Jude called us back as promised, reporting in that she’d gotten Millicent safely to her house and tucked away in bed, dosed up on Vicodin. “I don’t like it, Ken,” she confided to me unhappily. “She didn’t want me to say before, but whoever shanghaied her down to Renton roughed her up as they did it. Her ankle’s broken. I know she’s supposed to be magical and all, but hell, I feel like somebody beat up my grandmother!”
That didn’t help my paranoia any, and I admitted as much to Jude. “I don’t like it either. But stay with her. Call us if anything changes or if you need anything, okay?”
“Babe, I’m the one with the transportation, remember? I’m the one who ought to be making that offer to you.”
There were indeed disadvantages to not owning my own car. But what could I say? The trouble we were all in was because of me to begin with; I felt responsible. “Yeah, well. Just be careful,” I said. I’d said it the last time she called, but it bore repeating.
“You too, babe. Talk to you later.”
Just as uneasy as Jude that someone had physically as well as magically assaulted Millicent, I updated Christopher, called Aggie again to make sure she knew what was going on and just to hear the sound of her voice, and then tried to figure out what to do next. Our options were few. With the power out I couldn’t get on the Internet to try to contact Millie’s Warder friends and ask for information on Malandor, and I didn’t want to call Jude back to make her ask Millie for the numbers, not if the Warder needed her rest. The weather was ferocious enough to keep us inside—not that I wanted to cross the Wards we’d laid anyway.
So I got out matches to light a couple of the decorative candles on the shelf above my fireplace, which filled the living room with warm, flickering light and the scents of orange and cinnamon. I tried to call Carson and Jake, anxious to make certain they were all right, though I managed only to reach the front desk of their hostel once again since Carson wasn’t answering his cell. Christopher and I played the cat’s favorite game with him, Stalk the Hand under the Rug, much to Fortissimo’s delight. We played Scrabble, too, before raiding the kitchen to see what we could make for dinner without electricity.
But mostly we waited.
I hated waiting.
Eventually we turned back to the instruments, less exuberantly this time as Christopher showed me how to play his bouzouki. Its size and weight fascinated me, and so did my having to hold it in my lap rather than on my shoulder. I liked the feel of eight strings rather than four beneath my fingers, and how each one reacted to the barest hint of sound. When I giggled out of general pleasure, the echo of it resonated all along the bouzouki’s body and then into me, where the instrument rested against me. I liked that, too; it reminded me of Christopher.
“Some tune a zouk to A-D-A-D, some to G-D-A-D,” the Warder said, sitting close beside me on the couch. “Me, I like G-D-A-E, for the high note on the top of the chords.”
“So it’s tuned like my violin.” Pleased by that familiar connection, I looked up and down the length of the instrument and pondered where to put my hands.
He murmured an assent, and then I felt his right hand slide around me and press his pick into my fingers. “Strum with this,” he told me, his voice very close to my ear. His left hand arranged mine into a G chord on the bouzouki’s neck. “You’ll know the chords. Just have to stretch your fingers a little to get ’em where they need to be.”
We spent the rest of the evening sitting close together there on the couch, Christopher’s hands guiding mine on his instrument’s strings, his arms loosely cradling me while I fumbled my way through learning to strum. And when my fingers finally tired, he set the bouzouki aside and leaned me against his shoulder in its place.
“How do you say the words on the neck?” I whispered. He pronounced the phrase for me, and I considered the rough, lyrical rumble intently as I rested my cheek against the soft blue flannel of his shirt. “Which part is your name?”
“Crìsdean,” he whispered back.
Crìsdean. The two short syllables hit my ears with the eighth-note rhythm of his long-legged stride, krees-jen, krees-jen, a different pattern than the triplet of his name in English. I still thought that three syllables suited him better, but I liked this other version of his name too. Christopher squeezed me in approval as I tried it out.
“That’s good, Kendis lass.”
The sound of my name rolled through his accent struck me, and I asked thoughtfully, “Don’t suppose you can say my name in Gaelic?”
“Well, I don’t think it’d translate straight over,” he mused in a soft, contented rasp, turning his face into my hair as he spoke. “But if you don’t mind nicknames, Kenna might do.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Fair one.”
I snorted. “Don’t know if you noticed, but I’m not exactly the right color to be called fair.”
Laughter set his entire frame quivering against me, but his voice was completely in earnest as he clarified, “Good point, but for what it’s worth I wouldn’t mean fair like in white. I’d mean fair like in beautiful.”
Oh. Well. I could live with that.
We fell asleep there on my couch, lulled into slumber by the dual rumble of the rain outside the house and the cat within it. Never one to miss an opportunity to park it, Fortissimo jumped up to join us, wedged himself in under Christopher’s forearm to get his head into optimum scratching position, and started purring like a well-oiled purring machine. I wanted to shove the fuzzball onto the floor and tell him to get his own Newfoundlander—but Christopher draped my red fleece blanket over the both of us and settled me more comfortably against his chest. I’d seen him without his shirt at the hospital. But only just then, cradled against its firm expanse where I could feel far more of it than I could see, did I realize he had a rather nice chest. Between Fort’s purring, Christopher’s arms around me, and the blanket around us both, I was doomed for a trip straight to dreamland.
As dooms went, it wasn’t bad at all.
* * *
My paranoia turned out to be justified. The Wards Christopher and I had raised held solid, but when the attack came four hours later, it didn’t bother with the doors or windows. A sizzling wave of power blasted through my blood, catapulting me awake even as Christopher flipped me over on the couch so that he could shield me with his back—and that was all the warning I got before the tree punched a hole through the roof.
Total darkness blanketed the house, which shuddered and creaked with the impact of the strike. Fortissimo screamed and bolted down the hallway as fast as his big paws could carry him while fragments of wood, plaster, twig, and leaf pelted down through the opening ripped in my living room ceiling. Sharp droplets of rain came with them, spattering through the branches of the oak tree that had previously been standing in the front yard of the house next door.
Christopher snapped up his head, his expression grim and dire, and I didn’t have to ask if that blast of power had awakened him too. The way he leapt off the couch for his staff propped in the corner, pulling me with him as he went, was more than enough answer to that. “They’re back! Move it, lass! Now!”
While he lunged for the staff, I lunged for the phone with a single thought in my head: Millicent. We needed her, and I hoped like hell that she’d regained her strength. As I snatched up the receiver I wailed, “I thought the Wards were supposed to protect the house!”
“I didn’t know I’d have to Ward the roof! I’ll rebuild it for you later! We can’t stay here!”
As I slapped at the On/Off button on my phone nothing happened. No dial tone. No buttons lighting up. Not a single flashing symbol on the phone’s little LED. I swore, threw the useless device onto the couch, and sprinted down the hall. “Shit, we can’t call Millie, the phone’s dead!”
“Where’re you goin’?!”
“If they’re throwing fucking trees into my house, I’m not leaving Fort in here to get squashed!”
I dove into the bedroom, drea
d at the kind of power that could hurl a tree into a roof lurking on the edge of my mind, but I beat it back. I had no time for dread. Fort left shallow scratches all over my arms as I dragged him out from under the bed, and I couldn’t keep him from wriggling in terror even by pressing him hard against my shoulder.
Out in the living room, Christopher bellowed an alarm. I ran back to find him swinging his staff with all his strength at the tree that had destroyed my roof. For a split second I couldn’t figure out why—until I saw the oak branches moving.
Growing.
Stretching towards the Warder with impossible speed.
“OUT!” Christopher roared over the crack of wood on wood as he slammed the staff across three branches at once and shattered them in splinters. I hardly needed the rising tide of magic to tell me someone outside was pouring power into the tree—the visual evidence was enough. It staggered me, though, and it terrified Fortissimo. The cat screeched and writhed in my grasp, his claws gouging my shirt and my skin, and I almost missed Christopher’s next order in my effort to keep my feet. “Go, Kendis! I’ll be right behind you!”
I whirled and ran, through the kitchen, out the back door, and into the yard—
And came to a skidding halt at the spectral figures of Tarrant and Melisanda barely twenty steps away, each with swords drawn and shimmering like stormlight through the rain. Their gazes pinioned me the instant I burst out of the house, leaving me no room to elude their notice. Or get past them.
With an unearthly yowl Fortissimo scrambled over my shoulder and vanished into the darkness, leaving me with empty arms and fear steamrolling across my brain as Melisanda’s voice pealed out, clear and cold as a bell of ice.
“Do not force us to make this difficult, changeling child. You will come with us. It is your choice as to whether you will be awake or unconscious.”
I didn’t think. Instead, as I’d done back at the restaurant to Elessir, I poured every ounce of will I could summon to smack the Sidhe out of my way. The power in my blood lashed out of me with enough force to hurl the fey to the ground and knock their weapons from their hands—but that gained me only a few seconds. In that tiny span of time, Tarrant let out a swath of what could only be profanity even if it had the same liquid sound of the words I’d heard Mom utter in my dream, and Melisanda shot me a look very near to worry.
Then both Seelie dived for their swords, while just behind me the back door exploded. Literally. Through the shower of broken wood and glass Christopher came running, his staff held high in his hands. In hot pursuit a wave of vines surged after him, turning to snake up the side of the house only when he broke free of their reach.
The instant his feet hit the earth of the backyard his new-minted Warder magic thundered into life and hammered into Tarrant, flinging him backwards to land somewhere under the willow tree. Melisanda seemed made of sterner stuff, however. With lethal grace she sprang at Christopher, her sword blurring, then sinking deep into the side of his staff as he whipped it up to stop her blow. And he spared only enough attention for me for a single shout.
“KENDIS! RUN!”
The hell I will, half my mind shrieked. I wasn’t about to leave Christopher to fight by himself. Maybe I lacked a physical weapon, but Mother’s power—my power—was beginning to be as good as a weapon in my hands—
Don’t be an idiot! the other half of me shrieked back. Run! Get help! Get Millicent!
But I never got a chance to do either.
The storm around us redoubled in fury, and with a deafening crack, lightning tore into the earth just two feet from the Sidhe warrior and the Warder who fought her. Melisanda and Christopher both went sprawling, leaving me to spin around and gape upwards in a flood of horror. The lightning hadn’t come from the sky; it had come from Elessir. He stood high on the roof of the house, his slim frame glowing from head to foot, and I knew at first sight that he packed a lot more power to go with that first volley.
“You’re outnumbered, darlin’,” he called down to me, grinning that dark, crooked Unseelie grin. “Right about now’d be a good time to give up.”
“Quite,” said someone else just behind me. I whirled again, throwing myself at the source of the voice. But Malandor seized my hands before I could reach him, and when his skin touched mine power rolled into me, seeking to smother my will with his own. Around my neck, the Warded wolf’s head pendant woke with a vengeance. It hurled forth a surge of heat that very nearly broke the Seelie lord’s hold—but not nearly enough. He howled in startled pain, but did not let go of my wrists.
Memory of the thrall he’d laid on me fired off along with the necklace. Desperate to keep it from happening again, I screamed. I struggled. And since my hands and Jude’s necklace weren’t going to cut it, I beat at my mother’s brother with my fledgling power instead. The Sidhe’s fine-sculpted features tightened with palpable strain even as he smiled thinly down at me. “I see that Elanna’s blood asserts itself within you.” His titanium gaze dipped to my shirt, and his smile recast itself as a smirk. “Elanna’s blood, and something that carries her power as well. Nevertheless, my colleague of the other Court is right. You really should give up, Kendis Marie Thompson.”
When he uttered my name it tore through the fire that hung about my neck, jolting through my frame and convulsing every one of my limbs. I swayed and started to crumple, barely able to gasp through an increasingly urgent compulsion to surrender, “Bite me.”
“Come now, girl, rudeness is unwarranted; giving up can’t be all that difficult. Can it… Kendis Marie Thompson?”
Just as the tree had done with my roof, that second utterance of my full name ripped a hole through my consciousness. Through it, the thrall soaked into me and tumbled me to my knees. My body was sold on the surrender concept, but my mind gave a few last gasps and tried to re-ignite my faltering magic.
“Kendis. Marie. Thompson. Give up. Now.”
The third time around, Malandor’s voice made silk-swathed hammers of every syllable my name comprised, hammers that bludgeoned everything but obedience out of my awareness. His teeth gritted, my uncle plunged one hand beneath the neckline of my shirt; agony contorted his beautiful features, bathed in sweat and rain, yet without hesitation he ripped the pendant I wore right up and off my head. The blaze of it, a miniature star, speared into my eyes and blinded me to all else.
I gave up, and plummeted into darkness.
Chapter Nineteen
Something people in novels talk about is how when they come to from being knocked out, they keep their eyes shut to fake unconsciousness while they scope out where they are, who’s around them, and what’s going on. This is always a good idea for the hero or heroine, who comes across as acutely perceptive even if they don’t actually learn anything that gets them out of trouble. Me? I did what I automatically do every single solitary time I awaken from any kind of sleep whatsoever. Which is to say, I opened my stupid eyes.
Not that having my eyes open got me more information than having them closed, because for several seconds I was aware of nothing but the vague, dark blur outside my skull and the sluggish waves of pain pulsing inside it. Those waves sloshed from my head down towards my hands and feet, turning my limbs to lead as they went. Every part of me ached, and for a brief frightening instant I couldn’t remember why, or what had happened to me, much less figure out where I was or how I’d gotten there.
Then memory began to return in short, fast bursts. The storm. The tree smashing through my roof, its branches writhing like agitated snakes. The Sidhe ambushing Christopher and me in the backyard—
Oh God. Christopher.
As my memory cleared my senses followed suit, and the first thing they homed in on was the scent of Christopher, very close. He smelled like rain, earth, and the faint trace of shampoo from his hair; all accents on top of the basic scent I knew from lying in his arms. His back was jammed against mine so tightly that I could feel the contours of his muscles through both of our shirts. But I couldn’t turn to hi
m. Heavy silver chains bound us together, pressing in hard against my arms and keeping me from doing more than craning my head round to try to get a look at him. His head drooped forward, making damp, dark locks of hair fall across his face; he looked unconscious. And he did not react in the slightest as I stirred.
This, I concluded, was bad.
So was the other thing that jostled with Christopher’s proximity for my attention: the taut crackle of energy scraping along my nerves, thick enough and strong enough that it drowned out any trace of the bond between my power and Christopher’s, leaving me unsure if he was even still alive. Magic streamed inward towards us from a faintly glowing circle the color of starlight, surrounding the young Warder and me with about three feet on all sides, like an electronic fence meant to confine a pair of dogs. Its force set my teeth on edge, making me want to shy away from contact with it, though there was nowhere I could go. The chains held me completely immobile.
I managed only a few seconds to notice everything else about my surroundings. The rain had finally stopped, and we sat on hard, sodden ground in the middle of an open field littered with snapped twigs, scattered needles from conifer trees, and other detritus from the violent weather. Cold, slick grass met my bare feet—in our flight from the house, I’d neglected to put on shoes. High overhead, churning, tattered scraps of cloud allowed only sporadic moonlight down to the earth and to the broad, pale expanse of Lake Washington rippling in the distance. We were, I realized, on Sand Point Head in the middle of Sand Point Magnuson Park. And that we included Christopher, me, and the Sidhe.
Melisanda stood just outside the circle to our right. Her grip on her sword was casual, her gaze harsh and cold and suggesting all too plainly that the weapon’s business end would cross the gap between us at the slightest provocation. Before me, off to the left, Tarrant stood poised in a wavering column of light, his bearing that of someone both keeping tense watch and holding open a doorway for others to come through. More magic at work. I couldn’t feel it as strongly as the starlight circle, but it tugged at my mind nevertheless.
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