Ricky crouched and examined the footprints. When he touched the smallest, he said, "Fae," and then made a face. "Don't ask me how I know that."
"New power. Cool."
"Useful, at least." He rose. "You sent a couple of dryads to find Seanna, right?"
"I wouldn't say sent so much as allowed them to search. But yes, they're small, and they wear Docs, so the sizes and treads are about right. The dryads found Seanna--or told Gabriel they did. He knows it could be a trap. He needs backup. We're busy. Patrick joins Gabriel and the dryads at the office. They come here together and..."
I trailed off, frowning at the doorway leading deeper into the school.
Ricky said, "And the obvious answer is that the dryads sprung a trap, but you didn't get that sense from them."
"Which means nothing. Remember, I trusted Tristan after his partner tried to kill Gabriel and me. And then I trusted Melanie, who tried to kill me herself."
He gave me a hard look. We'd hashed through my guilt trips before. He would point out that Tristan's partner acted without his knowledge and even then, when Tristan lured me to the hospital, I knew it was a trap--I just went to see what he was up to. Melanie hadn't tried to hurt me until I uncovered her scheme. Still, I felt like an idiot--once burned, twice too-stupid-to-learn-her-lesson. Well, third time was the charm. I wasn't trusting the dryads, no matter what my gut said.
We followed the footprints. When we reached what had been a set of stairs, Gabriel's prints paced around it.
"Was he looking for a way up?" Ricky said.
"He was doing what we are--following footprints." I examined the traces more. "Patrick stopped here and scuffed around."
"Waiting for Gabriel to find the trail. So those two were tracking the dryads, who must have taken off on them."
"Which, being dryads, could mean they were fleeing...or just scampered ahead."
We followed the tracks down the hall. When I realized Ricky wasn't right behind me, I stopped to see him shining his light through a doorway.
"The windows are broken," he said. "And yeah, given that it's an abandoned building, that's no big shock, but the windows have been shattered very recently, pieces on the floor, no dust settled on them." He walked to the next door. "Same thing in every room we've passed."
"Olivia!" Gabriel's voice boomed from somewhere below. "Is that you?"
Ricky put his fingers on my arm. He knew I wouldn't run toward Gabriel's voice, but I would be tempted. I locked my knees and called back, "Where are you?"
"In the basement. We fell through the floor and seem to be trapped."
"What broke the windows?" I called.
"What?" Patrick answered.
"The windows. They're all broken. What happened?"
"We don't know," Patrick said. "A tremor? I thought it might be fae, but we didn't find any evidence of that. The building shook, and we heard glass breaking, and then the floor gave way."
I glanced at Ricky and then called, "Gabriel?"
"Hmm?"
"What did we have for lunch?"
"This isn't the time for games, Liv," Patrick said. "We're trapped in this basement, and the building keeps creaking and groaning. Gabriel fell three stories. He needs a doctor."
"We found a pen in the car, Patrick," I said. "One of your homemade jobs. What kind of ink do you use?"
Silence. Then a woman's voice said, "Oh, but you're clever, aren't you, Eden?"
It was the voice from Todd's memory. The one that plucked at my own memory but wove through Todd's until I wasn't sure if I'd really heard it elsewhere or just remembered it from him.
"Not so much clever as capable of learning," I said. "The fae like their tricks. Sluagh may not consider themselves fae, but they pull the same stunts. Where's Gabriel?"
"So you consider us fae? That will make this conversation so much easier."
"No, our conversation will be easier if Gabriel's standing beside me. It's the only way I'm talking to you."
"You have a high opinion of your worth, don't you, child? You think you're a player, but you are just a pawn. One we own."
"Because you're the ones who healed me. Yeah, I've figured that out. You set up the whole thing--giving Todd the idea, answering Ioan's summons, and then making the deal. Which you think means I owe you. It doesn't. My mother paid for my cure in full."
"Do you really think we'd go through all the trouble of arranging your cure simply to add a few mortal souls to our flock?"
"If you're trying to say I'm marked, I'm not. Nor did Ioan or Pamela bind me to you in any way."
"You're certain of that? Absolutely certain?"
"Certain that they weren't stupid enough to repeat some mystical incantation to bind me? Yeah. There was no part of those deaths..."
I trailed off as I remembered James's body, Gabriel turning him over for me to see what had been done.
"Liv?" Ricky moved up behind me.
"Oh, the mighty Arawn speaks. Of the three, you certainly got the worst of the deal, didn't you? The great lord of the Otherworld...reborn as a pretty biker. Even more a child than the others. Are you out of school yet, boy?"
Ricky ignored the voice and murmured to me, "You were thinking about something. What was it?"
"You always stand behind her, don't you, boy? Walk at her heels. Whisper your thoughts in her ear. The loyal hound, grateful for whatever scraps his huntress might offer."
"I want Gabriel," I said.
She gave a soft laugh. "Of course you do. And you say it right in front of poor Ricky. Thrown over again, Arawn. One might think you'd have the self-respect to walk away."
"I mean that I want you to return the guy you're holding hostage. Which is obviously not Ricky."
"Ignore her," Ricky said. "She thinks she can punch my buttons and I'll stalk off in a snit. Arawn might have. I am not Arawn. You heard Liv, bitch. If you want to speak to her, bring Gabriel."
"But we're already speaking. Her demands are mere bluster. You wish to see your beloved Gwynn, Matilda?"
She fell silent, and then a voice called, "Olivia? Olivia!"
"Not going to answer him?" the sluagh said.
"What'd we have for lunch?" I shouted.
A strained chuckle that sounded like Patrick. "That's an interesting greeting."
"She's making certain she's speaking to me," the other voice said. "Thai food, which I am regretting after falling three stories."
"What happened?"
"The sluagh, evidently. Which is why you need to get out of here. They've laid a trap--"
"She's already fallen in," the sluagh called back. "We've chatted. It was lovely. Now go rescue your lover, Matilda. He's right down the next hall. Well, down the hall and down two stories, but I believe he's already managed to crawl out of the hole."
"Olivia?" Gabriel called. "Go back out to the car. We're on our way."
"Mmm, no, Gwynn," the sluagh said. "You may have made it to the second floor, but that's like finding the jailer left your cell door unlocked for his own amusement. How fast can you run, Mr. Walsh? Not very fast, I bet. You aren't built for running. Nor are you dressed for it. But try. Please. See how far you get from that hole."
I pictured him hesitating, thinking he could run faster than the sluagh presumed, while knowing it was futile, that the sluagh just wanted to see him try.
"Give us a name," Patrick called.
"What?" the sluagh said.
"Your name. Your title of address. You seem determined to turn this into a long conversation, so at the very least supply us with a name to call you."
"So we can exchange pleasantries while you escape?" The voice snorted. "Poor play, bocan. Poor play indeed."
A shriek rang out, an inhuman scream as the building itself shuddered. Gabriel shouted, "Get down, Olivia!" but Ricky was already knocking me to the floor.
A tornado of melltithiwyd whipped down the hall, their shrieks almost drowned out by the thunderous roar of their wings.
As Ricky lay over me
, I felt the batter of those wings and bodies against his back. He hissed in pain, and I scrambled out to help him, but the swarm was still slamming into him, pecking at his back. By the time I got up, the throng was hurtling down the hall.
I saw something else down that hall. A spot where the floor seemed black. Where the floor was missing.
As one body, the melltithiwyd swooped down that hole, and I ran toward it screaming, "No!"
A curse from Patrick and then a snarling shout in Welsh. A crash. A thump.
I reached the hole, and I think if Ricky hadn't tackled me, I might have done something as stupid as leap right into it.
I struggled free and crawled to the hole.
The swarm of melltithiwyd flew straight at me. Their beaks opened, blood-red maws of tiny shark teeth. When one looked at me, its blank white eyes morphed into human ones, roiling with rage and anguish and hate.
That one melltithiwyd flew at me, beak wide. Ricky yanked me back, but the thing sunk its teeth into my cheek. It ripped and then swooped for a second bite, and Ricky smacked it so hard it flew into the hole, tumbling head over tail. Its brethren continued flying by, battering us with wings and bodies.
When they passed, I peered into the hole and saw Gabriel rising from a pile of debris, Patrick lying beside him. I started to call down, to ask if they were all right. Then the single melltithiwyd Ricky had knocked into the hole swooped up, shrieking, maw open, teeth flashing.
Ricky grabbed the thing. It wasn't any bigger than a swallow, and his hand engulfed it. The melltithiwyd went wild, pecking but unable to reach him. He squeezed. It started to scream, a scream of rage that turned almost human as it thrashed and pecked, its beak still spattered with my blood. Ricky kept crushing it, his fingers digging into the dark red feathers. The tiny body contorted, and the melltithiwyd snarled, white eyes turning human. Ricky squeezed until gore and black blood ran down his arm. That's when it stopped snarling, stopped screaming, stopped pecking, stopped struggling.
Ricky whipped the mangled thing at the departing flock. It hit one, and as the creature turned, it struck another, a chain reaction, the last few melltithiwyd pecking and shrieking as the rest of the flock swirled out of sight.
The dead melltithiwyd fell to the floor with a wet thwack, and when the remaining ones heard that, they stopped in mid-peck and looked down at the corpse on the floor.
They swooped as one body, and all I could see was a red-black blur. But I heard more. I heard ripping and snapping and gulping, and when they finally stopped, there was nothing on the floor but a black stain of blood. The lingering melltithiwyd flew upward, bits of their dead brethren still hanging from their beaks as they flew to join the others.
I grabbed the edge of the hole. "Gabriel?"
"I'm fine," he said. "They only knocked us in. Which was not a pleasant reoccurrence, but we're unharmed. It was simply a message--telling us that we are not escaping until the sluagh allows it." He squinted up, holding his cell phone for light. "Is that blood?"
My hand clapped to the spot the melltithiwyd had attacked, and I felt a tiny divot of missing flesh. "I'm fine. Ricky..." I turned quickly. "Are you okay? Your back..." I moved behind him.
"A leather jacket is both symbolic and functional," he said as I saw the peck marks on the leather. "I'm good."
I reached to the rear of his neck, where blood dripped from his scalp.
"Yeah, I should have been wearing the helmet, too," he said. "But it's just pecks. Like oversized mosquitoes."
I wiped the blood and checked a couple of the spots, which really did look like bug bites, bloodied pocks like the one on my cheek.
"You do an excellent job of feigning concern," the sluagh said, her voice sliding around us. "Overreact to his injuries in hopes he won't notice you asked after Gwynn first."
"Shut the fuck up," Ricky said.
"Scraps of attention," she whispered. "Her dutiful hound--"
"No, really, shut the fuck up. You told Patrick his ploy was poor? Yours is poorer. I just crushed a fucking hell-bird. Obviously, I was fine, and obviously she's going to check the guy who fell through the damned floor again."
Ricky caught my shoulder as I crawled past and whispered, "Stop worrying. That's what she's really doing--trying to make you feel like you're neglecting me." When I didn't respond, he squeezed my shoulder and nodded toward my ankle tattoo. "You said you aren't getting rid of that, so I know where I stand. Stop fretting. We stick together, the three of us. That's how it works, right? The only way it works."
"Thank you," I murmured, and kissed his cheek.
"Hey, Gabriel?" Ricky called. "Liv just gave me a kiss on the cheek. I'm letting you know before this sluagh-bitch tries to make it sound like we're two seconds from screwing on the floor here."
Gabriel's snort of a laugh wafted up from the hole.
"You all think you're such clever children," the sluagh said.
"Just go," Gabriel called. "Both of you. We'll find a way out."
"He's right," Patrick added. "If you stay, that only means four of us need to escape this place. We're fine. We'll figure this out."
"So there's that option," the sluagh said. "It presumes we'll let anyone leave, which we won't, but you can certainly try. For amusement's sake, though you might not find it quite so entertaining."
"What do you want?" I asked.
"It's already told us that," Patrick called up. "The sluagh would like to throw their hat in the ring, as a suitor for your affections."
Ricky snorted a choking laugh. "Seriously?"
"He means with the fae and the Hunt," Gabriel said. "A third competitor."
"Still, doesn't that mean they need a champion?" Ricky said. "I definitely want to see their champion. I think you're in for some stiff competition there, Gabriel."
"We do not have a champion," the sluagh said. "We do not need one. Ours is not a campaign of subtle wooing and flowery promises. We convince. And we are doing exactly that, demonstrating that we can find you, anywhere, anytime, and threaten those you love. Kill those you love. Or do you require a more overt lesson in that?"
"Threats won't--" I began.
"--work. Oh, yes, I believe threats work much better than flattery and gifts and promises. The trick is to be very, very clear that those threats are not empty. So let's do that now. The cost of leaving is a life. Choose one, Olivia."
My gut chilled. "Don't you--"
"Not Gabriel. We'll remove him from the options, knowing he will never be the one you sacrifice. So choose between the other two. Arawn or the bocan. Which may we have for letting Gabriel go free?"
"If you touch either, you will never win my favor."
"Is that a threat? Excellent. You do know how this works. Let me be generous, then. It doesn't help our cause to overplay our hand too soon. You don't need to choose. Not yet. In fact, we'll set them all free for you, Olivia. We'll even escort them out the door. But you..." Her voice circled me. "You stay. You find your own way out. And if they come back for you, they'll die."
Her voice turned to smoke, the black enveloping me even as I heard Ricky shout "No!" and lunge. His fingers brushed my arm, and then...
Darkness.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
I woke facedown on a cold floor, my head throbbing. I rose to all fours and gagged as my stomach lurched. I felt like I'd swallowed that smoke, the most foul imaginable, like something from a crematorium. My stomach lurched again at the thought.
Less thinking. More doing.
I turned on my switchblade's penlight and looked around. Not surprisingly, I seemed to be in the same place Gabriel and Patrick had been--a basement room with a jagged hole in the ceiling. Also not surprisingly, I was alone.
The third "Nope, still no surprises" moment came when I tried the exit door, and it wouldn't budge. I figured if Gabriel couldn't open it, neither could I, but still I tried, again in case the sluagh decided to play pranks with my presumptions.
So the question became "How to escape?" I
wasn't particularly concerned that I couldn't. I wouldn't be much use to the sluagh dead. Unless...
I thought of the melltithiwyd, and shuddered. I can't imagine Mallt-y-Nos would be very useful as a mindless hell-bird.
Gabriel and Patrick were able to climb out of this room, presumably by Gabriel standing on the pile of debris. Which is great, if you're six foot four. The obvious answer, then? Build a bigger pile.
That wasn't as simple as it sounded, given that I had to construct a pile stable enough to support me. I managed it. Then I heaved and hefted and hauled myself up through that hole...and in came the melltithiwyd, a swooping swarm of avian piranha. I instinctively let go and fell back into the damned basement.
Attempt number two. I did the exact same thing. And, shockingly, got the same result. When the melltithiwyd attacked, I squeezed my eyes shut and gritted my teeth and endured the pecks and the bites and the beating wings as I kept heaving myself up. Finally, I got out and rolled away from the hole. Then I crouched there, my head down, as the melltithiwyd battered me, and I lashed out as hard as I could.
That's what did it. Hitting them. I bashed a few into the wall, heard the thump as their bodies struck, the crack of bones, and then the shrieks of their comrades, diverting course to devour their brethren, not caring if they were dead or alive, only that they were momentarily dazed, weak, and vulnerable.
Whatever intelligence the melltithiwyd possessed, it was enough for them to see me hurting the others--and those others being devoured--and decide maybe they didn't want to torment me after all. Finally, with a scream that seemed to come from a thousand tiny throats, they tore off and I was left there, panting, blood dripping down my face.
"You're very pleased with yourself, aren't you?"
It was a woman's voice, which made me think of the sluagh, but this one was pitched lower, edged with anger rather than mockery.
When I didn't answer, she said, "Are you too good to speak to me, Miss Larsen? I bet you think you are."
A figure stepped into the doorway. I had a flash of instant recognition followed by...nothing. Just that flash that said, "I know you," but when I went to chase down a name, my memory had nothing to give.
She was my age, maybe a little younger, and she stood in that doorway, her blue eyes dark with hate. I'd seen that face. Seen it recently. Where...?