by Nora Roberts
“I hate the wait almost as much as Davey.”
Lilith smiled. “I’ll bring you back a present from tonight’s little game.”
Davey rode pinion with Lilith through the moon-struck night. He’d wanted to ride his own pony, but his mama had explained that it wasn’t fast enough. He liked going fast, feeling the wind, flying toward the hunt and the kill. It was the most exciting night he could remember.
It was even better than the present she’d given him on his third birthday when she’d taken him through the summer night to a Boy Scout camping ground. And that had been such fun! The screaming and the running and the crying. The chomp, chomp, chomping.
It was better than hunting the humans in the caves, or burning a vampire who’d been bad. It was better than anything he could remember.
His memories of his human family were vague. There were times he woke from a dream and for a moment was in a bedroom with pictures of race cars on the walls and blue curtains at the windows. There were monsters in the closet of the bedroom, and he cried until she came.
She had brown hair and brown eyes.
Sometimes he would come in, too, the tall man with the scratchy face. He’d chase the monsters away, and she would sit and stroke his hair until he fell asleep again.
If he tried very hard, he could remember splashing in the water, and the feel of the wet sand going gooshy under his feet and the man laughing as the waves splashed them.
Then he wasn’t laughing, he was screaming. And he was shouting: Run! Run, Davey, run!
But he didn’t try very hard, very often.
It was more fun to think about hunting and playing. His mother let him have one of the humans for a toy, if he was very, very good. He liked best the way they smelled when they were afraid, and the sounds they made when he started to feed.
He was a prince, and could do anything he wanted. Almost.
He would show his mother tonight that he was a big boy now. Then there would be no more almost.
When they stopped the horses, he was almost sick with the thrill of what was to come. They would go on foot from here—and then it would be his turn. His mother held tight to his hand, and he wished she wouldn’t. He wanted to march like Lucius and the other soldiers. He wanted to carry a sword instead of the little dagger hidden under his tunic.
Still, it was fun to go so fast, faster than any human, across the fields toward the farm.
They stopped again, and his mother crouched down to him to take his face in her hands. “Do just the way we practiced, my sweet boy. You’ll be wonderful. I’ll be very close, every minute.”
He puffed out his chest. “I’m not afraid of them. They’re just food.”
Behind him Lucius chuckled. “He may be small, Your Majesty, but he’s a warrior to the bone.”
She rose, and her hand stayed on Davey’s shoulder as she turned to Midir. “Your life,” she said quietly. “Begin.”
Spreading his arms in the black robes, Midir began his chant.
Lilith gestured so that the men spread out. Then she, Lucius and Davey moved closer to the farm.
One of the windows showed the flickering glow of a fire banked for the night. There was the smell of horses closed inside the stable, and the first hints of human. It stirred hunger and excitement in Davey’s belly.
“Be ready,” she told Lucius.
“My lady, I would give my life for the prince.”
“Yes, I know.” She laid a hand briefly on Lucius’s arm. “That’s why you’re here. All right, Davey. Make me proud.”
Inside the farmhouse, Tynan and two others stood guard. It was nearly time to wake their relief, and he was more than ready for a few hours’ sleep. His hip ached from the wound he’d suffered during the attack on their first day’s march. He hoped when he was able to close his gritty eyes he wouldn’t see the attack again.
Good men lost, he thought. Slaughtered.
The time was coming when he would avenge those men on the battlefield. He only hoped that if he died there, he fought strong and brave first and destroyed a like number of the enemy.
He shifted his stance, preparing to order the relief watch when a sound brought his hand to the hilt of his sword.
His eyes sharpened; his ears pricked. It might have been a night bird, but it had sounded so human.
“Tynan.”
“Yes, I hear it,” he said to one of the others on guard.
“It sounds like weeping.”
“Stay alert. No one is to…” He trailed off as he spotted a movement. “There, near the northmost paddock. Do you see? Ah, in the name of all the gods, it’s a child.”
A boy, he thought, though he couldn’t be sure. The clothes covering him were torn and bloody, and he staggered, weeping, with his thumb plugged into his mouth.
“He must have escaped some raid near here. Wake the relief, and stay alert with them. I’ll go get the child.”
“We were warned not to step outside after sundown.”
“We can’t leave a child out there, and hurt by the look of him. Wake the relief,” Tynan repeated. “I want an archer by this window. If anything out there moves but me and that child, aim for its heart.”
He waited until the men were set, and watched the child fall to the ground. A boy, he was nearly sure now, and the poor thing wailed and whimpered pitifully as it curled into a ball.
“We could keep an eye on him until morning,” one of the others on duty suggested.
“Are Geallian men so frightened of the dark they’d huddle inside while a child bleeds and cries?”
He shoved the door open. He wanted to move quickly, get the child inside to safety. But he forced himself to stop his forward rush when the boy’s head came up and the round little face froze in fear.
“I won’t hurt you. I’m one of the queen’s men. I’ll take you inside,” he said gently. “It’s warm, and there’s food.”
The boy scrambled to his feet and screamed as if Tynan had hacked him with a sword. “Monsters! Monsters!”
He began to run, limping heavily on his left leg. Tynan dashed after him. Better to scare the boy than to let him get away and very likely be a snack for some demon. Tynan caught him just before the boy managed to scramble over the stone wall bordering the near field.
“Easy, easy, you’re safe.” The boy kicked and slapped and screamed, shooting fresh pain into Tynan’s hip. “You need to be inside. No one’s going to hurt you now. No one…”
He thought he heard something—chanting—and tightened his grip on the child. He turned, ready to sprint back for the house when he heard something else, something that came from what he held in his arms. It was a low, feral growl.
The boy grinned, horribly, and went for his throat.
There was something beyond agony, and it took Tynan to his knees. Not a child, not a child at all, he thought as he fought to free himself. But the thing ripped at him like a wolf.
Dimly he heard shouts, screams, the thud of arrows, the clash of swords. And the last he heard was the hideous sound of his own blood being greedily drunk.
They used fire, tipping arrows with flame, and still, nearly a quarter of their number were killed or wounded before the demons fell back.
“Take that one alive.” Lilith delicately wiped blood from her lips. “I promised Lora a gift.” She smiled down at Davey who stood over the body of the soldier he’d killed. It swelled pride in her that her boy had continued to feed even when troops had dragged the body, with the prince clinging to it, away from the battle.
Davey’s eyes were red and gleaming, and his freckles stood out like gold against the rosy flush the blood had given his cheeks.
She picked him up, held him high over her head. “Behold your prince!”
The troops who hadn’t been destroyed in the brief battle knelt.
She lowered him to kiss him long and deep on his mouth.
“I want more,” he said.
“Yes, my love, and you’ll have more. Very soon.
Toss that thing on a horse,” she ordered with a careless gesture toward Tynan’s body. “I have a use for it.”
She mounted, then held out her arms so that Davey could leap into them. With her cheek rubbing against his hair, she looked down at Midir.
“You did well,” she said to him. “You can have your choice of the humans, for whatever purposes you like.”
The moonlight shone on his silver hair as he bowed. “Thank you.”
Moira stood in the brisk wind and watched dragons and riders circle overhead. It was a stunning sight, she thought, and would have sent her heart soaring under any other circumstances. But these were military maneuvers, not spectacle.
Still, she could hear children calling out and clapping, and more than a few of them pretending they were dragon or rider.
She smiled a greeting when her uncle strode over to watch beside her. “You’re not tempted to fly?” she asked him.
“I leave it for the young—and the agile. It’s a brilliant sight, Moira. And a hopeful one.”
“The dragons have lifted the spirits. And in battle, they’ll give us an advantage. Do you see Blair? She rides as if she was born on the back of one.”
“She’s hard to miss,” Riddock murmured as Blair drove her mount toward the ground at a dizzying speed, then swept up again.
“Are you pleased she and Larkin will marry?”
“He loves her, and I can think of no other who suits him so well. So aye, his mother and I are pleased. And will miss him every day. He must go with her,” Riddock said before Moira could speak. “It’s his choice, and I feel—in my heart—it’s the right choice for him. But we’ll miss him.”
Moira leaned her head against her uncle’s arm. “Aye, we will.”
She would be the only one to remain, she thought as she went inside again. The only one of the first circle who would remain in Geall after Samhain. She wondered how she would be able to bear it.
Already the castle felt empty. So many had already gone ahead, and others were busy with duties she’d assigned. Soon, very soon, she would leave herself. So it was time, she determined, to write down her wishes in the event she didn’t return.
She closed herself in her sitting room and sat to sharpen her quill. Then changed her mind and took out one of the treasures she’d brought back with her from Ireland.
She would write this document, Moira determined, with the instrument of another world.
She’d use a pen.
What did she have of value, she wondered, that wouldn’t by rights belong to the next who ruled Geall?
Some of her mother’s jewelry, certainly. And this she began to disburse in her mind between Blair and Glenna, her aunt and cousin, and lastly, her ladies.
Her father’s sword should be Larkin’s, she decided, and the dagger he’d once carried would go to Hoyt. The miniature of her father would be her uncle’s if she died before him, as her father and uncle had been fast friends.
There were trinkets, of course. Bits of this and that which she gave thought to bequesting.
To Cian she left her bow and quiver, and the arrows she’d made with her own hand. She hoped he’d understand that these were more than weapons to her. They were her pride, and a kind of love.
She wrote it all carefully, sealed it. She would give the document to her aunt for safekeeping.
She felt better having done it. Lighter and clearer in her mind somehow. Setting the paper aside, she rose to face the next task. Moving back into the bedroom, she crossed to the balcony doors. The drapes still hung there, blocking the light, the view. And now she drew them back, let the soft light spill through.
In her mind’s eye she saw it again, the dark, the blood, the torn body of her mother and the things that mutilated her. But now she opened the door and made herself walk through them.
The air was cool and moist, and overhead the sky was full of dragons. Streaks and whirls of color riding the pale blue. How her mother would have loved the sight of them, loved the sound of the wings, the laughter of the children in the courtyard below.
Moira walked to the rail, laid her hands on it and felt the sturdy stone. And standing as her mother had often done, she looked out over Geall, and swore to do her best.
She might have been surprised to know that Cian spent a large portion of his restless day doing what she had done. His lists of bequests and instructions were considerably longer than hers and minutely more detailed. But then he’d lived considerably longer and had accumulated a great deal.
He saw no reason for any of it to go to waste.
A dozen times during the writing of it he cursed the quill and wished violently for the ease and convenience of a computer. But he kept at it until he believed he’d spread his holdings out satisfactorily.
He wasn’t certain it could all be done as some of it would be up to Hoyt. They’d speak about it, Cian thought. If he could count on anything, he could count on Hoyt doing everything in his considerable power to fulfill the obligation Cian meant to give him.
All in all, he hoped it wouldn’t be necessary. A thousand years of existence didn’t mean he was ready to give it up. And he damn well didn’t intend to go to hell until he’d sent Lilith there before him.
“You were always one for business.”
He pushed to his feet, drawing his dagger in one fluid motion as he turned toward the sound of the voice. Then the dagger simply fell out of his limp fingers.
Even after a millennium, there can be shocks beyond imagining.
“Nola.” His voice sounded rusty on the name.
She was a child, his sister, just as she’d been when he’d last seen her. Her long dark hair falling straight, her eyes deep and blue. And smiling.
“Nola,” he said again. “My God.”
“I thought you would say you have no god.”
“None that would claim me. How can you be here? Are you here?”
“You can see for yourself.” She spread her arms, then did a little turn.
“You lived, and you died. An old woman.”
“You didn’t know the woman, so I’m as you remember me. I missed you, Cian. I looked for you, even knowing better. For years I looked and I hoped for you and for Hoyt. You never came.”
“How could I? You know what I was. Am. You understand that now.”
“Would you have hurt me? Or any of us?”
“I don’t know. I hope not, but I didn’t see any reason to risk it. Why are you here?”
He reached out, but she held up her hand and she shook her head. “I’m not flesh. Only an apparition. Here to remind you that you may not be what you were when you were mine, but you’re not what she would have made you.”
Because he needed a moment, he bent to pick up the dagger he’d dropped, then sheathed it again. “What does it matter?”
“It does. It will.” And apparition or not, her eyes swam as they locked on his. “I had children, Cian.”
“I know.”
“Strong, skilled, gifted. Your blood, too.”
“Were you happy?”
“Oh, aye. I loved a man, and he loved me. We had those children, and lived a good life. And still my brothers left a place in my heart I could never fill. A little ache inside. I would see you, and Hoyt, sometimes. In the water, or the mist, or the fire.”
“There are things I’ve done I wouldn’t have you see.”
“I saw you kill, and feed. I saw you hunt humans as you’d once hunted deer. And I saw you stand by my grave in the moonlight and lay flowers on it. I saw you fight beside the brother we both love. I saw my Cian. Do you remember how you’d pull me up on your horse and ride and ride?”
“Nola.” He rubbed his fingers over his brow. He hurt too much to think of it. “We’re both dead.”
“And we both lived. She came to my window one night.”
“She? Who?” Inside him, he went cold as winter. “Lilith.”
“We’re both dead,” Nola reminded him. “But your hands go to fists and your
eyes go sharp as your dagger. Would you still protect me?”
He walked to the fire, kicked idly at the simmering turf. “What happened?”
“It was more than two years after Hoyt left us. Father had died and mother was ill. I knew she would never be strong again, that she would die. I was so sad, so afraid. I woke from sleep in the dark, and there was a face at my window. So beautiful. Golden hair and a sweet smile. She whispered to me, called me by name. ‘Ask me in,’ she said, and promised me a treat.”
Nola tossed back her hair, and her face was full of disdain. “She thought since I was only a girl, the youngest of us, I’d be foolish, I’d be easy to trick. I went to the window, and I looked in her eyes. There’s power in her eyes.”
“Hoyt must have told you not to take such risks. He must have—”
“He wasn’t there, and neither were you. There was power in me as well. Have you forgotten?”
“No. But you were a child.”
“I was a seer, and the blood of demon hunters was in my veins. I looked in her eyes and I told her it was my blood who would end her. My blood who would rid the worlds of her. And for her there would be no eternity in hell, or anywhere. Her damnation would be an end of all. She would be dust, and no spirit would survive.”
“She wouldn’t have been pleased.”
“Her beauty remains even when she shows her true self. That’s another power. I held up Morrigan’s cross, that I wore always around my neck. The light flashed from it, like a sunbeam. She was screaming when she ran.”
“You were always fearless,” he murmured.
“She never came back while I lived, and never came again until you and Hoyt went home together. You’re stronger than you were without him, and he with you. She fears that, hates that. Envies that.”
“Will he live through this?”
“I can’t know. But if he falls, it will be as he lived. With honor.”
“Honor’s cold comfort when you’re in the ground.”
“Then why do you hold your own?” she demanded with a whip of impatience in her voice. “It’s honor that brings you here. Honor that you’ll carry into battle along with your sword. She couldn’t drain it out of you, and just the little she left was enough for you to draw on again. You made this choice. You’ve still more to make. Remember me.”