The Good, The Bad, And The Undead th-2

by Ким Харрисон

  My stomach quivered as a surge of his vamp-induced desire flashed through me and was gone. Its potency took my breath away, and I found myself reaching out to catch it. "Bastard," I said, wide-eyed as my blood pounded in me.

  "Flatterer," he said back, his eyebrows high.

  "She changed her mind," I said, as the last of his need died in me. "She doesn't want to be your scion. Leave her alone."

  "It's too late. And she does want it. I put no compulsion on her when she made her decision. I didn't need to. She had been bred and raised for the position, and when she dies, she will have the complexity to be a suitable companion, varied and sophisticated enough in her thoughts so that I don't become bored with her and she with me. You see, Rachel, it's not honest to say that the lack of blood is what causes a vampire to go insane and walk out into the sun. It's the boredom that brings upon a lack of appetite that leads to insanity. Working to bring Ivy about has helped me stave that off. Now that she is poised upon her potential, she's going to keep me from going insane." He inclined his head graciously. "And I'll do the same for her."

  His attention went over my shoulder, and the hair on the back of my neck pricked. It was Kisten. The whisper of his passage brushed against me, and I stifled a shudder. The bruised and beaten vamp silently set a cup of coffee on a saucer before me and left. He never met my eyes, his manner holding a subdued pain. The steam from the porcelain rose three inches before the artificial wind caught it and blew it away. I didn't reach for the cup. Fatigue pulled at me and adrenaline made me feel ill. I thought of the charms in my bag. Why was Piscary waiting?

  "Kist?" the undead vampire said softly, and Kisten turned. "Give it to me."

  Piscary held out his hand, and Kisten dropped a crumpled paper in his palm. My face went slack in panic. It was my note to Nick.

  "Did she call anyone?" Piscary asked Kist, and the young vampire ducked his head.

  "She called the FIB. They hung up on her."

  Shocked, I looked at Kisten. He had watched the entire thing. He had hidden in the shadows while I held Ivy's hair as she vomited, watched as I made her cocoa, and listened as I sat beside Ivy while she relived her nightmare. While I had been taking forever on the bus, Kisten had ripped my salvation from the door. No one was coming. No one at all.

  Not meeting my eyes, he walked away. There was the distant sound of a door closing. My gaze flicked to Piscary's and my breath froze. His eyes were entirely black. Shit.

  The unblinking obsidian orbs made my palms sweat. With the coiled tension of a predator, he reclined before me in his midnight-blue robe with that fake wind moving the wisps of hair on his bare arms, tan and healthy looking. The hem of his robe shifted with his subtle movements. His chest moved as he breathed in an effort to ease my subconscious. And as I sat before him, the enormity of what was going to happen fell on me.

  My breath came and went, and I held it. Seeing me recognize my death, he blinked slowly and smiled with a knowing glint. Not yet, but soon. When he could wait no longer.

  "It's amusing you care for her so deeply," he said, the power seeping from his voice to clench about my heart. "She betrayed you so utterly. My beautiful, dangerous filiola custos. I sent her to watch you four years ago, and she joined the I.S. I bought a church and told her to move into it; she did. I asked her to put in a witch's kitchen and stock it with appropriate books; she went beyond to arrange for a garden that would be irresistible."

  My face was cold and my legs trembled. Her friendship had been a lie? A sham to keep tabs on me? I couldn't believe it. Remembering the lost sound of her voice as she asked me to keep the sun from killing her, I couldn't believe her friendship had been a lie.

  "I told her to follow you when you quit," Piscary said, the blackness in his eyes taking on the tension of a remembered passion. "It was our first argument, and I thought that I had found the point where I could make her my scion, where she would show her strength and prove she could hold her own against me. But she capitulated. For a time I thought I might have made a mistake and she lacked the strength of will to survive infinity with me and I'd have to wait yet another generation and try with a daughter born of her and Kisten. I was so disappointed. Imagine my delight when I realized she had her own agenda and was using me."

  He smiled, the slip of teeth a little bigger, showing a little longer. "She had fastened upon you as her way out of the future I saw for her. She thought you could find a way to keep her from losing her soul when she dies." He shook his head in a controlled motion, the light glinting across his smooth scalp. "Can't be done, but she won't believe."

  I swallowed, making fists as my feelings of betrayal faltered. She had been using him, not following his direction. "Does she know you murdered those witches?" I whispered, sick at heart that she might have known and never told me.

  "No," Piscary said. "I'm sure she suspects, but my interest in you stems from an older reason, having nothing to do with Kalamack's current holy grail of a ley line witch."

  I kept my eyes from my hands gripped tightly in my lap above the opening of my bag. I couldn't reach for the vial. If it wasn't for that, why did Piscary want me dead?

  "It must have cost her pride dearly to come to me, begging for clemency when you survived your demon attack. She was so upset. It's hard to be young. I understood more than she knows what it is to want an equal. And I was inclined to spoil her more once I realized she had used me without my knowing. So I let you live, provided she break her fast and take you completely. You being her shadow had an ironic twist I liked. She promised she would, but I knew she was lying. Even so, I didn't mind as long as she kept you and Kalamack apart."

  "But I'm not a ley line witch," I said, keeping my voice soft so it wouldn't shake. I could have breathed the words and he would have heard. "Why?"

  He hadn't taken a breath since he stopped talking. The balls of his feet were pressed to the floor. His calves were tense. Almost, I thought, moving my fingers to the opening of my bag. He was almost ready. What was he waiting for?

  "You are your father's daughter," he said, the skin around his eyes tightening. "Trent is his father's son. Apart you are annoying. Together …you have the potential to be a problem."

  My gaze went distant then sharpened as I met his eyes, knowing my face had taken on a horrified expression. The picture of my father and Trent's outside a yellow camp bus. Piscary had killed them. It had been Piscary.

  Hard and strong, my blood pounded in my temples. My body demanded I do something, but I sat, knowing if I moved, he would move.

  He shrugged, a calculated motion that pulled my eyes to a flash of amber skin beneath his robe. "They were getting too close to solving the elven riddle," he said, watching my reaction.

  I kept my face impassive as he said Trent's most precious secret, telling him I, too, knew. Apparently it was the right thing to do.

  "I'm not going to let you two pick up where they left off," he added, prodding.

  I said nothing, stomach roiling. Piscary had killed them. Trent's father and my dad had been friends. They had been working together. They had been working together against Piscary.

  Piscary went very still. "Has he sent you into the everafter yet?"

  My gaze shot to his, fear in my gut. There it was. The question he wanted answered, the one he hid among others so I wouldn't know. As soon as I answered it, I'd be dead.

  "I'm not in the habit of breaking my client confidentiality," I said, my mouth dry.

  His cool dispassion cracked as he took a breath. It was subtle, but there it was. "He has. Did you find one?" he asked, catching himself before he could lean forward over the table. "Was it sound enough to read?"

  One? Read what? I said nothing, desperately wanting to hide my pulse pounding in my neck, but though his eyes were black, he wasn't interested in my blood. That was almost too frightening to believe. I didn't know how to answer. Would yes save my life or damn it?

  Frowning, he studied me a long moment while I listened to my heart
pound and sweat broke out on my arms. "I can't interpret your silence," he said, seeming irritated.

  I took a breath.

  Piscary moved.

  The adrenaline hurt. I pushed myself from the table in a blind panic. My chair tipped over backward, with me still in it.

  Piscary flung the table out of the way. It crashed aside, my untouched coffee making a fantastic pattern on the white carpet.

  I scrabbled backward, my bare feet squeaking against the circle of tile. My fingers found the carpet and I clutched at it, rolling over and pulling myself forward.

  A shriek escaped me as he yanked me up by my wrist. I clawed at him in panic. He took it all. Face dispassionate, he drew a fingernail across my right arm, follow the blue of a vein. Fire traced his nail as he opened my skin, then bliss. Silently, savagely, I fought to get free as he held me by my wrist, unmoving as a tree. My blood welled and I felt the bubble of insanity swell in me. Not again. I couldn't be ravaged by a vampire again!

  He looked at my blood, then my eyes. Taking his free hand, he swiped it across my arm.

  "No!" I screamed.

  He let go of my wrist, and I fell to the carpet. Breath a harsh pant, I scrabbled backward. I found my feet, adrenaline pounding through me as I headed for the elevator.

  Piscary jerked me back.

  "You son of a bitch!" I screamed. "Leave me alone!"

  He gave my head a smack to make me see stars.

  I crumpled. Panting, I lay at his feet as he stood above me, an amulet in his hand. He smeared my blood across it, and it glowed red. His hand was enveloped in a red haze as he nudged my fallen chair farther onto the surrounding carpet. I pulled my head up, seeing past my hair that the pattern on the tiled floor before us made a perfect circle. The circle of blue tile around the white stone was one piece of marble. It was a summoning circle.

  "God help me," I whispered, knowing what was going to happen when Piscary tossed the amulet to land dead center of the circle. I watched the ball of ever-after energy expand to form a protective bubble. My skin hummed with the power from another witch, kindled to life with my blood as Piscary prepared to call his demon.

  Twenty-Eight

  Piscary brought his hand to his mouth to lick away my remaining blood, recoiling. "Holy water?" he said, his dispassionate face showing a glimmer of distaste. Taking his robe hem, he wiped my blood from him, leaving his palm showing only a mild redness. "You need more than that to do more than annoy me. And don't flatter yourself. I wasn't going to bite you. I don't even like you, but you'd enjoy it. Instead, you will be dying slowly and in pain."

  "Bring it on…" I panted, slumped at his feet as my eyes remembered how to focus.

  He moved that hated eight feet away, staying between the elevator and me. Carefully pronounced Latin came from him. I recognized some of the words from Nick's summoning. My pulse quickened and I looked frantically over the plush, spacious white room for anything. I was too far underground to tap into a ley line. Algaliarept was coming. Piscary was going to give me to it.

  I froze as Piscary said its name. The taste of burnt amber coated my tongue, and a haze of ever-after red melted into existence within the summoning circle. "Oh, look. A demon," I whispered, dragging myself to the fallen table and pulling myself up. "This just keeps getting better and better."

  Swaying, I watched as it swelled to grow into a six-foot-high figure. The ever-after red soaked inward, coalescing as an athletic, amber-skinned body dressed in a loincloth decorated with stones and colored ribbons. Algaliarept had bare muscular legs, an impossibly thin waist, and a magnificently sculptured chest that would make Schwarzenegger weep. And atop it was a jackal head, alive with pointing ears and a long savage muzzle.

  My mouth dropped open and I looked from the vision of the Egyptian god of death to Piscary, seeing the vampire's features with new meaning. Piscary was Egyptian?

  Piscary stiffened. "I told you not to appear before me like that," he said tightly.

  The death mask grinned, fascinating in that it was alive and part of him. "I forgot," it drawled in an incredibly deep voice that seemed to set my insides resonating. A thin red tongue slipped past the jackal teeth to caress its muzzle. There was the clopping sound of teeth and lips.

  My heart pounded, and as if hearing it, Algaliarept slowly turned to me. "Rachel Mariana Morgan," it said, its ears pricked. "You are the little gadabout."

  "Shut up," Piscary said, and Algaliarept's eyes narrowed to slits. "What do you want for making her tell me what she knows about Kalamack's progress?"

  "Six seconds with you outside your circle." The sheer desire to kill Piscary in its voice was like ice down my back.

  Piscary shook his head, his cool compassion unshaken. "I'll give you her. I don't care what you do with her as long as she doesn't walk this side of the ley lines ever again. In return, you will make her tell me how far Trent Kalamack is in his research. Before you take her. Agreed?"

  Not the ever-after. Not with Algaliarept.

  Algaliarept's canine grin was pleased. "Rachel Mariana Morgan as payment? Mmmm, I agree." The Egyptian god clenched its hands and took a step forward, halting at the edge of the circle. Its jackal ears pricked and its doggy eyebrows rose.

  "You can't do that!" I protested, heart pounding. I looked at Piscary. "You can't do that. I don't agree." I turned to Algaliarept. "He doesn't own my soul. He can't give it to you!"

  The demon spared me a glance. "He has your body. Control the body, control the soul."

  "That's not fair!" I shouted, ignored.

  Piscary came close to the circle. He put his hands upon his hips, taking an aggressive stance. "You will," he intoned, "not attempt to kill or touch me in any fashion. And when I say, you will leave and return directly to the ever-after."

  "Agreed," the jackal head said. A drop of saliva fell from a fang, hissing as it flowed down the ever-after between them.

  Never dropping the demon's gaze, Piscary rubbed his big toe over the circle to break it.

  Algaliarept lunged out of the circle.

  Gasping, I backpedaled. A powerful hand reached out and grasped my throat.

  "Stop!" Piscary shouted.

  My breath choked and I pried at the golden fingers. It had three rings with blue stones, all pinching my skin. I swung to kick it, and Algaliarept shifted me higher to avoid my strike. A wet sound escaped me.

  "Drop her!" Piscary demanded. "You can't have her until I get what I want!"

  "I'll get your information some other way," the jackal said, the rumble of its words joining the rushing sound of my blood. My head felt as if it was going to explode.

  "I called you to get information from her," Piscary said. "If you kill her now, you violate your summoning. I want it now, not next week or next year."

  The fingers around my throat dissolved. I dropped to the carpet, gasping. Its sandals were made of leather and thick ribbons. Slowly I pulled my head up, feeling my throat.

  "A reprieve only, Rachel Mariana Morgan," the jackal head said, its tongue moving in fantastic patterns as it spoke. "You will be warming my bed tonight."

  I knelt before it, sucking in air as I tried not to figure out how I could be warming its bed if I was dead. "You know," I wheezed, "I'm really getting tired of this." Heart pounding, I got to my feet. It had agreed to a task. It was susceptible to being summoned again. "Algaliarept," I said clearly. "I call you, you dog-faced, murdering son of a bitch."

  Piscary's face went slack in surprise, and I swear Algaliarept winked at me. "Oh, let me be the one in leather?" the jackal head said. "Be afraid of him. I like being him."

  "Sure, whatever," I said, knees shaking.

  Black leather driving gloves slit into existence over the amber-skinned hands, and the jackal-headed Egyptian god's stance melted from a ramrod stiffness into a confidant slouch. Kisten took shape, wearing head-to-toe leather and thick-heeled black boots. There was a jingle of chain and a whiff of gasoline. "This is good," the demon said, showing a glint of fang
as it slicked its blond hair back, its passing hand leaving it shower-wet and smelling of shampoo.

  I thought it looked good, too. Unfortunately.

  Exhaling slowly, the image of Kist bit its lower lip to make it redden, a tongue slipping out to leave it with a wet shine. A shudder went through me as I recalled how soft Kist's lips were. As if reading my mind, the demon sighed, strong fingers reaching down its leather pants to draw my eyes to it. A scratch melted into existence over its eye, mirroring Kist's new wound.

  "Damn vamp pheromones," I whispered, pushing the memory of the elevator away.

  "Not this time," Algaliarept said, smirking.

  Piscary was staring in confusion. "I summoned you. You do what I say!"

  The image of Kisten turned to Piscary, belligerently flipping him off. "And Rachel Mariana Morgan summoned me, too. The witch and I have a preexisting debt to settle. And if she has enough guile to win a circleless summoning from me, then I will hold to it."

  Piscary's teeth ground together. He lunged at us.

  I gasped, lurching back. There was a wrenching sensation, and I stared as Piscary slammed into a wall of everafter, falling in a shocked tangle of arms and legs. I went cold as I realized Algaliarept had put us in a circle of its own construction.

  The thick haze of red pulsed and hummed, pressing down against my skin though I was two feet away. As Piscary got to his feet and adjusted his robe, I extended a finger and touched the barrier. A sliver of ice shivered through me as the surface rippled. It was the strongest, thickest sheet of ever-after I'd ever witnessed. Feeling Algaliarept's eyes on me, I pulled my hand back and wiped it on my jeans.

  "I didn't know you could do that," I said, and it chuckled. In hindsight it made sense. It was a demon. It existed in the ever-after. Of course it would know how.

  "And I'm willing to teach you how to survive manipulating as much ever-after, too, Rachel Mariana Morgan," it said as if reading my mind. "For a price."