by Christine Warren, Marjorie Liu, Caitlin Kittredge, Jenna Maclaine
Warren, with a presence of mind that both impressed and astounded me, grabbed the Craven Cross and jerked it off my neck. Brandishing it before him, he placed himself between me and the demon.
“Be gone, demon!” he shouted.
Michael hissed and staggered backward. I wasn’t sure if it was the vampire or the demon that objected to the cross. A cross, or just about any religious object, will repel a vampire if it’s wielded by a true believer and the vampire means the human harm. I wasn’t certain about demons, but it seemed likely such methods would work on them as well. Otherwise, what was the point of exorcisms?
“I will have you, witch,” the demon said. “But first I must fulfill the terms of my bargain. I promised him I would bring you unimaginable pain.” He held out his arms and glanced down at his body before smiling at me. “I think this will do.”
Tears sprang to my eyes as I watched him turn and walk away. Warren was talking to me, but I didn’t hear what he was saying. The demon stopped at the smoldering corpse and kicked it, rolling it over and over until the flames were extinguished. He reached down into what was once the man’s chest and gingerly pulled out a gold chain. A round pendant with some sort of stone set in its center hung from the chain, glittering in the moonlight. Slipping the artifact into his pocket, he calmly disappeared into the shadows.
“Cin!” Warren said snapping my attention back to him. “We followed you in your carriage. We waited, thinking you might need a ride home.”
I blinked at him barely understanding his words. “Pull the sword out, Warren,” I said numbly. “And help me home.”
EIGHT
My cloak managed to hide the gaping hole and the blood stains on my dress as I walked into the house on Upper Brook Street. Ginny followed behind me, and Warren had graciously offered to see to the carriage and the horses, since we’d sent Will the footman home hours ago. Devlin and Justine emerged from one of the parlors, and it occurred to me then, for the first time, that I would have to tell them what had happened.
Devlin inhaled sharply, his vampire senses easily detecting the scent of blood. His gaze roamed over my face and then dropped to my hands. I tried to hide the red stains in the folds of my cloak, but Devlin crossed the room and took my hands in his.
“Cin,” he said softly. “Where is Michael?”
I looked up into his dark eyes and I realized I didn’t have to be strong anymore. I’d had to hold myself together in front of the demon, and then with Warren and Ginny so that they could remove the sword and get me home. But now that I was here with Devlin and Justine … the tears started falling and, with a wrenching sob, my knees buckled. I would have hit the floor if Devlin hadn’t caught me and swung me into his arms.
I’d lost him. Michael had thrown himself in front of a demon, knowing it would take over his body, in order to save me. And I had been powerless to stop it. I clutched Devlin’s shirt in my fists and cried so hard I thought I might break. I should have run when he’d told me to.
“Mon amour,” I heard Justine say, “take her up to her room. I will clean her up, but you must find blood for her.”
Cradled against Devlin’s massive chest, I felt like a child being carried to bed by her father. He set me down on the mattress and then vanished as Justine and Ginny fussed over me. I let them do as they willed, the whole time thinking over and over of what I could have done differently to save him.
My cloak came off first, followed by my gown and underthings. In a daze I stood, I sat, I lifted my arms when they told me to, but I wasn’t really there. My body was in the house, but my mind was still out on that field. Justine cleaned the blood off my face, hands, and chest before sliding my nightgown on over my head. Sitting down beside me, she grasped my shoulders and gave me a little shake. Woodenly, I turned to her.
“Cin, chérie, tell me what happened,” she said.
I shook my head, the words coming out in a broken whisper I barely recognized. “He saw the Ripper. I told him not to follow him, but he wouldn’t listen. It was a trap. My magic didn’t work against him. I panicked. I set the demon on fire. I thought we’d have enough time to get away, but we didn’t. Michael … forced the demon to take him instead of me.”
“How did you get wounded?” she asked.
I looked up into her brilliant blue eyes. “Michael did it,” I said.
“You mean the Ripper?”
“Yes,” I answered, forcing myself to remember that. “And please don’t call him the Ripper anymore, not when he’s wearing Michael’s body.”
“Of course, chérie,” she whispered. “What did he say to you?”
“That he knew I’d come. That he wanted to hurt me,” I replied.
Remembering Michael’s face, his voice saying those things to me, made the tears start again.
“Justine,” Devlin said softly from the doorway. “Leave her be for now. Let her rest. I’ll go find someone to feed her. Fresh blood will help the wound heal.”
“She can take my blood,” Ginny said.
I shook my head. I’d almost forgotten she was there. She sat down next to me and pushed my hair back over my shoulder.
“It’s all right,” she said. “I remember my mother feeding you once when you needed blood. I’m not afraid.”
She held her wrist out to me and I looked up at her, too weak and weary to argue. She nodded to me.
“Go ahead,” she said. “Take it.”
My eyes locked on hers and it took every bit of energy I had left to bespell her so that she wouldn’t feel the pain. When I knew she was under, I raised her wrist to my lips and bit. Her sweet, coppery blood washed down my throat and the pain in my chest lessened as it filled me. Before I was ready to stop, Justine intervened and pulled Ginny’s wrist from my mouth.
“That’s enough for now,” she said and ushered Ginny toward Devlin. He put one arm around her and guided her from the room.
As Justine tucked me into bed, I grabbed her hand.
“Will you stay with me?” I asked. “Just for a little while.”
“Of course, mon amie,” she replied.
She walked around the bed and pulled back the covers. I turned on my side and she slid her body against mine, wrapping her arms around me.
“Do not fret,” she whispered. “We will get him back.”
Softly, she sang to me until I fell asleep. Thankfully, I didn’t dream.
NINE
I slept until noon, when the chiming of a clock somewhere in the house woke me. Rolling over, I expected to see Michael’s pale, perfect body stretched out beside me. But the bed was empty, and my heart clenched in pain as I remembered why. We will get him back, Justine had said. Yes, by the gods, we would.
I threw back the covers and stalked from the room. Vaguely, I remembered the books Devlin and Justine had gathered together in the library last night. I carried them into the parlor and shut the door behind me. The room was cold and dark, all the windows in the house having been shuttered and the curtains drawn so that we could move about freely in the daytime. There were logs in the fireplace, though, and I held my hand out toward them. A moment later a fire erupted, roaring nicely in the grate and allowing enough light and warmth for me to spread the books out on the rug in front of it.
For hours I flipped through page after page until, in the last book, I found what I was looking for. “Binding” the script at the top of the page read. And the rest of it looked like a blurry watercolor. Most of these books had traveled with me for many years before I’d bought this house and, at some point in all that time, this grimoire had sustained significant water damage. I remembered the invocation and part of the herbs needed, but the rest of it was lost.
“Damn it!” I cursed, snapping the book closed and hurling it against the wall.
“Cin?” Justine asked, sticking her head in the door. “May I come in?”
“Of course,” I said with a sigh.
Dressed in a soft pink morning gown, with her long blonde hair pulled back in
a neat chignon, Justine looked lovely. I felt rather bedraggled sitting there on the floor in my nightgown, with my hair uncombed. She picked up the book I had tossed, closed it, and handed it back to me before sitting down in one of the chairs flanking the fireplace.
“I take it the news is not good?” she asked.
I shook my head. “The writing is too obscured by water damage. I can’t make anything out.”
“So we have nothing?” she asked.
“No, we have part of the spell which is basically useless without knowing what the other half of the ingredients are.”
“Hmm,” Justine murmured and sat back in her chair. I watched her face and could almost see the ideas running through her head. “You don’t usually use spells and potions.”
“No,” I agreed. “My magic bends to my will.”
“Then why must you use this spell to bind the demon?”
I blinked at her. “Because I don’t believe my magic is strong enough.”
“Perhaps it is worth a try,” she suggested. “You say this spell is gray magic. Is that not what you have? Both the light and the darkness inside you?”
I thought about it for a moment. Could I do it? Bind a demon with nothing more than the magic I could call? As I was considering this, Devlin and Ginny entered the room. Justine explained our progress to them and they all waited while I thought through the obstacles and implications of what Justine had suggested. Finally I nodded.
“I think I could do it. For Michael, I will be strong enough to do it. But as I see it, we have three problems.”
Devlin arched one dark brow. “Only three?”
I continued on, ignoring his sarcasm. “The least of our problems is figuring out a way to get the demon to vacate Michael’s body without physically harming … well … Michael’s body. I think I have an idea, but none of you are going to like it, and I haven’t exactly worked out all the details, so for now I’m going to keep that to myself. The second problem is what to do with the demon after we get him out of Michael’s body. The Ripper is not going to make it easy. Once he leaves Michael’s body, I’m going to have to force him into some other vessel that he can’t escape from, before he can infect a new body.”
“Or you,” Justine pointed out.
I nodded. “Or me.”
We all fell silent, thinking.
“Oh!” Ginny exclaimed, making me jump. She pointed to the bookshelves that lined the wall next to the fireplace. “Will that work?”
I followed the direction of her finger and if my heart had been beating it surely would have stopped at what I saw.
“Ginny,” I said slowly, “Is that what I think it is?”
“After y’all left Devil’s Island, I kept it in my room as sort of a keepsake to remind me of … everything. When I came to London I brought it with me. I thought it should be here.”
Sitting there on the shelf (serving as a bookend no less!) was a large Grecian urn. I rose to my feet and slowly walked over to it. Reaching out I traced my fingers over the lid and down the sides, making sure it was still intact. And why wouldn’t it be? It was said to have been forged by Hephaestus himself.
I turned back to my friends and smiled. “An unbreakable jar that once held a god of war trapped for millennia. That will do.”
“Before we get ahead of ourselves,” Devlin said, always the voice of reason, “what is the third problem?”
My excitement waned. “The demon is apparently immune to my magic.”
“How can that be?” Devlin asked, stunned.
“I have no idea,” I replied. “But I’ll think it through today and maybe something will come to me. The minute the sun sets, though, we need to find Grady. Until I can figure out why my magic won’t work and how to remedy the problem, we can’t fight this demon. In the meantime, I want to make it very clear to Grady that no one is to harm the Ripper while he’s in my husband’s body.”
TEN
As twilight settled over London, I went from room to room in the house, checking the locks on all the windows and doors. If the demon decided to pay us a visit, I wanted to be sure he had to break down something solid to get in. At least we would have that as a warning. Ginny had flatly refused to leave the house at night, even though I had offered to put her up in a fine hotel, or turn a blind eye if she wished to stay with Warren. She was certain that I might need her, though, as I had the night before. Since I had taken her blood, I could use vampire magic to bend her to my will, but I wouldn’t do it. Instead I had sent the footman to Warren’s shop with a request that he come talk some sense into her as soon as he closed for the day.
That task had taken all of five minutes and the previous argument with Ginny had been short-lived. The other hours of daylight I’d spent poring over every book I owned, trying to stay busy so that I wouldn’t go mad with worry. Amy, the housemaid, had come in several times to ask if I needed anything. I had politely declined both lunch and tea, refilling my whiskey glass at a rate that would have been alarming in a human. None of it had kept my mind from wandering to Michael, though. To what the demon might be doing, at this very moment, in his body. For the thousandth time since I’d woken alone in our bed, I pushed the thought aside.
Entering my bedroom, I pulled my coat from the wardrobe and tossed it on the bed. Tonight I wouldn’t be tramping through the slush in skirts and slippers. This time I would be ready for whatever came my way. I was wearing black leather breeches tucked into a pair of thigh-high boots. A black leather vest topped the ensemble. I rarely wore the vest alone, with no shirt underneath. A full-sleeved shirt helped to hide the knives strapped to my forearms, but tonight I would do without it. I wanted to look as dangerous as possible.
I slid Michael’s claymore into the scabbard at my hip, feeling closer to him because I was wearing his blade. It wasn’t the great claymore that he called Ophelia, but one he’d had made as a scaled-down version of his favorite weapon. Wearing a sword in public will get you arrested in most places, and it’s difficult to conceal a blade nearly four and a half feet long. The sword he carried now looked like the claymore but was substantially smaller and easier to hide under a cloak or long coat. Ignoring the fact that the last time I’d seen Michael he’d shoved this blade into my heart, I opened the trunk that held our weapons and pulled out a long, flat box.
As a rule, vampires, especially the older ones, don’t like guns. They seem to view them as cheating. If you can’t win a fight by your own physical strength and skill with a sword, then you deserve to lose. However, last year I’d won a Smith & Wesson .38 from an American in a game of poker and, as it turns out, I’m an excellent shot. Of course, it’s nearly impossible to kill a vampire with a bullet, but it will get their attention. Sometimes that’s all you need. I loaded the gun, tucked it into the waistband of my breeches at the small of my back, and shrugged into my coat.
Michael called this my general’s coat. It was long and black with burgundy silk braiding that decorated the turned-back cuffs and ran along the edge of its stand-up collar. A smart row of oriental frog buttons in the same burgundy silk marched from the collar to just above my waist. The rest of the coat was open, allowing me swift access to the weapon at my hip or the knives strapped to my thighs, hidden by my tall boots. The coat belled out just enough to hide the fact that I was a woman wearing very scandalous and masculine attire. That is, if you didn’t look too closely.
As I reached the top buttons I touched my bare neck, wondering if Warren still had my cross necklace or if he’d dropped it in the park. It seemed a trifling thing to worry about, considering everything else that had happened. Still, it was one more thing that I’d had yesterday that I didn’t have today.
As I was tying my hair back at my nape with a thick black satin ribbon, I heard Devlin and Justine leave their room, murmuring to each other as they walked down the hall. I closed my eyes and imagined Michael standing behind me, his arms wrapped around my waist, his lips kissing my neck. It was what he always did before we wen
t out. This evening I wrapped my arms around myself instead.
“I will get you back,” I said to the empty room. “I swear I will.”
Warren had just arrived, and in fact was still standing in the foyer arguing with Ginny, when I came downstairs. He looked up at me and his mouth fell open. While I was walking down the stairs the coat did little to hide my boots, breeches, or the sword I was wearing, but I was certain that my clothing wasn’t entirely responsible for the expression on his face. Ginny, however, conspicuously cleared her throat and Warren swiftly regained his composure.
“I can’t believe it,” he said. “Last night I saw you with a sword sticking out of your chest and now you look completely healed.”
I shrugged. “Already being dead sometimes has its advantages.”
“I suppose so,” he murmured.
“Have you had any luck talking this hardheaded girl into leaving the house for the night?” I asked.
Ginny glared at me, but I ignored her.
“I’m afraid not,” he said, holding up a large canvas sack. “But I brought crosses. I’ll stay with her until you return.”
Ginny rolled her eyes and I tried not to laugh, for he was so earnest.
“If I don’t check the pot boiling on the stove,” Ginny said, “I’m liable to burn the whole house down, and then we won’t have to worry about it. Warren, make yourself at home in the parlor. I’ll return shortly when supper is ready.” She turned to me. “And you be careful with yourself.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said in my best imitation of her southern drawl.
As Ginny headed toward the kitchen I leaned over and whispered to Warren. “Of course, you realize that this means you’re going to have to marry that girl, don’t you?”
He smiled. “Oh yes,” he said happily. “But she hasn’t realized that yet.”
Hearing my voice, Devlin and Justine emerged from the parlor and the three of us headed for the door.
“Mrs. Craven!” Warren called out. “I almost forgot.”