Veiled Threat

by Shannon Mayer

  I lay on the floor and stared. “Why do I get the feeling you’ve done that before?”

  “Rylee.” Faris turned his blue eyed, icy gaze on me. “What are you doing calling me out to a necromancer’s territory?”

  “Long story. Short version is—”

  He held up his hands and closed his eyes. “Let me guess, you’re in trouble?”

  Erik, splayed out beside me, let out a deep shuddering breath. “Gods, yes. She’s in trouble.”

  “Not surprised.” Faris let out a deep sigh and held a hand to me. I took it and he helped me to my feet, his eyes flickering over my body and a frown twisting his lips.

  “Are you well, Rylee? You seem different.”

  I took my hand back; with him I never knew what to expect, and hoped he wasn’t hearing what was wrong with my heart like Alex. He’d use my weakness against me for sure. “Fine. Can you help us?”

  “No, ‘how have you been?’ or maybe ‘lovely to see you when we needed you to save our asses, thank you so much’?” His eyebrows rose over glacial blue eyes that roved my body. Not in a sexual manner, more like something puzzled him.

  I didn’t like it. “Stop looking at me like that. And thank you for pulling us out of there.”

  “Better,” he grumbled, his eyes flicking to Alex. “It is a good thing I recalled this wolf was yours or I never would have bothered.”

  I knew that was bullshit, he wouldn’t suddenly forget Alex and knew damn well he was my wolf. But I’d let him have his illusions.

  “Yeah. Good luck for us. Listen. We’re on a time crunch. Orion has stolen Milly and Pamela and if we don’t get them back—”

  Again he stopped me. “They’ll die, isn’t that the usual threat? And really, would Milly be much of a loss?”

  I glared at him. “It’s worse than that.”

  Faris’s eyes flicked up to mine. “How can it be worse than that?”

  “Orion is taking Milly’s baby to possess it. And her child will have more magic naturally coursing through it than any other witch ever born, including Pamela. And Pamela, I don’t think he’ll let her go, or even kill her. He’ll turn her like he did Milly.” As I said the words, I knew they were true. Death was not the worst thing that could happen to them; no, Orion would make sure he had far worse for them both.

  I saw the flicker in Faris’s left eye, just a twitch, but I knew it for what it was. Fear.

  “What do you need from me?”

  A part of me wanted to stare around, see what place he’d brought us to, where he considered home. But a quick glance showed me we were in an average house, probably somewhere in the suburbs that held no decoration to it. Nothing that stood out from anything, just white walls, basic furniture and no knick knacks. The blinds were drawn and no light came through. I shook off my curiosity. “I need you to jump the veil for me, we need to pick up Frank and his friend and bring them back to the necromancer we just left. And for the record, Frank and his friend are young necromancers. Can you handle that without killing them?”

  Erik stood quietly, watching me and Faris. I had a flash of understanding that solidified into fact inside my brain. Erik knew next to nothing about the supernatural world; he was a human with the rudimentary knowledge of how to kill demons and, while he might be able to teach me, I was also teaching him.

  Faris clasped his hands in front of himself. “First of all, I don’t hate necromancers the way other vampires do; how do you think I learned to jump the veil when no other vampires have?”

  “You’re telling me you don’t want to kill them? If that is true, why did Thomas know your name? Why did he react so strongly to it?”

  He shook his head. “The past is filled with stories and lives you can only imagine, Rylee. Thomas and I go way back.” He paused and shook his head again, this time as if trying to clear some of those stories. “Besides that, while there will always be a built-in animosity between vampires and necromancers, I can easily control it. You don’t know me, Rylee. Maybe it would be best if you don’t make assumptions about me and how I might react.”

  Hell, there was truth in that. I didn’t know him, or his past.

  Faris cleared his throat. “Tell me though, why do you not use the castle?”

  He didn’t know. Shit. I filled him in as quickly as I could. Red caps, Orion, the doorways all busted up and blocked.

  “Have you spoken to Doran of this yet?” Faris leaned over and grabbed the white phone that blended into the wall so well I hadn’t seen it.

  I thought about our quick visit to Doran to re-attach my soul. “No time, everything has been going to the toilet too fast.”

  Without looking at me he dialed what I assumed was Doran’s place. Apparently Faris took his job as second in command to the vampire throne very seriously. I paced the room while he was on the phone. I got one pass in before he hung up.

  “I didn’t hear you say anything.” I stopped in the middle of the room and looked over my shoulder at him, a bad feeling swelling up.

  “No answer.” Faris strode across the room. “We will wait and try again. I have not sensed his death, and I would. So we wait.”

  “Waiting isn’t an option,” I said, thinking he would listen. Nope wrong.

  “Then leave. I don’t have to jump the veil for you, you’d be best to remember that.”

  Oh, how the four letter words wanted to spill off my tongue. Mostly because he was right. Saying nothing, I walked to the couch and slumped onto it. I leaned my head back. Maybe he only would mean a few minutes. Fifteen or twenty. I could do that.

  Nope, wrong again. Four hours passed with Faris making phone calls at short intervals. Believe it or not, I managed to keep my mouth shut for most of it, only grumbling a time or two under my breath.

  “Seriously, why are you not just opening the veil for us?” I snapped somewhere near the end of the fourth hour.

  “Because, jumping into situations that are unknown are bound to get you killed. And since you are the savior of the world, I’d like to keep you around until your job is done,” Faris snapped back at me, the tension in his shoulders visible. I eased back into the cushions. Faris was trying to keep me alive. Again, I wasn’t sure if I could trust him or not, but there was no other choice for me at that point.

  He finally gave up when the line on Doran’s end went dead.

  “Someone’s ripped out the phone,” Faris said, setting his own phone down.

  Without any warning, he swung his hand. The veil sliced open ten feet away from him and then I understood why. Bright sunlight filtered in, the splash of Doran’s koi pond echoing back to us. Doran’s courtyard, but no one was there.

  “You aren’t coming with us? I know you can open the veil into his dark room.”

  “And since we know there are intruders, do you want to stumble directly on them, or sneak up and remove their heads before they even know you are there?” His eyes flashed with anger.

  “Fine.” I hated when he was right, mostly because he’d been a pain in my ass for so damn long. He might want to keep me alive, but when push came to shove, he would rather put me on the line than himself.

  Faris couldn’t go and check on Doran himself, but this would work for me. Close enough to Frank and his little necromancer friend that I wouldn’t need him to move us around. I’d just borrow Doran’s car and get them.

  “Make sure he isn’t hurt.” True worry in Faris’s voice surprised me. “Do not fail in this, Rylee; the vampire nation has never been stronger than since he took the reins. We do not want to lose him.”

  I snorted and headed toward the sunlight. “He’s my friend, Faris. If something or someone is trying to hurt him I will do everything I can. You fucking well know that.”

  Alex snorted, his words betraying him again as he gained more humanity back every day. “Doran is good. Worth saving.” But he ruined the serious tone by prancing across the room with his front knees firing up around his ears.

  He and I stepped through, Erik behind
us.

  “Have your wolf call me when you are ready,” Faris said, and the veil shut, closing us off.

  Not that I was worried.

  But I should have been.

  “What the hell are you doing?” He tackled Thomas to the floor, not caring if he broke the old man’s ribs, head or any other body part. The necromancer’s eyes glazed the second the veil opened and then all hell broke loose.

  Thomas snarled and tried to buck him off. The front door rattled as a zombie no doubt threw itself at it.

  “Get off me, Guardian. I know how to end your life. I have no qualms about piecing you out to my pets.”

  Liam didn’t move, fury and true fear racing through him. Not for himself, never for himself. Rylee had better have made it through the veil. His muscles clenched and he fought to keep from snapping the necromancer’s neck. They needed him for a while yet. “You sent her to bring back your protégés, how did you think she was going to get them?”

  Thomas stared up at him and slowly the mania faded from his eyes, and the thumping against the door stilled. “Get off. I am myself again.”

  He waited a half breath before moving, then pushed to his feet. But he did not offer his hand to the necromancer.

  With great difficulty, Thomas got to his knees, then his feet, his whole body shaking. “It has been many years since I last came across a vampire. The memories are too strong for me to deal with. Do you know the story of why the vampires and the necromancers hate one another?”

  “No.” Liam wasn’t sure he cared either, but then again, maybe there was information that would help them later. Or maybe not. But the FBI agent in him knew all the knowledge he could gather couldn’t hurt.

  His body trembling, Thomas slid into his chair, and then lowered his head into his hands.

  “Necromancers created vampires. An experiment with the dead to see if we could truly return life to those we’d lost. At first we ruled them, controlled them and their thirst for blood.”

  Thomas swallowed hard. “But in the end, they revolted and killed most of our people, taking us to the brink of extinction. From that moment forward, it is bred into our very being that we must kill one another.”

  “And you can’t control it?”

  The necromancer shrugged. “When I was young, yes. But I was a captive of a vampire for many years. He had been held by a vindictive necromancer and he returned the favor to me. I learned much, but …”

  Liam didn’t want to feel sorry for the necromancer who’d just tried to kill Rylee, but he understood all too well the feeling of being held captive. How would he have dealt with Milly if he’d been bound by her for years? No, there would have been no coming back from that; even Pamela wouldn’t have been able to win him over.

  “Rylee will have to use the vampire to bring her back.”

  “My zombies are cued to recognize a vampire and kill it if it steps foot onto our land.” Thomas finally lifted his head. “I will not remove that from them.”

  Not that he couldn’t, but he wouldn’t. Liam wanted to pull his hair out. There was no way to contact her, no way to tell Rylee to have Faris drop them off further away.

  He moved into the kitchen and picked up the phone, the line hissing at him but it didn’t go out. Without another second wasted, he called Doran’s number.

  The phone on the other end rang a dozen times before he hung up. He waited a minute and called again. Nothing.

  Damn.

  Doing his best not to give into his inclination to smash the phone into tiny plastic pieces, he hung it up rather hard. There was nothing he could do.

  Back in the living room he stood with his hands on his hips staring out the window at the zombies swaying ever so slightly in the early morning light.

  Perhaps he could get more information out of Thomas, find a way to make this time pass and be of value. He dove in without preamble.

  “There are demons coming through the veil, and they are possessing supernaturals.”

  “Yes and no. Evil spirits are coming through; they’re not the same as demons. Like shadows of a demon.”

  Liam frowned. “Why yes and no then?”

  “Some demons are being drawn through as well. I don’t know who is doing it but I have felt that through the veil. They are being called forth with magic. The veil has not ripped wide open, though there are attempts being made.” Thomas placed his fingers under his chin, propping his head up. “It is a precursor to the final break. Most likely whoever Orion has working for him on this side has the capability to bring forth demons and then allow them to possess others. It is a slow process, which is why they are freeing the evil spirits to possess the weaker-willed supernaturals as well. They are covering all their bases, whoever is doing this.”

  Liam thought of India, and the black coven, how close they had come to having their first victim in that little girl. She’d been inside a pentagram and a hoarfrost demon would have possessed her if Rylee hadn’t stopped the ceremony.

  “Witches, black witches are doing it,” he said, sure of himself.

  “They would have the power and access to the knowledge. It takes more than a desire to pull a demon through the veil.”

  He turned toward the old necromancer. “Can we send the demons back?”

  “Yes. There are ways; that is what the Slayers were for. But there are none left but your Tracker.”

  “Erik—”

  “Is a faint imitation. Years ago, he would have been lucky to be a teacher in the school that educated demon slayers. It is only because he is a brother to the greatest Slayer our world has known that he is even tolerated. Slayers are not human.”

  Liam closed his eyes. “And Erik is.”

  “Yes.” Thomas frowned. “There is something about him I can’t put my finger on, but I do believe he can teach her. If she will learn. I do not think it will be enough to stop Orion in the end, though.”

  That was not what Liam wanted to hear. Not for a second.

  “The demons loose now—”

  Again Thomas cut him off. “I know what you do, wolf. You try to gain knowledge through me. I see it in you, but I truly have little dealing with demons. What I know, I have gleaned from many years on this earth, not from direct contact. Necromancers are not demon dealers. We like them no better than the rest of the supernatural world. If those who were lost had truly done their job, the demons would have been sealed off forever.”

  “You mean the Blood of the Lost?” Oh, Thomas had his interest now.

  “Ah, you know of them?” Thomas lifted an eyebrow. “They are all gone now. And with them the last of our hope.”

  Liam took a chance. “They are not gone. One is left.”

  Thomas slowly brought his head around to stare at him. “Do you speak of yourself, wolf? Guardian and werewolf, you are a strange mix, one that has not been called upon for many, many years.”

  “No, I don’t mean me.” Perhaps he’d said too much. Yet, his wolf seemed to be inclined to trust this man. Much as he’d tried to kill them, it had been in self defense, of a sort.

  “Then you must mean the Tracker.” Slowly, the necromancer bobbed his head. “Yes, I see it in her now. The confidence, the brash behavior, the belief everything will turn out in the end. It never does, you know. The darkness is always stronger than the light, snuffing out candles and hope with a single sweep of its hand.”

  “I pity you, if you truly believe that.”

  The silence stretched after Liam’s words, the ticking of some distant clock in the house the only sound and he doubted Thomas could even hear it. But he could. He heard the way the necromancer’s heart beat, a funny hitch every third or fourth ‘lub, lub.’ Liam shook his head; so what if the old man had a twitchy heart?

  “And I pity you, wolf, for you will follow her down all the dark paths she takes, and in the end, it will kill you.” Thomas’s eyes pinned him.

  Liam didn’t turn from him, didn’t blink, just met his stare with his own.

  “I
know. But I wouldn’t leave her, not for an extra hundred years of life.”

  Thomas laughed softly, lacing his fingers together under his chin. “Then it seems we pity one another, for I would not follow her, not for all the love in the world.”

  His eyes narrowing ever so slightly, he turned from the necromancer. Not so long ago, he might have agreed with Thomas. But not now.

  Not now that he had Rylee.

  Chapter 16

  I STOOD ON THE threshold of Doran’s home and very softly said, “Alex.”

  He slunk forward, breathing in the air deeply, and just as softly answered me. “Ogres.”

  Oh fuck. There was a shuffle of feet deeper in the house. A grumble of voices. Berget and Doran were not helpless, but they would be bound to stay in the dark rooms and spaces of the house. I wished it were night and Faris had been able to come with us.

  Putting a hand on Erik’s arm, I tugged him close. “Ogres are big, fast and all they really know is fucking and fighting. And right now, they hate me with the heat of a thousand burning suns.”

  “Poetic,” Erik whispered, “but I did manage to figure that out the last time I saw you interact with them.”

  I shrugged and gave him a tight smile. “Thanks. I don’t know how you’ll fare against them, but stick close to me.”

  He stilled. “I’ll wait outside.”

  Again, he was going to leave me to do this on my own. Hell, he was really not much help at all. What a tool.

  “Try not to get killed.” I pulled my sword free of its sheath and headed into the house. I aimed for the kitchen, keeping my footsteps quiet, knowing the ogres might already know we were here. Their sense of smell was, in some ways, better than Alex’s.

  “Steak,” Alex whispered and I caught a whiff of meat being roasted, setting off my saliva glands. Apparently they were good cooks, just like Dox.

  We inched closer until I could peer around the corner into Doran’s kitchen. Except for the two ogres screwing each other’s brains out on the huge butcher slab that acted as an island in the middle of the kitchen, everything was the same as I remembered. One ogre was green, the other red. Like a seriously perverted Christmas scene. Never mind catching mommy kissing Santa Claus.