“Spider’s father found a woman from a blueblood family with a dirty secret—they had a changeling a couple of generations back. We’re a very healthy lot. Spider’s grandfather, Alain de Belidor, violently objected. Didn’t want his precious blood polluted. But Spider’s father married his bride anyway. The changeling blood fixed all their problems right up—Spider was born healthy as a horse.
“About that time Alain developed dementia. Since his son had one foot in the grave most of the time, Alain ruled the family. He terrorized Spider’s mother and the boy. Somehow he became convinced that Spider was a changeling.”
“How does that work?” Cerise asked.
“If the changeling is strong, like me, he has a ninety percent chance to pass the magic to the next generation.” He kissed her. “If our kid is born human, the chances of his kids going furry drop off. Twenty percent in the first generation and basically nothing in the second. Spider has the changeling blood, but he isn’t a changeling. His grandfather couldn’t wrap his mind around it. He stalked him, convinced that Spider was hiding an animal inside. Once when Spider was seven, Alain dumped boiling water on him to ‘draw the beast out.’ When Spider turned eighteen, he got his grandfather declared incompetent and took control over the estate. Nobody knows what exactly happened to Alain, but nobody has seen him for years.”
She grimaced. “That’s just horrible all around.”
William shrugged. “It’s a hard world out there. Spider hates my kind, because we’re the cause of his misery. I have to kill him. It’s more than revenge at this point—he’s a threat to any changeling. Hell, he’s a threat to the entire damn country. He understands it. He doesn’t take it personally.”
Cerise frowned next to him. “How do you know?”
“We talked about it before we got into it the last time. It’s just the reality of life for him,” William explained. “He’s a cold bastard. He understands my reasons, and in my place he would do the same thing. He doesn’t see himself as evil. In his own eyes he’s doing exactly what I used to do—serving his country the best he can. He isn’t crazy, Cerise. He’s very rational. That makes him more dangerous. What the hell is in that journal? Why does he want it so much?”
Cerise grimaced and rubbed her face. “I’ve been trying to puzzle it out and I have no idea. The journal is the key to the whole thing. I wish Sene had burned in a fire. I wish my parents would’ve razed it down to the ground—”
William put his hand over her lips.
“What is it?” she whispered.
“The birds stopped singing.”
VUR shifted from foot to foot. How long did it take to fuck? Was the wolf freak romancing her in there with wine and poetry? Vur focused on the flutter of oak branches by the barn and launched himself into the sky. His skin wings snapped open, and Vur flew, gliding on the currents to perch on the oak.
WILLIAM slid to the side, rising silently. Cerise rolled to her feet, thrust her hand into the hay, and pulled her sword out.
William bared his teeth. That’s my girl.
She moved to the wall. “Oh, baby! Yes! Yes! Give it to me! Yes!”
The roof creaked under the weight of someone’s body. William padded along the floor, tracking the creaking.
“Harder, baby! Harder!”
The roof burst. A feathered body fell through the hole, talons spread for the kill. William lunged at the attacker’s back, locking his forearm on the slick throat. The creature choked, gurgling. Cerise thrust, impossibly fast, and stepped back.
The creature fell to his knees. William scanned his memory for Hand agents with feathers. Vur. “The claws are poisonous.”
Cerise’s face gained a harsh edge. She looked like a wolf threatened in her own den. “Let him go, please.”
William released the lock. Vur crashed to the floor, gasping. Blood spread through his feathers.
“Hurts, doesn’t it?” Cerise took a step closer.
“Yesss,” the Hand’s agent gurgled.
“It will take you a long time to die, and it will hurt more and more as you slip away. The Hand took my father. Tell me where he is and I will end it now.”
Vur’s blue eyes blinked.
“Take your time,” William told him.
He circled the body and sat in the hay. Cerise sat next to him. Moments dripped by, slow like cold molasses. Vur’s moans turned into sharp cries. They waited.
A minute leaked away.
Another.
“Kasis!” he cried out. “He’s in Kasis.”
Cerise rose, her face grim. Flash sparked, sword sliced, and Vur’s trembling body finally became still.
TWENTY-FIVE
JOHN watched the door swing as Spider emerged from the bowels of the laboratory into the sunlight-flooded hallway. The lean man blinked against the light and raised his hand to shield his eyes. A thick leather binder lay in the crook of his right arm. It commanded John’s attention, and he couldn’t keep from staring at it.
“The smell is truly abominable,” Spider said.
“Sorry. It can’t be helped.”
Spider nodded. “Walk with me a bit.”
They strode side by side along the hallway, the binder swaying gently with Spider’s smooth pace.
John watched the floor before his feet. The binder was full of translated notes, the thoughts of a genius mind. The things he could do, armed with that binder. The very idea of what it might be hiding made John light-headed. He braided the fingers of his hands together to keep from reaching for it. He could almost feel the slick leather against the pads of his fingers.
Working for Spider was difficult. He was reasonable, but only when circumstances permitted; understanding of difficulties, yet completely unaffected by them. And he expected impossible things in an impossible timeframe.
John had done the impossible. A fusion, and a relatively stable one at that, in less than a month. He had done well, and Spider appeared content. Yet the fruit of his labors, the prize, lay locked in the binder in the crook of Spider’s arm, and John knew better than to trust Spider’s seeming felicity.
“We’ve identified three possible sites,” Spider was saying. “It will take us a day or so to examine them and perhaps another day to extract the unit. I’ll be gone, oh, for about a week.”
Gone. The word rang like a chime in John’s head. He will be gone.
“Why three sites, m’lord?”
“The journal notes aren’t clear as to the landmarks. A local might be able to pinpoint the exact location, but I decided against compromising the document by the presence of an outsider. I’ll be taking almost everybody. We have a lot of ground to cover.”
A dim light broke through the foggy melancholy in John’s head. He was being told this on purpose.
“I’m leaving two slayers and a guardian to protect the house. It’s a formality at this point anyway. There is nothing valuable here save for you and Posad, of course, and besides, the traps will do most of the protecting on their own.”
“Once the unit is located and the extraction is complete, I’ll send a retrieval team for you. I’m sure you’d rather rest here than slog through the mud with the rest of us. I hope your forced isolation won’t be a problem?”
John smiled. “No, m’lord. I’m badly in need of sleep.”
“Ahhh.” Spider nodded, gray eyes neutral under the blond eyebrows. “I’ll leave you to the comfort of the sheets and down, then.”
They exited onto the second-floor balcony. The wind brought dampness from the flooded plain below. John shivered. “Ghastly place.”
“Mildly put.” Spider ran his left hand along the balcony’s carved rail and smiled, showing even, sharp teeth. The smile shot a bolt of alarm through John’s neck all the way to his fingertips. He yawned, trying to mask his discomfort.