A red flower bloomed.
Rian’s hand shook so much at this success that she dropped her pistol. Taking great gasping breaths she hauled at the table. It seemed in her desperation that perhaps the grip of the hands had loosened, but the Sea of Lies had not fallen with the ones who had called it, and she scrabbled with no care for dignity at unhelpful wood, until she noticed that her efforts were observed by a black hare, running silently in place.
Rian could have wept at the sight of it, a conflation of her sole memento of her mother and someone who had begun to dominate her thoughts, but most of all a sudden and real hope for survival.
The Night Breezes swirled around her, a vortex of mouse and hare and hound dragging her upward. But the Sea of Lies did not release its grip, and Rian cried out in pain.
An arm across her back, solid and human, brought a sudden end to the wrenching tug-of-war. The grasping, spectral hands vanished, driven from existence by a stronger power, and Rian was lifted to the withers of the three-tailed mare. The Crown Princess was dressed very much for combat, and made a formidable armful, but that and royal protocol did not keep Rian from abandoning resolution and embracing her with the whole of her heart.
“Thank you,” she said, in a choked fragment of a voice.
Aerinndís, Sulevia Sceadu, let out her breath. For a moment, one single moment, she touched Rian’s shoulder. But then she straightened, and that movement brought Rian to her senses, and she allowed her arms drop, gathering what little remained of her self-composure.
The fight had been summarily concluded, the few surviving Romans helpless in a whirl of transparent hounds, though from the crashing noise out in the corridor it seemed the bull-bear had run, and was being hotly pursued.
Prince Gustav, a little clawed about the edges, strode over as the three-tailed mare dissipated.
“The Lyle?” he said, but he’d already seen, and raised his axe to the ceiling in grave salute. “This, no-one deserves.”
Rian, remembering a hand around her ankle, looked down and away, and spotted Makepeace striding into the room. He had been thoroughly clawed, his shirt tattered, and the flesh beneath furrowed.
“Lost the thing,” he said to Princess Aerinndís. “And the winds seem to have trouble keeping hold of it.”
“There was not, this time, an immediate vanishment,” the Crown Princess said, watching dispassionately as Makepeace’s exposed wounds began to stitch themselves together. “They still have it in sight.”
“You know of this animal?” Prince Gustav asked, brightly interested. “Not a thing of Rome or of Prytennia.”
Makepeace started to speak, then stopped, grimaced, and said: “And now an excess of cats.”
The noise that came close on the heels of this statement was rough, grating, and very loud. The roar of a lioness. The power and fury caught up in that sound would surely echo across the world. Prince Gustav, looking appreciative, headed toward it, Ishi at his heels.
“Comfrey, Dama Seaforth is out of her depth,” Princess Aerinndís said. “Return her to Forest House, and then find me.”
“Highness,” Makepeace said, then added: “Don’t dawdle Wednesday.”
He followed the two royals toward the roaring, giving no indication that he’d noticed the flush so hot it left Rian dizzy. True enough, perhaps, given she was surrounded by those with considerably more power, but Rian had thought her conduct creditable enough in the situation. She had needed rescue, true, but…
Or had Princess Aerinndís’ order been meant as a rebuke for an unwanted embrace? Rian examined that thought, then lifted her chin and walked after Makepeace with all the poise she could muster. Whatever else, this was certainly not the moment to wallow.
A single hand of the Huntresses crowded among the bodies and damning evidence of the first room, three of them in lion form and still roaring, the other two likely the Pakhet and Bastet members of the hand, small women whose current silence did nothing to distract from their fury.
The noise was considerable, threat palpable, and yet Aerinndís Gwyn Lynn spoke with no more or less than her usual grave formality, while Prince Gustav looked on with all the appreciation of someone who would gain from these events, at only the small cost of one aide. Makepeace walked through without pause, and brushed past the handful of police and pyramid staff that had ventured so far as the room entrance before wisely deciding to wait.
People moved aside without looking at Makepeace—or Rian—or even asking questions. They did seem to be marginally aware of him, enough to get out of his way, but reacted without any interest. Given Makepeace’s still-healing injuries, this was quite an achievement. The power to control minds: not only the minds of vampires, but any who did not have sufficient god-touched resistance to prevent it.
A crowd had gathered out in the deepening dusk. The Huntresses, particularly the Sekhmet vampires, could not storm through London’s heart without comment. Here, Rian did see occasional reactions to the advent of a man in a shredded shirt with nearly-closed rents in his skin, but even the people who looked frowned and blinked as if they had only caught a fleeting glimpse of the unreal, and then went back to gazing avidly at the pyramid’s entrance.
Makepeace was moving toward one of the squares of trees that could be found all over London, but once they were past the crowd Rian spoke up.
“I’m going to go check on Lynsey. You don’t have to escort me back—I’ll take a taxi.”
“Interesting thought,” Makepeace said, not breaking pace. “But this night has only started, and you are still bright and shiny bait, even if someone else was the one to be eaten. That tedious creature—Wrack or Wrack’s servant—was there, where you were intended to go. Her Highness will track it wherever it runs, unless it somehow vanishes again, and we will hunt as soon as Her Highness can diplomatically shovel this Roman mess into Hildy’s lap. Wrack must know the Sulevia Sceadu’s abilities, know the only way to escape will be to avoid her until dawn, or flee over the border. If the fulgite really is so important to it, it’s barely possible it may make one last attempt. The best place for you is Forest House.”
“Did you guess? What fulgite was?”
He didn’t answer immediately. It was not until they were walking toward the centre of the pocket-sized parkland that he said: “Most ba would have moved on long ago. None of the fulgite I’ve ever handled felt like more than rock to me, bar that piece your brats have been hauling about. Something so small could not possibly house a ba, and they usually would never waste their energy trying to communicate with this world even when intact—it would be enormously difficult, and greatly impact their ability to reach the Field of Rushes. When I touched that piece, I guessed that there was a living creature involved in the production, but hadn’t taken the next step. I wonder if whoever is buying back the stolen fulgite is specifically seeking that where the ba still has some connection to the shattered form.”
Rian waited until he had taken her into the Great Forest, then told him, as unemotionally as she could manage, all that had happened before he and Princess Aerinndís had arrived.
“Double-souled?” Makepeace mused. “Or is this Wrack one of the Hungry Dead, eating a living host from within? Surely I would have felt that?”
“The woman called Min said Dane had changed since meeting the Alban,” Rian pointed out.
“True. Not likely to be one of the Hungry Dead, then. They use up their host before hopping to another. Unless it’s multiple…” He shook his head. “Either way, the hunt’s up. We’ll see what we have when we bring the bull-bear down.”