Pride and Poltergeists

  “Dulcie is tending to her other duties,” Meg said, pushing her hair back over her shoulders. There were strands of silver in it, practically glowing, braided thinly beneath the black so she virtually glittered whenever she moved. I wondered if the discoloration came from the near-death experience she suffered at Bram’s hands. If only he’d double-checked his handiwork.

  “What the fuck does that mean?” I demanded.

  “It means, she is taking care of the business in which I have instructed her. She has a purpose to fulfill, and she is seeing to it.”

  “Her duty,” I repeated blandly. That doesn’t sound good. “What did you do to her?”

  “I reminded her of who she is. And what she is.” Her lips puckered, full and red. I blinked at them, and for a second, I couldn’t look away. “I simply allowed her to become everything that she was meant to be.”

  I swallowed. The blood wasn’t sitting well. “And what is she meant to be, exactly?”

  Meg giggled. The sound struck the walls and fell flat, like a broken bell—but when it stopped, there was one terrifying second where I wanted nothing more than to hear it again. I didn’t understand why. Maybe she was glamouring me. As a Loki, I shouldn’t have been susceptible to being glamoured, but stranger things had happened, I supposed. Now it would be in my best interest to try to fight whatever power she was raining down on me.

  “More,” said Meg. Her tongue snaked across her frightening teeth.

  “More than what?” I said. My words came slowly.

  Meg made a show of considering it. “More than she was,” she said at last. “More than anyone has ever been before.”

  Power, I thought. Power and a glamour strong enough to force Dulcie completely out of her own mind. Doing her duty … I didn’t want to think what that might mean, but I suspected it involved violence.

  “More than you?” I asked.

  Meg snorted. “Yes. More than me … and more than her father.” She looked at her hand, turning it over as though she could see Melchior in the fine, white shadows of her knuckles. She offered her hand a disdainful smile and shook her head almost sadly.

  Turning away then, she walked to the window to peer out into the colorless slab of night. She looked back to face me and smiled, and for half a second, she almost seemed happy.

  It was gone an instant later, if it were there at all. “Dulcie has …” Meg drew her hand across the windowsill, letting her nails drag over the glass, “acquired her destiny.”

  “Acquired?” I repeated. I couldn’t take my eyes off her hand. Long, slender white fingers, nails just long enough to break skin. They moved like a spider, swift and agile, strangely enthralling.

  I swallowed and realized I was gaping. “Acquired her destiny?” I sounded hoarse so I cleared my throat. “What the hell does that mean?”

  Meg stopped and shrugged. “Perhaps one day I’ll tell you.”

  “One day?” I said. So she intended to keep me alive. But what the hell for? “And you’re not killing me now because …?”

  Meg turned to me and walked across the room slowly, leaning in close enough that I could feel the chill of her breath on my throat. She drew her nail down the side of my face, leaving a warm, red line in its wake. The blood raced down my cheek. I refused to move, balling up my fists at my sides, staring her in the face. I wouldn’t blink; I refused to let her cow me.

  I know, I know. Stupid Knight, looking the vampire in the eyes. I never said I was a smart man. Defiant, yes. Stubborn, yes. Angry, yes. Smart? Well, not at that moment.

  But her eyes didn’t change. They stayed the same burnished orange they’d been since she walked in. They didn’t shrink or grow either, or pulse with the unwashed magic of the places where dead things walked. She just looked at me. Not with tenderness, but something very close to it. Something almost like pride. It was weird, and I began to wonder if maybe I was hallucinating again—imagining this whole exchange.

  “I’ll leave you to recuperate,” Meg said softly, and she stepped back. As she pulled away, I became aware of her smell, rotting roses and wet dirt, a cloying sweetness strong enough to choke me. She bit her lip with her fangs, drawing blood. It dripped down her chin, the brightest red I have ever seen. I followed it down her face, her throat, into the dip of her collar, over her breasts.

  I pried my eyes away, head pounding, and by the time I managed it, she was already at the door. She waved her hand, pulling back the magic strings before opening it wide. The wards around the frame twitched and sizzled as she held them back by sheer force of will.

  “Oh,” she said, halting, “I almost forgot. Antoine?”

  Her servant didn’t enter the room, but I heard a scraping noise in the hallway. Shoes scuffing against the polished floors, the muted thumping of a lost fight, the distant whimpering of someone begging for his life.

  For a second, I thought it was Bram. But Bram didn’t beg; he insulted or threatened. And I seriously doubted she would want us in the same room, braiding each other’s hair and plotting our escape.

  Meg stepped aside, and a man was rudely thrust into the room.

  I blinked at him, stunned. His hair, long and brownish gold, was slick with sweat. Scratches and punctures from, I assumed, his encounter with Antoine. A wild panic shone in his eyes. He looked at me and paled.

  “You,” I said, suddenly feeling a rush of health warming me. My strength seemed as if it doubled as I slowly got to my feet, my hands curling into fists. Renewed rage was brewing inside me, rage that was fueling my strength.

  “Him,” Meg agreed.

  Jax.

  My humanity instantly shattered. Hades’s fire came flaring to life inside me, the ancient power that gave me sway over everything corporeal. It reached across the room, silent, invisible, searing the air as it went—probing him, examining his mortality, looking for the edge of his soul, or whatever remained of it. I was searching for some leverage I could use to drag it off his bones.

  Jax was a Loki, too, and he could feel the fire when it invaded him, recoiling from it. The authority that once comprised his life’s blood was now toxic to him. He strayed from his purpose. He pissed on his divine ordinance, and I could taste it in his soul—Hades’s derision, his anguish, his wrath.

  Meanwhile, in my own blood, I felt his blessing. His sanction. The green light to destroy the man who violated Dulcie—and to do it however I damn well pleased. Jax didn’t belong to the old fires anymore. He was no longer a Loki in my mind. Much less anything to care about.

  “Vander,” he squeaked, casting a desperate look back at Meg, while realizing this was a death sentence. Hades had abandoned him long ago, but even now, with his magic decades cold, he could sense the blaze inside me. The divine furnace, hungry and betrayed. Eager, almost desperate, to unmake him. It scalded his essence, and he nearly screamed.

  Meg graced us with her smile, an impossibly white line of perfect, yet ominous, teeth. She could feel it too, she must have. She lifted her hand and her fingers curled in the air, wrapping around the invisible, orange ribbons stretching between us.

  “All yours,” she said to me. “Consider it a gift.”

  She left and closed the door. The wards clicked back into place.

  And then it was just Jax and me.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Sam

  I woke up. Eventually.

  Hades only knew how much time had passed. It was dark and I felt groggy, heavy, like I’d been out for more than the three hours we had to wait until sunrise. The sky was starless and the room was black, suffocatingly dark—

  Wait, hang on … my eyes were still closed.

  I opened them. Slowly, agonizingly, wrenching myself from sleep. The sky was cobalt-grey above me, clouds and smoke and straggling stars. The sun was poking up from behind the horizon somewhere to my left. The wind was cold, but after the blazing fire, I welcomed it.

  I could still smell smoke and hear sirens, so we couldn’t have gone too far. Not that I’d intended to. De
materializing yourself any distance is a taxing exercise, let alone moving two people and a dog, and trying to accomplish all of it with a punctured lung.

  The muted sirens were distant, and the burning smells grew fainter. I felt grass underneath my back. My guess was that I’d gotten us as far as the park on Seventh Street. We were several blocks away, and probably a good twenty stone buildings lay between us and them, and by now, I hoped, the National Guard too. Groaning inwardly, I knew this would bring the human government oversight down on us fast. Once they learned Caressa had deliberately kept the extent of the insurgency from them …

  Suffice to say, it wouldn’t be pleasant.

  A man loomed over me, derailing my train of thought. I squinted up at him. The light was dim, but I could make out most of his features. Sharply focused eyes, dark hair, square glasses, and a rather disarming grimace. He wore suit pants and an ash-coated, blue dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. He was a little ruffled, a little lanky, and not much taller than me … Frankly, he seemed a little nerdy, but in a sexy way. He had the kind of face that could look in or out of place at the back of a library. Pretty ripped, too, from what I could see. His shirt was slick with sweat, plastered against a well-toned body.

  But that observation wasn’t important at the moment.

  “You’re awake,” he said, sounding surprised.

  “Yeah,” I answered as I started to sit up.

  He put his hand on my chest and gently pushed me back down, cradling my head as he did so. “Don’t even think about it,” he said, gesturing to my side. I looked down and saw a swathe of white bandages wrapped around my exposed midsection, which was stained cranberry red around my ribs. I moved myself left and right experimentally and didn’t feel anything poking at my lungs anymore. Things were looking up.

  “Oh,” I said, unable to think of anything else appropriate.

  “Oh,” the man echoed, sitting back in the grass as he smiled at me. We were behind a cluster of dwarf holly bushes, in the shade of several sparsely leaved trees. He leaned against the trunk of one of the closest trees, looking like he’d been kicked by a manticore. Cuts and bruises covered his face, black soot stains on his shirt … and what appeared to be gloves of liquid red were crusted into the skin of his hands …

  And yet, yeah, this guy was still pretty cute. Even with the nerdy glasses and all the dirt. Then I remembered my bandaged body. “How’d you know how to do that?” I asked as I indicated my ribs.

  He shrugged like it was no big deal. “I’m a field surgeon.” Then he glanced at my bandages. “That’s an extremely temporary fix, so try not to move too much.”

  Even as he said it, I could feel the broken bone grinding against its sisters, held together by paper-thin strands of desperation—mortal magic, or what little they could muster as a race. I felt my eyes narrowing in confusion, but failed to find the wherewithal to ask about it. Besides, I lacked the strength—the blood supply, specifically—to examine the strands more thoroughly and get the answer on my own. Either he was the lamest warlock in the history of magic, or a human with far more power than he should have possessed—which, granted, wasn’t much, but it still gave me cause for pause.

  “Um … thanks,” I said. “Thank you.” Shoddy work, but whatever he’d done would have to hold until I could get home and fix myself properly. That is, assuming I could go home. I feared my neighborhood was swarming with Darkness employees.

  “What the hell happened back there?” the good doctor asked, snapping me out of my daze.

  “I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “The power went out right before an explosion …” It all came swimming back, the fire, the screaming, and Dulcie … Then, a small, rational part of my brain kicked back on, and I added, “I have to call Caressa.”

  The man pressed his lips together, and I could tell he was fighting the urge to look away. He fastened his eyes on mine and said, “I already tried to contact Splendor ANC in the Netherworld.”

  I swallowed. “Tried?” That sounded more than just bad.

  The man nodded. “I called Brandenburg’s direct line, and Caressa wasn’t the one who answered. I was told she had taken administrative leave …” He frowned at me. “I’m guessing that isn’t true.”

  I shook my head, feeling like I’d been sucker-punched. All the breath went out of me and I squeezed my eyes shut, struggling to resist the rising urge to hyperventilate. The world swam in a circle around me and I closed my eyes. Blood leached out of me into the bandages, and the accompanying dizziness sent me spinning.

  “What?” I could barely get my voice to work. I swallowed, cleared my throat, and forced the vocal cords to vibrate. “What about?” Hell, every word I said trailed away into gasp. “Dia?” I was way too weak to try to heal myself, another bitch of a realization. What I wouldn’t have done for a proper witch and a few shots of vodka right then …

  “The Moon ANC experienced a breach much like this one,” he replied, “although they did not include your flaming friend.”

  My flaming friend, my numb mind parroted. I sat up, despite his protests, and backed myself into another tree. By the time I was still again, my vision had gone all fuzzy and I was panting.

  “Be careful,” he said with a note of concern in his voice.

  I grimaced, but not at him. I was suddenly extremely aware of the soreness in my side; the muscles were protesting their stitches and whatever he’d used to support the displaced rib. The bone itself felt sore, throbbing all the way down to the marrow. I squeezed my eyes shut and took a deep, long breath until the pain finally subsided.

  All at once, my eyes shot open. “Blue,” I said, panicked, “where … where’s Blue?”

  “Blue?” he asked before his confusion cleared. “Oh, the dog’s keeping watch.” He jerked his thumb to the left, and I saw a fluffy golden tail poking out from behind a nearby tree, thumping languidly. I breathed a sigh of relief and almost started crying.

  “Blue, come here,” I said, my voice small and tight. My eyes watered as Blue stood up and came padding over to me, licking my face and nuzzling my shoulder. I winced, but didn’t even try to stop him, wrapping my arms around him and burying my face in his soft fur. For a second, I was back inside my office, worrying about Dulcie, and the ANC wasn’t in shambles.

  My shoulders started shaking, and I let the tears fall. Too much, this was all just way too much. I couldn’t do it anymore; this was never supposed to be my job. I was never supposed to be the one to save the world! What the hell was Knight thinking by leaving me in charge? And now everyone else was gone, everyone was gone, and I was it. Just me and Blue and this guy with the glasses and dirty smudges all over his face. That was all that remained of the ANC.

  Panic sank its teeth into my shivering skin, and for a solid minute, I forgot to breathe.

  Dulcie … I couldn’t even form a question to go with my thought. I was just confused and angry but, more than anything else, scared. My eyes stung with tears, streaming soundlessly down my cheeks.

  I should have known, I thought. I should have known the power outage wasn’t any accident, and I should have been worried when Caressa’s call dropped, but I was so tired and … And none of this is my job! Still, I should have known, I should have sensed something before it happened, a surge when they used a portal, a disturbance when full-metal Dulcie arrived, I should have known, I should have known …

  I felt a hand on my shoulder and looked up to see a pair of warm, brown eyes very close to mine. I didn’t realize I’d been saying all of that out loud until I stopped talking.

  “My name is Special Agent Casey James,” said a soft man’s voice, reaching down and squeezing my hand. “I’m with the FBI, Preternatural Division. I’m here to help.”

  Special Agent. Human Special Agent. Government agent, government help. Government reprimand, too, but there’d be plenty of time for that later. I nodded slowly. Something in his eyes drove the panic out of me. Damn, this man was pretty even if he w
ere human. Then I remembered that whole shoddy magic bit. “Are you …” I whispered.

  “Human?” he finished. “Yes, I am.”

  I nodded. I didn’t want him to look away, although he didn’t seem like he wanted to either. Or maybe that was just my imagination.

  “What are you?” He sounded so calm, like we were just having a normal conversation at a coffee shop.

  “Wiccan,” I answered. He nodded as if he weren’t the least bit surprised.

  “A witch,” he said. “A spellcaster?”

  “Sometimes.” Potions were easier than spells, but occasionally you did whatever you had to do. Like the dematerialization thing. Probably why I was unconscious for so long, I thought, and didn’t wake up when he was performing impromptu surgery. I was suddenly very grateful for that.

  “What’s your name?” he asked.

  I reached up to dry my eyes on my sleeve, only to find that the bottom part of my sleeve was burned away. “Sam,” I replied, wiping my tears with the heel of my hand instead. “Sam White.”

  “Short for Samantha?”

  I nodded.

  “All right, Sam. We’re going to figure this out, okay?” He gave my shoulder a light squeeze.

  “Okay,” I said. My breathing slowed and my voice returned.

  “I’m looking for a fairy named Dulcie O’Neil,” he continued. “Do you know where she is?”

  The tears threatened to spurt again, and I had to look away to catch my breath. “She was …” I sniffed. “She was the one throwing around all the hellfire.” The one way more powerful than she should have been, even on her best day. Dulcie was many things, but a Netherworldian war machine was never one of them. Casting that much hellfire, and that kind of hellfire, should have knocked her out cold, but seeing how strong it was … Normally, hellfire was little more than a fancy flamethrower, blue in passing, green when the caster knew what she was doing. I’d never known anyone to cast white fire or use it like a fucking grenade.