“I will not let tradition trample what I know in my soul to be right. And I will not fight you.”
“Then you can wage all the wars you like and remain a coward. It is the battle on the hearth that counts.” Mavritte turned away, contempt in her eyes. “If the home is not strong, the kingdom has no foundation to rest on. The Alpha must have the strongest house of all. You have no true mate. You have nothing.”
Lore was momentarily speechless.
Then they heard Talia’s shriek of pain.
Lore scrambled into the tunnel, morphing into hound form as he ran.
He looked first for Talia. She was down and bleeding from the neck and arm.
Errata stood to one side. She had a gun, but didn’t seem to know what to do with it.
One Hunter was down on the ground, but another, who was bleeding from the head, flew through the air. Darak lifted a third over his head like a sack of flour.
Lore had to get to Talia, but there was an obstacle. Two more Hunters—Talia’s brother and an older man—were wrestling on the floor and in his way. It looked like Max was trying to grapple for a knife. They both looked up to see Lore at the same time. In their surprise, the knife went skittering across the floor.
Lore gave a warning growl. The older one grabbed for a rifle that was lying on the ground. Mercury bullets. Bad news, because Lore’s strength was close to tapped out. The odds of pulling off that disappearing trick again tonight were low to none.
Rage slammed into him. He had to try. That was his mate wounded on the ground.
Kill. Protect. Lowering his massive bulk into a crouch, Lore bared huge, white teeth, his growl echoing like an earthquake down the tunnel. Someone screamed. Lore bounded forward, massive paws raised to trap and crush.
The older Hunter raised the rifle.
But Talia had lunged for the knife and thrown it a fraction of a second before, a look of deep anger in her eyes. He could still see the whirling blade, the thwopthwop of it as it spun through the air. It was the same moment as had been in his prophecy.
Lore twisted in the air, giving extra clearance for the knife’s path. The rifle fired. Lore had a moment of freefall as he waited for the tearing of the mercury bullets through his belly.
But they never did. He felt them skim by, a hot flick against his skin.
When he hit the ground, the knife had drawn a long, bloody slash down the older man’s arm. Lore landed with a clumsy thump and roll, coming to his feet in time to see the two men disappearing down the tunnel. Darak chased after them.
Talia was weeping, the harsh, racking sobs of heartbreak. Lore padded over to her. Her neck was bloody, but it wasn’t bleeding. There was a wound in her arm that was far worse.
He didn’t think it was the cut she was crying about.
Lore curled up on the ground, pushing his body against her thigh, and put his chin on her knee, peering up at her. Hellhounds weren’t known for their appeal, but he gave it his best doggy-soulful try.
She hiccupped. “Oh, stop it.”
He whined and licked her face, but just once.
She squeezed her eyes shut, burying her hands in his fur, kneading the ruff of his neck. It felt like heaven. “That was my father.”
A fresh bout of tears seized her. He melted back into his human form, and held her close against his chest.
“But I didn’t let him kill Errata,” she said. “I stopped him. I stopped my father.”
Chapter 33
New Year’s Eve, midnight
101.5 FM
“Happy New Year and best wishes from your friends at CSUP Radio, coming to you from the University of Fairview campus. This is Signy White filling in for Errata Jones.
“Here’s a piece of British folklore for you. Remember, ladies, that if the first person to enter your home on New Year’s Day is a tall, dark-haired male, it’s good luck. They call this man the first-footer. They don’t say what they’d call it if he had four feet.
“What the heck. Tall, dark, and lucky? I’m open to that kind of visitor any day of the year.”
New Year’s Eve, midnight
Downtown Fairview
Once she was in the clear air aboveground, Talia remembered that the sewer exit was a stone’s throw from the Castle doorway. Guards were there, two in hound form, two in human. The old, stained brick of the alley glittered with frost, waves of snow clinging to the bottom of the walls. The middle of the alley gleamed with ice. Just then, the carillon at the museum began ringing in the New Year. Above, the fireworks from the harbor started. A thunderclap filled the air as a Roman candle flared to life overhead.
A dozen yards away, a bare patch had grown around the back door of a Chinese food restaurant that someone had propped open with a huge white plastic bucket. The doorway exhaled gusts of chow mein–scented steam as if the whole of Fairview had ordered in for their latenight celebration.
As Talia got her bearings, one of the hellhound guards from the Castle doorway ran over, calling something to Lore in their own language. Lore replied tersely, and the guard reversed course.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“I asked him to get help.”
She suddenly felt faint. “Help? Aren’t we done for tonight?”
Lore turned her to look at her arm, his touch kind but no-nonsense. “For you. Your arm is bleeding. A vampire should have healed by now.”
Talia realized what he said was true. She hadn’t had a big injury since she’d been Turned, but she’d seen other vampires bounce back from the most horrific trauma. Life with Belenos was nothing if not educational. “Silver blade.”
He looked up, a touch of fear in his eyes. “We’ll get you looked after.”
“I’m tough,” she said. I’m dead. Could I actually bleed to death?
He slid his arm around her waist. “Good.”
There was another explosion overhead. It sounded like a cannon shot, but incongruous sparkles of gold dusted the sky. Talia let herself lean against Lore’s chest, his coat rough against her cheek. If she admitted it, the pain and hunger and slow blood loss were wearing her down—but she didn’t admit it. That was the first thing a Hunter learned: If you don’t believe in pain, it can’t hurt you. Yeah, right. So much for that theory. It bloody well hurts, Dad, so stick it in your ear.
It felt good to lean on somebody for once.
The hellhound was running back toward them. “Mac says to come inside the Castle. He’s got first aid.”
It took a moment for what he said to register, but when he did, Talia pulled away from Lore. “Are you kidding?” she protested. “I’m not going in there.”
“It’s safe. Mostly.” Lore looked like he was struggling, probably with his obligation to tell the truth. “As long as you stay near the door. You don’t want to go exploring.”
“But . . .” But it’s a prison for monsters. Only monsters go there. Wait. That’s me.
“I’ll be with you the whole time.” He took her hand. “We need to bandage your arm.”
“Okay, but don’t you dare leave me for a second.” She pulled out her gun and checked it. She still had plenty of ammo left.
Lore watched her, a slightly bemused look on his face. “Check with me before you shoot anyone, okay?”
“Whatever.”
He put his arm back over her shoulder and, flanked by hellhounds, they approached the Castle door. Talia noticed someone had strung a HAPPY NEW YEAR banner in front of the entrance. The gold foil flickered as fireworks bloomed overhead. She imagined a pack of ghouls with party hats and noisemakers, and it wasn’t pretty.
Lore stiffened as the Castle door swung open with a mighty groan. He might be used to the place, but she guessed he wasn’t a fan. Talia followed him, her skin crawling with the anticipation of something awful.
At first glance, Talia felt like she was on a horror movie set. Dark corridors hewn of gray stone crossed at regular intervals, each looking exactly like the other. Every few yards, a torch was set into
a bracket on the wall. The fire was odorless and gave no warmth, just a dim, flickering light. Magic.
The door shut behind them with a deep, hollow boom. She heard the slide of a thick metal bolt. The motion sent a cloud of dust swirling around her knees. Her first instinct was to whirl around and pound on the door to get out.
“You grew up here?” she asked in a whisper.
“Generations of hounds lived and died in this place without seeing the outside. I was lucky enough to find an open portal and lead my pack through it. That was in the bad days before Mac took over.”
Talia scanned the endless maze of dark, spooky hallways. It looked like Escher meets Frankenstein. She tried to imagine Osan Mina, with her bright kitchen, or—worse yet—the hellhound children trapped in the shadowy desert of stone. You grew up in here. How is that possible?
All at once she grasped the long, long road Lore had traveled with his pack. They’d come from this and still made a functional community in Fairview in a few short years. That’s a huge, massive act of will.
“This way,” he said, steering her down one of the many identical, featureless routes.
He slowed his steps to match hers, and Talia realized she was all but walking backward. She felt weak and shivery, but how much was due to her wound and how much was the Castle’s atmosphere? She forced herself to pick up the pace.
“Once, the Castle was a living world,” Lore said in a tone that said he was trying to calm her down. “That was a long, long time ago, before it turned into a dungeon.”
“What happened?”
“One of the sorcerers who built the place went mad. To make a long story short, he robbed it of life. Mac gave up his humanity to give it the chance to recover.”
“What do you mean?”
“The world is rebuilding itself now, but it’s kind of happening in fast-forward. Just like on the Discovery Channel.”
Talia stopped. “Excuse me?”
Lore looked at her arm. “There will be time to show you later.”
“You dragged me in here. Satisfy my curiosity.”
He considered for a moment. “Look at this.”
He drew her down a short side corridor. A few yards along, the stone blocks stopped and grew irregular, piles of rubble clogging the path. The walls broke away, ragged as if something had nibbled at them. Instead of geometrical corridors, there was a clearing with a pool. Starlight glittered on the shadowed water.
Fascinated, Talia looked up. “There’s sky in here!”
In the clear, clean air, with no other source of light, the stars looked huge and sharp against the absolute blackness.
Lore gave a smile that held the memory of sadness. “A year ago, the sky wasn’t there. There’s still no sun or moon, just stars.”
“No wonder it’s so dark in here.”
“I didn’t see the sky at all until I escaped this place.”
Talia tried to imagine that, but couldn’t. She squeezed his hand harder, feeling his big knuckles under her fingers. Her childhood had been dominated by her father and his Hunter ideals, but there had also been plenty of normal stuff. Playtime. School. A warm bed in a regular house. Lore didn’t need her pity and wouldn’t want it, but she still had a lump in her throat.
“There’s something growing over there,” he said.
She understood what he meant by the Discovery Channel comment. Prehistoric-looking ferns, green despite the lack of light, drooped into the water. Between them were small pink and white flowers—a carpet of the sweet-scented blooms stretching far into the starlit darkness.
“Beautiful,” she murmured. “I’ve never seen these flowers before.”
“Not too long ago, there was nothing here but moss,” Lore said.
Talia’s teaching reflexes kicked in. “That makes sense. The Castle needed to put down fibrous organic material before something larger could take root.”
She felt another shiver, but this time it was the thrill of seeing something incredible and rare. This is an entire ecosystem building itself in fast-forward. Someone should document the phenomenon, share it, make others understand why it was so remarkable. I wonder if they would let the university students in here?
More to the point—would the students get out alive and still human?
“Come,” Lore said. “We can look around later.”
Reluctantly, Talia turned back, her mind spinning. “Would it be okay if I brought a camera in here sometime?”
“Ask Mac.”
They walked for another minute, meeting more and more people as they went. Lore waved to some, but kept moving until they met up with a young man wearing a leather kilt.
“Hey, Lore. Mac’s coming,” he said, stopping to give them a hello.
Lore made the introductions. “Stewart is one of Mac’s new guards.”
Talia noticed that he was heavily armed, wearing a short sword, several knives, an automatic rifle, and at least two handguns. He also wore a thick leather collar around his throat, probably against vampires. It made sense. Stewart was human—she was too hungry to miss the scent of fresh blood—and the odds of survival weighed against him in a place filled with predators.
Most remarkable, though, was the creature perched on his shoulder. It looked like a tiny, feathery lizard, plumes of orange and scarlet mixed with pale gray bat wings. It gave Talia a glare and raised a colorful ruff, chittering. Adorably, it grabbed one of Stewart’s many earrings and held on with tiny, birdlike claws.
“What’s that?” she asked, wishing she could pet it.
“Dunno,” Stewart replied affably. “I found him in one of the cliff areas. He looked like he’d been dumped out of the nest. A few of the avian species seem to be laying eggs these days. It used to be everything in here was infertile, but not anymore.”
“Isn’t there a legend about feathered serpents in Mexico?” Talia asked.
Stewart grinned. “I’ll have to take him to Taco Bell and see if he gets excited.”
“Don’t you have a job to do, Stewart?” said a cheerful voice.
Talia turned toward it. So this is the infamous Conall Macmillan, the cop turned fire demon.
Mac was huge, dressed in a Harley-Davidson T-shirt and blue jeans. Blue tattoos covered his forearms. The most obvious sign of demonhood was the faint red glow in his eyes and the fact that the corridor warmed up the moment he was in it. Otherwise, he seemed fairly undemony to Talia.
Stewart excused himself.
“So what’s all this I hear about tunnels and giant arachnids?” Mac asked. “Caravelli leaves town for two minutes and you young hounds are running riot.”
He clapped Lore on the back with enough force that Lore had to catch himself. “And you gave me the boring job of first aid? Why didn’t you call us for the fight?”
“Your guards are spread too thin as it is,” Lore replied. “If you pulled them off duty here, we’d have bigger problems than Belenos running around Fairview.”
“I wish you weren’t right.” Mac guided them down the corridor. “I’ll forgive you, but I’m not sure Caravelli will when he lands tomorrow.”
“I’m sure Queen Omara will keep him busy.”
Lore and Talia told him everything that happened. By the time they finished, Mac had led them into a room with a low cot. He’d invited Talia to sit down as he laid out an array of first aid supplies.
Within a minute, Lore had maneuvered him aside and begun working on Talia’s arm. She caught the demon hiding a grin, and she flushed.
“You both look done in,” said Mac. “I’ll let Connie know you’re here. She’ll find you a place to clean up.”
“Thank you,” said Lore as he finished wrapping a bandage around Talia’s arm.
Connie turned out to be Mac’s wife, and a tiny Irish vampire with long black hair and deep blue eyes. Lore greeted her with a huge hug. She turned out not only to know Joe like a brother, but also to be the stepmother of Lore’s childhood friend. It was then Talia made the connection: This wa
s the person who had taught Lore to read. She looked at the little woman with interest.
Connie was the opposite of the stereotypical vampire. She was perky.
“The bad thing about this place,” she said, her words lilting along in a breathless flow, “is that no one’s ever taken a paintbrush to it. Stone everywhere. It’s depressing. No point in hanging curtains where there’s no windows. Now, I’ve been looking into this interior design course, thinking maybe that’s what we need around here. It’s hard to be morbid in Swedish modern.”
“I’m not sure how the trolls would feel about it,” Lore said. “I think they like the stone.”
“Well, what would you be expecting from them, anyway?” Connie said with disgust, stopping at a door set into yet another dark stone hallway. “If they had their way, this would be one big sports bar. Well, here we are. I did up some guest rooms.”
She had indeed.
As Talia stepped from the stone hallway into the thickly carpeted bedroom, she saw that Connie had an eye for design. The room was done in shades of green, the odd white accent giving it a clean, crisp effect. It was neither too fussy nor too stark, a series of abstract collages the main visual interest in the room. The bed looked sinfully soft.
Connie watched Talia’s response with pleasure. “Not a palace but nothing too bad either, is it? The room has a full bath. There’s another shower in the next room over, if you need it. Watch the water, though, hot means hot. We pump it through the dragons’ fire cave. I’ll bring some extra towels and clean clothes.” With that, she turned to go.
Talia sat down on the bed, looking up at Lore. He lingered in the doorway, chatting with Connie in the easy way old friends do.
Talia blinked, feeling the ache of exhaustion in every bone. She was hurt, weary, and in an alternate dimension run by a demon cop and a vampire who thought she was on Home and Garden TV.
Weirdly, she was content.
Images ran through her head: Stewart and his lizard, Mac, their chattering hostess. The primeval ferns and the stars in the water. For a moment, she was too overwhelmed to know what she thought about any of it. There was fear in the Castle, but there was beauty, too.
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