Chapter 25

W e march through the darkness, illuminated by blue-white tongues of flame held above the open palms of my fae—a glamour I watch them all cast with practiced ease as if it is one used so often it is second nature. Once I've parsed the process, I duplicate it on my hand; I instruct the fae to spread themselves out along the line so as to provide light for the others.

We step over charred, smoldering bodies—at least twenty.

We reach another doorway, this one much smaller, with a ward of commensurate power. Again, the ward faces us, so we cannot merely unlock it. Fucking devious bastard.

Pure irritation has me locking onto the hinge and pouring prana into it. I feel Belliah take my hand, and Lissaea the other—Lissaea surprises me. Her prana is a thin needle, but it is sharp and dense and vicious. This time, instead of sending their power through me, Belliah and Lissaea link with me and send their power into the hinge, and it is quickly overloaded, exploding with a sharp bang.

Immediately, a vampire rushes through the opening, unblooded and wild with bloodlust. He is thin and sallow, howling with rage. Before anyone can so much as blink, he's on Lissaea, legs wrapped around her waist, pinning her arms to her sides, his hands clutching her skull and tilting it backward, teeth gnashing into her throat. There is no seduction, no licking, no pheromones, just pure vengeful hunger. Lissaea screams, toppling backward to the ground with a bone-crunching thump. Her scream gurgles, and I fly into motion, summoning a knife. I jab the blade into the side of the vampire's neck, twisting to open its throat so the blood spills out. The mindless creature thinks of nothing but hunger, continuing to try to feed from Lissaea, who reaches with weak, searching hands for the vampire's face, palms clapping against his cheeks like a clumsy lover. But then…there's a flash of blue-white light, sudden and sharp and piercing, and the vampire flies backward to splat against the far wall, its head a smoldering red ruin.

Lissaea's hands fall to the floor, and she tries to lever herself into a sitting position, only to sag back down, her gasps wet and gurgling.

Her throat pumps blood, soaking her scarlet. "Qu-queen." She hisses. "S-save…me?"

The last time I tried to heal someone, it went awry. But I have no choice, do I? She took my mark.

Chaos swirls around me as more vampires surge through the opening, met with a crunch of bodies against bodies as my forces clash with them. Blood flies, and limbs scatter.

A vampire battle is a messy thing, indeed.

But Lissaea. I go to my knees and pull her onto my lap, and her blood pumps onto my thighs and my armor soaks it up, swirling and rushing and twisting around my legs and torso and arms. I press my mouth to her wound and taste her blood, and I lick the wound, feeling it try to close—too slowly. She's fading.

Instinct snaps through my body—I clap my hand over the seeping wound and push prana into her body, visualizing the wound closing. Her gurgling breaths come more evenly and lose the gurgle.

Alistair takes her from me. "She will be weak for some time, Maeve. I'll bring her to the rear. I fear she will not be the only casualty."

No, she will not be.

Two of my vampires lay in pieces, eyes blinking in their decapitated heads, but the enemy vampires are gone.

A trio of fae appear in the shadows, chanting in unison, eyes glowing white as they channel power, hands flexing in synch, twisting in weird, unnatural ways.

"Summoners!" Someone shouts. "KILL THEM! KILL THEM NOW!"

A flurry of fireballs screech past my face and burst onto the three figures, and their robes catch fire, their hair, their skin, but their chanting does not slow, and their hands blur and distort, fingers twitching in and out of reality, multiplying and dividing, flashing with white light.

A sharp crack splits the air. A black line carves down from the ceiling to the floor behind the trio of fae summoners, and icy shadows spill out, creeping with nightmarish speed across the floor to curl around the fae's ankles, up their legs, around their torsos. Their flesh is consumed and their chanting becomes louder, and then the writhing serpentine shadows dive into the open, chanting mouths of the fae. The flames flicker, stutter, and then become darkness, living, hungry shades that envelop the now-skeletal, charred bodies.

The black line twists in on itself and vanishes. For a moment, the three fae summoners stand still, wreathed in writhing shadows like some black tarry liquid. It seeps into their skin and coats their bones and becomes their flesh, and then their forms distort, lengthening like shadows cast by a moving source, becoming monstrous and inhuman.

Legs multiply, hands become claws, jaws drop and teeth become spikes, and eyes burn hellish red.

I stagger backward away from the nightmare creatures, which now stand eight feet tall at the shoulder, with rear legs bent like a dog's, jaws snapping and slavering, dripping shadowy saliva that burns smoldering holes in the stone floor.

"What—the FUCK —are those ?" I screech, pressing myself backward farther yet, drawing prana into my hands, as yet formless.

"Wraiths," a voice grates from behind me. "Summoned from The Dreaming. Nightmares made flesh."

I glance at the speaker: a middle-aged fae male wearing the black, belted jumpsuit of Tribunal security. His head is shaved and marked with the black ink of tribal tattoos, his brown skin inked all over, from fingers to toes.

"How do we kill them?" I ask.

"With great difficulty," he says. His eyes flick to the waiting form of Caleb. "Difficult for fae. Impossible for vampires. For shifters? A tasty snack. Wraiths are pure mana."

"How can fae manipulate mana?"

He shrugs. "It's old magic, black and long-forbidden. Zirae forgets nothing."

Caleb howls, and a sequence of amber flashes blink behind me, and then seven wolves prowl forward. Another amber flash, moments belated, and then a serpent slithers past, its body thicker than my torso, the rest of it coiled behind me. A cobra's hood swells from his head, and Sorren wraps his coils around the pack, once, twice, protectively, his hissing head brushing the ceiling some twenty above, rearing back, poised to strike.

The wraiths dart forward in unison, and Sorren strikes, faster than the eye can follow, fangs lancing into shadow-garbed flesh. Caleb snarls, leaping over Sorren's coils, which slither and twist and wriggle and reposition, and then wolves are snapping and snarling, teeth and claws flashing and the wraiths scream, shuddering weirding screeches that echo in the brain, shivering the blood.

A wolf yelps and shadows twist, and Sorren strikes and strikes, bones crunching and wet things splatting.

And then Caleb trots to me, jaws red and dripping liquid shadows—he licks his chops and his eyes flare. Behind him, his wolves rip and tear at flesh, thrashing and jerking, devouring. Sorren's mighty length ripples as he swallows a wraith whole.

"You're… eating them?" I ask.

Caleb yips, and licks the back of my hand, turning to watch his wolves as they devour every last scrap of shadow and droplet of black-stained blood.

"Once a wraith is summoned, the host-being is no more. They become the wraith, a creature of pure mana." This is the fae male again. "That we had an Alpha Prime is a boon—without him, we would all be dead." He watches Sorren's head, a diamond-shape with yellow eyes lit from within and larger than my whole body, surging and slithering past us to rejoin the rest of his coils. How long is he? Fifty feet? A hundred? It's hard to tell.

"That, and him," I say, watching Sorren settle his head in his coils.

The male shudders. "Yes—and him. I 'ent ever seen anything like him. Serpent shifters are so rare as to be thought myth, or legend. An' I believe he is a prime himself."

"Lucky us," I say, and turn to the male. "What is your name?"

"Hesperion. I was head of security for this level."

"Hesperion. Is there a way around the traps he's set for us? A back way to the council chamber?"

He shakes his head. "No. Only way is through."

"I was afraid of that."

Colin is limping, favoring his left rear leg. I rest my hand on Hesperion's shoulder and then go to Colin. Crouch beside him.

"May I help you?" I ask, reaching slowly for his hurt leg.

He whines and licks my hand.

"I'll take that as a yes," I say.

His leg is a mangled ruin, seeping blood, the fur shredded, muscle showing, and bone. More worrisome yet are the black threads wriggling in the open wound—bits of shadow.

"Best attend that quick, mistress," Hesperion says in his deep, rattling, heavily accented voice. "Wraith wounds infect quick. He'll turn in a matter of hours, and his pack'll have to eat him, too."

Colin whines again, turning scared lupine eyes on me.

I pet his muzzle. "It'll be okay, Colin. Let's see what I can do."

I look at Hesperion. "Any guidance on healing him?"

"Shadow-taint first, wound second."

I nod. Come on, Mom, I whisper in my head, help me. Help me help him.

Whether it's her or myself, I don't know—and I don't really know the difference anyway—but I cup my hands over the wound and cast my attention inward. I feel him. I feel his duality—his masculine humanity and his wild wolf, inseparable, twin spirits in a single soul. I feel his wound, a gaping hole in the fabric of his selves—the shadow-taint is an insidious stain, hungry and poisonous.

"Use light," Hesperion says. "Wrap the taint in light."

I summon my prana and focus on the ink-black strands of nightmare shadow digging into Colin's flesh. I picture the prana as light, beacon-bright and white-hot. The shadow-taint reacts instantly, wriggling frantically, digging into his flesh. Colin screams, a human sound from a wolf's throat, or perhaps I only hear his human scream in my head—I don't know. I pour magic into the light until it flares so brightly my eyes throb and blur, even closed.

I push the light into his flesh, and he screams again, a wolf's heart-rending yelp of agony echoing in my ear and a man's bellow of pain in my skull.

A hissing sound rattles beneath the screams, and I see thin tendrils of smoke seeping out from between my fingers. I move my hands to see Colin's flesh, raw and ragged, charred like over-roasted meat.

Hesperion pats my shoulder with a heavy hand. "Good, mistress. Now the wound."

Caleb growls, and Hesperion's hand hastily vanishes.

I scold Caleb with a glare, but he just glares back. Clearly, no other male can touch me but himself, Caspian, and my coven.

I turn my attention to the wound, placing both hands over it once more and summoning prana.

"Too much, mistress," Hesperion says. "Healing is done by degrees, or so I've been told. Just a thin stream."

I narrow the prana to a mere trickle, and realize this was the guidance I've lacked, in healing: I do too much too soon.

I heal the char, first, turning the flesh pink and healthy. Then, still using a stream thinner than a needle, I knit the ripped muscle together, and then, by degrees, the layers of epidermis. Finally, I restore the fur.

I'm sweating and panting by the time I'm done.

Hesperion claps his hands. "A wound like that, any healer I've ever known would take several sessions across many days to heal."

"Thank you for your wisdom, Hesperion," I say.

He shrugs. "Wasn't nothin', mistress. Been through more'n my share of wars, is all. Seen all sorts of wounds get healed. Wraith wounds is particular nasty, though. The infection spreads like the plague, and then all of a sudden you've got a wraith where your friend use'ta be. Seen whole encampments turn wraith overnight. Angelfire is the only way to cleanse ‘em, then."

"Angelfire?" I ask.

He sighs, lips puffing. "Oh, mistress. Nasty, nasty stuff, that. Need a full hand of seven casters linked, casting their prana and igniting it. Like a flamethrower used in the mortal wars, see? But…it rains down from the heavens, all golden and white, comin' down in sheets and curtains. It burns all , mistress. And the casting of it kills the seven. It's a last resort. Nuclear, like. Nothing grows where angelfire has burned, not for a thousand years." He growls. "I was there, on the Gobi plains, when a vampire army was turned wraith. Ten thousand strong, they was. They had no shifters, so the wraiths tore through 'em like nothing. Turned ‘em all. By the time fae enforcement arrived, it was too late. Angelfire rained down for a fortnight, consuming everything. Grass. People. Dirt. Everything. The desert what's there now is all that's left." A shrug. "Mortals remember it differently, o'course."

"Where are you from, Hesperion?" I ask. "Or is that a rude question?"

He grins, white teeth flashing. "Not a'tall, mistress. I'm Roman, by way of Londinium. Never quite could lose the Latin accent, even when I turned Londoner, so now, you hear the Latin and the cockney all mixed up, like."

"You were a soldier?"

A shrug. "Been many things, mistress, all of ‘em violent. I was a centurion first. Fought all across Europe. Fought for the Byzantines, too—they was canny bastards, them Byzantines."

"I think I shall have need of you in the days to come, Hesperion. I know little of tactics and warfare."

He grins, his scarred, bearded face lighting up. "Be the privilege of my long life to serve you, mistress. The Tribunal's lost its way. Gotten sick. An' that old fox, Zirae? He's the rot at the core of it."

Colin, who I think passed out for a moment or two, rouses, hops to his four paws, shakes his coat, and then licks my cheek, tail wagging.

"You're welcome, Colin," I laugh, ruffling his ears.

He yips, nips at my fingers, and then trots over to Caleb and sits on his haunches.

I rise and peer through the doorway.

Another long, shadow-stained hallway, and at the far end, another warded doorway.

"I'm getting really fucking sick of this shit," I grumble under my breath.

"Zirae's clung to power for millennia," Hesperion says. "He's got no intention of giving it up. And certainly not to you, who he likely sees as…well, not worthy, let's just put it that way. Once-Mortal, little more'n'a child, and a Secundus."

I clench my fists and intentionally call up the memory of Zirae plundering my mind and subjecting me to death after death.

I wreathe myself in magic and march into the shadows clogging the long, narrow, high-ceilinged hallway.

The shadows are a glamour, I realize, and follow the threads woven through them, hidden in the darkness. Anger and frustration and, honestly, a childish sense of petulance has me lashing with a slash of my hand, prana shaped into a scimitar. The threads of the glamour are severed, and the shadows dissolve, leaving the hallway still dark, but naturally so.

The same anger, frustration, and petulance pushes me to the far end of the hallway, my people clogging behind me, and I lash out once more. This time, I build my prana into a ball in my hands, growing it, letting it boil and rage, heating and heating until my hands turn white and then my wrists and then my forearms.

All I need now is to start chanting "kame-ha…me…ha…"

Nerd joke. Never mind.

When the roiling ball of seething white-hot prana feels too volatile in my hands to hold onto anymore, I launch it at the ward with a scream.

The ward flares, and then all light is sucked out of the hallway, bathing us in a black so perfect it could be The Dreaming—

and then a blinding white flash sears our eyeballs and the resulting concussion, so loud it's felt more than heard, knocks us all backward to the floor.

My ears ringing, I lurch to my feet. Caspian is on my left, Caleb on my right, and my coven and Caleb's pack arranged behind us. Hesperion is shouting orders, his rough gravelly voice booming above the sudden cacophony.

Smoke billows and dust swirls, and then forms charge through the ragged opening.

Wolves. Lions. Tigers. Leopards.

A dozen, at least, all shifters, all charging with snarls and roars and bellows, eyes flashing amber, coming for blood.

"Sister." A low, venomous, hungry whisper in my ear: Theris. "Free us."

No time to question the decision. I snap my eyes closed and seek the mage-cuffs. I feel them, three pairs, and I see the wicked, insidious, red parasitic glamour wrapped around three pairs of wrists like coils of barbed wire digging into flesh. The glamour wraps around arms and snakes into their torsos, winding into their centers and coiling around their magic.

Now that the cuffs aren't on me, I sense immediately how they're removed. A needle-thin stream into each cuff, opening a circuit, so to speak. I send streams into all six cuffs at once, and I feel them spring open and hear them clatter to the floor.

Beside me, Theris just…detonates. It's the only word that applies. His power surges, a mushroom cloud of immense magic—vampiric darkness woven through with the amber light of a shifter, and then he's glowing, his whole body blooming with furious amber light.

He vanishes, although my vampiric sight allows me to follow his movement as he all but vaporizes and reappears, moving faster than anything I've ever seen.

He's among the charging shifters, and they're standing still, so swift is he.

He rips a shifter's head clean off in a single swipe of his hand, plunging his face into the spewing fountain of blood, slurping it down greedily.

Simultaneously, Aquilia reacts very much the same—I feel her power explode, and she scrambles across the stone floor, bounces off the wall, and then slams into a lion shifter, and the pair go rolling across the floor in a tangle of claws and limbs and snarls, and the lion's wild, furious, ear-splitting roar seems to gutter into nothing, and then Aquilia rises to her feet, glowing pure undiluted white with prana. At her feet, the lion is a limp, skeletal lump of fur and bones. And then the white light flares and shifts through the spectrum into blinding amber, and there's a golden eagle standing eight feet tall from beak to talon; she snatches a wolf with a foot and her beak snaps it in half—I watch mana stream like an amber river from the spraying gore into her chest. Theris doesn't bother shifting—he just rips the shifters apart with his hands as if they're so many stuffed animals. Their blood swirls around his feet and their bones rattle on the stone, and he scoops up handfuls of it and drinks it, falls to the floor and slurps, licks, scoops, and Aquilia's talons, so large they could crush a city bus like a soda can, disembowel the enemy shifters with laughable ease.

Raphael stands beside me, hands stuffed into the pockets of his jumpsuit. He's waiting.

I glance at him. "Not hungry after all this time?"

His eyes are voids, his skin marble. "I've never had much of a taste for shifter," he says, his smooth low voice like a river of shadows. "There's fae beyond the door. They're mine."

"How can you resist the bloodlust?" I ask.

His head swivels, and his black gaze sears into me. "Long, long practice. I've waited twenty years to taste blood. The anticipation is…" he licks his lips. "Delicious."

"Have you ever had fae, Raphael?"

He nods. "Once. In a moment of desperation, during the War of Roses. I nearly created a nosferatu before I conquered myself."

"That's what I fear," I say. "It is addictive."

Blood and gore and limbs and furry heads fly, and prana glows and mana streams, and then the hall is silent.

Theris is a leopard but god-sized—taller than a warhorse at the shoulders. His muzzle is red, and he licks his paw three times and then swipes it over his muzzle and ear, and then repeats it, a process that is purely feline.

"Behold," Raphael says, "the mighty power of the Secundus Blood."

"We're coming for you, Zirae," I whisper, and I send the whisper on a streamer of wind, powered by prana.

In response, laughter rattles the mountain, dry and hollow and louder than any thunder.

Zirae is ready, it seems.