They went up the last dozen stairs. At the top was a kidney-shaped platform surrounded by an iron railing. It was like another small garden. The flower bed, maple tree, and bench would have been lovely in daylight. At night, the scene was eerie.
Reynard turned right and swept his gun downward to point at the fallen shooter. Ashe aimed at the figure sprawled facedown on the ground. He was twisted as if an effort to duck had spun him around.
Vampire. Now that she was close, Ashe could almost taste his essence. His energy was pouring needles of power over her like the skitter of insect feet on her skin. She glided to the left of the figure, Reynard to the right, until they stood on opposite sides of their quarry.
What happened next depended entirely on the vamp. Why had he shot at her? She wanted an explanation. She’d be happy to keep him alive—vibrantly undead?—at least long enough to question him. Longer if he played nice. Then again, he’d tried to kill her already. If he attacked, there’d be no messing around.
The vamp was male, medium height, dressed in jeans. A scatter of weapons and a tripod were strewn around him. She smelled blood, but saw only a shining stain on the back of his jacket. It was too dark to see color. He was motionless, but still she kicked his rifle out of reach. It was a sniper’s piece—nightscope and all the fancy fixings.
“Weapon says he meant business,” she said softly.
“It seems your enemies put forward their best efforts,” Reynard replied.
“I’m so flattered.” Ashe took another quick inventory of the vamp. Short leather boots. The glint of a fancy watch. Dark hair, collar length. “Y’know, at first I wondered why someone would shoot from a place with only one escape route.”
As she spoke, she shifted the Colt to her left hand and reached into the pocket that ran up the outside of her right thigh. Familiarity washed through her. Slaying wasn’t her happy place, but it was one she knew inside and out. And it was the place where a bad guy ceased to be a “he” and became an “it.” It was easier to take them out if they weren’t people.
Ashe pulled out a long, straight, sharp stake. “Then it came to me. Vamps can fly. And then I thought of another thing. I was called out here on an emergency. How did an assassin know where I’d be? Somebody’s been doing some planning, and I’m going to want names.”
The vampire struck. The speed was breathtaking, lifting it from a facedown sprawl to a frontal attack in less than a second—but she’d been expecting that. Ashe felt the thing’s body pound into the stake, and she used its own momentum to drive the weapon home. All she had to do was brace her feet against all that brute force and lean into it.
The vamp flailed its arms, trying to change direction and pull away, trying to slash and bite and escape all at once. She’d judged the vamp’s height fairly well, but the stake had entered just below its heart. Ashe felt her feet skid on the stone beneath her, sliding far too close to the iron railing and the sheer drop beyond.
Reynard yelled, grabbing the vamp from behind. In a flash of moonlight, she could see the vampire’s face—features twisted in pain and rage. Reynard was managing to pin its arms, something no human should have been able to do. That seemed to scare the monster even more than the stake.
Ashe twisted her weapon, driving upward. The vampire gasped. She stopped a hairsbreadth from skewering it, praying Reynard’s strength would hold. She was taking a risk, pausing like this, but a chance at information was worth it.
She could feel his—its—breath on her skin, catch the faint, sweet smell of its venom. A vampire’s poison was so addictive, its erotic high made its victims slaves after just one bite.
“Why were you shooting at me?” she demanded.
It bared fangs, giving a rattling hiss.
“Scary, but I’ve seen better,” she said.
Reynard did something that made the vampire wince. “Answer.”
“Abomination!” it snarled, and gave one last lunge at her.
“Last” being the operative term. Ashe slammed the stake upward just before its fangs could reach her flesh. She heard the snap of its teeth as they closed on air.
The vampire was suddenly deadweight. Reynard let the body drop, wood still protruding from its chest.
Ashe looked down at the vampire. She knew she would feel plenty later—anger, triumph, regret, pity, selfjustification—but at the moment she was blank. She’d done what she had to do. Once the adrenaline wore off, the rest could engulf her.
The vampire had called her an abomination. She opened her mouth to comment on how strange that was, coming from a bloodsucking monster, but closed it again. It was weird enough that she didn’t want to even think about it. Besides, there were other, more pressing questions—like why had the vamp chosen to die rather than talk?
It could be vengeance. It could be something else. Whatever it was, it was personal. That thought made her queasy.
“Are you all right?” Reynard asked.
“Yeah,” Ashe said, keeping her voice light. “It went down easily enough.”
Reynard sat down on the bench, head bowed. Ashe looked away. He looked glum, but skewering the enemy wasn’t a cheery kind of thing. And then again, you didn’t get into this kind of work to talk about your feelings.
Ashe turned to lean on the railing. Below was the garden, bathed in starlight. A much better view than the vampire. The body had already started to shrivel. In about twenty minutes, it would be a pile of dust. It was like time caught up with the vamps, grinding them to nothing. Once it was gone, they would search the vamp’s possessions for clues.
Above, the stars glittered like sequins on a torch singer’s evening gown. Below, the gardens glowed like a fairy kingdom. It seemed distant and surreal, a pretty mirage she could look at but not touch. She was made from a different element—something far less appealing.
At some point along the way, when her parents died, or when her husband died, or maybe when she’d bagged her first monster, Ashe had let herself slide into the darkness. Now that her daughter was home, she had to snap out of it. Kids needed a bright, shiny world. Eden needed something besides a monster- slaying action figure for a mom. Too bad Ashe didn’t know how to be anything else.
She would try. Goddess knew she would try. She would strive to see the beauty in the world and look away from the shadows. It was her duty as a parent.
She heard Reynard shift on the bench behind her.
“You should come see the view,” she said.
“No, thank you.” His voice was quiet. The dark made it oddly intimate.
“Why not?”
He was silent for a few heartbeats. “I have to go back to the Castle.”
“So?” She turned, leaning against the rail to face him.
He raised his head, but didn’t meet her eyes. “Whatever I see out here will make me restless, and I don’t have a choice about going back. It’s best I see as little as possible.”
There was so much regret in the words, it bruised her. Regret—that, she knew. She could almost taste it like coppery blood on her tongue, sharp and familiar.
Now, finally, there was something about him that she understood.
And, Goddess help her, she suddenly wanted to fix it.
Chapter 3
“This is Errata Jones at CSUP, the station that defines the supernatural in the beautiful city of Fairview. It’s eleven-oh-seven, just after the late news, and we’re back to talk some more about what the presence of the Castle in our town means for us.
“The new head honcho at the Castle—that would be our very own ex-police detective Conall ‘Mac’ Macmillan—has been hiring locals for guards, and a number of our Fairview boys have signed on.
“Well, girls and ghouls, that sounds like a great way to earn money and meet interesting people, doesn’t it? But I’d still ask a few questions before picking up my staff ID card. My sources have learned that, up until this recent hiring spree, the last man to join the guardsmen was Captain Reynard, back in 1758. Why did recru
iting stop for two and a half centuries? And why do we so rarely see the guards outside the Castle walls? After that long, you’d think those guys would want a breath of fresh air.
“So, what exactly are our poor mortal lads getting themselves into? Once they’re in, there’s a confidentiality clause that forbids the guardsmen from talking to us. What doesn’t the Castle administration want us to know?”
Inside the Castle, Reynard found himself alone. He paused, letting the portal drift shut behind him. It closed with a faint popping noise that reminded him of smacking lips. The Castle had swallowed him up again.
He straightened his clothes, dusting mud from his sleeve. The light was low enough that his eyes barely needed to adjust from the dark outside. The area where he stood was a round, empty chamber, chosen because it was large enough to corral and capture the rabbitlike creature. Like most of the Castle, it was built of rough gray stone and lit by ever-burning torches that cast barely more than a flickering orange glow. He had expected to find some of his fellow guardsmen, but apparently they had bagged their quarry and left.
Well, he’d done his part already. Captain of the guardsmen who patrolled this section of the Castle, he had gone into the world and recaptured an escaped prisoner. He had done it a thousand times, and would do it a thousand more. His duty ended only if he was killed or the otherworldly magic of the Castle prison wound down. These retrievals were his only break in routine.
One would think he’d welcome them. Instead, he hated leaving the Castle. He hated coming back in. It was a cruel thing to taste freedom and then to walk away from it after only a few hours.
The outside world held everything he had lost, and everything he might be tempted to take. The Castle robbed him of much—hunger, thirst, lust, joy—as part of the ancient magic that prevented overpopulation by the inmates or the gobbling up of weaker species. Perversely, anger and bitterness remained. The Castle had little love, but much war.
In contrast, the outside world sharpened his appetite after decades of nothingness. Sensation—the scent of grass, the wind against his cheek—vibrated in his bones like colors long forgotten, clinging a moment before they crumbled into the dust of memory.
Desire, so heady minutes ago, still clung to his imagination. He envisioned Ashe Carver’s body under his, warm and female, the spice of thyme washing around them. She was strong, but no match for a guardsman. He could think of a thousand ways he’d like to show her that strength. He savored the hunger, imprinting it on his mind before it, too, fell to cobwebs.
Reynard had a reputation for iron discipline. Few considered why it might be necessary, or what would happen if that discipline slipped. On the other hand, he remembered who and what he’d been before he got there: angry, womanizing, a gambler, a duelist, and every other hazard a debutante’s mama might think to warn her baby chick against. That man was long gone, but every so often he felt that devil stir.
He wiped the light sweat that clung to his face and started walking down the corridor, barely bothering to look around him. There were no windows, no views of another landscape. There was only an inside to the Castle, an endless maze of shadowed corridors and vaulted rooms. The stone dungeon had lost its novelty value approximately two and a half centuries ago, but what could one expect from an eternal curse? From what he could tell, curses all began with great fanfare, but were one-note songs. Eventually they faded to the background, like a ticking clock: doomed, damned, doomed, damned.
A crashing bore, really.
From a chamber or two away he heard Mac singing—if it could be described as such—at the top of his lungs, “Kill the wa-a-a-a-abbit!”
Despite himself, Reynard smiled. Mac had been a human officer of the law, become a fire demon, and now described himself as head of Castle operations. There was much to admire—courage, loyalty, and a shrewd mind. There was also much about him that puzzled Reynard.
“Kill the waaabbit!”
Puzzled him a lot.
Reynard turned the corner. Mac was in a small room to the left, writing on the duty roster he had pinned to the wall. Mac was large—a head taller than Reynard and bulky with muscle. He was wearing the same modern clothes many of the outsiders wore—jeans and a T-shirt that left his tattooed forearms bare. But Mac was no outsider. He was as close to a friend as Reynard had known for at least a hundred years.
“Did you kill the wabbit—er—rabbit?” Reynard asked. “I thought you merely wanted to recapture it.”
Mac gave him scandalized eyes—an odd look, since they held a glint of demonic fire. “Of course I didn’t kill it. We took it back to its habitat. Some idiot had left the gates open.”
“Then why are you singing about putting the creature to death?”
“I’m quoting Elmer Fudd.”
“One of your modern poets?”
A look crossed Mac’s face. “Not really.”
“Do I surmise that this is one of those cultural gaps no amount of explanation will close?”
“You got it.”
Reynard could hear the hubbub of the guards’ quarters a short distance away. Since Mac had arrived, the anti-appetite magic had been reduced in the quarters of the common men. Something close to a normal, noisy, messy life had returned—at least for the new recruits. For the old guard, as he’d said to Ashe, things never changed. They were subject to the Castle’s laws, but there was other, additional magic that ruled them—spells that denied them any benefits from Mac’s kindlier regime.
Reynard could smell the oily stink of roasting meat and hear the muted babble of one of those television devices. He edged a few inches away from the sound. They had a way of hypnotizing a man. He’d find himself wasting hours unless he was cautious, lost in images of things he could never have or do.
“How was the trip?” Mac asked.
“It was successful.”
“That much I got from the sofa-sized rabbit hurtling through the portal.”
Mac made a notation on a clipboard that hung on the wall, using a mechanical pencil leashed to the board with string. As if that would stop a thief. The Castle residents were notorious for stealing pens, flashlights, and anything else that was new. Such small wonders were as candy to children. Try as he might to ignore modern fripperies, even Reynard knew about cell phones and net-books. And—he was ashamed to admit—he had been known to carry off the occasional roll of duct tape. That stuff could be used for everything.
Mac glanced up from writing. “What I’m asking is whether you enjoyed your trip.”
“It is better if I do not enjoy myself. It makes returning all the harder.”
“Ever hear of the concept of vacation?”
“It’s different for us.” Reynard had seen soldiers go mad once they reached the open air, throwing civilization aside like barbarians sacking a town. “Killion left on a mission and murdered five farmers before we took his head. At the end, he was babbling about too much open space.”
“I think he was at the extreme end of the sanity bell curve.”
“Killion was not an isolated case.”
“You think your head would explode if you took a few weeks for yourself? Everyone deserves time off. I mean, it’s up to you, but you’re not one of the men I worry about.”
“Thank you, but no.”
Reynard thrust the idea aside before it could infect him. He liked to say he had two and a half centuries of overdue leave, but Mac didn’t understand. As capable as he was, there were things he didn’t know about the Castle.
The old guards had their secrets. There was a reason they never left.
One of the new guards walked by, pierced and tattooed, with a chain- mail shirt, leather kilt, stainless-steel coffee mug, and Doc Martens. He waved a hand at Reynard. “Hey, there, Cap’n.”
“Stewart.” Reynard nodded, overlooking the easy familiarity of the boy. Like the other new recruits, Stewart was a mere puppy, full of jokes and fun. Mac hired men as good with people as they were with weapons.
&nbs
p; Stewart stopped, grinning sheepishly. “I’m going to need to book some time off in August.”
Mac looked up. “Yeah, what for?”
The boy’s eyebrows lifted, pierced rings and all. “Honeymoon. Becky said yes.”
“Well, all right!” Mac said, thumping Stewart on the back. “Did you make her sign an insurance waiver? Y’know, hold harmless against risk and all that?”
“Why, do you think marriage to me is as bad as an extreme sport?”
“You tell me.” Mac waggled his eyebrows.
“Ha, ha. Maybe I should sign one. She said she’d break my neck if she doesn’t get two weeks in the Rockies.”
“Congratulations! All the best wishes to you and the fair lady.” Reynard shook his hand. “So, you’ll expect your wedding day off work as well?”
“If you don’t mind.”
“We’ll consider it,” Reynard said, deadpan. “It might cause some problems with the schedule.”
Stewart grinned, showing the even, white teeth that all the new men and women seemed to have. “I know you’ll do your best, Cap’n. And I want you at the wedding, if you can come.”
“Thank you.” Reynard was unexpectedly touched by the invitation. He didn’t bother to say it was impossible to accept. That could wait.
Stewart ambled away, lifting the mug to his lips as he walked. Reynard studied the young man as he disappeared down the hall. New recruits were desperately needed, but it was all one could do not to resent them for the life they had. Stewart had a woman he went home to every night. He was also mortal and utterly fragile without the devil’s bargain that made the old guards ageless, indestructible, and trapped.
Trapped. The best he could ever hope for was a dull contentment and devotion to his duty. Stop dwelling on it. Get over it.
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