The Devil You Know (41 page)

The woman’s eyes flashed with silver fire but she made no protest, staring at him with a look that bordered on pity. All the while, the old man kept pulling his levers, readying the next coffin for the fire. Mynx watched them with silent speculation, a small mysterious smile on her lips.

“Leave her be, Vanguard,” Kathryn said softly.

The auburn-haired woman reached out slowly and clasped the older woman’s thin fingers with the greatest of care. “Hello, G. Long time no see.” She smiled, popping a dimple at them, but her eyes were sad. “I know I’m not the one you seek, but for the time being I can help you do what has to be done.”

When a lone tear slid down Kathryn’s cheek, the younger woman reached out and wiped it away. It was the first time in a very, very long lifetime that Van had ever seen his aunt cry. If he had been a less manly demon and the type to faint, he would have laid out in the floor right then and there. As it was, he was too shocked to protest when the three women took over.

When the whirlwind was over, Van really couldn’t say how it came that the young, blue-eyed woman was the one riding with his Queen on the conveyor through the still warm oven’s massive iron door and on through the black stone gate at its back wall. He watched, amazed at her ability to call up the magic of the mirrored stone without a demon’s talisman or a guardian’s blood. Before letting the two step through, he’d confirmed the destination was the Prince’s fortress and that a squadron of guards, including Prince Falcon, stood ready to welcome them. Even so it was hard to relinquish his protective duties, but he agreed he could better serve his Queen on this side of the gates. His aunt need not know he planned to do more than protect Cate.

When the darkmirror stopped rippling with the passage of the two women and became solid again, Van turned to Mynx, feeling more alone than he had in centuries. It wasn’t until he found himself riding home with her in an unfamiliar car, quite gloomily free to pursue his other mission, that he realized what the young woman had called him. He would have to ask if this “uncle” was some sort of human slang. For surely the girl did not mean it in the literal sense. Other than his aunt, cousin Falcon, and now his cousin’s daughter Cate, he had no family. When he was a teenager, his mother, the Queen’s sister, had been slain. The brooding Van would never forget the killer’s face…or his black wings.

That and his own inability to save her were seared into his mind for all eternity.

He didn’t believe in genocide, but secretly a part of him wanted to kill every moon-riding selenocid and obliterate them from existence. He wanted to tear the wings from their backs and scatter the black feathers to the winds until the moon was indeed gray with their dark blood. Until now, he’d kept that dark part of himself locked away. But an arrow to the back—one tainted with the Gray House’s own unique brand of poison—and Cate’s careless words about imitating those traitors had brought back the memories of that decades-long war, of the horrors he had seen the black-winged ones commit, of the tortures he had endured at their hands. Of the horrors, the tortures, he had committed in return.

Now the locks on his soul were weakening. And Van knew he would have to deal with that hidden part, with those dark memories and even darker urges, before he began his next mission of taking a wife. He thought of a certain fine pair of jade eyes. Perhaps the beautiful, sensitive Helena could help him with more than finding a bride.

It was one thing to ask a woman to take a demon’s hand, another to ask her to take a monster’s.

Chapter Twenty-One

“It can be fickle, vain and greedy. Or it can be steady, powerful, and the one you trust. While there are laws to govern magic, never forget that sometimes it has the temperament of a child and will react in response to the way it’s treated. It’s often like love in that respect.”

—Evie Delacy

Night Fourteen

We materialized in a fenced-in garden behind Jacq’s rose-colored cottage, and I laughed. “You forgot our suitcases.” I thumped Jacq’s back lightly, my protest hollow.

Jacq lowered me slowly, brushing our bodies together. Breasts rubbed against breasts, thighs to thighs. I shivered with pleasure, my eyes half-lidded as I looked up at her, my shocked amusement melting away under the desire that constantly simmered between us. Holding me tightly, Jacq locked her eyes with mine and lowered her head, bringing our mouths together in a scorching kiss. I had to grab her shoulders to support my suddenly weak knees.

When it was over, she nuzzled my ear and said huskily, “We’re not going to need clothes, cher.”

My every ability to think rationally…really to think
anything
…fled. And for once in my life, I had absolutely nothing to say.

In a hurry, I grabbed her hand, heading toward the back door of the cottage, but Jacq spun me back into her body. Amused, I looked up with a laugh. My breath caught, my laughter dissolving. Her gaze boiled with molten silver.

“We have a tradition to observe,” Jacq said.

I tilted my head in query. Jacq’s hands slipped under my knees, raising me effortlessly, ready to carry me over the threshold.

“There’s something to be said for honoring tradition.” Charmed, I tightened my arms around her neck and grazed my lips across the corner of her mouth, my blood warming another thousand degrees with her presence. The jump from Gandsai to NOLA should have exhausted her. I had never seen Jacq use this power but knew flashing between small distances was something her people could do. Moving more than a hundred miles in a heartbeat with a passenger no less was beyond the powers my mother’s book had listed. But I could feel Jacq’s magic, still strong, burning beneath her skin, humming against mine, pulsing slowly with her heartbeat, held in by only the thinnest thread. It was a warm ocean of power, and from the look in her eyes she was about to toss me into it. Which was all well and good as long as the tossing was a metaphorical, magical, sexual sort of thing.

When Jacq turned from the back door and headed for a large silvery fountain at the garden’s heart, I had the sinking sensation that the tossing was going to be a little more literal. I eyed the fountain throwing sparkling drops of water into the sunshine, and my arms became a death grip around her neck.

“You wouldn’t dare,” I challenged, lust making my voice thick. I fisted one hand in her shirt.

Jacq’s smile grew wider. “Cate.” She arched a brow as if to say she very much
would
dare, and I gulped. “I have,” she said very seriously, “another confession to make.”

I steeled my expression, ready to dig my nails deep. If she threw me in, I would not go alone. “Unless you’re confessing that you’re a glutton for punishment, you had better not do what I think you’re about to do,” I growled, clutching her neck and shirt tighter. Her own grip tightened around my back and under my legs, making it clear I’d get a dunking if I fought for my freedom.

Ignoring me, Jacq stepped onto the fountain’s ledge. Around us, foreign magic bubbled, water shooting out of the fountain higher and higher, even as the sound of it falling dimmed unnaturally. Strangely, the fountain had become larger than a moment before. For a second, we stood on the edge of a silvery lake and the decorative centerpiece that had been throwing water was now a swirling whirlpool—one moving closer at an alarming rate.

Jacq said, “Simply put, I must confess that…I don’t actually live here.” Then she flashed me that one-dimpled grin and stepped into the watery vortex.

I squealed as silver water rushed up to meet us, sucking us into a magical portal. The water flowed over our heads, and we spun around and around, sinking ever downward in the wildest…wettest…ride of my life.

If I lived through this, I must explain to my love that if the “tradition” required a snorkel, it wasn’t one worth keeping.

Moments later, we came to the end of our trip…at least the one through the waterspout. Our journey together was only just beginning.

“You shit!” Half-choking, I burst out of the water and swam after a laughing Jacq. I tried to jump on her back, but like an eel she slipped out of my grasp. I went down sputtering. When Jacq pulled me up again, I spit water at her and pushed soggy hair from my face, using one hand and my legs to tread water. “Where are we?”

“We’re home, cher.” Jacq pulled me close, and suddenly we were no longer in the water but on the shore of the large pool into which we had landed. Turning me in her arms so I could see what she saw, Jacq swept her arm out, encompassing the sparkling blue-green pool, the small waterfall flowing into it, and the stony grotto that surrounded them both. “My home,” she said. As her arm moved, our clothes and hair dried.

Show-off
, my demon-half murmured in my ear. I half smiled.

Like my love, the cave was beyond breathtaking. I craned my head back, taking in every glistening drop, every speck of stone, every brilliant, radiant fragment of light.

The cave was massive, its walls the rich black of volcanic rock. Like an earthy starry sky, large and small crystals on the walls and high in the ceiling above twinkled with their own internal light. Magical sconces were placed around the walls, their soft light merging seamlessly with the light from the crystals. The pool was large, but it barely filled a tenth of the massive cavern. A large portal spanned an entire wall, top to bottom. I thought at first it was covered by dark glass. Then I realized it was a clear ward. The darkness was simply because it was night outside. Another large portal was cut into a wall above the pool. During the day, it would flood the pool with light, nourishing the lush green plants growing at the water’s edge. But at the moment, the pool was lit only by the glowing crystals lining its edges and deep bottom.

There were a few smaller openings on the cave’s other side, each closed off with wooden doors. As I looked about, Jacq watched me, hands in her pockets. Her expression was supremely neutral, but her nervousness leaked through our bond.

I held my hand out. “Where is here? Where is home?”

The stone of the cave felt different. Its magic vibrated with an unfamiliar, yet familiar hum. It was ground. It was earth. But it wasn’t mine.

Jacq took my hand and turned her attention to the water. With a wave of her fingers, the waterfall froze, and the pool became a giant silver looking glass. Through it, I saw lush green jungles full of foreign animals, brilliant red-gold deserts, giant mountains of blue ice—on and on, an entire world flashed across the water, but never once was there another human-shaped being.

Never was there another Jacq.

The images stilled, stopping at one of a regal bird flying high over green lands, and I looked up at my love.

She said, “
This,
some might say, cher, is paradise.” Her face was thoughtful, her tone even, but there was a world of pain in her eyes. “And I am its last keeper.”

* * *

March 18
^th
, 1727

They rode through the afternoon and late into the night, the boy and Lucine always many paces behind the others. Even now as the camp slept in a mountain cave, his pallet and that of the guardian’s black-eyed daughter had been placed in a smaller cave nearby. The guardian, Cassidy LaFortuna, the woman he now knew was the Witch Prime and his former Master’s sister, would not suffer his taint near her or her people. Not that he minded the silence. It was not empty. His new Mistress, Lucine, spoke to him often, her memories of her father’s house helping diminish the voices that had begun to tell him of their terrors now that his mother’s ghost and the villagers no longer spoke to him.

Black box in hand, the boy moved out of the cave slowly, leaving his young Mistress sleeping. As his Master’s had before him, the boy’s madness came and went. But like the pale-haired alchemist he had so recently killed, the boy knew his madness, like his hunger, would grow stronger every day until that was all he was. Even now, his former Master cursed loudly in his ears, tormenting him with this knowledge while trying to cajole the boy to not do what he knew he must.

The boy moved into the tall trees, pushing his way through the snow, barely feeling the cold despite leaving the cloak Lucine had given him behind. Once he was far enough away, he knelt in a meadow, the cold stars twinkling above him in the dark sky. He placed the box in the snow and removed the dagger from his belt. Despite a savage cleaning, he swore he still saw a trace of his Master’s blood on the blade. The boy didn’t flinch when he sliced the sharp edge across his scabbed-over palm. Praying the voice in the black stone had been right and he hadn’t sacrificed his soul and sanity for naught, he smeared the blood on the box, pushing what little magic he had stolen from his Master’s flesh into the stone. With relief, he saw it ripple like living water. Holding his breath, he pushed his hands into the liquid blackness.

With care he pulled the souls out one by one, careful to hold the magic open as the voice had told him, knowing once he let the magic go he would never have it again. The butcher, the baker, the blacksmith and page, the cheery cook, the stable lad and his lusty scullery maid, fathers and mothers, babes and the old—he freed them all, an entire village of the once-damned, watching as their wispy souls floated up to the stars. When he finally pulled the last from the box, he cupped it in his hand. Pink-tinted tears flowed down his cheeks as he looked at her.

His mother.

Her soul glowed as brilliant as the stars above and as warm as the Earth hiding far beneath the snow. Part of him wanted to keep her with him always, to keep the one woman who knew him when he was his best and would love him unconditionally, no matter what.

Which was exactly why he let her go.

With both hands, he tossed her upward. In his mind, he saw her like a bird with wings, flying her way to heaven, if reluctantly so. Something warm brushed his cold cheek and he knew it was her kiss goodbye—and her forgiveness of what he had become. He was almost certain that it would be the last they would ever meet.