Hands of Flame (28 page)

Janx peeled his lips back from his teeth, far less a smile than a threat. “Are you so very certain this is how
you wish to use that last wish, Margrit Knight? You have many years ahead of you, and may yet need a dragon's favor. And then there is the matter of Grace O'Malley and her children, is there not? Think carefully, Negotiator. Choose wisely.”

Triumph jolted her, burning up too much of what little energy she had, but a smile flashed over Margrit's face regardless. She had won already, even if Janx didn't know it yet: he had accorded her a title, and that meant she had a place amongst the Old Races. “We've already made the exchange for Grace's tunnels, Janx. Don't cloud the issue. Of course I'm sure. Maybe it's terribly human of me, but my friends are not pieces for you to push around on your chess board or knock aside as it pleases you. Tony's life is mine.”

She heard the detective catch his breath and a burst of humor cut through her triumph. Being alive made it easy to laugh. She hoped that would stay: it seemed as if her laughter was too often edged with cynicism. And she knew what caused Tony to protest, even if he didn't do so aloud. She'd made a claim on his life, staking it as hers. If, heaven forbid, he had made the same statement, she would have lashed out at him with any attack in her repertoire. She was autonomous, and so, too, was he.

On the other hand, at least once, very recently, she'd had the presence of mind to keep her mouth shut over just such a claim, and she hoped Tony would, too. It was a matter of principle in a relationship or at the office. Here, now, it was literally a matter of life and death.

“Am I to walk away with nothing?” Janx demanded. “My empire lost, cast from my temporary home, the lives of all responsible safe from my retribution? Is
this your way of smoothing the waters in our world, Margrit Knight?”

“You can walk away with your daughter.” Margrit sounded implacable to her own ears, the roughness of her voice gone. “I'd think that was worth any price.”

For an instant—
just
an instant—Janx softened as he looked toward Kate. Her lips parted, another ingenue's look of sweet hope, but this time Margrit saw raw emotion behind it, the expression no longer an act.

“It is more than a trinket,” Janx conceded, but then his expression hardened again. Kate's shoulders dropped in dismay, and Ursula hugged her harder, the two making miscolored shadows of one another. “More than a trinket, but not enough. I set a third task to you weeks ago, Margrit Knight. I would see it done. Then, and only then, are we even and is the slate between us cleared. Heed my wish and I'll heed yours.” He finally smiled, sharp-toothed and angry. “Do we have an accord?”

“We do.” Margrit whispered the words even as she shied away from the thought. Janx
had
set her a task, and she'd thrown it in his face in much the same way he'd just tried to do with her. Had warned him that it was his last favor, and he should be well aware of how he spent it.

She had acted to spare a life. Janx was acting to end one.

Eliseo Daisani would be destroyed. Not the vampire himself, but his persona, the business mogul who'd reigned over New York for the past thirty years. If Janx was to lose his empire, then Daisani would, too, and they would move elsewhere, begin their game anew. It would be hard enough for Janx, but nearly impossible for Daisani, whose face was known all over the world. A century earlier slipping from one life to another must
have been easy, but Margrit had no idea how a well-known person would even begin to do so in the modern world.

“We do,” she said again, more clearly. “You're a son of a bitch, Janx, but we have a deal.”

“Why, Margrit.” Janx made himself the picture of injured feelings. “I thought that was what you liked about me.”

“I don't think I like any of you very much right now.” The adrenaline high was beginning to burn off, leaving Margrit weaker than she wanted to be. “Get out of here, Janx. Go pack your things and leave Grace's tunnels and her children. Go somewhere with Kate. Get to know your daughter. Try to be a good guy for a while. It'd help me sleep easier.”

“Your wish, my dear, is my command. Katherine?” Janx, with consummate showmanship, offered Kate an elbow, then cocked the other and said, “Ursula?” in equally inviting tones.

The twins exchanged glances, first with each other, then with Margrit, who nodded and lifted her hand, fingers spread to represent a phone, toward her ear. She mouthed, “Call me,” and both the women smiled brightly, Kate nodding agreement before they each took one of Janx's elbows and allowed him to escort them away from the loading dock.

“Are you certain it's wise to encourage Daisani's daughter to walk with Janx?” Alban murmured.

Margrit turned toward him, the movement making her dizzy, and put a hand on his arm to steady herself. “I'll tell Eliseo, don't worry. I thought you didn't know who their fathers were.”

“I didn't,” Alban said dryly, “until I saw them in action. It became obvious, Margrit.”

“Oh.” Light-headedness replaced what she would normally have thought of as the sensation of a blush. Nausea followed it and she clutched Alban's sleeve, teeth set together against illness.

“Margrit?”

Her name came from two directions, Tony and Alban both voicing concern. She managed a weak smile at them, amused by the way they scowled, uncertain which of them should take precedence. After a few seconds Tony stepped back. Grace, looking surprisingly satisfied, tucked her arm through the detective's as Alban asked, “Are you well, Margrit?”

“Honestly? At the very least I need about a gallon of water, and a blood transfusion probably wouldn't hurt. But I don't think I have time for that.” Margrit shrugged and straightened away from Alban. “There's too much else to do.”

She managed three steps before her eyes rolled back and she collapsed to the concrete in a faint.

DESPITE WHAT HAPPENED
in films, it was rare indeed that anyone was quick enough to catch someone as she fainted. Daisani might have done it; Alban could not. He and Tony lurched simultaneously, and Grace's face wrinkled in horrified sympathy as Margrit crashed to the floor.

Alban scooped her up cautiously, concerned she might have injured herself further, then wondered how much more badly she could be hurt than having her throat cut. “She needs fluids.”

“She needs a
hospital
,” Tony said at the same time, then glowered at Alban.

“Hospitals will only ask complicated questions such as how she survived so much blood loss, and will want to do blood work. I don't know what they'll find.”

“The same thing they found in January!”

“Perhaps. But it's been months now, and her ability to heal has adapted and increased remarkably. A doctor might discover she is no longer fully human.”

“Then what the hell is she?”

Alban looked up from Margrit, who breathed shal
lowly but steadily, and felt sympathy draw his features long. “Unique.”

Tony's expression went bitter. “She was always that.”

“Yes.” Alban's voice softened and he glanced at the woman he held. “For what little it's worth, I had not meant to take her from you.”

“Margrit doesn't get taken anywhere. She goes where she wants.” The same bitterness colored his tone. “She didn't want me anymore.”

“You're taking this very well, detective. All of it.”

“All of it…You mean, all of you? I told you, it almost makes sense. Margrit doesn't hide things without a good reason, and I guess you people are as good a reason to keep secrets as I've ever seen. Besides,” Tony added flatly, “she needs me to.”

“She needs to not wake up to you two fighting over her.” Grace dipped a hand into her pocket and came out with a plastic vial that she unstoppered as she knelt beside Margrit. The scent of ammonia rose up and Margrit hacked, then sat up, her hand knotted in Alban's bloody coat again.

“What the hell was—Smelling salts? You've got smelling salts? That's the worst stuff I've ever smelled.”

Grace stood again, vial safely closed as she tucked it back in her pocket. “I've smelled plenty worse, some of it right here. You're in dire straits, love. How're you planning to get home, looking like that?”

“Alban can…” Margrit faltered, turning her face against Alban's chest. “Alban can take me home, both of us covered in blood, to the housemate who hates him. Or not.”

“Wait.” Tony crouched, clearly stopping himself from catching Margrit's upper arm. “Cole and Cam know about this? And you didn't tell
me?
”

“Cole saw Alban bringing me home the night of Daisani's masquerade ball.” Margrit kept her face against Alban's chest, sounding exhausted. “I didn't tell him. He just found out.” She lifted her head, though it looked as if it took effort, and found Cara Delaney with her gaze. “Which is not carte blanche for you to hare off and flay him, okay? He'll keep your secret. God, some secret. It's starting to seem like everybody knows.”

“Five humans out of a million and a half on this island,” Alban murmured. “It's not quite everyone yet, Margrit.”

“It's enough.” Margrit pulled herself to sitting, then, grimacing, wiped her sleeve over her face. Blood smeared and she stared at it grimly. “This is disgusting. Cara.”

“Yes.”

Margrit's voice went cool and steady. “You let him kill me.”

Guilt flashed in Cara's dark eyes and she glanced away only to find other censuring gazes surrounding her. “It was one life for many. One life, to avert war. You saw what happened in just a few minutes of fighting.”

“Actually, I missed a lot of it,” Margrit said icily. “What with being dead and all.”

Color stained the selkie woman's cheeks, but she lifted her chin defiantly and gestured around them, indicating the selkie bodies that lay burned and torn on the floor. “We are not well suited to battle on land. Though we might best be able to afford it in numbers, we would be decimated if it came to war.”

“She didn't used to sound like this,” Margrit said to Alban. “She used to sound like a normal person. I think the whole debutante-selkie thing has gone to her head.”

Cara's face reddened further, her hands clenching into
fists at her sides. Alban saw blood leak from a wound in her shoulder, but the girl ignored it as she challenged Margrit. “I made my choice. I would make the same one again, if I thought it would save my people.”

“Ah, there we go. The power of conviction, stripped bare of pomposity. That's what I was after.” Margrit shrugged, minute movement against Alban's chest that made her seem terribly fragile. “It was probably the right choice, even if I think you made it because you were pissed off at me.”

“You took everything we tried to gain!”

“Bullshit.” Margrit pushed away from Alban more cautiously this time, leaning heavily into the support he offered as she got to her feet. “The one thing you really wanted was legitimacy, and you got that. But as it happens, He giveth and He taketh away. Get me Kaimana, Cara. I'm going to make a deal.”

 

It was a motley army that escorted Margrit back into Grace's tunnels. Alban carried her, despite her weak protests that she could manage the journey on her own two feet. Not even she believed it, but part of her insisted that the pretense was important. That, in the wake of being newly alive, struck her as a tactic she should reconsider. There had to be room and reason to stop fighting battles that were only for show.

Alban's clothes were damp with blood, and hers stiffened and dried in folds stuck with his. The relentless sense of humor that had haunted her since she'd awakened suggested that was romantic. Disgusting, but still somehow romantic. More likely it was the slow, steady beat of Alban's heart beneath her ear and the surety
of his arms that bore romance, but amusement niggled at her anyway.

Grace walked ahead of them, a swaying black-clad form with no evident need for a light against the darkness. Margrit's gaze stayed on her for long moments, watching the way shadows accepted and released her as she led them through the gloom. Impossible answers itched at the corners of Margrit's mind, not quite ready for revelation, and darting away when she tried to follow them. She pressed her eyes shut, then opened them again to follow Tony with her gaze.

He was a step or two behind Grace, his flashlight splashing bright white circles on the walls and tunnel floors. Margrit could see tension in his shoulders and resignation in his walk, and wanted to reach out and reassure him somehow. She didn't try: first, she was too far away, and second, she was no longer a source from which he would draw comfort. Weary regret wrapped around her at that idea, and she let her eyes close, trusting Alban to carry her without her watching the way.

That, too, struck her as a new thing, born in the last minutes since her awakening. She'd once claimed she liked the lack of control over her life that running in Central Park offered her. Grace had dismissed that with a snort, and now Margrit wondered if the blond vigilante had been right. She was out of control now, but she felt safe, and it was distinctly different from late-night jogging. Then, she realized, she
had
felt in control, even if that was nothing more than an illusion.

Light footsteps echoed around them, the sound making her flinch awake, though she hadn't realized she'd slept. The gargoyles and injured selkies who
walked with them all moved with eerie silence, but the tunnels themselves picked up sounds her ears couldn't and reverberated them back at her, making her inhuman escort audible.

Not really her escort; that was a self-centered, human thought. They had their own reasons to retreat under the city. Wounds to lick, if selkies did that. Probably, she thought with another tickle of humor. After all, even humans used kisses to banish minor hurts. It wasn't far at all from licking injuries, and humans had no animal form to revert to. Seal-shaped selkies very likely did use the oldest possible method of cleaning cuts.

Margrit pressed her temple against Alban's chest, trying to stop her mind from such random wanderings. Blood oozed under the pressure and she grimaced. There were too many things to deal with to succumb to weakness. Janx was furious with her, and that had to be remedied somehow. More than just by fulfilling his demand to bring Daisani down; she wanted the dragonlord to like her again.

Of course, if she did succeed in toppling the corporate bloodsucker, it was unlikely she would have a future in which to worry about whether Janx still liked her or not. Irrationally reassured by the thought, Margrit opened her eyes and found that while she'd dozed, they'd traveled most of the distance to Grace's downtown hub.

“Why here?” After a little while of unuse, her voice croaked like she'd—Margrit winced, trying to stop the thought before it finished, but the analogy worked its inexorable way through to completion: like she'd had her throat cut. Still cringing, she said, “Won't there be a lot of kids around?”

“It's Friday night,” Grace said with humor. “Tonight they're topside having fun, and this center's got more lockable doors than any of the others. It's safest for all of you and yours, and that means it's safest for me and mine. There'll be plenty of hot water for bathing in,” she added to Alban. “I'll need the cisterns refilled, though, after you're done scrubbing. And I'd just burn those clothes, if I were you.”

“They're too wet,” Margrit said tiredly. “Too bad. I liked this shirt. I can walk.” She patted Alban's arm. He shifted his hold, but didn't put her down, and after a few seconds she decided that was agreeable.

Agreeable. A little blood loss, and she became the heroine of a Jane Austen novel. Margrit tried to laugh, but exhaustion swamped her again.

 

The next time she awakened it was because cool stone was beneath her body, chilling her all the way through. Alban, stripped to the waist and carrying two steaming buckets of water, edged into his room as she sat up. The front of his slacks were entirely soaked in blood from the knees down, and the thighs were badly spotted with it, all the pale material discolored and stiffening as it dried. Margrit shuddered, suddenly aware of how cold she was. Cold from her center to her skin, as if her furnace had shut down.

Alban looked pained at her tremble. “Forgive the accommodations. There seemed little point in putting you on the bed while you were still…”

“Covered in gore?” Margrit picked at the buttons of her blouse as Alban poured the water into a tub she'd never seen in his room before. Fingers too thick to operate properly, she let her hands fall and watched the muscles
in his back play easily, as if he picked up a piece of paper instead of gallons of water. A moment later he put the buckets aside and turned back to her, spoiling one lovely view but offering another. Margrit hunched her shoulders against the chill and managed a smile. “I could watch you do that all night.”

Gentle humor crossed his expression. “Except you seem to keep falling asleep. Shall I leave you to bathe?”

“No!” Sudden panic spurted in her at the idea, its wake leaving her more exhausted than before. “I don't even think I can undress myself, much less be trusted in a bath. I'd probably drown, and I've had enough of being dead for one night.” To her horror, tears scalded her eyes as she spoke.

Alban crossed and knelt by her, a solid, comforting presence as he began to undo the buttons she'd been too clumsy to manage. “I believe I've had enough of you being dead for a lifetime. When you're stronger, I think I'll take the opportunity to go to pieces on you.” Teasing glinted in his eyes as she gave him a sharp look.

“Go to pieces, huh? I didn't know you knew words like that.”

“I've been keeping bad company of late,” Alban said solemnly. He undressed her with quiet efficiency, no eroticism in the act, for which Margrit was wearily grateful. Passion stereotypically arose in the aftermath of danger, but she had no energy left for anything beyond relief that someone was there to care for her. Alban lifted her into the bath with all the gentleness of a practiced nurse, and she sank to its bottom with a whimper.

That quickly, the hot water demolished all her defenses. She began to shiver uncontrollably, teeth chat
tering at a decibel that would be funny if she wasn't suddenly so frightened. She reached for Alban's hand, her own shaking so badly it looked like a caricature of cold. “Is there enough room in this thing for two?” She couldn't control the stutter and bit her tongue harder than she meant to in trying.

Concern lined Alban's face. “Not with as much water as is in it now.”

Margrit's gaze skittered around the room, and all the books safely on their shelves. “The f-floor will d-dry. I n-need you t-to w-warm me up. P-p-please, Alban.”

A moment later he climbed in, his own blood-sodden slacks left on the floor behind him. Water cascaded over the tub's sides as Margrit twisted herself against his chest, hands fisted as she rattled with cold. His arms encompassed her, gentle fingers stroking her temple, and she finally let go of control and fear in terrible, body-wracking sobs.