***
The ride through the storm was cold and miserable, once again deafening without the ear protectors. The turbulence slammed us around until we hit the inversion layer, where the wind whipped in the other direction and rain beat against the windshield and windows all around, and the Huey tried to turn upside down, just for funzies.
Beast growled through my mouth and complained the whole way about being in the belly of a metal bird. Halfway there, Molly threw up from the turbulence. The smell of vomit and Ed’s torn flesh and old blood and soured breast milk were not a good combination. We were all...Wretchedwas a good word. Completely wretched.
My stomach wasn’t happy and the stench meant that Beast was having kittens about it all, bouncing off the walls of my/our brain. It was funny and annoying and I knew she would get me back for making her fly again. I’d probably wake up human, lying in mud two feet deep, or perched naked on a billboard. Beast chuffed in amusement and settled at that thought, planning evil against me as only cats can. Go, me, for giving her the idea.
For a while, in the inversion layer, we leveled out, but that part of the trip was short and the passage back into the storm, with winds in the opposite direction as we descended to land, was horrible. The landing was more a controlled crash, and I heard metal things popping and twanging and snapping. The Dark Queen would have to repair her Warlord’s Huey. My teeth snapped together on a final bump. The skids settled.
“Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for choosing Bell Huey Airlines,” the pilot said. “Watch your step as you disembark. And I thank you for the bunk on the layover.”
The rotors began their slowdown whine as Molly ducked and raced for the house. Lincoln, Kojo, Thema, and Gee, carrying Edmund, climbed out of the Huey and traipsed around to the back of the property. I glanced at the pilot, realizing I didn’t know his name, and decided he was busy. “Thank you,” I shouted to him. He didn’t look up, but he did give me thumbs-up. I stepped to the ice-slicked, crunchy ground, following the vamps and Edmund (who looked like a slab of raw meat slung over Gee’s shoulder) around the house to the finished cottages. The little Anzu was a lot stronger than he looked.
Lincoln opened the door to cottage one, the unit set aside for Edmund, and the inside lights came on. The cottage was set up like a four-star hotel suite, the décor in whites and grays, with a king bed, two pullout couches, an Oriental rug, a small kitchenette with quartz cabinet tops, and a bath that could have been designed right out of an HGTV makeover.
Gee carried Edmund to the bath and put a knee on the edge of the tub. Kojo came up behind him and together they lowered him to the bottom, Gee holding Ed’s head to keep it from bouncing on the porcelain. Gee stood up and backed away, as Lincoln stepped into the bathroom doorway behind me, pulling off his T-shirt.
It was not what I was expecting, all that expanse of flesh and ripping, rippling, striated muscle pressing beneath skin. Hairy bare chest and nipples and—
I jerked my eyes away but not before Thema noticed me looking. At my side, she said softly, “He is indeed afine-looking piece of man flesh. Though his bum is lacking, I fear.”
Before I could figure out how to respond or how to stop the shock that flushed beneath my pelt, Edmund’s head raised. Fangs clicked down, the sound barely registering in time for my eyes to snap back. Before I could shout a warning, Lincoln Shaddockmoved. Popped into the small space beside me. Caught Edmund’s head. Directed Ed’s desperate, insane dash for lifesaving blood to his own neck. Edmund savaged the flesh, biting, biting, sucking in the blood. Lincoln slid his arms around Ed, his voice hoarse from the fangs so near his larynx, saying, “I gotcha, bub. I gotcha.”
Tears filled my eyes and I said to the Master of the City of Asheville, “Thank you.”
“No problem, Queenie. It’s my job.” As master of a city, it truly was, and I inclined my head. Shaddock added, “Invading vamps in my city. Injuring a Mithran without my leave. Didn’t even bother to present themselves to me? I got me lotsa cogitating to do on just how to react to this’un, and how I’ll take his head,” he said.
Ed gulped and gulped, sucking down blood like a starving man. There was no sanity in his eyes. I had seen Leo blood-starved. Leo had tortured me after he was drained. I fought down the memory-fear and the old horror. The effect on vampires’ brains wasn’t pretty, and sometimes vamps didn’t come back from that precipice. Neither did their victims. I steadied my breathing before the nearby vamps caught the scent of yesterday’s fear.
“He has been deeply traumatized,” Gee said, his eyes fastened to the two in the tub. The Mercy Blade was perched on the closed toilet seat, his posture much like that of a big bird, his arms tucked up and his knees beneath his chin. In the white tub, Lincoln was smeared with thin blood and Edmund was breathing in and out, an almost inaudible whine with each breath.
From beside the tub, Kojo said softly, “The Son of Shadows is a dark cloud. His mind eats at the brain and the heart with fangs unlike any other. His magics slice the skin from our bones. I still carry his scars on my soul.” Heshook his head, his scalp beneath his short-cropped hair catching the light. “I cannot feed one who has been a vessel for the shadow.”
“Why?” I asked, just as softly.
“For fear the darkness will find its way to me again through my blood.” That sounded like black magic and demon possession all at once. I knew blood demons existed, but my understanding was limited. Maybe demons could pass through shared blood as well as familial bloodlines.
Thema called for Shaddock’s human blood-meals on her cell. She asked for six. That meant the rest of the vamps would be more hungry than usual. When her call was over, I asked, “Is there a chance that Edmund’s brain is tied to Shimon’s? That the SOD can hear everything we say?”
Kojo shrugged, an odd, disconnected movement of his shoulders, as if those muscles were out of sync with the others. “Your Edmund is very powerful. But there is nothing upon the face of the Earth like the Flayer of Mithrans and his shadow when one is possessed. Anything is possible.”
That was an unconventional way of phrasing it. The smell of Edmund’s blood on the air was so strong that I only realized Molly was walking up behind me when she spoke. “Edmund swore loyalty to me,” she said, “and to Angie and to my family.” She let a small breath go, shifted her position closer to my side. She was nursing, rotating slightly, swaying slowly side to side, Cassy in a sling. The scent of baby, mother’s milk, and the purity of earth magic was intense. Her darker power was back under lock and magical key, and Molly’s relief at being with her children seeped through her pores, strong and clean. “It’s an Everhart responsibility to protect him. I have some shielding workings I can try, to protect his mind and to guarantee that we have privacy.”
Kits. Keep kits safe,Beast thought at me.
“Are you sure?” I asked, seeing the small head at the crease of her upper arm, barely visible beneath a cloth diaper she had placed over herself to nurse. Smart,considering that some vamps were evil dark creatures and I didn’t know where Lincoln’s newest stood on the sanctity of children. Then I remembered the death magics Molly had used at the Regal, and the vamps falling. Moll was not in danger.
She looked up at me as if hearing my thoughts and led the way back into the living area of the cottage. “They weren’t dead. They’re drained. The vamps back at the hotel,” she clarified softly. “And yes, I’m sure. It’s what a Glinda does.”
I chuckled at the name. She was talking about Glinda the Good Witch, fromThe Wizard of Oz. I peeked back into the bathroom and saw Shaddock tap on the tub, three times, like a TV wrestler asking for backup. Thema took his place, guiding Ed’s fangs out of Lincoln and to her throat.
Molly dug into her pocket, held out her hand, and dropped a small, carved amulet into mine. Everything went silent and my eyes shot open wide. She took it back and placed it on the coffee table at the foot of the sofa, restoring the ambient sound. “It’s a monkey ear charm. You know, like the monkey with his ears covered? Put it on Ed. He won’t be able to hear us strategize.”
“In case the big bad ugly is still in his brain. Gotcha.” I lifted the wooden round and carried it to Ed, where I tucked it under his armpit. His flesh was icy. Dead. I removed my hand perhaps a little too fast.
Molly chuckled, the sound wry and darkly amused. I could almost hear her say, “Big bad vamp hunter can’t stand the touch of a harmless vamp.”
“Gee,” I said. “Talk to us about arcenciels. About the problem or war or whatever is going on in their world or their relationship with each other.” When he didn’t reply, I said, “Soul isn’t calling anyone back. So far as I know, she’s never gone dark before.”
