2 Death Rejoices (33 page)

“That's what I'm talking about,” I agreed. “More of this, please.”

“Simpleton!” Harry exploded at me, chucking harmless handfuls of dried leaves at me. “Silence your mouth and your loins this instant, or I will do it for you!”

“Don't you threaten me, Fangus McTantrumpants.” I tossed back, unable to squelch a smug smile. “He's the boss of you. He can make you do whatever he says. Go ahead,” I jerked my head at the shadow. “
You
tell him. He's supposed to be having way more sex with me than he does, right? That's in the rule book someplace.”

“Rule book?” The shade of Prince Dreppenstedt looked momentarily baffled.

Harry let out a gurgling, frustrated sigh and half-slumped against a mossy stump.

“The Bond requires constant rebuilding,” Prince Dreppenstedt confirmed, “constant protection, and, yes, of course that extends to the intimacies of his bed, nurturing his companion with the nectar of his loins and his veins both. This he knows. You are not Guy's first advocate. He is accustomed to sustaining his Bond.”

“Aha!” I rejoiced, though my brain went,
nectar of the whosa-
whatsit? I think we just missed something big there
but in my fervor to prove myself right, I skimmed over the prince's words and let it go. “Harry, my whole self was starving for something, and I just thought I was perpetually sex-obsessed — partly because you had me doped-up on bremelanotide, but party because you've been stingy with the sexing the Bond requires.”

I heard Harry's sharp choke at my mention of the so-called vitamins, and I ignored it while he pulled himself together, covering himself with a brusque yank of his pants.

I continued, “The Bond has been pushing me, driving me, insisting.”

“Your DaySitter is entirely correct,” Prince Dreppenstedt said. “I am glad that Viktor informed me of your grievous neglect, Guy.”

Ooops.
I shrank into the deeper shadows, but not before Harry's glare could lance over his shoulder. I shrugged apologetically with a little nose-wrinkle.
I'm way too cute to strangle, right?
it said. Harry shrugged into his shirt and began buttoning it up, fumbling at the button holes with aggravated fingers.

“Your Highness, Sir, please,” I relented, shifting into what little was left of my own clothes until they covered me.
Kind of
. “As nifty as it would be to have a steady stream of Harry-supplied orgasms in my life, if you force him, he's just gonna pout. I'll be the one who suffers.”

At this, the creature with the wings looked amused. “Does he play games with you, DaySitter? Does he enchant, and beguile, and inveigle, only to pull away and leave you cold?”

“You have no idea,” I grumbled. “He's going to mope and manipulate for punishment, even more than usual. He might even stop baking me brownies. Imagine. Me without brownies! I'm liable to kill somebody.”

“ ‘Tis baffling to me,” the prince mused, “that of all my Younger, you are the only one who remains so stubbornly human after all these years. You are like a child, Guy, playing with your toy.”

“Please, Master,” Harry said softly. “Do not listen to her. She is a soft-brained imbecile.”

“This I do not doubt,” the prince allowed. “Nevertheless, she is
your
imbecile, your chosen DaySitter, and you will honor her as such.”

“Excuse me
?
” I boggled at them both; calling me unflattering names, talking about me like I wasn't even there. “Couple of undead dillholes.”

“Master,” Harry pleaded, ignoring me, but his fight had flown; his shoulders slumped in defeat.

“Guy Harrick, I do wish it had not come to this, as I do not enjoy meddling in the intimate affairs of my Youngers. However, it is my will that you hurry to cement and solidify this wayward Bond, and maintain a proper measure of intimacy between you, regardless of your uncertainties about her management skills where power and Talent is concerned. Do not block the gifts of our Infernal Father, unless you are prepared to answer to Him why you have done so, for I am through intervening on your behalf. Do not drive your DaySitter to such lengths. One thinks this business must be terribly unhealthy for her. Do I make myself clear?”

“Master, you do make yourself abundantly clear.” He shot me a look. It was not a long way from affectionate, though there was definitely a spark of something both dangerous and seductive lurking in those pewter depths.

“And you shall accept your Companion into your bed just as often as he demands it, DaySitter,” Prince Dreppenstedt told me, “for your place is to trust his judgment on such matters and make no further demands on him than I have outlined here tonight.”

“Okay, wait a minute here,” I said. “Not so fast, you two.”

Both revenants craned to glower at me, mine slightly more incredulous than the other.

“It's just that…” I floundered. “Yes, he's got some apologizing to do, and hell yes, I could do with more frequent sexing. But I don't want him to be miserable. Can't you make him content with all this? Can't you make him, I dunno…happy?”

Prince Dreppenstedt watched me for a moment with his head cocked and his eyes vacant, as though I'd been speaking an alien language. Finally, he spoke to Harry. “You must also send the
wounded foundling away, and soon. The problem he is battling is one to which he must muster his own resistance, and he must do it alone, or he will forever be under your bailiff.”

“He is gravely injured, Master. Where shall I send him?” Harry said tiredly.

“The proper place for him is under master Strickland's wing, but since this is not recommended, he should strike out on his own for a time. Teach him to travel high, and see that it happens as soon as he is well. If he cannot be left alone, send him to the Bitter Pass and we shall see to his care. He must learn to feed. Properly.”

I managed not to snicker, because they were talking about my brother's undead future, but I suspected that revenant training camp would make fatbusters look like a walk in the park.

Wilhelm continued, “The discovery of his accident with the hunter may put you both at risk, and I cannot afford to lose you, Guy. Our bloodline's future in the New World depends on your continued well-being. I hope it is not in vain that I express my concerns to you this night.”

“You told him about Dunnachie?” I hissed.

“I was honor-bound to do so.” Harry looked up to speak to his master again, but the forest had lost the weak glow of his presence, and the phantasm had left nothing but a pale streak of green ectoplasmic froth in the cool air, the only trace he'd ever been here.

I sucked in a breath and let it puff out my cheeks, summoned my courage, and braced for Harry's wrath, shuffling in the leaf pile to face him, biting my bottom lip to keep it from shaking if he blew up at me. I lifted my chin, daring him to start yelling.

Instead, Harry's face crinkled. He started to laugh, softly at first, and then with great booming wonder.

My tension wavered, and with the amusement rushing through our Bond, most of it drifted sideways. “What the hell could possibly be funny right now?”

“You.” His shoulders shook. “Asking a prince of immortals to make me happy. How preposterous. How absolutely absurd.”

“You don't seem angry about all this.”

“Sometimes one must put corporeal intuition over intellectual reason, dearest,” he said. “I surrender the field, and submit to your crushing triumph.”

He threw out one hand, grasped me by the calf, and dragged me bodily to him through the loam with such a force that I yelped. I landed smack on my back, with one of his hands beneath me, but it was okay now; the warmth had returned to his grey eyes, tenderness that I hadn't seen in weeks, turning them from battleship to soft cashmere. He stroked bits of grass and leaves out of my hair with the back of his hand. “You may be the only one left who can make me happy, my own.”

“Holy mood swings, Harry. I thought I drove you bonkers.”

“Oh, you do,” he said. “Yet, even in these trying times, you bring unexpected warmth to my life such as I have not known in centuries.”

I felt a reluctant smile tug at the side of my mouth. “That's my job.”

“For one so capable of giving pleasure…” He indicated himself with one fine hand, then polished his nails on his shirt. “I suppose it is unrealistic for me to deny you all that you crave.”

“Uh, at the moment, what I crave is the truth. Then more of what we were doing before we got interrupted by Lord Spookywings. Can he really fly with those things?”

“Sweetness, I speak not to your cat-like curiosity, but to your sow-soft loins. Tell me, my angel, what exactly is it that you want?”

Sow-soft
? “Did you seriously just call me a pig in the midst of a seduction? Oh, wait, because pigs have orgasms, right?”

“I am taking further requests, my lascivious little love. Perhaps you should take advantage whilst I—”

My mouth dropped open and something unexpected popped out without my permission. “I want you, wearing nothing but your jackboots.”

“
Mon dieu.
” Harry's surprise was quickly sublimated by a questioning quirk of his thrice-pierced brow. “My English cavalry Jackboots, or the hobnailed
Marschstiefel
that I removed from the body of that Nazi during the war?”

I thought about that for a moment. “Are the Nazi ones clean?”

“Everything I own is exceptionally clean. Except my current attire, of course.”

“Will you model them both, so I can compare?”

“As my lady commands,” he replied. “When?”

I snort-laughed. “How soon can you fetch them?”

Harry
tsk
-ed me. “Have I taught you nothing about the sensory delights of drawing-out one's anticipation?”

“I wait months for you to bang me, and you're going to be obnoxiously coy about playing dress-up? Hello, I'm wearing the shredded remains of your favorite lingerie right now.”

“You do make a compelling argument, my dove,” he said, tracing a finger along one dangling strap and raising goosebumps that had nothing to do with the night air on my skin.

But I had other things I wanted from him more, at least for the moment. “Harry, what does it mean to ‘travel high’?”

He rolled sinuously to his feet with a fluid movement I doubted any human could have managed to repeat without decades of dance and gymnastics, a boneless kind of
zooop
that made me think of Fred Astaire break dancing. Pausing to make sure I was watching, Harry tipped his imaginary hat and down-stretched his pale hand to me. “We shall discuss all this and more another time,” he promised.

“Why don't you want to tell me?”

“Plausible deniability, of course,” he said.

I crossed my eyes and stuck out my tongue at him. “I can keep a secret.”

“Whilst you tango with a vampire hunter and play host to an unnatural historian? Do be serious, love.”

“Could
you
grow wings? That would be bitchin’.”

Harry gave up offering me a hand and put on his coat, patting the pockets, pale fingers questing for something. “Are there any additional secrets of the
Falskaar Vouras
that you feel entitled to discover right this moment, beloved?”

I knew he was being facetious, but I nodded anyway. “Uh, yeah, what the heck are the
Falskaar Vouras
?”

“Roughly translated, ‘false old person’; I think you will discover that most primeval revenants find it an amusing sobriquet.”

“Okay.” I stored this for future reference. At least I'd gotten one answer out of him. “And where is this Bitter Pass? Prince Dreppenstedt mentioned it, and so did Declan.”

“Ah yes, your scatty assistant and his misbegotten project. Upon no account shall I be sharing any further information with that gentleman;
I think you'll find I am quickly losing patience for his tiresome codswallop.”

A flash of silver caught my eye and I brushed leaves away to reveal Harry's cigarette case. I'd only noticed him carrying it over the last while, and figured he must have bought it in London until I saw the engraving on the front.
JB.
It was the same inscription as on the new-to-Harry lighter I'd seen kicking around the cabin.
Who the hell was JB?

“Is this yours, Harry?”

“Cheers, love.” He took it with a smile, squirreling it away inside his pants pocket as he retrieved his jacket, batting leaf bits and tiny sticks out of the tweed.

“Where did you get that cigarette case, Harry?”

“My, but you are full of questions.”

“And no answers,” I groaned, recognizing the utter stonewalling I was running up against.

Harry smiled in the face of my frustration. “Come, darling, my cenatory rumblings are not yet sated, and I trust I have earned the comfort of our parlor,” he said, rubbing a hand high across his midriff.

“I'm not going to get any answers tonight?”

“No answers, but more passion. A fair trade, wouldn't you agree?”

When I didn't agree, he narrowed his eyes at me, groomed the front of my hair with a finicky squint and fussy fingers. “Only, we have decades in our future, during which you may use that clever tongue to rend from me all my Earthly secrets, yes? Must I surrender all my mysteries tonight?” He picked a twig from my hair, examined it, then flicked it aside. “No more chirping, cricket. I shall take you home.”

C
HAPTER
25

SOMETIME AROUND OH-GOD THIRTY,
my cell phone rattled; I fumbled in the dark for it, knocking over a bottle of Tylenol. A second ring vibrated it in my palm. When I peered at the display, it indicated Batten's number. No elaboration, just a short text:
Body in ten
.

Body in ten?
It took me a minute to realize this probably wasn't a crude three A.M. booty call, and I gave my tired head a rub. Whose body? Where? I stumbled upstairs to shake Declan awake, nearly killed myself on the stairs coming back down, mumbled something that only barely resembled a good morning to Harry, who insinuated that the world would be a safer place if I went back to bed, and then slopped back into my bedroom to shower and do the quickest, sleepiest make-up routine possible: a sweep of lip gloss and a flutter of mascara. After wringing a promise from Harry that he would text before going to rest, I trudged outside with Declan and piled into his Buick. We did this wordlessly, though he did give me a disappointed grunt when I didn't move to take the Hummer. I didn't even know where the keys were yet, never mind getting the seats adjusted or the radio programmed.