“Yeah, but what about my promise?” I said dismally. “About destroying Arnaud?”
“I want him gone more than anything.” Her thumb tapped a button on the stomach of her blouse. “But I can’t imagine the kinds of choices you had to face in there. I’m not going to second-guess what you did.”
I pulled her in close and pressed my lips to the crown of her head. “Before I do anything else, I’ll talk with the Order,” I said. “See what our options are for—”
I grunted and doubled over as a savage force twisted my guts.
“What is it?” Vega asked in alarm, kneeling beside me. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s the agreement,” I managed. “Arnaud did his part, and now I have to do mine.”
She helped me to my feet and drew my arm over her shoulder. “Then we’ll do it together.”
With Vega supporting me, we made our way to Arnaud’s cell. When we arrived, I nodded and whispered that I could stand under my own power. Though the pain lingered, the brunt of the soul attack had passed.
She drew her service pistol, the magazine loaded with hybrid rounds. I unlocked the door and pulled it open. Beyond the oscillations of warding energy, Arnaud rose to his feet in his prison scrubs and neat robe.
“For a moment, I thought you were going to stand me up.” He strolled forward, hands behind his back. “And after saving humanity together,” he tutted. When he spied Vega behind me, he leaned over and smiled. “Hello, lovely.”
“I just want one assurance,” I said.
His eyes snapped back to mine. “Oh, I’m sorry, Mr. Croft. You accepted the agreement as is. There was no talk of amendments or assurances. And what did you say when I attempted to establish the terms for delivering you into the time catch? ‘No one gives a shit’?” He opened a hand. “Well, then.”
“That you’ll really stay away from my family,” I pressed on.
“My history as a vampire is one of persevering. And as a demon, I’ll increasingly crave power. We had this conversation, Mr. Croft. I can’t help what I am. And neither can you. As my ambitions grow, so will my enterprises. I’ll do things that will offend who you are and what you stand for. You may not be able to challenge me directly, per the terms of the agreement, but you’ll make every effort to frustrate my plans. That’s a cart of bothers I won’t tolerate.” He leaned over to look at Vega again, this time making a point of fixing his demonic gaze on her stomach. “And family, I’ve found, make excellent pressure points. If you could promise to leave me to my work—work you deem reprehensible—then I might honor your request. But you can’t, so I won’t. Now, kindly release me.”
Arnaud’s smug voice and subtle threats needled my rage centers. I accessed the pulsating wards. Did I test the strength of the agreement and throw them wide? Reduce the demon-vampire to smoke before he knew what hit him? The gut-twisting pain seized me again, and I dropped to my knees.
“Stop it!” Vega shouted, placing a hand on my shoulder.
Arnaud laughed heartily. “Oh, I’m not doing a thing, Miss Vega. Your shillyshallier is doing this all to himself.”
I could feel the pleasure he took in my pain, in Vega’s fear. But beyond that, I could feel his raging hunger. Free of Malphas, immune from the Order, and with no demonic rivals on this plane, the world was truly his oyster. The minute he walked, he would start seeding his hellish empire in Manhattan. One that would exceed his reign as a vampire in misery and butchery many, many times over as he pursued the rank of demon lord.
Yellow flames flickered in his eyes as he grinned down at me. “Come now, Croft,” he purred. “You’re only delaying the inevitable.”
Vega was right. An evil like his couldn’t be allowed in our world.
When a third attack hit me, this one carrying a stench of putrescence and death, I realized something. The pain wasn’t coming from the demonic agreement. Shuffling footsteps echoed down the corridor.
“Um, Everson?” Vega whispered when I’d caught my breath.
I followed her gaze to where a figure stood across the holding area, a long blade extending from one hand. Vega pivoted her service pistol, but I placed a hand on her forearm and brought it down.
“It’s all right,” I said, standing again.
Vega’s nose wrinkled sharply. “What in the hell is it?”
I turned back to Arnaud. “Since visiting your cell yesterday morning, everything you’ve told me has been true. You didn’t deceive me once. Though I suppose that was a play in itself—accumulate trust points so that when it really mattered, I’d be more prone to give you what you wanted.”
Arnaud had been trying to see who Vega and I were talking about. Now his eyes slashed back to mine. “Free me,” he said, insistence scoring the words. He might not have been able to see the presence, but he could feel it.
“I believe, from our talk in my library, that you were a decent person in life,” I continued. “From the sounds of it, you were attacked and left for dead, probably for your cargo. And that’s how a vampire found you, much how you would later find Maggie. I believe your claim that you resisted the bloodlust for as long as possible before it became all-consuming, and you accepted the creature you had become.”
Arnaud winced as the footsteps shuffled across the holding space. I could see the figure in my peripheral vision, the swinging blade glinting under the fluorescence. Vega seized my arm, but I kept my gaze fixed on Arnaud.
“The same with your demonism,” I said. “I don’t question the power lust that grows inside you like an infernal blaze, the bloody ambitions it feeds. It’s who you’ve become. It’s your nature now. The thing is, I can’t allow it. Not in our world.”
“We have a deal,” he seethed.
“We do,” I agreed. “But she doesn’t.”
I stepped back as the revenant arrived. Arnaud’s eyes shot wide, and he recoiled with his whole body. I couldn’t blame him.
Blade looked even more gruesome than the night I’d discovered her slaughtered body in her apartment. Dried blood spattered her disheveled scythe of pink hair. A hoodie jacket hung around a tank top that was blood-brown and in tatters. Arnaud had driven the vampire hunter through multiple times with her own katana swords, then left her pinned to the wall. From a pale green face, Blade’s vengeance-hardened eyes swung toward him.
“No, no,” Arnaud babbled. “You can’t hire anyone to come after me. It goes against the agreement.”
“My contract with Blade ended with her murder,” I replied. “This is between you two now.”
In desperation, Arnaud flung himself at the doorway. The ward met him in a burst of force and flames and threw him to the floor. He kicked himself backwards, smoke scattering from his trembling body.
“Per our agreement,” I said to him, “I release you.”
As the oscillating wards disappeared, my pain vanished along with the energy of the demon bargain.
I gestured Blade toward the open doorway. “He’s all yours.”
She nodded and stepped inside with her enchanted sword. There was a brief scuffle followed by Arnaud’s shrill scream and the crunch of metal spearing demon flesh. Mercifully, Blade closed the door behind her, muting what followed.
“Do you want to tell me what the hell is going on?” Vega asked in a shaky voice.
“At some point in her life, Blade underwent a ceremony with a powerful necromancer,” I said, walking her a few paces from the cell. “Maybe as payment for a job, I don’t know. But it ensured that were she ever murdered, she would return as a powerful spirit, a revenant, to avenge her death.” That seemed like Blade. “The thing is, because of the dislocation sigil I’d placed on Arnaud, she couldn’t find him.”
“So she locked onto you.”
“Exactly. She knew I’d been hunting him, so she calculated I could lead her to him. She came to my apartment yesterday morning, then tracked me to the Upper East Side. She also managed to find me in the time catch. Because her revenant powers were set on me, I reacted in
the same way her intended target would have. It’s awful, like exploratory bowel surgery but without the anesthesia.”
Vega held up a hand. “I get the picture.”
“But I was never in danger. Blade’s objective was always Arnaud. Caroline used an enchantment to hide me, but when she had to leave, so did the enchantment’s effect. Blade tracked me here.”
“Damned good timing,” Vega remarked.
The door to the cell swung out. For a moment, I was afraid Arnaud was going to step around the door, a victorious grin on his bloody lips. But it was Blade who came into view, wiping her sword on the leg of her cargo pants. Though she was still covered in dried blood, a healthy flush had replaced her green tone from earlier. As she looked at us, her eyes softened, becoming more human, more living.
“Paybacks are a bitch,” she muttered.
“Blade,” I stammered. “Are you … all right?”
I felt like an idiot for asking, but I’d never talked to a revenant before.
“Am now,” she said, sliding her sword into the sheath on her back. “Sorry for going psycho stalker on you.”
“No worries,” I said. “I’m just sorry for what happened to you and the others.”
She waved a hand dismissively. “Don’t be. We knew the risks when we got into the business. It’s why I took out this little insurance policy.” She gestured down her vengeful spirit body and winked.
Vega whispered to me, “What happens now?”
Assuming she really has destroyed Arnaud, she passes on, I thought. The fact she was still here made me nervous. Maybe she had only cast him back to the Below, where he could reform and return someday.
“I’ll be damned,” Blade said.
A rosy light warmed her tilted-back face as though she were watching the sun come up over the Sierra Nevada. The light grew and brightened, suffusing her form until it was simply too beautiful to watch. Vega and I turned away.
“So long, party crasher,” she called as the light receded again.
A parting jab at the night I’d met her, when I was under the influence of Thelonious.
“She’s gone,” Vega said.
I turned back, blinking, to find the holding area empty. I walked over to the cell and peered inside. A faint thread of Arnaud’s vapor lingered where Blade had slain him, its residual malice dwindling and breaking apart.
“So is Arnaud Thorne,” I said, exhaling heavily. “For good.”
With a weary smile, I walked back toward Vega. I was intending to hold her again, to revel in the end of a chapter in our lives. But as I arrived in front of her, I knew I was ready to start the next one.
“I admit, this isn’t how I pictured the moment. In the wake of a grudge match between a revenant and a demon-vampire, and me wearing a silk gown, but…” I dropped to one knee and beamed up at her. “Ricki Serrano Vega, would you do me the incredible honor of becoming my wife?”
Somewhere, I imagined Mae nodding her approval.
50
6 months later
On the first Saturday in May, we were married in St. Martin’s Cathedral in downtown Manhattan.
Ricki wore an elegant ivory satin gown with thin straps and a v-neckline. I chose a conservative wool suit, Irish brown. We made a nice portrait. Much of the ceremony seemed to speed past, but exchanging vows with her under the stained-glass image of St. Michael was one of the most profound moments of my life. And our kiss following the pronouncement of holy matrimony one of the happiest.
It was made sweeter by the applause of our friends and family who had come, and a touch more sentimental by the absence of those who couldn’t.
We reserved a nice courtyard in Brooklyn for the reception, which was catered by one of Ricki’s cousins. All of her family attended, and as a perfect spring day deepened into blue evening, and hanging lanterns glowed over Mediterranean cypresses, nieces and nephews scattered into a rowdy game of chase.
Tony, our ring bearer, turned to his mother. “Can I?”
“Go ahead,” Vega said. “Just take it into the yard over there.”
He looked at me with expectant eyes.
“What your mother said.”
“Thanks, Dad!”
As he jumped up from the head table, I took Vega’s hand. Her far hand rested over her very pregnant stomach.
“Pretty kicking wedding, huh?” I said.
She smirked. “We’ll have to do it again sometime.”
The rest of our long table was taken up by members of the wedding party. Tony’s sitter, Camilla, had acted as maid of honor, while Ricki’s oldest brother, Diego, had walked her down the aisle in her late father’s stead. Now, two of her other brothers, Alejandro and Gabe, were laughing about something with their wives, while the youngest of them, Carlos, picked sternly at his plate of flan at the table’s end.
Carlos had been dead set against the wedding and let the family know. Deciding she’d had enough of his shit, Ricki threw down an ultimatum: either shut up and come to the wedding or stay out of our lives for good. He’d come.
“Ugh,” Tabitha grunted. “Is it over yet?”
I’d leashed her to the chair beside me, where she lay slumped on her side affecting a miserable face. Consuming her weight in roasted pork probably had a little to do with it. The rest was just Tabitha.
I grinned. “Still having fun?”
“Wake me up when it’s time to go,” she moaned.
“The dancing starts in twenty and could go all night,” I teased.
Muttering several choice words, she flopped to her other side. I’d placed my father’s sword and mother’s emo ball on the table between us. It may have been my imagination, but the blade seemed to hum with new energy, while the emo ball glowed a little more brightly.
“We did good, Croft,” Vega said.
I looked from her to the small sea of tables, where our guests were chatting over dessert and coffee. We’d accumulated our share of friends and associates over the years. When I thought of the time catch version of me from the recent past and how lonely he’d seemed, I lifted Vega’s hand and kissed it firmly.
“Yes, we did,” I agreed.
The NYPD took up two tables. Vega’s partner, Detective Hoffman, had given us his best at the beginning of the reception. He remarked that we’d chosen well. Though said grudgingly, he sounded like he actually meant it.
Behind them was a table of my fellow professors and their significant others. With the Order back in action and the demon threat stalled, I’d resumed full teaching duties in the spring and freshened up old contacts at the college. I’d even sent an invite to Professor Snodgrass. He would have trashed it, no doubt, but his wife, Miriam, was a fan of mine and the first guest to RSVP.
She was presently holding court at their table. When Snodgrass reached for a carafe of water, she slapped his hand, telling him he was going to spill it, then snapped her fingers for one of the servers. Snodgrass gave me a disconsolate look that said he hoped I’d have better luck with my partner.
One table over sat Caroline and her husband, as well as several members of their fae court. Angelus, who had received emergency healing, looked as handsome and formidable as ever. He was even sporting a freshly grown hand.
Caroline had attempted to send Osgood back to us that day, but the 1776 time catch was locked. In the weeks following my return, gifts had arrived from Faerie, much of it foods that couldn’t be found in our world. The lion’s share ended up in Tabitha’s belly, of course. And when the gifts tapered off, she fell into a mild depression from which she was still recovering. Caroline had included a personal letter in the first package, thanking me for my trust in her and for helping to restore her husband and their marriage.
She smiled warmly at me now across the courtyard, her sentiments of friendship no longer being blocked.
The fae butler had come too. Sporting a silver tuxedo, Osgood was drawing a healthy amount of attention from the fifty-and-older female crowd. Above their table I could just make ou
t the circling contrails of Pip and Twerk. The demon twins had recalled them that day, it turned out, not destroyed them. I told the pixies they were invited as long as they remained out of sight and didn’t prank the guests.
Carlos was fair game, though.
“Great wedding,” a barking voice said.
I turned to find Bree-yark limping up on a cane, Mae beside him. They had been seated on my side of the head table, but they’d gathered up Dropsy the lantern as well as the pet carrier holding Buster.
“Not thinking of bailing on me, are you?” I said to Bree-yark. “Best man?”
Though I winked, he gave an embarrassed chuckle. “Aw, we’d love to stay, but…”
“But,” Mae took up, “this old lady is pushing her bedtime, and Bree-yark is being a gentleman and making sure I get home safe.” Their courtship was still going slow and strong, and they seemed happier than ever.
“I’m so glad you two could come,” I said, standing. “Truly.” When Buster chirped and wriggled his tendrils through the mesh door and Dropsy set off a pair of flashes, I chuckled. “You guys, too.”
“It was beautiful,” Mae whispered as I hugged her over the table. “And I’m not ashamed to tell you I cried like a proud momma.”
“Thanks for all your advice.”
“Anytime, sweetie.”
As she turned to gush over how amazing Vega looked one last time, I regarded Bree-yark. He’d been in bad shape when the Order recovered him from the time catch. Heavily scored by infernal fire, his chances of survival were doubtful. But true to his warrior spirit, he clawed his way back from the brink. And now here he was, having my back once again, and on my most important day.
“Thanks for everything,” I said, the words barely making it around the knot in my throat.
“Aw, c’mon. I keep tellin’ you I’m fine.” He held up his cane. “Another few weeks, and I can ditch this thing.”
Night Rune (Prof Croft Book 8) Page 36
