Her lips curled back to reveal her fangs, fully extended, her eyes a molten gold so bright it nearly seared my vision with spots to look into them. Every one of her muscles was tight as steel beneath my fingers, her whole body an over-twisted spring.
The wind howled higher, the leaves rustled themselves at us like the admonishing shake of a finger. I held on, fingers digging into her skin.
She shook herself like a dog and snapped her mouth shut. "Thank you."
"Guys," Seamus said into our earpieces, "we've got Maeve. I'm coming. Ten minutes, max. Hang on."
"Miss Shelley, Miss Quinn." Emeline came onto the line. With my hands on Roisin's shoulders, I felt her loosen as her attention shifted to our boss's voice. "I've rerouted all other sunstriders to your location. DeShawn, too, is sending his agents. Ghouls clog our path, but we are coming. Hold fast."
The shadows reached for us. Black shapes of branches crawled across the ground like claws, scrabbling over the broken dirt-and-rock terrain. Roisin and I pressed our backs against the wall, breaking apart from each other, flanking either side of the window as the shadows stretched, and stretched.
Roisin had not seen Lucien shatter at the seams and vanish into blackness, but I had, and as those spears of nothing scraped across the ground toward us my body responded with raw fear, heart pounding, claws extending.
What little moonlight sieved through the thick mass of clouds pressed down on my shoulders—not an unwelcome pressure. I recalled what Lucien had said, his fears that while the power rode him it was something other than Luna that waited for him. I wanted nothing more than to spring away from whatever this evil was, spilled like ink across already cursed ground.
The darkness snapped into place. The world lurched sideways, my perspective skewing, as in a breath the shadows of the trees were merely shadows again. That unseen thickness, that burgeoning presence, now came from within the house.
I turned, peering through the slit we'd found in the curtains, and caught my breath.
Ragnar loomed at the head of the room. He was clad in shadow, fragments like black shells snapped onto his body and fraying out at the edges as they had on Lucien, but not so frantic, not so crawling. These pieces were under his control—all of his strength was under his control—and his eyes... At first I'd thought his pupils had blown as Lucien's had, but it was only his irises, widened beyond anything natural, swirling with a mix of Luna's antique silver and the char-blacked smoke of a forge. When he smiled, his too-wide jaw revealed fangs to rival a jaguar's, massive but well-formed, not the horrible maw of teeth that had ruined Lucien's mouth.
His hands were in his pockets, his shoulders rolled back with casual ease. A predator standing in a flock of prey, knowing he was at his leisure to take his pick. Four figures flanked him—all men—and though everything that was Ragnar overrode my senses something about the way they stood, the pallor underlying their cheeks, told me they were nightwalkers. Not the weak creatures he'd made while he'd been aging, trying to recapture his power, but real, strong nightwalkers. Soldiers for his army.
Ragnar was back. Sun take him.
"You're late," Raina said, all smooth indifference. She half-turned to regard him, one arm thrown over the back of the chair and the other resting on the table. Tension tented her fingers on the tabletop. Not so fearless, after all.
"I've been exploring." His hair, returned to is lustrous blond, fell across his cheek as he turned his head to examine the soldiers standing beside him. "And recruiting, as it were."
Raina's chair shoved back as she stood to face him. "We were to be your first turns. That was the bargain of your restoration."
His smile turned briefly into a sneer, a flash of the madness I knew lurked beneath his calm surface. While he could appear smooth as a glacial lake, Ragnar was all turbulent waters.
"A restoration that you put off until you lost Lucien. Do not lie to me, woman. I've plumbed the mind of my make. He hid beneath your roof. You hid my power from me."
"Don't sound so wounded." She stalked forward, and I exchanged a glance with Roisin. This woman was far too confident to be standing face-to-face with Ragnar and scolding him while she was little more than mortal. "We knew not yet how to restore your power. Making Lucien believe I was his ally would have made things easier—" She shot a look over her shoulder. "—if Sonia had not intervened."
Sonia snorted and flicked a long wave of hair over her shoulder. "Lucien wasn't your pet to keep. And you must admit, the results were worth the turmoil. Ragnar is restored, and we've seen the Sun Guard in action. They're divided and unable to mount any real defense. We shall be perfectly safe once we make the turn."
Ragnar's gaze shifted to Sonia. "You believe yourself safe from the Sun Guard because they are in temporary disarray?" He chuckled, shaking his head. "That order has been a thorn in my side for thousands of years. If Magdalene had not seen fit to restore me for the sake of her lover, then I would have been dead at their hands long before you ever called this meeting.
"I would not have survived that night in the garden, do you understand? Lucien is our only leverage, and through him, Magdalene. And that lever will break, if you scheming witches keep meddling in their affairs and pushing too hard."
"Not our only lever," Raina said with a cocky smile and turned, extending a hand languidly to point at Talia. "I believe you two know each other."
Ragnar stutter-stepped to the opposite side of the table from Talia, standing directly beside Irina. The surrounding shadows shuddered from the use of power, cracks showing in the eternal blackness as crevasses of grey. His power was not so great that he could hold it all together at once. Despite his proud words, Ragnar was not yet whole. Hence the soldiers, no doubt.
He pressed both palms on the table, his long black claws scraping the wood, and peered at Talia. Everything in me wanted to burst through the window and come between them. My blood screamed for intervention, to become a wall between that mortal and the death she faced down.
But it was not the drumbeat of my oath. My urge to act didn't come from my leash, but from my choices. Talia was my friend. I would not see her harmed.
She sat straight, but not tensely, and let her hands rest easily on the tabletop as she met Ragnar's gaze and held it, unflinching. After a moment that seemed to last ages, he cracked a small, pleased smile.
"You came to the garden, but you were also the woman who led the mortals down the stairs."
"I was," she said without a hint of warble in her voice.
"You're a brave woman. You stood before me while I raged and did not back down. Why?"
She licked her lips. "Do not think I am fearless, Mr. Varangot. I sit before you terrified—truly—my heart leaps into my throat every time you glance my way. I know what you are, know better than these women, for I have seen not only your path of destruction, but the pain it leaves behind.
"When I stood between you and my colleagues on those stairs, I knew only one thing—that I would fail. That you would cut me down. I only hoped to buy time for those I protected. It was luck alone that Miss Shelley drew your attention away from me when she did. You terrify me. I'm sure that pleases you."
He threw back his head and laughed, clapping once in front of his chest. "Now this is bravery. You did a better job than I had hoped you would in vetting our applicants, Raina. You brought me one with real teeth."
Raina's smile widened and she looked upon Talia with pride. She parted her lips to speak, but Ragnar cut her off by snapping out a hand and clenching his fist.
"You may have also been a damned fool. In bringing me the brave, you brought me the dangerous. Why are you here, Talia?" He strolled around the table, watching her over his shoulder as he scraped one claw across the table's surface. "Brave soldier of the Sun Guard, why do you wish to embrace the night?"
She took in a breath, pushing her shoulders back, preparing herself to lie to save her life. My own hands clenched in anticipation. Come on, Talia. You sweet gibbering girl with
your nose buried in logistics and your driving rights stripped away for terrible performance. Come on. Lie. Lie to Ragnar and make him believe it.
"My order is flawed," she began. Good, starting with a truth was always the easiest way to back into a lie. "I admire many aspects of it, but ultimately I do not believe... Well. I do not believe we will win." Gods, she was telling the truth. She genuinely did not believe the Sun Guard would win against the night. My heart ached, but she took a breath and continued. "I want to win, Ragnar. If the world is to be devoured, then I wish to be on the side doing the devouring."
There, that was the lie—too quick, maybe too much. Could he really believe that this woman, who had stood before him facing certain death to protect her allies, would turn against her duty to save her own skin in the end times? I wouldn't have believed her—but then, I knew her. Had seen, when Adelia lay dead at our feet, something solidify within her. Some deep resolve that had nothing at all to do with pain and everything in the world to do with vengeance.
Talia, who had squealed in shock when she'd first seen me on her doorstep. Who'd covered my eyes with sunglasses and mooned over the loveliness of my hair. Who'd put her nose into all our business, and then done her best to organize it so that our lives would be easier.
Could she really convince this man, this monster, that she craved the preservation of the dark?
But she was also the Talia who, in stepping out of Ben's car to approach Raina's house, had reminded me of nothing less than a warrior marching to battle. Talia, though still herself, had been forged in the ashes of the Durfort-Civrac estate. Case-hardened.
She lifted her chin to meet Ragnar's gaze, her lips a flat line of defiance, her body so still she appeared undead already.
My instincts split, a war roiling in my mind:
Leap, and thrust that monster away from her. He was so close. Could spear her on his claws in a breath.
Stay. Trust. Believe in Talia, as she had believed in all of us.
I stayed.
"You beautiful child." Ragnar's claws stroked the line of her jaw. Forcing her head up higher, her neck exposed, the collar of her crewneck-cut dress doing little to hide the pale pulse of her throat. "You shall be my first protégé since Lucien."
His claws slipped around the back of her head and lifted her, light as ash, from the chair. Her arms went slack, her legs kicking out in surprise as he dragged her against him, bent his head over her neck, and bit deep.
Thirty-two: Circles of Stone
Talia's gasp of pain and fear consumed my world. The other women were shouting—jealousy and anger, bitter words for Talia for being chosen first—but they were irrelevant.
Glass shattered around me—around Roisin—as we burst through the window, to hell with going around to the door. The broken glass bothered us not at all. One woman screamed. The others shouted, recoiled from the rain of tiny knives, shoving chairs and tables.
Ragnar pulled back from Talia's throat, crimson blood trickling down her neck to stain her collar. She twisted, trying to break his grip, but he tightened his clawed hold on her as his gaze—glassy from bloodlust—whipped around to me. His lips parted in a red smear of a smile.
A film of power clung to me, a cobweb-like sensation I could not see—the trigger of a spell, but broken. Warping spread across the world, dizzying my vision, making me stumble sideways. I snapped out a hand to brace myself against the white plaster wall but touched stone, cold and grey. The entire world was grey, or turning thus.
Where once warm carpeted floors and white walls stood, floors of decaying dirt forced themselves into being, the walls shuddering as they transmuted back to their broken-tooth, granite reality. The ceiling vanished, having given in to weather and ruin long ago, nothing but a shelf of clouds above our heads, allowing moonlight to spill into the candlelit space. At least the table had been real.
"What is this place?" Roisin demanded.
Sigils flared into life all around us, engraved upon the stone walls. Pale, silvery blue runes of ancient power awakening with a burst like a static charge. Roisin's hair lifted, and the nape of my neck tingled.
"My home," Raina said, amused. She appeared far too calm for a woman whose supposed house was just reduced to rubble. Her friends—those Daughters of the Moon who sought immortality at Ragnar's hands—scrambled from their seats and clustered together, eyes wide as they took in the glowing marks all around them. They hadn't known. Dupes, all of us, in Raina and Sonia's games.
"My family spent quite a long time sanctifying this ground." Her gaze snapped on Roisin. "It is not for your kind."
A sense of being watched washed over me, the sudden attention sending a shiver down my spine.
"The stone circle of power isn't in the garden," I said, the realization coming too slow as electric eddies of power washed around me, illuminating the dust, twisting through the mist that flowed thick as an icy river around us all. "This is the circle. The house."
"Could hardly let something of real power rest out in the open like that." She tipped her head toward the garden and smiled.
"Your presence is not wanted here," Sonia told me, as if I had intruded upon a private business meeting and was being quite rude. "Please leave."
Roisin laughed and drew a gun from its holster. "Not happening, sweetheart," she cooed, and leveled her weapon at Ragnar. "Release the girl."
"She wants this. A wiser woman than you."
"Like hell. I was just stalling." Talia thrust her knee into his solar plexus.
He dropped her, letting out a whooping cough that transitioned quickly into a sharp laugh. She turned on her heel, shoved her chair out of the way—and then was back in Ragnar's grasp, his claws lashing like straps around her thin throat.
"A valiant attempt," he said, rubbing his chest where she'd connected with his free hand. She twisted around, jabbing two fingers at his eyes. He snatched her wrists together and held her tight, lowering her hands so they rested against her belly. "But your friend Magdalene was kind enough to restore me to my full strength. A blow from a mortal is little more than a flea-bite to me."
"Really?" She forced the words out between gasps for breath. "How small is this?"
She drove her knee into his groin.
He tightened his grip on her neck, her eyes bulging as the veins on her throat stood out. Ragnar bent over, dropping her hands to cover himself. Gasping for breath, she tangled her fingers in his hair and yanked down, driving his forehead into her knee. Ragnar roared—not in pain, but in annoyance.
"You worthless gnat," he hissed, and bit down hard on her neck. Talia's body jerked once. The hypnotism of the bite took over after that, stilling her mind and her hands.
Roisin fired, but did not have a clear shot, and so the bullet went wide, scraping Ragnar's arm. He hissed and turned away, covering Talia's body with his own. To shoot him would be to shoot her. Roisin swore.
The gunshot sent a chorus of screams through the Daughters of the Moon—their last straw, apparently. All but Sonia and Raina bolted for the exits, stumbling over their own feet as they tried to find their way through this new place and it's broken, maze-like walls.
"Cowards!" Sonia shouted after them.
Roisin and I moved as one. She came at him from head-on, along the side of the table, while I leapt to the table's surface and closed the distance to him from the flank.
"This is what we want," Raina snarled at me, tossing a candlestick that bounced off my hip and spilled a streak of wax across the table that immediately left a trail of fire. "Let us have our eternity!"
The trouble with mortal passions was how easily they could cling to deceitful notions. Roisin was almost to Ragnar. I whirled around to face Raina, standing tall, the strength of Seamus's blood pounding through me. And, yes, the strength of Luna—slim for me though it was—thundering through my veins. Fangs extended, claws spread, I let the hellish blue glow of the runes crackle across my skin, giving me a corpse-like cast.
"We are monster
s, Raina, never forget it."
Her fingers curled as if she could will them into sprouting claws of their own. "Forget?" Her laugh was low, strained... Familiar. "I am not the one who forgets."
Power crackled along her arms, streams like thin lightning coursing the length of her body. Wrong. Something was wrong. Raina was mortal, I was sure of it. I had stood so very close to her on multiple occasions and caught no scent of power. Yet power strong enough to gather the forces she called should have been evident even to my dull magic senses.
Talia moaned.
I whipped around and lunged for Ragnar—to hell with caution. A cold body slammed into me. One of Ragnar's soldiers. He took me at the waist and slammed me into the table, cracking the wood. Candelabras flew up all around us, spilling flame and wax. Hot lashes burnt my arms, crackled across my cheek.
Not-quite-dead breath hissed across my face and the man dug his elbow into my ribs, already twisting one of my arms up as he worked to keep me pinned. But his strength was only a shade past mortal. I coiled one leg beneath him and kicked out. He flung free, wrenching my arm painfully in the process, and hit the wall opposite.
Another was on me before I could even get to a crouch, his knife slashing at my chest, cutting a wide slice across my clavicle. I hissed and drew back, scrabbling against the table, and dipped my hand into flame.
I rolled away, trying to angle toward Ragnar, but crashed into a waiting soldier, his sneer jubilant as he plunged a silver-tainted dagger into my shoulder.
Neophyte nightwalkers. Simple enough one-on-one. Quite a problem in greater numbers.
Thirty-three: Old Friends
A flash of copper hair above was all the warning my attacker had. Roisin dug her claws into the man's shoulder and flung him away. He crashed into the wall, splatting like a fly. Roisin curled her lip in distaste and plucked the dagger from my shoulder, then handed it to me handle-out.
"Nightwalkers," she said—meaning, I'll handle those.
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