by Karen Chance
“Let me guess, you’re Alarr?”
“It means Elven general,” Heidar enlightened me automatically. “But, please, lady, I beg of you, tell us what you know of my father.”
“I’m sorry, not a lot. Only that he’s missing and presumed dead.”
“That is impossible,” Heidar said with conviction.
I didn’t feel like arguing the point, especially when I suspected he might be right. “Okay.” I looked at Claire sternly. “You want to tell me what’s been going on?”
“It’s a long story.”
“Hit the highlights.”
“Well, Heidar and I met at work—he’d come to bid on something—only my boss—you remember Matt, the gorilla in a suit?” I nodded. Her former boss at Gerald’s did look frighteningly like a shaved ape. “He’d decided to sell me to Sebastian, who’d finally tracked me down, only it didn’t work out quite like they’d planned. Heidar and I escaped into Faerie, but the damned Svarestri attacked us. We got away—you don’t even want to know how—and made it back to New York, but when I stopped by the house, Michael grabbed me for the bounty—” She stopped suddenly, looking stricken.
“Which you failed to mention to me.”
Claire rallied quickly. “I knew how you’d react, Dory! And you don’t know what the family is like. They’re… they can be very bad news.”
“So can I.”
“See!” Claire screeched. “See, I knew that’s what you’d say! You’d have gone stomping off—”
“I don’t stomp.”
“—to see Sebastian, and my slimy excuse for a cousin would have had you killed! He was surrounded by body-guards all the time, the little shit, and most of them were mages. With some of their spells, well, they can take down vamps, you know?”
“And we’re talking about him in the past tense because?”
“Oh, Heidar killed him,” she said, as an afterthought. I decided not to ask or we’d be here all night.
“So Michael kidnapped you and took you where?” I prompted.
“To Sebastian, for the bounty. Only of course Seb was dead and the family was busy fighting over the inheritance and couldn’t be bothered. Michael was actually pissed at me, like I’d asked him to kidnap me or something. But I told him I was carrying a half-Fey child and that its father was the king, and he couldn’t kill me then because the Fey would—”
“Separate his worthless head from his spineless body,” Heidar managed to get in.
“So you aren’t pregnant?” I asked for clarification.
“Um,” Claire said. And stopped.
“Er,” Heidar added, blushing.
I looked between the two of them. Obviously, Caedmon’s story had been off by a generation. Then I recalled something. “A couple of days?!”
“Um, yes, well, it was more like a week, actually—”
I held up a hand. I was soaking and cold and my shoulders hurt. The details I could do without. “Just tell me how you got away from Michael. I know you were at the caves.”
“That place,” Claire said, wrinkling her nose in Virgo disgust for such disorder. “Michael decided to sell me to some dark mages he knew for a null bomb. He figured he could at least get something for his trouble that way, only the mages said they wouldn’t touch me until they checked with the Fey. But Michael had been carting me around for over a day trying to get a paycheck and—”
“Where were you?” I asked Heidar.
He looked sheepish. “I opposed Claire’s wish to return to your home. The Svarestri do not know the human world well, but they have occasionally ventured here. I considered the risk to be—”
“I was only going to leave a quick note,” she said testily.
“So you ditched your only bodyguard with—let’s see—the mages, the vamps and Fey after you?”
“There’s no reason to take that tone, Dory. And anyway, this was before Michael. I didn’t know the vamps were after me, too.”
I let it drop. We were going to have a very long conversation at some point, but not now. “Okay. So you got away from Michael how?”
“I was trying to tell you.” Claire glared me into submission. “So Michael got pissed at the mages, who wouldn’t pay him until they were sure they’d actually be able to harvest me, and he trashed their place. You’ve never seen anything like it. Bodies everywhere, and so much blood and—you know how I feel about blood. I may have passed out.”
I gave her a look. Claire gets nauseous from a paper cut. She sighed. “Okay, I did pass out. And when I woke up, I was being taken to the auction. Michael had found some guys who used to work for the mages who weren’t the kind to ask questions—”
“And Drac found you there.”
“Yes. He just took me; didn’t pay or anything. Then we went to this total rathole of a motel—I mean that literally; it had rats. You could hear them in the walls—” I nodded. Drac must not have wanted to risk my leaking his Bellagio room number to the Senate and moved to the other extreme of the spectrum. “—and one of his men kept eating them, and I said I was going to be sick and went outside and they’d left the keys in the car—”
“They didn’t have wards around the place?” As soon as I said it, I realized how stupid that was.
Claire raised an eyebrow, dislodging some water from her bangs, which ran into her eyes. “Damn contacts! That’s the other reason I had to go home; I haven’t been able to see anything for days. ‘Extended wear,’ my ass,” she mumbled, fishing around in her purse for a pair of glasses.
“And you found me how?”
“I didn’t. That’s why I was so surprised to see you. Of course, I told Heidar all about you”—she thumped him again—“and said you might catch up with us sooner or later, but he never listens, and anyway, if you’d checked the answering machine, you’d have already known I was okay. I left—I don’t know—like, ten messages, starting last night—”
“I’ve been kind of busy.”
“And you never answer your cell phone.”
“My cell had a little accident.”
“Anyway, I found Heidar lurking around the motel—he’d found me but couldn’t get through the wards—and we drove around until we saw this great hotel that does tours of the vineyards. Then I remembered when I was looking at that magazine article about the wine country, you said your uncle had a house around here, and I thought maybe he’d know where to find you. So we asked around and here we are.”
I looked into her triumphant face and found myself utterly speechless. She’d been on a tour of the wine country. While half of Faerie chased her and I went slowly out of my mind, she’d been eating crackers and debating the merits of last season’s merlot.
I finally managed to unclench my jaws enough for speech. “Claire. This is very important. Did you accidentally take down the wards when you arrived?”
“What wards?”
“You might not have noticed, but Radu has a rather elaborate ward system.”
Claire blinked at me. “Why would he need that kind of protection? I mean, he is a vampire, right?” She stopped abruptly and stared at me, a hand coming up to cover her mouth. “Oh, listen, Dory, when I said I hate all vamps, I didn’t mean, you know, the good ones—”
“Svarestri,” Heidar hissed, in a tone so unlike his previous cheerful ones that I looked around for a moment, expecting to see someone else. But I saw only dark leaves against a deep gray sky, and heard only sheeting rain.
Then, like the shadow of a shark just beneath the surface of the sea, fluid and dangerous, a shape appeared out of the vines. A gust of wind tangled my hair, carrying a scent like cold midnight that chilled me to the bone. A second shiver of darkness joined the first, then another, and then two more. It looked like we had company.
Chapter Twenty
Like a cold current in a warm sea, something parted the rain. I could sense everything going on around me with preternatural clarity: the scurrying of hoofed and clawed feet as Radu’s terrors found something scarier
than themselves; the rhythm of my own nervous breathing; the slight sucking sounds of light footsteps sneaking up behind me. I felt poised on the crest of a wave about to break.
“Get her out of here!” I told Heidar. “I’ll slow them down.”
“You’ll do no such thing!” Claire was at her incandescent best. “I can help—”
I put a hand over her mouth and glared at Heidar. “Do you have a hearing problem?”
“You cannot win,” he said hurriedly. “They—”
“Did I ask you that?” I grabbed him by the arm, hard enough to bruise. “If she dies, I’ll rip your throat out.”
He drew himself up, spine straight, and fixed me with a level gaze. “If she dies, I will already be dead defending her.”
I nodded. “Good answer.”
“Dory!” I’d passed Claire to Heidar, who was too busy drawing a sword out of the sling across his back to muffle her. “You always do this! Other people have strength, too.”
“Take her and go!” I snarled. Heidar silently passed me the sword, threw Claire over his shoulder and disappeared into the vines. I didn’t see any of the dark shapes break off to follow them, which was both reassuring and a concern. Did they have others posted around the estate, to catch them unawares?
Then something dove at me out of the boiling sky. I lashed out at it instinctively, going on hearing rather than sight, and Geoffrey’s head rolled to the ground at my feet. I nudged him with my foot, and anger raged in the still-living eyes. A master-level vamp could heal a wound like that, given half a century or so of excellent care. But Geoffrey wasn’t a master, or at least, he sure didn’t fight like one. A second later it didn’t matter anyway. A booted foot slammed down on his skull, cracking it like a walnut and grinding it into the mud.
I jumped back, sword high. And looked up into pewter-colored eyes that shone with power like flickering starlight. Recognition was instantaneous, and I dove for him, but the sword literally jumped out of my hand and flew to him. I stumbled as a wall of cold slammed into me, so sudden and so chill that I had trouble breathing.
The Fey examined the weapon with a small smile. “The sword of kings, in the hands of a half-breed whore.” The voice was low and musical, and strangely beautiful. “How… disturbing.”
I managed to get to my feet, although the cold seared my skin like a branding iron. I glanced around, but there was no way out. In every direction, moonlight glimmered off pale faces.
“Do not be concerned.” The Fey spoke to me, but his eyes were on the weapon. He tested it experimentally, gracefully slicing the rain. The clear surface glowed in the dim light, reflecting lightning along its razor edge like a warning. “Once, long ago, this blade took the head of a Svarestri king. I would not dishonor him by using it on you.”
The burning chill was leaching my heat quickly. If I didn’t do something soon, I’d freeze where I stood. But considering the odds against me, conversation seemed the best chance to give Claire time to get gone. “You should maybe use it on whoever set you on this wild-goose chase.”
“What do you mean?” He was still more interested in his new toy than in me. I decided that was insulting.
“I mean, dumb ass, that I may be a half-breed, but I’m not a witch, I’m not a null and I am definitely not a six-foot redhead.”
The Fey’s head snapped up at that. “What?”
I bared fangs at him. “See these? Not standard-issue witch equipment. I’m a dhampir.” I grinned. “You’ve been chasing the wrong girl, genius.”
I guess he decided that the sword wasn’t so holy, after all, because the next second, it was underneath my chin. “Where is she?”
“Why? You want to pay homage to your future king? ’Cause it’s a little early.”
“The half-breed son of that Blarestri buffoon can never rule, and neither can any child he sires on another mongrel.” The sword point bit into the skin of my neck. “Give me what I need and you may live through the day. Otherwise…”
“I heard this speech once this week already. The other guy did it better.”
“Have a care, dhampir.” The Fey’s voice was no longer musical. “You do not know with whom you are dealing.”
Then again, conversation has never really been my forte. “Neither do you,” I said, and lunged. I ducked under the sword of kings and went straight for the bastard’s jugular. I threw everything I had into it, all my speed, and my fingers grasped the unexpectedly warm skin of his neck. But before my hand could close, something touched me, sliding down my spine like the blade of a cold iron knife. It took my speed, my strength, everything—as though all my senses had been cut off at once. I couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, couldn’t feel. Everything was gone. Everything except icy nausea and bitter fear.
And then my senses returned, and it was worse. It was agony, like a thousand tiny shards of ice spearing me at once. My throat spasmed as his hand closed over it. He wasn’t trying to strangle me—he wasn’t even pressing hard enough to bruise—but it felt like I was suddenly choking on ice. My eyes told me there was nothing there, but my throat grew numb, and my gag reflex kicked in, closing the airway completely.
“You wish to test yourself against me?” The voice was flat and hard, like ice over cold, dark water. “Very well.”
His hand came to rest on the front of my shirt, lightly, barely touching me, but it felt like he had spread his fingers and pushed them deep inside my flesh. Not tearing and ripping as an animal might, but in a slow creep like the onset of winter, stealing color and warmth and life. My lungs froze; I couldn’t have taken a breath even if my air passage had been open. My blood slowed down to a sluggish icy soup. That phantom touch sank farther into my body, burning like dry ice, creeping into hidden recesses I hadn’t even known existed until they cramped with it. Frost crept up my spine; ice encased my heart.
I fell, bones reverberating with a jarring shock when I hit the ground. It was no longer soggy, but hard as a rock with a thick layer of ice. The frozen mud glittered white and crystalline against my fingertips as my hand fell uselessly in front of my face. I was vaguely surprised that it didn’t shatter into pieces on contact, like glass. I started to black out, from pain and lack of air.
“The Svarestri command the elements.” The Fey kicked me onto my back with his foot, then crouched beside me. “Do you know the four elements, dhampir? Water, in one form, you are coming to know well, I think. Shall we try another?”
The pain changed from ice to flame in an instant. What had frozen before now boiled. I gasped as the constriction on my throat disappeared, and scalding air rushed into my lungs. A clinical pewter gaze watched as I arched in white-hot agony, my body bent like a bow as flames poured through me. Fire ate away at my nerve endings, but instead of deadening, the pain kept building, getting worse every second, until it felt like my bones would climb right out of my flesh.
The ice in front of my face melted and the puddle began to steam. It looked like the air itself had turned to fire, a boiling mass of knotted lightning. I was surprised that my skin wasn’t doing the same; it felt like my blood was actually boiling in my veins. The Fey put his hand on me again, but where it had been ice before, now it was fire. My shirt began to scorch, as if the fabric had been left too long under an iron. I could feel my skin start to bubble beneath it.
Then, as suddenly as it had begun, it stopped. I collapsed to the ground, splashing in a puddle of water hot enough to burn. My flesh throbbed with every heartbeat; my breath hitched in my lungs as I tried to breathe. I choked on the acrid smell that rose from the burnt edges of my shirt, like the fumes of a candle that had just been extinguished. The Fey pulled his hand away and sat back on his heels. Part of my shirt had flaked away, exposing red, blistered skin that ran from my breastbone to below my belly button. It took me a second to realize why the shape of the injury was so familiar. The perfect imprint of a long-fingered hand had been burnt into me like a brand.
“If I wasn’t protecting you, you would alre
ady be dead,” I was told. “But we have two elements to go, do we not?” He wasn’t touching me now, but a constriction was suddenly about my throat. My hands scrabbled at the burning sand beneath me, but I didn’t have the strength to lift them to my neck—I couldn’t even claw at the nonexistent cord. I bit the air, as if I could tear chunks out of it with my teeth, but nothing helped. Too many needs warred in my head—fight back, get air into my lungs, scream for mercy—
Almost as if he’d heard my last thought, the Fey leaned over to look in my eyes. “If you wish to save your life, tell me where the null is to be found.” The constriction relaxed, and I could breathe, although my lungs almost felt like they’d forgotten how. He waited while I gasped and choked. “Nothing to say?” I stared up at him, too raw in every nerve even to glare. Helpless wheezing sighs accompanied my every breath, but I said nothing. I only wished I had enough water left in my parched mouth to spit.
Then I realized the fun wasn’t over, as my lungs kept expanding even after filling to capacity. It felt like I had two balloons in my chest, balloons that were being stretched to their limit and beyond. They would soon burst; they couldn’t possibly hold any more. My eyes blurred with pain and I couldn’t stop a violent shudder. My vision began to fade. Something was screaming inside my head, a high, inhuman sound that had no beginning or end, a raw vibration of wet agony.
Just as I was sinking into blackness, the pressure stopped and I was allowed to exhale. I didn’t cough this time. The air trickled out of me slowly, and I took a few weak, shallow breaths afterward, as if my lungs were afraid to try for more.
I’d hurt worse in the past, but this definitely made the top ten. I wasn’t sure, but it might make the top three. The Fey regarded me thoughtfully, a finger tracing the burns on my chest delicately. “You surprise me. Most of your kind would have screamed themselves hoarse by now.”
I wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction of the truth, that my throat had locked up, that I’d been too choked on pain to scream. “You’ve never met one of my kind.” It came out as a dry croak, but he seemed to understand.
