SIXTEEN
“Out of the question,” Llyr snapped.
“If you appear to comply in turning us over,” Erin pointed out, “you can stage a rescue.”
The king shot her a dark look. “And risk getting you killed in the process? I think not.”
“Be not so hasty,” the brunette woman said. The surrounding advisers gave her a scandalized look at her contradiction of the king, but Llyr’s expression was tolerant. “Perhaps we could put a spell on them which would kill this creature without placing them in danger.”
Reece nodded slowly, interested. “Like a booby trap.”
The woman shrugged. “Perhaps. I am not familiar with the term.”
Llyr frowned. “Do you have a particular spell in mind, Grandmother?”
“Not at the moment,” she admitted. “But perhaps if we had more knowledge of this creature and its weaknesses, I could think of one. I remember the battle we fought with Geirolf and his kind, of course, but that was sixteen hundred years ago.” Her mouth drew into a grimace. “My memory is not what it once was.”
“I suspect we’d find the answers we need in Merlin’s Grimoire,” Reece said. “Grim would know about Geirolf’s people and where they came from. Hell, if they have any weaknesses, he can probably list them alphabetically.”
Llyr lifted a brow. “But to gain access to this book of yours, you would need to return to Avalon.”
Erin stiffened.
Reece shrugged. “I need to do that anyway. I still have to alert the High Council to the threat. Actually, I should have done that when I woke, but I was distracted.” He threw her a dark look.
“But what if—?” She stopped. What if they turned on him? What if they killed him? The idea filled her with pure terror.
“I’ve got my duty, Erin,” he told her.
The Sidhe king studied him, then nodded slowly. “So you do. Very well, then. I’ll transport you.”
“And me,” Erin said firmly.
“Absolutely not,” Reece said in a rough chorus with Llyr’s flat “No.”
She glowered at both of them stubbornly. “If you have to cast a spell on both of us, I’ll need to be there.”
Reece glowered back. “And what if the Majae’s Court decides the simplest solution to the problem is to kill you?”
“Triggering Janieda’s murder? I don’t think so. Besides, if it comes down to that, I can make my own gate to Avalon.”
Llyr bared his teeth. “Geirolf isn’t the only one who can create a spell of containment, Erin.”
“Enough!” his grandmother snapped. “The child has a point about being needed for the spell, and you know it. Take her with you.”
The king turned a regal frown on the old Sidhe. She glowered back at him as Erin tensed. Finally he gave a bad-tempered grunt. “I suppose I can protect her, if it comes to that.”
“It won’t,” Reece said coolly. “I can give her whatever protection she needs. But don’t you think you need to divert Geirolf first? The deadline he gave you is almost up.”
Erin frowned. “What are you going to tell him? He doesn’t exactly strike me as trusting.”
Llyr smiled, a chilling stretch of the lips. “The thing about dealing with a creature who specializes in betrayal is that he always expects to be betrayed. All you have to do is suggest you’re betraying someone else, and he’ll happily swallow the lie whole.”
Erin looked at him for an admiring beat. “Oh, you’re good.”
Maybe a little too good, a wary voice whispered in the back of her mind.
Janieda lay at the bottom of her cage, her mind working frantically as she tried to come up with a way to escape the trap she’d sprung around herself. As she plotted, she held her drooping wings close around her body, trying to present the picture of a thoroughly beaten victim. Everyone always wanted to believe her less than she was. This time she was going to make their poor opinion work to her advantage.
Behind the fragile barrier of her wings, she listened closely as the demon spoke to his mortal henchman.
“The last of the acolytes have drunk from the potion,” the human said. He had developed a faint lisp along with the new fangs that would have been amusing, if not for the hungry way he looked at Janieda. She found herself grateful for her cage. “They’re ready to move whenever you give the word.” He licked his bloodless lips. “In fact, they’re eager for it.”
Geirolf grinned. “Oh, I’ll wager they are. But if they demonstrate a little patience, soon they’ll bathe in Maja blood.”
“But now that the Majae have freed the Grimoire…”
The demon made a dismissive gesture. “Don’t trouble yourself. It’s far too late to do them any good.”
Beneath her wings, Janieda shivered. Horrific creatures. How was she to escape from this place without ending up a meal for one of them? She didn’t even know where she was.
Suddenly she heard a familiar, beloved voice. “I have considered your offer…”
Llyr! Instinctively she opened her wings and leaped up.
“…and I agree to your bargain,” the king announced.
Janieda gaped at him in a combination of hope and fear—hope that she might escape after all, and fear for her lover and her people. Oh, don’t trust this creature, she thought desperately.
Geirolf made a humming sound of anticipation that made her blood chill. “Then send them on, and I’ll transport your consort to you.”
“It’s not that simple,” Llyr said. “The Maja is surprisingly powerful. I doubt even I could send her anywhere she doesn’t want to go. I’ll have to strip her of her powers first.”
Geirolf gave him a hungry smile. “Let me into your palace. I’ll take care of her.”
Llyr lifted a haughty brow. “I think not. No, there’s a better way. She and the vampire have volunteered to set a trap for you. I have told her I’ll cast a spell on her that will strip you of your power when you trigger it.”
“But in reality she’s the one who’ll lose her powers,” Geirolf said. “Clever.” He laughed, the sound rolling over Janieda like a wave of maggots. “Very clever.”
“Of course. I will, however, need time to work the spell.”
The demon sighed. “These things are always time consuming. How long?”
“Let’s say five hours or so.”
Geirolf nodded crisply. “Done.”
Oh, Llyr, Janieda thought in despair as her lover’s image disappeared, what are you doing?
Erin and Reece looked up as Llyr stepped back into the room.
“Did he buy it?” she asked.
The king smiled darkly. “Of course.” Rubbing his hands together briskly, he turned toward Reece. “Now. Where will we find this Grimoire of yours?”
“Wherever it’s needed, actually,” Reece said. “It literally has a will of its own.”
“Very well. Think of the substance of it, and I’ll use that as an anchor.”
Reece had worked with enough Majae to understand how the process worked, so he obediently began building an image in his mind. For a moment he felt the touch of the Sidhe’s thoughts.
The next instant they stood in the ruins of the cell as Grace, Lance, and Arthur gaped at them. Morgana, holding the Grimoire in both hands, glanced up in surprise.
“Reece!” Lance began. “Where the hell have you—?” He broke off, his gaze narrowing as he saw Erin standing by Reece’s side.
“King Llyr.” Arthur gave a small, civil half-bow, which the Sidhe returned. “I see you’ve found our prodigal.”
“Indeed,” Morgana drawled, looking at Erin in a way that made the hair raise on the back of Reece’s neck. “Apparently more than one of them. I don’t believe I know you, child. And I should.”
Hoping to forestall any unpleasantness, Reece launched into introductions. No sooner had he gotten Erin’s name out of his mouth than Grace interrupted. “This is the woman I saw in my vision, Grandmother,” she said.
Llyr glowered at Reece. “Is there anyone who hasn’t had a vision involving you?”
Erin frowned. “That’s right, Janieda said something about some kind of vision, too, didn’t she?”
“That’s not a good sign,” Arthur said, leaning against the wall as he studied them.
Correctly interpreting Erin’s questioning look, Grace explained, “When a lot of seers start having independent visions about the same situation, we’re in trouble.”
“More so than usual, anyway,” Reece put in.
Erin studied her. “So what exactly did you see in this vision, anyway?”
The blond grimaced. “You and Reece, naked and bound on some kind of altar. A big, demonic-looking horned creature was about to plunge a pair of knives into you.”
Erin winced. “You’re right—that’s not good at all.”
“Do you know who this creature is?” Morgana demanded.
“His name’s Geirolf,” Erin said, rubbing absently at a knot of tension gathering in the base of her neck. “He’s some kind of demon or alien or something. You know all those Death Cults springing up in the U.S. over the past few months? His work.”
Morgana nodded as she moved to put the massive Grimoire down on the table. “We suspected as much. We knew whoever it was has a great deal of power, but was definitely not Magekind or Sidhe. The creature from Grace’s vision seemed a logical suspect.”
Merlin’s Grimoire spoke up in a sonorous rumble. “It sounded like Geirolf, based on her description. But for once, I would not have minded being wrong. Of all the Dark Kind, Geirolf was the worst.” Muttering to itself, it added, “And if Merlin had listened to me and killed him sixteen hundred years ago, we wouldn’t be in this situation now.”
“I assume,” Morgan said, her eyes narrowing as she looked at Reece, “this Geirolf has something to do with why you made this girl a Maja without the Council’s permission.”
Reece knew damn well he’d better make this good. “I was trying to avoid being used in Geirolf’s death spell, the one Grace saw in her vision. He plans to sacrifice Erin and me as part of some kind of ritual designed to wipe out the Magekind.” Quickly he explained.
When he finished, there was an appalled silence for several minutes as everyone tried to digest the sequence of events. “You should have come to us at once, Lord Reece,” Morgana growled at last.
Grace snorted. “Really, Grandma, are you that surprised he didn’t? The Council isn’t exactly known for its tolerance of illegal transformations.”
“Cases like this are why we wait to hear from the couple before passing judgment,” Arthur said. “Sometimes there are good reasons for making a Maja without permission.” He met Reece’s eyes. “This was one of them.”
Reece relaxed fractionally. If Arthur gave them his stamp of approval, no one else would quibble. Beside him, he could feel the tension drain from Erin as she, too, realized they were safe. “So what do we do now?”
“Now we get the information to work that spell,” Llyr said, then looked at the Grimoire. “What can you tell us about the demon?”
“First, he’s not a demon,” the book said, projecting an image of a floating planet over its pages. The world’s thick red cloud cover appeared to seethe, putting Reece in mind of Jupiter. “He and his kind are from another planet in the Mageverse around a star hundreds of light-years away. They are empathic parasites, feeding on violent emotion as well as the very force of life itself.”
“Which is why they like to kill people,” Erin said.
“Preferably in the most violent manner possible,” the Grimoire agreed. “They first arrived on mortal Earth thousands of years ago, when humankind was ripe for the kind of tricks the Dark Kind love to play.” The planet faded away, replaced by the image of an altar and what looked like an Egyptian priest, his hands lifted in a gesture of prayer. “Some of them were worshiped as gods, while others were feared as demons. Love or terror—it didn’t matter which—as long as the humans felt something. That was enough to feed the Dark Kind.”
“Until Merlin came along and stuck a stick in their spokes,” Erin said.
“Oh, it wasn’t Merlin alone,” the Grimoire said. “No, not even he had that much power. Many Fae came with him to rid Earth of its dark gods. Given the infestation, they knew it would take them all.”
“My people played a role as well,” Llyr told them. “My own father died in that battle.”
“And a good thing they did. It took Fae and Sidhe both to defeat Geirolf and the Dark Kind,” Grim agreed.
“Normally we stayed out of human affairs, but my father told me this time we had to intervene,” Llyr said, his expression brooding. “The Dark Kind would have eventually turned their attention to us. But it was only when Merlin and the Fae arrived that we were able to rid ourselves of them.”
“Even so, it was not an easy fight,” the Grimoire said. The image shifted, revealing ghostly, glowing figures locked in battle over the planet as lightning flashes danced around them. “Eventually, the allies drove the Dark Kind away from Earth and into the Mageverse. Only one managed to hang on, too powerful and stubborn to be banished: Geirolf. It was all Merlin could do to lock him in this cell.”
“Why didn’t he just kill him?” Erin asked. “It would have simplified things considerably.”
“That’s not how Merlin operated,” Morgana said. “He didn’t believe in killing.” Judging from her tone of voice, she didn’t agree with that particular stance any more than Erin did.
“I wonder how Geirolf got out?” Arthur said.
Grace shrugged. “He’d had sixteen hundred years to dig at the walls. It would have been surprising if he hadn’t created a chink or two.”
“Enough of one to reach into the dreams of a mortal serial killer, anyway,” Erin said. “Once the killer had murdered a few sacrifices for him—”
“Necromancers.” Morgana curled her lip in disgust. “Filthy creatures.”
“The question is, what do we do about this particular filthy creature?” Llyr asked the Grimoire. “Do you know of a spell that would do the job?”
“Naturally,” the book said. “But it’s not without its dangers.”
“When are these things not dangerous?” Morgana said dryly.
“Just so,” the Grimoire agreed. “This spell, however, is going to need a great deal of power. And that’s likely to be quite…”
A female voice gasped, a raw, deep sound of pain. At the same instant Lance gasped, “Grace?” Reece whirled to see his friend catch his wife as her knees buckled. “Grace, what is it?”
The Maja was staring at Erin, her eyes chillingly blank. “The price you’ll pay to save us all will be high,” she said in a dreamy voice.
“She’s having a vision,” Morgana said, then added to Grace, “What price, Grace?”
Grace stared at Erin without blinking. “Her sanity.”
Dread clutched at Erin’s heart. “Wait a minute. Is she saying I’ll go insane if I do this?”
“No, forget it,” Reece said. “We’ll have to—”
“Silence!” Morgana snapped. To Grace she said, “Can the madness be averted?”
But the Maja slumped as if all the strength had run from her body. “Damn,” she moaned as the dreamlike blankness was replaced by a grimace. “I hate that.”
“What did you see?” Reece demanded.
Grace reeled to a chair and sat down in it. “Not a lot. Myself, King Llyr, and Morgana, pouring magic into Erin.” She frowned. “I think Llyr and I were the donors, with Grandma working the spell. It was a hell of a lot of power, anyway. For a minute there, I felt what Erin was feeling.” The Maja made a gesture with her hands, like something bowing under the strain. “I could feel her beginning to give. But somebody was there, strengthening her.” She looked at Reece. “You. You’re going to have to Truebond with her, Reece, or she’s not going to have a prayer.”
“Truebond?” Erin said. “What’s a Truebond?”
Reece was frowning. “It’s a kind of deep psychic link, a sharing of minds.”
“It’s marriage without the possibility of divorce, is what it is,” Lance said, his expression doubtful. “How well do you two know each other?”
“Marriage?” Erin turned to stare at Reece in shock.
He gave her a sardonic smile that held a tinge of pain. “Hey, you were ready to marry the king a couple of hours ago. One marriage of convenience is as good as another.”
“There’s nothing ‘convenient’ about a Truebond, Reece,” Arthur said. “Assuming you can forge the link, which you may not even be able to do.”
“Arthur has a point,” Lance said. “If you don’t have a strong bond now, it’s not going to work.” And the skepticism on his face seemed to suggest he doubted they did.
Reece shrugged. “Grace’s vision suggests otherwise.”
Erin turned to the two Majae. “The question is, will the spell work? Will it allow us to kill Geirolf?”
“I didn’t see that far,” Grace said. “But it was a hell of a lot of power. As booby traps go, it would make a good one.”
Arthur folded his arms and stared down at his feet, a deep frown on his face. “If you can only find out where he is and break his wards, the rest of us could attack in force. However much power he has, he’s not a match for all of us.”
“He’s close,” Llyr said. “He’s very, very close. When I spoke to him, I could feel his power.” He grimaced. “His followers have been gorging him with murders.”
Erin looked at him. “If he’s so powerful he’s a match for both kingdoms, how are the three of us supposed to kill him?”
“It’s not going to be a direct attack,” Morgana explained. “You’re right—if he’s as strong as Llyr claims, that won’t work. What you’re going to do is reflect his own death spell back on him.”
Erin scratched a spot between her brows. “I don’t think I like the sound of this. If Grace and Llyr pump that much power into me, what’s it going to do to them?”
“It will leave us vulnerable,” Llyr told her. “That must have been what Janieda had her vision about. She said she saw me lying unconscious with my power drained away to Erin as Geirolf laughed.”
“It’ll do more than leave us vulnerable,” Grace said. “If he manages to kill her while we’re all linked, you and I will die as well.”
“Now, wait just one bloody minute,” Lance began. “If you seriously think I’m going to let you…”
His wife shot him a look. “If we don’t do it, he could eventually get his hands on a Magekind couple, and we all die anyway. I’d rather go down fighting.”
“But it doesn’t have to be you!”
“Yes, it does,” Morgana told him bluntly. “Remember the vision I had that convinced me you had to Gift Grace? I saw a man’s face, laughing, and I felt a sense of…evil. It was all very vague, but I had the sense she was going to be absolutely vital in destroying a threat against Magekind.”
“All right, dammit,” Lance growled, frustrated. Reece knew exactly how he felt. “I just wish to hell somebody’d had a vision that she’d come through this thing all right.”
Llyr gave him a small, regal bow of the head. “Thank you, Lord Lancelot,” he said. “I will not forget this. Without your wife’s help, Janieda has no chance at all.” He aimed a cool, direct look at Erin and Reece. “What about you?”
“If she does,” Reece said in a deep, low rumble, “Erin won’t be your queen.”
“I’m aware of that.” His attention shifted to Erin with a trace of male regret. “And it is a pity. But I won’t turn my back on Janieda.”
Erin straightened her shoulders. Her mouth felt like cotton, and she felt that particular blend of excitement and terror she always felt before a mission. “Yeah. I’ll get her back for you, Your Highness.”
Llyr’s face softened. “I do not doubt it.” He lifted his hands. A glowing doorway appeared. “In the meantime, I must make preparations and tell my people our plans.”
“Well,” Morgana said, lifting a brow. “It seems we’re going through with this after all.” She turned to the Grimoire and leaned against the table. “So. The spell. I believe I know the rough outlines, but help with some of the finer points would be welcome.”
The book’s pages began to flip by themselves. “It’s a complicated ritual with a large number of steps. It’s going to take several hours to prepare. First we must—”
“In the meantime,” Grace said, moving to Erin’s side, “let’s talk, shall we?” With a gesture, she opened a doorway in the middle of the cell.
Erin eyed it dubiously. “But don’t we need to start work on the Truebond?” she asked as the other woman urged her toward it.
“That’ll only take a few seconds—if you’re ready for it,” Grace said. “Right now I don’t think you are. Maybe I can help with that.” Correctly reading her glance back at Morgana and the Grimoire, she added, “Believe me, when she wants you, she can find you.”
They stepped through the doorway. Again, Erin shuddered as she felt the race of magic over her skin.
Looking around, she found they stood in a wide central square surrounded by beautiful buildings in a jumble of architectural styles. It should have looked like a mishmash as gothic cathedrals stood next to Greek temples and French chateaus, but somehow the air of magic about it all seemed to unify everything.
As Erin gaped around at the soaring buildings, she was vaguely aware of Arthur and Lance urging Reece through Grace’s gate after them. Reece threw her a quick look over his shoulder as the three walked away across the square.
“All this was a little easier for me,” Grace said, guiding her toward a garden planted in the center of the square. “Becoming a Maja, I mean.”
Erin had been straining to hear what the retreating vampires were saying. At the other woman’s words, she looked at her. Grace appeared no older than her late twenties, but knowing the Magekind, she could be a thousand years told. “So how long have you—?”
Grace smiled slightly. “About six months.”
Erin blinked as they walked down a paved path surrounded by huge white roses that seemed to shimmer in the moonlight, as though imbued with a magic of their own. “You’re kidding. And you’ve got that much power?”
The Maja shrugged. “Genetics. Morgana is my grandmother.”
“Yeah, that would do it.”
“Which is one reason it was easier for me to accept all this. I grew up in Avalon. I knew court politics, I understood the complex relationship between the Magi and Majae.” She shot Erin an understanding glance. “And I knew what a Truebond was, which made it much easier to enter into one with Lance. I get the distinct impression you’re a little less comfortable with the idea.”
Erin grimaced. “You’re not wrong there.”
“You want to talk?”
Oddly, she did, though she didn’t even know this woman. “This Truebond. It will be permanent?”
Grace shrugged. “If it really is a Truebond. There are lesser bonds, which is why we call it a Truebond. It’s very…profound.”
Erin studied the other woman as they walked. She could hear a fountain tinkling nearby, the sound musical and soothing. “What’s it like?”
“Most of the time you’re just aware of your partner. A presence, even when he’s not physically with you. You can reach out to him and feel his thoughts, though he can block you if he chooses. Lance usually doesn’t shield from me.” She seemed to gaze into the distance. “Right now Reece is telling them—” She stopped.
“What?” Erin finally asked, when she didn’t speak for several minutes.
Grace shook her head. “Normally I wouldn’t say this, but if you Truebond with him, you’re going to find it out anyway. You hurt him, Erin. Badly.” The look she turned on Erin was cool. “Making love to him, and then going off to accept Llyr’s proposal. That was cold.”
Erin felt a stab of shamed guilt. “Okay, maybe I shouldn’t have done it, but I thought it was the best way to save us both.” She shook her head. “Besides, he shook me. I’m not used to being vulnerable to a man. Plus he was doing this whole dominant male thing, and that just ticked me off.”
Grace’s expression warmed into wicked understanding. “Ohhhh, yeah. That’s a universal personality trait among Magi. Seems to go with the whole vampire/predator thing.”
“Yeah, well, I’m an FBI agent. Or was. I don’t do submissive.”
“Really? Cool. I was a Tayanita County sheriff’s deputy. I’m not submissive, either, but it can be a really fun game to play in the bedroom.” Her eyes glinted. “When I’m not being Mistress Grace.”
Erin eyed her lusty smile. “Oh?”
“Oh, yeah. Sometimes we play speeder and bad, bad deputy. I just love pulling Lance over and frisking him.”
Erin dissolved into giggles, picturing slim Grace handcuffing her big, brawny vampire. “Not to mention reading him his rights.”
“Mmm. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen that ass bent over a patrol car.” Grace gave a mock shiver.
Erin snickered. “Too much information.”
“Oh, come on! Tell me you wouldn’t love busting Reece. God, those shoulders—” Grace stopped and laughed. “Yes, Lance, I know you heard that!” She wrinkled her nose. “He gets so jealous.”
Erin laughed even as she felt a twinge of envy. To have that kind of relationship…
With Reece.
“I’m scared, Grace,” she said suddenly. “I’ll be so damn vulnerable to him.”
The laughter drained from the Maja’s eyes, leaving warm understanding behind. “And that’s a good sign.”
“Why?”
Grace studied her a long moment before she spoke. “I strongly suspect you’re the kind of person that focuses on the mission,” she said at last. “If you didn’t care about him, the Truebond wouldn’t worry you. You’d be more focused on killing Geirolf and saving the rest of us. If you love him, it’ll make the Truebond that much stronger.”
Erin hesitated. “Okay, yeah, I love him. But…my track record’s not that damn good.”
“Oh?”
“I’ve been in love before.” Remembered pain made her look away from the Maja’s perceptive gaze. “Another agent. Geirolf killed him. Or rather, he killed himself rather than obey Geirolf’s compulsion to kill me.”
Grace winced. “That’s rough. On a whole bunch of levels.” The Maja studied her thoughtfully. Erin tried not to shift under her penetrating stare. “You scared history’s going to repeat itself?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I am. And I’m not sure I’d survive it a second time.” She grimaced. “Assuming I even get that option.”
They rounded a bend in the path to find Reece waiting for them. His gaze locked on hers, hot and intent. “Let’s go.”
She hesitated only a moment, aware of Grace’s sympathetic eyes.
Then she reached out and took his hand.