Fields of Blood (The DeathSpeaker Codex Book 2)

by Sonya Bateman

  “Yeah, I…” Damn. Abe didn’t know about my past either, and there was no short way to explain this. Not that I would anyway. I loved the guy, he’d been like a father to me—and he didn’t deserve the burden of knowing. “Everything’s fine,” I said. “Promise. Call you back in a few minutes, okay?”

  “All right,” he said. “If you’re sure…”

  “I’m sure. Thanks, Abe.”

  We hung up and I pocketed the phone. The shower was still running in the bathroom. Probably a good thing, since Sadie might insist on coming with me.

  But I wanted to talk to Reun alone.

  Part of me figured he wouldn’t really stay. He was supposed to be a noble, some kind of Fae royalty, and hanging around waiting for permission to be a servant didn’t seem like a very royal thing to do. But I found Reun sitting in the night-damp, overgrown grass at the far corner of the building, watching the door.

  He looked exhausted and a little nervous when I approached him. “Has Taeral changed his mind?” he said.

  “No, and he’s not going to.” I probably shouldn’t be talking to this guy at all. The Fae half of me was Unseelie, and I’d gathered that the Seelie didn’t get along with them. Reun’s story had only reinforced that. And newfound humility or not, he was still a lot more powerful than me.

  But apparently I wasn’t going to let that stop me. “I want to know about the Milus Dei guys you killed at the church with the cemetery,” I said.

  He blinked. “What about them?”

  “First of all. You did kill them, right?”

  “Of course I did.”

  “Before or after the guy in the park?”

  “Before,” he said. “Why does it matter? The end result is the same—they’ve all been destroyed.”

  “I’m asking for a friend. Cops kind of care about stuff like that.” At least that was one problem solved. We didn’t have to worry about some other crazy guy slitting throats and carving runes on people. Even if the people in question deserved to die. “Okay, look. This is probably a long shot,” I said. “But do you have any idea what they were doing there, at that particular church?”

  Reun sighed, pushed himself up slowly to his feet and brushed bits of plants from his Robin Hood pants. “They appeared to be clearing out some sort of stronghold concealed within the building,” he said.

  “What, like a secret room?”

  “I suppose that would describe it. They were preparing for a journey.”

  “To where?”

  He gave a weak huff. “I’d not thought to ask them, since they would never arrive at their destination,” he said. “And you are not asking the question to which you seek the answer. Is there some significance to this church?”

  “Not really.” I wasn’t going to tell this guy about my mother. But there had to be some reason she’d ended up buried in a place Milus Dei used. I didn’t believe in coincidences. “So you killed all three of them, right? None of them got away?”

  “There were four,” he said. “And yes, I killed them all.”

  I frowned. “The cops only found three bodies.”

  “They’ve not found the stronghold, then. The fourth met his end there.”

  So there was still a dead guy at the church. I could talk to him, find out where they’d been headed, what they were doing—and why they used that place.

  “All right,” I said. If there were any more bodies in the city, I had to let Abe know. One more surprise and he’d blow a gasket. “How many of these assholes did you kill, total, and where were they?”

  Reun thought for a minute. “Seven,” he said. “Four at the church, one at the park. Two inside a derelict building.”

  “Great. There’s only a thousand of those in Manhattan.” I tried not to think about how casually he’d just admitted to killing seven people. “Any derelict building in particular?”

  “There was a sign. I believe it said King Street Theatre.”

  Well, that was something, anyway. I knew the place. There was a bolt hole in the basement, with access to the subtunnel leading to the former Milus Dei headquarters—the warehouse they’d tried to blow up with a dozen of their prisoners still inside. At least I could point Abe to the theater and tell him this time it really was all of them.

  I wouldn’t mention the fourth victim at The Church of Light. That one was mine.

  “Okay. I’m going to the church,” I said. “Where’s the secret room?”

  Reun frowned. “It’s difficult to explain.”

  “You’d better start trying, because I need to know.”

  He paused, and then straightened like he was standing to attention. “I can show you,” he said. “I would be honored to assist the son of Lord Daoin.”

  I would’ve laughed if his persistence wasn’t so sad. “You’re not going to impress Taeral, no matter what you do.”

  His brow furrowed. “I was referring to you. Are you not Daoin’s son?”

  “Yeah, but…never mind.” It’d take way too long to explain why Daoin didn’t know that. “If you want to help, fine. Let’s go.”

  “Where are we going?”

  I managed not to jump when Sadie spoke behind me. “Will you stop doing that?” I said, shooting a glance at her. She’d just stepped out the front entrance, still damp from the shower, and stood glaring with a hand on her hip.

  “Doing what? I can’t help it if your hearing sucks.” She walked across the grass, sending a wary look at Reun. “You’re going somewhere with him?” she said.

  “Yeah. He’s showing me—” I broke off with a frustrated breath. “Long story.”

  “Well, I’ve got time. You can tell me on the way.”

  “You don’t have to go, Sadie.”

  “Yes I do. Who’s going to protect you from the Seelie?”

  I gave her a dry look. “Seriously?”

  “The son of Daoin needs no protection from me,” Reun said, managing to sound haughty and insulted at the same time. “Do you question my honor, breed-child?”

  “What did you just call me?” Sadie half-shouted.

  “All right! Knock it off. Everybody goes,” I grumbled, reaching in a pocket for my keys. “Just shut up and get in the van.”

  This little field trip was going to be a real blast.

  CHAPTER 7

  Cemetery of the Pines was a half-acre or so of decently maintained graves surrounded by a wrought iron fence and an opening with no gate. Unlike most church boneyards, this one was set in front of the church building instead of behind it.

  The last time I was here, I hadn’t looked around much further than I had to.

  I headed for the marker first, still not sure what I’d say to the other two about stopping to visit a grave. But I couldn’t just ignore it when I was so close. The stone was easy to spot, now that I knew what I was looking for—cream colored, standard arch shape, about ten rows back and four columns in.

  There she was. Jessamyn Rose Hadley, the woman who’d died giving birth to me.

  My mother.

  I stopped and crouched in front of the stone, then reached out to trace the drawing inscribed in black below her name. A heart with a sword through it. Taeral had said it meant “dark warrior,” like his family name. Our family name, technically—but I was sticking with Black. Gideon Ciar’ Ansghar just didn’t have the same ring.

  “Hey,” I said, still not entirely comfortable with saying mom. I’d never even called the deranged woman I thought was my mother that. “Guess we can’t really talk this time. I just thought I’d stop by, while I was here.”

  A hand on my shoulder startled me. “Someone you knew?” Sadie said gently.

  “Actually, no. Not really,” I said. “She was my mother.”

  “Oh, Gideon. I’m sorry.”

  I shrugged. Sadie knew a little of the story—she and I had tried to dig up the body in Central Park where Taeral buried her, but the NYPD had found her years before and moved her. “Like I said, I didn’t know her. It’s just…I wis
h I did, you know? Might’ve been nice.”

  Reun drifted up on my other side. “Your mother did not raise you?”

  “No.” Something in me shut down, and I straightened without looking at either of them. “Let’s go. We’ve got work to do here.”

  I headed for the church at a fast clip, and the two of them followed. Sadie dropped the subject, probably because she had a dark past of her own she didn’t like to discuss. But Reun refused to take the hint. “So you were raised with Taeral, then,” he said. “Surely, before they took Daoin—”

  “Look, I’m twenty-six. You do the math.”

  “But you are Fae. And the DeathSpeaker.”

  “So?” I glared at him without slowing my pace. “I’m also human. That’s how I was raised. Why the hell do you care, anyway?”

  “You are a changeling,” he said softly. “That explains it.”

  I stopped so suddenly, Sadie bumped into me. “Explains what?”

  “Taeral.” He gave me a strange look. “I believe I mentioned that your brother is not aware he suppresses his full power.”

  “Yeah, you did.” In fact, the son of a bitch had used it to taunt me while he was keeping me captive for Foley. He’d said Taeral could’ve defeated him, if he wasn’t holding back. “So what, you think it’s because I’m a changeling?”

  “Almost certainly,” he said. “It is the gealdht. His promise to protect you.”

  “How the hell do you know about that? Taeral wouldn’t have told you.”

  “He’d no need to. I’ve the ability to track nearly anything, including spells and their sources.” Reun made a vague, dismissive gesture. “At any rate, failure to adhere to a gealdht bears consequences, and Taeral is suffering from them.”

  I frowned. “What kind of consequences?”

  “Fae must keep their promises, to the best of their abilities,” he said. “If they do not, it results in emotional turmoil, suppression of power, a fading spark. And eventually, death.”

  “Wait a minute. Breaking a promise can kill him?”

  “Yes. It can kill any Fae,” he said. “Taeral is aware of this. No gealdht should be entered into lightly. Even one made to a human, apparently,” he added in bitter tones.

  Jesus. I couldn’t believe this. “So if something happens to me, Taeral dies.”

  “Only if it happens because of his failure to protect you.” The corners of his mouth firmed. “The promise appears to have affected him greatly,” he said. “You must have had…difficult experiences, while you were raised away from him.”

  “Yeah. You could say that,” I admitted. “But it wasn’t his fault. I mean, he thought he was protecting me. Getting me away from Milus Dei. He didn’t know, when he…gave me to them.” I trailed off as the weight of it crashed into me like bricks.

  “A gealdht does not consider the intentions of its maker,” Reun said with something approaching sympathy. “It considers only the results of his actions.”

  I shook my head and backed off involuntarily. “So what, he has to protect me for the rest of his life, or he’ll fucking die?” I said. “No. That’s bullshit. It’s not his fault.”

  “Gideon.” Sadie brushed my arm, and I shivered. “It’s not your fault, either.”

  “Well, it sure as hell feels like it,” I growled. “Look…let’s worry about this later. We came here to do something, and I want to get it done.”

  I headed for the little stone church again, angry at nothing and everything all at once. Like it wasn’t bad enough that I’d been saddled with the DeathSpeaker crap—now it was up to me whether my brother lived or died. And unlike what I did or didn’t do with my abilities, this one was out of my hands.

  Even when I tried to stay out of trouble, it always managed to find me.

  CHAPTER 8

  The police tape was still across the wooden door of the church, but it was open. Because it’d been battered off its hinges. I assumed that was Reun’s doing.

  And the bloodbath inside was also courtesy of Reun.

  The small sanctuary held two rows of simple wooden pews, ten to a side. Four of them, the ones up in front on either side, had been upended and smashed. There was blood everywhere—splashed on the walls and the broken pews, pooled on the floor, gushed down the altar in drying rivers that ran across the platform and painted streaks on the shallow marble steps leading up to it. Thick maroon smears marked the aisle, where one of them must have tried to crawl away with a slit throat.

  I wasn’t convinced that even inhuman bastards like Milus Dei deserved this kind of brutal death.

  The scene didn’t sit well with Sadie, either. She hung back by the entrance with me, staring in wide-eyed horror. Reun, on the other hand, strode right up the center aisle, leaving casual boot prints in the blood.

  “Hey! Don’t do that,” I called.

  He glanced back. “What?”

  “You’re making more work for the cops.” I pointed at the floor and the obvious tracks through the gore. “That’ll have them chasing dead ends for a week,” I said. “Go around.”

  With an irritated expression, he doubled back. “Why should we concern ourselves with the problems of humans?”

  “Because Abe is my friend. He’s a cop, and he already has to clean up your mess. We’re not making it worse on him,” I said. “You might try considering other people once in a while. It’ll help with your arrogance problem.”

  He gave a faint sneer. “I am Fae.”

  “Yeah, but this is the human world. Remember?”

  “How could I forget?” he said with a sigh. “Very well. We will go…this way.” He headed for the far left aisle.

  Sadie bumped me with her shoulder and smiled broadly. “Nice handling,” she said.

  “Hey, I just don’t want Abe to bitch at me,” I said with a smirk. “Come on. Let’s check out this stronghold.”

  We followed Reun to the front of the sanctuary and up four wooden steps on the side of the platform. There was a wooden lectern behind the altar that held a massive, leather-bound Bible with yellowed pages, and a heavy floor-to-ceiling velvet curtain draped on the wall behind that.

  “The entrance is here.” Reun stepped up to the curtain and drew it aside slowly, revealing a wall that looked nothing like the rest of the place. While the other interior walls were polished wood paneling, this one was covered with one-inch square ceramic tiles. Hundreds of them, reds and blues and browns in various shades, displayed in a random pattern.

  Sadie frowned at it. “That is one ugly wall.”

  “And there’s a secret door in there somewhere?” I said.

  “Yes.” Reun stood facing the center of the wall. He closed his eyes, raised his right hand and skimmed his fingers along the tiles. Eventually he slowed and stopped. He pressed a single, unremarkable tile.

  There was a click, and a door-shaped part of the wall swung silently inward.

  “Holy shit. Now I see why you couldn’t explain it,” I said. “How’d you find the right tile?”

  He looked over his shoulder with a crooked smile. “Magic.”

  I managed not to groan. Walked right into that one.

  Beyond the door, faint light from somewhere below illuminated a stone staircase. Reun took the lead as we headed down in single file. The air in the stairwell was cool, almost pleasant at first. But it wasn’t long before the stench of death crept in.

  A thick steel, vault-style door stood open at the bottom of the stairs. There was a huge dent in the center of it, like it’d been punched by a giant fist. Once again, I was reminded of how powerful Reun really was—and this time I thought about Taeral. How he could be even stronger than the Seelie noble, if it wasn’t for me.

  There had to be a way to get him out of this bullshit promise.

  The first thing I saw in the secret room was the body. A short man with rust-red hair, lying face-up in a pool of blood at the center of the floor. His open, bulging eyes stared at the ceiling in endless horror. Unlike the other suit-clad Milus
Dei guys we’d run into so far, this one wore jeans, a plain blue tee shirt, and a shabby coat. A black briefcase lay on the floor, about a foot from his outstretched arm.

  A closer look revealed he was just a kid, maybe eighteen years old. Christ.

  The rest of the room wasn’t much. It had been once—there were shelves and metal utility closets and tables scattered all over, but most of them were empty. Just a few papers here and there, something that looked like an umbrella in one of the closets, and a dirty coffee mug lying on its side on a table.

  “Someone’s been here.”

  The tight statement from Reun caught my attention. “It wasn’t like this when you left?”

  “No. There were boxes, bags. They’d not moved things out yet.” He walked toward the body, crouched at the edge of the blood spill and pointed. “Here. You can see the impression where a box was removed.”

  I looked. There was a kind of dimple in the curve of red liquid, and darker lines that formed the outline of a corner.

  “Damn. And it wasn’t the cops, or they would’ve taken this kid too.”

  Sadie gasped and stared at me. “Kid?”

  “Yeah.” She must not’ve looked too closely at the dead guy. “And he doesn’t exactly fit the Milus Dei mold. You sure he was one of them, Reun?”

  “Of course he was. He’s marked with their symbol.”

  “Okay, then.” Still, it didn’t seem right, butchering a kid like that. “Guess I should talk to him. Find out what he knows.”

  With a faint shudder, Sadie drifted further into the room and picked up the briefcase. “I’ll check this out,” she said. “Maybe there’s something in here.”

  “Go for it.”

  She nodded. “Tell us what he says, okay?”

  “I will.”

  I approached the body without much enthusiasm. Something told me I really didn’t want to talk to this kid, but with the other bodies gone, I didn’t have a choice.

  As I tried to find a place next to him with the least amount of blood to kneel in, Sadie laid the briefcase on a table and popped the latches. I was surprised it wasn’t locked. She lifted it open, stared inside, and frowned vaguely as she leaned in closer.