Hollows 11 - Ever After (27 page)

Chapter Sixteen

W
ild elven magic coursed through my mind, electricity tasting of wine and music sparkling to my fingertips. The usual welcoming hum was a screeching din, and my stomach gave a heave when a wave of dizziness hit me, evidence of an unbalanced line. I was in a freaking ley line!
Bring Trent to me!
I wailed, promising the goddess that Trent didn’t believe in everything and anything.

He needs you more than you need him
tinkled through me, alien and wild, and I was shoved out of the line.

Arms flailing, I skidded on a white tiled floor. It shimmered under a cold electric light, and my nose wrinkled at the bitter bite of brimstone mixed with the acidic stench of burnt amber. I stood from my crouch, turning from the bank of electronic equipment and lab benches lining both the three sides and a short peninsula of the room to look behind me toward the muffled sound of crying babies. A glass wall stretched from waist height to the ceiling, showing what looked like a hospital nursery, complete with rolling bassinets and young women in uniforms tending them. There was no door. The women looked okay, and I wondered if they knew where they were or if they were borrowed familiars.

“Trent?” I whispered, glad that Ku’Sox hadn’t felt me arrive. He had to be here somewhere. Stupid rings. I hated wild magic. It wasn’t that there were no rules. I just didn’t understand them.

My heart pounded when the familiar sound of a pen hitting the floor and a chair rolling joined the humming of machinery and Trent rolled backward out from behind the peninsula of shoulder-high machines. Shocked, he stared at me.

He was haggard, wearing a lab coat over his expensive slacks and linen pinstripe shirt as if it was a uniform. His usual tie was absent. Red-rimmed and haunted, his eyes blinked numbly at me. His hair was mussed, and his posture as he sat in that chair gave the impression of his insides caving in. He looked as if he’d been gone a year, not four hours. “What are you doing here?” he rasped, the music entirely gone from his voice. “Are you crazy?”

He needs you more than you need him
echoed in my memory. “Maybe.” I held up my hand with the pinkie ring on it. “I’m trying to get your ass back to reality. I thought we had some sort of understanding.” Understanding. That wasn’t like an agreement—which had definite expectations. Understanding was more nebulous, more dangerous. What was I doing, trusting Trent with an
understanding
?

His expression cleared somewhat, and Trent frowned. “I’m not leaving.” He stood, so fast that his chair rolled backward. Lab coat furling, he scooped up his dropped pen, proving he could do businessman, playboy, and lab rat equally well. “You need to leave,” he said as he jotted something into a lab book. “Go.
Now.
Before Ku’Sox finds you.”

Go? Now? I wasn’t a dog, but seeing as I had no easy way of leaving other than Jenks summoning me back, I crossed my arms and stared at him. Ku’Sox wouldn’t know I was here unless he walked in the door or I tapped a line. My eyes went over the assembled machinery, all humming and clicking. Obviously he and Ku’Sox had come to some
understanding.
Damn it, I thought we had a plan. Must be the cost analysis had finally tipped the scales.

“Is that it?” I said, and Trent looked up, still standing hunched over his book, his back almost to me, stiff and cold.

“Is that what?”

I gestured at the instruments. “The machine that saved my life?” It was as close as I would go to an outright accusation of his helping Ku’Sox, and his ears reddened.

“No, it’s better by about three generations,” he said, still making notes. “Once I get the strand of DNA I want, I incorporate it into a mild-acting virus that targets the mitochondria. I’m not entirely happy with the strand I’m currently using. I didn’t have a chance to clean it before proliferation.” His pen stopped. Slowly he straightened and looked down at his lab book. “It has a seventy-seven percent perfection, which will cause problems in some of the subjects, but Ku’Sox is a butcher, and if twenty-three percent of his
children
die, then he will be happy with the seventy-seven remaining.”

I blanched, turning to look at the empty bassinet and the rows of babies—eating, sleeping, crying. There had to be at least a dozen out there. “That’s inhuman.”

Trent gazed at the nursery, a lost expression on his face. “He would’ve been happy with twenty percent.”

My lips curled. “You’re helping him,” I accused, and Trent’s eyes narrowed. “You told me you’d never give him what he wanted!”

His eyes bore into mine. “Is that what you think I’m doing?”

“Hey, if the lab coat fits.”

Making a low sound of discontent, Trent hunched back over his book. Thinking that might have been harsh, I went to the nursery window, my hand cold when it touched the glass. It was obvious that the women could see us, but they went about their business with a blind furtiveness that told me they knew they were alive on sufferance—until Ku’Sox didn’t need them anymore. “He took their nurses, too?” I asked in guilt. I couldn’t save everyone.

“In some cases.”

His words had come from the back of his throat, and the hidden tight disgust in it made me take a second look. All the women had red hair. “Oh,” I said, feeling uncomfortable. “Is there another way out of here?”

“I said I was not leaving.”

The anger in his voice turned me back around. “Stay here?” I said, hand on my hip. “I thought we had a good plan. Thanks for nothing. Where’s Bis? Have you seen him?”

Snagging his rolling chair with a foot, Trent expertly wrangled it around until he could sit. “He’s fine,” he said, so low I could almost not hear it. “The older gargoyles are very keen on talking to him when Ku’Sox isn’t watching.”

“Maybe they’re teaching him the resonances of their lines,” I said, wondering if there might be something good in this after all.

His head bowed, Trent kept writing. Ticked, I came to see what he was doing, and he looked up. “Bis knows the line in the garden,” I said. “Where’s Ceri and Lucy?” His jaw quivered, and I added, “Bis can jump us all out.”

What in hell is his problem?
I thought when Trent ran a slow hand over his face, almost ignoring me. “You keep saying you want to work together; well, how about accepting a little help? Trent, pay attention to me!”

Finally he looked up, anguish flashing behind his eyes before he whispered, “Ceri is dead. And Pierce.”

My heart seemed to stop. I took a faltering step, my face cold. He had to be joking! But Trent’s face was pale and his red-rimmed eyes had new meaning as I staggered back against a bank of machines. “Ceri and Pierce?” I whispered, looking through the wall as if I could see Pierce. I’d just seen him. Just talked to him. “Why?”

But then I figured it out. I’d
just
seen him.
Just
talked to him. Oh God, this was my fault. I’d talked to Pierce, rekindled his belief that he was a demon killer.
Ceri would help him . . .
Hand to my stomach, I tried to find something to say, my mind blank.

Seeing my understanding, Trent turned back to the lab book as if it was the only thing real left to him. “What happened?” I breathed. I already knew the why for everything: why Trent was here doing what Ku’Sox wanted, why he’d left with no warning, breaking the only easy way for anyone to follow, why he was closed and distant. Ku’Sox had called Trent’s bluff. “What. Happened!”

My hand shook as it landed on Trent’s shoulder. He didn’t move, either to acknowledge my touch or shake it off. “She and Pierce got it into their heads they could overpower him if they worked together,” he said flatly, and I closed my eyes against the heartache. This was my doing.
Oh God. Quen. Ray.

“Ku’Sox told me they tried to kill him in his sleep and that in retaliation he had every right to burn Pierce alive with their own joined curse,” he said, his tone frighteningly empty. “I have no reason to doubt that’s exactly what happened. If Ceri thought she could take him, she’d try. Especially if he had been threatening Lucy. Ceri died several hours later. As best as I can gather.”

I could hardly breathe, my chest hurt so badly. I wanted to rage that he was wrong, that Ku’Sox was tricking him into giving him what he wanted. But the memory of Ceri and Pierce working together to twist a black curse to kill fairies in my garden rose up, making my stomach sink. She’d been impressed with his skill, and Pierce had been trying to kill demons half his living existence and all of his dead. It had been all I could do to keep Pierce from trying to attack Ku’Sox yesterday.
Had it only been yesterday?
I thought, gazing at my burned fingers.

A tear brimmed and fell, splashing on them, and I made a fist. I didn’t love Pierce, but it still hurt, still ached.
And Ceri.
She had been so happy, so alive. She finally had the family that she thought she never would. Now it was gone? She was dead?

My grief began to shift to anger. I could do things when I was angry.

“Ellasbeth didn’t tell me any of this,” I said, and Trent looked up, blinking as if he was rearranging his thoughts.

“Ellasbeth doesn’t know,” Trent said, his chest heaving with a sudden breath.

“Quen?” I asked, my voice rising at the end into a squeak. “Does Quen know?” Ellasbeth said he was in the basement trying to get the vault door open. If he managed it, he would be cut down in seconds, helpless without his magic.

Trent was writing in that book again, his numbers careful and precise. “Quen removed her body from my office,” he said dully. “Ku’Sox left her there for me.”

I thought I was going to throw up. Trent was calm, but I could see the rage underneath. Lucy had to still be alive. “Lucy? Bis?” I asked, and his writing hand faltered.

“Alive,” he said, and my rapid breathing sounded harsh. “For the time being. You should leave before he finds you. Our plan can still work. You’ll have to do much of it alone, though.”

My anger bubbled over, and I pushed up from the machine, shaking. “Our
plan
?” I shouted, and he looked up, his expression horribly blank. “How can you sit there making notations! They’re dead!”

Trent looked down at the book, his mutilated hand showing strongly on the lined paper. “He has a book mirroring mine. If I don’t keep writing, he’ll know something has captured my attention, and he’ll come and see. You need to leave.” Numb, he wrote the time and initialed it. The pen hitting the paper sounded loud, and he turned to look at me straight on.

Numb. He was numb, but there was a seething anger fueled by helplessness underneath. My mouth went dry as I realized he was on a knife’s edge. He could do anything. He had vowed to keep his daughter and Ceri safe, and now Ceri was dead.

“Trent, I’m sorry,” I whispered, and his eye twitched. “This is not fair.”

“Fair?” he said, his anger showing. “When has fair ever entered into my life?”

I backed up as he struggled to take one careful, deliberate breath after another. “When fate levels the field,” he said flatly, “the rich man finds himself struggling to survive while the man plagued with bad luck his entire life is ironically strong enough to prosper. I’m both, Rachel. I’m both.” He hung his head, his fine hair hiding his eyes. “I wanted to believe that love could survive that which fate decrees, that love could remain when all is taken from you. But now . . . The Goddess has surely left me.”

“I didn’t think you believed in her,” I whispered.

His eyes were empty when they met mine. “Chance can’t build such a pit as I’m in. Only a god.”

Trent rocked forward, and I jumped, startled. “There’s no reason you can’t carry on with our plan,” he said suddenly, his voice holding a frantic determination. “I can’t help you, even after you find something to bind multiple strengths together. I have to stay here and keep Lucy safe.” He took my shoulders and gave me a shake. “I will not leave her. I’m going to do everything he tells me to. You have to find what you need, get it, and make it work. Understand?”

His resolve scared me, and I nodded. “Yes.”

He let me go, and I breathed again. “Quen maybe,” he said. “He will protect you when you move the imbalance, show the demons what Ku’Sox has done, and if they do nothing, I will be here to kill him.”

I blinked fast. “K-kill him?” I stammered, my thoughts flashing to Pierce. “Trent, you are
not
a warrior poet. If Ceri and Pierce couldn’t do it, what makes you think you can!”

Trent turned, looking furious. “Don’t—” he shouted, a finger pointing to make me drop back, and he lowered his voice, his eyes still virulent. “Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do,” he whispered. The scent of spoiled wine and broken fern grew strong.

Frustrated, I rallied my courage. “No one else will! I know you’re upset. I’m upset. But you can’t kill Ku’Sox!”

He walked to the nursery wall and stood looking out at his handiwork. “Your morals are going to be the end of two worlds.”

Morals?
I could not believe I was hearing this, and I got in his face, standing between him and the nursery. “This has
nothing
to do with my morals, and everything to do with
how strong he is
! You were there! You saw! I don’t care if the one ring to rule them all is in that museum, we can’t overpower him. You don’t have a plan, you have an obituary! Ceri tried with the help of an experienced, powerful witch, and now Ray has only one parent!”

Trent’s hands clenched. “You don’t think I know that?” he shouted, and I could hear babies crying through the window. “Why do you think I burned out the fuse to the vault? You shouldn’t be here, either. Why are you here?”

He was going to try to kill him. He was going to dump the task of proving Ku’Sox’s guilt onto me, and if the demons turned a blind eye, he was going to sacrifice everything to save Lucy. Ceri’s death and Lucy’s vulnerability had tipped him over the edge. “Please,” I said, taking his hand and forcing him to pay attention to me. “Promise me you won’t try to kill him. You’re right about everything you said last night. Give me a chance to make it work. Trent, you came to me asking for trust. It goes both ways.”