Confirmation he saw me as a partner and not a damsel sent relief swirling through me.
“Stick close.” He brushed a lingering kiss over my lips that curled my toes. “You never know when I might need saving.”
Lethe made wet gagging noises and staggered closer. I plastered myself against Linus to escape, and for other reasons, but she kept coming. Trust me when I say Lethe’s morning sickness was worthy of The Exorcist. Two legs or four, it didn’t matter. Regan MacNeil only wished she had Lethe’s range. Projectile vomiting was truly an artform, one I didn’t appreciate. At all. Even a little.
Hood’s chuffed laughter as he nipped her on the ear clued me in to the joke. Namely, me.
Without a backward glance, Lethe bolted for the chaos, barking orders as she ran.
Hood pinched the back of my shirt between his teeth and jerked his head over his shoulder.
“You want me to climb on your back?” I squinted at his withers. “You’re not that big.”
“You don’t weigh much.” Linus flexed his hand, and his moonlit scythe materialized in his palm. “Trust Hood to know his limitations.”
Easy for him to say, he was walking. “Do you remember how much I hated horseback riding lessons?”
“What I remember is you getting caught skinny-dipping with Boaz in the pond behind the barn.”
A flush crept up my neck. “I’ll just get on Hood then…”
Linus gave me a boost, and I straddled the gwyllgi, fisting my hands in his ruddy fur.
Nerves jangling, I sought out Linus. “Be—”
Hood lurched forward, and my teeth clacked together at the roughness of his gait.
To keep my feet from dragging, I had to hang on to his neck and plaster myself down his back. I drew my legs up behind me, hooking my ankles on his spine, and held on for dear life.
Ahead, Lethe carved a path through the vampires that Hood took with lengthening strides. Based on the screams behind us, Linus was carving a more literal path with his scythe.
Blood spattered my cheeks until I had to press my face against Hood’s neck to shield myself from the gore.
A sharp yelp snapped my head up in time to see how stupid I had been.
More than a dozen slavering vampires had converged on Lethe, and she was surrounded.
Lacroix wasn’t using his people as his vanguard. The coward wasn’t here. The knot of vampires hadn’t been concealing him. They had been corralling several dozen fledglings with bloodlust brightening their eyes.
We had fallen for their ruse, and with us in the middle of their circle, the vampire guards closed ranks behind us, trapping us among their ravenous charges.
“Protect Lethe,” I shouted to Hood over their snarls. “I’ll stick with Linus.”
I leapt from his back before he could protest, tucked into a ball, and rolled to a stop at the base of an icy cloak spun from starless skies and nightmares.
“He’s not here,” I stated the obvious. “What do we do now?”
“We try not to die,” Linus said as black swallowed his eyes from corner to corner, “and we take as many of them out as we can.”
“Good plan.”
Fighting back to back with him, romantic as it sounded, was impossible unless I wanted to risk accidental decapitation. The scythe required a range of motion my presence behind him would impede. Close-quarters brawling would have to be good enough.
A vampire stalked me as I moved away from Linus, charging the second I was outside the scythe’s lethal reach. All I had to do was hold the stake. He impaled himself on it, gaping in shock as blood flowed over my hand. I yanked my arm back at the same time I kicked him in the gut. His corpse slid off the tapered end with a sucking noise, and I grimaced. How did Corbin stand it? Murder was so…messy.
“New plan,” I called to Linus. “I’m going to set a circle, and we’re going to see how many vampires I can take out at once.”
The small knife in my pocket wasn’t much of a weapon, but I kept it razor sharp. It parted the skin covering my palm, and blood flowed. I made a fist and squeezed, drawing a tight circle in crimson.
“Lethe. Hood. Get in here.”
The second their paws crossed the barrier, I grasped the back of Linus’s cloak and hauled him in. The magic sprang closed around us, and the horde bounced off the impenetrable barrier.
With blood still dripping down my hand, I cupped my palm and dipped my fingers, writing sigils on the ward as fast as my mind conjured them. When I had five lined up, I smacked my palm against each one.
Blasts of energy as bright as daylight swept out into the crowd, incinerating them where they stood.
“Goddess,” I breathed. “It’s never done that before.”
The pulse usually shoved vampires off their feet. A solid hit knocked them unconscious. It had never killed anyone. This time, it vaporized them. And from the ashes of their destruction strode Lacroix, without a scratch on him. We had been right about his hiding spot, we just hadn’t been able to single him out from among the rabid fledglings.
“A goddess-touched necromancer is at her fiercest when protecting those she loves,” Lacroix intoned. “I had wondered if you had it in you.” He examined the remains of three dozen charred husks, all that remained of his fledglings. “I see now it was foolish of me to question if my son had bred true.”
“Savannah is my city, not yours.” I drew several more sigils. “Leave now, or I will burn you to ash.”
“You can’t harm me, that ought to be evident.” He chuckled, indulgent, but his eyes gleamed with malice. “I have lived a long time, Grier. Long enough to know how to protect myself against goddess-touched necromancers. I would never have engaged with you otherwise. As you might suspect, I enjoy being alive, and I’ve got lifetimes of experience in staying that way.”
He reached into the opened neck of his button-down shirt and produced a quarter-sized medallion stamped with intricate sigils. The design scratched the back of my brain where my genetic memory resided until I understood its purpose was similar to the sigil I drew on Linus, with one important caveat. Lacroix’s protection extended as far as my blood and my magic, and the blood and magic of others like me.
Lacroix was that cocky, that bold. He had only warded himself against circumstances beyond his control.
“The stake is an heirloom, I presume?” Lacroix eyed it covetously. “Perhaps we can arrange a trade.”
Asking would have given him the upper hand, so I waited for him to spell out his demands.
“Come with me of your own volition,” he said, extending his hand, “and I won’t kill your betrothed.”
Shaking my head, I walked up to the edge of the circle. “You already gave the order.”
“I did.” He let his arm drop to his side. “I can take it back.”
“No deal.” I eased between him and Linus. “You’ll kill him as soon as you secure me.”
“Ma coccinelle.”
Fear ignited in my chest, roaring through my limbs, as the crowd parted behind Lacroix. “Odette?”
Vampires escorted Odette, her frail arms trapped in their immovable grips.
Messy white braids slid across her face, and blood speckled her dress. She was missing a shoe and her glasses too. The vampires might not have been restraining her so much as preventing her from face-planting. She was almost blind without them.
“We discovered this treasure on the edge of the city.” Lacroix grinned, his fangs lengthening. “If memory serves, she was one of your mother’s dearest friends. Your adoptive mother favored her too, yes?”
“Let her go,” I rasped. “Please.”
Odette was family. I couldn’t lose her too.
“Ah.” He clucked his tongue. “I see you have recalled your manners.”
“Whatever he wants,” Odette cried, thrashing in their hold, “do not give it to him.”
“I’ll trade myself for Odette.” I heard myself as if the words echoed back to me from across a long distance. “Just don�
��t hurt her.”
Behind me, Lethe and Hood had gone eerily silent. But it wasn’t Lacroix they were staring down with murder in their eyes—it was Odette.
“Don’t blame her,” I told them quietly. “This is my choice.”
Linus rested his hand on my shoulder. “No.”
That was the entirety of his argument.
No.
I wasn’t certain that had been all he meant to say, or if that was all that came out. He wasn’t a man who relished repeating himself.
I won’t be parted from you again, his bottomless eyes reminded me.
The breadth of his devotion left me with an impossible choice. Either I condemned Odette…or him.
Cool fingers speared through mine as Linus entwined our fates. “Lower the wards.”
The gwyllgi pair whined behind me, their crimson eyes focused on Odette like she was the biggest threat on the street.
“This isn’t her fault.” I scratched them both behind their ears. “Don’t hurt her.”
Lethe lunged at me, closing her mouth around my hand but not biting down hard enough to hurt.
“I have to do this.” I wiggled free. “Odette is family.”
The hairs stood upright down the length of Hood’s spine, and he snarled at Odette with pure loathing.
All I could do was hope they would obey my wishes. I was out of time to reassure them. Lacroix wouldn’t wait for my answer forever.
“Give me your word you won’t hurt the gwyllgi,” I grated from between clenched teeth. “Linus and I are more than a fair trade for their lives. Let them go. They won’t give you any more trouble.” I cut them a sharp look. “They’ll go back to Atlanta, where they belong.”
“You must believe the two of you stand better odds of escape together.” He rolled a shoulder. “The boy is leverage. You will not be kept together, but perhaps you will be rewarded with supervised visits if you do as you’re told.”
Heart a panicked bird in my chest, I held on tight to Linus and used my toe to break the line.
The ward fell, and Lacroix’s grin widened until it stretched from ear to ear.
Movement in the crowd drew my eye past my grandfather to a blood-drenched gwyllgi barreling down on us with murder in his eyes.
“Stop,” I yelled. “No.”
His enormous paws struck Odette in the chest, and she fell back, thumping her head on the asphalt.
“Get away from her.” I rushed over, yanking his fur, pulling him back. “She’s with us.”
Red magic splashed over my hands, up my arms, sucking me down into the beast’s transformation.
Strong arms cinched around my waist and ripped me back as power consumed the creature, and a man’s form emerged with a booted foot pressed against Odette’s throat.
Shane.
“For the longest time, I thought you were dead, witch.” His outline rippled, the beast eager to tear from his skin again. “You’ll wish you were, when I’m done with you.”
“Shane, no.” I struggled to get free, but it was a very human Lethe—not Linus—holding me back. “Don’t hurt her.”
“I’m not going to hurt her.” He applied more pressure, and she gurgled. “I’m going to kill her.”
“Lethe, let me go. Please.”
Lethe didn’t say a word, but her whole body trembled against me as she fought the compulsion.
A compulsion that shouldn’t have extended to protecting Odette.
No, no, no.
There had to be an explanation. Lethe might not be able to tell me, but Odette could explain.
“Please,” I begged, glancing back at Lethe. “Don’t make me hurt you.”
Blood dribbled from the corner of her mouth, dripping onto her shirt. Her labored breaths stirred the hair at the base of my neck, a rasping wheeze of sound. Panicked she might kill herself to save me, I searched out Linus for help. But he was staring at Odette with a peculiar expression drawing his forehead into tidy rows.
Hood retained his gwyllgi form, and blood drip, drip, dripped from his eyes as he took laborious steps closer to his mate…and Odette.
Torn between loyalties, I went limp in Lethe’s arms to give her some relief then sought out Shane. “What’s happening to them?”
“The NDAs the pack use are fae made. They’re nasty pieces of work,” he said. “The magic woven into them will kill anyone who breaches their terms. Lethe is fighting it for you, and Hood is fighting it for her.” He slanted me a look. “Whatever they know about this woman, they’re bound from speaking ill of her. They have no way to warn you, but I can, and I will.”
Tears sprang into Lethe’s eyes, and she rested her forehead against my shoulder as sobs overtook her.
“I don’t understand.” I stroked her hair until Hood shifted and gathered her in his arms. “Odette was one of my mother’s best friends. She was one of Maud’s confidants. She’s like an aunt to me.”
“She’s Lacroix’s lover.” Pity shone in his eyes, but he shook his head. “She—”
Horror pitched me forward, but there was nothing I could do, nothing I could have done.
Lacroix was an ancient, and he was fast, and he was ruthless. Even more so than the fae.
Between one blink and the next, Shane’s body hit the pavement.
Lacroix dangled the severed head from a silky rope of blue-black hair.
Odette closed her eyes, her limbs trembling, and sobbed when his blood spattered her.
“He talked too much.” Lacroix tossed the head away and cleaned his hands with a handkerchief one of his followers offered him. “Now that we can hear ourselves think, I await your answer.”
Shock made it difficult to turn my head away from Shane’s corpse. The brutal attack had come so swiftly…
Swallowing the metallic taste in my mouth, I wet my lips. “No.”
Hidden behind the mask of Scion Lawson, Linus gave no indication if he agreed or disagreed with my change of heart, but the comforting weight of his arm draped across my shoulders.
“You would let her die?” Lacroix knelt beside Odette and toyed with one of her white braids, now stained crimson. “She means so little to you?”
A sour taste coated the back of my throat, and I picked at the scab on my palm, taking comfort in the warmth of the blood slicking my fingers. Magic in my hand, eager to come when I called on its power.
Odette might have been the one who bumped her head, but the impact had shaken me too.
“You cut your house-sitting duties short,” I said quietly to her. “You saw a vision of me in a car accident in Atlanta. You saw I got banged up, but you didn’t stick around Woolly to welcome me home or meet the gwyllgi.” I thought back on what Amelie told me at the time. “You blamed an allergy to dogs, but you’ve played with strays on the beach. You even took one in for a while. You never sneezed, not once.”
Slowly, Odette opened her milky eyes, and her brow furrowed. “I did see, but you were fine. I—”
“You made excuses for not visiting me after the Kinases settled in, but you’ve never liked to travel often or far. When I asked you to visit Amelie, and you checked if the gwyllgi were still here first, I should have suspected you had history with them. Why else would their presence have mattered to you?”
Thanks to the NDA, it’s not like they could have outed her, but their behavior would have tipped me off that something was wrong.
Lacroix watched me now, listening as I worked it all out, balling the handkerchief in his fist tighter.
“I should have been suspicious when you used your vacation as cover for moving out of your bungalow, but you’re family. Why would I think twice about anything you’d told me?” The more I rambled, the more I made sense, and I hated that I couldn’t stop. I wanted to bury my head in the sands outside her candy-colored home and pretend the ground wasn’t crumbling beneath me. “Your bungalow was dusted with powdered bronze.” I curled my fingernails into my palms. “Why would you do that? Why would anyone do that? Unless they knew I w
ould go looking for you. Unless they knew I used gwyllgi for security. Unless…they had something to hide.”
“I visited a client, as I told you,” she croaked, tears spilling over her weathered cheeks. “I was notified that the bungalow’s owner intended to sell while I was away. I paid a company to move my things. I have only just come back.”
Vision wobbly, I let fresh blood fall to the pavement, sealing the ward I had smudged earlier.
“You left a note for the realtor about the toilet in the master bathroom.” I raised the circle around us, protecting us, and only then did I let my own tears fall. “You’re lying, Odette.”
“Bébé, no.”
“The Elite had the handwriting analyzed. The results came back positive. It was yours.”
Eyeing Lacroix, she arranged herself in a seated position. “Those tests mean nothing.”
“This doesn’t mean anything either.” I reached into my pocket and retrieved the ark shell Cletus had given me the day I went searching for Odette on Tybee. “A million of these must wash up on beaches all over the world. But this one—it’s identical to a shell I found pressed into the concrete patio at the estate where I was held captive, right down to this.”
I held it up for her to see, my thoughts racing over what it meant if I was right. Unless she convinced me otherwise, she had been there when the patio was poured to leave her mark on…her home. The estate where I had been kept, not only as a prisoner, but as a baby. The estate my mother had escaped from.
The implications spun out in widening circles that made me dizzy with understanding of what debt Hood and the Kinases felt they owed me.
Her scent reminds me of a young woman to whom I owe a blood debt.
That’s what Hood had told me.
I couldn’t save her, but perhaps this might help me balance the scales.
The young woman I reminded him of, the one he couldn’t save, was…Mom.
And that meant Odette knew everything, and she had never told me. Any of this.
“The hole was so small on the original, I didn’t notice it at first. Granted, I was also drugged at the time. But I saw it again the other day, when I met with Lacroix. I even took a picture since I didn’t understand the connection.” I turned it this way and that. “The holes are in the exact same spot. Moon snail predation might explain one hole in a matched shell, but two? The reason for that, and their identical size and shape, is they were earrings once upon a time.”
How to Live an Undead Lie (The Beginner's Guide to Necromancy Book 5) Page 26