Dance of the Gods

by Nora Roberts

  “Fuck this,” Blair muttered. She grabbed a crossbow, armed it. With the bow in one hand, the scythe in the other, she began to move cautiously toward the door.

  This was Glenna’s area, not hers. Time to call in the witch.

  But Lora slid through the wall again, and what she pulled with her had Blair’s blood freezing.

  “No. No, no, no.”

  “He is handsome.” Lora slid a tongue down Jeremy’s cheek as he struggled against her hold. “I can see why you feel for him.”

  “You’re not here.” Oh God, his face was bleeding. His right eye swollen nearly shut. “It’s not real.”

  “Not here, but real. Say hello, Jeremy.”

  “Blair? Blair? What’s going on? What are you doing here? What’s happening?”

  “It was so easy.” Lora clamped a hand on his throat, choking him as she lifted him an inch off the floor. And laughing when Blair charged them, flew through them and ran hard against the wall. “I just picked him up in a bar. A few drinks, a few suggestions. Men are deceivers ever. That’s Shakespeare. ‘Why don’t we go to your place?’ was all I needed to whisper into his ear. And here we are.”

  She brought him down so his feet touched the ground, but kept her hand around his neck. “I would have fucked him first, but it seemed that would take the shine off the gift.”

  “Help me.” He choked it out, wheezing each breath. “Blair, you have to help me.”

  “Help me,” Lora mimicked and threw him to the ground.

  “Why are you wasting your time with him?” Blair felt her stomach twist as Jeremy crawled toward her. “You want me, come for me.”

  “Oh, I will.” Lora leaped, falling on Jeremy. Dragging him to his back, she straddled him. “This weak—yet attractive—human broke your heart. Isn’t that so?”

  “He dumped me. What do I care what you do to him? You’re wasting your time with him when you should be dealing with me.”

  “No, no, it’s never a waste of time. And caring, chérie, is what you do.” Lora clamped a hand over Jeremy’s mouth as he started to scream, then watching Blair, scraped her nail down his cheek to draw fresh blood. She licked it from her fingertip. “Hmm. Fear always gives it such a nice kick. Beg for him. If you beg, I’ll let him live.”

  “Don’t kill him. Please, don’t kill him. He means nothing to you. He’s not important. Leave him there, just leave him, you got my attention. I’ll meet you, alone, wherever you want. Just you and me. We’ll settle this. The two of us. We don’t need men getting in the way. Don’t do this. Ask for something in return. Just ask.”

  “Blair.” Lora offered her a sweet, sympathetic smile. “I don’t have to ask. I just take. But you begged very well, so I’ll…Oh don’t be ridiculous. We both know I’m going to kill him. Watch.”

  She sank her teeth into him, sliding her body down his as it convulsed in an awful parody of sex. Blair heard herself screaming and screaming. And screaming.

  Chapter 11

  When Larkin rushed in all he saw was Blair stabbing a stake over and over into the floor. She was weeping as she did it in wild, screaming sobs, and there was a madness on her face.

  He ran to her, but when he grabbed for her, she struck out in a blow that bloodied his lip.

  “Get away, get away! She’s killing him!”

  “There’s nothing there.” He gripped her wrist, and would have taken another punch if Cian hadn’t dragged her back.

  She kicked, twisted to attack. Cian slapped her, twice. Hard enough to make the crack of it echo. “Stop. Hysterics are useless.”

  Enraged, Larkin leaped to his feet. “Take your hands off her. You think you can strike her?” He might have charged, but Hoyt pinned his arm.

  “Hold on a bloody minute.”

  Larkin’s answer was to rear back, smash his head into Hoyt’s jaw even as Glenna sprinted over to stand between Larkin and Cian. “Just calm down.” Glenna held up her hands. “Just everyone calm down.”

  But there was shouting, accusations, and Blair’s helpless sobbing.

  “Ciunas!” Moira’s voice cut through the mayhem with a cold authority. “Quiet, all of you. Larkin, he did what needed to be done, so stop this nonsense. Let go of her, Cian. Glenna, get her some water. We need to find out what’s happened here.”

  When Cian released her, Blair simply melted to the floor. “She’s killed him. I couldn’t stop her.” She brought up her knees, wrapped her arms around her head as she lowered it. “Oh God, oh my God.”

  “You have to look at me now.” Moira crouched down, firmly took Blair’s arms and brought them down again. “You have to look at me, Blair, and tell me what happened here.”

  “He never believed, not even when I showed him. It was easier to push me away, to throw me away than to believe it. Now he’s dead.”

  “Who is?”

  “Jeremy. Jeremy’s dead. She brought him here, so I would see her do it.”

  “There’s no one here, Blair. No one here, and no one in the house but the six of us.”

  “There was.” Glenna passed down the water. “I can feel it.” She looked at Hoyt for confirmation.

  “A smear on the air.” He nodded. “A heaviness to it that comes from black magic.”

  “She came through the wall, and I thought, now we’ll fight. You and me, French bitch.” Though Blair fought to steady it, her voice continued to hitch. “I threw a stake, but it went right through her. She wasn’t really here. She…”

  “Like on the subway. It happened to me,” Glenna explained. “In New York. A vampire on the subway, but no one else could see it. He spoke to me, it moved, but it wasn’t really there.”

  “Boston.” Sick to the soul of her, Blair got to her feet. “She went to Boston. I used to live there. It’s where I met him—Jeremy. They were in his apartment. She told me where she was. Cian, do you have contacts there?”

  “I do.”

  She gave him an address. “Jeremy Hilton. Someone needs to check. Maybe she was just messing with me. But if…They have to make sure she didn’t change him.”

  “I’ll take care of it.”

  She looked down to where she’d hacked and drilled the steak into the floorboards. “Sorry about the floor.”

  “That’d be Hoyt’s and Glenna’s problem now.” Cian touched her shoulder briefly before he left the room.

  “We should go down. You should lie down,” Glenna said. “Or sit at least. I can give you something that will help.”

  “No. I don’t want anything.” She scrubbed the useless tears away with the heels of her hands. “I knew she’d come back at us, but I never considered, I never thought. Glenna, your family—”

  “They’re protected. Hoyt and I saw to that. Blair, I’m so sorry we didn’t do something for your…for your friend.”

  “I never thought of him. Never considered they would…I’m, ah, I’m going to take a few minutes before we get back to work.”

  “All you need,” Glenna told her.

  Blair looked at Larkin. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I hit you.”

  “It’s nothing.” Letting her go, letting her go alone, was more painful than any blow.

  She didn’t weep again. Tears wouldn’t help Jeremy, and they certainly wouldn’t do her any good.

  She contacted her aunt, relayed the details. She could count on family to protect family. In any case, she doubted Lilith, or Lora, any of them would go after people who were prepared, who knew them. And could defend themselves.

  They’d chosen the helpless for a very good reason.

  It didn’t waste time or effort, was low-risk, and very, very effective.

  She was absolutely calm when she armed herself, sliding the sword into the sheath on her back, the stake into the one on her belt. Her mind, her purpose were clear as glass when she went outside.

  There wouldn’t be many, she thought. It was poor strategy to waste more than a handful at this stage. Which was a pity.

  They would expect her to be broken,
to be shaking and weeping under the covers. That was a mistake.

  She watched the two come toward her, from the right and from the left. “Hello, boys. You looking for a party?”

  The sword came out of its sheath with the slick sound of metal on metal. She whirled; a quick, two-handed swing. And decapitated the one coming at her from behind.

  “Came to the right place.”

  When they charged, she was ready. Slicing, piercing, blocking with a sword that sang like vengeance. She took the nick on her forearm. She wanted to feel it, that sting.

  They were clumsy, she thought. Young and poorly trained. Fat and soft in the lives they’d led before they’d been turned. Not defenseless, not like Jeremy, but far from seasoned.

  She flipped out the stake, eliminated one.

  The one that was left dropped its sword, began to run.

  “Hey, hey, not done yet.” She chased it, took it down with a flying tackle. Then holding the stake to its heart, stared into eyes filled with fear.

  “Got a message for Lora. You know her? The French pastry? Good,” she said when it nodded. “Tell her she was right about one thing. It will be her and me, and when I end her, it’s going to be…Oh never mind, I’ll tell her myself.”

  She plunged the stake down. Rising, she tunneled her fingers through her dripping hair. Then picked up the scattered weapons, and started back to the house.

  The door swung open before she reached it, and Larkin stormed out. “Have you gone mad?”

  “They weren’t expecting it.” She tossed him one of the swords, moved by him into the house. “Only three anyway. Probably clears the ones she’s stationed near the house.” She laid the other confiscated swords on the kitchen counter. “And those were lightweights.”

  “You’d go out alone? Risk your life this way?”

  “I went out alone most of my life,” she reminded him. “And risking my life is part of the job description.”

  “It’s not a job.”

  “A job’s exactly what it is.” She poured herself a large mug of coffee. Hands still steady, she noted. Mission accomplished. “I’m going to go dry off.”

  “You had no right to take a chance like that.”

  “Minimal risk,” she countered as she walked out. “Excellent results.”

  When she’d changed her clothes, she joined the others in the library. She could see from their expressions Larkin had informed the rest of the group of her little sortie.

  “They were stationed close to the house,” she began. “Likely to try to hear or see something they could pass on. That won’t be a problem now.”

  “It would have been a problem if there’d been more of them.” Hoyt spoke quietly, but it didn’t disguise the steel beneath the words. “It would have been a problem if they’d killed or captured you.”

  “Didn’t happen. We have to be ready to take opportunities. Not only the six of us, but the people we’re going to be sending into battle. They have to be trained, how to kill, when to kill. Not just with sword and stake, but with their bare hands, or whatever comes to hand. Because everything’s a weapon. And if they’re not trained, if they’re not ready, they’re just going to stand there and die.”

  “Like Jeremy Hilton.”

  “Yeah.” She nodded at Larkin, absorbed his anger along with the weight in her heart. “Like Jeremy. Cian, were you able to find anything out?”

  “He’s dead.”

  She closed off the part of her that wanted to moan. “Could he have been changed?”

  “No. There was too much trauma to the body for that.”

  “It’s still possible he—”

  “No.” Cian bit off the word to cut her off. “She ripped him to pieces. It’s one of her signatures. He’s just dead.”

  She let herself sit. Better to sit, she decided, than to fall over.

  “There was nothing you could do, Blair,” Moira told her gently. “Nothing you could have done to stop it.”

  “No, there was nothing. That was her point—look what I can do, right in front of you, and you’re helpless. We were engaged, Jeremy and I, a couple years ago. So I had to tell him—in the end I had to show him—what I am, what I do. He walked out, because he wasn’t going to believe it, wasn’t going to be part of it. Now it’s killed him.”

  “She killed him,” Larkin corrected. “Who you are didn’t kill him.” He waited until she shifted her gaze, met his eyes. “She wants, very much wants, you to blame yourself. Will you give her that victory?”

  “She won’t win anything from me.” Tears stung her eyes again, but she willed them back. “I’m sorry, all around. This messes me up, and I have to live with it awhile on my own before I can put it away.”

  “We’ll put off the meeting.” Glenna glanced around at the others for agreement. “You can take some time.”

  “Appreciate it, but work’s better. Thinking’s better.” If she went upstairs now, were alone now, Blair knew she’d just fall apart again. “So okay. If we’re going to set traps on the other side, we’ll need to calculate the best locations, and determine how many we’ll need on those details.”

  “We have more immediate concerns,” Hoyt interrupted. “The transportation to Geall itself. If Cian’s barred from the Dance, he can’t reach the portal.”

  “There must be an exception.” Moira laid a hand on Blair’s shoulder, gave it one hard squeeze before moving aside. “Morrigan chose us, all of us.”

  “Maybe she’s finished with me.” Cian shrugged. “Gods are fickle creatures.”

  “You’re one of the six,” Moira insisted. “Without you in Geall, the circle’s broken.”

  “I could go back to the caves. From the air.” Larkin paced in front of the windows. How could he sit at such a time? “Scout. I might be able to find where they’re going through.”

  “We can’t separate. Not this close to deadline. We stick together now.” Glenna scanned faces, lingering on Blair’s. “We stay whole.”

  “There’s another thing, I think I should mention.” Moira glanced toward Cian. “When Larkin and I went to the Dance in Geall, it was barely midday. It seemed to happen so quickly, the way we were swept up and away. But when we came out here, it was night. I don’t think we can know how long it takes, or if time’s the same. Or…or if we leave at night as we planned, if it would still be night when we come to Geall.”

  “Or high bloody noon.” Cian cast his eyes up. “Isn’t that just perfect?”

  “There has to be a way to protect him if there’s sunlight.”

  “Easy for you to say, Red.” Cian rose to get a glass of whiskey. “Your delicate skin may burn a bit in strong sunlight, but you don’t go to ash, do you?”

  “Some sort of block, Hoyt,” Glenna began.

  “I don’t think SPF-forty will do the trick,” Cian countered.

  “We’ll figure it out,” she snapped back. “We’ll find a way. We haven’t come this far to give up, to leave you behind.”

  Blair let them talk, argue, debate. The voices just buzzed around her. She didn’t comment, didn’t contribute. When Hoyt finally harangued Cian into giving him a sample of blood, she left them to their magic.

  He didn’t try to sleep. A half dozen times he started to go to her room. To offer what? he wondered. Comfort she didn’t want, anger she didn’t need?

  She had suffered a terrible loss, and a hard, hard shock to her heart. She hadn’t, perhaps couldn’t turn to him. Not even, he thought now, as a fellow warrior.

  He couldn’t soothe hurts she refused to let him see, or reach wounds she closed in to herself.

  She had loved the man, that much was clear. And there was a small part of himself, an ugliness he could despise, that was jealous of the brutalized dead.

  So he stood at the window, watching the sun rise on his last day in Ireland.

  When someone knocked, he assumed it was Moira. “Bi istigh.”

  He didn’t turn when the door opened, not until Blair spoke. “My Gaelic’s pre
tty crappy, so if that was go to hell, too bad.” She hefted the bottle of whiskey she held in one hand. “I raided Cian’s supply. Going to get a little drunk, have a wake for an old friend. Want to join me?”

  Without waiting for an answer, she walked over to sit on the floor at the foot of the bed, resting her back against it. She opened the bottle, poured a generous two fingers into each of the glasses she’d brought in.

  “Here’s to just being dead.” She lifted the glass, tossed back the contents. “Come on, have a drink, Larkin. You can be pissed at me and still have a drink.”

  He walked over, lowered to the floor to sit across from her. “I’m sorry you’re hurting.”

  “I’ll get over it.” She handed him the second glass, poured more whiskey in her own. “Sláinte.” She tapped the glasses together, but this time she sipped instead of gulped. “Attachments, my father taught me, were weapons the enemy could use against you.”

  “That’s a hard and cold way to live.”

  “Oh, he’s good at hard and cold. He walked out on me on my eighteenth birthday. Done.” She leaned her head back and drank. “You know, he’d hurt me so many times before, cut my heart out, I thought, just by not loving me. But it was nothing, nothing that happened—didn’t happen—before came close to what it did to me when he walked away. That’s how I got this.”

  She turned her wrist over, examined the scar. “Going out while I was still reeling, trying to prove I didn’t need him. I did need him. Too bad for me.”

  “He didn’t deserve you.”

  She smiled a little. “He’d completely agree with that, but not the way you mean. I wasn’t what he wanted, and even if I had been, he wouldn’t have loved me. Took me a long time to come around to that. Maybe he’d have been proud. Maybe he’d have been satisfied. But he never would’ve loved me.”

  “And still you loved him.”

  “Worshiped him.” For a moment, Blair closed her eyes as she let that part of her go. That part was over. “I just couldn’t rip that out and turn it to dust. So I worked, really hard, until I was better than he’d ever been. But I still had that need inside me. To love somebody, to have them love me back. Then there was Jeremy.”

  She poured more whiskey for both of them. “I was working at my uncle’s pub. My aunt, my cousins and I took shifts. Hunting, or working the bar, waiting tables, just taking the night off. My aunt called it having a life. Work as a family, share the burden, have some normal.”

  “Sounds like a sensible woman.”

  “She is. And a good one. So I’m riding the stick—working the bar—when Jeremy comes in with a couple of friends. He’s just copped this big account, and they’re going to hoist a few. He’s a stockbroker.” She waved that away. “Hard to explain. Anyway, he’s good looking. Great looking, actually. So, he hits on me—”

  “He struck you?”

  “No, no.” Finding that wonderfully funny, she snorted out a laugh. “It’s parlance, slang. He flirted with me. I flirted back because he gave me the buzz. You know what I mean? That little zzzz you get inside?”

  “I do.” Larkin brushed a hand over hers. “I know that buzz.”

  “He hung around till closing, and I ended up giving him my number. Well, we don’t need every detail. We started seeing each other—going out together. He was fun, sweet. Normal. The kind of guy who sends you flowers the day after your first date.”

  Her eyes misted over, but she shook her head, downed more whiskey. “I wanted normal. I wanted a chance at it. When things got serious between us, I thought yeah, yeah, this is the way it’s supposed to be. The job doesn’t mean I can’t have somebody, be part of somebody. But I didn’t tell him what I did on those nights we weren’t together, or what I did some nights after he was asleep. I didn’t tell him.”