Revenant (46 page)

“And after that . . . you return to being a vampire?”

“Yes.”

“What are you now?” Quinton asked, truly puzzled and frowning.

Carlos surprised me by answering without rancor. “Something between. Part of each, most of neither. The only power I now can be sure I command is that which I was born with and trained to while I was still alive. But necromancy is a complex magic, ill-suited to quick work. I am, or will be from the moment the sun goes down, unable to touch the power without death on my hands.”

“And that would kind of ruin the dinner party,” Quinton said.

Carlos chuckled. “It would. But we can plan now, before the time comes, and I will simply . . . withdraw until tomorrow night. As you saw, the drachen are weaker in sunlight, so Rui and his mages will summon their Inferno Dragão after dark. They’ll use the Devil’s Pool—what better place than one reputed to have a doorway straight to hell? That is why the young dreamspinner was practicing there. He wishes to prove his mettle tomorrow night. Casting a smaller spell in the same location would give him a feel for the ley lines and flow of power there.”

I nodded. “It sounds likely to me. So . . . we need to be at the Devil’s Pool tomorrow before they can get started. But how are we going to disrupt the spell? You said the timing had to be perfect and the spell dissipated quickly. Could we use Rui’s bone flute?”

“Perhaps, but the risk is high,” Carlos replied. “The flute sings only to his bones and that would also require excellent timing. If you cannot remove the bones before the spell is begun, the song of the flute will reinforce the song of the spell, making it stronger until the bones are out of place. If you call the bones, you must assume them, or they will pull you into the construct instead.”

“Assume? You mean . . . take them as my own?” I felt sick at the idea. I’d embraced a ghost once and held its struggling energy
captive within my own flesh for a little while. It was an agonizing ordeal and one I could sustain for only a short time. I was better at this business now, but I doubted I could stand what he was implying. “What happens to
my
bones?”

“Usually they would take the place of the bones you had assumed from the spell, but they could also return to the matching bones’ original owner. It’s a difficult action to predict. Using the ghost bone, you could control it, but with both elements to manage, it would be extremely difficult.” He looked thoughtful. “But you wouldn’t need the flute to call a bone you have an affinity to—such as the finger bone you sacrificed—so long as the ghost bone is functioning.”

“I’m not sure that bit of me would break their spell—Rui said it was a ‘grace note,’ not a ‘key.’”

“A pity. If you were able to send the bone back to Rui, the effect could be . . . interesting.”

“Is that one of those ‘Oh God, oh God, we’re all going to die’ kinds of interesting?” Quinton asked.

“Yes. And no. The spell-transfer effect would occur only if the bone were moved after the spell was fully active—which has never been done, if, in fact, it can be done.”

“Never?”

Carlos gave Quinton a curious look. “How often do you imagine anyone has tried to raise O Dragão do Inferno?”

“I’m sure someone’s tried it once or twice,” Quinton replied.

“Fewer than a dozen times in human history—and most attempts have not been effective.”

I frowned. “What’s the spell-transfer effect?” I asked.

“As it sounds. With the bones out of place once the spell is in action, the full animation of the drache fails, but the other effects would continue for a time.”

“So . . . with this drache . . .” I started, unable to finish describing the grotesque image that my mind was conjuring.

“He would burn with the fire of the spell until the bone was consumed,” Carlos replied. “But as fitting as such an end might be, the danger in it is too great. A small miscalculation of location or timing would kill you in the same manner. It would be better to stop the spell before it’s cast. The timing would still be delicate—if the bones are moved or the spell disrupted too soon, Rui will simply destroy us and begin again—but I know the moment where the casting is irretrievable. The song of the spell rises to a sustained chord that ignites the flesh of the drache, and the breath of the fire then sings the song of the bones and sustains it. For our sake, the spell must break as it weaves the bones together—making them unsalvageable—but before the chord resolves.”

“It’s a good thing that’s going to be your job,” Quinton said, “because Harper can’t sing.”

Carlos scowled. “A dancer who can’t sing?”

“It’s not that unusual,” I said. “Have you ever heard Fred Astaire sing? Flat, off-key, imprecise, but right on the beat. I’m tone-deaf. I can dance. I can count time. I can tell you a touch from a shuffle and a heel tap from a toe by sound. I can syncopate with the best of them, but I can’t carry a tune in a bucket. I might
feel
where the chord is resolving, but I couldn’t anticipate it without knowing the song well enough to dance to it first.”

“Then it is as well that you won’t have to.”

“It’s too bad there isn’t more dancing magic around—I’d probably be brilliant at that.”

“You are brilliant now.”

I felt myself blush, taken off guard by Carlos’s flattery, but he could also just have been alluding to my aura.

Quinton smiled at me, his eyes alight with love, but sparkling with amusement as well. I smiled back. I was lucky to be in love with a man who had a sense of humor.

“Hey,” Quinton said, “couldn’t we just arrive early and steal their bones or something? Dad and his corps of creeps are going to have to do some setup first, aren’t they?”

“Yes, but there are many of them and only two of you. I will be nearly useless to you except as manual labor until the sun is fully set.”

“Damn. And here I was thinking I was having another genius idea to keep up with my brilliant girlfriend.”

I smiled a little in spite of the situation ahead. Then I picked up a glass of wine, enjoying the feel of the condensation as it touched the skin of my hand. “So, it’s tricky, but we have a plan?”

“We do.”

“How do we manage the clan of bone-waggers and spies?” Quinton asked.

“I will kill Rui as soon as the casting breaks. The disarray and destruction caused by the unresolved spell and his death will affect the other mages involved. They may or may not survive, but they will be too damaged to be any danger to us. Bystanders who are not mages may die, but they will certainly be confused and frightened even if they are otherwise unscathed. Given the state of health Blaine reports for your father, he may not survive any effects reflected by the bone he gave up.”

Carlos paused to watch Quinton’s reaction, but Quinton only tightened his mouth into a grim line around whatever he might have said. “It will be his own hubris and folly that bring him down, not one of us,” Carlos said, “but he is still your father, in spite of what he’s done and would have done. This won’t be easy.”

“I didn’t expect it to be.” Quinton stood up and folded the laptop
closed to tuck it under his arm. “I need to go upstairs for a few minutes. I’ll come back down for dinner.”

I put my glass down, stood, and started to go with him.

He put his free hand out to stop me. “Please don’t. I need to . . . put my thoughts in order. I’ve been thinking about this for a while, but it didn’t feel quite real until now.”

I glanced at Carlos, but he was blank. “I’m sure something could—”

“No,” Quinton said. “His survival is not an option. You know all the reasons why. But I need to resolve it in my mind, myself. By myself.” His breath was growing ragged and his face was paler than it had been the night before in Campo Maior. His expression implored me to understand and say nothing.

I took half a step back from him, offering a nod, without speaking.

He kissed my cheek and I turned my head to brush my lips against his. As he broke away, he gave me a thin, stumbling smile, then turned and left the courtyard.

Carlos was still watching me, his arms crossed over his chest and his head cocked down so he looked up from under his brows. “He is a remarkable man. You two are well matched.”

I sighed as the moment broke. “I know. And I know I haven’t answered his question yet. I tried yesterday, but it doesn’t seem right to talk about the Happily Ever After when we’re in the midst of plotting the deaths of others.”

“Death is incidental. Putting an end to madness that would kill millions is what we are after. If it could be done without bloodshed, then it should be, but I see no way to accomplish that.”

I didn’t, either, but I let the words I might have said dissolve into the air. Instead, I turned back to look out at the river valley again,
the light across the stubbled fields and dusty trees turning golden as the sun moved to the west. I thought how appropriate it was that Sunday evening, as the demands of the harvest waned and the fieldworkers began to trudge back up the hill to dine and rest, was the moment for contemplation that Quinton had chosen to take for himself. A day of rest in which there had been no rest for us, a day of peace in which we plotted destruction. I hoped he would resolve his emotions as easily as Amen, but I doubted it.

I saw the long communal tables under the trees being laid once again for dinner, the food brought out as the workers drew near. Nelia ran up and down, smiling and laughing as if this were any other Sunday dinner. Days turned like a wheel, each seeming like the last, yet each different and as inevitable as time itself.

The gate from the driveway creaked, the sound startling me from my melancholy thoughts. I turned a little and raised my head to look toward the gate that lay beyond Carlos’s back as he stood near me.

I recognized the sound of the dragging limp before the light fell on Eladio’s face. He emerged into the waning sun on the terrace with his hands fisted at his sides, his face set in lines of cold resolve and his aura bloody red. He walked toward Carlos as if there were no one else.

We both turned toward Eladio. I took a step and Carlos stopped me with a barely raised hand.

“It’s the ghost. It rides him. Banish it while he’s distracted with me. The rest will resolve itself.”

The box was still on the ground where Carlos had kicked it. I was a foot or two away, but it was only a step to return to it. I bent down and grabbed the wine crate, carefully turning it so as to scoop up the contents with it.

I glanced over my shoulder.

Eladio had drawn closer, and the golden sunlight glinted on a knife in his hand. Carlos shifted slightly as if looking for a way around the pool that didn’t force him to shorten the distance between himself and the advancing man. The only other route was past me and while I was working on the box, it wouldn’t be wise for Carlos to be too close to it or me.

I hurried and put the box on the table Quinton had been using, shoving the sweating wineglasses aside so they tumbled and smashed on the ground. I couldn’t give Carlos more room, but I could try to give him more time. I tore the lid away in my haste and grabbed the bundle of bones within, tied with sinew and bound in the ivory and black strands of bone magic.

“Come to me,” I said, feeling the spirit resist my demand and the barbed bone magic cut into my hands like blades.

I snapped one of the bones in two, clumsy with my bandaged finger, and a burst of shimmering light blinded me for a moment, but even dazzled, I could see Eladio still advancing. Carlos had barely moved, his head cocked to the side as if he saw something odd. While I appreciated that Carlos didn’t want to harm the man if the ghost was the real problem, I wished he’d at least . . . do something. “This is not right . . .” I heard Carlos say. He moved away from me, but I was focusing on the box of bones again and didn’t spare a moment to look up.

As I concentrated on the ghost, I broke the rest of the bones into pieces as fast as I could, panting with effort and the pain from the spell and my hand. “Go,” I ordered. “Go. You’re free. Get out of here.”

The silvery shape of a young man—the same thin, quivering, addicted man from whom I’d retrieved the priest’s wallet in a Lisbon alley—coalesced before me. He looked terrified. I ripped away the
last lingering bits of the binding spell, kicking the box apart and letting it all fall, glittering, to the ground to dim and die away. Then I plunged my throbbing hands into the ghost’s shape, groping for the burning-hot sliver that held him in the memory of himself.

From the kitchen door behind me, Nelia screamed,
“Não, Eladio! Não!”

I grabbed the core of the ghost and pulled it free, letting his tangled strands unwind and fall away.

The shivering phantom vanished with a sigh and I turned, breathing easier, too.

But Eladio didn’t stop coming forward and Carlos started walking toward him with his hands out. “You have no need to harm me,” he said. “Her heart is not mine.”

But Eladio wasn’t listening. Now the fury and jealousy in Eladio’s face burned hot instead of cold, and the color of his aura was no longer simple red, but dripping around him like visions of running gore and flashing with bolts of green and crimson.

“Oh no,” I whispered, starting to move toward Carlos.

His head came up sharply and then he looked back over his shoulder at me. He held up one hand as if to stop me running toward him. “Blaine, I’ve thought of a better way.”

Nelia had run halfway around the pool, but she was still too far away to stop Eladio any more than I could, on Carlos’s other side. We both shouted at once, “No!”

Carlos took one more step, turning his head back to face Eladio as the other man lunged forward, closing the gap between them. Clutching Carlos’s arm with his free hand, Eladio stabbed the knife upward into the necromancer’s chest, just below the arch of the sternum—upward, just like another blade had cut into Carlos’s heart ages ago.

I felt it in my own chest and gagged on the sensation as I reached for Carlos and he staggered back.

Eladio spoke the same words Amélia had shrieked at Quinton: “She is not for you.” He jabbed the knife into his rival’s chest again and Carlos doubled over, collapsing.