She killed him in cold blood, Vicky. A fifteen-year-old boy. And all because he tried to kiss me.
Yet Gwen’s words haunted me all the way home.
WHEN I WALKED IN MY FRONT DOOR, MAB LOOKED UP from the book she was reading. Kane came over and sniffed at my fingers, wagging his tail.
“You had a telephone message—” Mab began.
“I need to talk to you. Right now.” My voice sounded harsh as I gestured toward the bedroom.
“The caller did say it was important.”
“So is this.”
Mab didn’t argue. She stood slowly, her brow creased as she peered at me. She balanced her book on the arm of the chair and walked around the sofa to the bedroom.
Kane tilted his head, curious.
“I’m not trying to shut you out, but I need to talk to my aunt in private. It’s a family matter.”
He pressed against my leg, like he wanted to show his support, then went into the kitchen.
Mab sat straight-backed on the edge of my bed, hands folded in her lap. She kept her face blank, waiting.
I closed the door and leaned back against it. “Mab . . .” On the ride back from Needham, I’d imagined a dozen different scenarios of how I’d handle this conversation: a confrontation, a gentle question, a matter-of-fact request for her explanation. Now, it was hard just to get the words out. Gwen’s story, so vivid when she told it, dimmed, and suddenly I wanted to say never mind, it was a mistake, forget the whole thing. The idea of Mab as a murderer was preposterous. But I needed to know the truth. I blurted, “Gwen told me you killed someone in front of her. A village boy named Eric.”
Mab closed her eyes as if in pain. But then she nodded, once, and I had the feeling she’d expected my words. “Yes, I thought she might bring that up now. To enlist your help in keeping me away from Maria, I’d wager.” She opened her eyes and regarded me calmly. No hint of guilt troubled her gaze. “Frankly, I’m surprised she’s waited this long. She never told you before?”
“Don’t you think I’d have asked you about it if she had? I’m asking now. I need to hear your side of the story.”
“Well, your sister told you the truth. During the brief period of her apprenticeship, I became aware she was sneaking out of the house at night. I followed her, I saw her meet a boy. And I slashed his throat.”
She looked at me fiercely, almost defiantly, challenging me to judge her acts. I put my hands behind me to hide their shaking, but I waited. There had to be more coming, and I was keeping my judgment—and my emotions—in check until I knew the whole story.
“There was no village boy, Victory. It was Pryce.”
“Pryce?” The demi-demon who’d loosed the Morfran on Boston and tried to kill me had once upon a time courted my sister?
She nodded. “He somehow learned my niece had come to Wales to train with me, and his first thought was of the prophecy. He wanted to find out whether this young American niece was the Victory foretold in The Book of Utter Darkness.”
The Book of Utter Darkness was an ancient text, written in the language of Hell, that outlined the origin of demons and was full of slippery prophecies about the struggle between the Cerddorion and demonkind. Pryce had attempted to use the book as his personal road map to power, believing that “Victory,” mentioned in the book, was destined to be his mate and demon queen. In the end, though, his arrogance had caused him to misinterpret the prophecies and end up as he was now, “the sleeper.”
Mab continued: “Pryce altered his human appearance to that of a teenage boy.” Demi-demons can’t shift into animals, but they can take on whatever human shape they choose. “In that guise, he courted Gwen. It didn’t take him long to learn that she had a sister named Victory and to decide that you, not she, were the one foretold. Gwen was of no interest to him; he could have simply walked away. It would have broken the child’s heart—she was a silly, romantic girl—but Pryce saw an opportunity to injure me through her. He intended to kill her.”
I knew Pryce. I could believe it. But still I felt my jaw drop as I stared at my aunt.
“It’s fortunate I chose that night to follow her. At first, he looked like a human boy to me, as well. I almost went home, thinking I’d simply keep the girl too busy to sneak out. But when Gwen closed her eyes and leaned forward for her first kiss, Pryce pulled a dagger. Moonlight glinted off the blade. His shadow demon loomed behind him, and I realized who he was. I drew my own dagger and ran over to them; I swear I never moved so fast in this lifetime. I grabbed Pryce’s hair, yanked his head back, and slit his throat.” Her face showed grim satisfaction. “My only regret is that the blade wasn’t bronze. I could have destroyed that infernal demi-demon once and for all.”
Her fists were clenched. She opened her fingers and smoothed out her skirt.
“Poor Gwen,” she said. “All she saw was a mortally wounded boy. The look of utter horror in her eyes . . . I knew I’d lost her then. She ran back to Maenllyd and locked herself in her room. The moment she fled, Pryce disappeared into the demon plane to heal. Gwen didn’t see that, of course. He returned moments later in his demon form—at a safe distance, I might add—and announced he’d be waiting for you.”
No wonder Mab had kept such a tight leash on me for all those years of my apprenticeship. I never once went into the village alone, and my training left little time for walks through the woods and fields. Village boys? I never knew they existed.
Would I have been susceptible to Pryce’s charms at that age? I was glad I’d never had the chance to find out.
“Gwen wouldn’t open her door or listen to me. Over and over, she demanded to return home. That’s all she would say. And so I sent her home.”
Mab stood. “Your sister did see what she believes she saw: She saw the boy’s slashed throat, felt his blood on her arms and face. Yet she’ll never believe the rest. She wouldn’t listen to me. She didn’t believe the village constable, who said there was no such boy in Rhydgoch. She didn’t believe your father, who tried to tell her about demi-demons.” Mab sighed. “And should you try to explain, she won’t believe you, either. I concluded twenty years ago that Gwen was lost to me. Her recent actions confirm that. I’m afraid there’s nothing anyone can do about it.”
And that was that. Mab moved toward me. I stepped aside to let her pass. She opened the door and went into the living room, saying over her shoulder, “You need to return that phone call. It was from a Detective Costello, and he said it was urgent.” She picked up her book and resumed reading.
Kane’s face appeared in the kitchen doorway. “We’re good,” I told him. “Everything’s fine.” But nothing felt fine. My heart ached for Gwen, who for twenty years had been forced to carry a ghastly secret because no one would believe her. And for Mab, branded a murderer by the niece whose life she’d saved, shut out of Gwen’s life, her family. There ought to be something I could do to bridge the chasm between them. But they’d lived on their opposite sides of that chasm for twenty years. The tragedy of the situation was fresh to me; it had long ago been woven into the fabric of their lives.
I set the problem aside for now and went into the kitchen. I’d call Daniel and see if he’d learned anything that might help Juliet.
He picked up on the first ring. When he heard it was me, he dropped his voice.
“I can’t talk now. I need to get to a secure location. You’re at home?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t go anywhere. I’ll call back within five minutes.” He hung up abruptly.
Daniel’s voice sounded strange, I reflected as I waited, phone in hand, for his call. Tense, but also with a coldness I’d never heard from him before. When the phone rang, I answered immediately.
“Where did you get that sample you gave me?” Daniel demanded.
“Why, what—”
“No, I’m asking the questions. Where did you get it?”
I considered how much I should tell him. Juliet was still wanted by the police, and I wouldn’t bring he
r into this unless I had to. “From a fight. The sample was from the blade of a sword I took from my opponent.”
“Did it cut you?”
“No, but what—”
“Where, Vicky? Whose was it? Why did you swab the blade? That’s a pretty unusual thing to do, wouldn’t you say? I need details.”
My head spun from his rapid-fire questions. I picked the one that seemed safest to answer. “The sword belonged to one of the Old Ones, those creatures who stole Pryce’s body after the Paranormal Appreciation Day concert. Remember I told you about Myrddin? They’re working with him.”
“Who’s working with the Reaper. Shit.”
“Daniel, what’s wrong?”
“When you brought me that cotton ball, did you have any idea what was on that blade?”
“Some kind of poison, I thought.”
“It’s worse than poison. It’s a virus—a variant of the virus that caused the zombie plague.”
The phone fell from my hand. It hit my boot and skated across the kitchen floor. I chased it and snatched it up.
“Daniel? Daniel? Are you there?”
“The whole lab is under quarantine. I’m lucky they didn’t stick me in quarantine with them. I managed to convince them I didn’t come into direct contact with the specimen. But you can bet I got a grilling about where it came from.”
“What did you say?”
“I told them it was left anonymously in my mailbox, and I thought I’d better check it out.” I let out my breath in a rush of relief. He hadn’t linked the sample to me. I started to thank him, but he cut me off. “No more off-the-record stuff, Vicky. I can’t do you any more favors. This is way too serious for amateur detectives.”
I bristled a little at his suggestion that I was playing Miss Marple, but I let it go. He had a right to be angry. “Did anyone get sick?”
“Not yet.” That was good news. The original plague had killed its victims within minutes of exposure. “Don’t tell anyone. We’re trying to keep this out of the news to prevent widespread panic.” I bet his girlfriend the TV reporter wasn’t happy about that. “Each hour that goes by without symptoms is encouraging. This virus is a variant, so it may not be contagious to humans.”
Just like the zombie plague hadn’t been contagious to paranormals. My heart stopped. This virus hadn’t infected any norms, but it sure as hell was affecting Juliet. “I’ve got to go, Daniel.” I cut the connection.
The phone began ringing again almost immediately, but I ignored it. I skidded into the living room. Kane was at my heels, wondering what the hell was going on.
“Aren’t you going to answer that?” Mab asked.
“No. Mab, do you know of any viruses that can infect paranormals?”
“What kind of paranormal? When you were a teenager, I recall you were ill for a week with chicken pox.”
“Vampires. What about vampires?”
She considered, then shook her head. “I can’t say I’ve ever heard of one.”
The phone stopped ringing. Next the Goon Squad would be pounding on the door. We had to hurry. “You know that wound of Juliet’s? The one that won’t heal?”
She nodded and held up her book. “Yes, I’ve been reading about the toxicity of certain silver compounds, and—”
“Forget that. The blade that cut Juliet was coated with a variant of the zombie virus.”
Mab’s mouth dropped open. Kane sat on the floor. Both of them stared at me as though I’d just announced the beginning of the apocalypse. Maybe I had.
“The human victims of that plague were dead for three days before they rose again,” I said. “Juliet was attacked three days ago.”
Mab was already up and pulling on her coat. A minute later we were out the door.
IT WAS A LITTLE AFTER SEVEN IN THE EVENING, TOO EARLY for Creature Comforts to be open. I’d lost the key Axel had given me when those vampire junkies grabbed me, so I pounded on the back door, praying Axel would open it. He did. He didn’t say a word when we rushed past him and opened the secret door. As I sprinted down the stairs, I wondered what we’d find: Juliet, awake and somehow changed? Or Juliet, reduced to a pile of grave dust?
Neither. She was still unconscious. There was no change at all.
I sank into a chair; Mab took another. I rubbed my temples. Ever since I’d hung up on Daniel, I’d been trying to figure out why the Old One who’d burst into Juliet’s cell would carry a virus-coated sword. Was the blade tainted with the virus on purpose? If so, did that mean the Old Ones were behind the original plague? It made sense. Juliet had said they were experimenting with a formula for eternal life. What if that formula was a virus, one that killed its victims and then reanimated them? It would explain why there had been only a single outbreak of the virus, and in only one place—the Old Ones, damn them, had loosed it on downtown Boston and then sat back to see what happened. But that experiment failed. The virus infected only humans.
I voiced these thoughts to Mab. “I’ve been considering along the same lines,” she said. “It seems they’ve been trying out different magical formulas and somehow binding them to a virus. The virus part would be important. It gets inside the body’s cells and allows the formula to replicate there, spreading throughout the body. If the formula confers eternal life, every cell becomes eternal.”
“But the Old Ones are basically vampires. Viruses don’t affect them.”
“And that’s precisely what went wrong with the Old Ones’ first attempt at an eternity virus—it didn’t affect its true target. And it failed. The Old Ones don’t want to become zombies. They want to become gods, with their former youth and beauty restored. In the years since that experiment, I’d wager they’ve been working to perfect the formula.”
Two thousand people, along with their families and friends, had suffered—were still suffering—because the Old Ones had decided to use Bostonians as their guinea pigs. The callousness of it floored me.
And they weren’t finished yet. “Juliet said they killed four vampires with their recent experiments.” And that was just the number she knew of.
“I believe they’ve added silver to the mix somehow,” Mab said. “Silver actually kills many viruses, but if they’ve found a way to make it work . . . The silver would weaken the vampire’s immune system, making the vampire vulnerable to the virus and allowing infection to occur.”
“That’s why Juliet’s wound isn’t healing.”
She nodded. “The Old Ones themselves are highly vulnerable to silver right now, but that’s a good thing from their point of view: The silver will take them into death; the virusbased formula will bring them out of it. If they can get the balance right.”
And they were trying out that balance on Juliet, no matter what it did to her. The whole point of breaking into the Goon Squad facility must have been to infect her, and then grab her and take her back to their lair—with one leg or two, it didn’t matter to them—to observe what happened. Shit. Her odds didn’t look good.
I walked over to the bed. Juliet was so still and pale: not alive, not dead, not undead. She was simply there, another object in the room, like the bed she lay in.
The jar of salve sat on her nightstand. I didn’t know whether it was helping her, but Mab thought so. If she could just hang on a little longer, maybe we could find a cure, a way to force the silver out of her body so she could heal. I picked up the salve and pulled back the covers. Her leg was unchanged.
I scooped out some salve, cool and tingly on my fingers, and spread it on Juliet’s calf. Her skin didn’t absorb it. The salve smeared into a gray, greasy paste.
What the hell?
Wiping my hand on a tissue, I looked closely at Juliet’s skin. It was covered with an even layer of fine, grayish powder. I tried to wipe some off. The dust came off on my hand. More formed immediately beneath it. Brushing at it was like brushing Juliet away.
“Mab!” I shouted, holding out my dust-covered hands. “She’s dying!”
Mab was at my si
de in a flash. She leaned over Juliet, and her breath puffed a powdery cloud into the air. The dust had spread. It covered Juliet’s hands and face, clung to her eyelashes and hair. Grains flaked off and fell away, speckling the sheets, as Juliet slowly disintegrated.
My roommate was turning to dust before my eyes, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.
Mab shoved my arm. “Go upstairs, child. Quickly!” She tried to push me toward the staircase.
I planted my feet and stared at her. I wasn’t going to leave Juliet here to die alone.
“Do as I say! There’s a chance I can save her, but I must work alone.” She reached inside her blouse, pulling out her pendant.
“The bloodstone? It can help her?”
“Upstairs, child! Before it’s too late.”
One foot on the stairs, I looked back. Mab dangled the bloodstone over Juliet’s forehead. The room’s light had softened to a silvery glow. It seemed to come from every direction, erasing all shadows. Motes of dust floated above Juliet’s body, sparkling like stars. Mab murmured something in a low voice. I turned and hurried up the stairs.
22
I COULDN’T STAY STILL. I PACED THE LENGTH OF CREATURE Comforts: from the storeroom, along the hallway past BOOS and GHOULS, through the bar, to the front door. And then back the other way. Back and forth. Back and forth.
Axel wasn’t in the bar. I didn’t know where he’d disappeared to.
What was happening downstairs? I couldn’t blot out the image of Juliet, lying so still, her body crumbling to dust.
Back and forth. Back and forth.
I was brewing coffee—for no reason other than it seemed like a semi-useful activity—when the bolts on Axel’s private entrance slid back: one, two, three. A moment later, Axel stood in front of the bar. When he noticed me there, he did a doubletake and scratched his head, eyebrows up.
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