“Paid in full,” he said.
She stretched, giving him one last good look, yawned, and went out the door naked.
The door slid shut.
It hit Hugh like a gut punch – she was gone. For the few blissful hours she was with him, he had forgotten about the death, the blood, and the void. He’d poured his rage and wretched ache into her, and she’d drained him so completely, the only thing that remained was a satiated calm. Happiness, he realized. For the first time in years he felt happy.
She was only a few feet away, walking to her bedroom. The sheets where she’d lain, curled up against him, still held the warmth of her body. He missed her the moment the door closed behind her. His mind conjured up her face, her scent, the way her skin glided against his. The ache rose in him. He wanted her back.
He would get her back. But first, he had to make sure they survived.
Nez was coming. He showed up “in person” to bargain with her, which meant their time was short and when Nez came for them, he would hit them with the full force of the Golden Legion. They weren’t ready. They barely had two weeks.
His mind cycled through everything that still needed to be done to make them ready for the assault. Sleep wasn’t in the cards. He would sleep when he was dead.
Hugh pushed himself off the bed, took a pitcher of cold tea from the refrigerator, and drained half of it. He shook himself, sending the magic through his body, fixing small aches, knitting battle cuts closed, realigning, healing, bringing himself back to fighting shape.
He had to make sure Baile stood firm. He had to make certain that when Nez came, his Golden Legion broke on the old castle like a wave on a pier.
15
Night had fallen, bringing with it an autumn chill. Elara pulled the long blue-and-white shawl around her shoulders and leaned on the wall. Fog had crawled in from the lake, twisting and spilling into the clearing before the castle, thick and milky. The darkness leached the color from the woods and behind the curtain of the fog, the mighty trees looked like a mirage, a careless charcoal sketch on the rough canvas of the night.
Next to her, Rook waited, a silent shadow. He’d come and gotten her a few minutes ago.
In the lower bailey, Hugh and his four centurions pulled the barrels out of storage and loaded them onto a horse-drawn cart.
Elara shifted more of her weight onto the stone. Her feet hurt. It had been a long, long day. First, they’d had to finish evacuating the last of Aberdine’s defenders. She had sent them back to their town fed and clean, with their wounds tended. As much as she wanted to help, Aberdine would have to fend for itself now.
That done, she had inspected their siege fund. The possibility of an attack was always there, and they had stockpiled rations and water since they took over the castle. Grain, dried fruit, dried meat, cheese, canned goods. Their short-term supplies, cheeses, smoked sausages, and so on, everything that wouldn’t keep for too long, looked good. The long-term stockpiles had taken a hit. Several barrels of grain had gotten pantry moths in them somehow, despite being sealed. The entire affected supply went to the livestock. The loss hurt and now they had pantry moths to deal with, which were damn near indestructible. She had to call the witches to fumigate the entire supply house.
At least the water in the cisterns under the castle hadn’t turned foul. They still had the well, but Hugh had been right when he told her on that first day that the well would be a target. Knowing there was an extra supply helped.
Hugh spent most of the day running around the castle like a man possessed, checking the siege engines, healing the last of the wounded, surveying the land around the castle. She saw him only in passing. At some point they’d crossed paths in the kitchen, drawn there by the scent of fresh pirogis. She was on her way in, he was on his way out. They nodded at each other and kept going. Sometime after that, Dugas found her to tell her that Hugh asked for a fog tonight and that he wanted it to look natural. She told the druid to do what he could. And now Hugh was here, doing something with the barrels.
Bale heaved the last barrel in place. Stoyan took the horse by the bridle and walked him forward. The three other centurions followed.
She went down the stairs. Hugh was waiting for her in the lower bailey.
“You promised me you would tell me what was in the barrels, Preceptor. Now you’re sneaking off with them.”
“I told you I’d show you if you played your cards right. You should’ve tried harder last night, sweetheart. With more enthusiasm.”
Oh you jackass. “If you’d impressed me with what you offered, I would’ve tried harder. But a woman can only do so much with mediocre equipment.”
He grinned at her. They strolled through the gates, following the cart.
Stoyan turned the horse left and stopped. Bale and Lamar took the first barrel off and set it on the ground. Bale raised his hands, index and middle fingers crossed. Stoyan knocked on the cart three times, then spat over his left shoulder.
“What the hell are you two doing?” Lamar asked in a low voice.
“For good luck,” Bale told him.
Lamar shook his head. Together they tipped the barrel over the water. Lamar broke the seal, unscrewed the lid, and lowered it into the water. The two men gingerly slid the barrel into the moat and let it sink. Nobody moved.
“Now what?” Elara asked.
“Now we find out if we’re fucked.” Hugh pulled a small metal flask from his pocket, stepped to the edge of the moat over where the barrel had sunk, unscrewed the lid, and poured the dark contents into the water. The dark liquid spread over the surface. Magic slid over Elara like a tepid rotten smear. Vampire blood.
The water lay placid.
Bale waved his crossed fingers around.
The water boiled, as if something large slid underneath it. The red stain vanished.
“Ha!” Bale barked.
“Shhh,” the three other centurions hissed at him.
Stoyan pulled on the horse, leading it around the moat.
“What is it?” she asked.
“What will you give me if I tell you?”
“Hugh,” she ground out.
“Fine. Some years ago, Roland sent me up to Alaska to talk to Ice Fury. It’s the biggest shapeshifter pack in the US. The talks got us nowhere. The Ice Fury shifters are separatists. All they want to do is to run around their woods and be left alone. They spend most of their time in animal form. The way they’re going, in a couple of generations they’ll forget how to be human. So the talks didn’t go as planned, but since I was already in Alaska, I figured why not make a trip of it. We went up North and ended up in Mekoryuk. It’s a city on Nunivak island. Nuniwarmiut people have lived there for two thousand years. While I was there, I met an old woman who told me they weren’t worried about Roland or his vampires, because they had dirty ice and it would protect them. Long story short, I went and got some of that dirty ice. Cutting it out and dragging it back home was a pain in the ass, but I knew Nez or whoever came after him would be gunning for me sooner or later. Here we are.”
The cart stopped, and Felix and Bale took another barrel off. Elara watched as they took off the lid and sank it.
“Yes, but what’s in the ice?”
“A bacterial strain,” Hugh said. “Nasty bugger, highly aggressive. We had to cut down to permafrost to get it. Harmless to humans as far as I can tell. Loves water. Guess what it likes for dinner?”
“Vampires?”
He nodded. “Any undead is fair game.”
“Have you used it before?” she asked.
“We tested it.”
“But not in actual battle?”
“No.”
“So you don’t know if it will work.”
“There are no guarantees in life,” he said.
“Now isn’t the best time to get philosophical, Preceptor.”
“Would you rather have an empty reassurance?”
Yes, she thought. She would. It wouldn’t do her any good, but right n
ow reassurance would be nice. Sadly, nice wasn’t something she could afford at the moment.
“Vampires don’t swim,” he said. “No air in the lungs. They sink to the bottom, so they will have to wade through. Considering the distance and typical vampire speed under water, they are likely to be under between ten and twenty seconds. In lab trials, that was enough to cause critical damage. The trick is raising the concentration high enough. The higher the concentration, the more effective the bacteria will be. The bacteria will need food to multiply. Our supplies of undead blood are limited.”
“We have some blood and bones in storage. We’ll add what we can.”
“Thank you.”
“Do you think it will be long enough?” she asked.
“We will find out,” he said.
They followed the cart again. Dread settled on Elara and weighed her down. Two more weeks. Less now, one week and six days. There were other preparations to be made. The preparation for when everything went wrong. The memory of the ice flickered over her mind. She didn’t want to do it again. She didn’t want to remember what it was like but knowing she might have to gnawed at her.
“What if we sank some concertina wire?” she asked. “It’s a long flexible razor wire that comes in coils. Military grade.”
“I know what concertina wire is. How much do you have?”
“I don’t know. It comes in 50-foot bails,” she said. “We have a warehouse of it.”
He stared at her.
“We bought it off a derelict prison,” she said. “We meant to use it as a wolf deterrent, but wildlife and livestock kept getting caught in it and it was cruel, so we didn’t.”
He looked to the sky and laughed.
“I don’t see what’s so funny.”
He turned to her. “I’m trying to save us. Had I known we had concertina wire, I would’ve planned our defenses differently.”
She shrugged.
“I can’t effectively protect us if you keep relevant information from me,” he said.
“You seem to be doing fine,” she told him.
“You really are a harpy, you know that?”
“If you want to know if we have something, Preceptor, I suggest you use your words and ask. We do not volunteer information, because we don’t trust you. The only way to change that is by demonstrating your intentions and following through.”
Hugh shook his head. “I had a crazy thought.”
“By all means, do share it.”
“What if I’m dead and this is purgatory, and you’re my punishment?”
“I doubt it,” she told him.
“Why?”
“Because if I’m your punishment, you’re mine. The Christian god is the god of forgiveness. He is too kind to do this, even to us.”
He laughed again.
The fog parted, and a creature landed next to them, a shaggy, dark meld of human and wolf. The shapeshifter contorted, collapsing into a human shape. A nude woman shook herself, as if trying to fling the last of the fur from her skin. Karen, Elara remembered. One of Hugh’s scouts.
“Found them,” she said. “Fifteen clicks north at the Rooster ley line point.”
High turned to her. “Call your people. We have a strategy to plan.”
Elara slumped in the chair. Her feet still hurt. She nudged her sandals off, let them drop, and curled her toes.
The study was full. Savannah sat in an overstuffed chair to Elara’s right, perfectly dressed, her make up unsmudged. The only indication of the late hour was her loose hair that framed her face like a halo. Johanna perched on the table to Elara’s left, in her usual spot. Stoyan sat next to Savannah. He’d glanced in Johanna’s direction once when he came in and then proceeded to look everywhere else. Not fooling anyone. Across from Stoyan, Bale, who had come in a few minutes ago looking hung over, slumped forward in his chair, his head on the table, resting on his crossed arms. Felix, a quiet shadow, leaned against the wall behind Bale. Karen, the female werewolf scout, paced the length of the study, newly dressed.
Across from Elara, at the other end of the table, Hugh studied Baile’s map. He looked thoughtful. Hugh could twist his face into any expression he wanted. The man was a chameleon. She had seen him go from terrifying to aw shucks, I’m just a dumb oaf in a blink, but the unguarded moments like this, when he forgot to put on a show, and his intelligence shone through, were her favorite.
Favorite. Ugh. She snapped herself back to reality. It was the fatigue. She was so tired, she could barely see straight.
Lamar hurried into the room, Dugas following him. She had a feeling those two plotted together a lot more than anyone realized.
“Bale?” Stoyan asked.
The berserker snored.
“Is he hung over?” Elara asked quietly.
“No. It’s the battle warp,” Hugh said. “Wears him out.”
Johanna leaned forward, trying to read their lips. Elara signed to her, recounting the conversation.
“He’s good for a bit, but then he crashes,” Lamar added.
Hugh took a carafe from the table, poured a cup of black coffee, walked over to Bale, and put his hand on Bale’s shoulder.
The berserker raised his head, blinking his eyes.
Hugh put the coffee in front of him.
Bale nodded, sniffled, and gulped the coffee.
“You all know why you’re here,” Hugh said. “We have a date with Landon Nez in two weeks. Karen?”
“He is camped at the Rooster ley point,” the werewolf said. “There isn’t much there except a small village, a couple dozen buildings at most and a supply station.”
“Slow down,” Elara told her. She had gotten adept at signing over the years, but she was tired and thinking and signing at the same time took all of her concentration.
“Sorry.” The werewolf continued slower. “The security is tight, so I couldn’t get close. He’s shipping vampires in twenty-foot metal freight containers, five per container. I counted twenty-four containers, and more were coming in.”
A hundred and twenty vampires. A single vampire was not an issue. Ten vampires would be too much even for her. Ripping their magic out took an effort, and while she was busy with the first five, the rest of them would get by her, scale the walls, get into the castle… If Hugh’s water trap didn’t work, and even fifty vampires made it over the wall, Baile would become a killing box, even with all of the Iron Dogs in it.
She checked Hugh’s face. He didn’t seem worried.
“How many people?” Lamar asked.
“Too many,” Karen said. “I’d estimate at least three hundred if not more. The place was dead last time we surveilled it and now it’s Saturday morning market.”
“He is bringing the entire Legion?” Stoyan asked.
“Probably,” Hugh said.
“Lots of black and purple,” Karen said. “He definitely brought the Cleaning Crew.”
“The Cleaning Crew?” Savannah asked.
“The Legion has three components,” Lamar explained. “The navigators, which are Masters of the Dead and the journeymen; the undead; and the Cleaning Crew, human shock troops that follow the vampires and kill anything they leave behind.”
“How good are they?” Dugas asked.
“Decent,” Stoyan said. “Not a problem for us one-on-one.”
“It’s never one-on-one,” Bale said. “It’s always one of us and four of them.”
“The Cleaning Crew is expendable,” Hugh said. “Nez is pragmatic. Undead are expensive, humans are cheap.”
“Also,” Karen said, “I saw Halliday.”
Bale cursed.
“Are you sure?” Lamar asked.
“I’m sure,” Karen said. “It was her. Unless you know some other middle-aged dark-haired bitch, who travels with Nez and carries around a pair of Chinese crested dogs.”
“You saw the dogs?” Felix asked.
“Saw, smelled, heard. It’s Halliday.”
Elara looked at Hugh.
 
; “Beastmaster,” he said. “Roland likes to use magical animals in his wars. She is his wrangler.”
“What kind of magical beasts?” Dugas asked.
“An elephant the size of a cruise ship with three heads and tusks that shoot lightning,” Bale volunteered.
“There is no such thing,” Savannah told him.
“There is,” Stoyan told her. “It’s called Erawan. We’ve seen it.”
Johanna knocked on the table.
They looked at her.
“Seriously?”
Stoyan held up his fist, and made a downward motion, imitating a nodding head. He was signing, “Yes.” He did it in a hesitant fashion, the way those who have just started learning ASL sometimes second-guessed themselves.
Johanna grinned at him.
“You should see the size of its shit,” Bale said. “It’s a truckload.”
“This tells us two things,” Hugh said. “One, Nez will come at us during magic. Two, Roland let him pull on his other resources, which means Nez took this to Roland and Roland approved this fight.”
“This changes things,” Lamar said.
“How so?” Savannah asked.
“Nez was content to ignore us,” Hugh said. “Something happened to bump us up to the head of his queue.”
She knew exactly what it was. “Aberdine.”
Everyone looked at her. Savannah raised her hands and took over the signing.
“You protected Aberdine against a significant magic force,” Elara said. “You’re a fighting unit again. An army and a threat. He thought he could come and kill all of you at will, but now he can’t.”
She saw the calculation in Hugh’s eyes. He shook his head. “I doubt it. Did Nez ever explain why he wanted the castle?”
“No,” Savannah said. “He just offered to buy it again and again.”
“Maybe there is something here that he needs?” Stoyan wondered.
“I can’t imagine what it would be,” Elara said honestly.
“Let’s table that for now,” Hugh said. “Before we start planning, are there any ways into the castle that I’m not aware off? Hidden passages, secret tunnels?”