“Yes,” Jenn said, taking an Uzi from him and looping it over her head. “What’s Antonio doing?”
“Sending the Russian boy to heaven,” Holgar replied. “He’ll catch up.”
“Maybe I should stay with him,” Skye offered, her voice strangled as she watched Antonio with the suffering monster.
“Fighting partner,” Holgar reminded her gently.
“Holgar’s right. We need you with us. I wish we had more people.” Jenn lowered her hand to her side and checked her quiver of stakes. Then she broke into a trot. Holgar and Skye followed behind.
“You know this is probably a trap,” Holgar called after her.
“Life’s a trap,” Jenn replied, and put on a burst of speed.
“Well, we’re cheerful tonight,” he said, smiling wryly.
Skye wove behind Holgar through the dark forest, sickened and horrified. That monster had been more human than anything else they’d fought. And she had inflicted terrible pain on it.
An it harm none, do what thou wilt.
She had harmed it grievously. And in doing so she had betrayed everything that she, as a White Witch, stood for. Every vow she had made she had broken. First she had confided in Jenn about the Circuit, never dreaming that Jenn would assume the leadership position of the team. Back in New Orleans, Jenn had told her to reveal the existence of the Circuit to Father Juan, and Skye hadn’t.
These hybrids are people. She tried to tell herself that Antonio had stayed behind to minister to that wretched boy physically as well as spiritually, but she really didn’t think that that was true. If it were, he would have asked for her help. All her traditional magick revolved around blessing and healing—it was what her parents had taught her, what she had grown up with in their coven. No other White Witch had so publicly joined in the struggle against the Cursed Ones by training to become a hunter.
And even there her motives were not pure. She had run away to Spain to join the academy in hopes of learning how to protect herself against Estefan and whatever he had become. She kept hearing him in her head, and still she had told no one.
I’m doing this wrong. It’s all wrong!
To their right, a tall, craggy mountain overlooked the hill they were ascending. It was a perfect place for an ambush. Ahead of her, Holgar disappeared into the trees. Skye lagged behind, tired from healing Jenn’s horrible burns. She had also attempted to give Jenn a magickal boost of energy—she’d been trying to duplicate the effects of Father Juan’s elixir, or at least come close to it—and she herself was doubly exhausted from the effort. Her mind raced. Holgar had touched that creature as well. He must be in pain. They needed her to patch them up, not—not to hurt that poor thing.
If they infiltrated the lab, what kind of tortured monsters would they find?
A cold wind slapped her cheeks, forcing her to concentrate. They were in the middle of a mission.
“Skye?” Holgar called softly as he bounded through a copse of oaks. She nearly jumped out of her skin as she reflexively grabbed a stake from the quiver at her waist.
“You’re so far behind,” he said. He was a tall, powerful shadow in the dark wood. “We have a long way to go. Are you all right?”
Mute, she nodded. Before she realized what he was doing, he took her submachine gun from her and put it around his neck, then gathered her up and slung her piggyback, threading his arms around her legs. She wanted to protest and tell him to put her down, but he was right to do it. She couldn’t keep up.
Holgar loped along, his gait more wolflike than human, dodging tree limbs and sailing over roots. The guns around his neck clanked. The snow fell more heavily, and she tucked in her chin against his shoulder. Her white balaclava was bunched around her neck, but she didn’t want to let go to pull it up.
As they broke through a stand of trees, moonlight shone on a tiny, glittering object far below them in a valley. It was their target, Dantalion’s lab, housed inside a symbol of imperial Russia. Grand and mighty, it had been favored by Nicholas Romanov, the last czar, who had used it for his hunting retreat before he and his family were executed in 1918. First shot, and then their bodies burned.
What is in there now?
Noah and Taamir had camped quite a distance away. Holgar grunted and hunkered down, and Skye slid off his back. He took her hand and stealthily crept to the right. Past bare branches iced with snow, they darted down into a small dip where the rest of the team had assembled. Jamie had a submachine gun aimed at Noah’s head, and he and Taamir had their hands raised in the air. As Skye drew closer, she saw that the two men were huddled around a stranger. A man. Or maybe . . . not a man. His skin was bone white, and his dark eyes looked like black holes. He didn’t appear to be a vampire, and he wasn’t monstrous, like the other creatures they’d encountered. But he didn’t look “right.”
“This is Svika,” Jenn told Skye.
“Goddess be praised,” Skye said sincerely.
“Maybe. Maybe not,” Jamie retorted. “Something’s happened to him.”
“It’s horrible,” Svika said, in a thick accent that Skye couldn’t place. “Dantalion . . . he’s experimenting on humans, vampires, werewolves.” He looked at Taamir and Noah. “Yes, there’s such a thing as werewolves.”
Jamie snorted.
“There’s a tunnel,” Svika went on. “About five kilometers from here. It’s how I got out. No one saw me.”
“So he says,” Jamie bit off.
“We can get to Dantalion. I swear it.” Svika locked gazes with Jenn. “There are more of them searching for Noah and Taamir. But he doesn’t know about you. About your team. He’ll only send reinforcements when he realizes there are more hunters. Now is our chance to strike.”
Jamie looked at Jenn. “I say we kill him.”
“How far back is Antonio?” Jenn asked, looking back the way they came.
“Who gives a damn?” Jamie made a show of wagging the submachine gun at Svika. “This is a load. How convenient that the one tosser these two want ‘escapes.’ No one missed him back there in the madhouse?”
“I think we should leave,” Eriko said. “We have Svika. We can drive to the men with the black crosses and join forces.”
“In the middle of the night,” Jamie said. “With vampires on the loose.”
Eriko looked at Jenn and tipped her chin. “But of course it’s your decision.”
“Skye, can you scry anything?” Jenn asked. “Do you have any intuition you can share?”
“Intuition?” Jamie echoed, sputtering. “Oh, this is brilliant! Yes, Skye, why don’t you turn around in a circle three times and consult with the feckin’ Oracle of Delphi?”
“Leave off,” Skye snapped at him, cut to the quick. Jamie knew she had real powers. “I can, Jenn.”
“Whatever you are going to do, hurry,” Svika urged her. “If I am missed—”
“Double hurry.” Holgar looked at Taamir and Noah, who were both clearly very uncomfortable around him. “Okay, all right, but I’m a good werewolf,” he said in English.
They stared at him. After a beat Noah said, “What?”
Her heart pounding, Skye closed her eyes and searched for calm. She was trembling. Danger swirled around them. It was palpable. She thought of refuge and prayed to her Lady Goddess: Conservate me, conservate me, conservate me. Protect me.
She hadn’t done this sort of thing very many times. What she hoped to see were symbols, messages from that part of her being that was attuned to the larger magickal fabric of the world. Something such as a black well, to represent the tunnel Svika wanted to take them into, or a snowstorm, representing the need to abandon the mission, retrench, and try something different. Or the black Jerusalem crosses worn by the agents Antonio had mentioned, symboliz ing . . . what?
Instead, the tattoo at the small of her back grew warm, and she fell into a memory, long buried . . . by Black magick.
OUTSIDE LONDON, THE HELL FIRE CAVES, THREE YEARS BEFORE
SKYE AND ESTEFAN
Whil
e Estefan got them wine and laughed with his coven brothers from Cadiz, Skye closed and locked the door to the loo. Like the other rooms in the caves, which served as a clandestine meeting place for witches and other sorts who danced close to the edge of danger, the bathroom was illuminated by candle- and torchlight. A mirror veined with gold sat behind a black crystal vase containing five blood-red roses.
With trembling fingers, Skye loosened the scarlet laces of her black corset and pulled up the black lace blouse beneath it. Turning around, she craned her neck and looked into the mirror, moving the vase for a better view. She squinted at her reflection.
She caught her breath. She didn’t remember getting the tattoo at the base of her spine, which was why Estefan called her borachín. Little drunk one. But there it was, ugly, a misshapen gargoyle holding a heart in its mouth. The tattooed heart was bleeding. As if it were meant to bleed.
Biting her lip, she daubed the heart with tissues as best she could, careful to flush all traces of her blood down the toilet. A magick user who got hold of a witch’s blood could work powerful spells. Same with her hair, her nails . . . and her own heart, the one that was thundering inside her chest.
He’s bad, she thought. I shouldn’t be here with him.
“What’s the matter?” Estefan asked her, when she came out of the bathroom. He was wearing a black ritual robe lined in crimson, the hood flung back, revealing his thick, blue-black hair. His black brows were knit over his dark eyes. His mouth—lips so soft, so warm—curled into a curious smile.
Whomever he had been talking to moved into the shadows, and he was making an effort not to look in that someone’s direction. Was it another girl?
Skye’s heart seized in her chest as tingles played across her face. She heard inside her mind a strange, low vibration. Fear washed down her spine, so cold she half imagined the tattoo would begin to give off steam.
And then she knew.
She crossed to him and desperately gestured for him to come with her. Her feet were numb inside her black lace-up boots, and her terror made her awkward.
“Estefan, there’s a vampire here,” she whispered. She glanced fearfully into the shadows.
Twin eyes glowed ruby red back at her.
“Goddess,” she ground out. She grabbed Estefan’s wrist. “There! There it is!”
“Nonsense, mi amor,” Estefan said, moving his fingers in front of her face. Murmuring a spell under his breath. She fought it, struggling. He persisted.
“Estefan,” she whispered. “We’re all in terrible danger! The Cursed Ones are hunting witches! We have to get out of here! We have to warn everyone!”
“Everything is fine,” he assured her.
“Stop it. Stop!” she insisted.
“It’s fine.”
“No. There’s a—”
“There is nothing there.”
She blinked. The room, which had seemed to swirl was once again rock steady beneath her heeled boots. The air, fragrant with wine and candle wax. Soft laughter. The murmuring of voices preparing for ritual.
There had been danger, no?
No?
Her lids fluttered. She put her hand to her forehead, then lowered it to her side.
“Now, what were you saying?” he asked her pleasantly.
“I—I don’t know,” Skye murmured, swaying as Estefan caught both her hands in his.
Kissing her forehead, he chuckled. “Sit down, borachín. You’ve had too much to drink.”
Skye rubbed at the small of her back through the layers of satins and laces. “Something feels funny. Wait, Estefan. I remember! There’s a Curse—”
He moved his hand, and whispered in her ear.
“There is nothing. Nothing but my eyes.” He pulled a black half mask studded with rubies out of the pocket of his robe. “And my lips.”
He pressed his mouth over hers, and she forgot everything. She felt like the Sleeping Beauty, being awakened by a kiss.
“Te amo, mi amor,” he said as he finished the kiss. “I will always love you. Always.”
“Estefan,” she murmured, closing her eyes. “Kiss me again. Never stop kissing me.”
“Never,” he promised.
NEAR THE IMPERIAL HUNTING PALACE
TEAM SALAMANCA, TAAMIR, NOAH, AND SVIKA
“No,” Skye murmured, aghast. Now she felt like the Sleeping Beauty, awakening from slumber.
Estefan Montevideo had cloaked memories from her. She hadn’t remembered that night in the caves, the vampire in the shadows. Estefan had hidden the fanger from her. He’d conspired with it. Had the others done so too?
What else had happened? What more had he hidden from her?
In the nearly three years since she’d last seen him, she had grown as a witch. So why, while she was focusing on another matter, had this vision been revealed? There had been a Cursed One at their wild parties in Lord Dashwood’s Hell Fire Caves. Perhaps more then one. She would tell Jenn about that, and soon; but now she had more urgent business.
She refocused. And then, in her mind, she saw three deep tunnels, one left, one right, and one central. The one on the right glowed with warm light.
Her eyes flew open. She said urgently, “There are tunnels, like Svika said. We take the one on the right.”
“Yes.” Svika regarded her gratefully. “There’s an outbuilding. It was a carriage house. It’s to the west. And there’s a tunnel inside it that leads directly into the lab.”
“Oh, right,” Jamie said. “And if she’d said to take the tunnel on the left, you’d conveniently have a different outbuilding to point out, to lead us to our deaths that direction—”
“Jamie-kun,” Eriko said gently, “you know that Skye has abilities that we don’t have.”
“Eri,” Jamie said, looking peeved, “I do have a brain.” Then he blanched as Eriko pursed her lips and dipped her head. “Sorry.”
Eriko nodded without looking at him.
“We’re going in. Now,” Jenn declared. “It’s three miles to the carriage house, and then we’ll enter the tunnel.”
“I’m not going,” Jamie said, jutting out his chin.
Jenn gave him a hard look. He was completely unfazed.
“After we got back from New Orleans, you agreed to follow me,” Jenn said to him. “You nominated me to be your leader. Now let me do my job.”
She’s grown too, Skye thought, impressed. And relieved.
“I am following Jenn to the tunnel,” Eriko said, and Skye knew Eriko was speaking to Jamie, fighting partner to fighting partner. The Hunter didn’t realize Jamie was in love with her. Just as Jamie didn’t realize that she, Skye, was in love with him.
Eriko looked steadily at him. Jamie huffed, and Skye knew Eriko had won the battle of wills.
“Bloody hell.” Jamie looked at Jenn. “As long as the monster goes in first, and you give me permission to shoot him when I decide it’s best.”
“Done.” Jenn looked past him to the Middle Easterners. “Taamir, Noah, what do you have with you? Any grenades?”
“Jenn,” Skye said, shocked. “The germ warfare. There are things inside we should not unleash. What about the people who live near here?”
Jenn paused, then shook her head. “We have a mission to destroy Dantalion.”
Skye shook her head violently. “No.”
“Yes,” Jenn said. “We kill vampires by any means necessary. That includes blowing up their lairs.” Still, Skye could read the uncertainty in her face. What would they unleash if they did this?
“We need to win this war,” Noah affirmed, and she felt that same warmth toward him as before. He reached in his pockets and handed Jenn two grenades. “We’re hunters, not peacekeepers.”
“I should go first,” Svika said. “Follow me across. There are land mines all over the grounds.”
“Then we’d better step lively,” Jamie quipped.
“And form a line. Step where the guy in front of you steps,” Jenn said.
“Unless he gets bl
own up. Then I’d try a different route.” Jamie made a point of planting his Uzi in Svika’s back.
They assembled into a line.
Noah said, “Do you think we still have the element of surprise on our side? Has Dantalion figured out that there are more hunters out here than just me and Taamir?”
“Let’s assume he doesn’t know,” Jenn said. “So we don’t want to inform him otherwise by making any noise. Agreed?”
Noah nodded. “That’s how I would play it.”
“Okay, we’ll fall out on my mark,” she began.
“Goddess, protect us all,” Skye said, holding out her hands in benediction.
Just then Antonio burst from the trees and half ran, half rolled into the ditch.
“Go, go, go!” he shouted. “The woods are packed with them! They’re everywhere!”
“Follow me!” Hunkering down, Svika raced down the slope. The hunters followed.
And the forest shattered behind them.
BOOK TWO
VELES
Oh, night that guided me,
Oh, night more lovely than the dawn,
Oh, night that joined Beloved with lover,
Lover transformed in the Beloved!
—St. John of the Cross,
sixteenth-century mystic of Salamanca
CHAPTER EIGHT
Humans, lend us now your aid
Fight for us with law and blade
There are those who hate us still
They’re the ones that you must kill
Safety peace, our common goal
War takes an unpleasant toll
Now we put your love to test
Lay our enemies all to rest
UNIVERSITY OF SALAMANCA
FATHER JUAN
Father Juan ignored the pain in his knees as he knelt in the university chapel, praying. He had been that way for most of the day as unmoving as the statues of saints that kept silent vigil with him. He prayed for his team out in the field, for the students training at the university, for the war, and for the Church. There in the chapel he wrestled with demons of his own, struggling to find the hope that he needed to believe in so that he could share it with the others. For the first time since the Cursed Ones had announced their presence to the world, Father Juan felt completely hollow.
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