Devil's Gate: Elder Races, Book 3 (9 page)

All of that told Duncan a few things. The first was that Malphas did not expect to suffer any repercussions from Thruvial’s death because he hadn’t been involved.

However, Malphas would be involved in Vetta’s death if they hanged her. He had to be sure that death wouldn’t matter to anyone.

Duncan said, “This is the line you do not want to cross, Malphas.”

The Djinn turned those supernova eyes back onto Duncan. “You have my attention, Vampyre. Explain what you mean.”

“You may not belong to a particular House, but we do. Our House cares what happens to us, they know where we are and their associations are strong,” Duncan said. “Carling Severan is my maker, and while she no longer sits on the Elder tribunal, she still maintains connections and alliances with the most Powerful of the Djinn. Those connections include the head of the tribunal itself, Soren, and Soren’s son, Khalil of the House Marid. In fact you may have heard, once Carling and Khalil went to war together against a first generation pariah Djinn. They won.”

“I see,” said Malphas. His eyelids dropped over the blazing stars of his eyes, shuttering his expression.

Duncan told the Djinn, “Whatever happened to Thruvial is none of our concern. We are not here to solve a murder, to get involved or to placate the locals, no matter how much a sense of separateness or entitlement they seem to have acquired here at Devil’s Gate. We don’t have to justify taking an innocent girl away from a dangerous situation. You will not stop us from retrieving her, nor will you harm us in any way as we leave, because if you do, you would bring that kind of war down on yourself, and really, Malphas, when it comes right down to it, none of us are worth that to you.”

As Duncan talked, a quick patter of footsteps sounded outside. The Vampyre guard appeared in the open doorway, carrying a backpack on one shoulder while she held onto the arm of a young medusa with a tear-streaked face.

The medusa screamed, “Aunt Serrie!”

“Let go of my niece,” Seremela said. The Vampyre tossed the backpack to the floor and let go of Vetta who flung herself forward. Seremela snatched her close.

“You are quite right,” said the pariah Djinn with an angelic smile. “None of you are worth that.”

Seremela clenched the girl so hard the muscles in her arms jumped, while Vetta buried her face into her neck and sobbed. Seremela watched as the Djinn dissolved into black smoke that dissipated into nothing. Duncan pivoted on his heel toward her, his lean face composed but his eyes glittered with a dangerous light.

She said fiercely, “We’re done here, right?”

“We’re done,” he said. He sounded as calm as he always did, his rich voice mellow and soothing, but as he strode toward her he pulled his gun.

She sucked air, held Vetta tighter and said between her teeth, “What now?”

Sympathy darkened Duncan’s gaze as he reached her side. He gripped her shoulder and said, “Malphas has chosen to disengage, but that doesn’t mean anybody else at Devil’s Gate has.”

“Shit,” she muttered. Of course he was right. She looked around but the other Vampyre had disappeared as well.

Vetta lifted her head. Her eyes were smudged with streaks of black eyeliner, and her small, slender snakes were entirely subdued, curled quietly against her head. Seremela could see in her niece’s young, exhausted face the ghost of the five-year-old Vetta had once been.

“I really need to go home now, Aunt Serrie,” she whispered.

“Of course you do,” she said gently. Now was not the time for recriminations or lectures. “Are you hurt?”

Vetta wiped at her face. “Just tired and hungry.”

“All right.” Seremela looked at the backpack that the Vampyre had tossed to the floor. “Is this yours?”

Vetta nodded. Duncan said, “We’re not going to try to retrieve anything else. We’re going straight to our car and leaving.”

“That’s fine, I don’t care,” said the girl, her voice wobbling. “I just want to get the hell out of here.”

As Seremela turned her attention fully onto the backpack that Malphas’s guard had tossed onto the floor, she immediately sensed a warm glow of aged Power. She bent and reached for the pack, scanning it carefully.

When she had been a medical examiner, most of the deaths she had autopsied had occurred through magical or Powerful means, and her magical sense was finely honed.

She was used to handling dangerous residual Power. Usually when she scanned for magic, she could compartmentalize it within moments. A spell cast by a human witch, an item infused with Dark Fae Power, Demonkind, Elven, Djinn or Light Fae—she knew the flavors and characteristics of all their magics, and most of the time she could either disable or contain the spells.

This, though. This was something different from anything she had ever encountered. The harder she concentrated, the deeper the well of Power felt underneath the veneer of that mild, mellow glow. For a moment she felt as though she might fall into something vaster than she had ever experienced.

Astonished and more than a little frightened, she jerked back and heard herself say sharply, “What do you have in there?”

“The goddamn Tarot deck from hell,” Vetta said on a fresh sob.

She turned to stare at the girl. “Where on earth did you get something like that?”

Vetta’s face twisted with a flash of her old rebellious self that crumpled quickly. She wailed, “I stole it a couple months ago. I’m already so, so sorry I ever set eyes on it, so I don’t need for you to yell at me about it right now, all right?”

Seremela angled her jaw out. She said in a soft, even tone of voice, “I can’t help but notice your choice of words, Vetta. You’re sorry you set eyes on it, but you’re not sorry you stole it?”

The girl’s reddened eyes widened with fresh dismay.

Duncan said quietly, “This conversation can wait until later. Seremela, is the pack too dangerous to take with us?”

She gave him a quick glance then turned her attention back to the pack. After a moment, she said, “It doesn’t feel active at the moment, so I don’t think so. It’s a very old item of Power, though. We shouldn’t just leave it.”

“Then we’ll take it,” he said. “As long as you’re willing to look after it and we leave right now.”

She nodded, took the pack and slung it over one shoulder. Duncan strode to the trailer’s open door and looked out. Moonlight edged his set expression and sharp gaze.

Seremela had grown accustomed reading to the subtle changes in his face. When she saw the line of his mouth harden, she asked, “What is it?”

“The only way out of this fenced-in enclosure is through the casino,” he told her. “I noticed when we came in.”

As soon as he mentioned it, she remembered the unbroken line of fence too.

She said to Vetta, “You keep your head down. You stick to me like glue, young lady, and above all, you keep quiet. I don’t care if you see someone you don’t like, or if someone says something you don’t like. You do not antagonize anyone. Do you hear me?”

The girl bent her head and nodded, and Duncan led the way through the enclosure to the back of the casino, where bright flashes of color spilled out from the opening. It looked, Seremela thought uneasily, like the tent had been sliced open and was bleeding light.

They walked inside and along the main aisle.

Silence began to spread through the crowd. Seremela’s stomach tightened as people stared at them. Then the whispering began. Vetta did as she had promised and kept her head down as she walked as close as she could get to Seremela without actually climbing on top of her.

Seremela put an arm around her niece’s shoulders and several of her snakes wrapped around Vetta too. She tried as best as she could to adopt something of Duncan’s calm, non-confrontational manner, while each step she took, each moment that passed, felt as though it took an hour. In vast contrast to how she had felt when they had come into the place, she glanced up at the armed Goblins on the walk overhead and felt grateful for their presence.

A ripple of reaction moved through the crowd like a wave, and she knew they weren’t going to make it out of the casino without some kind of confrontation.

Duncan twisted to face the reaction. He still looked as prosaic as if he were taking out the trash, while her heart was jumping about in her chest like a cat on a hot tin roof. When she saw his lean, mildly interested profile, she felt a rush of emotion so powerful, it almost knocked her on her ass.

I love you, she thought. You have gone so far out of your way for me that you’ve traveled across the country. You’ve faced down petty criminals and a rogue Djinn. You accepted without question when I said that Vetta was innocent, and you’ve done all of it with humor and kindness, and you’re willing to do even this for my niece, whom you haven’t even been properly introduced to.

How could I not love you?

How could I not?

The crowd parted and a Dark Fae woman approached. She was tall and slim, with the trademark angular features and overlarge gray eyes of the Dark Fae. Her gleaming black hair was pulled back in a braid, and she wore simple dark leggings and a sleeveless tunic.

She also wore a sword that remained in its harness, strapped to her back. Her hands were empty and lax at her sides as she came face to face with them.

Vetta broke her promise of silence in a whisper. “Xanthe.”

Seremela’s arm tightened on her in warning.

Other than a slight smile and crinkling of her eyes, an expression that was gone almost before Seremela had registered it, the Dark Fae woman gave no sign that she heard Vetta. Instead she turned to Duncan and said, “Please allow me to assist in escorting you safely from this place.”

“Why should we?” Duncan asked.

“Because I, too, know that the girl is innocent,” said the Dark Fae. She spoke English perfectly, with a trace of accent, and raised her voice as she said it, causing another reaction to ripple through the avid-looking onlookers.

“Then by all means,” said Duncan, as he gestured to the aisle in front of him. “After you.”

The woman Vetta had called Xanthe inclined her head and took the lead, while Duncan fell back. He gestured for Seremela and Vetta to go ahead of him, and he came up close behind them.

Warily, Seremela followed the Dark Fae woman, while she tried to think how the maneuver might possibly be a trap, but she couldn’t see how—the woman had, after all, made very public declaration of Vetta’s innocence and support.

They worked their way through the rest of the casino. With the Dark Fae ahead of them, and Duncan guarding them from behind, Seremela felt marginally more secure. She devoutly hoped it wasn’t an illusion.

She asked Vetta telepathically, “
Do you know this woman?”

“Not really,”
the girl said.
“I know who she is—or was, anyway. She was one of Thruvial’s attendants. He had three. I guess that’s traditional?”

Vetta was correct. Dark Fae triads were quite traditional and appeared in various forms in their society. Seremela wondered where Thruvial’s other two attendants were.

She said, “
Yes, it is. What do you know about her?”

Vetta shrugged. She looked and sounded exhausted. “
Like I said, nothing much. She’s quiet and keeps to herself.”

“Okay,”
Seremela said.

They fell silent. Later Seremela would have dreams about that hellish walk through Gehenna, the dreams filled with a creeping sense of dread while a host of creatures stared at her with hungry gazes and stalked close behind her, moving in for a kill.

Then finally they stepped out of the tent. The cooler desert night air outside was indescribably wonderful. Seremela and Vetta took deep breaths, almost staggering with relief, as the Dark Fae woman paused to look over her shoulder at them.

“Don’t stop,” murmured Duncan. “We need to go quickly.”

Seremela nodded, and their small group moved into a different formation. This time the Dark Fae woman fell back to walk at Seremela’s side, while Duncan moved up beside Vetta on the other side.

The Dark Fae woman said, “We should not go through the crowded part toward the center of the camp. It is quieter along the outskirts.”

Duncan and Seremela looked at Vetta for confirmation. The girl said, “Xanthe’s right. The camp’s quieter around the edges.”

“Show us,” Duncan said.

Both Vetta and the Dark Fae woman did, and they were able to move quickly through the quiet, shadowed area. They had circumvented the encampment and reached the edge of the massive parking lot when Seremela couldn’t keep quiet any longer.

She stopped, pulling Vetta to a halt. The other two stopped as well.

Seremela said to the Dark Fae woman, “You. What is your name?”

“Xanthe Tenanye,” replied the Dark Fae.

“You just left her there,” Seremela said. “You knew Vetta was innocent, and you let them imprison her for—what, two days? She was terrified and all alone.”

“I did not leave her,” said Xanthe. Her large gray eyes seemed to gather all the meager illumination from the moonlight, while her hands remained at her sides. “I stayed in Gehenna for the last two days, watching while I tried to figure out what I could do for her. I would not have let them hang her.”