Bevan stopped, raising a hand to signal a halt. He raised his head, sniffing. Alessandro did, too, wondering what disturbed their guide. Something unfamiliar struck his senses. It was subtle, no more than a faint metallic tang.
“Run!” Bevan sprang forward, bounding down what was now no more than a hole through the stone.
Alessandro didn’t argue. He raced after, vampire speed matching the hellhounds’, pace for pace. After a hundred more feet, the passageway widened, allowing for more freedom. He could hear the hounds behind him, one beginning to howl with panic, a strange half-human, half-canine sound. What’s back there?
And then the tunnel began to tremble, dust falling in gusts as if a giant baker were tossing handfuls of flour. Alessandro heard the clink of stone shifting, the rattle of mortar shaken loose. The roof of the tunnel began to slope upward and he gratefully straightened, lengthening his stride.
The passage opened into a cave, and he took a last bound into the torchlight, hard on Bevan’s heels. The cave was filled with hounds, a babble of excited voices. Lore had said there were forty in this group. There had to be at least half that many again, some just babes in arms. Alessandro wheeled, looking behind him. The last of the hounds was leaping out Of the passage, arms and legs flying wide.
And then, with a sound like the swish of a sliding door, the tunnel disappeared. He had expected a crash, an avalanche of falling rock. Alessandro gaped for a moment, and turned to Bevan.
“That’s how it happens,” said the hound. “The outer territories have already gone.”
“If we’d still been in there?”
Bevan shrugged.
Forcing his hands to be steady, Alessandro fiddled with his sword, attaching the scabbard back on its hanger. His thoughts felt like rubber balls, frantically bouncing off the insides of his skull. I hate magic. I really, really hate magic.
He sucked in a breath and looked around the cave. There was another door. At least they weren’t trapped.
Then he took in the hounds. “These are mostly females and children,” he said.
“Yes,” said Bevan. “The males are dead. Killed by the changelings and goblins.”
Alessandro cursed inwardly. Some of the hounds were in their beast form, black dogs with long, pointed snouts and upright ears. They all looked exhausted, especially the children. He had a sudden, vivid memory from his human life, of playing with his own younger siblings. He knew a tired toddler when he saw one.
But there was no time to rest. He looked at their mothers, trying to gauge their condition. All the hounds were ragged, the clothes sewn from coarse, hand-dyed material the weight of old sacking. Their feet were bare. What they did have were bright strings of painted wooden beads— rich, gaudy colors defiant against the Castle’s gray-on-gray hues. Women always find a way to shine.
He had to believe the beads. These mothers would get their children to safety, if he and the male hounds could secure a path.
Bevan was talking to an older woman, who wore many bright strands around her neck. An elder, and probably a grandmother. She held a little girl on her hip, who peeked at Alessandro with wide, dark eyes. She’s going to break hearts someday.
The words flew fast in the houndish tongue, with a lot of pointing at the remaining door.
“What does she say?” Alessandro asked Bevan.
“That way leads to the dark pool of water. From there it is possible to find the Castle door.”
“Is that way guarded?”
“That is not the problem.”
Bevan turned back to the woman, who talked some more.
“What?” Alessandro snapped, apprehension making him impatient. “Are the corridors vanishing?”
“No,” said Bevan. He asked another question, got a one-word reply. “They’re afraid. There’s something out there.”
“What?”
“She doesn’t know. A creature that spreads darkness. They ran in here before it got too close. And then they were too tired to carry on.”
Alessandro pushed past Bevan, storming toward the doorway.
The hound caught his arm. “What are you doing?”
“You and your men stay and keep these people safe.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to find out what that something is.”
Connie and Mac raced down the narrow walkway that overlooked the guardsmen’s courtyard. Mac stopped, looking over the railing at the benches and empty dormitories below. The fires were burning, but the courtyard was | empty.
“Where are the guardsmen?” Connie asked.
“Up to no good,” Mac growled. “What are those?”
He pointed to a row of frames that stood in the courtyard. They looked like giant tennis rackets standing on their handles. Some sort of hides were strung in the middle, lashed to the frames as if to stretch them. They were a light brown, with dark rosettes, and whatever creatures they came from had been huge.
“Trolls,” Connie said weakly. “Those were trolls. That’s Bran’s work.”
“Do they hunt them?”
“It’s punishment. Trolls are slow but they talk. They live in tribes.”
Mac’s stomach heaved. Did one of those hides belong to the creature he’d seen thrown into a cell? Furious, he flung himself down one of the stairs that zigzagged down to the cells beneath. “Do you see anyone in the cells?”
“Are the caves their cells?” Connie asked, jogging down the stairs after him. “Because there’s someone in that one.”
“Where?” Mac asked.
“There.” She pointed to a cell across the courtyard. “He—I’m pretty sure it’s a he—isn’t moving.”
Mac squinted. She was right. “Good eyesight. That’s a guardsman’s coat. I’ll bet you a quarter that’s Reynard.”
He turned to Connie. “I need your key.”
She gave it to him with a questioning look.
“Let’s see if it works on the cell doors. Wait here.” Mac dusted across the courtyard, materializing right outside Reynard’s cell. The ledge outside the cell door was as wide as a sidewalk, allowing Mac plenty of space to crouch and look inside the bars.
What he saw disgusted him. The cell was tiny, not large enough to lie, or stand, or even sit in comfortably. The captain’s usually spotless clothes were torn and blotted with blood.
Perhaps most cruel of all, he was conscious. “My own men did this.” Reynard’s expression hovered somewhere between a grimace and a rueful smile. “You look shocked, demon.”
“I served as a kind of guardsman in my old life. This is shocking.”
“They claimed I let you escape.”
“Yeah, well, just be glad I got away, because I’m here now.” Mac pressed the gold disk against the lock. It flared with light. The mechanism ground with a shrill squeal, and then a clank. The light winked out. He yanked the door open. It came away in a cloud of stone dust, the raw ends of the bars scraping the rocks.
Reynard moved to crawl out, but his limbs refused to obey.
“Hang on.” Mac reached in, grabbing the man’s hip and arm and dragging him forward. Reynard collapsed to his hands and knees, his limbs too stiff and weak to stand. Mac steadied him with one hand. The landing at the top of the stairs was small. A false step would take the captain a long, long way down to the courtyard below.
“Where is the incubus now?” Mac demanded.
Reynard shook his head. “Gone. The others took him to the black lake.”
Damn. They had guessed wrong, come to the wrong place. “When?”
“Not an hour ago.” Reynard grasped the top of the cell door and determinedly got his feet under him.
Mac grabbed the captain’s jacket with one hand and hauled him to a standing position. Reynard wobbled dangerously. He hunched, holding one arm across his stomach.
“I’ll help you stop them if I can.” Reynard said. “Anything to stop Bran.”
“Can you walk?”
“Of course. Just give
me a moment.”
Mac kept one hand on Reynard’s shoulder, steadying him. “Do you know where the sorcerer is?”
“Atreus? They took him as well.”
Mac glanced across the courtyard to see Connie, leaning on the rail and watching. It was going to be a slog to get Reynard across the courtyard to join her. Or not. “Hold still.”
“What?”
They rematerialized on the other side of the courtyard. Reynard grabbed the railing with white knuckles. “God’s teeth!”
“Shortcut,” Mac said with a grin, but his smile wilted.
He’d been fooled by the guardsman’s bravado. Connie grabbed Reynard’s arm as he started to slowly collapse. Mac helped her ease him to a sitting position. Connie crouched in front of the captain, then drew back sharply.
She could smell the blood, Mac realized, as he saw her eyes flash silver. Even guardsmen’s blood would catch the notice of a fledgling, and they hadn’t been in the Castle long enough for her hunger to be entirely subdued.
“How badly are you hurt?” she asked, one hand over her nose and mouth.
Reynard gave a hollow smile. “I simply need to stretch my legs.”
He said it as casually as a country gentleman about to take a stroll around his estate. The only trace of strain he showed was a deepening of the lines in his face. He barely let the discomfort reach his eyes, but then he pressed his hand to his stomach. Blood seeped over his fingers, making tiny rivulets over his skin.
“On second thought, perhaps you should leave me,” Reynard said.
“If I leave you here, you’ll be dead meat,” Mac said, frowning down at him. With short, efficient movements, he bent and pulled open the captain’s jacket, then tore open the fine cotton shirt beneath. Mac caught his breath. “Sword wound?”
“Bran’s ax.”
Mac felt his gorge rising for the second time that morning. “Haven’t you guys ever heard of rock, paper, scissors?”
Chapter 26
What in Hades? The smell was the first thing Alessandro noticed. A stink like melting rubber, cloying to the nose and bitter as it reached the back of the tongue.
He crept down the hall, the dark arch of the stonework growing inky with shadow as he navigated the curve of the corridor. It took him a moment to place what was wrong.
The ever-burning torches were dead. That can’t be good.
Without light, the stench seemed thicker. Or maybe the smell was simply growing worse. He approached the darkness step by step, using his ears and the feel of the air against his face to navigate. His right sleeve brushed against the stones of the wall, giving him one boundary of the corridor. If he kept the wall within reach, he could reverse his path if needed. The black, lightless space ahead seemed to pulse against his skin. Nerves prickled across his shoulders, down the backs of his arms.
If the torches are extinguished, then the Castle’s magic is dead here. Or else there is something so powerful that it has overwhelmed the light.
He froze, reacting to a noise before he realized he’d heard it. The echo of his boots faded to silence. Faint as a whispered oath, something scraped, a long, slow drag over the stones. Statue-still, he listened, waiting. It was a full minute before he heard it again.
Alessandro tried to put an image to what his senses were telling him, but failed. The impenetrable blackness ahead gave no clues. The foul smell gusted on a waft of hot air that felt unpleasantly like an exhaled breath.
Whatever waits ahead is far too close.
He heard another noise, this time behind him. Trapped! Alessandro pressed his back to the stone wall, his sword raised. To his right was the unseen menace; to his left was a thin wash of light from where the torches still burned, barely enough for even his predator’s eyes. The bend in the corridor obscured whatever lay beyond the curve. He was caught between two unknowns.
Wonderful.
An indistinct shape detached itself from the mottled shadows, sliding like oil into the middle of the corridor. He recognized the silhouette by the size and posture. Ashe. Is she taking advantage of the confusion to finish her execution job? He saw her pause, felt her scrutiny.
There was no way he would make this easy for her. He shifted his hands on the sword hilt and waited, letting her come to him. His flexed his knees, his weight ready to lend force to a quick sweep of the blade. It was a technique he’d used time and again as the queen’s executioner. A swift blow to separate the head from the body—merciful and final.
At the same time, he heard the scrape from the darkness to his right. Tension crawled up his skin, a live current. The stink clogged the corridor, nearly making him gag.
Ashe ghosted forward. She moved nearly as silently as he did, making it almost accidental that he heard her. Stopping outside the reach of his blade, she reached out, her hand bracing against the wall, her shoulders oddly hunched. She’s still in pain from her battle with the sorcerer.
“What are you doing here?” he whispered, taking a quick glance toward the darkness.
“There’s something down there,” she said. “Something big.”
“I know. It’s blocking the way out.”
“The hounds are trapped back there?” she asked.
“They’re females and children.”
“I know. Kids. Puppies. Whatever.”
“What are you doing here, Ashe?”
“I’ve been scouting for Lore. I came down this way because I thought it would be safer. There’re guardsmen galore due west of here. I can’t get past.”
She took a few steps forward. His sword twitched, and she froze.
“Relax, I’m not here for you, fang-boy.” She coughed, trying to stifle the noise. “Sonofabitch, that stinks.”
“Get out of here. I’m willing to bet that’s some kind of noxious gas, and I don’t know what it’ll do to living lung tissue.”
“What about you?”
“I don’t need to breathe.”
“That doesn’t mean it’s not poisonous to you.”
As the dragging sound started again, he saw her body curl into itself, a spring coiling for action.
“What the hell is that?” She drifted closer again.
This time, he let her, slowly lowering the sword. It wasn’t that he trusted her, but right then there were other threats—and more interesting game for her to hunt. She coughed again, burying her face in the crook of her elbow.
Then, there was light in all that darkness, a flash of orange bleeding to crimson. It was so vivid, Alessandro felt it like a blow. It disappeared, the afterimage burning in his mind.
“Was that fire?” Ashe whispered.
Before he could answer, another glow appeared, dark like smoldering embers. Two smoldering embers, about shoulder height. And then the dragging sound again, like shells or scales hitting the stone floor. Maybe a tail? Claws?
Eyes.
Scales against stone.
Long and low, like a big lizard.
Flame.
Merda! Instincts screamed a warning.
Ashe grabbed his arm in a panicked death-grip. “Oh, fuck!” she croaked, the words robbed of air. She’d drawn the same conclusion.
Dragon.
The collapse of the Castle was bringing the creatures from its deepest levels.
“Run,” he said, sounding weirdly calm despite a jitter of panic. “A mortal won’t stand a chance in this fight.”
He half expected the creature to rush them, but it stayed put, eyes lit with an inconstant, shifting, bloody light. It had to be a good hundred feet away, but he could feel the heat radiating off its body. Dragons lived in fire. Lived with it inside them. He’d heard even their skin burned bare flesh.
“I’m the only backup you’ve got. Live with it.” Ashe released his arm and raised the light machine gun slung across her body. “What do you think? Underbelly?”
Alessandro shrugged. She was right. There was no one else to help, and Ashe Carver was a fighter. “Throat or eyes usually works with an
ything.”
Ashe squared her shoulders. “We’ll have those kids out of here by lunchtime.”
The dragon’s eyes shifted, the scraping sound matching the movement. It was scales making that noise, the swish of its tail on the stone.
It was inching forward. If Alessandro had to guess, he would have said it was curious. He backed away, dragging Ashe with him. This was his first dragon. He wanted a moment to plan.
“We have to separate. Find cover. We’re too good a target standing together.” Fire loomed large in his mind. Vampires burned all too well, and toast didn’t rise to walk the night. “Find a recessed hiding place. Stone shelters from the heat.”
“Got it.” Ashe pulled away from him and slid into the shadows, her form melting into the dark on the other side of the corridor.
Alessandro felt grudgingly glad to have her there. A family that slays together stays together? He slid back along the corridor until he found the entrance to a side passage where he could let it pass. They weren’t going to win by strength, so he wanted to attack from the dragon’s blind side, away from its flame.
As it closed in, the creature’s outline became visible, lit by the radiance of its eyes. No one Alessandro knew had ever seen one of the great beasts, though legends were plentiful. Unlike the weres or the vampires, dragons were truly wild creatures. They killed, ate, and laid their eggs as they had since the age of their dinosaur cousins. Human settlements were a convenient snack bar. This was the type of creature the Castle had to be meant for—one for which there was no suitable place in the outside world.
The creature’s savage beauty struck him first: the delicate bones of the head, the almost feline face surrounded by a flaring fan of skin and bone. The hide was smooth, brick-red with points of cream.
As it came closer, Alessandro could see the short legs were covered in hard, opalescent scales, the claws curved hooks of solid black. It was shorter than a man, but the body was a good twenty feet long.
Just beyond his hiding place, it stopped, round eyes blinking like the flash of rubies, the blast of heat from its flesh like a furnace door opening. Alessandro had willed his lungs to stop, protecting himself from the dragon’s breath, but he could hear Ashe coughing convulsively.
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