Pain sharpened as the vampire stepped harder on my neck. “Stay still,” he growled, “or I’ll—”
There was a grunt. The pressure on my neck let up as the vampire toppled over. I grabbed the gun and sat up, my finger on the trigger, praying I could aim left-handed.
“Don’t shoot!”
Juliet raised her hands, still holding a silver stake. On the ground beside her lay the vampire, writhing, the other stake protruding from his chest. Juliet pouted. “You started without me.”
I exhaled. Then I turned the gun on the fallen vampire and shot him four times. At such close range, left-handed didn’t matter. The vampire jumped and jerked and then lay still. Four silver bullets through his heart would make sure he never got up again. Already, he was disintegrating into dust.
The siren was on top of us. Flashing lights splashed the landscape as a police car pulled onto the shoulder of Storrow Drive. Cops had arrived to assist the crashed cars on Storrow Drive, but it wouldn’t be long before they came over to check out Back Street.
“Where’s Myrddin?” I asked Juliet. “Is he still here?”
“That fellow with the jar? Is he the wizard? He’s gone. Disappeared. He moves fast for someone who’s not a vampire.”
“He went into the demon plane.” Mab’s voice issued from beneath the vampire who pinned her. I couldn’t shoot this vampire with the cops right on Storrow Drive, but I yanked him off her and tossed him over a couple of cars. Mab sat up, rubbing her forehead.
She looked terrible. Worse than before, like someone had stolen my aunt and replaced her with an ailing centenarian. Drooping eyelids and puffy bags turned her eyes into slits. Age spots mottled her skin, and wrinkles creased every inch of her face. Her head shook with palsied trembling.
She touched her chest where her pendant had hung. “Myrddin took the bloodstone with him. We must get it back.”
“We will. We know where to find him.” At the fifth and final point to complete the rune.
“There’s little time.” Mab’s voice was a mere croak.
More sirens were headed our way. Not a good idea to be found at a murder scene. I kicked the decomposing vampire at my feet. Let his friend take the blame. It would send human-paranormal relations back to the Dark Ages—and wouldn’t the Old Ones love that? But there was nothing I could do about that now. I needed to get Mab home.
I got Mab’s arm around my shoulders and helped her to her feet. She seemed a couple of inches shorter, as though she’d shrunken. She leaned heavily on my arm as we made our way out of the parking lot to Back Street. I lifted her over the body of the human who lay at the entrance. “I thought he was a vampire,” I said. If I’d realized he was human, I wouldn’t have shot him in the head.
The other human servant—what was left of him—lay on the pavement. Myrddin’s magical attack had blasted his head from his body. Fragments of skull, teeth, and brains littered the ground and stuck to cars and trees.
The sirens were getting closer.
“Juliet,” I said. “Take Mab’s other arm.”
“Ah, Queen Mab,” Juliet said. “‘Reach me thy hand, that I may help thee out.’”
“‘No strength to climb without thy help,’” Mab wheezed, taking her arm.
“Now’s not the time for your Shakespeare game,” I snapped at Juliet. “We have to go.”
“Take me to the taxi,” Mab said. “I need to look inside.”
The sirens sounded like they were a block away.
“Mab, there’s no time.”
“Don’t argue with me, child. Do as I say.”
Juliet and I carried her to the taxi between us.
Mab pulled open the driver’s side door. A body spilled out sideways and lay half in the cab and half on the ground. I stared into the blank eyes of Mack, the taxi driver who’d wanted to bomb Deadtown out of existence. His favorite talkshow ranter shouted from the radio.
I recalled a man hailing the cab down the block from us, when I’d tried to send Mab home. Had that passenger been the
Reaper? When the taxi crashed, I’d assumed the driver was drunk. I was wrong. He wasn’t drunk—he was under attack. The Reaper had done his work and run off, allowing Myrddin to trap the dead man’s departing life force.
I shivered, feeling like a cold gust had blown in from the river. Juliet gasped and stepped back. The sight of human death didn’t usually bother vampires, but I could see why this one might.
A crescent-shaped slash grinned across Mack’s throat. Symbols had been carved into his face and hands. Blood soaked the front of his sweatshirt. Mab lifted his shirt to reveal another symbol scored deep in his chest, over his heart: the eihwaz rune.
My own chest burned.
She nodded, as though she’d seen what she’d expected, and pulled Mack’s shirt back down. She straightened—as much as she could in her aged state.
I took her arm and turned to ask Juliet to take the other. She wasn’t there.
She wasn’t anywhere on Back Street.
Juliet’s gasp. That sudden cold. A chill lingered in the air, along with the stale smell of ancient grave dust. The Old Ones had snatched Juliet away, and I hadn’t even noticed.
The sirens were almost on top of us, and flashing lights splashed across the Berkeley Street intersection. I lifted Mab into my arms, ignoring the pain that gripped my wrist, and ran.
24
AT THE CHECKPOINT BACK INTO DEADTOWN, THE ZOMBIE guard eyed Mab’s ID. He flicked a glance toward her face, then blinked and stared hard. He looked at the ID then back to Mab. ID, Mab. ID, Mab. He typed into his computer and squinted at the screen. He waited, tapping his fingers on his desk, until the computer beeped. He squinted at the screen again. Once more, he compared Mab’s picture with her actual face. Finally, he shrugged. “You should update your photo, ma’am.” His polite voice held a warning. “It will prevent future delays at the checkpoint.” He handed both IDs back to me.
The photo on the card in my hand, taken yesterday, showed someone who could be the daughter of the woman at my side. With each minute that passed, Mab was aging almost visibly. A dowager’s hump had sprouted between her shoulders, and her spine curved like a shepherd’s crook. She clutched my arm with ropy, liver-spotted hands. She could barely walk; I picked her up again so I could carry her through the streets of Deadtown. She turned her face to my shoulder and let me.
At the door to my building, though, she insisted I put her down. “I’ll walk across the lobby myself,” she insisted. Even her voice had aged, to a thin, tremulous, almost-whine.
Clyde came over to assist us. “Another relative, Ms. Vaughn?” he asked, offering Mab his arm.
“No,” said Mab, all dignity. “We met yesterday. I’m Vicky’s aunt, Mab.”
Poor Clyde nearly choked on his mortification. “I . . .” He coughed, swallowed, opened his mouth, closed it, then coughed again. “I do apologize.”
Mab harrumphed and accepted his proffered arm.
“She’s had a rough night,” I said. “She’ll be better tomorrow.” I sent up a silent prayer to whatever gods might be listening that it would be so.
Mab harrumphed again. She shuffled across the lobby, leaning her whole weight on Clyde and me.
“Would you like me to accompany you upstairs?” he asked, pressing the elevator button.
“No, thank you, Clyde. We’ll be fine,” I said.
“Very good.” When the elevator door opened, he helped Mab inside, then stepped back out into the lobby. The doors closed on his puzzled face.
“Almost home.” I patted Mab’s arm, hoping the gesture gave more assurance than I felt.
Mab sighed. The sound seemed to hold all the weariness of the ages. “This place, child, is very, very far from home.”
IN MY APARTMENT, KANE CIRCLED MAB, SNIFFING, GIVING me inquiring looks. I told him I had to get Mab to bed, and he backed off as I helped her into my bedroom. Once she was settled under the covers, Kane came in and sat on his haunches, staring at m
y aunt. She lay back with her eyes closed. There’s little time, she’d said. Right now, she looked like someone with no more than a few grains of sand left in her hourglass. Kane lifted his muzzle. His nostrils flared, as though he were trying to catch the scent of what had happened.
Two people I cared about, both so drastically altered. Tears pressed at my eyes, and I pinched myself to make them stop. I couldn’t afford to cry. I had to figure out what to do.
“Myrddin stole Mab’s bloodstone,” I told Kane. He cocked his head, asking what exactly that meant. I wanted to know more, myself, but now wasn’t the time to exhaust Mab further.
I laid a gentle hand on my aunt’s arm. “Mab?” Her eyes fluttered open. They were cloudy with cataracts. “What can I do to help you? Are there herbs I can get? Roxana—the witch—should I bring her back?”
“No, child. None of that would help.”
“Can you shift? Would that bring back your strength?” But even as I asked, I knew that the feeble old woman lying in my bed could never summon the energy for a shift. Mab merely shook her head.
“Well, maybe you’ll feel better after you get some rest.” It was the lamest thing I’d ever said in my entire life, but I couldn’t admit there was nothing we could do.
“I taught you better than that, child,” Mab’s thin voice admonished. “Wishful thinking means nothing. Unless you can retrieve the bloodstone, I’m finished. I will continue to age until my body gives out.”
“I’ll get it back.” But how? I didn’t know where Myrddin’s safe house was, and I didn’t know if I could face Myrddin—and his army of Old Ones, vampires, and human servants—alone. Saying I’d get the bloodstone back felt like more wishful thinking. But I needed to try to comfort Mab. “I won’t let Myrddin . . .” I couldn’t finish the sentence.
“Won’t let him what, child? Kill me? If only that were all he had in mind.” Her rheumy eyes closed, and her voice, barely audible, trembled with weariness. “Myrddin won’t kill me. He’ll bring me to the very end of life, to the point where death is the only thing still desired. And then he’ll use the bloodstone to imprison me, as I did to him fifteen hundred years ago.”
MY HEAD SPUN WITH QUESTIONS, BUT I COULDN’T TROUBLE Mab with them now. She was sleeping; a quiet snoring buzzed from my bedroom. Sitting on the living-room sofa, I listened, cherishing those snores. Each one meant another breath.
I checked the splint I’d put on my wrist. My kind heals quickly—the pain had already diminished—but it takes time for bones to knit back together. Keeping the wrist immobile would make sure they healed properly. Right now, though, I had more to worry about than a broken wrist.
Mab said she’d imprisoned Myrddin fifteen centuries ago. Was she telling me she was—or had been—Nimuë? According to legend, Nimuë had seduced Merlin and imprisoned him in a hawthorn tree. No, a yew tree, Mab had corrected. I guess she’d know. She also said she’d had many lifetimes. That was how she knew so much about Myrddin—she’d battled him before and won. No wonder Myrddin was obsessed with revenge.
He wouldn’t succeed. I’d promised my aunt I’d get the bloodstone back. And I would, somehow.
In forty-eight hours, the Reaper would claim another victim. The final point of the eihwaz rune was on the edge of Boston Common, near the Boylston Street T station. Myrddin would be there with his lidded jar. I couldn’t be sure he’d have the bloodstone with him—but I could be damn sure he’d expect me. He wanted my life force for Pryce.
It would be better if I could ambush him where he wasn’t expecting me: at the safe house. Myrddin must be there now, waiting until he could complete his ritual. It was probably where the Old Ones had taken Juliet, as well. But I didn’t have the slightest idea where the safe house might be. All Juliet could tell us was that it was in the basement of a brick town house—and Boston was full of those.
Kane settled on the cushion beside me, resting his head on my thigh. Gray eyes, a man’s eyes, regarded me from his wolf’s face. “How can we find the safe house, Kane?”
His head lifted, ears alert, and he jumped from the sofa and ran to the front door. He turned and looked back at me expectantly. When I didn’t move, he let out a frustrated yip.
“I can’t take you with me.” Even with Roxana’s charm to disguise him, it felt too risky to have Kane running around Boston in his wolf form. “I need you to stay with Mab.”
Kane barked again, more aggressively this time.
“Stop it. We promised Clyde that no one would know you’re here.” Besides, I wasn’t going to argue with a wolf.
Kane came back over, caught my sleeve in his teeth, and pulled. When I shook him off, he nipped my skin.
“Ow!” I rubbed the spot. No broken skin, but it stung. I glared at him.
Seeing he had my attention, he put his nose to the floor and ran around in circles, sniffing exaggeratedly. Okay, so in wolf form he was an expert tracker. But Myrddin had left the scene through the demon plane, and Kane couldn’t track his scent there. I told him so, and he yipped again.
He had a point. The Old Ones who’d grabbed Juliet were vampires, not demons. They couldn’t travel through the demon plane. And they had a very distinctive scent. Kane could track them, find out where they went. Even better, I could let him get Juliet’s scent from an item of her clothing and he could track her specifically.
“But what about Mab?” I didn’t think Myrddin would try to attack her here. He didn’t need to when he had the bloodstone. But I couldn’t leave her on her own, weak and ill as she was.
The phone rang, interrupting my thoughts. I snatched it up before the noise could wake Mab.
“Hello?”
It was Clyde. “Tina would like to pay you a visit?” There was a reason he phrased the statement as a question. Tina never, ever paused to let Clyde call upstairs. She always breezed past his desk, assuming (a) he’d know where she was going and (b) I’d be delighted to see her. Clyde must be questioning why she’d stopped to let him call up.
Tina’s voice sounded in the background. “That’s not how I said to say it. Give me that.”
There was a squeak—from Clyde, I assumed—and then Tina came on the line. “What he was supposed to say was ‘Tina requests your royal permission to come upstairs and return your stupid book.’ I wrote it down and everything. Since, you know, you made it clear that you don’t want to see me and all. I’m only doing it because I told your aunt I would.”
I closed my eyes. I had an idea, one I was sure I’d regret, but I was short on both time and options. “Yes, fine, Tina. Please come up. Tell Clyde I said it’s okay.”
She hung up without another word.
“What do you think?” I asked Kane, who sat by the door. “Am I crazy?”
He thumped his tail on the floor and nodded. Then he nuzzled my hand.
I put Roxana’s charm around Kane’s neck and watched as he took on the appearance of a German shepherd. Then I opened the door to watch for Tina. The elevator dinged, and she stepped out, holding Russom’s in both hands.
“Here,” she said, thrusting it toward me. “Here’s your book. I’ve gotta go.”
I opened the door wider. “Come in, Tina. I need to ask you a favor.”
Tina rolled her eyes, but she huffed past me into the living room. She dropped Russom’s on the coffee table with a bang.
“Shh!” I said. “My aunt’s asleep.”
“Oh! Sorry.” Tina spoke in a whisper. “But I don’t see why I should do you any favors, not after you dropped me—” Her eyes widened when she saw Kane, and she forgot about whispering. “You got a dog?”
Kane growled, and I patted his head to make him stop. It was better that Tina didn’t know his real identity. She wouldn’t exactly be my first choice if I were looking for someone to keep a secret.
“I’m watching him for someone. Just for a few days.” Or until the next full moon, I hoped.
“He’s cute. What’s his name?” Tina got down on her knees and scratched behind
Kane’s ears, burying her face in his ruff. “Are you a good doggie?” she asked in a baby-talk voice. “Are you a good boy?”
Kane growled and pulled out of her embrace. He backed away a few steps and crouched, ears back, teeth bared, looking ready to spring. I stepped between them.
“His name? Um, Killer. He’s not a pet.”
“A working dog, huh?” Tina sat back on her heels and leaned to see around me, looking wistfully at Kane. “I used to have a dog, when I lived with my family. Buddy. He was a crazy hound dog, but a lot of fun to play with.” She climbed stiffly to her feet. “One time, Buddy got hold of my little sister’s favorite teddy bear, and—” She frowned, remembering she was mad at me. “I’ve gotta go. Sorry, but I don’t have time to do you any favors right now.” She headed toward the door.
“The favor isn’t for me, Tina. It’s for Mab.” As soon as I said it, I bit my tongue. Mab’s brusqueness had intimidated Tina when they’d met. Being alone with Mab was probably the last thing Tina wanted.
She paused, one hand on the doorknob, and turned around. “Your aunt?”
“Yes. She’s not well. I need someone to stay with her while I . . . uh . . . while I take Killer for a walk.”
“Oh. Okay, I guess I can do that. I don’t really have to go anywhere.” She headed toward the kitchen. “You got anything to eat?”
“Whatever’s in there, it’s yours. I might be gone a couple of hours, but Mab will probably sleep until I get back.”
“A couple of hours? That’s a long walk. But I guess a big dog like Killer needs lots of exercise.” She pulled open the freezer. “Ooh, ice cream! Chocolate—is that all you’ve got? No mint chocolate chip or butter pecan or anything?”
“Tina. Listen to me.” I took the ice cream carton from her hands and set it on the counter, then closed the freezer door. “This is important. Until I get back, don’t let anyone in the apartment. I’ll tell Clyde, too.”
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