“If you insist,” the Blood Prince said.
Feet kicking uselessly midair, Gwynne grabbed frantically for the grip of the sword, tangled in his tunic. Ivory fangs flashed toward his face. Gwynne flinched, closing his eyes.
Sunlight exploded into the room, bright against Gwynne’s eyelids. The Blood Prince dropped him with a snarl, and Gwynne had to do a quick cat-roll midair to keep from skewering himself in the back. He landed on his feet with a jolt, and scrambled for the shelter of the desk. But someone else beat him to it.
Booted feet dropped down on the desk, in the center of the patch of sunlight. White hair shone like a halo. He’d broken through the roof.
Rhys.
What was he doing? Moron! They’d both get killed! But Gwynne felt a shock of pure relief that he wouldn’t be fighting alone. Of the two vamps, Gwynne would side with the one that hadn’t tried to eat him. If he saw opportunity, the Blood Prince would taste silver.
Gwynne flung himself under the desk. He wrestled the silver sword out of his tunic and clutched it to his chest. Jack’s bag sat at his back, but it was full of useless junk. No weapons or food.
“I apologize for the roof,” Rhys said. “I could not fit through the window.”
***
“Really, I much prefer prearranged meetings. This is the second time you have managed to interrupt my meal,” the Blood Prince said. “Does Alta’s Death Wind intend to slay me? Barehanded, no less.”
“Never barehanded,” Rhys said. He had been a weapon since his fifth year. He called lightning to his hands, threads of it weaving around his fingers in tingling arcs.
The Blood Prince prowled the shadows, circling the patch of sunlight. “Come, now. I have not forgotten that you are a hired lance. Surely I can offer you more than Alta.”
“I am not here for Alta,” Rhys said. Nor did he entertain any illusions of escaping this room without a confrontation. “You stole the Keystone and destroyed it. You abducted Princess Maelyn and massacred her guards. You threaten Seinne Sonne.”
“Such a patriot. Have you considered what your reward would be, should you return the princess to the palace? A quick trip to the courtyard for a stake and bake.”
It was true. Even now, the sunlight at his back burned his damaged skin. Mae knew what he was. Once they were clear of this place, she would treat him as any other vampire.
The false prince lifted his chin. “I see the Mara delivered my gift.”
The vial of blood. Rhys had forgotten it, hanging around his neck.
The Blood Prince casually took a vial from the cuff of his sleeve. It matched the one around Rhys’ neck. His smile widened. “I will make you a bargain. You drink yours and I will drink mine.” He shrugged. “Or I will drink mine even if you do not.”
There must be some catch. No doubt if he drank the Mara’s blood it would trigger a new transformation, leaving Rhys helpless for its duration. A state he could hardly afford to be in now. But what would it do to the Blood Prince?
“I believe I will refrain,” Rhys said.
“Pity. You truly mean to fight me?” Even now he sounded mildly amused. “Did you think I won the terradi with my handsome looks? That I charmed goblins with my silver tongue?” The Blood Prince smiled, deliberately revealing his fangs. Rhys gave a reflexive snarl in response. “Does the Mara follow me out of devotion?” The Blood Prince pulled the cork from his vial and drank its contents, savoring it like a fine wine, thrusting his tongue into the vial to catch the last drops. He tilted his head back and swallowed.
The Blood Prince lifted his hand to cover the eyes of his mask. “If you must insist on your death….” A deeper resonance joined his voice. “Then you may as well see what you are fighting.” He slipped forefinger and thumb into the eyes of the mask, lifting it away from his face. Gold rippled through his onyx hair, illusion lifting with the mask.
Rhys’ breath hissed past his teeth, betrayal ripping through his gut.
Duke Gareth of Alta’s smile bordered on a snarl, crimson overtaking his ordinarily green eyes. “Surprised? Final chance, Rhys. I would much rather hire you on in an expanded capacity, as my right hand man rather than my dirty secret.”
“I will be neither.”
***
Her mouth tasted like something died in it.
Charlie forced her eyes open. Her entire body felt heavy and swollen. All she could see was hazy blue.
Sky. Daylight. Cold. Freezing cold. Charlie curled her bare toes. They felt like toe-cicles.
Charlie tried to lift her head. It weighed a thousand pounds, and it felt like her ears were full of wet cotton. Roof. She lay on the shallowly slanted castle roof. The castle roof? How did she get here?
Oh! Rhys! They were going to rescue Rhys. Charlie pushed herself upright, dizzy and stiff. They were going to rescue Rhys from… but they already rescued Rhys. Didn’t they?
The wind across the rooftops made faint hissing noises. Noises that formed words. Not wind: whispers.
“I tell you, I cannot gate without my books,” Jack whispered urgently. “Even if I could do so, I refuse to abandon the boy.”
“Jack?” Charlie managed. She felt like she could breathe fire.
“Charlie!” Thin arms flung around her. “You live! It worked! Rhys was right. Extraordinary!”
For the moment, but not much longer if she couldn’t breathe! Charlie plucked at his arms until he let go. “What’s going on?” And where was Rhys? Charlie had a sudden panic. “Where’s Rhys?”
“Betraying us,” Maelyn said shortly. “He is even now in congress with the Blood Prince.”
“What?” Charlie spun to face them and nearly toppled herself over. Jack steadied her with a hand to her arm. “No way. We’ve already been there, done that. He’s not joining the dark side, even if they have cookies.”
“I can make better cookies,” Jack said. “But aside from that, he and Gwynne are inside. We cannot reach them. This window is too narrow, we cannot reach the one on the other side, and, well, I certainly cannot climb up to the roof as Rhys did.”
Maybe a squirrel could, but a squirrel also wouldn’t be much use against the Blood Prince. There had to be more options.
Charlie didn’t quite trust her head for balance quite yet, but it did feel better, so she risked climbing up the slope of the roof toward its flattened peak. She peered over it, downward toward the courtyard.
She felt a wide, Grinch-like grin curl across her mouth. “I have an idea, but Jack, you’re going to have to work something from memory.”
***
“So it is to be war between us. So be it.”
Rhys never saw Gareth move. One moment Rhys stood on the desk in a loose, defensive posture, hands crackling with lightning, the next something slammed into his chest with enough force that it knocked him back into the glass cabinet. Glass shards and bits of armor clattered to the ground around him. He felt shards of it sticking into his back. The cuts felt no worse than the sun damage.
No blood. None of the cuts bled at all. No blood meant no healing. Any injuries his flesh sustained would linger until he fed.
Gareth crouched before him in the space of a blink. His smile stretched his lips, but his crimson eyes were angry. “All these years - ”
Rhys flashed up to his knees, flattened palm crackling with lightning sparks, driving for Gareth’s chest. Gareth bent back and twisted to dodge. He flashed to his feet, all trace of smile gone. Rhys also leapt to his feet, scooping up a large shard of glass in one hand and the armor breastplate as a shield with the other. The glass would do little unless Rhys struck true to the heart, but it was more than no weapon at all.
Rhys cast a white bolt at Gareth, already moving to keep himself between Gareth and Gwynne, still crouched beneath the desk. Gareth spun away, then sprang at Rhys, fist punching toward his face. A triangular blade slid out from the back of Gareth’s wrist - a spring loaded katar. Rhys deflected it with the breastplate shield and with his forearm blocked the second b
lade that Gareth aimed for his belly.
They fought, twisting and striking and dodging too fast for ordinary eyes to follow. Rhys opened deep slashes in Gareth’s skin that closed again before they could bleed. Gareth slashed and punched with his katars, not caring if Rhys’ glass shard snaked past his guard, forcing Rhys to spin and dodge.
Gareth slammed his left blade through the breastplate, piercing the metal, and ripped it down. Rhys released it and leapt back, avoiding the slash of the second katar. He needed a true weapon.
Rhys ripped open the tower door, but he had no intention of escape. Gareth would not follow; he would go after Gwynne once more. “Guards!” Rhys barked. “Intruders!”
“No!” Gareth cried sharply. “Stay back!”
But moments later, a handful of terradi poured through the door, weapons drawn and spoiling for a fight. Seeing Gareth’s bare face and gold hair, the terradi threw themselves at him, thinking him to be their foe.
Rhys ambushed the last one through the door, springing on him and slicing deeply into his neck with the glass shard. He left it there. Rhys wrestled the terradi’s curved blade from his fist and drove his elbow into his blue face.
“Not me, you great blue apes!” Gareth said, snatching up his mask and slapping it onto his face. The illusion fell into place. “He is the intruder!”
The terradi’s momentary confusion allowed Rhys the time to take two by surprise with two quick slashes and engage a third before they reacted.
But now Rhys had a real blade in his hands. Rhys scythed through them like a field of wheat.
Gareth hissed his displeasure, katars crossed defensively across his chest. Rhys raised the curved sword parallel with his shoulders. For a moment, neither moved, waiting for a blink, a move.
The shutters pushed open from the outside, spilling more light into the room. Charlie leaned inside. “Vampire, vampire, fly away home,” Charlie chanted. “Your castle’s on fire, your children are gone.”
Alive! Rhys could not do more than note the fact, however, because Gareth took the momentary distraction to spring to the attack once more.
“Yo, bozo! I wasn’t kidding. YOUR CASTLE IS ON FIRE.”
Gareth’s upper lip twitched, showing that he wrinkled his nose. He bared his teeth in a snarl and broke from Rhys to dart for the window.
With a small shriek, Charlie retreated into the sunlight. Safe.
Gareth turned on Rhys with wild abandon. Rhys had reach, but the fatigue of his body attempting to heal itself without the means to do so had turned his bones to lead.
Gareth snapped his arms together, catching the curved sword between the katars, and twisted, trapping the blade. Gareth shoved with incredible strength, pinning Rhys to the stone wall. He could not free his blade or push away.
Gareth flashed fang. “Farewell, old friend.”
***
Now. Now was Gwynne’s chance. He sprang out from under the table and stabbed the sword into the Blood Prince’s side.
The Blood Prince roared in pain and whirled on Gwynne. Gwynne ducked, covering his face. He knew he wasn’t fast enough for anything else.
But no blow came.
The Blood Prince made a choked noise.
Gwynne peered upward.
Rhys’ hand was on the sword grip protruding from the Blood Prince’s’s side, but the blade stuck up at an angle from the Blood Prince’s chest. The Blood Prince’s lips twitched almost convulsively into a smile.
Rhys touched the end of the spear and it shrank back into a sword. He pulled it free and lowered the corpse to the floor.
“Farewell, old friend,” Rhys whispered.
Farewell, father, Gwynne silently added. Good riddance.
***
Ok, now this…. This could be a problem. “Um. Jack?”
“Yes, I see it,” Jack said grimly. His fingers twitched as if trying to write runes midair, but he had no chalk.
“Um. Can you tell it to stop?”
Jack had managed to unleash a phoenix from memory, decimating the courtyard and setting part of the castle on fire. But.
“I don’t think so.”
“It is coming this way!” Maelyn flung herself back against the stone rise of the tower.
Charlie darted to the window and thrust her head inside. “Rhys! Gwynne! We have a problem!”
***
Rhys could smell the smoke. That made matters serious indeed. “Gwynne.”
“Already gone,” Gwynne said, scrambling through the window.
Rhys took up Jack’s bag from under the table and slung it over his arm. He hesitated, glancing over the room once more, and Gareth’s body sprawled on the floor.
No. There was nothing here worth taking.
With some difficulty, Rhys climbed up to the hole he’d made in the roof and hauled himself up through. As he broke out of the room, he received a full face of smoke.
“Jack! Gate us out of here!” He jumped down to join the others, clustered together on the roof.
Jack shook his head, grimly pressing his lips together. He took his bag from Rhys and rummaged through it. “A wreck. All a wreck!” He grew paler and paler. “My books! Half my books are gone!”
“Time, Jack!” Rhys snapped.
Bright orange and yellow licks of flame sparked at the courtyard edge of the roof. Fire consumed with eager speed. The roof would not hold long.
Jack fumbled out a piece of chalk and frantically scribbled marks on the roof. “Not enough time,” he muttered. “Not enough time! I don’t have my books….”
True. They had no time to waste like this.
Rhys called to the Keystone, reaching for the white hot core of power. It answered in a hundred scattered stars, five of them brighter and stronger than the rest. One of them was close enough to reach, hidden in the boy Gwynne’s stomach. The power eagerly sprang to his call, circling him. He could feel the Gates, some open, some closed.
The Great Gate ripped open before them. Rhys felt it deep in his gut, a sudden shockwave more powerful than a lightning bolt. He shoved Mae through, Jack on her heels.
Gwynne flung himself through the Gate as Rhys grabbed Charlotte’s hand and pulled her through the Gate with him.
***
Returning to the bridge was to return to her nightmares. Mae closed eyes and ears against the chaos surrounding her, this time in body as well as mind. A scream built within her until she feared it would burst from her chest. She smothered it ruthlessly. She could not afford to lose herself here.
Mae.
Mae stiffened, drawing her hands away from her ears.
“Maelyn!”
She knew that voice. She thought she had imagined that voice, the one that urged her to fight against the Mara’s mind magic. She let her feet carry her into the twisting “floor,” trusting them to carry her when her eyes told her only lies. Trusting them to find him.
Find him they did.
At first all Mae could see was a dark mass within a writhing nest of translucent black chains, then she could discern the shape of a winged man dressed in ancient armor.
The Guardian of the Gate.
“I remember you,” Mae whispered. When High King Aneirin taught her how to use the Keystone, the Gate she opened had not taken her to another world. It took her here. To him. She remembered. When she was here on the bridge, frightened and lost, he found her and brought her back to the Gate to Seinne Sonne. He showed her the way home.
Mae abruptly realized that far above them was the gallery containing the sealed Gate, or else they stood on its ceiling. He left the Gate vulnerable. To save her.
“You,” Mae said. “You are the one who took my bonds.” The Mara must have added more of them. Or had she truly been enwrapped in that much darkness?
From within the nest of shadows, the Guardian bucked against the restraints. “Mae! Break me out of this. You can do it now. With your mind and body reunited, you have the strength. Come!”
***
The world turned
in a crazy spin around her. Charlie clung desperately to the floor as it turned into wall, then ceiling. Though she remained plastered to the “floor,” gravity seemed to have nothing to do with it.
“Charlie!”
Charlie turned blindly toward Rhys’ voice, reaching out for him.
The moment Charlie clasped Rhys’ hand, gravity settled safely to the floor, and she could make a twisted sort of sense out of the jumble. Stairways and catwalks rose up, down, sideways, and upside-down, and at any given moment several were shifting or twisting or turning to connect with a different doorway, each of which were different in style. It was as if the designers of Hogwarts had used an Escher painting for reference.
“What kind of world is this?” Charlie still felt a little dizzy looking upward.
“It is not a world,” Rhys said. “It is the in-between. The bridge.”
“Charlie! Rhys!” Gwynne’s voice came from above them. Charlie looked around, and almost lost her footing. He stood on a “wall” next to an archway. “Stay there!”
Gwynne took the stairway next to him, which brought him closer, but turned him upside down to their perspective.
“We should not linger long in one place,” Rhys murmured, gripping Charlie’s hand more tightly.
To emphasize his words, a crack sliced open beneath Charlie’s feet with a sound like tearing metal.
Charlie jumped away from it with a gasp, knocking into Rhys. She eyed the changing labyrinth, and carefully started edging along the catwalk toward Gwynne.
Gwynne clambered across a bridge and lowered himself onto another stair. “I saw the princess, but I lost her.” The stair chose that moment to change, swinging up and around, and placing Gwynne almost right over Charlie’s head. But sideways.
Charlie felt/heard several more rips nearby. She guessed that the “bridge” wasn’t meant to have people climbing around in it.
“Hurry!” Charlie called up. She couldn’t see any easy way to get to Gwynne, nor the other way around.
Gwynne looked down at them, gauging. He took a half step back, and Charlie guessed what he was doing.
He jumped.
Keystone (Gatewalkers) Page 25
