“What I would do with you,” I said. “I’m not at all comfortable in this role. But I will treat you as ethically as possible under the circumstances. When you have a need, I’ll do my best to meet it. I won’t screw you over. I won’t lie to you. And in return, I’ll expect the same of you.”
The creature stared at my eyes, flickering between forms, silver and blue, Lara and demon. Then her mouth descended on mine and my world went silvery with a slow throb of pleasure that spread from my lips and went straight down my throat and—
—and suddenly the soulgaze was over.
We were back in the gardens in the afternoon, cupping each other’s face.
We were both trembling.
I let out a gasp and bowed my head, closing my eyes. I felt it as Lara let her head fall back, also gasping for breath.
“Empty night,” she breathed, panting. “Oh, empty night.”
It took me a minute to recover from the intensity of the experience. Finally, I got my breathing under control and looked up at her.
Lara was just staring at me. We both lowered our hands. She began to slowly shake her head.
“You’re unlike anyone I’ve met,” she said quietly. “And I’ve met a great many.”
“It’s nice to be weird,” I said.
“If you can really do it,” she said. “If you can get Thomas out of this. Yes. I’ll stand with you.”
“And we’ll figure out how to shake you loose. Then we’ll take on Mab,” I said.
She flashed me a sudden, ferocious smile. “Even after that, I can’t tell if you’re serious or insane.”
“No reason it can’t be both.”
Chapter
Forty-Three
Fitz stood in the practice range in the castle’s basement facing off against a cardboard target maybe a week after the soulgaze. This one was a stick figure of a Hollywood vampire, complete with a cloak, Gothic cross medallion, and oversized pointy fangs. A word bubble rose from it reading, “Blah, blah, blah!”
He glanced back at me uncertainly, his features troubled.
“Don’t I get a warm-up round?”
“In the real world,” I said, standing with my hands behind my back, “you don’t get time to warm up. You don’t get time to stretch. No one counts to three.”
He frowned at me and said, “Yeah. Yeah, I guess so.” Then he took a deep breath and turned to face the target. “So, do I have a time limit here or—”
I took Backup out from behind my back and fired down at the target four times, as fast as I could squeeze the trigger. The nine-millimeter weapon was shockingly loud in the confined space.
“Jesus!” Fitz shouted, flinching.
“Now!” I roared. “Do it or die!”
Fitz whirled on the target, face locked in a rictus of concentration, and screamed,“Fiero! Fiero! Fiero!”As he spat the words, he slung his hands up from his hips like an old west gunfighter on the draw, and sent several screaming streaks of flame, like balls from a large Roman candle, downrange from his open palms, high-pitched whistling emergingfrom the spheres that led the streaks, leaving trails of steam in their wakes.
The first projectile missed, the second slammed into the word bubble, but the third went home in the center of the target, right below the Gothic cross, knocking the target back over and setting it furiously ablaze.
I lifted my eyebrows. Wow. Adrenaline seemed to help the kid, rather than shaking his concentration. The spheres had been hot enough to boil the water in the air as they passed through. Call it five hundred, six hundred degrees. One of the angled steel plates at the back of the range briefly showed a ruddy color in a small circle before sinking back into soot-black.
Fitz dropped to his knees, gasping.
I put Backup down on one of the steel tables against the back wall and walked up to stand beside him. Then I dropped down to one knee and put a hand on his shoulder.
