That shut Molly up. I could tell she hadn’t expected him to agree.
Deep inside, Beast purred. She liked Ed’s scent and Molly’s scent and the words they volleyed back and forth like gunfire. I walked backward into the TV lounge, studying my primo as I went. Ed was silent, his footsteps following me, his eyes on Molly.
Ed was wearing black from head to toe, the clothes not fitting well, the sleeves and pants legs rolled up. I recognized Eli’s wardrobe. Someone had given my heir and primo some of Eli’s clothes to wear. He did look like crap, his hair lank, his neck a patchwork of scars that looked like a burn victim’s. Edmund moved without that sliding grace of the Mithran as he stopped in front of the TV, his hollow, empty eyes on the screen that was replaying the scene at the Regal.
Before we reached the TV room, Molly said from the kitchen, “Witches don’t need your help. You know that, right? My magics are the certainty of that.”
Gently, Ed said, “If you useallyour magics, Witch of Death, you may well kill everyone, human or para, in a twenty-five-mile radius.”
I glanced back. Molly looked as if someone had slapped her, face pale and shocked, bright spots on each cheek. Witch of Death sounded like a very nasty title in my primo’s world. Shimon had been in Ed’s mind when the SOD Two recognized what Molly was. Witch of Death.Dang.I led Ed into the office.
Evan and Molly followed us both and the big guystood behind his wife, in the doorway. They moved together, like magnets attracting. Evan asked, “How do you know?”
Edmund said, “Any Mithran would know your power, Witch of Death. Even if I had not known before, I felt death at your call in the hotel main room.” He pointed at the screen where the event played over and over. “There and then. When the first two Naturaleza fell as if true-dead. It was not aspellcalculated to bring down the Mithrans, but pure, raw death magics.”
“Do you think the FOM knew what they were?” I asked, sitting on my recliner.
“Once I would say yes, absolutely. But he has changed. He has developed a...” Ed chuckled, the sound not real laughter, but not fear and death either. “... a thick skin.” Ed was talking about the exoskeleton. He was making a joke, even so soon after rescue. “He is darkness and shadow, and nothing but a close-in detonation of a large-scale bomb or being burned in a cremation chamber may take him into true-death now.” Ed slid a glance my way. “Or being eaten by an angel-touched white werewolf. The only good thing about this change and the magics he is now using is that the Flayer of Mithrans has lost the ability to detect some other forms of magic.” His eyes moved to the Everhart-Truebloods on the sofa. “Except for death magics, it seems. I do not know why.”
Before the two witches decided to test out their secret-not-so-secret weapon on Ed, I said, “Why didn’t you take over as emperor? Why didn’t you announce my resignation to the vamp world?”
Ed looked back at the screen, where the two videos were showing in loops. “Grégoire and I discussed it. We called a meeting of the Mithrans who received word of your resignation. We watched all the video footage of the Sangre Duello. We decided that you would make a grand figurehead. That we should both, Grégoire and I, seize territory in your name and hold it, until such time as the Soul of Night, the Son of the Screaming Darkness, the Son of Shadows, the Flayer of Mithrans, should rise from his recent rest and announce he was coming for you. Weknew it would not take long for his hubris and narcissism to send him after you.”
“So I was bait.”Again,I thought.And always.
Ed shrugged, not a human movement, but as if his shoulders writhed like snakes. “Shimon was always one to speak loudly, to make grand gestures. When he did so, our plan was to strike, kill him, and bring his body to you to dispose of as you did his brother. Once he was dead, accepting the crown of emperor would be a simple thing for you or for me, should you still wish to retire. But Shimon did not announce. He attacked first. An unexpected new ploy for the eldest among us. I was not prepared for him to act out of character, in opposition to millennia of recorded and witnessed actions and reactions. I was caught unaware.”
Something flashed through my back brain, half-remembered and then gone. Trying to tease it back, I said slowly, “In Shimon’s time, names had meaning. I understand why he’d be called Soul of Night, Flayer of Mithrans, and even Son of the Screaming Darkness. But why Son of Shadows on top of Soul of Night?” I sat a buttock on the table edge. “I mean, he’s old enough to be a daywalker, but there’s no evidence he pops from shadow to shadow or anything.”
I thought about the vision I’d had of the shadow that had been trying to infect Ed’s mind. Of the way Ed’s hands had moved when Shimon had controlled the minds of his scions and humans. “The shadow inside your vision? Did it... possess you totally?”
“Control of my mouth was not true possession, my mistress. True possession is when there is no longer resistance.”
I wasn’t sure I agreed with that answer. I wasn’t sure it was a statement of truth either.
Ed opened his mouth as if to speak again. Closed it. Carefully, he turned to Evan and Molly and said, “I pledged my honor to your family.” He swung his eyes to me. “Sabina told me that my life is bound with theirs and with yours. When you accidently claimed me”—he smiled slightly and breathed out like a human, releasingtension—“you put a protection over my soul. The shadow of the Flayer of Mithrans was not able to penetrate that shielding.”
I still didn’t know what the names really meant, but I had a feeling that they were all important. That they all told me something about the creature we fought, if I could only figure out what. I gave a truncated nod. Because what if the FOM told him to say that?
“Sabina told me that there would come a time when warriors would gather against warriors,” he said. “And that I should tell you to remember theBubo bubo.”
I didn’t tense, but it was a near thing. Conundrums upon enigmas upon dilemmas. Sabina in the longhouse with the warriors and my grandmother. Sabina smelling of owls. Sabina seeing my owl form once and speaking Mithran prophecy.
“Your hair needs braiding.” His fingers twitched as if to reach for me, but he halted, unsure, as if reading my almost-distrust.
I felt like a traitor to suspect him, but... “Ummm. I’m good right now,” I said.
His eyes moving back to the witch couple, Edmund said, “Shimon recognized the power of Molly and her husband, Evan. Like his brother, he wants to kill or possess all witches. Your friends, the family to whom I swore fealty, are in grave danger. Keep them close to your breast and beneath your wing.” Which seemed an un-Eddie-like thing to say.
“Go to bed with a few blood-servants and drink,” I said. “We’ll have a plan in place soon.”But we might not tell you what it is.
He turned and left the room. For the first three steps, it was like watching a reptile walk, not Edmund. Then he slid into Ed’s smooth gait. Over his shoulder, he said, “I will bleed and read and partially heal your Mithran prisoner, and turn his loyalty to me. We will know all he knows.”
I hadn’t noted that my detainee was lying in the front entrance where someone had dropped him like the undead body he was. “His name is Klaus,” I said.
“I do not care.” Which, again, was a very non-Ed thing to say, and made me wonder how much of the Flayer’s mind was still part of Ed’s. “Alex,” Edmund said, his voice compulsion and request all at once. “Would you put on ‘Evil Mama’ by Bonamassa.” Alex told Merlin to play the song, and the strains instantly filled the speaker system in the entire main level, a song about knifing a man in the back. I wondered if Edmund felt I had done that to him, or if he was trying to warn me that the Flayer still resided in part of his mind.
My primo picked up Klaus’s arm and dragged him through the house and out the back door, the hard-driving guitar and accusing lyrics hanging between us.
