Snapping his hips to one side, Lacroix flung off his gwyllgi attacker—Lethe judging by the yelp of pain. I got confirmation when her blood broke the line of the sigil, and I spotted her on her side, chest heaving.
Not good. That meant the impervious sigil wasn’t sticking as well to her as it was to the others.
Her distant fae heritage might be responsible for how my magic interacted with hers, but since Hood appeared unaffected, I was betting the issue was the amount of healing I had pumped into her not that long ago. Magic, my specific type, was hit-or-miss when I used it on myself, and it might be acting wonky on her because of that surplus. But the whys hardly mattered now. We could worry about those later.
A throaty bay rang out behind me, and Lacroix went down again, his skull cracking on the tile.
There was no time to gloat as Hood savaged him, the vampires were upon us.
Midnight unspooled from the center of the room, its tendrils unfurling across the floor as Linus materialized within arm’s reach of Odette. The sigil on his arm was smudged, and so were his fingertips.
“He’s acting as bait,” I whispered, furious. “Oh no you don’t.”
Using the tip of the stake, I sliced open my palm and raised a fresh ward around myself. I drew sigils on the wall of compressed air in front of me and slammed my palm against them. Power swept the vampires off their feet, but there was no ash. No death. The sigil hadn’t incinerated a single one.
So much for cracking the code on how to modulate that particular design.
Alone in a sea of temporarily disabled vampires, Odette clutched the arms of her chair, but I could see the blade of the familiar athame she kept tucked under her hand, glinting metallic against the wood.
Scythe in hand, Linus stalked her. There was no bargaining with him when he was on the hunt, so I didn’t waste my breath. But I remembered the feel of his blood slicking my palms too well.
Odette couldn’t see my future, so she never saw her death coming.
The stake was in my hand, my fingers gripping it the way Taz, Midas, and Lethe had taught me, and I hurled it with every ounce of strength I had left. The wooden tip pierced her heart, a perfect shot, and despite it all, it broke mine.
I had loved her. So much. So very, very much. But death stripped away all masks, and her true face was one I didn’t recognize. That didn’t stop the tears from pricking the backs of my eyes.
Clutching the shaft with both hands, she slid from the chair onto her wobbling knees. Bright crimson poured through her fingers, seeping down her blouse onto her skirt, drawing the eye of every vampire in the room. Understanding filled her glazed eyes when they shot to Lacroix, and she crumpled onto the floor.
“Gaspard,” she rasped, bloody hand reaching for him. “My…love…”
Across the room, I watched the light go out of her eyes and felt nothing. This woman had run Mom off the road, murdered Maud in her own home, and sent me to prison. She had slit Linus’s throat to buy herself time to haul Lacroix to safety, and she had condoned all the deaths his reign of terror had brought to Savannah. She was a heartless monster, the same as him. In that respect, they had been a perfect match.
And yet, the child in me who remembered all those lazy summers collecting shells and eating ice cream on the beach with her could no longer stem the tears, even if the Odette I had known only existed in my memories.
“No.” Lacroix roared like a lion and flung Hood off him. “Odette.”
He crawled to her on his hands and knees, scooped her limp body into his arms, and sobbed against her throat. With a wail of animalistic misery, he ripped the stake from her heart and flung it across the room. Rocking with her corpse, he murmured in her ear, pressed kisses to her neck, and shook with the force of his grief.
Dread blossomed in my gut when Boaz appeared behind Lacroix, having wiped off his sigil, wanting Lacroix to know who had come for him, and pressed his gun to the base of the ancient’s skull.
“This is for Rebecca Heath, and her family.” He got off one shot, and Lacroix jerked on impact, but he didn’t seem bothered much as he lay Odette down with infinite care. “Surrender, Lacroix. You’re not walking out of here.”
Lightning fast, Lacroix struck Boaz, knocking him against the far wall where he landed in a heap.
A cold knot cinched my chest tight, but he shook it off and began to push into a seated position.
“I loved her.” Lacroix gazed out the nearest window. “I loved her as I have loved no other.”
“Stop him.” I fumbled through the sigils in my head before I remembered my magic was useless against him until after I staked him. “He’s going to rabbit.”
Hood lunged for Lacroix, teeth bared, but the vampire hit the window, and glass shattered outward.
Landing in a crouch on the sidewalk, he dusted himself off, and strolled in the direction of the empty shops and hotels lining River Street like a man without a care in the world…or a man without anything left to lose.
The few vampires remaining stirred, as if woken from a spell. They blinked at their surroundings, clearly puzzled to find themselves in city hall, but a few appeared more lucid than the others.
“Do not leave this building,” I ordered them. “If you go out there, there’s a chance he’ll sink his hooks in you again. And if you come after us, or the sentinels, you will be incapacitated, and you might be killed.”
A haggard man looked to his comrades. “We will do as you ask, Dame Woolworth.”
“Thank you.”
Padding up to me, Hood nosed my hand then tossed his head, waiting for me to climb on his back.
The second I gained my seat, he bolted for the window, forcing me to hold on for dear life. All I could do was press my face into the fur at his nape and crush my eyes shut as he made the leap.
The impact when his paws hit the sidewalk rattled my teeth, and I hadn’t recovered when Lethe appeared at his side, stake in mouth. She spat it at me, and when I caught it, it was covered in crimson drool.
Her chuffed laughter as I slid it between my boobs almost covered my steady mantra of eww, eww, eww.
Almost.
Thirteen
The gwyllgi used their superior noses to track Lacroix to Jackson Square, but soon I didn’t require help to find him. Plumes of smoke choked the sky, blacker than the night, and bright embers danced on the breeze, sparking new fires where they landed until an entire block roared, an inferno that promised to devour the city whole.
“He’s put his vampires to work.” I swore as we passed several carrying lighters and whatever accelerant they could set hands on. “And fast. Too fast. This must have been his contingency plan all along.”
No wonder the vampires had been looting. They weren’t causing general mayhem, they were gathering supplies.
“Where is Lacroix?” I twisted but couldn’t spot him. “We have to take him down before he puts torches into the hands of every vampire in the city.”
As much as I wanted to point out that this validated every fear I had of torches, if not pitchforks, I recognized it for panic spinning my thoughts in wild directions to distract me from the horrors unfolding around us.
A sharp bark brought Hood to a skittering halt, and he spun on a dime, unseating me. I hit the asphalt on my tailbone and growled through my teeth at the shooting pain, but Linus was scooping me up and setting me on my feet before I could attempt to dust off my palms.
“He’s there.” Linus rushed toward a square filled with ancient oaks that hissed and crackled as they burned. “Come on.”
We ran for him, and the gwyllgi fell in beside us.
“What are we going to do?” I kept pace with Linus through sheer grit. “There’s no one to man the fire station. Most of the city is empty. We emptied it. Now there’s no one to help us get this blaze under control.”
“Focus on Lacroix.” Linus only had eyes for my grandfather. “We can’t help anyone until we take him down.”
Knowing he was right, I sh
oved down the grief over so much history being lost and zeroed in on the cause of all this. As we neared the ancient, I drew the stake from my décolletage and prepared to attack.
“The Lyceum will burn for what you have done,” he said, but there was no heat in his voice. “I will make a funeral pyre of this city for my love, to send her spirit to her goddess.”
I jerked to a stop, torn between finishing this confrontation and saving the Lyceum. It was an instinctive reaction, and I pushed through it. We could repair and rebuild, but not if Lacroix wasn’t stopped before there was nothing left but ash.
Moonlight glinted off Linus’s scythe as he held it aloft, and its wicked edge, wet with blood, comforted.
Lacroix appeared oblivious to the threat Linus posed, unable to tear his gaze away from the stake in my hand, crusted in Odette’s still-wet blood. His nostrils flared as he scented it, and his eyes bled full black. The emotion absent in him only moments ago roared to life, spilling over his lips in grief-filled rage as he charged me with his mouth open, fangs on full display.
The gwyllgi closed in on him from behind, but not just the Kinases. More than a dozen lizard-dog things converged on Lacroix, the whole Savannah pack, but they didn’t beat him to me.
Gone rabid, Lacroix snapped his teeth at my throat and slashed at my abdomen with his claws. So much for birthing his dynasty. I avoided a killing blow thanks to months of intense training, but I wasn’t his match in experience or strength. His quick jabs kept me too busy blocking to extend my arm and stake him.
Already tired from what it took to get here, I was flagging. I wasn’t going to last much longer.
Linus materialized behind Lacroix, the dark maw of his tattered cloak gaping, and hooked his arm around the ancient’s throat, maneuvering him into a headlock while he writhed and scratched him, shredding his forearm and voiding his impervious sigil, presenting me with a clear target.
“Prove you’re my granddaughter.” Lacroix hissed through clenched teeth. “Prove you’re just like me.”
Just like me.
No, no, no.
I was nothing like him.
Nothing.
Palming the stake, fingers matched in the imprints left by Odette’s blood, I raised it for the kill shot.
Then the choice was taken out of my hands, literally. Boaz plucked the stake from my fingers and rammed it into Lacroix’s heart. He held it there, twisted it, while the ancient scrabbled to rip it out, but the pulsing glow from before kindled in his chest and exploded outward in a blast of light that turned night into day.
The nearby vampires cringed and hid as their flesh sizzled and popped, screeching curses and sobbing.
Lacroix’s arms drooped, and he sought me out one last time. “I…”
Black crept over his skin as it burned until Linus hissed and leapt back, dropping the body.
Lacroix collapsed into a pile of ash, and flame engulfed his clothing.
Whatever last words he had for me, they went unspoken. I couldn’t say I mourned the loss.
The artifact I’d altered had consumed him from the inside out, and the stake was all that remained.
All except for the swath of destruction he left in his wake.
Fire devoured building after building, and its hunger only grew as it consumed more of the old houses.
“How do we stop this?” River Street wasn’t far, but it’s not like we could dip our buckets in the Savannah River and douse this blaze one gallon at a time. For one thing, we didn’t have buckets. Hold it together, Grier. The warning didn’t help. I laughed, giggled really, a hysterical sound that ended on a sob. “We have to stop this.”
The vampires had straightened, a few regaining their senses while others stared dazedly as the city burned. There was no help to be found there.
“We need to evacuate.” Linus grabbed my arm. “We can’t save this block. We have to get ahead of the fire if we want to save the next.”
“No.” I tucked the stake back into my bra and drew my pocketknife. “He doesn’t get to take this from me too.”
Dad. Mom. Maud.
Five years of my life.
Lacroix had done his best to take everyone and everything away from me, and I was done letting him win.
The Marchand collection throbbed like a headache at the base of my skull, the knowledge not yet spent, and I shut my eyes to mentally flip the pages that hadn’t eroded until I found the only solution available to me.
Blade slicing to the bone, blood dripping from my hand onto the thirsty earth in an offering, a plea.
“Grier,” Linus whispered, broken. “No.”
Unable to look at him, I started walking, creating a sigil that spanned from dirt to pavement. “I don’t have a choice.”
He didn’t argue against it again, but he couldn’t look at me either.
What I was doing…if it worked…meant we would belong to, belong in, two different cities.
As surely as the vampires had set fire to this square, I was sending our future together up in smoke.
But the fire was catching too fast, and Woolly wasn’t so far away. I couldn’t lose her. I wouldn’t lose her.
The sigil pulsed once as it closed around me, a shock wave that rumbled beneath my feet. A jolt of pure energy raced up my calves and electrified my nerves on its way to tingle in my scalp.
Alongside the presence of Woolworth House, which had been a part of me for as long as I could remember, a second identity nestled in, rooting itself in the fertile soil of my soul, claiming acreage in my mind as its own.
Savannah.
The city hurt, a physical ache, and it leaned on me, asking for solace, seeking comfort.
Words burbled up the back of my throat, cutting my reply to him off cold. I had to let them out or choke.
“I, Grier Woolworth, claim this city.” The nearby cobbles rattled with the force of my voice. “She is mine to protect, to cherish, to nurture. Our bond is unbreakable. I am…the Potentate of Savannah.”
More power than I had ever imagined welled up in me as the city claimed me back, and through that fledgling connection, I saw how to save her.
“I have to set a ward.” I erased the sigil then grasped Linus’s cold, limp fingers in mine. “Watch my back?”
“Always,” he promised, love and sadness mingling in eyes gone black.
“Evacuate the square,” I called to Lethe and Hood. “Keep the street clear.”
Teeth gritted, I cut a fresh line across my palm and made a fist to squeeze it like I was juicing an orange. Blood dribbled onto the pavement, and I started to walk, careful to mark off the burning area. Under my breath, I prayed to the goddess I wasn’t draining myself dry for nothing.
The world fuzzed around the edges by the time I finished lining the square, and I had to sit down or risk falling down to do the rest.
“Stay behind me,” I rasped to Linus. “Don’t interfere, no matter what happens.”
Moving into position, he stood at my shoulder. “I won’t make that promise.”
Tugging on the new bond I shared with the city, I channeled her energy through me and into the ward. I felt it set and reached out to test it. A hard wall of compressed air met my fingertips, and I almost cried with relief. That would prevent the fire from spreading. It wasn’t enough, but it was a start.
Pushing out a hard breath, I thumbed through the information crowding my brain until the right sigil combination struck me. I drew it on the exterior of the ward, coated both my hands with blood, and slammed them as hard as I could against the barrier.
A low hiss, similar to a balloon deflating, buzzed in my ears.
Head cocked, Linus dangled his scythe from his fingertips. “What is that?”
“Air,” I panted. “Funneling it through the top of the ward.”
“Removing the oxygen to suffocate the fire,” he realized. “That’s brilliant.”
A weak smile wobbled on my mouth as the whistling stopped and the blaze coughed and spluttered befo
re extinguishing. Through the exhaustion, I held on until the glow of embers died and the ward began trembling. And then I realized the barrier wasn’t shaking, it was me.
The power slipped through my fingers, and the ward collapsed in a deafening blast of energy that threw me back against Linus’s legs, knocking him onto the pavement beneath me. Head pillowed on his thigh, I closed my eyes and let go.
Fourteen
Warm and safe, I snuggled into my covers and breathed in the scent of detergent. I was halfway to sleep when a cool hand brushed my forehead and the words making me feel protected solidified in my head.
“The night birds are calling, calling, calling,” Linus sang in a voice gone raw from overuse. “The princess she’s falling, falling, falling.”
“Come to bed.” I reached for him. “I’m tired.”
“You’re awake.” He cupped my face, ran his thumbs across my cheekbones. “Thank the goddess.”
Woolly nudged me, and when I didn’t budge, tried again.
“Hmm?” I struggled to prop open my eyes. “I’m so tired.”
“Then rest.” He pressed kisses in a row across my forehead. “I’ll stay right here.”
“Mmm-kay.”
The old house wrapped me in her presence and lulled me back to sleep.
* * *
“Are you ever going to wake up?” A small finger poked my side. “Grier.”
“Go away.” I turned to face the wall. “I’m sleeping.”
“You’ve been asleep for days.” Straddling my side, Oscar dug his heels into my rib cage. “Get up, get up, get up.”
“Oomph.”
“Play with me.” He bounced up and down. “Hey, this is kind of fun. Like riding a horse. Yee-haw!”
“Oscar,” Linus called from the doorway. “Let Grier rest.”
“All she ever does is sleep.” The weight vanished. “What’s wrong with her?”
The thought occurred to me that something must be the matter, but I was too tired to care.
How to Wake an Undead City Page 24
