CHAPTER 27
A moment of stunned silence filled the room. Even Squick’s mouth hung open as if he couldn’t believe what he’d just heard. Fiona certainly couldn’t.
“That’s impossible! The library isn’t just warded; it’s guarded. No one could possibly get anything out of it without Aunt Mab’s express permission, which she definitely would not have given to Dionnu.”
Rule looked at her. “Your uncle is a powerful sidhe, Princess. And was once half of your aunt’s whole. Is it so hard to believe that his power to undo wards could rival her power to make them?”
Fiona shook her head, not in answer to his question but in an attempt to make it stop spinning. “I’m telling you it can’t happen. And even if Dionnu did manage to get his hands on the amulet, what in the world could he be doing with it? Summoning demons? For the Lady’s sake, Fae and demons are mortal enemies. He’s not going to do anything of the kind. Especially not when he can’t possibly get anything out of it. What point is there in summoning demons to earth and then using them to sabotage the human-Other negotiations? No matter how those go, it’s not going to have much effect on the Fae. We’re entirely separate from this world.”
“I don’t think the goal is to interfere in the negotiations,” Rule said. “I think the fact that they’re happening at all is just a convenient excuse for him to spend an extended amount of time in the human world. If they hadn’t been occurring, he might have invented something similar, just to have that cover.” He pointed at the sigils Fiona had sketched out. “Your interpretation of most of them was close, but ours is a complex language, and the differences between certain glyphs can be subtle. The fiend that sketched this wasn’t just trying to free itself from the hold of the amulet. It was trying to destroy it completely and free any fiend that was tied to it.”
Walker frowned. “So?”
“So this glyph is multiple, not singular. It means ‘host of fiends.’” He looked up. “In other words, an army.”
Fiona went pale. Her vision went hazy and for a moment the room around her swam out of focus. She heard a strange buzzing sound in her ears that faded just enough for her to hear Walker’s incredulous question.
“I’m with Fiona. Why the hell would Dionnu do that?” he demanded. “What does the Winter King of Faerie need with an army of fiends? He’s got his own army of Fae.”
“But the Seelie and Unseelie Courts are too evenly matched,” she whispered, her voice and her hands shaking. “Dionnu needs a secret weapon if he ever hopes to take over the Summer Court. That’s what he’s always been after. And that’s why he sealed the gate back, too. He didn’t want to take the chance of anyone sneaking back into Faerie to warn Mab. He’s planning an invasion.”
Walker stared at his mate in disbelief. “An invasion? Of his own world? What the hell are you talking about?”
Fiona jumped off his lap and began pacing around the room. “Dionnu has never been content with the division of Faerie. ‘Acrimonious’ would be a mild term for the split between him and Mab. He’s not happy ruling only the Unseelie Court. He wants, has always wanted, to be High King over the whole of Faerie. That was probably a good part of the reason why he married her in the first place. He thought he could unite the kingdoms and then seize power over both of them. He just didn’t count on the fact that Mab is at least as powerful as he is. Maybe more so. That’s one of the reasons he’s always after the cousins to agree to be named his heir. He thinks he can use us as bargaining chips, or failing that, as hostages to get Mab to surrender. He’s never understood that the kingdom is a lot more important to my aunt than a few uncooperative nieces and nephews.”
“And your uncle is wise enough to know that he can’t summon fiends directly into Faerie,” Rule said. “He’d need to do it on neutral ground. Like here. The human world isn’t as well warded as Faerie, and fiends have always been able to enter when invited. He could raise an army of fiends here, then bring them into Faerie from here.”
“But how would he do it? He’d still need to get past the Fae wards.”
“The amulet. Death magic is one of the strongest forces there is. All he would need would be a suitably powerful death and he could break the wards. Or at least crack them enough to slip through. The wards between here and Faerie are not designed to hold demons out the way the ones between there and Below are. They could do the job in a pinch, but with enough pressure, they’d never hold.”
“We need to tell my aunt. We should warn her.”
Rule shook his head. “How? The way into Faerie is still closed, and every death your uncle’s fiends cause only strengthens the barriers he has erected. We would need to take those barriers down before we could reach Mab, which we cannot do while Dionnu retains control.”
Fiona whirled on him. “So we just let her ex-husband invade her land and seize control by whatever means are necessary?”
“No, but there are still things we can do right here to prevent that from happening. We need to find Dionnu and get the amulet back. With it, we gain control of the fiends and the ability to send them back Below. After that, the invasion will lack an army, and your uncle will lack his secret weapon.”
“Right,” Walker growled, not liking this plan at all. “Which means we’re sure to be back in time for dinner.”
“I know where to find my uncle,” Fiona said. “If you can think of a way to get the amulet back, I can lead you to him.”
Rule’s grin flashed dark with malice. “I’m sure I can think of something.”
“This has got to be the dumbest plan ever invented by Fae or demon,” Walker muttered in the back of the private car Rafe had lent them. Walker, Fiona, Rule, and the imp had piled into the seats less than an hour after concocting a harebrained scheme that Walker was pretty sure would result not just in death for all of them, but quite possibly in dismemberment as well. Maybe even gibbeting.
“Everything will be fine,” Fiona reassured him. She sounded calm, but he could smell her uneasiness. One of these days he was going to have to tell her that it didn’t do any good to try to lie to a mate. “If we’re lucky, Dionnu won’t have his little army with him, and besides the three of us, Rafe, Graham, Tess, and Missy are in the car right behind us. Between all of us, I’m sure we’ll find a way to get the amulet back.”
Walker just grunted. If any of them were lucky, none of this would be happening in the first place, so he figured that was a flaw in Fiona’s pat little theory.
“Remember, we need to retrieve the amulet without damaging it,” Rule said. “If it’s destroyed, the fiends will be released from its influence, which would be almost as bad as if Dionnu sent them into Faerie.”
“I wish you had agreed to stay behind,” Walker said quietly, staring intently down at her. “You haven’t had a chance to replenish your energy after the incident in the park. I don’t like the idea of you going in there defenseless.”
“I’m not.” She smiled up at him in the dim light shining in through the car windows. “I have you to defend me.”
Walker felt his stomach tighten.
“We need her,” Rule pointed out. “Somehow I doubt we’d get past Dionnu’s front door if the rest of us showed up unescorted and unannounced.”
Walker opened his mouth to offer another protest, but the feel of the car pulling to a halt cut him off. He glanced out the window. “This is it.”
Fiona climbed out of the car and looked up at the familiar edifice. She frowned. “Where’s the doorman?”
It wasn’t likely either of them would have misremembered the fact that Dionnu’s building had one. Not after the little show they’d put on for him last time. Walker felt a twinge of unease. “Some buildings switch to a security guard for overnight,” he said. “Maybe this is one of them?”
“What’s the matter?” Rafe asked as the others piled out of the second car and hurried to join them. “Is something wrong?”
“Not wrong necessarily,” Fiona said. “It’s just that when we visited a couple of days ago, there was a doorman at this building. Now, I don’t see one.”
Rule’s eyes sharpened. “If you notice anything else out of place, tell me.”
They pushed through the front door and into the marble lobby. The atmosphere reminded Walker of a crypt, cold and pale and silent. He couldn’t even hear the hum of the elevators running. The uneasy feeling in his gut turned into the feel of the hackles at the back of his neck standing at attention. “I don’t like this.”
Graham glanced at him. “Is something else wrong?”
“No,” Walker admitted. “It just seems too quiet to me.”
“That might not be a bad sign. Fiends aren’t known for their discretion, or their quiet.”
Fiona led the way to the elevators and pushed the up button. The reflective gold doors slid smoothly open and she took a step forward. Then she froze.
“Uh, I think this counts as out of place,” she said, and pointed to a pool of dark crimson blood on the floor of the empty elevator car.