“Are you certain she’s broken with them?”
From the doorway, Kane barked, as if to say that’s what he wanted to know, too. He came into the kitchen and sat beside me.
I related to both of them Juliet’s account of her experiences with the Old Ones. And I told Mab what had happened when I’d visited Juliet in the Goon Squad cell, how the Old Ones had tried to saw off her leg to drag her out of there.
I wondered how Juliet was doing, if the salve had helped. I’d have to call Axel and check. Also Daniel, to see whether forensics had found anything on the swab of the Old One’s blade.
“If her story is true,” Mab said, “I’ll be very interested to meet this roommate of yours. In all my lifetimes, I’ve never heard of a vampire who could resist the Old Ones.”
“Why do the Old Ones have so much power over vampires?” It was easy to see why humans were attracted to the vampires who preyed on them—vampires were sexy, and their narcotic-laced saliva made feeding time an erotic pleasure. But the Old Ones . . . from their hideous faces to their icy auras, there was nothing attractive about those creatures.
“Vampires crave power and life. It’s their nature. They cannot help that any more than you or I can help craving air, water, and food. But it’s a craving that can get out of hand, and too many are prone to give in.”
“The Old Ones offer them more of what they crave.”
She nodded. “The Old Ones don’t just prey upon vampires. Centuries ago, the Old Ones created them. In a sense, vampires belong to them.”
“Explain, please.”
Mab cleared her throat, going into storyteller mode. “In ancient times, shamans were the most powerful men in the world. They were prophets, priests, and rulers, or advisers to rulers. In Wales these shamans were the derwyddon, the druids.” She poured herself another mug of tea, sipped. “Most druids were admirable men, loyal to a code of service and honor. But power corrupted then, as it always does. A druid named Colwyn became obsessed with the power of death. How could he have so much influence over men, and over the natural world through magic, and still be subject to death? The question possessed him, drove him mad.”
“This is the same Colwyn who’s working with Myrddin now?”
“Yes, but I can’t imagine that either of those two is happy in their alliance. I’ll explain why in a moment. When Colwyn was still human, still a druid, he began experimenting. He realized that power doesn’t exist on its own; it’s something you receive—or forcibly take—from others. And life, he reasoned, works the same way. Every sentient creature needs to consume life in order to sustain life. Predators eat other animals. Grazers absorb life from the living plants they eat. But that’s consuming only a small amount of life, just enough to keep going for another day. Take more life, Colwyn reasoned, take it in massive quantities, and you could live forever.”
“Sounds like a recipe for mass murder.”
“Indeed. There have always been rumors of druids performing human sacrifice. Anthropologists still debate the question today. The druids did not sacrifice living humans.” Her expression darkened. “Only Colwyn did. Hundreds of them. Eventually, he passed through death and turned himself into a vampire. The first one.
“Colwyn discovered how to create others like him. At first, Colwyn’s little band of vampires were very much like the vampires you know today, possessing youth, beauty, and strength. There were arguments, of course, power struggles, splinter groups. Vampires spread across Europe, across the world. They went to war with each other. With the rise of the Roman Empire, they went underground. And then, about seven centuries after he’d corrupted himself, Colwyn began to weaken.”
“Seven hundred years. That’s about Juliet’s age. She said the same thing, that she could feel herself growing weaker.”
Mab nodded. “All living things have a life span. Vampires are a corruption of nature, but they haven’t conquered death, merely traversed it once to postpone their ultimate end. Nature does win out eventually, as it must. But Colwyn couldn’t accept that. So much power, so much life, and he was losing it. He pondered on his original transformation. If he’d cheated death once by preying on humans, perhaps he could cheat it permanently by preying on what he considered a greater life form.”
“He started feeding on vampires.”
“Yes. And you see what he became as a result.” Colwyn traded beauty and youth for raw power. The Old Ones, with their skull-like faces and massive fangs, were vampires stripped to their essence: on the other side of death, craving power. “In a very short time, vampires became problematic as a food source. Although they’d spread, their population was relatively small, and Colwyn slaughtered most before he realized that he couldn’t treat vampires the same way he’d treated humans. So he preyed upon humans to feed his physical body and vampires to feed his power. He selected his most loyal followers and converted them into the creatures we now call the Old Ones. And if they’d been hidden before, now they pulled back even further into the shadows.”
“Let me guess. Fast forward to today, and their life span is once again coming to an end. That’s why I could kill one.”
Kane woofed.
“And Kane could, too,” I added, stroking his fur.
“Yes,” Mab said. “As vampires, they lasted seven hundred and fifty years. As Old Ones, they doubled that life span. But again, they’re weakening. I believe that’s why they’ve become so vulnerable to silver. In their strength, they possessed all the powers of a vampire many, many times over. In their weakness, their vulnerabilities are similarly amplified.”
I added up the numbers in my head. According to Mab’s story, Colwyn was more than two thousand years old. “So two-plus millennia aren’t enough for them.” You’d think that even a vampire-god wannabe would get tired of the game after all that time.
“Obsessions do not fade with time, child. They intensify. Colwyn will never get enough power. And he’ll never stop questing after eternal life.”
Not until we stopped him. “So where does Myrddin fit in?” I asked. “You said he and Colwyn weren’t exactly happy campers together.”
Something flared in my aunt’s eyes at the mention of Myrddin’s name. But it was gone in a moment.
“He’s the real Myrddin Wyllt, isn’t he?” I said. “I thought he’d named himself after some crazy wizard he admired.”
“Yes, he is. There can be no doubt about that.” Again, a glimpse of something in her face I couldn’t read. “You remember the story, correct?”
Uh-oh. Quiz time. “Myrddin was a prophet who worked for a chieftain named, um . . .”
“Gwenddoleu.”
“I knew that. Give me a chance, Mab.” I hated feeling like my knowledge was spotty in front of my aunt. But I did know this legend. “They lived in the sixth century.” Nearly fifteen hundred years ago, around the time the Old Ones were weakening as vampires and trying to extend their life span. “Myrddin went insane after his chieftain’s entire army was killed in battle. He ran off to the woods and lived as a wild man. Later, he prophesied his own triple death.”
The triple death was how Myrddin Wyllt’s story always ended. He predicted he’d die three times: by falling, by stabbing, and by drowning. And he did. A crowd of thugs, jeering at the madman, drove him off a cliff high above a river. He landed on a stake, which impaled him, and drowned with his head underwater. Three deaths for the price of one.
Mab nodded, and I felt a rush of relief at passing her pop quiz. “That’s the gist of the recorded legends, yes. But the legends tell only part of the real story. Myrddin served as Gwenddoleu’s bard, but he was actually working for Colwyn, who’d promised the wizard vast rewards if he could deliver the secret to eternal life. Myrddin believed he’d found it. He experimented on Gwenddoleu and his men and, thinking he’d made them invulnerable, summoned Colwyn to watch the battle. When Myrddin’s magic failed and the army fell, Colwyn was livid. Myrddin fled for his own life.
“He went into hiding in the w
oods. There, he learned the languages of animals and gained power over them. He also began to give more and more control to his demon half. As you know, most demi-demons have a human form and a shadow demon that exists primarily in the demon plane. Myrddin merged his two sides into a single entity. That’s where the name Myrddin Wyllt comes from. Wyllt is the name of his shadow demon; it means ‘wild.’ When he called Wyllt forth into himself, he added its name to his own.”
“What does that mean, that he merged them?”
“Part of Wyllt is always present in Myrddin’s human form, and part of Myrddin always dwells in the demon plane. As far as I know, no other demi-demon has achieved this feat, although Myrddin hasn’t been around to teach anyone.”
“The triple death.” Myrddin Wyllt couldn’t have died that way, not if he was running around Boston now. “So that part of the legend is untrue?”
“Myrddin Wyllt was indeed driven off a cliff, impaled, and drowned. But none of those things killed him. The so-called triple death was nothing more than a demi-demon’s parlor trick.”
“What for?” Killing yourself in three different ways didn’t sound like a fun way to liven up a dull afternoon.
“He wanted to convince Colwyn he’d finally achieved immortality. For the reward. But Myrddin’s means of surviving those injuries was nothing Colwyn could use. Merging with his demon half allowed Myrddin to enter and exit the demon plane almost simultaneously. For each injury Myrddin sustained, he blinked into the demon plane, healed there, and returned—too fast for the eye to perceive. Colwyn believed him.”
“And Myrddin got rich by tricking him.”
Mab shook her head. “He never had the chance. As you know, the character of Merlin is made up of many legends. What other ways did a wizard called Myrddin or Merlin come to his end?”
I searched my memory. “He was imprisoned in a tree or a cave by Nimuë.” According to the legend, Nimuë was a beautiful young nymph who seduced Myrddin, stole his magic, and locked him up forever. According to my family history, she was Cerddorion. Not surprising that she’d tangle with a demi-demon.
“It was a tree,” Mab said. She wrapped her hands around her empty mug and stared past me, her eyes unfocused, her face sad. Then she shook it off. She stood up and carried the mug to the sink. “And there Myrddin stayed. Until Colwyn undid the spell and released him.” Her voice took on a hard edge. “But I wish by all that’s holy he’d stayed there forever.”
17
I WANTED TO ASK MAB MORE QUESTIONS, BUT SHE SAID she wanted to rest. I couldn��t blame her. Crossing the collective unconscious had to leave a worse hangover than transatlantic jet lag. So I changed the sheets on my bed and made it up neatly—gotta get that character nice and shiny for my aunt—and redistributed clothes into the hamper or the closet.
When Mab was settled, I went to make some phone calls. Kane was again absorbed in the news, so I went into the kitchen to use the phone. When I picked up the handset, a stutter tone indicated voice mail was waiting. I punched in the numbers to retrieve my messages. The first call had come in just after seven a.m.
“Hi, Vicky, it’s Gwen. Maria’s been having more dreams.” My sister’s voice sounded slightly embarrassed. “She woke up this morning absolutely convinced that you were in danger, and I promised I’d call and make sure you’re okay. So that’s what I’m doing. Give me a call when you get this, okay?”
A computerized voice announced that the next message was from the same number, recorded a few minutes later. This one was from Maria herself. “Um, hi, Aunt Vicky,” she said, almost whispering. “It’s Maria. Your niece. Sorry, that sounded dumb. I know you know who I am. You, um, said I could talk to you if I had any more weird dreams. And I did, but this one was really weird. There was this lady who said she was my aunt, and . . .” Maria paused, and her voice got so quiet and hurried I could barely hear her words. “I’ve gotta go. Don’t call me back, okay? I’ll call you later.” The message ended, and there was no more voice mail.
Mab hadn’t erased her presence from Maria’s dreamscape as completely as she’d thought. I felt bad that Maria had worried about me all morning, but she’d be fine once she knew I was okay. The memory of the dream would fade—it probably had already.
I checked the clock. It was a little after one; Gwen would be at Justin’s playgroup. I dialed her home number and left a chirpy message that I was just calling to say hi and would try again later. That should put Maria’s mind at rest.
Next I called Creature Comforts, not expecting an answer since it was the middle of the norm workday—and that meant sleepy time for most paranormals. I figured I’d try, and then go over and let myself in to check on Juliet. Axel surprised me by picking up the phone.
“Yeah?”
“Axel, hi. I hope I didn’t wake you.”
“Nope. Deliveries.” Talking with Axel was always an exercise in minimalism. Talking to him on the phone felt positively skeletal.
“Okay, well, I’ll let you get back to work. I’m just calling to check on, um, your guest. How’s she doing?”
“Holding steady.”
“So the wound hasn’t healed yet?” Damn. I was hoping to hear the salve had cured her.
“Hasn’t gotten worse.”
Huh. Somehow I’d never figured Axel for an optimist. Next he’d be telling me that Juliet’s bottle of blood was half-full.
“So you’ve been using the salve?”
“Yep.”
“Okay, good. I’ll be in to see her tonight.”
We hung up without any further chitchat.
I also needed to check in with Daniel, so I dialed his number at work. He answered right away.
“Any developments?” I asked.
“Not yet. The lab is swamped, as usual. No, worse than usual. But my friend there did say he’d look at it when he had a spare minute.” Okay. I was a little less worried about poison now, since Juliet’s wound had stabilized. “Did you get a chance to talk to your aunt?” he asked.
“She agrees that the Reaper is Morfran-possessed.” I knew that from my own experience, but I didn’t want to place myself at the most recent murder scene. Daniel would want me to come in to the precinct, and the questioning would last for hours. If the cops even believed me. I had no wounds to show for my run-in with the Reaper. “But she says the murderer has to be present for a Morfran exorcism to work.”
“So there’s no way to call it out, make the murderer come to us.”
“I’m afraid not. But I think the Reaper is being controlled by someone else.”
“You do? Who?”
A fifteen-hundred-year-old, half-demon wizard who’d spent most of his life sealed up in a tree. Maybe I wouldn’t phrase it quite that way. I told Daniel about Myrddin, describing his appearance and explaining that Myrddin was using the Reaper in a ritual to harvest victims’ life forces and resuscitate Pryce.
“How did you learn all this?”
Good question. For Daniel’s sake, I wished I could answer it. “Can we make this an anonymous tip for now? Just follow up and see if there’s anything to it. I promise there will be.”
Daniel was silent for a minute. I could almost hear his reluctance over the phone; he didn’t like going off the record. “Okay” he said finally. “Tell me where I can find this Myrddin Wyllt.”
“I wish I knew, Daniel. I really wish I knew.”
KANE WAS ASLEEP ON THE SOFA, THE NEWS CHANNEL STILL on. I muted the TV and watched him. His wolf form was beautiful, with a thick, silver coat, supple muscles, and intelligent features. As he lay on the sofa, his ribs gently expanding and contracting with each breath, the long, lean lines of his body defined animal grace.
But I missed talking with him. And I missed the feel of his arms around me, his hands on my skin. I wanted Kane, my Kane, back. And I didn’t want to wait until the next full moon.
Maybe there was another option. I went back into the kitchen and picked up the phone.
Roxana Jade was one of Bosto
n’s leading witches. I’d met her last fall, when she helped me prevent a Hellion from destroying the city. She was beautiful—with long silky black hair and the kind of figure that makes men look not twice but five or six times—and also smart and accomplished. To tell the truth, I was a little envious of her. But she was an expert in magic, and she might have some ideas about getting a stuck werewolf unstuck.
I found her number, dialed, and we chatted for a few minutes. I wanted to work my question into the conversation casually if I could. But when you’re talking about the spring weather and the movie you saw last weekend, it’s hard to drop in a mention of werewolves. I blurted instead.
“Have you ever heard, hypothetically speaking, of a werewolf getting stuck in wolf form?” Not what you’d call smooth, but at least we were on track.
“Hypothetically? In folklore, there are stories like that. Usually the werewolf can’t change back because someone hid his clothes.” Kane had a couple of suits in my closet, so that wasn’t the problem. Roxana continued: “It’s funny how in those stories, the wolf is almost always a man—one with a cheating wife who finds it convenient to prevent her husband from returning.” Nope, definitely not the case here.
“Anything else?”
“Well, there’s wolfsbane. One of the reasons that plant got its name is that it’s the bane of the wolf—in other words, it makes the wolf vanish and brings back the human form.”
That sounded more promising. “How does it work?”
“From what I understand, it’s compounded into an ointment and rubbed into the wolf’s paws.”
“So is this ointment for sale?”
“Oh, no, I don’t think so. Wolfsbane is highly poisonous.” She paused. “Why do I get the feeling we’ve moved beyond the hypothetical?”
I considered. I didn’t know Roxana well, but she’d given me help and support when that Hellion threatened Boston. She’d had reason to doubt me then, but she’d decided to trust me. Okay. I’d make the same decision now.
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