by SM Reine
Lucifer lifted a finger to quiet him. “Wait.” The news had come back from commercial break. January Lazar was talking again.
“I don’t have all day.”
“We just established that you have eternity,” Lucifer said. “Wait.” The vampire stared intently at the news anchor. There were no subtitles, and the audio was quiet enough that Seth couldn’t hear it, but Lucifer must have been getting something out of it.
Or else he just liked annoying Seth.
Without shifting his eyes from the television, Lucifer said, “You’re a demon. I feel it all over you.”
“I’m not,” Seth said.
“Infernal. You’re drenched in infernal energy. Preternaturals, we’re all a family, even between factions—some of us more closely related than others. Shifters are closer to sidhe. Sidhe are closer to angels. And vampires are closer to demons. ”
The door to the bar opened, allowing harsh daylight to spill through Rock Bottom. Protesting voices lifted in shouts again.
Someone had come inside. It was impossible to see who it was at that distance. Seth doubted it was Dana McIntyre, but the mere possibility of it had him on edge. “Get to the point.”
“Vampires are just this side of infernal,” Lucifer reiterated. “You’ll need to feed the way we do if you want to heal your body. I can hook you up with blood.”
The revulsion was immediate and overwhelming. “No.”
He’d spent years fighting to ignore his visceral reaction to spilled blood. Working as a doctor, the battle had been relentless—what a revenant friend of his called living in the eye of the storm. Always an inch from getting ripped apart by hurricane winds.
Seth had strayed an inch too far from the eye of the storm in Sheol. He’d fed on Marion and still remembered the sweetness of death in her blood.
He would never do that again.
“Blood or meat, pick your poison,” Lucifer said. “Demons tend to go for meat over blood because it’s more substantial, but blood should do the trick. Bonus: it’s less likely to be fatal to your victims.”
“No,” Seth said again. “I can’t do either.”
“You can if you want to fix…that.” He flicked his fingers at Seth’s shirt.
The cloth was loose enough that it didn’t suck into the cavity of Seth’s body. But it fell over his exposed ribs when he wasn’t careful. And he wasn’t being careful now. When Seth finally dared to look down, he could see the outline of bones. “There has to be another option.”
“Blood can be extracted without murder. If that doesn’t work—if you need meat—then I can help you with that, too. Vampires aren’t bad people. I can tell you what we do to target the dregs of society nobody will miss.”
The dregs of society that Seth had healed in his hospital.
There was no such thing as a person nobody would miss. Everyone mattered. Everyone was important.
“Thanks for your time,” Seth said, standing up.
Lucifer watched him stand with obvious irritation. “You wanted a deal with the devil.”
“I’ve made such deals before,” he said. “I always regretted it.”
“The devil’s your last choice.”
“Second to last.” If he couldn’t bring himself to deal with vampires, he could still turn to an angel for help. A specific half-angel who he would have preferred not to risk seeing again, even though he desperately missed her.
“There’s one other thing we could do for each other. If you’re ‘human enough,’ I can take the ‘enough’ part away.” Lucifer tongued his incisors, which weren’t much sharper than an ordinary man’s. “I’ll make you a vampire.”
The idea was only two degrees less revolting than being a demon. But vampires could survive on synthetic blood, and Seth couldn’t at the moment—he’d already tried that.
He sat back down. “All right. We can talk.”
“You need to do something for me before I’ll change you,” Lucifer said.
“I told you, no deals with the devil. If you’re attaching strings then I’ll just ask another vampire to do it.” Someone like Charity Ballard, a revenant who would happily help Seth. He’d been avoiding her for as long as he’d avoided Marion, but it would be easy enough to track the thread of her life once he was ready.
“I’m the only devil you’ll find who can do this. Few vampires have the strength to make others.” Lucifer smirked, as if he knew what Seth was thinking. “And not all breeds can change others.”
Most likely revenants among them.
Seth’s eyebrows lowered. “All right. What would you want?”
“Root access to the darknet servers. They’re in the Winter Court and I saw you at the summit with the steward. You two are clearly intimate. Have her give you access.”
Marion probably didn’t know how to get in, either, but it would be an excuse to visit with her, and he wanted to visit. Badly. It was a drive both alluring and dangerous. “So you want root access. That means a login that lets you administrate the servers. Why?”
“I’m a businessman and all the good business happens on the darknet. I want to be in charge of that.”
“I’ll think about it.” Seth would have to think a lot longer and harder about whether he wanted to be a vampire than the darknet issue, though.
Before he could leave, a familiar face on Lucifer’s television caught his attention.
The news stories had switched over. Now January Lazar was talking about a young woman with heart-shaped features and hair the same shade as soil after rainfall. She was dusky in coloring, her flesh a shade too dark to be Mediterranean olive, her eyebrows strong and straight and almost angry-looking. That was what made the contrast of her white-blue eyes so shocking.
Marion Garin stood beside a second familiar face, which Seth found less appealing. Prince ErlKonig of the Autumn Court had an especially irritating smile in the footage that January Lazar was talking over. The two of them were in Hollywood, walking from a limousine to a theater.
Marion had a way of moving that made it look like she had wings, even though no such thing was visible at her back.
“What’s happening there?” Seth asked.
“The Voice of God has confirmed that she’s getting married to the unseelie Prince of the Autumn Court in a week,” Lucifer said. “They sent out invitations a few days ago and someone leaked it to the news.”
Married.
For a dizzying moment, Seth wasn’t surrounded by vampires in Rock Bottom anymore.
He was a younger man waiting at the altar for a beautiful blond werewolf Alpha. She had been pregnant at the time. Seth had believed that the babies, the twins, belonged to him.
It had been a snowy day when he’d been due to marry Rylie Gresham. And it hadn’t happened. Enemies had attacked their wedding before vows could be exchanged, blood had been spilled across the snow, and the nuptials had been interrupted.
Then he had learned that the babies weren’t even his.
Everything had fallen apart after that.
Twenty years later, he was alone. Rylie was still running the largest werewolf pack in the world alongside Seth’s brother, Abel—the father of her children. Her werewolf Alpha mate.
It still hurt.
Seth had promised himself never to deal with that hurt again.
He had sworn to be forever alone with that pain, letting old wounds heal, forgotten, while he dealt with a life beyond love.
That pain had nothing to do with Marion’s wedding to Konig.
Nothing at all.
Yet the giant hole in his chest was hurting more than it had since he’d been eaten by the Hounds.
5
“We’ll assassinate her,” Konig said. “Assassinate, dismember, and display her head atop the walls of Myrkheimr. I’ll see her skewered for this!”
Marion reclined on the throne, massaging her temples to relax the headache holding her skull in a vise. It had started with the Raven Knights’ unsuccessful attempt to seize Deirdre
, but it continued because Konig had been ranting about murder for the last hour.
Jibril’s arrival hadn’t helped assuage his temper, either. The normally calm angel was only feeding into Konig’s fire.
“You might have to settle for a less-favored appendage,” Jibril said. “I want her head on a pike in Dilmun.” That was the angel city in the Ethereal Levant. Marion had only ever seen it through Leliel’s memories, but if it was head-on-a-pike territory, she didn’t want to visit in person.
“We could bisect her head and each take half,” Konig suggested.
Marion rolled her eyes. “You can’t kill a phoenix.” Violet had explained Deirdre’s nature as soon as the shifter had departed.
“Actually, you can,” Heather said. She’d been summoned by Konig’s rage along with the Knights, and now she was skinning the dead Hound at the end of the hall. “A phoenix is rumored to be easier to kill than other shifters. The problem is that they have a nasty habit of coming back sooner or later.”
“Even coming back ‘later’ would be preferable to having her strip my title,” Konig snarled. “She only needs to be dead until the vote!”
Violet didn’t say anything, but the magic shimmering over her porcelain skin was distinctly smug. The fact that she’d resisted saying “I told you so” was even more miraculous than a phoenix shifter’s ability to be reborn from death.
“We can’t assassinate Deirdre,” Marion said, more firmly the second time.
“Heather can arrange it,” Konig said.
“It’s true, I can,” Heather agreed.
Marion lifted her head from her hands. “We won’t kill Deirdre over this—not least of all because it would be ineffective. She’d just be replaced by Jolene.” Jolene liked Marion as little as anyone else that she’d encountered. Worse, Jolene was, despite being described as “good people,” the kind of person who sneaked into the Niflheimr dungeons in search of the darknet.
“I won’t give up my title,” Konig said.
“You won’t need to,” Marion said. “We can lobby for votes the way that Deirdre will.”
“Let me remind you that ten of twelve of your ilk already think that Konig’s position as prince is something that should be voted upon,” Violet said. “The odds are hardly in your favor.”
“I can’t believe you signed such a thing on behalf of the angels without first consulting me,” Jibril said, turning his anger on Marion now. She was a much more convenient target than Deirdre.
“Blame Leliel,” Marion said. “She’s the one who made me speaker.”
Jibril pulled his wings tightly against his back. “Oh, I do blame Leliel. I blame her for a great many things.” The angels had been quick to disassociate themselves from Leliel’s attack on the Winter Court. Leliel was leader in the EL, and that leadership came with power, just as Marion’s stewardship came with ties to Niflheimr. It didn’t necessarily come with loyalty.
Jibril had been in the throne room almost daily to foster goodwill. He’d all but kissed Konig’s feet to avoid the wrath of the sidhe. No actual foot-kissing had happened, but Jibril had agreed to perform Konig and Marion’s wedding ceremony in a public display of peace.
“I won’t be bullied,” Konig said. “Especially not in regards to something so important to me.” He took Marion’s hand, brushing his lips over the knuckles. It reminded her of their long day in bed together. The mere memory of it weakened her knees. “We need to have Deirdre Tombs killed.”
Marion used his hand to help her stand from the throne. “We must do this the right way. I have connections among every faction—even if I don’t remember them. I’ll pull strings and convince everyone to vote in our favor.”
“I don’t know if that’s the better outcome,” the angel said. “What if Deirdre Tombs is right? What if your marriage makes the gods angry? What if this leads to another Genesis-like event?”
“We can risk gods who are meant to love me destroying the world over my wedding,” Marion said, “or we can be sure that the Winter Court will fall, and there won’t be anything to keep Leliel from killing us all. One is a gamble and one is a guarantee.”
“Lobbying for votes among factions who hate you is a hell of a gamble too, princess,” Konig said.
It was the truth, but it still stung. “We don’t have to be likable. We have to be compelling.”
Violet smiled bitterly. It looked especially vacant with her whited-out eyes. “In that case, I suppose I should get back to planning your wedding.”
Before entering the weeks-long recovery that had followed bleeding into the soul links, Marion had made a few important wedding decisions. She’d explored Niflheimr for a location that was structurally safe, relatively warm, and distant from the carnage that Leliel had wreaked upon the courtyard. Marion had found a chamber in one of the towers adjacent that met all requirements perfectly.
Whatever role the room had served before the revolution, nobody seemed to know. It was vast and empty and connected to the visitors’ bedrooms by a hallway. Privately, Marion suspected the Winter Court had used it for orgies. The sidhe liked to use everything for orgies.
Violet had needed Marion’s permission to make substantial changes to Niflheimr, but a few drops of blood later, the chamber had yielded control to the visiting queen. She’d managed to make things grow in the ice. Trees. Vines. Even furniture. The mere presence of flora seemed to have brought humidity with it, and dampness clung to every corner.
After Jibril left, Violet threw herself back into the magical labor of modifying the wedding venue. Nori was helping—or so she claimed. For the time being, helping seemed to be following Violet around and keeping track of her executive decisions so she’d be able to update the happy couple on what was transpiring.
Marion watched with reluctant amusement, hanging back where several benches were stacked in a pile. She knew better than to get involved when Violet was urging the ice to turn into perpetual waterfalls flanking the altar where the vows would be exchanged.
“You can’t fault your mother for her vision,” Marion said, trying to force a smile for Konig. The trees shivered as he stalked toward her. Sidhe didn’t skimp on sex, and they didn’t skimp on temper tantrums, either.
“Maybe Deirdre Tombs is right,” Konig said. “Maybe our marriage is damned by the gods.”
Marion glanced at Violet, who was conducting more seats to grow from the floor near the front of the room. They were like wooden vines wrapping together, forming into the shape of seats more perfectly than any careful hand-carving could have.
She drew Konig further away, just in case his mother was listening.
“You don’t need to be afraid of losing your title as prince,” Marion whispered. “We won’t let it happen.”
“I’m not afraid of anything! But you must realize that we can’t leverage your relationships to lobby for votes. The wards on Niflheimr are already weak. If you keep leaving the plane to talk to people…”
“I’ll strengthen the soul links as many times as I need to. I’m feeling much better. I can spill a lot of blood again.”
“And need a wheelchair to attend your wedding?” He snorted. “That’s going to look fantastic on the cover of Vogue.”
“I won’t need to drain myself as much this time. We’re just a few days from the wedding.” Once Konig was married to the Winter Court’s steward, assuming the role of king, he’d be able to connect to the sidhe magic. He’d be able to recast everything. The wards would be strong, and neither of them would need to suffer major blood loss over it.
“If there will be any wedding at all,” Konig said.
“Are you reconsidering the wedding?”
“Not because of her, and what she might do to me. Because of what she said about the gods. Just because she’s an asshole doesn’t mean she isn’t also right. How do we know that this won’t make the gods come slamming down on us? When’s the last time you even talked to them?”
Marion could remember the exact moment s
he spoke to them—one of them, anyway. “When Seth brought me back here after Sheol. When he was in my bedroom.”
“You talked to the gods after that?”
“No, I talked to Seth when he was in my room.” She drew in a breath, clenched her fists, squared her shoulders. “Everything with the Canope was set up to force Seth to reveal himself as a god. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner, but it wasn’t my secret to tell.”
“Are you sure?” Konig asked. “You’re absolutely certain he’s a god?”
“I’d be the one who knows, wouldn’t I?”
She’d expected him to be angry that she waited so long to tell him. Instead, he looked relieved. “We’ve got a god on our side. An actual god! I knew I liked Seth for a reason.” Marion was confident that Konig hadn’t liked Seth until that moment. “That means we have another strategy for getting votes that doesn’t require you to leave Niflheimr unprotected!”
“We do?”
He was getting excited now. “What do you think Deirdre Tombs told ten preternatural leaders to convince them to this degree of control? She said this would protect them from the gods, and you’re not on the gods’ side anymore. But we’ve got one of them. We can prove her wrong.”
“He wouldn’t want everyone to know about him, Konig. He chose to live as a doctor for a reason.”
“He’s going to save us,” Konig said. It was like he’d gone deaf. “We should tell everyone. They’ll bend to us immediately.”
“No,” Marion said, appalled. “Don’t you realize how many people would blame him for Genesis? Please, Konig. Promise you’ll keep it a secret.”
His face fell. “Marion…”
“Please.”
“Only for you. Anything for you.” He kissed her temple. “I didn’t get a chance to ask you how things went with Geoff Samuelson.”
“Confusingly. He told me that the person who attacked me outside Original Sin was—okay, this will sound crazy. She had the head of a goat.”
“I don’t suppose your sister was fathered by a goat?”
