by A. J. Aalto
Speaker Aristoxenus molted from grey to the liquid red of his demon lord, quaking with rage. “Say that name to me again,” he dared the little Irish dhampir.
“What a time to give up the drink.” Declan cleared his throat and repeated, “I stand for Remy Dreppenstedt, the Mistress Defiler, First Lady of the Falskaar Vouras.” He glanced over his shoulder at me, aping my declaration almost word for word. “I stand for she who is called the Afterdark. Madam Brightslip, Mistress of the Eversea, Lady of Eternal Grace. My mother, who never got a chance to feed me from her blessed diddies but sure as shit brought me into this goddamned world in her own house, which was therefore my first house in every way that matters.”
“Abomination,” Speaker Aristoxenus declared, rocking forward on his bench. “That’s what they call you.”
“Funny, coming from a lesser demon,” Declan replied. “Ask your master if I’m off my nut, here, or if He’ll allow this.”
“You do not belong to House Dreppenstedt, dhampir.” The Stonecaller bubbled and frothed with rage, and he was not the only one. DaySitters on both sides of me huffed and muttered, and the Blue Sense warned of their resentment. Their houses were being left behind, their companions losing ground.
“My history is unclear, and so is that of the Duchess’s making.” Declan pointed off to the southwest, in the general direction of Ireland. “I have evidence that suggests that Wilhelm Dreppenstedt and Malas Nazaire were present for both my fathering and my mother’s turning. I consider myself a product of both houses. I demand a ruling from the Overlord Himself.”
Aristoxenus sat back, angrily mulling, as the shadow figure behind him drifted between worlds, now here, now gone, flickering and smoking like a dying fire. Though we could no longer hear or see Asmodeus, He communicated from the shadows with His little court Speaker. Ari had to remove an earbud again; whatever he heard from the stinking Beyond displeased him, and the lesser demon’s tiny lips pursed primly as he rolled his sickly yellow eyes.
“Fine! Fine! But all this going-over-my-head business has really got to stop.” He stabbed a finger in the direction of Declan’s belly. “You have nominated the lichlady, Sister of Worms. As has already been stated, before your nomination is accepted,” he added with a snide smirk, “she must present herself before this court and accept it. Return to your master’s side, Declan Edgar. You are hereby dismissed.”
I felt a great wash of relief flood my chest and realized I’d been holding my breath since Declan had made his announcement. Feeling slightly dizzy, I looked down at Batten’s hand, still clutching my elbow, and shrugged out of his grasp.
“Down, boy,” I murmured.
“Is it almost over?” he asked.
I nodded to reassure him. Of course, I had no idea that the messy situation I’d created was about to get much, much worse.
The last house to be called was House Duchoslav, and Marek Rys approached the Stonecaller with a determined stride. The only male DaySitter to be called was a slender, balding gentleman wearing glasses. What little hair he did have was dark and messy. He wore faded jeans with a rip in one knee, dirty red Converse High Tops, and a wrinkled, pale yellow polo shirt. His collar needed smoothing. He looked like a guy who maybe still needed his mom to straighten him up a bit before he went to night school classes, the eternal student who was never graduating and never leaving his parents’ home. Despite his rumpled appearance, I knew Marek Rys to be a medical doctor with a specialization in preternatural health and life extension; he was, himself, nearly two hundred years old, and looked about forty-five. Not too shabby for a human. His revenant kept him very vigorous. Marek Rys was the second oldest living DaySitter on record, the eldest being one of the Gold-Drakes. (“The doctor is a combat SAMBO champion,” Golden had reported.) This doctor? He didn’t look like he could fight his way out of a paper bag.
He met my eyes as he passed under the banner of House Dreppenstedt; as far as I knew, we’d never seen one another, but perhaps he knew me by my bad reputation, or had heard that I’d helped a Younger from his house, Krystof, back home in Colorado. Or maybe he just thought my nominating Remy was ridiculous. The Blue Sense reported a whiff of discontent and disappointment from him, but as always, my empathy was rarely helpful. Was he disappointed in me, in the court, in his master, in himself? I had no way of knowing.
“I am told to throw my weight behind the banner of House Dreppenstedt as the obvious best choice to hold the throne,” he said.
My jaw dropped. For a moment, my hope soared. Was this my knight in rumpled armor? All he had to do was say her name.
“… and we hereby nominate Guy Harrick Dreppenstedt for king of the Falskaar Vouras,” Marek finished. “I stand in contest with my Second, Roland de Hagh.”
I felt Harry’s sinking horror hit me like a boot in the ribs; it was indistinguishable from my own. Harry had two nominations. So did Remy. So did Aston Sarokhanian. A Dreppenstedt could ascend the throne… the problem being, Remy might not accept my nomination. By the sound of it, she might not even be able to appear to accept it, in which case Sarokhanian and Dreppenstedt DaySitters would fight to the death in the Olmdalur; there was a good chance I could die, or that Harry would be staying at Skulesdottir for-fucking-ever.
And so would I. Fuck.
My only hope was that Asmodeus wouldn’t allow this. Marek Rys was the third person tonight to nominate outside their own house. Seemed like funny business. Who was I kidding? Asmodeus thrived on funny business. Fuck, fuck, fuckanut.
“Innnnnnnnteressssssssting,” Aristoxenus hissed, drawing it out as his body leaned way back on his bench so that the black figure could whisper commands in his frayed bobcat ears.
Asmodeus began laughing. Braying from His dark well behind the throne, His laughter raised all my hackles and started a ribbon of dread that tied my guts neatly in a knot. I knew it. Funny business. I felt my hopes drain away to be replaced by full-on panic. I could not stay in this place forever. I could not eat nutrimatrix and hang out with dead guys all day every day until I was centuries old. Hey, maybe I’d get lucky and House Dreppenstedt would decide that Harry’s lucky seventh wasn’t so lucky after all. You know your life is lookin’ bleak when the best you could hope for was one last brownie before your full body impalement.
“The Overlord has spoken: we will allow this cross-nomination if your master wishes it.”
The revenant was stone, but the lesser demon or the Overlord must have been using the immortal bond to judge the reaction of this dead guy to his DaySitter’s words. Aristoxenus nodded once, satisfied. “Tomas Duchoslav, Crowned Prince of the Blood, approves of this nomination and it is done. Congratulations go, one way or another, to the House of the Raven of Night.”
I didn’t dare look over at Harry. Even in stone, he radiated an unmoving fury. I tried to send him comfort through the Bond. When that did nothing to quell his internal struggle, I whispered, “I got this, Harry.”
Georgina Harris stepped away from the stone figure of Yulian Buryshkin and said loudly, forcefully, “I wish to change my nomination!”
Aristoxenus harrumphed, but his ear twitched back and he was overruled before he could even object to her unexpected announcement. “Speak, Ms. Harris.”
“I agree with everything that Ms. Mochizuki has proposed, and throw my nomination behind Aston Sarokhanian.”
For a moment, my mind scrambled to accept the sudden upset in power. If Sarokhanian took the throne, humans were in trouble. I was already calculating how quickly I could prepare for a culling-by-trolls sort of situation; who would I have to alert first, and how to make them listen?
One final voice cracked the tension, as someone moved stealthily under the quiet banner of House Prost; it was not Jeremiah himself, but a young black woman with straight, layered hair cut in a wispy bob around a heart-shaped face. She only came as far as the nearest gas lamp, but Aristoxenus spotted her immediately.
The Stonecaller listened once more, cupping his ear, his eyes gro
wing. Excitement vibrated his bobcat ears to the tips, and he wriggled a bit straighter on the bench, voice climbing an octave. “Call House Prost! Call Umayma Eyasi.”
The woman sidled up beside him; if she was nervous about being close to a demon, she didn’t show it—she had Batten’s cop face mastered—and if she said something, it was too low for me to hear.
“House Prost nominates Remy Dreppenstedt,” Aristoxenus said unhappily.
I felt a rush of baffled relief. House Prost on our side? Or did he just send a spy to find out where we were and what we were up to? Beside me, Batten nudged me; he was looking around the room for Jeremiah and not finding him. Neither could I.
The third nomination stalled House Sarokhanian effectively, knocked Harry out of the running, and provided Remy her nomination.
“Do we have a visitor? Show yourself.” He clapped sharply twice, and the ground shuddered hard enough to send the rowan wood stakes overhead clattering together like the deadliest wind chimes ever.
Chapter 19
The ground gave a tremor of warning before the heavy oak doors thumped once, hard. The urns at the gallery rattled as if startled. Something beneath my feet groaned, like the force of gravity itself was shifting. Batten looked down at his boots unhappily and took a step closer to Harry’s statue. I might have considered that both cute and ridiculous, but every pore on my body was distracted, prickling like an invisible hand was yanking me up by the individual follicles as the unseen thing approached. Another pace, and another, it moved through passageways of space. It, Marnie? Not a thing, remember? Careful. Another pace, under great duress, expending massive effort, slipping into our proximity with a wriggle and a shove, shadow-stepping into our reality. Closer now.
It had escaped my notice that both Declan had drifted to Batten’s side with me, and I had been steadily shrinking closer to the vampire hunter. I felt my shoulder bump into his warm and sturdy presence. I glanced up at him and his jaw did its clench-unclench dance, but his eyes revealed far more alarm than usual. Batten didn’t enjoy not knowing what to expect, and he had more than enough experience with creatures that had unmanned him; he wasn’t looking forward to being tromped, and while sometimes I could offer an expert word of comfort or advise, there wasn’t much I could do to set his mind at ease this time. I couldn’t even keep from thinking the word creatures.
A sharp snap-crack of wood splintering and the doors blew open, shattering in a whirlwind of fragments and spinning chunks that clattered to the floor. The dust from the explosion did not fall straight down, disobeying physics in front of my eyes. It twisted on crazy currents to scatter into forked tornadoes blowing straight across the marble slabs, curling like the necks of agitated asps, heads rearing to strike as tiny flashes of lightning surged throughout. When they drifted into a fine dust and settled, the visitor glided in through the wreckage as though oblivious to it.
“Why can’t I make a fuckin’ entrance like that?” I whispered out the side of my mouth at Batten. His hand was patting his side in a futile attempt to grip a rowan wood stake that wasn’t there. His Adam’s apple bobbed and I felt his attention, but he didn’t dare look away from the doors.
The thing that formed in the middle of the throne room was a crystalline bubble that began to coil like blown glass from a pipe, spiraling clear. It stretched up, a waterspout forming in a storm’s eye, until it reached nearly to the ceiling, frothing at the base, pulling more water up its core in swirling rivers and wild eddies. My brain spat out primordial chaos monster as it grew in strength, lumbering closer to the throne, though I Felt it was using every ounce of its strength to appear and would not have been able to attack or defend itself. Again, you’re calling this an it? This was no it.
Remy. Lichlady. The water began to part, becoming a green-tinted sheath, and within it, a pale woman with dark curls that matched Declan’s, unruly around her, drifting in midair like silken strands underwater. Even as a weak, naked, starving phantasm, bilocating from a great distance, her voice was a sultry curl that demanded attention.
With my heart in my throat, I thought, Declan’s mother. What must he think of her, at long last? The only female revenant in existence, possessed of all nine immortal Talents, banished from the Falskaar Vouras to be Duchess of the Darkest Corner, did not look in Declan’s direction. She uncoiled from her squat to stretch tall, all the while drifting closer to the empty throne, settling to hover in the middle of the revenant houses, three feet off the ground, her hair swaying midair like it was caught in a soft breeze or a strong undertow.
Worm forge, my memory teased, but I couldn’t sort that out while visions of her long, pale throat were assaulting me. My mouth watered, but it wasn’t my thirst that caused it; every revenant in the cavernous room was, as Wes would say, totally vamping out inside their alabaster prisons. I could taste the cold, salty mist of her aura and felt my face getting damp even from a distance.
Speaker Aristoxenus consulted the shadow form behind him, and then spoke. “It has come to this, lichlady. You are twice nominated, and your house represented.”
She laughed angrily, and my heart slammed up into my throat. I snuck my left hand sideways, seeking until I found Batten’s. It was in a tense fist, but at my touch, he opened it, scooped mine, and gripped it tight.
“My house,” she scoffed. “I have no house. There is no home beyond the Bitter Pass for the likes of me, no bloodline to secure my peace, no brood to comfort me in my never-ending night, no master to guide my path. I am exiled, forever alone.”
“That quarrel is with not with this court,” Aristoxenus said sternly. “End this disruption and have your say with Prince Dreppenstedt and le vicomte de Brisbois on your own time.”
“Oh, no,” she said smugly, swaying closer to the dais within her bubble. “Your time is my time, little flame-spit. I am called and I have arrived. Let all the musty houses of the Falskaar Vouras hear me. I will not be silenced by the craven shade of a lesser demon. You have no power over me. You are a mote of dust in the eye of a god, an annoyance and nothing more. Now…” She drew herself to full height and glared at the revenant thrones expectantly. “Where is the creature who calls himself my king? Show me the First Turned. I would have his attention.”
“You will not,” Aristoxenus said. “And you will guard your tongue when you speak of your liege, or the Overlord will know the reason for your defiance.”
“My reasons are obvious. I am shunned from all things by the very creatures who tore the babe from my breast and made me what I am. But no more. I will be represented at this court or I will…” Here, her fury got the best of her and she faltered, her mouth working around a thousand unspoken threats.
Aristoxenus sat back, and the shadow form behind him leaned forward to take center stage. “Or you’ll what?” Asmodeus asked.
When the Overlord chose to appear a second time, He did so in the form of the fallen angel He had been when He hit the Earth after being swept from the heavens alongside Lucifer, the Morningstar. I had only seen Him in this form once, but it had stuck with me, haunting my most terrible, lascivious dreams. He rested a lean elbow on the shoulder of the Speaker, and propped His narrow chin there, looking greatly amused. A shot of anxiety rocked up through me, followed by a naked pump of loin-shaking lust. It took all I had to look away, forcing my focus onto Remy Dreppenstedt.
“All your pretty words have flown,” Asmodeus observed. “Rage will only get you so far, my lovely. Stand behind your words or they are but the cold, stinking breath of the dead, and nothing more.”
She stammered and pouted; for a moment, she looked like a spoiled child in the face of her doting daddy. “Do not forget that I am more than just your exiled. I am the Afterdark. The Brightslip. You said so.” She pointed. “You did. I will cast a light upon their race and in my wake, ashes will fall—”
“But not today,” Asmodeus interrupted. “You are dismissed from this court, Remy Dreppenstedt, unless…” He cocked his head. “Unless, of course
, you are offering to accept your nomination and assist your bloodkin and your king?”
She jerked her head back in surprise, as though the thought had not occurred to her. Help us? Help them? Help him? Her rage surged to the surface again, rocking through the empaths in the room. Several DaySitters swooned, others groaned, but me… my guts jittered hard, urging me to speak. My tongue shook against the roof of my mouth like it had a mind of its own. Declan choked and reached for me, but my feet were already in motion. Under the heavy dress, my Keds padded marble.
She felt me coming with the effortless, preternatural senses of the undead, but I was not important, and I made it almost to her side before she tossed me an irritated glance across her shoulder.
Her dark beauty was stunning and stole away my first attempts to speak. My second attempt, I manage to blurt out, “Fnrf.”
Smooth, Marnie.
Asmodeus perked right up, making a delighted noise. “And here is one of your champions, lichlady. Behold, the DaySitter of Guy Harrick Dreppenstedt, Marnie Baranuik.” He was warming to the task, like a game show announcer running down a big prize to be won. “You other advocate is the DaySitter of Malas Nazaire, Declan Edgar.” He rocked forward, drawing each word out like taffy. “A man yoooouuu might know as Jean-Etienne Auguste Dufort Dreppenstedt-Nazaire. Your son.”
Remy’s eyes dropped to the marble to dart around as if watching mice scramble. Declan didn’t move a hair, watching the side of his mother’s pale, bloodless face to judge her reaction.