“Oh, come on. Juliet, in D.C.? She never leaves Boston. It must have been someone who looks like her.”
“Surveillance cameras again, this time outside a bank. I saw the images. It was Juliet.” Contrary to some legends, vampires do show up on film. In mirrors, too. How else would my roommate manage to apply her bloodred lipstick so perfectly?
“But that still doesn’t—”
Kane held up a hand to show he wasn’t done yet. “A guy came forward and said she’d fed from him that night. The saliva sample matched Juliet’s profile.”
“You are not going to convince me that Juliet murdered a judge and tried to blame it on you.” But she’d lied to me. Even as I shook my head, I wondered just what the hell she’d been doing with those things in the living room. And I remembered something else, something Juliet had said in Creature Comforts: about how she missed the old days, when vampires could drain a body dry. Did she want to force the monsters back into hiding, just so she could kill norms again? I couldn’t believe it.
“I honestly don’t know, Vicky. She’s disappeared.”
I caught his hand and held it to make him stop pacing. “What do you mean?”
“After the third full-moon night, I was free to go back to Boston. Nobody had seen her for several days. Not Axel, not your doorman, not Councilor Hadrian.” Juliet never went more than a day or two without calling Hadrian to complain about something. If he hadn’t heard from her, that was a bad sign. “I tried calling you to see if you knew where she was, but you didn’t call back—”
A surge of anger made me fling his hand away. “So you hopped on a plane and came to Wales to see if I was harboring the fugitive who tried to frame you.” Everything made sense now. Why he’d shown up, why he’d come with us today. The hell with stopping Pryce; he probably thought we were on our way to Juliet’s hiding place. No wonder he didn’t want to explain anything in the car.
“No, Vicky. That’s not it.” He sat down again. Leaning toward me, he caught my hand between his. I tried to tug it back, but he wouldn’t let go. “You’ve got to understand. Yesterday was a real low point for me. Everything I’d worked for lay in ruins at my feet. Everything I cared about had been ripped away. I asked myself, what the hell did I care about? What was worth fighting and struggling and sacrificing for? Anything—anything at all?” He dipped his head, toying with my fingers, and was silent for a long time. When he looked up again, his gray eyes shone. “There was one thing, Vicky, just one. And that was you.”
He raised my hand and pressed his lips against the palm. His eyes never left my face. “Suddenly, it seemed very important to find you and tell you that.”
My voice wouldn’t come. I leaned my forehead against his, and we stayed that way for half a dozen heartbeats. Then he made a sound low in his throat and pulled me to him, lifting me onto his lap. He kissed me with deep hunger, lips pressing mine, tongue exploring. I leaned into him, meeting his kiss with equal hunger, as need, fathomless and intense, opened in me. He held me like he’d never get close enough. My hands traced the broad contours of his shoulders, kneaded the hard muscles of his back. Everything about him—his scent, the feel of his body, the thrill of his kisses—was familiar, but also new.
He pulled back, breathing hard. “Vicky, I know I haven’t—”
I silenced him with a kiss. Wherever we might be headed, we didn’t have to figure it out tonight. I tucked my head under his chin and nestled against him as he stroked my hair, caressed my neck. If only I could stay here, like this, for hours. Days even. Warm, safe, held. Nothing to fight, nothing to save. Just us.
But it wasn’t just us, and I couldn’t stay here any longer. Reluctantly, I stood up. Kane stood, too. He took both my hands in his.
“Mab—” I began.
“I know, and you’re right. You should be with her.” He kissed the top of my head, both eyes, my nose, and finally my mouth. Gently, but with so much promise it took my breath away. “Go on. I’ll see you in the morning.”
HIS TOUCH LINGERED ON MY SKIN AS I MOVED AROUND THE kitchen, brewing a mug of no-dreaming tea. I carried the mug downstairs to the shift room. Mab, still in wolf form, lay on the cot; Rose dozed beside her in a chair. When I touched Rose’s shoulder, she jumped. “Go home and get some sleep, Rose. I’ll sit with her.”
She wiped her face with her apron and nodded. She squeezed my shoulder, mumbled something that sounded like “good night,” and went out. I took her place in the chair.
I sipped the herbal tea and stroked Mab’s fur. She sighed in her sleep. Her ribs rose and fell under my hand. That small motion was a miracle. Beside it, everything that had gone wrong—the freed Morfran, Pryce’s escape, Kane’s fiasco in Washington, Juliet’s disappearance—seemed small and insignificant. Mab was alive. She was breathing. It was what mattered.
I watched her for a long time. When exhaustion crept up on me, I lay down on the floor near the door, out of range of the energy blast that would come if Mab shifted back. Tomorrow, I’d throw myself back into the fight. For now, my aunt and I both needed to rest.
31
“WAKE UP, CHILD.” MAB’S VOICE AND THE SMELL OF COFFEE pushed through my sleep. I lay on the shift room’s cot. Everything was backward. Mab wasn’t supposed to be sitting by the cot waiting for me to wake up—it was supposed to be the other way around.
And yet, there she was.
“Mab!” I jumped out of bed and threw my arms around her.
“Careful, you’re spilling the coffee.” Mab tutted and said she was sure she didn’t know what I was making a fuss about. But she laughed a little, too.
I stepped back, keeping my hands on her shoulders. She looked like she always did, wearing her long black dress and a blue cardigan. “So you’re all right?”
“Yes, child, I’m fine. Still weak, but nothing a few days’ rest won’t cure.”
“When—?”
“I shifted back at about three o’clock this morning, and there you were, fast asleep on the floor.” She nodded toward where I’d lain down. “I lifted you onto the cot. I had a fright because I nearly dropped you. That’s when I realized how weak I was.”
For Mab, “weak” was stronger than most norm bodybuilders. If she’d had trouble lifting my 115 pounds, she wasn’t yet recovered. Still, it was wonderful to have my aunt back.
I hugged her again, sloshing more coffee. She bore it stiffly, then patted my back—onetwothree—and gently pushed me away. I took the now-half-empty coffee mug.
Mab crossed her arms and quirked her mouth in a smile, but my head drooped as I looked at the cement floor. “Yesterday … it was my fault.”
“Nonsense. You startled me, but I should never have let my guard down. I knew better.”
“I don’t mean in the mine.” Although that was my fault, too. “I mean before, in the library. I should have warned you.” I sat down heavily on the cot.
She looked at me, waiting.
“The book told me. The message was confused, a big jumble of words. But one word came through loud and clear: death. I thought it referred to me, and I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to worry you.” Tears brimmed. “But it was you. You’re the one who almost died.”
She batted away my words and sat beside me. “We’ve discussed this before. The book is deceptive. It tricked you the first time you opened it ten years ago, and it tricked you yesterday. If you’d tried to warn me, I suspect your words would have been muddled again. Or if not that, the book would have tricked me, too.” Her voice softened. “You were correct in your assumption, child. I would have worried about you. Perhaps I would have fallen sooner for it. So it’s possible, young Victory, that your attempt to protect me did indeed save my life.”
My aunt was arguing herself dizzy trying to make me feel better. Not that Mab had ever done such a thing before. Huh. Maybe she meant it.
“Yesterday, in the mine,” Mab said, “you entered the demon plane?”
“I had to. Pryce fried my headlamp
and my flashlight. It was so dark. Then you cried out, and I thought you were hurt. I was trying to help, not startle you. I didn’t know my demon mark would flare up like that.”
“It wasn’t that, child.” She paused, her mouth a thin line. “You had a shadow demon.”
“No, that’s impossible.” Mab had been through one hell of an ordeal; of course her memory was blurry. “You must have seen Pryce’s shadow demon.”
She shook her head. “I know Cysgod, child. The demon that shadows Pryce is part of him, like a human’s soul. It’s his nature as a demi-demon.”
“Well, see? Impossible. I’m not one of the Meibion Avagddu with a demon soul.”
“It was faint, which was why I stopped and stared. I wasn’t certain of what I saw. But it was there.” She put her hand on my arm, bracing me. “Victory, it was the Destroyer.”
“No!” Coffee spilled as the mug clattered to the floor. No, it was bad enough that the Destroyer could get into my dreams. It wasn’t shadowing me, too. Mab was wrong. She had to be.
But something inside me—a twitch of my demon mark, an echo of laughter—told me she was right.
“I saw it, child. It loomed behind you, and it moved with you. Not a second or two behind you, but exactly as you moved.”
I looked helplessly at my aunt. “What does it mean, Mab?”
“I’ve been thinking about that. I haven’t been able to think about anything else since I awoke.” She lifted my right arm and turned it so the forearm was facing up. Gently, her fingers traced the scar that marked the place where Difethwr’s flames had touched me. “A bond works both ways. Ten years ago, the Destroyer marked you, and for most of the interim you were subject to the Hellion’s essence.” I nodded, thinking about those years of unpredictable, barely controllable rages. “Last autumn, you used the bond to reverse the situation, making the Destroyer subject to you. Now, I believe Pryce and the Destroyer are attempting to reverse it again.”
“Putting me in the Destroyer’s power.”
“I’m afraid so. The Hellion is attempting to encroach upon your soul. It wants to make you a demi-demon, just like Pryce and his kin.”
“Is that possible?”
“I don’t know. They believe it is, or they wouldn’t try.”
The idea sat like a lead ball in my stomach. “So the Destroyer wants to take over my soul. And as Pryce feeds the Morfran, the Hellion will only get stronger.”
I didn’t look at her because I didn’t want to see her nod. But she changed the subject.
“Victory, this morning I found something new in The Book of Utter Darkness: ‘As the dead dance, the Brenin shall claim what’s his.’ Does that mean anything to you?”
“Pryce considers himself King of All Demons, so he’d think ‘Brenin’ refers to him.”
“I agree. What about the rest of it?”
“Elsewhere, when the book mentioned the dead, it meant the zombies.” When the dead dance … I saw Tina wiggling her hips as she practiced for her Monster Paul audition. I grasped Mab’s hand. “There’s going to be a free concert in Boston for Paranormal Appreciation Day. Hundreds of zombies will be there.”
“When is this planned?”
“February second.”
“That’s tomorrow.”
Upstairs, someone banged on the kitchen door. A moment later, Rose appeared in the doorway of the shift room. “There’s a boy rode out from the village on his bicycle,” she told us. “He says he’s got a message from Mr. Cadogan at the pub. Has to give it to Miss Mab herself.”
Mab rose and went upstairs. I followed her. At the kitchen door, she handed some coins to a boy who looked about twelve. He gave her a folded piece of paper and left. She closed the kitchen door, read the note, and turned to me.
“I can’t say this surprises me after what we were just discussing. Pryce checked out of the Cross and Crow this morning, making sure to tell Cadogan he’s been called suddenly to the States.” She crumpled the note in her hand. “He’s traveling to Boston this afternoon.”
I looked at the clock on the kitchen wall. It was a little past eight. “I’ll get packed.”
“And I’ll have Jenkins book you a flight.”
Kane chose that moment to stroll into the kitchen. He wore new-looking jeans and a soft, charcoal-gray sweater. “Good morning, ladies. Do I smell coffee?”
Rhetorical question. Kane’s werewolf nose could smell coffee half a mile away. Rose brought him a mug. He kissed my cheek and nodded to Mab. “How are you feeling?” he asked. “Better, I hope.”
She nodded, looking regal, a queen answering a courtier’s question.
Kane grinned. But he must have seen something in our faces because the grin faded. “What’s going on?”
“Pryce is on his way to Boston,” I said. “We think he’s going to launch a major Morfran attack on the zombies.”
“Don’t say ‘zombies.’ ” He turned to Mab. “In Boston, we call them the ‘previously deceased,’ ” he explained. Then he turned to me again. “You’re going back?”
“On the first flight Jenkins can book me on.”
“I’ll go with you.”
Mab nodded her approval. “I’ll tell Jenkins.” She pulled open the kitchen door.
“Mab, wait.” I tried, not successfully, to keep the fear out of my voice. I couldn’t do this by myself. I hadn’t yet managed to stone a single crow. Pryce had loosed a critical mass of Morfran—that sky-darkening flock of crows—and I wasn’t good enough with Hellforged to do anything about it. Now I’d learned that the Destroyer was shadowing me, waiting for its chance to bump out my soul and take over. I was going to lose. Deadtown would be a slaughter zone.
My aunt stood with her hand on the doorknob, eyebrows raised. “Tell Jenkins to book three tickets,” I said. “Come with us. Please.”
The expression in her eyes told me she understood my fears. But she shook her head. “I can’t, child. I’m not strong enough to travel. Although Mr. Kane saved my life, I’m not a werewolf. I … my heart. It’s not fully healed.”
She put out a hand to stop me from asking. “I’ll be fine, child. But I’d be no help to you now. Quite the opposite.”
What could I say? It was my fault that Mab had been wounded; I wasn’t going to ask her to risk her recovery.
There was no time for long good-byes. Within an hour we’d packed our bags and loaded Kane’s rental car. Jenkins shook Kane’s hand and clapped him on the back, then gave me a hug. Rose pressed a bag of sandwiches on us—“For the drive,” she said—and hugged us both.
Mab shook Kane’s hand. “Thank you again for saving my life. I owe you a very large debt of gratitude. I do hope you’ll accept my hospitality for an extended visit at some future time. Under happier circumstances.”
“It’s a date.” Kane smiled his thousand-watt smile and kissed Mab’s hand. The way she pressed her other hand to her chest made me worry for a second about her heart. It took a lot to fluster Mab, but Kane had managed it.
Everyone pulled back so I could say good-bye to my aunt. Kane went around to the driver’s side of the car, and Jenkins and Rose withdrew to Maenllyd’s front steps. Mab asked me for the fifteenth time if I had Hellforged. I nodded. I wasn’t trusting my voice just then. “And the book? The Home Sweet Home slate?” I kept nodding. “And you remember the words of the incantation?” I mouthed them silently. I did—for now, anyway.
Mab squeezed my arm. “You can do this, child. Remember what you’ve been working on. Be pure. Purity will help you overcome all threats from the demon plane.”
I still didn’t know what that meant. Mab was pure. Looking at her now, I realized I’d never known anyone purer. Truer to who and what they were. I, on the other hand, was one big bundle of fear and confusion, with some Hellion essence and a shadow demon thrown in. I’d never get all that sorted out before I had to fight Pryce and tackle the Morfran.
Mab’s face was smooth and unlined, her eyes clear. Whatever she was feeling, she didn’t we
ar it on the surface. I crushed her to me in a hug. She hugged back—for once, just as hard and nearly as long. Then, with her onetwothree pat, she dismissed me. Wiping my eyes with the heels of both hands, I went to the car where Kane waited. I got in, and there was much waving as we started down the driveway. Around the curve, all the way to the front gate, I kept waving.
As we turned onto the main road to start our drive south, I knew the trip would feel much, much longer than the four hours it would take us to reach the airport.
32
AT HEATHROW, WITH HELLFORGED STRAPPED TO MY ANKLE, I held my breath as we waited in various security lines. But I got through without incident—even the body scanner—thanks to a cloaking charm provided by Mab. The fact that I didn’t get picked at random for supernatural screening was pure dumb luck.
In the crammed boarding area, we sat on the floor with our backs against a wall. Haggard-looking passengers stood or slumped in chairs, surrounded by carry-ons and shopping bags. Others peered at laptops, ignoring the crowd. Bored kids ran around or cried.
I wasn’t looking forward to the flight. We had economy seats at the very back of the plane, judging from the row number. Jenkins almost hadn’t been able to get us on a flight today, so we were lucky. Still, sitting in this hot, crowded, stuffy corral watching business- and first-class passengers waltz onto the plane, where I knew they’d be greeted by smiling flight attendants offering them free drinks, I felt irritable.
Then I saw something that made me sit up straight and grab Kane’s arm. “There’s Pryce,” I whispered. He had his back to us as he handed his boarding pass to the gate attendant. His black suit looked as expensive and well cut as something Kane would wear.
“You’re right,” Kane said, as Pryce disappeared down the gangway. “I caught his scent.”
I didn’t think Pryce had seen us. He had no reason to look at the corner of the boarding area where we were jammed in among all the other economy passengers.
This was amazing luck. Or maybe not luck—after all, there were a limited number of afternoon flights to Boston. But Pryce wouldn’t be wreaking havoc in Boston while he was sitting on the plane. And we could follow him after we landed. Or Kane could. If I followed Pryce, the Destroyer might warn him. Once Kane learned where Pryce was staying, I’d figure out a reason to go there, something that wouldn’t put the Destroyer on red alert.
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