Unchained, the Dark Forgotten (2010) (34 page)

“I ran into a group of Undead. We’d no sooner become acquainted than one of your fey buzzed past. A little blue fellow. Are the fey in league with the Eastern vampires now?”

The amusement vanished. “No. For one thing, we had a falling-out over the girl.”

“The fey never give up their prizes,” said Reynard, his tone pure acid. “Not once you’ve won the game.”

The prince gave him a sharp look. “It’s not in our nature.”

“And you always play by the rules.”

“Precisely, when they’re rules we like. However, young Eden was in Belenos’s tender care. He didn’t seem to be daddy material, whatever his delusions, so I liberated her.”

That was interesting. But was anything Miru-kai said ever true?

“And now I liberate her from you.” Reynard meant to simply turn and go, but his vision narrowed, darkness eating away at the edges of the world. Cold sweat stuck his shirt to his skin.

Miru-kai flashed a brilliant but cold grin. “And you are a more able caretaker? I am a fey prince, and you are one guardsman looking a bit tattered around the edges. You offend me, Reynard.”

Then, without warning, Reynard’s legs gave way. He fell to his knees, sprawling forward. The gun clattered on the stone, slipping from sweat-slicked fingers.

“Captain Reynard!” Eden grabbed his sleeve. “Captain Reynard, are you all right?”

Miru-kai rose from his seat in a whisper of heavy silk robes. “Reynard?”

He didn’t respond, instead shaking his head to clear it. He thought he could hear guardsmen in the corridors, calling orders and running. He thought he heard Ashe’s voice calling him, and his heart raced with terror and love. His own existence had gone so very wrong, and this was the one thing he could do to make Ashe’s better. Except he wasn’t quite finished. He really had to get up and take care of loose ends.

Where was he?

What had he just been doing? Memory was flickering in and out of focus.

Oh, yes
. He started to climb to his hands and knees, but melted to the right, losing track of his hands and feet.

There was a terrible, terrible pain in his chest.

“Captain Reynard!” Eden shook him with all her strength as the world went black.

Ashe strode in Mac’s wake, Alessandro swift and silent behind them. They had found Mac easily enough. He’d been firing questions at a little blue fey no larger than one of Eden’s fashion dolls. The thing was trying to explain something about vampires and kidnapping and children. When Ashe showed up, argument stopped and they were on the move again.

The demon stormed into a huge, dark cavern. Angry heat blasted from him in waves. As soon as she could, Ashe stepped sideways, finding cooler air. The minute they reached open ground, she broke into a run.

Reynard sprawled in the middle of the cavern, Eden clinging to his hand.

“Baby!”

Eden gave a wordless cry and bolted across the stone floor. Ashe wrapped her child in both arms, holding her tight. An agony of relief ripped through her as she breathed in the smell of her child and felt soft skin against her own.

“Captain Reynard’s sick!” Eden sobbed. “And the prince disappeared when he heard you coming!”

Reynard!
Behind the relief came cold anger, then panic. Alessandro and Mac were already beside Reynard, who was having trouble getting to his feet.

“Get him out of here,” ordered Mac. Other guardsmen were trickling in through the doorway, drawn by the emergency. “Make a portal. Get him back on the other side of the door. Get him to Holly. Maybe she can do something.”

Alessandro picked up Reynard, slinging one arm over his shoulder. Vampire strength made light work of the full-grown man. “Lead on.”

The fey prince had to be guilty. Why else would he vanish the moment the authorities arrived? Ashe released Eden and stood, pulling a foot-long knife from her boot. “Goddess! Where is that bastard fairy?” It came out as a rasp. Frantic bursts of fear and relief and horror came one after the other, tearing her to shreds.

Mac rose, running to the entrance to the cavern, flames surrounding him in a white- hot corona. He filled his lungs and roared to the darkness, “
Guardsmen, find the fairy bastard!
”

The walls shook with the noise, as if the Castle itself cringed before his anger. Wherever the guards were, they heard.

“But he didn’t do anything wrong!” Eden insisted. “He was nice to me!”

But no one listened to a child. No one ever did.

“W
e’re joined here today for an exclusive telephone interview with Belenos, King of the Eastern Vampires. Your Majesty, I cannot begin to express how honored we are that you condescended to join us.”

“Thank you for having me, Errata. Let me begin by saying how much I appreciate the opportunity to speak to your listeners in the lovely Pacific Northwest.”

“It’s entirely our pleasure, Your Majesty. What would you like to speak about?”

“Interspecies relationships. The human media has long maintained that mixing human and nonhuman societies will inevitably lead to disaster.”

“Not all human media.”

“But most. I’m here to say it isn’t true. Peaceful relations can be maintained.”

“How do you propose to do that?”

“Humans outnumber us, so we assume they are stronger. I don’t think that’s true.”

“Why does it matter who is stronger?”

“Errata, my dear, half the time you wear the skin of a mountain lion. Surely you understand the law of fang and claw. Sovereignty belongs to the hunter, not the prey.”

“Excuse me, Your Majesty, but we need to cut to a commercial break.”

Reynard knew he was unconscious, because he’d had the dream so often before. It was New Year’s Day, 1758, at about ten in the morning. He rose from his bed in the big family home in Surrey, discovering that he had slept in his clothes. Drips of wine spotted the front of his shirt and breeches.
Well-done, Reynard.

Through the fog, he recalled being rude to his older brother, Faulkner, again. He couldn’t fix on the details. But then, his brother had been drunk, too. His memory would be no better. Hopefully. Reynard wished he could remember what the devil he’d said. Uneasy, he pulled the bell rope to summon a servant.

Outside, he could hear his nieces and nephews shrieking with excitement. He winced at the pitch of the noise, then cringed again when he pushed back the curtain to admit bright sunshine. A soft, feathery coating of new snow lay on every branch and stone, intensifying the dazzling light. He squinted at the scene. The children, bundled in wraps and mittens, were in heaven.

Noisy little buggers
, Reynard thought, but fondly. He had played under the same snow-dusted trees in his time.

Then Elizabeth emerged from the house, wrapped in furs, her hands tucked into a muff. She laughed with the children, walking toward them with cautious, tiny steps. The paving stones must have frozen over with ice.

Lizzie.
A poet could say how beautiful she was, how soft her fawn-brown hair, how smooth her skin, but Reynard was no poet. The sight of her killed the words inside him, striking him dumb, and empty, and full of lost echoes. She had that power over his spirit. She had kept him from loving anyone else.

Elizabeth, his brother’s wife. She had been his, but then Faulkner, with the title and fortune of the firstborn son, had come along. Elizabeth claimed her parents had made them marry, but he had always wondered. She’d fancied a coat of arms.

After that, Julian Reynard, dashing cavalry captain, was merely a comet that came blazing through from time to time, wakening dreams and stirring discord. If he loved his brother, if he loved Lizzie, he had to let her go.

Reynard started awake.
Where the hell am I?
He’d never been in this room before. He looked around, his tongue coated with the ashy taste that came from overusing magic. He was bone-tired, his limbs like sodden bread. He moved his gaze over the furniture. It looked new? Old? How could he tell? Everything looked modern to him. He closed his eyes, too tired to keep them open. He was thirsty, but sleep claimed him again before he could think any more about it.

He was dreaming, back in his old home, same day and date. He rinsed his face and smoothed back his long hair, tying it with a black ribbon. He pulled on his new uniform, thinking he would go out and about. A bit of gold lace impressed the ladies.

Reynard descended the stairs, still buttoning his coat. The bright, snow-reflected sun flooded the high-ceilinged hall, casting shards of light through the bevels in the window glass. Rainbows bounced off the crystal droplets dangling from the candelabra, ricocheted off the cut glass of a vase. The unforgiving light hurt his wine-soaked brain.

He stopped before the open door to the morning room, his gaze quickly spotting the coffee service sitting on a table by the window. The sun flooded in here, too, turning the steam from the coffeepot into a gossamer haze.

Faulkner, as fair-haired as Reynard was dark, and another man were sitting on either side of the fire in identical armchairs. Faulkner’s guest, an older man with a black coat and a full-bottomed wig, looked just the same as when he had visited their father years ago, but Reynard couldn’t remember the fellow’s name. Bellamy? Barstow? Beelzebub?

Bartholomew. That was it.

Faulkner was leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, his hands gripped together in an attitude of brooding worry. He flinched as Reynard strode across the Turkish carpet. Faulkner was either very tense or he had an equally vile hangover.

There were no servants in the room. Without a word, Reynard poured himself coffee and took a large bite out of a buttered biscuit. He wolfed down the food, standing with his back to the other men until he had something in his stomach. Rude, yes, but his temper would be far less risky if he was fed. He swallowed the last bite and picked up another biscuit, looking out at the prospect of the park and garden. The windows in the room were twice as tall as a man, draped with loops of sky-blue velvet. Beautiful, but they let in the cold as if there were nothing between the room and the snow outside. Dusting off his fingers, Reynard refilled his cup and moved toward the warmth of the fire.

All the while he had been eating, he had been eavesdropping on his brother’s conversation. His hearing had always been exceptional. Often he heard things he should not.

“So what is this nonsense?” He stopped, facing his brother. “You say your name came up in a lottery? What lottery? And what is this Order you speak of?” The name rang a bell, but he could not think why.

Faulkner lifted his head. “It’s not nonsense. I wish it were.”

“Then why did you never mention this Castle, if it’s so bloody important?”

Slowly, his brother sat back in the chair. “The odds of this happening were remote. The fewer people who know about the Castle, the better.”

“If something can turn your face as white as the snow outside, I have a right to know about it.” His point made, Reynard walked back to the table and neatly returned his cup to the tray. His life might be in all manner of disarray, but the army had instilled some need for order into his soul.

Bartholomew spoke for the first time since Reynard had entered the morning room. “Perhaps if the details are explained now, we can disregard what should or should not have been said in the past.”

The dry, dusty voice jolted him. The cruelty in it brought back memories of hiding under the stairs as a child. Another time he heard things that had confused him. Inwardly shaken, Reynard returned to his position, glaring down at his brother and folding his arms.

“Very well,” said Faulkner.

The older man shifted in the chair, leaning forward to look into Reynard’s face. “In the event that you do not remember me, my name is Bartholomew. I—as well as your father—have belonged to something called the Order for centuries. We look after—we guard—a particular castle.”

Faulkner buried his face in his hands. At the sight of his brother’s distress, a queasy sensation began invading Reynard’s gut. It was no longer the aftereffects of a night of drink. He recognized the cold seas of fear. “This is no ceremonial duty, I take it.”

“No,” said Faulkner, his voice quiet. “It is as dangerous as anything you faced in India. And it is absolutely, utterly real.”

Reynard’s mind groped for some point of reference. Despite Faulkner’s reaction, nothing about this conversation seemed believable. “Where is this castle?”

Bartholomew rose, restlessly pacing with his hands clasped behind his back. “That is the hardest question to answer.”

“How so?” Reynard protested, but Faulkner cut him off with a wave of the hand.

“Think back to the tales of the Dark Ages,” Faulkner said softly. “The stories of fey and demons, monsters and ghouls. Did you never wonder where such creatures went, why they walk the earth no more?”

“Not really,” Reynard said with a bark of laughter. “Those are nursery stories.”

“On the contrary,” said Bartholomew, his eyes meeting Reynard’s. “The sorcerers of old imprisoned all the evils in an infinite dungeon between the worlds.”

Realization nudged Reynard, not a bolt of brilliant insight, but the subtle bump of a stranger in a crowded room. He stared for a long moment, remembering scraps of conversation from childhood. Adults hushing as the children grew close, but not quickly enough that some shreds of their fantastic, gruesome news did not fall upon young ears. A book with a golden sun. Talk of warlocks. Talk of the Order.

So this is what all those mutterings were about.
He tried to deny the thought, but it clung like cobwebs. Old, bad dreams revived in the dark places of his memory. In spite of the coolness of the room, he felt sweat trickle down his ribs.