She said fiercely, “We’re done here, right?”
“We’re done,” he said. He sounded as calm as he always did, his rich voice mellow and soothing, but as he strode toward her he pulled his gun.
She sucked air, held Vetta tighter and said between her teeth, “What now?”
Sympathy darkened Duncan’s gaze as he reached her side. He gripped her shoulder and said, “Malphas has chosen to disengage, but that doesn’t mean anybody else at Devil’s Gate has.”
“Shit,” she muttered. Of course he was right. She looked around but the other Vampyre had disappeared as well.
Vetta lifted her head. Her eyes were smudged with streaks of black eyeliner, and her small, slender snakes were entirely subdued, curled quietly against her head. Seremela could see in her niece’s young, exhausted face the ghost of the five-year-old Vetta had once been.
“I really need to go home now, Aunt Serrie,” she whispered.
“Of course you do,” she said gently. Now was not the time for recriminations or lectures. “Are you hurt?”
Vetta wiped at her face. “Just tired and hungry.”
“All right.” Seremela looked at the backpack that the Vampyre had tossed to the floor. “Is this yours?”
Vetta nodded. Duncan said, “We’re not going to try to retrieve anything else. We’re going straight to our car and leaving.”
“That’s fine, I don’t care,” said the girl, her voice wobbling. “I just want to get the hell out of here.”
As Seremela turned her attention fully onto the backpack that Malphas’s guard had tossed onto the floor, she immediately sensed a warm glow of aged Power. She bent and reached for the pack, scanning it carefully.
When she had been a medical examiner, most of the deaths she had autopsied had occurred through magical or Powerful means, and her magical sense was finely honed.
She was used to handling dangerous residual Power. Usually when she scanned for magic, she could compartmentalize it within moments. A spell cast by a human witch, an item infused with Dark Fae Power, Demonkind, Elven, Djinn or Light Fae—she knew the flavors and characteristics of all their magics, and most of the time she could either disable or contain the spells.
This, though. This was something different from anything she had ever encountered. The harder she concentrated, the deeper the well of Power felt underneath the veneer of that mild, mellow glow. For a moment she felt as though she might fall into something vaster than she had ever experienced.
Astonished and more than a little frightened, she jerked back and heard herself say sharply, “What do you have in there?”
“The goddamn Tarot deck from hell,” Vetta said on a fresh sob.
She turned to stare at the girl. “Where on earth did you get something like that?”
Vetta’s face twisted with a flash of her old rebellious self that crumpled quickly. She wailed, “I stole it a couple months ago. I’m already so, so sorry I ever set eyes on it, so I don’t need for you to yell at me about it right now, all right?”
Seremela angled her jaw out. She said in a soft, even tone of voice, “I can’t help but notice your choice of words, Vetta. You’re sorry you set eyes on it, but you’re not sorry you stole it?”
The girl’s reddened eyes widened with fresh dismay.
Duncan said quietly, “This conversation can wait until later. Seremela, is the pack too dangerous to take with us?”
She gave him a quick glance then turned her attention back to the pack. After a moment, she said, “It doesn’t feel active at the moment, so I don’t think so. It’s a very old item of Power, though. We shouldn’t just leave it.”
“Then we’ll take it,” he said. “As long as you’re willing to look after it and we leave right now.”
She nodded, took the pack and slung it over one shoulder. Duncan strode to the trailer’s open door and looked out. Moonlight edged his set expression and sharp gaze.
Seremela had grown accustomed reading to the subtle changes in his face. When she saw the line of his mouth harden, she asked, “What is it?”
“The only way out of this fenced-in enclosure is through the casino,” he told her. “I noticed when we came in.”
As soon as he mentioned it, she remembered the unbroken line of fence too.
She said to Vetta, “You keep your head down. You stick to me like glue, young lady, and above all, you keep quiet. I don’t care if you see someone you don’t like, or if someone says something you don’t like. You do not antagonize anyone. Do you hear me?”
The girl bent her head and nodded, and Duncan led the way through the enclosure to the back of the casino, where bright flashes of color spilled out from the opening. It looked, Seremela thought uneasily, like the tent had been sliced open and was bleeding light.
They walked inside and along the main aisle.
Silence began to spread through the crowd. Seremela’s stomach tightened as people stared at them. Then the whispering began. Vetta did as she had promised and kept her head down as she walked as close as she could get to Seremela without actually climbing on top of her.
Seremela put an arm around her niece’s shoulders and several of her snakes wrapped around Vetta too. She tried as best as she could to adopt something of Duncan’s calm, non-confrontational manner, while each step she took, each moment that passed, felt as though it took an hour. In vast contrast to how she had felt when they had come into the place, she glanced up at the armed Goblins on the walk overhead and felt grateful for their presence.
A ripple of reaction moved through the crowd like a wave, and she knew they weren’t going to make it out of the casino without some kind of confrontation.
Duncan twisted to face the reaction. He still looked as prosaic as if he were taking out the trash, while her heart was jumping about in her chest like a cat on a hot tin roof. When she saw his lean, mildly interested profile, she felt a rush of emotion so powerful, it almost knocked her on her ass.
I love you, she thought. You have gone so far out of your way for me that you’ve traveled across the country. You’ve faced down petty criminals and a rogue Djinn. You accepted without question when I said that Vetta was innocent, and you’ve done all of it with humor and kindness, and you’re willing to do even this for my niece, whom you haven’t even been properly introduced to.
How could I not love you?
How could I not?
The crowd parted and a Dark Fae woman approached. She was tall and slim, with the trademark angular features and overlarge gray eyes of the Dark Fae. Her gleaming black hair was pulled back in a braid, and she wore simple dark leggings and a sleeveless tunic.
She also wore a sword that remained in its harness, strapped to her back. Her hands were empty and lax at her sides as she came face to face with them.
Vetta broke her promise of silence in a whisper. “Xanthe.”
Seremela’s arm tightened on her in warning.
Other than a slight smile and crinkling of her eyes, an expression that was gone almost before Seremela had registered it, the Dark Fae woman gave no sign that she heard Vetta. Instead she turned to Duncan and said, “Please allow me to assist in escorting you safely from this place.”
“Why should we?” Duncan asked.
“Because I, too, know that the girl is innocent,” said the Dark Fae. She spoke English perfectly, with a trace of accent, and raised her voice as she said it, causing another reaction to ripple through the avid-looking onlookers.
“Then by all means,” said Duncan, as he gestured to the aisle in front of him. “After you.”
The woman Vetta had called Xanthe inclined her head and took the lead, while Duncan fell back. He gestured for Seremela and Vetta to go ahead of him, and he came up close behind them.
Warily, Seremela followed the Dark Fae woman, while she tried to think how the maneuver might possibly be a trap, but she couldn’t see how—the woman had, after all, made very public declaration of Vetta’s innocence and support.
&
nbsp; They worked their way through the rest of the casino. With the Dark Fae ahead of them, and Duncan guarding them from behind, Seremela felt marginally more secure. She devoutly hoped it wasn’t an illusion.
She asked Vetta telepathically, “Do you know this woman?”
“Not really,” the girl said. “I know who she is—or was, anyway. She was one of Thruvial’s attendants. He had three. I guess that’s traditional?”
Vetta was correct. Dark Fae triads were quite traditional and appeared in various forms in their society. Seremela wondered where Thruvial’s other two attendants were.
She said, “Yes, it is. What do you know about her?”
Vetta shrugged. She looked and sounded exhausted. “Like I said, nothing much. She’s quiet and keeps to herself.”
“Okay,” Seremela said.
They fell silent. Later Seremela would have dreams about that hellish walk through Gehenna, the dreams filled with a creeping sense of dread while a host of creatures stared at her with hungry gazes and stalked close behind her, moving in for a kill.
Then finally they stepped out of the tent. The cooler desert night air outside was indescribably wonderful. Seremela and Vetta took deep breaths, almost staggering with relief, as the Dark Fae woman paused to look over her shoulder at them.
“Don’t stop,” murmured Duncan. “We need to go quickly.”
Seremela nodded, and their small group moved into a different formation. This time the Dark Fae woman fell back to walk at Seremela’s side, while Duncan moved up beside Vetta on the other side.
The Dark Fae woman said, “We should not go through the crowded part toward the center of the camp. It is quieter along the outskirts.”
Duncan and Seremela looked at Vetta for confirmation. The girl said, “Xanthe’s right. The camp’s quieter around the edges.”
“Show us,” Duncan said.
Both Vetta and the Dark Fae woman did, and they were able to move quickly through the quiet, shadowed area. They had circumvented the encampment and reached the edge of the massive parking lot when Seremela couldn’t keep quiet any longer.
She stopped, pulling Vetta to a halt. The other two stopped as well.
Seremela said to the Dark Fae woman, “You. What is your name?”
“Xanthe Tenanye,” replied the Dark Fae.
“You just left her there,” Seremela said. “You knew Vetta was innocent, and you let them imprison her for—what, two days? She was terrified and all alone.”
“I did not leave her,” said Xanthe. Her large gray eyes seemed to gather all the meager illumination from the moonlight, while her hands remained at her sides. “I stayed in Gehenna for the last two days, watching while I tried to figure out what I could do for her. I would not have let them hang her.”
“Interesting,” said Duncan. He had moved so that he was much closer to the Dark Fae. “How did you know Vetta was innocent, and how would you have stopped it?”
“By confessing, if I had no other choice,” said Xanthe Tenanye. “I knew Vetta didn’t kill Cieran Thruvial, because I did.”
“You’re a killer?” Vetta said it with such a squeak of surprise it would have sounded comical in almost any other situation.
“You may call me such, if you must,” said Xanthe.
“What are you still doing here?” Vetta asked. “They will hang you, if they realize you did it.”
“I am well aware of that, but I was not free to leave until you were,” said Xanthe. She looked around. “It is not safe to stay here and have this conversation. You still need to leave immediately.”
Seremela and Duncan looked at each other. He murmured, “Understanding what happened or getting involved is still not our mission.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Seremela said grimly. She remembered where they had parked the SUV and started hauling Vetta in that direction.
That was when Vetta chose to dig in her heels, literally. By simply not moving, she dragged Seremela to a stop. “Why?” Vetta said raggedly to Xanthe. “They held me in a metal building without food or water, and I knew I was going to die. All of that was because you murdered someone, and I need to know why.”
For the first time since she had approached them, Xanthe exposed emotion in her body language as she shifted sharply and rubbed the back of her neck. Then she said abruptly, “I work for the Dark Fae Queen. More accurately, I work for her chief of security. I didn’t just murder Thruvial, I executed him on orders for crimes committed against the crown. I had no idea that you would get blamed for his death. Now will you go?”
As soon as the Dark Fae woman mentioned the Queen, Seremela and Duncan jerked to a halt. They stared at Xanthe.
“Oh hell,” said Duncan. “She’s telling the truth.”
Seremela was beginning to feel dizzy from all the shifts in reality over the last few hours.
Murder. Illegal drugs. A pariah, and now inter-demesne politics. Oh, and she couldn’t forget to add theft of a major item of Power to that list, not when its subtle, fathomless Power was slowly but surely soaking into the bones of her shoulder. It felt good, nourishing and exotic at the same time, and she didn’t trust that feeling one iota.
Vetta had started to speak. Seremela interrupted her. “No more discussion.” She had never used such a harsh tone of voice with her niece before. Vetta looked shocked and her mouth shut with a snap. Seremela steered her niece back around in the direction of their SUV as she said to Xanthe, “Thank you for watching out for my niece. Either come with us now or stay, and goodbye.”
Duncan moved to Seremela’s side with smooth, liquid grace. Xanthe took a few steps backward as she said, “My thanks, but you would be much safer withou—”
A new voice interrupted her. “We could not believe it, Xanthe, when we heard that you defended our lord’s murderer and escorted her from Gehenna. Now we see your betrayal with our very own eyes.”
For the second time that night, Duncan blurred. By the time Seremela had spun around, he already faced the two newcomers with his gun aimed at their heads.
They were Dark Fae, a male and a female, dressed like Xanthe in simple leggings and sleeveless tunics, with swords strapped to their backs. They stared from Xanthe to Vetta and Seremela, their expressions bitter with hate.
“She is innocent,” said Xanthe as she drew her sword. “They will pass from this place unharmed.”
“She’s poison,” spat the male. “She made no secret of how she loathed our lord, and now she has brought another of her kind who is even more poisonous.” He and his companion drew their swords as well, and the sound of the long scrape of metal ran down Seremela’s spine.
“Do they not comprehend that you have a gun trained on them?” Seremela said incredulously in Duncan’s head.
Xanthe lunged, the others stepped to meet her and the clash of steel rang out.
“I can’t use it and they know it,” said Duncan. “The gunshot would draw too much attention. The sound of the swordfight is bad enough.”
He tossed the gun at her. Shocked, she made an incoherent noise and let go of Vetta to stumble forward, just barely managing to catch it.
“I hope you can shoot,” Duncan told her. “Use it as a last resort.”
She stared at him, caught the moonlit edge of his shadowed smile, and then he sprang at the three fighting Dark Fae.
Vetta was whispering, “Oh gods, I just want to wake up and be in my own bed.”
Seremela’s hands shook as she checked the 9 mm. Duncan had put it on safety before he tossed it to her. She clicked it off and stood ready as she watched the fight. While she was by no means an expert, yes, she knew how to shoot.
“Get behind me,” she told Vetta. The girl obeyed and huddled shivering against her back. All of Seremela’s snakes focused on the danger in front of her. Every muscle in her body was pulled as taut as piano wire, and she felt slightly nauseous as she tried to make sense of the melee.
They were so fast, all four of them, faster than she could track, and t
he Dark Fae were so difficult to tell apart in the silvery shadows. One struck another—oh, it was a bad blow—and that one grunted and went down on both knees, while Duncan engaged the third in a vicious flurry of blows and countermoves, and the fight was horribly, sickeningly unfair because his opponent had a sword while all he had was his knife.
A tic started at her temple, fluttering at a frenetic pace, because it was one thing to know how to shoot but quite another to know who to shoot, and just how was she supposed to tell when the last resort was, anyway? She pushed the heel of one hand against her temple as she tracked Duncan’s opponent with the gun.
Duncan leaped forward, a fast, vicious attack. His opponent fell back and kept falling until he lay prone on the ground. It took a couple of heartbeats for Seremela to comprehend what had happened, because the violence ended as quickly and abruptly as it had started.
Two of the Dark Fae were down. Duncan and the third faced each other but didn’t leap to attack each other. Seremela only recognized Xanthe for certain as the other woman reached over her head to sheathe her sword.
She lowered the gun, slid the safety back on and strode rapidly over to Duncan to fling her arms around him. He clenched her to him, one hand at the back of her neck.
“You’re not hurt?” she whispered.
“No,” he whispered back. “I’m all right.”
Oh gods, thank you. She held onto him with all of her strength.
His lean cheek was cool against hers, the length of his body hard. He said, “Let’s go home now.”
She nodded. She couldn’t trust herself to speak. In that moment, she thought those were the four most wonderful words in the English language.
Let’s go home now.
Chapter Seven
Hearth
After a nerve wracking yet uneventful drive back to the Reno airport, they were airborne a couple of hours later and headed to Chicago where they would stop just long enough to allow Xanthe to disembark before they flew to Miami.
During the car trip Vetta drank three bottles of water, ate a couple of protein bars and had a crying jag against Seremela’s shoulder as relief set in. As soon as they had cell phone reception, they called Seremela’s sister, Camilla, and Vetta cried some more at her mother. Once they boarded the jet and took off, the girl disappeared into the lavatory for a while to emerge some time later, looking pale and exhausted but somewhat cleaner.