“Oh?”
“Goddess-touched necromancers are anathema to their brethren,” I recited. “They are healers, not reanimators. Their progeny are the only true and perfect immortals. The Deathless are the product of a healing so deep their cells continue to repair any and all damage for as long as they exist.”
“Corbin will be interested to hear that,” Linus mused. “Perhaps that explains your effect on…” noticing Amelie was still in the room, he rephrased, “…other spiritual matter.”
And why Corbin didn’t smell like a vampire or require much blood to survive.
Cletus’s sentience, Oscar’s awareness, the city’s awakening…
Those weren’t healings, exactly, but they were unprecedented events linking my blood to their greater cognizance. Perhaps the answers were all there, in Eileen or in my head.
Thanks to our walk down memory lane—or the corridors of Atramentous, as it were—I had the next five months of uninterrupted time to sift through what I had learned and had yet to learn.
“How is Corbin?” I glanced around. “Where is he?”
“He’s malnourished and was injured badly during his captivity. Caring for a Deathless vampire has had its learning curves, but he’s on the mend. Woolly offered him a room. I imagine he’s there now, resting.”
“And Clem?”
“Boaz secured him a position within the sentinels. He’ll want to see you now that you’re awake. I’ll send him a text to let him know.”
A massive yawn stretched my jaw, and all the various side conversations died a sudden death.
“Chill.” I stood and stretched. “I’m not going to pass out again.”
A ghostly blue head topped with a sailor hat popped through the wall as Oscar noticed the commotion.
“Maybe you should rest,” Lethe suggested. “I can bring you a tablet so you can catch up on the news.”
“Actually, a walk sounds good.” I shooed Oscar away, trusting him to find me downstairs where we could have a more private reunion. “Linus? Care to stroll with the invalid?”
Having noticed Oscar, Linus hooked his elbow, and I took his arm. “One lap around the yard, then back to bed.”
“The yard?” I startled. “I thought we were under house arrest?”
“You’re bonded to Savannah.” Careful with me, he guided me downstairs and onto the porch. “We couldn’t be certain you could commune with her through Woolly and her wards, so I suggested an expanded house arrest. Allowing you access to the earth seemed prudent. However, we will be in breach of our parole if we cross any property lines.”
“I can live with that.” I brightened at the prospect. “This is sounding more and more like a vacation.”
I would be able to visit with Lethe easier and play with Oscar, who had yet to appear, more.
Linus pulled me closer. “Five months together with nothing to do but read and—”
“Read?” I threw on the brakes. “Be very careful what follows that and, mister.”
“—and make love to my fiancée followed by cuddling and snacks?”
Nodding my approval, I rested my head on his shoulder. “Those are acceptable pastimes.”
We walked a bit, edging toward the woods, before Linus asked, “Can you sense the city stronger now?”
“Yes.” I felt her in every step. “You were right to worry. The wards dampened the connection, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing. A layer of separation when I need one, while I’m adjusting, is probably a good thing.”
As we waited on Oscar, an elegant woman with silver hair at her temples stepped onto the path, cutting off our route. Perhaps going for stealth, she wore a black pantsuit that flattered her trim figure with matching ballet flats, but I could tell at a glance she wasn’t the hired-thug type, so this must be personal for her.
The scythe appeared in Linus’s hand, pure reflex, and it earned him an indulgent smile.
I leaned against Linus to cover my hand as I reached for…the knife that wasn’t in my pajamas.
Just as I was starting to worry about the kid, Cletus appeared at my shoulder, bony fingers clacking.
“Get the others,” I urged him. “Hurry.”
Now all Linus and I had to do was buy ourselves time for backup to arrive, and we’d need it for anyone with enough juice to waltz right onto my property without my knowledge.
“You do your blood proud, Grier.” The shape of her face rang a distant bell. Dare I say, an alarm bell. “Your momma would have been dancing on the ceiling when you claimed the city for your own.”
“I’m sorry.” I cocked my head at her. “You look familiar. Do I know you?”
“We’ve never met.” Her smile was amused. “I’m Rhiannon Marchand, your aunt.”
“The new Dame Marchand.” I tightened my grip on Linus. “I was sorry to hear about your mother.”
“I doubt that very much.” She kept her smile pinned in place. “How far are we from where my daughter was killed?”
Despite her amiable expression and tone, I noted the hard emphasis on the k in killed.
“She was taken down on the front lawn by a sentinel before she could abduct me.”
“Hmm.” The new Dame Marchand stared through the trees, but we had wandered too far from the house for her to see the exact spot. “I heard you gained access to the Marchand collection.” She focused on me. “There was no other explanation for Lacroix’s death, but I had to be certain. How much did you take?”
“Not a single book,” I said truthfully.
“You got what you came for, though. I didn’t anticipate your willingness to return to Atramentous.”
“Eloise told you what she did,” Linus surmised. “That she forged Severine’s signature on the acquisitions paper.”
“Dear boy, who do you think guided her hand? She never would have thought of it herself. I had to nudge her along.” She toyed with a button on her suit jacket. “Eloise is my heir. I would have chosen her regardless. Heloise was a hammer, like her grandmother. Ellie requires more training before she fully steps into the role of Dame Marchand, but she’s got a knack for subtlety.”
“Like her mother,” I finished for her, uncertain where this was headed. “Why are you here?”
“I’m certain you can imagine myriad reasons for this visit.”
“How did you know where to find me?” Her expensive clothes were pressed, unlined. Her flats showed little dirt. She hadn’t been squatting in bushes while she waited for me to wake up and decide to go for a walk. And even if she had, the pack regularly patrolled the property. “How did you get past the gwyllgi?”
“A summoning I painted on the ground, baited with a fresh kill and a time-delayed sigil to lull them to sleep once their bellies were full.” She shrugged. “I’m familiar with the species. Their stomachs do most of the thinking for them.”
“You didn’t answer the whole question.” Linus stared at her. “How did you know where, specifically, to find her?”
The reason for the pointed question caught up to me a second later. “Well?”
“You must have noticed you’re easy to find these days, but I see you haven’t yet figured out why.” Her smile chilled my blood, but it wasn’t mean or unkind, and that made it worse. “You would have put it together if you’d had more time.” She checked the gold watch on her wrist. “As it is, I have a flight leaving in a few hours, and it required longer to wake you than I expected.”
A chill swept down my spine at the casual power she wielded over me.
That explained how she knew when, but not how she knew where.
“Goddess-touched necromancers are marked at birth with a sigil whose pigments fade but protections remain. It shields them from detection, allowing us to hide the young and vulnerable from threats.” She fingered the hem of her cuff. “You were older when your mother imprinted you, but it worked just as well. While it hid you from your grandfather, which was her only concern, it can’t shield you from someone who knows how to look.”
Relief over finally identifying the culprit swept through me. “You hired the vampire assassins.”
And this meant I owed Mary Alice a mental apology for thinking she would ever betray Linus.
“I was assured they were the best.” She touched her bun to check its neatness. “I do apologize for their ineptitude. Their contract stipulated that your death be fast and painless. I regret they were unable to deliver on their end of the bargain.”
“I’m surprisingly good with them not murdering me,” I said, “but thanks.”
“Why target Grier?” Linus meshed our fingers in a show of support that ended with a cool weight filling my palm. The pocketknife he bought to replace the one I never returned to him. “Her mother was disowned. She has no ties to the Marchand family.”
Using our hands for cover, I finessed the blade open and pricked my skin. Blood pooled between our palms, and I very slowly, very carefully, began drawing protective sigils on us both.
“Mother took care to ensure Grier could reclaim her birthright if she chose. Grier would have robbed my girls of their rightful inheritance and the title of Dame Marchand.” A kernel of remorse filled her eyes. “It’s not your fault your mother carried the right genes, or that I might have murmured a few words in the ear of an old friend who had taken up with Gaspard Lacroix. It’s not your fault Gaspard used that information to select an heritor who would most appeal to Evie, or that he planned on breeding you to reestablish his line.” She rolled her eyes. “Don’t you find it always comes down to blood with vampires?”
“Yes,” I whispered, struggling to absorb the larger implications. “You wanted Mom out of the way.”
“I was born first. I was the eldest daughter. I should have inherited the title, but Marchands ignore age in favor of genes when it suits them, and it’s laughably easy when dealing with twins. Mother miscarried six times with six different Last Seeds before her mother married her off in the hopes she could at least produce necromantic offspring to carry on the family legacy.
“After it was confirmed I couldn’t give Mother a goddess-touched grandchild,” Dame Marchand continued, “she had no use for me. Evie was her shining star, and Mother thrust me into the shadows to hide her failure. The only way I could inherit was if Evie was no longer an option.” Her calm expression never wavered. “A nudge here or there, whenever she hinted she might return home to provide a safe and stable upbringing for you, pushed Gaspard, and by extension my old friend, to extreme measures.”
“Extreme measures? You mean murder.” Rage kindled in my veins. “How can you be so cold? She was your sister.”
“Every day of my life, I was told I was nothing.” A thread of heat simmered in her tone. “Evie’s death made me something.” Her hands tightened at her sides. “Mother picked a husband for me who gave me twin daughters. Neither carried the gene, so neither received preferential treatment. But with two girls, she had twice the hope for the next generation. She even named them, stole that small joy from me, not that I ever told them as much. She hoped it would bind them tighter than I had been with my sister, never realizing she was the reason I despised Evie.”
“You set the assassins on me and got rid of the Marchand collection the second you heard I was being released from Atramentous.” Thinking of Eloise, I recalled her telling me she had been in a meeting with Severine when Odette called to quiz Dame Marchand about my father’s identity. Eloise claimed not to have overheard their conversation, but she used that call to explain away her appearing on my doorstep. “Odette told you. All of it. You were still in touch.”
The entire time Odette “helped” me find my father, she had known his name—known him—all along.
All my request to Odette had accomplished was giving her an excuse to openly contact the Marchands.
“I sent Eloise to determine how best to…manage the situation.” Dame Marchand’s mouth tugged down at the corners. “But Mother learned of her trip and dispatched Heloise to bring you into the fold before you could be eliminated. That assignment cost one of my daughters her life, and it caused Mother untold grief.” She smiled a little at that. “Once again, she bet on the wrong daughter and lost.”
“Did you kill Severine after she informed you Grier had obtained permission to visit, or did you wait until she discovered you had disposed of the Marchand collection?” Linus posed the question with utter calm at odds with the black seeping into his eyes. “Johan claimed he was not his wife’s confidant, but his decision to leave Raleigh within hours of Severine’s death paints a different picture. He carried the note for you to buy safe passage.”
“Interesting theory.” She blinked once before shaking off her surprise. “You will, of course, never be able to prove any of it. Johan suffered a massive stroke just yesterday. Died alone in his bed. Romantics will say a broken heart was to blame.”
With Odette and Lacroix out of the picture, and Johan conveniently dead, she was close to getting away with a series of perfect crimes that had been playing out since before I was born.
“You’ve confessed to a lifetime of sins,” Linus said, voice colder than I had ever heard it. “Sins against Grier, which I tend to take personally.”
“You’re not going to take my head, young man.”
She dipped a hand in her pocket in the split second it took him to shield me from the perceived threat.
His shoulders blocked my view, but he jerked hard, and then he crumpled at my feet.
Dropping to my knees, I rolled him onto his back and spotted the opalescent knife blooming crimson on the left side of his chest.
It felt like my heart had been the one struck.
A goddess-touched artifact. It must be. Otherwise, the impervious sigil would have held.
“Wraith’s bane, a lethal dose by my calculations.” She watched while he gasped for breath then appeared to lose interest in his decline. “I altered the formula to compensate for his ready access to a healer capable of purging him.”
Of course, she had supplied the vampire archers. I should have done that math when she admitted to hiring them. The poison was too rare, and too specific, for even assassins to have on hand. That left the bronze arrowheads, but Odette could have easily tipped Rhiannon off to the gwyllgi’s lethal allergy.
“They say if you want something done, it’s best to do it yourself.” She withdrew a sleek knife that gleamed like onyx. “I regret the necessity, but there was one vital element of your creation over which I had no control. Lacroix fed George himself after his transition. The blood of an ancient flowed through George’s veins when he and your mother created you, and that same magic flows through you. You are too powerful to go unchecked.”
Activating the sigils I had inked on earlier, I snapped the ward into place around us.
“You learned nothing from Lacroix.” She hurled the knife, and it pierced the barrier then lodged in my shoulder. “You can’t protect against weapons forged by your own kind.” She pulled an amulet from the neck of her shirt. “Did you really think I would come here alone and unprotected?”
At the rate these charms were popping up, I had to wonder if Mom had died with a bald spot.
A third blade filled her hand, this one the mottled blue of turquoise, her grip sure. She had used the knives often to own such confidence.
I touched the smooth handle protruding from my shoulder, and pain radiated through me in agonizing waves. Gritting my teeth, I yanked out the blade with a throttled scream.
Linus gazed up at me, breath hitching, unable to speak or do more than tremble.
All my sigils and wards and healing were useless against her. The blood she so despised—rendered null.
She could do it. Kill us both. Leave our bodies for our friends to find. Hop a plane and fly back to Raleigh. She would have accomplished all she set out to do. Eliminating Mom and me, cementing her status and her favorite daughter’s inheritance.
Blood from my wound smeared the grass, and the earth trembled beneath my p
alm.
A chorus of howls lifted the hair down my nape, even as relief coasted through me as Cletus rejoined us.
I didn’t have to do this alone. I wasn’t alone. Not anymore. Not ever again.
Dame Marchand cocked her arm, poised to land her second strike, but she missed her mark by a mile when what resembled an ant bed punched through the grass beneath her feet, pitching her off-center. She drew a fourth blade, wary now, but nothing else happened.
“Tell your mother hello for me,” she said, tearing her gaze from the lawn.
Twin mounds of fresh earth erupted where she stood, and she leapt aside, but each time one dropped in a puff of dirt, another peaked, forcing her to dance out of their path. She couldn’t hold still long enough to aim.
“Fiddlesticks,” I whisper-screamed at Linus. “You’re missing it.” I swallowed hard at the puddle of my blood seeping into the ground. “Savannah is…” I wet my lips. “She’s protecting me.”
The anthill-sized mounds kept my aunt on her toes long enough for backup to arrive.
Lethe hit Dame Marchand in the small of her back with her massive paws and knocked her on her face.
Quick as whips, thick kudzu vines burst from the ground, wrapping Dame Marchand in a green cocoon.
Lethe jumped back, padding out of range, but the vines ignored her, continuing to tighten their grip on my aunt until she was pressed face-first into the ground with grass stuffing her cheeks. Gentle ripples of earth boiled around her, kicking dirt on her back, and the vines kept cinching like the ground might swallow her whole.
Circling me and Linus protectively, Hood kept an eye on his mate out of the corner of his eye.
Wary of the writhing vines, Clem disarmed Rhiannon then secured her wrists at her spine with a zip tie. Beneath her, the grass swayed and pitched in gentle waves that reminded me of how Woolly manipulated her floorboards.
From the direction of the house, Corbin limped toward us with a baseball bat in hand and Oscar propping up his bad side just in time to watch the vines form a noose around Rhiannon’s throat that squeezed until she blacked out before patting her on the head with a leafy tendril.
How to Wake an Undead City Page 26
