Right now he wished he were fey enough to simply grab the girl and count his blessings. Instead, his rudimentary conscience—a very human attribute—was forcing him to think hard about what he was going to do next. What futures might he alter by interfering with her destiny?
He could feel her unhappiness. Empathy was something Simeon had tried to teach Miru-kai, and now he couldn’t shut it off. The very air around the child screamed with how much she wanted to go home.
How did humans get on in life with everyone else’s feelings to worry about? It was exhausting. On the other hand, he couldn’t indulge in emotion all the time. He had to keep several thousand monsters in line. That called for a cool head.
“Sometimes,” he said, “it is difficult to be a prince.”
“Why?” Eden responded, startling him.
He hadn’t realized he’d spoken out loud. He looked down at her, and then decided to finish his thought. Listening and advising. That was what human companions were good at. That was what Simeon had done for him.
“I was a pirate once. That was much more fun. Gratuitous amounts of robbery and liquor.”
“So, why’d you change jobs?”
Miru-kai sighed. “The fey were weak. They needed a leader, and I was a prince. Then others came along—changelings, goblins, the unwanted and ugly species no one would take in.”
“Why do you want to rule them, if no one else seems to?”
“I understand what they need.”
Miru-kai stopped. They had reached a vast space ringed with balconies. In the center was a dark pool rimmed by white marble, the carved lip of the stone fluted and curving outward. The overall shape of the pool was squares overlapping squares in a geometric pattern. Rather than torches, fires burned in the four corners of the space.
The hall had seen better days. Tiers of stone benches rose up a sloped balcony, but many had been broken during the last battle inside the Castle. The curious fact was that some kind of night-blooming plant had begun to grow there, twining around the ruins and breaking them down to rubble. And yet, there was neither sun nor water. The sweet-scented vine had to be a freak of the Castle’s errant magic.
Eden reached out to touch one of the red- veined trumpet flowers, but the prince caught her hand. “I wouldn’t touch that. I’m not sure if it’s safe.”
Her face turned to him, and his heart grew still. There was gratitude in her eyes, and a glimmering of trust. The look made his chest hurt. Few people ever looked at him that way.
Eden put her hands back in her pockets and sat down on a stump of stone pillar. She looked sleepy. Dimly, he remembered that children needed rest.
“There used to be a dragon here,” he said, nodding toward the pool. “But they had to put it back downstairs, where it was warmer.”
“A dragon?” she asked. “My mom and Uncle Alessandro fought a dragon once. I wonder if it was the same one.”
“I think it was.”
She seemed to ponder a moment. “I thought dark fey were bad.” Eden made a face. “Sorry, but you seem nice. Not at all like what I’ve been told.”
Miru-kai blinked. That was the thing with children. They were blunt. “The dark fey are tricksters, but we’re part of nature’s cycle. Sometimes we’re the necessary chaos that breaks down old, dead patterns. Sometimes we give people what they deserve and they call it bad luck. That’s why they’re afraid of us. We’re not evil. We’re just uncomfortable.”
“And light fey?”
“They dress better, but they’re not that different. They don’t like to be around humans as much.”
“Why not?”
“It’s complicated. The last light fey I talked to still referred to humans as an upstart ruffian species that deserved to be exterminated like an unwanted invasion of ants.”
“Whatever.” She yawned. “Bring ’em on. Ants bite back.”
He tilted his head, amused. “I wonder how like your mother you are, and if Reynard knows what he’s getting himself into.”
Her mood, which he had so carefully eased, flattened. She began picking at her fingers, head bowed. “Why do you say my mom killed my grandparents?”
“It’s just something I heard,” he said lightly. “It’s probably not true.”
She gave him a withering look. “You said it had something to do with a spell?”
“So it was rumored.”
Eden pursed her lips, looking out over the dark pool of water. “I’ve asked and asked, but no one’s ever told me how they died. My grandparents weren’t sick or anything, were they?”
“No.”
“And no one suspected it was something magic?”
“Very few people had any idea there was anything out of the ordinary.”
“So it wasn’t like a mugging or something?”
“No.”
She fell silent.
“What are you thinking?” the prince asked uneasily.
“About something Mom said once. About how a selfish spell broke her powers.”
“What was the spell?” As soon as he asked the question, the prince felt a sudden need to change the topic. Talking about this was only going to make the child unhappier. “Have you noticed how sweet these blossoms smell?”
“It was to give Grandma and Grandpa car trouble so they wouldn’t come home and find out that Mom snuck out to a concert instead of babysitting Auntie Holly.”
“Ah,” said Miru- kai. “Would you like to visit the gargoyles? The hatchlings are really rather comical.”
“I don’t want gargoyles or flowers!” Eden snapped, then lowered her voice. “I just want to know the truth.”
Miru-kai considered long and hard. “A spell like what you describe is meant for two people. If your mother tried to perform it on her own, it would have been difficult to control.”
“Is that what did it? A car crash?”
Miru-kai looked down at his hands. “According to what I heard, your grandfather’s car went out of control.” He didn’t say the vehicle had fallen down a cliff, crashed to the beach, and burned mere feet from the ocean. In his experience, truth had to be adjusted to suit those who heard it.
Tears welled in Eden’s eyes. “I hate my mother.”
“Don’t be so hard on her,” Miru-kai said gently.
“She killed my grandparents. She cast a selfish spell that went wrong and they died.”
He winced. “And she’s had to live with that every day since. If she did not tell you before, it’s because she was afraid of losing your love.”
Eden looked at him from under dark lashes. “How do you know that?”
Miru-kai didn’t answer at once, but stared across the ruined amphitheater with its strange, fragrant vines. Images of the white blooms shivered in the dark pond, the water stirred by a breeze too faint to feel upon his skin.
“Because I’m very old, and I’ve made a lot of mistakes. Many were for selfish reasons. As I said, I was a pirate. A thief. Then I became a warlord. Those are occupations where mistakes are catastrophic. I don’t imagine being a young witch is any simpler, with powerful magic and the wildness of youth in one’s veins.”
“What she did was wrong.”
“Of course it was. But how does your anger fix anything at all? Does it make her a wiser person? Does it bring your grandparents back to life?”
“She should have told me.”
“She probably thought you were too young to understand. Perhaps she has not forgiven herself, and so finds it hard to ask forgiveness.”
“Why?”
“That’s something, sadly, you will learn in time. Think about it. If you were in your mother’s place, what would you think of yourself?”
Eden hugged herself, looking small and frail amidst the ruins of the hall. “No wonder she always seems so sad.”
“She’s a prisoner of those memories. Perhaps telling her you forgive her will set her free.”
Reynard drew his Smith & Wesson and fired all in one motion. A vampire hea
d exploded. Two of the other vamps fired their weapons. Reynard dropped to the ground, tucking into a roll that took him backward. With four on one, room to move was essential.
He came out of the roll and into a crouch, bringing up his weapon again. Blam!
The corridor rang with the noise, hell on vampire ears. He missed, but they flinched. Blam! Another head exploded.
Three on one now. Reynard ducked into another roll and scrambled to take cover where this corridor crossed another. A bullet chinged on the stone near his ear, sending prickles of alarm in waves down his neck. Reynard jerked back from the corner, gripping his gun and pulling in a breath of stale air and cordite.
A small blue fey zigzagged down the corridor, wings humming. One of the vampires fired at it, sending sparks flying off the stone wall.
Silence, then a hum of magic. Reynard felt it crawl over his skin, vibrating in his back teeth. Carefully, he peered around the corner.
Just in time to see a portal close behind Belenos and his last two henchmen.
Damn and blast.
He had heard from Mac that Belenos had a key. Unlike the guardsmen, who could open a portal at will, a vampire would have to activate the key’s magic—chant a spell or do a dance or however the blazes the keys worked. Reynard had never needed to use one, so he didn’t know the specifics.
But that answered why the King of the East and his minions were in this deserted corridor. Belenos had probably been looking for a quiet place to make a door and get away—a bit of a challenge with the Castle guard in pursuit, but he’d just managed it. Damnation!
Reynard clicked the safety on his gun and slipped it back into the holster beneath his jacket, reciting a litany of curses compiled over several centuries.
The skirmish had been over in less than two minutes.
As he would after any of his daily battles in the Castle, Reynard checked for injuries—bruises, but nothing noteworthy—and carried on. He would report the fight to Mac as soon as Eden was safe.
Unfortunately, the skirmish had cost energy. As he pulled out Holly’s crystal and resumed his search, Reynard’s feet felt heavy, and an odd ache beneath his breastbone began pulsing with every heartbeat. He pushed himself, hurrying as fast as he could manage. He was running out of time.
The trail led him to a familiar room, one nearly destroyed by a cataclysmic battle last autumn. To one side, his silk garments an exotic splash against the stone, sat Miru-kai. Across from him, Eden perched on a lump of rock, looking hunched and tired. Reynard’s heart bounded at the sight of the girl.
Silently, Reynard pocketed the crystal, sending a prayer of thanks for Holly’s magic. Then he pulled the Smith & Wesson again.
“Miru-kai.”
The prince looked up, his face tightening as he saw who had interrupted his conversation. “Well, old fox, it seems you’ve sniffed us out.”
Eden’s head whipped around. “Captain Reynard!”
She leaped up and streaked across the room, thumping into him in an ecstatic hug. The force of it nearly made him stumble. “You’ve come to take me home!”
Reynard put a hand on the dark curls, the child’s warmth so vibrant against the cold, dead air of the prison. His strength was ebbing fast. His knees were shaking with fatigue. It felt odd, for one immortal. He’d forgotten what illness was like.
That memory was coming back with a vengeance.
But he’d meant it when he said Eden came first. He hugged the girl and pushed her behind him, putting his body between her and Miru-kai. She grabbed the back of his shirt, as if she was afraid he’d vanish. Then one hand slipped into his.
He kept the gun trained on the prince.
He didn’t mind the anchor of Eden’s grip. His head was clear, but his gut was a solid knot of apprehension. In a weakened state there were too many things that could go wrong. “I’m taking Eden back to her mother.”
“Are you sure?” said the prince, his eyes a mix of anger and amusement. “You look like you’re about to fall over. What did you do, wrestle every troll between here and the Castle door?”
“I ran into a group of Undead. We’d no sooner become acquainted than one of your fey buzzed past. A little blue fellow. Are the fey in league with the Eastern vampires now?”
The amusement vanished. “No. For one thing, we had a falling-out over the girl.”
“The fey never give up their prizes,” said Reynard, his tone pure acid. “Not once you’ve won the game.”
The prince gave him a sharp look. “It’s not in our nature.”
“And you always play by the rules.”
“Precisely, when they’re rules we like. However, young Eden was in Belenos’s tender care. He didn’t seem to be daddy material, whatever his delusions, so I liberated her.”
That was interesting. But was anything Miru-kai said ever true?
“And now I liberate her from you.” Reynard meant to simply turn and go, but his vision narrowed, darkness eating away at the edges of the world. Cold sweat stuck his shirt to his skin.
Miru-kai flashed a brilliant but cold grin. “And you are a more able caretaker? I am a fey prince, and you are one guardsman looking a bit tattered around the edges. You offend me, Reynard.”
Then, without warning, Reynard’s legs gave way. He fell to his knees, sprawling forward. The gun clattered on the stone, slipping from sweat-slicked fingers.
“Captain Reynard!” Eden grabbed his sleeve. “Captain Reynard, are you all right?”
Miru-kai rose from his seat in a whisper of heavy silk robes. “Reynard?”
He didn’t respond, instead shaking his head to clear it. He thought he could hear guardsmen in the corridors, calling orders and running. He thought he heard Ashe’s voice calling him, and his heart raced with terror and love. His own existence had gone so very wrong, and this was the one thing he could do to make Ashe’s better. Except he wasn’t quite finished. He really had to get up and take care of loose ends.
Where was he?
What had he just been doing? Memory was flickering in and out of focus.
Oh, yes. He started to climb to his hands and knees, but melted to the right, losing track of his hands and feet.
There was a terrible, terrible pain in his chest.
“Captain Reynard!” Eden shook him with all her strength as the world went black.
Ashe strode in Mac’s wake, Alessandro swift and silent behind them. They had found Mac easily enough. He’d been firing questions at a little blue fey no larger than one of Eden’s fashion dolls. The thing was trying to explain something about vampires and kidnapping and children. When Ashe showed up, argument stopped and they were on the move again.
The demon stormed into a huge, dark cavern. Angry heat blasted from him in waves. As soon as she could, Ashe stepped sideways, finding cooler air. The minute they reached open ground, she broke into a run.
Reynard sprawled in the middle of the cavern, Eden clinging to his hand.
“Baby!”
Eden gave a wordless cry and bolted across the stone floor. Ashe wrapped her child in both arms, holding her tight. An agony of relief ripped through her as she breathed in the smell of her child and felt soft skin against her own.
“Captain Reynard’s sick!” Eden sobbed. “And the prince disappeared when he heard you coming!”
Reynard! Behind the relief came cold anger, then panic. Alessandro and Mac were already beside Reynard, who was having trouble getting to his feet.
“Get him out of here,” ordered Mac. Other guardsmen were trickling in through the doorway, drawn by the emergency. “Make a portal. Get him back on the other side of the door. Get him to Holly. Maybe she can do something.”
Alessandro picked up Reynard, slinging one arm over his shoulder. Vampire strength made light work of the full-grown man. “Lead on.”
The fey prince had to be guilty. Why else would he vanish the moment the authorities arrived? Ashe released Eden and stood, pulling a foot-long knife from her boot. “Goddess! Wh
ere is that bastard fairy?” It came out as a rasp. Frantic bursts of fear and relief and horror came one after the other, tearing her to shreds.
Mac rose, running to the entrance to the cavern, flames surrounding him in a white- hot corona. He filled his lungs and roared to the darkness, “Guardsmen, find the fairy bastard!”
The walls shook with the noise, as if the Castle itself cringed before his anger. Wherever the guards were, they heard.
“But he didn’t do anything wrong!” Eden insisted. “He was nice to me!”
But no one listened to a child. No one ever did.
Chapter 19
Sunday, April 5, 10:30 p.m.
101.5 FM
“We’re joined here today for an exclusive telephone interview with Belenos, King of the Eastern Vampires. Your Majesty, I cannot begin to express how honored we are that you condescended to join us.”
“Thank you for having me, Errata. Let me begin by saying how much I appreciate the opportunity to speak to your listeners in the lovely Pacific Northwest.”
“It’s entirely our pleasure, Your Majesty. What would you like to speak about?”
“Interspecies relationships. The human media has long maintained that mixing human and nonhuman societies will inevitably lead to disaster.”
“Not all human media.”
“But most. I’m here to say it isn’t true. Peaceful relations can be maintained.”
“How do you propose to do that?”
“Humans outnumber us, so we assume they are stronger. I don’t think that’s true.”
“Why does it matter who is stronger?”
“Errata, my dear, half the time you wear the skin of a mountain lion. Surely you understand the law of fang and claw. Sovereignty belongs to the hunter, not the prey.”
“Excuse me, Your Majesty, but we need to cut to a commercial break.”
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