Surreal looked at Rainier and knew that he, too, recognized the dark-Jeweled power that had come to play.
“Oh, shit,” she said. “It’s Lucivar.”
Lucivar? Had the uneducated Eyrien finally found someone to read the invitation to him? Or—and this was an even better thought—had he come to try to rescue the Surreal bitch and her companion?
Oh, this was excellent. Excellent! They were so unnerved by Lucivar being in the house! Maybe he would finally get some decent material to use for his book. Surreal and the limp Warlord Prince had made hardly any effort to find the exits. But the Eyrien was a warrior—and a real member of the SaDiablo family.
He had to hurry. Yes, he did. He didn’t want to miss a moment of Lucivar trying to pit himself against the surprises in the house.
Lucivar set the pack down next to the wall. He’d issued the challenge. Now he’d wait a few minutes to see if anyone accepted the invitation.
Odd that he hadn’t risen to the killing edge when he entered the house. He danced a heartbeat away from it, but he didn’t have the cold purity he usually had when he stepped onto a killing field.
Which meant this place didn’t offer a true killing field. It was a battleground, certainly, but it wasn’t the kind of field Warlord Princes were born to stand on.
He wasn’t sensing enough danger here. There wasn’t enough threat to sustain that state of mind. At least, not for someone like him.
Which meant just being pissed off about someone setting a trap for his family would keep his temper sharp enough. At least for now.
He took another step into the front hallway.
Doorway on his left, with the door halfway open. Closed door on his right. A coat-tree next to the stairs leading to the second floor. A mirror on the wall opposite the stairs.
He took another step.
Why have a mirror there? To fix a collar or smooth a lock of hair after removing a coat? Or was there another reason for a mirror to reflect the side of the staircase?
The stealthy sound came from behind him, on his left. Then there was the rush of a body coming toward him, along with the putrid psychic scent of a malevolent mind.
He spun around, his right arm straightening as he became a pivot for the death he held in his hand. He looked the Black Widow in the eyes as his Eyrien war blade sang through muscle and humbled bone.
The top half of her body fell in one direction, the lower half in another. Guts spilled out on the hallway floor, but not much blood. That meant the demon-dead witch hadn’t been drinking blood or yarbarah and had become too starved to be cautious.
She screamed at him as she pushed herself across the floor, too furious to remember she could use Craft to float her body on air. Intent on reaching her prey, she followed him as he circled toward the room where she had hidden.
His inner barriers were locked tight, and he should be safe enough from any games a lighter-Jeweled Black Widow might try to play. But a man who got careless and underestimated an enemy was a man who usually died.
Switching his war blade to his left hand, he grabbed the Black Widow by the hair, flung her into the room, and closed the door. Then he walked across the hallway and kicked open the other door.
Nothing sprang out at him, so he grabbed one ankle and threw the lower half of the Black Widow into the sitting room.
It went against his training and his temper to leave an enemy at his back. Since she was already demon-dead, the Black Widow was still a potential enemy. But he would need power to burn out what was left of her power in order to finish the kill. That would feed into the spells woven around the house. So he would leave her, and deal with her again if he had to.
Then he stopped and stared at the hallway as a thought curled around his heart.
Three Black Widows had made the spells for this spooky house. It stood to reason that the little prick who had devised this game wouldn’t want to leave any loose ends that could connect him to this place. Lucivar had no doubt at all that he’d just met one of the Black Widows—and he had no doubt he would cross paths with the second. But the third…
Daemon wasn’t a fool. The feel of Tersa’s spells was easily recognized by anyone who had spent enough time with her to know the woman. If she wasn’t safely tucked in her cottage in Halaway, if she was trapped in the house, Daemon would have told him. And if…
Fury washed through him at the thought of anyone daring to harm Tersa.
He grabbed the coat-tree and swung.
The mirror exploded, showering that part of the hallway with glass. One foot of the coat-tree punched through the wall.
Lucivar pulled the coat-tree out of the wall, set it down, and said, “Why use Craft when a little temper will do?”
Wasn’t likely he’d find Surreal or Rainier this close to the starting point of the game, but he’d check the back room and the kitchen before moving on.
One step. Two.
He caught a faint psychic scent, enhanced by a whiff of fear. It was gone before he could track the direction it came from, but it had been enough to warn him that Blood was nearby.
Not the Black Widow. This was someone else, someone who barely registered as Blood to his senses because that person stood so far above him in the abyss. Someone he hadn’t detected at all until he punched a hole in the wall.
He stared at the wall and considered the game. Then he bared his teeth in a feral smile and walked back to the front door.
“Guess I’ll play by your rules after all,” he said softly as he pressed his right hand against the door. The Ebon-gray Jewel in his ring blazed for a moment as he put an Ebon-gray shield around the whole structure.
Somewhere in the house, a gong sounded.
He felt the bite of a spell as it hooked into the Ebon-gray power, but he fed the shield for a few heartbeats longer—giving it enough power to assure that it wouldn’t be drained by the house before sundown. Of course, when he was ready to leave, he’d have to punch through spells that were bloated with his own Ebon-gray strength, and the backlash from that would hurt like a wicked bitch. So be it. He’d still be the one walking out. As for the little writer-mouse he suspected was hiding in the walls…
Lucivar picked up his pack and headed for the back room. As he passed the hole in the wall, he said in Eyrien, “You don’t leave until I let you leave. So you keep watching—and prepare to die.”
An illusion suddenly appeared in front of him. The boy had died a hard death, judging by the ripped torso and the missing eye, but he was just an illusion and not cildru dyathe, so he posed no threat.
“The worst is still to come,” the boy said.
“No,” Lucivar replied, walking right through the illusion. “I’m here now.”
He secured the door, then pressed his back against the wall—and trembled.
Why use Craft when a little temper will do?
Lucivar had cut the Black Widow in half. The fight was over before it began because he cut the witch in half.
Without Craft.
Lucivar had swung a heavy coat-tree like it was nothing more than a stick and punched a hole in a Craft-protected wall.
Without Craft.
The hole had compromised that part of the secret passageway, making it vulnerable to the spells that chained the rest of the house. This just proved how right he’d been to install doors to divide these passageways into separate sections that had their own set of protection spells. The witch who had done those particular spells had been a sweet woman until he had tortured her and killed her in a way that made her a suitably vicious predator.