“Don’t get out.”She couldn’t make her fists loosen.“Let’s just leave.Keep going.Getaway.”
“This is the safest place for you.”He popped the release, a burst of cold mineral-scented air filled the cab, and he slid free of the driver’s seat, rising with agonizing slowness and keeping both his hands visible.
He left the door open and stepped away.The invisible shell over him was gone, snow gathering swiftly on tousled dark hair and the shredded jacket’s shoulders.Both his big, capable hands were up and empty, the classicI surrenderstance.
The snow swirled.The SUV’s door-chime dinged softly, over and over.
A voice—hard, deep baritone, a tone used to command—came out of the snow.“Somniorum serve.”
“In omni re.”Erik put his chin down, keeping his hands high.Liv gasped.
They melted out of the snow, men with short haircuts and muscular shoulders in dark jackets, all moving with that same eerie, predatory grace.Liv huddled in the car and watched them surround Erik.Several had guns, they all had the strange crystalline-bladed knives he and Jake carried, and the older ones had swords and gleaming signet rings like Ignatius’s.They didn’t all look the same, but that strange fluidity and air of danger made them seem related.
She found out she could move after all, and hit her seatbelt’s release.Had he buckled her in?
It would be just like him.
“Wait,” she said, a tiny cricket-whisper.Her arms and legs didn’t quite want to work.She scrambled across the console and spilled out the driver’s side behind Erik, ignoring the constant dinging.Door open, door open, door open.“Wait.Don’t.Don’thurthim.”
They didn’t, but they also weren’t very gentle, pushing so he dropped to his knees in the snow.
“Stop it.”Liv’s hands were fists; she stepped forward.They all outweighed her, they were probably all super-strong, but she considered throwing herself at the closest one—grey-haired, his eyes a piercing blue, the snow avoiding him even as it clumped on Erik’s shoulders.
A redheaded guy with broad shoulders and tightly laced boots produced strange, oversized matte silver handcuffs.Liv tried to heave away when two of the older men, their swords vanishing into scabbards fastened to their backs—neatest trick of the week—took her arms and began practically carrying her for the slowly opening front doors.Golden light widened, a crack in the whirling white, and they dragged her, gently but irresistibly, into the stone building.
She screamed Erik’s name the entire way.
PartThree
The Dreamer
Bait on the Hook
The worst partwasn’t being cuffed with Flame-blessed metal.It was hearing her cry his name, over and over, as she was carried into safety.Everything in him wanted to surge from his knees, snap the irritating bracelets like the fictions they were, and kill them—kill themall, if that was what it took.
If that would keep her safe.
Instead, he stood right where he was, shivering and sweating like a horse run too hard, and glared, nose down but eyes up, at the Son in front of him.
Blue-eyed, toffee-haired, the guy was built wide instead of with Jake’s leanness, and had the faraway, listening look of an Elder.“Name?”
“Erik,” he said, crisply, and added the long string of his numerator as if he wasn’t longing to leap on this fellow and put him down quick-like.That was only the first step; he would have to take out the two Youngers on the other side of the stolen blue Suburban next.“Mylirai?—”
“Yours?”Wheat-colored eyebrows rose, and his fellow Son examined Erik in a long, leisurely sweep, from stained boots to torn jacket and the ribbons of his T-shirt.At least his jeans were mostly whole, except for the long tear on the inside of his left thigh.
One of the spiders had been going for his femoral artery.
“She’s new,” Erik managed.“She’s terrified.I have to report.”
“He’s clearly one of us, or was.”A Father, not wearing a cassock, his iron-colored hair combed back from a ferocious widow’s peak, clapped the toffee-blond on the shoulder.“Take him to the Chamber.We’ll debrief you there, Elder Brother.Where were you trained?”
“Erik,” he said again.Chapter and verse.“528-Alpha-X Ray-3840.My Father is Ignatius, my Younger Brother is Jacob.I was trained at Nightshade House of Belmont Temple, ’28 to ’33.Sent to Islington satellite in ’54, and stayed there since.We found a potential a few weeks ago, but we were chased?—”
“Erik?”Another voice, this one vaguely familiar, came from his left.The Younger there was slim and coal-eyed, his woolly hair cropped close and guns vanishing into their holsters.“By the Dreamers.Itisyou.”
“Someone you know, Stan?”The Father nodded, slightly, and his brothers’ hands weren’t rough, but they weren’t overly gentle either.
Stan?He vaguely remembered the boy, lean and smiling before his mark, somber and big-eyed afterward, just prior to Erik and Jake’s departure.“Stan.You took your mark in September.We went out drinking afterward.”Slipping the leash.It wasn’t a good thing to admit and the alcohol didn’t do anything to a Son’s enhanced metabolism, but it was kind of expected—and it was something nobody else would know except Stan, Jake, and the other Elder present that night.What was that asshole’s name?
