“Do you know why Winters started this?” Oberis asked, finally. “If he had that kind of lust for power, MacDonald would never have raised him as high as he did. What’s in it for him?”
“He never said,” Laurie admitted. “I have told you all I know.”
Oberis knelt by her and placed his hands on her shoulders.
“So you have,” he accepted. “I owe you one last service, then. Rest, Laurie,” he told her, gently laying her unresisting form down on the floor. “Sleep, and may your dreams be merciful on you.”
Slowly, the hag’s eyes fluttering shut under his soothing words, his hands on her shoulders. She passed into sleep under the eyes of us all, her breathing shallow. And then, peacefully, without so much as a spasm, her breathing stopped.
SOMEHOW, that quiet, utterly cold-blooded execution hit me harder than the violent deaths I’d seen and inflicted over the last few weeks. It put those deaths in perspective, and I barely heard Michael Tenerim speaking, addressing Enli.
I squeezed Mary’s hand and released it, making my way outside as quietly as I could as shivers of shock ran through me.
When I’d come to this city, I’d never killed anyone in my life. Now? I’d lost track. Like it wasn’t important. Like the vampires and shifters whose bodies I’d left behind me hadn’t mattered.
Laurie’s death suddenly put everything in perspective. The death of someone I knew reminded me that everyone I’d killed along the way had friends, even the vampires. The shifters I’d killed to save Holly had been vicious men, plotting rape and murder, but they’d had family. Loyalties. It was their loyalty to Darius Fontaine that had thrown them into conflict with me.
I threw up. I barely managed to make it out of the tent and out of the view of most before I did it, too. Collapsing to my knees in the snow, I emptied my stomach onto the ground. I’d come to this city weak, seeking a normal, mortal life. Where had everything gone so wrong?
Suddenly, I was a killer. The powers I’d wielded all my life had taken on new strengths, new intensities that terrified me. I’d become stronger than I’d ever dreamed and had seen more violence than I’d ever feared, and it had snuck up on me somehow.
“Are you okay?” I heard Mary ask behind me, but another voice answered her before I could.
“No, he isn’t,” Eric told her quietly. “You may not want to be here, girl,” he continued. “This isn’t pretty.”
“I’m not leaving until I know he’s okay,” she answered fiercely, and I felt her step up behind me and place her hands on my shoulders.
“Just hit you, didn’t it?” Eric asked me gruffly. “The things you’ve done for fealty. She changed you, and you didn’t even realize until afterwards.”
“What have I become?” I asked, looking up at the gnome as he passed Mary a warm wet cloth to clean my face with. “So much has happened here.”
“You have become a Vassal of the Queen,” Eric said simply. I felt Mary’s hands tremble as she gently cleaned my face. By now, I was sure she’d known I was more than I’d admitted to, but it was something entirely different, I knew, to hear it all confirmed.
“Your fealty shields you from the impact of much of what you do,” he told me. “Be grateful for it—it’s not like you can go visit a therapist for it.”
“Do I even get a fucking choice?” I demanded. I’d wanted a normal life—I still did. I wanted to drive a courier truck, be with Mary, and barely scrape by in the mortal lower class. Sad as it sounds, I wanted that mundanity so badly right then, I could taste it.
“No,” the Keeper said bluntly. “You were born to this, Jason Kilkenny. Fate and blood and race and fealty command it, you have no choice. But remember this,” he told me. “I did.”
I reached up to squeeze Mary’s hand as I looked up at the old gnome in question, and he nodded as I met his gaze.
“I was many things in my youth, much of which I regret,” he told me. “I saw...much that I would not see again. I chose to swear fealty to the Queen and take up a Keeper’s role. The Vassals of the Queen—and the rest of the High Court—keep the peace amongst our kind. They shield the mortals from the excesses of our race and the other inhuman races. There are darker sides,” he admitted, “and we are bound to Her will, but by and large, Her will is to keep our people safe.”
“I feel so much...less than I should be,” I confessed. “What I feel at Laurie’s death—shouldn’t I feel that for the others I saw die? What is so different about her?”
“You knew her,” Mary said simply from behind me, and Eric nodded. “While she wasn’t a friend, you knew her, and that always hits home harder. And every other death you’ve seen has been in battle—with them trying to kill you. Those shouldn’t impact you as much. Self-defense is a necessary evil.”
I squeezed her hand again and slowly stood up again with her help. “In the end, I don’t have much choice, do I?” I asked Eric, and the Keeper shook his head.
“You were born to a Vassal bloodline,” he said sadly. “Once She claimed you, you were Hers. Forever.”
I had just finished nodding my—somewhat grudging—acceptance of this fact when a burning car came careening around the corner outside the church and smashed through the gate.
34
THE VEHICLE TRAILED flames and pieces as it spun across the parking lot, flipped up on its side and skidded another ten feet before finally coming to a stop. With the dramatic entrance finished, I recognized the silver sedan—it was Michael’s car. The Enforcer who said he’d be in touch every day—who I now realized I hadn’t heard from since Thursday.
“Fire extinguisher,” Eric said quickly, pulling one from thin air and passing it to me before extracting another from nowhere.
Unlike in the movies, thankfully, real cars don’t explode shortly after being set on fire. Eric started at one end of the car and I started at the other, and we quickly had the flames mostly doused. The last few stubborn flames revealed the source of it—the car had actually been sprayed with some sort of burning liquid. Someone had attacked the vehicle with a flamethrower.
Two of the shifter guards arrived just as we got the flames out and help Eric and me tear the roof off the car so we could get the driver out. Others emerged from the tent to make certain the continuing discussions were safe.
I was completely unsurprised to see Michael in the car. His state, however, was horrifying. Whoever had used the flamethrower had managed to get the burning napalm inside the vehicle. He was only barely responsive and all but screamed as we removed his hands from the steering wheel—they’d literally melted into the rubber coating.
“We need a healer,” I said desperately, looking up to the guards. That was also when I realized that Mary had already left us. I looked around for her and spotted her leaving the pavilion, with Talus and Lord Oberis in tow. Her quick thinking gave Michael the only chance he had.
The two fae nobles reached us moments later, taking in the scene instantly and deciding, with some communication none of the rest could interpret, who would do what. Lord Oberis knelt by Michael’s half-incinerated form, white light flowing from his hands as he moved them over the Enforcer’s body.
Talus turned to me.
“Who is he?”
“One of the Enforcers,” I explained. “He was investigating the truth of what was going on—promised he’d keep me informed, but with all the chaos, I hadn’t realized he didn’t contact me. He may know something.”
“Well, someone seriously didn’t want him telling us whatever he knows,” the noble observed, eyeing the burnt remnants of the silver car. The napalm from the flamethrower had only been the final indignity visited on the car I realized. It had been sprayed with bullets from a high-caliber weapon first.