Min's Vampire (28 page)

Just then the dagger in Katarina’s hand
started humming again, this time loud enough it was practically
singing. She stared at it, as if it was speaking to her, and then
she turned and walked over to the wall. Katarina held one hand out
to the stained wallpapered wall and hissed out an oath in a
language Min couldn’t place. The surface of the wall seemed to
ripple, like a still pond when a rock is thrown into it.

Katarina took the silver dagger and
slashed at the wall. A long line of darkness gleamed evil and cruel
from the wall. Katarina stepped back and more sibilant words fell
from her lips, not a one of them sounded human. She held the dagger
in one hand, and with the other she reached out and made a grabbing
motion, then wrenched her arm down and the wall under the dark cut
the dagger had made fell away, leaving a gapping, howling hole into
darkness and cold. There was nothing to see but pitch-black night,
a silver moon that hung too low and too large, and treacherous
looking snow. In the distance Min could see a mountain, one darker
black than the night it was settled against.

Min gasped, something primal and scared
as hell quaking within her. Staring at the tableau in front of her,
she knew she should just turn around and run away. There was
something overwhelmingly horrific about it. It was the same feeling
she’d gotten when she’d gone to the museum as a child and stared up
at the bones of a Tyrannosaurus Rex. It was just something that was
imprinted on her from millions of years of evolution, something
instinctual, the mechanism that told mankind what to stay away from
if they wanted to live.

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. Someone 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 her if she 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 that 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 it 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, Faerie, and this magick 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 hole 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 breathe, 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 staggeringly large redwood trees. Yet they were all
dead. There wasn’t a living thing in sight, 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 night, 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 wild 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 wild 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.