by Cate Corvin
True freedom was a strange feeling, that was for sure.
“I think I want to just… chill. Get this place fixed up into something a little less grungy, send the pixies back to Faerie, have a few foursomes… you know. Normal things.”
“Normal things,” Will echoed, and Suraziel wrapped his burly arms around me and squeezed tightly.
“Foursomes on the beach,” he said gleefully.
“I like this beach idea.” Càel looked up at me with a twisted little grin. “We can import our tourists.”
“Call in the sand, then.” I stretched hard, pointing my toes. “But before we bring in the tourists, I need to lay down some Laws.”
Twenty-Three
Tori
The house was a frosted pink confection, coated in glitter from top to bottom, outfitted with doll-sized furniture and a handsome plastic boyfriend.
Ken smiled up at me from a table loaded with miniature petal-sprinkled crumpets. I tried not to look too hard at the enormous bulge in his tiny pants.
“Nice digs, Lula,” I said. The pixie preened, smoothing her hands over the tiny pink dress that’d been sewn by a brownie we’d found hiding under a bar sink on the third floor.
Giving Lula her Dream Mansion had been the high point in an exhausting three weeks. I’d laid down the Law, that was for damn sure.
Along with about three hundred addendums, and codicils for each of them. Once the Law was ordained by my blood, there’d been more than a few grumbles from the original members of the Clouded Court, who were used to living their own way, on their own terms.
Unfortunately, those had been Thraustila’s terms, which meant the place had been a bloodbath.
I couldn’t take away my vampires’ need for blood, but I could lessen the slaughter. All blood given had to be between two or more consenting parties. All Shadowed Worlders were still welcome in my court, as well as slayers, but I wasn’t going to let the blood-sports continue.
We’d gutted more than a few portions of Club Bathory. Lula’s Dream Mansion was on the fourth floor, which was dedicated entirely to the Fae who’d decided to remain with us. Walking into the room was like walking into an explosion of glitter and disco-lights. She’d requested more dollhouses for her kind, and when a heap of art supplies had been delivered, they’d gone to work on customizing their tiny homes. It was starting to resemble a Christmas village, but one that had been vomited on with a bucket of pink paint and sparkles.
The pixies were useful to have around. Lula had gone into ‘retirement’, but they were useful message runners. I’d dispatched a tiny blue one to Headmaster Burns over a week ago.
I left my little pixie to her crumpet-baking antics and headed downstairs. The hollow thump of music echoed through the stairwell from overhead. The pixie club was still in full swing, and so was Seventh Heaven. Suraziel had offered to take over part-time bartending while we got on our feet, but Korso had given him a horrified look, possibly the most expressive contortion of muscles I’ve ever seen on his face, and declined.
Suraziel needed an outlet. We still hadn’t found where Thraustila had kept the incubi and succubi he’d used to create the tainted dust, and tension was a constant companion under my demon’s shoulders.
I found him lurking in the stairwell.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
Suraziel looked up at me, black eyes glittering. He wasn’t one to hide his thoughts. “I’m wondering where he kept them.”
I draped my arm around his broad shoulders and led him downstairs with me. Suraziel might be free from Hell and Prince Sitri, tied to Will with blood, but this weight wasn’t going to leave him until we knew. “There’s one place we haven’t looked yet,” I said, trying to keep my tone light. “We’ll find them, Sura.”
He sighed, then swept me up in his arms and walked all the way down to the first floor and the concrete hall leading to our sanctuary. “I know we will. Demons don’t have these feelings, Tori. I know they wouldn’t do the same for me, but I want to see them buried for good. Give them the kind of rest they never knew.”
“It’s a good thing to feel that way,” I said, resting my head on his shoulder. He smelled delicious, spicy enough to make my mouth water.
“Let’s go down this week.” He looked at me, the red lights overhead reflecting off the hard planes of his face and ridged horns. “Just get it over with. My siblings probably aren’t the worst things we’ll find.”
Wasn’t that the truth. We’d deliberately sealed off the door leading to the tunnels, deciding to wait for another time to finish our investigation of just how far the psychopathic elder vampire had gone.
And it was starting to look like our time was about up. Every floor of Club Bathory was undergoing a renovation of some kind, Will was poring through our finances with the jaded eye of a lifelong accountant, overseeing every expense, and Càel was… well, I had the best bouncer and bodyguard in New York City, possibly the country, to say the least.
It was pretty much all going according to plan. It was time to lift the rug and sweep out the rest of the trash.
“This week,” I promised. “We’ll all go look. We need to get rid of the excess dust supply, anyway.”
Thornton had spent the last few weeks breaking down the tainted dust sample we’d given him until it’d been torn into its various mystical parts. I wasn’t surprised to see there was more to it than pixie dust and incubus saliva; a few other components had made their way in, as well. One of them was the ground-up pearls he’d taxed from the Graves End Bay mermaids.
Once he’d broken them apart, he’d come up with a solution of sorts to clear the dust from the body. Everyone who’d partaken of the tainted supply would have it forced on them whether they liked it or not, because the withdrawals were ugly.
More than a few of my court had gone mad in the week after I’d taken my throne, unable to procure any more of their supply, their bodies sagging around their bones and skin bubbling. I’d tried to be kind, at first. The last straw to break this camel’s back had been when I heard a panic of pixies and caught one of the dust-withdrawn vampires trying to shove Lula into his mouth.
From that point on, all addicts were confined to the cells Thraustila had once used for his hellhounds. Thornton had promised his solution within two weeks. For a very hefty price, of course.
Once we’d helped those of my court, I’d have to send out vampires to hunt down the humans who’d partaken. Lilith knew they probably weren’t doing much better, but Thornton had also snapped he was working as fast as he could. I hadn’t implied otherwise. The apothecary was a touchy sort.
So, one way or another, we needed to go into the tunnels and destroy the hundreds of crates of dust before one of the loose dustheads managed to make their way down and find the motherlode.
Suraziel gently lowered me to the floor just as Will appeared at the other end of the corridor. His chestnut hair was askew, like he’d been running his fingers through it in exasperation. He probably had been.
“Burns is here,” he said, falling in at my other side. “The Morrígna have him in the throne room.”
“Did he say what he wanted?” I asked, hope blossoming in my chest. I was starting to think he’d been ignoring my messenger pixie.
“No. He just requested your presence.” We strode past the doors to the blood-sports amphitheater, now padlocked until I decided what to do with it, and to the red doors of the throne room. I’d had them replaced out of a weird sense of sentimentality, not wanting to strip Club Bathory of everything it’d been when I first walked in.
I pushed them open. The throne room had been cleaned up by the brownies peppering Bathory’s dark hiding places, and I’d made a real effort to change things up. I still had the throne, which both Càel and the Morrígna had insisted on keeping, but there were new seats around the perimeter of the bright, clean room.
One for me. Three for my men. One for the pixies (this was the tiniest one, seated on a podium). A fishpond sun
k into the floor for the kelpies. Then there were chairs that had yet to be filled: for the demons, moonspawn, and slayers.
That hope in my chest grew when I saw Headmaster Burns seated in the chair I’d reserved for him, hoping he’d take me up on the offer. The Morrígna guarded the door, and my Maker gave me a smile as I passed.
I couldn’t say I liked the man on a personal level. God knew he hadn’t gone out of his way to help me. But he’d kept a clear head in a time of major conflict for his school, putting the priority of his living students first, and that made him a good candidate, in my humble opinion.
“You came,” I said, my heels clicking on the floor. I’d asked Rhianwen for jeans and boots when she insisted on taking over my wardrobe. She’d given me heels and dresses. We were going to have a chat about Neiman Marcus if I didn’t have boots by next week, and- even worse, in her opinion- I might start to do my own shopping.
Burns looked up at me, took in the braided crown of hair, the pretty dress… the scars, my clan necklace, my kill tattoos.
“I’ll admit it took me some time to accept what you offered, Miss Holmwood,” he began, and immediately amended himself. “Crowned in Blood. Old habits die hard.”
“I understand,” I said, offering a smile. I wasn’t offended. Once a Holmwood, always a Holmwood. My clan mark would always be there.
His was short and faint, but it was something. “I can’t hold the previous king’s actions against you, and we won’t forget that you risked your own lives to save ours. To that end, I accept your offer. We would be honored to hold a seat in your court.”
I laced my hands behind my back, not wanting to fidget and betray my nervousness. How the hell were queens supposed to act? It felt like wearing a face that wasn’t really mine.
Fuck it. If they were going to be around me for potentially millennia, they’d have to get used to ol’ Tori Serpentfang the way she was.
“Good. It’s a little empty in here right now, and we want to help you rebuild the academy. I was there for one reason: because it was my brother’s dream, and I know there are others out there like him, who want to be the best slayers they can possibly be.”
Burns looked down at me. “Somehow I feel that there’s more coming in these negotiations.”
Smart scarecrow. After all, the parents of the Libra students were furious, according to my glittering, be-winged sources. He might have a hard time squeezing money from a stone, and so far, I’d put the most on the table.
“I want to establish a scholarship for students like me. People who didn’t come from money and won’t have a chance at higher education otherwise. The James Holmwood Scholarship.” I smiled up at him brightly. “And perhaps an overhaul of the vampire portions of their education. I know I was sadly misinformed about many things. There’s no reason for us to always remain enemies.”
His brow creased, competing with his suit for wrinkles, but I knew a man backed into a corner when I saw it. “Those sound like fair concessions.”
“Super!” I said, patting his shoulder. “I’ll send someone to discuss the rebuilding with you. We hold formal court on Thursday nights if you have anything to bring up. It’s bring your own beer. We like to keep it relaxed around here.”
He was looking at me with alarm when Rhianwen ushered him out of the room.
I sighed and relaxed. “Well, that’s one seat down. Now we need to reach out to the biggest, baddest moonspawn. I’m hoping Korso takes the seat for demons, but he insists he’s better at mixing martinis than playing politics.”
“Well, that’s because that’s true,” Suraziel said. He brushed a stray curl away from my face. “He makes a mean Beelzebub Blender, but I think he’d rather listen to us dump our emotional problems on him than our business ones.”
I thought Korso might be more into not listening to problems at all, but I wasn’t going to tell Suraziel that.
“One down,” Will said quietly. Burns had nodded to him as he’d passed, but that was it. Will was no longer one of them, and everyone knew it now. Suraziel and Arko’s sigils on his arm gave him away.
But he had us, which meant he was much better off. We had fun.
Càel was the next to bring me another pressing matter. Luckily, this was one I was excited for: a liminal gate of my own.
“Stop giving her cookies,” I hissed at Christian. “You won’t win her over with baked goods!”
The Paladin smiled at me over his cup of tea. “Everyone likes cookies, dear.”
Mom had baked a mountain of them. For the first time in my life, Mom’s cookies smelled totally unappealing. Arkomoch was sulking at the granite island, looking like a male model despite being slumped over in his chair. “She took over my kitchen.”
“I’m sure she’ll find it in her heart to share,” I told him, sipping my cup of blood.
Arko sighed. “I didn’t watch the Food Network for twenty-five years to be kicked out now.” The silver chains draped around his horns tinkled as he shook his head, and I tilted my own head to the side to avoid touching one.
Càel sipped the cup of blood in front of him, holding his pinky finger out daintily. His face was mostly hidden by the cup, but I saw him hold back a smirk when he caught me looking at him.
“I tried to make them with blood, but they just didn’t turn out right,” Mom said, pushing a plate in front of Will. Suraziel snatched a cookie from the plate and shoved it in his mouth.
I met her eyes across the island, and she gave me a real smile, the kind that lit up her face and made her look like the young, joyful slayer I remembered from my childhood. She’d put on a bit of weight, looked healthy now instead of emaciated, and having a group of people to look after was always what she’d wanted.
The Paladin placed his teacup in the saucer with a soft plink. “Take a walk with me, Victoria.”
I glanced at Mom, but she just nodded and made a little swooshing motion with her fingers.
I followed Christian out of the French doors into the night. Heartfall’s lush gardens were in full bloom.
“You seem to have taken to your new position with aplomb,” he said. The moonlight winked off his glasses.
“I didn’t really have a choice. It was that, or run forever.” He led me down a stone path to a hidden courtyard, where a fountain gurgled quietly in the background.
Every cell in my body shivered in unison when I felt his presence. Maybe it was because I’d ingested several drops of his blood, but it didn’t hurt or disorient me as much when Ophiel appeared. The entire night sky was arrayed in his wings, which stretched and pulled in behind him.
He looked me over like he could see right through me, and I thought I saw tension leave the fallen angel’s shoulders.
You are as you were, without change.
“I feel your presence more clearly now,” I told him. How perilous was it to drink from an angel if he was worried about three drops?
As expected.
“There is one last thing we must ask from you, your Highness,” Christian said. He looked up, up, up at Ophiel. The contrast was stark. “I’m old now.”
“Don’t-”
“Please, let me finish. I’ve lived much longer than many slayers ever will. My time is coming, whether my own body fails me, or a stronger adversary ends my life. When that happens, a new Paladin will take my place.”
I looked at him, finding the tiny signs of anxiety in his expression. “You already know who the next Paladin is.”
Christian smiled sadly, and Ophiel inclined his head.
“When her time comes, she will have her work cut out for her. She might need help I will be unable to give. If she needs it, may I rely on you to be her guide, Victoria?”
In a way, I admired how calmly he accepted the reality of his own death. He was the kind of slayer I’d wanted to be one day, accepting the inevitable and planning for the future. Oddly, my mind flashed to the portrait of the young girl in his parlor, with blonde hair and secretive blue eyes. She could’ve bee
n anyone. “Of course.”
Swear in blood, Victoria Serpentfang.
One of Ophiel’s enormous hands appeared from within his swirling black robes, holding out a thin dagger. I winced as I approached him. His blood had made him easier to bear, but this close, it was still painful.
“I swear on my name that if the next Paladin needs me, I’ll come to her.”
I cut my palm and gasped. Searing, burning pain streaked across my palm like a flash of lightning, there and gone in an instant. A straight scar now permanently marked my skin, an agreement between vampire, angel, and Paladin.
Christian let out a sigh of relief. “Now I can live and die in peace.”
I gave Ophiel his dagger and backed away. There was no escaping the galaxies in the angel’s eyes, burning through me like the fire of stars.
I didn’t regret my promise, but it made me wonder what I’d be called on to do one day.
Twenty-Four
Tori
We left the next evening, pushing through the liminal gate of Heartfall in pairs, and stepped out into the brightness of the Clouded Court.
Morgrainne waited for us, leaning against the wall. “Try not to cut it so close next time,” she told Will, as if waiting until the last minute to return was his fault.
It was really my fault. After I’d made Christian and Ophiel an unbreakable promise, there’d been a lot of hugging, some tears (on Mom’s part), and for me, a whole hell of a lot of explaining to do. Up until the very last minute. If we’d been a second later, both Morrígna would’ve gone through the gate to find me, assuming the worst had happened.
Will ignored her reprimand. “Are the padlocks cut?” he asked.
Morgrainne nodded once. “All ready to go.”
We went down the next day. Rhianwen had finally given me practical clothes and a solid pair of combat boots, which she glared at like they’d offended her personally.