by Anne Bishop
She narrowed her eyes. “Whose blood?”
He gave her a smile that had her pressing into the bed. “That depends on whether a certain Lady thinks you look peaky. I strongly recommend not draining yourself to the point of looking peaky.”
“Mother Night.”
“And may the Darkness be merciful.” Saetan shifted so he no longer pinned her. “But as I said earlier, you should be grateful you never had Ebony-strength blood poured down your throat.” He rolled out of bed. “All right, witchling. Nurian will be back before sunup to take a look at your legs, but she already confirmed that her shields will keep everything protected so you can have a bath beforehand. I expect Daemon and Lucivar to arrive before sunup as well, since they both know you’ll need to sleep during the daylight hours. Karla’s wheeled chair was left outside the room. You can use that until we can arrange to have one built for you.”
“But you said I could air walk!” She didn’t want to be seen in a chair like that, didn’t want her sons thinking about the parts of her legs that weren’t there.
Saetan gave her a dry look. “It’s like anything else, Sylvia. There needs to be a balance between using Craft to move around and using your body. The wheeled chair is practical.” He snarled softly as he came around to her side of the bed. “You were not a vain woman when you were alive. You are not going to become vain now that you’re dead.”
Her mouth was still hanging open and her brain was still trying to think of a reply when he flung back the covers, picked her up, and took her into the bathroom.
Ignoring the breakfast breads, ham, and fruit that had been set out for him and Lucivar, Daemon poured himself a second cup of coffee and sat back.
“Let’s begin with the simple and work up to the nasty,” he said.
“Why is Sylvia glaring at me?” Lucivar asked Saetan. “It was only a few drops of Red added to the yarbarah. It’s not like I opened a vein and poured Ebon-gray down her throat. I added a few drops to your glass too, and you aren’t acting bitchy about it.”
“I’m going to overlook that poor choice of words,” Saetan replied, giving Lucivar a look that said, Say another word and I’ll kick your ass. “Prince Sadi, please report.”
“As I told you last night, Mikal is upset, but he’s fine except for the bruises Tildee’s teeth made on his arm. He and Tildee are staying with Tersa for the time being.”
“I thought my father might want to take him,” Sylvia said, her voice troubled.
Are you hoping he’ll take them, or are you hoping someone will step in and prevent that arrangement? Daemon wondered. Something wasn’t right between grandfather and grandsons, but he wasn’t going to wade into that family quarrel unless Jaenelle wanted him to. “Right now, Mikal has Tildee, Ladvarian, and Jaal protecting him. Your father might be willing to argue with two Scelties, but I don’t think he’ll want to deal with a tiger. So Mikal stays with Tersa, since her response to finding Jaal in her parlor was to send Ladvarian out to buy more milk.”
“And Beron?” Sylvia asked.
Lucivar gave her that lazy, arrogant smile. “He remembered more of his training than you did. But I guess I’ll overlook that, since you’re all weak and helpless now.”
*The Prick sure does know how to rile up women,* Daemon told Saetan as they watched Sylvia change from wounded, vulnerable woman into a pissed-off Queen. *Think she’ll go for his balls?*
*I locked the wheels on her chair after I tasted the yarbarah,* Saetan replied.
“Beron is wounded,” Daemon said. “He’ll need several days of rest and care to fully heal, but he will heal. He’ll stay at the Hall with us until this is settled. He’ll be well protected there. Nothing will get past Kaelas—or me.”
Sylvia looked at each of the men. “Why so much protection? The trouble is in the southern part of Dhemlan, not in Halaway.”
They had reached the nasty part of this report. “We brought Haeze back to the Hall last night. After talking with Rainier this morning, I’m glad I made that choice.” Daemon took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “A Warlord in Little Terreille has been preying on young boys for the past few years. There is even a story whispered in schools near Goth about No Face, a Warlord who tortures and kills boys who slip out at night instead of staying home as they should.” No Face indulged in physical, sexual, and emotional torture, but Daemon saw no reason to tell Sylvia what had been intended for her younger son.
“No Face.” Sylvia turned her hand palm up and stared at her fingers. “He had some kind of mesh covering his face. I thought my fingers were ripped up by it when I was fighting him.”
Saetan cleared his throat. “Nurian was able to heal your fingers before the flesh could no longer respond like it was still living.”
He broke his own rules in order to repair her body this much, Daemon thought. He won’t regret that decision, but he isn’t comfortable with having made that choice. “Some of No Face’s victims might have made the transition to cildru dyathe, but more likely, he used them up and made the final kill so there wouldn’t be anyone to bear witness against him.”
“Until now,” Saetan said too softly. “The cildru dyathe who have reached Hell in the past few weeks ...” He didn’t glance at Sylvia, but Daemon understood why his father chose not to continue. “The last one was a boy from Dhemlan. Something I wanted to discuss with you, Daemon.”
*Was he mutilated?* Daemon asked on a Black thread.
*Yes.*
“No Face has either grown careless or too confident,” Daemon began.
“Or bored,” Lucivar said, breaking in.
Daemon nodded. “Or bored. The bastard shifted his hunting ground to villages near the Dhemlan border. All of a sudden, village guards in Little Terreille were paying attention and responding faster when a child disappeared. More of a challenge for him, and far more exciting.”
“Then he made the mistake of straying over the border into Dhemlan.” Lucivar helped himself to one of the breakfast breads. “He sees a brown-skinned child and forgets that the Dhemlan people are a long-lived race, and that child probably has lived as many years—or more— than him. That means the child is a little more mature in some ways than other children and may not be as easy to grab. Combine that with an adolescent male who had the luck to become friends with the Queen of Halaway’s son, and the bastard has more trouble than he’s prepared to meet.”
“Haeze soaked in the weapons lessons Lucivar gave the boys, and used his spending money to buy a knife,” Daemon said. “When the District Queen makes some pointed inquiries, I suspect she’ll discover more than one child has gone missing from that village before Haeze came to visit Beron.”
“He wanted to learn to protect himself,” Saetan said.
“More likely, to protect his younger brother,” Lucivar said. “Like Beron, Haeze is too old to be of interest to No Face.”
Daemon glanced at his father. The look in Saetan’s eyes was enough to confirm the age of the children who had reached Hell.
“The invitation,” Sylvia whispered. “The house party was a ruse to bring Mikal within reach. Why lure a boy who lives in a distant village instead of hunting one within reach?”
“We think No Face blames your family for his death and the inconvenience that comes with the physical death,” Daemon said. “Haeze’s younger brother was the intended prey. But when No Face attacked, Haeze rushed in and managed to land a killing blow. Not an instant kill, since the boy was knocked out by a blast of power and his brother was taken, but he changed the battleground. No Face became demon-dead.”
“People in the border villages are going to notice if a Warlord from Little Terreille no longer goes out during daylight or sits down for a meal,” Lucivar said. “Whatever face the bastard hides behind that mesh is no longer going to go unnoticed—and people will start connecting him with the missing children.”
“So his game was spoiled,” Daemon continued. “All because Haeze went to Halaway to visit Beron.”
&nb
sp; “Why didn’t Jaenelle’s purge get rid of that monster?” Sylvia asked.
“That witch storm was over a decade ago,” Saetan said, “and it was unleashed to purge the Realms of Dorothea’s and Hekatah’s taint, not eliminate every person who is twisted in some way. If No Face comes from Little Terreille, which sounds likely, he’s from a short-lived race. He may have been young enough then to have avoided any kind of detection, or maybe his taste for this didn’t develop until maturity, when he would have the physical strength to overpower his chosen prey. Maybe he was the one who started the story of No Face to begin with—or maybe something happened to him and he told it as a story at school to hide the truth about a real predator.”
“Do we care about why he kills boys?” Lucivar asked.
“I don’t,” Daemon replied. “I just want to find him and put him in a deep grave.”
Saetan might be willing to wonder if a boy became a monster after being brutalized by one, but he had the duty to protect the people of Dhemlan. Until No Face was contained, he had no room for pity.
Sylvia set the unfinished glass of yarbarah on a side table. “He’s going to come after my sons, isn’t he?”
“We think so,” Daemon said. “It’s another reason the boys are safer where they are. After making the transition to demon-dead, No Face snatched a servant’s child. The boy was violated and mutilated, and then sent to Haeze’s family with the demand that they convince you to allow Beron and Mikal to visit. Once he had Mikal, he would return Haeze’s brother unharmed.”
“Revenge on me and mine because Haeze fought back,” she said. “Exchanging one child’s life for another’s.”
“Yes. But he didn’t count on you and Tildee—that you would fight him and Tildee would be able to take Mikal out of his reach. He didn’t count on Beron charging in to attack.” Daemon paused. “Beron ripped off the mesh and saw the enemy’s face.”
He and Lucivar suspected that was why the Healer had been destroying Beron’s ability to communicate. From what Jaenelle had told him, the bitch had a little of the Hourglass’s skills—enough to strip Beron of even psychic communication by locking him within his own mind, which she would have done if Jaenelle hadn’t intervened. A boy like that would be at the mercy of a predator.
How many of the recent cildru dyathe had arrived in Hell in the same condition?
“Do you think Haeze’s brother is still alive?” Sylvia asked.
“No,” Daemon replied. “But having seen the servant’s child and believing their own boy was still alive, they decided to sacrifice your child instead, knowing what that bastard intended to do to Mikal.”
“They didn’t have a choice,” Sylvia said.
“Yes, they did.” Daemon’s voice held a hint of ice.
“What choice?” The fire in Sylvia’s voice challenged the ice in his.
“They could have gone to the District Queen for help. Haeze’s father could have gone to the Queen’s Master of the Guard if he didn’t think the village guards would help him. Someone could have gone to the Province Queen or come to me when the first child in that village went missing. They had other choices, Sylvia, and the choice they made resulted in Beron being injured and you being killed.” He shoved out of his chair. “Save your pity for someone who deserves it. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a butcher to hunt.”
He walked out of the room, walked out of the Keep, and caught the Black Winds that would take him home.
Sylvia watched Lucivar fill up a plate with breakfast foods before wandering out of the room. He made it look casual, but it wasn’t. She didn’t think Saetan had caught up with Daemon before Sadi left the Keep, but Yaslana was getting off the battlefield before the High Lord returned.
Moments after Lucivar left, Saetan came back into the room. He walked over to the table beside her wheeled chair, picked up her glass of yarbarah, and warmed it over a tongue of witchfire before handing it to her.
“Finish that,” he said.
She bristled at the disapproving chill in his voice. “I’m entitled to an opinion.”
“And we’re entitled to think you’re being a softhearted ass for having that opinion,” he snapped.
“You’re not a mother!”
“No, but I am a father, and I am the High Lord of Hell. I’ve seen that bastard’s victims, Sylvia, and I gave mercy to some of them because they were so damaged that was the only thing I could do.”
“Haeze’s mother was just trying to save her son!”
“He’s dead!” Saetan roared. “No Face was never going to give her back a living boy. He was dead before you arrived for that visit.”
Sylvia shrank back in her chair, trembling. “You can’t be sure of that.”
“Oh, but I am sure of that. And before you say Daemon and I don’t have a personal stake in your sons, I suggest you consider how our families are connected.” He walked out of the room, slamming the door behind him.
She didn’t need to consider or think. She knew all about the connections.
When Jaenelle was fifteen and had tried attending school with other children, Beron had been her friend. Even now, when he was still an adolescent and she was a grown woman married for more than a decade, they were still friends, and he told Jaenelle things he wouldn’t think to tell anyone else. Mikal spent as much time with Tersa as he did at home, and because of that, Daemon was the adult male he had the most contact with outside of Sylvia’s own First Circle.
Many years ago, her father had come to Halaway to find work and a wife. He’d found both, and he’d been enormously proud of his daughter, the Queen. He was a good man, and he loved her as much as she loved him. But their love had been strained by her love of another good man—because that man was the High Lord of Hell and the patriarch of the SaDiablo family. Her father saw things one way; Saetan saw things another. Neither was wrong, and both cared deeply for family, but it had scraped against her father’s pride that her sons had found the SaDiablo way of thinking more appealing, even though its rules and code of honor were more demanding.
Having a man so old and powerful and lethal as her lover and her sons’ surrogate father had not sat well with the man who had raised her. Of course, he had thought the two Consorts who had sired her sons were great fellows because they fit into the social circles that minor aristos like her father found comfortable, and she suspected he’d been behind the interest Mikal’s sire had been showing in his offspring recently.
Daemon and Jaenelle would make room for her father and brother because they were her family, but whether her blood relatives liked it or not, her sons had become absorbed into the SaDiablo family, and the SaDiablos took care of their own.
She drained the glass of yarbarah and set it aside. Then she pulled up the long skirt and looked at what remained of her legs.
The SaDiablos took care of their own. Would Saetan have given anyone else a vial of Jaenelle’s blood so that a Healer could shape shattered bone and ripped flesh into clean stumps? Or heal her fingertips so that she could have full use of her hands? She knew enough about the restrictions he placed on the demon-dead to understand that he’d bent many of his own rules to give her this much.
If another woman had come to the Keep asking for his help, most likely he would have summoned his sons or trusted demon-dead Warlords to save the children, and he would have provided the blood that would have given the woman enough sustenance to keep the Self inside the flesh until she had the reassurance that her children were safe. What would have happened to her after that? Most likely, in a few days or weeks, that woman’s power would have faded and she would have become a whisper in the Darkness. Saetan was realistic. He had to be. Hundreds of Blood died every day. He couldn’t take care of all of them personally.
But he could, and did, protect the living from the dead. And wasn’t that part of Saetan’s—and Daemon’s—anger? No Face was demon-dead and was still hunting in a living Realm, was hunting now in Dhemlan.
Instead of recognizing the ra
ge growing in two Warlord Princes, she had remained focused on another woman’s fear as if it were her own—even though she knew that woman’s choice would not have been hers. She would have gone to the District Queen or the Province Queen or broken down the door at SaDiablo Hall if that was what it took to get help. She wouldn’t have sacrificed another woman’s child, even at the cost of her own.
Sylvia lowered the skirt and carefully arranged the folds. She was a spectator now, nothing more. As hard as it was to wait, she had to trust the living to take care of the living.
FIVE
Beron walked along Halaway’s streets, looking into shop windows and wishing he’d brought along a few coins so he could suggest buying dishes of flavored ice.
“I have money,” Jaenelle said.
He looked at her. Long golden hair and sapphire eyes, wearing one of those peculiar outfits that were too big for her. Only fifteen years old, but her eyes were ancient.
Fifteen? “You’re older now,” he told her.
“I can be,” she replied cheerfully as she held up a silver mark. “It’s your dream. But at either age, I still have enough money for two bowls of flavored ice.”
He laughed. It made his throat hurt enough that he really wanted that ice.
“It’s bad out there,” he said. “But you know that. You knew that before the rest of us did.”
“There are also strong men out there who will defend and protect,” she said. “They won’t let you come to harm.”
“I’ve seen his face.”
“Show me. Let him take shape here.”
Beron shook his head. “If I show you, you’ll be in danger too.”
Something brushed against him, muscle and fur hidden within a sight shield. More movement and soft sounds all around them.
“We won’t be the ones in danger,” Jaenelle said softly.
The face of the enemy floated in the air before them.
“He’s rather pretty, isn’t he?” she said. “You would never guess what was hidden under the skin. No matter. Now he doesn’t have any masks to hide behind.”