Tangled Webs (33 page)

“Langston man.” The words came out in a vicious snarl.

Surreal took a step to the side to get a better look at the woman moving toward them in a predatory stalk.

Hell’s fire. It
was
Tersa.

“You tried to hurt the boy,” Tersa said. “And the other children, too. You lied to me. You said it was a surprise for the children.”

It was that, Surreal thought.

“Tersa.” Daemon turned toward Tersa, blocking her direct path to Jenkell.

She had known Tersa for centuries, had seen her when she was semilucid, lost in her visions, or just raving mad. But she’d never seen her when she was filled with a cold, wild fury.

Still focused on Jenkell, Tersa shifted to move around Daemon. “You tried to hurt the children. You tried to hurt my boys!”

She lunged at Jenkell, who squealed—
squealed!
—and turned to run.

Daemon caught Tersa. Lucivar caught Jenkell.

“Tersa, let me handle this.” Daemon tightened his grip on Tersa’s arms.
“Mother.”

Jenkell froze. Surreal wanted to slap him for being an idiot twice over. Hadn’t he bothered to find out who she was
before
he lured Tersa into helping him?

“Mother, let me handle this.”

They stared at each other, mother and son, and Surreal saw a truth about Daemon she’d never seen before.
Mother Night. What he is…Not all of it came from his father.

Then Tersa held up something between them. Surreal couldn’t see what it was, but when Daemon looked down, he smiled. A cold, cruel smile.

He stepped back and turned to face Jenkell. “There is no law against murder. But there is a price. I rule this Territory. The people you killed to fuel this entertainment? They belonged to me. The Warlord Prince who was wounded works for me. The witch who was injured is family. Not to mention the harm you’ve done to my mother by using her in a scheme to kill her own son. Everything has a price, Jenkell. It’s time for you to pay the debt.”

Daemon walked up to the front door, then looked at Jaenelle. “Lady, would you mind holding the door?”

Jaenelle followed him up the steps.
She
was the one who opened the door and kept her hand on the latch while he walked past her into the house. He stopped in the middle of the hallway, nothing more than a shadowy figure.

Somewhere in the house, a gong sounded. One, two, three, four.

I guess the count starts over when a new game begins,
Surreal thought.

She lost count. She wasn’t sure if there were echoes in her head or if the gong was really sounding that quickly.

Daemon walked back to the door, holding a pen in his hand. “Twenty-eight?” he asked Jaenelle.

“Twenty-eight,” she agreed as he slipped the pen into a jacket pocket.

He nodded at Lucivar, who dragged Jenkell up to the door.

“According to your rules, there are thirty exits in this house. Twenty-eight have now been closed. You have seventy-two hours to find either of the remaining two. I guarantee that no matter what you meet in this house, you will live through those seventy-two hours.”

Surreal shivered, hearing the threat beneath the words.

Jenkell, the idiot, looked relieved.

Then Daemon stepped out of the house, grabbed Jenkell by the shirt, and flung him into the front hallway.

Jaenelle released the latch and skipped back.

The door slammed shut.

Jaenelle and Daemon came down the steps to join her and Lucivar, and all four of them looked at Tersa.

“Why?” Jaenelle asked, her voice gentle. “If you wanted to help with the spooky house, why didn’t you say something to Marian or me? We would have been glad to have your help. We would still like your help.”

Tersa wrung her hands, looking lost. “I saw…in a tangled web. Surprises for my boys. Not to harm, just little surprises. But there were other boys. That’s why I came to this place, this house. When the Langston man said he was building a surprise for the boys…I saw it in the web. One boy lost because I didn’t make my surprises.”

Lucivar looked back at the house, then looked at Daemon. “I think I met that boy. And he would have been lost in every way if it wasn’t for one of Tersa’s surprises.”

Daemon studied Lucivar for a moment, then nodded before he looked at the Coach across the street. “And I think Jaenelle and I found the other boy who needed help.”

“Yes,” Jaenelle said. “I think you’re right.” She smiled at Tersa.

“But you didn’t answer the question. Would you like to help Marian and me finish up our spooky house? Maybe you could put in the same surprises.”

No, no, no,
Surreal thought.
Not the damn beetles.
“The skeleton mouse was kind of cute. Very clever.”

“The spiders were good too,” Lucivar said.

“But you can’t have them pouring out of a drawer,” Surreal said. “If you do, you’ll need to assign someone to keep mopping the floor.”

A beat of silence. Then Lucivar burst out laughing. “That explains why I smelled piss in the kitchen.”

The ground melted. Suddenly Jaenelle was holding her up.

“We need to finish this discussion later,” Jaenelle said. “I’ve done as much preparation as I can on Surreal and Rainier. Now we need to get them into the Coach so I can do the actual healing.”

Preparation? Come to think of it, she
had
been feeling a phantom hand over the wound, easing the heat and pain.

“Yes,” Lucivar growled. “Our little cousin got herself poisoned.”

“You can’t yell at me if I’m sick,” Surreal said. “It’s a family rule.” And if it wasn’t a family rule, it was damn well going to be—starting now.

“Since when?”

That was Lucivar. In a pissing contest, he not only stepped up to the line; he pissed on the other person’s foot.

Since she was the other person, she balled up her fist, threw a punch—and didn’t come anywhere close to hitting him.

“Lucivar and I will bring Rainier and the children to the Coach. Can you handle Surreal?” Daemon asked.

“Don’t need to be handled,” Surreal muttered.

“Do you really want Lucivar to help you into the Coach?” Jaenelle whispered.

“No.”

“Tersa?” Jaenelle said. “Give me a hand?”

With Tersa on one side and Jaenelle on the other, she didn’t trip or stumble on the way to the Coach. Of course, Jaenelle was floating her on air and they were just tugging her along, but that was a small and insignificant detail.

“How bad is it?” Surreal asked when the Coach’s door opened and a young boy stared at her. “Really.”

“You’re going to be sick for a few days, but your body’s been burning out a lot of the poison in the same way you burn up food. An advantage you had because you wear the Gray.” Jaenelle hesitated, then added, “It was fortunate you were the one who was wounded that way. Rainier wouldn’t have survived it.”

Shit shit shit.

They floated her up the stairs to one of the Coach’s little bedrooms. As they settled her into the bed, she said, “Since this is the first time I was really stupid, do you think Lucivar will overlook the fact that I didn’t shield before walking into a strange place?”

Jaenelle looked at her and laughed. “Not a chance.”

TWENTY-SIX

J
arvis Jenkell picked himself up and brushed off his jacket with shaking hands.

This wasn’t good. This wasn’t good at all. He hadn’t anticipated the SaDiablo family linking him to the spooky house. He’d deliberately told a few people “in confidence” about the setting for his next Landry Langston story so that there would be independent confirmation that he’d begun writing his book
before
the tragic events that should have taken place here.

How had Lucivar known he was there? The passageways and observation posts had been carefully shielded. Had to be. Otherwise the demon-dead, chained to this house and craving fresh blood, would have been hunting
him.
But the protection spells hadn’t been good enough to fool the Eyrien. Not at the end.

No matter. He had seventy-two hours to get out of the house. He wouldn’t need an hour. The last two exits were actually in this first house. Not easy to find if you didn’t know what to look for, but easy enough to reach.

He turned toward the door at the back of the hall—the door he’d gone through in the guise of the caretaker in order to observe this game.

“Regrets?” a deep voice purred.

Jarvis spun around, his heart pounding.

Daemon Sadi leaned against the doorframe of the sitting room.

“I thought you had gone,” Jarvis said.

“We still have a few things to discuss.”

“What kind of things?” Jarvis asked as Daemon walked toward him. Such a beautiful man. It wasn’t just his face or the way his body was put together. It was the way he moved.

A temptation—even if a man wasn’t usually tempted by his own gender. A promise—but the sleepy gold eyes didn’t reveal all that was being offered.

“A seduction?” Daemon’s voice still purred, but it also held cold amusement.

When had Sadi circled around him, come up behind him?

He could feel the heat of the man pressed against his back, could feel the light prick of those black-tinted nails as a hand closed around his throat. Lips brushed his cheek as Sadi’s other hand slipped beneath his shirt and began a slow caress down his chest, down his belly, stopping when the fingers slipped just below his belt.

Delight? Shame? He wasn’t sure what to feel when his body responded, helpless to resist.

“Same game, Jarvis,” Daemon whispered. “But the rules have changed a little.”

No other warning before Sadi’s nails ripped his belly open, tearing through muscle, slicing his gut.

He screamed in pain and terror. Struggled to get away from the hand digging deeper into his gut.

He twisted, determined to land one blow before he died. His hands shoved at Daemon’s chest—and hit the wall.

He stared at his arms, which disappeared into Sadi’s chest. He felt the wall under his hands. He looked at those sleepy eyes.

Daemon smiled a cold, cruel smile.

“A sophisticated shadow,” Daemon said. “All part of the new game. You can’t touch me, but I”—a nail flicked, slicing Jarvis’s cheek—“can touch you.”

Jarvis backed away. One arm cradled his ruined belly, while the other hand touched his cheek. He looked at his fingers.

No blood.

He dared to look down.

No wound.

“Feels real enough, doesn’t it?” Daemon said pleasantly. “But it’s all illusion. Well, the pain is real. The wounds are not.”

“What’s the point of that?” Jarvis asked.

Daemon looked surprised. “I did guarantee that nothing in this house would kill you. The predators you brought into this place might hurt you if they catch you, but I’ll prevent them from killing you.”

“Lucivar killed them all.”

“Oh, no. Most likely, he ripped them up enough to take them out of that fight. Since his main interest was getting Surreal and Rainier out of the house, he wouldn’t have bothered to finish the kill.”

“But they’re all still…”
In pieces,
Jarvis finished silently.

Daemon sighed and gave him an amused smile. “Jarvis, darling, a demon-dead witch who was beheaded will have to use Craft to float on air, but as long as there is some power still burning within her, she can hunt. And she does have teeth.”

Jarvis shuddered. How was he supposed to survive something like
that
? He’d hole up in the protected passageways. He had food and water, a mattress and blankets, even a few chamber pots. He could hold out for the seventy-two hours required, and then he would be free. Debt paid.

“About those things we need to discuss,” Daemon said. “Since most of the original webs were destroyed when Lucivar punched free of the house, I’ve replaced them with my own illusion spells. You won’t find my tangled webs, so don’t waste your time searching. But I will tell you that one of them feeds into the hidden passageways. Yes, Lucivar did tell me about the writer-mouse’s hidey-holes. So in our new game, those passageways will still keep you safe from your own predators, but not from mine. Not from me.”

“Yours won’t kill me?”

“I demonstrated what mine are going to do.”

Another shudder went through him. Would the pain be any less because he knew the wounds weren’t real? Or would it be worse when he knew that no attack would kill him, no matter how vicious?

“My darling, I think you’re beginning to understand.” Daemon drifted toward the sitting room door. “The next thing you should know is that using my tangled webs to fuel the game shuffled the exits. There are still thirty of them, although only two remain open, and they’re still where they were. But the order in which they open was shuffled.”

“But that means…”

“You’re going to have to check every one of them in order to find the two that are still open.”

He’d have to travel through the whole house—all three buildings—with the demon-dead hunting him, and Sadi…

“You wanted to dance with the Sadist,” Daemon said too softly. “Now you will.”

He’d wanted to
observe
the Sadist, which was altogether different.

“What else?” Daemon tapped a finger against his lips. “Ah, yes. My mother wanted me to tell you that she made some changes to her illusions. They’re connected to my webs, and her little surprises are now more in keeping with your intentions for this house.”

“And that means…?”

“They all have teeth.” Daemon smiled. “You wanted to play games with my family. Now we’ll play, you and me.” As the shadow Daemon faded, he added, “Watch out for the cat. He doesn’t like humans—except when he’s using them for a toy or having them for dinner.”

Jarvis stood in the hallway, uncertain what to do or where to go. If he went into the sitting room, would the shadow Daemon still be there, waiting to play another round of the game? There was an exit in the sitting room. Maybe he should check the exits at the back of the house first. Or…