Until suddenly... they weren’t. A violent wrenching sensation beneath his ribcage stole Len’s breath, and behind him, Albigard cried out in pain. Len’s ghosts sank into his body, icy cold and full of power. Just as quickly, they were yanked away, disappearing from his awareness entirely.
The Hunt loomed in front of him, poised to pour into the now-undefended cave like a breaking wave. An arm wrapped around Len’s torso and dragged him backward. Albigard’s skin was as clammy as a corpse’s where it touched him. He was vaguely aware of a crackling sound like fire consuming ice...
... and an instant later, he collapsed onto a dusty tile floor in a tangle of arms and legs. He stared uncomprehendingly at the small oval of cold, blue flame hovering in midair—barely tall enough for two people to squeeze through without touching the edges. It collapsed to nothing as he watched, cutting them off from the Hunt’s darkness.
Len was on his back, half-crushing Albigard beneath him. The Fae groaned in distress and shoved Len off, barely managing to roll onto his hands and knees before his body convulsed, retching. A thin stream of dark bile dribbled from Albigard’s mouth, followed by a second, larger gush as he heaved again. Len managed to get to his knees and shuffle close enough to wrap a supporting arm around Albigard’s shoulders before the Fae collapsed face-first in the mess.
“What the hell?” demanded a deep voice, coming from somewhere nearby.
Len jerked around to look behind him as the voice’s familiarity registered in his fractured consciousness. It was a voice he knew all too well, but he absolutely hadn’t expected to encounter it here and now.
The room resolved itself into the bleak kitchen in Albigard’s warded house in Chicago, where Len had simmered opossum stew and baked bad pot brownies only a handful of days ago. Standing frozen by the kitchen door, Guthrie Leonides and Vonnie Morgan gaped at him with matching expressions of open-mouthed shock. Len stared back at them stupidly as his brain rebooted through the five classic stages of ‘Hey, I’m Not Dead Yet.’
Stage one: Wow, I’m still alive and did not, in fact, end up dying horribly. So... yay?
Stage two: Shit, that was close.
Stage three: Does this mean it’s safe to pass out now?
Stage four: Wait. Hang on. What just happened, exactly?
Stage five: And... I’m totally kneeling on the floor right now in front of my ex-boss and former coworker while wearing nothing but my underwear, aren’t I?
Stage five was admittedly a bit of an on-the-fly modification, since before today it had always consisted of the question ‘Have I or have I not just pissed myself in terror?’
Len blinked up at the pair, scrambling to catch Albigard as the half-naked Fae collapsed sideways into his arms, still retching weakly. “Um... hey there, guys,” he told them. “How’s it going? So—ever heard of, y’know, checking your fucking phone messages?”
A look of guilt washed over Vonnie’s features. The two were a study in opposites. Vonnie Morgan was a pretty, thirty-year-old woman with a pale complexion, fiery red hair, and the slightly careworn features of a single mother who’d had her kid at the age of sixteen. Guthrie Leonides appeared to be a handsome Black man in his forties, but was in fact a hundred-year-old demon-bound vampire—currently, the last vampire in existence. Len felt the blood drain from his face at the reminder of what had happened to the other vampires on his watch.
Vonnie was speaking. Len dragged his attention back from the ongoing horror of the situation and made himself focus on the words through his haze of weakness.
“... and then some of the kids accidentally destroyed all the phones in the area when they were practicing electrical magic with Edward. I’m so sorry, Len—but the supply chains in England are still a complete mess and we weren’t able to replace them immediately. We haven’t had internet or phone access for weeks—”
“But Nigellus dropped in two days ago with an update about what’s been going on,” Guthrie said flatly. “And this would be a really good time for you to tell me he was lying through his teeth.”
Albigard made a low sound of pain.
Len swallowed hard, trying to pack away all the emotions that were threatening to well up and drown him. “He wasn’t lying. Zorah and Rans are dead. Nigellus tried to bring them back, but the Wild Hunt had already ripped their souls away from his grasp. And... uh... there’s reason to think the Hunt may eventually destroy the entire planet if we can’t get it under control somehow,” he added as an afterthought.
At the end, he almost tacked on a ridiculously inadequate ‘I’m sorry.’ Zorah had been Guthrie’s biological granddaughter, though the two had only found each other recently. In some ways, Len felt like that made the situation even worse. Plus, Rans and Guthrie had been friends for a long time. Decades, easily. But saying ‘sorry’ wouldn’t make any of it better—no more than Vonnie’s apology and perfectly reasonable explanation for not returning his increasingly frantic messages made it any better.
Guthrie’s face settled into grim lines as Len delivered the bad news, his expression turning to stone. Vonnie raised her hand to cover her mouth, grief shining from her green eyes. In Len’s arms, shudders wracked Albigard’s freezing body in uncontrollable waves. Len watched, unable to summon the strength to move, as Vonnie dragged herself visibly under control.
She pulled the aura of ‘unflappable single mom’ around her like a cloak, and crossed the distance separating them.
“Okay, we’ll worry about the rest of it in a bit. You’re both hurt,” she said, crouching next to Len on the side away from the puddles of black vomit. “What happened?”
“’M not hurt,” Len said, aware that his words were starting to slur a bit. “Just, uh... dehydration and hypothermia. Oh, and I haven’t eaten in, like, two days.” Albigard shivered uncontrollably against him. “Same for him, but then I made him put diesel fuel in a gasoline engine and now I’m worried I might’ve broken him.”
He blinked, not having intended to say that last part out loud.
Vonnie put the backs of her fingers against the side of Len’s neck, and then against Albigard’s. The Fae flinched hard in response to the unexpected touch.
“Okay, I don’t know what that last part means—but, yeah, you’re both freezing,” she agreed. “Let’s get you into a hot shower as the first order of business.”
Silent and imposing, Guthrie appeared next to them and bent to haul Albigard upright with vampiric strength. The Fae groaned again, but managed to shuffle his feet forward with his arm slung across Guthrie’s shoulder for support. Len made to follow him, only for his knees to wobble the moment he made it to his feet and tried to take a step. Gray fog swam across his vision as Vonnie darted in to steady him, taking his weight with a grunt of effort.
“Sorry,” Len muttered, and tried not to lean on her too hard with his six-foot frame as she steered him toward Albigard’s ground-floor bedroom suite. The attached bathroom was similar in layout to the one in the upstairs bedroom Len had been using, except there was no standalone tub. The glass-paneled shower stall was just as huge, though. Guthrie was leaning inside, adjusting the temperature of the water one-handed while supporting Albigard against his other shoulder.
When he was satisfied, he turned the showerhead to the side so he wouldn’t get soaked, and swung Albigard into the stall with effortless strength. The Fae slithered down the wall, ending up in a crumpled heap on the tile floor.
“Hope you don’t mind sharing for a few minutes,” Vonnie told him. “I know you’re not exactly Tinkerbell’s biggest fan.”
Len felt an ugly, hysterical bark of laughter trying to rise in his throat, and managed to choke it down before it escaped. “’S all good, Red,” he mumbled, and lowered himself in a semi-controlled collapse next to Albigard’s shuddering form. Guthrie aimed the water at them again, and Len nearly groaned in relief at the sensation of delicious heat as it pelted him.
He looked up through the spray as his vampire ex-boss turned on his heel, leav
ing the room without a word. Vonnie left the door of the shower stall open—presumably to make sure neither he nor Albigard faceplanted across the drain and ended up drowning in two inches of water. She followed Len’s gaze toward the bathroom door.
“He needs a minute, that’s all,” she said. “You know how he gets—emotions aren’t really his thing. I think he was holding out hope that you’d tell him all of this was some elaborate demon mind game, and Zorah and Rans were actually fine.”
Len closed his eyes and dipped his head forward, letting the hot water pour down his face in rivulets. He heard Vonnie rummaging through the cabinets, and swiped a hand over his eyes to clear the water away. She set a pile of towels by the sink and came to crouch in front of the open door, lowering herself to their level.
“There may still be a way to save them.” Albigard’s voice sounded like someone had taken sandpaper to his throat, and the words were barely audible over the sound of the shower running full blast.
Vonnie gave a slow nod. “Nigellus, you mean? Okay. That’s good. We can work with that. What I don’t get is how they can be dead at all. That shouldn’t even be possible, should it?”
Len curled his knees up to his chin, and tried to let go of the awkwardness of having this conversation while sitting in a shower, wearing only a pair of soaked and filthy Calvin Klein briefs.
“So this thing... the Wild Hunt. It sucks the souls of living things into the Void,” he explained. “Apparently, it’s better at sucking souls than a demon is at holding onto those same souls. I think, maybe... Nigellus was weakened at the time, because it was also attacking him when Rans and Zorah”—he swallowed hard—“when they... died.”
She frowned. “But... you think there might still be a way for Nigellus to get their souls back? Is that even possible?”
Len shrugged, not uncurling from his defensive ball. “I mean... maybe? But before he could even try, we’d have to weaken this thing and corral it in Dhuinne where it belongs. Which is a bit of an issue considering it’s been kicking our asses to the curb so far.”
“Someone needs to check the weak point at the edge of the wards,” Albigard said weakly.
A little jolt of adrenaline kicked a few more of Len’s brain cells into gear. “Shit. Right. So, this thing’s after Albigard, and it managed to break through the veil between dimensions near the edge of the property here—but it looks like the wards confused it, so it left. It tends to get, I dunno... distracted, I guess you’d say. I’m not sure if it will have returned again or not. It seems to destroy a wider area each time it comes back, though.”
“Have the vampire scout the western boundary of the property from the air,” Albigard said. The Fae sounded a little stronger than before, though he still looked like death. At least his shivering had abated somewhat.
“And tell him to turn around and run like hell if he sees a cloud of black vapor,” Len added.
“Okay.” Vonnie rose. “I’ll pass it on. Are you two all right here for a few minutes?”
“Peachy,” Len told her, dreading the idea that he might have to move at some unspecified future point in time.
“In that case, I’ll go try to find you something to wear while I’m at it,” she said.
“Thanks,” Len managed. “And... there’s a pot of leftover stew in the fridge that should still be safe to eat. Would you mind putting it on the stove to warm up?”
His stomach knotted and cramped with hunger at the reminder of food.
“Of course,” she replied. “Clothes, water, food, reconnaissance. And then we need to talk.”
Do we ever, Len thought.
“Yeah,” he said aloud. “That’s for sure.”
FOURTEEN
ONCE VONNIE LEFT, Len closed his eyes and forced his muscles to listen to his brain’s commands. First, he scooted forward and closed the glass shower door, trapping the steam and the heat inside with them. That task completed, he turned his attention to the items sitting on a ledge in the corner. After grabbing the unremarkable Dove bar, he sat staring fixedly at the precious soap for a long moment.
“What’s the matter?” Albigard asked tiredly.
“Nothing,” Len told him, and started scrubbing himself as best he could without getting up from the floor. When he was done, he handed the soap to Albigard and focused on shampooing his hair. Beside him, Albigard managed to strip off his ruined pants before following suit. Len tried not to stare—a goal made easier by the fact that he still felt somewhat in danger of passing out.
Even so, he got a truly spectacular profile view of a well-defined chest, flat stomach, and muscular ass as Albigard gathered himself and rose to unsteady feet. The Fae stood face-first in the spray for a long moment before shaking the water from his eyes and reaching a hand down to Len. Len blew out a resigned breath and accepted it wordlessly, letting Albigard pull him to his feet.
Once he was steady... ish, Albigard opened the door and stepped out, leaving Len to give himself a final rinse before following. They were both drying off when Vonnie came back in. She blushed scarlet and looked pointedly away from Albigard’s naked ass, hurriedly placing two piles of clothing on the vanity.
“If no one’s in imminent danger of collapsing, I’ll just, uh, wait outside,” she said, before suiting action to word.
Len watched her go before lowering the towel he’d been holding in front of his body like a shield. He turned toward the fogged-up mirror. “You know, this is humiliating on so many different levels I’m losing count,” he told his hazy reflection.
“Human views on nudity are bizarre and tiresome,” Albigard said, sorting through the pile of clothing Vonnie had left him.
Len briefly considered calling him out on his general prudishness regarding all things related to sex, as a way of pointing out the hypocrisy inherent in his statement. It took him about half a second to decide he was too tired to bother.
“Thank you for getting us out of that place,” he said instead. “I’m sorry it hurt you.”
Albigard stilled, and was silent for a long moment.
“Had you not pressed the matter, I would be dead,” he said eventually. “And you would have been trapped alone with the Hunt. I should have attempted it sooner. In my defense, I genuinely did not think you would be a viable source of magical power.”
The memory of the wrenching sensation when Albigard had drained him made Len’s breath catch on the inhale. He cleared his throat and pushed the feeling away, before the spreading sensation of cold could banish the heat he’d managed to soak up in the shower.
“All that matters is that it worked,” he said, aware that his voice had gone hoarse. He cleared his throat and focused on getting dressed without his knees going rubbery on him again. When he’d successfully donned the same sweats and hoodie he’d been wearing when Rans and Zorah had sprung him from the hospital in St. Louis and dragged him here, he headed for the door, following the mouth-watering smell of food.
Vonnie was waiting outside in the hall, leaning against the wall with her arms crossed tightly. She tried to smile at him, but it was crooked and strained. “Leo’s checking on things outside,” she said, and Len felt his eyebrows trying to climb up his forehead.
Leo?
He glanced at Albigard, but the fact that Vonnie now had a private nickname for their icy and unapproachable ex-boss appeared to hold no interest for him.
“Um, okay,” Len said. “We can wait for him to get back before we get into things any further.”
His stomach distracted him the moment they entered the kitchen. The fact that his body’s single-minded lust for sustenance was focused on three-day-old opossum stew was something that would probably cause Len to question the entire state of his life, once his blood sugar level was no longer hovering somewhere around his ankles.
“Sit down before you fall down, both of you,” Vonnie told them, waving them toward the table.
It was embarrassingly difficult to convince his feet to move away from the food rather
than toward it, but he managed to walk to the table and sink into one of the chairs. Albigard lowered his body into the chair opposite Len’s with the air of someone who had, in fact, been a step or two away from total collapse. Len was in slightly better shape now that he’d thawed out, but not by much.
Vonnie had put water out for both of them, and Len drank his greedily. She brought two steaming bowls of stew a moment later, and he fell on it with all the grace and restraint of a ravenous wolf. He got about halfway through the bowl before his stomach started to rebel at being stuffed with food after days of nothing. At that point, he was able to slow himself down and focus on things beyond the scope of his spoon moving rhythmically back and forth between the bowl and his mouth.
He took a deep breath and let it out, feeling slightly more human now that he was clean, dressed, and at least partially fed. Sneaking a glance at Albigard, he was surprised to find the Fae only picking at his food, rather than wolfing it. Then he took in the gray cast of his complexion and the bruised looking circles under his eyes.
“Shit,” he said quietly. “Exactly how bad did I mess you up, anyway?”
Before Albigard could answer, a swirl of pale mist blew into the room and coalesced into Guthrie’s solid form. He took a step forward and rested one hand firmly on the table, looming over them.
“How about you start from the beginning, and clue us in on exactly what the hell is going on,” said the vampire, his tone making it clear that it was less of a request and more of an order.
Albigard was obviously in no condition for storytelling. Len drew breath to ask after his health again, but the Fae waved him off with a weary gesture, lowering his gaze to avoid the others’ eyes. It was pretty clear that he blamed himself for much of the current situation, just as Len blamed himself for not protecting Rans and Zorah.
“Okay, then,” Len said tiredly. “Story time.”
He made a concerted effort to gather his thoughts into some kind of coherence and launched into an abbreviated version of the past couple of weeks’ events. He outlined Albigard’s arrival on his doorstep with Rans and Zorah, the Hunt’s first appearance, and their flight to Chicago, followed by Len’s catastrophic return to St. Louis. When it came to the battle to close the original breach, he painted things with the broadest possible brushstrokes, because he still wasn’t confident of his ability to dwell on the details without melting down again.
Forsaken Fae: The Complete Series, Books 1-3 (Last Vampire World) Page 28