Unchained, the Dark Forgotten (2010) (33 page)

Now he knew the real face of danger. He had lost everything, all his choices.

Except this one. He chose to save the little girl who had given him hope. For her, he would gamble with the last scraps of his life.

For Ashe, who had given him back a taste of joy.

Reynard froze, listening. There was a scuffle of footsteps, soft soles on cold stone. Almost too soft to hear. Moving very, very fast.

Before he could draw into the shadows, a group of five vampires rounded the corner, moving smoothly as a school of sharp-toothed fish. Their pale faces floated in the dim light, eyes seeming lit from within. They came to an abrupt halt, staring at Reynard.

A tall red-haired male stood in the center of the group. The others surrounded him like an honor guard. All were armed and disheveled, as if they’d been in a fight. One had a gash in his temple, already scabbed over, a trickle of dried blood trailing down his cheek.

Well, that answered the question about who had drawn the guards away from their posts. They were forming search parties, looking for this group of intruders.

“Stand aside,” growled the red- haired one in the middle.

Belenos, I’ll wager
. A cold smile spread over Reynard’s features.

Eden was silent as she walked with Miru-kai through the Castle’s grottoes and torchlit halls. Deep in thought, she barely seemed to notice her surroundings. Or perhaps she was too afraid to be curious about the dark, stony prison. She was probably thinking about her grandparents.

Sadly, fey magic didn’t include taking back words he had no business speaking. The prince cursed himself.

It wasn’t like a fey to wonder about a human’s thoughts, but Miru- kai had human blood. It made him ponder things no other fey would worry about. For instance, every child taken by the fey changed the future. Their threads dropped from the weave of human history. Deeds would be left undone, future children never born—the effect as absolute as if they had lost their lives. Did the fey have the right to cause such changes in the pattern?

Right now he wished he were fey enough to simply grab the girl and count his blessings. Instead, his rudimentary conscience—a very human attribute—was forcing him to think hard about what he was going to do next. What futures might he alter by interfering with her destiny?

He could feel her unhappiness. Empathy was something Simeon had tried to teach Miru-kai, and now he couldn’t shut it off. The very air around the child screamed with how much she wanted to go home.

How did humans get on in life with everyone else’s feelings to worry about? It was exhausting. On the other hand, he couldn’t indulge in emotion all the time. He had to keep several thousand monsters in line. That called for a cool head.

“Sometimes,” he said, “it is difficult to be a prince.”

“Why?” Eden responded, startling him.

He hadn’t realized he’d spoken out loud. He looked down at her, and then decided to finish his thought. Listening and advising. That was what human companions were good at. That was what Simeon had done for him.

“I was a pirate once. That was much more fun. Gratuitous amounts of robbery and liquor.”

“So, why’d you change jobs?”

Miru-kai sighed. “The fey were weak. They needed a leader, and I was a prince. Then others came along—changelings, goblins, the unwanted and ugly species no one would take in.”

“Why do you want to rule them, if no one else seems to?”

“I understand what they need.”

Miru-kai stopped. They had reached a vast space ringed with balconies. In the center was a dark pool rimmed by white marble, the carved lip of the stone fluted and curving outward. The overall shape of the pool was squares overlapping squares in a geometric pattern. Rather than torches, fires burned in the four corners of the space.

The hall had seen better days. Tiers of stone benches rose up a sloped balcony, but many had been broken during the last battle inside the Castle. The curious fact was that some kind of night-blooming plant had begun to grow there, twining around the ruins and breaking them down to rubble. And yet, there was neither sun nor water. The sweet-scented vine had to be a freak of the Castle’s errant magic.

Eden reached out to touch one of the red- veined trumpet flowers, but the prince caught her hand. “I wouldn’t touch that. I’m not sure if it’s safe.”

Her face turned to him, and his heart grew still. There was gratitude in her eyes, and a glimmering of trust. The look made his chest hurt. Few people ever looked at him that way.

Eden put her hands back in her pockets and sat down on a stump of stone pillar. She looked sleepy. Dimly, he remembered that children needed rest.

“There used to be a dragon here,” he said, nodding toward the pool. “But they had to put it back downstairs, where it was warmer.”

“A dragon?” she asked. “My mom and Uncle Alessandro fought a dragon once. I wonder if it was the same one.”

“I think it was.”

She seemed to ponder a moment. “I thought dark fey were bad.” Eden made a face. “Sorry, but you seem nice. Not at all like what I’ve been told.”

Miru-kai blinked. That was the thing with children. They were blunt. “The dark fey are tricksters, but we’re part of nature’s cycle. Sometimes we’re the necessary chaos that breaks down old, dead patterns. Sometimes we give people what they deserve and they call it bad luck. That’s why they’re afraid of us. We’re not evil. We’re just uncomfortable.”

“And light fey?”

“They dress better, but they’re not that different. They don’t like to be around humans as much.”

“Why not?”

“It’s complicated. The last light fey I talked to still referred to humans as an upstart ruffian species that deserved to be exterminated like an unwanted invasion of ants.”

“Whatever.” She yawned. “Bring ’em on. Ants bite back.”

He tilted his head, amused. “I wonder how like your mother you are, and if Reynard knows what he’s getting himself into.”

Her mood, which he had so carefully eased, flattened. She began picking at her fingers, head bowed. “Why do you say my mom killed my grandparents?”

“It’s just something I heard,” he said lightly. “It’s probably not true.”

She gave him a withering look. “You said it had something to do with a spell?”

“So it was rumored.”

Eden pursed her lips, looking out over the dark pool of water. “I’ve asked and asked, but no one’s ever told me how they died. My grandparents weren’t sick or anything, were they?”

“No.”

“And no one suspected it was something magic?”

“Very few people had any idea there was anything out of the ordinary.”

“So it wasn’t like a mugging or something?”

“No.”

She fell silent.

“What are you thinking?” the prince asked uneasily.

“About something Mom said once. About how a selfish spell broke her powers.”

“What was the spell?” As soon as he asked the question, the prince felt a sudden need to change the topic. Talking about this was only going to make the child unhappier. “Have you noticed how sweet these blossoms smell?”

“It was to give Grandma and Grandpa car trouble so they wouldn’t come home and find out that Mom snuck out to a concert instead of babysitting Auntie Holly.”

“Ah,” said Miru- kai. “Would you like to visit the gargoyles? The hatchlings are really rather comical.”

“I don’t want gargoyles or flowers!” Eden snapped, then lowered her voice. “I just want to know the truth.”

Miru-kai considered long and hard. “A spell like what you describe is meant for two people. If your mother tried to perform it on her own, it would have been difficult to control.”

“Is that what did it? A car crash?”

Miru-kai looked down at his hands. “According to what I heard, your grandfather’s car went out of control.” He didn’t say the vehicle had fallen down a cliff, crashed to the beach, and burned mere feet from the ocean. In his experience, truth had to be adjusted to suit those who heard it.

Tears welled in Eden’s eyes. “I hate my mother.”

“Don’t be so hard on her,” Miru-kai said gently.

“She killed my grandparents. She cast a selfish spell that went wrong and they died.”

He winced. “And she’s had to live with that every day since. If she did not tell you before, it’s because she was afraid of losing your love.”

Eden looked at him from under dark lashes. “How do you know that?”

Miru-kai didn’t answer at once, but stared across the ruined amphitheater with its strange, fragrant vines. Images of the white blooms shivered in the dark pond, the water stirred by a breeze too faint to feel upon his skin.

“Because I’m very old, and I’ve made a lot of mistakes. Many were for selfish reasons. As I said, I was a pirate. A thief. Then I became a warlord. Those are occupations where mistakes are catastrophic. I don’t imagine being a young witch is any simpler, with powerful magic and the wildness of youth in one’s veins.”

“What she did was wrong.”

“Of course it was. But how does your anger fix anything at all? Does it make her a wiser person? Does it bring your grandparents back to life?”

“She should have told me.”

“She probably thought you were too young to understand. Perhaps she has not forgiven herself, and so finds it hard to ask forgiveness.”

“Why?”

“That’s something, sadly, you will learn in time. Think about it. If you were in your mother’s place, what would you think of yourself?”

Eden hugged herself, looking small and frail amidst the ruins of the hall. “No wonder she always seems so sad.”

“She’s a prisoner of those memories. Perhaps telling her you forgive her will set her free.”

Reynard drew his Smith & Wesson and fired all in one motion. A vampire head exploded. Two of the other vamps fired their weapons. Reynard dropped to the ground, tucking into a roll that took him backward. With four on one, room to move was essential.

He came out of the roll and into a crouch, bringing up his weapon again.
Blam!

The corridor rang with the noise, hell on vampire ears. He missed, but they flinched.
Blam!
Another head exploded.

Three on one now
. Reynard ducked into another roll and scrambled to take cover where this corridor crossed another. A bullet
chinged
on the stone near his ear, sending prickles of alarm in waves down his neck. Reynard jerked back from the corner, gripping his gun and pulling in a breath of stale air and cordite.

A small blue fey zigzagged down the corridor, wings humming. One of the vampires fired at it, sending sparks flying off the stone wall.

Silence, then a hum of magic. Reynard felt it crawl over his skin, vibrating in his back teeth. Carefully, he peered around the corner.

Just in time to see a portal close behind Belenos and his last two henchmen.

He had heard from Mac that Belenos had a key. Unlike the guardsmen, who could open a portal at will, a vampire would have to activate the key’s magic—chant a spell or do a dance or however the blazes the keys worked. Reynard had never needed to use one, so he didn’t know the specifics.

But that answered why the King of the East and his minions were in this deserted corridor. Belenos had probably been looking for a quiet place to make a door and get away—a bit of a challenge with the Castle guard in pursuit, but he’d just managed it.
Damnation!

Reynard clicked the safety on his gun and slipped it back into the holster beneath his jacket, reciting a litany of curses compiled over several centuries.

The skirmish had been over in less than two minutes.

As he would after any of his daily battles in the Castle, Reynard checked for injuries—bruises, but nothing noteworthy—and carried on. He would report the fight to Mac as soon as Eden was safe.

Unfortunately, the skirmish had cost energy. As he pulled out Holly’s crystal and resumed his search, Reynard’s feet felt heavy, and an odd ache beneath his breastbone began pulsing with every heartbeat. He pushed himself, hurrying as fast as he could manage. He was running out of time.

The trail led him to a familiar room, one nearly destroyed by a cataclysmic battle last autumn. To one side, his silk garments an exotic splash against the stone, sat Miru-kai. Across from him, Eden perched on a lump of rock, looking hunched and tired. Reynard’s heart bounded at the sight of the girl.

Silently, Reynard pocketed the crystal, sending a prayer of thanks for Holly’s magic. Then he pulled the Smith & Wesson again.

“Miru-kai.”

The prince looked up, his face tightening as he saw who had interrupted his conversation. “Well, old fox, it seems you’ve sniffed us out.”

Eden’s head whipped around. “Captain Reynard!”

She leaped up and streaked across the room, thumping into him in an ecstatic hug. The force of it nearly made him stumble. “You’ve come to take me home!”

Reynard put a hand on the dark curls, the child’s warmth so vibrant against the cold, dead air of the prison. His strength was ebbing fast. His knees were shaking with fatigue. It felt odd, for one immortal. He’d forgotten what illness was like.

That memory was coming back with a vengeance.

But he’d meant it when he said Eden came first. He hugged the girl and pushed her behind him, putting his body between her and Miru-kai. She grabbed the back of his shirt, as if she was afraid he’d vanish. Then one hand slipped into his.

He kept the gun trained on the prince.

He didn’t mind the anchor of Eden’s grip. His head was clear, but his gut was a solid knot of apprehension. In a weakened state there were too many things that could go wrong. “I’m taking Eden back to her mother.”

“Are you sure?” said the prince, his eyes a mix of anger and amusement. “You look like you’re about to fall over. What did you do, wrestle every troll between here and the Castle door?”