Dark Surrender (27 page)

Min’s mother turned, and her eyes were no longer brown. They were the most striking green she had ever seen. At once Min knew that it was not her mother she was looking to. Something else was in control, and somehow she knew instinctively that it was the Summer Queen. Anger flared inside Min. She didn’t care what the faerie queen wanted. She would kill it if it harmed her mother.

Then one of those green eyes winked at her. “Child, I’m but borrowing your mother’s body. No harm will come to her. It’s just that you both needed…a little help to get the portal open. And truth be told, you haven’t a lot of time to waste.”

“
What do you mean?” Fear clawed at her stomach.

“
What I mean is that your sister is in great peril, and she needs to know you are trying to rescue her.”

“
We’re not just going to try!” Min shouted defensively.

“
In this case, my dear moppet, the thought is all that really matters. She needs to see you, to know you would and have risked your life to save her. That is what she needs to know.”

“
You’re as crazy as the other one!” Min seethed. “Can’t you all, just once, not speak in riddles?”

“
Of course not, my dear. It’s our gift and our curse. Now—” and she held the dagger out to Min, “This will help you once you’re in Faerie. Don’t let it out of your grasp.” She gestured with a wave of her arm to the howling darkness that waited on the other side of the portal. “It’s time to go. Your mother must stay here. That is the only way to keep the portal open.”

She waved her other arm and three very large creatures, all huge, slathering gray hounds with burning red eyes, crept out from nowhere to surround Katarina. “My pets will protect her while you are gone.”

She stared down at the dagger in her hand and waited for Min to take it.

Fear welled up in Min’s chest, cold and painful. But she pushed it back and reached out to take the blade.

The moment Min took it, it vibrated and she felt something powerful and white hot surge into her.

Katarina blinked, and shook her head, and when she looked to Min again, her eyes were once more brown. She looked confused for a moment, but then she seemed to remember something. “You have to go now. I won’t be able to hold this opening forever.”

Min turned and looked to Luca, and then back to her mother. The huge hounds were there one moment, and invisible the next. But Min could feel them, their feral, powerful presence both disturbing and comforting. She knew without a doubt that almost nothing would get to her mother while they protected her.

She looked down to the dagger in her grasp, half expecting to see those green eyes again, but only the reflection of her own brown irises looked back at her.

Luca moved to her side. Blood stained his clothes and his flesh, but he stood there whole and strong. Already perfectly healed. He held out his hand to her, and she took it. She needed him, in every way she could imagine. And just the touch of his flesh to hers filled her aching body with strength, and soothed her troubled soul. He was a part of her, and her of him. She didn’t understand it, but made it no less true. They held hands for a few beats, and then let go at the exact same time.

“
Miles to go,” she whispered to him.

“
And a faerie queen to kill.” He raised his sword.

Min held out the hellfire Bellini to him. Something inside her told her she wouldn’t need it, she’d be too busy to use it, but that he’d need to use as he fought beside her. He sheathed the iron sword and reached out and took the shotgun. It glinted wickedly in his hands, and his eyes flashed fiercely with green light.

“
Ready?” he asked.

Not even a little
. Min closed her eyes, forced back all the fear that was clamoring around the periphery of her mind, and then cracked her neck. “As I’ll ever be. Let’s go.”

*****

At first it was just like walking through a door. There was only a slight difference in air pressure. But then the bitter, corrupting cold blew against them and stripped them of their strength. It was bone crushing, soul draining cold. Luca staggered. Min felt the life literally ripped out of her. Her head started spinning, and before she knew it she was on her knees, gasping for breath.

Just then the silver dagger in her grasp began to not only hum, it sang. The heat of a summer day flowed out of that dagger and into her, filling her instantly with more power than she had ever felt before. The freezing winter wind felt like no more than a warm tropical breeze. Immediately she knew this power was hers to command. It didn’t matter that it was borrowed, this was the Otherealm, Faeerie, and this magic was strong here.

Somehow Min knew, as if she’d known it forever, that this power wasn’t enough to overcome Winter—certainly not the queen of all winter, in her enter of power.

But it was power enough that she knew she was going to charge on up to that foreboding dark mountain and blow a wrecking ball sized whole in it.

Luca gasped, and Min jerked her attention to him. He leaned against the lee of a great boulder, his face distended in pain, a crack had formed on his cheek. He was freezing solid.

Min rushed over and laid her bare hand against his face. As their flesh touched, she felt that endless warmth flow into him. Instantly his eyes blazed back to life, and he exhaled a heavy breath he must have been holding. Not that the vampire needed to breath, but Min felt herself relax when he did.

He looked down to the dagger, and then back to her, the crack in his cheek had healed already. “Hell of an ace she gave you.”

Min smiled at him and leaned in to kiss him. A short, though satisfying kiss. “We’ll see how much good it does us when we try and break into…” she shook her head as she realized she wasn’t standing before the great mountain of Winter’s Keep.

“
Where the hell are we?” Luca said.

Where the hell indeed?

It looked to be a wilderness of old growth and redwood staggeringly large trees. Yet they were all dead. There wasn’t a living thing insight, only the tall, brittle corpses of what was once a great forest. And even with there being no foliage on the trees, she couldn’t see out to gauge where they might be. She let her witch sense stretch out from her, to feel for anything that might help, but this place had been void of life for so long it was empty.

Min let go of Luca’s hand. Somehow she knew that the dagger would keep him warm against the wicked cold simply because of their link. “I don’t know. I’ve never been to faerie before.” She stroked her hand absently down the blade of the dagger, in a strangely familiar gesture.

“
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.

*****

Chapter 27

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.