Shifter (18 page)

            “It wasn’t Palisor,” Fallon said. “It was just realizing that I
was
strong. It was having people around me who wanted me to be strong. That’s not what you are, Pietre. You pretend to be strong, and to do that, you keep the people around you weak. Well, I’m not weak. Let me show you.”

            Fallon leapt the way only he could leap, and he carried Pietre with him. Together they rose into the air so high that even Briony could barely make them out. Then they dropped. They dropped together like a stone. Faster than Fallon normally fell. Faster than could be safe, even for a vampire. Briony saw Pietre then, struggling underneath Fallon as the younger vampire drove him down into the ground like a hammer.

            They hit the concrete with a crash hard enough to crack the sidewalk. Dust flew up, making it impossible to see what was happening. All Briony could do was stand there, and hope, and maybe feel a little guilty for hoping.

            “It’s okay,” Kevin said beside her, slipping his hand into hers. “I hope he’s all right too.”

            The dust cleared, and Fallon was standing there. Pietre was at his feet, looking up and groaning. The master vampire looked like he could barely move then, but Briony knew even that wouldn’t be enough. Eventually, he would heal. Eventually, he would try to cause more chaos in Wicked. A month ago, she would have staked him. Now though, she had another option.

            She looked over to Archer, who was back in his human shape. “Xylyx isn’t the only pocket of reality connected to Palisor, is it?”

            “No, my queen.”

            “Are there any that would hold a vampire?”

            “Several.”

            Briony nodded and let go of Kevin’s hand so that she could touch her fingers to Archer’s shoulder. “Think of one.”

            Before, she had thought of the location the gate would open to. She’d been the one thinking of Wicked, trying to get home. Now, she just summoned her power, trusting that Archer would find the right place for this gate to open. Briony stared at the patch of ground beneath Pietre, pulling magic into her. Then she released it.

            The sidewalk where Pietre lay seemed to swirl like a whirlpool, going from something solid to something so fluid the vampire slid through without a sound. There
were
sounds though, on the other side. The sound of hounds barking and steel doors slamming closed. The sound of marching feet and people shouting things a long way off. An image came into Briony’s mind of a dungeon. Of a world that was nothing
but
dungeons. Mile upon mile of underground imprisonment. Somewhere even Pietre would have trouble escaping from. Briony let the power fade and the sidewalk went back to being just a sidewalk.

            She looked around. There were so many people in the street. There were vampires there, members of the Preservation Society, and werewolves. There were ordinary people from the town, who looked around as though knowing that their lives would never be the same again. Wicked had always been the town where people managed to ignore the supernatural things happening around them, yet now, Briony suspected that wasn’t going to be possible anymore.

            Fallon looked bad right then. He had several deep wounds, yet he seemed to be ignoring them for the moment. He looked around the assembled crowd, staring at the vampires there.

            “Most of you don’t know what is going on,” he said. “You were turned without a choice and pushed by Pietre to feed your hunger by hurting people. It doesn’t have to be that way. You have a choice, and you need to make it, if you aren’t going to be the kind of monster who gets hunted down. Think of your friends, your families. The people who love you.”

            “And then what?” Pepper asked it. Briony was almost glad to see that she’d survived the fight.

            “And then you keep on doing it,” Fallon told her. He looked around again. “How many of you are there now? Too many to go around hunting people.
One
vampire is too many to have hunting people. We’ll have to find a new way. A better way. And we will. Come on, all of you. We should leave. There are a lot of things we need to talk about.”

            He led the way, and the vampires followed him. Briony wasn’t surprised by that. Right then, they were looking for someone to help them make sense of things. Had any of Pietre’s older vampires survived? She couldn’t see any of them, and they would have been at the heart of the fighting. Even if they had, Pietre wasn’t there anymore to command them. Maybe they would change. So long as Fallon kept control of the rest, maybe it didn’t matter whether they did or not.

            “You’re just going to let them go?” Josh asked. “You think that vampires can live without hunting down humans?”

            “Do you want another fight that badly, Josh?” Briony countered. “It’s done. Maybe it isn’t done forever, but life doesn’t work like that. For now, we just have to find a way to make things work.”

            The first thing that meant was getting everyone off the street. That took a while. Most of the werewolves wouldn’t leave until Josh ordered them. Then there were the members of the Preservation Society, who were reluctant to move out from the safety of George’s Diner until they were certain that this wasn’t all some ploy by the vampires to get them into the open. There were plenty of ordinary people in there too, sheltering away from Pietre and his creatures. Most of them looked like they’d seen far too much in a short space of time.

            In the end, they decided to make George’s Diner their base while they talked through what would happen next. Josh showed up again with his sister, while Fallon came in with a couple of people Briony recognized as members of the town’s council. Briony knew that she ought to be at the heart of what happened next, but at the start of it at least there were so many people trying to talk at once that she just wanted to take a step back. She commandeered a booth with Kevin and just sat there with him, content to let the rest of it slide over her while she waited for the arguments to subside a little. Somewhere along the line, she must have drifted off to sleep, because she found herself waking with her head on Kevin’s shoulder.

            Briony smiled at the thought that she might be doing that for a long time to come. Then she looked up and saw why she’d woken up. Sophie was there, sitting down opposite them.

            “What did I miss?” Briony asked.

            “A bit,” Sophie admitted. “Josh and Fallon spent a while arguing over what should happen to the vampires next, but Josh has his own problems. His pack doesn’t want any more fighting.”

            “So what’s going to happen?” Briony asked.

            Sophie shrugged. “Pietre’s lieutenants seem to be either dead or gone. Fallon’s the oldest vampire left, and all the kids who were turned… well, they remember him from school. I think if anybody can teach them not to kill humans, it’s him.”

            “Will that work?” Kevin asked.

            “It worked for George.” Sophie looked over to the diner’s owner. “Who is now
Councilman
George, incidentally.”

            “How did that happen?” Briony asked. “I mean, people can’t just
decide
that you’re going to be on the town’s council.”

            “Ordinarily, no,” Sophie said, “but the circumstances are pretty special now. We have a town where people have just found out that they’re going to have to live alongside the supernatural. We have a large vampire population, one that’s mostly made up of people’s kids. It needs people on the council with the experience to cope with the situation.”

            “So George got a job?” Briony finished.

            Sophie smiled. “Not just George. There are a lot of vacancies now all the council representatives who supported Pietre have been persuaded to resign.”

            “When did that happen?” Kevin asked.

            Sophie looked at her watch. “Oh, I think Vigor will be getting around to the last of them about now. Would
you
want to hold onto a seat if you’d been helping vampires? After everything Pietre has done?”

            “So who else is on the council?”

            “Most of the Preservation Society,” Sophie said. She looked slightly uncomfortable. “And me. I couldn’t find a way to talk myself out of it.”

            Briony found herself thinking of the way Sophie was around Vigor. She couldn’t imagine Vigor staying in this world, yet Sophie would need to if she was going to attend council meetings.

            “I can commute,” Sophie said as though guessing Briony’s thoughts. “It just so happens that my great-niece is very good at making gateways.” Sophie smiled. “You’re going to need to be.”

            Briony hadn’t thought of that. There was so much to do here, but Palisor was hers now. Hers and Kevin’s. They’d have to go back and forth a lot.

            “It sounds like there’s a lot to do,” Briony observed.

            Sophie nodded. “Yes. But some of them will be more fun than others.”

T
hey held the wedding in the cloud palace, with row after row of guests stretched out across the great hall. Briony stood in front of the thrones at the head of the hall with Kevin. She wore a dress of silver and white fabric that seemed to shimmer with every breath she took. She said the two words she’d wanted to say ever since Sophie and the others suggested doing this over.

            “I do.”

            The crowd cheered, and there were enough people there that for a moment or two it was deafening. Maisy, Steve and the rest of the Preservation Society were there, looking around like they couldn’t quite believe the place they’d walked into. Archer, Fletcher and the rest of the dragons were on balconies around the place. As Briony said those two beautiful words they leapt off, transforming and breathing fire in a kind of aerial salute. Josh, the werewolves, Hugtandalfer folk from a hundred different parts of her kingdom… they were all there to watch her marry Kevin. They didn’t seem to care that they were already married. For royalty, it was the show that counted.

            The Hugtandalfer in charge of the ceremony nodded. “Then I pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss.”

            If anything, that got an even bigger cheer from most of the room. Briony felt like joining in with them in that moment, because she would never get tired of kissing Kevin like this. Not having to hold back, her arms thrown around his neck and her mouth exploring his for what felt like forever.

            It wasn’t forever, of course. There were still so many other things they needed to do. There was the official crowning, which Sophie took charge of while Briony sat on the main throne. Her great aunt placed King Waltham’s crown on her head. It was a little large, Briony noted. Probably, Vigor already had people working on producing a smaller one. He’d taken to seeing to so many of those small details as one of her new advisors and the head of her security.

            Briony reached up, lifting the crown from her head as they’d practiced for this part of the ceremony. Kevin knelt before her, looking up at her with nothing but love. Briony reached out to place the crown on his head before returning it to her own. Kevin had insisted on that piece of symbolism along with everyone else. While Briony wanted to crown him alongside her, he’d insisted that it should be clear that she was the queen, and he was simply her consort.

            Queen. In theory, Briony had been the queen for a while now, but that had always felt like just a label. Something to call herself to get people to help against the vampires. A way of unlocking the power that they all needed to save themselves. They’d been so busy fighting that it hadn’t felt like being the queen of Palisor was anything different.

            Now, it was finally starting to sink in what being the ruler of a whole other world meant. Servants bowed or curtseyed to Briony in the halls when she went past. People wanted her to help make decisions about what to do with rebuilding spots the vampires had damaged. And there were the gates. One was open in the corner of the great hall now to let people back and forth between Palisor and Wicked. Briony had decided to keep one open permanently between the two spots. It would have to be guarded, but she wanted the people she cared about to be able to go back and forth between the worlds.

            There was a party after the wedding. Actually, there had been a party going on for most of the week. Apparently, royal weddings were rare enough on Palisor that the people weren’t going to settle for anything else. But this was the main party, a grand ball with Hugtandalfer musicians playing stringed instruments and flutes, singing in ethereal voices and keeping up a steady rhythm on drums covered in dragon skin. Briony danced the first dance pressed tightly to Kevin, wishing that the moment would never end. Eventually though, she knew she had to talk to their guests.

            She started with Maisy, Steve, and the others. Maisy hugged her.

            “Congratulations! You look amazing!” Maisy stepped back and stared at her. “What does it feel like to finally be married to Kevin?”

            “I was married to him before,” Briony pointed out.

            “I know, but doesn’t this feel… I don’t know, more official?”

            It did, kind of, though the simple ceremony Vigor had presided over had felt so intimate and perfect. Honestly though, the thing that mattered was that they were married. The details of how it was done weren’t important. Or rather, they were, but only from the point of view of her being Palisor’s queen and having to put on a show.

            Josh was next after Maisy. He slipped in before Briony could move on to her aunt or one of the waiting Hugtandalfer representatives. That was good, because Briony had spent much of the last week hammering out a deal with him, and she wanted to make sure the werewolves’ king remembered it.