Chapter 18
There was a hard place in the middle of Moira’s chest, like a fist poised to strike. Breathing around it was an effort, but she stood as Cian did, at the edge of Silence.
“What do you feel?” she asked him.
“Pulled. You’re not to touch me.”
“Pulled how?”
“Chains on my feet, around my throat, pulled in opposite directions.”
“Pain.”
“Yes, but it’s mixed with fascination. And thirst. I can smell the blood in the ground. It’s thick and it’s rich. I can hear your heartbeat, taste your scent.”
Yet his eyes were Cian’s eyes, she thought. They didn’t burn red as they had the night he’d come here with Larkin. “They’ll be stronger here than on other ground.”
He looked at her then, realizing he should have known she would understand that. “They’ll be stronger here. There’ll be more of them than there are of you. Driven by what’s bred in this place, by Lilith’s power over them, death won’t mean to them what it does to you. They’ll come and they’ll come without thought of their own survival.”
“You think we’ll lose. We’ll die here, every one of us.”
Truth, he thought, would shield her better than platitudes. “I think the chances of beating this diminish.”
“You may be right. I’ll tell you what I know of this place. What I’ve read, and what I think is the truth of it.”
She looked out again, across the pitted land called Ciunas. “Long, long ago, before the worlds had separated, and were one instead of many, there were only gods and demons. Man had yet to come between to fight either, to tempt either. Both were strong and fierce and greedy, both wanted dominion. But still, the gods, however cruel, didn’t hunt and kill their own kind, didn’t hunt and kill demons for sport or food.”
“So had the margin of good against evil?”
“There has to be a line, even if it’s only that. There was war. Eons of it, all leading to this place. This was their last battle. The bloodiest, the most vicious, and most fruitless, I think. There was no victory. Only an ocean of blood that rose here, formed this harsh valley, and in time ebbed away, so that blood soaked into the earth, deep and deep.”
“Why here? Why in Geall?”
“I think when the gods made Geall, deemed it would live centuries in peace, in prosperity, this valley was the price. The balance.”
“Now payment’s due?”
“It’s always been coming to this, Cian. Now the gods charge the humans to fight the battle with this demon that began as human. Vampire against what is its source and its prey. It balances here, or it all falls. But Lilith doesn’t understand what may happen if she wins this.”
“We’ll burn out. My kind.” He nodded, having come to the same conclusion himself. “In chaos nothing thrives.”
Moira said nothing for a moment. “You’re calmer now, because you’re thinking.”
He let out a half laugh. “You’re right. Still, it’s the last place in this world or any I’d want to spread out for a picnic.”
“We’ll have a moonlight one, after Samhain. There’s a place that’s a favorite of mine and Larkin’s. It’s—”
Though he’d told her not to touch him, he gripped her wrist now. “Ssh. Something... ”
Saying nothing, Moira reached into the quiver on her back for an arrow.
I n the shadows, Davey grinned and drew his treasured sword. Now, he would fight the way a prince was supposed to fight. He’d slice and thrust and bite.
And drink, and drink, and drink.
He leaned low over the saddle, preparing to loose a war cry. And Lilith appeared before him.
“Davey! You turn that pony around this minute and come home.”
The fierceness on his face turned into a childish pout. “I’m hunting!”
“You’ll hunt when and where I tell you. I don’t have time for this nonsense, this worry. I have a war to wage.”
Now his face tightened into stubborn lines, and his eyes gleamed against the dark. “I’m going to fight. I’m going to kill the humans, then you won’t treat me like a baby.”
“I made you, and I can unmake you. You’ll do exactly what I... what humans?”
He gestured with his sword. As she turned, and she saw, true fear bloomed in Lilith’s belly. Uselessly she grabbed for the bridle, but her hand passed through the pony’s neck.
“Listen to me, Davey. Only one of them is human. The male is Cian. He’s very powerful, very strong, very old. You have to run. Make this pony run as fast as it can. You’re not meant to be here. We’re not meant to be here now.”
“I’m hungry.” His eyes were turning, and his tongue flicked out over fang and lip. “I want to kill the old one. I want to drink the female. They’re mine, they’re mine. I’m the Prince of Blood!”
“Davey, no!”
But with a violent kick of his heels, he sent the pony racing forward.
It was all so quick, Moira thought. Flashing moments. The silver snick of Cian’s sword leaving its scabbard, the shift of his body in front of hers like a shield. The rider flew out of the dark, and her arrow was notched and ready.
Then she saw it was a child, a little boy on a sturdy roan pony. Her heart stumbled; her body jerked. And her arrow went wide of the mark.
The child was screaming, howling, snarling. A wolf cub on the hunt.
Lilith flew behind the pony, an emerald and gold she-demon, streaking through the air, hands curled into claws, fangs gleaming.
Moira’s second arrow spiked through her heart and soared into the air.
“She’s not real!” Cian shouted. “But he is. Take the dragon and go.”
Even as she reached for a third arrow, Cian shoved her aside, leaping over the charging pony.
A little boy, Moira thought. A little boy with eyes burning red and fangs spearing. It waved a shortened sword, as it dragged on the reins. Lilith’s screams were like lances of ice through Moira’s brain as the boy tumbled off the pony and fell hard on the rocky ground.
It bled, Moira saw, where the rocks struck and scraped. It cried, as a boy would when he had a fall.
Her breath caught in denial as Cian advanced with the illusion of Lilith clawing at him with intangible hands. Sick in heart and mind, Moira lowered her bow.
The second rider came out of the moon-struck dark like fury. Not a boy now, but a man armed for battle, his broadsword already cleaving the air.
Cian pivoted, and met the charge.
Swords clashed and crashed, the deadly music of them ringing over the valley. Cian leaped, dismounting the rider with a vicious kick to the throat.
With no clear shot, Moira tossed down her bow and drew her sword. Before she could rush to fight with Cian, the boy gained his hands and knees. He lifted his head, stared at her with those gleaming eyes.
It growled.
“Don’t.” Moira backed up a step as Davey crouched to spring. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“I’ll rip out your throat.” His lips peeled back as he circled her. “And drink and drink. You should run. I like it best when they try to run.”
“I won’t run. But you should.”
“Davey, run! Run now!”
He whipped his head toward Lilith and snarled like a rabid dog. “I want to play! Hide-and-seek. Tag, you’re it!”
“I won’t play.” Moira circled with him, trying to work him back with thrusts of the sword.
He’d lost his sword in the fall, but Moira told herself she would use hers if he sprang at her. He wasn’t unarmed; no vampire ever was. And those fangs glinted, sharp and keen.
She spun, kicking out, aiming low to hit him in the belly and drive him back.
Lilith’s form crouched over him, hissing. “I’ll kill you for that. I’ll peel the skin from your bones before I do. Lucius!”
Lucius hacked out at Cian. There was blood on them both, blood in their eyes. They leaped at each other, meeting violently in midair.
“Run, Davey!” Lucius shouted. “Run!”
Davey hesitated, and something came over his face. Moira thought, for an instant, she could see the child the demon had swallowed. The fear, the innocence, the confusion.
He ran as a child runs, limping on his scraped knees. And gaining speed, gaining that eerie grace as he rushed toward the slashing swords.
Dropping her own sword, Moira grabbed up her bow. A moment too late, as Davey leaped onto Cian’s back, struck with fang and fist. If she shot now, the arrow could go through the boy, and into Cian.
A fingersnap. More flashes of time. The boy tumbled through the air, propelled by a savage blow. He knuckled his hands over his burning eyes and cried for his mother.
Again, Lilith called out. “Lucius, the prince! Help the prince.”
His loyalty, his years of service cost him. As Lucius turned his head a fraction toward Lilith, Cian took it with one singing strike of his sword.
Davey scrambled to his feet, wild panic on his face now.
“Take him,” Cian called out as Davey began to run. “Take the shot.”
Now those flashes of time slowed down. Wild screams, wild weeping, echoing through the dragging air. The figure of a child running on bleeding, tired legs. Lilith, her face alive with fear and horror, standing between the child and Moira, her arms spread in defense or plea.
Moira looked into Lilith’s eyes as her own blurred. Then with a tear in her heart, she blinked them clear, and sent the arrow flying.
The shriek was horribly human as the arrow passed through Lilith. That shriek went on and on and on as the arrow continued, straight and true into the heart of what had once been a little boy who’d played in the warm surf with his father.
Then Moira was standing alone with Cian on the edge of a valley that hummed with the hunger for more blood.
Cian bent, picked up the swords. “We need to go, now. She’ll have already sent others.”
“She loved him.” Moira’s voice sounded strange and thin to her own ears. “She loved the child.”
“Love isn’t exclusive to humans. We need to go.”
Her mind dull, she tried to focus on Cian. “You’re hurt.”
“And I don’t relish leaving any more blood here. Get mounted.”
She nodded, taking her own weapons before pulling herself onto the dragon. “She’d killed him,” Moira murmured as Cian vaulted on behind her. “But she loved him.”
She said nothing more as they flew away from the battlefield.
G lenna took over the moment they got back, herding them both into the parlor for first aid.
“I’m not hurt,” Moira insisted, but sat heavily. “I wasn’t touched.”
“Just sit.” Glenna got to work on Cian’s buttons. “Off with your shirt, handsome, so I can see the damage.”
“Some cuts, a few punctures.” He bit back a wince as he shrugged out of the shirt. “He was good with a sword, quick on his feet.”
“I’d say you were better and quicker.” Blair handed him a cup of whiskey. “That’s a nasty bite on the back of your shoulder, pal. What? This guy fought like a girl?”
“It was the boy,” Moira said before Cian could answer. She shook her head at the whiskey Blair offered. “Lilith’s boy, the one she called Davey. He came at us, riding a little pony, waving a sword no bigger than a toy.”
“He wasn’t a boy,” Cian said flatly.
“I know what he was.” Moira simply closed her eyes.
“A kiddie vamp did all this?” Blair demanded.
“No.” With some annoyance, Cian scowled at her. “What do you take me for? The soldier—trained and seasoned—Lilith must have sent after the whelp did this, except for the shagging bite.”
“How do I treat it?” Glenna asked him. “A vampire bite on a vampire?”
“Like any other wound. You can sure as hell hold the holy water. It’ll heal quick enough, like the others.”
“It was a foolish risk going out there,” Hoyt said.
“It was necessary,” Cian shot back. “For me. And our happy news is whatever holds that place doesn’t stop me from dusting another vampire. Moira.” Cian waited until she opened her eyes and met his. “It had to be done. There might have been others coming behind the one she called Lucius. If I’d gone after the young one, it would have taken time and left you alone. He was no less your enemy because of his size.”
“I know what he was,” she said again. “He was what killed Tynan, what tried to kill Larkin. What would have killed us both tonight if it had gone another way. Still, I saw his face—under what it was, I saw his face. It was young and sweet. I saw Lilith’s face, and it was the face of a mother, terrified for her child. I put the arrow into it as it ran away, crying for its mother. I know, whatever comes now, nothing I ever do will be worse than that. And I know I can live with it.”
She let out a shuddering breath. “I think I’ll be having that whiskey now after all. I’ll take it up with me if you don’t mind. I’m tired.”
Cian waited until Moira left the room. “Lilith will try for her. She may not be able to get physically into the house, but in dreams, or illusions.”
Hoyt rose. “I’ll see to it, make certain the protection we have is strong enough.”
“She won’t want me now,” Larkin murmured. “Or any of us,” he added with a quiet look for Cian. “She’ll need to curl up with it for a while. And she will live with it, just as she said.”
He sat now, across from Cian. “You said the one you fought was called Lucius?”
“That’s right.”
“That’s the one I tangled with, along with the boy, in the caves. I’d say you’ve just taken out one of Lilith’s top men. A kind of general. This would be a very hard night for Lilith, thanks to you and Moira.”
“She’ll come harder now because of it. We’ve destroyed or damaged those closest to her, and she’ll come at us like bloody vengeance.”
“Let her come,” Blair said.
S he would have come, then and there, so mad was her fury, her rage, her grief. It took six guards, and Midir’s magic to hold her down while Lora dosed her with drugged blood.
“I’ll kill you all! Every one of you for this. Take your hands off me before I cut them off and feed them to the wolves.”
“Hold her!” Lora ordered and forced more blood down Lilith’s throat. “You can’t go to their base tonight. You can’t go with the army and attack. Everything you’ve worked and planned for would be lost.”
“Everything is lost. She put an arrow in him.” She whipped her head, flashed fangs and sank them into one of the restraining hands. Her own screams mixed with the howls of the wounded.
“Release her, and I’ll take more than your hand,” Lora warned. “There’s nothing to be done for him, my love, my darling.”
“It’s a dream. Just a dream.” Bloody tears ran down Lilith’s face. “He can’t be gone.”
“There now, there.” Signalling the others back, Lora gathered Lilith into her arms. “Leave us. All of you. Get out!”
She sat on the floor, rocking Lilith, cooing to her while their tears mixed together.
“He was my precious,” Lilith wept.
“I know. I know, and mine.”
“I want that pony found. I want it slaughtered.”
“It will be. There now.”
“He only wanted to play.” Seeking comfort, she nuzzled at Lora’s shoulder. “In a few days, I could have given him everything. And now... I’ll peel the skin from her bones, pour her blood into a silver tub. I’ll bathe in it, Lora. I swear it.”
“We’ll bathe together, while we drink from that turncoat who took Lucius.”
“Lucius, Lucius.” Tears ran faster. “He gave his eternity trying to save our Davey. We’ll build a statue of him, of both of them. We’ll grind the bones of humans and build it from their dust.”
“They’d be so pleased. Come with me now. You need to rest.”
“I feel so weak, so tired.” With Lora’s help she gained her feet. “Have whatever humans we have left in stock executed and drained. No, no, tortured and drained. Slowly. I want to hear their screams in my sleep.”
M oira didn’t dream. She simply dropped into a void and floated there. She had Hoyt to thank for the hours of peace, she thought as she began to wake. Hours of peace where she hadn’t seen a child’s face blurred together with that of a monster.
Now there was work to be done. The months of preparation had whittled down to days that could be counted in hours. While the vampire queen mourned, the queen of Geall would do whatever needed to be done next.
She stirred, sat up. And saw Cian sitting in the chair near the simmering fire.
“It’s still shy of dawn,” he said. “You could use more sleep.”
“I’ve had enough. How long have you watched over me?”
“I don’t count the time.” She’d slept like the dead, he thought now. He hadn’t counted the time, but he had counted her heartbeats.
“Your wounds?”
“Healing.”
“You’d have had fewer of them, but I was weak. I won’t be again.”
“I told you to go. Didn’t you trust me to deal with two of them, especially when one was half my size? Less.”
She leaned back. “Clever of you to try to turn this into a matter of my trust in your fighting skills instead of my lack of spine.”
“If you’d had less spine and more sense, you’d have gone when I told you to.”
“Bollocks. The time for running is well done, and I would never have left you. I love you. I should have taken him with the sword, quickly. Instead, I wavered, and tried to find a way to drive him off so I wouldn’t be the one to end him. That moment of weakness could have cost us both. Believe me when I tell you it’s burned out of me.”
“And the misplaced guilt that goes with it?”
“May take a bit longer, but it won’t get in the way. We have only two days left. Two days.” She looked toward the window. “It’s quiet. This time just before dawn is quiet. She killed a young boy, and came to love what she’d made of it.”
“Yes. It doesn’t make either of them less of a monster.”
“Two days,” she said again, almost in a whisper. Something inside her was already dying. “You’ll go when this is done, if we win, if we don’t, you’ll go back through the Dance. I’ll never see you again, or touch you, or wake to find you’ve watched over me in the dark.”
“I’ll go,” was all he said.
“Will you come, hold me now, before the sun comes?”
He rose, went to her. Sitting beside her, he drew her against him so her head lay on his shoulder.
“Tell me you love me.”
“As I’ve loved nothing else.” He met her lips when she turned them to his.
“Touch me. Taste me.” She shifted so she lay over him, trembling body, seeking lips. “Take from me.”
What choice did he have? She was surrounding him, saturating his senses, stoking his needs till they burned. Offering as much as demanding as she pressed his lips to her breast.
“Take more. More and more.”
Her mouth was hot and desperate as she pulled away clothes, her teeth nipping at his jaw in sharp, quick bites while her breath shuddered.
She was alive now, burning and alive, with everything inside her rising, aching. How could she step back from this? The love, the heat, the life.
If she was destined to die in battle, then she’d accept it. But how could she live—day after day, night after night—without her heart?
She straddled him, taking him in, hips whipping as she fought to feel more, to take more. To know more.
Her eyes gleamed, almost a madness, and stayed locked on his. Then she leaned to him, and her hair fell, curtaining them both, trapping him in its texture and fragrance.
“Love me.”
“I do.”
His fingers dug into her hips as she drove him toward the jagged edge of peak.
“Touch me, taste me, take me.” On a cry, she lowered her throat to his lips, pressed that soft flesh with its pounding blood against him. “Change me.”
It was beyond him to stop the flood, it gushed through him, hot, strong, turbulent—and through her, he knew, as her body bucked and quaked. And shuddering, she rubbed that throbbing pulse against his mouth.
“Make me what you are. Give me forever with you.”
“Stop.” As his body shook, he shoved her away with a force strong enough to nearly send her to the floor. “You’d use what I am against me?”
“Yes.” Her chest burned with the tears that streamed through her voice. “Anything, anyone. Why should we find this only to lose it? Two days, only two days left. I want more.”
“There’s no more to have.”
“There could be. Lilith loved what she’d made, I saw it. You love me now, and I love you. We wouldn’t stop with the change.”
“You know nothing of it.”
“I do.” She grabbed his hand as he rolled out of bed. “There’s nothing I haven’t read. How can we just turn away from each other, and go on? Why should I choose death on the field rather than by your hand? It’s not true death if you change me.”
He pulled his hand free, then seemed to sigh. With a gentleness she couldn’t see in his eyes, he framed her face. “Not for all the worlds.”
“If you loved me—”
“A poor female trick, that phrase. Not worthy of you. If I loved you less, I might do exactly what you ask. I have before.”
He moved to the window. Dawn was upon them, but there was no need to draw the drapes. Dawn had come with rain.
“I cared for a woman once, long ago. And she loved me, or loved what she believed I was. I changed her because I wanted to keep her.” He turned back to where Moira knelt on the bed, silently weeping. “She was beautiful and amusing and bright. We’d make interesting companions, I thought. And we were, for almost a decade until she ran afoul of a well-aimed torch.”
“It wouldn’t be that way.”
“She was twice the killer I was. She liked children best. She was beautiful and amusing and bright—and no less so for the change. Only once she was like me, she put those qualities to use luring toddlers.”
“I could never—”
“You could,” he said flatly. “And most certainly would. I won’t turn the brightest light of my life into a monster. No, I’d never see you like me.”
“I don’t see a monster when I look at you.”
“I would be, again, if I did this. It wouldn’t just be you who changed, Moira. Would you damn me all over again?”
She pressed her hands to her eyes. “No. No. Stay then.” She dropped her hands. “Stay with me, as we are. Or take me with you. Once Geall is safe, I can leave it in my uncle’s hands, or—”
“And what? Live in the shadows with me? I can’t give you children. I can’t give you any kind of true life. How will you feel in ten years, in twenty, when you age and I don’t? When you look in the mirror and see in your nature what you’ll never see in mine? We’ve already stolen these weeks. They’ll have to be enough for you.”
“Can they be for you?”
“They’re more than I ever had, or thought to. I can’t be a man, Moira, not even for you. But I can feel hurt, and you’re hurting me now.”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I feel as if everything in me is being squeezed. My heart, my lungs. I had no right to ask you, I know it. I knew it even when I did. Knew it was selfish and wrong. And weak,” she added, “when I’d sworn not to be weak again. I know it can’t be. I know it can’t. What I don’t know is if you can forgive me.”
He came to her again, sat beside her. “The woman I changed didn’t know what I was until that moment. If she had, she’d have run screaming. You know what I am. You asked because you’re human. If I don’t need to ask you to forgive me for being what I am, you don’t need to ask me to forgive you for being what you are.”