of moonlight would slice across my path, and my body would thrum with delighted anticipation.
Light wavered through the trees, glinting off the low mists that curled through the deadfall on the ground. Not a natural light—nothing born of flames or electricity. It coalesced, thickening into a knot of silvery white deep within the center of the garden. The moonlit inverse of my rose garden.
Shadows of stones blackened the light like pox, figures moving in between them—none I recognized. Sonia, perhaps, with her waves of blonde hair swooping over her shoulders, trailed by a young man who might have been Michael the bodyguard, the way he attended to her. An older man, too. Shoulders hunched as he huddled over the support of a cane, a thick coat hiding the shape of his body. A breeze carried the watered-down scent of nightwalker we'd been picking up on the city's ghouls.
Above the ring of stones, the cloud cover cleared. I edged around the clearing, minding the brambles that tangled in the patches that the shadow of the oaks had not claimed. Seamus had allowed me to drink of his blood before he'd gone back to work for the evening, and so my body thrummed with power. His strange strength was a promise in my veins. A finite power, though. I must be careful, lest I strike too soon and drain away my abilities before I understood the whole of the situation. Patience would be my friend tonight.
And Basil Heywood's shotgun. That made a pretty good friend, too.
Footsteps crunched over the gravel walkway leading from the main house out to the garden. Talia and Raina raised their voices in idle chatter to draw attention. The heads of all gathered whipped around, Michael and Sonia turned toward the voices. She said something short to the older man and set off at a brisk pace to intercept the pair.
The garden was hemmed in iron fences lined by bramble bushes. Nothing tall—it wasn't a defensive structure—but the iron had bitten into the earth to keep the magic that swirled within the boundaries of the stones concentrated. I could clear it easily in one leap, but I waited, crouched behind the brambles with my body hidden by the overarching shadow of one of the taller stones, until Talia and Raina were close enough to distract the old man and Sonia.
The man seemed familiar. Curiosity tugged at me as I crept around the perimeter of the fence, trying to find a better angle that wouldn't risk revealing me. My breath caught. Though the coat hid the finer details of the man's body, his posture and bearing betrayed him. Head held high, stooped shoulders pushed back as far as he could force them to go. Even the man's hair, long and grey, had been plaited with an eye toward pride, the loose braid hiding the thinness of aging.
Ragnar. Ragnar Varangot, as an old man.
Impossible. We did not age. Our bodies remained locked into the flesh they were reborn within, forever held in stasis until the day we finally transmuted to nothing more than ash. Yet, no matter how many times I told myself what I saw could not be, my eyes did not lie. I sniffed the air. Ragnar. Reduced, yes, but Ragnar all the same.
Ragnar's silvery gaze caught the light as he cocked his head to listen to something, as if to drive home the point to my mind that he was still himself. Still nightwalker, and dangerous, no matter what had happened to his flesh.
Talia and Raina's chatter drifted close enough for me to pick up the words.
Raina was saying, "Nonsense. You've practically begged me to come and look at your treacherous little garden, and now that I'm here you won't let me see?"
Sonia, placating, "I know that you have knowledge of these things, so please understand that tonight is not a good night to examine the garden. If you would like to come back with a small party of your interested friends, then arrangements can be made, but tonight is no good."
"I want to see," Talia said, "and we've come all this way. Just let us take a quick stroll around, won't you? I can't possibly hurt anything."
"The energies in the area are very fickle..."
Talia. Ragnar would recognize her in an instant, and though he had aged, she would recognize him, too. The man who had murdered her boss. That could not happen. He would enjoy it too much.
Turning my back on the garden to shield the light, I pulled out my phone and texted Talia: LEAVE NOW.
Their footsteps came closer, Sonia switching from polite refusal to hesitant acceptance. I put my phone away and turned back to the garden, peering through the scraggly branches of the bramble vines. What was taking so long? Talia's phone hadn't vibrated yet, had she turned it off completely?
No hesitation, not even a pause as she fumbled her phone out of her pocket. Talia strode forward, a step behind Raina, Sonia facing them as she walked backwards, hands out, imploring them to come back another time—it would really be more spectacular than.
Turn around, I willed Talia. She crossed her arms over her stomach, defensive, and paused at the edge of garden while Sonia and Michael blocked the entrance. Good. If my message wouldn't send her back, then maybe they would succeed in turning them away.
"Honestly," Raina said, fixing Sonia with a hard stare. "You and I both know there's more to all of this than hedgewitches and ghouls. It's time you let me in on what you're really up to, and maybe I might feel in the right mood to help you. You're in over your head, Sonia."
She stiffened and stood up straighter, her placating hands snapping back to her sides. "Am I? You don't know half of the forces you toy with, just because you tripped over one of them."
Raina flashed a smile. "Haven't a clue what you mean."
Before Sonia could challenge her, Talia stepped forward. "You're the one who's clueless, Sonia. Now stop stalling, unless you're willing to admit that all you deal with here are cheap magic tricks."
Talia shoved past Sonia, who wobbled a moment on her heels until Michael steadied her. She swatted him away and turned around, intending to rush after Talia to stop her.
But Talia had already stopped. A few steps in from the wrought-iron gate, standing dead center in a pathway of bright, clear quartz gravel, the moonlight twisting around her ankles as if welcoming her into its fold, Talia was a pale as Luna herself. Though I don't think the moon had ever been so angry.
It took Ragnar a beat longer to place her, but when he did a slow chuckle rumbled up through him, wheezing slightly from the effects of age, but still the resonant baritone I remembered. He would not know her name, but he would know her face. The face of the woman who had stared him down while she struggled to rush all the other Sun Guard to safety. The face of the woman whose boss, whose mentor, he'd killed.
"You," she breathed out the word with such venom I expected a cloud of poison to slick from her lips.
"Who the hell is that?" Raina asked, shoving past Sonia to stand at Talia's side.
"We are but old friends," Ragnar rasped, taking a halting step toward her, his cane crunching against the gravel. He smiled at Raina a long moment before cocking his head to regard the flustered Sonia. "You have invited an agent of the Sun Guard into your garden."
"What?" She rounded on Talia as if she were a snake, but Talia, bless her, only had eyes for Ragnar. After what she'd seen at the estate, she should be screaming—running—melting into a sobbing puddle. But she stood straighter and canted her body forward as if she were just barely restraining herself from clawing his eyes out with her bare hands. This, from the woman who had almost fainted at the sight of blood on my clothes the first night we had met.
"Raina told you that you don't know what you're dealing with," Talia snapped.
Ragnar took another step toward her. Enough. I brought up the shotgun and fired.
Sixteen: A Mind Not Her Own
The birdshot, inlaid with gold, tore through the moonlit mist of the garden. Golden arc
s shredded the sky, leaving fiery trails through the coalesced magic. The whole garden lit up in a flash, and in that moment the magic bound to this plot of earth screamed out, enraged by the intrusion, a wave of revulsion washing over me as it tried desperately to repel my presence. I dropped to one knee, the shotgun cradled against my shoulder, and waited for the wave to pass.
Once it released me, I leapt the fence and brambles, dropping to a low crouch with my back to a stone and the shotgun braced and ready to fire. Ragnar hunched in the place where he had stood, bent halfway over himself, his cane discarded. His arms, muscular despite the withering of age, wrapped around his torso, black blood trickling from a half dozen tiny holes. The cheek closer to me had been ripped wide open, the touch of gold poisoning his flesh with a slow, searing burn that filled the air with the scent of rotten steaks over a fire.
He turned to me and smiled with the kind of tenderness one reserved for special pets and precious lovers.
"Ah, Magdalene. So good of you to visit."
Sonia stormed across the garden to stand near Ragnar, eyes narrow with rage. "Miss Shelley. Your involvement in these matters was not part of our agreement."
"We have no agreement," I said, standing, the shotgun leveled at Ragnar even though to fire at him would also hit the mortal woman. I didn't want to hit her, but I wanted even less to let Ragnar escape again.
"You gave me information regarding ghouls moving through the upper circles of London." I smiled at her, slow and sardonic. "Imagine where that led me."
All pretense of the overworked business woman just-trying-to-help drained away from her in an instant. She glanced between us all—Raina and Talia and me—then threw up her hands and laughed a short, staccato burst.
"Well. You are more persistent than I imagined."
Ragnar, gaze locked on me, spoke to Sonia. "You hired Magdalene?"
"Not precisely." She shrugged. "I might have nudged her in certain directions. Those low-class crèches were taking up far too much of her time. And if anyone was going to find Lucien for us, it was her."
My stomach boiled with rage, but I kept my smile easy, my gun leveled with intent. "He's your make, Ragnar. Have you lost control of all your flock with old age?"
The wound on his cheek stretched as he flexed his jaw. The flesh sagged, wrinkles giving way to crevasses filling in with poisoned blood. He poked at the hole with his tongue, the meaty tip visible through the wound.
"You never have been one to consider the consequences of your actions. I suppose I should thank you for your short-sightedness, it has always been so easy to get you to do as I wish. Why don't I introduce you to what you have wrought?"
His claws flashed, slicing three neat rows into Sonia's forearm. She hissed and drew back, covering the wound with her hand. Michael, impassive, offered a clean towel for her to staunch the bleeding. She glared daggers at Ragnar as he tipped his hand up, letting the blood run down his claws to pool in the palm of his hand.
"You could have warned me."
"My dear, if a little scratch puts you off our arrangement, you must endeavor to do some serious soul-seeking. Not that you're likely to enjoy what you discover."
"Sonia," I said, "step away from him."
She snort-laughed. "You think me a victim here? A chew toy of Ragnar's? Please, Miss Shelley, show me a little more respect than that. I know what it is I ally myself with. I only need him to finally uphold his end of our bargain."
"Quiet," Ragnar snapped.
"What bargain?"
"He's to make me like you." A smug smile split her face. "And I'm to find Lucien to bring back his ability to do so."
Understanding rocked me. When Lucien had taken my place in the circle of the Venefica's magic, he'd done more than keep Ragnar from becoming part sunstrider. He'd reversed the flow of the spell—an already inverted mess, thanks to the Venefica's nature—and with his presence drawn off some of Ragnar's power, making his sire somehow less of a nightwalker. Making him a man who could age, who could not pass on their dark gift to a new make. The watered-down scent on the ghouls was no fresh child of Ragnar's, but the man himself, diminished by the Venefica's twisted magic. And it had made Lucien something so much more, something we'd never seen before. An avatar of Luna.
"Sonia. Listen carefully to me," I said as I circled Ragnar, trying to achieve the cleanest angle I could with the shotgun. Long experience had taught me not to argue against the benefits of immortality with mortals hungry for that preservation, but I had other tacks to take. Betrayal was a language I was certain Sonia spoke. "Ragnar does not do favors. He does not make deals. He positions, and then he takes. I have known this man for hundreds of years, and not once has he dealt fairly, or upheld his promises, unless it suited him in some way terrible to the so-called benefactor."
She rolled her eyes. "I'm not an idiot mortal being puppeted by a greater master, Miss Shelley. I've done my research. Once Ragnar is restored and able to grant me the gift of immortality, I will be in his thrall for quite some time, something that will lessen with time. But he has no reason to destroy me, and it is death alone I fear. Or can you not smell the death on me already?"
Those last words snapped out with such venom they took me by surprise. Michael took a step back, startled. Just out of Ragnar's field of view, Talia caught the bodyguard's eye and motioned down low—come here. He did not so much as shake his head, he simply stood his ground. I wanted to scream at all three mortals to flee, but if they bolted it would only draw Ragnar's attention. That predator's eyes were sharp.
"You're sick," I said, not a question. Whatever was wrong with her I couldn't smell it, as she supposed, but I knew the desperation in her voice, the glazed determination that verged on madness which overcame her vision. A mortal on death's doorstep could be a very dangerous thing. I wished for Roisin or Maeve, or any of the other of my order who were better at talking with mortals than I was. This wasn't my territory.
"Sonia," Raina stepped forward, hands out as if she were approaching a wild dog. "You don't have to be his puppet." She flicked her gaze to Ragnar, who watched the mortal dramas play out before him with wry amusement. It was that detachment that I feared—the nightwalker ability to see all humans and their lives as lowly things, beneath contempt and useful only so far as they served your needs. My oath bade me protect, shelter, keep safe these small coals of fire, though they burn so briefly.
And a new sensation, all unwelcomed, the mote in my eye looking at Sonia in her fear, understanding that her mortal death was upon her unless my kin intervened, and being... disgusted. Revolted by the very sight of her desperation.
No. It was not Sonia's fault Ragnar had manipulated her fears to forge her into his ally. She was not beneath my contempt. She was not.
"There are other ways to make you well, whatever it is," Raina was saying.
"Doctors? Surgeons? The finest medicine in all the world? Are you here to promise me the resources of the rich mortal life, Raina? The 'good' doctors that can't be gotten without wait lists and donations large enough to build wings upon teaching hospitals? You don't even know—" She gripped the sides of her head and snarled.
"You don't even know what's wrong with me, and I have my own resources to bring to bear. They have already been used up and I can't—I can't stop, do you understand? I work all day and night, I fill my mind with thoughts not my own and load my veins with medication but still the thoughts come, and I cannot stop them, cannot ever stop them. Do you understand? Do you see how it is only a slim matter of time?"
Talia's expression softened in an instant, her arms dropping limp to her sides. "You're hearing voices?"
She bent over, wrapping her arms around her chest as if she could hold everything she was within and keep it all from leaking out. "Yes. God in heaven, yes."
"Sonia..." Talia stepped to Raina's side, holding out one half-curled hand. "Talk to us, please, but this... This isn't the way. It won't change what's inside you."
"My mind will be his
for those first years, don't you understand? In the thrall of someone else, I can be reforged. I can... I can be free of myself."
"What are you hearing?" I asked, recalling the deep sense of magic in the soil beneath our feet. I didn't have Roisin's nose for these things, but something about Sonia's panicked voice, her strained story, made me wonder—were these voices a psychological disturbance, or a magical one? If she had spent enough time on this ground, summoning spirits with her friends between the amplification of the stone circle, then something very well might have found its way into her mind.
"Enough of this." Ragnar flicked the blood that had pooled in the palm of his hand—Sonia's blood—into the moonlit mists that curled around our ankles. It sparkled, each droplet a diamond refracted over and over again by the ancient power that lurked beneath the ground. The scent of the blood overwhelmed me. My fangs extended of their own will, reacting to the amplified blood, my whole body thrumming with the desire to feed. If Lucien had tasted that blood before... There was no way he could not answer that call.
A howl broke the night, long and painful, raising the small hairs all over my body. He was coming. My monster.
I made eye contact with Talia and said, "Run."
Seventeen: Enough
Talia grabbed Raina's arm and ran, yanking the protesting aristocrat along behind her. Raina's shoes—impractical things with towering heels—flew off as Talia forced her at full speed down the gravel path, and after a few stumbling moments she reached down to grab the hem of her skirt and hike it up to free her knees, swinging her arms in rhythm with Talia as they sprinted. Ragnar's head whipped around, drawn by the sudden movement as any predator would be, but he let them go.
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