Briar Queen (41 page)

Lot went for Finn.

Jack, all Jack now, pulled the knife from his chest and leaped over the table. Cake and shards of porcelain scattered. The wolves caught him. He snarled as they wrestled him to the ground.

And as Finn tried to reach her sister, Lot seized Finn by the nape of her neck. “And what is this?”

She cried out as he drew from her hair the fragile form of the moth. He began to close his fingers around the frantically fluttering insect. “This was your secret weapon? How predic—”

“
Don't,
” Finn said, desperate to keep him from killing Moth. “I'll
stay with you—
”

“Too late.” His smile was all teeth.

She cried out as he crushed the moth. Glittering dust spiraled from his fingers, drifting above their heads. Anna pushed to her feet, reaching up. “He's still here.”

Before Lot could get hold of her again, Finn leaped onto the table, scattering goblets and plates as she ran, following the shimmering cloud of moth wing fragments. She stood on tiptoe, felt the fragments drift across her lips like electric pollen, shivered as a current ran through her, leaving her breathless. She whispered, “Alexander Nightshade . . .
come back to me
.”

As she was hauled, kicking, down from the table by two female Fatas, she saw the cloudy night sky through the crack in the ceiling. Then the world righted itself.

The tiny cloud of moth remnants ignited, speared down—and Moth crashed into existence, crouched amid the devastated feast, the hem of his coat sweeping over the table. As he yanked the jackal-hilted sword from the strap across his back, candlelight glistened along its blade of silvered iron. Seth Lot shouted as the young man rose and ran toward him down the length of the table, porcelain and glass crunching beneath his boots.

In the chaos that followed, Jack broke free of the wolves and Finn struggled against the Fatas hauling her away. Jack vaulted across the table, swung Anna to Lily's side, and went after the wolves holding Finn. Two big Fatas in fur coats stepped in his way.

Twisting in the grip of her captors, Finn saw shadows begin to writhe around
Seth Lot, until he was completely obscured. She glimpsed something monstrous moving in that darkness and screamed a warning to Moth as he made his way through the wolves, toward Lot.

While Jack and Moth fought the wolves, Finn clawed and kicked at the two who held her.

One of the wolves was torn from her. She wrenched free of the other and turned to see Hip Hop in her cowled coat aiming an ivory pistol at the remaining wolf. As Finn backed away with Hip Hop, the Rook's hood fell back—revealing, not Hip Hop, but the scarred face of a young woman who resembled . . . Finn whispered, “Who . . . ?”

“I'm Jill Scarlet. Go!”

Finn turned and ran—

A black mass so cold it stopped her breath fell over her, entangling her limbs with an icy grip, lifting her. She couldn't even scream as she was flung—

—she hit the ground and uncurled in a gloomy corridor. She lay there, shaking and glazed with cold sweat. Nausea and fear wrenched through her in a convulsive shiver.

The tentacled darkness churned back into the shape of Seth Lot. He strode to her and dragged her to her feet.

“
Lot
.” Looking like a prince of hell, Jack stepped into the corridor.

Lot hooked an arm around Finn's throat and yanked her back against him. She felt the fur of his coat prick against her neck, flinched as sharp nails caressed the pulse beneath her left ear. Lot said, “Let's see if you can get to her before I tear her open.”

Jack raised the ivory pistol the young woman called Jill Scarlet had carried, a Fata weapon shaped into a leaping hound. “Silver bullets coated with wolfsbane, Lot. They'll hurt.”

“Jack.” Lot sounded disapproving. “You're cheating.”

Finn slammed a heel into Lot's right foot. He growled and tightened his grip, but she braced her other foot against the wall and pushed with all her might. She slid down, felt a sharp burn across her cheek from his nails, heard the crack of a gunshot. Lot released her.

Jack shouted her name as she launched herself toward him.

Lot, bleeding darkness from where the bullet had grazed the left side of his face, seized her wrist. She shouted as she felt a bone snap, and fell to one knee in agony.

Lot whipped the sword from his walking stick and speared it at Jack.

The blade struck Jack in the chest, exactly where his heart still beat, but it was Finn who made a faint, wounded sound as Jack collapsed, the pistol clattering across the floor. Lot said, in a voice rich with satisfaction, “I thought I'd taught you better, Jack—never bring a gun to a swordfight.”

Jack clutched the sword in his chest. Blood trickled from a corner of his mouth.

Lot smiled down at Finn. Then he walked away, snatching up the ivory pistol and snapping it in half, scattering the bullets, before leaving them. When she heard him call, “
Li . . . ly . . .”
she staggered to her feet, cradling her wrist.

Jack raised his head. “Go. Moth will help . . . I'll follow in a sec—”

“Jack . . .”

“Go!”

Torn, she rushed to him, but he pushed her away. “He'll kill your sister. Go to Moth!”

She stumbled back, turned, and ran.

THE SWORD HAD PIERCED HIS HEART.

Jack clutched the hilt, cried out as he pulled the blade from him and felt the mortal blood leaving him in hot, pulsing streams.
No. I'm not human. I am already dead. This can't kill me
.

There was a shadow beneath him. His heart had stopped pumping. He was as cold as night and nothing.

“Not yet,” he gasped as his shadow rose before him, saturating the air with cold. Eyes as burning and bright as the sun glowed in the shadow's jackal head. Dozens of wings seemed to flutter and thump and rustle behind it. What he had made a deal with in Rowan Cruithnear's garden had come for him. At last.

He raised his head. “Not yet. Let me save her first. And then you'll have me.”

SETH LOT HAD FOUND LILY
and was dragging her up a flight of stairs, away from the mayhem around the feast table. Finn raced after them with only a steak knife in her good hand—her other wrist still hurt with a jagged, grinding
pain. Lot was heading for an arch shaped like a face with a gaping mouth. Beyond, she saw an otherworldly forest cast in the violet glow of a primeval night, the leaves of the trees flickering with orbs—the Ghostlands.

“
Finn!
” Lily tore away from Lot. He slammed her against a stone pillar and she crumpled to the floor.

Then he strode toward Finn. “I will make you fear me every moment of your life, Serafina Sullivan, for what you did to my Reiko.”

“I didn't kill Reiko.”

“You caused a beautiful, divine girl who had walked the earth for ages to
burn
. You snuffed out the life of a
goddess
.”

“She wasn't a goddess. She was a
monster
.” Finn backed away, hit a wall. She slashed at him with the steak knife, gripping the handle made from Leander's bones.
Get up, Lily. Just get up
.

He knocked the knife from her grip. One of his hands slowly closed around her throat as he said, “You think
we
are monsters?”

“You kill people and stitch them up filled with magic flowers.” She continued to speak despite those cruel, squeezing fingers, buying time. “You've
eaten
people.”

His grip on her throat lessened. He shrugged, his blue gaze holding hers as if he were curious. “I was a madman, back then.” He stepped back. The coldness seemed to leave his eyes for a moment. Finn didn't antagonize him further, her gaze flickering to her sister, who was beginning to stir. “We were not always nothing, Serafina. Or things of the dark. There are moments”—he reached out and she flinched as his fingertips caressed her brow—“when we are good.”

Her vision was replaced by a field of heather, where a tower rose against a twilit sky. A girl in a green gown was standing in front of the tower, her dark hair knotted with white roses. As she moved forward, she became Reiko—a younger Reiko, without the shadows. She smiled and held out a hand and masculine fingers free of rings clasped hers. Seth Lot, in armor of organic metal, stepped close to her, bowed his head to kiss her.

Finn blinked and met the Wolf's gaze as he continued, “The elixir is changing you, Serafina. Soon, you'll understand.”

She thought of Jack bleeding for her. She wondered if the Wolf had ever bled for anyone. “What were you, before?”

“I was good. I was noble.” He circled, never taking his gaze from her. “I was like you.”

“So you know you're not good and noble now, right? Not the hero of your own story?”

His mouth twitched in what might have been a smile or a snarl.

A slender shadow slid up behind him.

He must have seen it mirrored in her gaze, because he spun, vicious and quick, and slammed a blade that snapped from his sleeve, into the breast of the hooded figure.

Jill Scarlet slid to the floor, a sword clattering from her hands. As Finn whispered, “
No,
” Lot casually drew his blade from the Jill's heart and snatched up her sword. As bloody, black petals drifted from the wound in Jill Scarlet's breast, his blue eyes shadowed. “Wolfsbane. You fool. I used
mistletoe
on that blade that went into you.”

He slid to one knee beside Jill Scarlet, gripping her sword, its point balanced on the ground. He bowed his head like a knight about to receive a blessing and whispered, “Did you really think you could win?” He folded one hand over Jill Scarlet's scarred face, tightening his grip as if planning to crush her skull.

Finn edged toward Lily.

Lot snapped up and shoved Finn against a pillar. The beast, for an instant, made his beautiful face hideous. “Where are you going, my dear?”

She whispered, “‘
A wilder'd being from my birth, my spirit spurned control
.'”

His eyes narrowed. “What are you doing?”

She continued with the words of a poet haunted by darkness, “‘
But now, abroad on the wide earth, where wand'rest thou my soul?
'”

“What”—his teeth clenched as his hand returned to her throat, fingers tightening—“
are you doing
?”

She laughed breathlessly and wondered if the elixir or the fear was making her crazy—behind him, Lily was pushing to her feet. Finn said, “Don't you like poetry?”

“Hekas don't work on me either. Dangerous girl. What a
waste
.” His fingers gouged into her throat.

Something burst through his chest.

He collapsed to one knee, staring down at the point of the umbrella that had
speared him. The Mad Hatter painted on its vinyl folds gazed madly back at him as the umbrella's handle protruded from his back.

Finn lifted her gaze to Lily, who stood behind him, breathing hard and looking ferocious. Anna—whose umbrella Lily had used to impale the Wolf—was backed up against a wall, her eyes wide. Lily whispered, “That's for Leander, you fucking monst—”

Seth Lot spat out a dark liquid, laughed, reached around, and yanked the umbrella out. Black ichor spattered Lily's gown. She slowly retreated from the shadows that had begun rippling around him.

“Anna,” Finn whispered, “
run
!”

There was a tearing roar, as if reality itself had been damaged, and the darkness grew around Seth Lot, who vanished, warping, towering. Ice cracked the glass in the windows. Frost furred the walls. As violent, guttural sounds came from within the dark cyclone, Anna backed away, one nostril trickling blood. She looked at Jill Scarlet's body and flinched.

A monstrous shape began forming in the darkness and Finn whispered, “That's one death for you—only two more.”

Lily, on the other side of the black mass, met Finn's gaze. Anna was staring at the writhing shadow as if it contained all her childhood fears—the beast snarling in that spinning darkness exuded glacial cold and decay. Whatever emerged from that, whatever toothy, ripping horror . . . Finn wanted it to come at her, not Lily and Anna.

The cold vanished. The shadows fell away. Seth Lot stood before Finn in his beautiful form. As if recovering from a loss of control, he tucked his tangled hair behind his ears, the jewels flashing on his fingers. The ragged wound in his chest spilled more darkness as he bent down and picked up Anna's smashed umbrella. Turning it over in his hands, he sauntered toward Finn.

“The Fool,” he said softly, running his fingers across the umbrella's wooden handle. “Wolfsbane poison on the tip and the rest puzzled together from sacred winter plants—mistletoe, holly, poinsettias, and black hellebore . . . made to kill a winter king. So, it was planned, was it? To bring the little oracle and her umbrella.”

He looked up at Finn with a weariness that frightened her as much as the monster in the shadows had. Then he whirled and flung the shattered umbrella
across the room, at Anna. Lily cried out and pulled Anna against her. The umbrella struck the wall and splintered.

Seth Lot spoke to Lily like a lover, but his blue gaze returned to Finn. “You were a fine queen, my love, but I have found a better one.”

He gracefully extended a hand toward Finn, who didn't move.

“It's only because you don't want to die,” she whispered. “And I can kill you.”

He staggered a little, dropped his outstretched hand, and braced himself against a pillar. He laughed again, softly. “I'm not dead yet.” As he pushed away from the pillar, malice in his gaze, she felt a swift terror of a different sort. He moved closer, leaned in. “Your Jack is dying of mistletoe poisoning. Aside from you, I see only two frightened girls.” He raised his voice as Lily stepped toward something glittering on the floor—the steak knife that Finn had held. “And if those girls move, they will cause your death.”