Chapter 19

Of all the people who could have survived the Wild Hunt, it had to be Edward Wyrm.

I read the scene in a single look. True to his name, the man had somehow managed to slither his way into a small hidden compartment disguised behind one of the decorative wall panels not far from the massive hearth.

The snow blowing in through the shattered windows had smothered the fires burning on the tables, but it had also subdued the last of the Yule log. Without it, there were only the pitiful flickering of the grand chandeliers and the moonlight to illuminate Wyrm cowering on the floor, his face and balding head smeared with blood.

"—I didn't know it would be this way!" he was telling Caitriona. She glared down at him, her expression merciless as she held the point of her spear to the loose skin of his neck.

Neve looked on, her hands on her hips. "Then what was the party for?"

"It was—"

His eyes bulged as they landed on me, as if I were another unwelcome ghost. He mouthed the word Lark.

I'd be all too happy to haunt him until he drew his last miserable breath. "Lovely to see you again, you steaming piece of rat excrement."

He swung his gaze to the safer choice of Emrys .

"Emrys, my boy, tell them! You know how these women can be when they get something in their heads. I've been a friend of your family for years. I had no idea they would—they would—"

"Murder every last one of your party guests and take their souls?" Emrys finished coldly. He pushed past the others, hauling Wyrm up by the blood-splattered collar of his shirt and forcing him toward the bodies littering the floor. " Look at them, you coward! Then tell us again you had no idea this would happen!"

The fury in his voice took me aback. Maybe his had been living as close to the surface as mine. Maybe, before today, I would have cared.

Wyrm began to weep, his sobs pitiful and heaving. "It was supposed to be a gathering to greet him! To present him with the mantle! This wasn't supposed to happen!"

"You knew the Wild Hunt was coming?" I asked in disbelief.

"Yes," Wyrm moaned.

Emrys ripped the silver pin from his lapel, then released him, letting Wyrm's body fall limp to the floor. Blood and champagne sprayed up around him and the old man gagged.

"Tell them what this means," Emrys demanded. When the other Hollower struggled to find the words to speak, Emrys threw the pin at him, hard enough for Wyrm to whimper like the mewling child he was. "Tell them!"

"But you know—you know, don't you?" Wyrm insisted, wilting under Emrys's gaze. "Your father was the one who started it all back up again."

"Tell them," Emrys said through gritted teeth, more furious than I'd ever seen him. The others looked on in shock.

"It's …" Wyrm tried to regain his composure, smoothing a hand over the last wisps of his hair. "It's the Order of the Silver Bough."

"Why do I already hate the sound of this?" Neve asked.

Of course. I pressed a cold hand to my face.

I didn't know why I hadn't put the meaning of the symbol together before. A silver apple branch symbolized an invitation to journey to an Otherland.

"And the ‘Order' is what, exactly?" I pressed. "A little fraternity of power-hungry toads?"

Wyrm bristled. I wondered when had been the last time a woman had spoken to him like that—given the sputtering indignation, probably not in the last three decades. "The Order has been around for hundreds of years. For as long as there have been sorceresses in this world."

"Ah," Neve said darkly, cracking her knuckles one by one. "That would be why."

"The Order is meant to uphold the knightly virtues of Arthur and his court—to protect the world from the destructive magic of sorceresses and their hellish nature," Wyrm continued.

"Hellish nature, huh?" Neve said. I threw out an arm to block her path.

"We need to ask him a few more questions before you tie his tongue in knots," I told her.

Wyrm whimpered.

Neve feigned a reluctant sigh. "Oh, all right. I suppose I can wait a few more minutes."

"She's … one of them ?" Wyrm whispered in horror. He dragged himself across the floor, making as if to escape. Emrys planted a foot on his chest, kicking him back down.

"You're working with a sorceress?" Wyrm cried. "What hold does she have on you, my boy?"

"I'm not your boy." Emrys leaned down, bringing his face in line with Wyrm's. "And you'll be lucky if a hold is all she puts on you."

Wyrm's plum-red face blanched as he looked between the two of them. Neve's smile made the hair on my arms rise.

"What business does this Order have with Lord Death?" Caitriona asked, swinging her spear back around toward him.

Wyrm held up his hands, as if he had a face worth protecting. "Many of us are descended from the druids. We only desired to renew our worship of him—to summon him back into our world to defeat our enemies."

I leaned down, resisting the urge to spit in his face. "You wanted death magic."

"Well … yes," Wyrm said. "Is that really so wrong? Why should the sorceresses be the only ones with true power?"

I shook my head in disgust. Wyrm and so many of the dead around me were Cunningfolk. They had magic, abilities no mere mortal had. Just not enough, clearly.

"You really expect us to believe you didn't know what would happen tonight?" I asked.

Wyrm sent one last desperate look Emrys's way. "Your father wrote to me that I should host the celebration, to offer our allegiance. I didn't know what had become of him—what had become of all of them …" He trailed off, twisting around to survey the hall. "D-Do you hear that?"

A moment later, I did.

The crackling felt eerily familiar, enough that it set my teeth on edge as I looked up toward the ceiling, expecting to find the plaster splitting. But it was a wet sound, like footsteps in a marsh, a gurgle—

Neve sucked in a sharp gasp. I spun, following her gaze until it landed on the bodies near her feet. Something moved beneath their skin, slithering.

Caitriona bumped into me from behind, trying to escape the remains that were twitching, the limbs slapping against the floor, their teeth chattering.

"Oh gods, oh gods! " Wyrm cried, scrambling onto unsteady feet. Using the distraction, he fled for the open library door without a backward glance, twisting away from the rattling bodies. At the first snap of bone, I knew, with horrifying certainty, it had been a mistake not to follow him.

That sickening sound, the gurgle of entrails shifting, of cartilage stretching and remaking—that was one I recognized .

From Cabell's transformations.

"What in all the hells …," Emrys breathed out.

Spidery limbs and blood exploded out of the man's chest at my feet, his skin stretching and tearing as his spine pulled apart, spiking through his flesh, through the ragged remains of his tuxedo jacket. His back curled up like an animal stretching after a long sleep, and when he lifted his clawed-off face, it had become a familiar gray mask of death.

He—it—rose on long, sticky-wet legs, bringing its glowing white eyes level with mine. My mind screamed for me to move, but I couldn't. My feet had turned to stone. The stench of rot billowed around me as the creature's jaws broke and remade themselves into a snout, as its remaining teeth became silvery knives beneath its bloodless lips.

The heat of its baying screech blew my hair back from my face, splattering me with foaming spittle that burned everywhere it touched.

Terror, as it turned out, was its own kind of thrall. It held me there like a helpless prisoner as the corpses rose as Children of the Night.

They moved as one, circling us with a predator's delight. They had woken starving—many devoured the discarded flesh or the half-transformed monsters, shredding them before they could fully rise. The hall shifted before my eyes, smearing into that of a dead forest. Smoke became mist.

I couldn't move.

Time unspooled violently around me. At the edge of my vision, Neve lifted her hands to cast a spell, her lips barely parting before she was knocked back to the floor with a single blow. The sound her skull made as it collided with the wood echoed in my ears as she lay unmoving beneath the monster.

"Neve!" Caitriona launched her spear into the back of the monster. The weapon splintered as it soared through the air, embedding itself like a spray of arrowheads in the writhing body.

If she was shocked, Caitriona took it in her usual stride, leaping forward to rip the largest piece of the spear out of the monster's convulsing body. The scattered pieces flew toward that largest one, reassembling in her hand in the instant before she threw it into the next creature that tried to claw Neve away from us. Caitriona slid across the distance between them on her knees, covering the sorceress with her body.

It was the last thing I saw before I was falling too.

The hard shove knocked me sideways, robbing the breath from my lungs even before I slammed into the floor and a heavy weight collapsed on top of me. A ragged shout of pain blossomed like a blood-red rose.

Everything came into sharp relief as Emrys tried to stand again, one hand clutching the ragged claw marks slashed across his chest from shoulder to hip, as if he could hold the skin together by force.

Blood spilled out between his fingers as he gasped for breath. He staggered, dropping to a knee. He met my horrified gaze with one of total resignation. The Children skittered toward him from all directions.

"No!" The word tore out of me as I leapt to my feet, flinging broken furniture, discarded weapons, anything I could find. Nothing held them back for more than a second. Nothing would, but fire.

"Cait, please!" I shouted. "Please, you have to!"

She knew what I was asking her—it was the only option left to us.

Her fingers worked furiously, creating a flow of symbols, calling the magic of the Goddess in the way that was uniquely hers. Summoning fire.

But none came.

Her head shot up in disbelief. I watched in growing fear as she tried again, alternating between striking the Children and trying to eke a single flame out of the darkness around her. Her shoulders shook as the movements grew more and more frantic.

Emrys collapsed to the floor, blood flowing out of him in dark rivers. One of the Children bent over him, ripping the collar away from his shirt to get at his exposed neck.

A thunderous roar and flash exploded from behind me, and the creature's head was blown clean off its body. Oily blood sloshed out from its torso as it collapsed to the floor, thrashing in the throes of death.

Nash emerged from the whirling smoke, a hunting rifle raised to his eye, firing at the creatures again to drive them back. He turned the barrel up toward the chandeliers, firing at their chains until they crashed down around us. The twinkling crystals shattered, slicing through the Children who couldn't jump away in time.

More rose, screeching with the rage of the newly born. They were drawn to the thunderous sound of the gunfire and bounded away from us, toward him. Their claws tore the freezing air, primed for his own flesh.

"Nash!" I screamed.

His cool expression never wavered. He lifted the gun's sights again and, this time, kicked one of the large barrels strewn across the floor toward them. The Children vaulted over it, but the bullet was faster, igniting the whiskey inside.

The explosion flashed hot and bright. My ears rang as I tasted the burn of it with my next gulping breath. The Children scattered back toward the window, stopping only to feast on the severed limbs of those caught in the blast.

Nash was splattered in enough blood to look like a monster himself as he shouted to us over the shrieking of the Children. "Get to the library, you wee idiots!"

We did not need to be told again.

Caitriona scooped Neve up in her arms, her first uneven steps quickly turning to a flat-out run for the door.

I knelt beside Emrys, hesitating again. His skin was ashen.

Don't touch me.

Well, right now, I couldn't give either of us that choice, because I'd be damned before I'd let him die for me.

I looped his arm around my neck. His blood flowed, heavy and unrelenting, soaking into my jacket as I struggled to get us upright .

" Walk, Trust Fund," I told him, clutching the hand at my shoulder to try to get him to focus. His eyelids were drooping, his face going as lax as the rest of him. "Don't make me carry your sorry ass—"

As if I could. He was heavy.

Dead weight, my mind whispered.

"Leave … me …," he gasped out.

The words pissed me off enough that when the next surge of adrenaline came, I started fully dragging him. The sound of gunfire was the only confirmation that Nash was still behind me.

"Come on, come on," Nash said, reaching Emrys's other side and gripping his waist. With him balanced between us, we were able to drag him through the library in a few short steps. Nash kicked the door. Relinquishing Emrys to me again, he moved to pull and kick bookshelves down to block the entrance.

"Emrys?" I said, his weight dragging both of us to the floor. "Can you hear me?"

He gave no acknowledgment at all. His lashes fluttered as he fought to open his eyes again. I pulled off my jacket, pressing it against his open wounds, for whatever little good that would do.

The Children battered at the door from the other side. Flakes of plaster shook from the ceiling and walls.

"Vexing vexations— Tamsy! " Nash shouted. "A little help here!"

I tore myself away from Emrys's side, placing his hands over my bundled jacket. I tried not to think about how cold his skin was to the touch.

"You don't get to die a hero," I told him sternly, pushing up off the floor. You don't get to die at all.

I threw a panicked look over to where Caitriona had set Neve down on one of the love seats, but the sorceress was awake now, her eyes darting around the room.

"What … ?" came Neve's faint voice.

Caitriona gripped her arms, searching her for injuries, saying something I was too far away to hear. Neve's gaze shot to the other girl's face—Neve looked momentarily stunned.

"Tamsy!" Nash bellowed. He'd dug his heels in to try to hold the quaking bookshelves in place as the Children savaged the door. Their eyes flashed through the gouges they'd raked in the wood.

I mimicked his positioning, throwing my weight back against the bookshelves until my muscles quivered with the effort. The bookshelves thumped against my back and my palms with bruising force, and I only pushed against them harder.

It's really him, I thought. This was the Nash I remembered. Desperately reckless, always finding himself in the thick of things, but armed with an impossibly good sense of timing.

"Did I, or did I not, tell you to stay in that apartment?" Nash got out through gritted teeth.

"Is this really the moment for a lecture?" I snapped. "You would've had to lock me up—"

The idea that came to me was as reckless as it was breathtakingly stupid—but that had never stopped me before.

"I'll be right back!" I jumped away from the bookshelves, leaving a startled Nash in my wake. Caitriona dove forward to take my place, eyeing the shuddering door uneasily.

"Tamsin!" Nash shouted after me, but there was no time to explain.

I ran for the stairs and flew down them, my arms pumping at my sides as I burst into the cellar. The magically cloaked opening to the warehouse buzzed against my skin as I broke through it.

This is stupid, I thought, bending to pick up a large fragment from a champagne bottle. So, so stupid …

Olwen had lifted the mirror upright again and was pacing anxiously in front of it, her hands tangled in her ink-blue hair.

"—if you release me, I won't eat mortal flesh for a year," the hag was saying, watching the priestess. "All right, you have me. A fortnight, then. Well, perhaps three days. "

Olwen stopped. "I don't think that's how bargaining works."

"I'll take that deal," I said, rushing toward them.

Olwen gasped in horror at the sight of me. "What's happened?"

"Neve and Emrys—they're hurt, they're in the library—"

She didn't need to hear anything else. Pressing her bag to her hip to keep the bottles inside from rattling, she ran back the way I had come.

Leaving me alone with the hag.

The primordial creature eyed me, licking her lips at the blood staining my skin and clothes, edging ever closer to the surface of the mirror. The shard of glass cut into my palm as I drew in a deep breath and curled my fingers.

"You said you prefer the taste of magic-born creatures, right?" I asked.

The hag nodded eagerly.

"If I let you out—right now, right this second—will you swear not to eat any humans—any mortals—for at least a year?"

"A year ?" the hag bellowed, her breath fogging up the glass between us. "I'll swear to three days—"

"A fortnight," I countered.

"Fine, a fortnight, I agree!" the hag countered quickly.

"Do you vow it?"

"Yes!" Saliva was already dripping from her eager fangs.

"Good," I said, reaching around the back of the mirror to claw through the sigils there with the glass. "I hope you're hungry."