“We fools volunteered to fight. We have free will. I fight to save Julie and to kill as many of those bastards as I can. They came into my house, they tried to kill me, and they crucified my kid. I want to punish them. I want that punishment to be so hard, so vicious, that the next scum who takes their place wets himself at the mere thought of trying to fight me.”
Slayer smoked in its sheath, sensing my anger. Normally I’d have to feed it, or its blade would become thin and brittle, but with the magic flowing this strong, the sword would last through the battle and then some.
I pointed to the yard. “The shapeshifters fight to take a stand against a threat and to avenge their dead Pack mates. They fight to protect their children, because without them there is no future. What do you fight for?”
He ruffled the wild nest of his hair. “I have no future anyway. I fight because I made a deal with Morrigan. Without mist, I’ll age and die.”
“Would aging be such a bad thing? Don’t you want a life? A real life?”
He sneered. “If I wanted a real life, I wouldn’t have asked to be a hero. When I die, I want to die strong, with a sword in my hand, sheathing it into the bodies of my enemies. That’s how a man should die.”
I sighed. “My father served as a warlord to a man of unequaled power. This man called my father ‘Voron,’ which means Raven, because death followed him. Voron had never been defeated with a blade. Had he remained as a warlord to lead the army he had built and trained, the world would be a very different place.”
“Is there a point to this tale?”
“He left it all behind for my sake.” And he did it all for a child not of his own blood.
“Then your father was a fool and now I know why you’re one.”
I closed my eyes. “There is no reasoning with you. Let me sleep.”
I heard him jump off the rail and land next to me, and then he poked my shoulder with his finger.
“I’m trying to understand.”
I opened my eyes. Explaining my moral code really wasn’t my forte. “Imagine you’re being chased by wolves. You’re running through the woods, no settlement in sight, and you come across a baby lying abandoned on the ground. Do you save the baby or do you leave him for the wolves?”
I saw the hesitation in his dark eyes. “I’d leave the little bastard,” he declared, a bit too loudly. “Would slow the wolves down.”
“You had a doubt.”
He raised his hand but I shook my head. “I saw it. You had a doubt. You thought about it for a second. The same force that drove that doubt is what makes us fight. Now leave me be.”
I curled up on my blanket and closed my eyes. The wind gently stroked my face and soothed me into calm sleep.
Derek awoke me a couple of hours later. I looked at the sky. The sun rode high—it was just past noon.
I didn’t want to die.
Derek’s face was grim. “Jim has something for you downstairs.”
He took me to the first floor and held the door open for me. I entered a small room, where Jim sat in a chair, testing the edge of that same knife with his thumb. In front of him, on the floor, sat Red. He was filthy. His left eye was swollen shut with a magnificent shiner. A long metal chain stretched from the wall to clutch at a metal collar around his neck. God help you if you offend the Pack, because they didn’t need a K-9 unit to find you.
I crossed my arms and looked at him. He was only fifteen. It didn’t excuse his betrayal of Julie but it precluded me from doing all of the things I would normally do under these circumstances.
Red squinted at me with his good eye. “You gonna beat me, go ahead.”
I leaned against the wall. At the first hint of my movement, he ducked, covering his head. “Why didn’t you tell me about the necklace?”
“Because you’d steal it.” He bared his teeth. “It was mine. My power! My chance.”
“Do you know what happened to Julie?”
“He knows,” Jim said.
“Do you feel responsible at all?” I asked.
He scooted back from me. “What the fuck do you want me to say? Am I suppose to make nice and cry and tell you how sorry I am? I took care of Julie. I watched out for her for two years. She owes me, okay? They had their claws on my throat. Right here!” He clamped his neck with his grimy fingers. “They said, you get the girl or die. So I got the girl. Any of you assholes would’ve done the same. You gonna stand there and look down on me like that, well fuck you.”
He spat on the floor.
“If you didn’t care for her at all, why did you ask me to guard her?”
“Because she’s an investment, you dumb whore.”
He wasn’t a person, he was just a ball of hate. We could beat him, we could starve him, we could lecture him, but no amount of punishment or education would make him understand that he was wrong. He was lost.
“What are you going to do with him?” I asked Jim.
Jim shrugged. “I’ll give him a blade, put him on the field. He can show me how tough he is.”
“He’ll stab us in the back.”
“I’ll have people watching him. We found him once, we’ll find him again. He stabs someone, I’ll skin him alive. Piece by piece.” Jim smiled at Red. Most people saw Jim smile only once, just before he killed them. The smile had the desired effect: Red cringed and paled so light, I could see it even through the layer of dirt smudging his skin.
“Objections?” Jim asked me.
“Do what you will.”
In the yard, two huge buses roared, their engines fueled by magic-infused water. That’s the trouble with magic-fueled vehicles: they were slow, thirty-five, forty miles an hour max and they made enough noise to wake the dead and make them call the cops. I’d get to ride to the battle on a bus. The Universe had a mordant sense of humor.
I noticed a familiar slender figure. Myong. And next to her, Crest. He looked welclass="underline" same dark eyes, same clothes, immaculate to the last crease. He was still a very handsome man, with auburn hair and warm eyes. I looked at him and didn’t care. The pang of embarrassment was gone. I was free.
“Curran let them go. Released her from all duties to the Pack. She’s excused from the fight.” Derek wrinkled his lip. “If it was me, I’d make her fight. And then, if she did well, I might let her go.”
Crest held the door of a narrow gray vehicle for Myong.
“There, they are off, the happy couple excused from revenge and saving the world. Doesn’t it bother you?”
I smiled. “Derek, in life you have to learn to let some things go.”
We circled the bus and a wave of vampiric magic hit me. Eight vampires sat perched like statues in front of a Jeep. Curran stood by the Jeep, having a rather animated discussion with the ninth vampire. The vampire saw me.
“Kate,” it said in Ghastek’s voice. “Your ability to remain alive never ceases to amaze me.”
“What are you doing here? As in what are you doing here, instead of being under lockdown in the Casino?”
“Quite elementary, my dear; I’ve come to get even. That, and the People would like to monitor the full potential of the vampires during a flare in an environment where they are free to inflict unrestricted damage. But mostly, I’m here to get even with the Shepherd. I find retribution to be a worthy cause.”
I looked at Curran’s face and suddenly I knew exactly who would escort Bran through the tunnel.
Chapter 25
The bubble filled the gap. Solid, translucent, streaked with hairline cracks, it betrayed the faces of monsters within. Snouts crushed, heavy lips squished, the Fomorians stood shoulder to shoulder, packed tight like Altoid mints.
We had ridden the buses to the Honeycomb and walked a trail to the bottom of the Gap. Curran had brought a hundred shapeshifters, all volunteers. A hundred could block the Gap long enough to give Bran a chance to close the cauldron. And if they failed, no number of shapeshifters would make things right. Curran didn’t want to put more of his people in harm’s way. Still, I would’ve taken more, but nobody asked for my opinion.