Dance of the Gods

by Nora Roberts

  Something gave a little twist inside Blair’s belly. “And that sucks. I’m going to tell you I’m sorry about that, because I know how it feels to get slammed down when you’re doing your best.”

  “My best isn’t altogether that good, is it? No, I’m not looking for sorry,” she said before Blair could speak. “It’s hard to be told you’re lacking, but that’s what I am—for now. So I come up here in the mornings, early, and lift these bloody things the way you showed me. I won’t be the weak one, the one the rest of you have to worry about.”

  “You don’t have much muscle yet, but you’ve got some speed. And you’re a frigging genius with a bow. If you weren’t so good with it, things wouldn’t have turned out the way they did last night.”

  “Work on my weaknesses, and on my strengths, on my own time. That’s what you said to me—and it made me angry. Until I saw the wisdom of it. I’m not angry. You’re good at training. King was…He was more easy on me, I think, because he was a man. A big man at that,” Moira added with sorrow in her eyes now. “Who had affection for me, I think, because I was the smallest of us.”

  Blair hadn’t met King, Cian’s friend who’d been captured, then killed by Lilith. Then turned, and sent back as a vampire.

  “I won’t be easy on you,” Blair promised.

  By the time she’d finished a session with the weights and grabbed a quick shower, Blair had worked up that appetite. She decided to go for one of her favorites, and dug up the makings for French toast.

  She tossed some Irish bacon into a skillet for protein, selected Green Day on her MP3 player. Music to cook by.

  She poured her second cup of coffee before breaking eggs in a bowl.

  She was beating the batter when Larkin strolled in the door. He stopped, stared at her player. “And what is it?”

  “It’s a—” How to explain? “A way to whistle while you work.”

  “No, it’s not the machine I’m meaning. There are so many of those, I can’t keep them all in my brain. But what’s the sound?”

  “Oh. Um, popular music? Rock—of the hard variety.”

  He was grinning now, head cocked as he listened. “Rock. I like it.”

  “Who wouldn’t? Not going for eggs, this morning. Doing up French toast.”

  “Toast?” Disappointment fell over his face, erasing the easy pleasure of the music. “Just cooked bread?”

  “Not just. Besides, you get what you get when I’m manning the stove. Or you forage on your own.”

  “It’s kind of you to cook, of course.”

  His tone was so long-suffering, she had to swallow a laugh. “Relax, and trust me on this. I’ve seen you chow down, cowboy. You’re going to like it as much as Rock, especially after you drown it in butter and syrup. I’ll have it going in a minute. Why don’t you flip that bacon over?”

  “I’m needing to wash first. Been mucking out the stall and such, and I’m not fit yet to touch anything.”

  She lifted a brow as he strolled right out. She’d seen him slip out of all manner of kitchen duties already. And she had to admit, he was slick about it.

  Resigned, she turned the bacon herself, then heated a second skillet. She was about to dunk the first piece of bread when she heard voices. The newlyweds were up, she realized, and added to the batter to accommodate them.

  Effortless style. It was something Glenna had in spades, Blair thought. She wandered in wearing a sage green sweater and black jeans with her bold red hair swinging straight and loose. The urban take on country casual, Blair supposed. When you added the pretty flush of a woman who’d obviously had her morning snuggles, you had quite a package.

  She didn’t look like a woman who would rush a squad of vampires while she bellowed war cries and swung a battle-ax, but she’d done just that.

  “Mmm, French toast? You must have read my mind.” As she moved to the coffeepot, Glenna gave Blair’s arm an absent stroke. “Give you a hand?”

  “No, I got this. You’ve been taking the lion’s share of KP, and I’m better at breakfast than dinner. Didn’t I hear Hoyt?”

  “Right behind me. He’s talking to Larkin about the horse. I think Hoyt’s a little put out he didn’t get to Vlad before Larkin did. Coffee’s good. How’d you sleep?”

  “Like I’d been knocked unconscious, for a couple hours.” Blair dipped bread, then laid it to sizzle. “Then, I don’t know, too restless. Wired up.” She slanted Glenna a look. “And nowhere to put the excess energy, like the bride.”

  “I have to admit, I’m feeling pretty loose and relaxed this morning. Except.” Wincing a little, Glenna massaged her right biceps. “My arms feel like I spent half the night swinging a sledgehammer.”

  “Battle-ax has weight. You did good work with it.”

  “Work isn’t the word that comes to mind. But I’m not going to think about it—at least not until I’ve gorged myself.” Turning, Glenna opened a cupboard for plates. “Do you know how often I had a breakfast like this—fried bread, fried meat—before all this started?”

  “Nope.”

  “Never. Absolutely never,” she added with a half laugh. “I watched my weight as if the, well, as if the fate of the world depended on it.”

  “You’re training hard.” Blair flipped the bread. “You need the fuel, the carbs. If you put on a few pounds, I can guarantee it’s going to be pure muscle.”

  “Blair.” Glenna glanced toward the doorway to ensure Hoyt hadn’t started in yet. “You’ve got more experience with this than any of us. Just between you and me, for now, anyway, how did we do last night?”

  “We lived,” Blair said flatly. She continued to cook, sliding fried bread onto a plate, dunking more. “That’s bottom line.”

  “But—”

  “Glenna, I’ll tell you straight.” Blair turned, leaning back on the counter for a moment while bread sizzled and scented the air. “I’ve never been in anything like that before.”

  “But you’ve been doing this—hunting them—for years.”

  “That’s right. And I’ve never seen so many of them in one place at one time, never seen them organized that way.”

  Glenna let out a quiet breath. “That can’t be good news.”

  “Good or bad, it’s fact. It’s not—never been in my experience—the nature of the beast to live, work, fight in large groups. I contacted my aunt, and she says the same. They’re killers, and they might travel, hunt, even live together in packs. Small packs, and there might be an alpha, male or female. But not like this.”

  “Not like an army,” Glenna murmured.

  “No. And what we saw last night was a squad—a small slice of an army. The thing is, they’re willing to die for her, for Lilith. And that’s powerful stuff.”

  “Okay. Okay,” Glenna said as she set the table. “That’s what I get for saying I wanted it straight.”

  “Hey, buck up. We lived, remember? That’s a victory.”

  “Good morning to you,” Hoyt said to Blair as he came in. Then his gaze went straight to Glenna.

  They shared coloring, Blair thought, she and her however-many-times great-uncle. She, the sorcerer and his twin brother, the vampire, shared coloring, and ancestry, and now this mission, she supposed.

  Fate was certainly a twisty bastard.

  “You two sure have the glow on,” she said when Glenna lifted her face to meet Hoyt’s lips. “Practically need my shades.”

  “They shield the eyes from the sun, and are a sexy fashion statement,” Hoyt returned and made her laugh.

  “Have a seat.” She turned off the music, then brought the heaping platter to the table. “I made enough for an army, seeing as that’s what we are.”

  “It looks a fine feast. Thank you.”

  “Just doing my share, unlike some of us who’re a little more slippery.” She met Larkin’s perfectly timed appearance with a shake of her head. “Right on time.”

  His expression was both innocent and affable. “Is it ready then? It took me a bit longer to get back
as I stopped to tell Moira there was food being cooked. And a welcome sight it is.”

  “You look, you eat.” Blair slapped four slices of French toast on a plate for him. “And you and your cousin do the dishes.”

  Chapter 2

  Maybe it was the post-battle itches, but Blair couldn’t settle. After another session with Glenna, everyone’s injuries were well on the mend, so they could train. They should train, she told herself. Maybe the sweat and effort would work off the restlessness.

  But she had another idea.

  “I think we should go out.”

  “Out?” Glenna checked her chart of household duties and noted—God help them—Hoyt was next up on laundry detail. “Are we low on something?”

  “I don’t know.” Blair scanned the charts posted prominently on the refrigerator. “You seem to have the supply and duty lists under control—Quartermaster Ward.”

  “Mmm, Quartermaster.” Glenna sent Blair a twinkling look. “I like it. Can I get a badge?”

  “I’ll see what I can do. But when I say we should go out, I’m thinking more a little scouting expedition than a supply run. We should go check out Lilith’s base of operations.”

  “Now there’s a fine idea.” Larkin turned from the sink, where soap dripped from his hands, and he was not at all happy. “Give her a bit of a surprise for a change.”

  “Attack Lilith?” Moira stopped loading the dishwasher. “Today?”

  “I didn’t say attack. Throttle back,” Blair advised Larkin. “We’re outnumbered by a long shot, and I don’t think the locals would understand a bloodbath in broad daylight. But the daylight’s the key here.”

  “Go south to Chiarrai,” Hoyt said quietly. “To the cliffs and caves, while we have the sun.”

  “There you go. They can’t come out. Nothing they can do about us poking around, taking a look. And it’d be a nice follow-up to routing them last night.”

  “Psychological warfare.” Glenna nodded. “Yes, I see.”

  “That,” Blair agreed, “and maybe we gather some intel. We see what we see, we map out various routes going and coming. And we make a point of letting her know we’re there. Or were there.”

  “If we could lure some of them out. Or go in just far enough to give them some trouble. Fire,” Larkin said. “There should be a way to set a fire in the caves.”

  “Not altogether a bad idea.” Blair thought it over. “Bitch could use a good spanking. We’ll go prepared for that, and armed. But we go quiet and careful. We don’t want some tourist or local calling the cops—then having to explain why we’ve got a van loaded with weapons.”

  “Leave the fire to me and to Glenna.” Hoyt pushed to his feet.

  “Why?”

  In answer, Glenna held out her hand. A ball of flame shimmered in her cupped palm.

  “Pretty,” Blair decided.

  “And Cian?” Moira continued to deal with the dishes. “He wouldn’t be able to leave the house.”

  “Then he stays back,” Blair said flatly. “Larkin, if you’re done there, let’s go load up some weapons.”

  “We have some things in the tower that might be useful.” Glenna brushed her fingers over Hoyt’s arm. “Hoyt?”

  “We can’t just leave him without letting him know what we’re about.”

  “You want to wake up a vampire this time of day?” Blair shrugged. “Okay. You go first.”

  Cian didn’t care to be disturbed during his rest time. He figured a closed and locked bedroom door would be a clear signal to anyone that he wanted his privacy. But such things never seemed to stop his brother. So he sat now, awake in the dim light, and listened to the plan for the day.

  “So, if I have this right, you woke me to tell me you’re going out, down to Kerry to poke at the caves?”

  “We didn’t want you to wake, find us all gone.”

  “My fondest dream.” Cian waved that lazily away. “Apparently, the good, bloody fight last night isn’t enough for the hunter.”

  “It’s good strategy, going there.”

  “Didn’t work out so very well, did it, the last time we went there?”

  Hoyt said nothing for a moment, thinking of King, and the loss of him.

  “Nor, for you or me, the time before that,” Cian added. “You ended up barely able to walk away, and I took a fucking header off a cliff. Not one of my happiest memories.”

  “Those times were different altogether, and you know it. It’s daylight now, and this time she won’t know we’re coming. And being it’s daylight, you’ll have to stay behind.”

  “If you think I’ll sulk about that, you’d be wrong. I’ve plenty to keep me busy. Calls and e-mails, which I’ve largely neglected these past weeks. I still have businesses that need my attention, which might as well be tended to since you’ve pulled me out of bed in the middle of the damn day. Let me add it’ll be a pure pleasure to have five noisy humans out of the house a few hours, that I can promise you.”

  He rose, walked to his desk and wrote something on a notepad. “Since you’ll be out and about, I’ll need you to go here. There’s a butcher in Ennis. He’ll sell you blood. Pigs’ blood,” Cian said with a bland smile as he handed his brother the address. “I’ll ring him up, so he knows someone’s coming. Payment’s not a problem as I have an account.”

  His brother’s writing hand had changed over all this time, Hoyt noted. So much had changed. “Doesn’t he wonder why…”

  “If he does, he’s wise enough not to ask. And he’s no doubt pleased to pocket the extra euros. That’s the coin here now.”

  “Aye, Glenna explained it to me. We’ll be back before sunset.”

  “Better hope you are,” Cian warned when Hoyt left him.

  Outside, Blair tossed a dozen stakes in a plastic bucket. Swords, axes, scythes were already on board. All of the fiery variety. It was going to be interesting explaining things if they got stopped, but she didn’t scout out a vampire nest without going fully loaded.

  “Who wants the wheel?” she asked Glenna.

  “I know the way.”

  Blair checked the need to take control, climbed in the back, took the seat behind Glenna as the others joined her. “So, Hoyt, have you ever been in the caves? I don’t figure that kind of thing changes much in a few hundred years.”

  “Many times. But they’re different now.”

  “We’ve been in them,” Glenna explained. “Magically. Hoyt and I did a spell before we left New York. It was intense.”

  “Fill me in.”

  Blair listened, one part of her brain marking the route, landmarks, traffic patterns.

  In any part, she saw what Glenna described. A labyrinth of tunnels, chambers blocked with thick doors, bodies stacked like so much garbage. People in cages like penned cattle. And the sounds of it—Blair could hear that in the back of her mind—the weeping, the screaming, the praying.

  “Luxury vamp condo,” she murmured. “How many ways in?”

  “I couldn’t say. In my time the cliffs were riddled with caves. Some small, barely big enough for a child to crawl through, others big enough for a man to stand. There were more tunnels, wider, taller than I remember.”

  “So, she excavated. She’s had plenty of time to make it all homey.”

  “If we could block them off,” Larkin began, and Moira turned to him in horror.

  “There are people inside. People held in cages like animals. Bodies tossed aside without even the decency of burial.”

  He covered her hand with his and said nothing.

  “We can’t get them out. That’s what he’s not saying to you.” But it had to be said, Blair thought. “Even if a couple of us wanted to try a suicide run, that’s just what it would be. We’d die, they’d die. A rescue isn’t an option. I’m sorry.”

  “A spell,” Moira insisted. “Something to blind or bind, just until we free those who’ve been captured.”

  “We tried to blind her.” Glenna flicked a glance in the rearview to meet Moira’s eyes
. “We failed. Maybe a transportation spell.” She looked at Hoyt now. “Would it be possible for us to transport humans?”

  “I’ve never done it. The risks…”

  “They’ll die in there. Many have already.” Moira scooted up in her seat to grip Hoyt’s shoulder. “What greater risk is there than death?”

  “We could harm them. To use magicks that may harm—”

  “You could save them. What choice do you think they would take? What choice would you?”

  “She’s got a point.” If they could do it, Blair thought, if they could save even one, it would be worth it. And it would be a good hard kick in Lilith’s ass. “Is there a chance?”

  “You need to see what you move from one place to another,” Hoyt explained. “And it’s more successful if you’re close to the object. This would be through rock, and we’d be all but blinded.”

  “Not necessarily,” Glenna countered. “Let’s think about this, let’s talk it through.”

  While they talked—argued, discussed—Blair let it all stew around in the back of her mind. Pretty day, she thought absently. The sun shining on all that green. The lovely, long roll of land with cows grazing lazily. Tourists would be out, taking advantage of the weather after yesterday’s storm. Shopping in the towns, or driving out to gawk at the Cliffs of Mohr, getting their snapshots and videos of the dolmen in The Burren.

  She’d done the same thing herself, once upon a time.

  “So, does Geall look anything like this?”

  “Quite a bit really,” Larkin told her. “It’s very like home, except, well, the roads, the cars, most of the buildings. But the land itself, aye, it is. It’s very like home.”

  “What do you do back there?”

  “About what, exactly?”

  “Well, a guy’s got to make a living, right?”

  “Oh. We work the land, of course. And we’ve horses, for breeding, selling. Fine horses. I’ve left my father shorthanded. He may not be too pleased with me right at the moment.”

  “Odds are he’ll understand if you end up saving the world.” She should have known he worked with his hands, Blair realized. They were strong and hard, and he had the look, she supposed, of a man who spent the bulk of his time outdoors. All those sun-streaks in his hair, the light golden haze on his skin.

  Whoa, settle down, hormones. He was just another member of the team she’d been pulled into. It was smart to learn all you could about who was fighting beside you. And stupid to let yourself get little tingles of lust over them.

  “So you’re a farmer.”

  “At the bottom of it.”

  “How does a farmer know how to use a sword the way you do?”

  “Ah.” He swiveled around to face her more directly. For a moment, just a short moment, he lost his trend. Her eyes were so deep and blue. “Sure we have tournaments. Games? I like to play in them. I like to win.”

  She could see that as well, though it was probably more Hollywood than Geallian. “Yeah, me, too. I like to win.”

  “So then, do you play games?”

  There was a teasing, playfully sexy undercurrent in the question. She’d have had to have been brain-dead to miss it. Brain-dead for a month, she decided, not to feel the little buzz.

  “Not so much, but I win when I do.”