Vampires and Sexy Romance (44 page)

“That,” a smoky, inhuman voice purred, “Is why she sent me to help you.”

Min spun around, but found no one in sight besides Luca.

Did you hear that?
  She thought to Luca.  She didn’t want anything that they couldn’t see able to hear what she said.

Luca nodded, his sword was drawn, and the Bellini glinted in the eerie moonlit night.

“Do not be frightened, mortal…and vampire.”  The disembodied voice drawled.  It sounded closer, which made Min’s flesh crawl.  “As I said before, I am here to help you.”

“Aid usually doesn’t hide itself from those it is there to help.”  Min said, thinking
, It could be anywhere…but it has to be one of the fae.  Iron will kill it.

As if it had been standing there the whole time, a sooty black cat appeared directly in front of them.  Of course, calling it a cat was like calling a tyrannosaurus a lizard.  Its billowing form was roughly the size of a bear, and it had enough muscles to be more gorilla than cat.  But monstrously large or no, it moved with a grace most certainly feline.  Its eyes glowed an iridescent silvery white, like the moon, and its body, though visible against the pitch knight, seemed as insubstantial as smoke.

“May I introduce myself, oh heralded emissary of summer.”  The cat slithered rather than stalked, and it made no sound as it moved.  Its maw full of sharp fangs were glacial white.  “I am Graysyn, a shadow cat, and I am here to guide you undetected into Winter’s Keep.

Min looked to Luca.  What
the hell?  Is this some sort of lame set up?
 

He kept his eyes on the shadow cat, but she knew he was listening to her thoughts. 
Send a bad guy disguised as an ally—solid bait for a trap. But…

She followed his line of logic. 
But why would the winter queen bother?  This is her power center.  Why not just send a brigade of her goons to lay waste to us?

Hear the cat out?

Min frowned.  But the dagger the Summer Queen had given her gave her a gentle surge of power, of relief.  And in that instant she understood.

“You’re a creature of Winter,” Min said to the shadow cat.  “And yet in secret you serve Summer.  Why?”

Luca didn’t interrupt, but he did stiffen his hold on the sword, ready to do battle.  

The great cat’s Moonlit eyes narrowed.  “My queen shares too much.”  He growled in annoyance.  “But as is our way, not enough for your human curiosity.”  It stood still for a moment, staring at Min. 

“Very well.  I am technically one of the wilde fae.  I could have stayed unattached to either court.  But long ago I swore allegiance to Winter and its queen.  But she has grown unstable in her long, long reign.  And now she seeks power enough to not just tip the balance of power, but to obliterate it for all time.”

“What’s the difference?”  Min said, suspiciously.

The cat hissed.  “The difference is eternity.  It is one thing to cast the world into a winter a few centuries long.  That has happened before.  It destroys everything in the mortal world, frees up all that power, and lets it resettle.  Sooner or later the powers balance out again. 

“But the queen of winter is searching for power from outside this world, and power enough that the balance of power could never again be made.”  The shadow cat’s shape shimmered, as if it were shivering.  “Things would never change…again.  And that would be more terrible than any death.  For change is a part of nature, and the fae are part of nature, especially we wilde fae.  It would sooner or later wear us down, until we withered and were no more.”

The timbre of the cat’s voice was not just desperate, it was filled with sadness. 

“So you’ve gone double agent, to help keep the status quo?”

Graysyn nodded, and his eyes flashed fiercely.

“Then how can we trust him?” Luca spat.  “He’s already betrayed his own queen.”

“You can’t.” Graysyn answered.  The great cat’s fangs showed in what could only be described as a wicked sneer.  “But I’m all you’ve got.  I’m the only one there is to show you how to get to the mount of Winter’s Keep, not just as a guide, but undetected as well.”       

~*~

The Vampire was silent.  Min stood in that silence and stared at the cat.  Luca was letting her choose whether or not to trust the cat…and how far.  She knew from what the dagger was telling her that the Summer Queen vouched for the thing…but was that enough?  No fae was trustworthy, especially since they were the reason Andy was in this fix in the first place.

Min didn’t entirely understand how her baby sister, who had never showed much aptitude for magic, could be a threat to any of the fae, not to mention the Queen of Winter.  But there they were, up to their knees in the hellish snow and ice of the Winter Court of the Fae, and they were going to find her sister.  She still had a hard time reconciling that she wasn’t going to be able to save her—that was what she did, what she was there for.  That she was just there to show Andy that she would try…

How ridiculous!

But she would.  She would try until her last breath to get to Andy…and hope the rest would work itself out like the Summer Queen thought it would.  But if not, she’d die fighting.

“Fine,” Min said, and gripped tighter to the Summer Queen’s silver dagger.  A surge of primal power flowed from it into her, and she smiled viciously at the cat.  “But betray me, and I promise you you’ll burn first.”

The words had been all her, but her voice had rung with a subtle power, something wholly inhuman that was not.  Graysyn cringed, his ears folding flat against his head, as if her voice hurt them.

“I understand.” He whispered.

“Good.”  Suddenly Min found herself standing beside the shadow cat.  She reached down and stroked an idle hand down the creature’s back, making it shudder in what looked both like pain and pleasure.  “That’s my good cat.”

Min wasn’t in control, and she knew that she had to get it back immediately.  She pushed the thoughts of the Summer Queen from her mind and walked over to Luca and touched him gently on the shoulder.  Immediately she felt less like a part of a Faerie Queen, and more like herself. 

Thank god
. She shuddered in relief. At least she knew how to keep the faerie at bay. 

But she heard a voice laughing in the distance, somewhere in her mind. 

I was just making a point to the cat.  Only I can truly touch him.  Did you not feel his essence, and not just a handful of smoke?

Min pushed harder, and the Faerie Queen’s laughing voice faded to nothing. 

Stay out of my head…I’m here to save Andy, not to serve you or to be your puppet!

There was a reluctant surge of humming power from the dagger in her grasp.  No words, but Min knew the queen understood.

Bitch… 
She turned and scowled at the shadow cat.

“Okay, take us to Winter’s Keep.”

~*~

They followed the shadow cat through the vast forest of frozen trees.  The terrain was rough, not only strewn with rocks the size of skulls, but also full of jutting tree roots, some broken from other traveler’s gates, but all ready to reach up and trip you.  At some point Min realized they were not traveling on flat ground any longer.  They were trekking across a downward slanting slope.  Which didn’t make much sense: they were headed
toward
a mountain.

“Cat,” Min said, but the rest of her question went unsaid, for just then the forest of dead and frozen trees thinned and she saw exactly where they were.  And all she could think was…

Ohgodohgodohgodohgod…

They stood on the edge of a cliff that looked over a huge valley that must have dipped a thousand feet or more—probably more—into a twisted shadowy nothingness.  The wind howled and threatened to knock Min from her feet.  And there, right across from them, but what was surely miles away, was the great black mountain Luca had told her about.  Winter’s Keep.  It was as stark and evil looking as anything she’d ever imagined. 

She gulped, her mouth had turned dry, and her body, though still warmed by the power of Summer the dagger afforded her, shook with fear.

Min was afraid of heights.  It was the only fear from childhood she had never been able to conquer.  And when a fear has lasted that long, it was ingrained on one’s soul.

A physical jerk from her nervous system pushed her back and she fell in her haste to scramble back up the slope and grabbed for the first frozen tree she could find.  The brittle wood whined at her ardent embrace, but thankfully held.  All rational thought had left her, and she was sure she was screaming like a banshee. 

I’m going to die…

~*~

Luca stared at the mountain of pitch black stone they stood across the lethal drop from and wondered what trick the shadow cat had in mind.  He hardened his grip around the hilt of the broad sword and prepared to decapitate the faerie creature if he dared move a muscle.  But then he felt it, Min’s fear.  It boiled up and spiked, and he turned to see her clamber up the grade of the mountain they were on, and fasten herself to the nearest tree.

Her fear was overwhelming, a psychic scream that made every muscle in his body tense.  It tasted of stomach acid and bile, and made his legs shake for a moment.  He felt her fear completely.  Not a surprise, but that such a powerful and fearless warrior as she could hold such a menacing thing inside her was horrific. 

He saw a flash of her memory, the first time she’d been touched by this fear…

She had been young and the world looked so large to her.  On a dare from another child one day she’d climbed a large cypress tree, and about twenty feet up her feet slipped.  For a moment all that held her from falling and certain death was her frantic grip on a smaller, weaker branch.  It held just long enough for her to grab for the larger branch again before the weaker cracked off in her hand.  Somehow she managed to wrap herself around that branch and closed her eyes. 

Something inside her had turned off that day.  Her mother had had to come and get her.  Somehow she’d pried Min’s limbs from the branch and gotten her down from the tree, but Min had never remembered any of it.  All she remembered was holding onto that branch, and then much later holding onto her mother with the same helpless terror.

If she’d known then what she learned later, that fears left unchecked could choke the life from a person, she would have forced herself to face that one maddening fear.  That a phobia like this could fester, even though you couldn’t feel it, into something insurmountable.  Something that could get you killed.

The memory and Min’s inner thoughts simply stopped, and Luca felt her fear of falling cease.  She was frozen, inside and out, by that fear.  It had literally switched her off.

He approached her slowly, taking his time to talk to her, ignoring the impatient shadow cat and placing all his attention on the woman he loved.  He had to do something to lessen the fear that held her, but what?

His instincts told him to touch her, so he did: first tentatively on the shoulder, and then another hand, this one on the nape of her neck, making skin on skin contact.  She was warm, but that sense of connection, of a living electrical pulse was missing.  He swallowed and ignored the doubts that flickered in his head.  This was Min.  The fiercest mortal he had ever met, the woman he loved.  She would not lie down and die, she would fight. 

And he would help her.  It was what he was there for.  To love and help her in every way he could.

Min?
  His thoughts echoed back to him, as if she were empty.  But he knew she was still in there, somewhere. 
Can you hear me?
  Still nothing. 

I know this is a lot to ask, but you have to push your fear away from you.  You have no other choice.
  He tried to press some of his strength into her, as he had done before when she was injured after the Winter Queen had attacked her.  But it wasn’t her body that needed repairing.  He hissed in aggravation.  But his touch had helped balance her not long ago, hadn’t it?  His touch had helped her overcome so much already.

But that was just magic.  This was something real, something that had been with her, every day since it had happened, and it was a tangible, immutable thing.

Then he thought of something else that was as much a part of her as anything else, if even more so. 

“Andy needs you.”  Over and over, as gently as he could, he repeated those words.

Slowly her blank, staring eyes closed, and she licked her lips.  When her eyes opened again, tears streamed down her face and she shook violently.

“I can’t…”  She held all the harder to the frozen tree she had attached herself to.  “I c-can’t do this.”

Luca closed the distance between them until his lips were practically touching hers, her breath mingled with his.  He looked deep into her big, brown eyes.

“Yeah…but
we
can.”

Min blinked at her vampire.  Luca’s eyes shined not only with the warm green of Summer’s magic, but with love.  It made the cold, tight stranglehold of her fear loosen.  He really loved her.  He was so in love with her he was at her side as they marched most certainly to their deaths.

And he believed in her.  She felt that from their connection.  His belief and love for her throbbed and flowed into her from where his hand clasped the back of her neck.  For what seemed like forever she’d held desperately tight to the frozen tree, and she’d been all alone.  She hadn’t felt him, and hadn’t even been able to think of anything but how high up they were, as it had felt all those years ago to have almost fallen to her death from that blasted tree.

Why hadn’t she faced this fear before today?  Was she growing feeble, or had her fear been so great that it was powerful enough to hide in plain sight?

Oh god, she was giving an emotion nefarious characteristics and sentient intelligence. 

“I’ll be holding onto you the whole time,” Luca whispered.  “I won’t let you fall.”

She believed him.  But the roiling emotions of her fear seized her again, even through the warmth and power of their connection.  It made her arms jerk and her stranglehold on the frozen tree intensified.  Her eyes snapped shut.

Luca laughed.  Not a kind chuckle.  No, this was a mean, mocking little laugh.  This laugh made her blood boil.

“Fine, fine…” he chortled in a mollifying tone.  “I could carry you across.  It’s not the first time I’ve had to rescue a damsel in distress.”

Anger ignited in Min’s chest and her eyes flew open.  She felt the palm of her right hand burn and itch, power building there for a fireball.

“Who the hell do you think you are?  I ought to burn you to a freaking cinder!”

He locked her gaze with his and slowly nodded.  “There’s the Min I know.”

She was close to throwing a punch at his handsome face when it dawned on her.  “You just pissed me off to get my mind off my fear, didn’t you?”

“Yep,” he made the word pop with humor.  “Did it work?”

Min reached out and grabbed Luca by the collar of his bedraggled silk shirt, and pulled him into a brief though heated kiss.  “Damn straight it did.” 

She let go of him and turned to the seemingly endless chasm between where they were and the mount of Winters Keep, and the petulant shape of the shadow cat waiting on them.

“So how do we get down off this damned mountain and up the other?”

The shadow cat closed his eyes for a beat, and seemed to smile to himself.  “We won’t be going down.  We’re going across.”

“Across?” she asked.  “Can a shadow cat sprout wings?  Because I left my jet pack at home.”

In a tone one would use for the very young or mentally infirm, the cat said, “Many of the Sidhe, of the assorted faerie courts, cannot fly. That is why the secret bridge was fashioned.”

Min laughed and made a show of looking over the cat’s head and back.  “Bridge?  I don’t see any bridge.”

“And why should you?” the cat said smoothly.  “It wouldn’t be a secret if you could see it.”

Min looked nervously to the fathomless cannon and gulped.  Luca walked past her to the edge of the cliff.  He leaned down and picked up a handful of pebbles, then tossed them out in front of him.  The pebbles fell swiftly into the pitch nothingness of the chasm and disappeared.

Luca stood and shook his head.  “I was sure this was one of those
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
things.”  

“No,” taunted the shadow cat.  “It’s one of those
you have to physically step out onto the expanse for it to solidify
things.”

“Well, that sucks.”  Luca growled.  He turned back to Min.  “So we have to trust this faerie—”

The shadow cat hissed, his fangs glowing sharp and white in the cold night.

“That there’s a bridge that stretches from this point to somewhere on Mount Crazy.” Luca continued.  “Boy, our choices are getting better and better.”

The shadow cat cleared his throat indignantly.  “If it will appease you, I shall go first.  I would hardly throw myself off a cliff, now would I?”

“But you’re made out of smoke, you little kir.” Luca flicked his broad sword menacingly at the cat.  “You could just float out there and we’d be none the wiser!”  

A pulse of summer heat radiated out from the dagger and into Min’s hand, and with it an idea.

Min walked over to the cat and reached out, taking a tuft of its shadowy form into her hand.  It turned solid the instant she grasped it, and the cat moaned in what could have been pain or ecstasy.  The cat peered up at her.  He looked surprised.

“Now you’ll fall just like one of us.”  She leered over the cat and showed him her teeth.  The power of Summer burned in her veins, yet she could tell she was in full control.  “So is there still an invisible bridge out there?”

The cat’s moon-glow eyes widened, but his gaze did not falter.  “Yes, my lady.  The bridge is there, and will take us to where you want to be.”

~*~

The first step should have been the hardest.  Min held a death-grip on both Luca’s hand and the soft fur of the shadow cat.  To her extreme displeasure, each step on the solid, though alarmingly invisible bridge was just as hard as the one before it.  She didn’t look down…much.  But even without seeing it, she couldn’t just ignore that she was walking over a thousand feet up—or that she had no idea how wide the bridge was, where it stopped, or how close she was from the edge?

Min shook her head and pulled her imagination back in check.  All she needed to know was she was walking across a solid bridge, and that Luca was with her.  Maybe that was why she wasn’t huddled in a little ball, shivering with her eyes clenched shut.  Maybe it was his touch.

Though she knew the wind was blowing as hard as it had been on the mountain, since they had stepped foot on the invisible bridge she hadn’t felt the slightest breeze. 

Guess the fae don’t like being blown off invisible bridges either.

Her heart was pounding excessively hard at the halfway mark, and only every ounce of will she had kept her from running the last hundred feet to the dark mount of Winters Keep.  But once there, she felt a little differently.

She’d thought her legs might give out, and she’d fall to the ground and hug and kiss it in the greatest relief of her life.  But the instant her feet touched the terra firma of Winters Keep, the most profound sense of being in danger engulfed her.  Her pounding heart sped up, her breathing came in gasping rasps, and she looking around her with such force she was sure her head would snap off.

But as the shadow cat had said, they were utterly alone, and it seemed that nothing and no one was able to see them.  But still…

The shadow cat made a pained growl, and Min realized she had tightened her grip considerably.  To elicit such a sound from a fae meant she was using some of the Summer Queens power.  She let go of the cat’s hide, because she hadn’t meant to cause it pain, and because she certainly didn’t want to be using the Summer Queen’s powers for no good reason.

The shadow cat shook itself, as if it was wet, and then made a somewhat agonized sound.   Again, Min could not tell if it was pleasure or pain.  It prowled forward and swiped an insubstantial though sharp looking claw over the stone side of the mountain.  Immediately the darker-than-night stone split open, and though there wasn’t any light emitted from inside of the crag, there were eerie green and red lights, almost like the veins of color in marble, but they throbbed, gently moved, and even changed shapes.

“My lady,” The cat pronounced, and looked over its shoulder to her.  “Here is the way you seek.  This passage will lead us to the great hall.  There you fill find your sister, and the queen.”  The cat glided into the fissure.

Min wondered only for a moment why her sister would be held captive so close to the queen, but the pulsing heat of Summer told her the answer. 

She will keep her prize in sight of her own eyes; at least until she has taken what she wants from it.

Min shivered at the words that had floated through her mind.  The queen thought of her sister as nothing more than an object of power, something to own, to devour.

Luca gripped her hand all the harder, and then pulled away, taking both the shotgun and the sword in alternate hands, ready to fight.

Min gritted her teeth. 
Over my dead body.

Her grip of the silver faerie blade hardened, and she plunged into the dark fissure with sure, urgent strides. 

~*~

The fissure didn’t lead in a straight shot.  It curved and jutted from side to side, but Min got the definite feeling they were heading deeper and deeper into the mountain.  The walls throbbed all the more brightly, so much she could make out the Shadow cat’s shape as it slithered before her.  Luca moved backwards and watched the way they’d come. 

Then, with a jarring abruptness, they came upon a dead end.  The wall before them was huge and solid, and carved with glyphs and runes—all symbols alien to Min.  But one rune did come across to her loud and clear.  It practically glowed as she stepped closer to it.

Summer shall not pass
, it read.

Min shivered as the words passed through her mind and caused cold tingles of fear through her.  Did this mean the power of Summer couldn’t come with her?  Would she have to face the Winter Queen and her minions without any help at all?

The warmth of Summer flowed into her, at first pleasant, and then red hot.  The weight of the dagger evaporated in her hand, scalding as its metal melted into her flesh.  She looked down to her outstretched palm and a silver rune glowed in answer.  It read,
Go with though, shall I.

Okay, that was weird.  But as Min’s mind tried to wrap itself around what she was looking at, the power of Summer enveloped her, and she knew.  The runes warding the Winter Queen’s center of power would keep out Summer’s eternal power, but it wasn’t designed to keep out a mortal.  And even though Summer’s power flowed through her like water, she was still only a mortal.

“Open it, Graysyn.”

Luca changed his stance, so to see the way we were heading, his sword held to strike before us, the Bellini pointed to the rear.  The shadow cat looked up with his smoky, moonlit eyes, and with a swipe of his claws the wall started to open.

It slid open silently, and the room it led to wasn’t so much lit as it glowed with moonlight.  It was huge, with vaulted ceilings, and grand sculptures adorned its walls.  Some were carved murals of battles past.  Some were of goblins holding actual gems the size of human skulls in their grasps. Some were life sized mermaids, parts of their bodies reaching out, beckoning.  Sirens.

But the room was empty, and there wasn’t a door of exit anywhere in sight.

The shadow cat’s eyes flicked left and right, and it growled out a confused sound.  And just as it started to fade and disappear, a net of silvery light lashed up out of the stone floor and caught it whole, wrapping around it and holding it painfully flat to the ground.  The cat hissed and cried as the silver treads of the net dug into its form and seared its shadowy flesh.

Without anymore warning twenty shapes appeared around them as if they’d always been there.  They’d been veiled so well, even the shadow cat hadn’t been able to tell. 

Luca reached out and pulled Min back toward him, both the sword and the shotgun facing the sudden cadre of faeries. 

“Betray our Queen, you have.”  A tall, beautiful sidhe man said, his long hair the white of snow, his eyes glowing golden.  In his hands he held a long, menacing silver trident.  His voice was deep and metallic, utterly inhuman.  “For that you shall pay for an eternity.” 

He turned his cruel golden eyes upon Min and Luca, and the smile that formed on his face was not his own.  Min knew this smile, and the voice that came next from the male’s lips was smooth and feminine, and absolutely crazed.  The voice of the Winter Queen.  “But you two, I thinks, will die now.”  And she laughed, the sound like the tinkling of tiny bells, beautiful and painful all at once.

The assembled fae gave a cackle of glee and all of them surged forward at once.