“Ouch!” I dropped the silver shot-chalice and it landed on a pillow, upside down, as I shook my burned fingers. The shot glass was sterling, so I figured the shallow bottom was as useful as the deeper bowl on the proper side. I stabbed my finger with the lancet and said a bad word. Alex chuckled, sounding as wicked as his brother.Dear God.What was I going to do with two of them? I squeezed my finger over the shallow silver bottom and blood filled it quickly, then started to run everywhere. I applied pressure, but it didn’t stop. “Stupid cancer,” I said. “Now my blood isn’t clotting.” And I was breathless and nauseated and...
Brute wandered in from the TV room and flopped on the cold floor, head on one ear, tongue lolling, watching me sideways.Stupid dog.
“Girrard DiMercy,” I said. “By my blood I call you.”The blood in the silver vessel didn’t boil, but it did warm a little. For the space of maybe a minute nothing happened. So I picked up the mermaid in my bloody hand and said, “Girrard DiM—”
“By the feathers of Artemis, what are you doing!”
I looked up to see Gee hanging off the wrought-iron chandelier overhead. The chandelier was swinging and looked as if it might fall and hit me.
“Are you trying to kill us all?” he went on in his vaguely Spanish accent. “Do you know how many arcenciels are in the area? Three! Three of the flying goddesses, searching for a juvenile that someone sensed. And the three are in contact with others.” He said of the crystal, “Who have you trapped?”
I placed the crystal on the floor. Tucked my bleeding finger into the tight space between thigh and calf and used my body weight to apply pressure to the tiny cut. “Soul, but I didn’t trap her. She was captured while stuck in mermaid form and didn’t try to free herself and was carted off by a vampire. You missed the battle.” I didn’t add that if he had been here things might have gone very differently. “I got her back but I don’t know how to free her. The arcenciels owe me for reneging on Leo and the Sangre Duello. I want to collect. She’s my bargaining chip.”
“You want the arcenciels to free Soul?”
Brute snorted as if he thought that was funny.
“Yeah. And then help me rescue my godchild.”
“Have you not bothered to inspect Soul?”
I frowned and lifted the chain to study the trapped mermaid. “What am I looking for here?”
“Her leftleg,” Gee said, as if I was stupid.
I held the crystal to the chandelier; something inside caught the light. A silver-toned circle was around Soul’s ankle. Fin. Whatever. It was tight, cutting into her flesh. Small blisters ran up the scales of what would have been her calf and knee, then thinned and vanished. “Okay. I see it. Is this why she can’t find her dragon form?”
“Yes. No one will help her. No one will save her. No onecansave her. She was punished by the ArcencielCouncil for multiple infractions; for shifting the timelines enough to give Leo a faint chance for life, when they had decided to allow him to die. When she refused to assist them to go back far enough in time to destroy the Mithrans before they could be born. When she helped you, against their advice. And when she failed to keep their age-old enemies, the salamanders, from the Earth. They decided the infractions had piled high enough and they punished her.”
I didn’t know or care anything about salamanders. I cared about my godchild. “And if I let her go? Break the crystal right now? Will she go crazy and bite everyone in sight?”
“She may. Or she may die. Soul has two choices for recourse. She can help the arcenciels destroy the origination of the bloodline of the Sons of Darkness, or she can dive through a rift and be saved. She refused the former option. And there are no rifts available to her.”
“Why not?” I knew the answer, but I wanted to hear it from his lips.
“All the others are buried beneath the oceans, lost in the deluge that resulted at the end of the last ice age, or surrounded by Mithrans or they open into the middle of a mountain. The arcenciels have been cut off from their world for millennia.”
My entire body stilled. Even the pain seemed to pause for a bright, shining moment. Slowly, I repeated, “‘Surrounded by Mithrans.’ That’s why they want the Mithrans all dead? Because the vamps have access to a rift?”
“But of course. Why else?”
But of course.As if I had known, as if everyone knew. Had I bothered to ask why? Had I asked and accepted some excuse that made no sense? Because this... this made total sense. “‘All the others,’” I repeated. Except the riftonly I knew about. Well, me and the one arcenciel I had seen come through. Had that one found the others yet? They were searching for her, so no. She was young and the young dragons were more interested in sightseeing and playing and hunting than they were in helping their species accomplish their ends. I frowned, thinkingit through. “So if there was another available rift, then Soul and the rest of the arcenciels would give up on the plan to kill the vamps.”
“Not exactly, but a close enough summation. With the goddesses not everything is always so clear.”
“Uh-huh.” Soul hadn’t seemed overly interested in gaining entrée to the rift. But maybe, in reality, she was desperate to do so and had been hiding her need to gain the upper hand in any bargain I might make. I held the long quartz crystal up to the light. “And if I just break it, she might die because she isn’t in her dragon form. So she can’t help me, and without her to interpret for me, neither will the dragons.” And Beast wasn’t responding and I might have hurt her. And I had a terminal illness. And EJ was in the hands of the monsters. Somewhere. Time was very, very short.
The Anzu still hung from the chandelier, looking alternately amused and irritated, though at the moment leaning toward amusement. He recognized that we were bargaining for something and considered me inept.
“Don’t you owe me a boon?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “You utilized my debt to makemeyour Enforcer instead of Eli Younger.” His eyes were narrow and he was grinning. Enjoying this.
I was frustrated and in pain and getting close to blowing my cool. Which would not help this negotiation. Not at all. I shoved down on my anger and affected a curious expression. “Mmmm. You’re blood sworn to me as my clansman in Clan Yellowrock. Under that relationship, would you consider helping me to track and kill the Son of Shadows, in your Anzu form?”
“My little bird form is outside of that agreement.”
“As the Enforcer to the Dark Queen, would you consider helping me to track and kill the Flayer of Mithrans, in your Anzu form?”
