Bewitched, Blooded and Bewildered (24 page)

“You better say
thank you
to your Silverleaf cousins later,” he said.

“Right. No kidding. Let’s go.”

It felt like the tunnels went on forever, but after what seemed like an eternity, we finally stumbled upon the ending. A large oval mirror was lit with the glow of an open portal, smack dab in the middle of a stone wall. Our ducklings weren’t sure what to make of that, and I approached the priest.

“That’s the way to safety,” I informed him.

He grimaced. “I’m not sure…”

“I know it looks a little weird, but it’s not any weirder than demons overrunning the city, right?” I said, and he nodded reluctantly. “When we found you, you were asking for help from a higher power. Well, help is that way.”

The priest nodded again, and he extended his hand to shake mine. “Thank you.”

I shook his hand and managed to say, “You’re welcome.” This might be my most bizarre day ever. Attacked by hunters, rescued by an evil faerie, spent the night at a vampire’s mansion, interrogated some zombies, abducted by more faeries, and now I was shaking hands with a priest. And I didn’t spontaneously combust at the contact, go me.

The priest led the way through the mirror, and his people followed suit, even the Laura clone. Before Lex and I could follow, we heard a scream of terror from somewhere behind us. Lex tensed and started in that direction, and I grabbed his arm.

“It could be a trick,” I said. Another scream echoed through the tunnels, this time tinged with heartbreak, and I winced. “We’re at the end. It’s not our job.”

“That’s Riley. She’s Maureen’s granddaughter. Are you just going to leave her behind?” he asked.

I thought of Zach’s assertion that Maureen would have left Mac behind if she’d been in my place in Harrison Tower. I didn’t believe that then. I couldn’t believe it now.

“Fine. Let’s go,” I said. I hoped I wasn’t going to regret it.

Chapter Fifteen

Lex ran, and I struggled to keep up. I had no idea how he knew where to go, maybe it was some leftover guardian radar that homed in on magicians in trouble. After a few twists and turns we found ourselves at a pit of spikes identical to the one we’d just left. Except this pit had a tiger trapped in it—a half man, half tiger, which I assumed was Jeremiah—and Riley paced along the other edge across from us, hysterical with fear as she called out to him.

“Stay there!” Jeremiah roared at her. A stake had impaled him through the chest, and my stomach heaved its contents up near the back of my throat. I choked it back down and looked up at Lex.

“Don’t move,” Lex shouted at Riley. She looked up at us, wild-eyed.

“I have to help him.”

“If you do, you’ll get stabbed too. Stay put,” I ordered.

“I have to help him,” she repeated, and I had an awful suspicion that she was about to do something stupid.

“Can you hit her with a sleep spell from here?” I asked Lex. It was a guardian trick, used for crowd control. Angry mobs were easier to handle when they all fell over for naptime.

“I can try,” he replied.

I nodded, and knelt to start the freezing process again. I was tired and drained, but this magic was in my bone and blood, so I could manage it no matter how exhausted I was. The whimpering stopped, and I glanced up to see Riley crumple like a skinny marionette.

“What’d you do to her?” Jeremiah demanded.

“I knocked her out,” Lex explained. “She’ll be fine. Stay put and I’ll come get you.”

The frost wave spread by agonizing degrees. I tried not to think of how long it’d take the tiger to bleed to death, or if it was even possible for me to heal him after Lex got to him. I’d healed shifters before, but not like this. I didn’t even want to get near him and risk being infected. I prayed that Riley could help him when she woke up, but I had no idea how good her healing skills were. If she even had any. The way I’d heard it, she had only just started learning witchcraft when she was infected.

With any luck, the frost helped numb the shifter’s pain when it touched him, but I didn’t look to see his expression. I couldn’t look. I focused on my task until the entire pit was covered in a layer of white, and then Lex gently touched my shoulder.

“Stay here. Keep it going. I’m going to get them,” he said.

“Hurry.”

I held the spell as Lex dropped into the pit and headed toward Jeremiah. I was a history major in college, and I’d seen video of a ballistics-gel dummy used to demonstrate how Vlad the Impaler impaled his victims. This vaguely reminded me of that, in a morbid, sure-to-haunt-my-nightmares-after-this kind of way. It wasn’t as gruesome, which meant Jeremiah’s chances of survival were better.

Lex slowed as he approached Jeremiah, and the shifter eyed him with his yellow gaze. “I’m here to help you,” Lex said, keeping his tone calm and even.

“I appreciate that.”

“No offense, but I’ve had wounded shifters snap at me before. I need to know you’re in control.”

“I hear you. We won’t have a problem.” Jeremiah smiled weakly, his mouth full of razor-sharp teeth, and I hoped that was a good sign. Do tigers smile before they eat you?

Lex sidled up to him, reached up, and snapped the stake above the shifter’s body. With a grunt he heaved Jeremiah up and off the broken spike, and then began hauling him back toward me.

“No, take me to Riley,” he protested.

“She’s next,” Lex replied. When he arrived at my side of the pit he looked up at me. “Help pull him up.”

“Are you kidding? He must weigh three hundred pounds.”

“Do not,” the shifter growled.

“Uh huh. Pull your claws in,” I said.

“They are in.”

I decided that was as good as I was going to get. I grabbed hold of him and heaved him up. The shifter collapsed next to me like a limp fish, and I frowned down at him.

“I’ll be right back,” Lex said.

He headed for Riley, and I wondered what I was supposed to do. There was a hole clean through Jeremiah’s furred torso. A big one too, I could put my arm through him if I really wanted to be grossed out.

“I can’t heal this,” I told him. “Horatio’s going to have to do it. Think you can hold out that long?”

“Do I have a choice?” he retorted.

“Not so much, no.” I wiped my hands on my jeans and watched as Lex carried Riley back, slung over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. I pulled her up too, and then Lex, and I wondered what to do next.

“Give her here,” Jeremiah ordered. He held his arms out for her, and Lex picked her up and set her down. The tiger wrapped his arms around her and held Riley close. “Now go.”

“Are you sure—?” I started, skeptical, and he growled.

“Go. Finish it, so I can get a healer. And do it fast, please,” he replied.

I nodded, and Lex and I hurried away. “There better not be another test. I’m tapped out,” I said.

“We’ll be fine,” he assured me.

I hoped so. We didn’t have time for more games. We hauled ass back to the mirror, and as we drew close to it I saw the marble hall on the other side of the portal. Lex took my hand and we hurried through. The storm sewer vanished behind us, and I glared at the council.

“Are we done?” I asked. A pained groan sounded from behind us, and I turned to see the shifters sprawled on the floor.

“Horatio, if you would,” Cecelia said. The squat earth faerie to her right rose from his chair and crossed to them. Horatio muttered a healing spell, and the hole in Jeremiah’s chest healed shut. His tiger features faded, and both he and Riley rose to their feet, no worse for the wear.

“Are we square now?” Lex prompted.

“The challenge is complete. You have retained your roles as Titania and Oberon,” Cecelia replied. “Tell me, why did you help the humans?”

“Because it was the right thing to do. They were helpless against demons,” Lex replied.

It was a good answer. I probably would’ve said something like “because Lex wanted to.” He was just better at “the right thing” than I was.

“And why did you help your opponents?”

“Because Maureen would’ve wanted us to,” I answered. “I owe Maureen a lot.” I paused, turning my attention to Riley. I could see a bit of Maureen in her—the eyes, mostly. Riley and Maureen had the same shade of green eyes. “Oh, and since you ignore all my calls, let me take this opportunity to state for the record that your grandmother was my friend. She stood up for me when Lynne Trent and her bitch posse turned on me. Maureen believed in me. So please, do us all a favor and calm the fuck down before you start any name-calling or finger-pointing.”

Her boyfriend growled, but Riley nodded calmly. Good, maybe she’d learned something from this experience.

Cecelia gracefully rose from her chair and glided over to stand before Riley. “You mustn’t think of this as a failure on your part. You have both performed admirably. Your grandmother would be proud.” She smiled, placing a hand on Riley’s shoulder. “But your path is not her path. You have a different destiny, and a duty to your people.”

The faerie returned to her seat, folded her hands, and regarded us with her serene gaze. “In fact, I believe in the coming days you will all find that your people will look to you for guidance, and that your paths are not so different. For too long magicians have let their magic divide them. Now it must be what defines you.”

I frowned. Her speech was a bit too great-and-powerful-Oz for me, and that did not bode well. I took Lex’s hand, comforted by this presence. “Is this the part where you explain what all the rush was about?” I asked.

She nodded. “It is. But I believe you are already aware of the reason. The Promethean hunters are planning a large attack on Samhain. You must stop them.”

Before I could ask how we were supposed to do that, we were blinked out of the room. Normally we’d get to go home, but apparently the faerie council had other plans, and we popped into a room that was chock-full of magicians. The mix of several different, strong magics immediately irritated my nose, and I sneezed several times in quick succession.

“Catherine, are you all right?” Harrison asked. I turned around and spotted him standing with the other two necromancer council members, Grant and Vargas.

“Yeah fine,” I replied.

Confused, I looked around the room. There was a large circle of metal folding chairs, and fluorescent lights buzzed overhead in fixtures that hung from a concrete ceiling. There were a few metal doors but no windows, and the air was damp and heavy like a basement. I pulled out my cell phone and got a weak signal—good, at least we were out of Faerie. My GPS was having connection issues, but it seemed to think we were somewhere in the Chicagoland area. Good enough for me.

The group’s two most popular questions seemed to be “Where are we?” and “What’s going on?” as they shuffled anxiously inside the circle of chairs. In addition to Harrison and his buddies, I recognized Simon St. Jerome and Michael Black—whoa, was
that
Dr. Brian Dannaher? Damn, he looked like a young Liam Neeson. I couldn’t fault Marie for fooling around with him because he was almost as handsome as Lex. (My husband clearly won at best looking. Yes, I’m biased.) I also spotted Marie standing with another guardian I recognized—Charlie Stone—Patience Roberts standing by herself, Riley and Jeremiah with a werewolf we’d met through Harrison, and then I spotted the three members of the witch council. Councilwoman Lynne Trent was glaring at me like an ill-tempered middle-school principal, her thin lips pressed into a frown. I reached for the hilt of my rapier and closed my fingers around it.

“Hey! I’m gonna guess everyone here is either on a council or can represent their group. Am I right?” I asked. A chorus of yeses answered me. Too bad the faeries hadn’t also provided nametags, donuts, and coffee for a proper meeting. “Great. Okay, everybody, have a seat. We’ll go around the room and introduce ourselves before we get down to business.”

“What business? I demand to know why you’ve brought us here,” Trent snarled.

The rest of the gathered magicians listened to me and took a seat, but she remained standing. She was going to be a problem. Probably because she was a vicious bitch who hated my guts and led the charge to cast me out of witch society. The hatred was mutual.

My hand tightened on my sword. “First, we didn’t bring you here. The faerie Council of Three did. They want everyone to play nice together so we can do something about the hunters before they kill us all.”

“That’s ridiculous. A few hunters couldn’t possibly cause that much damage,” Trent scoffed.

I turned my attention to Patience Roberts, who was leaning back in her chair and almost looked like she was settling in for an uncomfortable nap.

“You’re what’s left of the summoners, aren’t you?” I asked.

She flinched, and then nodded as she sat up straight.

“Yes. The local council is dead. From what I can tell, I’m the only summoner who hasn’t been killed or captured west of Cincinnati and east of St. Louis.”

“You haven’t been attacked?” Lex asked.

“Oh, I’ve been attacked. I just didn’t think it was anything special. People try to kill me all the time. It’s part of the fun of being me.” Patience shrugged, nonchalant about the idea.