Even Vampires Get the Blues (27 page)

“No!” Pilar yelled down at them, dragging Clare backward into what looked like a shallow cave. “Call them off, or I will kill the faery.”

“I am not a faery,” Clare snapped, trying to glare at the demon who held her by the throat. “I am a lingerie model. There is a huge difference between the two things! Why does no one else see that?”

Paen shouted something to Uilleam. The ghosts
stopped their ascent, but they weren't happy about it, snarling and waving their swords around in a menacing fashion.

“She's a faery, she's immortal,” I called up to Pilar. “There's no sense in threatening to kill her—you can't.”

“I am
so
not a faery!”

“She'll be dead enough if I decapitate her,” Pilar called back.

“Oh!” Clare yelled, looking even more indignant.

“All right, we've stopped the ghosts,” I answered, moving a little to the side so I could have an unobstructed view of Pilar. Paen wrapped an arm around me and pulled me up tight against him. “Now, let's talk. Why do you want Clare? She doesn't have any powers except the ability to talk to flowers—”

“You are such a liar,” my cousin gasped.

We all ignored her. “—and the ability to wear sackcloth and make it look good. So why do you want her, of all people?”

Pilar laughed. “I wanted her because I thought you were dead. But as you survived, you will do. I will exchange your cousin for you.”

“You've got a deal,” I said without hesitation, pulling away from Paen.

“Like hell he does,” Paen snarled, pulling me back and stuffing me behind him. “You'll take me instead.”

“Hey!” I said, slapping my hand on his back. “Less arrogance, if you please. He wants me.”

“He's not getting you.”
You don't honestly believe I'm going to allow a demon to take you, do you?

He can't hurt me, Paen. I'm immortal now, remember?

He can decapitate you just as easily as he can Clare.

But he won't. He needs me.

It's a moot point. I'm not letting you sacrifice yourself.

“You may have your soul, Dark One, but you cannot enter the beyond on your own,” Pilar said, jerking Clare closer. “Nor can your brother.”

“I don't have a soul now, so neither can I,” I yelled around Paen, up to Pilar.

“No, but you have a cousin who can,” he said. “You will be a hostage for her.”

“It doesn't matter who can enter what—Sam is here, and I'm not letting her go,” Paen said, stubbornness positively rolling off him.

I thumped him on the back again.
Paen, truly I appreciate the anguish you feel at the thought of losing me, but I swear to you I'm not going to let him kill me. Again.

No.

We don't have a choice!

“Then we appear to be at an impasse,” Pilar said, glancing up at the sky. The clouds that had darkened the sky all day were starting to dissipate, little peeps of a quarter moon shining through the breaks. “It is almost deep night. Do you really wish to continue this stalemate until you run out of time?”

I pulled Paen until he was facing me. “We're out of options, sweetie.”

His brow darkened, and I could feel the protests he was about to make. I laid a finger across his lips, gently brushing them away. “I know. I feel the same way. But I will not let Caspar have your mother's soul, not while it's within my ability to stop him.”

His Adam's apple bobbed as he fought to keep his emotions under control.
I won't lose you again,
Sam. I can't. You made me love you, dammit! You made me give up brooding, and sex without love, and happily going about my way without interference from anyone. You owe me!

I laughed, leaning into him to replace my fingers with my lips, offering him everything I had, pouring into him all the love I felt, accepting in return from him the radiant warmth of his soul, crested by a love so powerful it seemed to rock the world back on its axis.
I love you, Paen. I love you more than I ever imagined was possible for one person to love another. You are the sun to me, you warm me and give me life, and I could not exist any longer without you. But I have to do this. We have to save Clare and your mother, and if you can think of another way to do it, I'm all ears.

Pain cut sharply through him, pain and regret, and anger at himself for not being able to save me.

But you did save me
, I told him, drinking in his warmth as he pulled me up tight to his body.
You didn't let me die before, and I know you won't let me go now. No matter what happens, I know you won't let go.

“I'll see to it nothing happens,” he said grimly, pulling his mouth from mine. He half turned, calling over his shoulder to Pilar, “Release Clare, and you can have Sam and me as hostages.”

Beppo jumped onto Pilar's shoulder. The demon seemed to consider Paen's offer for a moment before shrugging. “If you wish to offer yourself as well, I will not object. You may approach us, but only you two. No one else.”

Paen had to have a short talk with Finn, Uilleam, and the ghosts before they would let us climb up to where Pilar and Clare waited. I got the feeling that
unlike Finn, the ghosts weren't so much upset with Paen and me putting ourselves in potential danger as they were pissed at being done out of a good fight.

“You can fight later,” I told Uilleam as I scrambled up a large rock at the base of the cliff.

“Do we have yer oath on that?” he asked, fingering the edge of his sword.

I looked in surprise at him for a moment. “You speak English?”

“We're dead, not daft,” he said with a roll of his eyes. “We've naught else to do around here but listen to the tourists. At least, not until this lot came.” He indicated the movie crew with a sweeping gesture.

“Oh. Right. Well, then, if you guys can just hold tight for a bit, I promise you we'll find someone for you to battle later. Pretend battle. No killing or anything.”

The ghosts looked disappointed.

“Later,” I said, giving Uilleam a warning look as I reached up to where Paen was waiting to haul me up a big rock.

We reached the outcropping where Pilar and Clare stood without any mishaps.

“Let her go,” Paen ordered, nodding toward Clare.

Pilar smiled and released Clare, who took two steps to the side, then turned and slapped Pilar as hard as she could.

“That's for shooting my dress, you demonic twit!” she told him to his startled face before storming over to Paen and me.

“Her dress?” Pilar asked us.

I shook my head. “Honestly, you don't want to go there.”

“It was a Versace!” came the outraged reply from where Clare was standing behind me.

Pilar closed his eyes for a moment, wearing an expression that was identical to one I'd seen frequently on Paen's face. I thought about pointing that out, but decided it wasn't something Paen needed to know at that moment. “If you don't mind, I'm rather anxious to have the Jilin God. Could we get on with it?”

“We can if you answer a couple of questions first,” I said, taking Paen's hand. Just touching him toned down the howl of pain inside me that was my ever-present companion.

Pilar glanced at the sky again and gave another shrug. Beppo gave a little squeak and leaped from Pilar to Paen, quickly scaling his arm, jumping across him to land on my shoulder. I gave the monkey a stern look. “You didn't tell me you belonged to him,” I said, nodding toward Pilar.

“He is a familiar—he does not speak,” Pilar said, as if I honestly expected the monkey to answer. “What questions do you wish to ask of me?”

“Where is the Jilin God?” Paen asked, his fingers tightening around mine. Beppo wrapped his tail around my throat and began to pick through my hair, looking for mites.

“Within grasp in the beyond.”

“Why did you zap me into the place between realities? Were you afraid of what I was going to tell Caspar?”

Pilar looked at me with unemotional black eyes. “I am afraid of nothing. It was not my intent to push you into the web; I simply wanted the statue. I didn't realize you had it until I touched you.”

“Are you working for your master, or for yourself?” Paen asked.

You took my question!

There are plenty left for him to answer.

Pilar laughed. I didn't think demons could laugh, but he did, a mirthless, cold laugh, one that sent chills down my back. “I have no master.”

“Wait a second—you do, too. Caspar said you were his minion, that he hired you to drag me in to see him, amongst other things. He's a demon lord, you're a demon—that makes him your master.”

“Do you not yet understand?” Pilar asked, looking at me with an expression of something that looked a lot like disappointment. “The being you know as Caspar Green is not my master—he is my enemy. He tried to capture me, and failed. He tried to have me thrown down from the heavens, and failed. He has sought my destruction his entire life, and now he seeks to regain his former strength in order to rule this world. I am sworn to allow neither.”

“But . . . you were working for him,” I pointed out, wondering just how many surprises I could take in a one-week period.

Pilar gave me another disappointed look. “He did not recognize me in this form.”

“Oh.”

Paen's fingers tightened even more around mine until the grip was almost painful. “You are the sworn enemy of Yan Luowang, the god of death.”

“Yes,” Pilar said. I noticed he didn't give Paen a disappointed look.

“He attempted to have you thrown out of heaven,”
Paen said, and with his words, something struck a chord in me.

Figured it out yet, sweetheart?

Wait a sec . . . thrown out of heaven?

That's what he said.

I bit my lip as I looked closely at Pilar. He looked human, absolutely mortal, except for the cold that seemed to roll off him like a dense fog. “Caspar said you were a kung, a Chinese water demon.”

“I am many things. That is just one part of what makes me a whole.”

The pieces of the puzzle fell together with a snap that I could have sworn was audible. “Were you, by any chance, held prisoner in a stone prison for fifteen hundred years?”

Pilar smiled.

“You're Sun Wukong, aren't you? The monkey god? The subject of the Jilin statue? The one Buddha released, the one who became a champion against demons.”

“And their lords. Now I seek to stop Yan Luowang, whatever the cost such an action may demand.” Pilar made a polite little bow. “And you, Beloved, will do very nicely as the blood price.”

“I thought you were supposed to be the sacrifice?” Clare groused as she took my hand. “I don't see why I have to come along.”

I looked beyond her to Paen, giving him a small, hopeful smile. He didn't return it.

“You have to pull me into the beyond. Evidently since I'm soulless, I can't enter or leave it on my own, but you can take me there.”

“It's a ridiculous plan,” she snorted, casting pathetic glances at Paen. “Don't you think it's ridiculous?”

“Very much so,” he said.

“Stop doing that. Paen is on the edge as is,” I whispered to Clare, jerking her hand to get her attention. “My hands are full trying to keep him from attacking Pilar, without you baiting him into an action we'll all regret.”

“Well, it is silly. I don't know anything about this beyond place. I don't know why he thinks I'm going to be able to find the statue,” she said, frowning at Pilar.

Beppo sat on his shoulder, making occasional
chirruping noises as Clare and I prepared to retrieve the statue.

“You do not have to find it. The Beloved will find it. She was born of the light; she will have powers there,” Pilar told her for the third time. “Just do as you've been instructed.”

“Yes, but it's all so very silly,” Clare said, stalling like mad.

“Look at it this way,” I told her. “At least if we die, we'll die together.”

Her look of outrage would have brought a mortal to her knees. “I am not going to die!”

“I know that,” I soothed, giving her hand a friendly squeeze.

“I should hope you do,” she said, transferring her glare from me back to Pilar.

“Faeries can't die,” I added, smiling at her outraged snarl. “Come on, Glimmerharp. Let's get this over with so we can take care of Caspar.”

Clare swore colorful oaths at me as we turned and walked straight toward the rock face, where Pilar had indicated the nearest entrance to the beyond was. I was just about to ask her if she talked to her mother with that mouth when we hit a wall—or rather, I did. Clare passed through it, but I was held back by a field that didn't want to let me pass.

“Clare, you're going to have to pull,” I said, pushing myself against the barrier between realities. “I can't . . . seem . . . to get thr—”

She wrapped a second hand around my wrist and yanked with a strength that was surprising. I was jerked clean through the barrier into the beyond, stumbling over a rock and falling to my knees, the
shock of passing through it enough to strip the air from my lungs.

Sam? Are you all right? You disappeared
. Paen's voice was warm and reassuring in my head, but it was different somehow—stretched, as if it came from a great distance.

I'm fine
, I answered, getting to my feet, brushing the knees of my jeans as I took a quick look about.
Just a little shaky. I don't think that was the most graceful entrance I've ever made. Everything OK out there?

Yes. Pilar and I are having a stare-down.

Who's winning?

He is. I don't think he has eyelids.

Maybe you should offer to arm-wrestle him, or have a spitting contest or something,
I said, gathering up every warm emotion I could muster in the cold void of my soulless self, and sending them to him.

I love you, too,
he said, and for a moment, he shared his warmth and light with me, reminding me again that I wasn't alone.

Clare looked around us. “This is certainly different. Where did all these trees and lovely flowers come from? And that brook? I know that brook wasn't there a few seconds ago,” she said, pointing to a stream of silver that spilled over the rocks in a graceful display that promised refreshment and relaxation to any who paused to sit a while near it.

“You're in the beyond, now, Clare. Things are different here. Expect Disney music and dancing teacups at any moment. Put down that dove you found and come along. We have places to go, statues to rescue, demon lords to cream.”

“Where exactly are we going?”

“To find the statue.”

“I know that, silly,” she said, snatching up a handful of wildflowers as I held out my hands, feeling for a familiar tingle that would herald a wrinkle. “But where is the statue?”

“Evidently where Pilar stashed it, somewhere around Caspar's apartment.”

“Doesn't he know where he put it?”

“Yes, but things get shifted slightly in the beyond, so all he could say is that it would be somewhere near the apartment.”

“But that's all the way back in town,” she said, wandering over to where a silhouetted version of Pilar stood a few feet away from Paen. She waved her hand in front of his face. “They can't see us?”

“No. What you're seeing is the representation of him in the beyond. His aura is black because he has been tainted by dark powers.” A little frisson of something went up my left hand as I felt along the rock face. I moved over a step, running both hands along the minute stream of power.

“Paen's aura isn't black,” she said, looking at him. When you're in the beyond, people in the other reality appear shadowed slightly, as if you are viewing them through a thin veil, which I suppose is as good a simile as anything. “But he was cursed.”

“He has a soul now. Ah. Here it is.” I slipped my fingers into the stream, gently pulling it apart until there was a shimmering portal wide enough to allow a person through.

“The statue?” Clare asked, wandering over to me.

“No, the wrinkle. Come on, I don't know if it'll stay open once I go through it.”

“Wrinkle? What's that?”

I hauled her in after me. It was like walking through a faint field of electricity. One moment we were on the side of a cliff in the Lammermuir Hills; the next we were standing at the end of the street on which Caspar's apartment was located.

“
How
did you do that?” Clare asked, quickly stuffing a petal in her mouth.

I shot her an exasperated look. “Didn't you ever watch any
Star Trek
shows? It's a wrinkle in the time/space continuum. Or something like that—I'm not quite sure what the technical name for it is. All I know is you can use the wrinkles to travel to another area in the beyond. You take that side of the street, I'll do this one.”

Needless to say, Clare was too overwhelmed to do much but follow me as I searched the sidewalk and area surrounding the steps leading into Caspar's building.

“Crapbeans,” I said, shoving a garbage can back under the stone steps leading up to the doorway. I dusted off my hands, giving the building a wary look. “I guess this means we're going to have to go inside.”

“Oooh,” she said, her eyes big. “Will he notice us, do you think?”

“I'm not sure. He's a demon lord, so he shouldn't be able to see into the beyond, but he's also a god, so who knows what the extent of his powers are?” I pushed down the feeling of dread that rose as I started up the stairs.

All right, sweetheart?

The warm glow of Paen's being filled me.
I am
now
, I answered, smiling at him but unable to stop the sharp pang of regret.
If only things were as they had been . . .

We'll get it back, love. We'll get them both back,
he promised me.

I took a deep breath, sent a heartfelt prayer to let us all get through this without any more tragedies being inflicted, and opened the door to the apartments.

“Don't you have to press the buzz . . . oh!” Clare sucked in her breath as she followed me into the building, rubbing her arms and shivering.

“We're not restricted by the boundaries of our reality in the beyond,” I said, shivering as well.

Caspar's apartment might be on the third floor, but his presence turned the inside of the building black as night, seeping into every corner, filling it with a veritable miasma of dense, inky being. The only light we had was that coming off of Clare and myself—Clare's pure soul providing a halo of light around her, while faint sunlight seemed to gently glow from my skin.

“No wonder my elf senses were going berserk here,” I said, rubbing the back of my neck where the hairs were standing on end.

Clare said nothing, but grabbed my hand. We climbed the stairs in silence, carefully making our way through the darkness, doing our best to search each inch of the landings, stairs, and hallways as we came to them.

“Well,” I said what seemed like an eternity later as I stood outside a door labeled 12-C. “I guess we're going to have to go in and see if it's right under Caspar's nose.”

“Oh, no,” Clare said, backing down the hallway. “There is no way I'm going into that apartment.”

“I don't think he can see into the beyond,” I said, biting my lip. “We should be safe enough.”

“No. Absolutely not. And I think you're insane for even thinking about going in there.”

“Well, I'm not too wild about the idea myself, in case you hadn't noticed.” I thought for a minute. “What we need is a distraction, something to grab Caspar's attention in case he can see us.”

“How are you going to do that?” she asked, her face puckered with worry.

Paen, my love, we need some help.

I knew it! You're in trouble, aren't you? Tell Clare to pull me in—

We are not in trouble. We just need help. I need someone to capture Caspar's attention so we can check his apartment for the statue.

Paen created and discarded any number of objections to the thought of us going into the apartment, but he wasn't the man I loved for nothing.
Let me talk to Pilar.

We huddled together in the darkness of the apartment hallway, vaguely aware when one of the mortal inhabitants passed by on their way to or from their homes, but mostly just aware of the profound sense of dread that seemed to soak into everything, ourselves included.

Go ahead, Sam,
Paen told me eons later.
Noelle is conducting a ritual to summon Caspar. It should keep his attention off you, but she says you'll only have about five minutes before she has to stop the ritual.

Perfect. Thank her for me, will you? Uh . . . you can't do
the mind thing with her, can you?
I asked, a little spike of jealousy going through me at the thought of someone else sharing something so intimate with Paen.

Ever hear of a mobile phone, sweetheart?
he said, laughing into my mind.

I knew where Caspar was the second we slipped into the apartment. He was in the sitting room, the same lovely peach and cream room that had seemed so peaceful to me before, but was now a place of such horror my stomach clenched.

“Sam?”

The whisper barely penetrated the blackness. I turned back to where Clare stood in the doorway, her arms clutched around herself.

“I don't think I can go in.”

I took one look at the terror in her eyes and went over to give her a reassuring hug. “It's OK. I've been here before, so it won't take me any time to go through the room I was in when Pilar zapped me. You just stay here, OK?”

“OK,” she said, hugging me tightly. “If I was a faery—not that I am, but if I was—I'd rub magic faery dust on you to keep you safe.”

I smiled and didn't point out the fact that the front of my shirt glowed with the incandescent light from the faery dust which had rubbed on me when we hugged. Instead I mentally girded my loins, marched over to the sitting room door, and prayed that Noelle the Guardian had enough power to keep a demon lord occupied while I stood only a few feet away from him.

I needn't have worried. Caspar was there in the room, standing in the middle, but he was frozen, as if
locked in that position. Little curlicues of dark power snapped around him, but I clearly didn't register on his consciousness as I scooted around him, heading for the chair I'd sat on during my second visit.

The statue was tucked away behind a settee, still wrapped in the blue cloth. I snatched it up, uncovering just a bit of it to make sure it was really the statue before making a dash for the door.

Unfortunately, I forgot to watch where I was going, and tripped over a small footstool that sat almost hidden away under a table. Almost.

The statue flew from my hands as I fell to the floor, slamming up against the wall. My knees cracked painfully on the hardwood floor as I lunged forward to grab the statue before it could rebound, but to my complete and utter surprise, it didn't bounce off the wall like a proper brass statue of a falcon should.

Instead it shattered in an explosion of brass-coated plaster, the pieces of the bird falling into large chunks on the hardwood floor with several large thunks, the biggest of which was made by a small black statue of a monkey.

Caspar roared a scream of anger behind me as he broke the bonds of the summoning and spun around to see me scrambling madly toward the Jilin statue.