“Cain,” the cousins replied as one.
Helena glanced from one of them to the other. Then she looked down at the table top, rested her arms on it, and laced her fingers together. She chewed on her bottom lip for a second, her white teeth teasing it dangerously so that the cousins shifted uncomfortably in their seats. Liam shot Will a quick look and cleared his throat.
She knows how to use those pearly whites, doesn’t she? Cain made a sound of pure longing in Will’s head, and Will’s fist clenched where he hid it in his jacket pocket.
He touched his temple with his other hand and closed his eyes a second. “Helena,” he said, not only to get her attention again but because he loved the way her name sounded on his tongue. It focused him. “We can protect you from him.”
“From Cain,” she said, “as in the First Vampire.”
Damn, my name sounds good coming from that mouth, said Cain.
But Will was struck by the second half of what Helena said, not the first. The First Vampire. He’d said it so many times, heard so many stories, but right now, it sounded like something else to him. It sounded like… the Firstborn.
“The very same,” said Darryl as he approached the table and stood at its end.
Will shook himself out of it and looked up at the warlock, who smiled at him and gestured to the space next to him on the booth bench. “May I?”
Will tried not to roll his eyes. He scooted over, allowing himself to be caged in as Darryl slid in beside him.
“And why the hell would Cain be after me?” Helena asked, hands splayed helplessly. “Same reason as everyone else? He thinks I’m a threat because of my power and wants me dead?”
Every man in the booth straightened and looked at one another. After their exchanged glances, Will cleared his throat. “Not everyone wants you dead, Helena.”
“Yes, some want you very much alive,” added Darryl.
“Why?” she asked pointedly.
Darryl continued, “Well, you see that’s an interesting story – ”
“Darryl,” interrupted Will with a hard look. He could tell Darryl was about to fill her in on the entire shebang, and he wasn’t sure this was the time or place to tell her that she’d been made as nothing more than an objectified gift for the bastard vampire who’d murdered his brother. He wasn’t sure any time or place was right for that.
But Helena wasn’t stupid. What she was was stubborn. “I deserve to know.”
“Of course you do,” said Darryl with a placating smile. “As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted….” He leaned forward, lacing his fingers on the table just as Helena had. “You are in fact not who or even what you believe yourself to be, Helena Dawn. What you are is a prophesied creation with magical powers to spare, otherwise known as the Promised One. And you were specially designed as a gift for Cain, the First Vampire.”
The Firstborn.
Silence fell over the booth. In fact, silence seemed to permeate much of Lucky’s bar just then, and Will glanced up to find a few of the fae employees glancing their way. Lucky himself didn’t look happy. He looked worried. The air in the room was changing.
Charging up.
Helena, on the other hand, simply looked confused and disbelieving. “Say what, now?”
Laughter in Will’s head. She’ll never believe you, Will. Why don’t we just go ahead and show her? Let me talk to her and I’ll prove every word.
Never, Will informed him shortly. He would have thought Cain had learned as much the last time he’d tried. You may as well get the fuck out of my head and brain-jack someone else.
“I realize it’s a lot to take in,” Will said out loud, pointedly ignoring Cain’s mounting anger.
“But it’s the truth,” finished Liam. “You can’t even die. Tall, dead and douchebag here has killed you thirteen times, and you just keep coming right back, appearing as you are now.”
Helena looked at Darryl and her eyes widened. “My God. You really do have an agenda.”
Darryl beamed. “Agenda, yes. God, no… unless you would like me to be yours.” He leaned forward and his voice lowered intimately. “I promise to do a lot better job than the current almighties.”
Helena narrowed her gaze. She almost smiled – almost. “Uh-huh,” she said, nodding the way a teacher would when she knows a student is telling her a story.
“What reason would we have for lying to you?” asked Will.
“Oh, I can think of a few,” she said easily. “For instance, it’s a hell of a lot easier to steal someone’s powers when they trust everything you do to them.” Now she looked at Will pointedly. “Such as drink the beer you’ve put some kind of potion into.”
Will went completely still.
Oh, snap! said Cain.
Liam swore softly under his breath.
“You… noticed that,” said Will.
Helena gave him a fallen expression. “Will, I’m a warden. Of course I noticed it.” Then she paused and added, “Frankly, I’m surprised neither of you boys noticed the iron powder and colloidal silver and gold in your beers.”
Liam’s brows hit his hairline, and Darryl outright laughed. Will was momentarily stunned. And then he was just plain impressed. “Colloidal silver and gold,” he said aloud with a shake of his head. He and his cousin had been using iron powder for a while to flesh out fae when they felt they needed to, but neither of them had thought of gold and silver for other paranormal creatures. “Why didn’t we ever think of that?” he asked his cousin.
“Because we’re not the badasses we thought we were.”
“Maybe not,” said Helena. “But if I’m being completely honest with myself, I have to admit that if you’d wanted to do away with my powers, or with me in general, you’d have done so sooner. Like when you were in my car. Invisible.”
She said it in such a way that made Will feel even lower about himself. Liam did too, obviously, because he squirmed some more and looked around a lot.
“How long were you watching me?” she asked. “Were you in my garage too?”
Neither Liam nor Darryl seemed to want to answer that, so Will finally bit the bullet. “Yes.”
“I see.” She leaned back in the booth and sighed. “Well you could have ended me there too. Or siphoned off my powers while I was using them. Or something.” She shook her head as a sign that she really had no idea, then stared at the table top. “Am I really… just a present for an evil vampire?”
Not just any evil vampire, baby girl, interjected Cain.
Will straightened a little in his booth seat and pinned her with a hard look. “First off, the words evil and vampire are not necessarily mutually exclusive.” Because of Cain, vampires had been behaving badly for millennia. “And secondly, you’re not just anything, Helena. And you know it. Cain is after you, yes. And yes, it’s because he thinks you belong to him. But that’s a tiny piece of what you are, and I’m not going to let it happen.” He glanced over at Liam, and Liam gave him a single nod. “We’re not going to let it happen.”
Helena eyed him for a long, distinctly uncomfortable time. He grew very warm under that searching gaze.
“And how exactly do you plan to stop him?”
“That potion you noticed?” said Darryl, “that was part of it.”
Will asked, “You didn’t actually drink any of it, did you?”
She shook her head.
“Then it’s a bloody good job I made more than one,” said Darryl.
Absolutely none of them were surprised by that.
“What’s in it?” she asked.
Will and Liam exchanged glances. “We don’t know,” said Will. It was partly true. He only knew it had werewolf spit in it.
“Ask rigor mortis over here,” said Liam.
Darryl gave Liam a withering look and sighed. “Honestly sweetheart, you don’t want to know. The usual unpleasant things that go into a potion. But don’t worry. I made it tasteless.”
Tasteless is one way to describe it, said Cai
n.
Will’s fist clenched tighter. He was really getting tired of sharing his brain cells with the son of a bitch. No offense to the Storyteller.
“Helena, you need to trust us. Will you drink the potion?” Liam asked.
Will’s gut clenched. He wasn’t so sure he wanted her to drink it. He wasn’t so sure he wanted to continue with any more of the spell at all – well, except for the kiss, that was.
Helena licked her full, flushed lips. Cain made his lecherous presence known again.
“If I drink the potion, it will protect me from Cain?”
The table went quiet – and once more, the room seemed to follow suit, hushing just enough to be noticeable. Will decided not to look up. He didn’t think he could handle Lucky’s accusing glare just then.
“Sort of,” said Liam.
“And no,” added Darryl. “It’s only part two of a four-part spell.”
Helena’s lips parted. Her brow furrowed, and she sat up straighter. “Part two. You mean you’ve already cast part one on me?”
Will cleared his throat and looked at the table top. It had suddenly become very interesting. No one said anything. Helena made a slightly bewildered sound, and Cain gave a reprimanding tsk-tsk in Will’s head. She’ll never trust you now, Slate.
“Well what the hell are part three and four?” she demanded, her voice a little louder now. She was edging closer to a loss of patience. Will was impressed she hadn’t lost it sooner.
Not that anyone was going to divulge the answer to this last question anyway, but they were saved from having to when a loud knock came at the door to Lucky’s bar.
It was strange – someone knocking on a bar door. And it wasn’t a normal knock, either. It was loud. Like the gavel of a dark robed judge in a hollowed-out courtroom. Three hard raps echoed throughout the space, and every patron in the joint went quiet.
Will’s hand went for the gun at his back. “Darryl, let me out,” he whispered, his eyes zeroing in on the door. Something bad was on the other side of that barrier. Darryl must have agreed because he stood, allowing Will to slide out of the booth and get to his feet. Liam rose at the same time, and Will noticed he too had pulled his weapon.
“What the hell is that?” Liam asked.
“It’s trouble,” said Lucky, who had somehow appeared beside them. Will looked down at the small man, then back up at the door, then around at the other bar inhabitants. He was beginning to realize most of the people in the bar were not patrons, but fae who worked with Lucky – the vast majority of them were scooting toward the back door, or pulling weapons from hidden places in their clothing.
He recognized a few of the weapons, such as a Scottish dirk, a crossbow. No doubt all of the weapons were be-spelled with some kind of magic.
“Yae need tae leave, and leave now, Helena,” said Lucky. He turned and nodded at Helena, who had also exited the booth and drawn her gun, this time the .357 that Liam had taken from the box in her car. She held it down, but ready, in a strong and sure grip.
Helena met the leprechaun’s gaze and must have understood his meaning, because she nodded. “Guys,” she said, looking up at them, “we have to teleport out of here.” Her teeth were clenched in utter frustration and more than an ounce of anger. “Without Angel.”
Clearly she didn’t want to leave her newly refurbished car behind.
Liam took a step back and turned to face her fully. “You serious? Whatever’s out there is that bad?”
“Unfortunately,” said Lucky.
As if to emphasize the mood inside, the ominous knock came again, reverberating through the bar with terrible foreboding. This time, the walls shook with the sound, and the gold horseshoe above the door dropped heavily to the floor, putting a dent in the hardwood.
“Okay that’s it. No more time to lose.” Helena turned to face the others. “It’ll be easier the closer we are. I… haven’t transported a loose group of people before. I usually do an object with everything inside. So… I don’t know. Hold hands or something.”
Will and Liam looked at each other uncomfortably. Then Liam rolled his eyes and grabbed Will’s hand. They were less willing to hold Darryl’s but Darryl smiled and took Helena’s hand, and Will found himself reaching out and taking Darryl’s upper arm. In a tight grip.
His look when he met Darryl’s gaze was one of warning.
And then Helena was casting her spell.
Chapter Twenty-three
Helena glanced down at her hand where Darryl held her so securely, and tried not to pull away. He’d only done what she’d told him to do, after all. Instead, she raised her free hand at her side palm-up, and tried to concentrate. Normally when she wanted to teleport, she simply did so. She would reach out to the place she wanted to be, picturing it in front of her like a dangling carrot. Then there would be a flash, and she’d be there. But right now she was doing something new.
She began to whisper a few words. They were ancient and Latin-based, and the truth was that she had no idea how she knew them in the first place. But she knew they were the right words and they acted like a booster shot to the transportation spell, bolstering its power.
However, she stopped after only a few words and opened her eyes. She turned to face the rest of the room, meeting Lucky’s gaze.
His brow was furrowed with worry and more than a little confusion. “Why’d you stop, lass?” he asked, glancing nervously at the door.
“I can’t leave you,” she told him. “If I can help you, I have to.” She glanced at the cousins. “We’re wardens. This is what we do, right?” Then she looked back at the leprechaun. “What’s on the other side of the door, Lucky?”
No one was supposed to be able to even find Lucky’s bar if he didn’t want them to, much less infiltrate it. But Lucky was barely keeping this new threat on the outside of the tavern, and Helena was pretty sure that small advantage wasn’t going to last him much longer. Already, most of the patrons and employees had filed out through the back door of the establishment. Only a handful remained, those taller or stronger, and they all brandished magical weapons.
“No, Helena, yae need tae leave now!” he told her frankly.
Helena tried to let go of Darryl’s hand to fully face her friend. She was determined in this. But Darryl held fast, and when she whipped back around to face the warlock, his expression was stern. And his eyes had gone red. “He’s right!” the zombie insisted. “You can’t fight this. Not right now. None of us can.”
Helena blinked. Darryl knew what was out there?
Of course he bloody did. He knew everything.
But then she bared her teeth and yanked with all her might, freeing herself from his grip. If it was that bad, then Lucky was sure to die. There was no way in hell she could leave him to that fate.
“Damn it, lass, I said go NOW!”
Helena had barely turned to face Lucky again when his voice echoed powerfully. The true fae power in him showed as a wave of magic washed over her, blasting forth with such strength, she felt it like a punch to the chest. She was knocked backward into one of the boys, who wrapped his arms around her and held tight. She was stunned and actually grateful for the stabilization, because her world suddenly turned on its head.
Leprechaun magic encircled the lot of them, shoving them through the portal that Helena had begun, but that Lucky now finished. There was neither grace nor gentleness in this magic. It was desperate and it was fast, throwing them through a hole in space and time that whisked them away at break-neck pace. When the four of them came hurtling out the other end, not one of them landed on their feet.
Helena hit the floor and rolled, her savior having let her go in order to prevent himself from taking a face full of table. The lot of them knocked into furniture and skidded across polished hardwood, finally coming to rest in four partially immobile piles of shocked soreness.
“Ouch,” murmured Liam from where he slowly pulled himself to his knees a few feet from Helena. He’d been the one to grab hold o
f her before the portal had stolen them away.
Not far from them, on the other side of a long wood table, Will was also getting to his feet. He looked around as he rose to his full impressive height. “So now we know leprechauns can teleport into our safe house,” he muttered off-handedly.
Their safe house? Helena thought. She looked around as she sat up and Liam offered her a hand. She took it, slowly coming to her feet. “This is your place?” she asked, taking everything in. It was some kind of library from the looks of it, and according to the titles she could make out on some of the spines, the books were very old and very well cared for. They were also some of the world’s most treasured and forbidden texts on the supernatural realms and their legends and lore.
“It’s is,” said Liam.
“Welcome to our safe house,” said Will with a sweep of his arm. Helena followed his gaze, absorbing as much of her surroundings as possible. “We’re in an abandoned missile silo in Pennsylvania. Renovated, obviously.”
“Mi casa es su casa,” added Liam as he pulled his gun from its place at his back, set it on the table, and then rubbed his side. “I need a drink. You want one?” Without waiting for an answer, he turned and headed toward the arched exit to the room.
At the exit was a short set of three or four stairs leading to a lower level that sported punching bags and work out equipment. One room exercised the mind, the other the body.
Darryl had apparently been tossed down the stairs as they’d come out of the portal. Liam passed the warlock at the bottom of the steps as Darryl pulled himself up and dusted off his black coat.
“You want a beer?” Liam asked. Darryl seemed very slightly taken aback by the offer, but he recovered in record time and nodded. Helena wasn’t sure whether Liam even noticed the nod; she could only see him from behind and his stride didn’t slow. He rounded a corner and disappeared.