Mortal Kiss (21 page)

“But how?” asked Faye. “How does turning people into wolves do that?” She looked at Jimmy, who was trying to stay alert as Joe spoke. “Is that what they were trying to do to Jimmy?”

“There is an underworld,” Joe explained. “It’s called Annwn. It is full of everything you fear most—of creatures ancient, eternal and cruel. Nothing can defeat them; all we can hope is that none of us or the ones we love end up in their domain. Here, on Earth, we are lucky, for they cannot survive in our world. But there, in Annwn, they are full of power. Mercy and her kin found a way of communicating with them.”

“But why?” Faye asked.

“Because they knew that they could give the inhabitants of Annwn what they wanted: human emotion. Human life. Imagine never being able to eat, ever, and then tasting something for the first time. Wouldn’t you want more? That’s what Mercy’s people did,” said Joe. “They introduced the evil spirits of Annwn to the idea of humanity, and they craved more. So much more, in fact, that they would take any human emotion they could get, though the purer and rarer the emotion, the more they would pay. Fear they enjoy—that’s what the hunt is for, to terrify the prey. But love—true, eternal, unselfish love—that’s one of the rarest emotions there is. Nothing can simulate it. No one can make someone else love another person, not with potions or trickery or even with the strongest magic. True love, real love, grows
suddenly, unasked for and unexpected. That,” the biker added quietly, “is what Mercy took from me. And in return, Annwn keeps her young and beautiful.”

Faye stared into the fire, trying to take it all in. It just seemed too fantastical to be true, and yet Finn’s father seemed dead serious. She finished cleaning the blood from Finn’s chest and picked up her tin mug of coffee, wrapping her fingers around the heat as she tried to take it all in.

“But you’re not under her spell anymore?” Faye frowned, wondering whether they could really trust Joe. He seemed sincere, and she wanted to trust him … but he was a werewolf, after all. But then, so was Finn, and Faye knew now that she could trust him with her life if she needed to. Finn must have gotten that from somewhere, right?

Joe swallowed a mouthful of coffee, shaking his head. “Some of my brothers loved the hunt. They embraced the wolf wholly. I never did. I hated making others feel fear, and maybe that allowed me to keep a tiny piece of my humanity. That and the fact that for the first time in a long, long time, Mercy felt love for someone other than herself. For me.”

“Mercy was in love with you?” Liz asked.

He nodded, glancing away. “I don’t know why, but yes. I became more than just another person to be used. She trusted me. And then … then something changed. I could work against her, just a little. I suppose her love for me lessened her grip on my soul. Real love cannot help but be selfless, after all. So I began to learn, as much as I could, about her magic, about how she bargained with Annwn.”

“Why?” Liz asked. “What good did that do you?”

“It meant I knew what to offer them. Something greater than anything Mercy’s kind had exchanged before. And that was enough to free me—and those who
wanted to come with me—from the curse.” He sighed. “We knew it would be difficult, but we craved the freedom to live our lives as best we could under our own hand, despite the creatures she had made us. And to do no more harm to the innocent.”

Faye felt a cold shiver rattle its way down her spine. “What did you give them?” she asked, her eyes fixed on Joe’s face. “What did you give Annwn?”

Joe smiled grimly. “All of Mercy’s kin,” he said softly. “I twisted one of her bargains, just a little. The spirits of Annwn grasped as many of her family as they could and dragged them down into Annwn. I hid and listened to the screams. They were the most terrified sounds you could ever imagine. Mercy survived, but alone. And in return Annwn freed me of her power, though they didn’t take the wolf from me. Or from any of us.”

“So … so Mercy’s the only one of her kind left?” Faye asked.

“Yes.” It was Finn who spoke this time, the flickering fire casting long shadows across his face. “But she’s determined to get her family back.”

“She keeps trying,” Joe agreed. “She keeps finding different bargains to make with Annwn. So we track and follow her wherever she goes, trying to save as many as we can.”

“One day we’ll find a way to stop her, once and for all,” Finn muttered.

“Yes,” said Joe seriously. “And that day is almost upon us. She’s planning something—something bigger than ever before. We must stop her, or we will all pay the price.”

Lucas stared at the handprints on the mirror and realized with horror that they were pressed not on the outside of the glass but on the inside. They were too big to have been left by Mercy; they were far more likely to be Ballard’s. But Ballard was nowhere to be seen. The room was empty, the house silent except for the crackle of the fire in the grate.

Lucas stepped closer to the reflective surface, gazing into its depths. For a moment he felt as if he were falling from a great height, down, down, down, deeper and deeper into the mirror. He reached out to steady himself, gripping the edges of the ancient frame. The cold bite of the metal jolted him back to earth, and he blinked. He saw something skitter along the edge of the mirror, spiderlike, a motion that made his skin crawl.

Suddenly, Ballard’s face was in front of him. Lucas leaped backward, terrified. Ballard was inside the mirror. His eyes were baleful, horrified. He looked this way and that, searching for something.

“Help me,” Ballard begged, his eyes finding Lucas’s, his voice distant and pleading. “Please. Let me out. Let me out.…”

“I don’t … what … I can’t …,” Lucas stammered, shaking.

“Please,” Ballard said again. “It’s so cold, so cold.… I’ve learned my lesson. I’ve been here so long … too long.… It feels like forever.”

“Ballard,” Lucas said, trying to shake off his fear. “Ballard, I don’t know how to help you. I don’t know what’s happening.”

“Mercy,” whispered Ballard, his figure wavering in the mirror. “My lady can help me. She … she can release me.… Please … so cold … so …”

Ballard’s words melted into an unearthly scream, his mouth stretching wide in fear as the sound went on and on. Lucas stumbled backward while from even deeper inside the mirror a gnarled arm reached out of a well of deep blackness. Its hand’s bony fingers reached up to grab Ballard, and the man screamed again as he tried to twist out of its grasp.

Lucas watched in horror as the arm dragged Ballard down into the deepest recesses of the mirror, into a featureless, swirling void. Ballard shrank until he was nothing but a tiny, writhing figure. And then, with a final echoing scream, he was gone.

Lucas stood, breathing hard, staring at the vacant mirror. His own trembling face looked back at him, pale and wide-eyed.

Then he made up his mind. Whatever his mother was, whatever she had done, he had to know. He had no idea when she would return, but right now, the house was empty. If he was to act, it must be this instant.

The door to his mother’s bedroom was unlocked, as he’d known it would be. Mercy never locked her doors—she didn’t believe she needed to, and before now, Lucas would never have dreamed of ransacking his mother’s private rooms. But now his fear had been replaced by anger and a desperate need to know. Somehow he realized he was closer to the truth about his life than he had ever been before. The constant moving around, the strange companions, the everlasting money that Mercy never seemed to earn …

He pushed open the door. His mother’s room was opulent, decorated in rich colors and expensive fabrics. The huge four-poster bed and the floor were covered in furs.

Under the bay window was a desk. It was old, another piece of furniture that Lucas remembered from his childhood. It had followed them around like the mirror, but he couldn’t remember ever having seen inside it. Its surface was a large slab of deeply carved wood, and beneath it were four drawers with worn, ornate handles. Lucas tried them all in turn, but they were locked.

He rummaged among the papers on top of the desk, but there was no sign of a key. Looking around quickly, he saw his mother’s vanity table on the other side of the room. What he needed was a nail file, and sure enough, she had several.

Sliding the thin blade into the first lock, Lucas twisted it hard. He heard a soft pop as the metal sheared, and then the desk sprang open. He pulled the drawer out, looking through the objects his mother had locked away. There was nothing significant—what looked like some dried flowers, a lock of hair and several old books. Lucas flicked through them but found nothing interesting inside. They were old and fragile, printed roughly in a language he didn’t recognize, and someone had signed both at the front. He moved on to the next drawer, finding more of the same, and then the third.

His hands froze on an old, yellowed envelope stuffed with photographs. He pulled them out, settling on the edge of his mother’s chair and laying them, one by one, on the desk in front of him. The photographs were all old—some of them looked like they were from the dawn of photography. The people in them wore elaborate gowns and suits, bow ties and top hats. Some of the photographs were so old it was hard to make out the people’s faces. Lucas leaned close, tracing the brown images with his eyes. He wondered if these were relations of his, like a photographic family tree. And then he realized something.

He could swear that his mother was in every single one of these pictures.

Her face stared serenely from each image. In some, she was with a single other person, usually a good-looking guy. In others, she was with a group of people, most of whom seemed to be gazing at her adoringly.

Lucas sat back, his heart and mind racing. How could these old photographs show his mother, who couldn’t be more than forty? She looked exactly the same in each picture. That just wasn’t possible. And why did she have them at all? He thought back to the screwed-up image of Faye he’d found tucked away in that old jacket.

“They’ve got to be fakes,” Lucas muttered to himself. “Digital manipulations. Maybe … maybe they were taken at one of those amusement parks where you can dress up.”

But even as he said it to himself, he didn’t believe it. There was something horribly real about each picture, from the color and the fading to the dog-eared edges. He pulled out another one and held it up to the light. His mother stood in the background, a cold smile frozen onto her hard, beautiful face. But it wasn’t his mother who had caught his attention. Beside her, tranquil, equally beautiful, was another young woman. He’d seen her before, and he’d thought about her often.

It was Faye McCarron. It had to be; it couldn’t be anyone else. But she was dressed in old-fashioned clothing again, a prim lace collar and a dark, full-length dress, and the photograph was as old as the others. And she was standing with his mother.

Lucas stared at it, growing colder and colder. None of this made sense, but now at least he knew who could help him. Shoving the rest of the photographs back into the drawer, he slammed it shut.

If Faye was in the picture, she must know what was going on.

“But how does it work?” Liz asked, looking at Jimmy’s pale face as she held his hand. “I mean, I get the bargaining thing. But how does Mercy contact Annwn without having to go there herself?”

Joe stood, stretching as he swallowed the last of his coffee. “She has the Black Mirror, the oldest in the world. She’s owned it for centuries. It was taken from an ancient castle in the easternmost part of Romania. Mercy discovered that it was a connection to Annwn—a passageway between the two worlds.”

“It’s why the weather’s been so cold around Winter Mill since she arrived,” Finn added quietly. “The Black Mirror doesn’t just suck in whatever offering Mercy gives it. It takes whatever energy it can get. It’s like a sinkhole, leading to Annwn. And right now, she’s drawing more power than she ever has before. This is the worst I’ve ever seen it.”

“Doesn’t that make it incredibly dangerous?” Faye asked.

“Oh yes,” said Joe. “Not even Mercy can control the Black Mirror. All she can do is possess and use it. Long ago her kin developed complicated methods of their own to limit the physical contact they have with both the victims and the mirror.”

Liz felt herself shudder. Just a couple of days ago she’d thought Mercy and Lucas Morrow were the two most perfect people she’d ever seen. Now every time she thought about either of them, it felt as if someone were walking on her grave.

“What are we going to do?” she asked. “If she’s so powerful, what can we do to stop her?”

Joe smiled. “We’re working on it. Somewhere there’s a way, and we’ll find it.”

Liz nodded, looking down at Jimmy and biting her lip. He seemed so pale. “What about Jimmy? What’s happened to him?”

“He got caught up in one of her hunts,” Joe explained. “I’m hoping we stopped them just in time.”

“What do you mean, ‘just in time’?”

Joe sighed. “Usually, when a hunt attacks, it is to feed, or to gather new members. We stopped them from feeding, but …”

Liz put a hand over her mouth in horror. “Omigod. So he
is
going to turn into a werewolf?”

“That’s what we’re trying to stop,” Finn told her gently. “It’s looking good so far, but he does still have some of the wolf in him. That’s why he looks so bad right now.”

Liz felt her eyes filling with tears as she looked down at Jimmy. “Are you sure we shouldn’t take him to the hospital? What did he mean when he said everyone in town could be hers by now?”

“Mercy doesn’t just take victims outright,” Finn explained. “She uses her powers to control them, too. She enchants people, controls them by affecting their minds, their judgment. Then she can use other mirrors, ordinary ones, to give them instructions, or to nudge their thinking in whatever direction she wants.” He shrugged. “It’s amazing how many mirrors you look in every day without realizing it.”

Liz looked at Faye. Her friend was shaking her head, and Liz knew exactly what she was thinking. That all of this was crazy, unbelievable. And yet, after everything both of them had seen recently, how could it not be true? Liz remembered the night of Candi’s party. Had Liz been quite … herself? She reached out a hand and touched Faye’s. Faye turned to look at her, lacing her fingers through Liz’s and squeezing her hand gently.