Blood Heir

by Ilona Andrews

  In the distance wolves howled, answering him.

  18

  The old ruin around me lay silent. I had no idea what it had been in its past life. A hotel, a concert hall, a school? Two stories tall, it was perfectly round, and rose fifty feet above us in a dome punctured by rectangular windows, their glass long gone. The center of it lay open. Dust stained the once polished marble floor. Along the walls, columns supported a narrow balcony. Somewhere within the ruin, there were probably stairs that led up there, but neither Derek nor I looked for them.

  He lay next to me in the dirt. He hadn’t bothered changing shapes to ease the strain on Lyc-V, and right now he was shockingly large, a true monster sheathed in silver fur.

  The box sat between us on a dusty step. Moonlight shone through the windows above, and it set the enchanted bone aglow.

  I stirred the coals in the metal pot in front of me with a long stick and tossed another handful of dried herbs into it.

  I had fallen asleep on that battlefield, right in the ashes. Derek had moved me to the grass. When I woke up, hours later, he was the first thing I saw, still in his wolf form, sitting next to me, silhouetted against the setting sun. Soot and blood stained his silver fur. Bald patches marked his right arm, some still blistered and oozing fluid, where the heat had cooked him. I asked him if it hurt, like an idiot. Of course it hurt. He lied and said no.

  The box waited next to him.

  I had insisted on confirming that Saiman was still alive. Once I saw him with my own eyes, the lot of us walked out of the portal, and now we were here, in a ruin on the edge of Unicorn Lane, waiting to settle Derek’s debt to a kind priest. The wolves had spread out and hid, forming a perimeter around the ruin. Derek told them to not interfere unless Unicorn Lane spat something particularly nasty in our direction.

  I had been sitting here for hours, and we hadn’t said a single word to each other.

  He was leaving in three days. Two now. It was after midnight.

  I didn’t want him to go.

  It was absurd, and stupid, and when I thought about him leaving, it hurt. He’d lived. It was enough. He had his life, I had mine, and after tonight we would go our separate ways. It was for the best.

  There were so many things I wanted to ask. None of them mattered.

  Derek sat up. His ears twitched.

  A strange shape squeezed through one of the empty windows and perched on the balcony, staring down at us with disturbingly human eyes.

  She was the size of a female lion and most of her was built like one, but instead of a sandy-colored pelt, her hide was covered with fine brown hair, like the flanks of an Arabian horse. Two massive wings thrust from her back, their feathers a matching tawny brown flecked with white and gold. Her feline legs didn’t end in paws, but in monstrous hands with oversized cat-like fingers armed with sickle claws. Her thick neck supported a nightmarish head, her face a strange evolution of a lion muzzle with a flat feline nose, split upper lip, a large maw revealing fangs, and disturbingly human cheekbones and forehead. If lions had evolved the way humans had, they might have looked like her.

  A golden circlet crowned her brow. Thick gold armbands studded with red stones clasped her wrists. The gold necklace around her neck was splattered with dried blood.

  A female sphinx. My first time seeing one.

  The sphinx stared at us with glowing turquoise eyes. Creepy.

  She opened her mouth. “Do you burn the funeral herbs for yourself or for the wolf?”

  Her whispery voice raised the hair on the back of my neck.

  “I burn them for you,” I told her. “I brought a coin with me so you may take it to the ferryman. I know the local Thanatos. He’s a kind man. He will guide you well.”

  “How thoughtful of you, human.” Her claws scraped the stone. “The wolf hasn’t touched the treasure. He may go.”

  “You killed my friend,” Derek said. “A holy man.”

  “He touched the treasure. He had to die.”

  “He helped many people,” Derek said. “He healed the sick, he fed the hungry, and he shielded the weak. He didn’t steal the box, yet you killed him.”

  Her eyes shone. “His heart tasted like any other.”

  “You knew he no longer had the box. He wasn’t the one who stole it. You could have chosen to spare him,” Derek said.

  She seemed to think it over. “Yes.”

  “You could have given him a swift death.”

  She flexed her fingers, and her claws scraped the stone again. “I like prey that fights back. You have not touched the treasure. You are not my prey. Leave.”

  Slowly, deliberately, Derek put his clawed hand on the box. “How about now?”

  The sphinx dove off the balcony. Derek leaped off the floor, meeting her in midair. The wolf and lion collided in a whirlwind of bodies and fur. They rolled around, snarling, growling, biting, and clawing.

  I stirred my herbs. It was his fight. That’s why he’d returned to the city. I had to let him have it.

  The sphinx clawed Derek’s side, ripping through skin and muscle. He gripped one of her wings and bit it where it joined her body. She screamed, and they rolled again, smashing against the columns. Dust rose in the air. I coughed.

  Blood splashed the marble. Derek grasped the sphinx by her hind foot and swung her at the nearest column. Her back smashed into stone with a crunch.

  Outside one of the wolves snarled. Hopefully, it was nothing. If they snarled again, I’d have to go and check it out.

  The sphinx broke free and leapt at Derek, sinking her claws into Derek’s shoulders and kicking, trying to disembowel him with her hind legs. He grasped her by her throat, tore her free of him like she was a feral cat, and bit her neck.

  Blood washed over them, spurting out between his teeth. He chewed on her, carving through flesh with vicious focus. She raked him with her claws, but he kept biting.

  The sphinx sagged. Her strikes lost their power. She went limp. The light in her eyes dimmed.

  Derek let go. She fell to the floor in a crumpled heap. He drove his hand into her chest and ripped her heart out.

  She shuddered one last time and went still.

  Derek dropped the heart. He raised his bloody face to the moon and howled. It wasn’t triumphant, it was mournful. It gripped your heart and squeezed it, telling you that life was not forever.

  The last notes of the howl died, melting into the night.

  Derek turned. His warrior form condensed in on itself, folding into a human shape. His eyes were full of golden light.

  Uh oh.

  He started toward me, naked, bloody, his eyes on fire.

  I stood up.

  He kept coming.

  “Earth to werewolf, mission complete.”

  He lunged at me. I had no time to dodge. He pressed my back into a column. His face was inches from mine. An electric thrill dashed through me, fear and excitement rolled into one.

  He was looking at my face, at my eyes, at my lips…

  “I get that killing her was very exciting…”

  He leaned close, resting his forehead on mine. No rational thought remained in his eyes. Only hunger and need. Mayday, mayday.

  “Stop.”

  He took a deep breath, sampling my scent.

  “Stop! Derek!”

  Oh shit.

  He leaned back an inch. A slow smile stretched his, lips but there was no humor in it. It looked harsh and bitter. “Well, look at that. The illustrious Julie Olsen remembered my name.”

  Cold drenched me. “You knew.”

  “Yes.”

  It had to have been the blood armor. “Since when?”

  “Since the beginning. I saw you ride into the city.”

  “How? My face is different; my scent is different.”

  He leaned closer, his lips almost touching my ear. “I don’t need to see your face or smell you. I could tell it was you by the way you rode your horse.”

  My brain screeched to a halt.


  He straightened, giving me more room, and I saw his eyes. They brimmed with cold fire. He was pissed off beyond all reason.

  Really? He was mad? He had some nerve.

  “You knew and you didn’t tell me. Was it fun?”

  He pondered me. “Not sure. Let me think about it.”

  “I sense some hostility.”

  He pretended to ponder it. “Really? Now what could’ve caused that, I wonder?”

  “Why don’t you tell me? Just lay it all out.”

  He bared his teeth. His voice was a snarl. “You left. No goodbye. No explanation. You fucking left me behind like an old knife you didn’t want.”

  “You could’ve found me any time you wanted. I called home. I told them exactly where I was. If you wanted to talk to me, all you had to do was pick up the phone.”

  “And said what? Please come back? You made your move, I made mine. I waited for you to come back. You didn’t. You made it plain you didn’t want anything to do with me. Was I supposed to wait for you here forever like a good boy?”

  “Was I? I was in love with you for five years and you couldn’t even be bothered to look me up.”

  “You were a little kid!”

  “And if I hadn’t left, I would’ve stayed a little kid in your head forever. I grew up. I thought that if I left, eventually you would track me down. Things would be different.”

  “Things were fine! We were a good team.”

  “I didn’t want to be a team! I wanted to be a couple!”

  He stared at me.

  “My gods, how can you be so dense? If I stayed here, we would still be ‘a good team.’”

  “That was enough for me. I liked having you close. I liked knowing where you were and what you were doing.”

  “It’s not always about you. If I hadn’t left, we would still be right where we were before, with me hoping and hoping and you never making up your mind. Nothing would’ve changed.”

  “You didn’t give me a chance,” he snarled. “You left.”

  “I left because I had a gaping hole in my soul from the severed binding. I didn’t ask you to come with me, because for once in your life, I wanted you to show me that you loved me. I wanted you to fight for me. I wanted you to do the ridiculous werewolf mating thing, where you bring me food, and flirt with me, and growl at any other male who tries to hit on me. I had these ridiculous fantasies of you dramatically showing up out of nowhere. When you left Atlanta, I thought you were coming to find me. I waited by the fucking window like a moron every morning for three weeks.”

  “I left Atlanta because I had to figure out what I was. It had nothing to do with you.”

  “Nothing you do anymore has anything to do with me. I don’t even know why we’re having this conversation.”

  “We’re having it because I want some fucking answers.”

  “I got tired of waiting for you, Derek. You have done quite well for yourself, Beta of Ice Fury. You became the man I always thought you would be if only you got out of your own way. That man didn’t want Julie Olsen, but here we are, with you staring at me like you need me to keep breathing. What? Am I finally pretty enough for you?”

  He stepped away from me. His gaze was impossible to hold. “Okay. I hear you. Be careful what you wish for, Princess.”

  He turned and walked to the sphinx.

  “That’s right,” I called. “Keep walking.”

  He swiped her heart off the floor, turned to face me, and bit into it. Blood dripped down his chin. For a moment Derek froze, encased in moonlight, looking at something a million miles away with glowing eyes. A feral wolf smile bent his lips. He turned away and walked out.

  I sagged against the column.

  Too much. Too much magic, too much danger, too much Derek. Too much.

  It didn’t matter. He’d killed the creature he’d come here to kill. He would go back to Alaska now. It was over. I should be glad for him. I should be relieved for myself. I got things off my chest. I cleared the air. I could finally let go of him forever and be free. Everything went according to plan.

  So why the hell did it hurt so much?

  I sat by Saiman’s gravestone and watched the sky slowly lighten above Unicorn Lane. I was so beat up. My body, my mind, my heart, everything was bruised. I just felt hurt and hollow.

  Sienna walked out of the shadows, her cloak swirling around her. She carried a plastic bottle filled with clear liquid. The liquid shone slightly, not exactly glowing, but filled with its own subtle light.

  “Very mystical,” I told her.

  “I try.”

  She looked me over. Her eyes were distant. Magic shimmered along her skin. To my sensate vision, she glowed with an intense, brilliant blue, the tendrils of her magic stretching out in coils, as if stirred by a phantom wind. Her voice flowed, suffused with magic.

  “You are so tired,” the Witch Oracle said.

  “I am. Did I do enough? Did I change the future?”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  Fear drenched me like a bucket of icy water. I’d failed. I’d signed Kate’s death warrant. I—

  “But you’ve made it less certain.”

  The words took a moment to penetrate. “Damn it, Sienna.”

  “I want to show you something. I saw it for the first time just after midnight.”

  She crouched and poured the contents of her bottle on the ground. The liquid gathered in a depression of the pitted asphalt, and she touched it with one long, slender finger. Vapor streamed from the surface of the water, rising in a shimmering curtain. A dark-haired woman appeared within it, her features familiar, so much like my own. Kate. She smiled, picked up a small blond toddler, and set the child on her hip. The toddler looked at me through the curtain of time, her big brown eyes bright on her tiny face.

  Goosebumps broke out on my skin.

  “This is your sister,” Sienna said softly. “This vision exists because yesterday you brought Moloch up short.”

  The vapor vanished, as the water dissipated into nothing.

  “You bought them time,” Sienna told me.

  “How much?”

  “Who can say?” Sienna gave me a one-shouldered shrug.

  “Can I see them now?”

  “No. You cannot see them, and you cannot leave.” The Oracle looked at me with haunted eyes.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “If one day I wrong you, Julie, will you forgive me?”

  “Yes. We all come up short once in a while. You’re my friend.”

  She smiled. She looked like she was about to cry.

  “Is something wrong?”

  She shook her head. “A promise is a promise. I hope you always feel that way.”

  Her magic spiraled around her and vanished, pulled in. An ordinary young woman stood in front of me. My friend was back.

  “We should have tea and chocolate tomorrow,” Sienna said. “I will take you to the new bakery on Smith Avenue. My treat.”

  “I’ll take you up on that generous offer.”

  Sienna smiled.

  Epilogue

  The sun had risen, and the magic still held. Normally I would’ve waited till the beginning of a new wave, but this was too important.

  I picked up the box, wrapped in purple velvet, with my left hand and a bag with my right, took a deep breath, and reached for the hidden connection, letting it carry me to a place at once near and impossibly far.

  The scent of flowering trees washed over me. I stood on the balcony of a grand palace. Below me a breathtaking garden bloomed, trees and flowers flourishing among shallow ponds and gentle streams flowing through manmade beds. Delicate ornamental pavilions of pink and white stone dotted the greenery.

  The Water Gardens. One of the wonders of the old kingdom.

  “It’s been a while,” a familiar deep voice said behind me.

  I turned. My grandfather strode onto the balcony, dressed in a white tunic and loose white pants. His feet were bare. His dark hair, strategically
salted with grey, fell on his shoulders. He had the face of a sage, beautiful beyond human limits, yet wise and self-assured.

  “I’ve been busy. But I come bearing gifts.”

  “Is that my wolf in your bag?”

  “What’s left of it.” I let the bag fall to the floor. The fabric vanished, revealing melted remnants of the wolf. “I broke it. I’m sorry.”

  “You’re standing in front of me, so it must have done its job. Did it serve you well?”

  “It saved me. Can you fix it?”

  “It is only a machine,” Roland said. “Did you mourn it?”

  “I did.”

  Grandfather smiled. “Be careful. I will rebuild it, but the more attached you become to it, the more agency it will obtain. Such is the nature of magical constructs. There may come a time when it will become an entity with an independent will.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  I offered him the bundle of velvet.

  “What is this?”

  “An artifact Moloch desperately wanted. I think it might be one of yours.”

  Roland moved his hand. A table sprouted from the balcony’s floor. The bundle landed on it, and the velvet fell away.

  He laughed. Two bottles of Corona appeared on the table, ice forming on their sides. Two matching chairs materialized by the balcony rail.

  Roland picked up a beer. “Tell me everything.”

  We had finished the beers by the time I was done.

  “You’ve done well,” he said.

  “Thank you.” Praise from Grandfather, both rare and precious.

  “Would you like to know what this is?”

  “Please.”

  “We will need the night sky for this.”

  Roland waved his hand. Sunset splashed across the sky and melted behind the horizon. Indigo flooded the sky, familiar constellations shining within its depths like diamonds. Inside of his prison, Grandfather was god.

  Roland touched the box. The lid opened slowly. A gentle blue glow emanated from within and splayed out, forming glowing spiderwebs of constellations above and coastlines below. So beautiful.

  “When I was fourteen years old, my tutor challenged me to make a moving map. It had to always know its user’s location and adjust with the seasons and the tides. It had to be beautiful and effortless to use.”