by Alix Adale
He nodded and dove into the flood, swimming with powerful strokes toward the kitsune.
Okay. Time to do this. Gripping her sword, she charged through the water, leaping from car to car, finding fenceposts and mailboxes to keep above the raging foam as she made her way toward her family’s SUV.
The vampires had already torn the doors off and were about to leap inside. Screams of terror came from the interior. In a panic, dad tried to hit the creatures with his SUV. The tires spun, the vehicle trapped between a bent lamppost and a retaining wall.
With lightning quickness, she attacked. Her sword whipped out and decapitated the first hairless monster and sliced through a second before the rest even spotted her. By the time the creatures noticed the attack, her katana had cut them to pieces.
Only it was too late. Fifteen years too late. Her family was dead, they had been dead for a decade and a half, and they would always be dead. Death was a one-way door.
Already, the Demi-World was dissipating like a bad dream. She dropped her sword and rushed to the car. Her family’s faces lit up with joy and recognition, yet even as they reached out desperate arms their bodies faded.
Mama, come back! She leaped for her mother’s embrace, to hug her one last time. But mama disappeared, managing only a few words before she was gone: “It’s all right, baby. We’ll wait for you…”
Then they were gone. The waters receded. The drenched and battered town lay exposed in its full devastation. It was too late. It was over and it was too late.
But what of the others? She forced down the grief that had ruled her life all these years, rushing toward her old friend and her new man. They and her sword were the last things left.
Dreck squatted in the guesthouse living room, his arms empty. Even Ingrid had vanished with the dream. The tornado’s din dwindled to the soft hum of the air conditioning unit in the Saint Marius guesthouse. The hellish dreamscape receded into the soft gray luminance of pre-dawn. The wood-paneled walls of the bungalow returned, its Marian portrait and crucifix undisturbed.
She was back in the common room, Dreck in her arms. Every trace of the entity’s visitation was gone.
Dreck clutched her shoulders. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah. I’m … fine. Except…” She pointed. “My sword is not.” The broken blade of the katana lay across the hearthstone. “What about you?”
He nodded, then touched his throat. He curled and uncurled his fingers, trying to summon inner flame. “My fire,” he said at last. “It’s gone.”
“For good?”
“I don’t know,” he said, dazed. “What about everyone else?”
Oh God, Ingrid! They rushed toward the bedrooms. Armando and Colin met them at the door. The two men looked dazed and exhausted but intact. Without a word, all four rushed into the second bedroom. Cherise sat on the bed, semi-conscious but coming round. But Ingrid…
A pale, limp arm dangled from the bed as lifeless yellow eyes staring at the ceiling. The lycan had been too young, too weak to bear the brunt of the possession by that thing.
With a wail, Jordan collapsed beside the bedside. Ingrid was dead. There were no words, because there was nothing to say.
Chapter 20: Faithful Departed
Dreck
He stood in the guesthouse, staring at an ashen face in the mirror as weary fingers tried to make a Windsor knot.
“Here, let me do it,” said Armando. His brother came over, looped the tie together, tugged it into a crisp, balanced knot. “There.”
The others had not been affected by the Demi-World as much as he and Jordan—to say nothing of Kit—but they all had experienced something. They gathered that much, having talked it over the last few days. He gave Armando a nod. “I don’t know how many years it’s been since I wore one of these things.”
“You look good in a suit.”
“I don’t like them. A suit means somebody’s getting married or somebody died, and since our kind hardly ever marry…”
Armando nodded. “We have seen too many funerals.”
“This one hurts. She was a good kid. Too goddamned young.”
His brother nodded thoughtfully. The door opened and Colin walked in. “Just got finished speaking to Ursula,” he said, his chipper brogue far more somber today. “Her witches and sorcerers agree. The thing that possessed Malmardane, Ferdinand and the lycan was a Walk-In.”
It shouldn’t take the Queen’s best magicians to figure out the bleeding obvious. He could have told her that himself. His voice snapped, rough and brittle. “So some entity from beyond was controlling Malmardane all this time? Why did it switch to Ferdinand?”
Colin shrugged. “Records about vampire clans in Oklahoma are unreliable. It’s a borderland between major realms.”
“That’s not what I asked!”
Colin’s frown deepened. “Best guess—this is a guess, mind you, secondhand from the Queen’s Chancellor—is that the entity possessed Malmardane’s entire clan, warped their bodies as an experiment. It’s that powerful.”
“So how did it end up as Ferdinand?”
“You’re trying to apply human logic to something that’s not human. We don’t know, George. We don’t know anything about it. I can tell you this, though. Ursula is worried.”
She ought to be. This sounded bad. His frustration mounted. He wanted to wrap his hands around the creature’s throat and throttle it. But how did you battle a non-physical entity? “So where is it now? Dead? Banished? Still following us around?”
Colin could only shrug. “Who can say?”
Who indeed? He put a hand on the Windsor knot, gave it another tug to knock it off-center, and followed his brothers out the door.
Moog and Brickhouse stood outside the chapel. Both lycans were in their human forms and both—hard to believe—wore suits and ties. As a peace offering, Jordan had invited them. The kitsune had been part of their pack. He gave both men curt nods, having nothing to say them.
Brickhouse wept, blubbering in his cups. The big werebear was blaming himself for Kit’s death. As well he might. As well he should.
Moog also stayed silent, glowering at the vampires but keeping the truce. At least he’d made a gift of Mustard to Jordan. It had been Ingrid’s dog, so there was that small token of amends.
The lycan ringmaster approached, giving him a hard stare. “Dreck. You’re alive.”
“No thanks to you.” Dreck spat on the lawn beside the church steps. “I ought to lay you on the ground for trying to kill us. How did you get mixed up with Malmardane?”
Moog shrugged. “He presented himself as a vampire who wanted to fight. Sounded good to me. How could I know he was a demon?”
A likely story. He turned to go. “I got nothing else to say to you.”
“Wait.” The lycan fixed him cold eyes.
“Go on.”
“If there’s a war with these Walk-Ins, tell your Queen she can call on the Lycan Nations. This is our world too.”
Dreck nodded and turned away as Jordan and the other women emerged from the guesthouse. He went over and embraced her. Hand in hand, they led the group toward the cemetery.
Jordan
“May her soul and the souls of all the faithful departed through the mercy of God rest in peace.” Father de la Sierra spoke the final words as the casket containing Ingrid’s ashes dropped into the cool earth. The Order had agreed to give the orphan they’d expelled a Catholic burial. Why not? There was nowhere else for her to go: no family, no true pack, nothing but a memory. And slayers burned their dead.
Warm, Santa Barbara sunlight bathed the mourners this time instead of rain, but the service resembled the last one so much it was as if she’d never left. Déjà vu made her wary, and by habit she scanned the small crowd of mourners, dreading the sudden return of that inexplicable entity. But nothing came. That vast, unintelligible, cosmic presence had retreated. Whether for good or only for now, who could say?
Ingrid, born human, grown lycan, kicked out
of her order, cut loose from her pack, she never had anywhere to go but down.
Love ya kiddo. Take care of your foxy self, wherever you go.
Afterward, she met with Father de la Sierra again. “It’s done, Father.”
“What do you mean?”
“Malmardane is dead. Gone. Never was Malmardane to begin with. It was…”
“The Devil himself?”
She hesitated. Over the last few days, she and the other survivors had talked about their experience, pieced bits and pieces together, tried to form a coherent whole. But it was impossible to fit the entity into Catholic theology. She tried anyway, for his sake. “The best way I can describe it is some kind of creature from beyond heaven and hell. It wasn’t human. You can call it demonic, extraterrestrial, interdimensional—use whatever words you want. Language doesn’t do a good job describing the force that passed through us that night.”
“As you say, child. As you say. Praise unto Almighty God. Have you reconsidered your resignation?”
“No, that stands. I’ll be up in San Francisco, trying something new.”
“With that … man.”
Poor Father. He didn’t like Dreck, but tried to hide it. “Yes, with that man.”
“You are not the first young woman to leave the Order on account of love. I hope it works out.”
“Thank you, Father. Goodbye.”
“Go with God, my child. Go with God.”
Dreck bought a brand new Jeep Wrangler in Santa Barbara and they took turns driving it north at a leisurely pace. The other Bradens had driven on ahead, though they were all supposed to meet up at a bar in San Francisco, a place friendly to vampires.
She rubbed his hard, strong shoulder. “Something’s troubling you.”
He passed his new iPhone over. “A voicemail from my Queen. Go ahead, hit play.”
With a button press, she did. The soft English accent gave the reassuring ambience of a BBC newscast, at odds with the content of the Queen’s message.
“George,” the recording began. “You refused to bend the knee at solstice and left without permission. You cavorted with renegade lycans and jeopardized all of Dagon by consorting with a known slayer. These are serious errors, George, major transgressions. Other clans are grumbling. We cannot show preferential treatment. Therefore, we are exiling you from the Kingdom of Dagon for an unspecified period.”
The royal ‘we.’ Jordan had to laugh. After all they’d gone through, the Queen sounded petty. It was like a high school principal handing out detention for showing up late to school after a fatal car crash. “An unspecified period? What does that even mean?”
“A month, a year, a decade, who knows? Until she needs me again.”
“It’s not so bad. We were moving to The City anyway.”
“Yeah. Speaking of which, did Colin’s girlfriend find any leads?”
“Yeah, she spotted a cozy little Victorian in Seacliff. We’ll be living large.”
“Great,” he said. “A house in the fog, a job as a supernatural detective. What a way to go.”
The wryness in his voice didn’t bother her. They’d endured so much in the last several days. It was enough to turn anyone’s hair gray. “Mm, nope. No playing detective, not at first.”
“No?” His head pivoted, surprise showing.
“We need a genuine vacation. We’re taking at least a month off to break that house in. Wine. Weed. Concerts. Theater. Travel. Cruises. I’m taking you to Japan. You’re taking me to—I don’t know. Paris. George Dreck, we are going to live.”
“Yeah. Sounds good.” He grinned. “We’re breaking in that bed too?”
“Oh yeah. We’re going to break in a whole lot of beds. One on every floor.”
“One in every room.” His hand took hers. “You and me, for good.”
Her laughter came, free and easy. “You and me—for now.”
“For now?”
“We just met, what, a week ago? Let’s hold off on that other shit until we’re sure we can stand each other.”
He stroked her cheek. “Deal.”
Epilogue
Cherise
Her boots made nary a sound across the lush, piled carpets of Eibon Manor, the vampire palace in the heart of Portland. She rubbed her jaw as she walked—then stopped. That was turning into a bad habit: caressing her chin where the Queen had smacked her. Calling attention to that signaled weakness. Ursula didn’t matter anymore. Things had changed.
A tall, bald vampire in mirrored sunglasses walked with her, using his longer strides to keep a half-step ahead. Everything was a competition to a man like Mabon, the Queen’s Chancellor, but that was fine. His cold, calculating focus and ruthless drive were understandable. He had a stronger will, a clearer sense of purpose, than anyone in her clan.
The Bradens were simpering jellyfish, each and every one. Burdened by conscience, shackled by a hypocritical morality, they squandered the gifts of vampirism and immortality on narrow dreams of domestic bliss. They were fools. Absolute fools.
Even George—the only Braden with any spine—had turned into a jellyfish in the end. Love! Come on. Love was nothing but instinct, pop culture, and brain chemistry. It was an opiate for undeveloped minds. Only the self mattered; the rest was a masquerade.
“You survived another dangerous situation,” Mabon said. “I’m surprised.”
Surprised—but not impressed. Mabon liked to put her in her place. But that was okay. Those were the rules of the game. “Why do you have so little faith in me?”
“It’s not a question of faith, Cherise, but the odds of any fledgling surviving to maturity. Faith is for children; a throwback to a more primitive state, a surrendering to an all-powerful memory of the parent.”
“Like love.”
“Correct. Willpower is the only tool of the true magician.”
Yes, exactly. Mabon was one of the few who could see. But he couldn’t see everything. It was a dangerous game she played. “You’re not even a little pleased to see me?”
He chuckled without breaking stride. “Why should I be?”
Her hand shot out, grabbing his wrist and halting him in his tracks. Her other hand slid down the front of his pants, fondling the bulge in his trousers. “This.”
With an angry shake, he pushed away. “We don’t have time for that. The Queen is waiting.”
Like a pull-toy on a string, Mabon rolled in a single direction, not knowing when he got played.
They entered the throne room. The chamber was deserted, save for Ursula alone on her high-backed chair. The Queen looked weary, dressed in a Chanel business suit, as if back from a board meeting. The holdings of the Eibon billionaires made Armando—a mere multi-millionaire—look like a backwater hick in comparison. Power flowed up in the Underworld.
Mabon took his place at the Queen’s right hand, a half-step behind the throne, hands clasped behind his back, eyes fixed straight ahead. His face was impassive and unreadable behind the mirrored shades.
It was show time, the moment of truth. This report was for the Queen’s ears alone, not her entire court. She walked up the red carpet, bent her head, and dropped to one knee—a vampire page in Dagon’s court.
Ursula flicked a careless wrist, bidding her to rise.
She did. “Thank you, Your Majesty.”
The Queen extended a palm. “Give me my spirit-bottle.”
No problem. She handed it over. “It works.”
“Of course it works!” the Queen snapped, examining the small, reddish cloud writhing inside the crystal vial. “What’s this? What have you done? There’s a spirit here!”
“The lycan girl. I caught her up.”
“Why?” demanded Ursula. “You were only supposed to use it on Armando—and only if he died!”
The urge to test the spirit-bottle’s magic had been too much to resist. She concealed a smile, bending her head. “Forgive me, Your Majesty. I was moved by a spirit of compassion.”
“Put some effort into your li
es,” the Queen said. She tucked the bottle into her sleeve. “Never mind, I’ll add her to my collection. Maybe she can haunt the zoo.” Ursula smirked at her own joke, then was all business again. “Now. Give me your report. Omit nothing.”
Of course. She began, telling the Queen everything she had witnessed, leaving nothing out—except one tiny detail. That secret belonged to her and her alone.
After the entity had vanished, she’d woken up in the guest bedroom. Ingrid was dying in the next bed over, so she’d used the bottle, fast, then got back into bed before Dreck and the others burst into the room.
Later, she and the others had discussed the event. Everyone had experienced a different version of the Demi-World. Dreck had relived some old battle while the slayer had gone through a tornado. Colin spoke of a dreary passage across the Atlantic Ocean, while Armando muttered about a shipwreck.
She had declined to share her dream, telling them it was too traumatic to talk about. The others had accepted that. They spoke with horror about their experiences. But hers had been glorious, absolutely breathtaking.
In it, the world had become a broken, burning ruin beneath a storm-haunted, billowing sky. Atomic lightning arced above a radiation-scarred waste. In the perpetual gloom, the dead walked while the living cowered underground. She strode through this wasteland like an angel of death, a gun in her arms, an army of killers at her back. Such power. Such freedom. No magic, no drug, nothing had ever compared to that brief but vivid glimpse of invincible conquering godhood.
The dream had vanished too soon, but a few days later something more amazing happened. After the funeral, the thing found her. From out of space and time, it came whispering in the night.
The things it said. The secrets it told. It knew the way to other worlds. And it came bearing gifts of illimitable power. Whatever she wanted could be hers. In return, it wanted only her essence—her spirit, her soul, her ka, the unique and eternal pattern of her conscious mind. Whatever word you chose to use.
Without a doubt, Ferdinand and Malmardane had accepted similar bargains. They had not been strong enough to withstand the creature. It had overwhelmed them.
