Then, in almost the same instant, she felt three dull blows inside her head — like a hammer striking softly, without pain.
On the third strike, a door opened.
And Lyssa found herself in her mother’s memories, breathing her mother’s last breaths.
This was her blood.
Chapter Nineteen
Three knocks inside his skull. Eddie felt them like knuckles made of thunder as he struggled to watch Nikola through that terrible distraction.
But it was impossible. His vision wavered, cut with threads of crimson light, and inside his head he heard a sinuous voice whisper:
Do not be afraid. You are in her blood. You are of us now, forever. Dragon bound.
And there are things you must see.
Eddie choked, trying to breathe, but the air was sucked out of his lungs with terrifying force. He found himself falling into a terrible darkness. The only thing he could feel was Lyssa’s hand in his, but even that became fluid and hard to hold.
Until, suddenly, the world shifted again—
— and he found himself kneeling in snow, naked and bleeding, staring at a sobbing girl with golden eyes. Her hands and feet were bound, two obsidian blades digging into her throat. Two women, holding her down, laughing and nuzzling her soft hair as she stared at him with eyes that showed a blistered, burning soul.
Lyssa, he thought, fighting to reach her — but he was bound in place, an iron collar around his throat.
“Let her go,” he said, but it was a woman’s voice that left his mouth, low and quivering with fury. “Let her go. You promised.”
“I lied,” murmured a soft voice. “Blood murders blood. That is how it works. You know this better than anyone.”
“Your mother deserved to die,” Eddie said. “She was a monster.”
“But she was mine.” Pain flashed against his back, making him stiffen with a gasp. In almost the same instant, a hot tongue raced across the wound — and he felt part of himself drift away as though tugged by a string. “Just as you will be mine. . and your daughter and husband, as well.”
“No,” he said, just as the blade sunk through his back, barely missing his heart.
The pain was beyond words — but not as terrible as seeing Lyssa’s tortured gaze — or hearing her scream for him.
For her mother, he realized, and suddenly he could feel her hand again in his, clutched so tight he barely knew where one began and the other ended. Lyssa’s scream clawed through him, changing in pitch from young girl to woman, and in his mind Eddie squeezed her hand until he thought it would break, pulling with all his strength until a hard, warm presence slammed against him — and fire exploded behind his eyes.
When he could see again, he was back in his own body, crouched on the floor beside Lyssa. Hands clutched, white-knuckled, fingernails drawing blood from one another. His head throbbed, lights dancing in his vision, but when he looked up, he saw Nikola staring with hunger and fear.
I’m on fire, he realized dimly, noting the flames crawling up his arms as though far away, distant as a star. Lyssa was burning, too, the claws of her right hand flickering with a golden light that licked the air with threads of hungry fire.
Eddie tried to stand, dragging her with him. From the corner of his eye, he sensed Nikola take a step toward them — and without thinking, he set her jacket on fire.
She screamed, twisting wildly to tear off the burning red leather. Eddie hauled Lyssa across the room, following bloodstained tracks on the floor — guessing, hoping, that it would lead them where they needed to go.
Namely, to where Jimmy’s mother was being held. Though he hoped fervently that the blood wasn’t hers.
Lyssa choked down sobs as they ran. Part of Eddie was still inside that vision, and each time her voice broke inside her throat, some of his heart broke with her. Fire skipped down her body, crossing their joined hands and riding up his arm. Fire shimmered in the air. Fire, in his blood. Rising, rising into an explosion. Not yet, but soon. His control was fraying. No calm. Nothing but thunder in his head and the feeling of a knife stabbing his back.
His life, licked away by a hungry tongue.
No, not his life, he reminded himself. Lyssa’s mother.
“Down,” whispered Lyssa, surprising him. Her tears still flowed, but there was a look in her eyes that was a pure stubbornness, and that eased some of the tightness in his chest that was making it so difficult to breathe.
“Basement?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said, and gave him a searing look. “You were there in my mind. I could feel you.”
He knew what she was referring to. “Yes.”
She looked away, wiping her running nose. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“My mother was a good person,” she replied, which under different circumstances might have seemed like a random response — but in this case made sense. Especially given what he knew: truths he had figured out for himself, on top of what Lannes had told him.
“She loved you,” he said.
“She gave herself up for me. And my father.” Lyssa shot him a pained look. “I couldn’t save her.”
Eddie knew there was more to it than that, but there was nothing he could say to comfort her. He hadn’t saved his sister. No words or sympathy would ever lessen the pain.
Ahead of them, the blood-sticky tracks led to a massive oak door that stood partially open. Stairs on the other side. Lyssa inhaled deeply, closing her eyes. Light leaked from beneath her lids.
“This is it,” she said, trembling. “I need to tell you something. About what I am.”
“No,” he replied, nudging her aside as he peered down the stairs. “You really don’t.”
Empty stairwell. No sounds. Eddie didn’t trust it. This had been a trap from the start, and nothing would change that. On the other hand, he had the feeling that both of them were wanted alive. No one went to this much trouble to play mind games — literal and otherwise — just to put a bullet in someone’s head.
Down the stairs, silently. Breathing controlled, and soft. Lyssa stayed behind him, her back pressed to the wall. No more tears. Nothing but cold, sharp stone in her eyes.
They still held hands: wrapped together, anchored. Heat between their palms. Fire, building in their tangled fingers. Eddie wasn’t certain he could have let go, even had he wanted.
Bloody footprints covered the stairs. A trail that led to a dark hall with a stone floor and rough rock in the walls, lit in intervals by track lights that hung from the ceiling. The air was cool and held a scent that reminded Eddie of caves he had explored with his friends: a vein inside a hill always had its own scent, like air was blood and the earth the flesh.
Lyssa pulled back on his hand. “I hear pain.”
Pain. Eddie studied the hall ahead of them, which curved. “What kind of pain?”
“The cutting kind,” she murmured, and edged ahead of him with her right hand held up, palm out, clawed fingers flexing as though she was feeling the air.
It wasn’t until they were around the curve in the hall that he heard the whimpers.
There was a door in front of him, standing ajar. It was as if seeing it opened his other senses: He could hear pain, he could smell blood. He didn’t want Lyssa anywhere near those things.
Not up to you, he told himself, beginning to sweat. She needs to do this.
And he needed to watch her back. No blade was going to touch her. Not while he was breathing. Her mother’s stabbing still made his shoulders tingle, and the idea of anyone doing that to her—