"No!" I yelled, prying myself off the wet street. She was there immediately, helping me up with solicitation and concern. The remnants of Adrian's anger fought with my own disbelief that she would turn on us. I struggled with the conflicting desires, but his emotions were still pouring into me. The anger won.
"Nell—"
I grabbed her arms, shaking her a little as I fought to regain control over myself. "Did you betray us?"
"What?" We stood in the blue-white pool of light from the now steady streetlight. The light washed all the color out of the surroundings, leaving Belinda's gray eyes black, her skin a deathless white. "Did I what?"
"Betray us? Did you lure me away from the house, separating me from Adrian so he'd be weaker? Did you do that? Did you betray us to your Dark One?"
"No!" she gasped, her teeth chattering in response to the shaking. "I swear to you, I haven't done anything like that! I would never endanger Damian that way!"
I dropped my hands, the exhaustion that always followed one of my brain fits crashing over me like a fifty-ton weight, mingling with my regret that I had put Adrian's anger into words against Belinda. Sanity prevailed once again, and I believed her. Everything about her, everything in her eyes and voice, protested her innocence. She loved Damian—I knew that without a doubt, just as I knew she realized that to Saer, the boy was nothing more than a prize to be offered to any demon lord who would favor him. As much as it tore her up to leave Saer, she would not risk Damian's life by rejoining Saer.
"Come on," I said, turning wearily and starting toward the street where Christian's house was. "Saer managed to find a way into the house through our defenses. Christian has taken Damian off somewhere safe, but we have to help Adrian. I have a feeling that even with the ring, he's going to need us. I don't trust Saer any further than I can long jump, and if Sebastian is helping him, that makes it two against one."
"More, with the Aryans."
We ran around the corner to Christian's street, and stopped, shocked for a moment by what we saw. The house was crawling with Nazis, at least twenty cars parked haphazardly up and down the street, acting as barricades to keep anyone from traversing the street. Every car bore red banners with the white and black Wolfsangel symbol the white supremacists favored. On the car nearest us, a hand-painted sign hung in the back, declaring "WAR—WHITE ARMY REVOLUTION—HAS BEEN DECLARED!" Beyond the cars, a handful of guys wandered around in front of the house, some holding baseball bats and other large, hard objects. Lights blazed from the house, and in the gap in one of the ground-floor curtains, I could see figures moving around inside.
From a distance, the wail of a police siren cut through the night; apparently, someone in the neighborhood had seen Saer's army descend upon Christian's house.
"Aren't they a happy little army?" I asked under my breath as we started toward them, my fingers itching to draw all sorts of horrible things upon them.
"Nell, wait!" Belinda cried, grabbing my arm and stopping me before I made it more than a few steps toward the Nazis.
I shook off her hand. "Wait? I don't think so. That's my vamp in there going up against those guys all by his onesie. He needs me. I'm going."
She grabbed my arm again, this time shoving me into the darkened doorway of a nearby house. The Nazis hadn't seen us, but I didn't really mind if they were alerted to our presence. They were road hash as far as I cared. "We can't just walk up to the house!" Belinda said. "We have to have a plan. We have to figure out some way to distract those men so we can sneak inside and do what we can to defeat Saer and Sebastian."
"Plan schman," I sneered, my lip curling with scorn as I pulled away from her and started toward Christian's house. "We're immortal now, remember? They can't kill us. You can stay here if you want, but I'm going in to kick some serious Nazi butt. And then it's Saer's turn."
"Nell—"
The distress in her voice was evident, but I didn't have time to reassure her. I charged forward, my hands fisted as I tried to decide which of the two curses mentioned in the charm book would be the worst—turning the Nazis into voles, or impotent. I decided that while the latter might keep them from breeding, the former was the way to go.
"We can be killed, you know," Belinda said, deathly white with fear. "If our heads are cut off, that's it."
"Piece of cake. Voles aren't known for their tendencies to gnaw off human heads."
"Voles?" Belinda asked, jogging to keep up with me. One of the Nazis, evidently on patrol around the perimeter of the grounds, spotted us and yelled to his buddies.
I waved at them as they took up protective stances.
"Water voles, to be exact. That's the only curse I can think of that won't actually kill them." I slowed my trot to a walk, slapping a confident look on my face.
"You can't turn those men into water voles," Belinda said, clearly shocked by my intention.
I stopped for a moment and gave her a long look. "If I do not change them into water voles, it will take us much longer to get inside the house, and while I'm willing to bet that we won't actually be killed if they beat us up, it will probably hurt. A lot. Not to mention delaying us helping Adrian. Besides, there's something much worse for you to consider than watching me turn a few lowlifes into voles."
"There is?" she asked, blinking a couple of times.
"Yeah. If they win, you'll be Beloved to the head Nazi."
She grimaced. "It's not that I don't want to help, but… they have terribly large sticks."
I paused, watching men bolt out of the house in response to a warning call. The Aryans stood in a line, each armed with some form of weapon—several baseball bats, one cricket bat, and a couple of tire irons with spikes welded to the end to form a mace—all of them hurling taunts at us. Belinda had a point. I like to think I'm not a coward, but there was no sense in getting smacked around before I could turn them into voles.
"Turn around," I ordered her, raising my hand to draw a ward. I kept her turning until I had drawn protective wards all around her, repeating the action on myself.
"Will this work?" she asked in a nervous whisper as we marched toward the line of Nazis that filled Christian's driveway.
"Of course it will. I'm a ward drawer from way back," I lied, praying the wards might actually hold out if she believed in them.
"What do you two think you're doing?" one of the Nazis stepped forward to ask with a sneer. He slapped his bat against his gloved hand and raked us both with a look so foul it left me craving a bath to wash off the residue.
I stopped and smiled, Belinda bravely beside me. The words of the curse were on my tongue as I took a deep breath, then tapped into the darkness that Adrian carried within him, the darkness that bound him to Asmodeus. I pointed my finger at the lead Nazi, saying in my best Gothic voice of doom," 'The guardians of the four quarters lay open their minds, filled they are with blood, guilt, and fear. Within you, loathsome beast most blind, thy tongue shall taste of… er… shall taste of…'" Crap! I'd forgotten the words of the curse. Desperately I tried to visualize the charm book, now sitting on a shelf in Christian's library.
"What's the matter? Why have you stopped?" Belinda asked me in a worried whisper, one eye on the Nazis as they moved restlessly.
"We have us a witch, lads," the head Nazi snarled, brandishing his bat. "And what do we do to these filthy women?"
"Kill them!" the gang yelled, raising their weapons to pump them in the air.
"I can't remember the rest of the curse," I mumbled to Belinda, running back over the curse in my mind." 'Within you, loathsome beast most blind, thy tongue shall taste'… hell! It's gone! I just can't remember what comes after that."
"Beer?" Belinda suggested, stumbling backward as the men started toward us.
I shrugged. "Works for me. I'll just wing the rest. Halt!" I held up my hand and gestured dramatically. The men ignored me, moving faster now that they smelled fear. I spoke quickly, drawing once again on Adrian's darkness, sketching the symbols of the curse that boun
d the words to the victims." 'The guardians of the four quarters lay open their minds, filled they are with blood, guilt, and fear. Within you, loathsome beast most blind, thy tongue shall taste of stale beer!'"
The men stopped, looking puzzled. I held my breath, waiting for them to turn into small, furry brown ratlike creatures. Although a couple of them twitched, and one started batting at his ears, they were all still human.
Well, as human as neo-Nazis could be.
"Is that it?" Belinda asked, peering around me at the men. "Is there supposed to be more to the curse? Aren't they supposed to change, or are they more mental voles than actual voles?"
"I think there's more, but I can't remember it. Um. OK, how about this. 'Nazi, Nazi, go away. Become a vole today, I say!'"
Thunder rumbled overhead, a cold breeze whipping around us. Long-dead leaves were caught up in a maelstrom, a veritable tornado of spinning fury. Belinda cried out as she ducked behind me. I covered my face to keep from being struck by the wild leaves. In the center of the windstorm, the Nazis all fell to the ground, covering their heads.
The leaves were so thick, and the wind and cold so intense, that I turned away for a moment. When I turned back, the sudden wind had died. Leaves drifted slowly to the ground in a spiral pattern on the flagstones of the courtyard. Collected in the middle of them was a group of small, squishy brown things.
"Did it work?" Belinda asked, spreading her fingers to peek through them.
"Kind of," I said, prodding one of the small objects with the toe of my boot.
"Those aren't voles," she commented helpfully.
"No, they're not." I sighed, stepping around the slimy mass. "I'm two for two on curses. I guess that's a sign I should give them up, although I think there's a certain amount of poetic justice in this."
"Really? You think so?" she asked, confused as she followed me up the front steps.
I smiled. "Who better to be a slug than a Nazi?"
Chapter Twenty-one
The house was strangely quiet as we entered, not a sound penetrating what seemed to be an icy, dense thickness that filled the building.
Squish.
"Ew! Well, there's one Nazi slug less," I muttered as I scraped my shoe on a carton containing several cases of beer. I paused on point like a retriever, trying to open myself up to the house.
"Can you feel Adrian?" Belinda asked in a whisper, her words emphasized by the sight of her breath on the cold air. It was evident by the number of slugs that slid their way along the hardwood floors or down the carpeted stairs that my curse had been all-encompassing, so there was really no reason for us to be whispering, but I felt just as creeped-out as she did. The house was too still. I imagined that with Adrian, Saer, and Sebastian all locked in battle, the house would shake to its foundations, but as we slowly made our way through the hall, peering into the rooms whose doors had been flung open, the house was utterly quiet, as if holding its breath, bracing itself for a blow.
"No, I don't feel him. Can you feel Saer?"
We reached the bottom of the staircase. She shook her head, her face pinched and white.
"Maybe you should try to do the mind-meld thingy with him," I suggested, rubbing the goose bumps on my arms as I looked around. It was freezing in the house, seeming colder than outside. The Nazis hadn't been in possession of Christian's house very long, but long enough for them to spray-paint red supremacist logos all over the lovely mahogany paneling. Nothing but the slugs moved.
She shook her head again. "I can't."
I glanced at her, one foot on the bottom stair. "What do you mean, you can't? You can't because you don't want Saer to know you're here?"
"No, I mean I can't. I could before we were Joined, but afterward"—she looked away for a minute—"I couldn't. Something seemed to go wrong."
"Odd. Well, there's nothing for it—we're going to have to search the house to find them." I added a silent prayer that we would find Adrian alive. I was more than a little shaken by the fact that I couldn't feel Adrian's presence. I knew instinctively that he would break off mental contact with me when Saer was around, no doubt feeling he was protecting me somehow, but even when I'd blocked him from speaking to me earlier, I could feel him. Now there was nothing.
We found Melissande in the basement, bound and gagged, her long blond hair a curtain around her face as she slumped in a chair to which she was tied.
"Melissande!" Belinda jumped forward and knelt before the woman. I moved behind the chair, frowning at the cloth that had been used to bind her hands. I touched it, my frown deepening as the tactile memory of sliding my hands over that shirt came back to me. "What happened to you? Are you all right? Poor Melissande! Who did this?"
I untied Melissande's hands as Belinda carefully unknotted the matching black scrap of cloth that had been used to gag her. As Melissande lifted her head, Belinda gasped and fell back, staring in horror at her.
I moved around to look, rubbing my thumb over the warm silk. Why had Adrian ripped up a shirt to bind her? The questions that trembled on my lips died when I got a look at what had so horrified Belinda.
The symbol that had been burnt into Melissande's left cheek was one I was all too familiar with, the mere sight of it sending a cold wave skittering down my back that ended in a sick feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach. "Asmodeus."
Her eyes closed, tears slipping from beneath the closed lids. Faint silvery trails were left as the tears traveled a path down beautiful porcelain skin until it reached the red, angry swelling that marked the brand.
"Asmodeus the demon lord?"
I waved my hand toward Melissande's feet, feeling sick, feeling worse than sick. Now I knew why the house was so cold. Someone had invoked the power of Asmodeus, and, given the fact that Belinda and I had searched every square foot of it and found no sign of Adrian, Saer, or Sebastian, the odds were that Adrian had come to some sort of grief using the ring. "I fervently pray there's only one of him. Who did this to you, Melissande?"
I stood in front of her, confused by the anger visible in her gray eyes as she lifted her face to me. "My brother."
I turned away, unwilling to believe her, but driven to defend his cruel action. "Adrian has been—"
"Not Adrian," she interrupted, her voice throbbing with anguish. "Saer. He did this to me. He did this after I agreed to arrange a safe passage into the house for him. He marked me with the symbol of the power he's claimed after he promised to keep Damian safe."
"Safe," I snarled, whirling around to face her. My hands were clenched with the need to grab her and shake her as I'd done to Belinda, but I couldn't, not with the blood still fresh on the brand that marked her lovely cheek. "Safe from what, his own father? Don't you understand that Adrian loves Damian? Don't you see that he's sacrificed everything to save the boy? Are you so blinded by prejudice that you can't get it through your head that Saer is the one who means Damian harm, not Adrian?"
She stood, slowly lifting a hand. Her fingers were clenched tight in a fist, unfurling stiffly to reveal a small white and gold object lying in her palm. "I know that now. I am more sorry than I can ever express that I didn't recognize the truth."
I looked from Asmodeus's ring to her tear-stained face, confused. "Did Saer give you that to hold for him?"
"No." Her eyes were filled with pain similar to what I'd so often seen in Adrian. "Saer doesn't know I have it. Adrian gave it to me to give to you."
"Adrian gave you the ring? Why—"
"They took him," she said, shoving the ring at me. Of their own volition, my fingers plucked the ring from her palm, the familiar warm weight of it a comfort as it slid onto my thumb. "Saer and Sebastian took Adrian. He tried to save me despite what I had done, but it was no use. Saer threatened to kill me outright if Adrian did not cooperate. Sebastian went after Christian, but Saer remained. He made Adrian watch as he marked me, and then he tied me here, leaving me to face death alone."
"Death—" Belinda said. We both turned to look at the wall
opposite. Melissande's chair was carefully placed so that as the sun rose in the morning, light from the unshuttered window would creep slowly across the tile floor until eventually it would consume her—but not before she had a few hours to anticipate her end.
"I don't understand," I said, turning away from the window as I fought my own battle with a rising sense of panic. "Why didn't Adrian use the ring against Saer?"
"He could not," Melissande answered, her voice breaking as she slumped back into the wooden chair. "Saer too has been bound to Asmodeus. The ring was useless to Adrian, but he knew that in the right hands—your hands—it could wield the power needed to free him. Please, Nell, please free my brother. Save Adrian. Don't let Saer destroy him."
"Oh, don't worry, I won't," I said, marching determinedly toward the stairs up to the main floor, pausing when I realized I had no idea where I was going. "Uh—where exactly has Saer taken Adrian?"
"The British Museum. Adrian told Saer that the ring is hidden there. He did not admit it, but I know his intention is to summon Asmodeus before Saer can make the sacrifice. When Asmodeus finds out that Saer is trying to usurp him, Adrian will destroy them both."
My shoulders slumped. Alice and her six impossible things had nothing on me. "I really am going to have to have a talk with Adrian about his obsession with martyring himself. What sacrifice does Saer plan on making?"
"Damian," she said, sliding a guilty glance toward Belinda. "The only way Saer can gain power over Asmodeus without the ring is to offer the sacrifice of an innocent."
Belinda stiffened.
"OK. So we just have to get there and put a cap on Saer before either Adrian can summon his demon master to wipe out everyone, or Sebastian finds Christian, whom he'll have to kill to get Damian, which means Allie will probably die too, thus making the death toll three even before he drags Damian in to be turned into a sacrificial offering. And I thought Americans were violent! Belinda?"
She stared at Melissande for a few moments, then shook her head. "Saer is lost to me. I can't do any good if I go with you. He would only use me as a hostage, and I couldn't stand being the cause of any more of this horribleness."
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