12
“I COULD JUST TAKE IT FROM YOU WHILE YOU SLEEP
dear,” the ghost said. “I was only trying to make it a gift. If you
give it as a gift, I can help you.” She looked like the sort of
woman you’d hire to watch your children, I thought. Sweet and
loving, a little complacent.
“You won’t,” I growled. And I felt a little pop of
something. Something I’d done.
Her eyes widened and she backtracked. “Of course
not, dearie. Of course not—if you don’t want me to.”
She’d tried to cover it up. But I’d done something.
I’d felt it once before, in the bathroom at Amber’s house when I’d
told the ghost to leave Chad alone. Magic. It wasn’t the magic the
fae used, or the witches, but it was magic. I could smell it.
“Tell me,” I said, trying to put some push behind
it, imitating the authority that Adam wore closer than any of his
well-tailored shirts. “How did Blackwood manage the haunting at
Amber’s house. Was it you?”
Her lips tightened in frustration, and her eyes lit
up like the vampire she had been. But she answered me. “No. It was
the boy, James’s little experiment.”
Outside of the cages and out of reach was a table
stacked with cardboard boxes. A pile of five-gallon buckets—six or
eight of them—was on one corner. They fell over with a crash and
rolled to the drain in the center of the room.
“That’s what you were,” she called in a vicious
tone that sounded wrong coming out of that grandmotherly face. “He
made you vampire and played with you until he was bored. Then he
killed you and kept playing until your body rotted away.”
Like Blackwood had done to Amber, I thought, except
he hadn’t managed to make her into a vampire before he’d turned her
into a zombie. Here and now, I told myself. Don’t waste
energy on what you can’t change just now.
The buckets quit rolling and the whole room was
silent—except for my own breathing.
She shook herself briskly. “Never fall in love,”
she told me. “It makes you weak.”
I couldn’t tell if she was talking about herself or
the dead boy or even Blackwood. But I had other things I was more
interested in. If I could just get her to answer my
questions.
“Tell me,” I said, “exactly why Blackwood wants
me.”
“You are rude, dear. Didn’t that old wolf
teach you any manners?”
“Tell me,” I said, “how Blackwood thinks to use
me.”
She hissed, showing her fangs.
I met her gaze, dominating her as if she were a
wolf. “Tell me.”
She looked away, drew herself up, and smoothed her
skirts as if she were nervous instead of angry, but I knew
better.
“He is what he eats,” she said finally, when I
didn’t back down. “He told you so. I’d never heard of it before—how
should I have known what he was doing? I thought he was feeding
from it because of the taste. But he supped its power down as he
drank its blood. Just as he will yours. So that he can use me as he
wants to.”
And she was gone.
I stared after her. Blackwood was feeding from me,
and he’d gain ... what? I drew in a breath. No. The ability
to do just what I had been doing—controlling a ghost.
If she’d stuck around, I’d have asked her a dozen
more questions. But she wasn’t the only ghost around here.
“Hey,” I said softly. “She’s gone now. You can come
out.”
He smelled a little differently than she did,
though mostly they both smelled like stale blood. It was a subtle
difference, but I could discern it when I tried. His scent had
lingered as I’d questioned the old woman, which was how I’d known
he hadn’t left.
He had been the one in Amber’s house. The one who’d
almost killed Chad.
He faded in gradually, sitting on the open cement
floor with his back toward me. He was more solid this time, and I
could see that his shirt had been hand-sewn, though it wasn’t
particularly well-done. He wasn’t from this century or the
twentieth—probably sometime in the eighteen hundreds.
He pulled a bucket free of the pile and rolled it
across the floor, away from us both, until it hit the oakman’s
empty cage. He gave me a quick, sullen look over his shoulder.
Then, staring at the remaining buckets, he said, “Are you going to
make me tell you things?”
“It was rude,” I admitted, without really
answering. If he knew something that would help me get Chad,
Corban, and me out of there in one piece, I’d do anything I needed
to. “I don’t mind being rude to someone who wants to hurt me,
though. Do you know why she wants blood?”
“With blood, freely given, she can kill people with
a touch,” he said. “It doesn’t work if she steals it—though she
might do that just for spite.” He waved a hand, and a box tipped on
its side, spilling packing peanuts on the tabletop. Five or six of
them whirled up like a miniature tornado. He lost interest, and
they fell to the ground.
“With her touch?” I asked.
“Mortal, witch, fae, or vampire: she can kill any
of them. They called her Grandmother Death when she was alive.” He
looked at me again. I couldn’t read the expression on his face.
“When she was a vampire, I mean. Even the other vampires
were scared of her. That’s how he figured out what he could
do.”
“Blackwood?”
The ghost scooted around to face me, his hand going
through the bucket he’d just been playing with. “He told me. Once,
just after it had been his turn to drink from her—she was Mistress
of his seethe—he killed a vampire with his touch.” Lesser vampires
fed from the Master or Mistress who ruled the seethe, and were fed
from in return. As they grew more powerful, they quit needing to
feed from the one who ruled the seethe. “He said he was angry and
touched this woman, and she just crumbled into dust. Just like his
Mistress could do. But a couple of days later, he couldn’t do it.
It wasn’t his turn to feed from her for a couple more weeks, so he
hired a fae-blooded prostitute—I forget what kind she was—and
drained her dry. The fae’s powers lasted longer for him. He
experimented and figured out that the longer he let them live while
he fed, the longer he could use what he’d gained from them.”
“Can he still do that?” I asked intently. “Kill
with a touch?” No wonder no one challenged him for territory.
He shook his head. “No. And she’s dead, so he can’t
borrow her talents anymore. She can still kill if he feeds her
blood. But he can’t use her now like he used to before that old
Indian man died. It’s not that she minds the killing, but she
doesn’t like to do what he wants. Especially exactly what he
wants and no more. He uses her for business, and business”—he
licked his lips as if trying to remember the exact words Blackwood
had used—“business is best conducted with precision.” He smiled,
his eyes wide and innocent. They were blue. “She prefers
bloodbaths, and she’s not above setting up the killing ground to
point to James as the killer. She did that once, before he’d
realized he wasn’t still controlling her. He was very
unhappy.”
“Blackwood had a walker,” I said, putting it
together. “And he fed from him so he could control her—the lady who
was just here.”
“Her name is Catherine. I’m John.” The boy looked
at a bucket, and it moved. “He was nice, Carson Twelve Spoons. He
talked to me sometimes and told me stories. He told me that I
shouldn’t have given myself to James, that I shouldn’t be James’s
toy. That I should let myself go to the Great Spirit. That he would
have been able to help me once.”
He smiled at me, and this time I caught a hint of
malice. “He was a bad Indian. When he was a boy, not much older
than me, he killed a man to take his horse and wallet. It made him
not able to do the things he should have been able to do. He
couldn’t tell me what to do.”
The malice freed me from the distracting pity I’d
been feeling. And I saw what I’d missed the first time I’d looked
him in the eye. And I knew the reason that this ghost was different
from any I’d seen before.
Ghosts are remnants of people who have died, what’s
left after the soul goes on. They are mostly collections of
memories given form. If they can interact, respond to outside
stimuli, they tend to be fragments of the people they had been:
obsessive fragments—like the ghosts of dogs who guard their
masters’ old graves or the ghost I’d once seen who was looking for
her puppy.
Immediately after they die, though, sometimes they
are different. I’ve seen it a couple of times at funerals, or in
the house of someone who’s just passed away. Sometimes the newly
dead keep watch over the living, as if to make sure that all is
well with them. Those are more than remnants of the people they’d
been—I can see the difference. I’ve always thought those are their
souls.
That was what I’d seen in Amber’s dead eyes. My
stomach clenched. When you die, it should be a release. It wasn’t
fair, wasn’t right, that Blackwood had somehow discovered a way to
hold them past death.
“Did Blackwood tell you to kill Chad?” I
asked.
His fists clenched. “He has everything.
Everything. Books and toys.” His voice rose as he spoke. “He has a
yellow car. Look at me. Look at me!” He was on his feet. He
stared at me with wild eyes, but when he spoke again, he whispered.
“He has everything, and I’m dead. Dead. Dead.” He disappeared
abruptly, but the buckets scattered. One of them flew up and hit
the bars of my cage and broke into chunks of tough orange plastic.
A shard hit me and cut my arm.
I wasn’t sure if that was supposed to be a yes or a
no.
Alone, I sat down on the bed and leaned against the
cold cement wall. John the Ghost knew more about walkers than I
did. I wondered if he’d told the truth: there was a moral code I
had to follow to keep my abilities—which now seemed to include some
sort of ability to control ghosts. Though, with my indifferent
success at it, I suspected it was something that you had to
practice to get right.
I tried to figure out how that talent might help me
get all of us prisoners out of there safely. I was still fretting
when I heard people coming down the stairs: visitors.
I stood up to welcome them.
The visitors were fellow prisoners. And a
zombie.
Amber was chattering away about Chad’s next
softball game as she led Corban, still obviously under thrall to
the vampire, and Chad, who was following because there was nothing
else for him to do. He had a bruise on the side of his face that he
hadn’t had when I left him in the dining room.
“Now you get a good night’s sleep,” she told them.
“Jim’s going to bed, too, as soon as he gets that fae locked back
up where he belongs. We don’t want you to be tired when it’s time
to get up and be doing.” She held the door open as if it were
something other than a cage—did she think it was a hotel
room?
Watching the zombie was like watching one of those
tapes where they take bits that someone actually said and piece
them together to make it sound like they were talking about
something else entirely. Sound bites of things Amber would have
said came out of the dead woman’s mouth with little or no relation
to what she was doing.
Corban stumbled in and stopped in the middle of the
cage. Chad ran past his mother’s animated corpse and stopped,
wide-eyed and shaking next to the bed. He was only ten, no matter
how much courage he had.
If he survived this, he’d be in therapy for years.
Assuming he could find a therapist who’d believe him. Your
mother was a what? Have some Thorazine ... Or whatever the
newest drug of choice was for the mentally ill.
“Oops,” said Amber, manically cheerful. “I almost
forgot.” She looked around and shook her head sadly. “Did you do
this, Mercy? Char always said that you both suited each other
because you were slobs at heart.” As she was talking, she gathered
up the buckets—though she didn’t bother cleaning up the broken
one—and stacked most of them where they had been. She took one and
put it inside Chad and Corban’s cage before removing the used one
in the corner. “I’ll just take this up and clean it, shall
I?”
She locked the door.
“Amber,” I said, putting force in my voice. “Give
me the key.” She was dead, right? Did she have to listen to me,
too?
She hesitated. I saw her do it. Then she gave me a
bright smile. “Naughty, Mercy. Naughty. You’ll be punished for that
when I tell Jim.”
She took the bucket and whistled when she shut the
door. I could hear her whistling all the way up the stairs. I
needed more practice, or maybe there was some trick to it.
I bowed my head and waited for Blackwood to bring
the oakman back with my arms crossed over my middle and my head
turned away from Chad. I ignored it when he rattled the cage to
catch my attention. When Blackwood came in, I didn’t want him to
find me holding Chad’s hand or talking to him or anything.
I didn’t think there was a rat’s chance in a
cattery that Blackwood would let Chad live after everything he’d
seen. But I didn’t intend to give the vampire any more reason to
hurt him. And if I lowered my guard, I’d have a hard time keeping
the fear at bay.
After a time, the oakman stumbled in the door in
front of Blackwood. He didn’t look much better than he had when
Blackwood had finished with him. The fae looked a little above four
feet tall, though he’d be taller if he were standing straight. His
arms and legs were oddly proportioned in subtle ways: legs short
and arms overlong. His neck was too short for his broad-foreheaded,
strong-jawed head.
He walked right into his cell without struggling,
as if he had fought too many times and suffered defeat. Blackwood
locked him in. Then, looking at me, the vampire tossed his key in
the air and snatched it back before it hit the ground. “I won’t be
sending Amber down with keys anymore.”
I didn’t say anything, and he laughed. “Pout all
you want, Mercy. It won’t change anything.”
Pout? I looked away. I’d show him pout.
He started for the door.
I swallowed my rage and managed to not let it choke
me. “So how did you do it?”
Vague questions are harder to ignore than specific
ones. They inspire curiosity and make your victim respond even if
he wouldn’t have talked to you at all otherwise.
“Do what?” he asked.
“Catherine and John,” I said. “They aren’t like
normal ghosts.”
He smiled, pleased I’d noticed. “I’d like to claim
some sort of supernatural powers,” he told me, then laughed because
he found himself so funny. He wiped imaginary tears of mirth from
his eyes. “But really it is their choice. Catherine is determined
to somehow avenge herself upon me. She blames me for ending her
reign of terror. John ... John loves me. He’ll never leave
me.”
“Did you tell him to kill Chad?” I asked coolly, as
if the answer were mere curiosity.
“Ah, now, that is the question.” He shrugged.
“That’s why I need you. No. He ruined my game. If he’d done as I’d
told him, you’d have brought yourself here and given yourself to me
to spare your friends. He made them run. It took me half the day to
find them. They didn’t want to come with me—and ... Well, you saw
my poor Amber.”
I didn’t want to know. Didn’t want to ask the next
question. But I needed to know what he’d done to Amber. “What did
you eat that let you make zombies?”
“Oh, she’s not a zombie,” he told me. “I’ve seen
zombies three centuries old that look almost as fresh as a day-old
corpse. They’re passed down in their families like the treasures
they are. I’m afraid I’ll have to get rid of Amber’s body in a week
or so unless I put her in the freezer. But witches need knowledge
as well as power—and they’re more trouble to keep than they are
worth. No. This is something I learned from Carson—I trust
Catherine or John told you about Carson. Interesting that one
murder left him unable to do anything with his powers, when I—who
you’ll have to trust when I tell you that I’ve done much, much
worse than a mere larcenous homicide—had no trouble using what I
took from him. Perhaps his trouble was psychosomatic, do you
think?”
“You told me how you keep Catherine and John,” I
said. “How are you keeping Amber?”
He smiled at Chad, who was standing as far from his
father as he could get. He looked fragile and scared. “She stayed
to protect her son.” He looked back at me. “Any more
questions?”
“Not right now.”
“Fine—oh, and I’ve seen to it that John won’t be
coming back to visit you anytime soon. And Catherine, I think, is
best kept away, too.” He closed the door gently behind him. The
stairs creaked under his feet as he left.
When he was gone, I said, “Oakman, do you know when
the sun goes down?”
The fae, once more sprawled on the cement floor of
his cage, turned his head to me. “Yes.”
“Will you tell me?”
There was a long pause. “I will tell you.”
Corban stumbled forward a step and swayed a little,
blinking rapidly. Blackwood had released him.
He took a deep, shaky breath, then turned urgently
to Chad and began signing.
“I don’t know how much Chad caught of what’s going
on ... too much. Too much. But ignorance might get him
killed.”
It took me a second to realize he was talking to
me—his whole body was focused on his son. When he was finished,
Chad—who still was keeping a lot of space between them—began to
sign back.
While watching his son’s hands, Corban asked me,
“How much do you know about vampires? Do we have any chance of
getting out of here?”
“Mercy will grant me freedom this Harvest season,”
said the oakman hoarsely. In English this time.
“I will if I can,” I told him. “But I don’t know
that it’ll happen.”
“The oak told me,” he said, as if that should make
it as real as if it had already happened. “It is not a terribly old
tree, but it was very angry with the vampire, so it stretched
itself. I hope it has not... doneitselfpermanentharm.” His words
tumbled over each other and lost consonants. He turned his head
away from me and sighed wearily.
“Are oaks so trustworthy?” I asked.
“Used to be,” he told me. “Once.”
When he didn’t say anything more, I told Corban the
most important part of what I knew about the monster who held us.
“You can kill a vampire with a wooden stake through the heart, or
by cutting off his head, drowning him in holy water—which is
impractical unless you have a swimming pool and a priest who will
bless it—direct sunlight, or fire. I’m told it’s better if you
combine a couple of methods.”
“What about garlic?”
I shook my head. “Nope. Though a vampire I know
told me that given a victim who smells like garlic and one that
doesn’t, most of them will pick the one who doesn’t. Not that we
have access to garlic or wooden stakes.”
“I know about the sunlight—who doesn’t? But it
doesn’t seem to affect Blackwood.”
I nodded toward the oakman. “Apparently he is able
to steal some of the abilities of those he drinks from.” No way was
I going to talk about blood exchanges with Chad watching. “The
oakmen like this gentleman here feed from sunlight—so Blackwood
gained an immunity to the sun.”
“And blood,” said the oakman. “In the old days we
were given blood sacrifices to keep the trees happy.” He sighed.
“Feeding me blood is how he keeps me alive when this cold-iron cell
would kill me.”
Ninety-three years he’d been a prisoner of
Blackwood’s. The thought chilled any optimism that had survived the
ride here from the Tri-Cities. The oakman wasn’t mated to a
werewolf, though—or bound to a vampire.
“Have you ever killed one?” the oakman asked.
I nodded. “One with help and another one who was
hampered because it was daytime and he was sleeping.”
I didn’t think that was the answer he’d been
expecting.
“I see. Do you think you can kill this one?”
I turned around pointedly, looking at the bars. “I
don’t seem to be doing so well at that. No stake, no swimming pool
of holy water, no fire—” And now that I’d said that, I noticed that
there was very little that was even flammable here. Chad’s bedding,
our clothes ... and that was it.
“You can put me down as something else that won’t
be of any use,” Corban said, bitterly. “I couldn’t even stop myself
from kidnapping you.”
“That Taser was one of Blackwood’s
developments?”
“Not a Taser—Taser’s a brand name. Blackwood sells
his stun gun to ... certain government agencies who want to
question prisoners without showing any harm. It’s a lot hotter than
anything Taser makes. Not legal for the civilian market but—” He
sounded proud of it—proud and slick, as if presenting the product
at a sales meeting. He stopped himself, and said simply, “I’m
sorry.”
“Not your fault,” I told him. I looked at Chad, who
still seemed thoroughly spooked. “Hey, why don’t you translate for
me a minute.”
“Okay.” Corban looked at his son, too. “Let me tell
him what I’m doing.” He wiggled his hands, then said, “Go.”
“Blackwood’s a vampire,” I told Chad. “What that
means is that your father can’t do anything but follow Blackwood’s
orders—it’s part of what a vampire does. I’m a little protected for
the same reason I can see ghosts and talk to them. That’s the only
reason he hasn’t done the same thing to me ... yet. You’ll know
when your father’s being controlled, though. Blackwood doesn’t like
your dad signing to you—he can’t read sign. So if your dad’s not
signing to you, that’s one thing to look for. And your dad fights
his control, and you can see that in his shoulders—”
I broke off because Chad began gesturing wildly,
his fingers exaggerating all the movements. His equivalent of
yelling, I supposed.
Corban didn’t translate what Chad said, but he
signed very slowly so he wouldn’t be misunderstood and spoke his
words out loud when he answered. “Of course I’m your father. I held
you in my arms the day you were born and sat vigil in the hospital
when you almost died the next day. You are mine. I’ve earned the
right to be your dad. Blackwood wants you alone and afraid. He’s a
bully and feeds on misery as much as blood. Don’t let him
win.”
Chad’s bottom jaw went first, but before I saw
tears, his face was hidden against Corban.
It wasn’t the best time for Amber to come in.
“It’s hot upstairs,” she announced. “I’m to sleep
down here with you.”
“Do you have the key?” I asked. Not that I expected
Blackwood to have forgotten. Mostly I just wanted to keep her
attention and let Chad, who hadn’t noticed her, have his moment
with his dad.
She laughed. “No, silly. Jim was not very happy
with you—I’m not going to help you escape. I’ll just sleep out
here. It’ll be quite comfortable. Just like camping out.”
“Come here,” I said. I didn’t know that it would
work. I didn’t know anything.
But she came. I didn’t know if she was compelled,
or just following my request.
“What do you need?” She stopped within an easy
arm’s reach.
I put my arm through the bars and held out my hand.
She looked at it a moment, but took it.
“Amber,” I said solemnly, looking into her eyes.
“Chad will be safe. I promise.”
She nodded earnestly. “I’ll take care of
him.”
“No.” I swallowed and then put authority in my
voice. “You’re dead, Amber.” Her expression didn’t change. I
narrowed my eyes at her in my best Adam imitation. “Believe
me.”
First her face lit up with that horrible fake
smile, and she started to say something. She looked down at my
hand, then over to Corban and Chad—who hadn’t noticed her
yet.
“You’re dead,” I told her, again.
She collapsed where she stood. It wasn’t graceful
or gentle. Her head bounced off the floor with a hollow
sound.
“Can he take her again?” asked Corban
urgently.
I knelt and closed her eyes. “No,” I told him with
more conviction than I felt. Who knew what Blackwood could do? But
her husband needed to believe it was over for her. At any rate, it
wouldn’t be Amber who walked around in her body. Amber was
gone.
“Thank you,” he told me, with tears in his eyes. He
wiped his face and tapped Chad on the shoulder.
“Hey, kid,” he said, and he stepped away so Chad
could see Amber’s body. They talked for a long time then. Corban
played it tough and gave his son the gift of the belief in the
superman qualities of fathers for at least one more day.
We slept, all of us, as far from Amber’s body as we
could get. They pushed the bed up close to my cell and the two of
them slept on that and I slept on the floor next to them. Chad
reached though the bars and kept a hand on my shoulder. The cell
floor could have been a bed of nails, and I would still have
slept.
“MERCY?”
The voice was unfamiliar—but so was the cement
under my cheek. I stirred and regretted it immediately. Everything
hurt.
“Mercy, it is dark, and Blackwood will be here
soon.”
I sat up and looked across the room at the oakman.
“Good evening.” I didn’t use his name. Some of the fae can be funny
about names, and the way Blackwood had overused it made me think
that the oakman was one of those. I couldn’t thank him, and I
searched for a way to acknowledge his honoring my request, but I
didn’t find one.
“I’m going to try something,” I said finally. I
closed my eyes and called to Stefan. When I felt I’d done as good a
job at that as I could, I opened my eyes and rubbed my aching
neck.
“What are you trying to do?” Corban asked.
“I can’t tell you,” I said. “I’m very sorry. But
Blackwood can’t know-and I’m not sure it worked.” But I thought so.
I never had been able to feel Stefan like I did Adam. If Blackwood
hadn’t managed to take me over ... yet ... that should mean Stefan
could still hear me. I hoped.
I tried touching Adam, too. But I couldn’t feel
anything from him or the pack. It was probably just as well.
Blackwood had said he was ready for werewolves, and I believed
him.
Blackwood didn’t come down. We all tried not to
notice Amber, and I was grateful for the coolness of the basement.
The ghosts didn’t show up either. We talked about vampires until
I’d told them everything I knew in general—only leaving out the
names.
Stefan also did not come.
After hours of tedium and a few minutes of
embarrassment when someone had to use the buckets left for us, I
finally tried to sleep again. I dreamed of sheep. Lots of
sheep.
SOMEWHERE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NEXT DAY I
REGRETTED that I had not eaten the food Amber had prepared. But I
was more thirsty than anything. The fairy staff showed up once, and
I told it to go away and be safe, speaking softly so no one would
notice. When I glanced back at the corner it had been in, it was
gone again.
Chad taught me and the oakman how to swear in ASL
and worked with us until we were pretty good at finger spelling. It
left my hands aching, but kept him occupied.
We knew that Blackwood was paying attention to us
again when Corban stopped in the middle of a sentence. After a few
minutes he turned his head, and Blackwood opened the door.
The vampire looked at me without favor. “And where
do you suppose I’m going to find another cook for you?” He took the
body away and returned a few hours later with apples and oranges
and bottled water—tossing them carelessly through the bars.
His hands smelled of Amber, rot, and earth. I
supposed he’d buried her somewhere.
He took Corban away. When Chad’s father returned,
he was stumblingly weak and had another bite mark on his
neck.
“My friend is better at that than you are,” I said
in a snotty voice because Blackwood had paused, with the cage door
open, to look at Chad. “He doesn’t leave huge bruises
behind.”
The vampire slammed the door, locked it, and stowed
the key in his pants pocket. “Whenever you open your mouth,” he
said, “I marvel that the Marrok didn’t wring your neck years ago.”
He smiled a little. “Fine. Since you are the cause of my hunger,
you may feed it.”
The cause of his hunger ... when I sent Amber away
from her dead body, it must have hurt him. Good. Now all I had to
do was get him to make a lot more zombies or whatever he wanted to
call them. Then I could destroy them, too. I might weaken him
enough that we could take him. Of course, the nearest available
people to become zombies were us.
He opened my cage door, and I had to think really
hard about the present not to panic. I fought him. I didn’t think
he’d expected it.
Years of karate had honed my reflexes, and I was
faster than a human would have been. But I was weak—an apple a day
might keep the doctor away, but it’s not, by itself, the best diet
for optimum performance. After a time that was too short for my ego
to be happy, he had me pinned.
He left me aware this time when he bit my neck. It
hurt the whole time, either a further punishment or Stefan’s bites
were giving him trouble—I didn’t know enough to tell. When he tried
to feed me in return, I fought as hard as I could and finally he
grabbed my jaw and forced his gaze on me.
I woke up on the far side of the cage, and
Blackwood was gone. Chad was making noise, trying to get my
attention. I rose to hands and knees. When it was quite clear that
I wasn’t going to get up farther than that, I sat up instead of
standing. Chad stopped making those sad, desperate sounds. I made
the sign he’d taught me for the “f-word” and finger-spelled, very
slowly with clumsy fingers. “That’s it. No more Ms. Nice Girl. Next
time I scalp him.”
It made him smile a very little. Corban was sitting
in the middle of their cage looking at a mark in the cement.
“Well, oakman,” I said, tiredly. “Is it daylight or
darkness?”
Before he answered me, Stefan was there in my cage.
I blinked stupidly at him. I’d given up on him, but I hadn’t
realized it until he was there. I reached out and touched his arm
lightly to make sure he was real.
He patted my hand and gave a quick look up as if he
could see through the ceiling to the floor above. “He knows I’m
here. Mercy—”
“You have to take Chad,” I told him urgently
“Chad?” Stefan followed my gaze and stiffened. He
started to shake his head.
“Blackwood killed his mother—but left her a zombie
to do his chores until I killed her for real.” I told him. “Chad
has to be taken to safety.”
He stared at the boy, who was staring back. “If I
take him, I can’t come back for a couple of nights. I’ll be
unconscious, and no one knows where you are but me—and Marsilia.”
He bit her name out as if he still weren’t happy with her. “And she
wouldn’t lift a finger to help you.”
“I can survive a couple of nights,” I told him with
conviction.
Stefan clenched his hands. “If I do it,” he told me
fiercely, “if I do this and you survive—you will forgive me for the
others.”
“Yes,” I said. “Get Chad out of here.”
He was gone, then reappeared standing next to Chad.
He started to use ASL to say something—but we both heard Blackwood
race down the stairs.
“To Adam or Samuel,” I said urgently.
“Yes,” Stefan told me. “Stay alive.”
He waited until I nodded, then he disappeared with
Chad.
BLACKWOOD WAS MUCH MORE UNHAPPY ABOUT STEFAN’S
presence in his house than he was with Chad’s escape. He ranted and
raved, and if he hit me again, I was worried I might not be able to
keep my promise to Stefan.
Apparently he came to the same conclusion. He stood
looking down at me. “There are ways to keep other vampires out of
my home. But they are taxing, and I expect that your friend Corban
won’t survive my thirst.” He bent forward. “Ah, now you are
frightened. Good.” He inhaled like a wine taster with a
particularly fine vintage.
He left.
I curled up on the floor and hugged my misery to
me—along with the fairy staff. The oakman stirred.
“Mercy, what is it that you have?”
I raised one hand and waved it feebly in the air so
he could see it. It didn’t hurt as much as I thought it
should.
There was a little pause, and the Oakman said,
reverently, “How did that come to be here?”
“It’s not my fault,” I told him. It took me a
moment to sit up ... and I realized that Blackwood had been much
more in control of himself than he appeared because nothing was
broken. There wasn’t much of me that wasn’t bruised—but not broken
was good.
“What do you mean?” the oakman asked.
“I tried to give it back,” I explained, “but it
keeps showing up. I told it that this wasn’t a good place for it,
but it leaves for a while, then comes back.”
“By your leave,” he said formally, “may I see
it?”
“Sure,” I said, and tried to throw it to him. I
should have been able to do it. The distance between our cages was
less than ten feet, but the ... bruises made it more difficult than
normal.
It landed on the floor halfway between us. But as I
stared at it in dismay, it rolled back toward me, not stopping
until it was against the cage bars.
The third time I threw it, the oakman caught it out
of the air.
“Ah, Lugh, you did such fine work,” he crooned,
petting the thing. He rested a cheek against it. “It follows you
because it owes you service, Mercy.” He smiled, awakening lines and
wrinkles in the dark-wood-colored face and brightening his black
eyes to purple. “And because it likes you.”
I started to say something to him, but a surge of
magic interrupted me.
The oakman’s smile drained away. “Brownie magic,”
he told me. “He seeks to lock the other vampire out. The brownie
was His before me, and she found her release just this past spring.
His use of her power is still nearly complete.” He looked over at
Corban. “The magic he works will leave him hungry.”
I had one thing I could do—and it meant abandoning
my word to Stefan. But I couldn’t let Blackwood kill Corban without
making any attempt to defend him.
I stripped out of my clothes and shifted.
The bars in my cage were set close together. But, I hoped, not too
close.
Coyotes are narrow side to side. Very narrow.
Anything I can get my head through, I can get everything else
through, too. When I stood on the other side of my cage, I shook my
fur straight and watched the door open.
Blackwood wasn’t watching for me, he was looking at
Corban. So I got in the first strike.
Speed is the one physical power I have. I’m as fast
as most werewolves—and from what I’ve seen, most vampires,
too.
I should have been weakened and a little slow
because of the damage Blackwood had dealt me—and the lack of real
food and because I’d been feeding the vampire. Except that
exchanging blood with a vampire can have other effects. I’d
forgotten that. It made me strong.
I wished, fiercely, that I weighed a couple of
hundred pounds instead of just over thirty. Wished for longer fangs
and sharper claws—because all I could do was surface damage he
healed almost as soon as I inflicted it.
He grabbed me in both hands and threw me at the
cement wall. It seemed as though I flew in slow motion. There was
time to twist and hit on my feet instead of my side as he’d
intended. There was power to vault off unhurt and hit the ground,
already running back to attack.
This time, though, I didn’t have surprise on my
side. If I’d been running from him, he couldn’t have caught me. But
up close, the advantage of superior speed lost out to the
disadvantage of my size. I hurt him once, digging my fangs into his
shoulder, but I was looking for a kill—and there was just no way a
coyote, no matter how fast or strong, could kill a vampire.
I dodged back, looking for an opening ... and he
fell face-first on the cement floor. Standing like a victory flag,
stuck deep into Blackwood’s back, was the walking stick.
“Fair spearman was I once,” the oakman said. “And
Lugh was better still. Nothing he built but what couldn’t become a
spear when needed.”
Panting, I stared at him, then down at Blackwood.
Who wiggled.
I shifted back to human because I could deal with
doors better that way. Then I ran for the kitchen where, hopefully,
there would be a knife big enough to go through bone.
The wooden block beside the sink yielded both a
butcher knife and a large French chef’s knife. I grabbed one in
each hand and ran down the stairs.
The door was shut and the knob wouldn’t turn. “Let
me in,” I ordered in a voice I hardly recognized as mine.
“No. No,” said John’s voice. “You can’t kill him.
I’ll be alone.”
But the door opened, and that was all I cared
about.
I didn’t see John, but Catherine was kneeling
beside Blackwood. She spared a glare for me, but she was paying
more attention to the dying (I fervently hoped) vampire.
“Let me drink, dear,” she crooned to him. “Let me
drink, and I’ll take care of her for you.”
He looked at me as he tried to get his arms
underneath him. “Drink,” he said. Then he smiled at me.
With a crow of triumph she bent her head.
She was still drinking when the butcher knife
swooshed through her insubstantial head and cut cleanly through
Blackwood’s neck. An axe would have been better, but with his
strength still lingering in my arms, the butcher knife got the job
done. A second cut took his head completely off.
His head touched my toes, and I edged them away. A
knife in either hand, I had no chance to feel triumphant or sick at
what I’d done. Not with a very solid Catherine smiling her
grandmotherly smile only six feet from me.
She smiled, her mouth red with Blackwood’s blood.
“Die,” she said, and reached out—
Last year Sensei spent six months on sai forms. The
knives weren’t so well-balanced for fighting, but they worked. It
was a butcher’s job I made of it—and I managed it only by clinging
fiercely to the here and now. The floors, the walls, and I were all
drenched in blood. And she wasn’t dead ... or rather she was dead
already. The knives kept her off me, but none of the wounds seemed
to affect her at all.
“Throw me the stick,” said the oakman softly.
I dropped the French chef’s knife and grabbed the
staff with my free hand. It slid out of Blackwood’s back as if it
didn’t want to be there. For a moment I thought that the end was a
sharp point, but my attention was focused on Catherine and I
couldn’t be sure.
I tossed it to the Oakman and drove Catherine away
from Corban’s cage. He’d collapsed when I’d cut off Blackwood’s
head in a motion not unlike Amber’s zombie. I hoped he wasn’t
dead—but there wasn’t anything I could do about it if he was.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the oakman lick
the blood-covered stick with a tongue at least eight inches long.
“Death blood is best,” he told me. And then he flung the stick at
the outside wall, and said a word ...
The blast knocked me off my feet and onto
Blackwood’s corpse. Something hit me in the back of the head.
I STARED AT THE POOL OF SUNLIGHT THAT COVERED MY
hand. It took me a moment to realize that whatever had hit me must
have knocked me out. Under my hand was a thick pile of ash, and I
jerked away. Buried in the ash was a key. It was a pretty key, one
of those ornate skeleton keys. It took all my willpower to put my
hand back into what had been Blackwood and pick it up. I hurt from
head to heels, but the bruises the vampire had inflicted after Chad
escaped were mostly gone. And the others were fading as I
watched.
I didn’t want to think about that too much.
The oakman had a hand stretched though the bars,
but he hadn’t been able to touch the sunlight streaming into the
basement from the hole he’d blasted in the wall with my walking
stick. His eyes were closed.
I opened the cage, but he didn’t move. I had to
drag him out. I didn’t pay attention to whether or not he was
breathing. Or I tried very hard not to. So what if he wasn’t, I
thought. Fae are very hard to kill.
“Mercy?” It was Corban.
I stared at him a moment, trying to figure out what
to do next.
“Could you unlock my door?” His voice was soft and
gentle. The sort of voice you’d use on a madwoman.
I looked down at myself and realized that I was
naked and covered with blood from head to toe. The butcher knife
was still in my left hand. My hand had cramped around it, and I had
to work to drop it on the floor.
The key unlocked Corban’s door, too.
“Chad’s with some friends of mine,” I told him. My
voice slurred a bit, and I recognized that I was a little shocky.
The realization helped me a little, and my voice was clearer when I
told him, “The kinds of friends who might be able to protect a boy
from a vampire run amok.”
“Thank you,” he said. “You were unconscious a long
time. How are you feeling?”
I gave him a tired smile. “My head hurts.”
“Let’s get you cleaned up.”
He led me up the stairs. I didn’t think that I
should have grabbed my clothes until I stood alone in a huge,
gold-and-black bathroom. I turned the shower on.
“John,” I said. I didn’t bother looking for him
because I could feel him. “You will never harm anyone again.” I
felt the push of magic that told me whatever it was I could do to
ghosts had worked on him. So I added, “And get out of this
bathroom,” for good measure.
I scrubbed myself raw and wrapped myself in a towel
big enough for three of me. When I came out, Corban was pacing in
the hall in front of the bathroom.
“Who do you call about something like this?” he
asked. “It doesn’t look good. Blackwood is missing; Amber is
dead—probably buried in the backyard. I’m a lawyer, and if I were
my own client, I’d advise myself to avoid trial, plead guilty, and
do reduced time if I could get it.”
He was scared.
It finally occurred to me that we’d survived.
Blackwood and his sweet grandmotherly vampire ghost were gone. Or
at least I hoped she was gone. There wasn’t a second pile of ashes
in the basement.
“Did you notice the other vampire?” I asked
him.
He gave me a blank look. “Other vampire?”
“Never mind,” I told him. “I expect the sunlight
killed her.”
I got up and found a phone on a small table in the
corner of the living room. I dialed Adam’s cell phone.
“Hey,” I said. It sounded like I’d been smoking
cigars all night.
“Mercy?” And I knew I was safe.
I sat on the floor. “Hey.” I said again.
“Chad told us where you are,” he told me. “We’re
about twenty minutes away.”
“Chad told you?” Stefan would still be unconscious,
I’d known. It just hadn’t occurred to me that Chad could tell them
where we were. Stupid me. All he’d have needed was a piece of
paper.
“Chad’s all right?” asked Corban urgently.
“Fine,” I told him. “And he’s leading the cavalry
here.”
“It sounds like we’re not needed,” said Adam.
I needed him.
“Blackwood is dead,” I told Adam.
“I thought so, since you are calling me,” Adam
said.
“If it weren’t for the oakman, it might have been
bad,” I told him. “And I think the oakman is dead.”
“All honor to him, then,” said Samuel’s voice. “To
die killing one of the dark-bound evils is not a bad thing, Mercy.
Chad asks after his father.”
I wiped my face and gathered my thoughts. “Tell
Chad he’s fine. We’re both fine.” I watched bruises fade from my
legs. “Could you ... could you stop at a convenience store and buy
a yellow toy car for me? Bring it with you when you come?”
There was a little pause. “A yellow toy car?” asked
Adam.
“That’s right.” I remembered something else. “Adam,
Corban’s worried that the police will think he’s killed Amber-and
probably Blackwood, though there won’t be any body.”
“Trust me,” said Adam. “We’ll fix it for
everyone.”
“All right,” I told him. “Thank you.” And then I
thought a little more. “The vampires will want Chad and Corban
gone. They know too much.”
“You and Stefan and the pack are the only ones who
know that,” said Adam. “The pack doesn’t care, and Stefan won’t
betray them.”
“Hey,” I told him lightly—pressing the handset into
my face until it almost hurt. “I love you.”
“I’ll be there.”
I LEFT CORBAN SITTING IN THE LIVING ROOM AND
WALKED reluctantly down the stairs. I didn’t want to know for sure
that the oakman was dead. I didn’t want to confront Catherine if
she was still about ... and I thought she would have killed me if
she could have. But I also didn’t want to be naked when Adam
came.
The oakman was gone. I decided that it must be a
good thing. The fae didn’t—as far as I knew—turn into dust and blow
away when they died. So if he wasn’t here, that meant he’d
left.
“Thank you,” I whispered because he wasn’t there to
hear me. Then I put my clothes on and ran up the stairs to wait for
rescue with Corban.
When Adam came, he had the yellow car I’d asked him
for. It was a one-sixteenth scale model of a VW bug. He watched as
I took it out of the package and followed me down the stairs and
set it on the bed in the small room where I’d first woken up.
“It’s for you,” I said.
No one answered me.
“Are you going to tell me what that was about?”
Adam asked as we went back upstairs.
“Sometime,” I told him. “When we’re telling ghost
stories around a campfire, and I want to scare you.”
He smiled, and his arm tightened around my
shoulders. “Let’s go home.”
I closed my hand on the lamb necklace I’d found on
the table next to the phone, as if someone had left it for me to
find.